THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

"PROFESSIONAL OBJECTIVITY" IS MAN'S MOST DANGEROUS MYTH | 2005-01-22

My last book, Why Johnny Can't Think,

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is about a similar disaster caused by this "professional objectivity" nonsense.

Our universities and colleges have gotten themselves a monopoly and they are exploiting it exactly as any rational person should have said they would sixty years ago when the GI Bill of Rights dumped billions of dollars into sending World War II "veterans" (most of whom had never heard a shot fired) for a free college indoctrination.

This Greatest Generation was ideal to absorb the idea that professors should rule the world.

The whole Greatest Generation had been beaten into dog-like obedience in the Obedience Training courses called Basic Training. They were a total break with earlier Americans, who thought in terms of individual action and personal judgement.

They worshipped government. And their professors told them that leftist professors were the Objective Professionals who could provide an objective assessment of reality to them. Businessmen were greedy. Military men wanted money that should go into social action.

In class, no student ever asked whether the professional professor might have some biases of his own.

As happens in many cases, the minute the discussion began in class the important point was already agreed on. Everybody assumed that, while military men and doctors and businessmen were all biased, professors were discussing things objectively.

And all the discussion tended to reinforce the conclusion that military men and businessmen were not to be trusted (which is true), and professors and their big government plans were objectivity itself.

Professional objectivity, you know.

Professorial objectivity, you know.