American Duh

This Stinks!

“ April 17, 1991, was a heady day for Benno C. Schmidt Jr. and Donald Kagan. Beaming triumphantly at a news conference, then-President Schmidt and Kagan, who was dean of Yale College, announced some spectacular news: Lee Bass '79 would be giving Yale $20 million. It was an unusual gift for the University, not only because of its size, but because of the specificity of its academic purpose: the study of Western Civilization. Schmidt hailed the gift as "one of the largest and most inspired ever received by Yale. But four years later, Yale's new President, Richard C. Levin, found himself giving Bass his money back. - Bass, Yale, and Western Civ. The money was returned - at Bass's request - because the Yale faculty, in a nutshell, bristled over the condition that Western Civilization be taught at Yale, and refused to go along.  Multiculturalism had gained its foothold in elite academia; angst poetry written by a Ethiopian rug merchant trumped Plato and Churchill.  Today's announcement then, while no real surprise, a formality really, is, I dunno, like your dad dying after a long bout of cancer.  You knew it was coming, but the finality of it is shocking. The End of History in America's Classrooms “ Earlier this year, Massachusetts and New York, blaming budget troubles, pulled the plug on their state tests in U.S. history. Given the strident union rhetoric against “high-stakes” testing— America's Federation of Teachers’ Randi Weingarten has accused reformers of turning schools into “Test Prep, Inc.”—one would have expected social studies teachers in the two states to be elated. Instead, they were outraged. Don’t know much about history…