Back to School

As the dog days of summer wind down and the kids head back to school thoughts turn to learning and the state of education in the United States. Classicist and historian Victor Davis Hanson confronts this topic in a piece at National Review Online here.

The main graphs:


"We should first scrap the popular therapeutic curriculum that in the scarce hours of the school day crams in sermons on race, class, gender, drugs, sex, self-esteem, or environmentalism. These are well-intentioned efforts to make a kinder and gentler generation more sensitive to our nation’s supposed past and present sins. But they only squeeze out far more important subjects.

The old approach to education saw things differently than we do. Education (“to lead out” or “to bring up”) was not defined as being “sensitive” to, or “correct” on, particular issues. It was instead the rational ability to make sense of the chaotic present through the abstract wisdom of the past.

So literature, history, math and science gave students plenty of facts, theorems, people, and dates to draw on. Then training in logic, language, and philosophy provided the tools to use and express that accumulated wisdom. Teachers usually did not care where all that training led their students politically — only that their pupils’ ideas and views were supported with facts and argued rationally."


Reading through Jack’s school information yesterday I saw his 2nd grade class was going to work on International Peace Day collages. I’m all for world peace (hard to achieve what with planes slamming into buildings, embassies being bombed, plots aplenty to attack and terrorize the U.S and Israel, but I’m all for peace). Collages are kinda cool too. But really the emphasis on political correctness and sensitivity is far too great in many of our schools. As professor Hanson says, teach the basics then reason and argument can be taught from there.