Has the Education Degree Outlived its Usefulness?

Foxnews.com reports on a University of Minnesota program that

may require all education students at the school to understand and accept that they are either privileged or oppressed and that they be well-versed in issues like "white privilege," "institutional racism” and the "myth of meritocracy in the United States."

Hey, you know what might be an even better idea? Train future teachers in how to teach basic writing and math skills.

This sounds like the classic case of some rogue faculty members in education trying desperately to secure their jobs by hijacking the curriculum and refashioning it in their own bigoted image. Any time there is an "office of" or "director of" anything in higher education, the people who occupy that space are going to feel more compelled to make a splash in order to keep the attention of the higher-ups (and therefore stay a priority in terms of funding). In the end, though, all of these outlandish, pet-project pipedreams by minimus administrators obfuscate the actual goals of higher education.

Disadvantaged students are not going to become advantaged by feeling victimized, and they aren't going to be better served by their "privileged" teachers by making the teachers feel guilty. They will be best served by learning to use a precise and wide vocabulary, to form syntactically clear sentences, and to perform at levels that surpass their lazier counterparts. Anything short of that merely dooms these students to remain in a subculture that rewards them for professional incompetence.