Our country is rearing a group of intelligent young men and women with lots of skills and enthusiasm but little self-knowledge. Unable or unwilling to deviate from the script during childhood and college, we have shifted to early adulthood the self-exploration that used to occur earlier in life and used to be the purpose of a liberal arts education. The resulting economic, psychological, and social strain on parents and kids is tremendous.
Only by breaking down the rigid structure of the middle-class American childhood can this situation be rectified. Children’s lives must cease to be packed with extracurricular activities, sports leagues, music lessons, and innumerable other résumé-building pursuits…
Patrick Wolf
As John Chubb and Terry Moe originally argued in Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, a problem with education policy set by local experts through political bodies like school boards is that everyone has their own educational hobby-horse. Each contributor to policy making will insist that their pet program get adopted. The result is a curriculum like the Mountain of a Man — massive, bloated, and utterly lacking in discernment. Eventually something has to give…
Edububble
The University of Pennsylvania continues to claim that they’ve got a no loan policy at the same time as publishing a set of six case studies where four– count ‘em– four boil down to the parents taking out a loan...
Peter Meyer
For years I have watched schools react to social problems – or be made to react to them by misguided policymakers and legislators – by instituting a special class on it. Columbine unleashed a wave of Codes of Conduct. Drugs lead to DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). Gangs give rise to anti-gang education programs. We are now on the cusp of a wave of anti-bullying curricula, books, teachers guides. My favorite, however, has been the reaction to obesity: a PE curriculum, with texts to read and tests to take, but no physical exercise...
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