College students saw Charlie Kirk as the ultimate enemy, so awful he needed deplatforming or worse, but educational swindlers are the real enemies of youth
I grew up in the area of Chicago's suburbs at a time it was farmland not far from where Charlie grew up. None of the kids in my high school went to the University of Chicago. We went to the University of Illinois at Chicago--much less expensive. The University of Chicago is very expensive. It's in its own sphere in its own neighborhood like Columbia is in NY.
Stephens does not know Chicago at all or how high school kids sort. That was a bone-headed statement by Stephens.
I attended their recruit day for undergraduates with a child of mine. It was an absolutely beautiful day in Chicago. As I walked the campus, I found it to be one of the most depressing places I had ever been. Such a dark place. The most telling part of the sales pitch was that if your child wanted to leave campus, at whatever hour for a cup of coffee, a security escort would be provided.
That night we had dinner with my niece and her husband. He is a professor. He said he was the only one he knew who had not been mugged, and explained why. My child chose differently and had the best experience possible. I was so happy they chose differently.
He rode his bike to the suburban train station. Once at the station near U of Chicago, he would ride his bike to campus. All the others he knew would walk it. That is where they got mugged. The trip between the train station and campus. He basically never left campus once there, until going home.
The old saying is "crime don't climb". Apparently crime also doesn't want to chase after bikes either. Lots of walking targets to take without the effort.
Unfortunately, I doubt this works for your relative. Maybe the don't leave campus part does.
One does need to be careful but it really isn't that bad.
Be careful about going out at night.
Be aware of your surroundings. I would strongly recommend NOT wearing ear buds and just staring at your phone. That's almost an invitation.
Don't be conspicuous (e.g., jewelry, etc.).
There is always the possibility of "random" interactions: sometimes a person can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As noted, just being aware of one's surroundings and being careful about interacting with people you don't know will do a lot.
I was already pretty hardened by the time I got there -- I grew up in Chicago and was all-too familiar with street gangs already in grade school.
But if your relative is motivated and wants to put the work in to get a solid education, that's a great school. Just be careful. I took public transportation back then and there were risks. There are risks now. Chicago public transportation is a wreck budget-wise as is the city in general. If they can drive, that might be best. If they can live on campus, that could be a great option. I hope concern does not negatively impact their enjoyment of getting an education.
It's not that bad. In fact, better now than when I went there.
It's an academically intense environment. As noted in my other post, after the U of C, I went to the UMN for grad school. The UMN had, unsurprisingly, a very "Big Ten" atmosphere. I am very happy I went to the U of C for undergrad. It was life-changing for me.
I'm going to add a comment to qualify my previous comment instead of editing that comment.
I referred to the U of C as being an "academically intense environment" and it is as there are many people who are working to get into competitive schools for law, medicine and other disciplines.
More importantly, much more so, is that it's an "intellectually intense environment"; the curiosity and interest was palpable, even at the undergraduate level.
As noted in another comment, mathematics was my worst subject in what was otherwise a great Jesuit high school experience (the Latin and Greek are still with me though I of course have little skill after so many years).
At Chicago, after being that hippie-dippie radical meathead and (quickly) realizing I wasn't really cut out for medical school (i.e., my GPA after freshman year was horrible), on a lark I decided to take some math classes as I felt a sort of lingering alienation from the subject (I did learn about Marx's theory of alienation during my freshman year -- and Marx deserves much credit for that even if his prescriptive economic theories appear entirely bunk).
So I took some classes. Found out I actually was good at the subject. Namely, when it was presented as ideas, a theory, a way of looking at things. The material was presented honestly, seriously and as a beautiful, fascinating subject.
I wound up hanging out with the math prodigy crowd (for lack of a better term: one guy, who I occasionally still correspond with, was taking master's-level classes as a freshman in college). By the time I graduated college, I had taken probably at least a third of the coursework for the master's degree.
It was so fulfilling. Going to college and wanting to learn, simply being hungry for knowledge. That was the U of C experience for me.
And, to reiterate, there is absolutely no reason that anyone at any school can't have the same experience. What I am noting is that the environment I was in tremendously helped me on that path.
This is particularly true today as there are rich resources available to any curious, motivated student: the web -- if you want to learn it, it's there.
I did drop out of graduate school (another story) for a bit. A long bit. Stayed interested and in touch with people while working in internet tech and data munging. When I went back and plowed through my degree (the grad school told me I had one year to complete my degree -- I wrote and defended the entire dissertation in nine months), I never had to leave my apartment. Every resource I could possibly need was online.
But I still love libraries. Just browsing through the collection "after hours" was so much fun.
I am glad it worked for you. More than just "worked", if a life-changing time for you. With those, you gain the confidence to do anything. Congratulations to you.
I'll add that I don't see why more schools could affect people this way.
I think the biggest issue is that a college education became to mean a "college degree". It became a commodity. The degree was the goal as a ticket to getting a job.
For some people, as Matt indicates, college isn't necessary and the work experience may be more valuable. A person can always return to school if desired.
In particular, sending people to college just for the degree is a waste of time and resources.
For those interested in diving deep into a subject, it can be very fulfilling.
There are many universities in the Chicago area. Stephens picked the one he thought was fanciest. And though Hyde Park--as the U of C area is known--is heavily patrolled it is challenging to take public transportation to campus. They do have a great library that was built over Stagg Field where the first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place.
Years after my undergrad at Illinois-Chicago I did attend the (now closed) library school at U of C. There was no other library school in Chicago. For this I was a grad. student. Most of the other students did their undergrad at Oberlin, Williams, Vassar etc. My first student session they all talked about their years abroad. The level of wealth among most U of C students was stunning. I didn't think telling them about my trip to Milwaukee was going to impress them. In the library school at least they were less elitist. My fieldwork in the Pilsen (Hispanic) community was acceptable. My thesis on community colleges was a bit down market as a topic, but was also acceptable.
I grew up in Brighton Park, fairly close to Pilsen, in the '60s and '70s, when both were mainly populated by Eastern European immigrants and there were actually all-white street gangs, like the Harrison Gents, the Gaylords, and (my favorite moniker) The Insane Popes. The major gang in our neighborhood was The Young Savages, also white, with a scattering of Mexicans. Yet it was totally safe for us kids to roam the streets unsupervised all day until nightfall. A lot has changed, to speak with restraint.
Indeed. Boneheaded is as boneheaded does. What sticks in my craw however is that the dismissed Kibble … er Kimmel can idly enjoy his millions while the millions who purportedly enjoy his "comedy" still have to keep their student loan checks coming. Poor saps.
It was a bone-headed comment by Stephens. Par for the course given that it's the NYT.
I grew up in Chicago around Halsted and Fullerton when it was much less "yuppified". It was a bizarre combination of an artist enclave and a very ethnically varied area (lots of Hispanic -- both Mexican and Puerto Rican -- but also "standard" American blue-collar and a lot of transplants from Appalachia).
I got "jumped" for the first time when I went to school wearing a beret. I was maybe six years old or so. Che Guevara may have still been alive. The local junior-Latin-Kings did not take kindly to a chubby white kid wearing a beret.
Whatever, I survived.
I then went to Saint Ignatius around Roosevelt and Racine. Four years of Latin and three of ancient Greek: fantastic. Walked through Circle Campus every day to the bus or train. Got jumped on the train in what I now see were often blatantly racially-motivated attacks.
Whatever, I survived.
I then went to the University of Chicago. For me, it was a life-altering experience. I am so grateful for the education I received. Got turned onto mathematics (ultimately getting a PhD in what was my worst subject in highschool) and music theory. Truly a wonderful, magical experience, for me.
Got jumped some times at the El at University and 63rd street. Heh. I made the mistake of not wearing army-surplus clothing so I looked like a "mark". Racial epithets and the rest of it.
Whatever, I survived.
Stephens is a clown for making that comment but I'll quickly state that I am indebted to the University of Chicago for providing the environment I enjoyed.
I went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. Was a teaching assistant in the mathematics department. Was convinced that, if a student was motivated, they could get as good an education there if they put in the work. The atmosphere, the culture among undergraduates struck me as significantly different than what I experienced. At the UMN, the undergrad culture seemed one of "take classes, count credits and just get out".
Very much the sort of "commercial pipeline" that college has become.
So I'll chime in in defense of going to the University of Chicago. I went years ago and can only hope it's still similar. Certainly I went before the explosion in tuition and the astronomic growth of staff to faculty (arguably one of the factors behind the explosion in the cost of college).
U of C's libraries are without peer but Stephens was clueless as U of Chicago wasn't an option for many who lived in the area. It does get confusing as when people say, "I went to Chicago" do they mean "University of?" or now "Illinois-Chicago" which has become a very competitive school-- but when I went there we called it Circle. I lived at the YWCA near the Newberry Library (which in those days anyone could use) and then moved to Taylor St. to be nearer Circle. U of Chicago was so expensive, but if you were good at math maybe scholarships. They closed their library school partly because it wasn't a money maker in that alums weren't big donors.. I've always taught at state schools and the students varied in motivation. I appreciate going to U of C for library school, but thought Stephens tossing off that Kirk could have gone there was opaque as to the higher-ed situation in Chicago. He didn't think to mention Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul or IIT. (there are many more).
The Newberry is a wonderful place but they've (sadly) gone super woke.
I walked through Circle Campus pretty much every day going home from high school.
Chicago -- the University of Chicago -- has changed and is waaaaaaay more expensive than it was in the 70's-80's. It was fantastic for me. My sister went to Northwestern. :-) I grew up right by DePaul.
With the University of Chicago, the graduate schools and the research mentality have a profound effect on the undergraduate culture. Arguably much more than most schools.
Stephens was way off-base in his comments about Kirk. Yes, I will admit that getting my @$$ handed to me in some debates when I was wannabe-hippie-radical in my first years at the U of C did me a lot of good. Remember them to this day. But, as I noted above, any student at pretty much any state school in the US can get a top-notch education. If that's what they want, but they'll have to show the initiative as the culture often won't be a driving force.
No, not on Chicago Avenue. It was a huge YWCA. Just for women. One had to be in by 10pm and no male visitors. It was $20.00 a WEEK. Circle had no dorms and I was too young (16) to get an apt. They sold the building and it became a Dr. Scholl school. Then torn down for luxury apts. Also Bughouse square was there between the YWCA and the Newberry. Here is a picture: https://artic.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/mqc/id/38023/
I loved college too, at a State University. I was not saying it’s worthless, only that one becomes educated thoroughly through reading the Great Books.
Home Boy! California and Pershing! I have kin in MN, too-- Bird Island, Bemidji. Morehead, and Ellendale. 2 cousins went to South Dakota State, home of the obelisk called "The Prick of the Prairie," another went to Bemidji State.
I did not realize from our earlier discourse you were from Chicago!
Ah, reading National Lampoon in Chicago in the 1970's!
After high school, I worked at a small factory at Cermak and Kedzie for a couple summers. Not far from your haunts!
Sigh. Back when there were "small factories".
MN is a trip. Most Minnesotans are quite normal, hard-working people. It's the nutjobs up there that have seized control of the cities. Why people put up with it is a mystery to me.
I swear to god we must have met at some point we have so much in common. Totally agree with your take on MN. My relatives up there are fairly liberal but have not become crazed with TDS.
When I was in the last half of 6th grade (musta been spring of 1972) I got busted for bringing in a copy of NatLamp. I showed it to some loudmouthed kid (Dave Sullivold, a freak who had a moustache and an enormous hog with a full bush of pubes that I saw in our 7th-grade locker room and who later sold window-pane acid). He got all excited and started loud-talking about the tits in Photo Phunnies, and Miss Powell confiscated it. My big brother, who bought all our reading matter, was not pleased.
I had one of my first serious crushes on Miss Powell, who once gave me a ride home in her 2-seater Karmann Ghia when I missed the bus. As an adult, I always sought out women who looked like her, almost married one (she died of a stroke though) and dated one as late as 2007. She kicked me to the curb, broke my heart, and put me off dating for some years. JFC, that's already nearly 20 years ago!
Goddamnit, now you've started a flood of memories, something that happens a lot as I race to the grave.
Sorry for going on so long, but meeting anyone with a similar background to mine is rare.
Thank you very much for sharing these details. I greatly enjoyed your reminiscences. You reminded me of a wave of my own!
I'd be almost certain to have had a crush on any gal teacher who gave me a lift in her Karmann Ghia! Most excellent vehicles! That's instant-super-cool-chick material!
Here's a hoot: a dude down the block from my folks' house had an AmphiCar:
I really feel for "kids nowadays". While having access to all technology is fantastic, living inside a cell phone is not.
The 1960's and even the 1970's with all the stagflation and self-doubt were still simple and innocent by comparison.
Violent? Yeah, arguably, I certainly "enjoyed" my share but there's an honesty and directness in dealing with street thugs that's not as perverse as the parasitic passive-aggressive psyop ghoulish behavior on social media.
Kids are now saturated with much more extreme -- and typically less clever and less thought-provoking -- material than even the most vulgar nat'l-lampoon article of that era. There's something to be said for smut written by alums of the Harvard Lampoon.
I continually find applications of Marx's "Theory of Alienation" (and I'm very much not a Marxist as regards economics). Having everything inside a computer (or phone, same thing) can be an obstacle, a barrier to apprehending and appreciating "real world" experiences. The COVID hysteria almost seemed engineered to drive people further down that path. Isolation. Reduced human interaction and communication.
I honestly wonder what people are typing as they stare at their phones as I seem to get perplexed stares whenever I try to casually talk with people. People always seem so surprised at what I would take as very basic knowledge of history, politics, the world...whatever.
So what the heck are they so furiously typing on their phones?
"There's an honesty and directness in dealing with street thugs that's not as perverse as the parasitic passive-aggressive psyop ghoulish behavior on social media."
No doubt. But now even thugs record their shit on phones for the edification of their buddies and the general public.
"Reduced human interaction" is sure enough happening. It's at it's worst when you see recordings of people just sitting and watching as someone gets shanked on the subway or, worse, records it on their fucking "smart" phones.
Isn't Bret Stephens the former Wall Street Journal scribe who thought Mitt Romney using a jet ski was going to doom him with the poor flyover people who could never afford such luxury? Not exactly a meat-and-potatoes guy, that dude.
I remember in one video -- it may not have even been Charlie Kirk but a similar event -- a "professor" came down from her 4th story classroom to loudly declare that she felt unsafe because of the debate table.
Yep! Unfortunately, college is 90-95% completely a scam. I have to agree with CK wholeheartedly.
Of course, students don’t disagree with the loons called professors! They want to get good grades and graduate so they can get a job making lattes for the pipefitters and plumbers on their way to work! 🤯😞😳😵💫💯💥🔥
I had a lunatic history professor with whom I fought the entire semester. I dared her to fail me *to her face*. For each exam I took two Blue Books (dating myself here.) In one I regurgitated her idiocy. In the other I wrote what I actually thought. I kept each and told the woman I’d take her to the university scholars board if she even thought about failing me.
Even then the young fools in the class were astonished I would openly argue with the professor about the content and her batshit crazy takes. I couldn’t understand why they were such cowards.
The only explanation I can find is that I started college after living a lot of life, knew bullshit when I saw it and wasn’t the least intimidated by titles.
