My daughter is about to graduate from Stanford University’s Online High School, which she has attended for 6 years (junior and high school). My son graduated there in 2019 and attends a woke university in D.C. (a description that doesn’t exactly help narrow it down, does it?). While it certainly has in some ways succumbed to the woke vir…
My daughter is about to graduate from Stanford University’s Online High School, which she has attended for 6 years (junior and high school). My son graduated there in 2019 and attends a woke university in D.C. (a description that doesn’t exactly help narrow it down, does it?). While it certainly has in some ways succumbed to the woke virus that infects most elite institutions (an entire semester of Foucault in AP English, canceling Twain, etc.) we have managed to inoculate her reasonably well against this lunatic ideology with robust, candid discussions around the family table over the thousands of dinners of her youth. She was just accepted to a host of elite universities, Ivy leagues included, but is choosing to defer to pursue her dream of a career in professional ballet. She leaves this fall to dance at an equally elite European ballet school, and she hopes to land a job dancing with the company, or its equivalent. Watching her brother navigate the straits of cancel culture-obsessed academia has had a chilling effect on her. She realizes too well that, in the age of the internet, no one is prevented from learning anything; all it takes is a network connection and desire. Ours is a high net worth, education-focused family (my husband and I have post-graduate degrees; our son interviewed years ago at H-W but turned them down)—yet we fully endorse her decision to delay and perhaps, if her dance dream is realized, totally forego a college education. What colleges—and now, sadly, high schools—offer isn’t the liberal education my husband and I received. As far as I can tell, “critical thinking” at these institutions is all about criticism: tearing down anything and anyone not adherent to woke, anti-racist orthodoxy. It’s regressive, and I believe it will reveal itself as a woefully inadequate preparation for living life in an adult world.
My daughter is about to graduate from Stanford University’s Online High School, which she has attended for 6 years (junior and high school). My son graduated there in 2019 and attends a woke university in D.C. (a description that doesn’t exactly help narrow it down, does it?). While it certainly has in some ways succumbed to the woke virus that infects most elite institutions (an entire semester of Foucault in AP English, canceling Twain, etc.) we have managed to inoculate her reasonably well against this lunatic ideology with robust, candid discussions around the family table over the thousands of dinners of her youth. She was just accepted to a host of elite universities, Ivy leagues included, but is choosing to defer to pursue her dream of a career in professional ballet. She leaves this fall to dance at an equally elite European ballet school, and she hopes to land a job dancing with the company, or its equivalent. Watching her brother navigate the straits of cancel culture-obsessed academia has had a chilling effect on her. She realizes too well that, in the age of the internet, no one is prevented from learning anything; all it takes is a network connection and desire. Ours is a high net worth, education-focused family (my husband and I have post-graduate degrees; our son interviewed years ago at H-W but turned them down)—yet we fully endorse her decision to delay and perhaps, if her dance dream is realized, totally forego a college education. What colleges—and now, sadly, high schools—offer isn’t the liberal education my husband and I received. As far as I can tell, “critical thinking” at these institutions is all about criticism: tearing down anything and anyone not adherent to woke, anti-racist orthodoxy. It’s regressive, and I believe it will reveal itself as a woefully inadequate preparation for living life in an adult world.