Entries Tagged 'Education' ↓

A Dartmouth English professor is threatening to sue her students:

[Priya] Venkatesan said the incident occurred when she was lecturing about The Death of Nature, a book by Carolyne Merchant, and the witch trials of the Renaissance. The student went on a “diatribe” about the inappropriate nature of challenging patriarchal authority, Venkatesan said. Vakatesan respected the student’s right to express this opinion, she said, but the manner in which he vocalized his views and the applause afterward were disrespectful and offensive.

“I was horrified,” Venkatesan said. “My responsibility is not to stifle them, but when they clapped at his comment, I thought that crossed the line. … I was facing intolerance of ideas and intolerance of freedom of expression.”

Venkatesan contacted [Thomas Cormen, chair of Dartmouth’s writing program] about the event, she said, but claims she received no support from him. She canceled class because the incident caused her “intellectual and emotional distress,” she said. This event, which occurred on Feb. 1, would likely be included in a list of grievances relating to a potential lawsuit, she said.

You have probably heard of that other example of monstrous evil, Aliza Shvarts, the Yale student who created a work of “art” that consisted of repeatedly conceiving via artificial insemination and repeatedly giving herself an abortion. Though some have said it was a hoax, Shvarts insists that she really did this to yourself and to her unborn children.

Washington Post editorial page journalist Charles Lane goes into what she meant with her work of “art” and what this, in turn, tells us about what she had been learning at Yale. From The Art of Folly at Yale:

Among her “conceptual goals,” she wrote in the Yale Daily News, was “to assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form. It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are ‘meant’ to do from their physical capability.” Shvarts wanted to show that “it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are ‘meant’ to birth a child.”

Lane segues into a review of a book by a Yale professor who protests what his colleagues have done to the humanities:

Last year, Anthony T. Kronman, the former dean of Yale’s law school, published “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life.” This superb book traces the historical rise and fall of the humanities, which, Kronman writes, “are not merely in a crisis. They are in danger of becoming a laughingstock, both within the academy and outside it.”

In the past, Kronman argues, colleges and universities understood that undergraduates were hungry for answers to the Big Question: What is the meaning of life? And schools believed that not only religion but also higher education could help students find them. Humanities departments focused on great works of Western civilization, from Homer to Shakespeare. In short, Kronman writes, they gave their students a four-year seat in the unending “great conversation” of their civilization.

But between political correctness and the “publish or perish” ethic of the modern research university, the humanities have lost the desire and the capability to guide students’ spiritual quests. Instead, humanities professors stake their authority on an unrelenting critique not just of contemporary society but of meaning itself.

Once, humanities teachers cultivated perspective in their young charges; now, many of them instill grievance. The biological function of female reproductive organs can be portrayed as some kind of injustice. Or so Aliza Shvarts learned.

As I keep saying, where I am, at Patrick Henry College, we still cultivate the Humanities as this book says we should, as opposed to the inhumanities that dominate higher education elsewhere.

How my mind works: Ideas, memories, and experiences float around in my head until they crystallize into a question:

Thinking about our popular “Spy Camp,” contemplating our college’s Strategic Intelligence Program, having recently read a book and watched a movie about the origins of the CIA, having taken my son to D.C.’s Spy Museum, having just read a student paper relating the lessons from Shakespeare to the field of Strategic Intelligence, and having just done some research on Graham Greene (one of many author/spies going all the way back to Christopher Marlowe and Daniel DeFoe), I came across a quotation from super-spy and counter-intelligence czar James Jesus Angleton who said that literature majors make the best spies.

Indeed, during World War II and in the eariy days of the CIA, the recruiters for the new intelligence agencies tapped mostly Ivy League English majors.

What connection do you see between the study of literature and the VOCATION of espionage?

The separation of church and states, as it is currently construed, forbids public schools or other institutions getting taxpayer money from teaching Christianity, performing Christian rites, or conducting Christian prayers. That ruling, though, is not always being applied, though, when it comes to Islam in our public, tax-supported schools. An Islamic school in Minnesota is a charter school, meaning it receives taxpayer money. Various “multicultural” curricula involve role-playing that forces students to act Muslim, which, in Islamic terms, is unseparable from BEING Muslim. Read this and click its links: Sharia in the schools: Monitoring the American madrassa.

Notice how in many leftist circles multi-culturalism trumps everything, including other liberal concerns (feminism, secularism, gay rights).

Here is an excellent, information-packed write up about the school where I am the Provost and a literature teacher, Patrick Henry College. It describes our “Ivy League-caliber scholastics paired with a distinctly Christian worldview.”

If you think this is a good combination and would like to support what we are doing here, we’d be much obliged. We’re working on a challenge grant that asked us to increase our donor base to 5000. If you’d like to become one of them, click here.

Oh, yes. The article, on Worldnet Daily, was written by a PHC intern.

The California appeals court that outlawed homeschooling has decided to vacate the ruling. That doesn’t mean overturning it. Rather it means the court will reconsider the case. See here for details.

A blue-ribbon presidential panel charged with figuring out what has gone wrong with math education in this country. Here is a summary of the findings. They include this observation:

Children badly need both automatic recall of math facts and understanding of big concepts, in effect declawing both sides in the decades-long “math wars.”

