Sunday, April 15, 2018



Fox anchors come under fire after they call a Houston teenager who was accepted to 20 colleges 'obnoxious'

Such exceptional results do speak of affirmative action, which is inherently obnoxious as a form of racism.  His apparently unhumble response was also in poor form.  So that would most likely be what drove the adverse comments

Anchor Holly Morris and contributor Sarah Fraser were having a discussion on April 3 about Michael Brown, the high school senior who was accepted into every school he applied to, including several top universities.

The two women criticized Brown for applying to so many universities, saying that he was depriving other hard-working students of spots at the schools.

'It's a little ridiculous that this kid applied to 20 [colleges] taking away a spot and basically wait-listing another kid,' Fraser said.

Morris replied: 'It's a little obnoxious because you can only go to one. You can only take one full ride, and you are taking a spot from someone else who worked really hard.'

Seventeen-year-old Brown has a 4.68 GPA at Lamar High School was accepted into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Northwestern, University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, Georgetown and Vanderbilt, receiving full-ride scholarships from them and every other school he applied to.

A NowThis video criticizing the piece - and cutting the anchor’s reaction with with Brown’s excitement upon learning of his acceptances - has been viewed more than 7.83 million times.

Fraser apologized for her comments on Saturday in a tweet and said had 'learned a lesson'.

'I don’t feel that way. I have apologized to Michael and he accepted my apology. Michaels [sic] accomplishments aren’t up for debate. I have learned a valuable lesson,' she wrote.

However, Morris remained more defensive and said that race had nothing to do with her opinion on the matter.

'I also said he is an amazing young man. This is not a racial issue. I would have the exact same opinion if the boy was white,' she wrote on Wednesday

SOURCE






Slutty sheep: Veteran academics warn college students are going off the rails

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio – Today’s college students are “situationally confused.” They have no room in their schedules for “intellectual curiosity.”

And their sexual promiscuity is practically the only part of their lives that their colleges refuse to police.

Two veteran academics who have diagnosed different plagues in modern higher education have little optimism for young people entering college for the foreseeable future, judging by their presentations to a conference this past weekend at Franciscan University of Steubenville, a conservative Catholic institution.

College students have no passions today and “aren’t trained to pay attention to the things they feel connected to,” former Yale English professor William Deresiewicz told the gathering on the “crisis” in American higher education at the Veritas Center for Public Ethics.

In fact, higher education has become “profoundly unintellectual” and student life has become about “accumulating gold stars,” said Deresiewicz, who publicly disavowed Ivy League education several years after leaving Yale.

The author of Excellent Sheep, which fleshes out his views on the failure of elite education, told the Franciscan crowd that most students nowadays think that being intellectual simply means getting good grades.

Deresiewicz explained that most students now engross themselves so much into learning the structural parts of their classes that they “don’t have time for intellectual curiosity.”

Students “can’t think for themselves because they don’t have time,” he said.

He began assigning A-minus grades to students whose papers simply checked all the necessary boxes for an A but didn’t add any real insight, while working with those students to help them find their own intellectual voice.

Deresiewicz recounted how a student once told him “‘I hate all my activities, I hate all my classes, I hated high school, and I expect to hate my job,’” and that she had accepted this as her reality.

Such students go into fields including law, medicine and finance because they assume it will yield a lucrative career, not because they actually have a passion for those disciplines.

“You might as well go to Wall Street and make a lot of money if you have nothing better to do,” he quipped.

Deresiewicz said there are “a large number of mentally smart, [but] situationally confused graduates,” too many of whom sign up for Teach for America because they see it as a next step after graduation. There’s nothing wrong with the nonprofit’s work, he clarified, but students use it as a crutch because they have no idea what they are actually going to do with their lives.

The former professor, who taught at Columbia and Yale before becoming a full-time writer in 2008, said “young people aren’t trained to pay attention to the things they feel connected to.” He said most of the students he had taught at Yale came there with a “passion for success” but no other particular goals.

In loco parentis – selectively enforced

A professor who made his name in 2005 by shining a light on the “anarchic and often dangerous sexual environment” on campus, meanwhile, warned that college students’ sexual behaviors are just as degraded as their intellectual undertakings.

Vigen Guroian, professor of religious studies in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Virginia, focused on the implications of “sexual libertinism” on college campuses in his talk.

His Christianity Today article “Dorm Brothel” launched a wave of attention for the professor, then teaching at Loyola College in Maryland. Readers flooded Guroian’s inbox with stories of their experiences with the collegiate sexual free-for-all.

Guroian said he wasn’t trying to shame Loyola into changing its policies on sexual activity by writing the article. He simply wanted to lament the destruction of courtship and marriage that those widespread sexual behaviors were causing.

