Required Reading

[unixronin]

Or, in which a blogger you've never heard of calls the educational establishment to task for sixty years of abject failure.

Comments

"the litany of apology for Western civilization"

[ganainm]

Umm...wait a minute. I live in Berkeley, and my kids attended Berkeley's public schools. And my wife and I observed and volunteered many hours in classrooms. If what you describe was going on to the degree that you imply generally, it would have been going on to an extreme degree here in the People's Republic of Berzerkeley, and I can tell you it isn't. I'd like to know how many teachers you've actually observed displaying shame for our economy, society, or government. (Critical views of shameful events, e.g. the Japanese-American internments during World War II, don't count.)

Re: "the litany of apology for Western civilization"

[unixronin]

Maybe Berkeley teachers rebelled in the other direction ;)

Seriously though, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard some liberal academic dismiss the Constitution as a dead document written by dead white males, of only historical interest if even that, with both "white" and "male" spoken in tones of evident distaste...

Re: "the litany of apology for Western civilization"

[ganainm]

Actually, Berkeley's teachers are diverse in their outlooks, though the town's leftward bias skews the distribution.

I'm curious about this liberal academic dismissal of the Constitution. I've never heard it, and I've hung out with plenty of liberal academics. Even on the local Pacifica station, KPFA, which is to the left even of Berkeley, I've never heard anyone, academic or otherwise, dismiss the Constitution like that. On the contrary, the government is regularly excoriated for violating the Constitution.

The most dismissive quote I'm aware of is "[it's] just a piece of paper," attributed to George W. Bush.