Cameron Abrams is a policy analyst for Next Generation Texas at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Tabor College, Cameron completed a master’s degree from University of the Pacific. In his free time, you will find him either reading or training for an endurance running event.
America is in the midst of an education collapse. Declining literacy rates. Falling math scores. Shortened attention spans. And a growing uncertainty is emerging: What should we do? But in Texas, Bluebonnet Learning provides common sense curriculum, serious structure, and a reverence for the Western tradition by giving students a clear sense of what is...
From across the political spectrum, voters rural and urban and suburban, everyone I talk to has a theory about what has gone so wrong with American education. From cellphones to laptops, the culture wars and the pandemic, teacher pay and teacher burnout, weak discipline and bad curriculum to collapsing standards, there are no shortage of...
In the latest report from FIRE, President and CEO Greg Lukianoff sketches a dire situation: “[T]he overall state of free speech on campus is grim.” Who is responsible for this bleak reality? Lukianoff blames everyone; college administrators, the government, and students who advocate for “censorship, and limit academic freedom.” Some of the statistics are shocking, yet unsurprising...
We all know we are being watched all the time. The cellphone in our pocket tracks our every movement. The CCTV at Starbucks captures my coffee order. The “For You” feed on my social media knows exactly which posts will keep me lingering a bit too long. But fears about the use and misuse of...
“You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy” is an increasingly fitting description of the American college graduate. While that World Economic Forum slogan is rightly mocked for its managerial creepiness, jokes aside, the average student nowadays is surely more nihilistic about the world than previous generations. The economic bargain of college, however, is looking increasingly...
It’s everywhere. Even my family has begun to depend on it: “Mom, have you seen the doctor to get your wrist checked out?” I ask. “No, I asked Chat instead,” she says. You see it appear in texts; the long, meandering, just-so perfectly casual yet precisely to the point prose that has never passed the...
“American manhood is a fragile and precarious thing, shattered by the slightest deviation from ever-shifting norms — eating the wrong taco, tasting tofu, not eating meat, or maybe eating too much meat.” —The Atlantic, “The Masculinity Scam” Reading these lines from The Atlantic, I controlled my eye-rolling enough to read the rest of the hit-piece...
Recently, a strange, mercurial community of self-described, sometimes externally attributed, “conservative” academics engaged in a wide-ranging discussion of the “Great Books.” Luke Burgis, author and founder of the Cluny Institute, set off the tweetstorm with what on the surface seemed like a simple question: “What is the strongest argument from the political Right AGAINST Great...
All of America was on display this weekend. Peace deals were announced via social media by the president, Team USA dominated Paraguay in soccer, and the UFC hosted a blood-soaked battle on the White House lawn. Something is happening. Policy and politics aside, the aesthetics of what has, and continues to, make America great is...
The “toxic” and “unsettling” behavior of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner was revealed last week in The New York Times. Following months of speculation, the report details multiple women who accuse the local oysterman of leaving a trail of alleged violence and mental abuse. Platner, who has remained under public scrutiny for sporting a (supposedly...
For a Californian like me, the first time encountering a “Koolickle” is an unsettling experience. Stepping inside the local mom-and-pop gas station to fill up my gas tank and being asked if I have ever tried a Kool-Aid pickled cucumber put me on my heels. “It looks like it’s glowing,” I mumble to the lady...
The AI boom of the past few years has rendered an inevitable reaction. Technology that is supposedly capable of replacing much of the cognitive tasks of human beings has shaken higher education to its core. The hype enjoyed by this fundamental shift in thinking has remained a fascination of our great minds of the Western...