The Social World

Category: Education

  • The steady erosion of academic rigor in German schools

    The steady erosion of academic rigor in German schools

    German teachers are a privileged species. Most of us enjoy the status of a Beamter, a tenured civil servant. We can be dismissed only after a serious criminal conviction, we are exempt from social-insurance contributions and even our mortgage rates are lower. Such comfort discourages dissent. Yet, after more than 25 years as a pampered Beamter, I find myself overwhelmed, not by the teaching load or the students, but by the accelerating erosion of academic standards.

    Having taught English, history and Latin at four different Gymnasien, I have learned that challenging students is now frowned upon by both bureaucrats and politicians. Nearly all my colleagues agree that standards have plummeted. A mathematics teacher tells me that assignments he set 20 years ago for his older students would now be beyond even the brightest. One thing is certain: the children are not to blame.

    The decline began in 1964, when philosopher Georg Picht published The German Education Catastrophe, calling for a drastic expansion in the number of college-eligible high-school graduates. Until then, only those who graduated from a Gymnasium, the equivalent of a selective high school, qualified. Picht’s alarmism found ready ears. In 1960, 7 percent of students left school with college-level results; today, more than half do. The inflation of academic credentials accelerated with the 1999 EU Bologna reforms, which dismantled the traditional and rigorous European degree structure and replaced it with the Anglo-American model. Only medicine and law escaped. The effect has been the slow death of Germany’s once-superb vocational system. Many small- and medium-sized businesses no longer offer apprenticeships but almost anyone who has finished high school can find some comfy course at college. More than 70 German universities now offer degrees in gender studies. It’s dumbing all the way down.

    As college places were massively expanded, the Gymnasien had to lower their entry thresholds to keep pace with the demand for more and more students. Since 2002, in my own state of North Rhine-Westphalia, parents have had the right to choose their child’s secondary school, regardless of their teachers’ recommendations. Children deemed unready for the Gymnasium are admitted and, once enrolled, bureaucratic obstacles prevent them from being moved to a more suitable high school.

    The deterioration has been striking in my subjects. Since 2007, students have been allowed to use dictionaries in English exams, which discourages them from memorizing vocabulary. That same year, the Zentralabitur – a centralized state exam – replaced teacher-written finals. Previously, each school designed its own papers, tailored to what had been taught. Now, vague, homogenized curricula require little factual knowledge. History was replaced by the nebulous goal of “intercultural communicative competence.”

    Objective grading once relied on the Fehlerquotient (number of grammatical errors per hundred words). This was derided as “too rigid,” replaced by an imprecise points system designed to boost marks. Marks are awarded for trivialities, such as “structuring” a text. Students quickly learn the formula: use a few stylistic devices – enumerations, metaphors, repetitions – and you can be seen to analyze anything. Teaching to the test has replaced teaching to think. Real objectivity would require blind marking, external examiners and anonymized papers – none of which exist.

    When I attended a Gymnasium in the 1980s, advanced English students were required to study an entire Shakespeare play. Later, this became selected scenes, then scenes from film versions. In 2023, the Bard was dropped entirely, replaced by the study of “questions of identity and gender.”

    Since 1970, North Rhine-Westphalia has had only eight years of non-leftist control over education. Progressivism now permeates every level. Among teachers, Green sympathies are disproportionately high. Of the 17 newspaper articles used in exams between 2020 and 2025, not one came from a conservative source. The Guardian and the New York Times dominate.

    Behind all this lies the creed of “competence orientation.” Grammar, spelling and factual knowledge are dismissed as obsolete. It is enough to “communicate effectively.” Why, then, read Shakespeare? Why learn a soliloquy by heart? In biology and geography, exams no longer test knowledge but the ability to interpret pre-packaged “material” – charts, graphs and snippets of text. A colleague who marks geography papers believes anyone with common sense and patience has a decent chance of passing.

    Latin, too, has been softened. Translation from German to Latin is banned as it is “too difficult.” Lessons are increasingly padded with Roman culture and history.

    When the state exam was introduced, most teachers welcomed it because it meant less work. I realized something had gone horribly wrong when I graded a history paper by a gifted pupil who provided precise dates, facts and definitions. The new state syllabus allowed only limited marks for such content. I only managed to salvage her grade by awarding her full points elsewhere.

    Across all subjects, measurable trivia has replaced genuine learning. Multiple choice has supplanted multiple perspectives. Today’s “competence orientation” manufactures compliant consumers who consult Wikipedia or ChatGPT for ready answers. To criticize “competence orientation” is near-heresy; every mainstream party endorses it. It was introduced in my state under a Green minister, continued by a Liberal and remains untouched under a Christian Democrat. For the left, it serves egalitarianism; for Liberals, it produces plentiful but pliant employees. The Christian Democrats’ acquiescence is harder to fathom. But the result of all this is clear enough. In 2011, a student of mine wrote at the end of a Shakespeare exam: “Students don’t have to learn any more facts. Studying in this way is boring. Students will die of boredom.” If only I could have given her full marks.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 8, 2025 World edition.

