Comments on: How we lost our cultural literacy

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Thu, 28 Jan 2016 21:48:32 +0000

Geoffrey Britain Says:
January 26th, 2016 at 7:02 pm…
Nobles and peasants, elite and peons or nomenklatura and droids… “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss”…

“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.“ — Robert A. Heinlein
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Molly Brown Says:
January 26th, 2016 at 11:44 pm
This is why people homeschool.
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Pretty much says it all.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 18:52:36 +0000

Richard Aubrey Says:
January 27th, 2016 at 8:47 am

It’s intentional rather than inadvertent. But that view isn’t surprising from me.

By: Richard Saunders

Richard Saunders — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 18:23:50 +0000

expat — or Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, or the fact that 365,000 Union soldiers died to end slavery. No, no, NO!, not allowed — it doesn’t fit with the narrative!

By: expat

expat — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:47:49 +0000

David,
That is appalling. Of course, then they might have to cover the meaning of the Gettysburg address. We can’t have that, can we?

By: David

David — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 16:25:59 +0000

My son is currently in a California High School and is a Junior this year. In his American History class they skipped the Civil War section entirely.

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 13:47:38 +0000

When my granddaughter was seven, she remarked that the Fourth of July was my birthday and my father’s birthday, “because you fighted in the war”.
Far as I can tell, she put together the notion of our country, the necessity to fight various wars, the Fourth as a birthday, connected the Fourth to the guys who fought the various wars and metaphorically figured we could call it our birthday. She knew about our real birthdays.
While I’m impressed with the subject of her observation, I’m even more impressed with the number of things she knew and the connections she drew.
She had some pretty good insights for her age and in no conceivable construction of public education could she have gotten them at school by that age.
Her intellectual environment is so good it might be ruled illegal. But it’s just college-educated parents who have jobs but they freakin’ care and they know what to do. They talk about things all the time.
My DiL was a high school English teacher. I asked her if she’d encountered Benet’s “The Devil and Dan’l Webster” in any of her courses or anthologies.
Nope.
I’ve got some old high school anthologies which include it.
I’m sorry for our country that it’s no longer included, but you’d have to know a couple of things to really get it and those aren’t taught, either.
Accident? Call me paranoid, but I never thought it was inadvertent.

By: expat

expat — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 10:56:24 +0000

I’m sorry Richard. I’ll enroll in a diversity course so I don’t make the same mistake again.
You know what I really find tragic: ater college, in the late 60s and early 70s I worked for the welfare and health department in North Philly. It was my first exposure to large numbers of blacks (and Jews and city folk), both clients/patients and co-workers. We could actually talk to one another without having the racist epithet thrown out. It was just assumed that we all had different backgrounds and experiences and it was great to share them. That atmospher changed as the radical chic let the Panthers et al take over.
I had a client who had moved into a apartment above a soul food take out. It had become the go to place for the radical chic who attended summer concerts at the Robin Hood Dell down the street. I always chuckled to think of of the number of roaches they had in their meals because that was the filthiest most infested apartment I had ever seen. The client moved out shortly after, and I don’t think anyone else moved in.

By: Richard Saunders

Richard Saunders — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 08:05:16 +0000

Hard to remember, isn’t it, that one of the most popular books of the ’50s was a celebration of the Americanization of immigrants — Leo Rosten’s “The Education of Hyman Kaplan.”

Neo is certainly right that it was the ’60s that killed education my junior high and high school (I graduated in 1964) were devoutly American. If any of the educrats could see those schools, our assemblies, the Pledge of Allegiance, the National Anthem, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, gym with real sports and real teams competing, their hair would burst into flames.

The Department of Education has to be the first one to go!

BTW, expat, all that stuff about teaching kids to read, teaching their parents to care about their education, giving them access to books, that’s all WHITE PRIVILEGE, so knock it the hell off!

By: neo-neocon

neo-neocon — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 05:10:04 +0000

Gringo:

Academics in general caved. I don’t know exactly who was on left and who on right, but there were a lot more people on the right back then (perhaps not a majority, though), and (at least as Bloom describes it) very few held out. That means that I’m pretty sure that a lot of people who caved were at least somewhat on the right.

I certainly don’t have figures for that, though. So I could be wrong. But I doubt the right held firm as a unit. That’s not my impression from Bloom’s book.

By: Gringo

Gringo — Wed, 27 Jan 2016 05:06:10 +0000

physicsguy

Until the percentage of conservatives on faculties reaches at least 30%, it’s a lost cause. And that won’t happen because the hiring process is such that anyone who is conservative and applies will be quickly eliminated from the candidate pool once that is known.

What you state is sad, but true. They are not going to hire conservatives. The bursting of the college tuition bubble may provide some assistance. Most of the administrative bloat added in the last 50 years acts as enforcers for leftist agendas- diversity, what have you. Get rid of that administrative bloat- looks like a quick and easy way to bring college tuition costs down. Get rid of the studies departments in the interest of cutting the fat out- which will also get rid of more enforcers of leftist agendas.