| Wednesday,
May 19, 2010 Education
I have several friends ages 50 plus who are public
school teachers in Hawaii, and they all agree on two ways to improve public
schools. First, bring back Reform School; teachers spend most of their time
dealing with disruptive, misbehaving students, who do not want to learn, to
the disadvantage of the 90% of students who do want to learn. If the
disruptive, incorrigible 10% could be sent to reform school, my teacher
friends believe they could teach much more to the 90%. Second, eliminate
“mainstreaming,” whereby students with disabilities, i.e. crack babies, meth
babies, intellectually disabled kids, are kept in special education classes
and not put in regular classrooms with the majority of students who do not
have disabilities. Once again, mainstreaming sucks up all the teaching time
so that the 90% majority of kids are short changed. The liberal ideology of
the last 50 years has decided that the needs of the bottom 10% are going to
be met at the expense of the 90% rest of the student body, and changing that
allocation of time and resources would yield big improvements according to
my friends who are public school teachers.
Darryl Miyahira,
Honolulu, Hawaii.
The future of the nation depends on the education
of the top 50% of the population, and historically in the creative
contributions of the top 25% (some would make those numbers smaller). The
point of schools is to increase the marginal productivity of their
graduates over what they would have produced had they started working at
some earlier age. Roman boys went to the drill fields at age 14. Few spent
full time in education institutions after that. Think of this as the base:
do high schools teach anything that will make the students better and more
productive citizens than if they went to work upon leaving eighth grade?
And do the first eight grades teach anything worth the fuss and bother of
schools vs. training camps to provide child care and elementary military
drill?
Of course I exaggerate. Or do I?
The corruption of the public school system leads
to a new hereditary upper class: those whose parents contrive to secure a
good education for their children, as opposed to everyone else.
The more we decentralize control of education the
better. Transparency and subsidiarity. But instead we saddle all with
taxes to build an education system that does not work, is known not to
work, and which absorbs the money and talent that might be used to build
an education system that might actually be an investment in the future. In
some places the schools are not horror; but the Department of Education is
moving to correct that.
It is unfortunate that some children do not
profit from education, yet absorb the resources that are needed for public
education. This is the cruelty of nature. The liberal gnostics are
convinced that they can make the universe a happy and fair place; their
efforts generally add to the problem, yet they never believe the results.
This Time For Sure.
The remedy is not guillotines, but it may well be
mass discharges of everyone involved in building and supporting this
system of imbecility, and its replacement by people who understand that
the goals are not happy education officials but educated children able to
earn enough to pay taxes to pay back what the public invested in them.
Either education is an investment or it is robbery. At present in most
places it is robbery to serve the Iron Law.
===========
Re: Bush
Do I miss him yet?
In a word: no.
I suspect that the people who would answer “yes” to
that don’t really miss Bush himself, what they miss is the time in which he
was president. The thing that they miss is an overinflated economy and an
artificially high housing market where there was apparently lots of money to
go around- a situation we now know to be illusory.
Recently CNN had an interview on their website with a
woman who they purported to be a representative of the Tea Party movement.
One of the things that she said in that interview really caught me: “I want
my child to grow up in the world I grew up in.” (I can’t find the original
article, so I may be slightly misquoting her. If I am, it might be by
“daughter” instead of “child” or something similar.)
It strikes me that this is a common problem with the
Tea Party movement- they wish to hang onto the world that they knew in their
youth.
Personally, I don’t know anyone who wears polyester
leisure suits and gold chains, or narrow lapels on their grey felt suit, or
any of the other hallmarks of years gone by. The brutal truth of the matter
is that the world that existed in my youth- or far that matter, in my
childrens’ youths- is gone and will not return. The world moves on whether
we wish it to or not. The Tea Party seems to be yearning for Dem Good Ol’
Days, a time which in truth never existed.
To misquote Rumsfeld (intentionally), we don’t go to
the future with the world that we wish we had, we go with the world we have.
The Mayberry that the Tea Party claims we should cling to was no more than a
pleasant distortion of the memories of our elders. I for one don’t want to
go back to the way the world was in the 30s, 40s, 50s or any other decade of
the past. I would rather we evaluate the world that we have now and make
plans around how to improve it, rather than knock it down and try to return
to a fictional past. The Taliban is already showing what that would be like.
Paul Martin
And yet: what man once achieved, mankind can
aspire to. We have never achieved perfection; but freedom did once produce
a world that some of us find preferable to what we have. I fear I do cling
to memories of freedoms past.
The Old Republic was not perfection: part of the
idea of a free people is to eschew the gnostic goals of perfection, and to
reject the notion that if only you give me the sword of state I can build
you a perfect world.
Freedom is not free. Free people are not equal.
Equal citizens are not free.
