Saturday, July 7. 2007
 I will be able to recover my usual sanguine approach to life once I dump this comment on ye olde blogge.
How can it be possible to earn an undergraduate degree without having studied calculus, chemistry, economics, Plato, statistics, Classical History, Shakespeare, and physics? The sheer ignorance of supposedly "educated" (at great cost and parental sacrifice) Americans never ceases to amaze me. I know why this is, too: it is market-driven. Give those young brains-full-of-mush nice dorm rooms and eliminate standards for what a degree means, and the applications will flow in. People aren't stupid: they know they are just buying a piece of paper. And yes, I know that many serious kids do not approach college that way, but today I have had several encounters with recent grads of fancy schools which were beyond appalling. Some smart people, from outside the education establishment, ought to sit down and re-think the whole idea and purpose of "liberal arts education" in America. American college education is a scam on the same dimensions as the scam of investment management. And now I feel much better. Thanks for listening!
Wednesday, June 20. 2007
There are plenty of provocative ideas in this piece in The American Thinker that make sense to me. Education cannot be bought, even though it is marketed as if it could be. Credentials can be - and nowadays, must be - bought, but not education. All education is self-education.
Thursday, June 14. 2007
I'm sure it is possible to receive a rigorous and challenging secondary education in the UK but, according to Lubos Motl's summary at The Reference Frame, it's getting harder to find. Motl is specificially speaking about the softening of the sciences. A quote: ...all subjects have been affected. In literature, great poets are omitted while third class poets are included according to a political key. Civitas also confirm Grey's statement that the new subject "scientific literacy" is not really about chemistry, physics, and biology but rather about media studies. The children are expected to discuss AGW, GM crops, and whether scientists should be trusted. I have no idea how they can decide whether scientists should be trusted if the children learn no science.
If this is taken too far, where will their engineers and naval architects and doctors and physicists and science teachers and inventors come from? Eastern Europe, India and China?
Tuesday, May 22. 2007
LaShawn echoes what Dr. Bliss posted earlier today. She touches all of the bases. As our readers know, we are very concerned about black success in life here at Maggie's, and have sadly watched one costly government "program" after another, over decades, come a cropper by creating a dysfunctional subculture (which has had the dismal effect of nurturing a racism which no one wants to have, and which was well on the way to disappearing after the war). There is no government solution but, thankfully, blacks are doing better in life anyway. One quote from LaShawn: In a society where the stigma against a big belly and no ring has disappeared like so much vapor, how does one convince young people to stop fornicating and making babies while unmarried? Or to build stable families, when their parents and grandparents weren’t married? Instead of passing down the kind of values that will push their kids to success, they’ve passed down a plethora of pathologies that require them to play catch-up for the rest of their lives.
Monday, May 21. 2007
The endless of pursuit of equality of education outcome from our loopy cousins across the pond - a quote from a good piece by Melanie Phillips: Education here has simply been eviscerated in pursuit of the lunatic doctrine that all must have prizes (the title of my own book about this catastrophe back in 1996). Worse still, the government’s reaction to this implosion of standards and the denial of its own culpability has been a witch-hunt against those universities that still try to maintain some semblance of educational rigour, along with an instruction to them to discriminate, on pain of losing government funding, against pupils from not only independent schools but the better comprehensives, precisely to advance the argument made by Willetts that such achievement is proof of injustice.
Meanwhile back on Planet Seattle (from a good piece at Ace): Dr Caprice Hollins, the Director of Equity, Race & Learning Support for Seattle’s public schools, has previously criticised individualism, long-term planning (or “future time orientation”) and the speaking of grammatical English as “white values.” The expectation among teachers that all students should be responsible individuals and meet certain linguistic and organisational standards is, according to Dr Hollins, a form of “cultural racism.”
Good grief. A guy (or gal? "Caprice"?) with advanced degrees and a government sinecure is advocating what he or she imagines are jungle values for others - but surely not for his- or her-self, since I suspect the job comes with a fine future-oriented pension from the taxpayers who actually work at difficult and/or unpleasant jobs. I think this person is serious, and not presenting satire. So is it now racist to imagine that black people can be intelligent and can use their brains to adapt to life? Honestly, I can think of no more effective attitude than that if your goal is to keep black folks marginalized, poor, and stupid, down on the Dem Plantation. Fortunately, I do not think that anyone really listens to these education jerks because blacks are joining the American mainstream in gratifying numbers - and that pleases me immensely.
Friday, May 18. 2007
Good news for Dartmouth. At Powerline, Mr. Smith goes to Hanover.
