George Will Chimes In On The State Of The Nation

[dales]

The damaging impact of intellectual emptiness is leading to our inability to distinguish fact from fiction.
By George F. Will |

January 28, 2017 at 5:00 pm



WASHINGTON — In 2013, a college student assigned to research a deadly substance sought help via Twitter: “I can’t find the chemical and physical properties of sarin gas someone please help me.” An expert at a security consulting firm tried to be helpful, telling her that sarin is not gas. She replied, “yes the expletive it is a gas you ignorant `expletive. sarin is a liquid & can evaporate … shut the expletive up.”

Tom Nichols, professor at the U.S. Naval War College and the Harvard Extension School, writing in The Chronicle Review, says such a “storm of outraged ego” is an increasingly common phenomenon among students who, having been taught to regard themselves as peers of their teachers, “take correction as an insult.” Nichols relates this to myriad intellectual viruses thriving in academia. Carried by undereducated graduates, these viruses infect the nation’s civic culture.

Soon the results include the presidential megaphone being used to amplify facially preposterous assertions, e.g., that upward of 5 million illegal votes were cast in 2016. A presidential minion thinks this assertion is justified because it is the president’s “long-standing belief.”

“College, in an earlier time,” Nichols writes, “was supposed to be an uncomfortable experience because growth is always a challenge,” replacing youthful simplicities with adult complexities. Today, college involves the “pampering of students as customers,” particularly by grade inflation in a context of declining academic rigor: A recent study showed “A” to be the most commonly awarded grade, 30 percent more frequent than in 1960. And a 2011 University of Chicago study found that 45 percent of students said that in the previous semester none of their courses required more than 20 pages of writing and 32 percent had no class that required more than 40 pages of reading in a week.

“Unearned praise and hollow successes,” Nichols says, “build a fragile arrogance in students that can lead them to lash out at the first teacher or employer who dispels that illusion, a habit that carries over into a resistance to believe anything inconvenient or challenging in adulthood.” A habit no doubt intensified when adults in high places speak breezily of “alternative facts.”

“Rather than disabuse students of their intellectual solipsism,” Nichols says, “the modern university reinforces it,” producing students given to “taking offense at everything while believing anything.” Many colleges and universities, competing for tuition dollars “too often drawn thoughtlessly from an inexhaustible well of loans,” market a “college experience” rather than an education. The experience “turns into five and, increasingly, six years.” Nichols notes that “the fragility of 21st-century students” results from “the swaddling environment of the modern university” that “infantilizes students” who demand “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces.”

Much attention has been given to the non-college-educated voters who rallied to Trump. Insufficient attention is given to the role of the college miseducated. They, too, are complicit in our current condition because they emerged from their expensive “college experiences” neither disposed nor able to conduct civil, informed arguments. They are thus disarmed when confronted by political people who consider evidence, data and reasoning to be mere conveniences and optional.

For all the talk in high places about emancipating the many from “the elites,” political philosopher Walter Berns was right: The question always is not whether elites will govern but which elites will. And a republic’s challenge is to increase the likelihood that the many will consent to governance by worthy elites. So, how is our republic doing?

What is most alarming about the president and his accomplices in the dissemination of factoids is not that they do not know this or that. And it is not that they do not know what they do not know. Rather, it is that they do not know what it is to know something.

The republican form of government rests on representation: The people do not decide issues, they decide who will decide. Who, that is, will conduct the deliberations that “refine and enlarge” public opinion (Madison, Federalist 10). This system of filtration is vitiated by a plebiscitary presidency, the occupant of which claims a direct, unmediated, almost mystical connection with “the people.”

Soon, presidential enablers, when challenged about their employer’s promiscuous use of “alternative facts,” will routinely use last week’s “justification” of the illegal voting factoid: It is the president’s “long-standing belief,” so there. In his intellectual solipsism, he, too, takes correction as an insult. He resembles many of his cultured despisers in the academy more than he or they

[rubato]

Overgeneralizing writ Yuuge just enormous.

