The coronavirus pandemic exposes how even the most privileged households, with two working parents, are struggling to make it work. --- Viruses, or in this case, global pandemics, expose and exacerbate the existing dynamics of a society — good and bad. They are like a fun-house mirror, grossly reflecting ourselves back to us. One of those dynamics is the burden we put on individual parents and families. We ask individuals to solve problems that are systemically created. […] This cannot be solved by tweaks to the schedule, helpful routines, and virtual activities. We have to collectively recognize that parents — and any caregivers right now — have less to give at work. A lot less. The assumptions seem to be that parents have “settled into a routine” and “are doing okay now.” […] It exposes everything from the lack of paid sick leave and parental leave to the fact that the school day ends at 3 p.m. when the typical workday goes several hours longer — yet aftercare is not universally available. And that says nothing of our need for universal health care, irrespective of employment. Parents pour endless energy into solving for systems that don’t make sense and don’t work. […] This current situation is almost prophetically designed to showcase the farce of our societal approach to separating work and family lives. We are expected to work from home full time. And care for our children full time. And we cannot have anyone outside our immediate household help. It can’t work and we all are suffering at the illusion that it does. Our kids are losing out — on peace of mind, education, engagement, the socialization for which they are built. Our employers are losing out, too. Whether the office policy is to expect full-time work or whether, like in my experience, we are offered a lot of flexibility — work is less good, there is less of it, and returns will be diminishing the longer this juggle goes on.

It’s obvious enough that the intelligentsia of the United States finds itself reduced to literal servitude. Writers, professors, even the votaries of STEM, doctors, scientists and engineers, increasingly play the role of servants to the ruling class, who are systematically diminishing their roles, their numbers and their economic and decisionmaking power, concurrently and on all fronts. […] The American intelligentsia is also in the process of being strangled in its own citadels with the aid of rampant both-sides-ism. In the New York Times alone, unqualified writers like Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman are permitted to style themselves “public intellectuals” despite their permanent and boggling inability to form or defend an informed, cogent argument. This has the double effect of discrediting newspapers and the newspaper business, and devaluing the profession of journalism. And the independent voices that would once have challenged such poor work amid a mighty chorus must increasingly fight to make themselves heard.

I've had guns pulled on me by four people under Central Mississippi skies — once by a white undercover cop, once by a young brother trying to rob me for the leftovers of a weak work-study check, once by my mother and twice by myself. Not sure how or if I've helped many folks say yes to life but I've definitely aided in few folks dying slowly in America, all without the aid of a gun.

‘In all, industry advocates met more than two dozen times with White House and Education Department officials, including senior officials like Education Secretary Arne Duncan, records show, even as Mr. Obama has vowed to reduce the “outsize” influence of lobbyists and special interests in Washington.’

“Three American siblings attend an experimental school in Moscow where instruction is only in Russian and classes are videotaped to improve teaching.”

“Students are hitting the books less and partying more. Easier courses and easier majors have become more and more popular. Perhaps more now than ever, the point of the college experience is to have a good time and walk away with a valuable credential after putting in the least effort possible.” “Many of these young men and women are unable to communicate effectively, solve simple intellectual tasks (such as distinguishing fact from opinion), or engage in effective problem-solving.”

It’s not terribly shocking that a reality show about an ignorant millionaire trying to fix a school’s lunch program with his own special menu was a costly, exploitative, and ruinous failure, but the disastrous state of school lunch programs nationwide *is* shocking.

“Apparently people in their 20s are a bunch of entitled whiners. I also hear we’re afraid of hard work. I’m rather sick of hearing it. Of course we have a sense of entitlement—we had an understanding with the older generation. We followed through with our half of the deal. What happened? Let’s talk a bit about generational justice.” As a commenter puts it: “I’m a tired of hearing a generation that got everything handed to them (I’m looking at you baby-boomers) bungle everything up so badly and then badmouth the generation that has to clean up their mess (e.g. the national debt, the planet, the educational system, and so on).” See also my notes on that NYTimes article: http://pinboard.in/u:matthewmcvickar/b:a83c50952510

"It is they, fronted by President Obama, who are behind the charter school movement. Their goal is to make franchises of our schools, docile, low-cost industrial robots of our teachers, and McStudents of our children. This, despite the fact that the best academic studies of charter schools have shown that they perform no better than public schools and in many cases perform worse. Sometimes much worse."

Finally got around to reading this. I still can't reconcile the problem, but this is a very thorough analysis. My hunch is that it isn't exactly an undiscovered life stage or nothing but spoiled kids, but rather a confluence of factors stemming from stuff like 'extended adolescence' (and the provision thereof by parents, college atmospheres, and the entertainment industry), the recession, the internet, and an increasingly ineffectual educational system.

There are two problems with this piece that I have noticed right off the bat and later would like to comment on. One, he states that no research has actually shown that going for better teachers makes a difference, but that's not true (see the Economist article I linked to earlier regarding TFA's study etc.). I think the phrasing is ambiguous anyway, but there's a straw man here. Two, he seems to imply that bettering teachers is a quixotic goal, but isn't "bettering America" just as ambitious? He is essentially suggesting that we wage a war on poverty to get our children better educational environments. I don't disagree, but I think that finding top-notch teachers to bridge the gap while we fix that problem for the next fifty years is a good idea.

On the effectiveness of teachers.

How a school like Yale fails to teach a person how to want to think for themselves and be true intellectuals, how to interact with people from other walks of life.