Tag: education

With 15 days left, the Junior Classics campaign is now at 1015 percent of goal. Are you tired of winning yet?

News of the availability of the 2020 Junior Classics is has observably spread as far as Australia and Hong Kong. If you are similarly interested in acquiring one of the greatest homeschooling assets ever printed, whether in digital, hardcover, or deluxe leather editions, you can do so here.
The campaign owner is aware that the campaign cannot be found by searching for it on Google or the crowdfunding site. That is by design, so there is no need to repeatedly inform us of that fact. If you wish to help spread the news about the , please feel free to post the animated GIF above with a direct link to the campaign attached. And thanks very much to the Classics backer who created the banner.
In other crowdfunding news, we are aware of about 500 AH Vol. I omnibuses that have not yet shipped due to a problem with the order formatting. We are in the process of fixing that with the printer, so if you have not yet received your omnibus, just sit tight, as this is just a minor procedural problem.
UPDATE: The Heirloom perk is intentionally priced higher than the sum of its parts because certain backers have requested a means of providing additional support to the project.
UPDATE: Both the leather and the case-laminated hardcover editions are printed on acid-free paper that meets the ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 standards for archival quality paper.

The God-Emperor sets a few veterans free from the debt-vampires:

President Trump has announced a policy directive to the U.S. Department of Education to immediately facilitate the discharge of federal student loan debt for any veteran permanently disabled as part of their military service.

It’s a good start. The non-disabled vets should be next, followed by the unemployed. All student loan debt should be eventually discharged and all student loans should forbidden by state and federal law. They are intrinsically predatory and accomplish nothing except inflating the cost of higher education.

President Trump needs to get out in front of this issue in a big way. It is a definite election-winner:

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will propose on Monday eliminating all $1.6 trillion of student debt held in the United States, a significant escalation of the policy fight in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary two days before the candidates’ first debate in Miami.

Sanders is proposing that the federal government pay to wipe clean the student debt held by 45 million Americans – including all private and graduate school debt – as part of a package that also would make public universities, community colleges and trade schools tuition-free.

Sanders is proposing to pay for these plans with a tax on Wall Street his campaign says will raise more than $2 trillion over 10 years, though some tax experts give lower revenue estimates.

Sanders will be joined Monday by Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who will introduce legislation in the House to eliminate all student debt in the United States, as well as Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who has championed legislation to make public universities tuition-free.

Politics aside, eliminating student debt is the right thing to do. The power of the banks needs to be broken and this is the most effective way to begin doing that. Student loan debt is intrinsically predatory and cannot be justified, especially in light of the massive endowments of the elite universities.

The fact is that most people should not go to college. But if corporations are going to demand worthless pieces of paper for a job, then those worthless pieces of paper should be provided to everyone who wants one for free.

Remember, periodic debt forgiveness is straight out of the Bible and is even referenced in the Lord’s Prayer. Debtors must be forgiven, concerns about fairness notwithstanding.

Unauthorized Professor Rachel Fulton Brown defends the Middle Ages:

We medievalists all know the drill.

Somebody in public life says something disparaging about the Middle Ages, and we all leap in to insist that either:

  a) Europe in the Middle Ages was actually much more advanced/enlightened/sophisticated than the off-hand comment about people believing the world was flat suggests, or

  b) yes, absolutely, they’re right, medieval Christians were murderous thugs, barbarians of the first order who knew nothing of tolerance or diversity and probably ate babies for breakfast whenever they could get them.

Neither answer ever changes the public conversation one iota because everybody knows that whatever Charles Homer Haskins might try to insist about the real Renaissance happening in the twelfth century, there is no getting round the Albigensian Crusade and the massacres of the Jews in the Rhineland (the former called by the pope, the latter resisted by all the bishops and other leaders of the Church).

The more those of us who study the intellectual, institutional, and spiritual achievements of the period succeed in pointing to the great depth and complexity of the Christian tradition (including its criticisms of the very kinds of violence so often cited as paradigmatic of the Dark Ages), the more our colleagues who study the massacres and inquisitions reinforce the prevailing sense of the period as benighted and savage, and we are right back where we started, blaming Europe and its colonial offspring for all the woes in the world.

Our Enlightened and liberal predecessors would say we’ve been doing it wrong.

