The College of Central Florida Needs a New Name

The College of Central Florida needs a new name, to better reflect it’s actual mission and purpose: To make money for the Pearson Education publishing house; to enslave students to a single proprietary vendor whose policies, prices, terms, and forms change on the whim of that vendor, and to promote political correctness and discourage independent thought.

Almost all of my classes insist on using Pearson textbooks, and the Pearson web site for homework. Almost all of the instructors and classmates passionately hate the Pearson books and web site. They would choose different textbooks and certainly a different web interface for exercises and homework. Yet the college tells them they have to use these awful textbooks as a matter of policy. What real college does such a thing? It stinks of kickback, and I’m not the only student who thinks so. More than one of my professors thinks so too. Perhaps it should be re-named Pearson College.

But I suspect that my school is not a wholly owned subsidiary of Pearson Education, Inc. Microsoft surely has a large stake in the College of Central Florida as well. Because all work in all classes has to be submitted in Microsoft format. Both of the two alternatives for the required computer literacy classes are classes in Microsoft’s Windows® operating system and Microsoft applications, and all work has to be submitted in Microsoft format. Technology for Educators, the class I chose, makes no mention of any alternative to Microsoft products and formats, even though many schools, businesses, and even governments are freeing themselves from being bound to a single system from a single vendor. It is completely unrealistic and unethical to train future educators in only one single proprietary vendor’s system and software when most of the world is free to choose any other vendor, system, and software. Mac. BSD (OpenBSD, FreeBSD). Or any one of hundreds of GNU/Linux distributions. So maybe we should call it, Microsoft-Pearson College. Or an abbreviated blend, like Soft Pears College, or Micro Arson College. Any of those names would make more sense and better reflect the real mission of this never-to-be-recommended institution of so-called “higher” learning. I can’t wait to get this insanity over with and get the hell out of there.

I disagreed in a research paper with a bit of extreme left-wing propaganda that was required viewing in the mandatory Diversity for Educators class. The so-called “documentary” was produced by the ultra-leftist group, Southern Poverty Law Center, which was recently dumped by the FBI as an educational partner because of its radical agenda. The result of my disagreement – on a well-documented opinion paper no less – was a 75 out of 100 possible points. Instead of Diversity for Educators, that class should be re-named to the You-Should-Be-Ashamed-to-Be-a-White-Male-Heterosexual-Christian-American class.

I’m sure that the College of Central Florida will be first in line to adopt the New History when the Emperor’s “updated” version of U.S. History is released by Pearson Publications. And a great hero of America – besides Emperor Obama, that is – will be a gay and black version of Microsoft founder and major financial backer of Common Core, Bill Gates.

All this bovine excrement has got me seriously re-thinking my pursuit of a second career as an educator. I don’t think I can really do it under all of the idiotic constraints that our government has imposed. Perhaps I could teach outside of the U.S., or in a private school where the truth is still permitted; where critical, independent thought and argument are still encouraged; and where students and staff are not held hostage to a single vendor’s textbooks, software, or format.