“Te Atrocity” Of Schools

Posted on | September 12, 2011 | 14 Comments

by Smitty

Insty rounds up some more blowback over Paul Krugman, who dropped an upper decker at the NYT yesterday. Insty includes email from an anonymous academic:

But there’s also the invention of a “we were all united and then Bush ruined it” idea. This is nonsense. The professional and academic left immediately started with “the chickens have come home to roost,” “it’s our fault for supporting Israel, etc.”

Part of the cultural renewal, like PJTV and the new GBTV, is going to include draining the carbuncle that Academia has become. I’m thinking here about how to save for college for the World’s Youngest Blogger.

How do we ensure that we are providing real schools that aren’t Commie pinko incubators?

My guess is that starting from scratch may be easier than reforming the current collegiate contaminated crapper crop. As the higher education bubble bursts, one hopes to see new, lower-cost, higher-quality institutions arise. Sure, the accrediation weenies are going to balk at a resurgence of actual History being taught, of a lack of *Studies curricula for useless Bolsheviks to hide in, and salaries in line with what the market can bear.

But, if that’s what it takes to lower the likelihood of another Krugman, then that’s what we have to do.

Category: Education, Uncategorized

Comments

14 Responses to ““Te Atrocity” Of Schools”

Paul Krugman
September 12th, 2011 @ 5:47 pm

I am a liar and a dick. What more do you really need to know about me?

But I am friends now with Andrew Sullivan. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Bob Belvedere
September 12th, 2011 @ 5:53 pm

Methinks it’s going to come to starting our own institutions. The old academies should be abandoned by the Right and left to rot from the gangrene that has been festering within their cores. They’re too far gone; too much would have to be excised in order to cure the patient.
Anonymous
September 12th, 2011 @ 6:04 pm

I suspect that what the Bolsheviks and their fellow travelers are doing to society in general and the economy in particular are going to give us many areas of our lives where we are going have the opportunity to “start from scratch” Richard Fernandez wrote a couple of good pieces on the diminishing returns of “accreditation” and other flaws in our education system.

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/09/08/the-miseducation-of-the-first-world/#more-17016

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/09/08/the-miseducation-of-the-first-world-part-2/#more-17041
Ben David
September 12th, 2011 @ 6:18 pm

Easy-peasy:
1) Remove all government subsidies.
2) Replace student loans with a tax deduction for loan payments – and we can set a ceiling on that, too.

Then watch all the “gender studies” departments disintegrate of their own accord.

And when the inevitable whining begins, remember: no good art or “culture” ever came out of academia. Those are done by real people in the real world…
Anonymous
September 12th, 2011 @ 6:28 pm

I’ve got a faster idea…school choice. That’ll knock the Kommiecrats silly with all those emty scgool but the Red Flag flying glorisouly
Anonymous
September 12th, 2011 @ 6:49 pm

An old tradition in New England and in Britain, the “Public School” or what we call “Private School” is growing here by leaps and twitches.

Government schools are failing. Even the newly built ones in places formerly recognized as exemplary are not keeping up with the private schools in turning out brilliant minds.

Leave the government schools. All of you. Get your kids out of them any way you can. Move if you have to. Take a crappy job at a better location if you have to. Catholic schools and church-based schools are a good alternative to the purely private ones, and they cost less money.

Homeschooling helps if you have no ability to pay.

But don’t forget that many private schools do have financial aid. And if we all push for the voucher system, you should be able to offset cost of private school by directing state funds for your child to the school of your choice.

We can’t fix the public schools. They need to be replaced. The voucher system will speed that outcome.
Anonymous
September 12th, 2011 @ 6:53 pm

I often think that neighborhoods should get together, buy one of the houses where someone is moving, and turn it into a little red schoolhouse, and tell the government to keep its nose out.
Anonymous
September 12th, 2011 @ 7:46 pm

Any dick is a friend of Andrew Sullivan, Paulie.
Anonymous
September 12th, 2011 @ 7:49 pm

At the current trajectory, though, when the public schools really started to depopulate, the “progressives” would attempt to pass a law against student flight from their failing PS systems. They’d try to put a virtual Berlin Wall around the PS system to keep kids from escaping to the other side.

Fortunately, we are in the process of jamming down their trajectory.
Anonymous
September 12th, 2011 @ 8:03 pm

Also, the elite “progressives” might have their kids in the most elite private schools, yet they resent it when the prols put their kids into private schools.

Their hypocrisy partly stems from simple elitism, but it’s also because they need good kids to stay in public school to help prop up that failing system, which is important because . . .

A). They have a lot of ideological and political investment in the larger public school “project” and what it represents.

B). They don’t want to risk that some of the dysfunctional kids in the PS system will somehow end up in the same pool as their kids.

The four legs of a good school are: 1. Instruction (teachers, curricula, etc.); 2. Resources (computers, books, building facilities); 3. Parenting; 4. Users (or students), themselves.

Item 4 is crucial – a school can either have quality-enhancing or quality-detracting users. No matter how good a school is, if 75 percent of the kids in that school are punks who are intent on dragging down every other kid with them, few of the kids – even the good ones – will succeed.
Anonymous
September 12th, 2011 @ 10:19 pm

We have one High School that sends an incredibly-high percentage (high nineties) of kids on to college.

The main difference between that school and the big ones (other than size) is that you can be kicked out of that one, and over a hundred other kids are on a waiting list, wanting to take your place.

So all the kids there really want to be there. Makes all the difference in the world.
Anonymous
September 12th, 2011 @ 11:10 pm

The wall wouldn’t be nearly as hard to over come as the mental corral our kids are being herded into now.
Anonymous
September 13th, 2011 @ 3:44 am

Or the parents all really want them to be there… which is equally important.
Bruce
September 13th, 2011 @ 11:05 am

One week after 9/11/2001 the Left were circulating Arundhati Roy’s 20 page anti-American ‘chickens come home to roost’ screed ranting about Vietnam.

Talking about ‘root causes’. And debating whether the terrorists were ‘brave’.