Category Archives: Education

Education

American University

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Every few weeks, when there is a slight lull in 24-7 news crises, someone will describe how terrible the student-loan burden is for stressed-out graduates.  This is then followed by some pandering politician decrying the unfairness of higher education’s being available only to those who could qualify for loans and, therefore, with E-quality being more valuable than quality itself, college should be “free.”

This is an odd declaration for a federal representative who is overseeing budgets that are trillions of dollars out of balance.  Fortunately, we have an army of migrant workers and illegal entrants who help us harvest cash from the money trees that flower perpetually in a secret orchard between Washington D. C. and Wall Street, New York City.  No one responsible for spending the money on our behalf – we, the citizens of this great bankrupt country – can imagine denying free stuff to ostensible college entrants, regardless of ability.  How fortunate that we have full-time, well-compensated spenders working to expend as rapidly as possible.

In any case, the topic of student loans can be easily turned into a big, emotional shibboleth that, obviously, only a bankrupt, spendthrift government can solve.  First, President Obama, as part of the so-called “Affordable Care Act,” essentially placed all student loan business under the aegis of the federal government, applying the “profit” from those loans toward attempting to finance Obamacare.  Soon, of course, politicians were screaming about “profiting” from poor students who just want to improve their opportunities for higher wages through diploma ownership.  Oh, the horror.

On the other hand, many families impoverish themselves to pay for college and post-graduate programs.  They’re not cheap.  The cost of college has increased more than twice as fast as the Consumer Price Index, since 1980.  Another way to look at it is in comparison to car prices.  In 1980 a 3-series BMW was around $21,000 or so, and it was pretty nice.  Today a 325i is about twice the cost of the most comparable model from 1980.  And, it’s still pretty nice.

The thing is, the 2015 version is a far superior car to the 1980 model.  Almost no part of it has not been modified for the better; its performance is better, safety is way better, as are comfort and expected life of components.  The electronics are a phenomenon all their own.  Remarkably, compared to inflationary price pressures, today’s BMW is LESS expensive than the 1980 – and it’s far, far better.

College/University education, on the other hand, is turning out a poorer product, on average, for about THREE times the cost of 1980 tuitions.  That is, college costs have gone up half-again what other big-ticket items have.  What can possibly cause this?   There are only so many instructional hours in a semester.  Are the professors smarter?  Working longer hours?  Taking on more classes each week?  Are highly-compensated administrators covering more functions for their rapidly growing incomes?

It seems that the opposite is true in all of these question-categories.  In the 35 years that automobile manufacturers have continuously become MORE efficient at higher quality to stay competitive… to keep attracting buyer dollars, education has become LESS efficient, more philosophically (politically) biased, less likely to teach American History, less likely to study the Great Books, Greek history and philosophy, English literature… and a bunch of other culture-strengthening stuff.  There are a lot of lawyers, though.

College students, however, thanks to the fatuous generosity of federal grants and loans, are able to pay more and more and still more for those still-coveted diplomas.  Like the uber-capitalists they try to hate, colleges have raised their prices in virtually direct relation to the amount of tuition moneys available.

The growing number of high-school grads going on to college has increased steadily as tuition dollars became more available; at the same time, the net quality of entering students has gone down.  While this speaks to the reduced net quality turned out by, largely, public high schools, it speaks more loudly about the cynicism of colleges and universities: if you got the money, honey, we’ll happily take it while nearly half of you drop out the first year.  Your time, indebtedness and mental health are of no concern for us.  Can your parents, grandparents, rich uncle or well-to-do siblings co-sign for you?  Yes?  Well then come right in and we’ll call you a college student.

Even worse, larger institutions are perfectly happy to create 4-year degree programs in “soft” studies that have very little chance of generating significant incomes.  It’s not that the education isn’t real, it is the reality that it is very, very hard to sell the related skills.  For the college, however, those very significant tuition payments help to finance more costly areas of study and research… not to mention the multi-hundred-thousand dollar salaries of, say, law professors at Harvard – at least the Native American ones.

There is a simple, universally beneficial answer, and it is absolutely NOT federal-taxpayer-free college, Ms. Senator Warren.  The answer is for colleges to co-sign for every student loan!

