State of censorship

As students of a fine public university, our opinions have been challenged at one point or another in the classroom.

We have been exposed to diverse views of the world, and we will graduate from this institution as more cultured than when we first arrived.

According to an article by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ State and Consumer Initiatives organization, legislators in various states across the country do not see the value in learning about diversity in public universities. In fact, some states’ legislatures have decided to use its power of funding to punish public universities, university professors or organizations for teaching, doing or saying things they don’t like.

The state legislators who punished certain universities for their curricula were particularly upset whenever students were assigned to read books that were pro-LGBT rights or explored the religion of Islam.

These state legislators are using their power over the wee bit of funding they give to public universities to ensure everything those universities teach align with their narrow ideological views of the world.

Let’s get one thing straight. Schools exist to educate people about the real world.

So, if you have a problem with, say, gay people existing in this world or people practicing Islam in this country and that both groups contribute a great deal to the American story and to our culture, then you probably should not have anything to do with decision making about education.

Furthermore, just because topics are discussed or books are assigned and read in institutions does not mean they are endorsing the topic of the books or the discussions. It is simply a discussion of the topic’s existence and relevance in the real world.

Everyone benefits from those discussions, especially when they take place in objective, respectful, rational classroom settings such as those that are found in universities across the country.

Underlying this scandal of using school funding as an ideological tool is the decades-long trend of a decrease in state funding for public universities nationwide.

According to a study by Demos, a public policy organization, state higher education funding decreased on average by 26.7 percent from 2008 to 2012. All but one state in this country is spending less money per student on higher education than it did before the Great Recession. It is widely known that education creates positive externalities for society. We have forgotten the benefits of having public schools.

The benefits of someone going to school are passed to others in society who benefit from interacting with more educated fellow citizens. It makes perfect economic sense to publicly fund schools to make them more affordable.

Unfortunately, it seems that our state legislators have forgotten both the importance of providing free public education and teaching students about the real world.

If these legislators value the future of this nation and the education of freethinking, rational young adults, they better get their acts together and quit using the meager funds they give to public universities as ideological bludgeons.

opinion@idsnews.com
@IDS_Opinion