Students at SOAS try to remove irrelevant white philosophers from curriculum and old politically correct precious snow flakes lose their minds

[TimG]

2 hours ago, hernanday said:

http://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/greek-philosophers-african-tribes1.htm

From your link:

Quote

The Greeks seem to have put their own spin on what knowledge they'd learned.

Plato's education may have expressed it best: The Kemetic Mystery System was based upon a wide array of human knowledge. It encompassed math, writing, physical science, religion and the supernatural, requiring tutors to be both priests and scholars. Perhaps the aspect of the system that best represents this merger of religion and science is Ma'at.

In his "Republic," Plato describes a dichotomy between a higher and lower self. The higher self (reason) pursues knowledge, reason and discipline. The lower self -- the more prominent of the two -- is base, concerned with more crude aspects like sex, addiction and other self-serving pursuits. Reason must ultimately win over emotion for a life to be worthwhile. Thus the emphasis of reason over all else was born. And the concepts of spirituality and reason began to diverge.

So according to your own source the Greeks took what the Egyptians taught them and added their own spin. In particular, they ditched the spiritual mumbo-jumbo of the Egyptians and developed a philosophy which emphasized reason over all which is the true basis for western philosophy (for better or for worse).

Your attempt to minimize the importance of the Greeks is not surprising given the racial lens that you use to view the world. You are entitled to your opinion but your opinion is hardly sufficient to justify ending the study of the Greeks at western universities. They certainly earned their place in teh curriculum.

Edited January 11, 2017 by TimG

[H10]

3 hours ago, TimG said:

From your link:

So according to your own source the Greeks took what the Egyptians taught them and added their own spin. In particular, they ditched the spiritual mumbo-jumbo of the Egyptians and developed a philosophy which emphasized reason over all which is the true basis for western philosophy (for better or for worse).

Your attempt to minimize the importance of the Greeks is not surprising given the racial lens that you use to view the world. You are entitled to your opinion but your opinion is hardly sufficient to justify ending the study of the Greeks at western universities. They certainly earned their place in teh curriculum.

Clearly you have a reading comprehension issue. Plato focused on one part of the system of Ma'at (the reason based) that he studied because he did not complete his studies so he focused on what he knew and was taught.

Quote

Ma'at (/mi 'yat/) was a goddess who embodied the concept of the rational order to the universe. "This idea that the universe is rational … passed from the Egyptians to the Greeks," writes historian Richard Hooker [source: Hooker]. The Greeks' name for this concept was logos

I've never actually minimized the role of the Greeks, it is you with your racist lens of the world which has caused you to be unable to acknowledge that Plato who studied in Africa views were informed by and influenced by and come from Africa.

Your opinion certainly does not justify removing the foundation of Greek philosophy and Western civilization, African philosophers and African Ma'at and Kemetic Systems and african rational thought that passed from the Egyptians to the Greeks.

Edited January 11, 2017 by H10

[TimG]

5 hours ago, hernanday said:

Clearly you have a reading comprehension issue. Plato focused on one part of the system of Ma'at (the reason based) that he studied because he did not complete his studies so he focused on what he knew and was taught.

Complete BS. There is no magic behind the number of a years need to the study the material. It was a number likely picked to enforce seniority rules rather than any need to actually spend 40 years learning anything (who spends 40 years in school today?). The Greeks likely left once they realized that they could not learn anything more from them. They took what they learned like any student and developed their own ideas.

The key differential is the Egyptians appear to have conflated the spiritual and the rational. The Greeks broke that connection and developed a purely rational view of looking at the world. You see this idea permeating all western societies. 

I also never said that other philosophers should not be studied. I am objecting to the idiots asking that key philosophers be removed from the curriculum because they are white men. The Greeks matter. 

[Rue]

17 hours ago, eyeball said:

Yes well, it sounds like someone in authority is caving into these graduates silliness. I wonder why?

Yep, we're looking at the next generation of conservatives I'd say.