Monday, May 7. 2007
Why? Because they don't do any good. Education Wonks
Thursday, May 3. 2007
 Quoted in NRO (h/t, Classical Values), regarding the new documentary Indoctrinate U:
...I was struck by the scientist who said that her students were able to figure out her politics simply by noting what she did not say. Just by teaching her subject, without adding extraneous leftist political harangues, she had revealed herself to be a closet Republican. You won’t believe what happened when the faculty found out about her politics. But the full horror story is almost less disturbing than the reality of that single observation about silence. Particularly in some of the non-science disciplines, it really has gotten to the point where mere silence on matters political is enough to reveal you as the enemy.
Whole short piece at NRO here. Register your interest in seeing the documentary here. See the trailer here. What does it take to be an academic pariah? Be conservative. Powerline. It's not funny. Deeply disturbing and distressing. Maoist. Another plug for the Indoctrinate U documentary. If the main job of education is to transmit foundational knowledge, values, and the culture, it cannot be done without a required core. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) have one. Fun to read. Columbia and Chicago have the best ones I know of, but every college has a potential core curriculum - it's just not required. Only Mom and Dad can require it - and they should. Ask us what we have required, if you're interested. Or maybe I will post it. ACTA is not pleased with the Vanishing Shakespeare. Their report here. Freshman Algebra in 1961. Right Wing Nation. I especially like the quiz questions like "How would you approach this problem?" and "Why can't this problem be solved?" My opinion on high school? No reason for it to be four years. Three is enough to do the job. Trivia question: when and why was American High School increased from three to four years? And, of course, for grown-ups who feel inadequately educated (that should mean everyone), don't take a course. Use The Teaching Company. I have never been disappointed in them. Photo: Columbia's Hamilton Hall, across College Walk. Interesting that Columbia College is now the most competitive liberal arts college in the country, and has the largest required core curriculum and the largest number of required courses. That says something. You can thank Rudy and Bloomberg too, who have cleaned up the city.
Monday, April 30. 2007
Many of our younger friends, and my colleagues at the firm, spent the week before last visiting colleges with their high-school age kids. Ambitious kids often aspire to our venerable, prestigious Ivy League colleges, but the Ivies do not have the space for all of the smart, curious, motivated and talented kids who apply. These days, you need a hook. A very big hook, if you have the misfortune to be a white male with 1600 SATs. Why? Because nowadays, the most competitive colleges "construct" a class. They don't simply take the kids they like; they take the best applicant from each of a large number of columns. The best violinist, the best oboeist, the best squash player, the best quarterback, the best legacy applicants, the kids of the biggest donors, the one who won the most international math tournaments, etc. Plus their prospecting for ultra-talented kids is world-wide now: Just look at the names on Ivy tennis, soccer, or fencing teams - globalization at work. They might have a category for smart, well-rounded kids, but they keep that secret. Fortunately, in America there are tons of equally good alternatives for kids who would like to excel, many which have not become commie propaganda mills yet, and many of which are far less expensive. In education, you do not get what you pay for, you get what you can take in. In our firm, we have associates from all sorts of colleges and from all sorts of top 20 law schools. We realize that it's a big world out there, and that it's not like my day, when having an Ivy pedigree seemed like a social and professional requirement (and admission was less selective). Those days are gone, and it might be for the best, but I am not sure. I prefer values to brains, assuming the brains are adequate. Editor's Note: A reader sent in this photo of Harvard's University Hall, taken on a college visit with a child a week ago. 
Friday, April 27. 2007
The 2006 Campus Outrage Awards are out.
Thursday, April 26. 2007
Read it and weep. It surely applies to the US also. BBC News.
Wednesday, April 11. 2007
 We linked this piece from the Pittsburg Trib the other day. It compares American and Korean kids on their views of their math proficiency.
The American kids think they're good, but they aren't. The Korean kids think they're bad, but they aren't. Their findings are consistent with my own observations. However, I am not sure whether it can be blamed on the schools. I have written many times about the ridiculous notion of "self-esteem," and the absurdity of the idea that this is something schools - or anyone else - should or could instill. I think the differences might be plain cultural, though I do not mean to minimize the insidious reality of the "dumbing down" movement in education. David Warren has a fine piece on The Date of Inversion. He thinks it was August 10, 1969. A quote: At the end of the earlier school year, the old principal had been fired: he was a drill sergeant (literally, ex-military). The new principal was a "reformer": a nice guy, a sensitive guy. Overnight, Ontario’s Hall-Dennis Report had also swept through, with its smug title, “Living and Learning.” Half the subjects had become "electives": 300 pupils in Grade IX Latin, became four pupils in Grade X. The bottom had fallen out of educational standards that had already been slung very low.
