RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/04/the-folly-of-english-teachers-who-oppose-reading/

The National Council of Teachers of English wants to ‘decenter’ book-reading and essay-writing as the fundamentals of English class. This is a mistake.  

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) has proclaimed that it is time “to decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education.” Apparently, they don’t teach irony in English classes anymore.

The argument in the statement isn’t new. At the turn of the century, John Dewey, a central figure in progressive education, argued that the industrial revolution necessitated a “new education.” Now, the NCTE argues that “as society and technology change, so too does literacy,” and so we English teachers must focus on videos, gifs, memes, and other media.

They absolutely shouldn’t, though. Society might change, but the cognitive architecture of our brains does not. We need explicit instruction, repeated practice, phonics, a broad base of knowledge, and models to read and reason clearly. As they did centuries ago, students must grapple with rigorous, thematically rich texts to develop the capacity for critical thought, just as anyone must strain against weights to build muscle.

Similarly, technology changes, but great ideas don’t. When I was a student, blogging and Myspace were the hot new technologies. Anything I could teach my current students about the use of social media or software will be outdated by the time they mature. However, the wisdom in great literature and the warnings and exemplars found in historical texts are timeless.

Ultimately, the insular focus on present issues and contemporary media within the NCTE statement is self-defeating. If anything, to face the challenges of the future, students will need the lessons of the past. If we value self-control with social media, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the perfect warning against enslavement to passions. If we want eloquence, students need models in beautiful prose. If we want them to identify bias, they must familiarize themselves with the arguments and first principles that occur over and again throughout time.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/22/panic-at-st-vincent/

On April 9-11, the Center for Political and Economic Thought (CPET) at St. Vincent College held a conference on “Panic, Policy, and Politics.” I was an invited speaker.

When I first read the proposed schedule, I saw that nearly half the presentations focused on the panicked response to COVID. That made sense, and was a welcome correction to the one-sided embrace of COVID policy in academia and the media. My own talk was on financial panic, of the sort that hit the United States in 2008. Other presentations addressed information manipulation, Big Tech, and education in the context of madness and hatred.

I did wonder at one title, that of David Azerrad’s talk: “Black Privilege: Racial Hysteria in Contemporary America.” Black privilege, in the form of racial preferences in education, employment, and even speech, seemed to me the product of purposeful thought, activism, and indoctrination over decades, not panic. How would this talk fit within the conference theme?

As things turned out, it fit extraordinarily well. Azerrad’s talk was the only one that generated something like panic.

St. Vincent’s administration sent an armed guard to Azerrad’s presentation, and only his. After the talk, the administration hastily forbade CPET from publishing the videos of all the presentations. They relented a few days later in the face of outcries over academic freedom. Still, the college dean was required to publish a Soviet-style “regret” that more or less labeled Prof. Azerrad a bigot. One of the college’s trustees gave an interview to the local paper calling the talk “rage-inducing.”

https://nypost.com/2022/04/20/critical-race-theory-advocates-are-gaslighting-americans-for-power-and-profit/

America’s supposed racial divide has a class element that we are all supposed to ignore. But for the past two years, I couldn’t ignore the number of media outlets and supposed intellectuals who have discarded the legitimate concerns of the middle class because they, the elite, supposedly know what’s best for us and our children.

The anti-racism movement has come to Main Street, and no one asked for its arrival.

The average American isn’t very ideological because that is a luxury most Americans can’t afford when they’re trying to make ends meet and support their families, unlike the economic and intellectual elite. Men and women who have made their entire careers hypothesizing about the makeup of America never actually listen to Americans.

We recoil listening to their conception of American life for all races. Then the ideologues gaslight us, claiming we fight it because of our hatred of the truth rather than our disgust for radical elitists who find pleasure in telling us how to behave.

Anti-racists use race as a weapon for compliance and domination over the sensibilities of good people. Their intention is to hyper-racialize Americans by having you see all aspects of life through the prism of race — including education for your children. If you are white and choose to resist, you are labeled a white supremacist, and if you are black and resist, you are labeled a sympathetic character for a white-supremacist society. The only solution in their eyes is compliance, not dialogue.