I remember how it was -- JR
The Crash and Burn of Credentialism
The word credentials is derived from Latin for “believe” as in “Credo in unum deum” meaning “I believe in one God.” To have credentials is to have credibility, which is to say that people can and should trust you.
We saw this throughout the pandemic. If you did not have the right piece of paper—if you just wanted rights and liberties—your opinions did not count. Actually, even if you did have the right piece of paper and you disagreed with the professional consensus, you also did not count. And through this method, only one opinion prevailed. Those willing to say what Anthony Fauci wanted said rose to the top. Those who disagreed were cast aside.
So the credentialed elites had their way. And here we are with results about which no one seems pleased. Indeed, the long knives are out for all those people in whom we believed.
Perhaps we need another word, because credentials are being discredited by the day. They have led us down a destructive path. This applies not only to epidemiologists but also economists and public health officials and nearly every other field of expertise, particularly that which tied its credibility to the government’s pandemic response, which has ended in calamity for the world.
Politicians (Boris and Biden among the latest) are going down in flames but that’s just the beginning. Just as Henry Kissinger predicted on April 3, 2020, an aggressive response could and would lead to a wholesale loss of legitimacy for everyone involved. His warnings—born of his experience in watching Vietnam lead to a similar disaster—were ignored. Instead we ended up with his worst-case scenario: “a world on fire.”
I’ve earlier described the split in American political life as one between Patricians and Plebeians, recalling the ancient designations. One group rules and the other follows. This is not so much about ideology as it is control. To put a fine point on it, those who are ruled are fed up. They once trusted. They believed. They let their betters—those with credentials—have a go at it. And look at the mess they made!
It’s impossible to decouple the current economic and political crisis in America today from pandemic policy, which is why Brownstone Institute puts such emphasis on this topic at a time when both parties and most intellectuals want to pretend like it never happened. They are culpable, of course, so they wish to rewrite the history of our times as if the “public health measures” were perfectly normal and fine.
They were not. Their uselessness in mitigating disease was matched only by their brutality in dividing and demoralizing the population. The inflation of our times is directly caused by the pandemic response. The wild increases in public debt are utterly unsustainable. The educational losses are unbearable to contemplate. The health consequences of wrecked immune systems are more obvious by the day.
The ever-astute COVID-policy critic Alex Berenson has drawn our attention to a fascinating commentary that appeared in the New Yorker. The article is the usual attack on Ron DeSantis but it delves deeper and signals to the credentialed classes that something is very wrong:
When I asked Republican activists and operatives about the rise of the school issues, they told a very similar story, one that began with the pandemic, during which many parents came to believe that their interests (in keeping their kids in school) diverged with those of the teachers and administrators. As (Kevin) Roberts, the Heritage Foundation president, put it to me, parents who were in many cases apolitical “became concerned about these overwrought lockdowns, and then when they asked question after question, there was no transparency about them, which led them to pay more attention when their kids were on Zoom. They overheard things being taught. They asked questions about curricula. They were just stonewalled every step of the way.” The battles regarding the covid lockdowns, Roberts told me, opened the way for everything that came after. “This is the key thing,” he said. “It started with questions about masking and other aspects of the lockdowns.”
Both parties right now are trying to answer the question of how fundamentally covid has changed politics. “From 2008 to 2020, elections were decided on the question of fairness—Obama ’08, Obama ’12, and Trump ’16 were all premised on the idea that someone else was getting too much, and you were getting too little, and it was unfair,” Danny Franklin, a partner at the Democratic strategy firm Bully Pulpit Interactive and a pollster for both Obama campaigns, told me. But the pandemic and the crises that followed (war, inflation, energy pressures) were not really about fairness but an amorphous sense of chaos. “People are looking for some control over their lives—in focus groups, in polls, once you start looking for that you see it everywhere,” Franklin said.
Both parties had shifted, in his view. Biden had sought to reassure Americans that the government, guided by experts, could reassert its control over events, from the pandemic to the crisis in energy supply. Republicans, meanwhile, had focussed on assuring voters that they would deliver control over a personal sphere of influence: schools that would teach what you wanted them to teach, a government that would make it easier, not harder, to get your hands on a gun. A moral panic about gender identity might seem anachronistic, but it served a very current political need. Franklin said, “It’s a way for Republicans to tell people that they can have back control of their lives.”
Berenson comments:
The profound failure of lockdowns and now vaccines have woken many average folks to the dangers of bureaucratic overreach, expert overconfidence, and authoritarianism in the name of safety.
They took our rights. The media and public health authorities would like you to forget the closed playgrounds and shuttered malls and mask mandates of 2020. And the vaccine mandates of last fall. They want you to forget that for a while, the federal government tried to take the right to work from tens of millions of unvaccinated people. State and local governments went even further; and countries like Canada and Australia further still. UNTIL 10 DAYS AGO, CANADA DID NOT ALLOW UNVACCINATED PEOPLE ON PLANES—effectively curtailing their right to travel in a country that stretches more than 4,000 miles from British Columbia to Newfoundland.
