Category: education and schooling

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education and schooling general freedom ideological culture

Down-Shifted Demographics

gerontocracy, depression, young people

Until recently, the most obvious demographic trend has been the “squaring of the curve”: more people were hitting an apparently natural limit in their eighties and nineties, rather than dying off in their forties, fifties, and sixties.

Now, however, longevity stats are showing a new feature. A graph in a fascinating article puts it like this: “Americans die earlier than the English across the income distribution, despite typically earning significantly more,” with the article quickly clarifying the specifics: “America’s mortality problem is driven primarily by deaths among the young.”

The most vulnerable members of traditional society are newborns and the aged. But now it’s those reaching their alleged prime: “one in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday.”

Is it COVID? No. This trend is older than 2020, and remember, in the recent pandemic it was the aged, not the young, who experienced higher rates of morality.

An article by Zach Rausch and Jon Haidt suggests that the problem may loom beyond America, for their work shows that “The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic Is International,” and I don’t think it is at all out of bounds to take higher youth rates of suicidality, desperate recreational drug use, and expressed anxiety and despair — and skyrocketing transgender rates, too — as stressors related to increased death rates. 

It is vital to study these things, for their main conclusion is startling and a general sign of deep cultural decay: “Teen mental health plummeted across the Western world in the early 2010s, particularly for girls and particularly in the most individualistic nations.”

We should ask ourselves: could this be related to the rise of a gerontocracy?

A society run by old people for old people may have nasty inter-generational side effects.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling folly international affairs

Doctor-to-Be of Theology

Dr. Greta Thurnberg

“The year 2023 is the centenary of the passing of the Freedom of Religion Act in Finland,” writes “conferer” Martti Nissinen, promoting a future ceremony of the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Theology — in which one degree will go to . . . Greta Thunberg.

Much has been made, online, of theologians, of all people, awarding an honorary degree to a young environmental activist demonstrating no academic much less godly accomplishments. The obvious suggestion: “what she’s selling is a religion”! 

But what stands out to me? Mr. Nissinen’s declaration of this year’s ceremonial theme: “Freedom.”

Ms. Thunberg has been pestering and entreating leaders of the world to “do something” to “save the planet” from “climate change.”

What she demands is not freedom, but more

  • taxes
  • mandates
  • prohibitions. 

Whatever the actual threat may be, there is no hint of freedom in her agenda. And if you want more of that message, consult the latest alarm from the IPCC.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a bizarre restatement of past pronouncements, warning “that we are almost half way through the ‘last chance decade’ to pull the brakes on climate change.”

“The world is only a few tenths of a degree away from the globally accepted goal of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels,” explains The Guardian. “On current trends, we will shoot past the target within a decade.” 

Dooming the planet. 

Pushing this fake “global accepted goal” has a historical context. Many similar past warnings that haven’t come true. But, more pressingly, the worldwide panic over a pandemic that even to politicians increasingly appears to be a complete failure of the experts.

Why trust the Expert Climatologists when the Expert Epidemiologists have so disastrously failed us?

Just don’t ask Dr. Greta.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights media and media people

License for Leftists

censorship, education, schools, Marxism

Libertarians should avoid taking sides in left-right antagonisms when promoting a principled third position would make more sense.

Regrettably, in “Christopher Rufo Wants To Shut Down ‘Activist’ Academic Departments. Here’s Why He’s Wrong,” libertarian magazine Reason fails to offer that alternative.

“In an essay published this week in City Journal,” author Emma Camp begins, “conservative activist Christopher Rufo argued that universities — or rather, the state legislatures governing these universities — should shut down ‘activist’ academic departments. But rather than protecting higher education, forcibly shutting down left-wing academic departments would be nothing more than routine censorship.”

Tellingly, she never defines “routine” censorship.

Let me help: routine censorship is the governmental policy of preventing or punishing private speech on private property. 

State colleges and universities are public institutions, politically established and subsidized by taxpayers. With few exceptions, “private colleges” are also routinely tax-funded at the demand end, and are further supported with research contracts.

Getting rid of Marxist professors preaching political revolution is no more anti-free speech than preventing the CDC and Anthony Fauci from conducting gain-of-function virus research within some college laboratory.

Ms. Camp quotes the Supreme Court about the importance of “safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned.” Freedom sounds great, but as usual, the Supremes forget that taxpayers have an interest, and that constraints on public schools was once routine.

So how not to “cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom”? 

Offer a third position: de-subsidize and dis-establish government “education” by empowering higher education’s customers. Let Marxist professors find payers in the private sector.

Instead, Emma Camp effectively tells conservatives they have no choice but to fund every leftist program that politics and the bureaucracy allow. She could have recognized that “Academic freedom” in the context of tax-subsidized schooling is merely ideological license.

