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Record for NoIndoctrination.org entry #502.

North Carolina State University

May. 21, 2006

http://www.ncsu.edu

Course: PHI 221: Contemporary Moral Issues

Course Catalog Description: Philosophical analysis and theory applied to a broad range of contemporary moral issues, including euthanasia, suicide, capital punishment, abortion, war, famine relief, and environmental concerns.

Professor: Christine M. Pierce

Required? Met a General Ed./diversity/other requirement with a few course options.

Lecture Bias: Excessive

Comments: The title and description of this course do not at all reflect the content. Suicide, capital punishment, war, and environmental concerns were not even on the syllabus. Famine relief was not covered either, except for one philosopher's opinion that starvation could become obsolete if everyone became a vegetarian. Euthanasia was listed on the syllabus, but we did not cover it. This bait and switch course description flies in the face of the University's "Faculty Rights and Responsibilities" policy statement [http://www.ncsu.edu/provost/governance/Ad_hoc/COFOR/reports/faculty_rights.htm] which claims "intellectual honesty in teaching" as a "specific" responsibility of its faculty members. This teacher misused her authority to decide course content/materials such that they didn't even reflect the course description, which is a gross misuse of one of the University's "primary elements of academic freedom" – the right "to participate in academic program development and determine appropriate curriculum and course content."

One month into the course and with the first exam approaching, I became curious as to why we only studied one side of every issue, that being the liberal side of course. How were students to engage in higher education's loftiest goal of critical thinking with only half of the story? So I asked the professor why we were only getting the liberal viewpoint on these issues, and her response was that she was not aware of any relevant material by conservative philosophers. (I didn't realize that the Philosophy Department had such a limited research data bank!) If the topic of the class is moral issues, a dilemma with at least two arguments, I found it hard to believe that there was no philosophical support for another viewpoint. However, the data must not exist if a professional researcher who has based her life's work on these issues is unable to locate it, right? I even mentioned the Opposing Viewpoints series to her; she said that maybe she would look into it.

Exam #1 came and went, the first thirty percent of the course, and we had only studied one philosopher, Peter Singer, and two closely-related topics: animal rights and factory farming. Singer is a utilitarian, best known for his first book Animal Liberation He believes that rights should be extended not only to human beings but also to certain animals, some of which are more deserving of being called "persons" than certain humans. He does not, on the other hand, believe in the sanctity of life and says that if you say you do, you should not have chicken or some other animal for dinner tonight.

Following the first exam, the class was instructed to go to a theater in the campus library for the next three class periods in order to watch videos. The syllabus listed seven video days. Oddly enough, each entry on the syllabus only listed the date and location of the theater; there was no title or other information to give any indication of what a particular video might cover. The first video presentation was a movie entitled If These Walls Could Talk. The first half of the movie takes place prior to the Roe v. Wade decision; Demi Moore plays the part of the primary character who accidentally gets pregnant and diligently pursues getting an abortion. She is actually shown trying to give herself an abortion with a knitting needle. After this method proves unsuccessful, she finally arranges for a "back-alley" abortionist to come to her house. He’s a despicable creep who gives her an abortion on her kitchen table, and ultimately she hemorrhages to death all over the kitchen. I was totally unprepared for the crude and gruesome content of this video and do not consider it educational. This is the result of Academic Freedom which grants faculty members the right to "determine appropriate curriculum and course content" but has no standard as to what is/is not appropriate. The presentation of this tasteless video ignores "specific faculty responsibilities" including the pursuit of "excellence" and "professionalism" in teaching and "professional competence" in choosing appropriate materials.

As if Video Day One was not bad enough, I went back on Day Two. Since the syllabus did not have video subjects listed, I became even more confused as to what we were supposed to be learning when the second video was about homosexuality. I do not know the name of this video, but the setting was a lesbian bar. There were scenes of smoking, drinking, and dancing. Eventually, one of the women gives another a ride home via her motorcycle and the two share a passionate kiss. I left at this point. The teacher later explained that the wrong video must have been put in by mistake because we were supposed to be studying abortion. I began to question what this teacher was really trying to accomplish. At this point, I looked her up online and learned that much of her research and a book she had written was concerned with the subject of gay marriage, although the homosexual video was, according to her, shown by accident.

