Students Hate Trump's SCOTUS Pick... Don't Realize He Hasn't Made It Yet

The level of ignorance on every level is palpable.

Prager U: Dangerous People Are Teaching Your Kids

The Remnant: Catholic Colleges & Universities, RIP

Students Love Socialism... But Can't Define What It Is

A Defense of Beauty and Excellence from the Classical Tradition: Crisis Magazine

More on Beauty from Crisis Magazine today:

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/beauty-excellence-classics

From Catholic World Report: How do we teach Beauty?

A recent post on Catholic World Report by Dale Ahlquist discussed The Chesterton Academy and the priority and importance of teaching Beauty to students.  The post included the following quote from G. K. Chesterton:

Chesterton says, “Wherever men are happy, they will build beautiful things.” The modern world is ugly because we are unhappy. The modern world is ugly because we do not love the modern world.

You can access the post by clicking on the below link:

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/5636/how_do_we_teach_beauty.aspx

Public School Concentration Camps (Morality-Free Zones)

I Learned More at McDonald's Than at College

College Kids Say the Darndest Things: On Gender - SCARY!

Sophia SketchPad: Confirmation

What is Sophia SketchPad?

Sophia SketchPad is an innovative video series launched last year as part of Sophia Institute for Teachers. With over 200,000 views, this series has become one of the most popular resources used in Catholic schools and parish catechetical programs.

Sophia Institute for Teachers was launched two years ago to provide Catholic educators with the tools and training they need to catechize their students and prepare them to live out the Catholic Faith.

Since Fall of 2014, we have partnered with 20 dioceses to host nearly 100 teacher formation workshops nationwide, and we are directly engaging 20,000 Catholic school teachers with the tools and training they need to help their students graduate as knowledgeable and practicing Catholics.

Sophia Institute for Teachers is funded 100% through charitable donations, so please consider helping us sustain and grow this important work.


From Crisis Magazine.com

Fr. Schall: On Sustainability

Father James Schall, who taught at Georgetown University for more than 30 years, beautifully debunked the ever growing popular ideology of "sustainability" in a post today at The Catholic Thing.  Almost all universities have “sustainability” courses. We have Earth Days. We observe ecological, environmental, earth-warming, ocean-saving, anti-fossil fuel, and sundry species-preserving movements. All endeavor to “sustain” the Earth...More perceptive thinkers, however, suspect that “sustainability” is probably the most “useful” ideology ever invented. It brings everything, especially messy human beings who are the real problem, under direct state jurisdiction. It makes Marxism look like child’s play when it comes to absolute control of man and society. 

Fr. Schall delivers his coup de grâce against this misguided belief in a world without a future, and without reference to anything greater than ourselves.

Here's the quote:

The root of the “sustainability mission,” I suspect, is the practical denial of eternal life. “Sustainability” is an alternative to lost transcendence. It is what happens when suddenly no future but the present one exists. The only “future” of mankind is an on-going planet orbiting down the ages. It always does the exact same, boring thing. This view is actually a form of despair. Our end is the preservation of the race down the ages, not personal eternal life.

“Sustainability” implies strict population control, usually set at about two or three billion (current global population is around 7.3 billion, so many of us will simply have to disappear for sustainability’s sake). Sin and evil imply misusing the earth, not our wills. What we personally do makes little difference. Since children are rationed or even produced artificially as needed, whatever we do sexually is irrelevant. It has no real consequences in this life, the only one that exists.

 To read the entire essay, click HERE.

Words of Relevance: Wise Old Man to Young College Grads

The most important ingredient in the archetypal "wise old man" is "old."  The older one gets, the more likely he is to be dismissed by those much younger as being out of touch, or worse, a has-been, or worse yet, a never-was.  A little known quote from the "wise old man" which should be emblazoned on the back of every college diploma would be helpful in the education of the younger generation: those who despite any real experience see themselves as "special."

Here's the quote:

One of the pleasant surprises on growing old is the realization of how little you knew back when you thought you knew everything. 

