I remember how it was -- JR
Anti-Israel Protests Help Diagnose the University’s Ailment, But It May Be Too Late for a Solution
Machiavelli observes in “The Prince” that politics presents challenges akin to those physicians sometimes face: “ … in the beginning of the illness it is easy to cure and difficult to recognize, but in the progress of time, when it has not been recognized and treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to recognize and difficult to cure.”
So too for higher education in America: At this late date, our universities’ dysfunction—and the damage to the nation it has wrought—has become easy to recognize, but curing the dysfunction has become difficult.
The Hamas jihadists’ Oct. 7 atrocities in southern Israel may have provoked a watershed moment for higher education in America. Student and faculty expressions of solidarity with the mass murderers, university administrators’ initial confusion and missteps, and the eruption of antisemitism on campus compelled many who have long averted their eyes to confront our universities’ role in fanning the flames of division and discord.
However, since most university administrators, professors, wealthy donors, left-of-center commentators, and politicians of both parties have allowed the dysfunction to progress for decades without calling higher education to account or warning the public, only dramatic and costly interventions provide hope at this point of remedying the cluster of pathologies ravaging America’s universities.
Evidence that it is now permissible to speak in polite society about the dire state of our universities comes from The New York Times opinion page. Since Oct. 7, the Times has published several pieces declaring that our universities have gone badly astray and proposing measures to repair them.
These opinions are welcome, but tardy by several decades. They fail to identify the chief problem. They ignore the principal obstacles to reform. They propose reforms that provide the equivalent of Band-Aids for gaping wounds and shattered limbs. And they overlook the mainstream media’s complicity in largely ignoring, downplaying, or dismissing repeated warnings extending back a quarter century and more—largely, but not exclusively, from conservatives—that our universities undermine the public interest by attacking free speech, eviscerating due process, and hollowing out and politicizing the curriculum.
On Oct. 16, in “The Moral Deficiencies of a Liberal Education,” Ezekiel Emanuel proclaimed, “We have failed.” As vice provost for global initiatives and professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, Emanuel sees the failure as personal and professional: The transformation of our universities into boot camps for inculcating progressive opinions about social justice and disdain for other views proceeded under his watch.
Students blaming Israel for Hamas’ massacres and praising the terrorists “have revealed their moral obliviousness and the deficiency of their educations,” stated Emanuel. “But the deeper problem is not them. It is what they are being taught—or, more specifically, what they are not being taught.” Universities “have failed to give them the ethical foundation and moral compass to recognize the basics of humanity.”
A bioethicist, Emanuel calls for a two-course ethics requirement, and, more generally, the restoration of a curriculum built around required courses (he doesn’t say which ones).
Professors must cease their widespread dereliction of duty, he adds, which consists in refraining from challenging students’ opinions for fear of discomfiting or offending them. The aim is to rebuild undergraduate education “around honing critical thinking skills and moral and logical reasoning so students can emerge as engaged citizens.”
Emanuel’s measures move in the right direction but are inadequate to the challenge because they overlook how a proper liberal education itself furnishes and refines minds and provides an ethical foundation and moral compass.
The center of liberal education in America must consist in the study of the principles of freedom—moral, economic, and political—on which the nation is based and the constitutional structure and virtues of mind and character through which they are institutionalized and preserved.
Since those principles and virtues have a history, the broader Western civilization of which they are a part must also be studied. And since Western civilization revolves around the tension between individuality and our shared humanity, liberal education includes study of other civilizations.
On Nov. 8, in “How Are Students Expected to Live Like this on Campuses?” New York Times editorial board member Jesse Wegman observed that the numerous instances “of abhorrent speech by students and faculty members, mostly aimed at Israel, Jews and even Jewish students” raised pressing questions of free speech.
“How should a university respond,” asked Wegman, “when members of its community express sentiments that are at odds with the values the school is trying to inculcate, not to mention with human decency?” His answer was good insofar as it goes. “Speech should be presumptively allowed, as a basic principle of free inquiry and academic debate,” he asserted, while drawing the line at expression that concretely threatens, harasses, or incites to violence.
But are university administrators and faculty members disposed to vindicate free speech? Are they competent to draw the necessary lines? Are they prepared to face the mob? Wegman skirts these questions.
