Response to Progressive Scholar
Last week I posted a copy of an exam from an introductory sociology class, forwarded to me by a colleague. The test was graded 100%. I quoted the exam at length and noted that sadly “A student who matriculates in this field of study will have nothing in the way of useful skills, but will be convinced that his country is rotten to the core, and that whites and males are evil.” One reader, “progressive scholar,” (who has a blog under that name) commented on my post:
I don’t understand, what is the problem with this exam? It explores many common sociological theories. Not once does it proclaim that a certain way of thinking is right or wrong, nor does it discuss America and how the student should feel about it; in fact, the student actually begins an answer with “some say…”, which means that he or she recognizes that these are just theories, not objective fact.
The questions are asking the student to examine, explain, describe, compare, and analyze. Contrary to your claim, all of these skills are highly desirable in most career fields. Sociology as a discipline emphasizes critical thinking, not blindly following the “old Soviet agitprop of the Fifties”, as you say.
I’m not sure what China and India have to do with this topic, since many universities in both countries offer comprehensive liberal arts and social science programs, including Sociology. I encourage you to do some research on Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nankai University in China, and the Indian Institute of Technology in India, before assuming that they have eschewed all humanities and social sciences (“hate-America” fields?) in favor of technology, mathematics, and engineering – which are, apparently, fields that really love America.
The respondent is quite right that the exam I made public is quite mainstream in sociology. The problem is, however, that the entire discipline is so corrupt that nobody within the discipline still seems capable of perceiving anything wrong with it.
The exam speaks for itself. It is biased on the face of it because, from beginning to end, its point of view is entirely anti-capitalist, anti-white, anti-male. No other perspective is included, even as a hypothetical.
For instance, the professor who composed the test might have asked why corruption is endemic in the Third World and why developing economies are often wrecked by indigenous dictators, such as President Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Students could have been called on to compare and contrast how Adam Smith and Karl Marx would view Third World development. But no, the only questions asked, and the only answers acceptable, are limited to the view that all the ills of the world are the fault of capitalist, white, male America.
In response to the question regarding the “matrix of domination,” the student focuses exclusively on whites dominating blacks. He or she does not discuss, for example, black-on-white crime statistics available from the FBI. Nor does the student evaluate (or was he or she asked to evaluate) high black crime rates or high school dropout rates in light of decades of affirmative action.
Nor does the student mention that males have lost more jobs than females in the recession, or that females outnumber men in college (58% of attendees are female, whereas 42% are male). Such inconvenient facts as the nation having a black president and a female Speaker of the House are omitted. Are these not positions of power and domination? Rather, the “correct” but empirically false answer – since the exam was graded 100% – is that whites dominate blacks, and males dominate females.
The exam’s unremitting bias is also on display in the question on immigration. The professor does not ask students to consider the possibility that restricting illegal immigration, which brings many criminals and welfare cases to the U.S., might be in the national interest.
But, then, what does one expect now of sociology? True critical, nuanced thinking? Hardly.
In short, the exam’s questions and answers – no doubt greatly encouraged and perhaps prompted by the professor – are transparently one-sided. They contain not even a hint of competing ideas.
Thanks for your response! You make several salient points. I think it’s important to remember that this was one exam in a course, and just because the topics you mentioned were not discussed on this particular exam, they could have been addressed on other exams. We have no way of knowing. Nor do we know what other Intro to Sociology courses in other universities are teaching.
Blanket statements like “Sociology is anti-America” and “the entire discipline is corrupt” are unfounded (not to mention transparently one-sided) because you’re basing these assumptions on one exam written by one instructor from one course at one university.
While it is indeed unfair to condemn the entire discipline of sociology, I think the original post makes a reasonable point. The dogmatic views expressed in the catechism dressed up as an exam are, unfortunately, pervasive in the discipline today, although they are not held by every sociologist. Political sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz has argued, in The Decomposition of Sociology, that sociology as ideology has seriously undermined sociology as social science over the past thirty to forty years.
I am not a sociologist, but I do know that these ideas have factual basis and are not “liberal bias”. White males are over-represented in dominant positions at least because being dominant is inherent to masculinity.
Women make “safer” choices in the workplace because historically they have had it tougher than men, so they are less likely to lose their job but also less likely to advance. If the penalties all told for women were the same as the penalties for men, then statistics for women would be the same as for men. This is what actual studies show and isn’t made up “academic” nonsense.
Behavior of black people is strongly influenced by their continuing marginalization and would likely continue for generations even if it were possible to eliminate racism because you don’t just get over internalization. The whole “pimp”/”drug dealer”/”hip hop artist” culture is an easy escape route for the vast numbers of poor blacks. The market for that sort of “black culture” product is predominantly white people.
But what exactly is a sociologist supposed to do about any of this? Hence, I am not a sociologist, but at least I’ve made the effort to find out the underlying truth.
People who think “liberals” are biased should get some actual education instead of wasting time complaining. Write whatever you want in your course, fail if necessary, it’s not very likely you will, but at least learn something for yourself. Quit your pointless “liberal bias” whining.