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Friday, May 05, 2006
You don't get to have your own facts.

The principle used to be "you can have your own opinion, but you don't get to have your own facts". No longer, at least not if you're a Republican. For instance...

After 34 years of college teaching, I thought I had heard just about every imaginable student complaint. Last week, however, a freshman in my 300-seat US History Since 1865 course came in to discuss her exam with one of the graders and proceeded to work herself into a semi-hissy over the fact that we had spent four class periods(one of them consisting of a visit from Taylor Branch) discussing the civil rights movement.

"I don't know where he's getting all of this," she complained,"we never discussed any of this in high school." One might have let the matter rest here as simply an example of a high school history teacher's sins of omission being visited on the hapless old history prof. had the student not informed the TA in an indignant postcript, "I'm not a Democrat! I don't think I should have to listen to this stuff!"

The course in question was at the University of Georgia. I confess to being completely dumbfounded at the notion that only Democrats "should have to listen" to information about the Civil Rights era.
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