Maggie's Farm

From the article by Lawler. One quote:

 The humanities, in the old view, are about the purposes or ends of being human.  Technology is about the means--money and power--that should be subordinate to those ends.  Instrumental reason, by its very name, should be at the service of properly philosophical and theological reflection. So those with a technical education should be taking orders from those with a fully liberal education, as they have been, in fact, through most of our history.   Jefferson and Lincoln had a deep appreciation of the place of technology in American flourishing.  But they understood the difference between cultivation of the means for the pursuit of happiness and happiness itself.  When Jefferson thought of happiness, we learn from his letters, he gave us two exemplars:  the philosopher Epicurus and his version of the Jesus of the Bible.  And of course "the self-evident truths" could only be genuinely evident to a self who has reflected seriously--with the help of the key books of the West--about who each of us is.

The article is from Mead:

 Of the 33 states granted a waiver (from No Child Left Behind) last year, 27 now have different achievement goals for different groups of students. And the Obama administration fully supports this measure, “as long as the low-performing students are required to make greater rates of progress, so that the gap between struggling students and high-achieving students is cut in half over six years.”

Different performance standards depending on skin tone and eye shape? They have gone insane. With the President being 50/50 white/black, to what standards should he be held? I suppose he should be held to the lower dark standards, because that's his skin tone.

Vedder makes the case: Why Ed Schools are Useless:

 Teachers should earn degrees in academic disciplines, and undergo a modest amount of teacher preparation that at the secondary level is almost exclusively student teaching, working with seasoned high quality professionals, while primary and special education teachers should also receive a small number of courses dealing with the special problems of teaching those with immature minds or physical or mental disabilities. The supply of good teachers will expand, and universities will be free of an albatross that simply has not worked well, either for them or society.

From the article:

"General College students were normally required to take 17 hours a semester to remain enrolled, a tough load during the Vietnam War draft from 1965 to 1972. To matriculate out of General College at the University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill, students had to complete four semesters of science (with lab), two semesters of English and English literature, two semesters of math, four semesters of a foreign language, two semesters of physical education and two semesters of Western Civilization - the course that contributed the most to the failure rate.

The radical scholars recognized Western Civ had to be erased to achieve their goal of destroying the old order and ushering in the new "inclusive" inclusive manifesto. (Remember Jesse Jackson's chant at Stanford? "Hi-ho, hi-ho, Western Civ has to go"). In the process, the General College was abandoned - and with it went the foundation of a proper college education."

Dinosaur that I am, that old style is still "college" to me and it is what I expect from job applicants I interrogate interview.

Inside the academy and out, subjectivity is starting to replace the objective search for truth.

One quote:

Perhaps the most aggressive and outlandish attacks against science are attempts to inject value-driven methods into traditional science. Two academics at British universities, Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, came up with the concept of  “post-normal science,” a decision-making tool for situations when "facts are uncertain, values are in dispute, stakes are high, and decisions are urgent." That is not the realm of science, but of politics. After all, who is to decide whether decisions are so “urgent” that they must be made even when “facts are uncertain?”

Another ruse for promoting political agendas under the guise of using science is the “precautionary principle.” That principle is summarized as “[W]hen an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.” On the surface, this almost sounds reasonable, yet it is really just another deception to insert subjective values into the scientific process.

As they say in The Program, "Feelings aren't facts."

The article is here.

It's a strange premise, though. There is little that makes life easier about having kids. Perhaps when you're in your 80s kids can make your life easier, if you're lucky. Having kids is not about your convenience or career. It's about creating family. Life is easy without family.

She begins:

 Even though I'm a product of public schools and my mother just retired after 40 years as a public school teacher, I do not send my children to public schools. Instead, we are huge supporters of classical education, sort of the opposite of the progressive model employed in public schools across the land...

We recently posted the report that Google is not particularly interested in interviewing American grads with college degrees.

The fact is that the meaning of Higher Ed has changed in the past 100 years in the US. In 1900, around 2% of Americans had BA degrees. That was a meaningful socio-cultural marker, but as the numbers now exceed 35%, and as even the most elite schools do not seem to know what their mission is, it no longer means very much more than a piece of paper required to manage a McDonald's store.

For a couple of decades, as BAs became commonplace, graduate degrees seemed to become more meaningful and popular as markers. Now, however, we are overrun with unemployed and marginally-employed MAs, PhDs, JDs, D. Divs, and MBAs with huge loans and no way to pay them off. And, assuming that MOOCs begin to take off thanks to the internet, there will be far less need for Profs.

Voegli has written a very important essay on the topic: The Higher Education Hustle

One quote:

How do all the other tenured, morally self-congratulatory educators live with the knowledge that many of their students, after having had their narrow certainties and provincial visions broken down, face years of indentured servitude? We can begin to understand by thinking of the 2,774 U.S. institutions that (as of 2010) grant bachelor's degrees as being in the credentials business rather than the education business. The Daily Beast's Megan McArdle, summarizing an interview with economist Bryan Caplan, points out that it's "actually fairly easy to get a Princeton education for free, as long as you don't want the degree: just walk in off the street and sit in on the classes. It's unlikely that a professor will kick you out, or even notice." No one does this, of course, since no matter how much you might have learned auditing courses, your degree-less self will fare no better in the job market than will the next autodidact.

