School is a place where students should learn not what to think, but how.
Hence, philosophy is an excellent addition to academic basics.
As for college, many would insist the four-to-six-year foray should train young adults for a career.
Yet, it appears that over the last decade or two, secondary education has flirted with favoring philosophy over real-world prep.
Apropos of that — per Campus Reform — here’s a round-up of upcoming collegiate courses nationwide.
At California’s Humboldt State University, they’ll soon be studying Community Activism.
The class will cover “organizational and activist skills” via “hands-on projects.”
Such comes courtesy of the school’s Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
To the northeast, autumn attendees of the University of Wisconsin will get a taste of Queer Bodies.
From the official description:
Examines both physiological and social processes relating to gender and health across the lifespan among cisgender, transgender, and non-binary individuals. Examples of topics include hormonal processes, reproductive anatomy physiology, sexuality, sexual pleasure, chronic illness, depression, and sexual violence. A primary course objective is for students to connect information about their bodies and personal health to larger social and political contexts.
Also available: What happens when you mix queer sexuality and feminist theory, sprinkle some racial review with a dash of ecology thrown in? That’d be Queering Ecofeminism and Environmental Racism.
It’s quite the complex cocktail:
This course brings environmental studies and critical race theory perspectives to bear on gender and sexuality studies, taking “eco-feminism” as an identity, an object of analysis, and as a methodological approach. It engages social science and historical texts, films, short videos and poetry to give an introduction to ecofeminism, queer and transecologies, and connections with critical race theory and indigenous studies.
At the University of Washington, they’re keeping it simple. Students will get turned on to getting turned on with Queer Desires:
(GWSS 464) explores desire and the politics of sexuality as gendered, raced, classed, and transnational processes.
And if you’re more into feelings than getting felt, Campus Reform claims Portland State University will serve up instruction on Queer Feelings.
No other information is available.
Social justice and progressive identity certainly seem to have gotten an educational boost as of late.
As I covered last month, the Pennsylvania State University teacher of a Race and Ethnic Relations course told a white student if he was breathing and left the house that day, he “may have oppressed somebody.”
In March, a Kentucky college’s Women’s and Gender Non-Conforming Center hosted a “gender talk” focused on “White Citizenship as Terrorism: Make America Great Again, Again.”
And at Cornell University, a rock-climbing course was originally offered to only BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People Of Color) participants.
In addition:
Florida University Launches a Degree Program to Train ‘Social Justice’ Activists
https://t.co/FuR3xy9gzq— RedState (@RedState) May 26, 2021
University Aims for Utopia, Launches Doctoral Program in ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ https://t.co/hSl5QWgTkU
— RedState (@BordersUSA) July 28, 2021
If you’re female and would love to tout those moves, you might be interested in James Madison University’s 2021-22 odyssey Feminist Blogging.
Of course, college has long had auxiliary offerings.
I once took a class on Badminton.
I loved that class.
Doubtlessly, Queering Ecofeminism is more stimulating.
As universities turn more toward fixing the world’s problems, hopefully they’ll still make time for math, science, business, and other things that might practically qualify graduates for an actual job.
And if not, I suppose, those alumni can always score a position teaching the classes that gave them no other option.
More power to ’em — I’d gladly teach Badminton.
Or, The Racist Underpinnings of EcoRacquetSports.
-ALEX
See more pieces from me:
Medical School Professor Suggests Hate Crime Charges for Anyone Who Criticizes Government Scientists
Late Bloomer: ‘White Fragility’ Author Reveals She Didn’t Know She Was White ‘Til She Was 34
WATCH: Three Men Get Into a Violent Brawl Aboard a Commercial Flight
Find all my RedState work here.
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