Tag: education

2,774 words

“You cannot build a history on fiction.”
David Starkey, English historian.

Tony Blair was a very skilled operator when it came to language, an advocate of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), and adept with slippery rhetorical moves. One of his very first speeches in office was quite brilliant due to one of its linguistic constructions. What was his new government’s first priority? he asked. “Three things. Education, education, education.” He wasn’t lying, his government did indeed prioritize education. He just didn’t say what they were going to do with it. (more…)

4,512 words

Lipton Matthews
Busting African Delusions
2026

There is, within the human soul, the eternal struggle between the head and the heart. And so it goes with Lipton Matthews’s new book, Busting African Delusions. It concerns the economic development of Africa. It is intended to be an intellectual work: cold, hard analysis filled with practical solutions. Matthews is obviously intelligent and a talented writer; as long as he remains objective, the book is excellent. (more…)

Nigel Farage. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

3,415 words

White people and black people differ in many ways, and one of these differences is coming to the fore. The difference is one of perception. Whereas black people merely believe they have a white problem, because they are taught that they do, white people increasingly know they have a black problem, even if they are not permitted to talk about it. Black people are told, constantly, that white people are a clear and present danger to their people (despite the fact that they are far more dangerous to one another). (more…)

The Attributes of the Arts; by Anne Vallayer-Coster; 1769. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

1,466 words

In the United States, discussions surrounding gifted education seem to have progressed beyond mere reform and into a phase of reduction. For instance, during his time in office, Bill de Blasio instructed New York City’s public elementary schools to stop using standardized testing for gifted programs. This action dismantled a long-established system for recognizing highly capable students at an early age. More recently, Zohran Mamdani has proposed completely getting rid of gifted and talented programs for kindergarten students. (more…)

Goethe at the Window by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1786-87), depicting Germany’s greatest writer during his life-altering sojourn in Rome. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

567 words

Since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the history, language, and literature of the Romans, and to a lesser extent their art and architecture, has provided a large part of the material used to educate Western man. The extent to which this is so actually increased during the Renaissance and modern period over what had been the practice in the first millennium following Rome’s fall. In the case of the most thoughtful educators, this focus on the Roman inheritance represented a conscious choice, not a mindless following of hide-bound tradition, as is sometimes made out today. But the reasons for such a choice are not self-evident. (more…)

4,355 words

Agustina S. Paglaya
Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024

Why did societies establish mass education systems? Did democratic regimes produce schools to raise up informed and engaged citizens? Or perhaps, as libertarian writers like John Taylor Gatto propose, scheming businessmen endorsed compulsory education to craft a population of obedient, unthinking workers. (more…)

2,310 words

A society can become technologically modern while remaining intellectually pre-modern. Satellites may be launched into space while superstition governs everyday decisions. The result is not progress but instability—a condition that can be described as second-hand modernity.

How can a society produce seemingly world-class engineers and nuclear scientists while remaining deeply irrational? (more…)

4,659 words

Wayne Au
Critical Curriculum Studies: Education, Consciousness, and the Politics of Knowing
New York: Routledge, 2012

I fear that I have ignored Schopenhauer’s maxim: “A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones, for life is short.” However, the challenge with his guidance is determining whether a book, especially a more niche or obscure title, is good or bad without reading it. (more…)

3,517 words

Jeremy S. Adams
Hollowed Out: A Warning About America’s Next Generation
Regnery Publishing, 2021

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together

(more…)

6,616 words

Lucy Crehan
Cleverlands: The Secrets Behind the Success of the World’s Education Superpowers
London: Unbound, 2016

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is one of the most widely recognized measures of academic performance worldwide. Administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), PISA evaluates the math, science, and reading skills of 15-year-olds in participating nations. (more…)

2,952 words

Paulo Freire
Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos
Pedagogy of the Oppressed
New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2008

One of the most influential figures in education, though rarely spoken of outside education circles, is the Brazilian writer Paulo Freire. His book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the third most cited work in the field of social sciences and the most cited in education with over seventy-two thousand references. (more…)

3,298 words

Even though it does not receive quite as much attention as it deserves, one important aspect of the Cultural Revolution in the 60s is the sudden rise and rapid dominance of “descriptivism” in academia, education, and editorial staff in dictionaries, usage guides, and grammar manuals. (more…)

2,559 words

Abigail Shrier
Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up
New York: Sentinel, 2024

Abigail Shrier is a journalist associated with the “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW) who is known for her writing on adolescent girls who identify as transgender. Her earlier book, Irreversible Damage, was previously reviewed at Counter-Currents. Her most recent book, Bad Therapy, takes aim at modern therapy culture and accuses mental health professionals of inducing distress in otherwise healthy young people. (more…)