“Masking kids at camp outdoors is simply virtue signaling.”

Robby Soave:

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidance to help summer camps mitigate their coronavirus risk. Given that summer camps involve both children and the outdoors—two factors that render COVID-19 significantly less worrisome—and will be opening in the wake of widespread vaccination, one might have expected the CDC to depart from its characteristic over-caution.

Nope: This is among the most restrictive, unrealistic guidance the agency has released during the pandemic. It’s more limiting than the CDC’s guidance for vaccinated people exercising outside more generally. If followed, summer campers would be miserable, deprived of physical contact, and in considerable danger of overheating. The government has essentially recommended that summer camps treat kids like prisoners.

Here are just some of the restrictions:

  • Everyone at the camp—including staff and every kid over the age of two—must wear masks at all times, unless they are eating or swimming. They should wear two layers of masks, especially when social distancing is difficult, regardless of “whether activities are indoors or outdoors.”
  • Campers should be placed in “cohorts,” and their interaction with people outside the cohort must be limited.
  • There should always be at least three feet between campers of the same cohort, and six feet between campers of different cohorts. Staff should keep six feet away from campers at all times, whether inside or outside. Distance should be maintained while eating, napping, or riding the bus: The CDC suggests seating kids in alternating rows.
  • The use of physical objects that might be shared among kids—toys, art supplies, electronics—should be limited wherever possible.
  • Camps should not permit close-contact sports and indoor sports, and should require masks regardless.
  • If anyone is curious there are separate restrictions for outdoor gardening.

Teens, tech and mental health: Oxford study finds no link

Zoe Kleinman:

There remains “little association” between technology use and mental-health problems, a study of more than 430,000 10 to 15-year-olds suggests.

The Oxford Internet Institute compared TV viewing, social-media and device use with feelings of depression, suicidal tendencies and behavioural problems.

It found a small drop in association between depression and social-media use and TV viewing, from 1991 to 2019, 

There was a small rise in that between emotional issues and social-media use.

Facebook and Civics

Shoshana Wodinsky:

A series of Instagram ads run by the privacy-positiveplatform Signal got the messaging app booted from the former’s ad platform, according to a blog post Signal published on Tuesday. The ads were meant to show users the bevy of data that Instagram and its parent company Facebook collects on users, by… targeting those users using Instagram’s own adtech tools. 

The actual idea behind the ad campaign is pretty simple. Because Instagram and Facebook share the same ad platform, any data that gets hoovered up while you’re scrolling your Insta or Facebook feeds gets fed into the same cesspool of data, which can be used to target you on either platform later. 

Across each of these platforms, you’re also able to target people using a nearly infinite array of data points collected by Facebook’s herd of properties. That data includes basic details, like your age or what city you might live in. It may also include more granular points: say, whether you’re looking for a new home, whether you’re single, or whether you’re really into energy drinks.

Many taxpayer supported K-12 school districts use Facebook services, including Madison.

Commentary on Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 Governance Class

The Capital Times:

Madison has a great public schools system that faces great challenges. A year of pandemic-required distance learning made existing vulnerabilities and inequities all the more serious. Now, as the COVID-19 threat is easing, and as the schools are reopening, it is impossible to avoid the evidence of the work that must be done to address immediate concerns for students who have struggled in this period, as well as longer-term concerns over achievement gaps, curriculum choices and lingering debates over policing and safety.

Yet, as Albert Einstein observed long ago, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

To our view, there is no issue facing the Madison Metropolitan School District that cannot be addressed with dynamic leadership, and we believe the Madison School Board now has just that.

Last week, Ali Muldrow was elected board president and Savion Castro was elected vice president, as the members of the elected body that oversees Madison’s schools embraced the vision laid out by two of this city’s most thoughtful and engaged young leaders.

Muldrow and Castro both have deep roots in Madison. They know the schools well, from personal experience — as MMSD graduates — and from long histories of involvement with education issues.

They are ready to face the challenges, and seize the opportunities, of a moment when so much is up for grabs.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

“Democrat Party obeisance to the AFT and NEA”

Jason Reilly:

Cal­i­for­nia, which is the most pop­u­lous state and cur­rently has the low­est per capita Covid rate in the coun­try, also has the high­est per­cent­age of school dis­tricts that re­main en­tirely vir­tual. Teach­ers unions have used the pan­demic to de­mand more money and more-gen­er­ous ben­e­fits. They know that mil­lions of Amer­i­cans can’t re­turn to work if kids can’t re­turn to schools. For par­ents it’s a dilemma, but unions see it as lever­age. The United Teach­ers of Los An­ge­les re­quested free child care for its mem­bers as a con­di­tion for re­turn­ing to the class­room. Union clout is the main rea­son that Cal­i­for­nia’s per­cent­age of all-vir­tual school dis­tricts is more than three times the na­tional av­er­age.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

Molly Beck and Madeline Heim:

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.   

