Summer Squabbles

~ Laura

Photo by Somesh Kesarla Suresh on Unsplash

When I was an education journalist, I would typically not work in the summer. Flexibility is the one perk of a being a freelancer, after all. It just didn’t make sense to write articles about schools in the summer time. 

Because parents are busy with camp schedules and trips to Disney, education articles are not read. Teachers and professors are too hard to track down for quotes or input, because they are also driving their kids to camp and to the beach. And, foundations and think tanks also know the scene and don’t release any new studies during that time. So, why bother? I was plenty busy with my own mom-stuff at that time anyway. 

But this has been an unusually active education summer. The Supreme Court decisions to overturn Biden’s student loan program and to strike down Affirmative Action in college admissions certainly heated things up, but there also a lot of low level discontent out there, which I’m picking up even in random comments in conversations with friends. If things are at a low simmer right now, this fall should be very, very interesting.

Read more at Apt. 11D, the newsletter

Published by Laura

19 thoughts on “Summer Squabbles”

  1. Glad I’m still getting some of your links here, since Twitter (X?) is gone for me now. At first, after logging out, I could still search for your links and then when that stopped working, I could use the links at this blog, but that now just shows your most popular links.

    I’m am of confused mind about the role of access to elite colleges as a public concern. I entirely agree that these colleges do not provide access to college for most, where the numbers and cost play a much bigger role. Schools that educate lots of students for lower cost play that role for the non-rich. But, as my kid said when he looked at For Most College Students, Affirmative Action Was Never Enough, and said, but these <10% colleges still matter, because they are who "run the country". I was not convinced by the Chetty analysis in the most recent reports on whether that was really true. How big a role do they play? There's a tipping point in which the college brand becomes a qualification (i.e. supreme court justices), but are we there in the US? But anecdotally, the privileges do seem to be amplified. Kristof tried to use himself "rural bumpkin" admitted to Harvard as an example of diversity. Though as a "bumpkin" with parents who were professors, he was an example of someone already leveraging the system. And, now, his three children (all of whom went to Harvard — shocking, right?) are leveraging it further, with tweets by their journalist father about their writing before they went to Harvard and starting a cider/wine farm with their parents. The Kristof kids get to leverage through their parents and Harvard and kids who went to school with the Kristof kids leverage through the Kristof kids (and Kristof) (yes, I engaged in google searching the Kristoff/WuDunn kids (found 2, Gregory & Caroline).

    It would be better if that wasn't how you got coverage in the media or hired by the media (by knowing a Kristof or a Kristof kid) but as long as it is, there's a level where those schools matter.

    Like

    1. Found the orchard: https://newschoolbeer.com/home/2021/10/kristof-orchard-cider-launch

      To be fair, I wouldn’t describe this as “Starting a cider/wine farm with their parents.” A better description would be “helping the parents’ farm diversify its product range.” As the adult children are the third generation, this isn’t something you can lay at Harvard’s door.

      100 acres is on the small side for a farm.

      As an aside, if anyone tells you farming is the route to wealth…run away.

      Like

    2. I am not sure what “laying this at Harvard’s door” would mean for what I’m musing about. I think that I am thinking about the legacy benefits Kristof & WuDunn (of which their elite degrees are part) are transmitting to their progeny while imagining themselves to be different from the really elite (Kennedy/Roosevelt/ . . . .).

      Like

      1. I think we agree on a common point re: the media. The big names seem to have become nepotistic and sheltered. I miss the viewpoint of the common man in reporting. That’s likely also due to the rise of journalism programs, which probably tilts the profession toward the children of people able to pay college tuition for a journalism degree.

        The collapse of many local papers doesn’t help.

        The media focuses on Harvard too much, which inflates its perceived influence. Living in the same state, I know a fair number of Harvard grads, and many are not titans of anything. It’s not a golden ticket.

        Like

  3. Hey, guys. I haven’t really abandoned you. Been super busy with some unbloggable blog stuff. Hours and hours doing stuff that I can’t talk about at this time. Ah, well. It’s almost over.

    Like

      3. Yeah. I wasn’t very sick, but I think the moral of the story is that I should have worn a mask in the airport. But it had been almost 3 and a half years without getting it and I haven’t taken any protective measures in a long time, except when I knew I would see ill relatives.

        Like

    2. I hope it all ends well. 🙂 I’m having a summer of transition – took a job in higher ed comms, and got a (rescue, St. Bernard/Bernese mix) puppy. Not the smartest combination of things but we realized with my MIL living with us, we’d better get the puppy phase out of the way while she’s not-frail.

      I was at a higher ed conference (advancement-focused) in the US last week and the mood was sometimes somber – really eye opening to hear how things are on the ground there. The collection of people and experts in the room made me pretty happy though – people doing their best to do good work. The coming enrollment cliff is interesting.

      Like

  4. Masks are just about gone in NZ. You see the odd person at the supermarket wearing one – and some people at airports (usually on the outward leg of their voyage – no one wants to get sick at the beginning of their holiday)
    My GP still has masks (as do the hospitals) – but TBH I think that’s just protection against general respiratory infections – not specific to Covid.

    But, we are having a very low infection rate and hospitalization rate – just ticking away at about the ‘flu level. Remembering it’s winter here – and a very nasty wet and cold one it’s been, too. So it’s surprising that hospitalization with complications from Covid hasn’t been higher.
    The only explanation seems to be that most people have caught it, have a reasonably high immune system response, and there hasn’t been a ‘deadly’ strain evolving (in fact, Covid is doing what viruses always do, and evolving to become more contagious and less deadly).

    Like

    1. I think it’s actually “less deadly and more contagious”, because the really deadly ones don’t get as good a chance to infect more and more people.

      Covid in wastewater monitoring is going up in the US, though hospitalization/deaths have not really ticked up, suggesting that the virus is causing less significant diseases. (for which one would expect that vaccinations, not just prior infections play a significant role)

      Like

      1. We had one of the highest Covid vaccination rates on the planet last winter – and still had really high infection and hospitalization rates. A lot of people caught Covid despite being vaccinated.
        This winter – sharply dropping vaccination rates – Covid infections lower (some of that is failind to report) *but* very significantly lower hospitalizations.

        Like

  5. Two branches of the extended family have had summer plans influenced by Covid. This weekend I drove two hours to pick up a young relative when the friend he was visiting – who had been teaching at a summer camp – tested positive (and had symptoms). The kid sat in the back seat, we left the windows open, and both masked, and happily he hasn’t gotten it. So the rest of the vacation should go as planned! It’s a big deal bc we have an immunocompromised person along.

    New England is lovely, lovely, lovely right now. Everyone should get to have a vacation by the lake where it is sunny and 78 degrees.

    Like

    1. “New England is lovely, lovely, lovely right now. ”

      Can confirm. We did the most gorgeous bike ride on the Cape on Sunday.

      Like

Comments are closed.