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Some thoughts on a different Atlantic article from a couple of years ago (a thread) theatlantic.com/magazine/archi
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Today at @LiberalCurrents I critique @anneapplebaum’s recent essay on a news Puritanism run rampant in America. -I argue her evidence is lacking -I offer some thoughts on what may be going on -I review further evidence and find it disappointingly thin liberalcurrents.com/the-case-not-m
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I'm a parent in Brooklyn. My eldest started kindergarten last week, and my youngest will probably enter the "three-k" program in 2023. I have a real interest in the state of education in this city. So I read this article at the time.
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Reading the article, though, the author just felt like a complete alien to me. He kept using the word "meritocracy" to describe the thing he was feeling the pressure of when it seemed very clear to me it was something much narrower, the elite schooling track.
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I am not, nor have I ever been, "Type-A." I was always kind of fascinated in a horrified way by the kids I knew who (because of their parents obviously) seemed to think that it was Harvard or homelesness, those were the two tracks.
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But I went to public schools all the way up, albeit good ones (but not magnets). I only have only talked to people who've been in more of the pre-school-like environment of the intensely competitive private schools. Sounds pretty deranged tbqh
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I am more worried about a garden variety mediocre or meanspirited teacher for my kid than I am...something more robustly ideological than that. But I'm also never going to pressure my kid to aim for the top of the top of the top. I just want to encourage his growth.
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In as much as there's a story about private virtue we need to foster as opposed to institutional change we need to make to adapt to our new technological realities, I think it's this: we need to value a simple, normal, middling life much more than our elite culture presently does
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but yes, and more seriously apart from whinging about their imminent irrelevance and conniving to hoard & bequeath what’s left of their unearned privileges, what do these Cultural Elites do? What do they create, what do they protect? or, to quote a Legend:
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