==
Nostalgia?:
Former Sun Microsystems CEO and Chairman Scott
McNealy, in an interview with Fortune magazine (April 15) on what would it
would take to get him interested in running a company again:
It must be private, never go public. There will be
no upside investors other than me and the employees. . . . I hope we can
pull it off under those conditions because I would be thrilled to lead
another group of smart engineers, without all the crap that goes into
running a company today. I just don't want Congress telling me how much I
should be paid or firing me. I want to pretend I am back in the 1980s
again.
Phil
============
Moral behavior
Jerry,
From what I read I get the impression that government
wants to impose, improve, enhance, mandate, facilitate (choose which ever
you want) moral conduct on its citizens by law. I was led to believe that
moral conduct tended to come from the way individuals are brought up, not
something that could be imposed by the courts, congress or administration.
To me, courtesy is a part of moral conduct are we expecting that we will
have laws on this too?
Thanks for listening
M.K. Turner
There was a time when social courtesies were
taught as part of the costs of education. And enforced in the schools to
become habits.
===========
"tourism today is a right"
Dr. Pournelle --
The expansion of what is a "right" continues apace:
Get packing: Brussels decrees holidays are a human
right
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/
news/world/europe/article7100943.ece
"The idea for the subsidised tours" [for seniors,
18-25 year olds, the disabled, families in difficult circumstances] "is the
brainchild of Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise
and industry, who was appointed by Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime
minister."
"Tajani ... believes the days when holidays were a
luxury have gone. “Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend
our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life,” he said."
"Tajani, who used to be transport commissioner, said
he had been able to “affirm the rights of passengers” in his previous office
and the next step was to ensure people’s “right to be tourists”."
Tourist travel, an "indicator", is down. Therefore if
they artificially increase the indicator everything will be fine. Based upon
this logic, the next time I don't have enough gas to get home I should put
water in the tank, raising the reading of the gas gauge, and I'll make it
home without problem.
And, oh horrors, I see no indication that anyone is
considering the "carbon footprint" of all those additional travel miles.
Pieter
The pursuit of the millennium. And of course if
you have enough of other people's money...
===========
Subj: Is Internet Civility an Oxymoron?
Opinion piece of that subject by L. Gordon Crovitz in
_The Wall Street Journal_, 19 April 2010.
Not available directly to WSJ non-subscribers, but you
can reach it by Googling for the subject, in quotes, plus Crovitz.
The piece reminds me again how grateful I am that Dr.
Pournelle *does*not* have a promiscuous reader-comment facility.
Back in the days of BIX and GENIE, although Dr.
Pournelle had directly-posted reader comments in his Fora, things mostly
stayed within reasonable bounds. I don't know how much of that was due to
the efforts of his deputy moderators (I know he had at least one on BIX;
don't remember about GENIE), how much to the posting not being "free", since
only paying subscribers to the service in question could post, and how much
to reduced anonymity, since subscribers had invariant User IDs that could be
banned upon bad behavior, either from a particular Forum or from the entire
service.
Today, I find the comment areas of climateAudit.org
just barely usable. They're moderated, but although the moderators (assisted
by automation) are pretty effective in suppressing outright spam, the levels
of topic drift, piling on and flame-warring are often annoying and
occasionally quite exasperating.
I have found the comment areas of groklaw.org
completely unreadable.
I've used the WSJ's own Comments areas a little, but I
find their automation infelicitous: I can't figure out how to track threads
of discussion with a reasonable amount of effort. On the other hand, I
sometimes had the same problem with BIX. Maybe, being now older, I no longer
have enough still-functional neurons to maintain situational awareness.
Alternatively, being now older, maybe I am now enough wiser to be no longer
willing to put up with such a high level of frustration and with so much
time-wasting.
It will be interesting to see how "online communities
of correspondence" develop over the next few years. Can they serve the same
kinds of purposes the coffeehouses and "committees of correspondence" served
in the run-ups to the American Revolution and, earlier, in Great Britain, to
the Glorious Revolution of 1688? PJTV.com arguably serves much the same
purpose now as the pamphleteers served back then, but I think there also
needs to be a way for the nascent replacement for the corrupt incumbent
Ruling Elite to arrive at a consensus on what they're about, before there
can be a Circulation.
Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com
Of course the new legislative proposals (which
apparently are a good idea according to our newest Supreme Court
Appointee) would censor pamphlets and blogs or at best subject them to
record keeping about their finances as part of enforcement of "election
spending reform".
Oh brave new world
============
Zbigniew Brzezinski seems Disturbed
Jerry,
Now this is most interesting to me. Remember
Brzezinski is a globalist--along with Kissinger and several world leaders
trying to establish global governance. This may come as a shock to many, but
I've followed the concept since Bush I's thousand points of light speech. In
recent years, I've seen world leaders from Gordon Brown to Mikheil
Saakashvili calling for this "New World Order".