I had a similar experience in a graduate economics class, where the professor waxed on about a socialist village in Peru where everything is shared and they’ve basically solved every local problem. “Have you been there?”, I asked. “Well, no,but…”. Well I had, and proceeded to describe village life in detail, none of which matched his story. I dismantled him in front of a class full of students. From that point on, he kept his leftist diatribes to himself. I got an A also, as well as being offered a TA position. I declined and went to work in the real world.
I expect she was secretly extremely impressed by your industry. Good for you! Your experiences mirror my own,, btw. Timing is everything, I went to university seriously after thirty and loved (almost) every minute.
I argued devil's advocate for most of University and was always at odds. Only had one professor punish me on ideological grounds. But that was the 90s.
I suspect that if I'd gone to grad school just a few years later than I did, my gentle-but-stubborn pushback against the Leftist indoctrination most of my professors were pushing in the classroom would have resulted in bad grades or even being kicked out of the program. I still wonder if the only thing that prevented them from doing so, even then, was the fear that administrators would examine my work (which always merited A's) and consider the viewpoint discrimination way too obvious to ignore.
I was double major math and writing. The difference between the two sides if campus was illuminating. I hear the science and math side has gone downhill rapidly.
In grad school at the University of Memphis, a professor (Indian-born) marked up one of my papers, insisting I could not use the pronouns “he” and “him” as generic references to people (as well as to male people). I went to his office to plead my case, that in the English language we do not have dedicated, gender-neutral pronouns; we use the masculine in such cases. He was hearing none of it so standing there in his office, which was literally a wall to wall, floor to ceiling library, I said well let’s look in a dictionary. I’m assuming you have one. He replied, “Dictionaries are for uneducated people.” I laughed in his face and walked out and never stopped using he/him in my papers where it was appropriate to do so.
That most kids can’t write a proper email is obscene but I’ll wager a fair sum those same students won’t be failed after drawing stick figures in said blue books.
They were all stressful TBH. I worked third shift, took the kids to school, went to school myself, and lived on two hours of sleep six nights a week for a long time.
A good piece of advice is to “pick your battles.” Your determination and resolve and dares levied towards your batshit professor has them picking their battles in regards to you!
Bravo! Excellent tactic and an admirable anecdote. Are you a veteran? In my teaching experience, older students and vets were the most independent-minded lot and the best students. Would you mind saying when you were in? Have they done away with exam blue books?
No, I was an 8th grade dropout who spent my teenage years hitchhiking as a runaway. Got married to a lunatic, fled with toddlers, worked full time and got a GED.
Make no mistake, they want a government taxpayer funded job. Not bad returns when Omar is worth 50 million from a few years on the House of Representatives. Taking Pelosi’s place.
Kleptocracies require stealing from those plumbers and electricians to fund lavish 5 star lifestyles.
Now, THIS is what we need! Since The College Lie is already in mass-uptake-mode, Hollywood, Netflix, and whatever mind-numbingly fake rendition of life kids are consuming online could simply take up this mantle. Give all these helpless neurotics their internal locus of control back! Easy! (I felt a rush of glee from your story btw)
I don't know about plumbers, but pipefitters don't drink no damn lattes. They have a vacuum-sealed metal thermos that keeps the Maxwell House from the Mr. Coffee hot til past lunch.
As a 'Trades Guy' for 40 yrs, I tried a latte and I liked it. Start the mourning with Starbucks brewed in my Mr Coffee with 1/2 and 1/2 and raw sugar. House, truck, car, are paid for with no debt and I'm retiring at 62. (would go longer but the body has a different view) I'm a hybrid with some college business classes and street smarts and have had my own business for 28 yrs. My advice for my 4 kids when they went off to college (on my suggestion) was 'use the school, don't let school use you'. Y'all now have 4 productive U.S. citizens, that like me, are getting little more conservative everyday. I was a Reagan Democrat and now just an America First Independent hoping the D's get their shit together soon.
'And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest, "Excitable boy" they all said.
Well he's just an excitable boy' Warren Zevon 1978
I worked in the trades for about ten years before going back to school in my early thirties. I wasn't cut out for drywall subcontracting and had no ambitions to start up a business, having begun at a young age after getting out of the Army and having worked with a number of feckless alcoholics, subs who frequently called it a day early on Fridays to go get hammered and eat hot dogs at our favorite dive bar.
I have three grandsons, 12, 10 and 7. Should I live long enough to advise them as they finish their last two years of high school, I will read the “careers” landscape and dovetail it with their interests, abilities and aspirations. I will also compile “AI- proof” careers, so as to provide them a range of opportunities suited to them as unique men, likely to provide income sufficient to raise a family and resistant to the irrelevance that AI may bring.
Ironically I ran into this problem super early in childhood (a clock-drawing test) and I'm pretty sure it's one of the things that made me distrust authority so much. I wrote up an article about it in 2022 (at that time about covid), and a LOT of people in the comments had similar stories. https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/why-are-you-like-this (Bonus - at the end of the article is the very first picture of my kitty and editor, Gangster)
Interesting experience. I've definitely experienced situations where I gave them what they wanted just to get the grade, while at the same time thinking they were full of it.
Awww, the cat is an orange kitty, our orange boy just passed last week after 18 years.
I feel compelled to suggests this every few months when the topic rises: make student loans eligible for bankruptcy. Don't government back them. Lenders will immediately tighten funds, and in a few short years, this will defund colleges that don't educate students to professions that make college fees and loans worthwhile. Baristas can go straight to work out of high school, without the snooty degree in postmodern feminism. Or, they might be more prone to consider plumbing, or the military, or whether an additional 100k+ master's degree in education is really necessary to teach high school math or English.
the real scam of college is they use federally backed student loan money, (which administrators actually encourage the young people to maximize and use for whatever they want) to fund the indoctrination and loop back big contributions from their salaries to political campaigns. its one big circle jerk.
a sick circle of bullshit goes round and round. Students lie and or censor themselves to appease the loons (professors) which ensures the loons give good grades. Fire each and every loon and rebuild a structure that encourages free, honest, open, and critical thinking. That cannot happen until the dismantling takes place.
They can get even by giving them bad reviews when it comes time for filling out customer satisfaction surveys called things like "Student Perception of Instructional Effectiveness," though I think tenured pink-hairs and BLM types don't have to have this hanging over their heads.
Well, kids in primary and secondary schools are, according to decades of test results, getting stupider, so it'd be a surprise if the ones in college weren't as well.
Arne, considering that they've been raised by smartphones, it would be shocking if they hadn't got dumber. The "I hate books" attitude hasn't helped.
Other than the debilities of age, damn, I'm glad I'm 73. I remember when young people read books, and the ones who didn't tended to keep the fact to themselves.
For years I have thought that the Boomer generation really should be considered not even to have existed save for dull demographic reasons. This is because we first halfers were, I think, more like the Silent Generation than we were like the second halfers. Probably a majority of us first halfers had our brains formed pre TV, and the advantage of the brain's development in toddlerhood occurring apart from the electronic image can't be overestimated.
Sorry but you first halfers were the Woodstock generation of dropping out, turning on and tuning in with LSD and "free love". We second halfers growing up watching Gunsmoke on TV with our parents in the 60s were not the problem. 😉
Oh, yeah, we all went to Woodstock. Even my dope smoking cousin, who lived in northern Ohio and could easily have made it to Woodstock, didn't go because it would have taken him away from his glamorous summer job digging graves.
The first time under 21s were allowed to vote, the election of 1972, voters 18 - 21 voted in the majority for Nixon.
Look at the age of first marriage for people born before 1955. When I was at the University of Texas in the early seventies, there was essentially a city just west of the campus. It was married student housing, and it consisted of a lot of small houses, a lot of clotheslines, and a lot of pre school age kids running around.
The idea that the dormitories would ever have been sexually desegregated would have struck us as a fantasia.
I realize plenty of folks your age were not riding the Grateful Dead party bus, but we're talking about cohorts here. A lot of factors were involved in the widespread degeneration of our culture, but the turning point was the late 60s when folks your age were young adults and my age group (I was born in 1960) were playing little league. So blaming us is absurd. My parents - Dad a Korean War vet, attended college on the GI bill - were the Silent Generation.
Im 49, raised by parents born in 39 and 46, respectively, and agree with Bobby and have been saying the same for thing for years now. My parents and their cohort raised gen x. The younger boomer cohort raised millenials. The parenting styles were very different, and produced very different results. In terms of achieving trult terrible results in the department of child rearing, the failures of younger cohort of the boomer generation('55-'65) have only been surpassed by the failures of the older cohort of gen x(65-72). I would argue that the younger boomers and older gen xers are far more similar to one another than they are to the other half of their respective generations. Their parenting style has created an existential social crisis. But generally speaking, its been all downhill and I attribute almost all of it to the terrible worldview of blank slate liberalism.
Trashing any individual who's born into a particular demographic is absurd unless that person acts like a dick, then you can talk about how the reasons for the dickishness might be related to the time he was born into.
I'm really skeptical of over-generalities about generational guilt. Look what it's done to Germany. It works in the other direction, too, like the gushing over "The Greatest Generation," which also has its warts.
Time will tell the story of . . . where are we now in generational generalities . . . Generation Z?
I don't think of it in terms of blame. I was only pointing out that I think the first half of the generation had more in common with The Silent or Greatest Generations than it had with the second half of the generation. There is a Facebook group, Generation Jones, which is limited to people who were born after, I think, 1957, but before GenX, which began in 1965, so I'm not the only Boomer who has that perception.
I do think there is some value to this. I was able to write essays arguing positions that I didn't actually agree with. I think this is something that's pretty common in debate societies - people are assigned positions and they have to argue them whether they agree with it or not.
But there's quite a big difference in why are students doing it. Is it because they're just regurgitating what they've been taught and what they know the teacher wants to hear?
Because they're afraid?
Are students able to take counter positions and argue those without fear of repercussions?
Those are the sort of questions that seem important.
The worst thing: I know from direct observation that Left wing profs don't necessarily care if the students believe the things they are compelled to write, they just want them to say the words and put their name on it. It's totalitarianism in real time.
And it goes all the way up the ladder to the DEI Loyalty Oaths that, until quite recently, were required at virtually every university as a condition of full-time employment.
I taught seventh grade English a few years ago, and we use the philosopher‘s chair and the Socratic seminars as part of our argumentative writing. We had to write at least 4 to 5 essays a year based on literature or current events. One of the practices we had was that you had to take an opposing view just so you would understand another person‘s opinion (like lawyers do) and felt more confident in using data, facts from research or quotes within the essay to support opinions. Just a year and a half ago, I had a friend asked me why I was being argumentative or playing the devil’s advocate, and all I could comment was - I’ve been teaching this for 14 years and it just seemed like a normal conversation to me. When teaching in academics, one would think it would spill over into real life. Maybe I’m wrong. I enjoyed teaching it and most kids did really well. I hope they use this process as young adults or college students feeling confident in communicating their ideas.
That's pretty heavy lifting for 7th grade. Maybe there are some exceptions to the generalizations about the decay of public education in the US. Or were you teaching in a private academy?
This was a local public school in Carlsbad, California. Strong writing curriculum. I used short stories, age-appropriate articles, current events which students picked, short stories and worked in small groups to dissect. They learned ( in the process of…) what writers used and considered: history, compare and contrast, opinion and use of quotes to support their writing. We Used philosopher’s chairs and Socratic circles to encourage conversation and support the learning process. I tried to make it fun. Hopefully, they can use what they learned.
Hell yes, I did that too. It was really appreciated when I could suss out what sort of research the professor was working on and write it up better than he could. A+++.
"I think this is something that's pretty common in debate societies [. . . .]"
Maybe in the past. these days a lot college debate has become some sort of weird performance art that relies more on "lived experience" than knowledge or reasoning. Thanks once again to the asshats who rule the Humanities roost for this ugly development.
For example, here's a quotation from the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal website, dated 12/10/2008:
"A newer and (fortunately) still somewhat controversial development is called 'performance debate.' Performance debates are arguments that are literally presented with a performance (such as acting, rapping, storytelling or singing) or a combination of performance and reading evidence. [. . .] Performance debaters usually engage the debate topic marginally, but speak primarily about issues that they view of greater importance. Usually these issues involve arguments about the institution of policy debate itself or socio-economic issues." https://jamesgmartin.center/2008/12/college-debate-aint-what-it-used-to-be/
Why would so many students be in debate classes? Do we need debate classes to learn how to make an advanced ceramic heat shield for a space shuttle? Do we nees debate classes to learn how to build a better highway?
What are the jobs people actually do, and I mean 95 percent of people.
Take payment for a product or service, retail and B2B.
Describe a product to a customer to help them know what to buy, retail and b2b?
Team lead a very small number of co workers often 7 or less, retail and b2b.
Answer the phone ask or answer queations bases on company provided knowledge, retail and b2b.
Move an object from one location to another, stocking, product display, shipping prep, actual shipping.
Perform a simple mechanical or physical task trained on the job, line cooking, assembly, installation.
Manage and alter records per company policy training done at the company.
If you combine these tasks with the trades it represents 80 to 85 percent of jobs.
Yet, we encouraged 70 percent of high school graduates to take on debt to attend college in 2010. How is it rational to have 70 percent of kids waste 4 to 6 years getting degrees that will only help them in 20 percent of jobs?
Education is not (and shouldn't be) purely vocational training, though I agree with your take on university education as far as its usefulness as a sort of jumped-up vocational school. Non-technical/science-related subjects (that is, the humanities) have been compromised by leftist ideologues and their crackpot theories of knowledge and education and most everything else. Jordan Peterson is right.
Ideally, universities should limit their instruction to the hard and applied sciences. Let people who want to study art and literature head to museums and libraries and buy books on Amazon.
Still, if they're not getting any help in public schools, that leaves the problem of how to advise kids what might be entertaining and instructive to read besides Harry Potter and other contemporary light entertainment. Real literacy (that is, reading something deeper than the instructions on the backs of soup cans) and love for reading begins at home, and the more schools churn out illiterates not interested in reading anything but what's on their phones, fewer parents will be able to steer their kids onto anything from the past that might be worthwhile to read.
My daughter wanted to do a book repot on Orlando Furioso in fifth grade, which I convinced the teacher to allow. She asked me recently if I thought third grade was too early to allow my grandson to read it.
We might be an unusual family but kids can find books without paying $100k for indoctrination.
> "Ideally, universities should limit their instruction to the hard and applied sciences. Let people who want to study art and literature head to museums and libraries and buy books on Amazon."
I generally agree with most of your comment, but with some quibble here. Where do history and philosophy fit in? Aren't there specialized art academies purely for teaching artists to do art, and others to appreciate it's history and technique? If we are teaching history, philosophy, and foreign languages, which do have a "hard" core to them, don't art and literature feed into those pursuits in important ways?
Good question. You made me think beyond my initial take.
These disciplines, history especially, require serious, widely and deeply-read scholars to introduce newcomers to these subjects and to direct their reading in their particular interests. Learning how to read critically enough to get some good out of it . . . well, that's been crippled somewhat by the compromised English departments. In my time, there were still instructors dedicated to teaching the rhetoric of argumentation without battering their captives with their political horseshit (fortunately including the departments I taught in, whose chairs actively discouraged it) and there were some history and philosophy profs who took on the added work of teaching students the rhetoric of argument and critical reading . . . as if they didn't have enough of a work load teaching their own specialties.
