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David Foster's avatar

A big part of the problem is that the multiple ladders of success which have existed in American society are increasingly being collapsed into a single ladder, with access tightly controlled via educational credentials. More than 50 years ago, Peter Drucker asserted that a major advantage of America over Europe was the nonexistence of 'elite' educational institutions with overweening power over admissions to key positions in society:

"One thing it (modern society) cannot afford in education is the “elite institution” which has a monopoly on social standing, on prestige, and on the command positions in society and economy. Oxford and Cambridge are important reasons for the English brain drain. A main reason for the technology gap is the Grande Ecole such as the Ecole Polytechnique or the Ecole Normale. These elite institutions may do a magnificent job of education, but only their graduates normally get into the command positions. Only their faculties “matter.” This restricts and impoverishes the whole society…The Harvard Law School might like to be a Grande Ecole and to claim for its graduates a preferential position. But American society has never been willing to accept this claim…"

American society today is a lot closer to accepting that claim than it was when Drucker wrote.

More excepts from Drucker on education here:

https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/26133.html

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Eric Beeby's avatar

Another fine musing Perfesser. I agree that our libel and slander laws could use a deep updating; the only other option being, perhaps, the return of dueling which, may have to come first.

It is astonishing to consider the speed with which the Woke psychosis (not too strong a word I think) infected the American credentialed class though that in turn points to its origin, viz., the Academy. And if the Academy is the origin, how did that happen? Yes, the march of the Left through the humanities and the "social sciences" was known and observed with the requisite "tsk tsk" by the extant professoriate at the time it happened, and it was tolerated there, but now we have arrived at a place where Math and Science are denounced as racist and oppressive. Where free speech is racist and oppressive. Where any deviation from the Woke dogma is attacked, often with violence.

I think the blame can be placed on cowardice. Yes, plain ordinary, simple human cowardice. The leadership in the Academy are cowards as are most of the administration and professoriate.

Which begs the question, how then did cowards come to lead and administer the Academy?

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