Levelling
At Vanderbilt University, an honours programme intended to accommodate academic giftedness has been denounced as “inherently exclusionary.” Having now been identified as an affront to “equity,” an unforgivable wickedness, the programme is of course being shut down:
And so, instead of all that problematic academic rigour, all those challenging tasks that not everyone can complete, exceptional students will now be obliged to mingle with those less academically inclined, and offered an education “accessible to all,” one “open to the voices of divergent experiences.”
The practised doublethink in play, in which precocious interest in advanced material is actively discouraged, and in which “access” is invoked while gleefully denying it, has been noted here before.
Along with educators’ hostility to students and parents who dared to complain about the downgrade, and whose concerns were dismissed as perpetuating “systemic racism.”
Update:
In the comments, sH2 quotes this,
And adds,
Well, quite. The reliance on fuzzwords and rhetorical fluff is not an encouraging sign. And any unironic use of the word equity should raise eyebrows.
The restructuring above is a familiar conceit, heard many times, and somewhat unconvincing. We’re expected to believe that by phasing out the most challenging courses, in high schools and colleges, and by shafting the students who take them, somehow everything else will become every bit as good, every bit as excellent.
Yes, there will be excellence everywhere.
Albeit achieved in ways that are never quite explained. And despite the obvious disregard for students who excel, and whose ability is deemed troublesome and a basis for corrective measures.
Regarding the promise of glorious inclusion and excellence everywhere, this came to mind:
Oh, and let’s not forget the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Inclusive Excellence Centre, where microaggressions are forbidden, including the words thug and trash, and where punctuation and grammar are unfathomable things, even among staff.
Update 2:
On the subject of omnipresent excellence, arrived at by some opaque and supernatural means, Rafi adds,
That would seem to be the most plausible option, the easier route. That, and cultivating a ludicrous unrealism. Habitual pretending. Something close to an inversion of reality, driven by fantasies of “equity,” which seems to mean something like equality of outcome regardless of inputs.
As in California, where differences in “school experiences,” i.e., differences in ability and achievement, are something to be eliminated by holding back high-achieving students, with curriculum guidelines based on “social justice,” and educators who are visibly “committed to social justice work.”
And so, we have California’s Department of Education actively discouraging gifted maths students from taking calculus any earlier than their less gifted classmates. As if this were a good thing with no conceivable downsides. Because frustrating clever kids, boring them and demoralising them, is, like, totally progressive.
And likewise, we have Jennifer Katz, a professor of education at the University of British Columbia, scolding parents who question the conceit that bright children will somehow flourish if taught more slowly and in less detail in a more disruptive environment. While implying, quite strongly, that any parents who complain must be racist.
And then there’s San Diego, another bastion of progress, where teachers are instructed that in order to be “anti-racist,” they must “confront practices” deemed inegalitarian and which result in “racial imbalance” – say, norms of classroom behaviour, a disapproval of tardiness and cheating, and oppressive expectations of “turning work in on time.”
There’s a through-the-looking-glass quality. A fun-house mirror malevolence.
As noted in the comments following this, it’s quite easy to demoralise bright children, and the brighter they are, the easier it tends to be. Just bore them and frustrate them in an environment where precociousness is ideologically problematic and often results in social disapproval, from both peers and educators. Say, with accusations of racism, and the closure of their advanced programmes, where they’d previously been allowed to be better at things.
The pace at which learning happens is important. If a lesson is unfolding much too slowly for someone, if new information is barely trickling out, with endless delays and interruptions, boredom and frustration can be hard to avoid. If someone needs to work at a certain speed, anything less can, very quickly, be demoralising. And difficult to undo.
But hey, progress, baby.
Tom Kratman wrote that another definition of insanity is doing everything differently and expecting the same results.
Our fine betters live that philosophy.
The Case of Justine Bateman And Why Gen X Broke for Trump
(via here.)
[ Peers around. ]
It’s quiet. Too quiet.