Many students do the opposite, however: earning, or in any case receiving, college degrees after learning as little as possible. After all, writes McArdle, college students "cheer when class is cancelled. This makes no sense if the goal is accumulation of human capital. In no other business are customers excited to get less than they were promised."

Large public universities, where millions of Americans enroll, are especially conducive to the avoidance of intellectual exertion and achievement. As John Merrow, a journalist specializing in education, discovered in 2005 after investigating academic life at the University of Arizona, "learning seems to be optional." Many undergraduates, in the words of one administrator he interviewed, are "‘maze smart'—they have figured out what they have to do to get through: buy the book, find out what's going to be on the exam and stay invisible." Another spoke of the "mutual nonaggression pact," in which the professor gives the students high grades for mediocre work, and the students give the professor generous evaluations for indifferent teaching. As Arizona's dean of students acknowledged, "We have a lot of students whose motivation for coming here is to get a good job. They think, ‘How do I get the grades?' instead of trying to learn."

Like most of us Maggie's Farmers, I get my education now via a pre-MOOC. If you like to learn, that's what you do. It used to be called The Teaching Company, but now it's called Great Courses. Once you're hooked, you will never waste time on TV or movies again.

Books are good, too. Some students give it up after a paper credential, but some use it as a launching pad for a lifetime of curiosity and intellectual pursuits. In my view, the latter are the only ones deserving of a liberal arts education.

Many of us privileged baby boomers were fortunate enough to receive a rigorous classical education while the masses received the fad du jour from the teachers' colleges in the government schools.

A classical education is not dead: Classical schools put Plato over iPad

A strong claim, but there must be some truth in it:

 Trunk says you should skip college unless you’re really great at school or got accepted into a top ten school. Instead “you should just go to work.”

In her recent article published on LinkedIn, Trunk advises young people to re-think college and focus on internships, saying that anyone can teach themselves the skills needed to be successful. She gives the example of an MIT program that gave iPads to illiterate kids in Ethiopia who then were able to teach themselves how to use it, program it and read it in English without a teacher or curriculum.

I am not sure why schools of education exist. It seems like an odd concept to me. It would seem to me that an apprenticeship system would work better for the lower grades.

The best private schools do not demand teaching credentials, and do not want to hire education majors. Likewise, college faculties do not need to be taught how to teach.

For what it's worth, Report Sharply Rebukes Universities Nationwide For Shoddy Teacher Prep

As Folks says:

 As one who has spent a lifetime studying the humanities, my advice for students is to take their business elsewhere.  Until humanists can offer an education that truly prepares one for life -- not just with a marketable degree, but with an education of wisdom and hope -- I would consider a degree in accounting or computer science.  Then, after work, one can read all the Shakespeare one likes and not have to be informed that the bard was a racist, an anti-Semite, and gender-challenged to boot.

From Predatory Learning by Gecan in the Boston Review:

 Twenty-five years ago, when the New York City public school system seemed permanently mired in mediocrity, a New York Times reporter asked me, “Alright, what’s the answer?”

I said, without thinking really, “One hundred nuns.”

20 Completely Ridiculous College Courses Being Offered At U.S. Universities

If parents knew, they would cry.

The article here.

Government loans are not a favor for students and their families. They are a subsidy to an unaffordable education industry. Just as with government bailouts, subsidies, and tax breaks, government policies tend to freeze the inefficient status quo in place, and to inhibit reform, new ideas, new more efficient solutions. Obamacare attempts the same.

Yes, I happen to oppose the mortgage interest tax deduction too. (I am also opposed to the income tax in general, the death tax which is a game for lawyers and accountants and prevents families from building businesses and independence, and the corporate tax which also amounts to creating an industry for lawyers and accountants.)

Primary school education: In the ‘Reinventing the Wheel’ Category

Article here. One quote:

Boys are more at risk than girls in the U.S. educational system. A MetLife study stated, "Girls appear to have an advantage over boys in terms of their future plans, teacher's expectations, everyday experiences at school and interactions in the classroom."  Boys are less engaged in school, and less engagement means less success in the classroom; in fact, engagement with school is probably the single most important factor of academic success. Boys are more likely than girls to come to school without supplies and without doing their homework. Why aren't boys more engaged in school? According to Sommers, "schools today tend to be run by women for girls. Classrooms can be hostile environments for boys. They like action, competition and adventure stories. Those are not in favor. Games like tag and dodgeball are out; tug of war has become tug of peace, and male heroes have been replaced by Girl Power."  Boys receive lower marks from female teachers, according to research done for the London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance.

American schools are designed for scholars, and gals. The average guy just does not like to do as he is told, especially by a female. Furthermore, many guys like manual work. It feels good.