Category Archives: Kids

The Daily Northwestern, A Newspaper, Says ‘No’ To Journalism

English, Free Speech, Journalism, Kids, Media

Woke journalism puts feelings before facts.

The background to the latest campus snowflake storm comes straight from the horse’s mouth (with apologies to horses). Writes The Daily Northwestern (in crappy English and style):

former Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke on campus at a Northwestern University College Republicans event. The Daily sent a reporter to cover that talk and another to cover the students protesting his invitation to campus, along with a photographer.

We recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced, and we wanted to apologize for and address the mistakes that we made that night — along with how we plan to move forward.

One area of our reporting that harmed many students was our photo coverage of the event. Some protesters found photos posted to reporters’ Twitter accounts retraumatizing and invasive. Those photos have since been taken down. On one hand, as the paper of record for Northwestern, we want to ensure students, administrators and alumni understand the gravity of the events that took place Tuesday night. However, we decided to prioritize the trust and safety of students who were photographed. We feel that covering traumatic events requires a different response than many other stories. While our goal is to document history and spread information, nothing is more important than ensuring that our fellow students feel safe — and in situations like this, that they are benefitting from our coverage rather than being actively harmed by it. We failed to do that last week, and we could not be more sorry [SIC] …

And so it goes. If only this tinny denunciation of basic journalistic practices was, at least, written with some flare.

MORE of the mea culpa: “Addressing The Daily’s coverage of Sessions protests.”

NEW COLUMN: Update II (12/20/019): Conservative Kids Must Learn Before They Lead

Capitalism, China, Conservatism, Critique, Culture, Education, Intelligence, Kids, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Reason

NEW COLUMN: “Conservative Kids Must Learn Before They Lead.” Read it on The Unz Review or WND.COM.

An excerpt:

To judge by their writing, the youngsters who’ve been given the run of the conservative op-ed pages, pixelated and printed, know little about how socialism differs from capitalism.

To their credit, they’ve chosen a side—the right side—but are incapable of arguing the morality of capitalism and its efficacy (which stems from its morality).

Discredited are their employers for failing to demand that their young, conservative charges methodically and creatively motivate for the right—and the Right—side.

Endeavoring to explain the oft-repeated banality that, “Colleges are turning young people [into] socialists,” one such prototypical writer says this in her dog’s breakfast of a column, for the Washington Examiner:

“Students are gullible and moldable because they have little conviction and no foundation. Too often, public universities teach students to accept basic, shallow ‘knowledge’ at face value. They are not trained to ask why this knowledge matters or how it influences the rest of their education or how it relates to higher principles.”

The writer at once, and incoherently, condemns “shallow knowledge” (whatever that is), yet laments that students are not taught to relate “shallow knowledge” to higher principles. What does this even mean?!

Such bafflegab is published absent the telltale signs of editorial oversight. Or, perhaps the editors of the Examiner and publications like it think that voicing an opinion is the same as advancing an argument.

However, meandering assertions, circular arguments, non sequiturs and assorted banal utterances don’t belong on editorial pages. Agile argument does.

The piece continues in this puerile vain, conjuring the catchphrase that currently precedes every sentence spoken by a millennial: “I feel like.”

“I feel like” columns and essays are a dime a dozen; their purveyors having procured plum positions in the conservative press.

That “students are not learning” in schools and are thus gravitating to socialism is beyond trite—it’s also a non sequitur. For one would have to argue that lack of learning leads to socialism, and not merely assert it.

In showcasing amateurish, intern-quality material in national forums, conservatives are letting the liberal credo guide them. …

… READ THE REST.  NEW COLUMN: “Conservative Kids Must Learn Before They Lead.” Read it on The Unz Review or WND.COM.

Updated I (11/28/019):

You can’t think critically when there is nothing between your ears: On Critical Thinking: We can only think critically about things about which we have knowledge.”

Update II (12/20/019):

‘How Dare You’: Greta Thunberg Thunders Death Metal. Growl on Grrreta.

Education, English, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Kids, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Music

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This is a keeper.

In defense of this poor, singularly charmless girl, Greta Thunberg’s facility with English and her terse, to-the-point compositional skills are way better than those of her “high-achieving,” verbally diarrhetic and ungrammatical American peers.

Growl on Grrreta.

UPDATED (9/27/019): Barely Literate Pre-Teens Dominate Climate-Change Conversation

Education, English, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Globalism, Intelligence, Kids

Unlike climate change, here is something that is not in dispute. These two, pre-teen, self-styled climate activists pictured here are barely literate. Hear them for yourself.

The girl, Ridhima Pandey (11), proves that American, teenybopper English has been exported successfully to India. The word that informs Pandey’s “thinking” on climate change is … “Like,” repeated lots of times.

Another opinionated kid, Carl Smith, 17, joined Ali Velshi on MSNBC, to prove nothing more than that their generation struggles to express the simplest idea in coherent English.

Did the so-called adult in the room give these two some desperately needed corrective feedback? Naturally not.

To the contrary: MSNBC’s Ali Velshi told incoherent kid Ridhima Pandey that she was “forcing a smarter conversation on the climate,” when she’s not.

Cleverer Kids like the wild-eyed, unhinged Greta Thunberg are right about one thing: The adults who groom them are big liars.

UPDATE (9/27/019): Grrrreta has a future. I kinda like this version of Greta Thunberg quite a bit: