From the left: Smart Phones Mean Dumb Kids
“Students who spend more time staring at their phone do worse in school, distract other students around them and feel worse about their life,” reports The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson. Data from the Program for International Student Assessment show that “students who spend less than one hour of ‘leisure’ time on digital devices a day at school scored about 50 points higher in math than students whose eyes are glued to their screens more than five hours a day,” that “screens seem to create a general distraction throughout school, even for students who aren’t always looking at them,” and that “nearly half of students across the [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] said that they felt ‘nervous’ or ‘anxious’ when they didn’t have their digital devices near them.”
Campus watch: Ivies’ Path to Self-Destruction
“Jewish enrollment is down across much of the Ivy League” and those “who are admitted increasingly feel uncomfortable on campus,” scowls Tevi Troy at City Journal. Despite these schools’ commitment to “safe spaces,” they “are strangely silent about anti-Semitism” and seem “implicitly supportive of acts of intimidation and violent protest.” The Jewish situation on elite campuses evokes “historical parallels”: Nations that have antagonized Jews and “have seen Jews flee in response, often were experiencing a deeper rot and corruption.” Now “we may be seeing something similar at elite American universities” that are “rejecting their liberal foundations at the same time that hostility to Jews rises.” “Anti-pluralism” and “anti-intellectualism” drive the effort to block Jewish admissions and “mute” those who make it in. It’s an “indication that elite universities are acting as parties to their own destruction.”
Eye on Harvard: Worse Than Ignorance
Harvard University President Claudine Gay haughtily told a congressional panel: “Anti-Semitism is a symptom of ignorance, and the cure for ignorance is knowledge.” Sneers Cory Franklin at Spiked: Implicit in that remark is the thinking “We are Harvard, we cannot be ignorant. So we can’t be anti-Semitic.” But it’s “not entirely surprising that anti-Semitism would fester among the most highly educated.” Contrary to Gay, three researchers found that “ ‘education appears to provide no protection against anti-Semitism, and may in fact serve to license it.’ ” With a substantial number of “young people who don’t believe the Holocaust occurred,” the problem is “a deep one” — and simply firing Gay “would likely do nothing to diminish anti-Semitism at Harvard.”
Conservative: Democrats’ Israel Problem
Sen. Chuck Schumer “said that the latest wave of antisemitism” provoked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities “was coming from ‘people that most liberal Jewish Americans felt previously were their ideological fellow travelers,’ ” notes The Spectator’s Ben Domenech. But Dems put those people “at the podium” and gave them “glossy profiles.” Now, “Democrats have a massive Israel problem.” Indeed, “the fundamental problem” is “that “from the river to the sea” is by no means out of step with the principles” of the progressive left. “The academic left taught them to think, the Democrats bought them a mega-phone — and now they are shouting through it.” The question now: “When the Biden-Pelosi generation is gone, who will be left to stop them?”
Education beat: Home Schooling Under Attack
“The knives are out for home schooling,” warns The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Hennessey, citing a “spate of critical articles.” During the pandemic, some parents saw how their kids were being taught, didn’t like it, switched to home schooling and stuck with it afterward. Now “somebody somewhere has decided this experiment has gone on long enough.” The public-education “blob wants its monopoly back.” “As always these days,” the claim is “democracy itself is at stake,” though if “a free people don’t have the freedom to raise their kids as they see fit, democracy is already in trouble.” Money actually drives the attacks, at least in part. “But it’s mainly about freedom. There’s a certain type of person who thinks too much of that is a bad thing.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
Source link: https://nypost.com/2023/12/25/opinion/smart-phones-mean-dumb-kids-worse-than-ignorance-and-other-commentary/