This is the blog attached to the coming Unauthorized course on medieval history, so if you’re interested in it, be sure to bookmark it.

The Great Enstupidation of the United States proceeds apace:

When Yale recently decided to relocate three-quarters of the books in its undergraduate library to create more study space, the students loudly protested. In a passionate op-ed in the Yale Daily News, one student accused the university librarian—who oversees 15 million books in Yale’s extensive library system—of failing to “understand the crucial relationship of books to education.” A sit-in, or rather a “browse-in,” was held in Bass Library to show the administration how college students still value the presence of books. Eventually the number of volumes that would remain was expanded, at the cost of reducing the number of proposed additional seats in a busy central location.

Little-noticed in this minor skirmish over the future of the library was a much bigger story about the changing relationship between college students and books. Buried in a slide deck about circulation statistics from Yale’s library was an unsettling fact: There has been a 64 percent decline in the number of books checked out by undergraduates from Bass Library over the past decade.

Yale’s experience is not at all unique—indeed, it is commonplace. University libraries across the country, and around the world, are seeing steady, and in many cases precipitous, declines in the use of the books on their shelves. The University of Virginia, one of our great public universities and an institution that openly shares detailed library circulation stats from the prior 20 years, is a good case study. College students at UVA checked out 238,000 books during the school year a decade ago; last year, that number had shrunk to just 60,000.

One can make a very good case for outlawing so-called “higher education” now, as the Christian university created to educate young men has now devolved into a worse-than-useless factory for transforming young women into barren SJW debt-slaves.

We are pleased to announce that medievalist professor Rachel Fulton Brown will be offering a Medieval History 101 course to Unauthorized subscribers. She has a few questions for prospective students.

The first question that I have is about format. What kind of format would make for a good course online?

What I do not want is to have these videos simply be lectures, the canonical professor-talks-while-the-students-doze lectures you get in the movies before the professor starts encouraging the students to stand on their desks.

I want, in fact, to make them real—in the sense of the kinds of discussion I would give my students at the University of Chicago.

Which means you are going to have to do a bit of homework. Don’t worry, it will be fun!

Here’s the format I would like to try. I know that those of you who have been following Vox are familiar with his blog. Professor Fulton Brown is a great fan of blogs! You can see several that I have designed for courses I have taught on animals in the Middle Ages, Mary and Mariology, medieval Christian mythology, and Tolkien: Medieval and Modern.

I use these course blogs as a place for students to talk about the readings they have done and the themes we have discussed in class. I am always encouraged at how much insight they are able to bring to our discussions, as well as stimulated by the questions they raise.

This is how I would like to use the blog for our online course.

I will post a short reading (about a page) a few days before our scheduled “class.” You will be invited to leave comments on the blog, whether asking questions about the text or suggesting themes you would like me to address. Your comments will help me gauge the level of familiarity that readers have with the text, as well as help me craft my comments on what I would like you to learn from it. Following the video “class,” you can return to the blog and leave additional comments. Our goal will be to build up a common understanding of how to study history beyond learning the relevant facts.

I will also post reading lists for those who want to delve further. There are thousands upon thousands of books already published on the history of Europe in the Middle Ages. My role as a teacher is to help you learn how to read and evaluate them.

All subscribers will have access to the history course, but it will also be possible to purchase access to it whether you are a non-subscriber or not. I was extremely amused when Prof. Brown sent me a picture of what she said would be the textbook – all eight volumes of the first edition of the Cambridge Medieval History series published from 1926 to 1936! Don’t worry, you won’t be required to acquire your own copy for the course.

Also in Unauthorized news, the fifth episode of Chuck Dixon on Comics is now available for subscribers.

Forget the issue of prayer in the public schools. Conservatives can’t even keep perverts, Planned Parenthood, and pedos out of them:

On Tuesday, April 23, 2019, Minnesota House Democrats voted in favor of including pornography and sexual perversions as part of the Minnesota House Education Omnibus Bill, HF2400.

The Minnesota Child Protection League (CPL) tried to warn parents and stakeholders to call their legislators to urge them to remove Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) from the 258-page House Education Omnibus bill HF2400 before it was debated on last Tuesday. Of course, the bill was debated two days after Easter Sunday, when parents were distracted and just getting the kiddos back to school after the holiday.

