NPR tweeted the Declaration of Independence, and you’ll never guess what happened next!
Category Archives: Education
Our Failed Political Class And “Elites”
Some links and thoughts from Instapundit:
We need to take a serious look at how we select these people. Our current method is not working.
Well, it’s working for them. For now.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, Bob Mueller is looking worse and worse:
Four top lawyers hired by Mueller have contributed tens of thousands of dollars over the years to the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates, including former President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump’s 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.
One of the hires, Jeannie Rhee, also worked as a lawyer for the Clinton Foundation and helped persuade a federal judge to block a conservative activist’s attempts to force Bill and Hillary Clinton to answer questions under oath about operations of the family-run charity.
Campaign-finance reports show that Rhee gave Clinton the maximum contributions of $2,700 in 2015 and again last year to support her presidential campaign. She also donated $2,300 to Obama in 2008 and $2,500 in 2011. While still at the Justice Department, she gave $250 to the Democratic National Committee Services Corp.
Rhee also has contributed to a trio of Democratic senators: Mark Udall of New Mexico, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Congress should ask him to testify about this.
“Hate Speech”
Another reminder, this time from @Popehat, that there is no such thing, in terms of the First Amendment. Warning, pop-up ads.
Evergreen College
Its course catalog is bonkers.
Via Instapundit, who asks “Why is this place even accredited?”
The rot in academia is deep.
[Update a few minutes later]
Related: Many colleges fail to improve critical-thinking skills. Of course they do. That would get in the way of indoctrination.
The Campus Sex Police
Trump’s budget cuts funding for it. Good, except it will probably be restored by Congress. Devos needs to put the right people in place, and issue new guidance.
[Update a while later]
Related, sort of. Students are largely not learning to think in college. Because it’s more important to the universities to indoctrinate them, while taking their money and blighting their futures.
Public Speaking
This looks like a very useful development. I find this a strange attitude:
Let’s just remember that bilingual speakers are by definition fluent in two languages yet are too often deemed uneducated or undeserving of opportunity simply for sounding not quite like the people we see on TV.
As someone really only fluent in one language, I’m always impressed by people who are bi- or multi-lingual, even if they have an accent.
When I Learned To Read
I do not remember what books she gave me, except that they were thick hardcovers. I believe one might have been a Thomas Hardy. It makes no difference. My English teacher was right, and I was wrong. Some books are better than others. And as a teen I had no way of judging for myself.
Without that bet, I would still have read serious literature when I had to, but I’m not sure how much I would have read because I chose to. Mrs. Dickey had taught me that there are things one ought to read. I put away the books of sports records and pulpy sci-fi. By the time I finished high school, I had read all of Shakespeare, the sonnets included.
When I started college, although I began as a physics major, with lots of work in math and computer science — you can’t entirely ungeek the geek — I was drawn increasingly to literature. In those days you could still find a jampacked course on Western Civilization and read the great books. (Dante haunts me still.) I devoured Greek drama, medieval philosophy, Russian absurdist stories, and the novels of Updike and Baldwin. In my spare time I prowled the stacks of the campus library, in search of authors of whom I had never heard. I was an addict whose craving could never be satisfied. I was finally in the oasis after a lifetime in the desert.
I read a lot of SF when I was a kid, but I read a lot of other things, too. You can’t be a good writer if you haven’t read a lot (I’ve always wondered where Mark Twain got access to his education).
[Update]
Sorry, link fixed…
Mutually Assured Butthurt
Some good advice from Iowahawk.
I agree. Kathy Griffin should keep her job, and university administrators should lose theirs.
Mocking The Snowflakes
The media hates it.
Admittedly, many of them are snowflakes themselves. Or just flakes.
Dilbert One
…”scientists” zero:
…in a sense, the video doesn’t even refute the straw man it set up. It’s not that climate science consists only of models: obviously there are observations too. But all the attribution claims about the climatic effects of greenhouse gases are based on models. If the scientists being interviewed had any evidence otherwise, they didn’t present any.
When you can’t even knock down your own straw man, you don’t have much of an argument.
So how did the video do refuting Scott Adams’ cartoon? He joked that scientists warning of catastrophe invoke the authority of observational data when they are really making claims based on models. Check. He joked that they ignore on a post hoc basis the models that don’t look right to them. Check. He joked that their views presuppose the validity of models that reasonable people could doubt. Check. And he joked that to question any of this will lead to derision and the accusation of being a science denier. Check. In other words, the Yale video sought to rebut Adams’ cartoon and ended up being a documentary version of it.
They would appear to lack self awareness.