Socrates Is Dead ... Again

Filed under "Is Our Children Learning," I cannot believe this:

According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, the law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities.

Students who believe their professor is singling them out for "public ridicule" – for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class – would also be given the right to sue.

"Some professors say, 'Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,'" Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue.

Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, warned of lawsuits from students enrolled in Holocaust history courses who believe the Holocaust never happened.

Similar suits could be filed by students who don’t believe astronauts landed on the moon, who believe teaching birth control is a sin or even by Shands medical students who refuse to perform blood transfusions and believe prayer is the only way to heal the body, Gelber added.

Well, students during my undergrad years would have been suing for days. Those Jesuit priests were quick to whip your tail with a little socratic dialogue to help you sound out your questions and arguments. I recall my roommate coming from a Theology class one afternoon totally stoked by what she'd witnessed. Apparently, another student (whom she happened to know as a rich girl from her home town) made some snooty remark about seeing a woman in the local bakery purchasing a birthday cake with food stamps. The professor/priest promptly questioned her as to whether she believed that poor people deserved to have birthday cakes too. Yes, the girl was red-faced and miffed. But had she ever thought that, just perhaps, even poor people deserve to have a happy birthday - even if it meant buying a cake with government supplied food stamps?

I hardly think that exchange was about a liberal professor trying to insult or berate this student because she'd expressed her gut response. I'm sure her belief was that if you are poor, you should be buying food with her tax dollars. Part of learning should mean growing to say "Gee, I never thought of it like that before." I submit, then, that part of learning is learning to THINK! If a professor can no longer question a student who is there to learn, why is the student even there? I think this is more about some conservatives not wanting students to ever open their minds, learn to think or have opinions that deviate from the narrow views they were raised with. For that, someone ought to be sued.