From the left: Smart Phones Mean Dumb Kids
�Students who spend more time staring at their phone do worse in school,
distract other students around them and feel worse about their life,�
reports The Atlantic�s Derek Thompson. Data from the Program for
International Student Assessment show that �students who spend less than
one hour of �leisure� time on digital devices a day at school scored about
50 points higher in math than students whose eyes are glued to their
screens more than five hours a day,� that �screens seem to create a
general distraction throughout school, even for students who aren�t always
looking at them,� and that �nearly half of students across the
[Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] said that they
felt �nervous� or �anxious� when they didn�t have their digital devices
near them.�

Campus watch: Ivies� Path to Self-Destruction
�Jewish enrollment is down across much of the Ivy League� and those �who
are admitted increasingly feel uncomfortable on campus,� scowls Tevi Troy
at City Journal. Despite these schools� commitment to �safe spaces,� they
�are strangely silent about anti-Semitism� and seem �implicitly supportive
of acts of intimidation and violent protest.� The Jewish situation on
elite campuses evokes �historical parallels�: Nations that have
antagonized Jews and �have seen Jews flee in response, often were
experiencing a deeper rot and corruption.� Now �we may be seeing something
similar at elite American universities� that are �rejecting their liberal
foundations at the same time that hostility to Jews rises.� �Anti-
pluralism� and �anti-intellectualism� drive the effort to block Jewish
admissions and �mute� those who make it in. It�s an �indication that elite
universities are acting as parties to their own destruction.�

Eye on Harvard: Worse Than Ignorance
Harvard University President Claudine Gay haughtily told a congressional
panel: �Anti-Semitism is a symptom of ignorance, and the cure for
ignorance is knowledge.� Sneers Cory Franklin at Spiked: Implicit in that
remark is the thinking �We are Harvard, we cannot be ignorant. So we can�t
be anti-Semitic.� But it�s �not entirely surprising that anti-Semitism
would fester among the most highly educated.� Contrary to Gay, three
researchers found that � �education appears to provide no protection
against anti-Semitism, and may in fact serve to license it.� � With a
substantial number of �young people who don�t believe the Holocaust
occurred,� the problem is �a deep one� � and simply firing Gay �would
likely do nothing to diminish anti-Semitism at Harvard.�

Conservative: Democrats� Israel Problem
Sen. Chuck Schumer �said that the latest wave of antisemitism� provoked by
Hamas� Oct. 7 atrocities �was coming from �people that most liberal Jewish
Americans felt previously were their ideological fellow travelers,� �
notes The Spectator�s Ben Domenech. But Dems put those people �at the
podium� and gave them �glossy profiles.� Now, �Democrats have a massive
Israel problem.� Indeed, �the fundamental problem� is �that �from the
river to the sea� is by no means out of step with the principles� of the
progressive left. �The academic left taught them to think, the Democrats
bought them a mega-phone � and now they are shouting through it.� The
question now: �When the Biden-Pelosi generation is gone, who will be left
to stop them?�

Education beat: Home Schooling Under Attack
�The knives are out for home schooling,� warns The Wall Street Journal�s
Matthew Hennessey, citing a �spate of critical articles.� During the
pandemic, some parents saw how their kids were being taught, didn�t like
it, switched to home schooling and stuck with it afterward. Now �somebody
somewhere has decided this experiment has gone on long enough.� The
public-education �blob wants its monopoly back.� �As always these days,�
the claim is �democracy itself is at stake,� though if �a free people
don�t have the freedom to raise their kids as they see fit, democracy is
already in trouble.� Money actually drives the attacks, at least in part.
�But it�s mainly about freedom. There�s a certain type of person who
thinks too much of that is a bad thing.�

� Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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than-ignorance-and-other-commentary/