Conrad: "Safe Spaces" Are Unsafe for Free Exchange of Ideas

"'Trigger Warnings' are just another way of saying 'Shut Up', argues Laurel Conrad, the Institute's Lecture Director in a Legal Insurrection post. "Why should the leftist students control the conversation and keep out other perspectives?"

College campuses are meant to be a place where students engage in new perspectives and critical reasoning. Or so they say.

But by labeling conservative points of view as “extremist,” “anti-feminist,” and “racist,” feminists are shutting down the dialogue on their college campuses before it even begins.

To the leftist student activists, it seemingly doesn’t matter whether or not these labels are deserved. They’ve realized that all they need to do is to stigmatize a talk by a conservative speaker is to condemn the speaker as an oppressing force.

For instance, last Thursday, I facilitated a lecture at the Georgetown University on behalf of the conservative organization I work for, the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, and the Georgetown CRs.

As soon as the campus feminists caught wind of the event, they immediately began protesting and demanding trigger warnings in order to silence the talk.

The lecture, given by author and Luce Institute speaker Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers, was entitled ‘What’s Right (and Badly Wrong) with Feminism?’ It was set to take a critical look at the failures and good points of feminism.

But from listening to the campus feminists, you would inaccurately think Dr. Sommers was gearing up to give a lecture on ‘Rape Apology.’

Read the rest.

Obama Broke Student Loan Program Too

"Obama keeps trying to portray the student loan crisis as a problem suffered by students burdened by a mountain of debt when they graduate," writes Investor's Business Daily. But the greater crisis, the editors' argue, is the explosion of debt owed the federal Treasury as a result of Obama's federal takeover of the loan program.

Obama sold this government takeover as a way to save money — why bear the costs of guaranteeing private loans, he said, when the government could cut out the middleman and lend the money itself?

The cost savings didn't happen. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office just increased its 10-year forecast for the loan program's costs by $27 billion, or 30%.

IBD's chart (above) shows the rapid explosion in student loan debt owed to the federal Treasury, which totals nearly $1.2 trillion today and "now exceeds that of auto loans or credit card debt."

Although "average student loan debt is only a little over $20,000" (an amount IBD editors argue could be paid back within a decade by "a student who gave up his $5-a-day Starbucks habit"), less than half of student debt owed the federal government is being paid back.

Through words and actions, Obama has encouraged irresponsibility on the part of student borrowers. He constantly talks as if student debt were an unfair burden they unknowingly had foisted upon them.

At the same time, he's made it easier and easier to avoid paying back student loans in full.  Earlier this year, for example, Obama expanded eligibility for his "pay as your earn" program, which limits loan payments to 10% of income, with any debt left after 20 years forgiven.

Students got the message. The St. Louis Fed reports that 27.3% of student loans in repayment are at least a month behind in payments. That's a far higher delinquency rate than any other kind of debt, and it's significantly higher than the delinquency rate 10 years ago. ...

A 2013 Consumer Financial Protection Board report found that less than half of this federal loan money was actually being paid. About 30% was held by borrowers still in school or in a grace period, another chunk in deferment or forbearance, and almost 14% was in default.

Celebrating, Demanding School Choice

"More than 11,000 rallies and events focusing on school choice are planned this week across the country" to celebrate National School Choice Week (NSCW), reports Mary Lou Byrd.

Economist Milton Friedman first advanced the concept of K-12 education vouchers — a system in which education tax dollars are attached to each child and follow each child to the public or private school of his/her choice.

His rationale was simple: the American public school system is a government monopoly. As happens with all monopolies, public school performance and quality are in decline, and American children as a group are falling behind their peers in other nations.

Introduce competition in K-12 education (as most other industrialized nations have), and the U.S. will (a) erase the inequality of educational opportunity between rich and poor children (i.e., between children whose families can afford private schools and children whose families can not), and (b) vastly improve the quality of education delivered by all American schools, especially government public schools. Moreover, he asserted, competition will cause public schools to become more efficient.  It will apply much-needed brakes to out-of-control public education costs, since private schools typically deliver a higher quality education at about half the cost of public schools.



School choice experiments that began in the 1980s have proven Friedman correct in his assessment of expanded equality, equal opportunity, and cost-containment. Public school systems even began opening "public charter schools" as an alternative to the assigned neighborhood public school in hopes of keeping parents from choosing private school options. For all the right reasons, school choice has expanded in the U.S.

