Hillsdale Collegian 2.27.20

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Michigan’s oldest college newspaper

Vol. 143 Issue 20 - February 27, 2020

www.hillsdalecollegian.com

After four consecutive days of sunshine, a blizzard blanketed campus. Ben Wilson | Collegian

New Barney Charter Hillsdale launches schools open in 2019 new online course By | Nolan Ryan assistant provost for K-12 O’Toole said BCSI’s education, said that all four curriculum team also visits Editor-in-Chief schools are doing well in the each school at some point. Four first-year charter midst of their first year. On the first day, they observe schools from all over the “All the students are getthe teachers. For the next country opened their doors ting to know each other, the day or two, they give recomas members of Hillsdale’s teachers are getting to know mendations and feedback to Barney Charter School their students, ” said O’Toole, the teachers and give them Initiative last year. This year, a chance to ask the BCSI staff questions. continue to “A lot of the work with support we the schools give brand new to make sure teachers is how they offer a to do specific good educatechniques,” tion to their O’Toole said. students. One such The four technique, for new schools example, focuses are Ivywood on teaching bar Classical modeling — a Academy in pictorial repPlymouth, resentation of Michigan; math problems Northwest — from the Ohio Classical Singapore Math Academy in curriculum. To Toledo, Ohio; instruct students Treasure in this method Coast Classisuccessfully, cal Academy O’Toole said, in Stuart, teachers must be Florida; and familiar with bar Treasure modeling before Valley Classitaking it to the cal Academy classroom. Workers erect the sign for Treasure Valley Classical in Fruitland, O’Toole said Idaho. Each of Academy in Fruitland, Idaho. Facebook BCSI serves to these joined support charter BCSI in 2019 and continued who recently visited Treasure schools, especially ones that to work with Hillsdale ColCoast Classical Academy. are just getting started. She lege as they began the 2019BCSI leaders worked said no matter the school, 2020 school year last fall. with school administrators the first year is always diffiBCSI is a program that to found the schools. For cult, especially when faculty, seeks to promote classithis, O’Toole said, they did administrators, students, cal education and support four training sessions for and families don’t know each charter schools nationwide. each school board, as well as other yet. Also, teachers in According to its website, one these contexts are often new of their primary goals is “that training for the principals. There is also a two-week to classical education, and public-school students may training for teachers in the BCSI helps them learn how be educated in the liberal beginning of August where to teach within the classical arts and sciences and receive BCSI takes them through a method. instruction in the principles “deep dive into the curricuof moral character and civic See Charter A3 lum,” looking at how to teach virtue.” in a classical school setting. Kathleen O’Toole,

By | Ashley Kaitz Assistant Editor Hillsdale College has launched an online course which it hopes will, in part, combat popular media’s revisionist history like the New York Times’ 1619 Project. The course, titled “The Great American Story: Land of Hope,” launched on Feb. 12. It aims to offer a “broad and unbiased” look at the achievements and failures of America’s past, according to Hillsdale’s website. Kyle Murnen, director of online courses at Hillsdale, said the idea for the course came after historian Wilfred McClay published an American history textbook called “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story” in 2019. “It’s very difficult to write a one-volume narrative his-

tory of America, and ‘Land of Hope’ is especially good: compact, serious, witty, and surprisingly comprehensive for a 400-page history book,” Murnen said. “In fact, the book has been adopted as a high school American history textbook in our Barney Charter School Initiative and is used as a supplementary text in several sections of the American Heritage course here.” The course, consisting of 25 lectures, begins with Christopher Columbus’ arrival in America and ends with a lecture that considers how best to mend the cultural divisions in the nation today. According to Murnen, “The Great American Story: Land of Hope” is unbiased and patriotic. “The course is unbiased because it aims at providing

an accurate picture of what happened in the past. It is also patriotic, in the sense that it aims to promote the type of intelligent patriotism necessary to preserve the blessings of our free government,” he said. “Those two aims are not mutually exclusive.” In the introductory video to the course, McClay talked about why it’s important to study history. “There’s a tendency to think we can decide questions of principle by reference only to abstractions,” McClay said in the video. “History is concrete. History fills in the blanks with real-world events and real people, things that actually happened, and we can test out our principles by seeing how they operate.”

See Course A3

Wilfred Mclay, author of “Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story,” teaches a class for Hillsdale College’s online course, “The Great American Story: Land of Hope.” External Affairs

Q&A: Stephanie Merrick, Free Beacon Managing Editor By | Stefan Kleinhenz Culture Editor Stephanie Merrick is the managing editor at the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication in Washington, D.C. The following is an excerpt from an interview that was recorded this week with Stefan Kleinhenz on Radio Free Hillsdale. What is the Free Beacon? We started out as combat journalism. I think we were the first ones to coin that term. We are a publication that goes after, specifically, the Democrats and the way that other outlets cover Republicans. So we’re going

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after Bernie Sanders the same way that the New York Times would go after Mitt Romney when he was running for President. How did you end up at the Free Beacon? I started off college as a pre-med major and I quickly realized that was not for me. I worked at the Michigan Review at the University of Michigan which is the conservative publication in Ann Arbor. I worked there as a sophomore, and I loved it. I loved being part of the newsroom. So I started doing internships in D.C. every summer. I worked for the Washington Examiner

and the Daily Caller before getting my job at the Free Beacon. I got an assistant editor position at the Free Beacon, and that’s where I’ve been ever since. Michigan Football: is that important in your life? Yeah — Go Blue! Is Jim Harbuagh going to stick around for awhile? I’m not convinced about him. He hasn’t really taken our team anywhere. I’ve heard the argument that he’s gotten Michigan to the best place they can be right now. If that’s the best we can do,

I think we need somebody else. We live in a fascinating time with journalism, politics, and everything. Your publication is geared toward getting in the fight, getting in the mud, in ways that people haven’t done before. How has Trump, in your perspective, changed the way that journalism functions? That’s an interesting, loaded question. He’s changed it in a lot of ways. No one has ever covered a politician like Trump — his tweets, you know. His breaking news and his tweets: you have to cover it, and if you don’t cover it,

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you’re not part of the conversation. We’re not so focused on covering him as we are on covering the Democrats. We try to stay out of that battle. But he’s changed it incredibly. But is it new for a politician to be saying the things that people have felt for a long time? That media isn’t fair, that overage isn’t fair, that it’s not talking about both sides fairly. How does that change the way journalists function? For us, it hasn’t changed a ton. He’s still giving access to the same exact people. And we don’t have a White House correspondent or anything that has a ton of access to

him. He is giving more access to other conservative outlets. I think that has changed. Looking at the 2020 primaries, it looks like Bernie might be running away with the nomination. Do you think that’s a response to Trump? Do you think that Bernie’s movement is a response to that or do you think it’s something completely different? I think Bernie is similar to Trump in a lot of ways in that he’s kind of a populist movement. He’s kind of anti-establishment — we can change Washington by getting the

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