Maggie's Farm

We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

You might be surprised to learn what the nation's preeminent college of education stands for.

As FIRE notes:

Teachers College’s Conceptual Framework, which represents the “philosophy for teacher education at Teachers College,” requires students to possess a “commitment to social justice.” Moreover, students are expected to recognize that “social inequalities are often produced and perpetuated through systematic discrimination and justified by societal ideology of merit, social mobility, and individual responsibility.”

The story of the Dartmouth alumni rebellion has been well-covered in the blogosphere, especially by Dartmouth alums like Volokh, Roger Simon,  and the Powerline dudes. Recently, the WSJ decided to highlight the story, as reported by Volokh.

Joe's Dartblog follows the story closely from Hanover.

It's an important story not only because Dartmouth is an important college: it's important because it sets an example for what alumni groups at other colleges could do when they are displeased by what is being done to their alma mater.

In an era in which the tenured radicals and anti-traditionalists use their colleges and universities as laboratories for social engineering and experimentation, many alumni tend to feel dismayed, but helpless.

Strangely - but not strangely - the Dartmouth administration is seeking to crush those who do not hew to the Party Line. The Party Line, at the moment, is to change the rules so that petition candidates cannot be elected as trustees. Their use of "push-polling" and intimidation are among the methods which are being applied.

That sets one heck of an example for the academic ideal of diversity of opinion and considering different viewpoints. Woops - I forgot. Those ideals are just an antiquated, un-progressive, and obsolete tradition.

Viva la Revolucion!

Update: A comment from our Dr. Bliss:

It's not just about setting an example for other higher education institutions - it's about setting examples for all levels of education. The teacher's colleges take their cues from the Ivies. The entire anti-traditionalist, political-correctness dhimmitude, dumbing-down, feel-good, social-engineering movement in primary school has been inspired by what the big guys do and say, and not just by their own socio-political agendas. One sobering example from a teacher patient of mine (a fellow who uses the subjunctive properly), who told me on Friday that the public schools in MA no longer teach grammar. It's too difficult for the kids, and it's elitist!

If that's difficult and elitist, then try taking Physical Chemistry.

Reposted from May, 2005:

Roger Kimball, author of Tenured Radicals, with an essay: Re-Taking the University

Samples:

"Academic life, like the rest of social life, unfolds within a frame of rules and permissions. At one end, there are things that one must (or must not) do; at the other end, there is rule of whim. The middle range, in which behavior is neither explicitly governed by rules but is not entirely free, is that realm governed by what the British jurist John Fletcher Moulton, writing in the early 1920s, called “Obedience to the Unenforceable.” It is a realm in which not law, not caprice, but virtues such as duty, fairness, judgment, and taste hold sway. In a word, it is the “domain of Manners,” which “covers all cases of right doing where there is no one to make you do it but yourself.” A good index of the health of any social institution is its allegiance to the strictures that define this middle realm. “In the changes that are taking place in the world around us,” Moulton wrote, “one of those which is fraught with grave peril is the discredit into which this idea of the middle land is falling.” One example was the abuse of free speech in political debate: “We have unrestricted freedom of debate,” say the radicals: “We will use it so as to destroy debate.”  "

and:

"Many parents are alarmed, rightly so, at the spectacle of their children going off to college one year and coming back the next having jettisoned every moral, religious, social, and political scruple that they had been brought up to believe. Why should parents fund the moral de-civilization of their children at the hands of tenured antinomians? Why should alumni generously support an alma mater whose political and educational principles nourish a world view that is not simply different from but diametrically opposed to the one they endorse? Why should trustees preside over an institution whose faculty systematically repudiates the pedagogical mission they, as trustees, have committed themselves to uphold? These are questions that should be asked early and asked often."

Read entire.

Greene at American Enterprise takes a look at these questions about US education:

1. Does money matter?
2. What about teacher pay? (they make more than you think, per hour, including benefits)
3. What about social problems?
4. Does class size matter?
5. Does teacher certification matter?
6. Private schools spend half per student of what public schools spend. Why do they do better?

Read the article, and spread the truth. There are tons of great teachers out there, but the public system is a union plantation, with a big megaphone.

Remember the bumper sticker "The one who dies with the most toys wins"?  That one was popular at the same time as the one that read "When all else fails, lower your standards." Lower that bar, and all shall have prizes.

