I remember how it was -- JR
The True Antidote to the Rot in America’s Universities
American higher education is reeling from a litany of well-deserved scandals, most recently from the congressional hearing on antisemitism last week, which pulled back the curtain to reveal the world’s oldest hatred cloaked in the language of “diversity” and “inclusion.”
Harvard President Claudine Gay’s hedging when asked to condemn antisemitism during the hearing and her new plagiarism scandal follow years of universities mandating COVID-19 masking and vaccines; the pay-to-play “Varsity Blues” scandal; and a decade of embarrassing scuffles over “microaggressions,” “trigger warnings,” and the cancellation of conservative speakers. The university has abandoned its fundamental purpose: the search for truth in an atmosphere of free inquiry.
America’s colleges and universities deserve opprobrium, and perhaps even a complete uprooting to start over again.
The Marxist ideology pitting the “oppressed” against “oppressors” has ravaged higher education, discarding the wisdom of the ancients in a destructive pursuit of intersectional one-upmanship that is poison not just to the pursuit of truth but to the foundations of the social order and prosperity we take for granted.
The antidote, however, is not a wholesale rejection of higher education but a return to the animating force that gives higher education its value—the artes liberales, or “liberal arts” education. Not liberal in the sense of the Left or the Right, but in the sense of equipping a person with the skills to enjoy and maintain freedom.
What Is Liberal Education?
Oxford professor and theologian John Henry Newman wrote that a liberal education entails a “process of training, by which the intellect, instead of being formed or sacrificed to some particular or accidental purpose, some specific trade or profession, or study or science, is disciplined for its own sake.”
The liberal arts trains students to contemplate the good, the true, and the beautiful, which Aristotle said was the highest end of mankind, and to articulate the truth once it has been discovered. The great thinkers of the West raised timeless philosophical questions that students should ponder, and the Western intellectual tradition laid the foundation for the freedom and prosperity we enjoy today.
Liberal arts involves embracing the roots of our civilization, studying them, questioning them, and learning from them. This kind of education can produce great reformers who are wise enough to know what to change without rejecting our heritage wholesale. It fosters intellectual curiosity, humility, and a resolve to change things for the better.
Even amid the rot of higher education today, diamonds in the rough like my alma mater, Hillsdale College, keep the liberal arts spirit alive, teaching students that pursuing truth is an end in itself and equipping them to learn from the rich tradition of education in the West.
Hillsdale knows better than to discard Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke in pursuit of a “racial justice” that sees these luminaries as building blocks in the structure of oppressive white supremacy. Hillsdale students learn from these thinkers, and if students ultimately reject their ideas, they have at least expanded their minds by seriously considering them.
Hillsdale seriously wrestles with the Western tradition and America’s heritage, teaching students to read the original documents and contemplate how they shaped the world around us.
While this kind of education may not be for everyone, it represents a good in itself, and America would be wise to preserve it amid the reckoning in higher education to come.
A Reckoning for Higher Education
Such a reckoning is long overdue. C.S. Lewis highlighted the central problem in his book “The Abolition of Man.” He noted that human beings have to learn to navigate between our animal appetites and our reason, and this requires a well-trained moral compass. Yet modern education teaches the young to debunk morality and follow their own course. Lewis calls these people “Men without chests”—men and women without grounding in a proper response to the way things really are, a foundation that makes it possible to live a good life.
“In the older systems, both the kind of man the teachers wished to produce and their motives for producing him were prescribed by [conscience]—a norm to which the teachers themselves were subject and from which they claimed no liberty to depart,” Lewis explained. “They did not cut men to some pattern they have chosen,” but rather “they initiated the young neophyte into the mystery of humanity which over-arched him and them alike.” It was merely “old birds teaching young birds to fly.”
The new morality is more a form of “conditioning,” forcing students to follow a particular ideology.
In recent decades, the university has become dominated by a Marxist ideology teaching that society is fundamentally oppressive and the oppressed (women, minorities, LGBTQ people) must throw off the yoke of the oppressors (men, white people, straight people). This great revolution justifies tossing out the entire Western heritage and producing people who adhere to a new “woke” morality. It increasingly brooks no dissent, encouraging students to view with suspicion anyone who questions its pseudo-religious tenets.
These ideas themselves represent a threat to liberal education. They aim to transform the sanctuary of learning into a factory of ideological warriors bent on pulling down the very foundations on which it stands.
Americans should vehemently oppose this ideology and demand reform in higher education. Such reform should not aim to abolish the universities but to restore them to their original purpose—the artes liberales.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/12/12/dont-throw-liberal-education-university-bathwater
***********************************After Affirmative Action Win Over Harvard, Group Takes on West Point
The group that triumphed in a landmark Supreme Court case that struck down affirmative action policies at Harvard University earlier this year hopes to build on the victory with a lawsuit targeting similar policies at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed the lawsuit on Sept. 19 with high hopes, but the organization has strayed into a legal and political minefield as the academy and the Biden administration try to block the lawsuit on the grounds that an institution training military officers isn't subject to the same rules as private universities and that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies help, rather than hinder, effectiveness in combat.
Largely as a result of the perceived disparity between those standards that apply to private colleges and universities and those applicable to entities under federal oversight, the SFFA faces one of the most formidable legal challenges, the outcome of which will have implications for every school and academy in the nation.