My view of "lower education" is that it ought to try to instill humility about their ignorance, try to excite curiosity, and to provide the basic information people need to know to understand the basics of their history, their culture and the world, and to handle life. To carry kids along as far as their talents, interests, drive, self-discipline, and abilities can handle requires plenty of structure, demands and expectations. I see LaShawn has recently written a piece on the self-regulation aspect. Editor: - David Warren responds to the attention given to his piece linked above, here. - Right Wing Nation looks at the differences between what high school teachers consider to be good college preparation, and what college teachers consider good preparation
Monday, April 9. 2007
 "Applications to Columbia numbered 18,081, and the college accepted 1,618 of them, for what was certainly one of the lowest acceptance rates this spring at an American university: 8.9 percent."
From a piece in the NYT: A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them - New York Times Is this article bad news for very bright and scholarly-minded kids? I don't think so. There are lots of interesting colleges which will give you an Ivy education or better - for far less money, and still don't stoop to taking every applicant who can pay the bill. I like Berea, which is on my mind today.
Monday, February 5. 2007
Ah, higher education. Video at Volokh. A college applicant tour. My Dad always said that, when Dartmouth came down to Cambridge for sports, you were well advised to get your car off the street. A bunch of wild Indians up there.
Sunday, January 28. 2007
 The Duke humanities faculty have everything figured out, don't they? Allen in The Weekly Standard:
"The faculty enabled Nifong," Baldwin said in an interview. "He could say, 'Here's a significant portion of the arts and sciences faculty who feel this way, so I can go after these kids because these faculty agree with me.' It was a mutual attitude." Indeed, it was the Duke faculty that could be said to have cooked up the ambient language that came to clothe virtually all media descriptions of the assault case--that boilerplate about "race, gender, and class" (or maybe "race, gender, sexuality, and class") and "privileged white males" that you could not read a news story about the assault case without encountering, whether in the New York Times, the Washington Post, or Newsweek for example. The journalists channeled the academics. Although outsiders know Duke mostly as an expensive preppie enclave that fields Division I athletic teams, the university's humanities and social sciences departments--literature, anthropology, and especially women's studies and African-American studies--foster exactly the opposite kind of culture. Those departments (and especially Duke's robustly "postmodern" English department, put in place by postmodernist celebrity Stanley Fish before his departure in 1998) are famous throughout academia as repositories of all that is trendy and hyper-politicized in today's ivy halls: angry feminism, ethnic victimology, dense, jargon-laden analyses of capitalism and "patriarchy," and "new historicism"--a kind of upgraded Marxism that analyzes art and literature in terms of efforts by powerful social elites to brainwash everybody else. The Duke University Press is the laughingstock of the publishing world, offering such titles as Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity and An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality and Lesbian Public Cultures. Phrases such as "race, gender, and class" and "privileged white males" come as second nature to the academics who do this kind of writing, which analyzes nearly all social phenomena in terms of race, gender, class, and white male privilege. A couple of months after the lacrosse party, Karla F.C. Holloway, a professor of English and African-American studies at Duke, published a reflection on the incident titled "Coda: Bodies of Evidence" in an online feminist journal sponsored by Barnard College. "Judgments about the issues of race and gender that the lacrosse team's sleazy conduct exposed cannot be left to the courtroom," Holloway wrote. "Despite the damaging logic that associates the credibility of a socio-cultural context to the outcome of the legal process, we will find that even as the accusations that might be legally processed are confined to a courtroom, the cultural and social issues excavated in this upheaval linger." There was a fascinating irony in this. Postmodern theorists pride themselves in discerning what they call "metanarratives." They argue that such concepts as, say, Christianity or patriotism or the American legal system are no more than socially constructed tall tales that the postmodernists can then "deconstruct" to unmask the real purpose behind them, which is (say the postmodernists) to prop up societal structures of--yes, you guessed it--race, gender, class, and white male privilege.