This points to a fallacy that seems everywhere in education and elsewhere: the FALSE DICHOTOMY. How would anyone think there needs to be a CHOICE between EITHER knowing material OR understanding it? To be educated about any subject you need BOTH! You also need to be able to apply it yourself.

(Note that the whole range of what education must be is fulfilled in the paradigm of classical education: grammar [knowing]; logic [understanding]; rhetoric [personal application].)

What are some other false dichotomies? (I’ll get you started: faith & works; orthodoxy & mission. . . .)

Patrick Henry College is known for its internships. One of our journalism students, Heather Terwilliger, scored an internship with USA TODAY. That is huge in itself, a plum opportunity and getting it was a great accomplishment for Heather. But her accomplishments on the job were so great that the paper started publishing her stories! With a byline! That almost never happens with an intern. Instead of making her fetch coffee and do the filing, the editors had her write feature stories that were being read by their 3 million readers. That’s impressive and a tribute to Heather and to her college that gave her such a good education and that boasts such gifted students. I was actually planning to blog about that, but then Heather outdid herself.

Because of her homeschool connections, Heather knew about the California court ruling and its significance in banning homeschooling before anyone else in her vast newsroom. She pitched the story to her editors. Drawing on her contacts, she wrote with staff reporter Greg Toppo the story, scooping everyone else. (You will notice some details that did not show up anywhere else.)

But this is the killer: HEATHER TERWILLIGER IS ONE OF THOSE HOMESCHOOLED KIDS FROM CALIFORNIA that the court thinks are so educationally disadvantaged!

A California appeals court has ruled that children must be educated by a state-credentialed teacher and NOT by their parents! See Homeschoolers’ setback in appeals court ruling:

“California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. “Parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling under the provisions of these laws.” Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said.

Go to The Home School Legal Defense Association for breaking news, analysis, the chance to sign a petition, and information about what may be done. (The HSLDA and Patrick Henry College where I teach share facilities. I’ll try to monitor this and keep you posted.)

UPDATE: Read the HSLDA response and the litigation being prepared.

Young people today know hardly anything about history, literature, or Western culture. We knew that, but study proves it. Among the findings,

Among 1,200 students surveyed:

•43% knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900.

•52% could identify the theme of 1984.

•51% knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.

I’m positive my students here at Patrick Henry College know all this stuff. What amuses me is the way they often draw a blank at pop cultural references. Ask them about Britney Spears, High School Musical, and similar staples of the adolescent universe, and you often just get a blank stare. They WILL, however, tell you all about Homer, Dostoevsky, and deToqueville.

Patrick Henry College, where I teach as a Literature Professor and which I administer as the Provost, stands in stark contrast to the institutions and educational methods that I have been criticizing.  We offer a classical Christian education with the highest academic standards to some of the best and the brightest young people in our nation.Once each semester, we dismiss classes for a day that is devoted to what we call a “Faith and Reason Lecture.”  A speaker, usually alternating between an outside scholar and one of the scholars on our faculty, delivers to the entire campus community a substantive academic presentation exemplifying Christian scholarship.  After the lecture, we discuss it over lunch, then break into our Christian study groups (an ongoing book study led by a faculty member) to talk about it in depth.  Then we all meet together for a panel discussion with other faculty members, and then an extensive period of Q&A from our students.Our lecture this semester was by my colleague David Aikman, an Englishman who spent 23 years as an international correspondent with “Time Magazine” and is currently our writer in residence and one of our history professors.  He spoke on the subject of a new book that will soon be released, a consideration of the “New Atheists” currently in vogue.  Here is his paper.Today I thought I’d post just a couple of tidbits, things I learned from what Dr. Aikman said. I am not even trying to do justice to the way he took apart Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins. You can read that for yourself. (I’ll try to remember to post something on his book when it comes out.)

 P.S.:   I’m having trouble making paragraphs on this WordPress blog software.  So please don’t think I don’t know how to sort out my prose properly.  And if anyone knows how I can fix the problem–I’m striking out on “help”–please let me know.

Susan Jacoby wrote an op-ed piece, based on a book she is releasing, entitled The Dumbing Of America.  She decries the anti-intellectualism of America today, citing the rank ignorance about history and geography that is rampant today, as well as statistics such as 40% of Americans have never read a book in the last year.  She also discusses how our culture tends to denigrate intellectuals as “elitists,” as opposed to the down-home democratic ideal of average “folks.” What she neglects to address, though, is that when it comes to anti-intellectualism, our elites are the worst offenders!  It is precisely our intellectual elites–university professors, cutting-edge artists, culturally-in-tune authors–who are denying the efficacy of reason, insisting that truth is relative, and holding onto exploded ideas (such as Marxism and neo-Marxism) against all evidence.  Who is training the teachers and writing the curriculum that have gutted our young peoples’ education and deprived us of our knowledge base?  Who is denying that there is such thing as truth or goodness?  Who is denying the existence of beauty and purposefully making art that defies the canons of classical aesthetics?  Most common “folks” have better sense.  So I agree with the author in lamenting the dumbing down of our culture.  But until not just the “common people” but the intellectual elites who need to change their thinking.