Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Detroit’s Wayne State University Has a Tradition of Illiteracy Fit for the Stalled Former Motor City

By Nicholas Stix

I got the following essay from the Countenance blogmeister, who wrote:
 

Awhile back, a regular AR poster who goes by the screen name “Proactive” had this to say about his alma mater, Wayne State University:
 


Way back in the ‘70s, when I was about to graduate from Wayne State University in Detroit, we soon-to-be-grads had to assemble in one of the campus auditoriums to write a 250-word essay. Regardless of major, every student had to pass this simple (and widely known) exercise in order to receive their diploma.

It was blindingly simple. The instructors gave handouts explaining that you had to introduce the subject, discuss it in the body, and then write the closing. Five hundred topics to choose from were listed on a separate sheet of paper, and an overhead projector kept the instructions, as explained verbally, cast on a huge screen in front of our huge group. A postcard came in the mail a week later telling if you passed or failed. I was already working at a job in my major when I read in The Detroit News how a large group of black students was suing the school for discrimination.

It’s important to note here that Wayne State U. in Detroit is and always has been just to the left of Karl Marx, politically. Political Correctness may have been born on this campus. Blacks with just over 1.5 high school GPAs were admitted as freshmen, and they were passed no matter which courses they took. Dumbing down for black students and social promotions were the rules of the day at WSU. After 4 years of, uh, “study,” they had failed the simple essay requirement.

Their argument was that the requirement was biased against blacks due to the “fact” (sic) that writing essays were particularly difficult for their race. What’s the complaint in this AR article? That multiple choice tests were too difficult for blacks? What testing method is left? A few weeks later I read where the black students vs. WSU lawsuit was thrown out of court. Due to the absence of a healthy shame among blacks, and their near total disregard for learning while IN school, these idiotic lawsuits continue. Today, the courts appear to be so PC-corrupt that the litigants often win. With the liberal messiah in the highest office, expect more of this insanity. After all, he’s our first PC, affirmative action prez.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"absence of a healthy shame among blacks," Yes indeed. Dr. Manning, a pastor out of Harlem, calls it "no honor" among blacks. Blacks in ten thousand years have contributed nothing of any benefit to the world. They are not ashamed. They have no honor.
I too had to write an essay on subjects from a list selected by the university that I attended and on the spur of the moment. I wrote, as I recall, about fire extinguishers. I have no idea what my grade was. I passed.

Anonymous said...

Another spree shooter story for the media to disappear as quickly as possible. Jerry:

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Police-Capture-Suspect-in-Shooting-Rampage-That-Left-Five-Dead-Terrell-Brownlow-229670821.html

Anonymous said...

I took a law class there while I was summer clerking from my time at a better school. The education was pretty good and practical, but the grading was easy as heck. Easy A for sure.

Tartar said...

I am a WSU grad as well, class of '80. Most of the liberal arts faculty were either liberal, but not flaming, or at least didn't get in the way of the speeding liberal dynamite truck. To younger readers of this blog, liberals in those days would still say things like:

-> "Though I disagree with what you say, but defend to the death your right to say it."

-> "Disagreement is healthy."

-> "Everyone's opinion is valuable."

One doesn't hear those things any longer from the collectivist end of the continuum; the long march is pretty much at its end, they pretty much have what they strove for. A lot of the libs of those days have died off or grown up. The power lust and will to enforce collectivism are in the open now.

Anyhow, by the time I graduated, the essay requirement was gone. What I recall is that incoming students had to take a test of their composition skills, and those who passed went to a normal freshman English class, I think it was English 150, and those who failed went to a remedial class, if I recall correctly, English 130. A couple of friends I went to school with ended up in the 130 class, but got back up to snuff. They told me most of the blacks never did. And I saw in the 200 level English writing classes that most were passed through the education mill even though they never acquired the requisite writing skills.

A nephew, who graduated from one of the better schools in the Detroit area, and did a year at a noted Catholic college in the Midwest, quit after his first term at WSU. Apparently, a lot of the students are taking classes to maintain welfare eligibility. He said it was worse than being in high school, some of the brothers never having grown up and still acting out in class, and the total lack of literacy and analytical skills among these students were a time-consuming obstacle to achieving class objectives. (Anyone who has worked for the Government knows what I mean.) The fuliginous fraternity still mills about the northeast door of State Hall, who knows, some of the bodies might have been milling since the time I graduated. He didn't even want to bother trying the suburban WSU campus, opting for Oakland U. Amazing how Oakalnd U. grew during WSU's decline. The decline of WSU parallels the decline of the USA and the deepening degradation of "Liberalism."

I would be interested in seeing any statistics on alumni giving broken down by race and gender, both at WSU and in the aggregate. I suspect it is the white or Asian male alumni who contribute the most, by far, and the affirmative action/diversity successes are more into buying expensive cars they don't have the skills to drive and other consumer goods and services.