I remember how it was -- JR
America’s Education Crisis Is a National Security Threat
Since the end of World War II, the world’s population has not only gotten vastly bigger; it has also become vastly more educated. In nearly every country on earth, the total number of years that citizens have attended school has grown faster than the population itself, and the number of college degrees conferred has grown even faster. Although population growth is now slowing almost everywhere (and depopulation is an emerging reality for some countries), the overall pace of educational expansion will remain much faster than natural population growth as far into the future as a demographer’s eye can see.
Education is a crucial component of human capital and, by extension, of national might. A better-educated citizenry means a more productive economy and thus greater military potential. But because the educational explosion of the last 70 years has been uneven—some countries have made greater strides than others, and the pace of progress has varied over time—this dramatic transformation hasn’t just increased the overall size of the global economy. It has also shifted the distribution of economic potential among countries, including great powers.
Comparatively speaking, Western nations, including the United States, have been the biggest losers in this great reshuffling of educational and economic heft, as we detail in a recent report for the American Enterprise Institute. During the Cold War, the United States was the uncontested education superpower; Americans enjoyed the world’s highest levels of educational attainment and accounted for far more of the world’s highly educated workforce than any other country. But that epoch is now history. An increasing number of countries are overtaking the United States in educational attainment, when measured by mean years of schooling, and it will soon cede its first-place ranking in college-educated workers to China. Sometime in the next two decades, India may also surpass the United States in total numbers of working-age men and women with higher education.
Such changes reflect major shifts in the international environment that have occurred over the past generation and foreshadow still others that will shape the world order in the decades ahead. Whether the United States can weather these changes without forfeiting its position of economic and military dominance will depend in part on its ability to recognize and address the ominous stagnation in its classrooms and lecture halls. That will require thinking creatively about partnerships and alliances with tomorrow’s centers of educational excellence—whether in Asia or in the United States’ backyard—and getting serious about reversing the unwelcome trends in U.S. education that policymakers have overlooked for more than a generation.
SMARTER WORLD
Scholars and strategists have long understood that nations draw strength from their populations. Until recently, however, most have focused on head counts: numbers of people, broken down by age and sex, inhabiting different countries or alliances. But that simple approach makes little sense in a world where people from some countries have much greater economic potential than people from others. Switzerland has fewer residents than Burundi, for instance, but its GDP per capita is more than 90 times greater.
In an era when a single person’s productivity in one country can be greater than that of 90 people in another, human productivity will increasingly affect the global balance of power. Productivity, in turn, is driven primarily by improvements in human capital—in health, knowledge, skills, and other intrinsically human factors. Rapid but sharply differential increases in human capital can open wide productivity gaps between countries, including between great powers, in just a few decades. One of the most important ingredients in human capital is education: more specifically, the sheer quantity of schooling received by national populations. Overwhelming evidence shows that more schooling means more productive potential at the national level, regardless of how high or low a nation’s baseline level of educational attainment.
Two projects have sought to chart the postwar educational explosion around the globe, and their findings offer clues about its effect on the international balance of power: the Human Capital Data Explorer, published by the Vienna-based Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Human Capital, and the Barro-Lee Educational Attainment Dataset, run by Harvard University’s Robert Barro and Korea University’s Jong-Wha Lee. The Wittgenstein research provides estimates of the world’s overall demographic and educational profile from 1950 to 2020, with projections up to 2100, while Barro and Lee’s work offers educational attainment estimates for 146 countries from 1950 to 2040. The assessments of these two projects are close but not identical, and we rely on data from both.
Educational progress over the last 70 years has been profound. The global share of adults who have received no schooling dropped from about 45 percent in 1950 to about 13 percent in 2020, and the Wittgenstein Centre projects that that figure could fall to eight percent by 2040. Between 1950 and 2020, the mean years of schooling for people aged 15 and older worldwide steadily rose from 3.7 years to 8.8 years—almost a two-and-a-half-fold increase. Around the world, average levels of adult schooling in 2020 were nearly five and a half years above what they were in 1950. That amounts to a long-term pace of improvement of over 0.7 years per decade, a rate that is projected to continue at a slightly slower tempo over the next 20 years.
These advances have occurred despite significant headwinds created by the shifting composition of global population. In 1950, the world’s less developed regions—where educational attainment remains lowest—accounted for two-thirds of the global population; today they account for five-sixths of the world’s population and virtually all the population growth projected for the next two decades. The countries with the most rapidly increasing populations tend to be those with the lowest baseline levels of schooling, meaning that their weight in the total global composition is steadily growing—and pulling down the global average for education.
