Academe—we reap what we sow

“After 50 years of teaching at Harvard, I have never met a less courageous group of people than tenured faculty.” Alan Dershowitz.

“There’s clearly a double standard. Minority students, gay students, transgender students, Arab students generally have a greater leverage and a greater voice, and their grievances are taken far more seriously than the legitimate grievances of Jewish students, Zionist students, Christian students, conservative students.”

http://dailysignal.com/2015/11/20/these-are-tyrannical-students-what-a-former-harvard-professor-thinks-of-college-protests/

Collective bargaining for teachers result in poor student outcomes

“Laws requiring school districts to engage in collective bargaining with teachers unions lead students to be less successful in the labor market in adulthood. Students who spent all 12 years of grade school in a state with a duty-to-bargain law earned an average of $795 less per year and worked half an hour less per week as adults than students who were not exposed to collective-bargaining laws. They are 0.9 percentage points less likely to be employed and 0.8 percentage points less likely to be in the labor force. And those with jobs tend to work in lower-skilled occupations.”

http://educationnext.org/bad-bargain-teacher-collective-bargaining-employment-earnings/

On behalf of world peace in the coming New Year

This is my own comment to commenters at my blog about a world peace demonstration in Cairo organized for students of a private school by their parents. I reread it this morning, and still think that this is where peace really begins--with the individual, at home, in the family, in the community.

"Although these kum-ba-ya experiences are mostly for show (although far better than the Frenchman charging $67 a piece to teach kids how to be street protesters), if even ONE child returns to his regular life determined that bullying, teasing, ridicule, insulting a sibling, sassing his parents, cheating on tests, envying someone else's appearance, friends or clique, or any area of conflict over which he personally has control, and realizes that is where "world peace" begins--with the individual--then the whole event was worth every penny and hour and committee and planning effort."