Which is itself a sad alternative to real liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

Urinals De- and Re-commissioned

unisex bathrooms

Remember when opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment said that we would wind up with unisex bathrooms should the constitutional amendment be ratified? And ERA advocates scoffed?

Well, here we are: no ERA, but unisex bathrooms . . . in public schools.

Or, more precisely, two flavors of unisex bathrooms: one room for girls along with those boys who identify as girls, and another for boys and those girls who identify as boys. 

In early February, New Hampshire’s Milford School District school board voted to cover over boys’ room urinals with garbage bags while members investigated the cost of turning all the restrooms into all-stall accommodations.

Why? A few parents of trans students had complained that urinals made their trans boys uncomfortable — their girls “transitioning” to become boys didn’t . . . well, I’ll let you imagine some of this.

Of course, urinals in boys’ rooms allow for faster turnover of users. Getting rid of them makes boys spend more time in a place they, as often as not, would like to minimize.

But it affects actual girls negatively, too.

“As a female,” one girl told a local TV station, “I don’t think it’s safe to have males in our bathroom.”

The board had also ruled that the number of students in each restroom should be limited to the number of stalls — not an efficient way to serve students’ needs, completely ignoring time spent at the sink in front of a mirror. More bizarrely yet, the board had specified that clothing changes for physical ed. be confined to locker room toilet stalls.

Last Friday, students held a walkout. And the school board backpedaled, unbagging the urinals.

Good. But I don’t think anyone can mistake all this “business” for common sense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling

Problem Student, Problem Admin

school problem, problem student, gun, violence, education

“School downplayed warnings about 6-year-old before teacher’s shooting, staffers say,” The Washington Post headlined its Saturday report.

Weeks ago, elementary school teacher Abigail Zwerner was shot by a first grader in their Newport News, Virginia, classroom. Authorities are not sure of the precise motive but have called the attack “intentional.”

Zwerner remains hospitalized in stable condition, while her child assailant is in emergency custody undergoing “court-ordered mental health treatment.”*

School officials received a tip that the boy had brought a gun to school but did not find the weapon in their search.

More disturbing, The Post interviewed “educators claiming that Zwerner raised alarms . . . and sought assistance” but “that school administrators waved away grave concerns about the 6-year-old’s conduct.” The lad reportedly “threw furniture and other items in class,” once “barricaded the doors to a classroom, preventing a teacher and students from leaving,” and “was known campuswide for disruptive and violent behavior.”

One educator revealed that “the boy wrote a note telling a teacher he hated her and wanted to light her on fire and watch her die.” When brought “to the attention of Richneck administrators,” however, the teacher “was told to drop the matter.

“Several teachers said they received no support when they faced violence in the classroom or attacks from students,” the article informed. “Some speakers claimed the district is more interested in keeping discipline statistics low than in taking meaningful action to address students’ problems.”

The Post’s story was hampered by numerous school personnel refusing to talk citing their fear of reprisals from school authorities. 

While mental health help must be addressed, there is no solution to problems if administrators act like crooked politicians, simply sweeping aside serious issues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* In Virginia, a person must be seven years of age to be charged with a crime, so the first grader will not be prosecuted.

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education and schooling government transparency paternalism

Motown Bully

School Board, parents, government

Is the republican form of government unnatural?

People in government tend to balk at republican imperatives, anyway. You know, like transparency. Citizen control sure seems unnatural to politicians.

Case in point: Detroit.

“The Rochester Community School district is determined to keep the sun from shining on its operations,” writes Kaitlyn Buss in The Detroit News.

At issue is a new school board member, Andrew Weaver. He had campaigned on issues like “transparency, accountability and communication between the district and parents.” Well, Superintendent Robert Shaner does not like this agenda. He “sent a letter to the board president and vice president in late December targeting [the] newly elected board member” and threatening “legal action if Weaver is too forceful in challenging the way schools are being run.”

This is awfully brazen, and it should alarm parents in the Rochester Community School District. For it is not coming from some obscure bureaucrat: “Shaner was selected as Superintendent of the Year in 2020 and is one of the longest tenured and highest paid school leaders in the state.”

He epitomizes government, at least in the “education” wing of Michigan government.

Bullying is how he rolls.

Mr. Weaver explains it this way: “I sat there as a private citizen and wondered why our board didn’t do anything. Well, we found the answer. Because they’re all scared of getting one of those [letters].”

But perhaps Weaver’s prepared for the battle. Even as a parent he’d received two cease-and-desist actions from Shaner, who objected to his online attacks.

Politicians think they are kings. Above citizen criticism.

Which is why citizen control must be forced upon them. 

Over their objections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling insider corruption local leaders

Lightfoot, Heavy Hand

Lori Lightfoot, Chicago, corruption

When you’re right, you’re right.

And all of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s critics are right that it was wrong for Lightfoot’s deserves-to-fail reelection campaign to solicit teachers to solicit students of the city’s public schools to work for her reelection campaign in exchange for class credit.

