I remember how it was -- JR
Sens. Cotton and Loeffler Ask AG Barr to Investigate 'Apparent Racial Segregation' on College Campuses
GOP Senators Tom Cotton (AR) and Kelly Loeffler (GA) wrote to Attorney General Bill Barr asking for a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into apparent violations of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on college campuses.
“I write to bring your attention to an alarming trend of apparent racial segregation in schools in the United States,” Cotton and Loeffler wrote. “These cases appear to violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in federally funded programs or activities. I urge the Department of Justice to investigate these and similar cases as part of our nation’s commitment to equality before the law.”
The pair of GOP Senators cited two recent incidents that raise alarms about violations of equality under the law:
“On September 8, the Center for Social Justice and Inclusion at the University of Michigan-Dearborn two virtual 'cafes,' or online discussion groups, that were segregated on the basis of race, with moderators also segregated on the basis of race...the University of Michigan appears to have created 'whites only' and 'non-whites only' events, in a manner reminiscent of the doctrine of racial segregation overturned by Brown v. Board of Education,” they tell AG Barr. “On August 7, the University of Kentucky’s Bias Incident Support Service hosted segregated training sessions for resident assistants, ‘one for RAs who identify as Black, Indigenous, Person of Color and one for RAs who identify as White.’”
Cotton and Loeffler point out that college administrators “rationalize” racial segregation activities “as a tool to further diversity.”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/reaganmccarthy/2020/10/23/cottonloeffler-school-bill-n2578664
Did You Know? The Ignorance of College GraduatesStudents are paying a higher price tag for college, but is the quality of their education also increasing, or at least staying stable? A lot of indicators suggest “no.”
During the George W. Bush administration, the Spellings Commission found evidence that “the quality of student learning at U.S. colleges and universities is inadequate and, in some cases, declining.”
In 2003, the Department of Education’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy found that only 31 percent of college graduates scored at “the proficient level” of reading. That number was 9 percentage points higher in 1992. Of the 2003 college graduates, 53 percent scored at the “intermediate level” and 14 percent scored at the “basic level.” Three percent of college students scored a “below basic” literacy level.
In 2008, 57 percent of college graduates failed a civic literacy exam put out by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. And a 2013 Gallup and Lumina Foundation poll found that only 11 percent of business leaders believed that college graduates are prepared for the workforce.
According to a 2013 study, fewer than 5 percent of college students knew the following: that Thomas Jefferson’s home is named “Monticello;” the name of the author of Brave New World; and that Madam Curie discovered radium or that Mozart wrote Don Giovanni. Additionally, compared with students in 1980, far fewer students knew that Paris is the capital of France.
Law school graduates also have poorer outcomes. According to the Bar Examiner, between 2007 and 2016, bar exam passing rates declined in most states.
The results of a 2017 Gallup survey show that only 42 percent of college alumni strongly agreed that they were challenged academically in college.
One of the most comprehensive studies on college student learning is detailed in the 2011 book Academically Adrift by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. The authors surveyed 3,000 students on 29 campuses.
After analyzing transcripts, surveys, and scores from the standardized test called the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), the researchers found that 45 percent of students demonstrated “no significant gains in learning” after two years of college. They also found that, compared to students from a few decades ago, today’s college students spend 50 percent less time studying.
The authors note that although students may be familiar with course-specific content and may graduate with a respectable GPA, many are nonetheless “academically adrift” because they are “failing to develop higher-order cognitive skills.”
As the findings of Academically Adrift suggest, students’ dismal learning outcomes may be connected in part to their poor study habits. Federal data show that college students don’t spend enough time studying.
In 2016, the Heritage Foundation analyzed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey from 2003–2014. The analysts found that the “average full-time college student spends only 2.76 hours per day on all education-related activities”—totaling 19.3 hours spent a week.
On a weekly basis, the average full-time student spends only 10.7 hours a week on research and homework—a number that falls far below the recommended number of study hours. It is recommended that students study two to three hours per credit hour per week. Since full-time students must take at least 12 credit hours per semester, they should be studying at least 24 to 36 hours a week.
Unfortunately, colleges are reluctant to track and release information regarding how much students learn in college. Former Stanford Graduate School of Education dean Richard Shavelson said that, for many schools, student learning is “less important than having a winning football team if you want to stay alive, in the scheme of things.”
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2020/10/did-you-know-the-ignorance-of-college-graduates/
Free Speech and Liberal Education–Two Endangered Pillars of SocietyFifteen years ago, American higher education was beset with serious problems, especially rising costs, politicization of the curriculum, the mania over diversity, and falling academic standards. At that time, however, few people would have said that among its problems was the threat to freedom of speech on campus.
