A Tepid Diagnosis of the Humanities’ Crisis – Kali Jerrard, National Association of Scholars
A few weeks ago, I mentioned the Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences (the Report), authored by Vanderbilt University and Washington University. While my initial analysis of the Report was brief, it warrants a closer look, especially now that National Association of Scholars President Peter W. Wood has offered his own critique.
Harvey Mansfield: an ‘unsound’ old sage on the myth of a ‘special relationship’ – Tunku Varadarajan, Olney Review of Books
“Men dressed very well there in the 1950s,” says Harvey Mansfield, recalling a visit he made to England as a graduate student in 1953. “And I liked their articulation. The way they pronounced their vowels and didn’t ever slur their speech.”
The mind of a 94-year-old sage can be a cocktail of lucidity and reminiscence. Especially at dinnertime.
Mr. Mansfield is sipping a small Scotch in the dining room in his country house while two grad students tend to a grill on the patio. Looking past their functional ineptitude, so common in male Twentysomethings in the 21st century, he voices some sympathy for them. To be in the open air in rural Massachusetts in the early evening in June is to offer yourself as a gift to mosquitoes.
Bluestockings: London – Jessica Hooten Wilson, The Scandal of Reading: Uncovering Holy Wisdom
A “Bluestocking” is an intellectual woman, the word coined in the 18th century when that strange phenomenon of a thinking woman began to host salons and be known publicly rather than merely privately for her wit, reason, and moral sentiments.
What the rise of classical schools says about what parents want – John Burtka III, The Detroit News
Michigan has long understood that schools are not abstractions. They are local institutions built around communities, families, teachers, habits, expectations and the daily formation of children. That is why the national growth of classical education deserves attention here. It is not merely another school-choice story. It is a demand signal.
Between The First and Last Day of Class: What We Say to Teachers – Brandon Crowe, Great Hearts America
In my time as a school leader, I offered an “exhortation” at the beginning of the school year to the faculty. I wanted to remind teachers of the meaningfulness of the work we were taking on that year. Yet, as I watched each year go by, it occurred to me that teachers needed the same kind of encouraging reminder near the end of the year as well. So, whether this draws your mind to the beginning of next year or the end of this year – or, both – I hope it is helpful for considering one path for speaking to teachers about the lasting value of their labors.
How the Other Half Chooses: A New Era of Choice for the Charter Movement – Thibaut Delloue, Real Clear Education
In How the Other Half Learns, the portrait of the New York-based charter giant Success Academy, Robert Pondiscio argues that no-excuses charters like Success don’t “cherry pick” students, as charter critics frequently evoke, but parents. Students end up in high-quality schools of choice in great part because their parents are willing to abide by those schools’ more demanding cultures and aren’t put off, as Pondiscio asserts, by uniforms, stricter discipline standards, and the “constant demands” on their time.
Digging in on the New Federal Scholarship Tax Credit – Frederick Hess, Education Next
There’s a lot of giddiness about the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC), which will launch January 1, 2027. The new federal program lets taxpayers give up to $1,700 to scholarship programs and get a dollar-for-dollar reduction on their federal taxes. It could mean billions each year for educational choice. The legislation even has blue states feeling pressure to open their doors to large-scale school choice.
Great Books Cultivate Great Minds - Beanie’s Blog
According to recent data, only about half of U.S. adults read a book in 2023. The percentage of adults who read daily for fun in the same year was a measly 13%. Data from the same survey shows the percentage of 13-year-olds who read for fun dropped from 28% in 2004 to 14%. It’s clear that reading books for fun has fallen out of fashion in general society. That is disheartening, but what’s also sad is that reading whole books in school has also fallen out of fashion in recent years. Freedom in Education believes it needs to be fashionable again, and we are on a crusade to make it happen. Think of it as the literacy version of the famous “Couch to 5k” program to get people running.
Why Microschools Are Multiplying – Mickey Revenaugh, Education Next
While declining enrollment in America’s traditional public schools is turning into a slow-moving crisis, participation in microschools is set to blast off. The 21st century answer to one-room schoolhouses, microschools are typically private-pay and serve fewer than 20 kids each. The Covid-19 pandemic turbocharged this trend, multiplying the number of microschools to over 100,000 across the U.S., according to the National Microschooling Center, with more coming online each season. Microschools have reached an estimated enrollment of 1–2 million students, and those numbers are poised to grow as the federal tax credits from the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill hit the system, and local school districts get into the act.