The Institute for Justice, one advocate of school choice that has "defended every major lawsuit filed against school choice programs by teachers' unions and other opponents," told the Washington Free Beacon this week,

School choice is on the rise like never before. There are now over 50 school-choice programs in 25 states that give parents both public and private school options, and about half of those programs have been enacted in just the past five years. ... [S]tate legislatures are increasingly heeding the demands of parents, many of whom are unsatisfied with the performance of their children's assigned public schools and want other options. 

Public opinion on this issue is with the parents.

A new poll released ahead of School Choice Week shows a majority of Americans‐69 percent—favors the concept of school choice. The poll, released by the American Federation for children, another partner of NSCW, also showed 63 percent support private school choice, 76 percent support public charter schools, and 65 percent believe choice and competition among schools improve education.

For all its expansion to date, however, school choice is still available to only a small percentage of the entire K-12 student population. While NSCW's celebration is certainly warranted for the gains that have been made, it also serves as a encouraging reminder of the work that remains to make Friedman's universal school choice vision a reality for all children in the U.S.

Common Core and the Wisdom Deficit

In a thought-provoking essay, veteran English teacher Michael Godsey writes that he doesn't teach much "wisdom" in his high school classes anymore, and he wonders who does now that the Common Core has taken hold in public schools.

Secular wisdom in the public schools seems like it should inherently spring from the literature that's shaped American culture. And while the students focus on how Whitman's "purpose shapes the content and style of his text" [in the Common Core]," they're obviously exposed to the words that describe his leaves of grass.  And that's good. But there is a noticeable deprioritization of literature, and a crumbling consensus regarding the nation's idea of classic literature. The Common Core requires only Shakespeare, which is puzzling if only for its singularity.

The Common Core's 10 so-called College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards focus heavily on technical skills and impersonal text analysis and leave little if any room for classical literature. Yet classical literature plays an important role in encouraging students to personally engage in, and examine, literary characters' life experiences and decision-making processes. Through literature, students had the opportunity to garner a certain wisdom from those life lessons and to evaluate truth and appropriately apply it to their own lives.

Admittedly, nothing abut the Common Core or any modern shifts in teaching philosophies is forbidding me from sharing deeper lessons found in Plato's cave or Orwell's Airstrip One. The fine print of the Common Core guidelines even mentions a few possible titles.

But this comes with constant pervasive language that favors objective analysis over personal engagement. Achieve the Core, for example, an organization founded by the lead writers of the standards, explicitly encourages schools to teach students to "extract" information so they can "note and assess patterns of writing" without relying on "any particular background information" or "students having other experiences or knowledge." This emphasis on what they call "text-dependent reading" contributes to a culture in which it's not normal to promote cultural wisdom or personal growth; in fact, it's almost awkward.

Godsey doesn't worry about his own children, or children of families who value classic literature and the life lessons they teach enough to pursue it at home. But he is concerned for the millions of young people who are not so fortunate and who will lose out on the shared wisdom that families once relied on their public schools to transmit.

Source: The Wisdom Deficit in Schools, Michael Godsey, The Atlantic, January 2015

Univ of Illinois Could Lose $4.5 Million for Hiring Terrorist

A wealthy donor will withhold a $4.5 million planned gift to the University of Illinois if the school goes forward with its plan to pay a convicted murderer and domestic terrorist as a professor, reports Eric Owens @ the Daily Caller.

Last month, the statewide board of trustees cleared the way for the flagship campus in Urbana-Champaign to rehire 1970s-era Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist James Kilgore, a convicted murderer who participated in a 1975 bank robbery during which bank customer Myrna Opsahl was shot and killed.

The 42-year-old mother of four bled to death on the bank floor.

Now, Chicago businessman Richard Hill has notified officials at the University of Illinois at Chicago that he will rescind a pledge to donate $6.5 million to the UIC bioengineering department, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Hill, the retired CEO of Novellus Systems, has already given $2 million. However, he has vowed to withhold every last dime of the remaining $4.5 million if school officials allow Kilgore to teach courses in Urbana-Champaign.

“I no longer wish to be associated with University of Illinois,” the retired CEO wrote in a letter to school officials. “The Academy at the University of Illinois has clearly lost its moral compass.”

From Border Crashers to Public School Enrollees

Remember the almost 37,000 'unaccompanied' illegal South American minors who crashed the US southern border this year and were placed with sponsors throughout the U.S.?

"The Department of Education has made it clear that every child, regardless of immigration status, is 'entitled to' a public school education," reports breitbart.com, and you will be getting the bill for the fed's generosity.

A new study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimates the nationwide cost to educate these illegals could top $761 million.