But one scholar who did see that freedom of speech was coming under attack was University of Wisconsin professor Donald Downs. His book Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus was an alarm bell in the night. He saw that the forces of intolerance and repression were gathering strength.
Downs has now written a new book on this problem entitled Free Speech and Liberal Education: A Plea for Intellectual Diversity and Tolerance. He argues that each college and university ought to be an “intellectual polis” where people can study, teach, and research in an atmosphere of civility and respect. For most of our history, they were—but not so today. Intellectual freedom on our campuses is “embattled,” he writes.
At many institutions, we find “conspicuous displays of intellectual intolerance” by faculty and students. They have been “abetted by an ever-growing campus administrative state” staffed with people who “nourish anti-free speech thinking and activism.”
Among the many pieces of evidence Downs cites is the infamous riot at Middlebury College when political scientist Charles Murray tried to speak. A student mob forced Murray and the faculty member who was to serve as moderator, Allison Stanger, to flee, during which Stanger was injured badly enough to need hospitalization. That part of the Middlebury story is very well known. What is not well known (and equally disturbing) is the aftermath: some faculty members wrote a statement deploring the incident and supporting freedom of speech, but a majority of the faculty refused to accept it.
Another particularly troubling incident involved Northwestern University professor Laura Kipnis. She was attacked by her students for having written an essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education in which she argued that American campuses were in the grip of “sexual paranoia” and the new Title IX rules imposed by the Obama administration were unfair.
Those were reasonable positions and professor Kipnis supported her argument well. Nevertheless, she was accused by a group of her students of “harassing” them with her writing. The students were women who were so deeply invested in the idea that American campuses were so fraught with peril to females that to dissent at all was the same as “harassment.” And if that weren’t absurd enough, Northwestern’s administration sided with the students and subjected Kipnis to an investigation.
Downs laments that the culture of victimhood has become so deeply entrenched on our campuses that it is now dangerous to speak your mind. Scholars, he observes, are now afraid to publish criticism of ideas or books that might offend groups that have been conditioned to respond not with counter-arguments, but with official complaints, or worse.
Opinion surveys of students and faculty members with regard to free speech issues are also troubling. They show that support for free speech is declining among students and that about one-third of faculty members don’t think there should be any punishment for students who disrupt speakers.
One point that particularly disturbs Downs is the way the “heckler’s veto” has become a tactic that’s used by militant students against speakers who present arguments they dislike. Downs notes that the origin of the heckler’s veto was in the segregationist South; when speakers who advocated civil rights for blacks were harassed and shouted at by white opponents, law enforcement usually stepped in—but to arrest the speaker for “disturbing the peace.” Sadly, that’s how some college officials look at matters today. The problem is the outsiders who need to be suppressed for the “safety” of all.
Similarly, at many schools, officials have designated tiny “free speech zones” where students may speak their minds. Their excuse is that free speech is so troubling to some that it must be restricted, as if, Downs says, free speech were like some “contagious disease.” Of all places, colleges should be the most free from speech restrictions, but instead students and faculty members find themselves in “intellectual straitjackets.”
We have even reached the point where, in law school classes, professors have to refrain from bringing up certain topics (sexual assault, especially) because they might “trigger” sensitive students.
How did we get from robust free speech on campus to having to walk on eggshells lest some hyper-sensitive students complain that their feelings are hurt or that certain ideas make them feel unsafe?
Downs argues that much of the blame should be placed on UC-Berkeley professor Herbert Marcuse, a 1960s radical who maintained that free speech was in fact undesirable because it helped to keep what he regarded as bad ideas (such as private property, capitalism, limited government, etc.) in social dominance. What was necessary for progress, Marcuse said, was for those voices to be suppressed so that the claims of the “marginalized” groups could be heard.
It was a silly theory, but it hit the right notes with faculty and administrators who thought that their foremost task was to promote social justice. A great many of them have allied with “woke” students in trying to silence speech that questions anything about their agenda. Rather than teaching them knowledge and virtue, they pander to student passions.
One of Downs’ most telling arguments is that it takes courage to face challenging ideas. In a fair intellectual battle, you must be prepared to lose if you can’t defend your position, and if so, you need to either strengthen your case or change your mind. (A fascinating instance that our author brings to light is the way Justice Holmes changed his mind with regard to government restrictions on free speech in cases before the Supreme Court following World War I.) Too often, though, our educational leaders allow some students to “win” not through their brains, but through coercion. In that, Downs writes, they “are letting our young people down, as well as our republic.”
So, freedom of speech being “embattled,” what will help it emerge victorious? Downs points to several good tactics.
