Thursday, January 23, 2020


NC: Turning Against Scholarship at Wake Forest

Nan Miller

I love Wake Forest. I was there before the ban on drinking and dancing was lifted but there during an era when supplying freshmen with free samples of Winston and Salem cigarettes was standard practice. When friends at other schools asked how I liked being deprived on the one hand and ensnared on the other, I confided that I’d become an artful dodger of certain rules — including what felt like the requirement to smoke. 

It was only later that I saw what an advantage I’d had as an undergraduate at Wake Forest. By the end of my sophomore year, I’d been steeped in our Western heritage and taught by professors who loved great works for their timeless insights and perfectly wrought passages, professors who challenged us, inspired us and prepared us for the hazardous business of being adults. 

Back in the ’60s, no one could have predicted that the ’80s would bring a nationwide push to replace legendary scholars with a breed that would redefine our heritage as one long procession of pompous white males who hold a Goliath-like grip on power by oppressing women and minorities. By 1991, The Atlantic had redefined higher education as “Illiberal” and featured on its cover a hand pouring gasoline on a stack of great books. 

So I was not the only donor who followed developments at Wake Forest to make sure my alma mater hadn’t joined the race to hire scholars who aim “to get away from the notion that literature is sacred,” as Georgetown’s John Glavin famously declared. 

Before 2016, I had no reason to doubt the pledge I’d found in Wake Forest’s Strategic Plan — to stand firm against “the undertow of trendiness.” Now I see that the fine print should read “unless, of course, the trend involves rescuing a university from the clutches of the Koch brothers” — for that is precisely the trend Wake Forest followed in 2016.

No one had objected when economics professor James Otteson announced plans to establish an institute that would bring together scholars from a range of disciplines to explore ways to promote happiness or “eudaimonia,” which was Aristotle’s term for human flourishing. Dr. Otteson’s plan fit perfectly Wake’s other mission “to create interdisciplinary institutes” where faculty and students can explore “complex issues” and “engage in actual research.”

Then came the announcement that the Charles Koch Foundation would donate $3.7 million to the Eudaimonia Institute — and the name Koch triggered 189 professors to stage what The Wall Street Journal called an “Anti-Koch Meltdown.” Using tactics set forth by the George Soros-funded movement to UnKoch My Campus, Wake’s faculty senate conducted “an intensive study” that uncovered a Koch plot to build “a robust freedom-advancing network of professors” who would smuggle a right-wing agenda into the Wake Forest curriculum. No matter that Soros himself once admitted to having “messianic fantasies” of imposing a left-wing agenda on his adopted nation. 

Perhaps in response to a spate of negative publicity, President Nathan Hatch rejected the faculty senate’s plea to “SEVER ALL CONNECTIONS TO THE CHARLES KOCH FOUNDATION.” Denied an official ruling against “dark money,” the senate sought ways to hamstring its release — and to warn students of the Institute’s stealth plan to push for “lower taxes and less government regulation” (in clear violation of the faculty senate’s plan to quash those ideas). 

As an undergraduate studying philosophy under the redoubtable A.C. Reid, I read John Stuart Mill’s appraisal of ideologues who allow free speech only when it conforms to their particular creed: “To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.”

Fortunately, absolutists at Wake Forest have failed in their mission to defund the Eudaimonia Institute. In 2019 alone, the Institute sponsored lectures, presentations and conferences for 1,379 faculty and student participants. The bad news is that faculty resistance is behind the Koch Foundation’s recent decision to withhold the final million of its $3.7 million investment in the Eudaimonia Institute.

When Wake Forest professors argue that the pursuit of happiness can be hazardous to student health — from a safe perch secured for them by the sale of cigarettes — they scare off donors to the general fund. So I am not alone in my resolve to give only to the Eudaimonia Institute — where faculty and students can assemble “to explore the moral and economic case for freedom and prosperity” and where they are free to hold and affirm a diversity of opinions.

SOURCE 





Student protesters are still a small minority

If news stories about the end of the decade are to be believed, the 2010s were an era in which American students – those in Gen Z – became significant agents of social change. Headlines regularly depict students protesting climate change, or organizing nation-wide school walkouts. We see Stoneman Douglas students in Parkland, FL marching and advocating for more gun control, and seemingly never-ending student protests on our nation’s colleges and universities, demanding change under the banner of social justice and equity. Such headlines make it easy to believe that those in Gen Z see themselves as agents of social change, and that, for them, protesting has become the norm.