A former city inspector general called the move “deeply, deeply problematic.” Local teachers union honchos called it a “shakedown” and “exploitative and wrong.” Mayoral election challenger Brandon Johnson called it “outrageous, desperate, and downright unethical,” an abuse of power.

This may be a case of Corruption Grade B rather than Grade A if, as seems slightly possible, nobody on Lightfoot’s team understood that they were crossing another line in the endless saga of incumbents’ shameless misuse of government-controlled resources for political gain.

First, Lightfoot’s campaign said “this is common practice” and that they were just giving students “the opportunity to learn. . . .”

Eventually, they ended up saying that out of an “abundance of caution, we will cease contact with [public school] employees.” Then that campaign staff were being admonished about the “solid wall” that must exist between the campaign and “contacts” with noncampaign government employees.

Is enlisting public school teachers to enlist public school students to help an incumbent mayor’s reelection campaign really so very different from other abuses we have seen before, especially in a super-corrupt town like Chicago?

It doesn’t change the fact that when you’re wrong, you’re wrong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom ideological culture

Inherent Racism of Racism

CRT, race guilt, racism

New Hampshire bans public school teachers from telling kids they’re inherently racist or oppressive because of unchosen traits like skin color.

Some lawmakers want to overturn the ban.

The debated law, Right to Freedom from Discrimination in Public Workplaces and Education, is imperfect. But we live in a world where some taxpayer-funded educators, inspired by noxious doctrines like critical race theory, are eager to accuse students of being inherently racist or sexist or oppressive.

Obviously, though, moral wrongdoing is something chosen. One doesn’t commit it merely by having a certain hue, gender, or ancestors.

So how can one reasonably object to a provision stating that “No government program shall teach [that] an individual, by virtue of his or her age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, [etc.] is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously”?

The law itself stresses that it’s not to be interpreted as prohibiting discussion of “the historical existence of ideas and subjects” like racism. Nevertheless, critics falsely claim that the law bans classroom discussion of racism as such. And their repeal bill, HB61, seeks not to perfect the current law but to repeal all sections “relative to the right to freedom from discrimination in public workplaces and education.”

New Hampshire lawmaker Jim Kofalt rightly reminds proponents of HB61 of the vision of Martin Luther King, a future where his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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In the Name of Equity

equity, egalitarianism, collectivism

Last year, I noted complaints by Virginia officials about the high proportion of Asian students attending Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. These students studied too hard, supposedly.

Now we learn that TJ High administrators have been conniving to prevent students who won National Merit awards, issued for excelling on the PSAT, from being informed of this. Principal Ann Bonitatibus and another official, Brandon Kosatka, have been memory-holing the notifications for years.

You can’t report having won a National Merit award on a college application if you just don’t know.

The policy is consistent with the Fairfax County school district’s ugly new Harrison-Bergeronesque ideal of “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.”

Kosatka told a parent that the idea was to “recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements,” a nonsensical proposition. Individuals don’t just sit around being themselves; they do stuff. Kosatka also said that the principal didn’t want to hurt the feelings of non-winners of the Merit awards by acknowledging winners.

Bonitatibus and Kosatka should be fired — at least. Their job is to help students achieve, not to undercut them.

We’ll never rid the world entirely of resentment against achievement — or, for that matter, the benefits that flow from achievement. But we can teach kids that the proper response to disappointment at doing less than their best is to resolve to do better at the next opportunity. 

And to be inspired — not, heaven forfend, demoralized — by the heights that others do achieve.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom

Federally Funded Racism

race quota, science

Can one cosponsor a racially discriminatory program without having any idea of its nature, even if this is implied by the program’s very name?

The University of Oklahoma and other universities are cosponsors of the Oklahoma Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, a program funded by the National Science Foundation that requires beneficiaries be members of certain minority groups: “African American, Hispanic, Native American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.”

The Alliance’s goal is to “increase recruitment, enrollment, and retention of minority students in STEM [science, technology, engineering, and math] programs.”

Because of the program’s discriminatory criteria, the group Do No Harm has filed civil rights complaints against a dozen Oklahoma universities. Its leader, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, points out that the terms of the federally funded program “specifically exclude white students, students from middle eastern countries, and Asian students. . . . [B]ut it is illegal to engage in such discrimination based on race.”

When first asked about the complaint, the University of Oklahoma declined comment. But after The College Fix site reported on the matter, OU spokesman Jacob Guthrie said that the university’s site had been amended to reflect the fact that any student may apply, insisting also that the program “has never been restricted by race.”

It sure looks to me as if OU officials, like those of Ithaca College (subject to a similar federal complaint in October), are now suddenly worried about legal consequences. 

Anyway, Do No Harm’s filing is already doing good, helping to re-establish that old liberal idea that governments must not discriminate on grounds of race.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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