Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

America is on the wrong track because, over the past 50 years, no matter who was in the White House, the Leftists have held the reigns in the culture-creating industries of education, news and entertainment and they have used their powers not to advance truth, beauty, justice, morality, decency, or anything else that is good.

Even Sayet, over on Big Hollywood

This from the man who some time ago claimed that liberals are evil. Actually all people are evil, but there is something to Sayet's claim about the Liberal takeover of education and media. That something being that as the custodians and teachers of knowledge and culture, those in the education system, who generate the ideas and policies, and those in media who spread the ideas, have enormous power in America.

The problem is that they do not teach truth, but falsehoods. Falsehoods that keep them in their behind-the-scenes power. Moldbug over at Unqualified Reservations has a very long open letter to progressives in which he explains how that works (it has about a dozen parts, each many pages long).

It explains why a Republican congress, with a Republican president, with parity on the Supreme Court, still went left for 8 years. It's why the Reagan revolution didn't last, and why, in the future, when the Republicans sweep back into power, we'll continue our progressive journey. They are all progressives to one degree or another, having been taught by extreme progressives in their political science and fill-in-the-blank studies classes.

Meanwhile, in the real world, we are left to suffer with the consequences of whatever policy gets enacted. Suffering professors and politicians alike are allowed to skip over.

But the nation's foremost scholars in middle-school education are worried the fast-growing trend is leaving minority children behind. They also question whether the practice is legal because, nationwide, it has tended to result in students being segregated by race.

The quote in question is on the practice of middle school students taking high school classes.

I'm going to go ahead and say it: if two distinct groups of people habitually perform differently at some measured aptitude, then perhaps they really are different. To put it more bluntly, if you are a minority (I'm sure they mean black and Hispanic) then you are less able to succeed in life than a white person.

Now if you've simmered down some from that racist statement, I'll explain what I mean by that. I really don't think genetics is the determining factor here. It appears to me that the culture associated with race has far more bearing on this difference in ability than your ancestry.

I know that there are very intelligent, driven black people out there, and also very dumb white people. I've met some of them, spent some time with them. And yet, the data show that on average, white people commit fewer crimes, less violent crimes, do better in school, do better on the job, make more money, have more stable families, and just generally do better at life. Now as is normal with any bell curve distribution, some white people will be worse than most blacks, and some blacks will be better than most whites. But there is a definite distinction between the center masses of these two curves.

The scholars of the quote at the top acknowledge this fact. But their solution is to prevent whites from succeeding, so that they are on par with their less capable counterparts. They have looked at the data and said only white people are getting ahead, there must be something wrong with white people.

To say that there is something wrong with black people is blasphemy of an unrivaled scale. (Don't get me started on the hypocrisy between these two positions.) Because to say that is to say that black people need to change their culture so that it stops handicapping them. But that is the obvious conclusion the data present. Black people do not succeed because they live in a culture that prevents success.

In fact, I've heard my successful black friends be called 'whitey' by their ghetto brothers. Like the ability to work hard and provide for a family is a white trait. Actually, there is some truth to that. White people (well, alright, Christians) believe that hard work and responsibility are the keys to success. And look, they are ahead of everyone else. So you know what, if white culture breeds success and black culture does not, then blacks could use a good white washing.

Whites are not immune to this either. Many people could use a good dose of old fashioned Christian values. That is where the real difference lies. The productive, stable, successful cultures adhere to biblical, Christian principles. The rest live in an impoverished world of violence and distrust. Unfortunately, our leaders are asking everyone to emulate the failures.

Random prediction: if Christianity is outlawed society will collapse to little better than subsistence living, much like the middle ages (and much like third world countries today).

Hat Tip: Conservative Grapevine

Some of my bosses and managers are pushing my supervisor into getting a master's degree. They are also after me to go back to school, though less insistently. Since I walked in the door three years ago right out of college, my managers have wanted me to get a master's degree. The problem is, they want me to get a degree for the degree's sake.

From what I can tell, the primary reason to get a master's degree is so HR can check off that box next to your name when they are considering promotions and raises. A master's is a filter that HR applies to determine how qualified a person is. Someone with a master's is considered better than someone without a master's.

Except that all the coworkers I've talked to agree that a master's degree doesn't teach you anything you couldn't learn quicker and cheaper on the job. Nobody actually expects me to be a better engineer or manager when I'm done with the degree. It's possible I could be, but I expect it would be a better use of my time to actually go do engineering rather than watch a lecture online explaining how to do it. Especially under an experienced engineer.

This brings up an interesting question. Do the senior managers actually want me to get a master's degree, or are they telling me to get one so it's easier to work me through HR? They've all said it's a good idea, but the only reason I ever got was that it would help me in the long run. Nothing about actually learning how to do a thing. In fact the company offers training and mentoring programs for learning how to do stuff.

I wonder if I would get in trouble if I just asked straight out if I'm supposed to learn something or if it's only to help me deal with HR. I wonder if I would get an honest answer.