  • What did the ancients consider a ‘just war’?

    What did the ancients consider a ‘just war’?

    Since the UN does not provide a definition of the “just war,” it is interesting to see the ancient take on the matter.

    The Greeks contributed little. For Plato, war was necessary for the creation and survival of the city, but it was not its ultimate purpose: that was peace. For Aristotle, life consisted of three arenas of activity: war for the sake of peace, work for the sake of leisure and necessary and useful activities to demonstrate one’s worth.

    But Cicero (d. 43 BC) understood war in ways that have shaped our own understanding. His starting point was that there were two ways of settling an issue: by discussion, or by force. As he said, “the former [is] appropriate for human beings, the latter for animals.” Further, although Rome always marked a just war with a religious ceremony, Cicero thought a just war should flow not from religious sanction but from natural law.

    The search, then, was on for a iusta causa to rectify the rupture of mankind’s natural state, peace. Clearly, self-defense was the most obvious, but equally no war would be just unless the enemy had been given the chance to offer redress. War should advance some good beyond merely self-interested expansion. Other legitimate reasons for going to war, Cicero suggested, should be as a response to an earlier wrong, such as an attack on allies or ambassadors, or to a breach of treaties; or against those who supported an enemy of Rome (which might involve punishing an enemy). Further, Cicero believed that Rome must fight honorably, must not involve civilians and must show mercy to the conquered, though Roman rules of war permitted the seizure of property and enslavement. Most significantly, the word “revenge” plays almost no part.

    But Cicero’s world was torn apart by civil wars in the 1st century BC, triggering his reflections. He lamented that those unjust wars had destroyed the republic and ruefully commented: “As long as the sway of the Roman people was maintained by the bestowal of benefits, not by injustice, our sovereignty might then have been termed patronage, rather than domination, of the world.” Cause for thought?

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.

  • The study of psychology has been a disaster

    The study of psychology has been a disaster

    A young Chinese girl approached me after I gave a talk at a conference and asked for my advice about what she should study. I knew nothing of her, except that she was pretty, with beautiful dark eyes, and was almost certainly of high intelligence. I was touched by her naive assumption that I would answer benevolently and in her best interests. It suggested that she had not yet encountered much of human malignity. “What are you interested in?” I asked.

    “I was thinking of history and psychology,” she replied.

    “Ah,” I said, “definitely not psychology, at all costs not psychology.”

    My answer emerged spontaneously, without any reflection – too spontaneously, in fact. I have never entirely overcome my early awareness that I was a child in a world of adults and that everyone around me therefore had more authority than me. That anyone such as this girl should now consider me an authority therefore seemed to me strange; I could hardly credit the idea that in her eyes I might be a sage, or that my answer could play a part in determining her future and that I had a great responsibility to weigh my words carefully.

    For me, our conversation was initially one between equals, a casual encounter such as between people at a party; because I had never fully grown up and reached the awe-inspiring status of the adults of my childhood, I failed to appreciate that a conversation between a 75-year-old man and 16-year-old girl can never be one between equals. “Why?” she asked, with regard to my interdiction of psychology.

    People come to think of themselves as objects rather than subjects, almost as laboratory specimens

    “Because it will turn you in on yourself. It will make you self-obsessed. Most students of psychology want to learn about themselves. It never works. No explanation is ever satisfactory to them. They enter a labyrinth from which there is no return. I don’t know why you want to study psychology, but if it is because you want to find out about yourself, abandon the search straight away – before it is too late. You don’t need to find yourself; you need to lose yourself.”

    I seemed to have struck a chord, for finding out about herself was one of her motivations for choosing psychology.

    “What should I study, then?”

    “Anything that really interests you that has nothing whatsoever to do with you.”

    I retreated slightly from my dogmatism. By now, I realized that I had changed mode, from that of equal to that of guru, and that she was looking at me as a fount of wisdom and truth. Perhaps I would be responsible for having turned her from what would have been a satisfying path in life, a cause of long-term regret. “Of course, if you have other reasons for wanting to study psychology and you are passionate about it, I wouldn’t want to discourage you.”

    But in retreating from my original position, I was not being entirely sincere. For in truth, I believe that the study of psychology, notwithstanding the assistance that it may give in some cases, has been a cultural, and even a psychological, disaster. Not only have these ideas filtered their way down into the general population, but so has the notion that the study of psychology is the best possible way to understand the human predicament. People now turn to psychology rather than to literature for an explanation of the difficulties in living that mankind eternally has. A technocratic solution is the pot of gold at the end of psychology’s rainbow.

    Psychology has the effect of alienating people from themselves. They come to think of themselves as objects rather than subjects, almost as laboratory specimens, or as feathers in the wind of circumstance rather than as contributors to their own lives. I do not wish to deny that featherdom, so to speak, really occurs, but it is not the normal condition of mankind, certainly not in daily life in the modern world. It is both the burden and the glory of being human that our life entails constant and inescapable choice. Psychology supposedly relieves us of that burden, but in the process destroys the glory.