Worldwide, the average level of educational attainment is now slightly above a completed grade-school education.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/america-education-crisis-national-security-threat
***************************************************How Teachers Are Secretly Taught Critical Race Theory
In 2018 the Tredyffrin-Easttown School District near Philadelphia signed a contract with Pacific Educational Group, a California-based consulting firm. According to the school district’s website, the partnership’s purpose was “to enhance the policies and practices around racial equity.” The district assured parents in an online update last summer that no “course, curriculum or program” in the district “teaches Critical Race Theory.”
Benjamin Auslander didn’t buy it. The parent of a high schooler in the district, he wanted to see the materials used to train teachers. Mr. Auslander, 54, made a formal document request but was denied. Officials told him the materials couldn’t be shared because they were protected by Pacific Educational Group’s copyright. His only option was to inspect them in person—no copies or photos allowed. “What are you trying to hide?” he asked school board members at a meeting in December.
Mr. Auslander accepted the district’s offer and in February went to inspect the documents in person. When he tried to record voice memos on his phone about what he was reading a district official called it a copyright violation. According to a subsequent complaint filed by Mr. Auslander in federal court, the official threatened him “with civil and criminal liability” if he kept recording. The official then ended the meeting.
In April, Mr. Auslander sued the district. His argument? The First Amendment protects his right to access information about officials’ public activities and issues of public debate without retaliation. Pacific Educational Group declined to defend its copyright claim, and in June the judge in the case vacated a confidentiality order on the training materials.
Our examination of those materials indicates that Tredyffrin-Easttown staff are being trained in critical race theory.
Documents emailed from 2019 to 2021 by Pacific Educational Group to district administrators in advance of various training seminars cite critical race theory explicitly. A rubric dated Feb. 4, 2020, encourages participants to “Deconstruct the Presence and role of Whiteness” in their lives. A March 17, 2020, presentation lists “aspects and assumptions of white culture” in the U.S. Some are negative, such as “win at all costs,” “wealth = worth,” “don’t show emotion,” and in reference to food, “bland is best.” Others are seemingly universal principles such as “cause-and-effect relationships,” “objective, rational, linear thinking,” and “plan for future.”
That presentation also spells out the “5 tenets of critical race theory” to “better understand the critical intersection of race and schooling.” One tenet is the “permanence of racism,” or the idea that “racism is endemic to all our institutions, systems and structures” in the U.S. Another is “whiteness as property.” The “critique of liberalism” tenet argues that “colorblindness,” “neutrality of the law” and the “myth of meritocracy” must be “deconstructed.”
These tenets aren’t presented as abstract notions for faculty to consider, but ideas they’re meant to apply. School staff’s ability to use “critical race theory . . . to inform racial equity leadership and analysis of school policies, practices and procedures” is considered a sign of the successful “internalization and application” of Pacific Educational Group’s framework. And a chart includes “Critical Race Theory” as a step toward “Equity/Anti-Racism School Transformation Action Planning.” A Feb. 3, 2021, seminar is even titled “Using Critical Race Theory to Transform Leadership and District.”
Brian Elias, an attorney representing the school district, told us via email that these materials “were for District leadership team training only.” He insisted that materials “were not designed to train for classroom teaching” but merely to help district leaders understand “what Critical Race Theory is.” He added that “none of the training designed for core classroom teachers included a discussion of critical race theory.”
Does that mean no Tredyffrin-Easttown teachers attended Pacific Educational Group training that discussed critical race theory? Mr. Elias refused to say.
Information on the district’s website seems to show that they did. A 2020 update on the district’s racial equity work declares that five to eight teachers from each “building” in the district would attend Site Equity Leadership Team, or E-Team, training. The material quoted above was marked to be included in E-Team training.
Perhaps districts like Tredyffrin-Easttown think they can shoo parents away by making a distinction between teacher training and curriculum. But what is the point of teacher training if not to inform teachers on how they should teach?
Teacher training is “where a lot of bad things actually happen,” says Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, a nonprofit advocacy group. She says the group’s tip line hears often from frustrated teachers forced to endure training in woke concepts. Records requests and whistleblowers have uncovered staff training, including in Loudoun County, Va., and Rhode Island, that push “antiracism” ideology.
Tredyffrin-Easttown is far from the only district contracting with teacher-training organizations like Pacific Educational Group. Lawmakers in some states are pushing—with little success—to require schools to post their classroom and teacher-training materials online. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a transparency bill in December. A former teacher and principal, Mr. Evers was Wisconsin’s elected superintendent of public instruction for a decade.