[ Heads to fallout shelter’s armory to strip and clean all weapons. ]
The New York Post has picked up the story of the “defund the police” activist who lost all her worldly possessions when her U-Haul truck was stolen. Hoping she becomes a national laughingstock. A postergirl for cretinous folly..
Shhh.
Heh. I had almost forgotten about those. We had them in 5th grade as well. Our teacher was rather lazy so self-taught stuff was up his alley. I remember completing the one box that we had which I think was just limited to 5th grade. The color coding of the sections is mostly what I remember.
By end of year I had finished through 12th grade level and was sad there was no more.
My grade school was small enough that it was common for one teacher to have two different grades in the same class. So three and four were together and five and six were together. In fifth grade, the teacher let me and another student work in the at a table in the cloakroom. He had the math texts for grade our two grades plus grades seven and eight. In grade five me and my friend completed grade five, six and seven math. In grade six the teacher bought more text books and we completed grade eight and grade nine math.
When I went on to my next school, an experiment in combining middle school and high school, so grades 7 to 13, I got 100% in grade 7, 8 and 9 math. I was bored out of my tree, but they wouldn’t let me work ahead.
As grateful as I may be, what took them so bloody long? They’re nearly entering their seventh decade of life. Perhaps much of the current idiocy could have been avoided if they started thinking for themselves a couple decades sooner. Not that Boomers are much superior in this regard. Better late than never, I suppose. Getting damn close to never.
A shining example of the Ed School industry.
I have a vague memory of SRA materials in grade school, but only a vague memory that we used them. Nothing about their nature or whether they seemed valuable. Our grade school went through so many experiments that it all blurs together.
A lot of pretending going on at Vandy. What’s *the* major reason why they don’t have black and hispanic students for the honors program, in sufficient quantity?
Well, Vandy was poached for such students by another university, the next rung up the prestige ladder! That U., with its relaxed admissions standards for the preferred demographics, and with all the same patronizing attitudes shared by the Vandy administrators.
(And every last one of them is aware of this.)
“I’m not a bad guy, I’m not an evil person.” “I feel attacked!”
Norm MacDonald Joke of the Day
Heh. The bailiff shifting his attention around, checking his watch wondering how much longer he has to listen to that BS.
Re joke of the day…perhaps it’s gotten around by now but a friend who was crossing on the Queen Mary 2 recorded an otherwise dull interview of fellow passenger John Cleese. Cleese did have this to share:
Why have the French had so many civil wars? They’re hoping to eventually win one of them.
Not a BBC April Fools Day item.
One possible response: “Maybe. But the demons inside you make it necessary to incarcerate you for the rest of your life.”
Nothing says “Christmas” quite like a pickle.
“I’m not an evil person.”
Related, it is unjust to arrest a rich Ivy educated person just because he allegedly killed a man by shooting him in the back.
Re the pickle, from further down in the comments:
Not sure that makes it better. Doing the same sad, pathetic thing you were doing 75 years ago in a post-war ravaged country. Do they go home to a dinner of Spam and leftover K-rations?
Possibly not as provocative as microwaving tea.
The Trafalgar tree, decorated in a traditional Norwegian way,
That explains this. Today my junk mail included this image from a Scandinavian store called JYSK. I knew it looked familiar.
The tree 1948, many such cases at Getty & elsewhere. Edinburgh’s Norwegian tree.
I suspect The Pickle is just a lazy version of an actual Norwegian tree.
Thanks for checking on that.
Wondering how this name was chosen.
But then, there’s a restaurant in Boston named Legal Seafood.
I suspect The Pickle is just a lazy version of an actual Norwegian tree.
That explains this.
Made me curious. I googled it and JYSK is a Danish company. So maybe that style of vertical lights is a Danish thing and not a Norwegian one.
But then, there’s a restaurant in Boston named Legal Seafood.
I’ve heard some locals call it “Lethal” Seafood.
So maybe that style of vertical lights is a Danish thing and not a Norwegian one.
I dunno, if you look around at photos from other countries, the general Scandinavian trend appears to be just lots of white lights instead of colored lights. Traditionally it would seem to make sense as the lights replaced candles as I don’t think the Vikings were hanging strings of candles or of electric lights until Edison came along.