Read the whole thing. And wonder, like me, how long it will take for this sort of academic to be "unmasked" as no more than cynical, bitter, and ignorant careerists, with interest in neither truth nor beauty. Are there two Dukes? Because one does not encounter such soul-less people in the stands at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Tuesday, January 23. 2007
I read the three-part series in the WSJ by Murray, which was interesting and provocative. Had been meaning to write something on the series, but Kling beat me to it at TCS. Kling links the WSJ articles. I cannot link them thru the subscription barrier. Kling believes that Murray is too IQ-centric and elitist, (our piece on IQ here) and is skeptical about the idea of "talent." I lean towards Murray's view, even though I usually agree with Kling on things in general. Furthermore, I think Kling misunderestimates the economic ladder that the trades climb: any plumber in my town makes more money than the average college grad in their cubicle - and has more fun and more freedom in doing so. I will agree with Kling on one thing: the nature and goals of high school education need to be re-thought - but not re-thought by government. And college? Most American college education is overpriced high-school remediation, with a dose of Marxist re-education thrown in.
Wednesday, January 10. 2007
Boyd in The American Scholar has a fine critique of what they call "Theory" in the humanities. Somehow in the 60s, the humanities got terribly excited about having a world-debunking Theory - or a theory at all, without realizing that in all other disciplines theories are a dime a dozen. I think it made them feel rigorous and scientific to have a theory, but I don't think most of them ever took Physical Chemistry or Statistics, so they don't know much about the rigor and the self-criticism which are essential to serious theory-play. A quote: The position you represent has neither the intellectual nor the moral high ground you are so sure it occupies. Until literature departments take into account that humans are not just cultural or textual phenomena but something more complex, English and related disciplines will continue to be the laughingstock of the academic world that they have been for years because of their obscurantist dogmatism and their coddled and preening pseudo-radicalism. Until they listen to searching criticism of their doctrine, rather than dismissing it as the language of the devil, literature will continue to be betrayed in academe, and academic literary departments will continue to lose students and to isolate themselves from the intellectual advances of our time.
It's not exactly light reading, but it's good. Here. A reader sent us a piece by Victor Hanson, a long-time prof himself, From the Classroom to the War. A quote: Why when academia is so critical of other American institutions, from the Republican party and corporations to churches and the military, does it ignore its own colossal failures? The level of knowledge of today’s graduate is the stuff of jokes, exactly what one would expect once a common shared instruction in science, history, literature, languages, and mathematics largely disappeared, replaced by a General Education potpourri of specialized classes in gender, race, class, and politics masquerading as knowledge-based?
Whole thing here.
Tuesday, January 9. 2007
Front Page takes a look at some the union-perpetuated myths. Quote: Few people are aware that our education spending per pupil has been growing steadily for 50 years. At the end of World War II, public schools in the United States spent a total of $1,214 per student in inflation-adjusted 2002 dollars. By the middle of the 1950s that figure had roughly doubled to $2,345. By 1972 it had almost doubled again, reaching $4,479. And since then, it has doubled a third time, climbing to $8,745 in 2002. Since the early 1970s, when the federal government launched a standardized exam called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), it has been possible to measure student outcomes in a reliable, objective way. Over that period, inflation-adjusted spending per pupil doubled. So if more money produces better results in schools, we would expect to see significant improvements in test scores during this period. That didn't happen. For twelfth-grade students, who represent the end product of the education system, NAEP scores in math, science, and reading have all remained flat over the past 30 years. And the high school graduation rate hasn't budged. Increased spending did not yield more learning.
Whole thing here.
Thursday, December 14. 2006
These people are, like, in, like, you know, college? I pity their parents, if they are paying the, you know, bills. Especially if a parent is a, like, police officer. From Students Honor Cop Killer: “If you look at it at face value and think about what she did, it might seem wrong, but I think you really have to, like, look beyond the whole thing with the cops to really understand, like, where she’s coming from,” said Orlando Ayala, a 24-year-old senior.
and Sophomore Carlos Badilla, 20, of the Bronx, wanted to know why the center was named after Shakur. “If it had nothing to do with killing the cop, it’s alright,” he said. “You have to think why she did it, cause cops are known to mess with some people, you know. If she had a reason to do it then I have no problem with it.”
Tuesday, December 5. 2006
 A very fine rant indeed, on education, by Derbyshire. (h/t, Never Yet Melted). It's about all of the education scams in the US. Just one quote:
Towering over all these lesser scams is the college racket, a vast money-swollen credentialing machine for lower-middle-class worker bees. American parents are now all resigned to the fact that they must beggar themselves to purchase college diplomas for their offspring, so that said offspring can get low-paid outsource-able office jobs, instead of having to descend to high-paid, un-outsource-able work like plumbing, carpentry, or electrical installation. ..