    The desire to avoid the realization that we are often at least the partial authors of our own downfall is an old one, and probably inherent in human nature. Edmund refers to this tendency in King Lear as “an admirable evasion of whoremaster man to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star”: in other words, to explain his actions by reference to anything except himself. In psychology, himself ceases to be himself; he starts to talk of himself with pseudo-objectivity; and even the most unimaginative person can come up almost instantaneously with ingenious mechanistic explanations of his wrongdoing when it is necessary or advantageous to do so. I should be surprised if any reader had never in his life made use of this powerful faculty of mind. I should add that no one goes to much trouble to explain his good, kind or generous actions, which do not puzzle him.

    The habit of thinking psychologically – that is to say, with the concepts, however superficially or mistakenly, of psychology – places a distorting lens of theory between a person’s behavior and his explanation of that behavior. He becomes even for himself a mere vector of forces that he is powerless to control: in short, he becomes a victim.

    Of course, in a sense we all think psychologically, and much more is available to us by way of explanation than we customarily employ. Doctor Johnson said, “He who attends the motions of his own mind will find…”: our problem is that we will not examine the motions of our own minds, either from laziness or fear of what we might find there. Dryden said of Shakespeare that “he was naturally learned; he wanted not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inward, and found it there.” Imagine Shakespeare with the spectacles of psychology. Falstaff on the couch; Richard II on Prozac; Richard III in group therapy; Hamlet having CBT. What progress in human self-understanding that would represent.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 13, 2025 World edition.

  • Is Randi Weingarten America’s most divisive woman?

    Is Randi Weingarten America’s most divisive woman?

    In the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, a moment when leaders across the political spectrum should be dialing back the rhetoric and fostering unity, Randi Weingarten has charged ahead with her divisive agenda.

    As president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), she has doubled down on promoting her new book, which brands conservatives as “fascists.” This inflammatory approach comes at a time when the nation is reeling from violence, yet Weingarten shows no signs of restraint.

    Her recent appearances underscore this troubling pattern. On MSNBC, while hawking her book, Weingarten suggested the US is under “Nazi occupation,” claiming she now wears a paperclip as a symbol of resistance. She elaborated on a podcast, explaining that teachers in Norway wore paperclips “as a resistance against the Nazis.” In the very next breath, she urged protests against President Trump, demanding that people tell him: “Do not take our freedoms away. Do not take our democracy away.”

    Such casual invocation of the Holocaust and Nazi history to score political points trivializes one of history’s greatest atrocities. It equates policy disagreements with genocidal regimes, a tactic that poisons public discourse and erodes trust.

    Weingarten’s missteps extend beyond rhetoric. She deleted a social media post that pushed a false flag conspiracy theory, alleging the assassin of Charlie Kirk was a “right-winger.” This baseless claim fueled division rather than healing. Worse, the AFT under her leadership issued a statement defending teachers who celebrated Kirk’s murder, framing it as protected free speech.

    Teachers do enjoy broad freedoms of expression, but those rights come with limits in professional settings. Employers, including school districts, retain freedom of association. Unhinged individuals spewing hateful rhetoric have no inherent right to shape young minds or indoctrinate children with toxic ideologies. Schools should be places of learning, not platforms for extremists.

    Financial improprieties add another layer to the case against Weingarten. The AFT’s latest LM-2 report reveals payments totaling $171,715 to Feldman Strategies, a progressive public relations firm. That same firm recently boasted on social media about promoting Weingarten’s book. Why are teachers’ hard-earned dues funding a PR machine that advances her personal projects? Weingarten already earns over half a million dollars annually. This apparent misuse of funds raises serious questions about accountability and priorities within the union.

    Undeterred by controversy, Weingarten is pressing forward with a book event hosted by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) on October 8. This book talk comes amid intense backlash against the CTU for glorifying a convicted cop killer who once appeared on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists List. The union’s defense of such figures alienates mainstream educators and undermines public confidence in the teaching profession. Weingarten’s involvement signals a lack of judgment and an absence of shame.

    A leaked email from Leo Casey, Weingarten’s assistant who earned $234,400 last year, exposes further cracks in the union’s leadership. Writing on an internal Democratic Socialists of America listserv, Casey expressed doubts about Zohran Mamdani’s “ability to govern,” noting his lack of experience in city government.

    Casey drew parallels to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, whose favorability rating has plummeted to 14 percent, with 80 percent unfavorable, an all-time low. “Something has clearly gone wrong,” Casey wrote, insisting it couldn’t be blamed solely on opponents. “Winning an election does not necessarily translate into the ability to govern.” He confirmed the email’s authenticity in a response to me on X.