“Paging Rudyard Kipling. “Rudyard Kipling” to the White Man’s Courtesy Phone! Sloth and heathen folly await your service.”
And named a baseball team the Yankees.
Remember that next time the wokesters try to shame us for naming a team after anyone.
In Brazilian Portuguese, “legal” means awesome. So….
[ Post updated again. ]
It’s not just that they’re frustrating and demoralizing the brighter kids, there’s often the conceit that the slower kids benefit by being exposed to the more advanced concepts and hanging out with the smarter kids.
Uh, no. I’ve sat in lectures and classes and read articles that were way over my head. I didn’t have a grasp of the basics of the topic, so nearly every sentence uttered contained assumed knowledge that I just did not have. Pretty soon I stopped paying attention because I couldn’t assimilate the information, because I didn’t have a conceptual framework to organize the new info.
If the subject matter is far enough over your head, you won’t “pick up on it” after awhile. Instead, you’ll just give up and get bored as everything sails over your head. This is what happens to university students who are admitted with low test scores — they give up and drop out, because they’re just not ready for college work. Maybe they could be later on, but at the time of admission, they aren’t.
Ah, but that’s the twisted beauty of it, the perverse genius. “Equity-focussed” policies, like those mentioned above, are likely to have negative consequences for both ends of the ability spectrum. The cognitively untalented will be spared the normal incentives to master at least the basics, even the basics of behaviour, while the gifted will be denied access to advanced material more suited to their abilities, resulting in boredom, alienation, and demoralisation.
If you think of it in terms of wishing to do harm, it makes a kind of sense.
[ Schedules this week’s Ephemera, resumes work on The Year Reheated. ]
[ Schedules this week’s Ephemera, resumes work on The Year Reheated. ]
And it’s only Wednesday!
Well, the yearly round-up takes a big chunk of time, so this year I’ve tried to get a head start. Rather than, as usually happens, leaving it to the last minute and hoping I have the time and motivation to get the damn thing done.
Tap tap. Tappity-tap-tap. Tap tap tap. Tap-tappity-tap.
Regarding Mr Penny, this short thread.
As a native New Yorker, this is what has gone wrong with the city. Yes, we have always prided ourselves on our resilience. However, in the past it was demonstrated by taking matters into our own hands and administering street justice, hopefully “just enough” to broadcast to the miscreant that certain behavior is not tolerated.
During the looting that occurred when the blackout of the summer of 1977 happened, the men and male teens in my Bronx neighborhood spontaneously amassed down by the shops on Bainbridge Avenue. They armed themselves – bats, shovels, and various weapons (many older men had handguns from years past, including my father). And then stood guard – if the looters were going to reach our neighborhood, it wasn’t for the taking.
The definition of hero has been distorted to just mean the celebrity of the day. In the classic sense, the hero is someone who acts for the welfare of another at a risk to himself or herself.
Btw, they are overlooked but kudos to the two Black men who assisted Daniel Penny.
Exactly. It’s simple common sense. But try telling smart people that. Especially smart educators. They’ll tell you you’re being stupid.
Speaking of whom, he was a helpless dancing kitten, you know.
Can’t help wondering what Our Betters would think.
The internet, a place of wonder where at one’s fingertips one has nigh the sum of human knowledge, access to all the wonders of the world, and tales of great uplifting human feats and accomplishments. Not content, her goal is 1000.
Many words come to mind, but I’ll go with broken.
What, they didn’t leave a $20 on the dresser after?
QUESTION: You are riding on the NYC subway an hour after Daniel Penny was acquitted. This maniac boards the subway and does this. What do you do?
Look for a less degrading place to live?
In the meantime I use such clips to shame liberals into recognizing their delusions. And also to encourage people to see “progressives” as rats gnawing away at civilization.
Tap tap. Tappity-tap-tap. Tap tap tap. Tap-tappity-tap.
[ Pauses to consider merits of having burgers for tea. ]
Tap tap. Tappity-tap-tap. Tap tap tap. Tap. Tap-tappity-tap.