While most high school graduates these days, in Connecticut and throughout the country, never master high school English and math, social-promotion policies advance them anyway. Many are admitted to public colleges only to take remedial high school courses. And now, the Connecticut Mirror reports, public and private colleges in the state are being overwhelmed by students needing mental health therapy.
Southern Connecticut State University's counseling services director, Nicholas Pinkerton, explains: "What we provide students is time. Forty-five to 50 minutes of undivided personal time is something that is very difficult to scale, so the question is: How many staff do you need to facilitate that?"
Of course, everyone may benefit occasionally from speaking confidentially with someone else about personal concerns. But the explosion of anxiety among college students emphasizes what educators are starting to recognize as unpreparedness for higher education. This unpreparedness is the inevitable consequence of social promotion.
Because of social promotion, students are unprepared not just for higher education but for adult life itself. Mental-health counseling may calm them down temporarily but it is no cure for their ignorance.
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REFUGEES IN AND OUT: Responding last week to the Trump administration's inquiry to all states to find out if they want the federal government placing refugees with them Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont proclaimed Connecticut's virtue. The state, he said, “will continue welcoming those escaping persecution and upholding the long tradition of the United States as a place that treats every human being with dignity and respect.”
Most illegal immigration in the United States is economic. Little of it involves persecution, though persecution is often claimed because it is hard to disprove. So scapegoating refugees is just more of the Trump administration's demagoguery about immigration.
But then Connecticut's acceptance of refugees isn't so virtuous either, since the state generates far more refugees than it accepts -- refugees from overtaxation and domination of government by special interests.
While the governor may welcome people fleeing Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma, Cuba and similarly unfortunate places, Florida, the Carolinas, Texas and other states are welcoming many departing Connecticut residents who have realized that the state's current regime promises them little more than ever-increasing taxes to finance pension benefits for government employees. Indeed, as long as those pension benefits remain the highest purpose of government in Connecticut, the more successful refugees from persecution who settle in the state in time may become economic refugees as well.
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SCOLD OF THE YEAR: Time magazine has designated 16-year-old Swedish climate policy protester Greta Thunberg as its person of the year. She may be the right choice but not for Time's reasons.
For Thunberg has neither discovered nor told the world anything new about climate change. She has not persuaded anyone who did not already have an opinion. She has not argued a case. Instead she has merely spread hysteria, arrogance, contempt, and self-righteousness in pursuit of intimidating anyone who might disagree with her.
At the United Nations she shrieked: "How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words." But without argument all words are empty.
So a teenager can be as obnoxious as any adult in politics today. At least in that respect it may be clear enough that the climate is getting worse.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
“Anxiety” 1894), by Edvard Munch