My instinctive (knee-jerk?) answer is a need for the development of a greater amount of specialized academies in art (especially technique), as well as academies dedicated to history, philosophy, and foreign languages. When and how that can happen . . . who knows? It's probably impossible, but it might be the only way for people to avoid being taught by the leftist ideologues who have screwed everything up and eroded trust in higher ed.
Now that I think of it, Jordan Peterson has attempted something like this with his online Peterson Academy (https://petersonacademy.com/)and there are probably others like it out there somewhere.
If the students stand their ground, universities that police right-leaning view points don’t realize that they are also producing excellent debaters on the right because right-leaning students graduate knowing all of the left’s arguments backwards and forwards while left-leaning students also leave knowing the left’s arguments and….that’s it.
I graduated from Georgia Tech in the 2010s, the opposite of a liberal arts school, but I took some free electives and was absolutely shocked at how wild the professors’ views were and the content of their classes. In one class, the professor gave us all lesbian erotica to dissect together as a class and brought in her friend, a “butch top” to present to the class on…I don’t even know what? In another class, a professor went on a tangent about abortion (a topic in which I lean right) and was absolutely floored that I was willing to debate my position in front of the class with him. He could not believe it and started to insult me personally in front of the class. It was a wild experience, even at the Georgia institute of technology.
Virtually no institution of higher ed in America, with the exception of Hillsdale College, has escaped the Leftist-inspired insanity. Having "Tech" in your school's name makes no difference whatsoever. MIT is one of the worst offenders of all.
That’s disheartening. We toured GT in 2022 for my son when looking at colleges and I was thrilled nobody introduced themselves with their pronouns and there weren’t tampons in the men’s room (UVA). He ended up at UAH but I’m secretly hopeful he’ll GT for Master’s should he choose to pursue one.
Bad news. It's not just college! I had the privilege of paying a lot of dollars for my kids to go to private school where, as a freshman, my oldest son told me he learned to "shut up and keep my head down."
The current state of higher education absolves me from providing in my will for my grandchildrens' education.
Yesterday, my year-old granddaughter crawled to my antique typewriter, a relic formerly displayed in my newspaper office. I moved her away from it, saying, "Typewriter bad. Bad, bad typewriter."
College taught an enormous number of mediocre people that they are not, indeed, mediocre, and that they should ignore all evidence to the contrary while actively despising those deemed lower status. We will be dealing with those consequences for a very long time.
Or at least a snicker. But I am serious. The best new research indicates that sociopaths aren't driven by a need to compensate but by a sense of entitlement.
This is a one size fits all argument unless you have some real support.
We are all stuck in different status competitions, competition for esteem, competition for money. How are college grads any different?
I do think there are problems with education, among them imbalances between political views and burgeoning administrations that need to justify their positions by interfering. But doesn't "elite overproduction" translate to too many people who disagree with you? And then I have a real "overproduction" problem, since most people Left and Right disagree with me!
This is a very worthwhile article and subtle in its use of the idea of elite overproduction.
But when it says: "And you say that this first group—the carpenters, the plumbers—are going to fail because there’s a lack of effective organization among them." I think that is very classist and just untrue: These people elected Donald Trump and they seem perfectly (and, yes, overly) happy about that.
The elites who concern me are the people in control: Entrenched academics and government workers and billionaires and politicians who would sacrifice ANYTHING to be re-elected.
Everybody counts in a democracy. I understand striving, though it interested me little. When I had a lot of money I gave half of it away because I felt the scales out of balance. When I had power I let it dissipate by spending it trying to stand up for the powerless. Me. I didn't hide in a group. I didn't label people. I just tried to help without preconceptions.
As for mediocrity, the idea that people who don't fight to stand on top of over people are mediocre - in response to others, not you, I say that these mediocrity-accusers are usually among the most mediocre people there are, because they are blind and foolish enough to think that multiple big yachts and exclusive restaurants are anything more than a false front over emptiness.
The number of Americans who self-identify as being smart BECAUSE they vote Democrat (and also think what they're told by authoritative sources like the endless stream of rando "experts" speaking on NPR) numbers in the tens of millions.
I hate to tell you this buddy, but my intellectual level and IQ are many stories above the average Democrat voter's. Or, as a matter of fact, above the average NPR expert's. But, stay angry.
I think mediocre "means" average, no? Just with a sense of judgment.
I'm not surprised that many less intelligent people go to college in an attempt to get a leg up while college is less necessary for clearly intelligent people. I never graduated college. Never hurt me. Never came up.
I've lost track of the number of academics online sneering at Charlie Kirk as a "community college dropout", an intellectual lightweight who went around picking on teenagers.
Well then... Why are you so incredibly, deliriously happy the man's dead? People don't film themselves dancing when the victim didn't threaten them at all. Charlie Kirk was over the target, threatening the whole rotten credentialist enterprise, and they know it.
As a conservative, I am pleased that Pam Bondi took a well deserved skewering in that interview, inventing hate speech as a crime. She got an earful from the right. You'll notice that never happens when the left is in power.
I really liked Charles Cooke’s tweet: “So, just to check, given the encouragingly universal reaction to Bondi I’m seeing this morning: We’re all agreed, going forward, that there’s no such thing as hate speech, and that Jack Phillips can choose which cakes to bake, right? This is settled now?”
In the same vein, I have a problem with the concept of a “hate crime “, which is usually applied to homicides. What difference does the motivation make to the victims? There is some element of hate or animus in any crime. It’s an inherently subjective charge.
When can we get the “we’re all agreed, going forward, that a man cannot become a woman or vice versa, right?” I probably won’t live long enough to see the post mortem on this phenomenon, but it will hopefully provide an abundance of shame on a lot of the intelligentsia.
The interesting thing is when leftists listen to Bondi and can’t agree with her so they have to support free speech. Folks who said speech was violence (if they disagreed with it)
Similar to post Annunciation shooting someone posited that maybe trans folks shouldn’t have guns….boy howdy never saw so many gun grabbers become ardent 2A proponents overnight
Leaving some space for her comments actually being a blunder, it doesn't take the ability to play 3-D chess to guess the directionality and volume of the response from the left to a hyperbolic statement from anybody in the Trump Administration. Getting hundreds of Democrats on record that there is no such thing as "hate speech" (while hundreds of Republicans reaffirmed their commitment to the 1A) might have been worth the heat.
When she was first picked as Gaetz’s “successor” pick, my impression was that she didn’t have the chops. I chided myself for prematurely judging her and not giving her a fair shake. I doubt my first instincts less now.
Matt-in your last piece on this you criticized Kirk’s statements on black pilots and black mid-century wellbeing, seeming to suggest some racial animus. Many of us attempted to engage with you on this, providing context that showed Kirk was making rational points.
Rather than engage most commenters, you snuck in two comments deep down in the replies saying you thought Kirk’s statements were “unintentionally revealing” and also admitted ignorance of DEI in aviation.
Your subscribers deserve to know: were you insinuating you think Kirk is racist in a post two days after he was assassinated? If so, please own it and tell us. If not, please explain, or retract and correct. The stakes here are too high for this mode of discourse to continue.
If I meant to say “racist” I would have said that. You don’t have to agree with me, but what I said in that piece was that statement didn’t sit well. I’m not allowed to voice that opinion? To feel that?
I’m very opposed to the modern version of DEI, I think it’s a form of institutional racism (and not reverse discrimination but specifically racism), and I’ve been outspoken about this. That doesn’t mean I’m required to co-sign every way of arguing against it. If you’d rather not hear that I believe there are better ways of saying things, I don’t know what to tell you.
Thank you for replying, and I will get off your back. Sorry if it was annoying.
You’re allowed to feel that of course - but it was unclear because “sitting well” is a nebulous feeling that your readers can’t decipher. I honestly don’t know what “sitting well” means in a substantive sense. It’s uncomfortable in a way you can’t put a finger on? That’s fine, I’ll take that. (Edit: you said your precise statement would be more like: “I agree in the main with Kirk’s criticisms of DEI, but not with how he framed or phrased them”)
Even a paragraph of context for your views like the above would have been tremendously helpful when the whole point of the piece was to criticize people who were making out of context criticisms of Kirk. (And even more so because Kirk was killed for his speech, presumably) Add the additional context that you’re the country’s foremost investigative journalist - we NEED you desperately to be a model of civil and well informed discourse in this moment when that is under attack.
Also, I don’t know if you’ll see this, but I’ll put it out there anyway in the off chance you do.
I understand if you’re indignant because I was poking you until you answered. But rationally, let me be the “ombudsman” here and point out the following about why this is really something to think about.
You’re probably one of the 20 most important and influential public facing figures in American media right now, and probably in the top 5 when it comes to anything 1A related. The political temperature is through the roof. Speech is under physical attack. Charlie was killed because of political speech.
So, saying something like “Charlie said some stuff on race that didn’t sit well with me” without any more details…well that’s something sane liberal observers text our friends on Friday after he is killed. But given all the above - to throw it out there to millions (literally) in your piece and leave the possibility it was a racism accusation on the table (I was far from the only one who read it that way)…it’s just not the model of discourse that needs to be put out there over and above all the partisan whack jobs who want us to see their hot takes.
For another subscribers viewpoint, I'm okay without another purity test. This was a great article. Looking for blood over any perceived grievance in some attempt to "gotcha" a great voice is how we end up with no one saying anything worthwhile for fear of misspeaking.
I don't see it as a purity test, just an opportunity for dialogue. We all know Matt Taibbi isn't the type to denounce any opponent of DEI as an unreconstructed remnant of the Confederacy in order to win plaudits from the Atlantic set, like some mediocrities I could mention. Reasonable people can still disagree.
It’s not a “gotcha”. I never watched Charlie Kirk in my life and had no particular sympathy for him before the assassination. It’s just asking Matt to speak clearly and with logic and evidence at a highly sensitive political moment. He did none of the above in his criticism, and he should be held to the very high standard he has set for his multi decade career.
Asking for clarification on the main idea of his prior piece? Read the totality of the discussion about this, including the comments on the last piece - I’ve never done this in 10 years of reading Matt. This is very important to be careful and precise about with what’s going on
I’ve read it. I don’t need to be instructed to read something. I can come to my own conclusions about what was said without being a fucking baby and demanding the author “clarify”. Maybe one day you’ll learn that skill too. It’s part of growing up. Give it a whirl.
You are properly smacking flyover down. He deserves it. You will notice that he just keeps going, though. That is troll behavior. I do not think you can change him, but shaming him for his infantile behavior is still pretty good!
Look, I poked Matt with strong language to get him to reply but have otherwise been very constructive and diplomatic with everyone replying. I’ve said nothing that I wouldn’t say to anyone’s face. The profane ad hominem attacks are beneath this comment section, which tends to be a pretty healthy conversation most times.
I think Matt can hold himself to whatever standard he would like. And certainly you can expect a certain standard as well, which you have communicated, as can I, which I have communicated. That's all.
Asking the country’s foremost investigative journalist to accurately source and explain his position on the most salient political event of the year is an objective, universal standard. To ask anything less is disappointing. I’m not asking Matt to state a position to which he made no reference. That would be a “gotcha” and I would never do that to someone. Go back and see his original post - he made insinuations about Kirk’s racial views that were unclear and unsupported by evidence.
The sad fact is, the policy of DEI hiring makes anyone from any category helped by it suspect in terms of their actual skills for the job. When skill level and achievement become secondary to gender or skin color, it is not unreasonable to become concerned when the pilot in the cockpit is BIPOC, etc. As I said, sad but true.
I'm an old and grumpy feminist and I had no problem with what Matt said. Back in the 70's and 80's I never assumed males (white) were the best qualified for their jobs. Most were good at their job but there were those mediocre males who were sometimes promoted over better women and minorities. Those days have long gone and now others have taken up the mantle of railroading white males for mediocre women and minorities in some weird revenge plot. I remember the jerks from the old days and I don't want them replaced by the new jerks. This is what I heard Kirk saying, but I do think he could have said it better.
STOP WITH THE GODDAMNED INQUISITION. Taibbi isn’t always correct, but he’s always trying to be, and he’s genuine. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s in short supply these days. If you want to shit on snide apparatchiks engaging in sophistry and double talk masquerading as journalists, I have a list for you to review. Matt’s not on it.
I am sorry if I came off as an inquisitor. I’ve never pressed Matt to clarify his meaning on anything before, and I was one of the original subscribers to his Substack. I won’t repeat it here, but you can read my replies to him for why this got me so spun up.
To your point substantively, it’s precisely because Matt is not one of those journalists that I’m making a big deal of it. I know he is a person of great principle and integrity. He has more backbone than all of us anonymous goobers put together. He deserves to be held to a high standard by his friends. Especially on this issue at this moment.
Asking Matt, as a subscriber, to clarify a position he insinuated but left murky—a position that relates to the main idea of his prior piece and the entire debate over Kirk’s death is forcing speech?
Yes, since you made it clear there was only one "right" answer. What you did is exactly what the Left does to extort compliance in speech. Which you can do and the left can do. I'm not the speech police, just somewhat calling BS on that whole move, whoever does it.
I think you have me mistaken. I will repeat in a different way. Matt made an unclear statement about his opinions on Kirk’s racial views. One interpretation is that Matt was insinuating Kirk was racist. I said so and asked him to clarify, saying that if he did it was poorly informed. He did clarify. Now all is well and the meaning is understood. I see no extortion in the above.
He has made a career of being the left’s “house conservative.” They like to trot him out on campus to show “balance.” That is, when David Brooks is not available.
Agreed! Fuck Bret Stephens, I wouldn't wipe my ass with a thing he dribbled onto the page - empty, faux conservative pomposity from a flag-pin patriot - complete waste of space.
While I'm in agreement with some of Taibbi's posting, his use of Bret Stephens as a whipping boy is, well too easy.
"Even" NYT readers pretty much despise him. The leading reader comment to a recent article was: "I am so, so done with Bret Stephens." And it seems the NYT with some regularity has a column titled, "Readers respond to a column by Bret Stephens." Hint, they ain't praising him.
The Times readers despise Stephens because he’s “conservative” by their standards, ie not for any rational reason. I’ve actually met him, and he’s a self satisfied, preening jerk.
"Consider the source" only makes sense in matters of fact. In abstract matters consider the words or you are doing a mirror image version of "Everything Trump says/does is WRONG!".
So Stephens threw himself into the arms of Sulzbergers aka anti-Israel folks...
AI: "The Sulzbergers of the New York Times have not always been supportive of Israel. In fact, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times from 1935 to 1961, was explicitly anti-Zionist and opposed the creation of the state of Israel. He viewed Judaism primarily as a religion, not a national or ethnic identity, and resisted efforts to highlight Jewish issues prominently in the paper. Under his leadership, the Times downplayed the danger Nazism posed to Jews, buried Holocaust stories, and editorially aligned with anti-Zionist groups such as the American Council for Judaism. He even forbade the use of the term "Jewish state" in the newspaper's coverage.