Yet another unsupported screed about what colleges and universities are teaching with zero evidence that it is so. The writer commits the same error T-Rump does; beliefs come first. But in his case he never bothers to find evidence or even know what it would look like. Clue #1 "Anecdotes are not evidence".





yrs,
rubato

[dales]

"Anecdotes are not evidence".

yrs,
rubato

Perhaps you should follow your own advice?

[Lord Jim]

"Anecdotes are not evidence".

yrs,
rubato

Perhaps you should follow your own advice?

Oh come on Dale...

How much fun would that be?

If rube confined himself to posting actual facts, he'd post almost nothing, and the whole humor value of his presence here would be lost...

Don't pay any attention to Dale, rube...

You just keep being you...

[dales]

I'll keep on being "me" along with my secret sock puppet!

[Lord Jim]

(Dale, I would however appreciate if you would fix the typo in Mr. Will's first name in your subject line... )

[wesw]

anecdotes certainly are evidence.

they may not be conclusive evidence, but if you get a collection of em and count up.....

they re evidence

[Lord Jim]

There are many people who are saying that wes is rube's sock puppet...

(I of course am not saying that, but many people are...)

They do seem to have a lot in common in terms of their regard for factual information that contradicts their pre-conceived beliefs...


And I did notice that wes has been complimenting rube:

as much as rube is teased about being a scientist, he does seem to be a data oriented person.

you know, I respect rubato s comment.

as much as I may, or may not disagree with him on issues, he spoke his last post as my understanding of an American.

feel free to guess why I think that.

Hmmm...

"feel free to guess why I think that"...

Hmmm....

"why" indeed...

[Guinevere]

Keep on saying it, LJ, and it becomes, you know, evidence.

[Lord Jim]

Hey, I'm just passing along what many people are saying...

Don't shoot the messenger...

[Joe Guy]

Some people are saying that rubato is wesw's sock puppet and that wesw once went by the name 'jay'. Notice how they don't capitalize the first letter of their names?

Dead giveaway...

[Guinevere]

Even more evidence.

[BoSoxGal]

I taught college for a number of years once upon a time, and I have several close friends who are university faculty in the USA & Canada.

Some college students are assholes & snowflakes, many others are not. I suspect this has always been the case. There are many things about academia which are worthy of criticism, but I don't think it's all on fire.

On another note: It's my several years teaching writing, along with 43 years as a constant reader, that lead me to the firm conviction that Joe is wesw; were such a thing provable one way or the other, as I've said before, I'd stake all my modest wealth on the assertion. Most of the time Joe does okay with the charade, but in a handful of wesw' posts the facade has slipped and Joe's hand has shown through clearly, IMNSHO.

It has recently occurred to me however that wesw's presence here has been a catalyst for much board activity since he first appeared on the scene, and certainly without him there wouldn't be a regular, prolific poster and Trump acolyte to rail against - so I suppose he serves a psychological purpose beyond what itch the ruse scratches in Joe's pathology.

[Joe Guy]

On another note: It's my several years teaching writing, along with 43 years as a constant reader, that lead me to the firm conviction that Joe is wesw; were such a thing provable one way or the other, as I've said before, I'd stake all my modest wealth on the assertion. Most of the time Joe does okay with the charade, but in a handful of wesw' posts the facade has slipped and Joe's hand has shown through clearly, IMNSHO.

It wouldn't take much to prove you wrong but I'm not interested in your money and I don't need to prove anything to anyone.

I can't speak for anyone else though...

[Guinevere]

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12905&p=160347&hili ... oe#p160347

It was a joke! Or was it.....

[Joe Guy]

Aha! You are actually BSG. I can tell because I taught several people reading and I'm a constant writer...

[Econoline]

Up until your last post, BSG, I wasn't quite sure if you were serious or just playing along with the joke. I remember when "kmccune" and "wesw" showed up at Le Chat House (at the invitation of MGMcAnick, who found them over at the current incarnation of the Car Talk forums). IIRC* both Joe and I mentioned Plan B to them as a somewhat less-sedate discussion forum, and I'm quite sure that Joe and wes (and kevin, for that matter) are different people.

(Now wes and "jay"...? I'm not so sure. )


* ...which I may not actually be doing: it's possible that I only thought about mentioning Plan B to those two new arrivals, and didn't follow through after Joe beat me to it. But I think I did say something, too.