Issue 2

 Babak ...


       Universities are said to be places where new ideas are born, where intellectual debates are encouraged, and where students leave the university life behind with a new state of mind.  For one to enter university and not learn of different ideologies and view points in relation to our complex world would be highly problematic.  One would have to conclude that higher education had failed that particular student.  However, the ultimate question is where is the line to be drawn on how much a university can alter and influence the values and morals of its students?
       The main task of a university is to be objective in the material it presents to its students, and most importantly professors should not be using their classrooms as forums to champion one set of beliefs over another.

       With a doubt one can conclude that Canadian society is secular, liberal, and capitalist and these notions are all prevalent in the method the educational system uses to teach its pupils beginning from as early as elementary school right up to higher education.  For example, it is not until one takes a course at a college or university where the ideas of socialism and Marxism are introduced for the first time.  More times then none such leftist ideas are either championed or scorned at by the instructors in their classrooms depending on their ideological backgrounds.

       Therefore instead of attending a particular history, political science, or economics class and learning the different view points from socialism to liberalism to conservatism on a particular event, professors only select one ideology and present it to their students.  Now the majority of these professors go on about achieving the task at hand in a subtle manner.  For example, course text book, journal articles, and other reading materials that are selected for the students to read are hand picked by the instructor in such a manner that each scholarly work agrees with the professor’s political philosophy.  If by some chance a particular article does not follow suit to the instructor’s ideology, he or she will criticize that work to death, and thereby keeping intact the one and only political ideology he or she wishes to pass on.

       Moreover a number of other professors will go as far as turning their classrooms into a political forum that champions only one set of ideas.  Such endeavors are accomplished when the instructor from the start of the course reveals his or her political ideology and ridicules all other forms of ‘isms’.  Furthermore, such professors do not allow any other view points to be expressed in their classes, and if a student is brave enough to question the validity of such a procedure, he or she will receive the punishment at the end of the term when grades are revealed.

       If one is to learn anything from such acts it is the alarming corruption of students’ minds that are occurring in universities.  When universities practice such methods of teaching they are first not allowing students to develop mentally at their own paces.  Since, the university is drilling into these young minds, one set of beliefs, one set of values, and one set of morals.  Therefore the institution of higher learning begins to function much like an assembly line producing only one product, or political ideology in this case.  Lastly, when professors turn their classrooms into a forum where they only preach their own political philosophies, and do not allow for any other view points to be expressed, they are transforming their students into an intolerant group of people who will enter society and not accept anyone who thinks differently from the way they do.  Such an accusation is not hard to make as all one has to do is look to the United States today, to see how blind intolerance can make a state or its government in the actions it pursues both domestically and in its foreign policy.