OK, one more: Professionals have their own credentialing systems: You may have graduated law school, but you’ll still have to pass the bar exam, and so on. Then why make aspiring lawyers go to law school? Presumably for the same reason we insist on cube jockeys having bachelor’s degrees from accredited four-year colleges. Why not let them study up at home from Teaching Company DVDs, then sit for a state-refereed common exam when they feel they’re ready? Why not let lawyers learn on the job from books and as articled clerks, the way they used to? I don’t know. College-going is just an irrational thing we do, the way upper-class German men used to acquire dueling scars, the way women in imperial China had their feet bound. Griggs vs. Duke Power probably has something to do with it. Since, following that decision, employers are not permitted to test job applicants to see how intelligent they are, the employers seek a college degree as a proxy for intelligence.)
Read it all. You'll feel better if you do. Griggs vs. Duke Power? Interesting case, in which it was decided that intelligence is racially discriminatory. Huh? That sounds like a deeply racist finding, does it not?
Friday, November 17. 2006
 Discouraging but not surprising stats about US education at Willisms. Take a look.
It's the same old story: spending does not correlate with results. What does school spending correlate with? Teacher's union votes. EDUCATION RESULTS ARE CULTURAL. Math is too hard - can't the kids do something creative? To develop and express their special selves? And to have fun? Abe Lincoln learned more in a one-room schoolhouse with a wood fire and a only a Bible to read and a teacher with a paddle than kids do today. Not even air conditioning! Most American kids want everything to be easy, and they want work to be nothing more than a short path to a second childhood, called "retirement." I suppose the new way is just not the old Yankee view of life. Our material comfort and success is biting us in the behind: it is both a blessing and a curse. Perhaps, in time, this lazy approach to life will lead us back, against our will, to our true gritty selves. Image: a Kansas one-room schoolhouse
Thursday, November 2. 2006
 The people have
spoken, and the
Dartmouth People's
Insurrection has won.
Power to the People! Better check those Diebold machines pieces of paper vote-counters heck, there's gotta be a law suit in here somewhere. One thing for sure: they don't dare call their voters ignorant morons morans! Woops. I see we have two simultaneous posts on the same subject. Well, it deserves it. Good on us.
The news has just come out 
that Dartmouth's newly proposed alumni constitution has been rejected by voters, 51 percent to 49 percent (67 percent being the threshold required for passage). The proposed constitution had been roundly criticized for its anti-democratic nature, yet had been massively promoted by an alumni council that had already violated its own constitutional election rules in anticipation of the constitution's passage. An overview of the whole saga can be found at Joe's Dartblog, here. Let's see whether they do like the EU, and try it again in a year or two.
Wednesday, November 1. 2006
Thespis Journal says: Like many professional training programs, the Columbia faculty concentrate more on furthering their political agenda than on the essential skills needed to be a master teacher.
A quote from a piece in The New York Sun, echoing our views: What a juxtaposition — the same week that Columbia University is celebrating merit in the form of the Nobel prize in economics awarded to Professor Edmund "Ned" Phelps, Columbia's Teachers College is coming under justified criticism for deriding merit, favoring instead a kind of left-wing indoctrination. If that sounds like an overstatement, we invite you to check out the "conceptual framework" for Teachers College that is available for download at the Teachers College Web site. It states, "Social inequalities are often produced and perpetuated through systematic discrimination and justified by societal ideology of merit, social mobility, and individual responsibility (Strum & Guinier,[*] 1996). Traditionally organized schools help to reproduce social inequalities while giving the illusion that such inequalities are natural and fair." The "conceptual framework" goes on to assert that "educators must recognize ways in which taken-for-granted notions regarding the legitimacy of the social order are flawed, see change agency as a moral imperative, and have skills to act as agents of change."
Good grief. The "legitimacy of the social order"? Deep waters, there, Teacher's College! I believe we live in a democratic republic already - the most free and most prosperous one ever on the planet, with the greatest opportunities for all. If those profs think they have a better idea than that, let's hear it - before they inject those ideas into our kids' teachers. Teaching is a high calling, an art and a skill. And much of teaching requires trying to engage young brains which would naturally prefer to be doing other things. That is often a thankless task, but the emotional rewards are when a kid finally "gets it," and the material rewards are a good pension, long summers, tenure, and better net hourly pay and benefits than most jobs. Propagandizing with worn-out Marxist notions - left-overs from the 1960s - is a much easier thing to do than to teach kids important and useful information. It's easier on the kids too. They learn quickly to parrot this stuff back, if that's what the teacher wants: kids can be quite cynical and practical about such things. I know, because I have heard it: "Daaaad, but I know Miss Jones wants us to say this!" One of these days I will sit down and write what I, as an American citizen (and as an employer of thousands), expect a middle school, a high school, and a college graduate to know.
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