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AGAINST_STUPIDITY

                                     September 15, 2004
   
Intellectual fads come and        
go, and along the way they      
often produce changes in   
the educational system, but      
they never seem to do any  
real good.                 
                              
When you come down to it, it
just doesn't seem to matter
very much what the subject is
that the students are yawning
through to get their union
cards...
   

     
  We must bridge the "Two Cultures", it's time    
  for...  Interdisciplinary Distribution Reqs 
 
                              TWOCULT 




  When I was at Stanford (late 80s, early 90s) 
  a multicultural assault was on the way, against 
  Stanford's well-regarded requirement for undergrads 
  to do a year's worth of study of "Western Culture".
  This got revised into some sort of "World Culture"
  program, named "Cultures Ideas and Values".

      I was down on this change myself: I think 
      you can construct arguments for the change 
      that sound good, but the way it would 
      play out is that the the revised program 
      would be less substantive without a heavy 
      background in the classics, dreaded 
      Dead White Males or no.                        A class in "Western 
                                                     Culture" sounds like 
                 But I suspect that the way          fun to me, but I'd 
                 it *really* played out is           hear undergrads say 
                 you got the kids buying a           stuff like "I'm off 
                 different set of books they're      to Western Torture".
                 not going to read, and that's    
                 about it.                     
                          


   You sometimes hear people claiming that    
   we can save American education with    
   national standardized tests...         
                                 
       Myself, I graduated from a high school     
       in New York State, which has a bunch of 
       additional tests high school kids take      TEACHING_THE_TEST
       in order to earn a diploma from the    
       state Board of Regents.  While aceing    
       them is no joke, merely passing them    
       really is, they're dumbed down to make    
       sure that nearly any warm body can     
       squeak by.                             
                                              
          You can't possibly 
          Maintain Standards                    
          with a standardized test.             
                                               
             Standardization is the            
             opposite of intelligence.         
                 
                 
                 
It's all so sad, but 
what can you really do?   
                 
There's no question that 
education is important, 
and no question  
that it needs improvement,
what changes can you possibly        And worse, a funny dated-looking 
try to make that won't turn          band-aid reflecting concerns of 
into another band-aid?               eras gone by.  Paisley psychedelic 
                                     band-aids, pin-striped organization 
                                     man band-aids, sputnik atom-age 
                                     band-aids, multi-cultural band-aids 
                                     with a rainbow of fleshtones... 
                 
                 
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