DOES IT PAY TO BE DISENGAGED? Rose at No Credentials has a spot-on characterization of what passes for learning in the politicized classroom.

I don't think liberal bias in the academy is dangerous because it programs the tender young minds of undergraduates. At the University of Oregon, at least, most of the undergrads I saw looked upon the unkempt sloganeers behind the lecturn with boredom and resentment. They weren't interested in emulating some near-celibate graduate student obsessed with the WTO, or with the iconography of androgyny, or with the abstract collaboration between global and national ideologies in a postpolitical world (I mean really, would you want to be like that?).

No, the young are protected by their indifference, and by their devotion to partying.

The real danger of radical monothink is that it weakens society's faith in the quest for intellectual truth—more specifically, in the academics who've been, not without some skepticism, entrusted to take part in that quest.

It gets better. I particularly enjoyed this.

And we get, in the classroom, endless references to American imperialism, American fascism, American war-mongering, American ignorance, and American false consciousness.

There are certain young men who hang around pool halls wearing jean jackets adorned with Harley-Davidson patches, who adopt the slang and the facial hair of bikers, who act tough with impressionable young girls and nervous old people. They've never kept a job long enough to afford a motorcycle; and if they ever did, they wouldn't have the strength to right one of those 1200cc monsters when it topples over at the curb, as in their hands it almost certainly would. Their loudmouthed behavior often annoys real bikers, who (generally, generally) uphold values like honor, bravery, and courtesy to the public. The term given to these costumed fakers by real bikers is "sidewalk commandos."

And what is the upshot?

Thanks to the efforts of Terry Eagleton, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and all the rest of the revolutionary wannabes, the public is fast losing respect for humanities scholars, and for the profession they represent. Instead of taking seriously their roles as trained minds engaged in the service of higher, if sometimes abstract, truths, humanities professors have donned the costumes of revolutionaries. They decorate their office doors with political frippery; they pepper their lectures with incendiary buzzwords; they congratulate themselves out loud on how dangerously they speak truth to power. They are a generation of sidewalk commandos.

You know, I really ought to locate and republish an essay from 12 years ago that began "Universities are failing at their mission." There is probably not a word of it I need to retract. Perhaps find it, and engage in a self-fisking, if that's required?

Hat tip for the No Credentials piece: J. V. C. Comments, who adds,

I've often wondered what bizarre, misguided impulse makes people become humanities professors because they hope to foment widespread political revolution. Want to change the planet? Join the Peace Corps; become a Marine. Me, I wanted nothing more than to learn about and contemplate our big, weird world. My task as an adjunct is really quite simple: I encourage my students to devote serious thought to the works we read, and I do my best to provide them with detailed information about the author, the historical context of each work, differing interpretations, and fair responses to any questions that arise; their job is to make up their own minds. I aim to teach them how to think, not what to think.

The problem, however, is that there might be precious little learning really going on. Via Cranky Professor I find a Jay Mathews column (mental note: bookmark Mathews!) on the recently-completed National Survey of Student Engagement, which discovers that many students, are, well, disengaged.

Only 11 percent of undergraduates surveyed said they are doing the 25 hours of class preparation each week that their professors recommend. About 44 percent of freshmen and 25 percent of seniors said they don't discuss ideas or reading from their courses with faculty outside of class.

And what is to be done? Perhaps some more careful gatekeeping in the first place, and cultivating after admission?

Colleges have good reasons for not exposing their flaws, scholars said. Mark D. Soskin, associate professor of economics at the University of Central Florida, said, "Establishing standards or even publishing measured learning would reveal that the emperor, if not naked, has a much skimpier wardrobe than commonly presumed."

Once inadequate teaching and learning are revealed, Soskin said, colleges have to face a number of difficult choices, such as making campus life less sociable, flunking more students and forcing faculty to undergo more training in how to teach -- rather than just lecture -- in their specialties.

For sure, for sure. Perhaps Tuesday night football would be a good place to start.