Category: Education

The White Man’s Burden

A question no one asks, at least not out loud: To what extent are blacks dependent on the charity of whites? What would happen if all public assistance, all programs specifically or de facto for blacks were withdrawn?

What would happen if Section Eight housing were abandoned, Head Start, AFDC, free lunch and breakfasts in inner-city schools, food stamps, and all the rest? I do not recommend doing this–the consequences would be hideous–but do suggest thinking about it. The conclusion will probably be that blacks are in custodial care. If this is not true, tell me why it is not.

I never even thought to ask that. Hmmm…

Source: The White Man’s Burden

The Harvard Classics

Let’s face it. What is taught in schools — K-12 through college — is not education. It’s job training. And not very good job training at that!

Do it yourself:

The Harvard Classics is a 51-volume Great Books list, compiled and edited by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot in 1909. All volumes are now in the public domain. Free pdf versions (and other formats) are available at archive.org. A complete list of volumes and links is supplied below.

Of interest is Dr. Eliot’s suggestion that a superior education can be gained by reading from this list for only 15 minutes a day.

Source: The Harvard Classics

Surgery students ‘losing dexterity to sew’

Prof Kneebone says he has seen a decline in the manual dexterity of students over the past decade – which he says is a problem for surgeons, who need craftsmanship as well as academic knowledge.

“An obvious example is of a surgeon needing some dexterity and skill in sewing or stitching,” he says.

“A lot of things are reduced to swiping on a two-dimensional flat screen,” he says, which he argues takes away the experience of handling materials and developing physical skills.

Such skills might once have been gained at school or at home, whether in cutting textiles, measuring ingredients, repairing something that’s broken, learning woodwork or holding an instrument.

Students have become “less competent and less confident” in using their hands, he says.

“We have students who have very high exam grades but lack tactile general knowledge,” says the professor.

Can’t these kids do anything?

Source: Surgery students ‘losing dexterity to sew’

Public school teachers are not underpaid; they earn more than the taxpayers who have to pay their salaries!

Mrs Brown teaches at Woodford County High School in Versailles, Kentucky. The average income for a resident of Versailles is $24,652, and the median family income is $41,915. Mrs Brown earns, just from her salary at Woodford County, 2¼ times as much as the average worker in her community, and 31% more than the median family income there. How, I have to ask, is Mrs Brown forced into ‘financial juggling,’ unless she has been living well beyond her husband’s and her means?

I have been saying for decades that teachers are OVERPAID. In my community they are making over $50k/yr when the average annual family income in my community is $19k/yr. Their pay needs to be cut.

This is true of all public employees.

 

Gramscian damage

I identified some of the most important of the Soviet Union’s memetic weapons. Here is that list again:

  • There is no truth, only competing agendas.

  • All Western (and especially American) claims to moral superiority over Communism/Fascism/Islam are vitiated by the West’s history of racism and colonialism.

  • There are no objective standards by which we may judge one culture to be better than another. Anyone who claims that there are such standards is an evil oppressor.

  • The prosperity of the West is built on ruthless exploitation of the Third World; therefore Westerners actually deserve to be impoverished and miserable.

  • Crime is the fault of society, not the individual criminal. Poor criminals are entitled to what they take. Submitting to criminal predation is more virtuous than resisting it.

  • The poor are victims. Criminals are victims. And only victims are virtuous. Therefore only the poor and criminals are virtuous. (Rich people can borrow some virtue by identifying with poor people and criminals.)

  • For a virtuous person, violence and war are never justified. It is always better to be a victim than to fight, or even to defend oneself. But ‘oppressed’ people are allowed to use violence anyway; they are merely reflecting the evil of their oppressors.

  • When confronted with terror, the only moral course for a Westerner is to apologize for past sins, understand the terrorist’s point of view, and make concessions.

Sounds ominously familiar…

Source: Gramscian damage

Freeing the Humanities from Academia

The greatest assault on Western Civilization came from the inside, and what was once the deepest reposit of that knowledge: Academia. This is nowhere seem more deeply than in the purging of the humanities of millennia of learned knowledge and the wisdom of generations to make room for its antithesis.…

Hence, we must all take it upon ourselves to learn, cherish, and teach the great humanities of Western Civilization so that some piece of us lives on rather than be relegated tot he ash heap of history.

So say we all. Amen.

A quick followup: since I posted this I discovered a website called Erenow, “one of the largest collections of online free books on history.”

Did I mention free?

Source: Freeing the Humanities from Academia

College Students Not Mailing Absentee Ballots Because They Don’t Know Where to Buy Stamps

“One thing that came up, which I had heard from my own kids but I thought they were just nerdy, was that the students will go through the process of applying for a mail-in absentee ballot, they will fill out the ballot, and then, they don’t know where to get stamps,” Lisa Connors with the Fairfax County Office of Public Affairs said.

We really don’t need people this stupid voting. Raise the voting age. To 30. Hopefully they will be adult enough to have moved out of their parents’ basements.

Source: College Students Not Mailing Absentee Ballots Because They Don’t Know Where to Buy Stamps