I remember how it was -- JR
Harvard Dean Threatens Faculty Who Protest School’s Mistreatment of Jews
“Snitches get stitches” is a threat typically made by adolescents to avoid punishment by intimidating those who might expose their misdeeds. Yet it seems Harvard is a glorified junior high these days, with Lawrence Bobo, its dean of social sciences, threatening faculty who publicly criticize the university for its mistreatment of Jewish students.
Writing in the Crimson, Bobo argued that it is “outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct for a faculty member to excoriate University leadership, faculty, staff, or students with the intent to arouse external intervention into University business.”
Faculty who appeal to external actors to reverse gross injustices at Harvard may not get literal stitches, but Bobo could deny them tenure or lower their pay. His piece has not been made official Harvard policy, but more senior administrators have not repudiated his interpretation of “acceptable professional conduct,” and his discretion to punish snitches remains intact.
Bobo’s hostility to “external intervention” is reminiscent of something more menacing than junior high taunts about snitches. It echoes George Wallace’s complaints about “outside agitators.” The segregationist governor of Alabama claimed in a 1964 letter that efforts by him and other Southern leaders to improve the condition of the “Negro citizen” were being undermined by “the national news media and the propaganda distributed by various organizations.” If only outside agitators would avoid stirring up trouble, both “white and colored” could continue to live in “peace and equanimity.”
Bobo similarly expresses a preference for managing Harvard’s problems through “internal discussion on key policy matters,” threatening to sanction “behaviors that plainly incite external actors—be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government—to intervene in Harvard’s affairs.” It’s as if Bobo were saying that Harvard’s Jews could be living in “peace and equanimity” without outside agitators in the media and government stirring up trouble.
Bobo and other Harvard leaders are right to fear outside intervention. Despite its more than $50 billion endowment, Harvard is a financial house of cards built on government subsidy and donor largesse. Harvard’s operating budget last year was $5.9 billion, of which about $650 million came from federal research grants, $55 million came from government student aid and loans, and another $500 million came from the “current use” gifts of donors.
If Harvard’s misdeeds were to motivate the federal government to remove its eligibility for research grants and student assistance, and donations were to dry up, Harvard would be facing the loss of about a fifth of the revenue it needs to cover its operating costs. Harvard has been so flush with cash for so long that it has no idea how to cut 1% of its budget, let alone 20%.
A future Republican, or for that matter Democratic, administration cutting off its access to federal funds alongside a donor strike would be financially catastrophic for Harvard at the same time that it would be enormously politically popular. Stopping the gush of federal money into Harvard would spell the end for Bobo and his colleagues, just as sending the National Guard to Little Rock Central spelled the end for Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus’s political ambitions.
In his Crimson piece, Bobo emphasizes that students “must also learn from the example of heroic figures like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” Bobo himself might benefit from rereading King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In that letter, King rejects the notion that “outside agitators” are somehow illegitimate, noting, “Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”
Similarly, no external policymaker, reporter, or donor is an “outsider” regarding Harvard’s mistreatment of its Jewish students, not to mention professors of all faiths, who suffer under administrators such as Bobo who have made Harvard America’s worst university for free speech.
Harvard is facing a reckoning. Bobo is trying to stave off that reckoning by intimidating faculty critics into silence. It’s too late. Even Harvard does not have a large enough endowment to avoid the consequences of getting on the wrong side of a critical mass of policymakers and donors.
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New Brisbane school to focus on classics
The Power family, whose father, James snr, established Campion College, Australia’s first liberal arts tertiary institution, is behind the launch of new school in Brisbane next week.
St John Henry Newman College, initially catering from Prep to Year 3, will be built at Tarragindi, on Brisbane’s southside next year, to open in 2026. One class will be added each year, with a separate campus, later, for secondary school in 2030.
Inaugural chairman and managing director of the Power group of companies, James Power, said expressions of interest from parents were strong.
The school would be geared to the classical, Western tradition, an emphasis in the early years on direct instruction, numeracy and literacy (including phonics), encouraging reading and no devices in the classroom. When history and geography were introduced the subjects would be taught factually, not laced with ideology.
Kenneth Crowther, a teacher at Toowoomba Christian College, who has been appointed principal and is completing his PhD in Shakespeare said classical schools emphasised on introducing students to the “great books’’ – from Dante to Dostoevsky.
“For the juniors, that’ll be Aesop’s fables, Beatrix Potter, Winnie the Pooh and Wind in the Willows, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia and Tolkien,’’ Mr Crowther said.
In recent years, many parents have been disappointed to find traditional favourites missing in school reading and English lessons.
As a Catholic school, religion will be part of the curriculum, with the priests of the Brisbane Oratory to serve as chaplains.
The establishment of classical schools by communities concerned about education standards has become a major trend in the US.
Australia’s first classical Orthodox school, the St John of Kronstadt Academy, opened on Brisbane’s southside this year for Prep to Year 3 and will also add a grade a year. Its stated aims are “to provide our children with a classical Orthodox curriculum that will nurture the child’s soul, mind and body, develop Orthodox wisdom and virtue and will be steeped in Orthodox faith and liturgical tradition”.
In Melbourne, the principal of St Philip’s Catholic Primary School, Blackburn North, Michelle Worcester and Parish Priest Fr Nicholas Dillon will oversee the transformation of the local Catholic school to a classical model next year and in 2026. The change has the support of Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools authorities and will be first of its kind under the system.