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state. 

Channel3000:

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

2021 Math Framework Revision

California Department of Education:

The State Board of Education adopted the Mathematics Framework on November 6, 2013. Curriculum frameworks provide guidance to educators, parents, and publishers, to support implementing California content standards.


2021 Revision of the Mathematics Framework

The California Department of Education (CDE), Instructional Quality Commission, and State Board of Education have commenced the revision process for the Mathematics Framework for California Public Schools: Kindergarten Through Grade Twelve (Mathematics Framework). Information and updates concerning the revision of the Mathematics Framework will be posted here.

Mathematics Framework First Field Review

Comments were received from February 8 through April 8, 2021.

Public Comment for Draft Mathematics Framework 

At its January 21–22, 2021, meeting, the Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) approved the draft Mathematics Framework for public review and comment. The public review and comment period is an opportunity for interested individuals or organizations to provide comments and suggested edits to the IQC. The comment and suggestions received will be reviewed by the IQC/Mathematics Subject Matter Committee at its meeting on May 19–20, 2021, when the IQC is expected to recommend a revised draft for a second public review to take place in June and July, 2021.

We Owe Our Deepest Appreciation to Our Nation’s Civics and History Teachers

iCivics:

As we approach the end of the 2020-2021 school year, we owe our nation’s civics and history teachers our deepest gratitude. This has undoubtedly been one of the most challenging school years in recent memory for all teachers, but amid cascading social and political crises, it has been particularly challenging for those who teach about our history and system of government. Civics and history teachers deserve special recognition and appreciation for a job well done through such uncertain times. 

Together, iCivics, Facing History and Ourselves, the Bill of Rights Institute, National Constitution Center, the Center for Civic Education, the Ashbrook Center, Generation Citizen, and Mikva Challenge want to send this message of gratitude to civics and history teachers across the nation.

Internal Combustion Engine

The invention of the internal combustion engine in the 19th century has revolutionized transportation over land, water, and air. Despite their omnipresence in modern day, the operation of an engine may be cryptic. Over the course of this article I’d like to explain the functionality of all the basic engine parts shown in the demonstration below. You can drag it around to see it from other angles:

It’s hard to talk about a mechanical device without visualizing its motion, so many demonstrations in this blog post are animated. By default all animations are enabled, but if you find them distracting, or if you want to save power, you can globally pause them.

An engine like this may seem complicated, but we will build it up from first principles. In fact, we’ll start with a significantly simpler way of generating a rotational motion.

John Eastman lays groundwork to sue CU Boulder for stripping him of duties after appearance at Jan. 6 Trump rally

Elizabeth Hernandez:

Visiting scholar John Eastman laid the groundwork to sue the University of Colorado Boulder on Thursday, filing a legal claim alleging defamation and violation of his First Amendment rights over school leaders’ response to his role in efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election.

The six-page notice of claim, a necessary precursor to suing the university, also alleges breach of contract, and indicates Eastman will seek at least $1.9 million in damages, including nearly $20,000 that remains in a CU research account and $1.85 million in future salary he alleges he can’t earn because of “reputational harm.”

“The educators who are intent on adding this symposium of op-eds to the syllabus have every reason to fear their critics.”

Noah Rothman:

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Gordon Wood described the project as “wrong in so many ways.” Lauded chronicler of the Civil War, James McPherson, called the project a “one-sided account” that “left most of the history out.” In these pages, author and University of Oklahoma history professor Wilfred McClay observed that the Project’s claim that America’s capitalistic ethos was an outgrowth of slavery is a byproduct of the project’s reliance on “demonstrably wrong” and long ago discarded academic theories. Its own editors describedthe “goal of the 1619 Project” not as dispassionate history but an effort to “reframe American history” and place slavery “at the very center of our national narrative.”