Now, flash forward to 2010. It seems to me that men
like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger are men that we should pay
attention to. Their books are most enlightening and--if one takes the time
to read them--one may be shocked at what they read there. But, not many
people read such books or watch C-Span. Zbigniew Brzezinski's latest speech
is most interesting.
In this speech he says that, for the first time in
history, mankind is politically awake. Brzezinski mentions how this
complicates the thrust for a world government. He laments the G-20 is the
closest they have come to a world government, and it is not united. This is
the most interesting video I've seen this month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZxE8L38h6U
I refuse to support world governance for a few
reasons. One, this shift away from local governance has not worked well in
the United States where Washington looks more and more like an alien city
state--as Rome was--ruling the empire. Two, the people behind this shift in
2010 are not the kind of people I want managing my life or the lives the
citizens of the world. Three, a successful and equitable world government
must come from an organic movement among the people, not some fictitious
construct created by men who want to gratify their egotistical desires to do
something big before they die.
-- BDAB,
Josh
I prefer liberty.
==========
Hay/straw - oil...
"The video segment suggesting a way to clean up oil
spills was to use hay was interesting, but I would suggest using straw would
be a lot better for the environment and economy. Production of hay is
expensive and much needed as feed for stock. We get about three cuttings a
year from the land we have in hay here in Montana (probably one less this
year due to the cold weather hanging on). During the summer, hay can goes
for an average of $50 a ton ($90 for premium Alfalfa), and in the winter,
especially if it is a long one, the price can easily go to X4 or X5.
Straw is essentially a byproduct of wheat production,
and we always have quite a stack of it rotting at the end of winter. We use
it for various things, stock bedding, covering early seed plants, etc….but
there is always too much. If they could use that, the only real cost would
be transporting it to the oil spill."
Bagasse. And, it's nearby.
David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province,
Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV
remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Collector of Hot Sauce; Avoider
of Yard Work
Bagasse is the residue from sugar cane and
sorghum after processing.
=============
Bond Rating Agencies
Jerry -
I forwarded your May 14th comments on the ratings
agencies to my CPA daughter
On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 3:43 PM, David Smith wrote:
This is a question that Jerry Pournelle touches on
periodically - do you have any insight?
"Congress and the regulatory agencies are
finally turning some attention to the ratings agencies, but they don't
seem to be terribly serious about it. As far as I know, the BIG FOUR are
written into the public law -- you must buy a rating from one of them.
Yet you pay them for your rating, which means that if you get a bad one
you won't be back. The conflict of interest seems built it -- and
obvious. I have read a lot about this, and I don't understand the logic
here. You must go buy a rating in order to issue bonds. You shop for the
best rating. This makes so little sense that I feel I must be
overlooking something obvious.
I'll continue to study the situation. I'd
appreciate enlightenment, because the current system seems so obviously
subject to temptations of corruption that I can't understand how anyone
can defend it."
- this is her reply:
Yup, that's pretty much how it works. People have been
knocking around the idea that this sets up an untenable conflict of
interests since at LEAST my freshman year of college - it just hadn't
brought down the economies of most developed nations yet. :) Some professors
posited that, as there hadn't been any major systematic corruption to that
point, four rating agencies created enough of a competitive market that they
could sort of self-police. I think they've changed their minds by now. I'm
thinking there will have to be some sort of regulation in this area, such as
a common fund from all bond issuers that the ratings agencies are paid out
of (?!). Not really sure how that would work.
Or, here's an idea - how 'bout we have some
accountability from the agencies themselves? A la Sarbanes-Oxley making the
CEO sign off on the financials so that they could be hauled into court. You
can rate a junk bond AAA, but you can no longer fall back on the excuse that
it's an "opinion" and that the end purchaser must draw his or her own
conclusions. Isn't that what the rating agency is FOR?! That's the argument
they've always used to this date to keep their happy asses out of court...
==============
The Official Ejection of Professor Katz
Dr. Pournelle,
Here is a link to the Washington University website of
Professor Jonathon Katz, lately removed from the group of five “most
intelligent people” convened to find a solution for the gulf oil spill.
http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/diversity.html
If you read some of the articles linked to the site,
it’s easy to see why the White House liberals would be afraid of him. I
suspect it may be somewhat harder to get the smart people who are not in the
political mainstream to roll over than they planned. Certainly Katz, based
on the writings in his web site, would not be someone they could trust in a
news conference.
I suspect this may blow up in their faces and cannot
be a good political move right now. Of course the Dems have already been
beaten up yesterday, maybe they have nothing to lose.
John Witt
I no longer expect courtesy or competence from
the current administration. I came to this conclusion reluctantly, but to
the best I can tell, the entire administration is infected with secondary
to tertiary stage injelititis. Those familiar with the works of C.
Northcote Parkinson will understand.
===============w
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