Published in Education
Education
The Opening of the Chinese Mind?
The awakening to this type of education has to do, in part, with the publication of a now popular book in China that was written jointly by three Chinese graduates from Bowdoin College, Franklin & Marshall College, and Bucknell University. The book apparently explains the purposes and the virtues of a liberal education and describes the sort that is available here in the United States.
Colleges and universities in the U.S., of course, responding to the new demand are looking at this as a potential way to make up for declining funds resulting from the recession . . . but wouldn't it be something, too, if a market demand from Chinese students (and students from other eastern nations) were to drive American universities back to a kind of liberal arts equivalent of the Great Awakening?
Education
Ajax and Philoctetes
The founder of Theatre of War said: ""Sophocles was himself a general, and Athens during his time was at war for decades. These two plays were seen by thousands of citizen-soldiers. By performing these scenes, we're hoping that our modern-day soldiers will see their difficulties in a larger historical context, and perhaps feel less alone." A soldier is quoted after a reading: "I've been Ajax. I've spoken to Ajax."
Education
To His Health
Politics
Worth a Couple Grins
- A growing 40 percent of all Americans self-identify as conservatives, about 36 percent as moderates, about 20 as liberal, according to Gallup. I wonder whether they factored in the reluctance of Republicans/conservatives to speak to pollsters.
- All politics is local: Local Chinese officials make school kids salute all cars on the road (as a safety measure). (I can imagine the compelled salutes American kids might give.) But the other examples of Chinese local tyranny are far less petty--killing dogs, compulsory liquor and cigarette purchases, licenses for harvesting one's own corn, and prohibiting women from being secretaries.
- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is #15 on the NY Times trade paperback bestseller list and rising. I'm not sure what this Zombie business means--it's all over comics strips, and kids talk about it. Something to do with the "end of history," but there may be other meanings of brain-eating.
Education
Schools of Education
Education
Georgetown Student Seeks Personal Assistant
Fellow students are giving the Georgetown sophomore grief for advertising a $10 an hour job to drive him around, schedule him, wash and fold his laundry, etc.: He's "just full of himself." But isn't this the logical conclusion of what David Brooks wrote eight years ago, in his "Organization Kid"--that undergraduate students schedule virtually everything and as a result devote no time for many of the most important things a bright student should be doing? A sample from Brooks:
There are a lot of things these future leaders no longer have time for. I was on [the Princeton] campus at the height of the election season, and I saw not even one Bush or Gore poster. I asked around about this and was told that most students have no time to read newspapers, follow national politics, or get involved in crusades:
As silly as the Georgetown kid may appear, he appears to be following out student logic.
Pop Culture
Broadway Comes to Washington
Education
Higher Ed Stuff
"A recent study of the applicants to seven elite colleges in 1997 found that Asian students were much more likely to be rejected than seemingly similar students of other races. Also, athletes and students from top high schools had admissions edges, as did low-income African-Americans and Hispanics."
"Translating the advantages into SAT scores, study author Thomas Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist, calculated that African-Americans who achieved 1150 scores on the two original SAT tests had the same chances of getting accepted to top private colleges in 1997 as whites who scored 1460s and Asians who scored perfect 1600s."
I also noticed that in the current issue of Newsweek, devoted to higher education, Sen. Lamar Alexander argues that colleges should adopt something like a year-around schedule, and students take their degree within three years, and thereby save 25% in tuition.
Education
Kindle Versus Printed Book
The NY Times presents a symposium on reading on a Kindle/computer versus reading a printed book. Each participant offers something worthwhile considering. (David Gelernter is the one identifiable conservative.) My question, which the academics consider more or less, is whether students read any more. At the beginning of a course I ask students to note books they have read that have influenced the way they think and act. The list is thin--maybe someone will list the Bible or an Obama book. You never see a book from political science. Now, more than when Aristotle questioned whether the youth are fit to study politics, the inclination of the young to indulge their passions meets the least intellectual resistance. Given our technology, books or rather reading (books are too long and require too much effort) becomes just another way to fulfil desires: the ideal reading is the cookbook* (with lots of pictures). It is a rare education that shows students another way of looking at books.
