Is it True That University Students Are Being Taught to Think?
Executive Summary
- For many years it has been proposed that obtaining an undergraduate degree trains students in not only narrow domains of expertise but how to think.
- How accurate is this assertion?
Introduction
We have been repeatedly told of the benefits of undergraduate education — and that even if the student does not apply the specifics of what they learned in their life or career, that the attainment of undergraduate education has taught that person or trained them how to think.
Interviewing Students at California State Northridge
The person who told us this obtained their undergraduate degree from California State University at Northridge.
The following video was filmed at this exact university. Let us see how well the students do that thinking.
Many of the students did know who some of the most well-known people in history were from their photographs.
The problematic issues that were surfaced from this experiment were the following.
First Batch of Students: Obama is a Better Person Than Jesus Because He is Their Race and was President
The blacks placed Obama after Jesus because they were black. This is an affiliation, not logic for why they are a good person versus the others that could be selected.
Trump was placed below Hitler because he is..
“Childish”
Even after it being presented to them, what was just one of Hilter’s crimes, they first did not know, and secondly, this did not influence their positioning. They stated that Trump (supposedly was still worse) because he wanted to..
“build that wall”
Building a wall is only about stopping illegal immigration. Yet stopping (non-white) illegal immigration is considered more of an offense than Hilter — although admittedly, the two black students appeared to barely have a clue who Hitler was.
This brings up an interesting conundrum in my analysis. Is it worse to know be able to identify Hitler from a photograph, or instead to place him above Trump? Why am I faced with this dilemma? Shouldn’t these students know enough, so I don’t have to think this through?
Even if these two are on their first days at the campus, this should have been taught to them in high school. Are these two students going to actually graduate from this school? Does Cal State Northridge want them to graduate, and then have to live with them telling people they hold a degree from this school? It seems that just for self-preservation Cal State Northridge might want to allocate money to entice these two students to enroll in a different school.
Second Batch of Students: Obama is a Better Person Than Jesus Because He is Black
The two Indian or undefined racial dark-skinned women again chose race as a determining reason why they placed Obama ahead of Jesus.
Third Batch of Students: Trump Might One Day be Worse Than Hitler
The two white women could see that
“potentially in the future,” Trump could be placed in “the same category as Trump.”
This is filmed in Sept of 2019, which means he had been in office for most of his term when these women are making this statement.
Fourth Batch of Students: Obama is a Problem for Deporting Illegal Immigrants
The Latin American students stated that Obama was better than Hillary Clinton, but still a problem because he removed a..
“bunch of immigrants.”
This is untrue. Obama removed illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are to be removed by US law. This law is as far as I can tell either a universal or near-universal feature. Mexico deports many illegal immigrants residing in Mexico, and no one says anything about it.
This is now the third value judgment that is entirely about race. The Latin American woman states she knew they were “deported” but does not seem to accept that illegal immigrants should be deported.
Obama has, of course, all kinds of shortcomings, including his policy having close to no relationship to his public statements, his unwillingness to prosecute bankers, his coziness with Wall Street — but the only shortcoming listed here is his enforcement of US immigration law.
Fifth Batch of Students: Mark Zuckerberg is Better Than Jesus Because He is Powerful
The dark-skinned male student that followed (he is racially ambiguous to me) places Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook above Jesus on the basis that he is powerful.
That is also not the question.
The question was to rank the individuals by how good they were. And the answer is not even internally consistent. The student states that Zuckerburg is not as powerful as Jesus, but then still places him ahead of Jesus.
Again, this is not even consistent if one follows the logic that the question is who is the most powerful person.
Sixth Batch of Students: Reagan is Below Hitler
The two Indian women placed Ronald Reagan below Hitler — because Reagan was more
“mentally manipulative!”
Hitler, on the other hand, is a
“real pimp”
and
“he upfront with his stuff.”
Hillary Clinton is placed in the middle — because she..
“Does not like black people.”
This is now the 4th reference to race issues in terms of how good a person is.
How the Indian woman determined Hillary Clinton did not like black people is a mystery to me, as this is the first time I had heard of this observation.
Seventh Batch of Students: Hitler is The Lowest Rated…But Primarily Because He Took Guns From Germans
As for with the white man who was interviewed last, regarding Hitler..
“s*** went down in Germany because he (Hitler) started taking rights away from people.”
And that Hitler created a
“gun-free government.”
I had to look this up because I had also never heard of this claim before.
This is what Wikipedia has to say about this claim.
