Wall Road Journal Op-Ed:  School Ought to Be Extra Like Jail, by Brooke Allen (Hudson Overview):

Many people who care deeply about training within the humanities can solely really feel despair on the state of our establishments of “greater” studying. Enrollment in these topics is plummeting, and college students who take literature and historical past lessons usually are available in with rudimentary concepts concerning the disciplines. Interviewed in a latest New Yorker article, Prof. James Shapiro of Columbia stated educating “Middlemarch” to in the present day’s faculty college students is like touchdown a 747 on a rural airstrip. Expertise reminiscent of messaging apps, digital crib sheets and ChatGPT, which is able to write essays on demand, has created a tradition of informal dishonest.

By no means have I been extra grateful to show the place I do: at a males’s maximum-security jail. My college students there, enrolled in a for-credit faculty program, present a pointy distinction with up to date undergraduates. These males are extremely motivated and hard-working. They have an inclination to learn every task two or thrice earlier than coming to class and take notes as nicely. A few of them have been incarcerated for 20 or 30 years and have been studying books all that point. They’d maintain their very own in any graduate seminar. That they’ve had tough experiences out in the actual world means they’re much less liable to fall prey to facile ideologies. A big proportion of them are black and Latino, and whereas they could not like David Hume’s or Thomas Jefferson’s concepts on race, they need to learn these authors anyway. They need, briefly, to be part of the centuries-long dialog that makes up our civilization. The lessons are sometimes essentially the most fascinating a part of these males’s jail lives. In some circumstances, they’re the one fascinating half.