"Before greater truths can be discerned"

Our new "4ft x 6ft Super Tough Brand Polyester US Flag" -- "the most durable American flag you can buy" --  from the online United States Flag Store arrived on our doorstep this afternoon. As soon as Tuck -- holding up Old Glory above -- designs and assembles the new fittings, it will proudly wave between the two central columns of our Greek Revival facade. According to flag etiquette, it will be hung "with the stars to the left [mirror image of above] of anyone looking at it from the street."

"[Harvard] students realize that education is occasionally not fun, that before greater truths can be discerned, one ought to have the most basic facts straight," writes the irrepressible Travis R. Kavulla [via Red Ivy] in a spirited defense of History 10a in The Harvard Crimson:

Unlike the sciences and much of the humanities, there is only one lecture course which all history concentrators must take to graduate. It is History 10a, “Western Societies, Politics, and Cultures: From Antiquity to 1650,” the sole remnant of an imposing body of historical knowledge department leaders once thought all of their students ought to know. And Hist10a’s time may be nearly up, to be replaced by a requirement that concentrators take a course “long ago” and “far away” from their specialty . . .

We’ve reached a point where a University Professor can complain of that awful dystopia where the “names and dates [of historical events] were chiseled in stone.” This attitude is chief among the reasons why undergraduates are so devoid of a broad historical narrative in which to situate the little nuggets of ephemera they receive from the hodgepodge of Harvard history classes. It’s this condition that makes History 10a’s mission more vital today than ever before.

Like bags and boxes, flags are huge with cats. Tiny settles in on our new Old Glory for a lovely afternoon nap.

Along similar lines, "Although political indoctrination in our universities gets all the attention, it is even more widespread and dangerous in our elementary and high schools," writes Sol Stern at FrontPage [via City Journal], who names names:

As I have noted in my book, Breaking Free, a large part of this deformity of American education can be traced to our most dangerous and yet most popular writer on K-12 education: Jonathan Kozol, many of whose books are required reading in the country’s ed schools. Lately Kozol has been writing about the alleged institutional racism behind the unequal funding of schools. However, in two books written in the ‘70s and ‘80s, he attempted to convince teachers that their proper role is to subvert mainstream (and therefore racist) beliefs about American society.

Jay Bennish, the "Accelerated World Georgrapy" teacher whose rambling, Bush-bashing rant was recorded by a student and heard 'round the world, comes to mind. Alongside totalitarian impulses to indoctrinate other people's children are similarly pc efforts to "leave no child behind," as Stanley N. Katz writes at School & Choice [via Milt's File]:

Our effort to educate everyone is laudable and central to a democracy, but we have, mostly unconsciously, dumbed down our approach to liberal education in order to not leave anyone out.

We are also increasingly uncertain about what counts as liberal education. On the one hand, we seem to have too much to teach; on the other, we worry about offending some students (and their parents) by speaking openly and honestly about controversial matters. And, although this is hard to substantiate, it seems to me that we Americans have a fear of asking too much of our adolescent children (at least academically, if not in terms of all the other demands we make on their time and energy that sap their focus), and so we have deferred to college the kinds of aggressive and searching education that our youngsters need for their full intellectual development.

In the middle of the 20th century, an innovative collaboration of Ivy League colleges and elite prep schools revisited the notion in an attempt to revitalize liberal education. They were spurred by the words of John M. Kemper, headmaster of Andover, who argued in 1951 that "it appears obvious that school and college programs, especially during the important years from the 11th through the 14th grade, have not been planned as coherent wholes. Boys from the best independent schools often report that their early courses in college are repetitious and dull." Kemper decried "the waste involved in the transition from school to college, especially for gifted and well-trained boys." The focus on "boys" may not be the same, but the question of waste still concerns us.

Waste not, want not.

Comments

[Gayle Miller]

Congrats on the new flag and thanks for the breakdown on the breakdown of public education. I become increasingly grateful that my parents sent me to private schools.

On another note: Thought you'd like to know that it is now my habit one or more times per week to set a picture of the extraordinarily beautiful Tiny or Baby as my office computer background. It's so soothing.

Of course, if I were bright enough to use MY DIGITAL CAMERA, I could use pictures of my own cats on my blog and on my office computer!

[goomp]

Those who lack a knowledge of human history have no basis for making judgements concerning the problems facing humans today. It seems that we have a generation of educators with an agenda which hopes for a socialist world. Socialism always leads to loss of freedom and an economically deprived populance.

[amba]

Beware of the dreaded No Cat Naps on the Flag Amendment!