Friday, October 16, 2020


They’ve Got to Get Rid of Western Civ—They Have To

For ten years I served on the GRE Literature Exam committee. The exam is one of the special subject matter exams separate from the regular GRE (with math, verbal, analytical sections), and several English departments require that applicants take it. Each year five of us would meet for several days at Educational Testing Service’s campus outside Princeton to pore over data on prior tests, review the performance of each question, and select new passages and craft new questions for the next administration.

During my tenure, five years of it as chairman, the number of departments in the United States including the test in graduate applications dwindled considerably. The consistent racial gap in scores was a problem for departments aiming to boost the admission of African American and Hispanic/Latino students.

And there was a substantive objection as well: The heavily white-male orientation of the test. Inevitably, nearly all authors of the passages we selected that dated before 1800 were white males. Given the comprehensive nature of the test—it has to cover literature written in English from Beowulf to the 20th century, as well as major works of world literature starting with Homer—we couldn’t avoid the racial imbalance. To do so would be to alter literary history.

Since the time I left the Committee five years ago, the test has only grown more unpopular, as you may expect. In fact, it’s doomed.

Throughout my involvement, I admired the design of the test for its breadth, and the staff members who managed our work were excellent. The test showed very well which test-takers possessed generalist knowledge of literary history and an analytical eye for literary language.

But impressive reading knowledge of great literature through the ages, which a high score confirms, doesn’t count much with English departments anymore. You can see that by checking out how many mission statements include anything about tradition, the canon, literary historical depth, and erudition.

Compare the frequency of those terms to the incidence of diversity and critical thinking and the preferences of the professors come through loud and clear.

The recent announcement by the University of Chicago English department that they will accept only those applicants interested in pursuing Black Studies shows how little they care about how much Medieval literature the students know.

The fate of the GRE Literature exam is the fate of the tradition it contains. The Woke Revolution demands it.

Several decades ago, one of the strongest movements in the humanities was “revisionist history,” a re-examination of the past that amounted to a Nietzschean “transvaluation of values.” The revisionists didn’t so much change the facts as they did the moral meaning of them. European explorers were not daring adventurers; they were greedy colonizers. Natives were not uncivilized peoples; they were dignified souls with a culture all their own. America was not a “city on a hill,” a beacon of freedom; it was an empire built on racism and conquest.

As it proceeded, their success in establishing a contrary party line on the West and American was astounding.

But there is a big difference between the revisionists of old and the Wokesters of today. The revisionists studied the history and culture of the West and of America and denounced them. The Woke ones denounce the West and America and do NOT study them.

The earlier leftist critics read old authors and exposed their bad social attitudes. The Woke critics say, “If those guys had bad attitudes, why should I read them at all?” The logic is clear to them. If American history and literature and art are packed with exploitation and bigotry, let’s not waste time with it.

The logic is clear to them. If American history and literature and art are packed with exploitation and bigotry, let’s not waste time with it.
I am not sure that this is what the revisionists intended. They took great satisfaction in de-mystifying and de-mythifying the past. It pleased the vindictiveness that sprang from their ressentiment, which itself grew from their unhappy consciousness of inferiority in the face of larger-than-life characters from the past.

But the younger leftists didn’t grow up in the shadow of the old-fashioned, reverent humanities. Their teachers were the revisionists themselves. They don’t feel the burden of the past in the way the previous generation did. They have no duty to “transvalue” Jonathan Swift (because of his misogyny) or the Founding Fathers (for allowing slavery). That work is already complete.

All that remains is to dispel them. Tear down the statues, replace 1776 with 1619, and promote contemporary writers, artists, and thinkers of color. The Woke generation doesn’t know very much about the past, but they have sufficient moral scruple to forget it, to judge it as white privilege and carry onward. To them, historical ignorance is no crime. On the contrary, a proud dismissal of a venal heritage is praiseworthy.

This is the natural next step in the decline of the humanities—the decline of culture.

The old New Left insisted on historical consciousness, the right and proper historical consciousness. Those revisionists insisted just as fervently as traditionalists did that young Americans read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, only with a different eye.

The Woke Movement isn’t interested. “Always historicize!” was a slogan of the 1970s and ‘80s, but it strikes 21st-century identity scholars and teachers as too academic, too much the way of the old system. They want action and change. That puts the traditional canon of Western civilization in the crosshairs of curricular revision.

