Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Indoctrinating Students

Lawyers Guns Money recently posted on a terrible Book TV special where someone actually claimed that every female college student was indoctrinated with the ideas of Judith Butler. And I thought, well hell, I do that. So I thought I'd put my syllabus for my introductory history course on the blog to show just how brainwashing students work. So here it is:

HISTORY 161, HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
In this course we will learn how to hate America, your parents, apple pie, the flag, the modern world, and God. The goal of this course is to turn you all from God-loving Americans into drug-taking, homosexual atheists. Any dissent in this course will automatically ensure you of an F in the course. We will learn how to hate America by reading other God-hating commies.

Week 1. Readings--Thomas Paine, Common Sense
The goal of this week is to prepare you for bloody revolution
Your assignment is to write an essay discussing your plans to prepare for the revolution against America.

Week 2. Readings--Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
The goal of this week is to teach you to reject God.
Your assignment is to desecrate a local church. Urinate in the holy water, have sex on the altar, use a statue of the Virgin Mary to pleasure yourself. Inventiveness is highly encouraged.

Week 3. Readings--Karl Marx, Kapital
The goal of this week is to teach you to understand the heart of the capitalist beast and to show why capitalism is doomed.
Your assignment is to write a 200 word essay summarizing the key argument of the book.

Week 4. Readings--Prince Kropotkin, His Thoughts and Works
The goal of this week is to show why all government is evil and should be destroyed.
Your assignment is to blow up a symbol of capitalism. Or just blow up whatever you can find.

Week 5. Readings--V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done?
The goal of this week is to teach you how to instigate a revolution
Your assignment is to preach the oncoming revolution on the streets, to your parents, or in your church.

Week 6. Readings, Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis, An Introduction
The goal of this week is to show how the US controls the world and oppresses all people of color.
Your assignment is to pick one country and show how a revolution will end American dominance over it.

Week 7. Readings, Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
The goal of this week is to show why white people hate everyone in the Third World.
Your assignment is to write a paper on why America should celebrate the birthdays of leaders like Patrice Lumumba, Robert Mugabe, and Julius Nyrere instead of racists George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Week 8. Readings, Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The goal of this week is to discuss why the "Man", meaning all of us whiteys, continue to screw the black population of the world.
Your assignment is to kill a white person. If it's yourself, you will get a posthumous "A" for the course since I won't have to grade any more of your work.

Week 9. Readings, Mao Tse-Tung, The Little Red Book
The goal of this week is to find out how to create a radical revolutionary culture.
Your assignments are to form small groups and self-criticize as well as to denounce elders in public. If you can force your parents, teacher, or a minister to their knees and to cry, you get extra credit. But no extra credit for only one. They must be on their knees and crying. If you denounce me, you get double the extra credit.

Week 10. Readings--Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism
The goal of this week is to teach you that Israel is the antichrist and should be destroyed with as much violence as possible.
Your assignment is to pick a group of people and find out how the Jews have screwed them over. It's very important that you don't engage in any anti-Semitic violence this week. If you've learned anything so far, it's that you must work within the movement and that individual action will result in the fall of the revolutionary movement. Not to mention that it will lead to a 1/3 grade deduction at the end of the semester. If you need a reinforcement of this, watch I Am Cuba

Week 11. Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
The goal of this week is to show you how white capitalist culture has destroyed the environment.
Your assignment is to chop down a billboard.

Week 12. Readings--James Scott, Seeing Like A State
The goal of this week is to show how capitalism has screwed up the world and how Scott is a counter-revolutionary rightist for claiming that communist nations caused the same problems to people and the environment as capitalist movements. See, critical reading is encouraged in college.
Your assignment is to find the plans for a high-modernist structure, preferably a dam. We will discuss how to destroy it in class.

Week 13. Readings--Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference
The goal for this week is for you to be able to tell your parents and other authority how stupid they are because they don't understand deconstructionism.
Your assignment is to deconstruct your relationship with your parents.

Week 14. Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History
The goal for this week is for you to understand why women are better than men.
Your assignment depends on your gender. If you are female, you must dominate and humiliate a male. If you are a male you must be dominated or humiliated by a female.

Week 15. Readings--Judith Halberstam, Female Masculinities
The goal of this week is show that acting within established gender norms is evil and oppresses the world.
Your assignment is to cross-dress for a week. Experimental sex is encouraged.

Week 16. Readings--Judith Butler, The Judith Butler Reader
The goal of this week is to learn a language that people in red states can't understand as well as to reinforce your new status as homosexuals.
Your assignment is to film yourself having sex with at least one other person of your gender. More than 1 is encouraged. If you're particularly shy, a goat will suffice.

Final Project
The final will be to start a violent, yet racially, gender, and sexually tolerant revolution. We will begin the revolution at the designated time for your final exam as listed in the schedule of classes. Blue books are not required for this final.


Do any readers have similar syllabi? I am always looking for more effective ways to indoctrinate my students.