Planned Parenthood will provide the CSE curriculum for Minnesota public schools and has lobbied hard for this legislation. The Guttmacher Institute, which was started in 1968 as a part of Planned Parenthood, is expected to be developing the state model policy, according to StopCSE.org, a website to educate parents on the harmful effects of CSE.

At the center of the CSE curriculum debate is a book called, “It’s Perfectly Normal” which is endorsed by Planned Parenthood and boasts of “more than one million copies in print”. The book contains explicit drawings of the male and female anatomy and covers such topics as vaginal, oral and anal sex, homosexuality and abortion which will be taught to elementary students as part of CSE. “It’s Perfectly Normal” was written in 1995 by Robie Harris, who was a member of Planned Parenthood’s National Board of Advocates. A new edition of the book states it is “updated for the 21st century” on the cover.

Notice the inevitable equalitarian propaganda in the “educational” pictures. The lesson, as always, is this: homeschool or die.

Jordan B. Peterson provides an excellent demonstration of how a gamma male handles being rejected. It’s hilarious, because he clearly believed he was now beyond experiencing any more of that, having become Rich and Famous. This is a classic Gamma response we know as the Wall of Text.

Cambridge University Rescinds My Fellowship

From @CamDivinity, this morning (Wed, Mar 20, 2019): “Jordan Peterson requested a visiting fellowship at the Faculty of Divinity, and an initial offer has been rescinded after a further review.”

I visited Cambridge University in November of last year, during my 12 Rules for Life Book tour, one stop of which was the city of Cambridge, where I spoke publicly at the venerable Cambridge Corn Exchange. While there, I had lunch and dinner and various scheduled conversations with a good number of faculty members and other interested individuals who came in for the occasion, and we took the opportunity to speak with a welcome frankness about theological, philosophical and psychological matters. I also recorded twoYouTube videos/podcasts: one with the eminent philosopher Sir Roger Scruton, presented by The Cambridge Center for the Study of Platonism, and another with Dr. Stephen Blackwood, founding President of Ralston College, a university in Savannah, Georgia, preparing for launch.

I was also invited to address the student-run Cambridge Union, the oldest continuously running debating society in the world – a talk which was delivered to a packed house (a relatively rare occurrence) and which, despite being posted only four months ago, is now the second-most watched of their 200 total videos. I’m mentioning this for a very particular purpose: CUSU, the Cambridge University Student Union (not to be confused with the aforementioned Cambridge Union), pinned to their Twitter account the rescindment announcement three minutes before (!) the Faculty of Divinity did so, and in a spirit of apparent “relief.” The Guardian cited the following CUSU statement:

We are relieved to hear that Jordan Peterson’s request for a visiting fellowship to Cambridge’s faculty of divinity has been rescinded following further review. It is a political act to associate the University with an academic’s work through offers which legitimise figures such as Peterson. His work and views are not representative of the student body and as such we do not see his visit as a valuable contribution to the University, but one that works in opposition to the principles of the University.

It seems to me that the packed Cambridge Union auditorium, the intelligent questioning associated with the lecture, and the overwhelming number of views the subsequently posted video accrued, indicates that there a number of Cambridge students are very interested in what I have to say, and might well regard my visit “as a valuable contribution to the University.” I also have to say, as a university professor concerned with literacy, that the CUSU statement offered to The Guardian borders on the unintelligible, perhaps even crossing the line (as so much ideological-puppet-babble tends to): what in the world does it mean that “it is a political act to associate the University with an academic’s work through offers which legitimise figures such as Peterson”? And who could write or say something of that rhetorical nature without a deep sense of betraying their personal conscience?

In any case: In November, when I was in Cambridge, I began discussions with one of the faculty members (whom I had met briefly before, in London) about the possibility of entering into a collaboration with the Cambridge Divinity Faculty. I enjoyed the conversations I had at Cambridge immensely. I learned a lot about Biblical matters that had remained unknown to me in a very short time. This was of particular relevance to me, but also perhaps of more broad and public import, because of a series of lectures on the Biblical stories of Genesis I prepared, delivered live (at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto) and then posted on YouTube (playlist here) and in podcast form.

