Booker T. Washington, high school, and other news

Some time ago, I read Booker T. Washington’s “Up from Slavery” and highly recommend it; it’s amazing how far reaching his insights are. Today, I’m linking to an assortment of interesting things I read recently, and I’ll lead off with this quote from Washington, which Darrell Harrison reiterated recently in response to news that Oregon had subspended state reading, writing and math proficiency standards for high school graduation. Basically, for the next five years, high school graduates won’t have to be able to prove they can read, write, or do math at a high school level. Apparently, the current standards don’t lead to the desired proficiency rates for “diverse” individuals so the standards need to be changed. As Harrison notes, Booker T. Washington wrote:

I have begun everything with the idea that I could succeed, and I never had much patience with the multitudes of people who are always ready to explain why one cannot succeed.

Here’s a more detailed discussion of the relevant Oregon bill.

In other news:

• Apparently, homeschooling continues to trend upwards, partly due to the pandemic – as of Sept. 2020 it was up to 11%. Black households saw the largest jump. I’m a fan of homeschooling, and was homeschooled myself, though I don’t necessarily think homeschooling is for everyone.
• In the context of the Afghanistan wind-down, Bari Weiss had a guest post on some of the issues this raised for our soldiers who fought and lost friends there, including a feeling of betrayal.
• Several individuals were banned from Twitter recently for offenses like saying that the transgender weightlifter competing in the Olympics was a man or (in another case) for saying that banning someone for that is absurd.
• Al Mohler’s discussion of some of the issues regarding transgender athletes at the Olympics is something I found helpful. Part of what he notes is that the relevant rule-making entities can’t even agree what the right factors are in order to set the rules about who can compete in which sport.
• There’s some alarming news about data brokers and how they sell access to our sensitive information.

I’ve got a number of other things to link to, but that’s all the time I have for now, so that will have to do.