Western academe’s sunset years

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 1 July 2020.]

The current insanity sweeping the western world that started with the George Floyd killing is now way past that outrage and moved on to much bigger objectives.  The event served as a trigger to launch the ready and waiting socialist and anti-capitalist factions to start their push toward a global collectivist world by first weakening or doing away with sovereign nation-states that have cultures built up over the centuries which today are the glue that unify their populations.  The socialist elites and their fielded militants in the streets have identified several critical weak points in the ties that bind nations.  One of them involves the flawed histories that each developed western nation has, which includes their role in colonizing the third world and fighting religious wars among themselves.

All of these pursuits are ample demonstrations that violate today’s standards of political correctness, social mores and values, treating all peoples and races equally and with appropriate respect for their indigenous cultures.  Western nations did little of that when they conquered and colonized the more backward civilizations of Africa, the Americas, and southern Asia.  All of that history is used by the global Left to indict today’s mostly white and European-derived countries of everything ranging from ‘cultural appropriation’ to genocide.

The west’s public educational systems have long been co-opted by progressive cadres injecting leftist principles at all levels of curriculum.  The generations of the so-educated are now primed as they doubt their own worth to humanity, and are ready to adopt a more virtuous course forward that demands fundamental changes in each nation’s basic and foundational institutions.  The ‘evidence’ for this ongoing stratagem overwhelms us daily every time we tune into mainstream media outlets.

Part and parcel of this assault on western civilization is taking place in our academe.  The humanities were already compromised a couple of decades ago.  They have now become magnificent edifices for dispensing and adjudicating the socialist gospel.  In those ivy-covered halls the standing motto has long been ‘the socialist way or the highway’ for students and faculty.  This ideological pandemic has now breached the ramparts of science, technology, engineering, and math – the disciplines whose advances and mastery have determined the fate of nations for at least the last two centuries.

Leading universities, ranging from large systems like the University of California, along with our Ivy League colleges, and across the sea to the hallowed halls of Oxford and Cambridge, they have all capitulated and are in a pell mell race to “decolonoize” their maths and science courses.  Typical in this rush to academic oblivion are initiatives to make their curricula “more inclusive (by) adding diverse voices to it. This includes steps such as integrating race and gender questions into topics, embedding teaching on colonialism and empire into courses, changing reading lists to ensure substantial representation of a diverse range of voices, and ensuring better coverage of issues concerning the global South in syllabuses.”

As a career engineer, scientist, and teacher I can assure you that today there are already not enough hours in a day in which to cram into a young person’s head the core STEM subjects she needs to master in order to become a contributing member of a first class research and development team.  Substituting a litany of virtue-signaling and guilt-assuaging readings for hardcore subjects dictates that such universities will produce second rate STEM graduates whose careers guarantee that their nation-state will not be competitive on the world stage.  You can bet the ranch that China, Russia, Iran, and other rogue states countenance none of these diversions as they train their scientists and engineers.  They know what will assure their competitive leadership as future global hegemons.

But in America and Europe the graduation of such marginally competent or incompetent cadres of professional technicians is the aim of leftwing political parties everywhere that work for a post-capitalist world with government-controlled markets.  And no one on Main Street sees coming this tragic part of our ongoing fundamental transformation. 

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  A growing chorus of leftwing voices is demanding that the ideological revolution, having already infested government and corporations, complete its hat trick by encompassing the remnant parts of academe that so far have escaped the infection.  STEM subjects must now be infused with dollops of diversionary progressive propaganda.  For openers, they will attempt to minimize the contributions of dead white Europeans, and seek (manufacture?) where possible alternative sources for the discoveries that changed the face of science and our understanding of nature.  Much of this will include the narrative that the white scientists plagiarized the extant discoveries of scientists in countries they colonized.  Reassigning such credits is just another aspect of belatedly achieved social justice.

Another coincident thesis is that all of STEM teachings are already political, but of hues that are either not well thought out or that serve the wrong masters – e.g. capitalists who exploited their workers.  Since that is the case, redressing such curricula with today’s proper political orientation is the just and proper course that reflects today’s correct values and mores on the roles of socially just and inclusive advancement of science and technology.  (more here and here)

And finally, there is the progressive faction that takes a dim view of the monies, public and private, that have gone into STEM education.  Specifically they wonder why so much emphasis and spending has been focused on STEM, because America’s students have never achieved the top STEM rankings.  According to Harvard’s Michael Teitelbaum -

But the metric used to determine America’s standing is far from perfect, and its 2012 score isn’t necessarily an aberration. “I found that the U.S. has always been in the middle—we’ve never been at the top,” Teitelbaum said, pointing out that many of the education systems at the top of the list are cities, like Shanghai and Hong Kong, or very small countries like Singapore. “I’m not saying their performance is irrelevant,” Teitelbaum said, but the comparison shouldn’t be considered a direct one. “If you take a national average of the U.S., you have a huge disparity in educational performance across this country, even down to the local level, so you have a higher variety of educational outcomes,” he said, so it makes sense that Americans' average is not as high as smaller education systems. “We’re not falling back, some [other] countries are just rising, and the U.S. is not rising.”  Other metrics corroborate the idea that the U.S. isn’t falling behind when it comes to STEM. 2012 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that the U.S. spent more than any other country on research and development. Similar data from the OECD shows that, in 2011, American scientists had published the most papers in reputable scientific journals and had submitted the greatest number of patents. … I think that being competent in STEM fields at the end of secondary school is the modern equivalent of being literate and numerate in the 19th century.

What people find hard to understand is that despite our mediocre standing on the global scene, our level of ‘STEM productivity’ is the highest because of our private sector entrepreneurial culture that motivates through the promise of profits, as it leaves individuals to take the inevitable risks that come with R&D and the launch of any bleeding edge technology-based enterprise.  Governments seldom do well in advancing science, save perhaps when national security is at stake, and government has a long record of ignoring the advent of ground-breaking technologies.  For example, in 1838 Samuel Morse could not get the federal government to support demonstration of the telegraph over long distances, a technical breakthrough eventually funded by private capital that changed the face and fortunes of our nation. (more here)

Comments

[Gregory]

"... being competent in STEM fields at the end of secondary school is the modern equivalent of being literate and numerate in the 19th century"- Teitelbaum

STEM fields in secondary school are just math, chemistry and physics; adding Techology is just fluff and adding Engineering (applied science) just adds a vowel.

[Rich Ulery]

I do believe that Republicans are slowly waking up to the need to begin focusing on the importance of school board elections. The Arizona GOP has a specific training program for Republican school board candidates. The Orange County Board of Education in California now has a conservative majority and is led by a good friend and former colleague. They are successfully approving charter schools against the stiff opposition of teacher's unions. And yours truly now sits on the board of our local elementary school district, which also has a strong conservative majority. The fact that we are too far behind in ceding our schools to the Left is unquestioned, but there may be a small flicker of hope.

[George Rebane]

RichU 602pm - Good to hear from you. Jo Ann goaded me into applying for a vacancy on the NC Board of Ed, which I did, and was predictably rejected in favor of a more established apparatchik. The Union misreported the criticism in my application to which I replied in a letter that was published today. For your reading pleasure -

The June 26 piece in The Union on the Nevada County Board of Education replacing one of its members erroneously reported that I, as one of the three unsuccessful applicants for the slot, had characterized our public school system as being in “complete disarray.”

That I did not. Instead, I did characterize it as being dysfunctional. Our public school industry is anything but in disarray.

Over the last decades it has become one of our most insular, sclerotic, and ideologically narrow institutions in its structure, process, and policies, which student performance numbers corroborate year after year. In short, its “array” is very firm, stable, and enduring as it has successfully resisted efforts to redeem its student orientation, and step back from being another merit-optional public employee sinecure for teachers and administrators.

Seeking to contribute to a change in the status quo, I concluded my application with, “In sum, I would like for you to consider my joining you only if you believe that productive change on the local level is within the art of the possible. However, if you are comfortable with the current state and direction of our county’s public schools, and wish to have a compatible and compliant colleague to continue the same ol’ same ol’, then please consider this application moot and withdrawn. Please let me know.”

Which, of course, they did.

[L]

George, the eternal optimist...

[Bill Tozer]

‘Universities Sowing the Seeds of Their Own Obsolescence’

“Universities are certainly teaching our youth to be confident, loud, and self-righteous. But the media blitz during these last several weeks of protests, riots, and looting also revealed a generation that is poorly educated and yet petulant and self-assured without justification.

Many of the young people on the televised front lines of the protests are in their 20s. But most appear juvenile, at least in comparison to their grandparents — survivors of the Great Depression and World War II.

How can so many so sheltered and prolonged adolescents claim to be all-knowing?

Ask questions like these, and the answers ultimately lead back to the university.“

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/universities-sowing-the-seeds-of-their-own-obsolescence/

[scenes]

re: Schools.

Just for Mr. Gregory's sake...

"The email also laid out a series of steps to be taken by the college in order to combat racial injustice. These include hosting a series of Equity Scorecard Sessions throughout the academic year, adding anti-racism sessions to New Student Orientation, and engaging in fundraising to “develop curriculum that addresses systemic racism.” “Supporting our Black students, faculty and staff, as well as our other students, faculty, and staff of color, will continue to be a priority” for the Harvey Mudd administration.

According to the transcript, Harvey Mudd administrators stated that the college currently has many plans in place to increase the number of Black students, including its “Future Achievers in Science and Technology” program, which flies in underrepresented students. Harvey Mudd has also dropped its SAT subject test requirement, and has also temporarily suspended its SAT/ACT testing requirements. "

https://claremontindependent.com/harvey-mudd-president-reverses-position-initially-no-institutional-support-blm/

lol. Oh well.

Serious question. Where do you send a promising kid now? I expect even the service academies will pick up this nonsense, especially in a Vice President Rice/Harris administration. This all assumes that life isn't lived a bit more bare to the bone, finagling up fake passport to escape The Party with gold sewn into your clothing.

It's an important question since any overseas univerity might likely require new language skills.

[scenes]

re: education.

I was thinking about Harvey Mudd dropping some test requirements and it brought a few things to mind.

. I was wondering to what extent the problem in modern colleges is simply low entrance standards, especially the better schools. You perform various sorts of AA and the likely result is people who drop out or move to departments with little in the way of rigor. Plus, there's the added value of angry kids feeling left out because they aren't capable of the work.

. Digging around the web archives a few weeks ago in a fit of boredom, I ran into standardized tests for the 19C. British civil service in India. No passee, no jobee. Man, those were some serious exams, held over a week or so. These were intended for folks going through the normal school system in the UK at the time, not the wealthy (why would wealthy people want to run a train depot in Bombay?). Greek, Latin, non-trivial questions in mathematics and literature, multiple local (in India) languages. An eye opener.

. Leading to a theory. How to choose a school. I wonder if Latin might not be a good gating requirement. I doubt that the average university grad, at least the variety we get to read about in the college-outrage-of-the-day, would be capable of the work it takes to learn it at any level. The act of learning something difficult, as opposed to merely telling everyone how you feel, has a lot of value. At least you aren't required to learn a new alphabet (mostly).

[Don Bessee]

What an expensive waste of a Harvard degree ima sure mom and dad are so happy with the outcome -

Claira Janover, who graduated in May with a degree in government and psychology, went viral after posting a short clip in which she attacked anyone with “the nerve, the sheer entitled Caucasity to say, ‘all lives matter.’”

“I’ma stab you,” the Connecticut native said, zooming in close on her face.

“I’ma stab you, and while you’re struggling and bleeding out, I’ma show you my paper cut and say, ‘My cut matters, too,’” she added.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/harvard-grad-stab-all-lives-matter-death-threats-joke

;-)

[scenes]

Next up for the chop. Steven Pinker. The guillotine is always hungry and The Terror never sleeps.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ZqWl5grm_F5Kn_0OarY9Q2jlOnk200PvhM5e3isPvY/mobilebasic?urp=gmail_link

"We want to note here that we have no desire to judge Dr. Pinker’s actions in moral terms, or claim to know what his aims are. Nor do we seek to “cancel” Dr. Pinker, or to bar him from participating in the linguistics and LSA communities (though many of our signatories may well believe that doing so would be the right course of action). We do, however, believe that the examples introduced above establish that Dr. Pinker’s public actions constitute a pattern of downplaying the very real violence of systemic racism and sexism, and, moreover, a pattern that is not above deceitfulness, misrepresentation, or the employment of dogwhistles. In light of the fact that Dr. Pinker is read widely beyond the linguistics community, this behavior is particularly harmful, not merely for the perception of linguistics by the general public, but for movements against the systems of racism and sexism, and for linguists affected by these violent systems."

"Nor do we seek to “cancel” Dr. Pinker"

roflmao.