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“Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are destined to repeat them.” - Santayana
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In other words, “The dumbing down of America via government schools is completing itself.”
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These are more like welcomed diversions from serious study... societal pastimes... cataracts... clouding ones ability to observe and analyze reality.
Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among US young adults. There is a reason for that.
Bookmarked.
As a second career college teacher (now retired), I periodically reentered college as a matter of personal enligtenment and professional development. Hansen nails this one. The difference in the education that I received as an undergraduate in the early 1960’s was as different from my later soujourns into higher education in the 70s, 80s and 90s as King Lear is from Big Momma’s House. What passes for education today —with some exceptions—is nothing more than a reiteration of the popular culture wrapped up in post-modernist language. And many younger faculty are truly dumber than wooden watches. They have no understanding of historical context of philosophical underpinning to the world of ideas. Be very careful where your son or daughter matriculates. If someone has not already done so, it would be a very good idea to establish a list of higher education institutions whose core curricula reflect the value and content that Hansen describes as worthwhile.
Yup... that was their mantra in college, when I was a student. “Damn the absolute, the truth is relative.”
However, I had a for-real upbringing (read: right and wrong exist and we depart from that fact at out own peril. I am living proof that you will not only survive serious a^%-kickings for infractions on that rule, but you will become a responsible and mature adult just the same and I think, a whole lot sooner). ALSO I read books lots of them, NOT just the ones on the syllabus.
I study mathematics and engineering. Unfortunately for the liberals, it is nearly impossible to make relativist such coursework as Linear Algebra, Data Structures, and Algorithms.
>>>Sometime in the 1960s—perhaps due to frustration over the Vietnam War, perhaps as a manifestation of the cultural transformations of the age—the university jettisoned the classical approach and adopted the therapeutic. <<<
A glut of draft-dodging PHD’s who majored in the social sciences — those who were pumping gas near the end of the war, and afterward — were able to infiltrate our education system, and our government. Don’t forget that our government (federal and state) has created a myriad of social programs since 1970.
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Of course. It is the vital first step to the point when all one needs to know is "we have always been at war with Eastasia." The State said so.
My college has nearly 100 different student organizations. When I was a student that number was probably less than 20. Now we have a black student union, a Jewish student union, Asian student union, etc.
This dadgummed celerbation of diversity has reduced my beautiful little college from an institution devoted to the search for truth, into a rock-ribbed, multicultural hell hole where everything is relative.
Recently I asked our provost(the chief academic officer of the college) what was the most popular major. Answer: International business; 2) Psychology. I asked him where history fit in. His answer: “It barely registers.” My response: “So, we are educating students who have positively no sense of the past for their nation or the world.” No answer.
How do we alter this downward spiral into relativism?
There is also the issue of "style" over "substance."
My wife teaches literature and writing courses in our homeschool group. A recent graduate of hers received an "outstanding" (6) evalution on the written part of the SAT. Her mother called to thank my wife for my wife's "part" in this outcome.
Let me tell you the rest of the story. My wife only awarded this student a "C" in the course. The student was lucky to get this grade. My daughter who is a national merit finalist and an exceptionally gifted writer (she, only a freshman, was asked to tutor in an honors writing lab at her college). Here's the kicker: she only received a (4) on the written portion of the SAT.
I discussed how this could be with my wife. She informed me that SAT evaluators don't actually read the essays in their entirety, but rather examine them for length, structure and style (confidence). She said they separate them based on length and then do other/subsequent evaluation within each group. It doesn't matter what ideas are presented, but only if the author has energy and expresses a confident point of view. In contrast, my daughters essays are strategic creations: thesis, developement, restatement/conclusion. It should be pointed out that my daughter only wrote on every other line of the notebook, since this is how she had been trained, leaving room for the evaluator(s) to make corrections and notes. Consequently, her essay was only potentially half as long as others might have been. Superficially her essay was "deficient" in length and "unclear" (subtle: you've got to read it in its entirety).
I told my wife that she really needed to "teach to the test" next time! There's "good writing" and there's "lengthy written overconfident verbage" for the SAT written portion. Style and form win out over substance.
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