Later Sulzberger family members, such as Arthur Ochs Sulzberger ("Punch") and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., had a more complex and varied relationship with Jewish identity and Israel, with the paper's stance evolving over time. Although The New York Times today is considered an influential source on the Israel-Palestine conflict and is sometimes criticized from both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian perspectives, the early Sulzbergers were distinctly anti-Zionist and unsupportive of Israel's founding and early existence.
AI: "One significant reason for Stephens' departure was his desire to have a new platform; he had been a prominent anti-Trump conservative voice at The Wall Street Journal, often clashing with pro-Trump perspectives within the paper."
Here's my college rip-off story. I wroted my master's thesis for my major professor and he panned it telling me it was all wrong in its thesis. I took his advice and rewrote it his way then he told me it was wrong for all the reasons the first version was right. I rewrote it a 3rd time as it was the first time but instead of telling me its wrong he told I could pay him a thousand dollars and he would get it rewritten for me.
I was flumoxed. As I thought about it, I realized it was a solicitation of a bribe. I wrote it up as a complaint and sent it to the dean. I was blacklisted and my career as a music theory teacher was off the table.
What's great about being a Believer is simply I can call on my Creator when there are problems. I found an ad in a newspaper(that tells you how long ago this was) that asked if I knew Microsoft Word. I wrote my thesis in Word 6.0 The rest is history. I became an employee of Microsoft for 4.5 years and turned myself into a programmer and I've been doing stuff like that every since.
The academic institutions are rotten to the core and have been for decades. Time to flush the chunks and begin again.
BTW: The bribe solicitor retired with a nice fat package some years later. The local paper refused to cover the story because their bread was buttered by the university. It now controls massive swatches of real estate for which the city and county cannot collect taxes. Charlie was right. Higher education is a total ripoff.
Something like this happened to me in my doctoral program. My advisor told me that my doctoral study had to result in a tool that could be sold by his private publishing company, and that if I didn't agree to that, he would make certain I would never graduate. He was furious when I said, "Ok" and found a different advisor. The most important lesson I learned in the program was that most professors/researchers/advisors were only out to line their own pockets and snag accolades along the way to the bank.
I went on a college tour to a highly selective university in North Carolina this summer. The tour guide college student told us that part of the writing 101 courses offered were Dolly Parton for President and one to the tune of Life of Taylor Swift. $95k/yr.
I can’t believe someone would pay to send a kid who can’t write to a university at all- let alone one that costs $95k/yr. I’d tell that kid to go get a job.
My niece is currently in her second year of nursing school. It enrages me she is paying college tuition to take volleyball this semester. Last spring semester she took billiards. I want to find the person who is a university billiards instructor and slap them upside the head. There is zero useful knowledge gained from a college billiards course! I understand the idea of electives and am a champion of a well rounded education, but maybe offer useful electives like navigating insurance, budgeting, or meal planning. Not freaking billiards!
I got a B.S. in college in 1980. It got my foot in the door, but it was worthless otherwise. That was my fault as I took easy, non-challenging electives. Within a year of starting my career, I realized I had no life experience that remotely matched the professional class I was selling to—lawyers, doctors, business owners, corporate execs—who had families and many were WW2, Korean and Viet Nam veterans of war.
So, I joined a book of the month club for the 100 best books of Western Civilization and educated myself. The first book of the month was “Moby Dick” and the second was “War and Peace.” A slow reader, I was immediately behind in reading a book a month. But I persevered and it changed my life for the better.
The college experience today is so toxic I have not encouraged my kids to go to college unless they are pursuing a career that requires a B.S. (and typically a masters and/or PhD). There are a handful of good colleges with traditional humanities degrees and less toxic environments, but none of my kids are interested in education for education’s sake. I was obviously the same way at their age, but I’d gladly pay for such an education if they wanted one.
I sort of did that. The University of Chicago in its earlier manifestation sold the Great Books idea. They even wrote about it in Life Magazine. The great Books came in a set like encyclopedias. My h.s. library had a set. I even got a Syntopicon. By the time I went to actual college I had a fair knowledge of the humanities. That is one of the reasons I thought becoming a librarian was a good career. People w/o college could have access to so much. I wrote about that program here:
I've a set of the Great Books and a set of Harvard Classics on the shelves of my office at a public university. My dad picked them up at university library sales. For whatever it's worth, there are still people like us on campus.
Just read your article on Substack. A $62,000 budget for the Great Books that ended up costing millions. Those scholars should not have skipped math class!
There are plenty of good options for folks if one checks the curriculum, although I expect most here already have a degree or some experience with college.
Most of university is reading and we don't need to pay anyone to do that. Check a course syllabus, or three, to get a flavor of the arc. Access to primary sources has never been easier - start with the Library of Congress online and just read a few hundred newspapers from the period of your choice. Google Books will also opens up worlds by simply using the tools: custom time and view.
Paul, reading, like critical thinking, is rapidly becoming a lost art in today's universities. Students won't read anything longer than a few paragraphs, and faculty have no real way anymore to compel them to do so.
One only need compare the syllabi from the 1970s to the ones from today to see how true this is. Some students, it is true, always ditched/faked the assigned reading. But today, it is not even assigned.
Cheers! I always enjoy your replies, Pacificus. In lecture courses its impossible and always has been. University teachers, however, are among the least imaginative people I know - no need for examples.
One on one interviews with a demand that the student be prepared to describe in detail every element of an argument on a particular page doesn't leave even the most slippery student any place to hide. Threats to double reading assignments, HW, and interviews are also powerful incentives. The invitation to depart or fail is, of course, the threat of last resort.
I made clear, however, my goal was to help and to invite students to do their best - coz that's what we're here for. The vast majority, after some resistance, rose to the challenge and were grateful for the opportunity. My faith in our young people remains - its the oldsters who've opted out and who should be condemned. As for university teachers, god help us all.
K-12, on the other hand, continues to attract the best. Always good to hear from you. I doubt many university teachers, or students, even understand what critical thinking actually is, so thanks for that too!
I agree re the Zoomers—lots of hope for them. That said, I hear from teachers K-12 and college that kids are not only not reading, but using ChatGPT to write their essays. I tell my own kids, “That’s who will be your ‘competition’ in life. Cheat now and pay later, or put in the hard work now and reap the rewards for the rest of your life.”
The template I've described works - decades of experience.
Essays, assignments are written in class on B-5 lined paper and pencils with no notes and no tech. Students do all work outside class the same way - photograph handwritten assignments and submit them daily, if need be. I worked in private ed for a long time where people paid for results. Stress that the skill of working is far more important than any particular assignment - challenge your kids big to study what they they like - and produce something memorable by hand. And don't be afraid of getting your hands dirty - ask them to help you produce something new that's of interest to them, not you. You sound like a great dad, stay close, stay involved and forget about the teachers who think tools and tech are a substitute for dialogue and engagement. Show this email to the teacher, btw, if you like. 30 years of success (no money) but a lifetime of worthwhile experiences. Get the teachers to give it a try and tweak to fit their own style.
For example: each student must provide a daily three-paragraph handwritten report of class-related prep, reading etc. These reports become part of the assessment: content, style, vocab. The student is then interviewed and we discover whether the student can deploy the same elements orally. Rinse, repeat.
Once the student knows that the teacher is engaged on a personal level with the arc of improvement, students respond positively and will do the work - who doesn't want help? Tis easy for any teacher willing to engage and commit to each student as a person.
I’m no longer in the mood to indulge the left’s ideas, feelings, grievances and aspirations. For years it’s felt like we’ve been playing a game where one side gets all the calls, cheats and re-writes the rules as we go. And we just take it because we’re good sports. Well, I’m throwing out the rule book and walking off the field. It’s Game Over. We should have done this a long time ago.
I’m a college graduate actively pursuing a Masters Degree. I’m also a licensed Professional Engineer. I think America’s youth should consider a “gap year” (or four) between high school and further education. Get out of the classroom and into the real world. The college model we have built for this country is legalized loan sharking. I’m convinced that the vast majority of jobs could be OJT, similar to the apprenticeship model of the trades. This includes engineering and law. Medical school could be an exception.
I recall one coworker snarking about kids enlisting in the military because “they were too dumb for college.” A few years later, myself and most veterans I know are homeowners with no student debt, while our non-veteran peers are watching 20% of their take-home go up in smoke against a huge principal of student loan debt. Who were the dumb ones again?
My heart breaks for the Kirk family. What was especially gut wrenching was his daughter running to him after he was shot. That anyone would be pleased at that torture imposed on her is sickening. I say let all those who wish to celebrate his death do so as loudly and freely as humanly possible. Don’t let me or the law stop you from showing your true colors.
Agreed. I didn’t get my engineering degrees till after 30. A good friend of mine did the same thing. Recruiters were tripping over themselves to hire both of us. Even back then, it was obvious hiring someone with life experiences, not just a degree, was highly desirable.
An engineer who’s spent a few years using tools is invaluable. A decent engineer can design something that works on paper, a great engineer can provide a solution that can be readily built AND maintained affordably.
Put myself thru school working on the shop floor, wound up taking six years. When I graduated, I was a production superintendent, company (to be fair, had helped with tuition for last few years) promoted me to eng position, few more years to Director. All because I started out hands on
The fact that we can refer to “the real world” and everyone knows what we mean is telling. I went to university and I am glad I did. But the real world turned out to be a lot more interesting and I learned a lot more of value.
Bret Stephens, apparently, doesn't have a clue about Charlie Kirk's appeal to younger voters. Perhaps Stephens was mentored by those "smart" people he extols.
What was once a fairly estimable power to weight ratio in these private boarding schools and Ivy League 'institutions' has become skewed to the point of no return.
As El Gato Malo said recently, they all need to be closed.
Hey, I am a UofC alum, so I too have a shameful secret.
(BTW, Stephens' thought of the average profoundly awkward UofC nerd being able to counter an experienced debater expert is hilariously off-target. If you went there, you know.)
A huge part of college is teaching the coded language and norms progressives have established to separate themselves from the other. It’s not an accident the higher the elite the crazier they post which leads to thousands of others trying to signal they are also on the side of good by posting similar toxic ideas
Per your Flatland reference, Stephens sees himself as a fractal. He is not. He isn't even a circle; a mathematical paradox. He isn't a node. He isn't a zero either. He is an empty set. He hates dissent. I can hear him say: "do you know who I am". My answer: yes I do; you can turn a phrase but your words, your ideas are empty. They have no meaning. He is an arrogant twit.
I grew up in the area of Chicago's suburbs at a time it was farmland not far from where Charlie grew up. None of the kids in my high school went to the University of Chicago. We went to the University of Illinois at Chicago--much less expensive. The University of Chicago is very expensive. It's in its own sphere in its own neighborhood like Columbia is in NY.
Stephens does not know Chicago at all or how high school kids sort. That was a bone-headed statement by Stephens.
I attended their recruit day for undergraduates with a child of mine. It was an absolutely beautiful day in Chicago. As I walked the campus, I found it to be one of the most depressing places I had ever been. Such a dark place. The most telling part of the sales pitch was that if your child wanted to leave campus, at whatever hour for a cup of coffee, a security escort would be provided.
That night we had dinner with my niece and her husband. He is a professor. He said he was the only one he knew who had not been mugged, and explained why. My child chose differently and had the best experience possible. I was so happy they chose differently.
I have a relative about to go there (with no input from me); if you recall how did he say to avoid being mugged?
He rode his bike to the suburban train station. Once at the station near U of Chicago, he would ride his bike to campus. All the others he knew would walk it. That is where they got mugged. The trip between the train station and campus. He basically never left campus once there, until going home.
The old saying is "crime don't climb". Apparently crime also doesn't want to chase after bikes either. Lots of walking targets to take without the effort.
Unfortunately, I doubt this works for your relative. Maybe the don't leave campus part does.
Thanks!
One does need to be careful but it really isn't that bad.
Be careful about going out at night.
Be aware of your surroundings. I would strongly recommend NOT wearing ear buds and just staring at your phone. That's almost an invitation.
Don't be conspicuous (e.g., jewelry, etc.).
There is always the possibility of "random" interactions: sometimes a person can be in the wrong place at the wrong time. As noted, just being aware of one's surroundings and being careful about interacting with people you don't know will do a lot.
I was already pretty hardened by the time I got there -- I grew up in Chicago and was all-too familiar with street gangs already in grade school.
But if your relative is motivated and wants to put the work in to get a solid education, that's a great school. Just be careful. I took public transportation back then and there were risks. There are risks now. Chicago public transportation is a wreck budget-wise as is the city in general. If they can drive, that might be best. If they can live on campus, that could be a great option. I hope concern does not negatively impact their enjoyment of getting an education.
carry a piece and use it.
It's not that bad. In fact, better now than when I went there.
It's an academically intense environment. As noted in my other post, after the U of C, I went to the UMN for grad school. The UMN had, unsurprisingly, a very "Big Ten" atmosphere. I am very happy I went to the U of C for undergrad. It was life-changing for me.
I'm going to add a comment to qualify my previous comment instead of editing that comment.
I referred to the U of C as being an "academically intense environment" and it is as there are many people who are working to get into competitive schools for law, medicine and other disciplines.
More importantly, much more so, is that it's an "intellectually intense environment"; the curiosity and interest was palpable, even at the undergraduate level.
As noted in another comment, mathematics was my worst subject in what was otherwise a great Jesuit high school experience (the Latin and Greek are still with me though I of course have little skill after so many years).
At Chicago, after being that hippie-dippie radical meathead and (quickly) realizing I wasn't really cut out for medical school (i.e., my GPA after freshman year was horrible), on a lark I decided to take some math classes as I felt a sort of lingering alienation from the subject (I did learn about Marx's theory of alienation during my freshman year -- and Marx deserves much credit for that even if his prescriptive economic theories appear entirely bunk).
So I took some classes. Found out I actually was good at the subject. Namely, when it was presented as ideas, a theory, a way of looking at things. The material was presented honestly, seriously and as a beautiful, fascinating subject.
I wound up hanging out with the math prodigy crowd (for lack of a better term: one guy, who I occasionally still correspond with, was taking master's-level classes as a freshman in college). By the time I graduated college, I had taken probably at least a third of the coursework for the master's degree.
It was so fulfilling. Going to college and wanting to learn, simply being hungry for knowledge. That was the U of C experience for me.
And, to reiterate, there is absolutely no reason that anyone at any school can't have the same experience. What I am noting is that the environment I was in tremendously helped me on that path.
This is particularly true today as there are rich resources available to any curious, motivated student: the web -- if you want to learn it, it's there.
I did drop out of graduate school (another story) for a bit. A long bit. Stayed interested and in touch with people while working in internet tech and data munging. When I went back and plowed through my degree (the grad school told me I had one year to complete my degree -- I wrote and defended the entire dissertation in nine months), I never had to leave my apartment. Every resource I could possibly need was online.
But I still love libraries. Just browsing through the collection "after hours" was so much fun.
I am glad it worked for you. More than just "worked", if a life-changing time for you. With those, you gain the confidence to do anything. Congratulations to you.
Thank you for the kind remark.
I'll add that I don't see why more schools could affect people this way.