*There are variants on such how-to books, but this is a family-friendly site.
Congress
Is Political Science a Science?
Not according to Dr. No, aka Senator Tom Coburn, md, who seeks to kill National Science Foundation funding for the eclectic discipline. Political scientists banged their begging bowls to save their fed funding.
The latest Nobel Economics Prize winner, political scientist Elinor Ostrom, might note the disappearance of a free rider: No "tragedy of the commons" here, just the comedy of con-artists. Ostrom, former President of the American Political Science Association, presented this paper on her approach to the study of politics, known as public or rational choice, a school of thought that often supports conservative policy objectives. A President who earned her Nobel!
UPDATE: I hadn't noticed that Ostrom's paper is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation. More on the limits of rat choice later.
Race
Now Here's a Senior Thesis/Local History Project
University of Maryland students take up their school President's challenge and write a local history of slavery and its role in its founding. This is a serious work (only 48 pp, rtwt), with wonderful graphics, full of information and sober insights: The Declaration did have a great influence on freeing slaves. Did you know, though, that free blacks could not own dogs, but that they did own slaves?
The students conclude that their University had antebellum roots in both slavery and free labor policies. After the Civil War state segregation policies thwarted national policy, which was color-blind:
By the end of the 19th century, the Maryland Agricultural College had become the University of Maryland, a federal land-grant college. In 1890, new congressional legislation, the second Morrill Act [the first was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln], stipulated that there be no "distinction of race or color" in the use of funds the federal government supplied. However, the school's trustees, deeply committed to maintaining a racially exclusive institution, refused to accept black students at the College Park campus. Instead, they allocated one-fifth of the Morrill funds to the Princess Anne Academy on the Eastern Shore for the education of black students. Black students were no longer excluded from higher education in Maryland, but they were segregated and barred from the College Park campus.
Given the bad stuff we have seen coming out of the University, it is a relief to see some good work.
Education
Happiness
My freshman class is broken up into study groups, and each group meets (outside of class) at least once a week to talk about Xenophon's Education of Cyrus. I try to attend each group's meeting once or twice a semester, just to get a feel for what they are talking about, and how they are doing it. I met with two groups yesterday, one in the afternoon and one in the evening, both at my house, over coffee and cookies. During one of the conversations about justice, or the lack of, in the text, the talk got especially good and serious. Everyone was interested, seven students on the point, and thinking. The conversation was textually based, so focused. I sensed that some things were becoming clear in a way they had not yet revealed themselves. All seemed aware of this, so we pushed the thing around a bit, even shoved at it. We played with it. It felt very good. Eventually I became conscious of time and noted that we should stop for now, a couple said we should go on, another said it's too bad we had to stop. It's hard to leave eternity, I thought. I was tempted to stay with it, but an hour and a half seemed good enough. A good long moment. We were grateful for it. They walked out into the setting sun and I went back to Xenophon, lit up a stogie, poured another cup of coffee while listening to a Bach Cello Suite.
Education
Back to School Defense Tips
On a visit to Johns Hopkins University today I learned how a student defended himself and his housemates and killed the intruder with a Samurai sword, hacking off his hand. Better than savoring a John Belushi skit. Given that Maryland authorities had considered prosecuting the exposers of ACORN antics, it is not surprising that they are still considering charges against the undergraduate student.
Here's a sample Belushi Samurai clip.
Literature, Poetry, and Books
Cia-Cia
Education
Decline of the English Department
William M. Chace writes a thoughtful article on the decline of English as a college major and, more generally, as a coherent discipline. First the numbers. In one generation (1970-2003), the number of students majoring in English dropped almost in half, from 7.6% to 3.9%, reflecting a general decline in the number of humanities majors (business is apparently now the most popular major). Chace offers several reasons for this, but the main one is this:
the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself. What departments have done instead is dismember the curriculum, drift away from the notion that historical chronology is important, and substitute for the books themselves a scattered array of secondary considerations (identity studies, abstruse theory, sexuality, film and popular culture). In so doing, they have distanced themselves from the young people interested in good books.
