John Hinderaker of
Power Line cites a
story from
The New York Times about Canadian universities "indigenizing" their curricula. That is defined as follows:
A new, elastic term that means everything from drawing more aboriginal students and faculty members onto campuses built largely for white settlers, to infusing those stodgy Western institutions with aboriginal belief systems and traditional knowledge.
This isn't easy, for:
Aboriginal scholars say that colonial education philosophies and aboriginal theories of knowledge are incompatible.
At the University of Saskatchewan:
Last year, the academic governing body agreed that all of the 17 colleges and schools, from dentistry to engineering, should include indigenous knowledge.
I love Hinderaker's comment about this:
I am not sure what the Stone Age engineering of Native Americans can teach modern engineering students, but I know this for sure: when it comes to “indigenous” dentistry, count me out!
The whole idea of indigenizing the curriculum is ridiculous. Establishing a department to respectfully study indigenous culture and folkways and their applicability to modern life is certainly reasonable.