Video Day Three presented the second half of If These Walls Could Talk. This segment takes place after abortion was legalized. The pregnant woman seeking an abortion this time is played by actress Ann Heche, who coincidentally used to be the girlfriend of Ellen Degeneres. She’s trying to decide whether or not to get an abortion by the clinic doctor who is played by Cher. She does decide to get the abortion which we again had to watch. In this movie, the abortion clinic workers are portrayed as kind, gentle, and compassionate people in stark contrast to the pro life supporters who are portrayed as radical, angry, and violent. They stand outside the clinic and yell things like, "Burn in hell baby-killer." Furthermore, the doctor (Cher) has to wear a bullet-proof vest to work every day but it’s of no use because eventually one of those crazed radical "Christians" gets in and kills her anyway. The next regular class day, I told the teacher that I felt like Christians were represented unfairly in this movie and used the analogy that it was like measuring all Muslims by the Al Qaeda. She responded that there were fundamentalist Christians who were violent like that. At any rate, the presentation of these less than intellectual and fictitious videos is inconsistent with "specific faculty responsibilities to encourage students and colleagues to engage in intellectual discourse and inquiry."

Reading assignments on abortion were written by Michael Tooley, Judith Thomson, Peter Singer, and Don Marquis, who the teacher considered to be "pro-life," but he even says, "Not all abortion is wrong," so there really wasn't much opposition to the pro-choice platform presented. We finished this section by reading the Roe v. Wade decision, which contains a key concept in the professor's overall agenda – the right to privacy.

The third and final portion of the course strongly emphasized the rights to privacy and liberty, especially with regard to homosexuality. Readings included "Privacy Yes, Secrecy No" from Ch. 4 'Why Sex is Private' in Gays-Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society and Law by Richard Mohr and the Supreme Court's decision regarding John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner v. Texas, a case in which a same-sex couple was arrested based on the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law. There were three more video days, mainly focused on homosexuality. One video showed a lot of gay pride marches, which the teacher informed us occur every year as a memorial to "Stonewall," an historical event in which gays in a New York bar fought back against police officers who had consistently raided the bar and unfairly targeted them. There was a documentary concerning an incident on the "Queen" boat in Egypt. Apparently, gay men boarded the boat one night a week and they cruised and drank until one night when police raided the boat and many were arrested and imprisoned for sexual crimes, although they were only having drinks. These videos contained portrayals of homosexuals passionately kissing and narrations describing first sexual experiences. One of the videos began by showing homosexual artwork; I specifically remember an Asian painting that showed a cartoon-like figure of a nude Asian woman and another woman with her mouth on the first woman’s breast. Regardless of whether the characters were participating in homo- or hetero-sexual acts, this is not "appropriate curriculum and course content."

The remainder of the semester was spent on J.S. Mill's essay On Liberty. The teacher stressed autonomy and individuality, connecting Mill's philosophy - that people should be allowed autonomy to direct their own lives as long as they are not harming another - with the John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner v. Texas court case. This case is a result of an incident in which police raided a home based on suspicion of weapons but ended up arresting a same-sex couple "caught in the act." The teacher's message was that two consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they want in the privacy of their own home as long as they are not harming another. I asked her how it would have been different if the two had been smoking marijuana rather than having sex; should they be allowed to do that? It's also against the law in Texas. She just said that it was a good question and went on.

A couple of final notes regarding the gross misuse of academic freedom in this class surround attendance and testing. I only saw the teacher take attendance twice, although she said it was a university requirement on the first day. I missed several days, more than I've ever missed in any class before, but I still managed to get an A, and it's not because I'm a philosophical genius. It's because I regurgitated her propaganda right back to her on tests. The only grades were the three exams (30%, 30%, and 40%). I found her tests to be especially suspicious. An example of a test question would be first a phrase like "According to Peter Singer," followed by a colon. Then there would be a series of true/false statements such as, "Sanctity of life is not a valid argument," to which you would have to respond "true" to be correct. Another reason that tests were not difficult is due to her incessant repetition of phrases she deemed important.

