It is 20 years since I returned to the University of Maryland as a graduate student in education. I was there until 2006, when I simultaneously split from my wife and lost enthusiasm for academia. I was convinced in both cases that being a white man in contemporary America was a major disadvantage.
I have written extensively about the fact that getting divorced and moving to Ukraine was the best decision I ever made. I am getting a fair shake. Yesterday I took a look to see what my University of Maryland professors were up to now, how they were coping with life in contemporary America.
I entered the College of Education intending to learn how to teach. It took less than a semester to conclude that was not at all what they had in mind. They were teaching young people how to indoctrinate.
Colleges of education have always had a reputation for being the least academically demanding departments in the University. SAT scores were the lowest. My fellow students were mostly young women, diluted by a few soy boys, white mice, passive feminist men. They had absolutely no use for a man who thought he was a man and had a lot of experience in the world to back it up. They made it abundantly clear that I was in the wrong place. As much fun as it might have been to fight the tide, I took advantage of the fact that the Department of Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation – stats for short – was also part of the College of Education. I moved over after one semester.
EDMS is not whatsoever like the rest of the College Of Education. It was staffed predominantly by men of my own age. They were interested in the science of statistics, not politics or cultural Marxism. It was a breath of fresh air. I learned a lot. The guys who taught me are still listed in the directory, all but one in emeritus status. There are several Asians now on the faculty. Koreans, Japanese, and East Asians made up the vast majority of the 57 graduate students when I was there. They have stayed on. Greg Hancock, a smart young man, is now a distinguished scholar. Laura Stapleton, junior faculty when I was there, is now the department chair. The bottom line is that 20 years have not brought much change to EDMS.
My advisor was Bob Mislevy, the star of the department. He had spent a long time with the Educational Testing Service, producing the SATs. It was a pleasure working with such an accomplished, intelligent and dedicated scholar. Bob's two daughters, Meredith and Jessica, were also associated with the University and EDMS. They were not only smart but dedicated to academics. It appears following the links above that they are embedded in the deep state apparatus. Only one is married, with no indication of children on the horizon. Alas, that seems to be the fate of many of our best and brightest women.
As a student I was able to join Study Abroad anthropology courses in Brazil and Argentina. Judith Freydenberg, my age and now emeritus, taught a course on The Jewish History of Argentina. As an Argentine Jew, and a very classy and educated woman, she was a natural for the part. Although I learned quite a bit about both the country and the people, the three weeks I spent on the road with them taught me more about contemporary American women and feminism than about Argentina. My Toastmasters talk about the Jewish History of Argentina has more to say about the treatment of the American male than it does about the nominal subject.
Prof. Janet Chernela, who led our trip to the Kayapo Indians in Brazil, is also my age and now emeritus. She is passionately devoted to the welfare of the Indians. Her graduate student Matthew Aruch contacted me when he was researching his PhD, but both he and Chernela have refused to return my emails asking about the Kayapo after getting what they could from me. They correctly intuited that I am not cut of the same liberal cloth as they are, and that I have a less than sanguine take on their projects. I am sure they have seen my YouTube video on the trip that Chernela led in 2004. I had a wonderful time, I learned a lot, but I cannot envision any smooth transition of these people into the 21st century.
While nothing much changed in the statistics or anthropology departments, quite a bit did change for the feminists who drove me out of the College of Education.
Laura Perna, who was teaching statistics for dummies within the College of Education itself, and to me demonstrated a weak grasp of the subject, nonetheless managed to give me poor marks on everything I submitted. Here is what I wrote at the time:
That was taught by Dr. Perna, a young feminist who went out of her way to discourage my career in education. I simply could not turn in any piece of work that did not come back running with red ink. I went out of my way to ask her advice in advance, to attempt to work with her on assignments, and basically to do everything they tell a student to do to achieve a good grade. It was all to no avail. I was a man. I was an older man. I was a man who had his own opinions... not one of the white mice castrati who were permitted to exist in this feminist domain.
Her feminism, per the link above, has brought her success.
The second was Jennifer King Rice. This is what I wrote about her back then.
It took a semester to change, and I took one last course in the Education Policy and Leadership department the following semester. I had heard Jennifer King Rice, the professor, speak and concluded she wasn't dumb. She was married with four boys – how bad could it be? Bad, actually. In grad school everybody gets A's and Bs. I think they have to explain up to some level just short of the chancellor if they give you a C. Anyhow, nothing I could do would move Dr. Rice to give me more than a low B. Here is a B-/C+ paper I enjoyed researching and writing. To hell with her.
I see why my paper offended her sensibilities. I concluded that Indians by and large don't want to be educated. I wrote that a young Senator Ted Kennedy had demagogued the issue of Indian education to tarnish his political opponents. A bit of research shows that Rice graduated from Catholic prep school and university and now has five kids. A good Democrat, for sure, if not farther to the left.
The centerpiece of her course on the economics of education was Equity, Equality and Justice, and my paper held that the Indians are indifferent to education because it is their nature. See the video above about the Kayapo. Scholarship be damned. My paper managed to step on every one of her liberal toes.
Professor Rice was at least polite to me, if cool. I cannot say that for the women in the class. They loathed me. She is now the Senior Vice President and Provost at the University. She has definitely moved on up.
I have mixed emotions. I am pleased to see a woman set an example of combining family and career. I hope her children have not been destroyed by the toxic Marxism in which they were undoubtedly bathed growing up. I am sure the whole family has been multiply jabbed. I hope it doesn’t ruin their health or fertility.
Those are the reflections from Lake WeBeGone on my brief career as a PhD candidate. My former wife could not understand what led me to drop out. I hope you readers understand better.
It probably doesn't speak well of me, but I don't care whether liberals or leftists have children or not. If they don't have kids, then a few more of the young are spared their tender ministrations.
The link to the B-/C+ paper has been corrected.