My favorite pundit, Pat Buchanan, writes in Takimag about the decline of American academic standards since 1964. He is horrorized that many of CUNY's students are virtual morons, unable to understand a long sentence or fractions. Buchanan implies that having these people in CUNY is based on a lie, that they can learn something. He thinks that some kind of deception is involved.
I agree that CUNY is not what it was fifty years ago, and that the name of City University is no more descriptive of what it is. CUNY is a mechanism to have the city's moronic, violent youth occupied doing something they are ready to do and quiet. The alternative is having them on the streets organized in criminal gangs. Of course preventing social diseases like street crime costs money, and the fact that CUNY is being financed decade after decade by the taxpayers means that they think it is worth it. I dont think New York taxpayers are being deceived, I know some of them and they are not stupid, they know that having "the barbarians" corraled in some room in CUNY is worth every cent. Currently they are some 3 million young people in jail in America, how many more can you put in jail? That doesnt cost money?
It is possible that some academicians and oldtime politicians ignore that CUNY is what we in Israel call "matnas", neighborhood clubs for drawing young marginal people from the streets. They think that someone is being deceived. But only they are.
Addenda: Some parts of CUNY are bona fide university, like the Math and Physics departments. The African and Puerto Rican Studies are not. It is easy to be confused, which is the purpose of the whole CUNY 2009 thing.
Illustration from CUNY website: Funtummireku-Denkyemmireku
literally: A Ghanian Mythical Two Headed Crocodile With A Common Stomach. Symbol of unity in diversity, democracy or the oneness of the human family despite cultural differences and diversities.
11 comments:
You are totally right, as usual. But given the rubbish they are taught, it is just as well these people cannot learn anything.
Leo Strauss would have approved of this piece. Indeed, could have written it.
Anon.
Instead of saying unity in diversity, it would be more accurate to say unity in poverty.
The alternative is having them on the streets organized in criminal gangs.
These youths are already involved in criminal gangs.
I dont think New York taxpayers are being deceived, I know some of them and they are not stupid,
I believe they are stupid, and let me explain why. Take a look at the Racial breakdown of the US state of Mississippi here. Here is a summary:
Black: 36.66%
White: 62.37%
Now here is the electoral breakdown in the 2008 election for Mississippi:
total votes: 1,279,259 - 100%
McCain: 724,597 - 57%
Obama: 554,662 - 43%
Using these numbers we can calculate the percent of Whites who voted Republican, assuming all Republican votes came from Whites:
57/62.37=.91=91%
The actual White vote was probably a little bit lower than that.
New York has more than to races, so I can't calculate the percent of Whites who voted Democratic in the last election, but I can post the data to give you an idea how liberal they are. First the race numbers:
Black: 18.3%
Hispanic: 13.3%
Asian: 7.2%
White: 61.7%
Now at this point if you compare the percentage of Whites in the two states you will find that they are about the same. Now here are the electoral results for 2008:
total: 7,557,429 - 100%
McCain: 2,752,728 - 36%
Obama: 4,804,701 - 64%
Had 91% of Whites in NY voted Republican NY would not have the crime problem it has now. If Mississippi did not have to contend with the political influence of states like NY it would be able to control its Black population better too. Also, The liberal voting patterns of NY cannot be completely explained by the Civil War, since many of the White groups in the state immigrated after the war was over, such as the Italians, the Jews, and most but not all of the Irish. Fourth, many of the Hispanics are illegals and cannot vote, and the Orientals are likely to give at most a third of their votes to the Republican party.
Heck, let me calculate some hypothetical numbers for NY. Lets assume that each racial group in NY cast the same proportion of votes in the election as its proportion of the population and that the Whites of NY gave 91% of their vote to the Republicans.
Total votes 7,557,429
Blacks 18.3%
1,383,010 total votes
all votes Democratic
Hispanics
1,005,139 total votes
assuming that Hispanics vote 2 to 1 for the Democratic party we get:
670,093 Democratic votes
335,046 Republican votes
Asians
544,135 total votes
assuming Asians vote 2 to 1 for the Democratic party we get:
362,757 Dem votes
181,378 GOP votes
Whites
4,662,934 total votes
Now let us assume for our purposes that Whites in NY state gave 91% of their votes to the GOP, here is how their votes would breakdown:
4,243,270 GOP
419,664 Democrats
Now let me add up the votes in this fictional contest to see who would win:
GOP: 4,759,694 - 63%
Dems: 2,835,524 - 37%
Now bear in mind that this is at the state level, not NYC which is already 2/3 non-White. Nonetheless, the Whites in the state could destroy the Democratic party's hold on power and slash welfare to the point that a good a part of the Blacks would go back to the states their ancestors came from in Dixie. Some of the Whites in NY state may also be Muslims, so NY state may be past the tipping point.
If your friends in NY aren't voting Republican then I can't say I have a lot of sympathy with their plight being a White minority in the city, because they are making common political cause with the Blacks.
In fact, if your intelligent friends in NY are voting for the Democrats then at best I consider them idiots, at worst willfully evil.
Using the numbers I put up above, I calculate that the Whites of NY state gave 48% of their vote to the Republicans.
It's ironic that an anti-Semite like Buchanan is complaining. The reason the caliber of CUNY students has declined is that instead of the brilliant Jews of the '30s and '40s (their children have all moved on to better schools), they now have the no-so brilliant blacks and Hispanics. You cannot shave 30 IQ points off your applicant pool and not have a decline in standards. What people w/ 85 IQs are doing in a university (other than keeping them off the street as you posit) is another question, but there are no more jobs in the hollowed out US economy for people w. strong backs and little brains.
Not 30.
40.
I was figuring say 115 for Ashkenazi Jews and 85 for blacks (Hispanics are a little higher depending on how black they are). But 30, 40, whatever, 2 or 3 standard deviations is the difference between future professionals (with a few Nobel laureates thrown in) and "college students" who can't really elementary texts read fluently. Very sad really, when I think of the 6 million shot and gassed - their children and grandchildren could have been the brilliant City College (and Hebrew University) students of today. Instead we have (both Israel and America) to fill our U's with what we have - the black & brown offspring of Africa, Yemen, etc.
While I am (mercifully) still employed, I am old enough that age discrimination would be a concern should I be forced into seeking a new job. I graduated from CCNY in 1972, which poses a dilemma: Most experts on the subject advise older job-seekers not to provide a college graduation date so as not to be eliminated immediately, but in the case of CUNY most know that the school pretty much crashed and burned in the mid-70s so only those graduates before that date have degrees that are worth anything.
I guess I could lie and say I went to another school or just focus on my grad school credentials.
Anonymous (second above): I never read it formulated it so clearly. Of course we are of the same mind.
Anonymous (directly above): I have the same problem. Argentine universities after the nineteen seventies (the "Proceso" military dictatorship) decayed or closed. Then came the Peronist populism, and diplomas were given to anybody. Argentine diplomas are worth nothing here. Fortunately I made some courses in the Technion, which are respected.
Everywhere, there is the tendency to debase the currency.
Anon.
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