    This critique is particularly damning given the AFT’s and CTU’s investments in Johnson. The CTU poured $2.4 million of member dues into his campaign, while the AFT added another $2.2 million to secure his victory. Neither Weingarten nor Casey has addressed these concerns publicly, despite responding to me on X about the email. Their silence suggests an unwillingness to admit that union resources – teachers’ money – were squandered on what Casey himself described as a governance failure.

    Teachers deserve better representation. A recent union magazine, shared with me by a concerned educator, features Weingarten’s book prominently on the back cover. The teacher posed pointed questions: “How is this allowed and why are our union dues paying for this?” These sentiments reflect growing frustration among rank-and-file members who feel their contributions are being diverted to personal and political pursuits.

    Weingarten herself has acknowledged the right to dissent. On a New York City radio show, she told a caller upset about the union’s politicization: “The union can be as political as it wants as long as it’s democratic.” She advised the teacher: “You have the right to pull back on your [union] contributions if you don’t like the direction of the union.”

    Rational educators who reject Weingarten’s leadership should heed her words. They can opt out of dues and join alternatives like the Teacher Freedom Alliance, which provides personal liability insurance at no cost.

    Weingarten’s tenure has been marked by extremism, financial opacity, and a failure to prioritize teachers over ideology. She must resign in disgrace to restore integrity to the AFT. If she refuses, teachers should withdraw en masse, forcing the change the union desperately needs.

  • Why Chicago Teachers Union lionized a terrorist

    Why Chicago Teachers Union lionized a terrorist

    When I first saw the Chicago Teachers Union’s post honoring Assata Shakur, I thought it was a headline from the Babylon Bee. But no, this one was real, and beyond parody.

    The union, entrusted with educating Chicago’s children, used its official social media account to mourn the death of a convicted cop killer, calling her a “revolutionary fighter” and “leader of freedom.”

    Shakur was found guilty of murdering New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973 and later escaped prison, landing on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists List with a $2 million bounty. To make matters worse, CTU Vice President Jackson Potter doubled down, declaring on X that “Assata was a freedom fighter!”

    The tone-deaf post is a glaring sign that the CTU can’t be trusted to educate children. While the union wastes time lionizing a terrorist, Chicago Public Schools are failing spectacularly. In 55 schools, not a single child is proficient in math. Taxpayers shell out about $30,000 per student annually, yet the system squanders that money on everything but effective teaching. It’s almost as if the CTU is competing for the title of most unhinged organization on Earth, alienating reasonable members in the process.

    This post should serve as a wake-up call for Chicago teachers who don’t share these extreme views. If your values aren’t reflected in honoring a murderer, why keep funding the radicals at the top?

    Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Janus decision, unions can no longer force public school teachers to pay dues, as it violates their First Amendment rights. Rational educators who simply want to teach can opt out and stop handing over their hard-earned paychecks to bosses like CTU President Stacy Davis Gates.

    Teachers can now get free personal liability insurance through the Teacher Freedom Alliance. That way, they keep more of their own money, stay protected, and cut off support for this insanity.

    Their post isn’t a one-off mistake. Stacy Davis Gates declared earlier this year at the City Club of Chicago that children in public schools belong to her union. Her X bio even proclaims, “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe.” But if kids truly belonged to the union, their leadership would be in jail for child abuse, given the horrifying academic outcomes.

    Remember 2022, when the CTU voted to strike and keep schools closed long after it was clear reopenings were safe? Those closures harmed children academically and emotionally. The union deleted a post claiming the push to reopen was “rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.” Meanwhile, CTU board member Sarah Chambers was caught vacationing in Puerto Rico, thousands of miles away, while railing against returning to work.

    Stacy Davis Gates labeled school choice “racist,” yet she sends her own son to a private school. The CTU also reposted a video of a mock guillotine outside Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s house, stating they were “completely frightened by, completely impressed by and completely in support of wherever this is headed.”

    As an affiliate of Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers, the CTU mirrors national union extremism. Chicago Public Schools have morphed into a jobs program for adults rather than an education system for kids. Staffing has ballooned 20 percent since 2019, even as enrollment dropped 10 percent.

    The CTU operates more like a political machine than an educational advocate. It poured $2.4 million into electing former organizer Brandon Johnson as mayor. Now, Johnson holds the highest unfavorable rating in Chicago mayoral history, with nearly 80 percent viewing him negatively.

    Teachers deserve better representation. Parents deserve schools that prioritize learning over ideology. And children deserve a chance to succeed, not a union that honors killers while failing them in the classroom. It’s time for teachers to hold the union cartel accountable by opting out and starving the beast from the inside.

  • The cultification of math and science

    The cultification of math and science

    My, how we laughed, nearly 30 years ago, when the physicist Alan Sokal hoaxed a social science journal into publishing a paper “liberally salted with non- sense” (in his own words) but that “flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions.” Its title gave away the joke: “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” Little did we in the truth-seeking enterprise known as science realize verbose and vapid social deconstruction was coming for us too. In a landmark new book, called The War on Science, edited by the astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, 20 scientific scholars lament the corruption of their field by left-wing ideological nonsense. Whereas once a book with this title would have raged at the conservative right pushing creationism and sexism in the teeth of truth, now they are raging at the woke left pushing identity ideology and intersectionality at the expense of reason.

