90 Miles From Tyranny : The War on Competence

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Monday, January 23, 2023

The War on Competence


Decades ago, the Left played the class-war game. These days it’s a war on competence and achievement, hiding beyond claims of racial and sexual equity.

In Virginia, we are to believe that on their own, high school administrators in seventeen schools decided not to inform those of their students who had scored high enough on their scholastic aptitude tests to be named National Merit semi-finalists. Of course, it was not coincidental. Two factors are involved: The spurious claim that schools can achieve the impossible -- equal outcomes for all -- a claim which must not be challenged by contrary facts; and prejudice against high-achieving students -- most likely, given historical records, majority Asian and white. Hugh Hewitt thinks this was a clear violation of the students' civil rights for which Fairfax County may end up paying heavy legal damages.

A Massachusetts congresswoman, Ayanna Pressley (who represents, inter alia, most of Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts), plainly revealed what is the basis for the war on intellectual achievement:

“IQ is a measure of whiteness.”

It isn’t, of course. It’s a combination of genetics (dare we say this?), home environment, including familial respect for achievement, personal interests and motivation, and to a certain extent, the caliber of the education received.

This is not just a K-12 excrescence. For some years now it has metastasized to higher education.

Richard Vedder noted four years ago trends in this direction which have only accelerated since then.
1. A decreasing portion of institutional resources is going to fund academics -- teachers and researchers. Spending on disseminating and creating knowledge is being crowded out by massive increases in administrative staff overseeing student affairs, new sustainability and diversity bureaucracies, intercollegiate athletics, etc.

2. Students on average are spending far less time on academics than they did a generation or two ago, and almost certainly are learning less from their schooling.

3. America’s clear global lead in research is rapidly ending as other nations, especially China, are vastly increasing research spending relative to that in the United States, where political leaders increasingly forfeit future investment and...




Read more: HERE

3 comments:

JG said...

It is clear the Left and their teachers and admin in the Education System has worked for years to dumb down the Education System of the USA. From when I was in school in the 60s and 70s and college in the mid to late 70s all have gotten worse and it was planned.

My sons are in their mid to late 30s. Me and my wife had issues with their teachers, the admin, and the school board but got nowhere. We ended up tutoring both through their classes and also teaching them what they were not learning. Both decided on going to different Trade Schools and make 6 figures.

My sister-in-law homeschooled her two kids and they graduated at much higher then kids that went to the local public schools. Both are in college with different degrees.

Dan Patterson said...

Fighting the system from within has worked out, how exactly?
Abandonment is one answer, self-segregation and voluntary association are two other tools.
But those do not affect the larger system nor the larger problem.

MMinWA said...

When I was more active and lived in CO we put 3 different voucher initiatives up for a vote. Every time millions of dollars poured in from teacher's unions across the country to spread lies.

And the products of their system ate it up and defeated them. Although I wonder with the massive election fraud that's been exposed. None the less, I've contended for decades that enemy #1 are these fucking unions.

It's insidious. School boards "negotiate" with teacher's unions over salary & benefits. Unions turn around and pump in the cash to dem campaign coffers and elect them to school boards. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This is exactly why the DOJ got involved and started calling parents, domestic terrorists for showing up at school board meetings. Can't have any of us uppity rubes upsetting their scam.