Since President Joe Biden took office, a marked cultural shift has been underway in virtually all branches of the military.
The Biden administration has forced through policies that promote DEI at the expense of the traditional criteria of combat readiness and the minimization of U.S. casualties, experts have told The Epoch Times.
President Biden has revised rules put in place by the Obama administration to remake the military even more boldly in accordance with DEI principles and has relied on executive orders, often without public discussion, to force through this agenda.
In December 2022, revisions to the Obama-era Department of Defense (DOD) Instruction 1300.28 altered official DOD vocabulary regarding transgender recruits, made officers more directly liable for perceived offenses against such persons, and gave official approval to cross-dressing on military bases, among other changes.
President Biden’s general DEI stance makes the SFFA litigation one of the most impactful lawsuits so far undertaken against a military institution in modern history.
DOD officials and representatives for West Point didn't respond to a request for comment.
From Triumph to Trial
The Supreme Court handed down its ruling on June 29 in the closely watched legal case of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, finding that affirmative action policies at Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The court issued a similar ruling in the matter of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina (UNC) on the same day.
In a footnote to its opinion in the Harvard case, the majority explained that its ruling didn't apply to military institutions such as West Point, stating that no military academies were a party in the case.
The court acknowledged a U.S. government brief that contended that "race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation's military academies."
SFFA's founder, Edward Mr. Blum, now sees an opportunity to redress what he sees as a glaring omission in the Supreme Court's June rulings.
“The SFFA cases have energized the legal community to challenge longstanding policies that have always been illegal. That is happening especially in the employment arena,” he told The Epoch Times.
In the case of West Point, the legal issues are fundamentally the same, Mr. Blum believes—as is the opposing argument from those who want to preserve affirmative action.
“It is the same failed argument that the government made about ‘leadership’ and ‘diversity’ in the Harvard and UNC cases,” he told The Epoch Times.
But West Point and the Biden administration don't see matters that way.
In a Nov. 22 memorandum filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams and colleagues set forth a number of defenses of West Point's admissions policies.
They charge that the plaintiff, in extending the reasoning from the Harvard and UNC cases to this one, “ignores critical differences between civilian and military universities” and has failed to establish legal standing to weigh in on a matter that falls under federal jurisdiction.
The government lawyers also argue that the Army's “operational interests” require the training of officers who can build a “cohesive rapport with subordinates,” and that, in “an increasingly diverse nation,” that goal isn't achievable without affirmative action.
But it isn't clear if arguments in court will even get far enough to consider that last issue
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Australia: Final High School results 2023: Wake-up call for school leavers as the income gap between low and high achievers is revealed
This is an expected result but caution about causation is needed. School exam performance is highly correlated with IQ so the high ATAR scorers would be brighter -- and that alone tends to lead to economic success. ATAR scorres will mainly be an indicator, not a cause of future success
Students who achieve a high ATAR score will earn up to $33,000 more than their peers by the time they reach their 30s, new research has revealed.
The findings, unveiled during the week when year 12 students receive their ATAR scores, indicate a strong correlation between the attained ATAR level and income levels by the age of 30.
'Individuals with a higher ATAR are more likely to earn a higher income,' said Dr Silvia Griselda from e61 Institute, one of the authors of a new study said.
The e61 paper 'What's in an ATAR? How can university admission scores predict future income?' used data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that draws a link between income levels taken from tax returns and ATAR scores.
At the age of 30, Australians with an ATAR below 70 will have a median annual income of approximately $70,000 in 2022 dollars.
Those with an ATAR between 70 and 80 earn slightly above $75,000.
A score in the 80-90 range correlates with a median salary just surpassing $80,000.
For ATARs falling between 90 and 95, the median salary increases to nearly $90,000, while scores in the 95-98 range leads to a median salary of almost $95,000. ATARs exceeding 98 are linked to a median salary close to $105,000.
In comparison, 30-year-old Aussie workers without a degree earn a median salary of just under $60,000 a year.
The research found people who choose not to pursue a university education and enter the workforce directly from high school typically see an initial rise in income.
However, these advantages tend to diminish by the age of 25.
Dr Griselda said school-leavers who achieve a high ATAR often receive priority admission to esteemed academic programs, particularly in fields such as medicine, finance, and law, boosting their earning potential compared to their peers.
Analysis by the e61 Institute found those who got an ATAR score over 98 will earn a median salary of $33,000 more by age 30 than those with a score below 70
She also noted that the careers of high achievers also benefited from networks they gained through their parents and expensive schooling.
While the link between a high ATAR and a high income is unmistakable, it's important to note a considerable income variation within each ATAR band.
For example, among 30-year-olds with ATARs above 95, the top 10 per cent of earn annual income surpassing $156,000, whereas the bottom 10 per cent in that band earn less than $30,000 per year.
This income disparity is also notable among 30-year-old workers without university degrees. Despite having a median income just under $60,000, the top 10 per cent in this group earn over $115,000 each year.
It comes as 67,234 high school graduates received their HSC marks via text at 6am on Thursday morning, with ATAR results following at 9am.
Year 12 applications through the University Admissions Centre are currently at the lowest level in a decade as fewer school leavers pursue a degree.
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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)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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