Category: Education

The Noble Gases of Social Theory

Mark DavisLeave a comment

elem_inertgas1“Intellectually inert” is an insult that I reserve only for vast elaborations that present little in the way of new knowledge. I use it sparingly and with hesitation. Ross Douthat usually doesn’t rise to that level, though he does tend to be obsessed with vague theories about the breakdown of traditional (read “conservative”) societal mores and the consequences to modern America.

But his recent blog post “Social Liberalism as Class Warfare” is so numbing in his rhetorical elaborations that it was the only phrase that came to mind after slogging my way through it. So what’s the gist of the post?

  1. Maybe rich, smart folks pushed through divorce and abortion because they thought it made them freer.
  2. But poor, not-so-smart folks lacked sufficient self-control to use these tools wisely.
  3. Therefore, the rich, smart folks inadvertently made poor, not-so-smart folks engage in adverse behaviors that tore-up traditional families.
  4. And we get increased income and social inequality as a result.

An alternative argument might be:

  1. Folks kept getting smarter and better educated (everyone).
  2. They wanted to be free of old stuffy traditions.
  3. There were no good, new traditions that took their place, and insufficient touchstones of the “elite” values in the cultural ecosystems of the underclass.
  4. And we get increased income and social inequality as a result.

And here we get to the crux of my suggestion of inertness: it doesn’t matter whether the unintended consequences of iconoclasty differentially impact socioeconomic strata. What matters is what can actually be done about it that is voluntary rather than imposed. After all, that is what the meritocracy of educated folks do in Douthat’s own calculus of assortative mating. And it won’t be that Old Time Religion because of (1) and (2), above.… Read the rest

Trust in What? Counterpoint

Mark DavisLeave a comment

Peter Berkowitz at Hoover Institute argues in Wall Street Journal that higher education is a liberal indoctrinating mechanism. The article centers on a report, available here, that looks at the University of California system.

There is not much new in the report. It repeats the mantra that core courses in Western Civilization are an essential and missing part of many educational curricula. It also rounds up the disturbing result that has been circulated for some time: it is difficult to assess the value of college educations. Quoting the report quoting studies of the efficacy of college:

We observe no statistically significant gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills for at least 45 percent of the students in our study.

That doesn’t surprise me, but I’m still not altogether certain that critical thinking can actually be taught despite efforts to try to do so in recent decades.  More interesting, though, is the attempt by the authors to try to link this skills deficit to progressive political activism:

If graduates cannot even write short declarative sentences competently, that is not surprising when writing courses neglect writing and focus instead on radical politics. When graduates cannot read and extrapolate from books of any difficulty, that is what one would expect when reading lists so often give them books written at the superficial level of journalism rather than more complex works that would challenge them.

Let’s dissect. What do these imagined writing courses look like? Most low-level writing courses emphasize a variety of writing styles, but has the UC system substituted political activism for actual writing instruction? The report is rather vague about that, instead focusing on descriptions of how the professors made political statements and gave little writing advice, as reported by complaining students on a website.… Read the rest