James Hankins, a Harvard historian, has written an astute essay for the Martin Center about the difficulties facing a graduate student who wants to study traditional history. Such a student is one “who dislikes mixing contemporary politics into every historical dish and is out of sympathy with the perfervid evangelism of the modern progressive academy.”
These potential students, whom he calls conservative (but may not be conservative in the usual sense, just eager to study traditional history), are increasingly avoiding the academy. They find themselves out of sync with “social justice” agendas, and sympathetic would-be mentors are increasingly entering retirement.
I highly recommend Hankins’ article. In addition, it gives me a timely opportunity (in journalism, a “news peg”) to share my own experience as a history graduate student at North Carolina State University, from which I will soon receive a master’s degree. Continue reading “How to Be a Graduate Student in 2020”
In my last column, “A Blot on the Poor Law,” I noted an unintended consequence of England’s poor law: It made possible “pauper apprentices.” Had the poor law not been in existence, parishes would not have sent large numbers of children to the textile mills, where they worked long hours and were sometimes cruelly treated.
I hope my readers aren’t tired of the English poor laws because, after a year or two of research, something has occurred to me that I had completely missed. There is a flaw I didn’t see. Continue reading “A Blot on the Poor Law”
The First World War is endlessly fascinating—to historians, to the public, and to me. It was so devastating, so unexpected, and it set in motion thirty years of war and turmoil. By 1990, 25,000 books and articles had been published on the subject [1] (and I have read four major books published since then, the latest being July 1914 by Sean McMeekin) [2]. No one can stop trying to answer the fundamental question, Why did it happen?
Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Jay Schalin, director of policy analysis at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal in Raleigh, North Carolina.
As somebody who is right in the middle of the “boomer” generation, I often hear or read my peers lamenting the good old days in education, before the radicalization of the late 1960s and 1970s ushered in disastrous changes.
What they fail to realize is that the K-12 education we received in the post-World War II era was not only already severely degraded, but it paved the way for the radicalization they decry. Here’s how it happened. Continue reading “The (Not So) Good Old Days in Education”