I think the biggest issue is that a college education became to mean a "college degree". It became a commodity. The degree was the goal as a ticket to getting a job.
For some people, as Matt indicates, college isn't necessary and the work experience may be more valuable. A person can always return to school if desired.
In particular, sending people to college just for the degree is a waste of time and resources.
For those interested in diving deep into a subject, it can be very fulfilling.
U of C is known as “where fun goes to die.”
It’s located in a really high crime neihborhood on the south side. My daughter decided not to go there based on the crime.
There are many universities in the Chicago area. Stephens picked the one he thought was fanciest. And though Hyde Park--as the U of C area is known--is heavily patrolled it is challenging to take public transportation to campus. They do have a great library that was built over Stagg Field where the first man-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction took place.
"Fanciest"
Stephens ungrad degree is from U of C
Years after my undergrad at Illinois-Chicago I did attend the (now closed) library school at U of C. There was no other library school in Chicago. For this I was a grad. student. Most of the other students did their undergrad at Oberlin, Williams, Vassar etc. My first student session they all talked about their years abroad. The level of wealth among most U of C students was stunning. I didn't think telling them about my trip to Milwaukee was going to impress them. In the library school at least they were less elitist. My fieldwork in the Pilsen (Hispanic) community was acceptable. My thesis on community colleges was a bit down market as a topic, but was also acceptable.
I grew up in Brighton Park, fairly close to Pilsen, in the '60s and '70s, when both were mainly populated by Eastern European immigrants and there were actually all-white street gangs, like the Harrison Gents, the Gaylords, and (my favorite moniker) The Insane Popes. The major gang in our neighborhood was The Young Savages, also white, with a scattering of Mexicans. Yet it was totally safe for us kids to roam the streets unsupervised all day until nightfall. A lot has changed, to speak with restraint.
I knew a lot of people in Berwyn who had moved from Pilsen which was named, of course, after Plzeň !
Forget not the "Insane Unknowns". They were fun [not].
Is that Circle Campus? That area is pretty well-policed, last I heard.
We called it Circle campus back then. And it was safe. University of Chicago in Hyde Park is different.
Stephen's, it appears, has turned into a self-congratulatory prig.
Leopold and Loeb.
Whenever I think of Chicago and middle class young people in HS I think of John Hughes, The Breakfast Club, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Indeed. Boneheaded is as boneheaded does. What sticks in my craw however is that the dismissed Kibble … er Kimmel can idly enjoy his millions while the millions who purportedly enjoy his "comedy" still have to keep their student loan checks coming. Poor saps.
It was a bone-headed comment by Stephens. Par for the course given that it's the NYT.
I grew up in Chicago around Halsted and Fullerton when it was much less "yuppified". It was a bizarre combination of an artist enclave and a very ethnically varied area (lots of Hispanic -- both Mexican and Puerto Rican -- but also "standard" American blue-collar and a lot of transplants from Appalachia).
I got "jumped" for the first time when I went to school wearing a beret. I was maybe six years old or so. Che Guevara may have still been alive. The local junior-Latin-Kings did not take kindly to a chubby white kid wearing a beret.
Whatever, I survived.
I then went to Saint Ignatius around Roosevelt and Racine. Four years of Latin and three of ancient Greek: fantastic. Walked through Circle Campus every day to the bus or train. Got jumped on the train in what I now see were often blatantly racially-motivated attacks.
Whatever, I survived.
I then went to the University of Chicago. For me, it was a life-altering experience. I am so grateful for the education I received. Got turned onto mathematics (ultimately getting a PhD in what was my worst subject in highschool) and music theory. Truly a wonderful, magical experience, for me.
Got jumped some times at the El at University and 63rd street. Heh. I made the mistake of not wearing army-surplus clothing so I looked like a "mark". Racial epithets and the rest of it.
Whatever, I survived.
Stephens is a clown for making that comment but I'll quickly state that I am indebted to the University of Chicago for providing the environment I enjoyed.
I went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota. Was a teaching assistant in the mathematics department. Was convinced that, if a student was motivated, they could get as good an education there if they put in the work. The atmosphere, the culture among undergraduates struck me as significantly different than what I experienced. At the UMN, the undergrad culture seemed one of "take classes, count credits and just get out".
Very much the sort of "commercial pipeline" that college has become.
So I'll chime in in defense of going to the University of Chicago. I went years ago and can only hope it's still similar. Certainly I went before the explosion in tuition and the astronomic growth of staff to faculty (arguably one of the factors behind the explosion in the cost of college).
U of C's libraries are without peer but Stephens was clueless as U of Chicago wasn't an option for many who lived in the area. It does get confusing as when people say, "I went to Chicago" do they mean "University of?" or now "Illinois-Chicago" which has become a very competitive school-- but when I went there we called it Circle. I lived at the YWCA near the Newberry Library (which in those days anyone could use) and then moved to Taylor St. to be nearer Circle. U of Chicago was so expensive, but if you were good at math maybe scholarships. They closed their library school partly because it wasn't a money maker in that alums weren't big donors.. I've always taught at state schools and the students varied in motivation. I appreciate going to U of C for library school, but thought Stephens tossing off that Kirk could have gone there was opaque as to the higher-ed situation in Chicago. He didn't think to mention Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul or IIT. (there are many more).
Was that the Y on Chicago Avenue?
The Newberry is a wonderful place but they've (sadly) gone super woke.
I walked through Circle Campus pretty much every day going home from high school.
Chicago -- the University of Chicago -- has changed and is waaaaaaay more expensive than it was in the 70's-80's. It was fantastic for me. My sister went to Northwestern. :-) I grew up right by DePaul.
With the University of Chicago, the graduate schools and the research mentality have a profound effect on the undergraduate culture. Arguably much more than most schools.
Stephens was way off-base in his comments about Kirk. Yes, I will admit that getting my @$$ handed to me in some debates when I was wannabe-hippie-radical in my first years at the U of C did me a lot of good. Remember them to this day. But, as I noted above, any student at pretty much any state school in the US can get a top-notch education. If that's what they want, but they'll have to show the initiative as the culture often won't be a driving force.
No, not on Chicago Avenue. It was a huge YWCA. Just for women. One had to be in by 10pm and no male visitors. It was $20.00 a WEEK. Circle had no dorms and I was too young (16) to get an apt. They sold the building and it became a Dr. Scholl school. Then torn down for luxury apts. Also Bughouse square was there between the YWCA and the Newberry. Here is a picture: https://artic.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/mqc/id/38023/
I loved college too, at a State University. I was not saying it’s worthless, only that one becomes educated thoroughly through reading the Great Books.
It's all about why you're there. If you're there to learn, you can do so at just about any school. Faculty love motivated students.
Home Boy! California and Pershing! I have kin in MN, too-- Bird Island, Bemidji. Morehead, and Ellendale. 2 cousins went to South Dakota State, home of the obelisk called "The Prick of the Prairie," another went to Bemidji State.
I did not realize from our earlier discourse you were from Chicago!
Ah, reading National Lampoon in Chicago in the 1970's!
After high school, I worked at a small factory at Cermak and Kedzie for a couple summers. Not far from your haunts!
Sigh. Back when there were "small factories".
MN is a trip. Most Minnesotans are quite normal, hard-working people. It's the nutjobs up there that have seized control of the cities. Why people put up with it is a mystery to me.
I swear to god we must have met at some point we have so much in common. Totally agree with your take on MN. My relatives up there are fairly liberal but have not become crazed with TDS.
When I was in the last half of 6th grade (musta been spring of 1972) I got busted for bringing in a copy of NatLamp. I showed it to some loudmouthed kid (Dave Sullivold, a freak who had a moustache and an enormous hog with a full bush of pubes that I saw in our 7th-grade locker room and who later sold window-pane acid). He got all excited and started loud-talking about the tits in Photo Phunnies, and Miss Powell confiscated it. My big brother, who bought all our reading matter, was not pleased.
I had one of my first serious crushes on Miss Powell, who once gave me a ride home in her 2-seater Karmann Ghia when I missed the bus. As an adult, I always sought out women who looked like her, almost married one (she died of a stroke though) and dated one as late as 2007. She kicked me to the curb, broke my heart, and put me off dating for some years. JFC, that's already nearly 20 years ago!
Goddamnit, now you've started a flood of memories, something that happens a lot as I race to the grave.
Sorry for going on so long, but meeting anyone with a similar background to mine is rare.
Thank you very much for sharing these details. I greatly enjoyed your reminiscences. You reminded me of a wave of my own!
I'd be almost certain to have had a crush on any gal teacher who gave me a lift in her Karmann Ghia! Most excellent vehicles! That's instant-super-cool-chick material!
Here's a hoot: a dude down the block from my folks' house had an AmphiCar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphicar
No, most regrettably, I never got a ride.
I really feel for "kids nowadays". While having access to all technology is fantastic, living inside a cell phone is not.
The 1960's and even the 1970's with all the stagflation and self-doubt were still simple and innocent by comparison.
Violent? Yeah, arguably, I certainly "enjoyed" my share but there's an honesty and directness in dealing with street thugs that's not as perverse as the parasitic passive-aggressive psyop ghoulish behavior on social media.
Kids are now saturated with much more extreme -- and typically less clever and less thought-provoking -- material than even the most vulgar nat'l-lampoon article of that era. There's something to be said for smut written by alums of the Harvard Lampoon.
I continually find applications of Marx's "Theory of Alienation" (and I'm very much not a Marxist as regards economics). Having everything inside a computer (or phone, same thing) can be an obstacle, a barrier to apprehending and appreciating "real world" experiences. The COVID hysteria almost seemed engineered to drive people further down that path. Isolation. Reduced human interaction and communication.
I honestly wonder what people are typing as they stare at their phones as I seem to get perplexed stares whenever I try to casually talk with people. People always seem so surprised at what I would take as very basic knowledge of history, politics, the world...whatever.
So what the heck are they so furiously typing on their phones?
"There's an honesty and directness in dealing with street thugs that's not as perverse as the parasitic passive-aggressive psyop ghoulish behavior on social media."
No doubt. But now even thugs record their shit on phones for the edification of their buddies and the general public.
"Reduced human interaction" is sure enough happening. It's at it's worst when you see recordings of people just sitting and watching as someone gets shanked on the subway or, worse, records it on their fucking "smart" phones.
Getting old is interesting, isn't it?
Take care, homie.
It was bone-headed in more ways than one.
Isn't Bret Stephens the former Wall Street Journal scribe who thought Mitt Romney using a jet ski was going to doom him with the poor flyover people who could never afford such luxury? Not exactly a meat-and-potatoes guy, that dude.
THANK you and -- this is an OUTSTANDING video:
Creating Israel: Terror in the Middle East – Sep 17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r02Ndxp2Mh0
Leopold and Loeb.
Remember the article that just came out saying 90% of college kids lied about their opinions to appease their professors?
https://www.foxnews.com/media/multi-college-study-indicating-over-80-students-lie-about-views-appease-liberal-professors
Edit to add another study link -- https://www.thefire.org/news/survey-shows-majority-college-students-feel-intimidated-share-opinion-unlikely-disagree
This is the environment Charlie was highlighting.
I remember in one video -- it may not have even been Charlie Kirk but a similar event -- a "professor" came down from her 4th story classroom to loudly declare that she felt unsafe because of the debate table.
That's the state of college today.
Yep! Unfortunately, college is 90-95% completely a scam. I have to agree with CK wholeheartedly.
Of course, students don’t disagree with the loons called professors! They want to get good grades and graduate so they can get a job making lattes for the pipefitters and plumbers on their way to work! 🤯😞😳😵💫💯💥🔥
I had a lunatic history professor with whom I fought the entire semester. I dared her to fail me *to her face*. For each exam I took two Blue Books (dating myself here.) In one I regurgitated her idiocy. In the other I wrote what I actually thought. I kept each and told the woman I’d take her to the university scholars board if she even thought about failing me.
Even then the young fools in the class were astonished I would openly argue with the professor about the content and her batshit crazy takes. I couldn’t understand why they were such cowards.
The only explanation I can find is that I started college after living a lot of life, knew bullshit when I saw it and wasn’t the least intimidated by titles.
Got an A in the course BTW.
Good for you, Marie!
I had a similar experience in a graduate economics class, where the professor waxed on about a socialist village in Peru where everything is shared and they’ve basically solved every local problem. “Have you been there?”, I asked. “Well, no,but…”. Well I had, and proceeded to describe village life in detail, none of which matched his story. I dismantled him in front of a class full of students. From that point on, he kept his leftist diatribes to himself. I got an A also, as well as being offered a TA position. I declined and went to work in the real world.
Don’t you hate when the ignorant wax eloquent while spewing nonsense?
It happens all the time. It’s what they do.
See Rodney Dangerfield, "Back to School"!
Sam Kinison's role as the crazed Vietnam veteran history teacher was freaking hilarious!
I expect she was secretly extremely impressed by your industry. Good for you! Your experiences mirror my own,, btw. Timing is everything, I went to university seriously after thirty and loved (almost) every minute.
I argued devil's advocate for most of University and was always at odds. Only had one professor punish me on ideological grounds. But that was the 90s.
I suspect that if I'd gone to grad school just a few years later than I did, my gentle-but-stubborn pushback against the Leftist indoctrination most of my professors were pushing in the classroom would have resulted in bad grades or even being kicked out of the program. I still wonder if the only thing that prevented them from doing so, even then, was the fear that administrators would examine my work (which always merited A's) and consider the viewpoint discrimination way too obvious to ignore.
I was double major math and writing. The difference between the two sides if campus was illuminating. I hear the science and math side has gone downhill rapidly.
its easier to just move along
I’m not the sort to take the easy way out, particularly when I’m paying good money for an exceedingly poor product.
In grad school at the University of Memphis, a professor (Indian-born) marked up one of my papers, insisting I could not use the pronouns “he” and “him” as generic references to people (as well as to male people). I went to his office to plead my case, that in the English language we do not have dedicated, gender-neutral pronouns; we use the masculine in such cases. He was hearing none of it so standing there in his office, which was literally a wall to wall, floor to ceiling library, I said well let’s look in a dictionary. I’m assuming you have one. He replied, “Dictionaries are for uneducated people.” I laughed in his face and walked out and never stopped using he/him in my papers where it was appropriate to do so.
Side note - Blue Books are returning as a way to stop students from using AI to do their work. That might help.
That’s one way to do it!
That most kids can’t write a proper email is obscene but I’ll wager a fair sum those same students won’t be failed after drawing stick figures in said blue books.
That is an excellent story, though it sounds like it was a stressful semester!
They were all stressful TBH. I worked third shift, took the kids to school, went to school myself, and lived on two hours of sleep six nights a week for a long time.
It’s a good thing I was/am stubborn.
A good piece of advice is to “pick your battles.” Your determination and resolve and dares levied towards your batshit professor has them picking their battles in regards to you!
Bravo! Excellent tactic and an admirable anecdote. Are you a veteran? In my teaching experience, older students and vets were the most independent-minded lot and the best students. Would you mind saying when you were in? Have they done away with exam blue books?
No, I was an 8th grade dropout who spent my teenage years hitchhiking as a runaway. Got married to a lunatic, fled with toddlers, worked full time and got a GED.
It’s a long story.