I would add, they have distanced themselves from the young people who might be interested in using books to think about life and its questions. Among many other interesting arguments and observations, Chace reports that Harvard University recently replaced its survey of English literature for undergraduates with four new "affinity groups" - "Arrivals," "Poets," "Diffusions," and "Shakespeares." Sounds inspiring. And clear. (Incidentally, I had heard that Shakespeare didn't exist, but not that there were several of him.) The idea is that the content of the old survey will "trickle down" to students, but if no one takes thought that it happen, how likely is that? To his credit, Chace cautiously defends the idea of a tradition of English literature, and even intimates that those in the field ought to have a "sense of duty" towards the works of English or American literature. "Without such traditions," he concludes, "civil societies have no moral compass to guide them." It will be interesting to see how (or whether) the profession responds.
Politics
Loving Freedom: Why the left are unfaithful lovers
At the end of her denunciation Democratic party arrogance, Obama admirer Camille Paglia observes:
[A]ffluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why? Is it because the new professional class is a glossy product of generically institutionalized learning? Independent thought and logical analysis of argument are no longer taught. Elite education in the U.S. has become a frenetic assembly line of competitive college application to schools where ideological brainwashing is so pandemic that it's invisible. The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote "critical thinking," which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms ("racism, sexism, homophobia") when confronted with any social issue. The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it's positively pickled.
Paglia's earlier reference to Bob Dylan as one true freedom-lover reminds us of his autobiography, Chronicles. Among Dylan's shrewd observations (about Thucydides as well as his contemporaries) is his criticism of Machiavelli's maxim that it is better to be feared than to be loved: No, the person who is the most loved can also be the most feared. Dylan also declares that his favorite politician from the sixties was Barry Goldwater.
A far greater poet of freedom with a funny voice was Winston Churchill. Those in the San Francisco area should make it to the Churchill Centre conference this weekend, featuring, among others, Justice Clarence Thomas and Hillsdale College President and Churchill scholar Larry Arnn.
Education
Inspired Rhetorician or Finger Wagging Drag?
But there is room for criticizing it nonetheless--as there would have been plenty of room for criticizing it, I suspect, if any other president had delivered it. I do not think that Bush or even, maybe, Reagan would have done any better. I don't think most teachers or parents would do better. And that's the rub. If you're going to do something that's never really been done and tout it with the kind of fanfare that this thing has had, shouldn't you have something new to say? Shouldn't you attempt to inspire?
The trouble with this speech is that it reads a bit like a scold. Essentially, it says that you should stay in school and work hard so that you don't become a loser. Further, you'd better take responsibility for yourself because no one is going to buy any of your excuses. (Yes . . . gotta admit that as a parent, I especially liked that part.) But this speech was not supposed to be for parents. And I wonder whether the best way to inspire kids to learn is to warn them of the consequences of failing, chastising them that they whine too much, and (again) asking them to "do it for their country." In varying degrees (except, I think, for the last motivation here cited) those calls to perform may or may not succeed in getting something out of a stubborn soul.
Fear and shame are always powerful motivators . . . though I had been given to understand that they were somewhat out of fashion among liberal Democrats. The call to patriotism and service to country is a nice touch too. But how many people have ever really studied harder for a test because they trembled for their country in the face of an "F"? I was always a lot more inclined to tremble for something closer to the seat of my pants.
Strikingly missing from his discussion of self-interest rightly understood, is any notion that education is a good in and of itself. In this speech (as for far too many Americans) education appears merely to be a means to an end. Education is described as something of a burden and a pain (which, of course, I understand that it can be at times) but never as something that has the ability to make your mind and heart soar. My point is that he does not make the thing sound very attractive apart from the good it might do for an individual's job prospects and the future economy of the nation. It's all very . . . I don't know, cog and wheel.
Why not any talk of the ability to connect with the great minds of the past . . . transcending time and place? Why not any talk of the prospect of discovering great and hidden mines of scientific treasure? Is there something more that a kid with a penchant for science, for example, can hope for other than being the next inventor of a device like an iPhone? Not that there's anything wrong with such practical and lucrative occupations . . . but did that inventor go into his field with only that purpose in mind? Did he do it to serve his president and his country, or did something more elusive and alluring seduce him? But might there not be some near indescribable pleasures in the pursuit of scientific--and all other--truth apart from its relative usefulness and capacity to keep us all from being "losers"? Why was there no discussion of the "mere" beauty of truth?
But I don't wish to be too hard on Barack Obama for this shortcoming. For, as I say, I would not have expected much better from any Republican on the subject. And that is why, ultimately, such displays are--ironically, perhaps--not of much utility at all.
Education
How One Ohio School is Dealing with Obama's Speech on Tuesday
Kudos to the Superintendent of Medina City Schools (just South of Cleveland) for leaving it up to parents to decide whether their kids should listen to Tuesday's address. Also impressive is his emphasis on the Constitution. Good for him.
Dear Parents of Medina City Schools,
In case you haven't heard, President Obama intends to address the children of our great nation on Tuesday, September 8th at noon. As a district we will not be airing President Obama's speech or utilizing the supporting documents for the speech. While we believe his intentions are good, we will leave it to you, the parents, to determine if you wish to have your children view President Obama's speech.
While we sincerely respect the position of President of the United States, as an educational institution we must also respect the rights of a parent to make decisions for their children when it comes to politics. Many parents have called the District both in favor and against the speech being broadcast live to students. In order to minimize any controversy and the potential disruption of the educational process, we decided to leave it to parents to discuss or watch the speech with their children on their own time. Should you make the decision to view the speech with your child you can access it via an archived webcast at www.whitehouse.gov or www.ed.gov.
The Medina City School District will teach your children to think critically and think for themselves. We will also teach children how to sift through all of the information that is available to them (political or not), decide between fact and fiction, and then understand the process for making an educated decision based on quality information. We will also continue to make sure that our students know and understand the branches of government and the Constitution of the United States. We believe that once they truly understand the Constitution they will then be able to make good political decisions on their own.
Thanks for your understanding on this matter and thank you for your ongoing support of the Medina City School District!
Sincerely,
Randy Stepp
Superintendent
Medina City Schools
Presidency
The REALLY Youthful Youth Vote
Of course, "the speech" is being sold as an exhortation to America's youth to stay in school and to strive to achieve. Thus, no teacher or parent is really free to object without inviting the scorn of secret (and not-so-secret) Obama partisans who now have leave to say that such objections are nothing more than "overreaction." It's a clever sell. But I won't buy it.
Hugh Hewitt is also covering this and provides some useful links. John Hinderacker at Powerline is on it too, and I think he hits upon what is likely to be the strongest reaction to the "big event" by the majority of America's schoolchildren: "inexpressibly lame." Bingo!
I do not worry (too much) that Obama will be able to win legions of followers in the Pre-K to 12 grade set because of this speech. If his past performances of late are any indication of what is more likely to happen, he will talk too long, talk too condescendingly, and bore them to tears. It is almost as laughable as the serenade offered in the movie Grease 2 (yes, I had a misspent youth) in which a young man drags his main squeeze down into a bomb shelter, misleads her into thinking that the nation is under attack, and suggests that they "do it" for their country. She didn't buy it either . . . and that was under the threat of nuclear annihilation.
But what is nicely and brazenly on display here is the President's unshakable and (now) almost pathetic belief in the power of his words to accomplish things. If ever a man bought into the narrative of his legion of sycophants regarding his persuasive abilities, it is Barack Obama. And there is something else too. Notice the navel-gazing personalization of the thing. If kids know HIS story and read about HIM and HE talks to them, well, then they will all be persuaded to do their best and, what is more, "help the president." Help him do what, exactly? Turn around the economy? Secure our borders? Fight domestic and international terrorism? Or does he simply want to remake America in his image? One begins to suspect that it's mostly the latter and, in the suspicion, one finds very little that is persuasive about that plan.