Near the end of the semester, the teacher advised us that a student wanted to speak to the class, so she was going to end the lecture five minutes early in order to allow the student to speak. She indicated that it was a university policy to allow students to speak to a class if the message was pre-approved by the particular academic department. The student asked the class to sign a petition to the N.C. Legislature. The petition said that N.C. discriminated against homosexuals because the State does not allow gay marriage.

Discussion Bias: Excessive

Comments: All discussions were led by the professor. People were definitely free to comment or ask questions, but the answer was always the same - "That's a very good question" - regardless of whether it was or not, she ALWAYS started with that. If she didn't want to comment on a religious or historical question, she would say, "I'm not an expert on religion, or I'm not an expert on history." For example, I asked her about data I read on the NIH website that said women who had previously had abortions were more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy later. She said she wasn't a medical expert. When questions were raised about possible opposition to Singer's viewpoints or utilitarian reasoning in general, she usually deferred back to the literature as if to say, "I'm teaching you Singer's viewpoints, not what others say." Occasionally, she might say, "Yes, Singer addresses that issue on page so & so." In other words, whatever Singer said is her general answer. More students commented or asked questions from an oppositional standpoint earlier in the semester, but eventually everyone realized the discussion was going to go in one direction, and people tended to give up unless they had a question or comment that was in no way oppositional in nature.

Readings Bias: Excessive

Comments: See above.

General Comments: I had already taken a similar class entitled "Moral Ethics and Social Issues" at another local college, but the credit did not transfer, so I chose this class to fulfill NC State’s 3-hour Philosophy requirement. I thought it would help that I had already studied capital punishment, war, abortion, and had written two research papers on euthanasia. My previous class was taught in a very objective manner. We used a textbook from the Opposing Viewpoints series, a compilation of essays written by individuals from each side of every issue. The essays are quite persuasive and provide strong arguments for both sides; therefore, students are required to think critically in order to arrive at a position on a particular issue. In addition, students participated in debate/discussion during each class period. The professor lectured and facilitated discussions, but it was never clear as to her own personal opinion on any issue.

First, I must agree with NCSU’s decision not to accept credit for my previous ethics and issues class. Though NCSU’s PHI 221 course has an almost identical name to that of my previous ethics course, and though the issues listed in the course description appear to be the same, more or less, the actual material covered in PHI 221 could not have been more different. (She did mention Plato and Socrates and some other well-known philosophers, but they were just glossed over as compared to Peter Singer and J.S. Mill who dominated lectures.) The course would have been more appropriately entitled "Contemporary Liberal Viewpoints" and the course listing should have read:

A study based largely on modern liberal thought, Utilitarian Theory, the occasional dose of Rights Theory and covering a narrow range of topics including animal rights, factory farming, abortion, and gay rights.

Hopefully, the preceding paragraphs give some indication as to how this class is misrepresented in the course catalogue and how it was used to further the teacher’s own interests rather than provide students with quality educational tools for critical thinking. I believe this teacher is well-versed when it comes to Academic Freedom, and she walks the line. In consideration of the actual course content, I believe this teacher took advantage of her captive audience and attempted to brainwash students in favor of homosexuality by "the application of a concentrated means of persuasion, such as an advertising campaign or repeated suggestion, in order to develop a specific belief or motivation." *

* Definition of "brainwashing" (http://www.answers.com/topic/brainwashing).

[Upon NoIndoctrination.org's request, the student mailed us the corroborating course syllabus.]

[NoIndoctrination.org note:
Two statements from the NC State Philosophy Department homepage (http://www.ncsu.edu/chass/philo/phil_index.html):
1.) "They [students] are trained ... to think critically, constructively and independently about important issues...."
2.) "The study of Philosophy helps students to develop their capacity to understand, criticize and construct arguments, to analyze and solve problems, and to elaborate their ideas and present them in a clear, coherent and well-organized form."]

Rebuttal

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