RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2019/04/14/the-problems-with-americas-best-teacher

A question central to Plato’s Republic is “What should we teach our children?” Judging from the parents I’ve talked to, this question is not getting the consideration it deserves. Parroting a common conservative refrain regarding what some believe schools teach, a colleague referred to them as “liberal-producing factories.” Thankfully, that’s not quite the case. While the teaching profession as a whole leans left, most educators are aware of their bias and, with varying degrees of success, try to push against it. Unfortunately, this is not true of the programs that train the nation’s school staff.

I received a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the premier schools of education in the country, occasionally nudging out Columbia and Harvard for the top spot in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of education programs. In reality, it was a series of graduate courses that featured various arts and crafts projects.

To their credit, the faculty seek to ameliorate legitimate and pressing concerns that our schools face: racial disparities, stagnant scores that are falling behind other countries, defective spending structures, high teacher turnover, and a host of other problems. However, they promote a philosophy of education that is effective at exposing these problems but impotent to solve them. The root issue is that the three elements of a progressive worldview I discuss here—restorative justice, contemporary literary theory, and an antipathy to intellectual diversity—result in an education that questions all systems but fails to offer students a coherent alternative.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/13/u-need-a-shine/

In the 1940s, a wave of automation threatened an industry that employed large numbers of low-skilled workers. The rise of the electric shoe-shine machines turned the once ubiquitous street corner shoeshine boy and the higher-end hotel lobby shoe-shine stand into rarities.

At the bristly heart of the corporate takeover, the shinification of American footwear, was the Uneeda Shine Machine Company, of 552 West 53rd Street, in Manhattan.

The mechanics, of course, were simple: a few spinning brushes running off a motor. The genius was in the packaging. The standard Uneeda Shine Machine was the Shine-O-Mat, a sturdy gun-metal box that stood a little taller than a desk and offered amenities such a choice of black or brown brushes, a foot stand for applying polish, and handles in the event that the vroom of the brushes might send the patron careening across the room.

I speak from experience. About 15 years ago I salvaged a Shine-O-Mat from scrap metal oblivion. It is in perfect working order and has traveled with the various chapters of my curriculum vitae ever since. It travels with the same joy of movement that Mount Rushmore might have if it were forced to relocate to Hackensack. The thing was built to stay put—probably to deter thieves and former shoeshine-boys-turned-anarchist-luddites. Or perhaps to ensure that the momentum of the brushes didn’t drive it across the floor.

Silber Shines
I salvaged my Shine-O-Mat not out of an obsessive desire to see my reflection in a pair of Oxfords, nor out of nostalgia for a bygone era of auto-matting. Rather, I was seeking to preserve a relic of a great epoch in academic history. Herein hangs a tale.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/14/the-downward-spiral-of-post-secondary-education/

Something is seriously rotten in our education establishment, especially in colleges and universities. The culprits are the evolution of the educational agenda, the cult of progressivism on campus, and the debt that students accumulate for an increasingly disappointing outcome.

Total student debt as of 2018 stood at approximately $1.56 trillion, and the average student who graduated in 2018 faced a debt of about $30,000. Lending Tree offers a breakdown of the depressing statistics. The average graduate of a private institution owes nearly $40,000, and some 88 percent of graduates are indebted at some level. Students who attend elite colleges without winning scholarships and those who go on to graduate school will almost surely enter the workforce owing $100,000 or more. And these are debts that bankruptcy cannot erase.

Those who enter “professions” such as law, medicine, and business administration can hope to earn enough income to repay the debt. For the rest, the picture is much more bleak. Almost half of those who attended private colleges default within 12 years. Public schools, at least, saddle their graduates with a more manageable burden, so the default rate is more like 1 in 7. But that still represents many people who are experiencing severe emotional strain.