יום ראשון, 13 באפריל 2003
Thomas Sowell Inside American Education
The quality is uneven; a few chapters are very good while others disappoint. Sowell is at his best when he looks at universities and their incentives from the point of view of an economist.
In "Damaging Admissions" he takes apart the "Tuition only covers 2/3 of the cost of educating you" nonsense. (What the 2/3 number really means is, "From sources other than tuition, we are able to raise 50% more.") The picture emerges of (some) universities as the venal oligopolists they truly are.
In "New Racism and Old Dogmatism" he explains how the policy of racial preferences has radicalized the beneficiaries of that policy; unable to compete on conventional academic criteria, students -- as well as their professors -- rationalize their academic shortcomings by dismissing academic standards altogether and blaming racism in often absurd ways. At the same time, a vicious campaign of intimidation and ostracism targets those blacks who do not toe the ideological line. I have not seen a more forceful condemnation of "Affirmative Action" anywhere.
"New Racism and Old Dogmatism" and "Ideological Double Standards" are rich sources of anecdotes about the hypocrisy and intolerance of the campus left-wing establishment. This is very good stuff, if not as wide-ranging as Dinesh D'Souza's _Illiberal Education_.
Some chapters are not so good. "Impaired Faculties" is about the intellectual poverty of Education Schools, their professors and their products (schoolteachers), but it's mostly too vague. The same can be said of "The Empire Strikes Back", the chapter on schoolteachers'unions. The chapters about political indoctrination of schoolchildren are specific enough, relating some truly outrageous anecdotes, but I was left unsure if these are the exception or the rule.
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