Study: College Kids Who Detect Bias in Class Are Mostly Dumb

Are you a college student who frequently detects political bias of one sort or another in your professors? Chances are, you're dumb.

A new study at an anonymous Southern university compared students' own level of resistance to personal and political change with their perceptions of how biased their teachers are. Surprise: correlation!

The study found that students — even in the same classrooms — didn't perceive bias in the same ways (or at all), and those who perceived bias were those who were resistant to changing any of their views. The finding extended to some who identified themselves as being far on the left and resistant to change, and who believed that they had some biased conservative professors. But among both left-leaning and right-leaning students who didn't score high on resistance to new ideas, there was little perception of bias.

To clarify this, for the dumb students who will, with any luck, composed outraged emails to us after being forwarded this post: while the research accompanying this study "found no evidence of real bias," it did find that kids who are very resistant to change thought their professors were biased, because the professor, perhaps, challenged the student's views. Since the student is paying money to the professor to teach the student with the implicit understanding that the student knows far less than the professor about the subject at hand, these findings indicate that the students in question—who mistake the educational process for "bias"—are dumb.

http://gawker.com/5810764/study-college-kids-who-detect-bias-in-class-are-mostly-dumb

Skip the Gawker link and go to the source:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/06/10/new_study_on_why_some_students_perceive_political_bias_in_classrooms

not to reinforce what you already "know", & force others to believe what YOU do...and then complain when they refuse:)

There was only one that actively went out of his way to shove his opinions down out throats, and he was one of the conservatives. He regularly gave speeches about how evolution was bullshit, about how "partial birth" abortions were an abomination, and a few other goodies if I remember. Some of the students (not me) did complain to the administration about him and he got a talking to.

Anyways, most of my professors, even the ones that were conservatives, were fair. They simply taught the material and presented different sides, which is what education is supposed to do. But the only actual biased teacher I ever had was a conservative.

There's a difference between a teacher having their own opinions and actively shoving them down students throats. Nearly all of my professors understood that. Liberal bias? LOL. Just a bunch of crybaby conservatives that can't stand it when students are actually made to think. Because when they do, conservatives usually suffer.

I don't recall ever being charged LESS money for ANYTHING just because I am black. I remember a thread about these idiots a few years back. I suggested that the black students should just come to the table and buy ALL of the cookies for the stupidly marked-down 25 cent price and then resell them for a nice little profit.

:D

I'd love to have seen the looks on their faces if someone had actually done it.

I remember that discussion. Can't say I read your suggestion back then, but it's classic. Would have been great to set up a table right next to them and sell the cookies for 30¢ each. "We don't want to take advantage of anyone; we just want a chance to improve ourselves."

...go out and buy some milk with the profits and sell that as well--or offer it for free with the cookies, whatever's your pleasure. :)

because, rather than just letting them rest on their liberal laurels (hey, it's UCLA), I make them defend positions. I laughed, but I also thought it was indicative of doing something akin to what I'm supposed to do, which is to challenge assumptions and to knock them away from their conventional wisdom. Despite them thinking I was a republican, none of them accused me of bias. That's just laziness.

and quite a few not easily classified. None ever expected me to regurgitate their beliefs by rote but all expected me to master the class material. If Thorstein Veblen was the topic, Milton Friedman wasn't the answer. However, as they expected me to know the topic, I wasn't required to believe the topic -- but it was my responsibility to intelligently defend any contrary belief I held.

And as I wrote on this board some years ago about this very topic: Many times, I feel those who protest the most about a professor's "slant" are the one's least able to support their own. They're not protesting a professor's restriction of their academic freedom so much as they're reacting to their own academic frustration.

And that's the way that cookie crumbles.

Mostly left of center, and usually the further left the more outspoken.

Most of the conservative teachers I assumed were conservative because I had no data on which to base an opinion.