He acknowledges that universities have eroded free speech on campus, not least by instituting speech codes and by affirming campus orthodoxies on controversial political questions. His principal recommendation is mandatory free-speech training for first-year students to build “a culture of basic respect and listening.” But who will educate the educators?
Having undermined respect for others and the art of listening by presiding over—or silently acquiescing in—the curtailment of dissenting speech for more than a generation, the current crop of administrators and professors seems ill-suited to fashion and implement free-speech training.
Moreover, free speech is best learned not by didactic lectures and seminars but by practicing it in the reasoned consideration of competing ideas with those capable of challenging one’s assumptions and arguments. But where are the professors who can lead such conversations? Which faculty members remain capable of understanding their side of the argument because they understand the other side?
On Nov. 16, in “Universities are Failing at Inclusion,” Times columnist David Brooks also took grim, post-Oct. 7 realities as his point of departure: “Jewish students on America’s campuses have found themselves confronted with those who celebrate a terrorist operation that featured the mass murder and reportedly the rape of fellow Jews.”
Brooks blamed higher education for betraying its mission. “Universities are supposed to be centers of inquiry and curiosity—places where people are tolerant of difference and learn about other points of view,” he wrote. “Instead, too many have become brutalizing ideological war zones.”
“How on earth did this happen?” asked Brooks, who mentioned that he has “been teaching on college campuses off and on for 25 years.” He faulted “a hard-edged ideological framework that has been spreading in high school and college, on social media, in diversity training seminars and in popular culture.”
Although he said the framework lacks a name, it reflects a postmodern progressivism. It holds that group identity is more important than shared humanity; the fundamental social and political distinction is between oppressors and oppressed; a person in one group cannot understand a person in another; racism and bigotry are endemic to America; principles of freedom—free speech, due process, meritocracy—are tools of oppression; and affirming these dogmas of postmodern progressivism takes precedence over acquiring knowledge and developing intellectual independence and integrity.
It is not feasible, Brooks argued, to jettison the deeply entrenched campus diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies that divide people into racial and ethnic groups, give preferential treatment based on group membership, and exclude dissenting views. Instead, he advocated the teaching of true diversity grounded in the remarkable achievements of American pluralism.
To help students understand that they “live in one of the most diverse societies in history” and prepare them to cooperate with others from different backgrounds and with alternative perspectives, courses should “explore diversity, identity and history from a pluralistic framework” and assign “a range of books on the social and moral skills you need to see people across difference.”
Brooks rightly espouses study of diversity in America and the means of preserving and enriching it, but he makes the same mistake as Emanuel and Wegman. All three suppose that special classes—on moral reasoning, free speech, and diversity—will provide an antidote to our universities’ ills.
Liberal education is itself the best means available for cultivating toleration and civility, virtues conspicuously lacking on campus but essential to freedom and democracy. The sciences and the social sciences mustn’t be neglected. But serious study of literature, history, and philosophy—at once questioning and rigorous, patient and probing, and determined to understand before criticizing or extolling—provides an incomparable tutorial in the complexities and continuities of morality and politics, the competing conceptions of the good life, and the basic rights and fundamental freedoms that are inseparable from human dignity.
That campus dysfunction is now easy to recognize but difficult to cure does not revoke the obligation to do what is in our power to repair America’s colleges and universities by providing students with the liberal education they need and deserve.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/11/27/campus-dysfunction-easy-to-recognize-difficult-to-cure
**************************************************Eliminate Federal Intrusion in Education to Reduce Budget Deficit
Earlier this month, Moody’s Investors Service slashed its outlook for the United States’ credit rating from “stable” to “negative” pointing to economic risks including high interest rates, the government’s steadily growing debt and political polarization in Washington.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, updated projections show a federal budget deficit of $1.5 trillion for 2023. By eliminating the federal government’s intrusion in education, annual government spending could be reduced by $725.8 billion. Not only could Congress dramatically cut the deficit, reducing debt in the long run, they could demonstrate political will and cooperation by collaborating to remove the unconstitutional federal encroachment on local education decisions.
The time is right. Parents are fed up with indoctrination in government schools and citizens are suffering from inflation, high interest rates and inexcusable debt accumulation.
