That’s a really well-written article, and this kind of restructuring is happening all over the place. The university I taught at in the UK was very obvious in their intent to instrumentalize students to serve the needs of future employers. At one point I was asked to contextualize every assessment in the context of one of a list of “employability outcomes.” KPMG was hired (at great expense) to spin a narrative about department profitability in order to remove underperforming degree programs.
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Agreed on both counts.
West Virginians, trapped in the clutches of economic hardship, find themselves mercilessly shackled to a state most can ill afford to abandon, left to suffer the full weight of the WVU administration’s harrowing decisions. We will learn only subjects aligned with the preferences of the rich, driven by their financial motivations. We will work for the oligarchs for the rest of our lives, just like our parents and our grandparents did for the global coal industry. We will continue to amass inconceivable riches for the nation’s privileged elite until our last breath, and we will find our resting place in unadorned cardboard coffins beneath West Virginia soil.
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Thats the history of WV in a nutshell. Beautiful state, lovely people, screwed mercilessly for generations.
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In good news for a change, Bridgewater College here just slashed tuition from $40k to $15k.
Kinda shocking, honestly. But hopeful.
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[shocked not shocked gif]
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This is, um, frustrating:
As far as I can tell, Brandeis has no justification for cutting these programs, except that they aren’t science.
This treatment coming for all the humanities and social sciences… Those are now only for the rich and wealthy, and the rest of us need to be pushed into “practical” job training… It’s enraging.
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Totally enraging. and I’m not even sure it’s about “jobs,” so much as “the right jobs.” I was with a colleabue in Theatre at a “Parents Night” recruiting event. SOme parent was going on and on about Music and Theatre, and “dead end majors” that “lead to the unemployment line.” My friend politely pointed out that Theatre has the highest employment at graduation number of an major on campus (100%, for several years running). The parent paused, and shifted to “Yeah, but I mean ‘good jobs.’” WTF?
Fuck that noise.
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good jobs
So much is wrapped up in that. It seems to mean “jobs that put money in the pockets of rich dudes.” Even medical training is being cut here, even though nurses and doctors are sorely needed and the earnings in these professions are relatively high. They don’t “create wealth,” though.
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We have evolved into a system where those who actually make the society a better place are penalized to promote those who gather more wealth for their masters. Doctors, teachers, therapists, artists, authors and poets are all in a bucket of “takers” together. Bankers, stockbrokers and “wealth managers” are the ones that make real money and carry the prestige. It’s a broken system we are bequeathing to our children, man.
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Quiet kids, timed lessons: How HISD’s first day went for schools in Mike Miles’ NES program
The first day of school, typically, is a day for ice breakers and introductions, a day when kids excitedly catch up with friends and get comfortable with the teachers responsible for their education over the next nine months.
That wasn’t the case Monday at Houston ISD on the first day of classes under the leadership of state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles, who toured two schools in his New Education System. There were no “what I did this summer” activities or getting-to-know-you games. What Miles saw instead was his vision for rigorous instruction from day one fully realized.
Students sat silently, pencils scratching, as they worked on the “demonstration of learning” worksheets that they’ll be required to complete every day in their core classes. Teachers taught from PowerPoint presentations developed by HISD’s central office, with a livestream of the class projected on an adjacent wall — the same stream a student would watch from a laptop were they to act out in class and be sent to one of the school’s “Team Centers,” some of which have replaced their school’s libraries.
That kind of discipline wasn’t necessary Monday morning, though, at Forest Brook Middle School or Shadydale Elementary School, two of the 85 NES and NES-aligned schools where Miles’ most sweeping reforms will be instituted this year. Classroom doors were wide open, but the hallways were eerily quiet; lessons were being implemented too efficiently to leave time for students to talk, let alone scream, at each other.
The article goes on to further describe a new school day there and it sounds like torture for both students and teachers.
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As intended. The real goal is the same since desegregation - make public schools fail to justify public money going to fund private religious schools that can be legally segregated. 
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Apparently not every state requires reporting of homeschooling. And homeschooling is on the rise for many of the reasons we can think of, including conservatives keeping their kids home to protect them from “woke” and liberals worried about conservatism choking out diversity and expression in schools.
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These are probably the same people complaining about the SAG/AFTRA strike on the basis that actors are already “overpaid.”
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No need for students to write “essays” anymore. Just have them scribble thoughts in class and then revise it into…something? 
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