Yes, it’s economic lunacy to think that the U.S., let alone California, can prevent whatever climate change is induced by CO2 emissions.
Category Archives: Education
Instead Of College
Eight alternatives. I did go eventually, but it was to community college first, after a gap year.
“Progressive” Professors
…want to blacklist academics who write for Quillette.
[Update a few minutes later]
Speaking of Quillette, “Why We Should Read Marx.”
The AR-15
Yes, the gun-control case against it is full of lies. As he notes, this isn’t about the AR-15; it’s about banning all semi-auto rifles, if not all semi-auto guns, if not all guns. That’s always their ultimate goal, because they know that an armed society is a free one.
A Modest Proposal For Academia
An earlier post elicited this comment from George Turner (who should have his own blog). I thought I’d slightly edit and elevate it here:
“Trying to stop the cheating won’t fix the problem, which was baked in when parental/donor pressures led to grade inflation. Using brutal attrition and grading on the curve was a way to continually deselect students. There was no point in a parent tying to cheat a kid into Harvard if the kid would almost immediately flunk out.
That harsh grading system’s drawback was that it produced drop-outs, and that was an inefficient way to get all of the bright kids the maximally beneficial education. And it still had the corruption problem because some rich or powerful kids simply weren’t going to be flunked out, even if it took hand-holding by the administration. And once it became obvious that rich kids weren’t really going to flunk out, the public realized that the Ivy League had become social clubs.
That seemed unfair, so SATs/ACTs. But those are harsh, and Jews did too well, so they added essays. But essays are hard, too, and Jews and Asians are great writers, so they emphasized BS high-school extra-curricular activities and offered a back door for ping-pong. Academics, educators, and administrators will no doubt make careers out of debating the merits of various fixes, and the wheels of the bus go round and round.
Continue reading A Modest Proposal For AcademiaThe College Admissions Mess
Bottom line: our admissions process is badly flawed. I blame it partly on the decline in the predominance in academic values coinciding with the bureaucratization of the university. Administrators are crowding out faculty not only numerically but in terms of power. I blame it partly on our academic obsession with evaluating people on the basis of group characteristics, not individual merit. What would Alexis de Tocqueville say visiting 21st century America, learning that students bribe their way into a ticket for economic success by lying about their ability to hit tennis balls? Is that the new American exceptionalism?
Apparently.
[Update a few minutes later]
Yes. The college-admissions scandal should make everyone furious.
Academia has been infuriating me for years. It’s a generational disaster, not just for the kids, but the Republic itself.
Climate Change
No, The New Republic, it’s not this generation’s Vietnam War.
College Children
What a societal disaster.
[Monday-morning update]
Are parents robbing children of their adulthood?
Yes. This is one of the things that drove the “keep your ‘child’ on your health insurance until he’s 26.”
Meanwhile, what happens when all of childhood becomes college prep. In this formulation, the kids are being robbed of their childhood. In some sense, both things are happening.
[Bumped]
Beta O’Dork
He’s the candidate for vapid morons.
That seems a little harsh. It’s true of pretty much the entire field, if not the party itself.
Meanwhile, Zogby says Trump will be hard to beat in 2020.
Yup. Can’t beat something with nothing.
[Update a few minutes later]
Beta’s gafftastic day.