In regards to your first comment, the actual politics within educational administration when setting  curriculum whether it be in elementary or high school, college or university is highly political and teachers, instructors, and professors are rarely if ever  consulted. If we were the curriculum would look far different.

The bottom line is that educational  administrations at private and community colleges and universities know student enrollment is the source of their profit and so decisions are made to promote student enrollment and if this means changing the curriculum to please students to attract students and keep enrollment high, that is what these institutions will do, but to a certain extent, some more than others, and the more you change your curriculum to be popular the more you run the risk of ruining any academic reputation you have. Its a fine line.  It's true many universities and colleges don't run certain courses because students won't take them and administrations feed and promote this selectivity but often its not based on anything more than maintaining specific recruitment levels not on anything more thought out then that. Its just about money not ideology/

Furthermore once you get to a certain size and reputation like say Yale or Oxford, you can carry more unpopular courses, then let's say some small university like Trent or Bishop's where you have set budgets that only allow you to hire a certain amount of professors and so sometimes your curriculum reflects who you have been able to recruit as professors and what their specialties are.

So curriculum will be based on academic criteria and student in-put as well as what professors are available to be hired and what their specialities are. It's not just based on one thing so  I doubt this association has any say as to the  curriculum and student groups say many stupid things. Its part of life. Students tend to be radicalized and see things in blacks and whites and be angry at something they see as part of the establishment they want to challenge. I doubt a reputable university would cave in to such students. I would hope not.  It is true for example community colleges in Ontario run popular courses to increase student enrollment but they also have to run basic vocational courses or industry association courses too. Often professional associations  dictate the courses to be followed. 

Where it has gotten absurd is at the elementary and high school level. I think curriculum drafted to conform to the politics of the day is real and its unfortunate at that level  and has compromise good academic practices. It's frustrating being a teacher because they have no say in the curriculum and it's often done to placate school trustees who are placating parents. Just look at the controversy behind sex education at public schools. You also have this damn phenomena where so called educational learning experts with  PH.D's who have never taught, design curriculum such as what we came to know as the new math. They come up with new trendy approaches and you end up engaging in sheer stupidity as these new approaches lack any common sense.That's another story. Some of you know having children how the basics, reading, writing, and math have been changed.

As for your next comment I will say this. I doubt you have a clue who Edmund Burke is or what he stated.  Go look at yourself in the mirror before you engage in childish name calling about conservatives because you have nothing to contribute to the thread topic.

As a student I can only speak for me. I had a wide spectrum of professors with different approaches. The one who showed the most respect to me  was an international relations professor who was a refugee from Communist Hungary.. He was the most open minded and tolerant guy I ever met. 

Also when I went to Hebrew University of Jerusalem where  I studied  war history with someone who survived the holocaust, fought in the anti-Nazi underground, then  4 wars in Israel. He was an ultra right winger.  I had major debates with him. He was the most gentle open minded patient person in the world with me. So I can only say from personal experience intolerant people come in all political ideologies religions, classes, ethnicities, etc.

If I learned one thing, being tolerant, listening to others is a human relations skill not a political ideology.

 

 

Edited January 11, 2017 by Rue

[Rue]

6 hours ago, TimG said:

Complete BS. There is no magic behind the number of a years need to the study the material. It was a number likely picked to enforce seniority rules rather than any need to actually spend 40 years learning anything (who spends 40 years in school today?). The Greeks likely left once they realized that they could not learn anything more from them. They took what they learned like any student and developed their own ideas.

The key differential is the Egyptians appear to have conflated the spiritual and the rational. The Greeks broke that connection and developed a purely rational view of looking at the world. You see this idea permeating all western societies. 

I also never said that other philosophers should not be studied. I am objecting to the idiots asking that key philosophers be removed from the curriculum because they are white men. The Greeks matter. 

Agree with all your responses. 

