Education
August 18, 2023 — John Hinderaker
It is an inconvenient truth that various ethnic groups do not, on average, perform equally well on objective measures of intellectual accomplishment. Mathematics is particularly problematic, in that results are hard to fudge–basically, answers are either right or wrong. Liberals have responded to this conundrum by dumbing down one discipline after another. Their theory is that if they lower standards far enough, they will arrive at a point where racial
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August 13, 2023 — John Hinderaker
In the U.S., college admissions have become a political battleground. In the wake of the Harvard and UNC decisions, many schools–probably most–have vowed to do away with all objective test requirements so that they can continue engaging in race discrimination. What will the consequences be for the quality of post-secondary education? A clue comes from the U.K., where a much less severe erosion of meritocracy has had malign consequences, as
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August 9, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Under Ron DeSantis’s leadership, Florida has attained the enviable status of the state that liberals most like to hate, and to denigrate irrationally. Thus it is no surprise to see this headline: Pro-woke professors leave Florida universities in protest. The Tampa Bay Times reported on a July meeting of the Florida Board of Governors. During the meeting, a number of professors expressed concern about the political climate in Florida. Professors
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July 28, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Well, possibly not all education. But down with colleges and universities, anyway. It seems that their net effect is to make their students dumber. A case in point: American college students think their country is going downhill. Not in the ways it actually is going downhill, but in the ways it isn’t. This was the question: Based on what you have learned in college so far, do you think that
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July 18, 2023 — John Hinderaker
That is actually what they call it. Catrin Wigfall lifts the lid on a program that is even worse than what you probably expect from the public schools. In this case, we are talking about Minnesota’s Department of Education, but the same thing is going on across the country. It starts with bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, but transitions quickly into hard-core leftism: The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) is encouraging a divisive
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June 24, 2023 — John Hinderaker
I’m filing this one under Great Moments In Self-Delusion. The London Times warns: “Harvard graduates advised to keep quiet about it.” But not for the reason you might think! They call it “dropping the H-bomb”. For decades, graduates of Harvard have wrestled with how best to mention that they went to a university with a reputation so splendid that some alumni fear to speak of it directly with friends and
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May 25, 2023 — John Hinderaker
How bad is America’s education system? Worse than you can possibly imagine. At George Washington University (annual cost $78,335, although probably no non-Chinese citizen actually pays that, as college tuition numbers are fraudulent), students protested against the school’s teams being called the “Colonials.” George Washington University changed its “Colonials” moniker to “Revolutionaries” after facing scrutiny from students who deemed the school’s mascot as offensive. Revolutionaries! I suppose we should be
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May 13, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Well, probably not all. But when did public school education become, on net, a force for evil? At some time after public sector unions were legalized in, as I recall, the 1960s. One of the worst mistakes in the history of our democracy. Now, the teachers’ unions have mobilized teachers as left-wing activists, and a great many of those who were not comfortable with that politicization have left the profession.
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May 11, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Randi Weingarten, the head goon of the far-left teachers union, has been trying to rewrite history about her opposition to reopening schools during COVID, now that all the data is in that the prolonged school shutdowns were an educational disaster. Even Chicago’s dreadful Lori Lightfoot has called out Weingarten as a liar. Tom Elliott on Twitter directs our attention to the receipts: SUPERCUT! Don't let @rweingarten rewrite history. Here's proof
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May 5, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Sadly, having large Republican majorities in a legislature does not guarantee sound public policy. A case in point comes from the current session in Texas, where conservatives are trying to stamp out the left-wing race and gender ideologies that have been institutionalized at the University of Texas. Texas SB 17 would defund and prohibit DEI departments, officers, employees, training, and so on in Texas state colleges and universities. The bill
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April 27, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Minnesota’s public schools are awful: only 36% of the state’s 11th graders can do math at grade level, to cite just one appalling statistic. Even worse is that the schools are not safe. Violence is rife, teachers are routinely insulted and ignored by students, and chaos reigns. I take it that this is at least partly the result of discipline quotas imposed by Minnesota’s state government, in imitation of one
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April 16, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Young people nowadays tend to be poised, sociable, and reasonably articulate. That’s good. On the other hand, they also tend to be shockingly ignorant. For the most part, they simply don’t know much about science, economics, literature, and above all, about history. Contemporary education indulges endless expressions of opinion, as long as those opinions are consistent with the schools’ political agenda. But opinions–above all, the opinions of teenagers–are worthless unless
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April 9, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Lately, Democrats have tried to posture as free speech advocates by denouncing “bans” of various books. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz went on a tirade at a press conference, claiming that Florida–the Left’s bete noire these days–has “banned” various books like, for example, Of Mice and Men and Lord of the Flies. It turned out that Walz just made it up, as usual. More broadly, the whole “book ban” controversy is
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March 20, 2023 — John Hinderaker
For the last 50 years or so, public policy in the U.S. has trended toward the view that everyone, more or less, should go to college. This was a sharp departure from the historical norm, when higher education really was higher, and only a small minority obtained four-year degrees. It has become increasingly evident that the payoff for sending most kids to college is minimal, both for them and for
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March 10, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Mean scores on IQ tests rose generally in the U.S. beginning in the 1930s, apparently reflecting better nutrition and improved schooling. But that trend has now been reversed. A paper published in an upcoming journal finds IQ scores now declining: Labeled the Flynn effect (Herrnstein and Murray, 2010), intelligence quotient (IQ) scores substantially increased since 1932 and through the twentieth century, with differences ranging from 3.0 to 5.0 IQ points
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March 6, 2023 — John Hinderaker
I ran across this because it was re-tweeted by Brit Hume. Read it and weep: This is at Harvard!? pic.twitter.com/ON99P4XcGP — Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) March 2, 2023 When I was growing up in South Dakota, even the slower-witted junior high school kids could diagram simple sentences. Now many Harvard students apparently can’t tell a subject from a verb. And math education is, if anything, worse. In Minnesota, where I
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March 1, 2023 — John Hinderaker
A report recently found that there are 53 public schools in Illinois where not a single student can do math at grade level. That report made international news, and my colleague Catrin Wigfall wondered whether there could possibly be any such low-achieving schools in Minnesota. So she investigated. It turns out that there are 19 public schools in Minnesota, 11 of them public charter schools, where not a single student
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