So, when the Department of Education published guidelines for a new grant emphasizing the “1619 Project” and advising applicants to show how they would teach “systemic marginalization, biases, inequities, and discriminatory policy and practice in American history” accordingly, there was plenty of room for good-faith objections. But when Sen. Mitch McConnell offered one such objection in a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, the reaction provoked by his request to avoid promoting a “politicized and divisive agenda” in the classroom was anything but honest.

Rigor and Equity

NY Post Editorial:

On his Facebook page, Ian Serotkin of the Loudoun County School Board explained the “equity” issue involves the current tracking system, which makes it hard for kids to “get to calculus later on if they weren’t sufficiently accelerated in middle school.” But he rightly called the end of all math acceleration until 11th grade “absolutely bananas,” as it just limits how much higher math anyone gets to take. 

That’s progressive “equity” for you: Promote “fairness” not by adding opportunity, but by removing it from those who’ve already done well. Along with all the other garbage the left is pushing on US schools, it’s an invitation for China and other competitors to leave America in the dust.

San Francisco teacher warned for teaching in park

Joanne Jacobs:

Today, Andrew Libson, a physics teacher at San Francisco’s Mission High School, will be in a San Francisco park teaching children and their parents about circuits.

The district investigated Libson for teaching his students in a park during spring break,  but he received only a slap on the wrist, reports Kate Selig for Mission Local.
“News of the investigation quickly drew widespread blowback on social media from community members.”

In a letter to Libson, Mission High principal Pirette McKamey said he’d violated a health order by teaching students from more than three households.

Libson’s March 29 outdoor learning event over spring break involved 11 students and some of their family members; he led them in an activity about circuits, with Covid safety protocols enforced. The event was entirely optional for students, and students were required to get the consent of their parents before attending.

Mission High reopened on April 26 only for special-needs students.

She brought kids joy with her ‘magical’ toys. And hid her own misery until it became unbearable.

Ellen McCarthy:

Melissa Bernstein creates toys intended to delight and comfort children. They’re seemingly simple, no flashing lights or blaring noises. We’re talking about metal tea sets. Astronaut costumes. Farm-animal magnets. Wooden puzzles. Puppet theaters. The kinds of toys that today’s grandparents would’ve loved when they were children. The kinds of toys that bridge generational gaps, that evoke a feeling of getting back to something.

“Wokeness is a problem and we all know it”

Sean Illing:

You ever get the sense that people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges use a different language than ordinary people? They come up with a word like “Latinx” that no one else uses. Or they use a phrase like “communities of color.” I don’t know anyone who speaks like that. I don’t know anyone who lives in a “community of color.” I know lots of white and Black and brown people and they all live in … neighborhoods.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with these phrases. But this is not how people talk. This is not how voters talk. And doing it anyway is a signal that you’re talking one language and the people you want to vote for you are speaking another language. This stuff is harmless in one sense, but in another sense it’s not.

Civics: Don’t wait for the government to fix surveillance capitalism. It’s up to us.

Sauvik Das:

Don’t wait for the government to fix privacy. Any attempt to curtail and reverse the growing power of surveillance capitalism will have to start from us — the people — through grassroots mobilization.

Why?

Institutions in power do not willingly give up their power — it must be wrested from them. And, make no mistake, unilateral control over the collection and processing of personal data is one of the strongest emergent forms of power in the information age. It is the lifeblood of a trillion dollar global industry.

Sometimes a government that serves the people can be trusted do this wresting, assuming the privacy-violating institution is not the government itself. For example, anti-trust regulation can prevent the formation of exploitative corporate monopolies.

Not so when it comes to the protection of personal data. At least not yet.

Why?

Teacher union CDC influence

Jon Levine:

The American Federation of Teachers lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on, and even suggested language for, the federal agency’s school-reopening guidance released in February.

The powerful teachers union’s full-court press preceded the federal agency putting the brakes on a full re-opening of in-person classrooms, emails between top CDC, AFT and White House officials show.

The emails were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative watchdog group Americans for Public Trust and provided to The Post.

The documents show a flurry of activity between CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, her top advisors and union officials — with Biden brass being looped in at the White House — in the days before the highly-anticipated Feb. 12 announcement on school-reopening guidelines.

“Thank you again for Friday’s rich discussion about forthcoming CDC guidance and for your openness to the suggestions made by our president, Randi Weingarten, and the AFT,” wrote AFT senior director for health issues Kelly Trautner in a Feb 1 email — which described the union as the CDC’s “thought partner.”

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

Molly Beck and Madeline Heim:

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.   

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state. 

