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.
If you dressed that way in college today, people would assume that you were as gay as Milo. However, kids in fine private schools still dress in ties for class, and those youths in the photo were probably just wearing something similar to what they had always worn to school. People used to dress for church too. I still do. It shows respect for the occasion. Please do not wear cut-off jeans to church. I am sure God doesn't care, but I do. (And you gals, please do not dress too sexy. It is a terrible distraction for us guys.)
It seems to me that part of the post-war cultural change in the US, and in the West generally, contained a degree of psychological regression, a clinging to childhood or adolescence. I do not know why that happened (decadence from prosperity and comfort?), but there was a time when people aged 18 were adults, viewed themselves as adults, comported themselves as adults, dressed like adults and, in short, aspired to be dignified grown-ups. I know this from my parents, but I grew up after that. Adulthood was difficult for them (military service, war, money, etc) but adulthood is always a deadly serious matter for which children are not equipped.
Dress expectations are superficial for sure, but they still mean something. So do all other cultural expectations. I am most comfortable associating with those who share my cultural expectations. Generally, know what to expect. Birds of a feather...
Solway discusses The Infantilizing of the Academy. I will not blame anybody or anything for the cultural regressions, but it is an interesting question.
It's about time that a national politician made an issue of public K-12 education. Only somebody with the audacity of Trump would do it. In some ways promotion of school choice seems most relevant (and appealing) to inner-city blacks but there is no reason it should not be appealing to others.
While elite private schools can be prohibitively expensive, most charter schools cost less to run than government education. Prosperous people (like Clintons and Trumps) have school choice for their families. Nobody else does. What matters is choice. Probably most public ed in the US does a fine job but, fine or not so fine, why not give parents a choice?
Everyone with eyes knows that the urban public school system in America is a travesty. Over decades the Left took a basically good system that churned out good citizens, entrepreneurs, and employees, and transformed it into a jobs program for adults, especially Democratic Party supporters and labor bosses. It amounts to a gigantic partisan slush fund that everyone who pays taxes in America is forced to support. And no matter how much money gets spent, things never seem to improve...
What kind of people are these administrators? Surely Yale Univ. has thousands of smart, normal students even if the admin consists of castrati. Are they all intimidated into silence while these circuses occur? Or too busy studying to have time for nonsense?
Big-time sports simply do not blend well with academic pursuits. Georgia Tech’s Richard DeMillo nailed that point when he wrote in this Pope Center article: “Sports programs are grafted onto universities to extract value from academic programs for the sake of the sports programs. Athletic decision-making cannot be trusted to align itself with academic goals when so many of the incentives are tied to the success of a non-core, big money operation that has virtually no relationship to academic outcomes.”
Is there any hope of escaping from the arms race for sports prestige?
Useless as it may be, it's too popular to go away.
Because there is no evidence that education dollars correlate with schools' success. Rich schools are not the "best" schools, but kids in schools in more prosperous districts tend to perform best because kids perform best in areas where the parents tend to have their act together.
It's the kids that make a school look "good", not the school itself. Teachers want to teach but not all kids are interested in this project. For example, in my state student performance correlates almost exactly to the average town income, regardless of per pupil expenditures (which tend to be highest in "low-performing" urban schools). Thus the "best schools" are in solidly middle-to-upper-middle class, homogeneous towns with no new immigrants, no out of wedlock kids, and minimal social dysfunction.
Schools do not "perform." Kids perform, or not.
Education does not cost too much. Just ask any home-schooler, or any Charter School.
No doubt there will be safe spaces for white middle class jocks too. People like to hang out with those with whom they have more in common. The racial component seems rather strange, as if, for example, all brown people have a lot in common. That is ridiculous.
I predict that one ethnic group will not go for this sort of thing: Asians. Forgive the evil stereotype, but Asian kids seem versatile, comfortable, well-adjusted, and goal-directed. There are reasons for that, and it is not all their higher average IQs.
