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Education

Chronicles of the war on math: Why math is racist

Wethinks that the big winners are teachers who can’t teach, protected by unions. The big losers are kids who leave school innumerate and must cope with a workplace that no longer needs innumerate people. We have machines now. Read More ›

How do we move civilisation (and especially science, tech and math) forward?

We are clearly in an age of reversion to oligarchic domination and lockout of dissent, so the issue is that of formation of a counter-culture, starting with the life of the mind. H’mm, as a preliminary, let us look briefly at a refresher on a more useful ideological/political spectrum than the usual LEFT/RIGHT (which has no coherent definition of centre and right, where also Nazism/Fascism is actually of the left . . . contrary to popular notions): This is necessary because, regrettably, power dominates over essentially anything, especially in a time of deep polarisation. We can map that through the seven mountains/pillars of influence model: This naturally points to the cliff metaphor and warning: Let me add, that with our Read More ›

End of tenure forecast. What about academic freedom?

That may reduce tuition fee bloat but it won’t be good for academic freedom, a point that Vedder acknowledges: “The rise in political correctness has been accompanied by a decline in tolerance of alternative points of view.” The thing is, absence of academic freedom makes many degrees worth much less—unless all a student wants to know is how to be unemployed and resentful, with a bunch of letters after his name. Read More ›

Eugenics: The hidden history of the progressive movement

Cargill: Judging by a representative sample of textbooks, America’s high-school students get little exposure to the history of eugenics and scientific racism. One reason might be that the relationship of these movements to Progressivism is too close for comfort. Read More ›

Unexpectedly Homeschooling because of COVID-19

Many people have been unexpected thrust into home education due to the effects of COVID-19. At Homeschool Oklahoma, we are trying to put together resources to help out families who have to figure out how to educate their children at home with no prior planning. Read More ›

Science writer dons sandwich board: Ask me anything about evolution!

But why on earth did she think that such a strategy would ever be an aid to effective communication? Wasn’t she, at bottom, just trying to put the supposedly stupid mid-Western rubes on display for the supposedly sophisticated Brits? That stuff is wearing thinner all the time though the targeted Brit demographic might be the last to know. Read More ›