The problem with this narrative is that is it simply not true.

Despite news reports which simplify and exaggerate reality, most American students are not interested in protesting; those who are new to college are more concerned with community service than their earlier counterparts, but public demonstration is not a high priority whatsoever.

As a professor who works with Gen Z Americans, I have visited scores of colleges and universities and talked with thousands of students. I have noticed that our students are not overwhelmingly political or interested in protesting.  

Six decades of data from UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) supports this line of thinking.

HERI has regularly presented a list of “objectives” to be achieved in college to incoming students who were asked if they were “essential” or “very important.” When asked about “keeping up to date with political affairs,” for instance, 57% of students on average thought this was essential or very important throughout the 1960s. This figure dropped significantly in the 1970s to 46% and a few points lower to an average of 43% in the 1980s.

By the 1990s, interest in politics waned even more to 37% and from 2000 to the 2015, the number slipped a few points more to 35% – a figure 20 points lower than the 1960s. By 2015, the figure ticked up a bit with the generational change on campus, and by 2017, the figure climbed to 48%. So, there has been a very recent jump in interest in political affairs, most likely due to the rise of Donald Trump, but this is a figure still notably lower than the norm in the 1960s.

Similarly, when students were asked about their interest in “influencing the political structure,” the figure has been fairly low and stable since the 1960s.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, about 17% of students thought that influencing politics was essential or very important. From the 1990s through 2015, the average increased slightly to 20%. In 2016 and 2017, the figure jumped with Gen Z on campus to 27% – but this is barely a quarter of the population.

HERI went further and asked the same students about performing volunteer or community service work. This is, of course, a different way to have political influence and the data show that there has been a steady increase from 1990, when only 17% believed that there was a “very good chance’ that they will engage in service, compared to 37% in 2017 –an increase of almost 118%.

Finally, incoming students were also asked about whether they intended to “participate in student protests or demonstrations” between 1967 and 2015, and that number has remained low over the past five decades. Only about 6% of incoming students on average said that there is a “very good chance” that they will protest. This figure vacillated between about 3.5% and 8% – but never crossed the 9% line, revealing that incoming college students are not inclined to be as radically engaged as the media often portrays them – and they weren’t so inclined even in the 1960s when the U.S. was going through massive socio-political change. Moreover, these protest statistics have barely changed even when other measures of political and social engagement have significantly shifted over time.

Regrettably, newer recent data has not been released but the 2018 HERI survey does have this question included. Even if the newer data doubles the student numbers toward protest, it would still amount to a small percentage of students and would not support the common narrative that students are eager to protest and demonstrate. When they do, they are often prodded by activist administrators who set the tone and influence student behavior on our nation’s college campuses.

Interest in politics among college students is appreciably lower compared to those entering college in the 1960s, and students say they have little interest in protests and demonstrations. On the other hand, students today are more interestedin volunteer or community service work when compared to those in earlier eras.

The current 24-hour news cycle and social media universe may have created the impression that today’s students are hyper-political and eager to demonstrate, but it simply is not true. Today’s college students want to make an impact, but they are more interested in impacting society by non-political means.

SOURCE 




The old teacher standards debate

You can demand high academic standards in teacher trainees until you are blue in the face but people with high academic standards don't want a bar of chaotic Australian State schools.  They have better job options. So dummies are all you can get to teach there

What is needed to raise teacher quality is to make teaching more attractive and that means making public school classes less like a warzone.  And the only way to do that is to enforce civil standards of behaviour from the students.  Unruly students should be diverted to special schools where physical means can be used to enforce compliance with the rules. In the old days students were caned as a punishment for bad behaviour.  That could work again but Leftist opposition ensures it will not be reintroduced.

So what is the alternative?  Australia has a well-known alternative:  40% of Australian teenagers go to private schools.  Such schools are expensive so the kids concerned have to come from middle class homes -- where even a look can be sufficient discipline.

