Anyone who thinks there isn't a left leaning bias at university either doesn't want to know about it, or is part of it, or whole-heartedly thinks that Bob Brown is a centrist.

In my opinion universities are home to some radical ideas which wouldn't be considered legitimate by the vast majority of regular Australians.

I once had a lecturer in a class on terrorism say things like

"what we call terrorists are often just freedom fighters"

"the Oklahoma City bombing in the US was an example of Christian terrorism."

"Most of the world's media support Palestine... (except The Australian newspaper)...but that's just 'The Israeli' anyway."

But then, I guess perception of bias can be relative. I've also experienced a lecturer who was openly a Communist say they thought Australian Universities had a right-wing bias because Communism wasn't being taught as a legitimate alternative.

No normal everyday Australian thinks that Communism is a good idea, nor is there anyone suggesting that Christianity has a problem with terrorism.

We can't give these academic radicals carte blanche for their own academic crusade on the common-sense.

I think something ought to be done. If they're not bias, then universities shouldn't have a problem with becoming more open & transparent abou what they are teaching.

I agree completely with the article, although the US examples cited were a bit irrelevant other than an example of elsewhere

After forty years in the workforce, I recently undertook teacher training through a Grad Dip in Education. I wanted to share my experience and knowledge, put something back, so to speak. I was appalled at the outrageous narrow approach of some of the lecturers/tutors, where you had to spout back exactly what you were told, and only from the set texts, otherwise you failed or your work was rejected to be resubmitted until the espoused doctrine was adhered to.

It was not so much the narrow views themselves that I found hard to take, it was the fact that by taking the particular stances in a tertiary institution, the proponents were portraying how ill-educated they themselves were.

I don’t divide these views into right or left, simply because I find such labels both constraining and unhelpful to debate and/or discussion. Suffice to say that the doctrines advocated were from narrow and closed minds.

Chris C,
I have heard of many complaints from high school students and parents regards what a teacher has been telling the students, and what a teacher has done if a student had a different opinion.

One favorite trick appears to involve giving the student low marks for assignments, and a student should enter into an arts course, a social science course, and even a history course at their own risk (particularly if they are male and white).

But the good news for high school students (in QLD at least) is that they can join the local town library and access an online tutor for free.

https://connect.yourtutor.com.au/list.aspx

If they are a member of the local town library, the student can submit their assignment to the online tutor, and the tutor will provide an assessment of the assignment before the student submits the assignment to their actual teacher.

For no cost the student can get a second opinion of their assignment, and this may help balance out any prejudice or bias from their teacher.

Shorter Nigel Freitas: WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

But seriously, he claims that gentle right-wingers are victims of "a new McCarthyism", when he is the one channeling Joe McCarthy - casting aspersions about some sort of shadowy left-wing conspiracy among the higher education sector to turn out radical lefties.

Where is the evidence? A couple of half-baked anecdotes about people encountering challenging material for the first time in their lives and being upset by it. Guess what? You go to uni to read things you wouldn't otherwise encounter. That's the point. This is probably a shock to the poor dears after a lifetime being raised on a steady diet of spoon-fed private school coaching.

News Flash: The radical left is dead on campuses. Barely anybody shows up to protests. Student unions have been decimated by the last government's policies. The students all work two jobs just so they can eat two-minute noodles for four years. Doesn't leave much time or energy for plotting the overthrow of capitalism.

The Big Red Menace is over, guys. It's been over for almost 20 years. Have you been too busy jumping at shadows to notice?

paul L, i save such language for ideologically inspired threats to academic freedom. is there a problem with biased lecturers, and silly lecturers, and sacred cows? of course there is. there always has, there always will be, on both sides of the spectrum. i'm as appalled by knee-jerk unquestioned feminist twaddle as i am by knee-jerk unquestioned free market twaddle. it's an easy game and it's a pointless, stupid game.

there is a problem: lecturers are human. they have failings. some more than others, some more consciously and deliberately than others. but it's not a left thing or a right thing, it's a human thing.

what will not help one iota is to have a campaign of little hitlers waiting to write down and publicise utterings at the first sign of offence. ther are plenty on the left who like to play this game, too. and it is just as disgusting then. but this is a whole-cloth american import of horowitzian sleaze.

such campaigns ARE chilling and these people ARE sleazy political creeps. the language fits, and they should wear it.

Sadly, political correctness starts long before University. That's why two thirds of uni students are now girls...

Our teachers and Education bureaucracy (who write the Curriculum and who teach our teachers how to teach) are deeply biased against the pedogogies and interests of boys.

I believe that boys and girls are equally smart, and that all children deserve an equal start in education. Innocent children should not suffer from the idelogical prejudices of the education bureaucrats.

Up until the 1980's boy and girls got a similar average mark in year 12, and had a similar chance to get into the uni course of their choice.

But then boys results started dropping. By 1996, boys had dropped below girls by 7%! This certainly set off the alarm bells... and since then the NSW Education Department stopped collating figures by gender, and claim under several FOI requests to not have nay idea of boy's results.

According to the ABS... "Several explanations have been suggested to account for the overall changes in HSC results. These include: changes to the HSC curriculum, assessment or scaling processes; increased retention rates; changes to TE score calculations; and the impact of different patterns of subject choices.6 Some of these changes may have favoured girls' approaches to learning, their preferred mode of assessment and their more broadly based subject choices. Analysis of many of these factors suggests that, while they may account for some of the current difference, as yet there is no clear explanation why the relative performance of boys in the HSC has been falling over recent years.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/C2A1E1B677D4AE81CA2570EC00195177?opendocument

One report said tha the average difference now is 20%... That means that girls average 20% better than boys of equal ability!

Don't blame boys being less intelligent than girls, because boys used to do as well as girls, only 20 years ago.

Don't blame boys 'lack of motivation', because teachers are meant to motivate their students.. and if they only motivate the girls and discourage the boys, that is not the fault of bthe boys, that is simply discrimination.

PartTimeParent@pobox.com