Mr. Auslander is still fighting in court to prove that the Tredyffrin-Easttown school district violated his rights by denying him access to the documents and allegedly threatening him with liability if he recorded what he saw. The district maintains that its actions were justified because of the copyright asserted by Pacific Educational Group at the time. If Mr. Auslander gets a favorable ruling, it may help protect Pennsylvania parents from similar stonewalling by educators. If Tredyffrin-Easttown continues to make a dubious distinction between teacher training and classroom instruction, more parents may start to wonder exactly what it is the district is trying to hide.
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Australia: Leftist crap taught even in an elite school
Freedom of speech is an essential element of a modern, functioning Western society. It allows us to express opinions and ideas without interference or threat of reprisal. When healthy debate is encouraged, ideas are tested and we invariably achieve a better outcome.
As an Independent secondary school student, I see this right increasingly threatened both by peers and the school institution itself. More and more we are made to conform to a single popular belief on various fronts.
I am a white male. Sadly for me, history class has become less of a lecture on the fascinating events, people, facts, or lessons learned and is instead a very public shaming for the actions of our white male predecessors.
Being labelled as ‘privileged’ or as a ‘white colonist’ is not uncommon. In fact, racism is often the theme of different subjects – from the books we study in our English class, to the units and topics we learn in our history classes.
While a strong understanding of this topic’s long and dark history is necessary, it should not be wielded as a weapon against a particular demographic of students.
We are taught ‘you cannot be racist toward white people’. I am sure the Jewish under Hitler, the Irish under English Lord Cromwell, and countless others over the years may not completely agree with this line of thought. Yet to make even a slight suggestion of this can result in a hostile response from classmates or even be detrimental to grades and reports issued by the school and its teachers.
Feminism is also regularly at the forefront of class discussion and is often unfortunately used to promote a victim mentality.
Open discussion about this topic is frequently suppressed by both peers and the school, resulting in many concepts being presented through a biased lens where men are typically depicted as villains.
An example is the gender pay gap. A quick Google search will show that in 1969, the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission ruled that women should receive equal pay to men for work of equal value. Mentioning this indisputable fact will often lead to the label ‘misogynist’.
As with racism, there is no denying that women have lacked opportunity and privilege in the past. The origins of feminism are well-founded and it is important to understand the history, acknowledge and learn from our mistakes, then move forward together as a single community. Continuing to promote a victim mentality, especially amongst young and developing minds, results in division and dangerous movements such as the #KillAllMen hashtag that has been recently trending on Twitter.
Gender and sexual orientation introduce further complexity to school communities.
I’m sorry, you’re bi? Oh, and you’re pan? And you are non-binary? My apologies, I have used the wrong pronouns. They/them? I see, and singular they for you, ze/zem for you, and it/them for you. Understood. Oh, and you’d like me to learn your flags together with your pronouns? Okay… I’ll do my very best to remember those, together with the sexual, gender, pronoun, and flag preferences of my 150 other classmates.
But with the utmost respect, there may be occasion where I stumble. No… No… I’m not homophobic, biphobic, transphobic or enbyphobic. I was raised to lead with empathy and treat all humans with dignity and respect regardless of their identity. It is just that my maths, physics, and history also need attention at the moment, and unfortunately there are only so many hours to learn in the day.
Schools should provide an environment where young aspiring minds can openly and freely debate controversial cultural and political issues and have the opportunity to do so even in a non-mainstream way. However, Independent secondary schools have sought to push a single narrative to the detriment of many students.
Is this an attempt by the school to appear more progressive?
Is it for the fear of being ‘cancelled’?
While I am fortunate and grateful for my educational opportunity, it is nonetheless concerning to see such basic and fundamental freedoms gradually stripped away through no fault of our own.
The school community has become divided into conservative and progressive extremes. In reality, the best ideas and solutions are typically found somewhere near the centre after healthy debate. These groups must collaborate and work together – like a football team in which conservative defenders rely on what has worked in the past to staunchly protect the goal while creative liberal attackers attempt to find new and innovative ways to score.
Those students that do not bend to a single popular belief become ‘white privileged, misogynistic, -phobic’ in the mind of the school and in the eyes of their peers.
This leaves me wondering, are those now doing the labelling and marginalising any better than those they are targeting for historic misdemeanours?
https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/whats-it-like-to-be-a-male-student-at-secondary-school
***********************************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)
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