“I believe that the college experience has an impact on the marriages our children make” and has probably affected the divorce rate, he said.

But rules were definitely on Guroian’s mind. He talked about his own experience living at a fraternity house as a UVA undergraduate, and the role that an institution has in policing its students’ behavior: “Whoever tells you that colleges aren’t practicing ‘in loco parentis’ is lying to you.”

But colleges only act in the place of a parent selectively, Guroian said: If colleges are policing alcohol and drug use, why aren’t they policing where and when students are in situations where they can behave promiscuously?

Historically, college has been where people often find their spouse, but “dating has taken a back seat,” Guroian said. “Where courtship languishes, marriage weakens.”

While much of Guroian’s talk was an indictment of student promiscuity and how “college is a parent-funded motel party,” the UVA professor made a startling claim about the debunked Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus.”

Guroian said the university preemptively hired psychologists and lawyers to defend itself from precisely the sort of allegations that would later form the basis of that story – that UVA turned a blind eye to a brutal gang rape in a fraternity house.

It wouldn’t matter if the accusation were true or not, he said: The university nonetheless was prepared to issue a swift and effective response, the essence of which would be “someone or something other than the university was to blame.”

Guroian also lamented the end of single-sex colleges as a “great tragedy,” claiming that many problems seen today would not exist if even just dormitories were single-sex. When he was a student in the 1970s, “no one thought unisex dorms was possible.”

He believes colleges are “unreformable,” and that any attempt at reining in the problem of sexual libertinism will only cause more problems. Guroian said he’s “dreading the idea” of his grandchildren reaching college age.

SOURCE






Australia: Deputy head to return to Trinity Grammar after 'unjustified' sacking

"Modern" administrators tried to fire a popular and dedicated teacher who did not share their shallow goals

Trinity Grammar's sacked deputy principal will return to the school next week after an independent review found his dismissal over cutting a student's hair was unjustified.

After weeks of unrest, the Kew private school offered deputy principal Rohan Brown his job back on Wednesday evening- an offer he swiftly accepted. "I want my job back," he told The Age, fighting back tears. "I am so proud of the Trinity community. It is a great profession and I adore the boys and parents."

The review by high-profile silk and former judge Ray Finkelstein, QC, and barrister Renee Enbom found that while deputy principal Rohan Brown's actions may have breached the school's code of conduct and constituted serious misconduct, his dismissal was unwarranted.

This was because principal Michael Davies had decided not to end Mr Brown's contract directly after the controversial hair cut incident and the school council had no authority to dismiss the popular teacher.

The findings will pave the way for a resolution to a chaotic chapter in the school's 115-year history.

School council chairman Robert Utter apologised to Mr Brown and said the school accepted full responsibility for a decision that had ultimately been deemed "wrong". "We would also like to extend sincere apologies to the wider Trinity community, with the original decision creating concern for many," he said in a statement. "The decision itself was not taken lightly at the time. It was based on an understanding of matters, which are now known to be different."

Maurice Blackburn employment law principal Josh Bornstein, who is acting for Mr Brown, said while it was unfortunate his client had been dismissed in the first place, he was pleased he was being reinstated. "Our client has always held the utmost respect for Trinity Grammar and its students, and he is very proud to be a part of the school community," he said. "He has only ever sought a fair process and he welcomes that an independent investigation has now confirmed that he should never have been dismissed from his role."

The review was commissioned by the school in March in the wake of an unprecedented backlash against its decision to sack Mr Brown.

Mr Brown's sacking last month thrust the Anglican school into an administrative crisis, with parents, students and alumni declaring they had no confidence in the school council or principal. There was a chorus of calls for the popular Mr Brown, who had worked at the school for 30 years, to be reinstated.

Student protests broke out in the schoolyard where children unfurled "Bring Back Brownie" banners, while their angry parents packed into town hall meetings and threatened to withhold their fees of up to $32,000 a year.

Some parents even paid for a truck with an electronic billboard to circle the school, airing messages calling for principal Dr Michael Davies and the school council to stand down.

Facing intense criticism from the school community, three school council members, including the chair, stood down last month.

Earlier this week the new school council chair, Robert Utter, opened nominations for an interim school council. He called for people with risk management, accounting and finance, legal, education, fundraising, wellbeing and welfare and infrastructure skills.

The Old Trinity Grammarians' Association criticised Mr Utter's announcement, saying it had undermined the role of the nominations committee, which has its own process for nominating to the school council.

The turmoil began brewing long before Mr Brown chopped a student's hair on photo day in February.

In December,  Old Trinity Grammarians' Association president David Baumgartner raised concerns with the school council chair and headmaster about changes to the school's culture. In a scathing letter, he accused the prestigious private school of being too preoccupied with high ATARS, fundraising and building projects.

SOURCE




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