Few German citizens owned, or were entitled to own firearms in Germany in the 1930s.[2] The Weimar Republic had strict gun control laws.[8] When the Third Reich gained power, some aspects of gun regulation were loosened, such as allowing firearm ownership for Nazi party members and the military.[5]:672 The laws were tightened in other ways. Nazi laws systematically disarmed “unreliable” persons, especially Jews, but relaxed restrictions for so-called “ordinary” German citizens.[5]:670,676 The policies were later expanded to include the confiscation of arms in occupied countries. – Wikipedia
This claim has a contentious history, as the following quotation also explains.
In October 2015, U.S. Republican Presidential Primaries candidate Ben Carson said that Hitler’s mass murder of Jews “would have been greatly diminished” if Germans had not been disarmed by the Nazis.[19]
In February 2018, U.S. Republican Representative Don Young, proposed the question “How many Jews were put in the ovens because they were unarmed?”
In October 2015, in response to comments made by Ben Carson, history professor Alan E. Steinweis wrote in a New York Times piece:
The Jews of Germany constituted less than 1 percent of the country’s population. It is preposterous to argue that the possession of firearms would have enabled them to mount resistance against a systematic program of persecution implemented by a modern bureaucracy, enforced by a well-armed police state, and either supported or tolerated by the majority of the German population. Mr. Carson’s suggestion that ordinary Germans, had they had guns, would have risked their lives in armed resistance against the regime simply does not comport with the regrettable historical reality of a regime that was quite popular at home.
Inside Germany, only the army possessed the physical force necessary for defying or overthrowing the Nazis, but the generals had thrown in their lot with Hitler early on. – Wikipedia
The man finishes by saying that guns are what will help protect people if they are afraid of Trump.
This claim appears to be an attempt to rig historical analysis to support gun rights. However, the idea that the one thing that a student would observe about Hitler is that he restricted gun rights — even if true is a very restricted analysis of Adolf Hilter. I have watched countless documentaries on Hitler and read numerous books on The Third Reich — and this has to be one of the most bizarre critiques of Hitler imaginable.
This topic of Hitler will arise again in the next section.
How Do Berkeley Students Fair on “Thinking” on Freedom of Speech?
While the students at Cal State Northridge failed the thinking test, let us see how the students at the most elite school in California fared.
Here the question is whether it was correct to cancel a speech by Ann Coulter, the notoriously offensive conservative author, and media personality.
A Collage of Students: Ann Coulter is Racist, Xenophobic, Conservative with an Ignorant Mind Who it is Right to Use Violence Against to Stop Her Speech
It is “cool” and the “best course of action” that she was stopped from speaking on campus.
The white man with possibly an Irish accent states that the Nazis
“were free speech.”
Which is not true. The Nazis only allowed their own free speech — they not only denied freedom of speech, but they eliminated other political parties.
If we are speaking of the Nazi rise to power and what enabled this rise to power and that their speech should have been restricted, that case is also weak. Hitler provided a convincing story for Germany’s fraught condition as the economy worsened (the country was stabbed in the back by the Treaty of Versailles, Jews were responsible, etc..). The worldwide economic depression elevated the Nazi party, who had really been telling the same story since its inception. But while in the 1920s, the Nazis struggled to obtain 5% of the vote, but in the 1930s, they were able to obtain 37% of the vote in a national election. This meant the Nazis did not have the required majority to take power, which led to political negotiation that had a highly historically negative outcome.
The political situation at the time that led to the rise of the Nazis is explained as follows.
The Nazis polled almost the same 37 percent they had in the presidential election, making them the largest party in the Reichstag. Schleicher negotiated with them, proposing that Hitler become vice-chancellor. Hitler demanded the chancellorship along with five cabinet positions and important posts in the state governments; additionally the Reichstag would have to pass an Enabling act giving a new government all needed powers, otherwise it would be dissolved. Around the country Nazi stormtroopers were running riot, attacking their political opponents.(emphasis added)Hindenburg refused to make Hitler chancellor, so he met with Hitler to explain that he was unwilling to bring a single party to power.
To break the stalemate, Hindenburg proposed Hitler as chancellor,(emphasis added)Papen as vice-chancellor and Reich commissioner of Prussia, and Göring as Prussian interior minister (who controlled the police).
Hitler’s first act as chancellor was to ask Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag, so that the Nazis and Deutschnationale Volkspartei (“German Nationalists” or DNVP) could win an outright majority to pass the Enabling Act that would give the new government power to rule by decree, supposedly for the next four years. Unlike laws passed by Article 48, which could be canceled by a majority in the Reichstag, under the Enabling Act the Chancellor could pass laws by decree that could not be canceled by a vote in the Reichstag. Hindenburg agreed to this request. – Wikipedia
But this was not enough — Nazis did not just speak, their rise was not just a feature of their speech or popular support. They used violence and effectively set up a fake emergency to finally take power.