What?  You say.  Make colleges actually responsible for student success?  What if the student spends his time partying?  Is the college responsible for that, too?

Well, what if they were?  How would the college experience change if the college actually cared whether students were studying or goofing off?  If the college could only come out ahead if the students it admitted ALSO came out ahead, who would they admit?  Would they let Freshmen enter if they had no scholastic history that indicates the ability to learn, study and succeed?  Would they then offer realistic remedial programs AT THE STUDENT’S EXPENSE (as low cost as possible) that would have to be mastered before the rest of their college time could be financed with an institution’s co-signature?

Imagine the real cost of college dropping as schools, themselves, realize that huge student loans are a shared risk.  Maybe the financial wizards who have rewarded one another while money has been free-flowing will become enough sharper as to provide genuine education for far less dough… maybe even scheduling classes so that degrees can be earned in 3 years instead of 4.  Hmmnnn.  These are ideas that make you go, “hmmmnnn.”

 

Culture, Education, Politics 2017, Trump

An American Prescription

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We are at a crossroad in history.  One might say that we are always at a crossroad, but from time to time there is a confluence of forces that literally force decisions on nations and people that will significantly change their paths – and the paths of other nations – into the future.  And here we are.  What are the forces that have come, or are coming together to force big change, none of which is good?

First is militant Islam.  Islam and everyone else have been in conflict since Muhammad was marrying a 9-year-old.  Without parsing every conflicting and convenient verse of the Q’uran, the message of Islam is that everyone must be Muslim, one way or the other – the “other” being force.  This has become twisted, especially since the influence of Nazism, into honoring those who kill themselves to defeat the “enemies of Allah.”  This includes even children and grandchildren.  Muslim political leaders arrange for pensions to be paid to the parents of suicidal “heroes,” often from monies received from the United States(!), as tribute for their “martyrdom.”

There is no possibility of negotiation or compromise with people who believe such things, except that Westerners – Christians in particular – relinquish part of their own beliefs and sense of abhorrence.

The history of relations with strictly Muslim countries is one of slow, steady loss for their opponents, which is to say, us.  The question is whether we have lost enough to be at a point of unrecoverability.  The second condition that forms this point of historic crossroad is nuclear proliferation.

For the only nation to actually kill a few hundred thousand people (both quickly and slowly) with nuclear ordnance, the United States has been just about the worst player in the field of preventing the spread of nukes.  The recent “agreement” with Iranian mullahs, negotiated by the great statesman, John Forbes Kerry, at the behest of international genius, Barack Hussein Obama (the only person who really knows, who ever stated that he, B. H. Obama, was born in Kenya) was a colossal retreat on every front the mullahs thought of, and then an even larger retreat on some fronts they hadn’t thought of but which were conveniently placed before them by the aforementioned duet of American foreign relations braniacs.  The result is the acceleration of Iran’s terrorism operations, deeper involvement in Syria’s civil war, alliance with Russia and, just to add some fun to the world’s troubles, guaranteed development of nuclear-tipped ICBMs.  A legacy of accomplishment.

The rush by North Korea to also field nuclear ICBMs is not a coincidence to the Iranian effort, they are joined at the rectum, passing their crap between them – another legacy of accomplishment for American anti-proliferationists, going back decades.

And so we have two key forces: militant Islam and nuclear weapons.  What’s the third?

The third force is China.  Whether the 21st will be a Chinese century is the immediate result of choosing wrongly which way to turn at the crossroad we are facing.  China has its problems, including potentially severe economic ones, but it does not hesitate to expand its military influence in dramatic ways, including creating islands that it now claims are its territory because it has placed military installations on them.  And, China is the best thief in the world in terms of intellectual property, keeping itself abreast of nearly every U. S. military innovation by stealing every secret we haven’t had the courtesy to hand to them.

China perceives itself as the natural next world hegemon, and simply waits as the U. S. self-destructs in the face of militant Islam and the internal forces we have arrayed against ourselves.

We, ourselves, the nation of the United States of America, representing the decline and fall of Western, Judeo-Christian civilization, comprise the multi-faceted FOURTH force.  It will not please liberals and their lefty, anti-freedom, anti-capitalism friends to hear the prescription for keeping America on top in the global pecking order.