Serious conversations are happening throughout the country about the legitimate and effective role of the federal government in education. Many on both sides of the political aisle agree the federal government has become unreasonably intrusive and ineffective in education policy and practice. Some states are even beginning to look at weaning themselves off the federal dole.
Spending for education in the United States has risen dramatically in recent decades. Federal elementary and secondary discretionary spending under the US Department of Education (USED) rose to $692 billion in 2022. This is in addition to the $9 billion in spending by the Department of Health and Human Services for Head Start and the Department of Agriculture’s $22 billion for Free and Reduced Lunch. The Department of Education has an administration budget of $2.8 billion and employs over 4,000 people.
Despite dramatic increases in federal intervention and funding in the public education system since the 1960s, educational achievement has not improved. The most widely used measure of school achievement are scores from National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which shows no significant change. Efforts to improve educational outcomes for low-income children have also been expensive and unproductive. Even the federal college grant and loan programs have been ineffective for students. The evidence is inarguable, the federal government’s intervention in education has been a dismal failure.
Moreover, the majority of nefarious pedagogies originate from the federal government and are incentivized with federal funding. For example, in 2010, the Common Core Standards were forced on states through “Race to the Top” federal grants. In 2021, to receive the third round of “COVID Relief” funding, state education agencies had to certify they would advance “equity and inclusion” (a.k.a. Critical Race Theory). Last year, the Biden Administration threatened to withhold “Free and Reduced Lunch” funds from states who didn’t have unisex bathrooms.
Although this experiment with federal control of local public schools has gone on for half a century now, it has failed. We need to stop treating children like guinea pigs in some social engineering laboratory and start embracing children as human beings to be supported and inspired to achieve their own dreams and aspirations. We must return America's education to its proper local roots and restore parental authority over their children's education.
United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) is a nonprofit, nationwide coalition of state leaders focused on restoring local control of education by eradicating federal intrusion. USPIE’s Blueprint to Close USED and End All Federal Education Mandates explains the elimination of federal intervention can be achieved in five steps: 1) Send all program management and funding to the states including Pell Grants for college. 2) Repeal all laws permitting federal intervention in K-12 education starting with ESSA. 3) Privatize college loan programs through savings & loan institutions. 4) Eliminate all offices and divisions in the US Department of Education and related spending. 5) Reduce federal tax collection, shifting education revenue responsibilities entirely back to the states.
America needs to return to a culture where parents, empowered with the authority to choose what and how their children learn, are the undisputed primary educators of their children; where local schools operate in support of families, and where education is unencumbered by federal mandates.
Any member of Congress serious about returning federal spending to sane levels and saving our country from destruction through the indoctrination of children should refer to the USPIE Blueprint for a detailed plan to dismantle federal intrusion in education.
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‘Australia’s long-term slide’ in reading, maths and science, PISA results show
Being taught ideological rubbish instread of a real education shows
Australian teenagers have fallen almost two full academic years behind students who went to school in the early 2000s, with nearly half of pupils failing to reach national standards in maths and reading in the latest round of international tests.
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results reveals the huge achievement gap between the richest and poorest students is continuing to expand after a $320 billion school funding deal was signed more than four years ago.
Despite the lacklustre results, Australia regained its place in the international top 10 for the first time since 2003, but testing authorities say that is largely due to the decline of other countries, rather than significant local improvement.
Singapore was the highest-performing country in all subject areas in 2022, with a mean score of 575 points in maths, 561 in science and 543 in reading, compared with Australia’s 487, 507 and 498.
In NSW, more than 20 per cent of students are now classified as low performers, meaning they do not have the skills and knowledge to allow them to adequately participate in the workforce.
Overall, the proportion of low performers in maths, reading and science has doubled since 2000, while at the same time the number of high-performing students has fallen.
The findings underscore glaring inequities in the nation’s education system: 15-year-olds from disadvantaged families lag their advantaged counterparts by five years of schooling. Indigenous students are around four years behind non-Indigenous students.
Lisa De Bortoli, a co-author of the Australian PISA report, said for NSW students there was no significant change in maths and reading results since 2015. However, science results improved across the state between 2018 and 2022.
