Looking for input on this matter

[choicevoice]

My daughter called me, livid about an email her Marketing professor had sent out. It was regarding course information then veered off into his right wing slant on the social security situation. Any ideas on what should or could be done about this? Is it proper for a professor to do this?

I don't think I covered chapter 5 adequately---if at all. Chapter 6 is more important, but chapter 5 will be covered (rather quickly) next class. The chapter primarily deals with demographic shifts such as income distribution and the aging population. By the way, ask your grandparents if they realize that AARP is working against social security reform---and then ask them how they feel about you having to pay 50% of your income to fund my "retirement."

You guys need to get involved with this issue since it impacts your financial future. I see nothing wrong in your being given the opportunity to set aside 4% (out of approximately 12%) of your SS deduction into your own personal account---one that is portable and that can be passed along to your heirs. As it presently stands, you'll be on the hook for the "retirement" benefits of one of the largest demographic groups in our country's history, not to mention the medicare mess (which may be in worse shape than SS). It behooves you to get familiar with this mess---especially if you happen to be an African American male or have a history of heart disease in your family!

Edited to add the above section from the email.... sorry. How silly of me.

Your comments are welcomed.

[skids]

1. Timely...

Read the Latest page, article about Bush trying to restrict professor's "liberal bias." Your case is a counterpoint, and if you got it to the right people, they might be able to use it as ammo. Not that I know who the right people are on this front.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. I hate censorship more than I hate right-wing crap.

I'd leave it alone; academic freedom means nothing unless people are free to say things you don't like. Any objection you make here can be turned against you when some RW student wants to shut up his biology teacher for teaching evolution, etc.

Edited because I hate typos almost as much as I hate wingnuts.

[dryan]

3. Academic freedom is....

an important concept. I would advise your daughter to wait until evaluations are distributed and then put down that this is inappropriate.

[seabeyond]

4. we want a liberal professor to be able to express views

then so should right. further, in higher education your daughter should be able to do her research and get in a competitive debate with the man expanding and growing in hte process, the whole point of high education

[applegrove]

5. Sounds like a DUPE to me. I mean if the academics do not have

enough information to say SS needs the immediate changes...how does this jackass? What are his assumptions?

Tell your daughter to ask the professor what his/her assumptions are about 1) SS
2) the tax system that will be in place
3) the growth of USA market in the next 75 years by decade

[jdj]

6. I'd ask her to take the anti-gay ad in there and ask him if he

is behind it.

[JHB]

7. Your daughter should ask him to address the counterarguments...

After all, if he thinks it's so important that the students "need to get involved with this issue since it impacts your financial future" (although it's apparently not important enough for him to "cover adequately"), then these should factor into it (as well as provide practical exampes of how to lie with statistics):

-- The assumptions about economic growth used when pointing out SS's troubles, and the different set of assumptions used to make privatization look attractive;

-- Especially applicable since the topic is demographics: somehow the most dire predictions about the solvency about SS thanks to the Baby Boomers seem to ignore the fact that the Boomers will, as the years pass, die off.