America is destroying itself and its ability to lead the world.  There are many symptoms of this self-destruction, but we do not heed their warnings.  Here are some examples:

  • $20 Trillion in current debt and a hundred $Trillion or so in impossible obligations;
  • 40+% of budgets committed to welfare;
  • Dysfunctional education that has effectively separated Americans from their own history;
  • Dissolution of the social order, distrust of civil authority, fomented racial tensions and breakdown of urban cores;
  • Secularization and separation from, even embarrassment towards Christian religious faith and morals;
  • Rampant drug assault on young people with inconsistent actions to prevent their entry and production;
  • Legalization of a hundred strains of potent marijuana on the premise of tax revenue and official lies about “medical” and “recreational” marijuana;
  • Pollution of electronic media with unbridled pornography and destructive, dishonest “entertainment” contributing to the breakdown of moral institutional influence;
  • Legalized and subsidized abortion;
  • Nearly complete reversal of the role and place of the U. S. Constitution and the ideas of America;
  • Dissolution of marriage, the meaning of marriage and the basic responsibilities of family commitment and child-rearing.

We could talk for hours about all the cultural declines we can see all around us, so many of which weaken our people in terms of mental and physical toughness in the face of potential hardships we will inevitably face.  Science notwithstanding, Americans in great numbers believe there will never be another depression, or even severe inflation; they believe that the weather they like can be guaranteed politically, believe it or not; they believe they can matriculate with barely a glimpse of history, study of founding documents and philosophies, or of the reasons behind major events; they believe there are pills that will a) make them smart, 2)keep them fit with rock-hard abs, 3) make them attractive to beautiful partners, 4) change their birth gender.  These are they who think that criminal illegal entrants strengthen the economy and the nation, that drugs can be legalized to the benefit of government without damaging users, that single-payer health-care will improve quality and lower costs without fascist death panels.  Talk about Dreamers.

What is/are the prescription(s)?  There isn’t room or time to list the hundreds needed, but Prudence indicates that these 4 will make the fastest, surest differences:

  1. Facilitate church-run schools.
  2. Qualification of voters prior to elections.
  3. Charterization – non-union – of public schools.
  4. Nationalizing the Federal Reserve.

America is worth saving; the world depends upon it.  Perhaps the worst thing we could do is pursue removal of a legally elected president no matter how much you may hate him.

Education, Race

Damned Conservatives

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Alas poor education, we once were free.  For those of us… you, who are angry with “conservatives” and who agree that conservatives are (choose all that apply): 1) racist;   2) homophobic; 3) Islamophobic; 4) “Trans”-phobic; 5) anti-women; 6) anti-science;    7) climate change deniers; and 8) fascists.  Excuse me, I forgot, 9) Christian fanatics.

Conservatives who support or, worse, don’t mind Donald Trump, are also stupid.  Did we pretty-much cover it?  Let’s not forget the Russians – don’t mean to slight anyone.

The United States was premised on the concept of individual sovereignty and liberty.  This isn’t taught anymore, but it’s true.  If you perceive or believe that we are “free” only when our entire group is free, then you are, to a degree, believing that the very basis for the exceptional founding of our nation, is no longer valid.  That’s quite sad.

The U. S. was not founded to be a unionized social-service mega-agency.  That we have become so is far from a testament to our benign compassion for the poor; not at all.  Rather, it is a massive subversion of liberty by the left.

“What?”  You exclaim, “Should we just let these poor, oppressed people starve?  If that’s what conservatism is, leave me out!”

No, conservatives would have taught those starving people to feed and otherwise take care of themselves.  Those same would then move forward in life without the artificial welfare of any government.  That seems, to the racist, homophobic, anti-women Neanderthals that liberals hate so deeply, like the ultimate compassionate action, and is, in fact, the very basis of free-enterprise capitalism.  There is wide misunderstanding about these principles.

The most easily grasped distinction between liberalism (in modern definition), or leftism, and conservatism (in modern definition), is responsibility – personal responsibility.  That is, modern liberals perceive everyone only as a member of a “demographic.”  Everyone only has identity due to matching characteristics of a named (must be known by a name) group.