In 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire, which Hitler used as a pretext to seize emergency powers and detain his political enemies. With communists and other leftists under arrest, he was able to push a law called the Enabling Act through parliament. The Enabling Act allowed Hitler’s cabinet to institute legislation without parliamentary consent. – LiveScience
One has to ask, why did Hindenburg agree to dissolve the Reichstag?
Hitler’s forces were brutalizing many political opponents at the time, and Hindenburg detested Hitler. Hitler also used violence throughout his rise. This was enforced by the Brownshirts, which were then renamed as a force after they were made illegal by the German government. As the Brownshirt organization was made illegal, it could certainly not have been news to Hindenburg that the Nazis used violent means to achieve their goals. What did Chancellor Hindenburg think would happen if he acquiesced to Hitler’s demands? Hindsight is 20/20, but there appears to have been ample evidence against what Hindenburg agreed to before he agreed to it.
In the references section, I have included more the steps that Hilter used to rise to power, and it shows multiple steps where Hitler could have been stopped. However, this is too much detail for the main body of this article.
Therefore, the explanation of the rise of the Nazis was that they are an example of free speech that should have been suppressed, does not fit with history. And secondly, there is not much of a correspondence between the Nazis and Ann Coulter, so the comparison is incoherent.
The white woman states that free speech was a
“movement for its time,”
but
“this is now a different time.”
The First Amendment to the US Constitution goes back to the founding of the country. Its protections were enlarged by the US Supreme Court during the 1960s. But apparently, it does not apply to the present day. Why this is the case is not explained.
A woman with a strange hairstyle states that..
“I am Jewish, and I know what happened in 1930’s Germany.”
However, the Nazis did not just restrict Jewish speech. Obviously, they did much more. And this woman is supporting what the Nazis did, which was to deny the freedom of speech to Jews and to any opposing voices. How she converted the Nazis’ denial of free speech into something; she is preventing by, like the Nazis, opposing freedom of speech is a serious logical flaw. It does not appear she is thinking through what she is saying but is reaching for an excuse to censor speech she does not like.
This also brings up the question of how much history these students know, and whether they have any references outside of Hitler and the Nazis. Secondly, they do not even appear to understand the Nazis — therefore, their one “historical guidepost” is false.
The black woman with the yellow headscarf than says that Trump has emboldened racists to be more assertive. However, Ann Coulter has had the same act long before Trump was elected.
The possibly Irish man then says that if the university does not listen (that means to follow directives and stop controversial speakers from speaking), then students are justified in using violence to silence speakers invited to the university by the university. He presents this as if there is no other option. One option, which is the option that is part of US history, is to listen to the speaker quietly, and then at the end of the speech, there is typically time set aside for questions. This is the part of the session, where students can challenge the speaker.
The Indian man then states that offensive speech is a type of violence, and
“violence comes in all forms.”
This is the new construct of combining speech with violence so that real violence is then justified in response to “speech violence.” And the scope of the term violence continues to enlarge. According to many transgendering — the act of “misgendering” is now considered “violence.” And naturally, as a transgender is a victim of “violence” (misgendering), they can use real violence in return.
This is distinctly anti-speech framing. It is the direct threat of the use of violence against speech one disagrees with. How a society that was based around principles of The Enlightenment got to this point, how students at a university — that is “the educated” is a serious indictment of either the education they are receiving, the society in general, or both.
He states that he is happy to see..
“Richard Spencer get punched.”
However, Richard Spencer does not incite violence. He offends people but does not call for violence. This Indian man is saying that people that say things that are offensive should have violence used against them.
A white man with long brown hair makes a comment about violence being “inevitable, like in Spain.” It is very unclear as to what he means — but he also appears to support using violence to stop speech that you find offensive.
The woman with the strange hairstyle then refers to the Nazis again, when she says,
“Physical force should have been used against the Nazis, as that was the only way to stop them.”
It is curious that Ann Coulter is first being compared to the Nazis — as she is not the leader of a movement, not running for political office, has not written a book where she outlines the extermination of the Slavic people. This woman is also confused because the Nazis used violence against other people — they had the advantage in violence against the opposition. The Nazis stopped opposition with both violence and the restriction of freedom of speech.
If the freedom of speech had not been restricted, it would have been more difficult for the Nazis to rise to power. Stopping people from speaking is exactly what the Nazis did. Curiously, these Berkley students are supporting violence to stop speech, which is exactly what Black Lives Matter and Antifa do today.
Antifa uses violence against those that oppose illegal immigration — and they are justified because people that oppose illegal immigration are like Nazis. Which is curious because the Nazis both restricted speech and used violence.
This is a consistent theme that none of the students appear to know much of anything that is accurate or nuanced about the Nazis, and they continually use the term “Nazi” for people that have contradictory views from them.