And they took our rights FOR NOTHING.
That’s it. People not only want control back over their lives. They also demand control over their government, the control promised to us hundreds of years ago when modern political systems were forged with the primacy of freedom as a first principle. This is something we can believe in.
Whatever it is that the World Economic Forum is promising does not look especially impressive by comparison to the normal freedoms we took for granted. Indeed, we let the experts have a go at it and they created a monstrous experience for billions of people the world over. This will not soon be forgotten.
The younger generation was especially touched. They were locked out of dorms. They couldn’t go bowling. They couldn’t get a haircut. They couldn’t go to the movies. They saw family businesses wrecked, siblings and parents demoralized, and even churches shuttered. When they finally were allowed to move about again, it was only by covering their faces. Then the shot mandates came, which turned out to introduce more risk than reward. When people finally started traveling again, prices had nearly doubled. It is increasingly obvious that locking down for a virus was really about pillaging the public on behalf of a powerful elite.
It’s an outrage. The experience has shaped an entire generation, having taken place at the time when such experiences form an outlook that lasts a lifetime. The impact extends across all class, gender, language, and ethnic lines.
Notice too that things are not going in the direction that the credentialed lockdowners had hoped. Their censorship is not working, nor their media control, nor their intimidation tactics. They have been discredited.
We are looking for new ways to believe in something. Let’s just call it freedom. It’s not nearly as risky as putting our fate in the hands of the same gang that betrayed the multitudes in this last go around.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-crash-and-burn-of-credentialism_4588761.html
*************************************************How Covid-19 has dramatically increased the number of children who can’t read — “the worst educational crisis for a century”
When covid-19 first began to spread around the world, pausing normal lessons was a forgivable precaution. No one knew how transmissible the virus was in classrooms; how sick youngsters would become; or how likely they would be to infect their grandparents. But disruptions to education lasted long after encouraging answers to these questions emerged.
New data suggest that the damage has been worse than almost anyone expected. Locking kids out of school has prevented many of them from learning how to read properly. Before the pandemic 57% of ten-year-olds in low and middle-income countries could not read a simple story, says the World Bank. That figure may have risen to 70%, it now estimates. The share of ten-year-olds who cannot read in Latin America, probably the worst-affected region, could rocket from around 50% to 80% (see chart 1 on next page).
Children who never master the basics will grow up to be less productive and to earn less. Mckinsey, a consultancy, estimates that by 2040 education lost to school closures could cause global gdp to be 0.9% lower than it would otherwise have been— an annual loss of $1.6trn. The World Bank thinks the disruption could cost children $21trn in earnings over their lifetimes—a sum equivalent to 17% of global gdp today. That is much more than the $10trn it had estimated in 2020, and also an increase on the $17trn it was predicting last year.
In many parts of the world, schools were closed for far too long (see chart 2 on next page). During the first two years of the pandemic countries enforced national school closures lasting 20 weeks on average, according to unesco. Periods of “partial” closure—when schools were closed in some parts of a country, or to some year groups, or were running parttime schedules—wasted a further 21 weeks. Regional differences are huge. Full and partial shutdowns lasted 29 weeks in Europe and 32 weeks in subSaharan Africa. Countries in Latin America imposed restrictions lasting 63 weeks, on average. That figure was 73 weeks in South Asia.
Over two years nearly 153m children missed more than half of all in-person schooling, reckons unesco. More than 60m missed three-quarters. By the end of May pupils in 13 countries were still enduring some restrictions on face-to-face learning—among them China, Iraq and Russia. In the Philippines and North Korea, classrooms were still more or less shut.
Poorer countries stayed closed longer than their neighbours. Places with low-performing schools kept them shut for longer than others in their regions. Closures were often long in places where teachers’ unions were especially powerful, such as Mexico and parts of the United States. Unions have fought hard to keep schools closed long after it was clear that this would harm children.
School closures were also long in places where women tend not to hold jobs, perhaps because there was less clamour for schools to go back to providing child care. Many children in the Philippines live with their grandparents, says Bernadette Madrid, an expert in child protection in Manila. That made people cautious about letting them mingle in the playground.
Places where schooling is controlled locally have found it harder to reopen. In highly centralised France, President Emmanuel Macron decreed that all but the eldest pupils would return to school nationwide before the end of the 2020 summer term. It was the first big European country to do this. This gave other countries more confidence to follow. By contrast, decisions about reopening in places such as Brazil dissolved into local squabbles. In America a full year separated the districts that were first and last to restart properly.
In some countries the results were truly dire. In South Africa primary schoolchildren tested after a 22-week closure were found to have learned only about one-quarter of what they should have. Brazilian secondary-school pupils who had missed almost six months of face-to-face school did similarly dreadfully. A study of 3,000 children in Mexico who had missed 48 weeks of in-person schooling suggests they appeared to have learned little or nothing during that time.
