America Has An Existential Civics Education Crisis That More ‘Civics Education’ Will Only Make Worse
“So 'allowing alternative teacher certification' and banning CRT may be the best recommendations in the report. But we need a heck of a lot more. Republicans have been appointed watchmen against these kinds of threats by their voters for decades, only to sleep while anti-American barbarians have taken over the country.” - The Federalist, 6/14/21
The Revolt against Left-Wing Schooling
“For conservatives, too, this newer revision of American history threatens their own view of what good public schools can do, which is to help students from diverse backgrounds cohere as a people. Instead, this education is taken to be an attempt to further enjoin students into mutual antagonisms, or to pronounce that they are permanently locked into these by the American system itself. No wonder conservatives find it 'demoralizing.' That seems to be the point.” - National Review, 6/14/21
Supreme Court Seeks Biden Administration Views on Harvard Admissions Policies
“The Supreme Court asked the Biden administration to weigh in on a legal challenge to Harvard University’s race-conscious undergraduate admissions policies. The justices, in a brief written order on Monday, asked the U.S. Solicitor General’s office to submit the federal government’s views on an appeal that argued Harvard unlawfully discriminated against Asian-American applicants.” - Wall Street Journal, 6/14/21
Why It’s Impossible To Teach History Only Using ‘The Facts’
“There’s not anything essentially wrong with spending more time discussing racial or social history. If done professionally and factually, it’s still history. But it also means students will get less of other forms of history (typically political, military, religious, or economic), many of which are necessary to understand their nation’s story as it relates to their duties as citizens.” - The Federalist, 6/14/21
The Money Not Everyone Wants
“California Community College system budget officers are at odds with faculty members and their union over what is usually a cause for celebration -- an increase in state funding. Faculty members are in favor of a budget proposal by the state Legislature that includes $170 million for the hiring of 2,000 full-time faculty members, which would make the system less reliant on adjunct instructors. But the system’s number crunchers are wary about the long-term implications of such a funding decision.” - Inside Higher Ed, 6/14/21
Stith: “The Best Community College System In the Country”
“In the past year, the North Carolina Community College system said goodbye to one president and gained another. After former president Peter Hans took up his new role as the head of the University of North Carolina system, the community college system began its search for a new leader. In December 2020, Thomas Stith was elected to be that new leader. Stith officially began his work as the community college system president on January 11.” - The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, 6/14/21
Loudoun County Parents Rally Against Critical Race Theory ‘Indoctrination’
“There is a war in Loudoun County, Virginia, but no troops are on the ground. Instead, parents and teachers are fighting for the next generation amid a critical race theory clash that has boiled over into a national controversy. Like-minded community members, with planning help from The Heritage Foundation and Parents Against Critical Race Theory, came together Saturday to sign petitions, wave signs, deliver speeches, and connect with one another for an 'Education, Not Indoctrination' rally.” - The Federalist, 6/14/21
The Imperative of A Boring Judiciary
“If we really are in a jurisprudential or political crisis, the answer lies among our laws’ authors: our legislators and, frankly, us, the people who elect them. Our failures have been aggravated by judges who think they know better, engaging in illegitimate lawmaking masquerading as textual interpretation. But the solution is not more illegitimate lawmaking.” - Law & Liberty, 6/14/21
Anatomy of the Woke Madness
“Do we revert to the norms of the civil rights movement where the content of our character alone matters, not the color of our skin? Or have we sunk so deeply into the woke quicksands, that we cannot thrash our way up to the air, and thus suffocate from the ancient pressures of the bog that have always destroyed civilizations?” - American Greatness, 6/13/21
We can’t fight racism if Whites see any remedy as a threat and an insult
“But the racial equity controversy also illustrates the unwillingness of many Whites to tolerate even modest efforts to account for racial discrimination in America, past and present. It’s an unmistakable example of 'White fragility,' the intense discomfort that many Whites feel at any suggestion that we have benefited from our race, or that we harbor unconscious racist attitudes instilled by a predominantly White culture.” - Washington Post, 6/13/21
Here’s a Thanksgiving take on this. When the Massachusetts Bay Colony first began in 1628, it was illegal to follow any religion other than the Congregationalism of the Puritans. There were of course disagreements, and among them was the separatism of the Pilgrims as opposed to the nonseparatism of the Puritans who came a few years later. (“Separatism” refers to the Congregationalists’ relationship to the Church of England.) One thing was sure, though, that competing religions were not permitted. Thus, in the 1600s and into the early 1700s the Quaker and Baptist faiths were illegal, and several proselytizing Quakers were hung.
Today’s campuses inherit the moral indignation of the early Puritans. It isn’t just capitalism that inherited the Puritan spirit, as Max Weber claimed. Today’s campuses see themselves as cities upon hills, as institutions that set forth the one true morality: Diversity is the highest good; racism is the greatest evil; income inequality is the second greatest evil; gays must get married; anyone who disagrees must be put in stocks; global warming is the hellfire in which those who benefit from capitalism will burn for eternity.
The rigid, insipid version of today’s campuses as far removed from liberal arts and from “liberalism” in any of its meanings as were the witch trials in Salem.
These students did not arrive with these ideas – be very clear here – these are faculty driven ideas.
Anonymous reporting : absolutely NO accountability for accusations made.
More [x] “studies” : gee – jobs for faculty and control of each dept. Is this going to “empower students” or faculty and admin?
This one is truly astonishing – it’s straight out of Mao’ism and Stalin’s days in the USSR:
“One confession of racism by a faculty member each week ”
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
These students are applying Marxist, Stalinist, and Maoist theory to their daily lives. They have learned these subjects well and are vigorously applying theory to their local situation. They have even done it in their spare time.
I think most of their teachers are sympathetic.
This shows that today’s students are not lazy and ignorant. They learn and apply learning well when they are interested in the subject and have some practical incentive such as the lust for power.
So? This stuff was already there, when I was in school, at every level they made it clear there was no such thing as “free speech” and they could control speech, dress and anything else they wanted.
It makes sense that the buyers of a service, paying a significant amount of money, can dictate the rules. That is the very basis of democracy, people gathering together and making demands.
If these schools don’t like it, they can stop taking federal loan money and stop charging these students, and go do something else to earn a living.
Shrug,
The interactions between a student and a college or university are unlike the relationship of a typical buyer and seller in at least two ways. One, the majority of students don’t pay for a large chunk of the cost of their education (this is particularly so at public universities). Two, a buyer may have quite a bit of information about the product or service which he is purchasing. Almost by definition, most students are ignorant of a good deal of the subject matter of their classes (why else would they be taking those classes). There may be other differences.
So you are basically acceding to all the worst quasi-fascist movement on campus.
All of these demands only serve the One True Demand. One Demand to Rule Them All.
“We demand an Oompa Loompa and we demand it NOW!”