Harry Stein: We had been threatened with expulsion so we were pretty nervous. We felt, in the grandiose way that a lot of antiwar kids thought of themselves at that time, we were really putting our lives on the line, we were putting our bodies on the line, we were as brave as you could be. So—on the other hand, the administration at that point and certainly most of the faculty was against the war, so we had some sense that maybe the punishment wouldn't be all that severe. Maybe we would only be suspended. So initially we were put on trial in a big, banked stadium, all of us, and we turned that into a show trial. The kid who was representing us, one of our number, was a future radical lawyer as a matter of fact, and he, of course, put the war on trial. So that collapsed pretty quickly, and they began bringing us in one by one before the judiciary committee. And of course we were all guilty so all we could do was acknowledge that we had been there and sign a statement to that effect, and then the verdicts came. And the verdict was suspended suspensions, which was of course a joke and we laughed about it and felt very relieved, but at the same time I think we also felt a kind of contempt for these ostensible grownups in the administration who didn't even have enough faith in their own values and traditions to stand up to us. Because we knew we were kids. We knew, even serious as we were against the war, we knew we were essentially kids pushing the boundaries and they didn't have the gumption to stop us. And that was a real kind of psychological break with the past and I think for Pomona a very important moment, because it's been all downhill from there.
Are the leaders of our academic institutions complicit in the current student-led challenge to free speech and free expression on college campuses? Jonathan R. Cole thinks so.
Should Employers Be Prohibited from Asking Applicants About College Credentials? From the article:
The justices in Griggs thought they were simultaneously applying the Civil Rights Act and helping to make life more fair for people who didn’t have high school credentials or good test-taking abilities. Little did they suspect that a consequence of their ruling decades later would be to keep such individuals from having a chance at numerous jobs just because they lack a college degree.
And the logic of the case seems every bit as applicable to college degree requirements as to the sort of job requirements the Court struck down in Griggs. If companies violated the Civil Rights Act when they set arbitrary and seemingly irrelevant educational requirements for employment in 1971, why are they allowed to use the absence of college credentials to screen out people today?
No it is not hard. It is just not easy for most people. Like learning a language, it requires IQ and mental discipline, and it takes time to comprehend what a mathematical process is about. It's high abstraction.
Each step of math mastery offers advantages in life, but all of the math steps are steps toward yet another level of mastery and, if you choose and have talent, it can never end.
There are three reasons for this: 1. Math is hard so I'll go to a school that doesn't make me do it. 2. It is often claimed that, statistically, women are worse with math. So make the curriculum less daunting for women. 3. IQ. Math above the ordinary high school level probably takes more IQ than many modern college students possess.
My view is that a college degree means little unless it includes some proficiency in statistics and calc. The more, the better.
It is all almost entirely true. However, higher ed still can be somewhat like it used to be if and only if a student and his parents together make a plan to navigate the place so as to get the most out of it. A solid traditional education can usually be designed from their offerings just as a nutritional meal can be designed despite all the the junk in the supermarket. Seeking the most rigorous coursework and diving into constructive extracurriculars are good starts.
When the structure of a school would once make sure the student was a product of which the school could feel proud (literate, well-rounded, and, as they used to say, able to comprehend every section of the Sunday New York Times), now it is up to the paying parents to ensure that that happens.
They are Canon Fodder. A beginning list of the canonical minds who must be banned. Basically, anybody smarter than you. That is, the people whose brains, talents, and accomplishments damage your self-esteem and make you feel small. I guess admiration is passe.
The higher ed marketing machine has done a good job for its booming industry over the past 50 years, but it has gotten ridiculous. A college degree means nothing. Anybody who wants to can now cheat, drink, and bs their way to the piece of paper as long as they can find a way to come up with the cash.
Let's face it. If you can't or won't handle Calc. and Aristotle, you can't use it. Get a job and learn something real. And read books.