Since their posting, beginning in May of 2017, these lectures have received about 10 million hits (as well as an equal or greater number of downloads). The first lecture alone, on the first sentence of Genesis, has, alone, garnered 3.7 million of those, which makes it the most well-received of all the talks I have ever posted online. I have received correspondence in great volume from religious people all over the world, Jews, Christians, Buddhists and Muslims alike—and an equally large number from atheists—all telling me that my psychological take on the Genesis material resonated very strongly with their faith, or that it helped them understand for the first time the value of these stories. You can see this for yourself by reading the comments on the YouTube channel, which are remarkably civilized and positive, by modern social media standards. I don’t think there is another modern religious/psychological phenomenon or happening that is genuinely comparable. It’s also the case that my books, 12 Rules for Life and Maps of Meaning both rely heavily on Judeo-Christian thinking, and are predicated on the idea that the stories that make up such thought constitute the bedrock of our civil, peaceful and productive society. The former has now sold 3 million copies (one million in tongues other than English), and will be translated into 50 languages; the latter, a much older book, was recently a New York Times bestseller in audio format. This volume of interest is clear indication of the widespread cross-cultural appeal of the work that I am doing.

In the fall, I am planning to produce a series of lectures on the Exodus stories. I presume they will have equal drawing power. I thought that I could extend my knowledge of the relevant stories by spending time in Cambridge, and that doing so would be useful for me, for faculty members who might be interested in speaking with me, and to the students. I also regarded it as a privilege and an opportunity. I believed (and still believe) that collaborating with the Faculty of Divinity on such a project would constitute an opportunity of clear mutual benefit. Finally, I thought that making myself more knowledgeable about relevant Biblical matters by working with the experts there would be of substantive benefit to the public audience who would eventually receive the resultant lectures.

Now the Divinity school has decided that signaling their solidarity with the diversity-inclusivity-equity mob trumps that opportunity–or so I presume. You see, I don’t yet know, because (and this is particularly appalling) I was not formally notified of this decision by any representative of the Divinity school. I heard about the rescinded offer through the grapevine, via a colleague and friend, and gathered what I could about the reasons from social media and press coverage (assuming that CUSU has at least something to do with it).

I would also like to point out something else. As I already noted, the Divinity Faculty (@CamDivinity) tweeted their decision to rescind, consciously making this a public issue. This is inexcusable, in my estimation, given (1) that they did not equally publicize the initial agreement/invitation (which has to be considered an event of equal import) and (2) that they implied that I came cap-in-hand to the school for the fellowship. This is precisely  the kind of half-truth particularly characteristic of those who deeply practice to deceive, as the fellowship offer was a consequence of mutual discussion between those who invited me to Cambridge in July and my subsequent formal request, and not something I had dreamed up on my own.

It’s not going to make much difference to my future, in some sense. I have more opportunities at the moment than I can keep track of, let alone (let’s say) capitalize on. It’s a complex and surreally fortunate position to occupy, and I’m not taking it for granted, but it happens to be true. In the fall, therefore, I will produce the lectures I plan to produce on Exodus, regardless of whether they occur in the UK or in Canada or elsewhere, and they will attract whatever audience remains interested. But I think that it is deeply unfortunate that the authorities at the Divinity school in Cambridge decided that kowtowing to an ill-informed, ignorant and ideologically-addled mob trumped participating in an extensive online experiment in mass Christian and psychological education. Given the continued decline of church attendance, the rise in atheistic or agnostic sentiment, the increasing irrelevance of theological education and the collapse in interest in such matters among young people, wiser and more profound decisions might have been made.

You see, it matters whether people around the world understand these ancient stories. It deeply matters. We are becoming unmoored, because we no longer share the structure these stories undergird. This is psychologically destabilizing. It’s producing a pathological and desperate nihilism that is increasingly common and, at the same time, a pronounced proclivity for the ideological certainty that mimics but cannot replace true religious belief. Both consequences are bound to be, as the evidence certainly indicates, divisive and truly dangerous.

I think the Faculty of Divinity made a serious error of judgement in rescinding their offer to me (and I’m speaking about those unnamed persons who made that specific decision). I think they handled publicizing the rescindment in a manner that could hardly have been more narcissistic, self-congratulatory and devious.