Easiest to understand in this odd universe is a group known variously as “people of color,” “African-Americans,” “blacks,” or the current liberally-correct description.  People with brown skin are of a hundred origins and genealogies.  By definition they do not comprise a “group” or a tribe or even a nationality.  Why on earth would rational people look at people with brown skin as if they were somehow all connected or similar?  The answer reveals the heart of modern leftism.

The only rational purpose for grouping individuals who share a trait or appearance… even a little, is because those who consider them so might gain political power.  This rationalization has also infected members of the artificially constructed group, who join with liberals in maintaining the belief in the existence of a group that exists only politically and not in fact.  Great anger, hatred and historical distortion stems from this artificial group perception.  By automatic reflection, or reaction, every action of unkindness or perceived “hatred,” practiced by anyone not “in” the artificial group, becomes a failing of everyone in the “outgroup,” so long as its members share some identifiable characteristic – like a different skin color.  Suddenly, politically, hatred of the outgroup has flowered, and “white privilege” is the result.

Such hatred requires nurturing and nutrition.  Once embarked on the road to political power, people who know how to profit from hatred can’t seem ever to reverse course.  The joys of political office are too enticing; the lack of true responsibility too comforting, the outlandish emoluments too rewarding.  Today, hatreds are the MOST COMMON political motivations; statesmanship is nearly invisible.

For some “hatred” is simple cynicism.  These are they for whom “public service” is mere aggrandizement, and to Hell with society so long as they get as much out of our pockets as they can.  For the next level of public cynics, power is their profit, and they are satisfied to gain power for themselves, and to Hell with the rest of us.  The consequences of their powers are of little concern to them – indeed they generally absolve themselves of requirements to adhere to laws they codify.  Mixed into the second group are some of those who learn how to employ baser, defined hatreds in order to gain and retain their cynical powers.  Now it’s not simple lies and thievery, it is society-threatening.

And here we are.  Conservatives will point out that the left, constantly riding the “racist” bull, are using black hatred for white supremacists to enhance leftist political power, when it is the left that actually hates blacks by cynically trapping and consigning them to an artificial welfare life.  Blacks, themselves, hate what has happened to them, as they should, but careful education has taught them that it is conservatives who have done this to them.  And on the cycle of hatred goes, while fattened liberals live in mansions, sometimes not even in the districts they “represent.”

There are conservative haters, some of whom actually “hate” black or brown people.  Those are a very tiny minority.  Careful education and media manipulation teaches blacks that these few represent all conservatives.  This is easily refuted, but that is never taught. If one simply sets aside personal concerns temporarily and contemplates the question: “What element of society is primarily responsible for social and governmental failure?”

The likely answer will be “conservatives” or, at the very least, “Republicans,” the two far from synonymous.  At that point, the thoughtful and caring citizen has to wonder if that is a) possible; and b) how he or she came to think so.

Real conservatives, here defined as constitutionalists and others who believe in free enterprise and personal responsibility, are not haters… of anyone.  Mostly they, we, are disappointed that people of color aren’t doing better, on average, particularly with so much evidence of people variously brown in skin color, becoming champions of every field and discipline.  Clearly, or so it seems to us, there is no genetic reason for social failure.  It is based on beliefs, including carefully nurtured hatreds.

The actions that stem from hatred have no claim on forgiveness – from anyone.  The same is true for white-skinned people only more so, since they have no minority status to overcome along the way to happiness.  We have a left-induced tendency to forgive the hatreds of blacks, while trumpeting and often imputing those of whites.  Both destroy society and are to be condemned.  They are not to be exploited, God forbid.  But they are, to our shame… Black and White.

Culture, Education, Family

Do You Believe in Magic?

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It’s all a matter of belief. We strive for truth, or, at least, we tell ourselves that truth is our highest aspiration. But truth among people is the subject of much argument, if not battle. Our beliefs tell our internal selves what is “true” and what is “false.” Likewise, we have internal judgments about who is trustworthy and who is not. Over thousands of years we have created deep belief structures that “work,” in a sense, to organize societies and to increase, however fitfully, general prosperity and defensive strength. Religion is often a significant basis for progress, but has just as often been a limiter, even to this day.