Diane Ravitch on the deterioration of college admission standards:

The board's first tests were offered in June 1901 to 978 applicants to Columbia, Barnard College, and New York University. Each year more colleges joined the program as they recognized its value.

The examinations — in chemistry, English, French, German, Greek, history, Latin, mathematics, and physics — contained no multiple-choice questions. Students were expected to demonstrate their knowledge by writing extended essays or displaying their solutions to problems. In English, 10 classics were assigned in advance for students, including The Merchant of Venice, The Vicar of Wakefield, The Last of the Mohicans, Silas Marner, and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Students were told that they would be judged more for their powers of clear expression than for their minute knowledge of those works, but they were expected to have closely studied them and to be ready to answer questions in detail. Every two or three years, the standards and reading lists were revised, and high-school teachers knew well in advance which works would be covered.

Well, of course they do, and steal lollipops too. But the No Child Left Behind nonsense has made it worse. That Bush bill was a typical Federal response to a local issue, and a complete waste of taxpayer $ for non-existent political gain.

The kind of education kids get should be totally up to every town and village in America. The Feds have nothing of value to offer, other than free money - and the Feds should not be offering that either. It isn't their money, is it?

ABC News shows how the States play games with their tests, so the voters don't get pissed off. H/T, basil.

Charter Schools, Connecticut and Florida

With the sad news that Florida courts have struck down their system of charter schools, championed by Jeb Bush - as being unconstitutional, we will take a look at the state of affairs in CT, where Gov. Rell seems to be reluctant to take on the issue - which means the unions. Hey, Gov. Rell - you have some political capital, so use it for something worthwhile.

From the WSJ: 

The politics of education reform typically features Republicans
pushing for more choice and Democrats defending the status quo. But not always. In Connecticut, Democrats in the legislature are eager to expand the state's successful charter school model while GOP Governor Jodi Rell refuses to lift a finger to help.

Forty states and Washington, D.C., now have charter schools, which were devised 15 years ago as education laboratories. Charters are public schools -- a fact that opponents like to play down -- but they are not overly burdened by union rules and hence are free to try different pedagogical approaches. A charter might extend the school day, for instance, or pay teachers based on results rather than seniority.

As it happens, Connecticut boasts some of the finest charter schools in the country. In June, the Hartford Courant reported that at "New Haven's Amistad Academy, where 98 percent of students are African American or Hispanic, math and reading scores have risen to triple those of neighboring public schools and equal to scores in [wealthier and predominantly white] Greenwich."

Common Ground High School, a charter in New Haven that caters to
at-risk students, has lower drop-out rates and higher college
participation than regular New Haven high schools. And at Bridge
Academy in Bridgeport, where 96% of students are minority, every
graduate last year was accepted to college. The waiting list for a
charter school in Connecticut averages 200 students, a function of the fact that the state has only 14 charters in operation and caps
enrollment at 300 students per school.

Last year charter proponents urged Governor Rell to lift the
enrollment cap, increase per-pupil spending (charter students receive several thousand dollars less than what the state spends for
non-charter students), and make funding for facilities more equitable. Yet when Ms. Rell released her budget in February, there was no extra money for charters.

It was due only to the efforts of Democratic leaders in the
legislature that Connecticut's charters ultimately received a modest
increase in per-pupil spending and a pilot program for facilities
funding that would allow one charter school -- one! -- access to the same school construction bonding that other public schools receive. Last month, the state board of education -- headed by another reform-minded Democrat -- voted unanimously to expand the state's charter program by 10 schools and $18 million.

Nevertheless, when Ms. Rell presents her new budget next month, she's expected once again to ignore the education reformers. That's because she is running for re-election in November and is seeking the support of the teachers union -- the Connecticut Education Association -- which is dead set against charters and any other education reform that threatens its monopoly. With a job-approval rating that's remained well over 70% since she took office, Ms. Rell has the political capital to take on an entrenched interest that hurts poor kids. But she apparently lacks the political will.

According to the most recent National Assessment of Educational
Progress report, Connecticut has the country's largest achievement gap between rich and poor students in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. Given their successful track record, charters could help Connecticut close that embarrassing gap. Too bad its governor is missing in action.

Literary Scholarship: Back to Aesthetics?

