Category Archives: education

Academia delenda est

A retired general, already at an academic think tank, gets rejected for a position at a Chiraq-area university.  Their excuse?  You’re not going to believe it:

Suicide by Self-Importance

Of all the displays of political myopia and intolerance in the American academy over the past several years, this story may be the most astonishing: Students and faculty at Northwestern University have forced Karl Eikenberry—a retired three-star general and fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies—to withdraw his appointment as head of a new global affairs institute on the Evanston campus on the grounds that he is a “career military officer.” 

The Washington Post‘s report on the story contains a truly remarkable, and telling, quote from one student involved in the crusade against the general (who has contributed to this magazine):

“An ex-U.S. general will likely think about international politics in terms of war and from the perspective of the U.S.’s interests, and the research agenda will be negatively skewed as a result,” wrote Charles Clarke, a Northwestern graduate student and one of the petition’s backers. “Instead, why not appoint someone who will encourage research that is less belligerent and tainted by U.S. bias?”

WTF? Over?

A world of hugboxes

The kids are alright…it’s their teachers and school administrators that are off the rails:

High School Censors Swastikas, Missing Entire Point of Satirical Anti-Nazi Play, The Producers

Administrators have ordered the removal of swastikas from a high school production of The Producers, the famous Mel Brooks film that makes fun of Nazism.

The New York school district that oversees Tappan Zee High School considers the inclusion of a swastika to be offensive and, possibly, a hate crime—regardless of the context.

“There is no context in a public high school where a swastika is appropriate,” South Orangetown Superintendent Bob Pritchard told the local CBS station.

O RLY?  How does this mental midget propose history classes deal with World War II, given that Nazi Germany was the primary aggressor?

People who can, do.  People who can’t, teach.  People who can’t teach, put their feet in their mouths.

“It’s satire, not supposed to be taken seriously,” said Tyler Lowe, a student performer. CBS notes that Lowe is himself Jewish.

It’s not surprising that the teens understand the play better than the district does. The plot concerns a pair of producers who put together a deliberately bad, patently offensive pro-Hitler play in order to profit from its commercial failure. They are thwarted when the play is a hit—the audience assumes it’s satire.

A possible light at the end of the tunnel of the current PC insanity?

Student Loans and Moral Hazard

What do you mean, running up $200k in debt on a questionable (at best) degree from an expensive private college isn’t automatically a Good Thing?

I’m pretty sure someone‘s written a book about this:

Student Loans and Moral Hazard

In this Daily Caller piece, Eric Owens writes about one such student, Samuel Garner, who has penned a lengthy piece on Slate wherein he whines that he now has to pay about 40 percent of his income to cover his college loans. Nobody, you see, told Garner that he shouldn’t assume that college debt is “good debt” and think about his financial prospects. Garner complains, “I thought signing loan documents was just a routine” and blames Connecticut College officials for not making a serious effort to explain the consequences of taking on more and more debt to him.

Math stumper? It’s easier than it looks at first glance

Still, on a test given to the world’s brightest math students from 16 countries 20 years ago, only 10% got it right. The percentage of Americans taking the test who got it right? Only 4%.

mathprob1_thumb

Hint:

Answer:

Sign of the times for our college campuses

FullSizeRender-1024x768Maybe they still have a few of these stashed away in some warehouse in Berlin that they could send over, as they haven’t needed them since 1989:

Checkpoint, Charlie

Consider, to take just one example, our institutions of so-called higher education.  You know as well as I how thoroughly that “so-called” is merited by sodden, politically correct swamps that our colleges and universities have occupied in recent years.  Those scenes of spurious “micro aggressions” and  “trigger warnings,” of mephiticrievance mongering, sexual inversion, and infantile political posturing: is there any aspect of American society more distaste, more pampered, more epicene?  I doubt it. Kinglake’s wry observation might be justly applied to those portals of inanity, but a friend who recently visited Berlin had an even more appropriate label.  It is this advisory from Checkpoint Charlie, which divided the American from the totalitarian zone of Berlin.  Really, is there any more pertinent sign for most colleges and universities?

The Struggle for Stupidity

On Common Core and the dumbing-down of America:

Bill Whittle: The Struggle for Stupidity

Reference is made within to a high-school reader (which may have been mistakenly identified in the title as sixth-grade material) from 100 years ago:

California Sixth Grade Reader

This looks like it could be an interesting read. (Interesting technical aside: just bought a copy, and it’s being sold without DRM. w00t!) If you have school-age kids attending the government-run indoctrination centers that are called “public schools,” it’d most likely be a good antidote for the PC mush they’re going to get there.