From The New Criterion (reg. req.), a special issue on the 20th anniversary of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, including essays by Roger Kimball, Mark Steyn, and Heather McDonald; and Jeffrey Hart on Jacques Barzun at 100. From Inside Higher Ed, regrets, I’ve had a few: Half of education is knowing what you don’t know. Scott McLemee checks out a new pamphlet for undergraduates; a skeptic’s take on academic blogs: Adam Kotsko has seen their benefits, but also how difficult they are to sustain in productive ways; and an enthusiast’s view of academic blogs: Scott Eric Kaufman writes that blogging gives him two invaluable things: community and an audience. Liaisons in the lecture theatre: Surely romantic trysts in the tutorial room are alright between consenting adults? From Prospect, data from Sweden suggests that vouchers could offer the government a truly equitable way of combining its educational ideals with pragmatism. What every child needs: How universal pre-K could benefit middle- and upper-class children as much as poor ones.
