Category Archives: Education

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Syria And Egypt

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They can’t be fixed:

Sometimes countries dig themselves into a hole from which they cannot extricate themselves. Third World dictators typically keep their rural population poor, isolated and illiterate, the better to maintain control. That was the policy of Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party from the 1930s, which warehoused the rural poor in Stalin-modeled collective farms called ejidos occupying most of the national territory. That was also the intent of the Arab nationalist dictatorships in Egypt and Syria. The policy worked until it didn’t. In Mexico, it stopped working during the debt crisis of the early 1980s, and Mexico’s poor became America’s problem. In Egypt and Syria, it stopped working in 2011. There is nowhere for Egyptians and Syrians to go.

That first sentence could apply to us, on the route we’re on. If we allow the Democrats to remain in charge, it will be our fate, and sooner than later. We just have to hope that we’re not there already. And then there’s this:

This background lends an air of absurdity to the present debate over whether the West should arm Syria’s Sunni rebels. American hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, to be sure, argue for sending arms to the Sunnis because they think it politically unwise to propose an attack on the Assad regime’s master, namely Iran. The Obama administration has agreed to arm the Sunnis because it costs nothing to pre-empt Republican criticism. We have a repetition of the “dumb and dumber” consensus that prevailed during early 2011, when the Republican hawks called for intervention in Libya and the Obama administration obliged. Call it the foreign policy version of the sequel, “Dumb and Dumberer”.

Except it’s not funny. At all.

Business, Education, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Is Our Teachers Learning?

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I am completely unshocked to hear that schools of education do a terrible job of teaching teachers:

“We don’t know how to prepare teachers,” said Arthur Levine, former president of Teachers College at Columbia University and author of a scathing critique of teacher preparation. “We can’t decide whether it’s a craft or a profession. Do you need a lot of education as you would in a profession, or do you need a little bit and then learn on the job, like a craft? I don’t know of any other profession that’s so uncertain about how to educate their professionals.”

You don’t say.

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Student Loans

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…subsidize waste:

When students have little hope of completing an academic program, subsidies are not just a waste of taxpayers’ money, but a waste of these young people’s time and effort at a crucial age. Too often, they drop out with a sense of failure, poor work habits, and perhaps a sizeable debt.

In an era of scarce resources, ending pure need scholarships may cause low-income students to make wiser choices about their futures. It would be far better if, instead of floundering in an academic institution, they learned a trade, entered the military, or gained work experience. If they really wish to pursue a bachelors’ degree, they can prove themselves worthy of scholarship money by taking classes at low-cost community colleges first.

Like most well-intentioned government programs, this is a disaster.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Religious Zealots

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…who are running our public schools:

What’s up with this? It’s not based on any concern with safety. Lego guns, cap guns, bubble guns, nibbled Pop Tarts, and fingers are no threat to safety. And the wild overreaction in these cases says there’s more going on here than simple school discipline. As I said, who treats a 5-year-old this way? It smacks of fanaticism.

In fact, it seems like a kind of quasi-religious fanaticism. I think it’s about the administrative class — which runs the schools with as little input from parents as possible — doing its best to exterminate the very idea of guns. It’s some sort of wacky moral-purity crusade. If a few toddlers have to suffer along the way, that’s tough. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

But that raises two questions. First, what business do public schools have in trying to extirpate “impure” thoughts? Aren’t we supposed to celebrate diversity? And, second, why should public schools decide that a longtime staple of American childhood, the toy gun, is suddenly evil?

Suppose you wanted to raise a generation that was both frightened of guns and thought them evil, except in the hands of government employees, and wanted to make thaat generation supine, disarmed sheep, and deferential to those same people. This is exactly what you would do.

These people are stupid, or evil, or both.