Education
Standard Deviations
How low are the standards in New York City's schools? Would you believe that one can pass the test, and move up to the next grade, by guessing the answers?
Education
Silent Language
Education
Western Civ in Texas
Our friends are divided about this, as this article makes clear.
I am inclined to side with one set of friends against the other, in large part because I am reluctant to see state legislators descending to that level of detail in establishing degree requirements. It is one thing, for example, to say that every graduate of a state university must have had a course in state history and/or state government (though this is usually done by the regents or sthe state board of higher education), quite another to become as prescriptive as this bill is in setting core curriculum and major requirements:
The school shall develop and offer students an interdisciplinary course of study in Western civilization and American institutions and practices designed to foster the thoughtful development of ethical character and civic responsibility, including a sequence of six three-hour courses, each covering one of the following topics: (1) ancient philosophy and literature; (2) ideas from the Bible; (3) great works from the Middle Ages; (4) classics of the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment; (5) the development of Western science and technology; and (6) classics of the American founding and development of the American Republic.(b) A student who completes the sequence of courses described by Subsection (a) shall be considered by the university to have satisfied 18 hours of core curriculum course work in the following areas: (1) three hours of communications; (2) three hours of additional natural science; (3) three hours of humanities; (4) three hours of government; (5) three hours of visual and performing arts; and (6) three hours of any institutionally designated optional or seminar course.
(c) A student who completes the sequence of courses described by Subsection (a) in addition to 18 hours of upper-division course work in the Western civilization (WCV) field of study at the university shall be considered by the university to have completed an undergraduate major in Western Ethics and American Tradition for a bachelor of arts degree in the university's College of Liberal Arts.
I would not object to a faculty establishing something like such a program on its own accord, but I do object to its being imposed politically. And yes, I recognize that all too many faculties would be loathe to institute such programs, but I would at the same time hate to concede to state legislators of any stripe the authority to decide what constitutes an appropriate desgree program at a university. Imagine how such a power could be abused! And consider what one would have to concede to grant to the legislature such authority--that political power can, of its own accord, without any inherent claim to wisdom or expertise, declare what an appropriate program of study is. Knowledge isn't power. Power is knowledge. In some important respects, this is the fantasy of the postmodern academic Left.
Lovers of genuine higher education, and conservatives of almost any stripe, ought to be able to make common cause against such an ill-conceived idea.
Shameless Self-Promotion
Liberal Education and Republican Self-Government
Our own Dr. Pat delivered the keynote and wove together a number of themes centering on our multiple crises, among which (and perhaps near the center of which) is a crisis in higher education. In a nutshell (and he can clarify and correct me on this), he argued that many of our crises can be traced to a failure to appreciate and respect our limits, a failure of which "the new science" (that is, Baconian science) is the cause. The contemporary university is in some sense the central institution housing the new science and celebrating the self-fashioning which is its most common expression. (Readers of C.S. Lewis might regard it as a N.I.C.E. place.)
We also had an interesting discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of Anthony Kronman's recent pretty good book on Education's End, which covers some of this terrain, albeit not nearly as well, in large part because he can't bring himself to admit that to counterpose (or indeed oppose) the humanities to religion (or to the possibility of religious truth) is to deprive them of a principal source of their vitality. He treats religion as essentially "fundamentalist" and anti-intellectual and thinks that one can contemplate life's big questions without taking seriously religious alternatives. I suspect that it's closer to the truth to argue that Kronman's "secular humanism" (which isn't too far from the kind of conversation across the ages that someone like Allan Bloom would have suggested) must collapse into Baconian self-fashioning if it rejects out of hand (as Kronman seems to) the possibility of religious truth.
Many thanks to all the conference attendees (among them three of Lawler's students who made the trek down from Berry and an assiduous reader of Dr. Pat's blog) and to its various sponsors, including ISI.
Education
Liberal Education at Liberty University
Education