[H10]

8 hours ago, TimG said:

Complete BS. There is no magic behind the number of a years need to the study the material. It was a number likely picked to enforce seniority rules rather than any need to actually spend 40 years learning anything (who spends 40 years in school today?). The Greeks likely left once they realized that they could not learn anything more from them. They took what they learned like any student and developed their own ideas.

No, real bs, it takes 40 years to get through the content because of the large volume, by the time Plato, Socrates and the Greeks started showing up in Egypt starting with Thales, Nile Valley philosophy had been practiced and been in development for over 4000 continuous years. We take quiet long to learn a relatively much shorter amount of material.  You also have to bear in mind the content covers multiple areas from medicine, philosophy, architecture, engineering, geometry, calculus, algebra,, logic, religion, astronomy.

 

8 hours ago, TimG said:

The key differential is the Egyptians appear to have conflated the spiritual and the rational. The Greeks broke that connection and developed a purely rational view of looking at the world. You see this idea permeating all western societies. 

I also never said that other philosophers should not be studied. I am objecting to the idiots asking that key philosophers be removed from the curriculum because they are white men. The Greeks matter. 

How in your mind did they conflate the two?  Are you forgetting that Socrates was sentenced to death for teaching "false gods" by fellow athenians and that the ancient greeks were highly superstitious?  Are you forgetting these are people who believed in a religion that was often conflated into their history and works?

 

Which philosophers though.  I agree some are important, but alot of the white male philosophers like kant, niche, etc they are teaching are only being taught for being white.  That is political correctness gone run a muck, they are entirely irrelevant, especially for a school with focus on africa, asia and middle east. 

 

[Rue]

Hernanday you don't get it. If students don't want to study philosophers because they are "white" that's their problem or choice. No one cares.

If you want to go through life making the choice to segregate your mind from anyone or anything that doesn't look like you who cares?

Whether you are a neo Nazi white supremacist or some brown bigoted twit who cares. No one cares.

The point though remains, academia is not just determined by bigots for bigots and thank God for that.

 

Edited January 12, 2017 by Rue

[H10]

On 1/11/2017 at 9:24 PM, Rue said:

Hernanday you don't get it. If students don't want to study philosophers because they are "white" that's their problem or choice. No one cares.

If you want to go through life making the choice to segregate your mind from anyone or anything that doesn't look like you who cares?

Whether you are a neo Nazi white supremacist or some brown bigoted twit who cares. No one cares.

The point though remains, academia is not just determined by bigots for bigots and thank God for that.

 

No I get it perfectly well, you want us to study philosophers just for their skin color, just because they are white.  It is your problem with political correctness trying to censor people.

 

[Rue]

On 1/18/2017 at 6:45 AM, hernanday said:

No I get it perfectly well, you want us to study philosophers just for their skin color, just because they are white.  It is your problem with political correctness trying to censor people.

 

No you don't. I do not want you  or anyone else or whoever this "us" is you refer to, to do anything. I don't care. Education and what we choose to study is an individual decision.  Your response shows you deliberately ignored what I stated and are trying to falsely mis-state it. If you do not want to read certain philosophers' works because you believe they are "white" knock yourself out. My point was, is and remains that students not you,  on an individual bsis should make the choice what they want to study. You do not speak for any student or "us". You speak only for you, and no one cares whether you have racist views or not and won't read philosophers' works because they are white. That's your decision. This delusion you have however that you are a spokesperson for "us" and "us" are racist just like you is something you fabricated and no you and your "us" can't trot about from campus to campus burning books and determining who will be studied based on skin colour for all students. If your "us" actually exists, and they think they can impose their racist beliefs on others and tell those others what they can study, that "us" and you are sorrily mistaken. The right to read, think and study, begins and ends with individual choice not you or imagined "us" dictating to people what they can read.

If you want to go burn books because their authors are "white" and for that matter the pages in the books are "white" go start a bon-fire. Hitler did the same thing with books from Jews, and other people he deemed undesireable. You have political precedent for your extremist views.

