Maggie's Farm

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

Jefferson’s Doomed Educational Experiment

Lunatics running the asylum. Can Storied Williams College Be Saved From Itself?

Orwell’s warning in ‘1984’ is as relevant today as during the Cold War

Years ago, Calvin Trillin took a stab at some honest Class Notes

Link fixed - 

Via Instapundit

At Quillette: 

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...

Arnold Kling

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

Should We Abandon the Concept of Merit?

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.