#american compass

[ltwilliammowett]

Early American Drycard compass marked for Benjamin King, Newport, Rhode Island, 1756

Accompanied by an 18th Century leather-bound navigational volume, which includes calendars dating as early as 1728, a "Table of Difference", instructions on how to use various navigational instruments, etc. 

[arcticdementor]

(link)

[gwydionmisha]

Conservative Group Accidentally Reveals Its Secret Donors. Some of Them Are Liberal Orgs.

American Compass included five key names on a 2022 tax statement that The Daily Beast obtained.

[ms-myself]

The Five Deadly Sins of the Left - American Compass

After 40 years of decline, perhaps it’s time for the Left to try something new. After all, capitalism has been underperforming as an engine

The Left has paid a considerable price for its increasingly strong linkage to militant identity politics, which brands it as focused on, or at least distracted by, issues of little relevance to most voters’ lives. Worse, the focus has led many working-class voters to believe that, unless they subscribe to this emerging worldview and are willing to speak its language, they will be condemned as reactionary, intolerant, and racist by those who purport to represent their interests. To some extent these voters are right: They really are looked down upon by elements of the Left—typically younger, well-educated, and metropolitan—who embrace identity politics and the intersectional approach. This has contributed to the well-documented rupture in the Democratic Party’s coalition along lines of education and region.

[arcticdementor]

Our Educational Colonialism - American Compass

I get criticized for not talking about policy enough, so here we go: No Child Left Behind is a disaster, the spearhead of our misguided attempt to funnel everyone to college. It has hurt the working class, because it devalues their worldview, leaving them feeling humiliated and labeled dumb hicks or lazy hoodlums. It has […]

I get criticized for not talking about policy enough, so here we go: No Child Left Behind is a disaster, the spearhead of our misguided attempt to funnel everyone to college.

It has hurt the working class, because it devalues their worldview, leaving them feeling humiliated and labeled dumb hicks or lazy hoodlums. It has hurt the “aspirational professionals” by producing too many college graduates, leaving them to compete over a few high-paying high-status jobs in a few expensive cities. All while charging an arm and a leg that piles debt on them.

It has hurt everyone, with the exception of a few tenured literary critics who get increased status, and the CEOs of conglomerates, who get more resumes to choose from.

Federalization is about imposing a dominant ideology and worldview, and in the case of our educational policy it is about imposing “front rowness”— the idea that everyone should aspire to becoming a tenured professor or a widget engaged in a resume arms race with the rest of the world.

It is a system built by intellectual elites who want everyone to be like them, and humiliates everyone else. It is a system that says anything that can’t be learned in an advanced placement class isn’t that important, like being a good member of the community, or family, or church. Those things are impediments to success. Staying home to care for your parents rather than rushing off to Princeton is an unnecessary speed bump on your way to having your best career!

Those who fundamentally don’t buy into this ideology, which is most of the working class, end up sitting in the back row of whatever school, distracted and frustrated. Throwing spitballs at whoever because they don’t take easily to set theory, or Algebra, or Henry James or Nathaniel Hawthorne. Because they don’t enjoy memorizing whatever they have to memorize for the next standardized test.

…

Education is wonderful, so is bettering yourself by getting as much of it as possible. But done on your terms and because you want it for your reasons. Not because you, your community, and everyone else you know, is competing with the Chinese, or the Germans, or the Indians. So you have to take countless standardized tests so you can win a golden ticket to ship off to Princeton and hang with others who are good at taking standardized tests, to then be taught more stuff, to then go to grad school to learn even more stuff, so you might, if you are lucky, get to go to San Francisco and live in an a small room hundreds of miles from your family to start in a firm trading bonds, or helping Google sue someone, or running from teaching one introductory writing course at one school to another introductory oratory course at another school, or maybe so you can write papers for a non-profit funded by a billionaire arguing that we need more education. That isn’t good.

What we have now is a top-down educational system that intellectually strip mines America and humiliates everyone. What we need is a democratic educational system that provides pathways to dignified lives for everyone. That provides Shakespeare and differential topology to those who see the beauty of each, but also provides skills to those who would rather focus on things like music, mechanics, nursing, parenting, farming, or whatever.

We need educational freedom, not educational colonialism.