Hacker News Reader

Comment by myrmidon | Hacker News Reader

Are these questions typical/representative for US education?

To me, they seem strongly tainted by the professors worldview in a way that seems barely acceptable for a classroom setting and completely inappropriate for an exam.

Republican complaints about education being an avenue for indoctrination now make much more sense to me (assuming that this is actually common).

View on HN

This is from the GMU economics department. I actually agree with a lot of the worldview of the people there, but it is clearly a political project, not an academic one. Noteworthy wealthy political activists have donated enough to the department to pay the majority of the faculty's salaries for many years. For better or for worse (I think mostly for better), most academic departments are not like this one; it's nearly unique.

No. I actually thought the post was satire because of how overtly political the questions and answers are.

edit: The material from his course[0] is all pretty similar. It's hard to believe this guy is a real professor.

0: https://betonit.substack.com/p/my-new-policy-class?utm_sourc...

Having been out of college for a while now, my answers may be a bit out of date. But I've never seen anything quite this toxic. I grew up in liberal area, so I have seen more liberal views. But even then I've never seen anyone not me nor class mates lose points for having a different view they could support. E.g. some argument or evidence.

This reads a lot more like satire even though I don't think it is. Had I not read this in this context I wouldn't have believed something could be this bad.

In the US, this is very common in the higher education Social Sciences.

It is necessary to align with the professor’s (usually left) slant to secure the best marks. This is common knowledge for students in the US.

While I think you're drastically overblowing the issue. I'll agree it's common knowledge in the US there's plenty of college professors who do that kinda BS.

I wonder if there's any correlation between this kind of malfeasance and university quality.

> Republican complaints about education being an avenue for indoctrination now make much more sense to me

The funny thing is that these exam questions are mostly aligned with Republican values. I'm sure it also happens the other way, but this particular case looks more like conservatives indoctrinating students and then turning around and complaining about liberals doing it.

I think most people have already answered this, but there are of course outliers. I did polisci and there were great teachers, and then there were ones who spent the entire class talking about the upcoming election and their views on it and why anyone who disagreed was wrong.

People are people in the end, and while there's weeding out some always slip through.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com