While engineering school saved me from a ton of p.c. bullshit, it left some holes in my education. Why do you think it is that engineers are generally more interested in liberal arts than liberal arts majors are interested in engineering and technology? It seems to me that whenever I have a tech discussion with someone with a liberal education they seem to think it is all magic.

I think part of this is the fault of the colleges. For example, in engineering school, I had to take three sophomore liberal arts courses. Liberal arts majors have to take freshman math and science that doesn't even count towards an engineering degree.

--Jim Breed
Kansas City, Mo.

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In accordance with your suggestion that women study history rather than women's studies, I recommend Gen. Patton's speech before the third army during World War II. It should be required reading for all college students studying history and leadership. It's titled "The Speech Somewhere in England, June 5th, 1944."

--Gregg Hanke

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As a junior wonkette and history buff, I feel the lesson that women should be more involved in historical and military studies is not presented to my female schoolmates, or any other girls my age. I would love to see an entire column devoted to the rampant gender disproportion of women in history and political science classes in high school and college, and what should be done to fix it.

In addition, I'd like to point out one possible bright spot, the Model United Nations. It allows high school and college students to attend conferences, argue the position of a country (oftentimes a radical or even, God forbid, non-capitalist one) and attempt to reach a consensus with others. It's a truly great program, which illustrates not only bureaucratic and political frustration, but the art of oratory and politics itself.

--Jane Miller

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How long must we wait for good arts education? I regret to say that I received my B.A. in photography and cinema from the Ohio State University. The only good that came from that incredible waste of time and money is that the degree got me into law school.

I was at Ohio State between 1978 and 1981. I wanted to learn filmmaking; too bad. The professors were more interested in discussing the revolutionary importance of protesting the Contras in Nicaragua than in teaching us poor, stupid, unwashed undergraduates the fine points of filmmaking. They never gave us any kind of appreciation for the art of filmmaking.

What I did not notice is that there was a war raging between the old-school professors who had been with the Department of Photography and Cinema back in the days when it was part of the College of Engineering and the "new blood" they imported from the West Coast, who were fascinated with all kinds of leftist theories. Some of these professors actively promoted communism -- which was not taken very well by one of the old school professors who had first hand experience with REAL communists (he escaped from Czechoslovakia after the Soviet crackdown on the Prague Spring in '68).

You will appreciate the end of the story. Sometime during the mid-'90s, the university had enough of all the pseudo-intellectual-revolutionary nonsense that was coming out of the department. With little fanfare, the department was dissolved. Last year, I came across one of my favorite lefty professors from the department; he was now working as a messenger for a law firm.

--Hugh Greentree

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Rants and questions from Hungary: The dumbing down and Balkanization of academia.

It may interest you to hear that any graduate program requiring a GRE history exam is in effect filtering its students for yet more simpering correctness. Any moron can get a perfect score on that test simply by looking for the stereotypically left-p.c. answer to the multiple-choice questions. I've done this for several years in a row, and friends of mine who never managed to make it through JuCo are amazed at how suddenly brilliant they've become when the test scores come back.

Regarding the Balkanization, I'm glad to hear that swords hold a soft place in your heart. They sure do in mine, because I am a scholar of sharp and pointy things, mostly swung with one hand. But the philistines who run academia have things so chopped up by area and period (how can someone consider himself or herself learned if they know one century in incredible detail, but can't even name a major literary, military, or artistic figure from the one after it?) that there is not one [italicize "not one"] university in America that can supervise a dissertation on 15th-century swordplay, even if I bring the manuscripts with me and translate the buggers into 20th-century English.

--Russell Mitchell
MA program assistant, medieval studies
Central European University Budapest, Hungary

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I want to tell you about a professor I had at Queens College (City University of New York) who deftly taught Shakespeare and kept us informed about her radical feminism and other intellectual affiliations.

Barbara Bowen taught an evening "Shakespeare" class I took while I was employed as a truck driver during the day, and it was a fantastic life experience in the balancing of opposites, as was her class. Somehow she conveyed the greatness of his work while interweaving the latter-day considerations you and all your anti-p.c. fans all decry, when they are shoveled in the extreme. The result was that I came away from the experience with a balanced, mature appreciation of both the literature and its implications.

Bowen never let her politics overwhelm the course or the Master, and so I never resented her, indeed it made me check out some essays about radical feminism and make my own decisions -- based on my own thought process, not one of indoctrination and classroom terrorism. She is a paragon of the right way to do things.

--Frank John Giovinazzi

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I'm a Portuguese teacher currently working in Germany. I came to deeply respect the work of your Yale mentor, Harold Bloom, and you were the cause. I am always moved by both your and Bloom's passionate defense of imagination, art, beauty and deep spirituality -- words and experiences easily ridiculed in today's hip posture of cynicism towards anything that evokes enthusiasm.

--Artur Jorge Pires da Silva

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