Prudence suggests that the Judeo-Christian ethical platform has been, ultimately, the most successful of historic belief structures, yet it is assaulted daily as “unscientific” since it accepts “truths” that cannot be proven or tested in a laboratory. When are unshakable beliefs imparted? How is it that some kids prefer gang membership while others become Eagle Scouts? Do we think it happens from a conversation with a 5-year old? From Sesame Street? Pre-school?

Speak to a pre-school teacher and she can describe the wide range of attitudes among 3-year olds, some quite destructive. Where did they form those personalities? Well, at home, obviously, but when? At age two and a half? Age two… or earlier? Somehow very young kids are “empatterned” such that anti-social actions, even pathological actions, are the automatic reactions to stimuli. When are those patterns implanted?

Our suspicion is that the process commences in the womb. Ask an expectant mother about the reactions of her pre-born baby and she can describe how her moods and feelings coincide with movements. When she is stressed and when she is calm and happy there are noticeable differences in the baby’s kicks and turns. Do we think the baby is completely inured to its environment until the moment of birth?

Imagine a baby in the last couple of months of gestation in a home where revenge is the common reaction of the parents – and others – to every slight or act of disrespect. Every source of irritation between husband and wife yields a reaction that the offended party must “get even” with, or get the better of, the offending party. The baby, innocently, will mature with a comfortable reaction toward opposition or disrespect that virtually requires that he or she obtain revenge against the offender. It is what he or she “believes.”

What a different path of human interaction that child will be on; what a different interpretation of what love and hate may be. Think about the “differently socialized” children you’ve known. By the time they enter kindergarten such children are already “marked” for special handling. By the time they are teenagers, some of these revenge-comfortable kids are gang members, either organized or in a company of local “bullies.”

Now, place these boys in a position to enthrall girls who grew up without rational father figures, never knowing how a man should treat a woman, respect her and care for her, along with their children. Such an, in effect, fatherless girl would perceive the feral sexual attentions of just as possibly fatherless boys, as true compassion. Now there are two ill-socialized children having their own children, who gestate and begin post-natal life amidst discord, resentment, poverty and, almost inevitably, vengefulness.

Is urban destruction like Ferguson, Missouri or Baltimore, Maryland at all surprising amidst populations that our own social policies have generated in far less than ideal pre-natal and post-natal family conditions? By foregoing social mores related to marriage and family and child-rearing, have we commenced a process of social disintegration? Most likely. Given this, where do we expect our dishonest politics to lead us?

Because individual power and status is the most vital of purposes for elected “representatives,” the misfortunes and dysfunctions of populations have become sources of political, personal, power. We could not have tolerated, and funded beyond reason, via hundreds of overlapping social-service agencies, social dysfunction for literal decades, unless those expenses served the purposes of Congress and others made powerful thereby. It is not possible to consider our history since the 1960’s and conclude that the trillions of dollars expended on basically failed welfare theories, resulted in failure and explosive government expansion, accidentally!

We are destroying the most successful form of social organization the world has seen, insofar as its basis is individual opportunity, freedom and growth without tyranny. Worse, we have brought ourselves to a political point where we are arguing and fighting about how FAST the Judeo-Christian heritage may be dissolved.

We are maintaining the propagation of new citizens who will not have the opportunity to grow in personal character and integrity. They will not enjoy two-parent, loving nuclear families, nor the reinforcing institutions of church and morality-based education.

We are racing not to the Brave New World, but the Craven.

Economics, Education, Politics 2017, Responsibility, Transportation

A Home on the Beach

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As the popular sport of denigrating Christianity has flourished, the new religion of “climate change” has gained thousands of new acolytes. Of course, “climate change” is science as opposed to faith-based mumbo-jumbo. You religious nuts have to come in to the 21st Century. Maybe. Hold the door, please.

Climate change is one of the few constants in the life of the earth. Ice ages, warming periods, volcanoes, comets, tides, gravity, planetary magnetic fields – these things have been present quite variably for billions of years. Well, yeah, but… but pollution, man… pollution has been present for like, since the atom bomb, man. What about that, dude?

Valid point, but pollution, too, has come and gone many times. We are considering only pollution that affects things WE have experienced. We, in our hubris, see this brief period since Biblical times or, more pointedly, since Columbus, say, as what is normal and the only way the world should be forever. Maybe, but an impossibility with or without the befouling presence of humans, especially white ones; they are the worst.

