What did children read before him?
Category Archives: Education
The Social Safety Net
…is a form of institutionalized child abuse. And as the New York Times would say, minorities are hit hardest.
Majoring In Fun
What a disaster academia has become. And all government subsidized, of course.
Green Energy
Why people are finally losing hope in it.
Because they’re finally coming to their senses.
The Entitlement State
…has begun to eat its own:
The biggest federally funded program (Medicaid) is competing directly with the next-biggest set of programs (education). State politicians are now squeezed between the two most voracious (and unionized) constituencies in American politics: the education blob, and the health care/AARP/provider complex. They will want a way out; otherwise, they’re toast. And the only way out is interposition to Obamacare.
When something can’t go on, at some point, it doesn’t.
Handwriting
Is it becoming obsolete?
I have no nostalgia for it, myself. I’ve always considered dragging a writing implement across paper to be sheer physical drudgery, and if I didn’t have a keyboard, I wouldn’t be a writer.
This is the key point:
Although these historical tidbits are fascinating—the chapter on the absurdly indecipherable script prevalent in Germany before Hitler banned it helps demonstrate how arbitrary and cultural our writing conventions are—they have one point in common. Every innovation in handwriting was designed to improve the speed and legibility of human communication. And here is where Hensher’s quixotic defense of the hand stumbles. For what is faster and clearer than typing? Weren’t you slightly relieved when the handwritten paragraphs in this review came to an end, leaving you on the sturdy shores of a new thought expressed in Microsoft Verdana? Isn’t it easier to catch my meaning, to pay attention, when you are staring at a nice clean block of type?
My emphasis. The other issue that she doesn’t really get into is that by “handwriting,” what is really being discussed here is cursive script, which I learned as a child, but abandoned for just printing around junior high, because I found it too time consuming. I never bought, and still don’t buy, the notion that by eliminating the need to lift the pen, it somehow sped up the process. Both my printing and my cursive are illegible to anyone but me, but printing goes faster, because I don’t have to spend time worrying about the loops and flourishes. I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but when I took my GRE, it said that I had to write (not print) a pledge on the cover. It had been so long since I’d written cursive that it took me a couple minutes to slowly remember how to form the letters in the single sentence required.
I do think that being able to write down thoughts, old school, traditional tech, will always be a valuable skill (well, barring the Singularity). But there’s no reason for most kids to learn cursive these days. That could just be a hobby or art, like calligraphy. Typing is a much more important skill.
Diversity On Campus
You’d think with all of the money they spend on it, they’d get better results, but it’s almost impossible to prove discrimination, even though it’s obvious to everyone that it is occurring.
The Higher-Education Bubble
Is it an opportunity to take back the culture from the Left? If so, it’s one we shouldn’t miss.
Free Speech
Campuses have it on the run.
Well, what do you expect from something that costs so little?
Oh, wait.
No, there is no entitlement to not be offended.
College Degrees ROIs
Here’s news you can use (if it isn’t already obvious) — the eight worst ones.