My standard example of a biased professor wasn't a class I was in, but a professor I was (in some sense) working for. Mostly I helped her students get their presentations into web pages. She had approved a project and didn't like where the student took it. It was war literature, and she focused on misogynistic and racist themes. An English class, the literature was American and British. Almost all the presentations were the same: Look at representations of foreign nationals or at how American minorities/women were presented.

But one guy in ROTC decided to focus on the WACS. He tracked down WACS in nursing homes and interviewed them. The written material looked at how the WACS were presented in literature, but also their history (since few students knew of them). The core of his presentation showed that in literature they were presented as industrious, loyal, hardworking, etc., etc.--and the interviews showed that this understated the dedication and pride the women had in what they accomplished. As he played the interviews during his presentation the teacher turned bright red and looked furious. She got up, rushed to the tape recorder and turned it off. She told him he failed, he misunderstood that their low status was accurately portrayed as humiliation and discrimination, and that the women he interviewed were obviously deceived and couldn't be trusted. Instead of being a sign of progress, the WACS were a diversion to oppress women.

The next presenter was a girl forced to radically revise her project. She was fluent in Japanese and dug up Japanese war posters and was discussing the dehumanizing representations of Americans (anti-black, anti-white, anti-whatever). She was forced to revise it to talk about American attitudes and it left the impression that the Others were nice and non-racist. (Which was a stretch for WWII.) When she tried to refer to Japanese posters and how racist they were, she was steered back on topic by the teacher, lest a person of color be called a racist.

This came from a 30-year-old Berkeley PhD who drove a nice car (mommy and daddy had money), blonde and blue eyed. She had the Truth. She insisted that her students reflect the Truth. (Few times have I been pissed enough at a professor to get up and walk out. This was one.)

went over very well in Berkeley. :eyes:

My English lit prof (almost 40 years ago) said overthrowing Allende was the best thing that could have happened to Chile. "But he was elected by the people." "Those people are like children - they don't know how to govern themselves. Otherwise they would not have elected a commie."

I thought that was biased.

I guess I'm just dumb.

ANd thinking that disagreement means your professor is biased and that bias is affecting the information they are imparting to you. And the point of the article isn't that a student isn't stupid every time they think this is happening, or that bias doesn't ever exist.

middle of the road, and never forget that AUTHORITY is speaking and you might just be misunderstanding it'.

It seems to me a way to dampen any protests about professorial bias, for fear of being classed as one of those fringe dummies.

Disagreement with professors is a time honored tradition and a vital part of higher education - bias, OTOH, tries to quash disagreement.

And as a side note - if the disagreement, and fallout from that disagreement, are tangential at best to the subject in the classroom, as per my example above, it's safe to say it is not a teaching tool, but is bias.

LOL!

:rofl:

That picture is of my alma mater, U. C. Berkeley. What a travesty. :cry:

His stupid spin on the study has nothing to do with what the studies author states.

First off, It was not an anonymous Southern university. "Darren L. Linvill, the study's author and director of basic courses in the department of communication studies at Clemson University".

It found the perceived bias on both the left and the right. "The finding extended to some who identified themselves as being far on the left and resistant to change, and who believed that they had some biased conservative professors. But among both left-leaning and right-leaning students who didn't score high on resistance to new ideas, there was little perception of bias."

His conclusions had more to do with the teachers than the student. "Linvill said that his ideas come from the realization, when interviewing students who thought they experienced bias, that their feelings were very real but that their evidence was of "insensitive teaching, not politically biased teaching."

The only dumb bias in this story is from Gawker.

tlk politics. he was with niece and told niece. they sat him next to me at dinner. everyone was ready... really was funny. the thing, dinner, peace, and a guest, i was nice and we all enjoyed the meal getting to know him.

AFTER dinner. we talked. i was kinda excited too. educated. i like that. repug.... cool, maybe i could understand his rational for all the bushco years. (this was four years ago).

he was all fox news talking points. every. single. thought. was fox news.

so easy to kick his ass from here to the moon and back, over and over and over.

he left with ears back, but being so gracious and was humble in my kicking ass.