Here is a pledge from the Syracuse University English Department explicitly outlining that intention:

In refusing the perpetuation of all structures and methods that harm and devalue the lives of Black people and People of Color, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ communities, we commit ourselves to examining our own departmental and programmatic structures, acknowledging our complicities and shortcomings, as well as strengths. To that end, we pledge to bring awareness and justice to our classrooms and to all of our wider communities by foregrounding racialized voices, experiences, and histories in our curricula, our pedagogies, and our practices of recruiting and retaining faculty and students of color. Through these forms of self-examination and action, we affirm our rejection of the normalization of racial violence and structural racism, and lend our voices and labor to the struggle for social and racial justice.

Oh, how the purpose of teaching has changed.

English professors are not charged with passing along the great tradition of Hamlet, Paradise Lost, and “Song of Myself.” No, they promise to “bring justice to our classrooms.” They are activists, social justice change agents, figures of “resistance, protest, and solidarity.” That puts Samuel Johnson and Alexander Pope well down the list of learning outcomes.

The 1940 AAUP statement on academic freedom warned teachers that they “should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subjects.” But activists have no patience with those restrictions. To them, the observance of such institutional limits on politics in the classroom only maintains an unjust status quo.

And to those students of a conservative or libertarian or classically liberal bent who worry about such tendentious teachers grading their papers, the response is: “Find another major.”

In the current climate, any professor who stands up in a department meeting to say, “We can’t do this—this is not what English is all about,” hears in reply, at best, “Oh, yes, it is now.”

The traditional literary canon is out, or at least the systematic study of it. The old call for more diversity on the syllabus sounds downright tepid to the Woke. They want a whole new discipline. English is “too white.” That’s the blunt problem, and it has risen to decisive status.



Reverse Racism Is Still Racism

Another Ivy League school is in legal trouble for race-based discrimination.

Whatever one thinks about affirmative action, this much is undeniable: It’s one of the most effective euphemisms ever created. If you disagree, try to come up with a sweeter sounding way to say “race-based discrimination.”

We’ll wait.

According to The Smithsonian, this politically charged term entered the presidential lexicon in 1961, when, in John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925, he called on government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin” [emphasis added].

Without regard. Thus, the affirmative action of 1961 has been turned completely on its head. For decades now, these discriminatory policies have taken from one group and given to another. And yet according to Princeton’s panicky president, things have only gotten worse.

They’ve gotten worse, too, for another Ivy League school — Yale — which the Trump Justice Department is now suing for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and for imposing “undue and unlawful” undergraduate admissions penalties on the school’s white and Asian applicants.

As Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff writes, “According to the complaint, Yale engages in racial balancing by, among other things, keeping the annual percentage of African-American admitted applicants to within one percentage point of the previous year’s admitted class as reflected in U.S. Department of Education data. The complaint alleges similar racial balancing with regard to Asian-American applicants. It also alleges that Yale injures applicants and students because its race discrimination relies upon and reinforces damaging race-based stereotypes, including such stereotypes against Yale’s racially favored applicants.”

When affirmative action is couched in terms of “righting wrongs” or “improving diversity,” a majority of folks tend to favor it. But, as the above description of the Yale lawsuit indicates, the more people know about a particular instance of affirmative action, the less they support it. Take, for example, what Gallup Senior Scientist Frank Newport wrote in 2018 about still another case of race-based Ivy League discrimination — this time at Harvard: “Gallup polls have shown that a majority — although not a super majority — of Americans favor the broad, conceptual idea of ‘affirmative action for racial minorities.’ Responses to this question are to some degree affected by the context in which it is asked, but our most recent updates show that 54% to 58% of the public favors affirmative action for racial minorities.”

That seems pretty solid support, doesn’t it? And the Pew Research Center’s numbers are even more impressive: 71% of Americans think affirmative action is a good thing.

Or do they?

When people are polled about affirmative action, context is everything. The Pew poll got that 71% number by asking about “affirmative action programs designed to increase the number of black and minority students on college campuses.” And when it’s put in those terms, affirmative action seems like a pretty noble endeavor.

But, as Newport admits, “The Gallup question does not define ‘affirmative action’ at all, leaving that to the understanding of the respondent. The Pew question doesn’t define the specifics of the affirmative action programs beyond saying that the result would be to increase the number of black and minority students on college campuses.”

What happens, though, when respondents are given some specifics? According to Newport, Gallup in 2016 asked about a then-recent Supreme Court decision involving the University of Texas, which was worded as follows: “The Supreme Court recently ruled on a case that confirms that colleges can consider the race or ethnicity of students when making decisions on who to admit to the college. Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision?”

The results? Just 31% approved of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding affirmative action, while a whopping 65% disapproved.

