We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
It strikes me as ironic that in a realm like education, the lesson America’s scholastic visionaries never seem to learn is also the most simple lesson of all—that education should be about educating. Theorists persist in reinventing the wheel, sometimes with good intentions and sometimes in the service of agendas that are rather less defensible and/or wholesome than those publicly stated. Such is the case with the hottest currency to emerge from the pointy-headed precincts of pedagogical theory: social-emotional learning, or SEL...
Somewhere around the time that "new math" became an educational fad, "whole word" reading was developed. Like New Math, the reasons for a new method were never made clear because everybody had been learning to read just fine with "phonics," otherwise known as "sounding it out."
We're in another era now. Now, there is "New, new math" from Common Core that nobody can understand. Supposedly it's meant to offer a deeper understanding of numbers. There is no more plain long division even though that old division sign was a great tool.
Will the government education machine finally accept that phonics is the easiest way to read? K–12: Phonics Is Winning
It's a peculiar topic, best addressed in specifics rather than in generalities. Specific acquired skills and developed talents. It's not too difficult to measure their value. Can you play world-class violin? Can you frame a shed that will not fall down? Can you make a route over a mountain from point A to point B? Can you help an autistic child behave in a civil manner? Can you hit a fastball? Most adults become pretty good at assessing the obvious merits (and flaws) of others. For less evident skills, an oral exam or written exam or performance exam vets out specific merits pretty well. Especially logic and math.
We want bridges that will not collapse, and there is nothing easy at all about that. Yet, our elites happily drive over those bridges with any clue about how they came to be.
Not anymore, not nowadays. Not in a time when lots of "higher ed" is about work skills.
For example, 6 million Americans attend community colleges. That's a lot. They are not there to study Shakespeare and Plato. They stop by to pick up credits that help them apply for work: medical coding, computer coding, hospitality jobs, turf managment, nursing aide ed, etc etc.
There are, in fact, important and interesting insights to be derived from The Social Construction of Reality. On the other hand, there is ordinary reality which always wins in the end.
"The object of the university is to develop character — to make men. It misses its aim if it produced learned pedants, or simple artisans, or cunning sophists, or pretentious practitioners. Its purport is not so much to impart knowledge to the pupils, as whet the appetite, exhibit methods, develop powers, strengthen judgment, and invigorate the intellectual and moral forces. It should prepare for the service of society a class of students who will be wise, thoughtful, progressive guides in whatever department of work or thought they may be engaged."
Johns Hopkins University President Daniel Coit Gilman, in 1876 (h/t, Askblog)
Wilfred Reilly at Quillette 
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.