Channel3000:

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

“It’s probably true that these children of Americans who are not getting born would probably be dull slackers compared to the plucky, effervescent immigrants.”

Ann Althouse:

There was some concern expressed yesterday over the “remarkable slackening” in population growth seen in the 2020 census. What will it do to the economy going forward if Americans don’t maintain the long human tradition of robust reproduction? I was inclined to say, don’t worry about it, less population growth is good for the environment. But if you took the other side of that debate… you’d better worry about women declining the option to undertake childbearing and men and women passing on the potentially fulfilling endeavor of child-rearing. It’s terribly expensive!… [Y]ou’re going to have to incentivize reproduction a little bit.

Abortion notes, links and data. Choose life

“a 41% funding increase—for the Department of Education”

Jude Schwalbach:

The president’s budget request includes significant funding increases for:

  • School districts with students from low-income households, increasing Title I funding from $16.5 billion to $36.5 billion.
  • The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, increasing funding from $12.9 billion to $15.5 billion.
  • Head Start, the federal government’s largest preschool program, which would receive $11.9 billion, an increase of $1.2 billion.
  • School districts, which would receive an additional $1 billion to increase the number of counselors, nurses, and mental health professionals in K-12 education.
  • The federal Pell Grant program, which would see an increase of $400 per grant on average.

This proposal is just one piece of a massive education spending spree that began a year ago and shows no sign of stopping.

“It has to produce results or it doesn’t mean anything.”: taxpayer supported K-12 Governance, Madison

Scott Girard:

Both mentioned a few areas of focus for the upcoming year, including most immediately the transition back to in-person learning as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Muldrow noted that the “vast majority of the young people we serve” are not eligible for a vaccine yet, requiring the district to continue to “provide high-quality educational opportunities” while keeping safety top of mind.

“The other thing I think that the board is really starting to think about differently is how we give our students credit for what they’ve learned about and from technology,” she said. “So how do we recognize that our students are coming back to school with all of these skills around the information age that we’ve never given students academic credit for, but that are super relevant to their ability to interact with the job market?”

Broadly, Castro and Muldrow have similar priorities from when they began on the board, including early childhood education, as the district plans a full-day 4-year-old kindergarten pilot program at eight schools next year. They hope it’s one way among multiple strategies to begin to close the longstanding opportunity gaps between students of color and their white peers.

“Making sure that the color of a kid’s skin isn’t a determining factor in whether or not they’re going to be able to read, whether or not they’re going to be perceived as disruptive or talented and gifted,” Muldrow said.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

“we just don’t see decisions being made to optimize student success at Milwaukee Public Schools”

Rory Linnane:

Schlifske also said that Northwestern Mutual will be reaching out to others in the philanthropic and business community to support the goal of an additional 5,000 seats in “high-quality schools” by 2025, as measured by state report cards based on standardized tests and other metrics.

Schlifske’s op-ed specifically criticized MPS board members over the district’s loss of Milwaukee College Prep charter school network. The schools, which have operated under contract with MPS, are moving to a contract with UW-Milwaukee after MPS held back incentive funding.

Milwaukee College Prep is suing MPS over the funding. In addition, losing the network of four high-performing schools will cost MPS revenue.

“Instead of focusing upon improvement and quality outcomes, our community finds itself in a divisive debate over the types of schools students attend,” he wrote in the piece for the Journal Sentinel.

Madison’s business community continues to sleep amidst long term, disastrous reading results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Commentary on federal redistributed taxpayer funds for K-12 school districts and charters

Libby Sobic:

As Congress doles out billions of dollars for K–12 schools, charter schools already receive a much smaller portion of the education-funding pie. Currently Congress appropriates $440 million for the CSP, which is just 1 percent of U.S. Department of Education spending on K–12.

However, the CSP has been critical to the growth and sustainability of charter schools throughout many states. For instance, in 2017 Wisconsin received a five-year award of $95 million from the CSP. In the City of Milwaukee alone, seven charter schools were recipients of more than $5 million in CSP grants over the last three years. Elsewhere, in 2020, the Florida Department of Education received a five-year grant of over $78 million in charter funding through the CSP, the California Department of Education received a three-year grant of more than $41 million, and Texas received a five-year grant of $100 million.

These funds are used to plan and implement charter schools with a focus on improving academic outcomes for economically disadvantaged students.

Begin With The End: What’s The Purpose Of Schooling?