    In 2022, Nature magazine, at the pinnacle of the scientific establishment, published an editorial stating that from now on it would refuse or retract papers that “could reasonably be perceived to undermine the rights and dignities of an individual or human group on the basis of socially constructed or socially relevant human groupings.” The editors went on to reassure readers that they would consult “advocacy groups” before doing this, just as they once had to consult popes before denying that the earth circles the sun. This was an open invitation to activists to censor science they did not like.

    Sure, scientists always had their prejudices, ideological biases and blind spots, but almost by definition they regarded those as bad things to be minimized, not good things to be magnified. Here was a manifesto for deliberately injecting bias into science.

    As I said, back in the 1990s we laughed off this threat. The structure of DNA, the charge of an electron, the distance to Andromeda – these were neutral facts, not social constructs and always would be. Foucauldian gobbledygook could be ignored as a disorder of the humanities and sociology. Then the ramparts of anthropology were overrun by those who insisted science must come second to cultural hypersensitivity when discussing indigenous peoples. Then much of psychology went the same way: the sensible compromises between nature and nurture that every sane person had accepted were thrown out in favor of the outdated fable of blank-slate social construction.

    But surely biology was safe, let alone chemistry and physics? How naive we were! Gender became the new front line. Journals were falling over themselves to declare sex a spectrum and any other view a heresy, despite the fact that all animals divide neatly into a sex with large, immobile gametes and a sex with small, mobile gametes – and there are no other sexes, just some rare develop- mental anomalies. Deviate from this new Lysenkoism by saying there are two sexes and you will be excommunicated.

    Richard Dawkins once pointed out innocently in a tweet that a mostly white woman had been pilloried for “identifying as black,” which seemed puzzling given that race is a spectrum in a way that sex is not. Why is it all right for a man to identify as a woman but not for a white person to identify as black? Just for raising the issue, he was retrospectively stripped of his Humanist of the Year award by the American Humanist Association. They accused him of implying “that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity.”

    So biology fell, but physics and math? Incredibly, yes, they too are battlefields for this nonsense. In 2023, a physics journal published an article on “observing whiteness in introductory physics, a case study” and a math conference heard a talk on “undergraduate mathematics education as a white cisheteropatriarchal space and opportunities for structural disruptions to advance queer of color justice.” Hilariously, the ideologues have painted themselves into an awkward corner in their attempts to decolonize mathematics. They demand non-western slants on algebra and algorithms, which are words of Arabic origin, while rewriting exam problems to replace adding up grocery bills (which “carry the ideological message that paying for food is natural”) with calculating how many aboriginal people can fit in a tipi, which is patronizing to the point of racism. One right-on mathematician admitted this change was insulting, but only “because indigenous people would not divide themselves in the way stated… relational and spiritual factors would dominate.” Meanwhile, New Zealand now requires schools to teach indigenous Maori “ways of knowing” as equivalent to scientific ones. So creationism is fine if brown people do it?

    Many scientists continue to do good work unperturbed by this revolt against critical thinking. But the sheer volume of funding, publishing and attention that is being siphoned off into this pathology represents a massive opportunity cost. Grants are being spent, papers retracted, scientists sanctioned, hiring practices altered and peer-reviews corrupted, while scientists are self-censoring to prevent their cancellation. Four-fifths of students say they self-censor, many more than at the height of McCarthyism.

    It is clear that embracing ideology over truth directly led to scientists misleading us during the pandemic. In an open letter published in 2020, more than 1,200 academics argued with a straight face that the mass protests about George Floyd’s death during lockdown were safe, while visiting a dying relative in hospital was not. This helped torpedo the reputation of science. Science has always behaved like a cult to some extent, enforcing dogma and persecuting heretics, but it has grown far worse with wokery. Science as a philosophy is still great, but science as an institution is about as true to its philosophy as the church was under the Borgias, and as ripe for reformation.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 29, 2025 World edition.

  • How the Spartans got fighting fit

    How the Spartans got fighting fit

    Donald Trump has brought back the Presidential Fitness Test for American children, once used in state schools to gauge young people’s health and athleticism with one-mile runs, sit-ups and stretching exercises. He could usefully add elements of the early training invented by the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus to create disciplined, physically and mentally resilient soldiers and citizens.

    Every baby was examined for fitness. They were trained not to fuss about food, or be frightened of the dark when left alone, or to get angry or cry. At seven, they joined bands in which they grew up together while their elders registered their progress in obedience and courage. They were also taught to stay silent rather than drivel on, and if they did talk, to use language clearly and trenchantly (our term “laconic” derives from Lakôn, “Spartan”). Famous examples: “We do not ask how many the enemy are: just where they are.” And to a Persian boasting “Our arrows will block out the sky”: “Good, we shall fight in the shade.”