From an important piece by Lindsay Waters:

The problem is not just that literary scholarship has become disconnected from life. Something else more suspicious has happened to professional criticism in America over the past 30 years, and that is its love affair with reducing literature to ideas, to the author's or reader's intention or ideology — not at all the same thing as art. As a result, literary critics are devoted to saving the world, not to saving literature for the world, and to internecine battles that make little sense outside academe.

Read entire. It's about time we saw some reason from Harvard.

Curiosity, "Higher" Education, Leading a Horse to Water, and Job Security

My elitist opinion is that true higher education is, or was, designed for the few natural scholars amongst us for whom curiosity and "thinking about stuff" is a driving force. When a college degree becomes a job credential, that meaning and that purpose is lost. The idea of universal college education must, of necessity, degrade it's meaning, and it begins to be a few more years of insanely expensive high school except in the most competitive institutions, or for the wonderful but unusual nerdy student-scholars who Want To Learn Things. Having just heard a series of informal, highly enthusiastic lectures from a Georgetown kid in the Uffizi about Cimabue, Duccio and Giotto, I am not ready to despair yet: some "get it," and many do not.

From a piece by Zane:

"I guess I've always known that many students are just taking my course to get a requirement out of the way," Naumoff said. "But it was disheartening to see that some couldn't even go to the trouble of finding out the name of the person teaching the course."

The floodgates were opened and the other UNC professors at the dinner began sharing their own dispiriting stories about the troubling state of curiosity on campus. Their experiences echoed the complaints voiced by many of my book reviewers who teach at some of the nation's best schools.

All of them have noted that such ignorance isn't new -- students have always possessed far less knowledge than they should, or think they have. But in the past, ignorance tended to be a source of shame and motivation. Students were far more likely to be troubled by not-knowing, far more eager to fill such gaps by learning. As one of my reviewers, Stanley Trachtenberg, once said, "It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care about what they don't know."

Read entire.

Truth about Colleges

From a review of several books, by Hacker, at NYReview of Books:

"Higher education in America is no longer the preserve of a privileged elite, with more than seven million undergraduates now enrolled in the roughly 2,600 colleges and universities that grant bachelor or higher degrees. In 2002, the most recent year for which figures are available, 1,291,900 students received bachelors' diplomas and 606,958 completed graduate programs. The latter figure is worth noting, since it tells us that almost half of those who are completing college believe that a single degree won't suffice for what they want to do or be.

A census study last year found that among adults aged thirty to thirty-four, only 41 percent had attended high school without going to college. These high school graduates, moreover, represent a dwindling part of the population. Another 32 percent had earned at least a bachelor's degree, while 27 percent had spent time on a campus, whether a community college or a four-year college, without finishing. Viewed one way, that figure shows a high attrition rate. Many of the colleges and community colleges, moreover, fail to provide more than perfunctory courses.

The claim that almost six in ten Americans in their early thirties have had some kind of college experience thus needs further scrutiny. The experience can range from small seminars in philosophy at Colgate to lectures in motel management at Southwest Missouri State. Some colleges have rigorous core curriculums: students elsewhere must choose courses from huge catalogs in order to amass the 128 credits needed for a BA. Reed College in Oregon limits its enrollment to 1,312 students, while at Michigan State University an entering student would be one of 34,617.

In fact, there are places open for anyone who wants to pursue a bachelor's degree and can pay for it, and many colleges must work hard to attract students. In a study published this year, James Fallows concluded that

for all but the richest ten or twenty universities, an important part of managing enrollment is simply being sure that enough paying customers will show up each fall.^[1] "

Read entire interesting review.

Sociology: An academic discipline or a political movement?

An entire academic discipline has been taken over by "the revolution." But we all knew that already, right? It's a joke, but also a damn shame. From Wagner's piece at HNN:

At the 1968 ASA convention in Boston the radicals succeeded in preempting an appearance by LBJ’s Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and allowing radical Martin Nicolaus to tactlessly harangue the secretary (referring to him as the “Secretary of disease, propaganda, and scabbing”) and any mainstream sociologists who may have been left in the ASA on the evils of value-neutral, scientifically rigorous research. This speech, known as the “Fat Cat” speech in sociological circles, called for sociology to serve the interests of radical politics, and spelled the ascendancy of radicalism in sociology. It has been a downhill road every since. While the rest of academe moved back to positions of relative normalcy after the radical days of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, sociology stubbornly remained a very politicized field.

Read entire: Click here: Is Sociology Stuck in the 60s?