Before covid19 governments in many developing countries were overlooking egregious failures in their education systems. Optimists hope that the pandemic could spur them to start fixing the problems. Schemes to recover lost learning could lead to permanent reforms. Never before has there been so much good evidence about what works to improve schooling at scale, says Benjamin Piper of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
https://blendle.com/i/the-economist/millions-of-wasted-minds/bnl-economist-20220708-9c42201fd70
**************************************************Australia: Private and independent schools awarded vast majority of $30,000 Ramsay Centre scholarships
Despite Leftist hatred of the subject, it looks like Western civilization courses attract a lot of takers. So much so that the demand greatly exceeds the supply of places. That in turn means that a high bar has to be set for students to get in. And that high bar consists of very good High School results. And good High School results are most common in the private school sector. So it folows that most admissions to such courses go to private school graduates. It is nothing strange or sinister
The vast majority of the generous Ramsay Centre Western civilisation scholarships have been awarded to private or non-government school students, with a top university now attempting to attract more public school applicants to the controversial program.
The centre says the $30,000-a-year scholarships, offered at the University of Queensland, University of Wollongong and Australian Catholic University in Sydney, give a much-needed “shot in the arm” to humanities in Australia.
Figures provided to the Herald show that at the University of Queensland, about 85 per cent of the 71 scholarship recipients over the past three years attended private or independent high schools. At the University of Wollongong, 71 per cent of the 93 recipients attended private or non-government schools.
The Australian Catholic University, which is not subject to NSW freedom of information laws, did not provide the full data on request and said a “public/private” school binary did not paint a fair and accurate picture of equality of outcomes.
The Western civilisation degrees, which are funded through a $3 billion bequest from healthcare magnate Paul Ramsay, are great books-style courses in which small groups of students study key texts from the Western tradition in depth. Up to 30 students a year at each participating university are offered the $30,000 annual scholarships for up to five years.
In 2018 and 2019, the centre was engaged in discussions to set up a base at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney. However, agreement on a proposed model could not be reached amid concerns about academic freedom and a backlash from some academics who claimed that the centre was trying to push a right-wing agenda.
Queensland University said the Western civilisation courses were now among the most competitive humanities degrees in the country, with required ATARs ranging from 95 to 98. It said the percentage of scholarship recipients was reflective of the number of applicants when comparing private/independent to public school data.
“To encourage greater representation from public schools, we are speaking with our current students from public schools to understand how we can better promote the scholarships and review administrative processes,” a spokesperson said.
“We will also have program ambassadors from public high schools to support this work. We have targeted engagement and outreach programs that prioritise public schools, and for regional schools, financial bursaries are offered for travel costs to attend.”
The university said of the scholarship recipients, 11 per cent were from regional Australia and 17 per cent identified as disadvantaged.
“It is sadly unsurprising scholarships are not being awarded or being promoted to those who would benefit from them most.”
National Tertiary Education Union president Dr Alison Barnes said the figures showed universities needed to review the selection criteria and processes around promoting the scholarships in public schools.
“It is sadly unsurprising scholarships are not being awarded or being promoted to those who would benefit from them most,” she said. “Irrespective of the course’s controversial curriculum, all scholarships should be available and made known to all students.”
A University of Wollongong spokeswoman said students enrolled in the course came from a broad mix of social and schooling backgrounds. In 2022, 37 per cent of the university’s scholarship recipients were from public schools, up on the three-year average of 29 per cent.
“UOW aims to attract high-achieving students from all backgrounds and all schools – whether public, Catholic or independent – to the course. We endeavour to make the course and the scholarships as widely known as possible among NSW high school students,” the spokeswoman said.
“We promote the bachelor of Western civilisation course in the same way we promote all other courses – via open days, discovery days, information evenings, career expos and other events, and by promoting it directly to schools and to students.”
A Ramsay Centre spokeswoman said the scholarship application process may, where appropriate, give preference to applicants who are disadvantaged or are from an underrepresented background.
“Our university partners continue to target engagement and outreach programs to public schools and lower SES students in line with their university policies,” she said. “We have always been keen to support three distinct programs at three distinct universities to ensure a diverse cohort of students have access to the wonderful opportunity the study of Western civilisation provides.”
“Having access to the scholarship makes a big difference to their ability to achieve their academic aspirations.”
Professor Robert Carver, director of the Western civilisation program, said most of its scholarship recipients came from Catholic schools where fees were “low to modest” and the student body was “rich in diversity of ethnic background”.
“About a quarter of our students are from outer suburban or regional areas and having access to the scholarship makes a big difference to their ability to achieve their academic aspirations,” he said.
“In all cases, we look at the totality of the person – our selection process (particularly the interview) gives us the scope to assess the potential of each candidate and the flexibility to take any mitigating factors or special circumstances into account.”
***********************************
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)
*******************************
No comments:
Post a Comment