Is it really liberal for someone who doesn't go to college and makes less money to pay for people who do go and make more? #LiberalGrift pic.twitter.com/aF1cNZ0CZF
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) June 5, 2021
Strong language advisory to the above video. When Bill Maher, Bill Maher!, is the voice of reason you know you are in trouble. Too many colleges have been transmuted into adult playgrounds/indoctrination centers. When I went through the U of I four and a half decades ago, I thought then that the intellectual content of many of the courses I took was fairly minimal. The rot has been going on for a very long time. Now we are handing out college degrees to people who cannot write grammatically, who cannot make change without a calculator and who lack any intellectual curiosity and drive to cure their manifest ignorance of the most common facts of our world known to virtually all high school graduates a half century ago. The fault is not in the students of today, but rather in the way they have been reared and mis-educated. They have been brought up to believe they are wonderful just the way they are and that anyone seeking to cure their ignorance is engaging in microaggressions against them. A traditional maxim is that whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. A maxim for our time is that putting the mad in charge of schools is a sure and certain way to destroy a society.
Bill Maher is right of course. Been that way for years. College is a racket build on vanity and, in most cases, building an edifice of pride and foolishness on most who attend.
Eventually it will all collapse in chaos as will all Modernist thinking which is a work of the devil.
No conservative should send their child to tax payer funded K-12 school, and I am dubious about Diocesan schools and secular private schools.
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Homeschool. Do what you can. Please note, homeschooling will not guarantee you won’t end up with a Lefty–especially if they go to college–but you’ve got a much better chance of them still willing to consider what you have to say.
Apparently, the rot extends to higher, higher education. A few days ago, Instapundit linked to a study.
The typical brainwashed masters and PhD candidate becomes worse in that he/she is more adept at ignoring and omitting any fact and principle that belies the fake opinion.
We live in a time of universal deceit.
When I went through the U of I four and a half decades ago, I thought then that the intellectual content of many of the courses I took was fairly minimal.
I seem to recall you were studying for a schoolteacher credential at first. The ‘school of education’ at just about any campus is notorious. In New York, I think Cortland State’s might be the exception.
IMO, tertiary schooling should be of three varieties: (1) replicating secondary schooling, but with a different financing and selection method; (2) occupational instruction of varying levels of sophistication, which for > 85% of those who enroll will be courses of study limited to two academic years or a single calendar year; (3) preparatory courses which allow you to fill in gaps ‘ere entering occupational schools; and (4) specialized study of the arts and sciences, which would not usually exceed two academic years and which would be available for perhaps 12% of each birth-cohort.
Study at private institutions would be financed by family resources, foundation grants, unsubsidized bank loans, and the institution’s own endowment and donation stream. Berths at public institutions would be rationed to a fraction of the young adult population defined by statute and financed by voucher redemptions (in addition to donation and endowment income). The state funds from which the redemptions were drawn would be financed by a dedicated income tax whose haul was limited by the state constitution to specific shares of the state’s total personal income flow.
The sort of ignorance to which you were referring yesterday is a reflection of the failure of primary schooling, which should incorporate the fundamentals of American history, geography and civics. Some of that would be reinforced by secondary schooling for those following an academic course (while most students are following a voTech course or still attempting to master the basics). What stunned you about those Jeopardy contestants is that they’re all the sort of people you’d expect to have followed an academic course, one of them was a bloody school teacher, and another a lawyer.
Note, at the root of this is that schools, like just about any bureaucracy in fields without robust operational measures of competence, exist to provide employment for those on the payroll. Anything else is byproduct. And teacher training is scandalous.
Four varieties.
I seem to recall you were studying for a schoolteacher credential at first. The ‘school of education’ at just about any campus is notorious. In New York, I think Cortland State’s might be the exception.
Teacher education social studies. The education courses were the worst and seemed to be populated by too many truly lazy students and professors, with a fair number of honorable exceptions. Twenty hours of psych that I found interesting but way too easy. The political science courses taught me little that I didn’t already know. The History courses were usually intriguing and occasionally challenging.
The financial model of funding a college education is that of the leveraged buyout (LBO), but the college education has no cash surrender value, so there is no equity (in the financial meaning) position. The students are underwater financially for their student loan debt. It looks like predatory lending. Something like a high-toned payday loan.
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How much intellectual engagement can be expected from students who are going to college to get their meal tickets punched?
“The education courses were the worst and seemed to be populated by too many truly lazy students and professors, with a fair number of honorable exceptions”
Statistics online show that the students with the lowest ACT/SAT scores are major in Education. My own niece said the reason she went into education is she found economics classes too hard.
Statistics online show that the students with the lowest ACT/SAT scores are major in Education. My own niece said the reason she went into education is she found economics classes too hard.
IMO, teacher’s colleges should have one task: training teachers. Not training administrators, offering (pseudo) research degrees, training school psychologists, or anything else.
You screen all aspirants with an impersonal examination. Those that make the cut but have no other preparation are free to enroll in the course for a general elementary certificate or a special education certificate. Those with the requisite preparation can enroll in the course for an academic secondary certificate, vocational secondary, music, studio art, athletic coaching, or ESOL certificate. Preparation for an academic secondary certificate would consist of 42 credits (D-credits excluded) in one of about a dozen subjects offered in the arts and sciences faculty. It would be much the same for the music or art certificate, bar that the latter would also include a passing mark on a blind audition or portfolio submission. For the coaching certificate, 42 credits in some variant of physical education and passing a fitness test. For the vocational secondary, it would be something equivalent, like passing through a standard apprenticeship program. For each certificate, there would be a series of brass-tacks methods courses completed over part of a year, then placement in an internship where you’re appended to a certified master teacher. If you don’t bomb, you’re approved for a stipended apprenticeship with a master teacher, which lasts one academic year. For elementary teachers, there would be the opportunity to enhance your certificate by passing supplementary examinations, one in social education and one in general sciences. Exam preparation courses would be taught by professors seconded by the arts and sciences faculty, but they’d be optional. For side subjects teaches, you could enhance by having a second year of apprenticeship in a different venue – say, an elementary placement in one year and a secondary placement in another. For academic high school teachers, you could enhance by taking 42 credits in a different subject. And so forth.
My understanding is that there are screening examinations which weed out the worst aspirants, but the course work is largely useless when not frankly pernicious. I suspect if you investigated, you’d discover most people actively pushing woketardism are the issue of schools or education or social work. Both sorts of faculty should be dismantled.
“Both sorts of faculty should be dismantled.”
Carpet bombing would be appropriate.