One of them is the phenomenon of independent centers on campus. They serve the crucial function of sheltering dissent from orthodoxies and widening the scope of the kind of diversity that really ought to matter—diversity of thought.
Downs observes that while you’d think a university’s lawyer would be familiar with First Amendment law, that’s often not the case.
Another tactic is for faculty members, even if greatly outnumbered, to fight against measures that would stifle free speech. Downs gives some inspiring examples. For instance, at Clemson University, a group of three faculty members fought successfully to defeat a draconian speech code that zealous, “social justice warrior” students were pushing. In another case, one of Downs’ former students single-handedly shot down a speech code at Northern Illinois University by pointing out to the university’s general counsel that when challenged in court, the code was sure to lose. Downs observes that while you’d think a university’s lawyer would be familiar with First Amendment law, that’s often not the case.
Most important of all, colleges and universities should teach their students about the importance of free speech and the need to guard it. Downs’ own course on the First Amendment at Wisconsin helped to protect free speech there. I would strongly recommend that other schools look for people (probably practicing or retired lawyers) who could teach that kind of course to their students.
That isn’t possible everywhere, but what is possible everywhere is for the administration to explain to incoming students the rules of academic discourse and the consequences for disregarding them. The University of Chicago has done that, and other schools ought to follow its lead.
And here’s one more good idea—stop force-feeding “diversity” to everyone on campus. Doing so does little or no good and emboldens the forces that want to dictate what others must believe. Downs argues that people will better learn about diversity naturally, from the “bottom-up” rather than pushing it in mandatory “training” sessions.
Free Speech and Liberal Education is a book that every educational leader should read.
What those officials have forgotten (if they ever knew it) was John Stuart Mill’s “human fallibility” argument, namely that because humans can be mistaken, it is imperative to allow all claims about truth and knowledge to be challenged. If they are true, they can only be strengthened by challenges.
Australian University to shift teacher training to postgrad diplomas
Back to the future. No more dummy teachers: Students with poor High School marks no longer admitted
The University of Technology Sydney has abruptly shelved its primary teaching degree, saying it was losing money and struggling to attract students because of government-imposed academic standards for trainee teachers.
The decision – which the university describes as a "pause" – comes as a new federal university funding scheme, beginning next year, reduces fees for education degrees to address a looming teacher shortage.
UTS' BEd (Primary) degree has been removed from the 2021 University Admissions Centre guide. Hundreds of students who listed it as a preference have been individually contacted to be told it is not available, multiple sources told the Herald.
The dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Professor Alan Davison, wrote to the school of education late last month listing the reasons behind the decision.
There was not enough interest in the degree, its ATAR was low compared with competitors, and the school of education was not generating enough high-visibility research, he wrote in an email seen by the Herald.
"There is continued impact on load [student numbers] from increasing federal and state standards requirements, [such as] those wishing to enter a teaching degree require a minimum standard of three Band 5 HSC results," the email said.
Professor Davidson’s email said UTS’s vice-chancellor and provost had asked him to take "prompt action" to pause the degree, and explore the possibility of offering a postgraduate primary education course instead.
"As you are aware, undergraduate teacher education at UTS has been a major loss maker, and that must be addressed with some urgency," he wrote.
Students studying the degree will finish it, and there will be a small first-year cohort next year of deferred and repeating students. The secondary education degree has also been cancelled with UAC, and will be offered as a masters degree.
A spokeswoman for UTS said the pause would allow a review of the course in the first half of next year, "leading to a decision on its ongoing viability," she said.
One in 10 trainee teachers fails required literacy and numeracy tests
The decision was made before the federal government’s changes to student fees passed the Senate on October 8. "The challenges facing the area predate, and are unrelated to, the recent government funding changes," the spokeswoman said.
Under those changes, student fees for education degrees will drop by almost $3000 to encourage more students to study teaching. However, the government will not match the amount of money universities will lose due to the lower fees, so teaching – like nursing and engineering – will attract less total funding per student.
Michael Thomson, the state secretary of the National Tertiary Education Union, said UTS was due to replace its existing primary teaching course with a new one in 2021. Staff had been working on that course for at least a year.
"They were quite shocked when the announcement came that they were putting it on pause," he said. "What does a pause mean? People are concerned that this decision was made a bit ad hoc."
Mr Thomson said staff found out about the change two days before voluntary separation applications closed. "If they’d had this information beforehand, it might have influenced what they did," he said.
Like many universities, UTS’s revenue from international students has been hit hard by border closures related to COVID-19.
***********************************
My other blogs: Main ones below
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
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://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
*******************************
No comments:
Post a Comment