Check out FAIR's state-by-state breakdown to see how many of these illegal minors have been sent to your state and how much you'll pay for this new federal entitlement program (full screen map).

Atlantic: Today's 27 Yr Olds, in Charts

"What are today's young adults really like?" asks Jordan Weissman @ the Atlantic.

In the spring of 2002, the government's researchers began tracking a group of roughly 15,000 high school sophomores—most of whom would be roughly age 27 today—with the intention of following them through early adulthood.

In 2012, the government’s researchers handed their subjects an enormous survey about their lives in the real world. Here, I've pulled together the most interesting findings. (One important note: I've shorthanded this group as "today's 27-year-olds." But again, not all of the study participants are precisely that age.)

Below are a few of the charts Weissman developed from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002.

For more, see Highly Educated, Highly Indebted: The Lives of Today's 27-Year-Olds, in Charts.

Juggling Work and Family

Two recent articles, both by feminists, suggest contemporary feminism is struggling to find its way. In Female Ivy League Graduates Have a Duty to Stay in the Workforce, Keli Goff posits an extreme view, arguing women have a greater obligation to their gender, and those who wish to be wives and mothers should stay out of Ivy League schools entirely:

There's nothing wrong with someone saying that her dream is to become a full-time mother by 30. That is an admirable goal. What is not admirable is for her to take a slot at Yale Law School that could have gone to a young woman whose dream is to be in the Senate by age 40 and in the White House by age 50.

In Why Women Should Embrace the Good Enough Life, Elsa Walsh argues that the periodic "discussion about women and feminism, work and family" has become "a narrow conversation, centered largely on work, as though feminism is about nothing more than becoming a smart and productive employee and rising to the top."

Parenthood and family are much more central to our lives than this conversation lets on. The debate has become twisted and simplistic, as if we’re merely trying to figure out how women can become more like men. Instead, let’s ask: How can women have full lives, not just one squeezed around a career? It helps to take a longer view of a woman’s life...

Walsh offers a bit more conservative advice to her own daughter based on that longer view.

Dr Carson Speaks

In the video below, Johns Hopkins University Hospital pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson addressed many topics, from political correctness and good education to health care and fair taxation, at the National Prayer Breakfast this month. One audience member, President Obama, doesn't seem particularly comfortable with Dr. Carson's remarks.

Groupthink Diminishes Learning, Creativity and Productivity

"Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink," writes Susan Cain in the NYTimes. But research, she continues, strongly suggests that Groupthink robs us of our individual creativity, productivity and ability to achieve. It also tends to make us more hostile and less healthy.

The New Groupthink has overtaken our workplaces, our schools and our religious institutions... Virtually all American workers now spend time on teams and some 70 percent inhabit open-plan offices, in which no one has “a room of one’s own.” During the last decades, the average amount of space allotted to each employee shrank 300 square feet, from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010.

Our schools have also been transformed by the New Groupthink. Today, elementary school classrooms are commonly arranged in pods of desks, the better to foster group learning. Even subjects like math and creative writing are often taught as committee projects. In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question.

Cain points to research showing that solitude and privacy are essential to creativity, productivity, learning, personal health and healthy professional relationships.

... it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it.

In a fascinating study known as the Coding War Games, consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister compared the work of more than 600 computer programmers at 92 companies. They found that people from the same companies performed at roughly the same level — but that there was an enormous performance gap between organizations. What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said their workspace was sufficiently private compared with only 19 percent of the worst performers. Seventy-six percent of the worst programmers but only 38 percent of the best said that they were often interrupted needlessly.

Solitude can even help us learn. According to research on expert performance by the psychologist Anders Ericsson, the best way to master a field is to work on the task that’s most demanding for you personally. And often the best way to do this is alone. Only then, Mr. Ericsson told me, can you “go directly to the part that’s challenging to you. If you want to improve, you have to be the one who generates the move. Imagine a group class — you’re the one generating the move only a small percentage of the time.”

Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity.... decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases.

Cain's article prompted Rob Long at ricochet.com to post "Brainstorming is For Losers," in which he concludes,

Underpinning all of this collectivist, brainstorming groupwork, is, I think, something nasty and totalitarian. All thoughts must be produced—and vetted—by the hive. Squirreling away in silence and solitude is condemned for being "anti-social" or, worse, ego-driven. When you're alone you have interesting and (maybe) revolutionary thoughts. When you're in a group, you naturally tend to fit your thinking into the prevailing pattern. No wonder our public schools love this kind of group thinking so much.