Santorum Claims' California Universities Don’t Teach American History'

[Ichingcarpenter]

Rick Santorum has previously called colleges “indoctrination mills” that make students liberal and Godless, and labeled President Obama a “snob” for wanting kids to get educated. “Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image,” Santorum said.

Santorum continued his broadside against higher education (and the facts) today in Wisconsin, claiming that “seven or eight” of the ten schools in the University of California system “don’t even teach an American history course”:

SANTORUM: I was just reading something last night from the state of California. And that the California universities – I think it’s seven or eight of the California system of universities don’t even teach an American history course. It’s not even available to be taught.


In fact, of the 10 UC system schools, just one (San Francisco) doesn’t offer American history courses. But that’s because it doesn’t offer any humanities courses at all — it’s a medical school.

Meanwhile, Berkeley, Irvine, Davis, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz all offer numerous American history courses. All require students to take U.S. history before they can graduate.


http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/04/02/456547/santorum-uc-american-history/

[Jim__]

1. I'd really like to know what he was reading. - n/t

[davidthegnome]

2. Me too

His contempt for education strikes me as amusing - as it's probably what leads him to make moronic comments like this one.

[JHB]

4. His audience.

Pretty well, too, since they lapped it up.

[geckosfeet]

5. I'd like to know what he is smoking. Seems like pretty powerful stuff.

[Jamaal510]

17. Crack.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. He was reading a Wall Street Journal op-ed that argued that the UC's don't REQUIRE

an American history course.

This is typical Santorum misstatement and exaggeration. The WSJ op-ed (itself a reactionary bit of claptrap from a Hoover Institute conservative overstater) was doing the usual pseudo-academic bemoaning of the changing curriculum, crying that the UC's don't REQUIRE a course in American history, and arguing that Berkeley doesn't have a survey course in Western Civ (because, um, it's not 1955 anymore, apparently). This is typical culture wars stuff, Dinesh D'Souza without the brains (and that's saying a lot), how can you be an English major and not have a required Shakespeare course, closing of the American mind style nonsense. Santorum makes it even more nonsensical by exaggerating: you can't even take an American history class at any UC! Wah! Of course, that's complete idiocy: there are plenty of what we in the humanities call "Americanists" of all stripes in many departments at many UC's and they all offer courses in their area of specialty. What Santorum is on about is the requirement that one take an American history survey at the college level, a requirement that is usually met by the YEAR that almost every high school student in this country has to spend on American history.

What is a 10 or 16 week college level SURVEY course going to cover that the 40 week high school YEAR in US history didn't? It's a grand mystery.

This is not even to mention where the real resistance to the requirement comes from: the very STEM programs that we're supposed to be abandoning the humanities for in the first place! So, who kills the requirement for a US history survey course? is it the evil multiculturalists forcing all the white suburbanites to take classes in South Asian Women's Literature Under Colonization? No. It's the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs that fill their student's schedules with three semesters of calculus before they can even start taking major courses. Why do they oppose the humanities requirements? Because their students literally don't have an open space in their schedule for the first two years of college, given the major requirements. None of these whining conservatives have ever done academic advising for incoming first-year students, that's for sure.

[Jim__]

9. Thanks, that explains it. A thought on requirements ...

... Back in the late 60s, students were protesting what seemed to be arbitrary requirements. If I'm majoring in literature, why do I need to take a calculus course. As a student, I tended to be sympathetic to reducing requirements. Now, I'm less certain than I was then.

[HereSince1628]

8. I think he's reading the label directions on these

[Thor_MN]

3. So according to the Santorum Theory,

being educated makes you more liberal, which also means being uneducated makes you more conservative.

Seems about right...

[saras]

12. It's not his theory, it's most modern neurobiology

It's the reason postwar psychology has been suppressed - the entire body of psychology from the mid-forties to the eighties was suggesting the same thing. TPTB preferred mind-numbing drugs and Reagan served them well.

Now it remains to be seen whether neurobiology will keep getting funded once they announce a cure for TeaPartyism.

[Thor_MN]

16. Maybe I was too subtile

Santorum, all on his lonesome, called himself stupid. He claims he is the only real conservative and that education makes you liberal.

Granted there's nothing new or untrue there, I just thought it was interesting that a campagain would really go with "Vote for me, I'm uneducated"

[CanonRay]

6. Little Ricky needs to stay off the Internets.

until he grows up and can understand bad people put lies on there.

[HopeHoops]

10. Yeah, and George Washington cut down a cherry tree. Give it up Mr. Frothy.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

11. He's upset that they don't teach that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs.

You know...history.

[Voice for Peace]

13. He probably believes this because when he was in college he almost was turned into a liberal

until his religion saved him.

[Ichingcarpenter]

14. There's Santorum On Your History

The facts of this lie have been

'Refudiated"

to quote the GOP scholar and linguist Sarah the grifter Palin.

By the facts.

[Arkana]

15. Ah, another entry for the "I Get To Make Shit Up Because I'm Rick Santorum" file.

This'll go nicely with the "Dutch doctors involuntarily euthanize old people!" claim.