Tag: education

Prediction: having embraced the “success is defined by female participation” metric, Harvard Business School will lose its elevated cachet within a decade:

Of all the ceremonies and receptions during graduation week, the most
venerated was the George F. Baker Scholar Luncheon, for the top 5
percent of the class, held in a sunny dining room crowded with parents
who looked alternately thrilled and intimidated by what their offspring
had achieved. 

In recent years, the glory of the luncheon had been dimmed by discomfort
at the low number of female honorees. But this year, almost 40 percent
of the Baker scholars were women. It was a remarkable rise that no one
could precisely explain. Had the professors rid themselves of
unconscious biases? Were the women performing better because of the
improved environment? Or was the faculty easing up in grading women
because they knew the desired outcome? 

“To my head, all three happened,” Professor Piskorski said. But Mr.
Nohria said he had no cause to think the professors had used the new
software, and the subjective participation scores, to avoid gender gaps.
“Sunshine is the best disinfectant,” he said, a phrase that he said had
guided him throughout his project.

Consider how fast the question of “is college worth it” has rapidly followed the rise of women with college degrees. Credentialists never understand that pieces of paper are only indicative of an ability to sit in class and follow orders and that no amount of degrees will ever be an adequate substitute for intellectual horsepower, curiosity, and testosterone-fueled risk-taking.

The primary female psychological objective is risk-reduction.  This is why societies with too much female influence rapidly become not only static, but anti-dynamic, and rapidly begin to decline. It’s also why an amount of female influence is a societal survival trait.

In which he responds to the much-discussed Slate article concerning it being evil to send children to private school:

If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person
A Manifesto

No kidding. It is actually subtitled “A Manifesto”. We’re off to a great start. 

By Allison Benedikt
You are a bad person if you send your children to private school. Not bad like murderer bad—

Wait… Are we talking actual bad murderer bad, or murderers that
liberals have the hots for bad, like Che Guevara? Or murderers that
liberals don’t like to own up to like Kermit Gosnell bad? Because you
know, liberals are into nuance and stuff. 

but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid bad. 

So using a lot of unnecessary hyphens bad. 

So, pretty bad.

Apparently. But please, Allison, educate us poor knuckle draggers
why we should put the future of failing liberal institutions based on
outdated philosophies dating back to the industrial revolution over the
welfare of our children. 

I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental. 

Well you’re a liberal, so that goes without saying. 

But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve. 

And I can’t wait to hear how you figured this part out. Especially
since everybody is always whining about overcrowded classrooms, so when
a kid gets pulled out and sent to private school, you just freed up
more public school resources, and *gasp* the parent paying for private
school is still paying taxes which pay for the dumpy public school… but
hey, I’m getting ahead of myself. 

This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your
children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the
meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good. 

Wait… Let me get this right… I need to needlessly screw up my
children and grandchildren’s chances in the hope that maybe, just maybe,
our shitty public schools might be decent in forty or fifty years. And
this is the high note she picked to open her essay with. Holy shit.

I have to admit, I find it a bit difficult to get worked up over something this obviously stupid.  In addition to the fact that argumentum ad sensum is so logically fallacious that it isn’t even listed as a formal logical fallacy because so few people are dumb enough to try making it, there is a fundamental flaw in the idea that increased patronage will improve a failing product.

Think about it.  When a restaurant’s food or service is sub-par, does expanding the size of its clientele tend to improve either or make them worse? When a retail store doesn’t have anything people want to buy, does an increase in customers tend to improve what is found on offer? When a government is corrupt and awful, does its governance tend to improve with the number of citizens over which it holds authority?

We can readily observe that the opposite is reliably true.  Therefore, by her own dubious measure, the moral imperative of improving the quality of the public schools, we can only conclude that it is evil to send one’s child to a public school.  In fact, since positive change tends to be inspired by people abandoning an institution and thereby forcing the institution to respond, there is a moral imperative for parents to improve the public schools by taking their children out of them.

It’s a pretty hapless argument when, by one’s own self-selected metric, one somehow manages to make the case for the exact opposite.  While the article may be little more than Slate attempting to troll the sane public for linkbait, remember that there are no shortage of white progressives who genuinely believe what this woman is writing.

However, while I very much disagree with the idea that private school attendance is evil, I will say that it is suboptimal. Private school is still subject to the group education speed limit on learning, and while there is more accountability than with public schools, the parent is still putting primary responsibility for the child’s education into the hands of strangers. Homeschooling offers more of the positive benefits of private education while being subject to none of the disadvantages.

You cretinous, foolish young woman:

Readers will recall that Andria has an “Honors BA in Social Justice and Peace Studies” and is pursuing a Master’s degree in Gender Studies. So . . . how’s that going?

“I have a honors BA and I’m defending my MA thesis in two weeks. I am also apply for jobs and I can only find stuff in the service industry. I applied for a Hotel Front Desk Clerk job today.

My degrees mean NOTHING.

I am at the end of my rope.“

And she just figured this out NOW?  She has a degree in “Social Justice and Peace Studies”.  She will soon have a second degree in “Gender Studies”.  She’s very lucky the service industry will consider hiring anyone with a pulse, because any employer looking at those degrees has to knows she is a walking, talking, sexual harassment and/or discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen.

In fact, a Gender Studies degree actually has negative value, given that credentialed feminists are considerably more likely to cause disruption in the workplace.

It’s bad enough to acquire garbage degrees in economic boom times.  It’s even worse to do so in the middle of a five-year depression.

HHS asks for curriculum advice:

Would you mind putting up a homeschool open thread? My wee one is
finally getting to that age, and while she’s learning to read now, we’re
looking for our first well-rounded curriculum.

Have at it.  SB uses Saxon math, Trivium Pursuit, and the Well-Trained Mind, which has met with some very good results.  I don’t have much to offer in this regard, as my only responsibilities in this regard fall in the very important areas of Video Game History and Philosophy of Gaming.

That being said, I generally prefer starting a child off on Spacewar rather than Pong.  And one can only truly appreciate the Intellivision if one has first been thoroughly exposed to the Atari 2600.

But I congratulate HHS and his wife on their decision.  After all, America’s best educated kids don’t go to school.

 It’s official: blacks in 27 states are less academically able than Asians in those states.

Beginning this fall, Alabama public schools will be under a new
state-created academic accountability system that sets different goals
for students in math and reading based on their race, economic status,
ability to speak English and disabilities.” Alabama’s Plan 2020 “sets a
different standard for students in each of several subgroups — American
Indian, Asian/Pacific islander, black, English language learners,
Hispanic, multirace, poverty, special education and white.” Of the 33 states granted a waiver last year, 27 now have different achievement goals for different groups of students.

Now, according to those who support “marriage equality”, the state goverments have the right and ability to define marriage.  Marriage, they assert, is solely defined by what the government declares it to be.  But this is no less true of equality. Based on this logic, blacks must be academically inferior to Asians because the state governments have established their position on the matter.  Ergo, it is so.

Leftists never seem to understand that government is a sword that cuts equally well either way, and sometimes irrespective of who happens to be holding at the moment.