Michael Horn:

That means, as Stephen Covey wrote in one of the best-selling non-fiction books of all time, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” beginning “with the end in mind.” Or, as Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe wrote in the context of education in “Understanding by Design,” good teachers start with the goals and how they would know if students have met them and then backwards map all the things they need to provide to get to those outcomes.

Although it’s unlikely there will be any consensus across all communities in the country around a central purpose, that’s OK. That’s part of a robust pluralism underlying our democracy that values the fact that students sit in different circumstances and will have different needs.

But clarity in any specific schooling community is critical.

To help school communities think through what’s the purpose of schooling, a little history can help, as the dominant policy rationale for public schools’ purpose in society has changed over time. In “Disrupting Class,” Clayton Christensen, Curtis Johnson and I offered a brief history of these shifts.

Through much of the 1800s, a kind reading of history would say that the central role of public schools was to preserve the American democracy and inculcate democratic values.

University of Toledo law professor faces backlash for inclusivity award

Sophia Perricone:

University of Toledo students are speaking out after the Office of Diversity awarded law professor Lee Strang the 2021 Inclusive Excellence Award.

A current law student who asked to remain anonymous said in his opinion, Strang is not the clear winner.

“His views are not exactly in tune with, I guess you can say, modern diversity and views most professors would hold,” the student said.

And he isn’t alone. Students and alumni on Facebook pointed to an opinion piece written by Strang while at Harvard University in 2003.

In the article, he called homosexuality harmful, writing that “a corrupt society that does not seek to prevent homosexual activity makes it more difficult for us to properly raise our children.”

In a recent statement shared with law students, Strang said he regrets writing portions of past columns and that he wouldn’t make “arguments using this kind of language today.”

Grammar-Nerd Heaven

Mary Norris:

It’s hard not to mythologize Bryan A. Garner. He is the Herakles of English usage. As a boy growing up in Texas, he lugged Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged) to school one day to settle an argument with a teacher. When he was sixteen, he discovered “Fowler’s Modern English Usage” and swallowed it whole. By the time he was an undergraduate, he knew that he wanted to write a usage dictionary. Instead of going into academia or publishing, the traditional career paths for English majors, he went into law, a field where his prodigious language skills could have broad applications. His first usage dictionary was “Modern Legal Usage,” published in 1987. “Garner’s Modern American Usage” came out in 1998 and is in its fourth edition; with a significant tweaking of the title, it’s now “Garner’s Modern English Usage.” Move over, Henry Fowler.

Garner’s success—he is a highly sought-after speaker among lawyers and lexicographers—has enabled him to indulge his passions as a bibliophile and an antiquarian. A selection of sixty-eight items from the Garner Collection is on view at the Grolier Club (47 East Sixtieth Street, through May 15th), with a sumptuous hardcover limited-edition catalogue that serves as a companion guide. To enter the exhibit, titled “Taming the Tongue: In the Heyday of English Grammar (1713-1851),” via a discreet door on the second-floor landing of a stairwell at the Grolier, is to climb aboard the Grammarama ride at Disneyland for Nerds.

Academic freedom’s most determined adversaries are inside academia.

Keith E. Whittington:

As the coronavirus pandemic rages on, institutions of higher education in the United States face an existential threat. Even if they can survive their current budget crisis, what kind of institutions will American universities and colleges be in a decade’s time?

One crucial front in the war over the university pits defenders of the free-ranging pursuit of truth against those who would put political limits on such inquiries. For most of higher education’s history, this dispute was between advocates of academic freedom inside the universities and skeptics of it who were outside. On behalf of conventional mores or the community’s political and economic interests, politicians, or donors, took the position that the pursuit of knowledge is all well and good…until it threatens vital orthodoxies. The example of Socrates has always been both an inspiration and a warning. Heterodox gadflies tend to get swatted.

In the 21st century, however, academic freedom’s most determined adversaries are inside rather than outside academia. A growing army on college campuses would like to restrict the scope of intellectual debate by subjecting academic inquiry to political litmus tests. Over the 20th century, American universities’ students and faculty pushed to make them havens for heretics, dissenters, iconoclasts, and nonconformists. In the wake of their success, many scholars now demand that campuses adhere to their own orthodoxies. Until recently I would have said that many students and faculty want the range of intellectual debate on a college campus to be narrower than the offerings in the New York Times’s op-ed pages. But now, of course, the college graduates hired by the Times are scrubbing its op-ed pages of heresies as well.