Conclusion
This was a horrific performance on the part of these students — and the performance of the students from the most elite university in California was perhaps only marginally better (the students were able to better articulate their views, but the logic contained in their answers was not much better than those from Cal State Northridge). But some of the students at Cal State Northridge do not appear to have been prepared by their high school to attend a university. In the Berkeley interviews, none of the students appeared to understand why the US has freedom of speech protections or why offensive speech is speech that requires protection. They also did not appear to consider what might happen to their freedom of speech if someone who opposed them were to say…call them a Nazi.
Obviously one cannot take a final conclusion from a small sample size like this — but the fact that there were no good answers, and that the students were so willing to use false historical examples, did not know basic facts, gave illogical answers is certainly not encouraging that students are learning “how to think.” A number of the students appeared to be doing nothing more than using rank tribalism around race to come to their conclusions.
This claim of developing higher thought processes and strong logical thinking has long been asserted of those who support the university system. But there are many examples of generalized testing as well as my personal interactions with those with university degrees that contradict these proposals. One of the issues is that universities, students, the parents of students all want to think this is true. And as is the case with confirmation bias, there is, therefore, a strong incentive for a large number of people to believe that it is true.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Nazi_Germany
https://www.livescience.com/54441-how-hitler-rose-to-power.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_von_Hindenburg
How Hilter co-opted, Hindenburg is an interesting story.
During 1933 and 1934, Hitler was very aware of the fact that Hindenburg’s power to sack him was the only means by which he could be legally removed from office. With the passage of the Enabling Act and the banning of all parties other than the Nazis, Hindenburg was the only check on Hitler’s power. Given that Hindenburg was still a popular war hero and a revered figure in the Reichswehr, there was little doubt that the Reichswehr would side with Hindenburg if he ever decided to sack Hitler. Thus, as long as Hindenburg was alive, Hitler was always very careful to avoid offending him or the Army. Although Hindenburg was in increasingly bad health, the Nazis made sure that whenever Hindenburg did appear in public it was in Hitler’s company. During these appearances, Hitler always made a point of showing him the utmost respect and deference. – Wikipedia
How Hindenburg was sidelined before is death is covered in this quotation.
During the summer of 1934, Hindenburg grew increasingly alarmed at Nazi excesses. With his support, Papen gave a speech at the University of Marburg on 17 June calling for an end to state terror and the restoration of some freedoms. When Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels got wind of it, he not only canceled a scheduled tape-delayed broadcast of the speech, but ordered the seizure of newspapers in which part of the text was printed.[119]
Papen was furious, telling Hitler that he was acting as a “trustee” of Hindenburg, and that a “junior minister” like Goebbels had no right to silence him. He resigned and immediately notified Hindenburg about what happened. Hindenburg was equally outraged, and told Blomberg to give Hitler an ultimatum—unless Hitler took steps to end the growing tension in Germany and rein in the SA, Hindenburg would sack him, declare martial law and turn the government over to the army. Not long afterward, Hitler carried out the Night of the Long Knives, in which the SA’s leaders were murdered, for which he received Hindenburg’s personal thanks in a telegram.[119][177] A day later, Hindenburg learned that Schleicher and his wife had been gunned down in their home; Hitler apologized, claiming that Schleicher had drawn a pistol. During the Nuremberg Trials, Goring admitted the telegram was never seen by Hindenburg, and was actually written by the Nazis.
Hindenburg remained in office until his death at the age of 86 from lung cancer at his home in Neudeck, East Prussia, on 2 August 1934. The day before, Hitler received word that Hindenburg was on his deathbed. He then had the cabinet pass the “Law Concerning the Highest State Office of the Reich,” which stipulated that upon Hindenburg’s death, the office of president would have remained vacant and that Hitler would have been titled Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Chancellor of the Reich).(emphasis added) – Wikipedia
This is another very obvious move on the part of Hitler that should have been illegal. First, Hitler eliminated the Senate body of the Reichstag, but in the next move, he consolidates the Chancellorship and the President.
Why did Germans not push back on this? These are textbook dictatorial moves, and it does not take a crystal ball to see what comes next.
Recall that the Nazis only received 37% of the vote in 1932, which means that most of the German electorate actually did not support Hitler.
Two hours after Hindenburg’s death, it was announced that as a result of this law, Hitler was now both Germany’s head of state and head of government, thereby eliminating the last remedy by which he could be legally dismissed and cementing his status as the absolute dictator of Germany.[119]
Publicly, Hitler announced that the presidency was “inseparably united” with Hindenburg, and it would not be appropriate for the title to ever be used again. – Wikipedia
This is pure idiocy — it is a faux sign of “respect” and the elimination of the President’s office. Yet it was accepted. This illustrates one error after another that lead to Hitler’s rise. There were many steps where Hitler’s rise to power could have stopped or at least greatly curtailed.