Maggie's Farm

Manhattan Contrarian: Covid-19 Is An Opportunity To Disrupt Education

 Despite overwhelming evidence that opening schools for in-person education is both safe and beneficial for children, teachers unions across the U.S. continue to try to hold families hostage in pursuit of political gains. As the unions overplay their hands, there is a great opportunity for market disruption of the dysfunctional union-controlled status quo.   

Quillette: How to Fight the Enemies of Academic Freedom

 In the worldview of the Woke, America has never been that paragon of freedom, justice, and opportunities for all that attracted us immigrants, but rather a terribly unjust, racist, and corrupt society. Its foundation does not begin with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that we proud and patriotic immigrants venerate, but rather, as the New York Times tells us in its 1619 Project, with the date when the first slaves were brought to these shores. American history is no longer taught dialectically, as a constant struggle for improvements made possible by the magnificent founding principles and institutions of the republic, but, rather, statically as a mindless sequence of acts of oppression against various groups. In fact, the founding documents are themselves often deemed to be racist and sexist, as are the historic figures who wrote them...

About Thomas Sowell's new book

An Old White Professor Speaks to the Class of 2020

How dependent is American higher ed on foreign students?

Quite a lot, especially Chinese kids.  I did not realize the extent, and have no strong opinion on it. However, it is clearly about money. Are some Chinese students spies, of sorts? Of course, if a spy is somebody sent by the government to get information.

Higher education faces challenges that are unlike any other industry. What path will ASU, and universities like ASU, take in a post-COVID world?

I suspect back to the usual, in time. 

Williamson:  What Are Schools For?

 Public schools are a peerless example of the progressives’ conception of society as one big factory that can be scientifically managed with a kind of political (and moral) Taylorism. (Frederick Winslow Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management was enormously influential among American progressives.) Whether the problem is education or health care or pharmaceutical regulation, the factory mindset of progressives favors unified systems characterized by standardization and homogeneity. The idea of lots of different kinds of schools offering lots of different kinds of education — with many of them operating outside of the direct oversight of the central bureaucracy — gives them the willies.

School Choice Defeats Anti-Catholic Bigotry 5–4 at the Supreme Court

Not just anti-Catholic - anti-Jewish, anti-charter, anti-Moslem, anti-anything with free choice. My view is educational vouchers through grade 12 for all.

Two books survey how the university came to prize ideology over ideas.

Restore Authority to Education

When you read the details, it's remarkable: The University of Texas Succumbs to the ‘Social Justice’ Pandemic

Pretty good advice for Liberal Arts students. A quote:

 What follows is advice I would offer to any student with the good fortune to study such a course. You enjoy a remarkable opportunity—afforded inside what Oakeshott called “the interim,” a sunny recess between the sheltered world of childhood and adolescence, and the onerous responsibilities of adulthood—to enjoy without distraction an induction into a great inheritance. It is unlikely you will get it again. I hope the thoughts I have assembled here will help you make the most of your experience. They are not exhaustive and they are not gospel. You can judge their value for yourself as you pursue your studies.

93 Vermont Towns Have No Public Schools, But Great Education.  (h/t, reader)

Related,  California Sued for Not Teaching Children to Read

It's a Powerline podcast.

Charter Schools in Newark: The Effect on Student Test Scores

Wilfred Reilly at Quillette patiently explains to the NYT that there was no USA until 1776 - and not even then.  Not yet.

It's grade school information: The colonies were British colonies, each separately governed by Brit governors beholden to London. Just like Brit colonies all over the world. 

Unification, and rebellion, was extremely difficult requiring all sorts of compromises.  Some ugly, some wonderful and wise.

Yale against Western Art

As usual, Heather nails it. 

From Italo Calvino in 1986. 

He believes that they are wasted on the youth, but that could be said of many things. 

To a point, it seems to.  After that point, not much. Teacher quality matters of course, but I do not see how school buildings matter. Do high-tech blackboards improve education? I do not see how. Blackboards (now whiteboards mostly), pencils, and paper do the trick.

But parental influence might be most important. 

How money matters for improving education

It has been a project of the American Left to destroy Western civilization, or at least its history. It seems like a fool's errand to me, but also evil in a way.

It might work in spineless academia, but not in real life. Stop by to see a show at the Metropolitan Museum in NYC sometime. There will be a line of thousands from all over the world waiting to get in. Every language, nationality, color, etc. Universally known as best museum in the world if not best in every single area.

People know what is amazing to look at, despite academic fads. 

My high school Art History course was mind-expanding, cave art through Egyptian and Assyrian up to the Renaissance (yes, we had to learn the math of the Parthenon's steps and of the columns), and the required semester of Art History Intro in college almost equally-so. We learned a bit about Asian and African art too because of their influences on Western art and design. 

Yale is getting rid of it.  It's "too white." 

Pieta was carved by Michelangelo at age 23. That is just not normal.  What have I done lately? What have those students and academics done lately? Those smartypants are not Michelangelo.

The Humanities Throw in the Towel

The Academy has gone commercial. Mass market. We all know that. STEM hasn't dumbed down yet. Pretty much nobody gets an A at MIT, even today. I hear the stories. A C+ in math can be high praise.

Aristocracy was unfair. Meritocracy was the new thing but first the Jews, and then Asians figured out how to do meritocracy and now it is unfair. Now, from one point of view, success is unfair. Problem is that success is only individually defined.

A speech by Yale Law Prof Daniel Markovits, the author of The Meritocracy Trap. I see many erroneous assumptions in this guy's arguments (a c-span video). He seems to want to eat the wealthy, kill the kulaks. He thinks too much about money, as if it were the meaning of life. Maybe I think too much about freedom and free life choices.

For minor wealth, I work pretty hard and do the S&P index. For major wealth, I invest in Powerball at $2/month. 

He thinks he discovered that life is unfair. If you have the time to listen to Markovits, I'd be interested in your reactions.

When Disruptive Students Are Coddled, the Whole Class Suffers