Teachers save time with AI. Their students may pay the price – Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
Artificial intelligence is often promoted as a way to make teachers more effective by helping them write lesson plans, generate classroom materials and provide feedback to students in seconds. But one of the first randomized trials testing AI in real classrooms found that it can also undermine learning. Students whose teachers were given access to an AI teaching assistant felt less motivated to learn.
Dear Alpha School: I Hope You’re Right – Robert Pondiscio, The Next 30 Years
In 2014, after Success Academy posted another year of astonishing results on New York State tests, I wrote an op-ed in the New York Daily News asking a deliberately provocative question: “Is Eva Moskowitz the Michael Jordan of education reform—or Mark McGwire? I have no idea, and you don’t either.”
It wasn’t a cheap shot. It was a statement about evidence. Extraordinary results invite two equal and opposite temptations: belief and disbelief. I try to resist both. Rather than cheer or jeer from a distance, I ended up spending nearly a year inside Success Academy and writing a book about what I learned.
Is This What a Post-Literate Era Looks Like? – David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times
Reading scores among both students and adults have fallen from where they were a decade ago, and it’s hard to find a college professor who thinks freshmen are arriving in class as prepared as ever for the reading. On the subway, people are always on their phones, and nobody appears to be reading anything on them. You probably have a hard time concentrating on books yourself, with so many distractions around. Public discourse seems shaped by podcast clips and short-form video, and if you happen to find yourself reading something longer than an Instagram caption it might well be an essay, like “The End of Reading Is Here” by Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic last week, studded with incisive observations about the shift from a culture of literacy to one defined by what’s been called a digital culture of orality, in which charismatic narrators make sweeping emotional appeals to their audiences rather than through logical argumentation and careful citation.
Five Tips for Teachers on Bringing Homer to High Schoolers – Joe Goodkin, The 74
I stand alone on a stage in front of 200 high school freshmen. They’re looking at their phones, talking to one other, laughing — paying attention to anything but me. I pick up my guitar, strum a chord and start singing, first in almost a whisper: “Who am I, mind on fire, born of you but who am I … οἴνοπα πόντον.” (The wine-dark sea.)
Two hundred sets of eyes are now off their phones and on me. The laughter and talking stop, the room is silent. I have the audience’s complete attention as they listen to … my 35-minute, 24-song retelling of Homer’s “The Odyssey.”
“Gifted” Is Dead. Long Live “Advanced” Learners! – Russell T. Warne, Education Next
The American education establishment loves to rebrand. Home economics became family and consumer science, while vocational education is now career and technical education. Remedial education is now developmental coursework, economically disadvantaged students are at-risk or underserved, and English as a second language students are English language learners or emerging bilinguals. The new terms that replaced the old reflect educators’ evolving perspectives on these concepts.
One label, though, has refused to die: gifted. For decades, experts in and outside of gifted education have criticized the label as elitist, simplistic, and generally problematic. Yet, the term persists in schools, among scholars, and in popular culture.
Mom, Dad, I Want to Be a Welder- Callie Holtermann, The New York Times
Gen Z is increasingly turning to trade schools in hopes of future-proofing their careers against A.I. But getting their parents and peers on board can be a challenge.
A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird – Derek Thompson, Derek Thompson Substack
Here are some questions that I consider self-evidently compelling about the modern world:
Why is the news media so interested in telling you how much the world sucks all the time?
Why are so many of us obsessed with distraction and managing our attention?
Why is it so hard to stop comparing ourselves to others?
And why does everything in art and design seem the same these days?
A week ago, I didn’t think these questions were related. I’m not sure I would have told you I had a good answer to most of them. And I certainly wouldn’t have made the audacious and borderline bonkers claim that one single theory could begin to explain all of them, at once.
Too Many Books? – Alex Vadukul, The New York Times
Mendel Uminer faced a crisis when his landlord objected to the 10,000 volumes in his New York studio apartment.
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