Overall, the latest PISA results – the first since the COVID-19 pandemic – show the nation’s education system has stagnated since the last report was released in 2019.
Australia was now below only nine other countries in mathematics – compared with 22 in 2018 – and eight for science and reading, De Bortoli said. Those countries include Singapore, Macao, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Estonia and Canada.
It was above the OECD average for all subjects including maths after failing to exceed the figure in 2018. But De Bortoli said the OECD average for both maths and reading had fallen significantly.
“While it’s encouraging that Australia’s results have stabilised, it’s important to recognise that our position in the top 10 is largely due to the performance of other countries dropping below ours,” she said.
“We’ve got almost half of our 15-year-olds, they’re treading water … in terms of having those elementary skills that they’re expected to have at an age when they should be swimming.”
Andreas Schleicher, OECD director for education and skills, pointed to Ireland as one country that had outperformed Australia over time because teaching was a prestigious profession, and they had less focus on class size.
When it came to high performing Asian countries, Schleicher said there was less freedom for the teacher to interpret the curriculum, and parent involvement in education varied.
“One of the factors that may have contributed to Australia’s long-term slide is the loss in [the academic] demand on students … It’s become easier for students to be successful, and that’s not what you see in East Asia.”
“High performing systems … take [parents] as co-constructors of learning opportunity. They’re very active in making sure that parents do play their part.”
Schleicher said students who report feeling anxious without devices near them have lower maths results, and that school-wide bans on smartphones at school was the only effective way to reduce technology distraction in the classroom.
The latest results show more than 40 per cent of Australian students in the lowest socioeconomic quartile were low performers in maths. About 12 per cent of Australian students performed at a high level in mathematics, compared with Singapore’s 41 per cent.
“Students from the lowest socioeconomic background are six times more likely to be low performers than their more advantaged peers,” De Bortoli said. “We also have 10 per cent more low-performing students compared to when testing began in 2000.”
“Every child should have the right to develop strong literacy and numeracy skills, and the data shows we aren’t doing that,” she said.
Australia’s students are now the equivalent of about four school years behind in maths compared with students in the world’s top-performing country, Singapore, and almost three behind in science and more than two in reading.
PISA is normally held every three years to test the higher-order thinking skills of 15-year-olds. In 2022, tests were taken by about 690,000 students from 81 countries, including 13,437 from Australia.
Australian students’ performance has fallen over past two decades, with maths dropping 37 points since 2003, science falling 20 points since 2006 and reading down 30 points since 2000. De Bertoli said 20 points is roughly equal to one year of learning.
Australian girls suffered their biggest drop in reading, falling half an academic year behind compared to their peers who sat the test in 2018.
Just over half achieved the national proficient standard: 51 per cent in maths, 58 per cent in science and 57 per cent in reading.
Students of migrants and those born in other countries outperformed Australian-born students in maths and reading. In both those domains, there were fewer Australian-born than foreign-born children who achieved national proficient standard.
When school and student-level socioeconomic background is factored in, both independent and government schools perform better than Catholic schools in maths and science. For reading, results showed there was no advantage for independent students, but government students performed better than Catholic students.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said the results highlighted the need to fix the funding and education gap in Australian schools.
“Students from poor families, Indigenous students and students from the regional areas are more likely to need additional support,” he said.
“The PISA assessment highlights that Australia has a good education system, but it can be a lot better and fairer.”
Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe said government funding for public schools had increased by 17 per cent between 2012 and 2021 but funding for private schools had risen by double that amount in the same time.
“Unacceptable achievement gaps between students from different backgrounds and locations are a clear reminder we don’t have an equitable education system that can meet the needs of every child,” Haythorpe said.
Glenn Fahey, research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, said the halt to a long-term slide in international rankings may “bring some relief, but there’s also no cause for a victory lap”.
“For all the talk of funding and equity as goals of the system, our approaches to these challenges don’t appear to be working.
“The best that can be said for one of the world’s biggest influxes of school funding is that results have flatlined. And, despite concern for lifting the system’s equity, the richer are getting smarter and the poor are falling further behind. For all the Gonski ‘good-feels’ about equity, we’re not making any headway in raising educational opportunity,” Fahey said.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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