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The Regrettable Decline of Higher Learning
Townhall.com ^ | February 4, 2016 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 02/04/2016 5:25:36 AM PST by Kaslin

Edited on 02/04/2016 6:19:03 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]

What do campus microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes and censorship have to do with higher learning?

American universities want it both ways. They expect unquestioned subsidized support from the public, but also to operate in a way impossible for anyone else.


(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: collegesandunis; education; microaggessions; safespace; triggerwarnings; vdh; victordavishanson
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1 posted on 02/04/2016 5:25:36 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: bestintxas; COBOL2Java; DuncanWaring; EXCH54FE; ExTexasRedhead; FreedomPoster; Kennard; Hojczyk; ...

Victor Davis Hanson Column


Please Freepmail me if you want to be added, or removed from the ping list

2 posted on 02/04/2016 5:27:25 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: Kaslin

He lays it out precisely. I would love to be in his classes.


3 posted on 02/04/2016 5:32:35 AM PST by SueRae (It isn't over. In God We Trust.)
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To: Kaslin

4 posted on 02/04/2016 5:37:56 AM PST by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free)
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To: Kaslin

Grades are inflated so that 70% of the people fit in the top 30%. Go figure that out, that’s common core math.

Teaching for the most part has become the career path mainly for liberal flunkies. God bless the few that are in it for the students and the love of teaching.

Stop giving federal dollars for a 4 year cycle and let the system eat its own.


5 posted on 02/04/2016 5:41:55 AM PST by Fhios (circa 2016: Truth will be outlawed unless pre-approved.)
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To: Fhios
Hasn't the Classic Liberal Arts concept now been reduced to what “old white, dead men” did in the 17th century onwards?
6 posted on 02/04/2016 5:48:41 AM PST by Netz
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To: All

The dumbing-down of America is not an accident.
Why do you think slave owners refused to let their slaves become educated?


7 posted on 02/04/2016 5:50:02 AM PST by Maverick68
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To: Kaslin

I relate this story of mine from 2011. I had to fly into a southern airport late one night, and walked into the car rental shop. The manager was the only person left there...so we were doing the paperwork and chatting for a few minutes.

She was early 20’s....college graduate (four years)....minority....and the manager. It struck me as odd. Ten years prior....the typical manager of a medium-sized airport car rental shop would have been some guy in his 50’s....no college degree (just high school education)....maybe four years in the military.

I asked this gal about career progression. She just looked at me....this was mostly it unless she got picked up for regional and likely to never happen. Pay was the same level as the high-school graduate guy from a decade ago. She owed $30,000 on student loans.

On the positive side....she’s got a job and at least paying bills and her loan. On the negative side....there’s nothing much about the job that required a college degree. I look across at hundreds of thousands of jobs like that....where higher education really doesn’t mean much for the job. In some ways, we’ve invented a new society with fake credentials and puffed people up enough to feel they are smarter...when they aren’t.


8 posted on 02/04/2016 5:50:42 AM PST by pepsionice
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To: Kaslin

It has been declining for some 100 years, why get excited now?


9 posted on 02/04/2016 5:54:37 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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I think that a big part of the problem might be due to the very thing that made America great. Historically, Americans have had something of a “Calvinist” attitude, believing in hard work, and getting the job done. That led to the oft used meme, “those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”

This has resulted in the creation of “schools of education,” which are havens for miscreants and morons, people who couldn’t make it doing productive things. Of course, many wonderful people are FORCED to go through these schools, in order to become wonderful teachers in the real world. But far more graduate who don’t know what they teach, and/or are completely unable to pass on any sort of information as educators.

Universities, once hot-beds of “revolutionary thought,” these leftist students never left the universities, and eventually went on to teach, and even run them. And now, even convicted terrorists are welcome as “professors” on campuses.

It doesn’t bode well for the future, but unfortunately, it might have been partly caused by Americans’ wish to perform and succeed.

Mark


10 posted on 02/04/2016 6:00:16 AM PST by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
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To: PIF

declining since 1916? You can’t be serious


11 posted on 02/04/2016 6:03:07 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: PIF

I mean, I don’t disagree that is has been declining, but certainly not since 1916, more like since the the late 1960s


12 posted on 02/04/2016 6:06:46 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: MarkL

“Leftist students never left the classroom”
No, it is worse than that. Look at the “Professor” or whatever. He/She entered the classroom at age FIVE and to date has never stepped out of the classroom.
They have exactly NO experience in and knowledge of the real, true world, but believe they are the smartest people in the world. If dependent on their own “skills” and “ability” they would starve.
These are the people who look down upon the grease covered auto mechanic who just repaired the brakes on their car, giving them good odds on reaching their destination safely.


13 posted on 02/04/2016 6:16:03 AM PST by CaptainAmiigaf (New York Times: "We print the news as it fits our views.")
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To: Kaslin

So when you were in high school, how was your Greek and Latin? Leave school fluent in more than 3 languages, were you? Loved your Philosophy classes did you? The Advanced Math and Statistics classes were really exciting, weren’t they? All once part of the usual humdrum curriculum in the 19th century. I was being kind about the early 20th. Today’s educational system is educational only in name ... more like advanced babysitting.


14 posted on 02/04/2016 6:16:19 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: Kaslin

Ya, sort of what I was thinking. I would say it started during the 60s and has been in steady decline since.


15 posted on 02/04/2016 6:18:09 AM PST by 556x45
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To: Admin Moderator
Why did you excerpt the article? No where does it say that it has to be excerpted and the preview said The article will be posted as is, showing the entire article. I would appreciated if you would re-post the entire article

Thanks in advance

16 posted on 02/04/2016 6:25:27 AM PST by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: Kaslin
The decline in education, not just in the US, but in at least the Anglosphere (if not the West as a whole) has been going on since well before the 1960's. C.S. Lewis's prophetic The Abolition of Man was written in 1943 and foresaw most of the rot in Western civilization on the basis of a bad English textbook used in British schools.

1916 is probably as good a start date as any -- right in the middle of the "Progressive" Era when the baleful ideas of Dewey that replaced the real education needed for citizenship with training for jobs came into vogue.

17 posted on 02/04/2016 6:29:04 AM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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To: pepsionice

That’s because employers are no longer allowed to test applicants for intelligence. As a result they hire college grads for high schooligans jobs.


18 posted on 02/04/2016 6:38:06 AM PST by Labyrinthos
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To: Kaslin

VDH always a good read.


19 posted on 02/04/2016 6:39:28 AM PST by CPT Clay (Hillary: Julius and Ethal Rosenberg were electrocuted for selling classified info.)
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To: Labyrinthos

That was the Griggs vs Duke Power Co. decision.


20 posted on 02/04/2016 6:39:52 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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