So in such schools teachers are allowed to teach and that is where the good teachers go. At my son's private school, he even had two MALE teachers, wonder of wonders

So Leftist failure to permit adequate discipline consigns as much as 60% of the child population to schools where very little gets taught in the worst cases.  How compassionate!



THE way to lift Queensland's academic standards? Get brighter teachers. It's not rocket science - but then science, of any kind, is not the strong suit of most who are fronting our classrooms.

By accepting into education degrees the students at the bottom end of tertiary entrance rankings, we can't then expect top outcomes. An OP17 won't get you into most university degrees - and fair enough, too - but it will ensure you a seat in the lecture theatres at the Australian Catholic University.

I've written about this issue before and am familiar with the arguments of those who disagree with me, including fans of ACU and proud parents of young teachers who say the ability to relate to kids outweighs academics.

Now, Deanne Fishburn from the Queensland College of Teachers is claiming that "you can't be registered as a teacher in Queensland without meeting high and rigorous standards".

As director of the QCT - which, according to its website, "registers teachers for Queensland schools and accredits the state's preservice teacher education programs" - Ms Fishburn is hardly going to admit the status quo stinks. Naturally, she will defend it.

However, as part of her argument, she says that those high standards include that "teacher education students must have passed senior English and mathematics". That means obtaining a C. Hardly what I'd call excellence.

When economic experts are continually identifying the greatest jobs growth in fields that require higher level maths and critical thinking, such as engineering and technology, why are we settling for a pass mark in those who would inspire and instruct future job-seekers? It is unreasonable to expect people who are average achievers themselves to be able to confidently unpack complex problems to others.

Alarming findings from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute back me up on this. Only one in four teenagers is learning from a specialist maths teacher - someone who studied maths at university, including for six months as part of their four-year education degree. Too often, sports or music teachers are also taking maths classes.

It's no better in primary school, with former AMSI director Geoff Prince saying that teachers are "breaking out in a cold sweat" when they have to teach maths. Contrary to the requirement to which Ms Fishbum refers, Mr Prince says many "haven't done maths through to Year 12 (and) don't understand fractions and percentages properly themselves".

Ms Fishburn argues that focusing on OP scores (soon to
be ATAR) distorts the real picture of the beginning teacher workforce. Reason being, she says, is the average age of graduate teachers is 28, meaning they are likely to have a career behind them or perhaps another degree. They might also have had several gap years, stuffed around  switching courses,'Or taken longer than usual to complete their teaching qualifications.

Don't get me wrong - life experience is valuable, but it shouldn't excuse academic mediocrity or underperformance.

In Finland - a much stronger performer than Australia in PISA international benchmarking - all teachers hold a master's degree.

Teaching polls as Finland's most admired profession, and you can't just walk into an education degree. You have to be the cream of the crop. This is how it should be.

As Peter Goss, director of the Grattan Institute School Education Program, told the Courier-Mail yesterday: "Teaching is a complex job. It requires strong cognitive abilities as well as the  emotional skills to relate to the  children, but unfortunately the academic backgrounds of new teachers has been dropping for 40 years and has continued to drop even over the last decade."

  Lowering the bar to address teacher shortages - which is partly why an OP17 is  considered adequate - will not  attract high achievers.  What will, however, is not an easy fix. It requires a major shift in how we, as a society, view the value of education and, in turn, respect, train and remunerate teachers.  Kids deserve the best educators - those who combine academic proficiency with "soft" skills such as creativity, communication and empathy, but as it stands now, that boils down to sheer luck.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 18 January, 2020



1 comment:

C. S. P. Schofield said...

I never thought that the 'student' protesters we are plagued with were a majority. Protest has become a fashionable hobby, and like most hobbyists the Protesters are crashing bores on the subject of their favorite pastime.

Viewed as a hobby, the endless cycle of protests makes more sense. It's like Civil War reenactment; it doesn't actually accomplish much, but it is totally engaging for the participants. And like most hobbyists, the Protesters have facile arguments for why their hobby vastly improves the world. Stamp and coin collectors say their hobby teaches and preserves history. Protesters say they are opposing War, or saving the planet, or something similar. The cold truth is, the Protesters enjoy gathering with like-minded people, making a fuss, and wrapping themselves in the faux moral superiority of the Cause Du Joure.

They're like Shriners, minus the fashion sense.