Anyone who has taught philosophy has encountered the phenomenon of student relativism. SR is not so much a philosophical theory as a form of psychic insulation. An outgrowth of adolescent rebelliousness, it says: 'You can't teach me anything because truth is relative; we all have our own truths.'
Not being a philosophical theory, SR cannot be refuted in the usual ways. It is not meant to be true, after all, it is meant to put an end to inquiry into truth. It is a pathology that must be outgrown. Unfortunately, we live in a society in which adolescence in many extends into the twenties, thirties, and beyond. Some remain life-long adolescents in their mentality. Many of these characters are found on the Left, and many are in universities where they are unlikely to have the sorts of experiences that could cure them.
The best example of a leftist in academe who is a relativist (of a very primitive sort I might add) and who also comes across as an overgrown adolescent is the moronic Ward Churchill.
This, however, is nothing as insidious as the relativism that you encounter on Wikipedia, which seems now to be the encyclopedia of choice to the whole planet. Every point of view is the same as every other point of view. (Long rant continued on p. 94).
Another attempted quote, " presumably one keeps an open mind so that it may eventually close on something", Chesterton.
Luckily some adhere more to Chesterton than to Mrs Freebish at the head of the class telling them that existence is one big gray area. "Keep an open mind class",[ soto voce]"and we'll stuff it with crap".
It is attributed to St Francis Xavier (seven years, not five). It is a famous Jesuit saying.
There is also the open-minded/empty-minded contrast.
Ockham,
What bothered me more than the inability to spell was their impoverished vocabularies. I'd often spend fifteen minutes of a class on remedial vocabulary training. And they call these institutions universities?
How do I get to p. 94? We'll have to talk about Wikipedia sometime. Have you had much interference with your Existence article?
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4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.