Words of Relevance: Allan Bloom and Political Men

Allan David Bloom (September 14, 1930 – October 7, 1992), one of our great professors, philosophers, and classicists, is most famous for his magnus opus: The Closing of the American Mind.  His first book was a collection of three essays on Shakespeare's plays, entitled: Shakespeare's Politics (1964), and today's relevant quote is taken from that work.  Bloom is countering the idea that the family is not the most important aspect of politics (an idea espoused by Plato and others, who believed more in the "just city").  The quote is in his essay on "Richard II":

Here's the quote:

"…the exquisitely refined souls do not belong in the best political men."

Words of Relevance: Roger Kimball

Roger Kimball, editor and publisher of “The New Criterion,” in his latest book: The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia (June 2012), addressed the problem of public (government) education, and the resultant rise of home-schooling.

Here’s the quote:

Only a few years ago, it was a fringe phenomenon, allied almost exclusively to certain conservative evangelical sects.  Today, home schoolers come from every religious and social background.  In 1990-1991, 76,000 children were home-schooled.  The estimate for 2011 is more than 2 million.  That explosion is not only evidence of disenchantment with the intellectual failure of public schools: much more it betokens disenchantment with the moral tenor of public education.

Lying for Diversity at Claremont McKenna

"The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie."
Joseph A. Schumpeter

Score another victory for Diversity over Truth.

Charles C. Johnson, a Los Angeles based writer and graduate of Claremont McKenna College, wrote a very sad piece for City Journal about his alma mater.  Seems this once great college has been lying about the SAT scores of students admitted there ("in some years, some individual SAT scores were simply made up") in order to expand racial preferences in its admissions. "It’s probably no coincidence" that the manipulations began soon after the college received a $700,000 grant to do just that.

To read the whole piece go HERE.  A clip that summarizes the fraud follows:

Vos (dean of admissions) was an enthusiastic supporter of racial preferences and a vocal critic of California’s Proposition 209, which in 1996 banned state colleges from admitting students on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex. During his tenure, CMC’s admissions policies led to higher acceptance rates for blacks and Latinos and lower ones for whites and Asians. According to the Claremont Independent in 2006, “statistics provided by the admissions office show that it admitted roughly 45 percent of both black and Hispanic applicants, [versus] 22 percent of the white applicants and 17 percent of Asian applicants.” Given this history, it’s probable that Vos’s preferential policies resulted in lower average SAT scores than he would have liked and led him to make his disastrous fabrications.

"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
Herbert Agar

Bret Stephens Should Replace Sebelius at Georgetown Commencement

Bret Stephens is the deputy editor of the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.  He normally writes clear and concise editorials about foreign affairs, but earlier this week he did something a little different: he offered to the college graduating class of 2012 the best advice they could possibly receive on their way back home to live with their parents (thereby keeping intact their health insurance thanks to Obamacare).

Too bad most graduates will never hear this advice because so many colleges will instead call on the likes of Kathleen Sebelius (talking about you, Georgetown) to enforce the nonsense with which they have been filling their brains for the past four years.

Click on the link below to read this important piece, and share it with those you think might benefit from reading it.

http://online.wsj.com/article/global_view.html


H/T: rmck1

American Education II: The Math Major

If you missed the previous post on Education in America: Failing, go HERE.  Then, if you doubt the statistics shown there, come back here and watch this video again.

Education in America: FAILING

Via: OnlineEducation.net

A Typical Product of Schools of Education

That's Arlene Ackerman, the former superintendent of schools in Philadelphia, and I'm willing to bet she was not in it for the children.

Former Philadelphia Schools Chief Arlene Ackerman Files Unemployment Claim « CBS Philly

Here's a little more about Dr. Ackerman from Philadelphia Magazine.

Our Inefficient and Ineffective Education Spending

Adam Schaeffer posted a piece on Cato@Liberty today entitled: Everything You Need to Know About Public School Spending in Less Than 2½ Minutes.

"Our public education problem is huge; we’re spending far too much and getting way too little. But most people don’t know the basic details. They still think we need to spend more on education."