    Girls, while not being formed into the companies, also underwent state-sponsored training that emphasized physical strength and endurance, preparing them for their roles as mothers of warriors. They too learned to express themselves incisively. A girl saw a Milesian having his shoes put on and laced by a slave and said: “Father, the foreigner hasn’t any hands!” Being asked by an Athenian woman “Why is it that you Spartan women are the only women that lord it over your men?,” she said: “Because we are the only women that are mothers of men.” Another, when her sons had fled from battle back to her, said “Where have you come from now, you craven slaves? Do you intend to creep back in here, where you came from?”, and she pulled up her garment and showed them. Another, as her son was going to war, gave him his shield and said: “Your father kept this safe for you; do the same, or do not exist.” Another, asked by a man if she would be good if he bought her, said: “Yes, and if you do not buy me.”

    Fine lessons in exploiting the potential of language, rather than waving it flabbily about.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s September 15, 2025 World edition.

  • Why America’s schools are failing

    Why America’s schools are failing

    It seems that every few years America rediscovers that its children can’t read. In 2024, only 30-31 percent of eighth graders were deemed proficient in reading, and our numbers in history and math are even worse. Since 2020, no state has reported improvement across subject areas.

    It’s tempting to blame “the pandemic” for these declines, but in reality, Covid only accelerated trends that were already underway. For decades before 2020, US students were struggling to reach proficiency, and the truth is that the problem isn’t today’s culture-war skirmishes over pronouns, politics and school closures. It’s the more mundane question of how children are taught to read, to count and to remember.

    Let’s take phonics, for example. Until the 1980s, most teachers were trained to teach students how to read through linking letters to sounds. Taught this way, students learned rules for decoding words, so that they could sound out new words independently. The emphasis was on systematic, sequential instruction, memorization, and drilling. So if a student saw the word “cat,” they would sound out each letter and apply the process to words like “bat” and “mat.”

    But by the 1990s, most teachers were trained more heavily in whole language models, which are mechanisms used to teach students to read words and sentences as a whole, focusing on context and meaning. Taught this way, students would see the word “cat” in a sentence, and would guess the word based on the context of the sentence, or based on a picture of a cat near the word.

    By the late 2000s, though some states resisted, the whole language model was the norm in many elementary school classrooms. There was criticism early on, leading to some “balanced literacy” programs promising to blend whole language instruction with phonics, but in reality, “balanced literacy” usually just meant sprinkling in a few phonics lessons while relying on context guessing. Soon the science piled up, and decades of research showed that a heavy emphasis on systematic phonics is necessary for a child to learn how to read.

    As states began to reinstitute phonics requirements, they realized that the teaching pipeline was stuck. Education professors were trained in whole language and balanced literacy, and taught new teachers in the same manner. Major curriculum companies also had a strong influence on what districts adopted, and had built hugely profitable programs with balanced literacy at their core. Teachers pushed back on a personal level too – no one likes being told they’ve been wronging students they care about for the entirety of their careers.

    But it wasn’t just phonics and reading proficiency – similar issues showed up across educational subjects. Traditional math was standards and drill-based, emphasizing structure and singular proven methods to solve equations, but between the 1990s-2010s, new “constructivist” math allowed students to invent their own strategies with minimal direction. In the same way, traditional civics & history, which was characterized by memorizing facts and dates, was replaced with more sourcing-based lessons that ask “how do we know?” rather than “what do we know?”

    The problem leading to these shifts was, in fact, ideological, but not in the way we usually think.

    In the 1960s, The Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, the Vietnam War, and technological advances led to a widespread distrust of authority and tradition. Old ways, hierarchies and one-size-fits-all approaches began to be seen as oppressive, leading to a movement in the world of education that centered around the individual child and his or her self-expression, creativity and discovery. Memorization and drills soon became seen as not suited to a free, modern child, for whom education was supposed to serve in their process of self-actualization.

    “Knowledge,” after all, is socially constructed, and there is no single “right” process for a child to learn. At least that’s what the educational sphere began to believe, which led to phonics rules, historical timelines, and math formulas being viewed as impositions on the child – mechanisms to inhibit equity. As a child learned to read, whole language models fit better with this world-view than did phonics drilling. Many young teachers were taught that old ways of learning like phonics could be harmful to the child because it was a power-based and limiting model.

    This, then, is the pattern of the past 60 years of education: evidence-based basics like phonics, arithmetic and historical fact began to be treated as old-fashioned, and more progressive models, emphasizing meaning-making, creativity and individuality without a solid foundation became the norm. Student outcomes declined and critics called for a return to the fundamentals, but the corrections came abruptly, and teachers are now caught between what they know how to teach and what they’re suddenly expected to do.

    Those blaming declining educational quality on ideology, then, are right in one sense. Not because most teachers today are ideologues, but because they teach as they were trained in programs heavily influenced by an ideology that rejects truth. Modern parents aren’t fleeing public schools because they’ve discovered a latent love of flashcards and homeschooling, but because they believe they can teach their kids more efficiently than the modern public-school teacher.