In short, folks generally favor affirmative action in the abstract, but they generally hate race-based discrimination in the real world. Yet these two terms are synonymous. And therein lies the awful power of a well-crafted euphemism.

SOURCE


American higher education caught in perfect economic storm

The COVID-19 pandemic has hit America’s colleges and universities like a category 5 hurricane. After a very tough spring and summer, campuses are doing their best to open.

Those that cannot have gone virtual, which has generated demands for refunds of housing, meal plan fees, tuition and other fees. These refunds in combination with COVID-19 related compliance and safety-related expenses and major investments in technology and training to go virtual have just added to the pain. The losses that schools incurred from the spring shutdowns were only partially offset from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act and additional funding from the federal government is questionable.

The refunds and additional expenses are being compounded with the loss of revenue from international students and students taking a gap year. Future revenue is likely to be impacted due to projected demographics showing domestic college-bound students down or flat for the next decade throughout most of the country.

Many larger schools rely on their football and basketball programs to generate the revenue that is needed to support their other sports programs. The loss of revenue from the cancellation of the NCAA basketball and baseball tournaments and a significantly reduced or eliminated football schedule has meant billions in lost revenue.

Very few schools have the reserves to deal with the financial deficits that they are experiencing and lie ahead. Smaller schools are at a particular disadvantage because they do not have the scale to spread these costs like their larger competitors, and average tuition has been increasing at more than two times the rate of inflation, so many schools have reached the limit of tuition that can be sustained. So cost cuts may be the only viable option.

Many schools have been attempting to reduce costs by deferring maintenance on their buildings. According to JLL (a leading international real estate advisory firm), the average school has more than $123 per square foot of deferred maintenance and that number is expected to grow. Donors love putting their names on new buildings but have little interest in providing new roofs or HVAC systems, so these costs will continue to burden future cash flows.

Many schools with historic campuses are located in small towns that have lost employers over the years that provided the local tax base to help support these community pillars. Many of these smaller schools have excellent programs and educate students that become the teachers, nurses, local business entrepreneurs and other skilled positions these communities and America desperately need.

Unlike their larger competitors, smaller schools also have smaller alumni bases to fund endowments needed for capital improvements, upgrades and future capital expansions. Lastly, higher education institutions of all sizes worry about the trending occurrence of litigation, with COVID-19 claims and issues of moving to virtual academic delivery generating even more claims.

Houses in good school zones sell in a flash

This is a case of a virtuous circle. Success feeds on success. Schools that already have good students and teachers attract parents who are very concerned about that and have the money to buy in to a place where their children will be well treated.

And because the school is a good one, that will push prices up in its area as so many people want in.

And a school with well-off parents will generally mean that the parents will be of higher IQ -- and high IQ parents tend to have high IQ kids, So that will keep the school results and standards up -- thus making the school and its area ever more attractive


Parents desperate to get their kids into a good public school have taken to sleeping in swags overnight in the hope of landing a coveted spot.

But it has never been cheaper to buy a house inside a sought-after catchment zone thanks to low interest rates, government incentives and flat house prices.

However competition is fierce, with one house in a sought-after catchment zone going under contract in less than 24 hours.

On Tuesday night, about a dozen parents camped outside the gates of Pimlico State High School, one of Townsville’s top performing schools.

The school, like many other top state schools in the city, is the subject of an Enrolment Management Plan (EMP), meaning the number of students accepted from outside of its catchment area is strictly capped.

Students living within the catchment zone are automatically guaranteed a place at the school.

A five bedroom fixer upper at 35 Latchford St was listed on a Thursday and under contract the following day, snapped up by a family with young children.

To put that in perspective, the median days on market in Townsville is 84, according to the latest data from realestate.com.au

Listed for $270,000 negotiable, it was sold by Sibby and Lucy Di Bartolo of John Gribbin Realty, with the contract due to settle today.

“There was a lot of interest in it, from first home buyers and families,” Mr Di Bartolo said.

“Buyers are keen to get their kids into that school (Pimlico) but the suburb also offers affordable houses.

“I wish I had 10 more like it because a lot of people missed out.”

A few doors down is 17 Latchford Street, a five bedroom Queenslander on a 971 sqm block.

It is listed with Julie Mahoney of Ray White Julie Mahoney and will go under the hammer on October 26.

One of its key selling points is the fact it is located within the school catchment.

“Being located in a good school catchment can be a huge drawcard for buyers,” Ms Mahoney said.

“And we have had huge interest in this property, mostly from families and young couples planning for the future.”

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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)

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