RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/richard-bernstein-dei-universities-dictatorship-of-virtue

Decades before terms like “virtue signaling,” “anti-racism,” and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” became ubiquitous, one author foresaw how they would come to dominate American universities and other elite institutions. Richard Bernstein, an esteemed New York Times journalist whose career spanned assignments from Europe to China, died last month at 80.

Among his books was Dictatorship of Virtue: How Multiculturalism is Reshaping Our Schools, Our Country, Our Lives (1994, updated 1995). In it, Bernstein identified these concepts in their early stages. He acknowledged the appeal of these ideas, which could sound like aspirations for “a fuller realization of American pluralism.” But over time, he argued, they evolved into an intolerant political program which makes people afraid to say what they truly think. Bernstein predicted that this political movement, which he called the “new consciousness,” would reshape American culture, deepen polarization, and ultimately spark a fierce backlash—one with its own potential perils.

As Bernstein’s reporting makes clear, feckless leadership and rigid quasi-religious ideologies are nothing new at American universities. While his focus in Dictatorship of Virtue is the University of Pennsylvania, Bernstein insists that Penn was “fairly typical” of other elite universities, where “diversity training [had become] an exercise in the advancement of radical political ideology.”

https://www.city-journal.org/article/richard-kahlenberg-class-matters-book-universities-affirmative-action

Class Matters: The Fight to Get Beyond Race Preferences, Reduce Inequality, and Build Real Diversity at America’s Colleges, by Richard Kahlenberg (PublicAffairs, 384 pp., $26.99)

Richard Kahlenberg is an old-school liberal, committed to narrowing the gap between rich and poor. He’s also one of the leading critics of racial preferences in college admissions, having served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court case that effectively ended the practice. In his new book, Class Matters, Kahlenberg lays out the connection between these commitments.

Notably, Kahlenberg’s opposition to affirmative action doesn’t seem to be rooted in instinct or ideology. His concerns are practical. First, racial preferences divide the working class, making political solidarity harder to achieve. More significantly, the gatekeepers at selective colleges seem far more invested in race than in class—eliminating racial preferences, he argues, might finally force them to focus on economic disadvantage.

https://www.afterbabel.com/p/edtech-tragedy?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

In The Anxious Generation, we focused on the emergence of the adolescent mental health crisis that began in the early 2010s. However, since the book’s publication one year ago, we have learned even more about worrisome trends in education that closely mirror those in mental health: after decades of stability or gradual improvement, test scores in the U.S. and around the world began declining notably in the 2010s.

While widespread attention to declining test scores intensified during and after the COVID-19 pandemic—with many experts attributing the downturn primarily to COVID restrictions and the rapid movement to full remote learning—the declines actually began much earlier. Evidence from The National Assessment of Student Progress (NAEP) clearly illustrates this earlier decline. As shown in Figure 1, after decades of slow and steady gains, American students started to give back those gains after 2012, particularly among students who were already performing at lower levels.

But as with the mental health crisis, it wasn’t just an American thing. In December 2023, Derek Thompson wrote an essay in The Atlantic titled, It Sure Looks Like Phones Are Making Students Dumber.

Here’s a figure from that essay (re-graphed by us), showing that the decline is happening across the dozens of countries that participate in PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). As with the mental health declines, these decline started after 2012, not 2020.

What could cause such an international decline in learning? One plausible explanation is the arrival of the phone-based childhood, which, as we showed, arrived between 2010 and 2015. However, there is a related hypothesis that is more proximal to the educational decline: the sudden appearance of a laptop or tablet on every student’s desk. To be clear, the intentions here were good. In 2010, for example, the U.S. Department of Education recommended that schools provide every student with “at least one Internet access device…Only with 24/7 access to the Internet via devices and technology-based software and resources can we achieve the kind of engagement, student-centered learning, and assessments that can improve learning in the ways this plan proposes.” But the outcome seems to be bad for most students—especially students who were already struggling.

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28433/let-fix-education-episode-193-big-picture-thinking

Pundicity page: goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com

BIG PICTURE THINKING

I want to celebrate the work of Linda Goudsmit. She is that rare miracle today, a big thinker. Her topic is understanding life in the 21st-century, the forces that are dragging it down, and how we can make it better.

The academic world forces scholars into small niches. They must all be specialists of something in particular. So, you won’t find big thinking there. I think we need more big thinking. Linda Goudsmit shows, in clear candid prose, what that looks like.

Knowledge-phobia, that’s the disease so prevalent in our world today. Apparently, the public schools will have to call 911 if any students start to learn anything. Oh, the horror. I think we need more knowledge. From K onward.

Some of the world is just lazy. Another big part of the world is constantly propagandizing. No matter what they pretend to care about, they are always pushing the same message. I think we need less propaganda, more love of Truth.

A few years back, I sent an email to Linda Goudsmit asking her what is the most important theme in her work. She said freedom. I had already decided that was the single word I would pick for that question. We had never discussed philosophy but somehow knew that if you don’t have freedom, you don’t really have much else.

Myself, I am a rampant generalist. Pretty much all my life I’ve been a novelist, painter, poet, art director, and now a passionate voice for education reform. But compared to Linda Goudsmit, I am stuck in a rut. So I readily appreciate her range and the tremendous amount of work that goes into studying all the facets she studies.

Now Linda Goudsmit deserves some sort of Oscar. Her most recent book is titled Space Is No Longer The Final Frontier — Reality Is. There are more than 370 pages, in 45 chapters. You will find a tremendous range with chapter titles such as: