RUTHFULLY YOURS

A friend in suburban New Jersey was disappointed after conducting an informal survey of his household this week. It seems that not one of his four children who attend local public schools had heard a single word about D-Day. Tuesday was the 73rd anniversary of the Allied landings at Normandy that began the liberation of Europe. Unfortunately, the experience of his family is hardly unique.

According to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a full 30% of recent college graduates don’t know that D-Day occurred during World War II. Looking at U.S. history in general, the most recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2014 found that just 18% of U.S. eighth-graders were graded as “proficient” or above.

While professional educators certainly deserve much of the blame, the journalistic profession could also do better. To its credit, yesterday the Las Vegas Review-Journal published the following letter from reader Donald Anderson:

I am totally dismayed that the Review-Journal failed to mention D-Day in the June 6 edition. If it hadn’t been for the success of the brave forces who stormed the beaches of Normandy on that fateful day in 1944, I’m sure the world situation would be entirely different.

Yes, I saw the eight lines in the Almanac section. Thank you.

Mr. Anderson could just as easily have sent an even stronger complaint to your humble correspondent. Lacking an Almanac section, this column failed entirely to mention the anniversary. Fortunately readers compensated for your correspondent’s oversight by appropriately marking the occasion in the comments section.

As for the news blackout that seems to have occurred in certain schools on Tuesday, the possible silver lining there is that a contemporary progressive educator’s rendering of World War II might leave parents wishing for complete silence on the subject.

In any case, this job seems to have fallen to non-professional educators, and perhaps a good place to start is by encouraging the youngsters in our households to see what they can learn about the two men pictured at the top of this page. They served as combat medics attached to Easy Company, 2nd Battalion of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division during World War II. The group is better known as the ‘Band of Brothers’ of book and television fame.

Speaking of the Army, this week the service tells the story of several D-Day veterans who gathered to share their experiences:

When the ramp to his World War II landing craft slammed down onto Utah Beach, then-Cpl. Herman Zeitchik jumped out and dashed across the sand as deadly rounds were shot out from fortified bunkers.

With the amphibious assault underway in the early morning of June 6, 1944, Zeitchik and other 4th Infantry Division Soldiers — who were part of the first wave of troops to land — desperately tried to find safe passage through the German-occupied beach.

“When the front of these landing crafts went down, we just took off,” said Zeitchik, now 93 years old. “We couldn’t see where to fire. We just had to get off the beach and try to find the rest of the unit.”

Along a 50-mile stretch of coastline in northern France, more than 160,000 Allied troops stormed Utah Beach and four other beaches that day to gain a foothold in continental Europe. By the end of the D-Day invasion, over 9,000 of those Allied troops were either dead or wounded — the majority of them Americans. CONTINUE AT SITE

At least 10 college-bound students found out this week that they won’t be going to Harvard after all. The college rescinded its admissions offers after reviewing explicit and racist messages the students had traded on a private Facebook page.

The school’s student newspaper, the Crimson, obtained screenshots of the chat and reported that it included “memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children.” One message “called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child ‘piñata time.’ ”

It makes you wonder what these kids wrote in their application essays. Harvard’s questions range from explaining “how you hope to use your college education” to saying “what you would want your future college roommate to know about you.” Jokes about the Holocaust or pedophilia probably didn’t spring to mind.

But that’s the farcical application process. Admissions officers, after reading all the 500-word essays, the heartfelt recommendations from teachers, the interviews with loyal alumni, know exactly what students want them to know. SAT scores are more objective, but testing plays a smaller role in admissions than it used to.

In a 2015 Kaplan survey, 40% of admissions officers at top colleges said that they check applicants’ social-media accounts. Let’s stipulate, too, that other elite schools would probably have had the same reaction—rescinding admission—upon discovering a similar Facebook group. CONTINUE AT SITE

Progressives like to paint their ideological opposition as violent, hateful, and all sorts of other unpleasant things, but always held the Left up as the beacon of civility and tolerance.

As we get into the Trump Era, we are seeing their true colors. They’re like the aliens in the ’80s miniseries “V.” The progressives have pulled off their human skin, and what’s beneath is horrifying.

The latest example comes from Emerson College in Boston. As The College Fix reports, students there have been harassed for months for daring to be conservative or libertarian:

The students said they knew when they decided to attend Emerson they were entering a left-leaning campus. After all, the school is located in the heart of one America’s most liberal cities.

Yet, how that progressivism transcends campus is what surprises them. They described a hostile campus where right-of-center opinions are strongly opposed and students who peddle them can be susceptible to name calling and other forms of bullying.

Aside from being called a white supremacist, Kaufman said she’s been called a racist to her face.

“It’s hostile and there’s a lot of tension, just sitting in a classroom, you can literally feel these eyes on you and all this hate if they know who you are,” she said.

Meanwhile, Picone said it’s not unusual for him to be called out for his gender and ethnicity.

“Anything I will say will be dismissed because I’m a straight white male. As if that has anything to do with the argument I’m saying,” he said.

Freshman Lexie Kaufman claims the harassment has been so terrible that she is transferring. She’s not the first to feel that was the only option after the tolerant campus Left showed its hypocrisy, and she won’t be the last.

Emerson students may be fortunate, however, as it sounds like the school’s administration is showing more sanity than many across the country. The administration claims to want to restore civility, and is taking steps such as introducing a “conservative thought” class this fall. Students also are trying to bring conservative speakers to the school.

Of course, the underlying issue won’t be fixed so easily.

Deep in their hearts, progressives believe they are following the One True Way — and that everyone who disagrees with them is scum. They excuse all sorts of terrible behavior by arguing that none of it compares to the imagined injustices they blame political opponents for unleashing each and every day.

This is a long-term cultural problem. Emerson’s administration can’t do much about it immediately other than treat all reports of such harassment equally. The targeted students deserve nothing less.

These pages have been reporting on the intellectual decline of American higher education, but maybe all is not lost. One near-miraculous sign of life is the appointment of constitutional law professor John Manning as the next dean of Harvard Law School.

Mr. Manning, who joined the law school faculty in 2004, takes over a post on July 1 that is typically held by a liberal, most notably by current Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. He is a well-known expert on administrative law and statutory interpretation who doesn’t hide his jurisprudential conservatism.

The new dean has served two stints at the Justice Department and clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, as well as the late Judge Robert Bork on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Following that distinguished tutelage, Mr. Manning has become one of the premier textualists in the legal academy, meaning that he emphasizes the importance of lawyers and judges reading and interpreting the plain text of a law.

Mr. Manning has been deputy dean and perhaps his competence in that role made him a natural choice for promotion. But in an academy that usually treats conservatives like the walking dead, credit Harvard for promoting on merit regardless of ideology.

Even though manipulated computer models and predictions of global warming/climate change have been demonstrated to be completely inaccurate, children are taught almost from the womb that the science is settled and anyone who questions the agenda is stupid and shouldn’t be listened to. No wonder they don’t ask any questions.

Kids are also indoctrinated to believe that anyone who wants to require photo IDs to vote is trying to oppress the vote and is a racist. I wonder why the kids won’t question the professor as to why those same people who can’t get photo IDs are required to have them for so many other things by the government.

The kids are taught that sanctuary cities are good and that people who want to enforce the borders are anti-immigrant, racists, xenophobes and want to harm women and children who just want to improve their lives. They should be taught that the U.S is a nation of laws, that politicians should uphold their oath to enforce the laws and that nations are not nations without borders and laws.

Students are repeatedly taught that capitalism and profits are bad, corporations are greedy and the rich don’t pay their fair share. They are taught that government is a benevolent entity that helps the poor. They should be taught that capitalism is what caused the United States to lift people up and that socialism destroys countries and holds people down, such as Venezuela, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

They are rarely taught that the main reason for terrorism is that they want to destroy our way of life. It is not because of climate change, poverty, or lack of education. The leaders of terrorist organizations are idealists.

Colleges are almost wholly staffed by liberals with a few conservatives sprinkled in. Conservatives have been blocked frequently from speaking on campus. That is intentionally keeping alternative views from the students.

The reason students, Democrats and most reporters don’t seem to have any critical thinking ability is because they have been taught that to get along they must go along.

Editor’s Note: In our May 29 issue, we published a piece by Jay Nordlinger about DECA. The organization held its big international conference in late April. This week, Mr. Nordlinger has expanded his piece in his Impromptus. For Part I, go here. The series concludes today.

As I’ve mentioned, there are 16,000 kids here in Anaheim — 16,000 DECA-ites, doing their thing. And they reflect a great diversity. They come from every corner of America, and in every flavor, pretty much.

I meet Italian-American kids from New Jersey — right out of Central Casting. And Mexican-American kids from Albuquerque. And black kids from the Deep South — and from the Rust Belt cities.

In the DECA throng, there are many, many South Asian kids: the sons and daughters of immigrants from India. No doubt the fathers of a good number of them are motel owners, pharmacists, and engineers. No doubt these kids have been instilled with the values of hard work, entrepreneurship, and upward mobility.

One of the things that students here at the Anaheim conference do is run for office — the various offices of the wide DECA network. On an exhibition floor, there is a booth promoting the candidacy of one Vishwesh Ravva. He lives in Memphis and is running for vice-president of DECA’s southern region. Campaign slogan: “Wish for Vish.”

When I look at these kids in their blue blazers, with the DECA patch; when I see them planning for their future, and thinking about their place in the economy, and dreaming of what they might contribute — I think they are as American as Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer ever were.

The 200,000 DECA high-school students across the nation mirror the general high-school population: in the male-female ratio, for instance. But they differ in one respect: They tend to come from poorer families. They may have an unfortunate cycle to break out of. They may be hungry to get ahead and prove themselves.

There is a young woman here who has never been out of her hometown (in Pennsylvania). Neither have members of her family. She is here thanks to a scholarship from AT&T. Her world has been vastly widened.

When competing, DECA students must wear their blue blazers. Why? Well, the blazer looks kind of sharp. But also, it’s an equalizer. Rich kids, poor kids: They all look the same, essentially. No one need worry about the vexing question of dress.

On the exhibition floor, there are many booths, booths galore. Near the front are two branches of the military: the Army and the Navy. The Army features a slogan that goes, “Lead Faster.” I think what that means is: “Assume a leadership position faster in the Army than you would elsewhere.” But I’m not sure.

There are also booths representing business schools and institutes — including a hotel school in Lausanne. That sounds desirable, if you’re inclined toward the hotel business.

And there are all sorts of businesses, with booths. Take Sparkling Ice, a beverage line: “Never Too Busy to Get Fizzy.”

On this exhibition floor, businesspeople meet potential future employees. And students meet potential future employers. It’s win-win, in that capitalist way.

There is a gift shop, selling a variety of “spirit wear.” (In fact, I learn this term.) Many shirts and hoodies and so on have the DECA logo on them. There are also teddy bears, decked out in DECA shirts. I’m told that students and teachers love the “brand”: the DECA brand. There is a DECA culture, a DECA family feeling, and the spirit wear is part of it.

You can also buy flip cards, which are learning aids. Here is one from the “Marketing” pack: “Cost-Plus Pricing.” And on the back: “This type of pricing includes the variable costs associated with goods, as well as a portion of the fixed costs of operating the business.”

Here is one from the pack marked “Business Management + Administration”: “Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).” “A process improvement technique for evaluating how efficiently a company is able to deliver technology products to its customers.”

I got a million of ’em. Or rather, DECA does.

In one patch of the exhibition floor, students are engaged in madly intense video games. Now, what I have called “games” are actually VBCs, or “Virtual Business Challenges.” These challenges are divided into several categories, including restaurants, hotels, retailing, and sports management.

Consider the restaurant challenge: Students have to figure out menu pricing, purchasing, staffing, a dining layout, a kitchen layout, etc. Moreover, they have to do it under the gun — on the clock — competing against others. They are zealously focused.

Later on, thousands of DECA kids will sit in front of hundreds of judges, participating in an array of competitions. There is an introductory level, which involves role-playing: How do you train a new employee? How do you deal with an angry customer? And at the top level, you submit a 30-page business prospectus. These kids like Shark Tank, the TV show? Now they’re really in a shark tank.

Some of the kids have businesses already. Horse-grooming, for example. I hear about a student from last year who started a business online. He sells vintage and limited-edition sneakers. And he has made a lot of money. This is an advance beyond the old lemonade stand (though kids still create and man those).

As for the judges, they come from myriad sectors of the business world. They may be with well-known companies, such as Marriott, Men’s Wearhouse, or Otis Spunkmeyer. They may be dot-com whizzes. Or franchisees. Or bankers. Or even officials of the Small Business Administration. Many are DECA alumni.

That’s the way it goes in DECA: one generation helping another.

When the Left Turns on Its Own

Bari Weiss https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-turns-on-its-own.html?_r=1

Bret Weinstein is a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., who supported Bernie Sanders, admiringly retweets Glenn Greenwald and was an outspoken supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Weinstein, who identifies himself as “deeply progressive,” is just the kind of teacher that students at one of the most left-wing colleges in the country would admire. Instead, he has become a victim of an increasingly widespread campaign by leftist students against anyone who dares challenge ideological orthodoxy on campus.

This professor’s crime? He had the gall to challenge a day of racial segregation.

Bret Weinstein probably didn’t intend to become a rallying point for conservatives and libertarians who take issue with the rampant political correctness that has infected American campuses. The self-described liberal probably finds himself in agreement with the typical SJW on most issues.

However, he dared to take issue with an event that kicked every white person off campus for the day, and that is all the evidence social justice jihadis needed to claim Weinstein is suddenly a white supremacist.

It’s hard to believe that a school offering feminist biology classes — yes, you read that correctly: check out “Reproduction: Gender, Race, and Power” and “Feminist Epistemologies: Critical Approaches to Biology and Psychology” — would have missed Weinstein’s intense hatred for everyone with a different amount of melanin, right?

Well, according to Rate My Professor, where reviews can get rather nasty, Weinstein had a rating of 4.2 out of 5, with 100 percent of students saying they would take a class from him again.

Sound like the record of a white supremacist on a progressive campus?

Not everyone loved him, such as the student who gave the following review:

I have a very different view of Bret’s teaching. He was very unorganized, and didnt know what he was going to teach until he came to class. I can honestly say that I learned nothing in this class, and was very disapointed with the content and quality. Instead of learning about adaptations of organisms, we played frisbee and watched movies.

Hmm. No white supremacy there.

Results of a standardized measure of reasoning ability show many students fail to improve over four years—even at some flagship schools, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of nonpublic results.

Freshmen and seniors at about 200 colleges across the U.S. take a little-known test every year to measure how much better they get at learning to think. The results are discouraging.

At more than half of schools, at least a third of seniors were unable to make a cohesive argument, assess the quality of evidence in a document or interpret data in a table, The Wall Street Journal found after reviewing the latest results from dozens of public colleges and universities that gave the exam between 2013 and 2016. (See full results.)

At some of the most prestigious flagship universities, test results indicate the average graduate shows little or no improvement in critical thinking over four years.
Some of the biggest gains occur at smaller colleges where students are less accomplished at arrival but soak up a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum.

For prospective students and their parents looking to pick a college, it is almost impossible to figure out which schools help students learn critical thinking, because full results of the standardized test, called the College Learning Assessment Plus, or CLA+, are seldom disclosed to the public. This is true, too, of similar tests.

Some academic experts, education researchers and employers say the Journal’s findings are a sign of the failure of America’s higher-education system to arm graduates with analytical reasoning and problem-solving skills needed to thrive in a fast-changing, increasingly global job market. In addition, rising tuition, student debt and loan defaults are putting colleges and universities under pressure to prove their value.

A survey by PayScale Inc., an online pay and benefits researcher, showed 50% of employers complain that college graduates they hire aren’t ready for the workplace. Their No. 1 complaint? Poor critical-reasoning skills.

“At most schools in this country, students basically spend four years in college, and they don’t necessarily become better thinkers and problem solvers,” said Josipa Roksa, a University of Virginia sociology professor who co-wrote a book in 2011 about the CLA+ test. “Employers are going to hire the best they can get, and if we don’t have that, then what is at stake in the long run is our ability to compete.”

International rankings show U.S. college graduates are in the middle of the pack when it comes to numeracy and literacy and near the bottom when it comes to problem solving. CONTINUE AT SITE