Sounds similar to the experience of an ex girlfriend who kicked me to the curb back around 2015.
That's a lot of work. Congratulations.
Thanks ☺️ Graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.
I don’t recommend the method.
Oh and I was in school from 1994 to 2000. I’ve heard that the trusty Blue Books have been replaced with laptops but haven’t seen that myself.
Marry me! 😍
🤣 Thats kind but I’ve been married more than three decades. Thank you though!
Make no mistake, they want a government taxpayer funded job. Not bad returns when Omar is worth 50 million from a few years on the House of Representatives. Taking Pelosi’s place.
Kleptocracies require stealing from those plumbers and electricians to fund lavish 5 star lifestyles.
Now, THIS is what we need! Since The College Lie is already in mass-uptake-mode, Hollywood, Netflix, and whatever mind-numbingly fake rendition of life kids are consuming online could simply take up this mantle. Give all these helpless neurotics their internal locus of control back! Easy! (I felt a rush of glee from your story btw)
Is she seriously worth $50 million? I find that unbelievable.
I don't know about plumbers, but pipefitters don't drink no damn lattes. They have a vacuum-sealed metal thermos that keeps the Maxwell House from the Mr. Coffee hot til past lunch.
As a 'Trades Guy' for 40 yrs, I tried a latte and I liked it. Start the mourning with Starbucks brewed in my Mr Coffee with 1/2 and 1/2 and raw sugar. House, truck, car, are paid for with no debt and I'm retiring at 62. (would go longer but the body has a different view) I'm a hybrid with some college business classes and street smarts and have had my own business for 28 yrs. My advice for my 4 kids when they went off to college (on my suggestion) was 'use the school, don't let school use you'. Y'all now have 4 productive U.S. citizens, that like me, are getting little more conservative everyday. I was a Reagan Democrat and now just an America First Independent hoping the D's get their shit together soon.
'And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest, "Excitable boy" they all said.
Well he's just an excitable boy' Warren Zevon 1978
Good for you, and congratulations on a well-earned (more earned than most) retirement.
And I stand corrected: skilled trade guys may like lattes, but they’re sure as hell smart enough not to pay $8 for one.
Excitable Boy is my favorite of his.
Nice.
I worked in the trades for about ten years before going back to school in my early thirties. I wasn't cut out for drywall subcontracting and had no ambitions to start up a business, having begun at a young age after getting out of the Army and having worked with a number of feckless alcoholics, subs who frequently called it a day early on Fridays to go get hammered and eat hot dogs at our favorite dive bar.
Amen, brother.
I have three grandsons, 12, 10 and 7. Should I live long enough to advise them as they finish their last two years of high school, I will read the “careers” landscape and dovetail it with their interests, abilities and aspirations. I will also compile “AI- proof” careers, so as to provide them a range of opportunities suited to them as unique men, likely to provide income sufficient to raise a family and resistant to the irrelevance that AI may bring.
Well, yes, of course! Duh! Y’all understand my point that wasting all that time and money for a job that requires virtually zero skills!
Ironically I ran into this problem super early in childhood (a clock-drawing test) and I'm pretty sure it's one of the things that made me distrust authority so much. I wrote up an article about it in 2022 (at that time about covid), and a LOT of people in the comments had similar stories. https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/why-are-you-like-this (Bonus - at the end of the article is the very first picture of my kitty and editor, Gangster)
Oh I’m going for the cat
He's 100% worth it! He's laying on my lap right now, helping me with my latest article 🙂
Interesting experience. I've definitely experienced situations where I gave them what they wanted just to get the grade, while at the same time thinking they were full of it.
Awww, the cat is an orange kitty, our orange boy just passed last week after 18 years.
Very sorry to hear about your loss.
Yeah, tough stuff, still working through it. I keep seeing reminders of him everywhere.
I feel compelled to suggests this every few months when the topic rises: make student loans eligible for bankruptcy. Don't government back them. Lenders will immediately tighten funds, and in a few short years, this will defund colleges that don't educate students to professions that make college fees and loans worthwhile. Baristas can go straight to work out of high school, without the snooty degree in postmodern feminism. Or, they might be more prone to consider plumbing, or the military, or whether an additional 100k+ master's degree in education is really necessary to teach high school math or English.
the real scam of college is they use federally backed student loan money, (which administrators actually encourage the young people to maximize and use for whatever they want) to fund the indoctrination and loop back big contributions from their salaries to political campaigns. its one big circle jerk.
Well, it is also true that professors give good grades so they get good reviews which is critical to reappointment, promotion and tenure.
a sick circle of bullshit goes round and round. Students lie and or censor themselves to appease the loons (professors) which ensures the loons give good grades. Fire each and every loon and rebuild a structure that encourages free, honest, open, and critical thinking. That cannot happen until the dismantling takes place.
That’s good!!!
They can get even by giving them bad reviews when it comes time for filling out customer satisfaction surveys called things like "Student Perception of Instructional Effectiveness," though I think tenured pink-hairs and BLM types don't have to have this hanging over their heads.
Also, I don't at all reject the possibility that people have gotten essentially stupider in the last two decades.
Well, kids in primary and secondary schools are, according to decades of test results, getting stupider, so it'd be a surprise if the ones in college weren't as well.
Arne, considering that they've been raised by smartphones, it would be shocking if they hadn't got dumber. The "I hate books" attitude hasn't helped.
Other than the debilities of age, damn, I'm glad I'm 73. I remember when young people read books, and the ones who didn't tended to keep the fact to themselves.
For years I have thought that the Boomer generation really should be considered not even to have existed save for dull demographic reasons. This is because we first halfers were, I think, more like the Silent Generation than we were like the second halfers. Probably a majority of us first halfers had our brains formed pre TV, and the advantage of the brain's development in toddlerhood occurring apart from the electronic image can't be overestimated.
Sorry but you first halfers were the Woodstock generation of dropping out, turning on and tuning in with LSD and "free love". We second halfers growing up watching Gunsmoke on TV with our parents in the 60s were not the problem. 😉
Oh, yeah, we all went to Woodstock. Even my dope smoking cousin, who lived in northern Ohio and could easily have made it to Woodstock, didn't go because it would have taken him away from his glamorous summer job digging graves.
The first time under 21s were allowed to vote, the election of 1972, voters 18 - 21 voted in the majority for Nixon.
Look at the age of first marriage for people born before 1955. When I was at the University of Texas in the early seventies, there was essentially a city just west of the campus. It was married student housing, and it consisted of a lot of small houses, a lot of clotheslines, and a lot of pre school age kids running around.
The idea that the dormitories would ever have been sexually desegregated would have struck us as a fantasia.
I realize plenty of folks your age were not riding the Grateful Dead party bus, but we're talking about cohorts here. A lot of factors were involved in the widespread degeneration of our culture, but the turning point was the late 60s when folks your age were young adults and my age group (I was born in 1960) were playing little league. So blaming us is absurd. My parents - Dad a Korean War vet, attended college on the GI bill - were the Silent Generation.
Im 49, raised by parents born in 39 and 46, respectively, and agree with Bobby and have been saying the same for thing for years now. My parents and their cohort raised gen x. The younger boomer cohort raised millenials. The parenting styles were very different, and produced very different results. In terms of achieving trult terrible results in the department of child rearing, the failures of younger cohort of the boomer generation('55-'65) have only been surpassed by the failures of the older cohort of gen x(65-72). I would argue that the younger boomers and older gen xers are far more similar to one another than they are to the other half of their respective generations. Their parenting style has created an existential social crisis. But generally speaking, its been all downhill and I attribute almost all of it to the terrible worldview of blank slate liberalism.
Trashing any individual who's born into a particular demographic is absurd unless that person acts like a dick, then you can talk about how the reasons for the dickishness might be related to the time he was born into.
I'm really skeptical of over-generalities about generational guilt. Look what it's done to Germany. It works in the other direction, too, like the gushing over "The Greatest Generation," which also has its warts.
Time will tell the story of . . . where are we now in generational generalities . . . Generation Z?
I don't think of it in terms of blame. I was only pointing out that I think the first half of the generation had more in common with The Silent or Greatest Generations than it had with the second half of the generation. There is a Facebook group, Generation Jones, which is limited to people who were born after, I think, 1957, but before GenX, which began in 1965, so I'm not the only Boomer who has that perception.
Possible.
I absolutely did when I was in college.
I do think there is some value to this. I was able to write essays arguing positions that I didn't actually agree with. I think this is something that's pretty common in debate societies - people are assigned positions and they have to argue them whether they agree with it or not.
But there's quite a big difference in why are students doing it. Is it because they're just regurgitating what they've been taught and what they know the teacher wants to hear?
Because they're afraid?
Are students able to take counter positions and argue those without fear of repercussions?
Those are the sort of questions that seem important.
Totally agree. If I thought this was a "you have to learn the argument from the other side" type thing, I'd be all for it.
But I think we have pretty clear data that type of thinking isn't being taught in college, because the students can't seem to ever do it.
The worst thing: I know from direct observation that Left wing profs don't necessarily care if the students believe the things they are compelled to write, they just want them to say the words and put their name on it. It's totalitarianism in real time.
And it goes all the way up the ladder to the DEI Loyalty Oaths that, until quite recently, were required at virtually every university as a condition of full-time employment.
I taught seventh grade English a few years ago, and we use the philosopher‘s chair and the Socratic seminars as part of our argumentative writing. We had to write at least 4 to 5 essays a year based on literature or current events. One of the practices we had was that you had to take an opposing view just so you would understand another person‘s opinion (like lawyers do) and felt more confident in using data, facts from research or quotes within the essay to support opinions. Just a year and a half ago, I had a friend asked me why I was being argumentative or playing the devil’s advocate, and all I could comment was - I’ve been teaching this for 14 years and it just seemed like a normal conversation to me. When teaching in academics, one would think it would spill over into real life. Maybe I’m wrong. I enjoyed teaching it and most kids did really well. I hope they use this process as young adults or college students feeling confident in communicating their ideas.
That's pretty heavy lifting for 7th grade. Maybe there are some exceptions to the generalizations about the decay of public education in the US. Or were you teaching in a private academy?
This was a local public school in Carlsbad, California. Strong writing curriculum. I used short stories, age-appropriate articles, current events which students picked, short stories and worked in small groups to dissect. They learned ( in the process of…) what writers used and considered: history, compare and contrast, opinion and use of quotes to support their writing. We Used philosopher’s chairs and Socratic circles to encourage conversation and support the learning process. I tried to make it fun. Hopefully, they can use what they learned.
Thanks for asking
Sorry I took so long to reply, but your curriculum sounds like it could be from a typical college freshman course in composition/rhetoric.
Hell yes, I did that too. It was really appreciated when I could suss out what sort of research the professor was working on and write it up better than he could. A+++.
"I think this is something that's pretty common in debate societies [. . . .]"
Maybe in the past. these days a lot college debate has become some sort of weird performance art that relies more on "lived experience" than knowledge or reasoning. Thanks once again to the asshats who rule the Humanities roost for this ugly development.
For example, here's a quotation from the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal website, dated 12/10/2008:
"A newer and (fortunately) still somewhat controversial development is called 'performance debate.' Performance debates are arguments that are literally presented with a performance (such as acting, rapping, storytelling or singing) or a combination of performance and reading evidence. [. . .] Performance debaters usually engage the debate topic marginally, but speak primarily about issues that they view of greater importance. Usually these issues involve arguments about the institution of policy debate itself or socio-economic issues." https://jamesgmartin.center/2008/12/college-debate-aint-what-it-used-to-be/
Why would so many students be in debate classes? Do we need debate classes to learn how to make an advanced ceramic heat shield for a space shuttle? Do we nees debate classes to learn how to build a better highway?
What are the jobs people actually do, and I mean 95 percent of people.
Take payment for a product or service, retail and B2B.
Describe a product to a customer to help them know what to buy, retail and b2b?
Team lead a very small number of co workers often 7 or less, retail and b2b.
Answer the phone ask or answer queations bases on company provided knowledge, retail and b2b.
Move an object from one location to another, stocking, product display, shipping prep, actual shipping.
Perform a simple mechanical or physical task trained on the job, line cooking, assembly, installation.
Manage and alter records per company policy training done at the company.
If you combine these tasks with the trades it represents 80 to 85 percent of jobs.
Yet, we encouraged 70 percent of high school graduates to take on debt to attend college in 2010. How is it rational to have 70 percent of kids waste 4 to 6 years getting degrees that will only help them in 20 percent of jobs?
Education is not (and shouldn't be) purely vocational training, though I agree with your take on university education as far as its usefulness as a sort of jumped-up vocational school. Non-technical/science-related subjects (that is, the humanities) have been compromised by leftist ideologues and their crackpot theories of knowledge and education and most everything else. Jordan Peterson is right.
Ideally, universities should limit their instruction to the hard and applied sciences. Let people who want to study art and literature head to museums and libraries and buy books on Amazon.
Still, if they're not getting any help in public schools, that leaves the problem of how to advise kids what might be entertaining and instructive to read besides Harry Potter and other contemporary light entertainment. Real literacy (that is, reading something deeper than the instructions on the backs of soup cans) and love for reading begins at home, and the more schools churn out illiterates not interested in reading anything but what's on their phones, fewer parents will be able to steer their kids onto anything from the past that might be worthwhile to read.
My daughter wanted to do a book repot on Orlando Furioso in fifth grade, which I convinced the teacher to allow. She asked me recently if I thought third grade was too early to allow my grandson to read it.
We might be an unusual family but kids can find books without paying $100k for indoctrination.
No doubt. You demonstrate my point about litetacy. My mother had pile a of good books and taught me and my bro how to read. Who's Orlando Furioso?
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/615
> "Ideally, universities should limit their instruction to the hard and applied sciences. Let people who want to study art and literature head to museums and libraries and buy books on Amazon."
I generally agree with most of your comment, but with some quibble here. Where do history and philosophy fit in? Aren't there specialized art academies purely for teaching artists to do art, and others to appreciate it's history and technique? If we are teaching history, philosophy, and foreign languages, which do have a "hard" core to them, don't art and literature feed into those pursuits in important ways?
Good question. You made me think beyond my initial take.
These disciplines, history especially, require serious, widely and deeply-read scholars to introduce newcomers to these subjects and to direct their reading in their particular interests. Learning how to read critically enough to get some good out of it . . . well, that's been crippled somewhat by the compromised English departments. In my time, there were still instructors dedicated to teaching the rhetoric of argumentation without battering their captives with their political horseshit (fortunately including the departments I taught in, whose chairs actively discouraged it) and there were some history and philosophy profs who took on the added work of teaching students the rhetoric of argument and critical reading . . . as if they didn't have enough of a work load teaching their own specialties.
My instinctive (knee-jerk?) answer is a need for the development of a greater amount of specialized academies in art (especially technique), as well as academies dedicated to history, philosophy, and foreign languages. When and how that can happen . . . who knows? It's probably impossible, but it might be the only way for people to avoid being taught by the leftist ideologues who have screwed everything up and eroded trust in higher ed.
Now that I think of it, Jordan Peterson has attempted something like this with his online Peterson Academy (https://petersonacademy.com/)and there are probably others like it out there somewhere.