I believe that the parties in question don’t give a damn about the perilous decline of Christianity, and I presume in any case that they regard that faith, in their propaganda-addled souls, as the ultimate manifestation of the oppressive Western patriarchy, despite their hypothetical allegiance to their own discipline.

I think that it is no bloody wonder that the faith is declining (and with it, the values of the West, as it fragments) with cowards and mountebanks of the sort who manifested themselves today at the helm.

I wish them the continued decline in relevance over the next few decades that they deeply and profoundly and diligently work toward and deserve.

P.S. I also find it interesting and deeply revealing that I know the names of the people who invited me, both informally and formally, but the names of the people who have disinvited me remain shrouded in exactly the kind of secrecy that might be expected from hidden, conspiratorial, authoritarian and cowardly bureaucrats. How many were there? No one knows. By what process did they come to the decision (since there were obviously people who wanted me there)? No one knows. On what grounds was the decision made? That has not been revealed. What role was played by pressure from, for example, the CUSU? That’s apparently no one’s business. It is on such ground that tyranny does not so much grow as positively thrive.

P.P.S. Here’s something from Vice-Chancellor Professor Stephen Toope of the University of Cambridge that’s worth consideration, in the current context (the described “openness” is apparently part of the university’s declared strategic initiatives regarding (what else) equality and diversity (bold mine):

One very specific aspect of…openness is being inclusive, and open to diversity in all its forms – diversity of interests and beliefs, of gender, of religion, of sexual identity, of ethnicity, of physical ability.

People are literally committing crimes to try to get their children into universities considered prestigious:

The scheme was uncovered by the FBI and federal prosecutors in Boston, who discovered that dozens of parents had paid a total of $6million in bribes to get their children into elite schools including Yale, Stanford, Georgetown, and UCLA. In many instances the children were unaware that their parents had paid these bribes, according to federal documents.

Most of those charged either paid to get higher SAT scores or faked an athletic resume that, with the participation of a bribed college coach, helped the children get accepted to a college as a team’s recruit. Prosecutors said in court on Tuesday that some students also lied about their ethnicity on applications to take advantage of affirmative action.

William Rick Singer, the founder of Key Worldwide Foundation, had been identified as the alleged mastermind behind the scandal. The documents claim that since 2011, Singer has received $25million from parents which was used to payoff or bribe individuals who could ‘designate their children as recruited athletes, or other favored admissions categories’. In his biography on the website for the Newport Beach-based Key Foundation, Singer is heralded for his ability to get children into the college of their choice. Singer is also praised for ‘helping students discover their life passion, and guiding them along with their families through the complex college admissions maze’.

Huffman paid a $15,000 ‘charitable contribution to participate in the college entrance exam cheating scheme on behalf of her eldest daughter,’ according to the complaint. She also ‘later made arrangements to pursue the scheme a second time, for her younger daughter, before deciding not to do so’.

The charging documents state that Huffman had the site where her daughter took the SATs moved from her own high school to a test center in West Hollywood. Her test was then administered by a proctor who had flown in from Tampa and told investigators that he ‘facilitated cheating, either by correcting the student’s answers after the test or by actively assisting the student during the exam’. In this case, Huffman’s daughter scored a 1420 out of 1600 in December 2017, which was a 400 point improvement from her PSAT results just one year prior….

Problems arose however when Olivia’s guidance counselor became curious as to how she managed to receive admission based on her involvement in crew since she did not row.  At the same time, Loughlin complained that her daughter was having difficulty filling out her other college applications, prompting Singer to ask an employee to take care of the task. This was done so as not to draw attention to the fact that it was already confirmed Olivia had received conditional admission to USC.

At some point, there was a very heated and public altercation between Giannulli and the counselor, which elicited an email from Heinel asking that it not happen again in the future so as to avoid detection.  Everything began to fall apart in October 2018 when the IRS audited Key Worldwide and began to look into donations made by parents whose children were then admitted to USC. Loughlin and Giannulli were told by Singer to say they had given the $500,000 to the foundation to help ‘underserved kids.

The whole system is going to collapse soon. The lawsuit filed by a number of Asian families against Harvard is almost certainly going to expose far worse practices being committed systematically by the universities themselves as a result of collusion between the admissions offices and a specific identity group that dominates the admissions offices.