The conventions of the credit hour, the semester and the academic year were formalized in the early 1900s. Time forms the template for designing college programs, accrediting them and — crucially — funding them using federal student aid.
But in 2013, for the first time, the Department of Education took steps to loosen the rules.
The new idea: Allow institutions to get student-aid funding by creating programs that directly measure learning, not time. Students can move at their own pace. The school certifies — measures — what they know and are able to do.
The public-school paradigm is also based on a century-old model: industrial learning. Time to abandon it, but it’s hard, because it so benefits the status quo, even if it’s a disaster for the kids.
Every generation must relearn the lessons. Unfortunately, it’s even harder to teach them when people who find them personally inconvenient to their agendas are in charge of the educational system.
The borders were always arbitrary, imposed from outside, which is the only way that it could have been done. This is truly the end of colonialism. Sadly, what will follow will almost certainly be worse.
Could they decide the election? It appears that they’ve decided some previous ones. But I’m sure that the Dems are fine with that. The ends do, after all, justify the means.
…has gotten some bad health news. He was one of the early bloggers with whom I’ve argued, dinnered and partied. My best wishes to him for a speedy and full recovery.
“Whenever you can’t have a debate, I often think that’s evidence that there’s a problem,” Thiel said on The Glenn Beck Program. “When people use the word ‘science,’ it’s often a tell, like in poker, that you’re bluffing. It’s like we have ‘social science’ and we have ‘political science,’ [but] we don’t call it ‘physical science’ or ‘chemical science.’ We just call them physics and chemistry because we know they’re right.”
Thiel said no one will be upset if you ask questions about the periodic table, because it is actually science. But referring to man-made climate change as “science” tells you “that people are exaggerating and they’re bluffing a little bit,” Thiel said.
“The weather has not been getting warmer for the last 15 years. The hockey stick that Al Gore predicted in the early 2000s on the climate has not happened,” he remarked. “And I think as this monolithic culture breaks down, you can have more debates.”