If the students stand their ground, universities that police right-leaning view points don’t realize that they are also producing excellent debaters on the right because right-leaning students graduate knowing all of the left’s arguments backwards and forwards while left-leaning students also leave knowing the left’s arguments and….that’s it.
I graduated from Georgia Tech in the 2010s, the opposite of a liberal arts school, but I took some free electives and was absolutely shocked at how wild the professors’ views were and the content of their classes. In one class, the professor gave us all lesbian erotica to dissect together as a class and brought in her friend, a “butch top” to present to the class on…I don’t even know what? In another class, a professor went on a tangent about abortion (a topic in which I lean right) and was absolutely floored that I was willing to debate my position in front of the class with him. He could not believe it and started to insult me personally in front of the class. It was a wild experience, even at the Georgia institute of technology.
Virtually no institution of higher ed in America, with the exception of Hillsdale College, has escaped the Leftist-inspired insanity. Having "Tech" in your school's name makes no difference whatsoever. MIT is one of the worst offenders of all.
That’s disheartening. We toured GT in 2022 for my son when looking at colleges and I was thrilled nobody introduced themselves with their pronouns and there weren’t tampons in the men’s room (UVA). He ended up at UAH but I’m secretly hopeful he’ll GT for Master’s should he choose to pursue one.
I still think it’s a great school, especially for anything in STEM
A Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech! It's been a while since I've choked down a chili dog at The Varsity after getting hammered in Buckhead.
My god, the humanities are dead and their remains are stinking up the air everywhere.
I would have absolutely lost it. Back to the admin I go!
Bad news. It's not just college! I had the privilege of paying a lot of dollars for my kids to go to private school where, as a freshman, my oldest son told me he learned to "shut up and keep my head down."
Yikes
The current state of higher education absolves me from providing in my will for my grandchildrens' education.
Yesterday, my year-old granddaughter crawled to my antique typewriter, a relic formerly displayed in my newspaper office. I moved her away from it, saying, "Typewriter bad. Bad, bad typewriter."
I hope she becomes a plumber or welder.
Mamas, let your babies grow up to be cowboys.
Good thought! She won't be a vegetarian!
Those who can do. Those who can’t teach.
And (to paraphrase Woody Allen), those who can't teach, teach Gender Studies.
You beat me to it! Thank you!
Good links. Thx.
Iow, not worth the piece of paper...
A poll on campuses will prove this to be true.
one reason for optimism.
Maybe Peter Boghossian's street epistemology at PSU? A social work grad school mob came down to object to a question about the trans issue?
BWAH HA HA! If only she’d been in there in Utah!
College taught an enormous number of mediocre people that they are not, indeed, mediocre, and that they should ignore all evidence to the contrary while actively despising those deemed lower status. We will be dealing with those consequences for a very long time.
"Elite overproduction." It starts civil wars.
It would be interesting if someone could correlate the rise in the number of college graduates with the rise in the number of sociopaths.
Hadn't thought of that..But it is food for thought..
Or at least a snicker. But I am serious. The best new research indicates that sociopaths aren't driven by a need to compensate but by a sense of entitlement.
I'm reading End Times by Peter Turchin right now and he mentions this!
This is a one size fits all argument unless you have some real support.
We are all stuck in different status competitions, competition for esteem, competition for money. How are college grads any different?
I do think there are problems with education, among them imbalances between political views and burgeoning administrations that need to justify their positions by interfering. But doesn't "elite overproduction" translate to too many people who disagree with you? And then I have a real "overproduction" problem, since most people Left and Right disagree with me!
I first saw that term here - For context. https://www.thefp.com/p/peter-turchin-end-times-bari-weiss
This is a very worthwhile article and subtle in its use of the idea of elite overproduction.
But when it says: "And you say that this first group—the carpenters, the plumbers—are going to fail because there’s a lack of effective organization among them." I think that is very classist and just untrue: These people elected Donald Trump and they seem perfectly (and, yes, overly) happy about that.
The elites who concern me are the people in control: Entrenched academics and government workers and billionaires and politicians who would sacrifice ANYTHING to be re-elected.
Everybody counts in a democracy. I understand striving, though it interested me little. When I had a lot of money I gave half of it away because I felt the scales out of balance. When I had power I let it dissipate by spending it trying to stand up for the powerless. Me. I didn't hide in a group. I didn't label people. I just tried to help without preconceptions.
As for mediocrity, the idea that people who don't fight to stand on top of over people are mediocre - in response to others, not you, I say that these mediocrity-accusers are usually among the most mediocre people there are, because they are blind and foolish enough to think that multiple big yachts and exclusive restaurants are anything more than a false front over emptiness.
Yes. That’s why universities became unemployment factories.
Imagine if we removed the people "employed" by DEI-related industry, both in government and out.
I’d love to imagine that. Unfortunately higher education is imploding so I’m focusing on that instead.
You would enjoy watching them suffer unemployment? Certainly you aren't suggesting killing them? I hope.
No I just meant separating them out in the stats, although eventually bulldozing the industry isn't a terrible idea.
The number of Americans who self-identify as being smart BECAUSE they vote Democrat (and also think what they're told by authoritative sources like the endless stream of rando "experts" speaking on NPR) numbers in the tens of millions.
Jesus. Shout your envy and your GED a little louder.
I hate to tell you this buddy, but my intellectual level and IQ are many stories above the average Democrat voter's. Or, as a matter of fact, above the average NPR expert's. But, stay angry.
Sight. I know it’s you, Brett Weinstein. Still trying to sell that Theory of Everything?
Mediocre may be an overestimate.
“Meta-analysis: on average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average”. https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR.2024.0002.v1
Yes, when you start making it nearly mandatory, it should look like the population average.
I think mediocre "means" average, no? Just with a sense of judgment.
I'm not surprised that many less intelligent people go to college in an attempt to get a leg up while college is less necessary for clearly intelligent people. I never graduated college. Never hurt me. Never came up.
That is precisely how I see it..Arrogantly Stupid..
Dunning Kruger Effect, taught as you major!
I've lost track of the number of academics online sneering at Charlie Kirk as a "community college dropout", an intellectual lightweight who went around picking on teenagers.
Well then... Why are you so incredibly, deliriously happy the man's dead? People don't film themselves dancing when the victim didn't threaten them at all. Charlie Kirk was over the target, threatening the whole rotten credentialist enterprise, and they know it.
"Fans don't boo nobodies."
As a conservative, I am pleased that Pam Bondi took a well deserved skewering in that interview, inventing hate speech as a crime. She got an earful from the right. You'll notice that never happens when the left is in power.
I really liked Charles Cooke’s tweet: “So, just to check, given the encouragingly universal reaction to Bondi I’m seeing this morning: We’re all agreed, going forward, that there’s no such thing as hate speech, and that Jack Phillips can choose which cakes to bake, right? This is settled now?”
In the same vein, I have a problem with the concept of a “hate crime “, which is usually applied to homicides. What difference does the motivation make to the victims? There is some element of hate or animus in any crime. It’s an inherently subjective charge.
Hate Crime = Thought Crime.
Murder should be enough to get hard time…
When can we get the “we’re all agreed, going forward, that a man cannot become a woman or vice versa, right?” I probably won’t live long enough to see the post mortem on this phenomenon, but it will hopefully provide an abundance of shame on a lot of the intelligentsia.
Thanks for sharing that tweet. I was gently picked on for suggesting Pam didn't understand the Constitution.
The interesting thing is when leftists listen to Bondi and can’t agree with her so they have to support free speech. Folks who said speech was violence (if they disagreed with it)
Similar to post Annunciation shooting someone posited that maybe trans folks shouldn’t have guns….boy howdy never saw so many gun grabbers become ardent 2A proponents overnight
Leaving some space for her comments actually being a blunder, it doesn't take the ability to play 3-D chess to guess the directionality and volume of the response from the left to a hyperbolic statement from anybody in the Trump Administration. Getting hundreds of Democrats on record that there is no such thing as "hate speech" (while hundreds of Republicans reaffirmed their commitment to the 1A) might have been worth the heat.
When she was first picked as Gaetz’s “successor” pick, my impression was that she didn’t have the chops. I chided myself for prematurely judging her and not giving her a fair shake. I doubt my first instincts less now.
Matt-in your last piece on this you criticized Kirk’s statements on black pilots and black mid-century wellbeing, seeming to suggest some racial animus. Many of us attempted to engage with you on this, providing context that showed Kirk was making rational points.
Rather than engage most commenters, you snuck in two comments deep down in the replies saying you thought Kirk’s statements were “unintentionally revealing” and also admitted ignorance of DEI in aviation.
Your subscribers deserve to know: were you insinuating you think Kirk is racist in a post two days after he was assassinated? If so, please own it and tell us. If not, please explain, or retract and correct. The stakes here are too high for this mode of discourse to continue.
If I meant to say “racist” I would have said that. You don’t have to agree with me, but what I said in that piece was that statement didn’t sit well. I’m not allowed to voice that opinion? To feel that?
I’m very opposed to the modern version of DEI, I think it’s a form of institutional racism (and not reverse discrimination but specifically racism), and I’ve been outspoken about this. That doesn’t mean I’m required to co-sign every way of arguing against it. If you’d rather not hear that I believe there are better ways of saying things, I don’t know what to tell you.
Thank you for replying, and I will get off your back. Sorry if it was annoying.
You’re allowed to feel that of course - but it was unclear because “sitting well” is a nebulous feeling that your readers can’t decipher. I honestly don’t know what “sitting well” means in a substantive sense. It’s uncomfortable in a way you can’t put a finger on? That’s fine, I’ll take that. (Edit: you said your precise statement would be more like: “I agree in the main with Kirk’s criticisms of DEI, but not with how he framed or phrased them”)
Even a paragraph of context for your views like the above would have been tremendously helpful when the whole point of the piece was to criticize people who were making out of context criticisms of Kirk. (And even more so because Kirk was killed for his speech, presumably) Add the additional context that you’re the country’s foremost investigative journalist - we NEED you desperately to be a model of civil and well informed discourse in this moment when that is under attack.
Also, I don’t know if you’ll see this, but I’ll put it out there anyway in the off chance you do.
I understand if you’re indignant because I was poking you until you answered. But rationally, let me be the “ombudsman” here and point out the following about why this is really something to think about.
You’re probably one of the 20 most important and influential public facing figures in American media right now, and probably in the top 5 when it comes to anything 1A related. The political temperature is through the roof. Speech is under physical attack. Charlie was killed because of political speech.
So, saying something like “Charlie said some stuff on race that didn’t sit well with me” without any more details…well that’s something sane liberal observers text our friends on Friday after he is killed. But given all the above - to throw it out there to millions (literally) in your piece and leave the possibility it was a racism accusation on the table (I was far from the only one who read it that way)…it’s just not the model of discourse that needs to be put out there over and above all the partisan whack jobs who want us to see their hot takes.
For another subscribers viewpoint, I'm okay without another purity test. This was a great article. Looking for blood over any perceived grievance in some attempt to "gotcha" a great voice is how we end up with no one saying anything worthwhile for fear of misspeaking.
I don't see it as a purity test, just an opportunity for dialogue. We all know Matt Taibbi isn't the type to denounce any opponent of DEI as an unreconstructed remnant of the Confederacy in order to win plaudits from the Atlantic set, like some mediocrities I could mention. Reasonable people can still disagree.
Yes - and Matt should have made his position clear rather than relying on vague allusions and insinuations.
It’s not a “gotcha”. I never watched Charlie Kirk in my life and had no particular sympathy for him before the assassination. It’s just asking Matt to speak clearly and with logic and evidence at a highly sensitive political moment. He did none of the above in his criticism, and he should be held to the very high standard he has set for his multi decade career.
Your subscription doesn’t entitle you to demand granular definitional precision of every sentence uttered. Settle down.
Asking for clarification on the main idea of his prior piece? Read the totality of the discussion about this, including the comments on the last piece - I’ve never done this in 10 years of reading Matt. This is very important to be careful and precise about with what’s going on
I’ve read it. I don’t need to be instructed to read something. I can come to my own conclusions about what was said without being a fucking baby and demanding the author “clarify”. Maybe one day you’ll learn that skill too. It’s part of growing up. Give it a whirl.
You are properly smacking flyover down. He deserves it. You will notice that he just keeps going, though. That is troll behavior. I do not think you can change him, but shaming him for his infantile behavior is still pretty good!
Look, I poked Matt with strong language to get him to reply but have otherwise been very constructive and diplomatic with everyone replying. I’ve said nothing that I wouldn’t say to anyone’s face. The profane ad hominem attacks are beneath this comment section, which tends to be a pretty healthy conversation most times.
I think Matt can hold himself to whatever standard he would like. And certainly you can expect a certain standard as well, which you have communicated, as can I, which I have communicated. That's all.
Asking the country’s foremost investigative journalist to accurately source and explain his position on the most salient political event of the year is an objective, universal standard. To ask anything less is disappointing. I’m not asking Matt to state a position to which he made no reference. That would be a “gotcha” and I would never do that to someone. Go back and see his original post - he made insinuations about Kirk’s racial views that were unclear and unsupported by evidence.
I was really disappointed by this as well.
Meh. No one is perfect, not even Taibbi.
The sad fact is, the policy of DEI hiring makes anyone from any category helped by it suspect in terms of their actual skills for the job. When skill level and achievement become secondary to gender or skin color, it is not unreasonable to become concerned when the pilot in the cockpit is BIPOC, etc. As I said, sad but true.
I'm an old and grumpy feminist and I had no problem with what Matt said. Back in the 70's and 80's I never assumed males (white) were the best qualified for their jobs. Most were good at their job but there were those mediocre males who were sometimes promoted over better women and minorities. Those days have long gone and now others have taken up the mantle of railroading white males for mediocre women and minorities in some weird revenge plot. I remember the jerks from the old days and I don't want them replaced by the new jerks. This is what I heard Kirk saying, but I do think he could have said it better.
STOP WITH THE GODDAMNED INQUISITION. Taibbi isn’t always correct, but he’s always trying to be, and he’s genuine. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s in short supply these days. If you want to shit on snide apparatchiks engaging in sophistry and double talk masquerading as journalists, I have a list for you to review. Matt’s not on it.
I am sorry if I came off as an inquisitor. I’ve never pressed Matt to clarify his meaning on anything before, and I was one of the original subscribers to his Substack. I won’t repeat it here, but you can read my replies to him for why this got me so spun up.
To your point substantively, it’s precisely because Matt is not one of those journalists that I’m making a big deal of it. I know he is a person of great principle and integrity. He has more backbone than all of us anonymous goobers put together. He deserves to be held to a high standard by his friends. Especially on this issue at this moment.
Holy Moly!! This is exactly the way the Left argues. Stop trying to force speech.
Asking Matt, as a subscriber, to clarify a position he insinuated but left murky—a position that relates to the main idea of his prior piece and the entire debate over Kirk’s death is forcing speech?
Yes, since you made it clear there was only one "right" answer. What you did is exactly what the Left does to extort compliance in speech. Which you can do and the left can do. I'm not the speech police, just somewhat calling BS on that whole move, whoever does it.
