American universities are producing graduates with no hope and no skills. Why not just skip college?

In this proud land, we grew up strong.
We were wanted all along.
I was taught to fight, taught to win.
I never thought I could fail.
No fight left, or so it seems.
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted.
I've changed my face, I've changed my name.
But no one wants you when you lose.

   Don't Give  Up

Sung by Willie Nelson and Sinead O'Connor

American universities went all in on affirmative action, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Hiring committees seeking to be more "inclusive" often hired new faculty members based on race, ethnicity, and sexual identity—not merit. Colleges hired thousands of highly paid DEI officers—1,100 at the University of Michigan alone.

According to one report, “the current undergraduate population at public universities will spend at least 40 million hours” taking required classes focused on DEI. Colleges created academic programs in gender studies, ethnic studies, Queer Studies, LGBTQ+ studies, Marxist and Socialist Studies, Equity Studies, and Social Justice.

Professors in traditional academic disciplines got on the bandwagon and adopted the philosophy of critical race theory as the cutting-edge pedagogy in the humanities, social studies, and liberal arts. Students exposed to this drivel were actually being indoctrinated in victimology--the belief that all human endeavors are conflicts between oppressors and the oppressed.

At the same time higher education was wallowing in DEI, grade inflation seeped into the academic assessment. Professors became too lazy to grade students rigorously; even at Harvard, most undergraduates were honor students.

Higher education's obsession with race, sexual orientation, and victimhood contributed to the spiraling cost of going to college. Few students can afford tuition pegged at $60,000 a year, but the federal government cheerfully loaned them the money.

The result? Millions of young people hit the job market with no reasoning or problem-solving skills, an inability to express themselves verbally or in writing, and no training in a substantive field of work. And they were burdened with massive student debt.

What's worse is that many students exposed to the universities's radical curricula became openly racist. It became acceptable and even chic to be anti-Semitic and to call for the destruction of Israel.

Minorities identified a "whiteness problem," and whites harbored the unspoken suspicion that students of color were the unworthy beneficiaries of DEI.

So, what do these clueless college graduates do? Some go to graduate school and acquire more debt without improving their marketability. Others take do-nothing government jobs or work the DEI hustle.

No wonder the United States is full of seething and resentful college graduates who can't figure out what to do with their lives or how to become productive citizens.

What's the solution? I don't know, but I am confident that no one should take out student loans to major in liberal arts, the humanities, or social sciences. If that is all you can think of to study, skip college altogether, get some vocational training, and work in the trades.

You'll meet a better class of people if you enter the world of actual work, and you'll probably meet fewer racists.

Image credit: Reuters

"Spanish is a loving tongue": So white people shouldn't be teaching Spanish?

 "Spanish is a loving tongue," so the song tells us,  "soft as music, light as spray." 

Indeed, Spanish is a lovely language, and I keenly regret not learning to speak it when I was young. I told myself I had no facility for languages, but I realize now that I was merely slothful.  

I was surprised to learn, then, that Jessica Bridges, a doctoral candidate at Oklahoma State University and a woman who taught Spanish for nine years in Kentucky, stated publicly that she stopped teaching Spanish because she is white.

As reported in Post Millenial:

[Bridges] decried the horror that children she taught had to "learn Spanish from a white woman. I wish I could go back and tell my students not to learn power or correctness from this white woman. I would tell them to stand in their own power. "White isn't right," she said.

I am confused. Does Ms. Bridges believe only people of color should teach Spanish? 

If so, I disagree. 

First of all, the people who inhabit the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) are Europeans, and although many Spanish people have a multiracial heritage, they are basically white people.

So how does it promote racism to have white people teaching Spanish?

Secondly, in my opinion, the transmission of knowledge should not be segregated by race, which is what Bridge's decision not to teach Spanish implies.

After all, the English language developed in Great Britain, chiefly inhabited by white folks. Should only white people teach English?

I think we would be a better country--a more inclusive country--if all Americans were bilingual--facile in both English and Spanish. I also believe our universities would advance diversity and equity more effectively if they would require their students to learn Spanish instead of obsessing on critical race theory.

Further, in my view, our universities should teach American history so that all students learn to appreciate the Hispanic contributions to our American heritage.

For example, educated Americans should know that the nation's oldest continuously inhabited town--St. Augustine--was founded by the Spanish.

They should know that the Spanish settled the upper Rio Grande Valley twenty years before the English set foot on Plymouth Rock.

And they should appreciate the fact that many of California's major cities have Spanish names--names given to them in the eighteenth century by Father Junipero Serra, born in Spain.

But to argue that white people shouldn't teach Spanish is--in my opinion--kinda silly.

Hey, buddy, are you teaching Spanish?