Based on parental interest and inquiries, which have come from as far away as country Victoria, Fr Dillon expects to the school numbers, which have fallen to 29, to double in the first year.
Similar transformations of schools in the US over the past 40 years had seen small enrolments expand to 300. “Parents are looking for a quality back-to-basics approach and want their children introduced to classical literature and Western civilisation,’’ Fr Dillon said.
St John Henry Newman College will be launched at the Brisbane Oratory on Thursday, July 11. Its patrons include businessman and Brisbane Broncos chairman Karl Morris and retired computer scientist, businessman and former Dean of Bond University business school and author Ashley Goldsworthy.
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The Australian Education Union is miffed about phonics
Kevin Andrews
One of my earliest memories is sitting on the front verandah of my parents’ farmhouse. My two younger brothers and I were sunning ourselves along with my mother. In the years well before the ‘slip, slop, slap’ campaign, she had rubbed olive oil into our skin so that we would tan. She believed – like many others in the late 50s and early 60s – that a tan would prevent sunburn. It was before I attended the local primary school, so I must have been about four years of age.
In addition to the small trikes we rode around the verandah, my parents had purchased a blackboard on which we could draw. It had the letters of the alphabet along the top and bottom of the board, and the numbers from 1 – 20 down the sides. My mother would help us to write words, sounding out the appropriate letters from the alphabet on the board. By the time I attended school, I could read and write basic sentences. I took to reading books with alacrity, reading to my parents each night. Not having a television until I was about 15 also spurred an interest in reading. It is perhaps little wonder that I chose occupations that have required copious reading.
These early experiences were reinforced at school. In addition to reading, we learnt the times tables by rote. I recall chanting the times tables as a class each morning. ‘One two is two, two twos are four, three twos are six’ and so on. It was fun and effective. Legible writing was encouraged. The cursive script of earlier generations had been dispatched, but neat, readable letters and sentences were practised daily. Parents placed great emphasis on their children being able to read, write, and count as the most important skills to master at primary school. I believe that is what most parents still desire.
This is not to deny that many children have difficulties in learning to read and write. Several of my own children were dyslexic. This was a significant challenge which required extra tuition and support, mostly by their mother, with the backup of remedial programs in schools and learning specialists. Phonics played a significant role.
These reflections came to mind as I read that Victoria has finally accepted that phonics should be taught in schools. The state’s Deputy Premier, Ben Carroll, who is also Education Minister, announced that the explicit learning method would be reintroduced into the state’s schools next year. The Catholic system in Victoria has already adopted the changes.
The Australian Education Union has opposed the changes, urging teachers to reject the new approach. ‘The AEU Joint Primary and Secondary Sector Council views with significant dismay the policy announcement by Victorian Education Minister, Ben Carroll, on the misnamed Making Best Practice Common Practice in The Education State, without proper consultation with the profession and the AEU.’ Instead, the Union demanded additional funding to the sector. Moreover, the minister should support teachers to ‘make professional decisions about the content and pedagogies appropriate for the learning programs in their classrooms and schools.’ In other words, teachers should decide what is taught, not the duly elected government.
The Union was clearly miffed that Mr Carroll would make a decision not proposed or endorsed by its members. How dare a minister do his job and a government govern! No wonder it has taken years for Victoria to follow other states and jurisdictions to introduce the changes, despite studies demonstrating the advantages of phonics. Indeed, the statement failed to even use the word phonics!
This is a union steeped in Marxist-inspired ideology. It opposes the funding of non-government schools, opposes any ranking of academic performance and has subscribed to every cause in the modern zeitgeist, ranging from global warming to multi-gender recognition. The AEU and other teacher organisations rail at any suggestion that literacy standards have fallen. Perhaps the fact that Mr Carroll is from Labor’s right faction partially explains the antipathy of the AEU towards his education policies.
Why would the Union oppose the use of phonics when English is a phonetic language? Apart from the ideological nonsense pedalled by the Union, there is a suspicion that some teachers are the victims of the approach to learning that has been favoured for the past few decades. Will the reinstatement of phonics expose the inadequacy of the educational methods, possibly the deficiency of some teachers themselves?
The falling standards of English language are evident everywhere. How many times do you hear someone pronounce ‘nothing’ as ‘nothink’, even some otherwise well-educated people? My wife constantly points out grammar errors in newspapers, such as using an incorrect verb with a collective noun, for example ‘the government are…’
Union chagrin wasn’t confined to the AEU this past week. John Setka, the firebrand secretary of the CFMEU, attracted widespread criticism for his proposal to slow down work on construction sites associated with the Australian Football League while they employed the former Building and Construction Commissioner, Stephen McBurney. Mr McBurney, a distinguished AFL umpire officiating at four grand finals, is now head of umpiring for the League.
His previous employment, as a public official, under legislation passed by the Parliament, should not be subject to intimidation. Thankfully the AFL has rejected the comments, despite its endorsement of Woke culture generally. But the ambivalent response by many Labor MPs and ministers was less robust. Instead of stating clearly that such comments are unacceptable, many dodged the issue, saying that Setka was an effective Union representative. Perhaps the millions that his Union has donated to the Labor Party, and the support for various Labor candidates, influenced their muted response. They could learn something from Mr Carroll, who was prepared to ignore the AEU’s bleating and act in the best interests of the state’s schoolchildren.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/the-australian-education-union-is-miffed-about-phonics/
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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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