I think you have me mistaken. I will repeat in a different way. Matt made an unclear statement about his opinions on Kirk’s racial views. One interpretation is that Matt was insinuating Kirk was racist. I said so and asked him to clarify, saying that if he did it was poorly informed. He did clarify. Now all is well and the meaning is understood. I see no extortion in the above.
Then we disagree. It happens.
So to clarify, you hold that a subscriber asking a journalist to clarify his statement about an essential point of meaning is extortion?
Bret Stephen’s writes for the NYTimes. He hasn’t been ‘readable’ for years. As they say, ‘consider the source’ .
He has made a career of being the left’s “house conservative.” They like to trot him out on campus to show “balance.” That is, when David Brooks is not available.
David French has entered the chat...though I'm pretty sure. he's a Democrat now.
Amen.
Agreed! Fuck Bret Stephens, I wouldn't wipe my ass with a thing he dribbled onto the page - empty, faux conservative pomposity from a flag-pin patriot - complete waste of space.
While I'm in agreement with some of Taibbi's posting, his use of Bret Stephens as a whipping boy is, well too easy.
"Even" NYT readers pretty much despise him. The leading reader comment to a recent article was: "I am so, so done with Bret Stephens." And it seems the NYT with some regularity has a column titled, "Readers respond to a column by Bret Stephens." Hint, they ain't praising him.
The Times readers despise Stephens because he’s “conservative” by their standards, ie not for any rational reason. I’ve actually met him, and he’s a self satisfied, preening jerk.
Yet - he's still on the masthead...
And why is this? I would suggest because he isn't Left enough.
"Consider the source" only makes sense in matters of fact. In abstract matters consider the words or you are doing a mirror image version of "Everything Trump says/does is WRONG!".
As you probably know, he was at the Wall Street Journal. I don't know why he left.
He hated the Murdochs. And liked being invited to the best cocktail parties.
So Stephens threw himself into the arms of Sulzbergers aka anti-Israel folks...
AI: "The Sulzbergers of the New York Times have not always been supportive of Israel. In fact, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times from 1935 to 1961, was explicitly anti-Zionist and opposed the creation of the state of Israel. He viewed Judaism primarily as a religion, not a national or ethnic identity, and resisted efforts to highlight Jewish issues prominently in the paper. Under his leadership, the Times downplayed the danger Nazism posed to Jews, buried Holocaust stories, and editorially aligned with anti-Zionist groups such as the American Council for Judaism. He even forbade the use of the term "Jewish state" in the newspaper's coverage.
Later Sulzberger family members, such as Arthur Ochs Sulzberger ("Punch") and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., had a more complex and varied relationship with Jewish identity and Israel, with the paper's stance evolving over time. Although The New York Times today is considered an influential source on the Israel-Palestine conflict and is sometimes criticized from both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian perspectives, the early Sulzbergers were distinctly anti-Zionist and unsupportive of Israel's founding and early existence.
Totally. He lives in NYC - getting invited to the parties reigns supreme. Not exactly principled.
Stephen’s is like David French = ‘faux conservatives’
AI: "One significant reason for Stephens' departure was his desire to have a new platform; he had been a prominent anti-Trump conservative voice at The Wall Street Journal, often clashing with pro-Trump perspectives within the paper."
The WSJ has pro-Trump voices? Maybe in 2018. Not so much now.
Here's my college rip-off story. I wroted my master's thesis for my major professor and he panned it telling me it was all wrong in its thesis. I took his advice and rewrote it his way then he told me it was wrong for all the reasons the first version was right. I rewrote it a 3rd time as it was the first time but instead of telling me its wrong he told I could pay him a thousand dollars and he would get it rewritten for me.
I was flumoxed. As I thought about it, I realized it was a solicitation of a bribe. I wrote it up as a complaint and sent it to the dean. I was blacklisted and my career as a music theory teacher was off the table.
What's great about being a Believer is simply I can call on my Creator when there are problems. I found an ad in a newspaper(that tells you how long ago this was) that asked if I knew Microsoft Word. I wrote my thesis in Word 6.0 The rest is history. I became an employee of Microsoft for 4.5 years and turned myself into a programmer and I've been doing stuff like that every since.
The academic institutions are rotten to the core and have been for decades. Time to flush the chunks and begin again.
BTW: The bribe solicitor retired with a nice fat package some years later. The local paper refused to cover the story because their bread was buttered by the university. It now controls massive swatches of real estate for which the city and county cannot collect taxes. Charlie was right. Higher education is a total ripoff.
Something like this happened to me in my doctoral program. My advisor told me that my doctoral study had to result in a tool that could be sold by his private publishing company, and that if I didn't agree to that, he would make certain I would never graduate. He was furious when I said, "Ok" and found a different advisor. The most important lesson I learned in the program was that most professors/researchers/advisors were only out to line their own pockets and snag accolades along the way to the bank.
"wroted"?
"flumoxed"?
"every since"?
Sorry if pointing these out make me a jerk, but you're kidding, right?
a few typos from thumbs on a phone keyboard? Verdict - yes, you're being a jerk.
i thought he was trolling us.
i don’t edit comments often and everyone but you seems unbothered with these errors.
“Music Theory” - give him a break
I really did think that maybe he was a bot - no offense meant, Don
I went on a college tour to a highly selective university in North Carolina this summer. The tour guide college student told us that part of the writing 101 courses offered were Dolly Parton for President and one to the tune of Life of Taylor Swift. $95k/yr.
Seems like we really are at Peak Nonsense, doesn't it?
I can’t believe someone would pay to send a kid who can’t write to a university at all- let alone one that costs $95k/yr. I’d tell that kid to go get a job.
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough!
My niece is currently in her second year of nursing school. It enrages me she is paying college tuition to take volleyball this semester. Last spring semester she took billiards. I want to find the person who is a university billiards instructor and slap them upside the head. There is zero useful knowledge gained from a college billiards course! I understand the idea of electives and am a champion of a well rounded education, but maybe offer useful electives like navigating insurance, budgeting, or meal planning. Not freaking billiards!
I got a B.S. in college in 1980. It got my foot in the door, but it was worthless otherwise. That was my fault as I took easy, non-challenging electives. Within a year of starting my career, I realized I had no life experience that remotely matched the professional class I was selling to—lawyers, doctors, business owners, corporate execs—who had families and many were WW2, Korean and Viet Nam veterans of war.
So, I joined a book of the month club for the 100 best books of Western Civilization and educated myself. The first book of the month was “Moby Dick” and the second was “War and Peace.” A slow reader, I was immediately behind in reading a book a month. But I persevered and it changed my life for the better.
The college experience today is so toxic I have not encouraged my kids to go to college unless they are pursuing a career that requires a B.S. (and typically a masters and/or PhD). There are a handful of good colleges with traditional humanities degrees and less toxic environments, but none of my kids are interested in education for education’s sake. I was obviously the same way at their age, but I’d gladly pay for such an education if they wanted one.
I sort of did that. The University of Chicago in its earlier manifestation sold the Great Books idea. They even wrote about it in Life Magazine. The great Books came in a set like encyclopedias. My h.s. library had a set. I even got a Syntopicon. By the time I went to actual college I had a fair knowledge of the humanities. That is one of the reasons I thought becoming a librarian was a good career. People w/o college could have access to so much. I wrote about that program here:
https://kathleenmccook.substack.com/p/great-books-in-life-magazine
I've a set of the Great Books and a set of Harvard Classics on the shelves of my office at a public university. My dad picked them up at university library sales. For whatever it's worth, there are still people like us on campus.
Just read your article on Substack. A $62,000 budget for the Great Books that ended up costing millions. Those scholars should not have skipped math class!
There are plenty of good options for folks if one checks the curriculum, although I expect most here already have a degree or some experience with college.
Most of university is reading and we don't need to pay anyone to do that. Check a course syllabus, or three, to get a flavor of the arc. Access to primary sources has never been easier - start with the Library of Congress online and just read a few hundred newspapers from the period of your choice. Google Books will also opens up worlds by simply using the tools: custom time and view.
Yes, you are right--and as copyrights end and things go into the public domain there are more books available everywhere.
Also--Worldcat (free to sign up) will tell you your closest library for most books. https://search.worldcat.org/
Paul, reading, like critical thinking, is rapidly becoming a lost art in today's universities. Students won't read anything longer than a few paragraphs, and faculty have no real way anymore to compel them to do so.
One only need compare the syllabi from the 1970s to the ones from today to see how true this is. Some students, it is true, always ditched/faked the assigned reading. But today, it is not even assigned.
I like to look at the "Legacy Libraries" of famous people--mostly writers--at the platform, Library Thing.
https://www.librarything.com/legacylibraries
Cheers! I always enjoy your replies, Pacificus. In lecture courses its impossible and always has been. University teachers, however, are among the least imaginative people I know - no need for examples.
One on one interviews with a demand that the student be prepared to describe in detail every element of an argument on a particular page doesn't leave even the most slippery student any place to hide. Threats to double reading assignments, HW, and interviews are also powerful incentives. The invitation to depart or fail is, of course, the threat of last resort.
I made clear, however, my goal was to help and to invite students to do their best - coz that's what we're here for. The vast majority, after some resistance, rose to the challenge and were grateful for the opportunity. My faith in our young people remains - its the oldsters who've opted out and who should be condemned. As for university teachers, god help us all.
K-12, on the other hand, continues to attract the best. Always good to hear from you. I doubt many university teachers, or students, even understand what critical thinking actually is, so thanks for that too!
I agree re the Zoomers—lots of hope for them. That said, I hear from teachers K-12 and college that kids are not only not reading, but using ChatGPT to write their essays. I tell my own kids, “That’s who will be your ‘competition’ in life. Cheat now and pay later, or put in the hard work now and reap the rewards for the rest of your life.”
Cheers!
The template I've described works - decades of experience.
Essays, assignments are written in class on B-5 lined paper and pencils with no notes and no tech. Students do all work outside class the same way - photograph handwritten assignments and submit them daily, if need be. I worked in private ed for a long time where people paid for results. Stress that the skill of working is far more important than any particular assignment - challenge your kids big to study what they they like - and produce something memorable by hand. And don't be afraid of getting your hands dirty - ask them to help you produce something new that's of interest to them, not you. You sound like a great dad, stay close, stay involved and forget about the teachers who think tools and tech are a substitute for dialogue and engagement. Show this email to the teacher, btw, if you like. 30 years of success (no money) but a lifetime of worthwhile experiences. Get the teachers to give it a try and tweak to fit their own style.
For example: each student must provide a daily three-paragraph handwritten report of class-related prep, reading etc. These reports become part of the assessment: content, style, vocab. The student is then interviewed and we discover whether the student can deploy the same elements orally. Rinse, repeat.
Once the student knows that the teacher is engaged on a personal level with the arc of improvement, students respond positively and will do the work - who doesn't want help? Tis easy for any teacher willing to engage and commit to each student as a person.
I’m no longer in the mood to indulge the left’s ideas, feelings, grievances and aspirations. For years it’s felt like we’ve been playing a game where one side gets all the calls, cheats and re-writes the rules as we go. And we just take it because we’re good sports. Well, I’m throwing out the rule book and walking off the field. It’s Game Over. We should have done this a long time ago.
Game over man! Game over! (I read your entire post in Bill Pullman's voice)
I’m a college graduate actively pursuing a Masters Degree. I’m also a licensed Professional Engineer. I think America’s youth should consider a “gap year” (or four) between high school and further education. Get out of the classroom and into the real world. The college model we have built for this country is legalized loan sharking. I’m convinced that the vast majority of jobs could be OJT, similar to the apprenticeship model of the trades. This includes engineering and law. Medical school could be an exception.
I recall one coworker snarking about kids enlisting in the military because “they were too dumb for college.” A few years later, myself and most veterans I know are homeowners with no student debt, while our non-veteran peers are watching 20% of their take-home go up in smoke against a huge principal of student loan debt. Who were the dumb ones again?
My heart breaks for the Kirk family. What was especially gut wrenching was his daughter running to him after he was shot. That anyone would be pleased at that torture imposed on her is sickening. I say let all those who wish to celebrate his death do so as loudly and freely as humanly possible. Don’t let me or the law stop you from showing your true colors.
Agreed. I didn’t get my engineering degrees till after 30. A good friend of mine did the same thing. Recruiters were tripping over themselves to hire both of us. Even back then, it was obvious hiring someone with life experiences, not just a degree, was highly desirable.
An engineer who’s spent a few years using tools is invaluable. A decent engineer can design something that works on paper, a great engineer can provide a solution that can be readily built AND maintained affordably.
Put myself thru school working on the shop floor, wound up taking six years. When I graduated, I was a production superintendent, company (to be fair, had helped with tuition for last few years) promoted me to eng position, few more years to Director. All because I started out hands on
You got that right!
The fact that we can refer to “the real world” and everyone knows what we mean is telling. I went to university and I am glad I did. But the real world turned out to be a lot more interesting and I learned a lot more of value.
Didn't Winston Churchill say something to the effect that he began his education three years after leaving college?
I intentionally haven't watch the video, and knowing this happened is something I wish I didn't know...OMG.
Bret Stephens: what a crap-filled stuffed shirt.
I ran across this last night, from 1940 novella by Robert Heinlein:
“We must teach our children always to doubt their elders, and to judge for themselves—on evidence, not authority!”
(Edited at 16:39 to remove a grammar error)
Bret Stephens, apparently, doesn't have a clue about Charlie Kirk's appeal to younger voters. Perhaps Stephens was mentored by those "smart" people he extols.
Looked it up, and sure enough, Bret Stephens is a U. of Chicago alum. Even better, he went to a Massachusetts boarding school.
You almost feel sorry for him. He was programmed into being a smug, know-it-all prick from an early age.
I was quite old when I realized that there were boarding schools that were pipelines.
What was once a fairly estimable power to weight ratio in these private boarding schools and Ivy League 'institutions' has become skewed to the point of no return.
As El Gato Malo said recently, they all need to be closed.
That's Maoism, hombre!
I'm not close to feeling sorry for any of those jackasses!
Maybe the boarding school’s janitor’s kid beat the shit out of him and he’s still holding a grudge.
Notably, Tabbi also attended a fancy boarding school.
Hey, I am a UofC alum, so I too have a shameful secret.
(BTW, Stephens' thought of the average profoundly awkward UofC nerd being able to counter an experienced debater expert is hilariously off-target. If you went there, you know.)
More than anything, young people right now crave authenticity and positivity, and Charlie had both in spades.
A huge part of college is teaching the coded language and norms progressives have established to separate themselves from the other. It’s not an accident the higher the elite the crazier they post which leads to thousands of others trying to signal they are also on the side of good by posting similar toxic ideas
Case in point: Land acknowledgements. They're almost a perfect filter. "If you say the words and do the dance, you're allowed to speak at the event."
yup, and it cracks me up Trump did pretty well with the Tribal Indian vote.
Per your Flatland reference, Stephens sees himself as a fractal. He is not. He isn't even a circle; a mathematical paradox. He isn't a node. He isn't a zero either. He is an empty set. He hates dissent. I can hear him say: "do you know who I am". My answer: yes I do; you can turn a phrase but your words, your ideas are empty. They have no meaning. He is an arrogant twit.
And he wants to declare a victor in the debate between rationality and spirituality after the first round.