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.
In a recent article for American Thinker, “Why I Quit Teaching,” I listed three reasons that prompted me to abandon the teaching profession: unscrupulous administrators, degenerate teachers, and incompetent students. Of these, the latter was the most determinant...
It’s been 30 years since then-Education Secretary William J. Bennett took to the pages of The New York Times to chide colleges for their “greedy” behavior. He decried the negative effect federal student aid seemed to have on tuition, namely, that it allowed universities to raise prices without feeling the consequences of reduced demand or lower-quality students...
I think this means the academy either doubts the ability of the students to absorb knowledge or the unwillingness of faculty to convey it. What good is "process" without deep knowledge? This is pure laziness all around, but I do understand that colleges compete and many paying students do not want to strain their little brains.
Again, a Christmas book only for those who wish to continue or to update their secondary or college educations: Campbell's Biology.
It is the current basic text, and it guarantees a thorough grounding in the basics. If you shop around on line, you can find it for much less than the list price.
A magnificent book, clear and easy to read if you recall some basic biochem. If you took college bio ten years ago, you know almost nothing.
Do you agree with that? Many people today are going to things called colleges like junior colleges and trade school colleges to learn careers in things such as nursing, practical electric, cooking, hospitality, criminal justice, emergency medical service, and all sorts of other practical fields.
It's difficult say exactly what the topic is (it says "Reality and the Sacred") but it really meanders all over the map. Very rich stimulating. I believe this is from when Peterson was teaching at Harvard.
"A phenomenon always transcends the manner with which you frame it."
What the author might not understand is that the kids in the Success Academies tend not to be the same kids that the author probably grew up with. Inner city kids and kids from dysfunctional backgrounds often do not arrive at school with the levels of bourgeois impulse control, respect, and orderliness that middle class schools and private schools are accustomed to. To the contrary, these kids are starved for structure. Actually, most people function best with clear structure and deteriorate or unravel without it.
Moskowitz' idea is neither radical nor new. It's the old way.
Dewey was an idealist who, like idealists in general, imagined an imaginary ideal (ideal in their minds) reality. There are no, or extremely few, little John Deweys or John Stuart Mills lurking inside of most schoolkids. Is that news?
Two smart guys, Peterson (a mostly-Libertarian, or at least anti-authoritarian sort) and Haidt (non-Leftist Liberal). Warning: Once you begin, you will not want to turn it off because these are thoughtful, knowledgeable guys.
... you should not bother to tell us how you feel about a topic. Tell us what you think about it. If you can’t think yet, that’s O.K.. Tell us what Aristotle thinks, or Hammurabi thinks, or H.L.A. Hart thinks. Borrow opinions from those whose opinions are worth considering. As Aristotle teaches us in the reading for today, men and women who are enslaved to the passions, who never rise above their animal natures by practicing the virtues, do not have worthwhile opinions. Only the person who exercises practical reason and attains practical wisdom knows how first to live his life, then to order his household, and finally, when he is sufficiently wise and mature, to venture opinions on how to bring order to the political community.
One of my goals for you this semester is that each of you will encounter at least one idea that you find disagreeable and that you will achieve genuine disagreement with that idea. I need to explain what I mean by that because many of you have never been taught how to disagree...
Great, if you assume that inside each little brat is a hidden Euclid or Archimedes or Newton just waiting for the chance to emerge. Since the odds are strongly against that, we have instituted the concept of "education," meaning learning what much smarter people have already figgered out.
So sensitive to offended students, aren't they? As we keep trying to point out to the academic so-called grownups, these kids are manipulating you. And, as with 3 year-olds, the more you give in, the more they want.
Between 1830 and 1840 U.S. immigration quadrupled, and between 1840 and 1850, it tripled again. Particularly troubling to lawmakers at the time was the fact that many of these new immigrants were Irish Catholics who threatened the dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultural and religious customs. "Those now pouring in upon us, in masses of thousands upon thousands, are wholly of another kind in morals and intellect," mourned the Massachusetts state legislature regarding the new Boston immigrants.
Universal, taxpayer-funded “common schools” became the mechanism to rein in these masses and “Americanize” them...
Derek Bok thinks so. I don't think so, but I am in favor of more rigorous secondary ed. Leef comments:
The real problem here is that a great many young Americans don’t really want an education. They want college fun and they want a degree as long as it doesn’t put much of a burden on them. And since other people are paying for their schooling, why put much effort into it? The education system is giving them what they want. If and to the extent that Americans start wanting education and having to pay for it, things will change from the bottom up.
A young person I know recently transferred from Colorado State to UConn. Business major. Says at Colorado there was too much weed, he never cracked a book and got straight As by listening in class. At UConn, has to study every night and can't keep up - and UConn is far from an elite institution. Mediocre at best but they love basketball.
To me, it's no longer clear what "college grad" means. Is it adolescent daycare?
“What has happened is these young people now getting to college have no sense of history – of any kind! No sense of history. No world geography. No sense of the violence and the barbarities of history. So, they think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of nice, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water and the hot water comes out. They have no sense whatever of the destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on – and how arrogant people get when they’re in a comfortable civilization. They now have been taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never been exposed to the actual evil of the history of humanity. They know nothing!”
The argument that introducing modern civilization to more primitive societies may have been more of a blessing than a curse in many cases seems to be One Of Those Things You Can Not Say.
What would India be without the British Raj? Well, hard to say, but debatable.
Most of those seeking teaching careers end up as adjuncts, making peanuts and struggling to survive. One wonders why they do not simply apply for high school jobs where they could get steady, well-paid useful work with benefits and can never be fired.
Today, getting tenure as a full professor is like making it to the NBA.
One also wonders why our lefty universities treat these devoted slaves so poorly while hiring diversity administrators for $350,000/year.
Again, a Christmas book only for those who wish to continue or to update their secondary or college educations: 