Current Wisdom 2012
People are still saying wise things, although usually off campus. In collecting the wisdom from the past year, that’s where we found most of the sagacious sayings.
In a couple of cases, we had to reach a bit beyond the grave, to John Maynard Keynes and Whitaker Chambers. How’s that for diversity? Nevertheless, what they had to say sounds surprisingly contemporary.
Here is Accuracy in Academia’s compendium of current wisdom for 2012 in two parts. Yes, we found that much:
November 27, 2012
“Over the last thirty years, America’s test-prep companies have grown from almost nothing into a $5 billion annual industry, allowing the affluent to provide an admissions edge to their less able children.”–Ron Unz, The American Conservative, December 2012
November 20, 2012
From the blog of John Ray, Education International comes the following: Keynes did get some things right. His comment on education seems positively prophetic: “Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”
November 14, 2012
“What other conclusion is possible when, to reach for the handiest exhibit, it is seen that the Republican Party has been able to rule only by becoming a socialist party, and there is a strong likelihood that it will be voted out of power in favor of the more knowingly socializing Democrats?”—Whitaker Chambers, 1957.
October 9, 2012
“What we call basic skills are only ‘basic’ because they are one aspect of the cultural capital of the middle class.”—Southern University Professor Lisa Delpit
September 17, 2012
“Utopia: That’s more of an ideal than a reality.” Sally L. Kitch, professor of women’s and gender studies, Arizona State University at ASU symposium, “Are we losing our humanity?,” National Press Club, September 7, 2012.
September 6, 2012
“In college, the views academics impress upon their students are all too frequently based on partisan progressive politics, radical professorial notions or hypotheses masquerading as well-established theories — for example, anthropogenic global warming.”—meteorologist Anthony J. Sadar.
August 30, 2012
“College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.”—U. S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc.
August 27, 2012
“I’ve spent most of my life in academia, and can say with some conviction that most professors have no friends or colleagues who are out-of-the-closet traditionalists.”—Robert Maranto (rmaranto@uark.edu) , 21st Century chair in Leadership at the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.
August 23, 2012
“You know that a lot of people don’t have a big imagination, even with sixth-graders, their imagination is slowly dying, so you have to continue to dream big and you can do great things in life.”—Imaginative sixth-grader Gabrielle Williams
August 16, 2012
“The ‘everybody gets a trophy!’ school of thought does not make students confident, but renders them cynical.”— Douglas B. Reeves, founder of The Leadership and Learning Center
July 24, 2012
“It may be summer time, but some college campuses never take a break from P.C. indoctrination.”—Michelle Malkin
July 2, 2012
“No child who goes to these schools should get through them without being humiliated.”—Charles Murray, on the state of higher education, in remarks at the Fordham Institute, June 26, 2012.
June 25, 2012
“Thwarting banditry is a positive good.” Jacksonville State University economist Christopher Westley
June 21, 2012
“In reality, the state does nothing else but redistribute and serve its own purposes.”— Deepak Lal at The Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, June 19, 2012.
May 29, 2012
“A ‘social justice bill of rights’ might begin, ‘Government must provide…’ a home, car, job, French bulldog puppy, whatever.”—Jonah Goldberg , The Tyranny of Cliché`s.
May 25, 2012
“Unfortunately, the idea that a small, enlightened elite should guide the ignorant people to what is good for them, even at the cost of misleading them, has become more prevalent in America.”—Luigi Zingales, a professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the University of Chicago.
May 7, 2012
“Why is it that the language of allegory, once generally understood by our culture as a whole, has been banished from our nation’s sacred sites so completely that one needs to spot naïve roadside memorials to find unambiguous statements of grief and love?”—Michael J. Lewis, the Faison-Pierson-Stoddard Professor of Art at Williams College
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail contact@academia.org.
Malcolm A. Kline
Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail contact@academia.org.