    Yes, some teachers push their own politics, and that’s a problem. But it’s nothing compared to a system that treats phonics, arithmetic, and historical facts as relics. Kids can’t read – not because of one activist, but because an entire generation of educators was taught to doubt the very idea of right and wrong answers.

  • The students bullied into being woke

    The students bullied into being woke

    If, as Shakespeare observed, “all the world is a stage, and all its men and women merely players,” no place is that truer than the modern American university.

    In the first study of its kind, 88 percent of Northwestern and University of Michigan students admitted they “have pretended to hold more progressive views than [they] truly endorse to succeed socially or academically.” While the phenomenon of college students pretending to be more liberal than they actually are to make life easier for them as they attend these hotbeds of radicalism is not surprising, the true scale of it is.

    But how have we got here? If you’re looking for a single explanation, I’m sorry to disappoint you. The modern college environment is a perfect storm of several factors working together.

    Faculty and student demographics deserve some blame. It’s no secret that university professors across the country are overwhelmingly progressive. Student demographics are no better. Female enrollment at universities has reached record highs and 71 percent of female students at top American universities identify as liberal.

    It’s hard enough to be your authentic self when that means risking either your social or your academic status. But for many conservatives on campus, it means risking both. We shouldn’t be surprised that conservative students keep their heads down and try to blend in. This also applies to students who are liberal – but not that liberal. After all, if a student supports a centralized economy, that does not logically require her to support gender ideology. But if all her friends claim to support gender theory, and if her professor does, she may find herself labeled an “outsider” merely for defending biological reality.

    Social media makes this problem much worse. College students today navigate campus politics along with Instagram, TikTok, and online “cancel culture.” Cameras are everywhere, and everyone has social media followings. Going viral for all the wrong reasons is a nightmare.

    Twenty years ago, a student could make a mistake or do something controversial without the whole campus knowing about it. And even if the whole campus knew, the whole country did not. But today, students who behave controversially often risk internet infamy in the process. Scandalous news spreads far and wide, and it often comes with a picture or video. Getting “canceled” today often means enduring threats, abuse and harassment from people who don’t attend your school and who never will.

    You probably don’t know the name Marcus Stokes. But you probably should.

    In 2022, Marcus Stokes was a white Florida high school senior and four-star quarterback prospect. He’d recently accepted a scholarship offer from the University of Florida. That changed when Stokes posted a video of himself singing a popular rap song that included a racial slur. The slur wasn’t directed at any individual; Stokes was just singing a rap song. But because the clip was only a few seconds long, it was devoid of context. Stokes obviously made a poor decision, but it did not justify what happened next.

    Social media went ballistic, and sparked news stories from national outlets like Sports Illustrated, CBS and TMZ. Stokes briefly became a national villain whose face was plastered across the internet because he dared to sing a popular rap song. Predictably, Stokes immediately lost his scholarship to Florida.

    Two months later, Stokes received a new scholarship offer from Albany State, a historically black university. That should have been the end of things. Instead, the internet browbeat Albany State’s football program for four straight days. Finally, Albany State’s head coach publicly apologized for recruiting Stokes and he revoked Stokes’s scholarship offer.

    Now, you may think that Stokes deserved what he got. But even if that’s the case, Mary Kate Cornett certainly didn’t. Cornett is a 19-year-old student at the University of Mississippi. Cornett became an unwilling internet celebrity this year when she was accused of sleeping with her boyfriend’s dad. The story absolutely blew up on social media. There was just one problem: the story was completely false.

    The Cornett rumor came from YikYak, an app that lets users anonymously circulate gossip. But the rumor’s shaky foundation didn’t stop millions of internet users, including national talk shows, from spreading it. Think about that for a second. An anonymous internet rumor with zero evidence destroyed a 19-year-old girl’s reputation in a matter of days. If you’re a college student, do you really want to risk angering the wrong person by challenging their beliefs?

    While these rumors merely destroy reputations, getting “canceled” for political reasons often involves physical threats. At the University of Texas, for example, a liberal student group threatened and attempted to doxx incoming UT freshman who supported Trump. These threats are not empty, either. Earlier this year, masked protestors disrupted a TPUSA event at UC Berkeley, assaulted the conservative students and destroyed their tent. It’s hard for a student to own their beliefs when they don’t feel safe doing so.

    That brings me to the third problem: weak administrators. Romm and Waldman conducted their study between 2023 and 2024. During that period, pro-Palestine students at Northwestern and Michigan engaged in protests that were often contentious, violent and downright riotous. Both universities indulged these protests for weeks or even months. At Michigan, for example, the university allowed a “pro-Palestine encampment” to exist for almost a month. The university stood by while the protests “descended into violence” and the protestors led “assault[s] on law enforcement officers” (Those are University of Michigan President Santa Ono’s words, not mine). The university finally broke up the encampment because it violated Michigan’s fire code.

