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Academia Politics Problematic Competence

Elsewhere (316)

February 21, 2023 68 Comments

Ashlynn Warta on “diversity” versus competence:

[The proposal, by North Carolina Association of Colleges for Teacher Education,] would remove the exam that is currently used to determine whether a teacher candidate is prepared for teacher training. It would also eliminate the exam that is currently used to determine whether a candidate is qualified to teach in a classroom post-graduation. Why are education “experts” so adamant about removing these exams? The answer is unsurprising…

NCACTE recently explained its concerns about standardised tests, stating, “Entry and licensure exams serve as barriers to placing more teachers, particularly more diverse teachers, in classrooms.” In other words, NCACTE doesn’t believe that its “diverse” teacher candidates can succeed when faced with objective measures of preparedness.

Somewhat related, the third item here:

It is now illegal to use a math test to make sure that math teachers know the material they would be teaching.

There is a category tag – Problematic Competence – via which you can find many similar items.

Also related, Heather Mac Donald on the stupefying effects of “disparate impact” ideology:

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Written by: David
Academia Free-For-All His Pretty Nails Parenting

And These Are My Knickers

February 7, 2023 153 Comments

Yuliah Alma on a suboptimal substitute teacher:

A trans-identified male substitute teacher was banned from King Middle School in Portland, Maine after he shared his highly sexualised TikTok account intentionally with students. Lydia Lamere, also known as Chris Lamere, wrote his TikTok handle on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom and encouraged students to “check it out,” according to one student.  

When not conscripting middle-school children into his cross-dressing psychodrama, and presumably being thrilled by the thought of 11-year-olds seeing him in various states of undress, while discussing “kink” and sexual positions, Mr Lamere tells us, “I’m not a predator, I’m just a woman who happens to be super tall and hot.”

Mr Lamere’s employment history includes “environmental educator” and, er, pest control.

Update, via the comments:

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Written by: David
Academia Food and Drink Politics

Get Thee Behind Me, Mr Kipling

January 18, 2023 122 Comments

In dangers-of-the-workplace news:

If nobody brought cakes into the office, I would not eat cakes in the day, but because people do bring cakes in, I eat them.

The grown adult quoted above is Professor Susan Jebb, employed by the University of Oxford to think deeply on matters of diet, and current chair of the Food Standards Agency. For our disapproving academic, the workplace is akin to a “smoky pub,” due to the occasional presence of cake, and therefore conjures – in her mind, at least – notions of “passive smoking.” Being offered a slice of cake during one’s coffee break is, it turns out, grounds for invoking victimhood. And because struggling with even the most routine self-possession has to be blamed on something:

We’ve ended up with a complete market failure because what you get advertised is chocolate and not cauliflower.

Cauliflower enthusiasts will no doubt be gutted.

Professor Jebb insists that her desire to make workplace cake-bringing taboo – and seen as something harmful and antisocial – is “not about the nanny state,” or, dare I suggest, some personal inadequacy. You see, the advertising of cakes and other confections – and the fact that they may be accessible in the workplace – is “undermining people’s free will.” Free will being demonstrated only by compliance with Professor Jebb’s New Rules Of Cake-Eating. And which is why, one assumes, this grown woman, a professional intellectual, can’t say no to a bit of sponge.

Cakes in the workplace – and their allegedly unhinging effects on women – have, of course, been mentioned here before.

Via Christopher Snowdon, who, as you might imagine, has some thoughts.

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Academia Art Emotional Support Water Bottles Free-For-All Reheated

Reheated (75)

January 16, 2023 84 Comments

For newcomers and the nostalgic, some items from the archives:

Today’s Word Is Chutzpah.

Living in Glasgow is a work of art. Now hand over your wallet.

Writing in the Guardian, Liam Hainey rushes to defend Ms Harrison’s low-effort art project, denouncing “budget butchers” and asking his readers to “look at the bigger picture.” All while carefully ignoring anything that might trouble the assumptions of the freeloading arts community. Mr Hainey, a former Green councillor, dismisses the widespread mockery of Ms Harrison’s hustle as “predictable.” Yet much of the mockery occurs because hustles of this type are themselves so predictable – and what we’re seeing, once again, is a display of arrogant presumption, one that’s routine among a socially and politically narrow subsidy-seeking caste.

Mr Hainey tells us, triumphantly, that the money spent on Ms Harrison’s project isn’t in fact being wasted because it was already earmarked for art that would probably be unpopular and which nobody asked for. The uncomprehending Mr Hainey instead suggests that the hustlers be given more of the money that someone else had to go out and earn. Because they’re artists, you see, and therefore more deserving of your earnings than you are.

You’re Doing It All Wrong.

Josefin Hedlund wishes to correct your erotic preferences.

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Written by: David
Academia Anthropology

The Scissors Suggest A Failure Of Patience

January 12, 2023 65 Comments

Via the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I bring you bondage news:

As I took the decorations off my artificial Christmas tree and put them away, I found myself mulling over new year’s resolutions… Carefully handling each branch, I snipped away at the wires and started feeling for this tree. With each snip and painstaking unwinding, I recognised that I was releasing the tree from the bondage of appearance and glitter.

The bondage of glitter, I mean.

As an Anishinaabekwe, I am most at home among my mitig (tree) relatives. So when one is brought into my home, I feel like I’m welcoming family. I live by the beliefs and values that I’ve been taught: that I have a relationship with everything around me — the flying beings, the growing beings, the swimming beings, the four-legged beings and the rooted beings.

And the mass-produced plastic trees.

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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.