Category Archives: Education

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Latest Warm-Monger Scam

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Some thoughts:

Here’s what interest me: why do the journalists and professors so fervently believe in things they cannot possibly verify on their own?

Well, they believe in the “scientists.” But why? Are all scientists always right? Of course not; the definition of science is that new information and ideas are constantly refining or overturning old verities. The definition of science is that scientists are sometimes wrong, or will be at some point.

What if it’s a class thing? Instapundit has a link to an essay class warfare within the New Class. “OWS is best understood not as a populist movement against the bankers, but instead as the breakdown of the New Class into its two increasingly disconnected parts. The upper tier, the bankers-government bankers-super credentialed elites. But also the lower tier, those who saw themselves entitled to a white collar job in the Virtue Industries of government and non-profits — the helping professions, the culture industry, the virtueocracies, the industries of therapeutic social control, as Christopher Lasch pointed out in his final book, The Revolt of the Elites.”

This seems to me to be the same thing. Journalists who are not scientists, or professors who are not climate scientists, identify with the Knowledge Class: the technologists and researchers.

The phrase “the science is settled” is the very antithesis of science. But these people don’t really understand science.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Are Schoolteachers Underpaid?

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No:

Most teachers have Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees in education, and most people with education degrees are teachers. Decades of research has shown that education is a less rigorous course of study than other majors: Teachers enter college with below-average SAT scores but receive much higher GPAs than other students. It may be that a degree in education simply does not reflect the same underlying skills and knowledge as a degree in, say, history or chemistry. When we compare salaries based on objective measures of cognitive ability — such as SAT, GRE, or IQ scores — the teacher salary penalty disappears.

I’d always suspected that, but I had never actually seen the statistics. Colleges of Education should be abolished, or at least not eligible for federal funding of any kind, including student loan guarantees.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Civil War

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…of the elitists:

The upper tier is still doing pretty well. But the lower tier of the New Class — the machine by which universities trained young people to become minor regulators and then delivered them into white collar positions on the basis of credentials in history, political science, literature, ethnic and women’s studies — with or without the benefit of law school — has broken down. The supply is uninterrupted, but the demand has dried up. The agony of the students getting dumped at the far end of the supply chain is in large part the OWS. As Above the Law points out, here is “John,” who got out of undergrad, spent a year unemployed and living at home, and is now apparently at University of Vermont law school, with its top ranked environmental law program — John wants to work at a “nonprofit.”

This isn’t going to end well.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

More Tax Money Down The Toilet

…but at least it will be an eco-friendly toilet. It’s really infuriating that the administration continues to bail out the foolish and irresponsible with the money of the productive.

[Update a couple minutes later]

More brilliant government “investment” decisions. As he notes, these clueless idiots think that any dollar spent by the government is an “investment.”

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Smash Capitalism

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…and you destroy civilization.

It’s sad that these spoiled children have put themselves so deep into debt for educations that are worthless, both in the marketplace and in understanding how the world works. They rage against the wrong machine.

[Update a couple minutes later]

They’re also not materially poor. But they do suffer from a poverty that is worse in many ways:

These young people also suffer from a vast intellectual and moral poverty. One of the things that shines through when we interview the people taking to the streets is that so many are woefully ignorant, and that they wallow in a sea of relativism that allows for no morality other than that gained by intense navel gazing. They are the antithesis of the original American revolutionaries, whose leaders were men of exceptional erudition and thoughtfulness, and whose followers knew at the very least their Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress. Revolutionaries of old were shaped by philosophy, known science, literature, practical life experience, and a deep sense of morality and justice. Today’s little park piddlers are shaped by an aching sense of unfairness, a terrible fear of human-kind (that would be the AGW shtick), and a morality shaped by Oprah and whichever fabulously rich Hollywood Leftist happens to grab the microphone on any given day.

These self-styled 99%-ers are not poor, not by any known standard, either today or in the history of the world. They are intellectually and emotionally bereft, but otherwise awash in material benefits.

Fortunately, they’re not, as they delude themselves, the 99%. If they were, the Republic would be lost.