And now for the schools. The recall in SF, of both school board members and the DA, bring out the usual claims that "dark money" is behind it all. Baloney. I live next door to Gordon Lau School in Chinatown and the mothers who circulated petitions did so not because some shady Svengali pressed, but because they want their children to hav…
And now for the schools. The recall in SF, of both school board members and the DA, bring out the usual claims that "dark money" is behind it all. Baloney. I live next door to Gordon Lau School in Chinatown and the mothers who circulated petitions did so not because some shady Svengali pressed, but because they want their children to have the advantages that only serious schooling will bring. Grass roots. At Lowell, the chickens are already coming home to roost in the first year of diminished expectation as the student body now seems more interested in protest and grievance than classes and homework. Oh, well, students have been protesting since the age of pedagogues. But, the curriculum is already changing -- with the elimination of Latin in particular, and classical studies generally. So this now means that no SF Public school will offer Latin. This while classics seems to thrive in some of the area prep schools (I interviewed several over the last decade for college admissions). Those who champion "equity" in schooling should consider the diminished opportunity here. There is no better argument for school vouchers.
Princeton, yes Princeton, is eliminating all Ancient Greek and Latin language requirements from its undergraduate Classics program in order to encourage diversity among their Classics majors. You can now graduate from Princeton with a Classics degree without knowing what quid pro quo means. All of this is well intended, but it's typical lefty condescension; the idea is that we'll attract more students by not requiring them to gain proficiency in skills that don't interest them, but the message is: minority students aren't bright enough to handle the onerous requirements of the program, so we'll water down the requirements. Maybe, it turns out, minority students generally aren't that interested in learning about a bunch of old dead white guys.
And now for the schools. The recall in SF, of both school board members and the DA, bring out the usual claims that "dark money" is behind it all. Baloney. I live next door to Gordon Lau School in Chinatown and the mothers who circulated petitions did so not because some shady Svengali pressed, but because they want their children to have the advantages that only serious schooling will bring. Grass roots. At Lowell, the chickens are already coming home to roost in the first year of diminished expectation as the student body now seems more interested in protest and grievance than classes and homework. Oh, well, students have been protesting since the age of pedagogues. But, the curriculum is already changing -- with the elimination of Latin in particular, and classical studies generally. So this now means that no SF Public school will offer Latin. This while classics seems to thrive in some of the area prep schools (I interviewed several over the last decade for college admissions). Those who champion "equity" in schooling should consider the diminished opportunity here. There is no better argument for school vouchers.
Kurt Vonnegut was a prophet.
Princeton, yes Princeton, is eliminating all Ancient Greek and Latin language requirements from its undergraduate Classics program in order to encourage diversity among their Classics majors. You can now graduate from Princeton with a Classics degree without knowing what quid pro quo means. All of this is well intended, but it's typical lefty condescension; the idea is that we'll attract more students by not requiring them to gain proficiency in skills that don't interest them, but the message is: minority students aren't bright enough to handle the onerous requirements of the program, so we'll water down the requirements. Maybe, it turns out, minority students generally aren't that interested in learning about a bunch of old dead white guys.