    Northwestern indulged a similar encampment and sent faculty members to negotiate with the protestors rather than involve the police. The university’s Dean of Students “attended an anti-Israel protest… targeting Hillel, the school’s Jewish student community center.” And some Northwestern professors dispensed with class attendance requirements and offered make up classes. The University responded merely by “convey[ing] with departments and programs that this is not appropriate.” Northwestern behaved so badly that the Department of Education opened an investigation against the university, citing “widespread antisemitic harassment.”

    When you combine all three elements, you give college students the following message: Your professors and peers all hold certain beliefs. If you challenge those beliefs, then your academic, personal, and professional life may suffer. In fact, you may wake up and find national television hosts discussing horrible (and fake) rumors about you. Your fellow students may even physically assault you. After all, 33 percent of Northwestern students believe violence is justified “to stop a campus speech.” And throughout all of this, the administration will probably sit on its hands.

    Put yourself in a 18-year old student’s shoes. How often would you speak up?

  • Chicago Public Schools have failed. But there’s another option

    Chicago Public Schools have failed. But there’s another option

    Illinois recently released its 2024 Educational Report Card. The grades are, not surprisingly, bleak. Eighty schools reported not a single student who reached grade proficiency in math. Of the state’s low-income students, only 24.6 percent are proficient in reading, and 13.7 percent in math.

    The Chicago Teachers Union – with impeccable grammar and punctuation – blames insufficient funding: “[Governor JB] Pritzker cries poor, he is leaving $10 billion in billionaire and big tech tax breaks on the table. Reversing just a fraction of that windfall would provide [Chicago Public Schools] and all Illinois schools the funds they need to thrive.”

    Not that the CPS or the CTU have proven themselves emblems of fiscal responsibility. CPS is running a $734 million deficit and devotes 7 percent of its funding to debt service. It suffers immense administrative bloat: fewer than half of its 45,965 full-time employees are teachers. Despite falling enrollment rates, its budget balloons every year. Chicago schools face an incredibly difficult task. But to spend $9.9 billion this year alone, while 18,000 students attend zero-proficiency schools? That seems slightly excessive.

    The CTU, meanwhile, charges its teachers $1,410.98 a year and devotes 80 cents on the dollar to campaign donations. Following a 2021 discrimination lawsuit against CPS (not to be confused with the more recent labor negotiation that increased CPS operating costs by $1.5 billion), the union paid its law firm $4 million in fees. It just so happens that the firm is owned by the mother of the union’s vice president, Jackson Potter. The union’s president, Stacy Davis Gates, declared on X that ”*School choice* was actually the choice of racists” while her son was enrolled in a prestigious Catholic school. Not surprisingly, the union maintains a shining 21 percent favorability rating within the state.

    Perhaps it is time to try something new.

    Investing in charter schools is a good first step. According to a 15-year Stanford University study, charter schools across the nation consistently yield higher reading and math outcomes than their public-school counterparts. Few charter-school studies have followed Chicago specifically in recent years, but as of 2017, the city’s charter schools sent 19 percent more of their graduates to four-year colleges than did its district high schools. Yet these charter schools operated on 36 percent less spending per student than mainstream public schools. This disparity could be interpreted in three ways: that charter schools operate efficiently because they must compete for students to enroll; that they are underfunded; or that typical public schools are not so starved for cash as they claim (one Douglass Academy High School spent $93,787 per student in 2024, and 100 percent of its students still failed in math). Regardless of which interpretation you choose, the upshot is that charter schools are succeeding (comparatively, at least) where typical public schools are failing. The very fact that the parents of one in four Chicago high-schoolers choose to enroll in a charter school indicates a higher level of trust than in district schools. Taxpayers ought to be questioning why CPS agreed, in the March labor negotiation, to place a moratorium on the founding of new charter schools.

    Better yet, Illinois could give students the opportunity to escape the dismal public-school system altogether. The state currently offers a 25 percent tax credit for educational expenses such as private-school tuition, but it caps the credit at $750 per family. While this modest break may be nice for middle- to high-income families with students enrolled in private schools, it does not bridge the gap for severely disadvantaged families. Illinois once enabled these low-income students to receive tuition scholarships via its “Invest in Kids” program, which gave a 75 percent tax credit to families and businesses that donated to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). But in 2023, at the behest of you-guessed-who, the CTU, Illinois axed the program.

    Fortunately, Congress has offered Illinois the opportunity to grant school choice to those families whom the public-school system has failed. The Big Beautiful Bill created a 100 percent tax credit – should a state governor or legislature opt-in – to match an individual’s donation to an educational SGO. These organizations then grant scholarships to low-income or disabled students to attend private schools. The new program would cost neither the state of Illinois nor the local public-school district a cent.

    Both CPS and the CTU have failed the students of Illinois. With the federal scholarship program, a 12-year-old in West Garfield Park could attend a private school that invests in children, not political campaigns. Governor Pritzker must decide: will only the wealthy be taught to read?