Tuesday, January 31, 2017



One liberal's view about education

I have ZERO sympathy for people who run up huge college debts. As in "none". College -get this!- isn't that expensive if you humble yourself and go the community college route for the first two years (all states have them) and then the university partnership for the remaining two, I bet you could've saved like 75%. But Americans are hyper-entitled and everybody thinks they're the one entitled to a super-expensive private education because, "Like all my friends are going there and stuff."

I especially have no sympathy for people who study programs that have no marketability or who went to a private university and then acted stunned when Social Worker Degree #12 from Duke didn't get the kind of market pay required to cover the $195,000 debt. Surprise! Nobody cares where you went to school for that and good luck getting a job with that degree.

The vast, VAST majority (>95%) will never need a really elite university degree. Most companies don't give a shit that you went to Stanford or Harvard. Some do, and maybe you're that super-special snowflake. Great. But most of us need community college #348 + their local state university partnership.

Now, I do believe that your first two years (community college) should be covered by the US government because an Associate's Degree is the new 12 year high school diploma - it's the very basic you need to enter the work force. The remaining two should be offset by choosing an in-demand field with good GPA and attendance OR a committment to two years of service to your country/state/community afterwards.

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Only 2 Miles, but a Planet Away

Just over 2 miles from the U.S. Capitol lives Kariah Butler, a 10-year-old girl being raised by a single mom. Looking for a way out of the neighborhood public school, which last year graduated less than 50 percent of its class, Kariah’s mother signed her up for the federal school voucher program.

Called the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, it launched in 2004 to serve low-income students in the nation’s capital by awarding them vouchers to attend a private school of their choice. Spending a fraction per student compared to public schools, this school choice program has increased graduation rates by 21 percentage points.

Under the new Republican-led administration, school choice advocates are hopeful that efforts like the D.C Opportunity Scholarship Program won’t just survive, but perhaps even expand. On Thursday, President Donald Trump lent his support to the movement and issued an official proclamation declaring Jan. 22-28, 2017, as National School Choice Week.

The Daily Signal traveled to the Anacostia section of Washington to meet Kariah and see what life is like over the bridge, where school choice is helping, one child at a time.

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Ohio State Students To Study White Privilege, Microaggressions

White privilege and microaggressions are on the academic menu this spring at Ohio State University.

The College Fix reports that the school is offering a course to students that will enable them to identify such highly debatable phenomenon in their lives and to “develop an understanding of major social justice concepts.”

Students can enjoy a reading list that encompasses such works as: “Waking up White: What it means to accept your legacy, for better and worse,” “The Arab Woman and I” and “Memoirs of a Gay Fraternity Brother.”

Anyone questioning the viability or popularity of such studies should know that the course is one way to fulfill the university’s requirement to compete a “diversity” module before graduation.

The university that offered students a “safe space” to cope with inauguration day is inaugurating its own identity politics curriculum that will focus on social justice themes and train students to “identify microaggressions,” recognize “systems of power and privilege” and assess how best to promote diversity and inclusion at school and in the workplace. It will also discuss the importance of “global citizenship” in Trump America.

“Crossing Identity Boundaries” aims to expand students’ “self-awareness” and help them develop “dialogue skills.”

Because the course qualifies as part of mandatory diversity requirement, the university is already ensuring that it will run throughout the academic year.

Students will be required to bring some of their work home by participating in “implicit bias tests,” and keeping a journal that records incidents of “power/privilege in your life.” Tolerance levels will really be evaluated by tests that ask Christians how it would feel to be a Muslim or suggesting that men imagine themselves as women and “reflecting on how this new identity would have impacted your day.”

The microaggressions group presentation is a critical part of the course.

According to the syllabus, students must “find at least 12 examples of microaggressions using at least 3 different types of social media (e.g., Yik Yak, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest). Explain who the target of the microaggression is and why your group believes it is an example of a negative remark. Provide an example of how you might respond to such a comment.”

The point of all this is for students to “evaluate the impact that power and privilege have within social media,” a syllabus states. Grades are assigned on the basis of “quality of microaggresion chosen (do they clearly articulate why they are microaggressions and which group is targeted” and “quality of response (did they address the microaggression in an appropriate and meaningful way?)”

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