Also need I remind you in the 50's and 50's people burned records from black musician, Elvis Presley, the Beatles on the grounds they were undesireable. Knock yourself out. While you are at it why stop at white philosophers. start burning white art, paintings, records, books, furniture, money with white politicians on it, go for it.

You'll probably be charged with arson but you can explain you are trying to exercise free speech.

Got news for you. Tell me or anyone else what we can or can not read and you are  in for a rude surprise.

 

Edited January 19, 2017 by Rue

[H10]

On 1/19/2017 at 2:12 PM, Rue said:

No you don't. I do not want you  or anyone else or whoever this "us" is you refer to, to do anything. I don't care. Education and what we choose to study is an individual decision.  Your response shows you deliberately ignored what I stated and are trying to falsely mis-state it. If you do not want to read certain philosophers' works because you believe they are "white" knock yourself out. My point was, is and remains that students not you,  on an individual bsis should make the choice what they want to study. You do not speak for any student or "us". You speak only for you, and no one cares whether you have racist views or not and won't read philosophers' works because they are white. That's your decision. This delusion you have however that you are a spokesperson for "us" and "us" are racist just like you is something you fabricated and no you and your "us" can't trot about from campus to campus burning books and determining who will be studied based on skin colour for all students. If your "us" actually exists, and they think they can impose their racist beliefs on others and tell those others what they can study, that "us" and you are sorrily mistaken. The right to read, think and study, begins and ends with individual choice not you or imagined "us" dictating to people what they can read.

 

You want to force students to read white philosophers just for being white.  You say you supportstudents choosing who they want to study, then why are you trying to force them just to study white philosophers just for being white?  You cannot say who I speak for, I speak for us, you speak for you!  Racism is in the realm of the jews murdering palestinians.  You are the racist for trying to force us to read about useless white philosophers.

 

Quote

If you want to go burn books because their authors are "white" and for that matter the pages in the books are "white" go start a bon-fire. Hitler did the same thing with books from Jews, and other people he deemed undesireable. You have political precedent for your extremist views.

Hitler himself was a jew as confirmed by science and dna testing, so get over.  Reinhard Haydrich was the second in command of the German military, chief of german police, head of the gustapo and internal security office, he was a jew, and he drafted the final solution.  It was the jewish judenrats (jewish councils) who picked out which jew would be shipped off to the Holocaust camps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenrat#Missions_and_duties

One of the sad events of the Holocaust is that jews were active participants in killing other jews.

"

 The Judenräte also directed the Jewish police to assist the Germans in catching Jews and loading them onto transport trains leaving for Nazi concentration camps.

In her book, Arendt wrote that: "To a Jew, this role of the Jewish leaders in the destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole dark story. [...] In the matter of cooperation, there was no distinction between the highly assimilated Jewish communities of Central and Western Europe and the Yiddish-speaking masses of the East. In Amsterdam as in Warsaw, in Berlin as in Budapest, Jewish officials could be trusted to compile the lists of persons and of their property..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judenrat#The_role_of_the_Judenr.C3.A4te_in_the_Holocaust

 

"

Hitler 'had Jewish and African roots', DNA tests show

Adolf Hitler is likely to have had Jewish and African roots, DNA tests have shown."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/7961211/Hitler-had-Jewish-and-African-roots-DNA-tests-show.html

 

" His father, Alois, is thought to have been the illegitimate offspring of a maid called Maria Schickelgruber and a 19-year-old Jewish man called Frankenberger. "

Hitler was a jew.

 

 

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Also need I remind you in the 50's and 50's people burned records from black musician, Elvis Presley, the Beatles on the grounds they were undesireable. Knock yourself out. While you are at it why stop at white philosophers. start burning white art, paintings, records, books, furniture, money with white politicians on it, go for it.

 

You are a using hypeerbole

Quote

You'll probably be charged with arson but you can explain you are trying to exercise free speech.

Got news for you. Tell me or anyone else what we can or can not read and you are  in for a rude surprise.

 

No, it is you and your political correctness.

Edited January 20, 2017 by H10