Education

Luigi Mangione is officially the “suspect” in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, but he is plainly the culprit, and public discussion has moved on to his motives. Why would a young man possessed of intellectual gifts, friends, family, good looks, a winning personality and, apparently, lots of money, gun down a man he had never met? This isn’t the kind of question my organization, the National Association of Scholars, normally takes up. We concern ourselves more with academic standards and questions of state and federal policy. But I’ve been nudged several times with questions about Luigi’s academic background. This has two parts: Luigi’s high school and Luigi’s college.

“Record drops in teen math and reading scores.” “National Math, Reading Scores Hit Historic Lows.” “Test Scores Flashing Red!” The headlines roll in weekly, each more alarming than the last. In February, twenty-six schools in Baltimore failed to bring a single student up to the most basic math requirements. The same month, sixty-seven schools in Illinois couldn’t produce a single proficient reader. We’ve reached a national education crisis, and its roots run deeper than many are willing to admit. The pressing question is: why can’t America produce proficient students? But perhaps a more crucial question is: why can’t America produce proficient teachers?

You’ve got to hand it to President Biden — when he puts his mind to something he doesn’t let mere semantics like the rule of law stop him. Despite an earlier Supreme Court slap down, “Middle Class Joe” provided an upper-class gift to some 150,000 college graduates in the form of $1.2 billion in student loan forgiveness. That brings total educational loan forgiveness under this White House to $137 billion effectuated by nothing more than a stroke of Biden’s pen via executive order. Biden openly boasted of his defiance, all but inviting the justices to try to stop his patronage gambit. It’s not that anyone can blame him, because it’s a political win-win for the White House.

The idea that Western civilization ushered in an age of oppression, cultural destruction, environmental degradation and all manner of human exploitation, is bittersweet. I don’t mean that it tastes like coffee or dark chocolate. I mean bittersweet the vine, Celastrus orbiculatus, with the colorful orange-red berries. This kind of bittersweet grows at a phenomenal rate, ascending into the canopy and strangling trees. If you drive north out of New York City, you will pass endless miles of arboreal carnage. Tens of thousands of roadside trees are draped in the deadly vine. It is an invasive Asian species that, once established, is impossible to eradicate. And while its fall berries are attractive and make for good floral arrays, they are inedible.

The new school year is just a few weeks away, and that can only mean one thing: right on cue, school districts are once again bemoaning a “lack of funding.” It’s the same story every year. Along with notices advertising the local high school drama department’s production of Grease come headlines announcing the school district is in dire straits and schools will literally fall to pieces if they aren’t pumped full of life-saving funding, stat. Year after year, it’s the same old song and dance: school funding increases, and the next year they need even more. Why is it never enough, though, and where does all the money go?

I have been pondering ways to rescue young Americans from the trouble and often the waste of the four-year undergraduate college education. Many young people as I recently pointed out are looking for alternatives. But there aren’t very many good ones. In what follows, I propose we put some of these discontented souls in a ship and sail them around the world. It is not entirely a new idea, and before I turn my rudder in that direction, I’d like to survey the horizon. Once, long ago, I was asked by the senior administration of my university to look after the playboy son of a wealthy European family who had decided to enroll in an undergraduate degree program. He was handsome, smooth, reckless and not very bright.