Reply to thread

So The Australian is making it up?

No one is suggesting avoiding education. It's just that universities seem to have forgotten why they are there, which is to encourage critical thinking and disseminate the wisdom accumulated by Western civilisation since the Enlightenment to the benefit of society. As well as training the next leaders in research and public service.

If you've been to any university in Australia you're likely to have come out at least subconsciously subverted by left-wing ideology which permeates most humanities departments and student activist groups. It's self-perpetuating. Graduates become teachers and leaders, and so it goes on. Students like to belong so they accept these ideas as the right ones.

Where do you think the current focus on race, gender, identity, colonialism, oppressed/oppressor paradigm, white supremacy and privilege, climate catastrophising, equity, rejection of religion and capitalism, have all come from? I've been to university, in the 1980s before all this extremism really took hold and even then we were bluffed by the lure and excitement of casting off the stodgy old ideas and forging a new brave path forward. Unfortunately, the old ideas had stood the test of time and there are very few of the above items that have achieved mainstream acceptance.