Earth changes in ways and for reasons we cannot affect, effect or fully understand. We may have some ephemeral effects right now, but they get taken care of through cyclical processes fairly well, although not perfectly, God knows… except for jet aircraft and a handful of other egregious assaults on the biosphere that we can fix if we develop a mind to. Surface weather cleans up a lot of our sloppiness, and we are technologically obviating some of our worst ideas. Economics helps.

Self-driving cars are a good example. Again, hubris and greed are driving current approaches, but we’ll get it right without too many deaths, one hopes. Once a standard is set requiring cars to “talk” to each other, real progress will be made. The problem with “autonomous” vehicles is autonomy: attempting to have every car have all the abilities to detect, control or react to every variable in traffic, pedestrians and weather – and weird roads. Can’t be done. However, if every car knew what every other vehicle within, say 100 yards were doing – direction, speed, acceleration – then traffic could automatically adjust itself so that it would never have to stop, including at intersections! Add a few sensors at intersections, on-ramps and the like, and “self-driving” cars will begin to resolve one of the worst pollution generators on the planet: personal, independent, ready-at-a-whim, expensive, heavy, inefficient cars.

And save lives. Imagine commuting without driving your own car. An electric “AV” (autonomous vehicle) or “SDC” picks you up along with 3 others going to the same concentrated economic zone, all independently arranged with phone apps. You work on your laptop, play cards, text or eat breakfast perfectly safely. Your SDC moves steadily forward cutting commuting time by a third or a half, then drops each “ride-pooler” at his or her work and goes off for the rest of the day to do some other tasks, including plugging itself in for an hour or so. At the prescribed times it picks up its riders (who may or may not be the same 4 based on workday schedules) and takes them home. Highways are less congested, traffic flow is uninterrupted (thanks to MDV’s [manually driven vehicles] also communicating with vehicles within that 100 yards), and billions of gallons of gas are left unburned. Cool.

Plus, thousands of acres of parking lots are made superfluous and may be “de-paved” and otherwise made better use of. Public transportation, that perennial, government, unionized cesspool of constant losses and shortfalls, will finally be in a form that works and a lot of crappy trains, trolleys and buses can be eliminated. SDC’s can go where people need to go when they need to go there, resulting in actual use. A lot of people will simply stop owning personal cars that sit idle 93% of the time.

As for jet travel, that’s different. Still, large fractions of it can be obviated with superior “ground” transport systems. Monorail transports in busy corridors, even up to 1,000 miles, can eliminate thousands of short-haul jet flights. Jets, after all, dump their exhaust at 35,000 feet, beyond where normal weather will help remove it. Surface transit at 300 miles an hour, or close to it, will compete effectively on trips up to 3 hours or so – possible up to 1000 miles. Trips from 150 to 500 miles would be a breeze, and more comfortable… and electric. Clean.

Elon Musk’s batteries are going to help, but we’ll have to resolve our UN-scientific fears of nuclear power to finally clean up our planet. It’ll happen… has to. Neither solar nor wind can carry the load in the next couple of generations and we seem to want to clean things up right now – nuclear.

At the same time, maybe we can devise solar-powered robot vessels to clean up our preposterous gyre of garbage in the pacific. Container-ship companies can pay for them. We have to become serious about not despoiling our home. Clean air, clean land, clean water – all valid and viable goals. Climate change will slowly correct to the only extent that it can. What does that mean?

To whatever, unquantifiable degree that human activity has caused a change in Earth’s average temperature, it has taken a long time. This is not to discount variations in solar output, sunspot cycles, variations and weakening of the magnetic field and so forth, but let those go. We may have an impact, no matter how arrogant we sound in saying so. Still, it’s fairly small and slow to make a difference. There isn’t any treaty or legislation that is going to make a rapid reversal. Decades, generations.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start as soon as possible… and we have. But, increasingly, the choice that true believers offer is stark destruction of our ecology and mass starvations and all they imply; OR, VOLUNTARY population reduction. The possibility that Humanity might resolve pollution by dint of invention and technology or even good motives, is never proffered. According to the Church of Inevitable Death, mankind will either kill itself out of stupidity and greed or thanks to enlightened leadership from government members of the new religion.

I’ll take door number 3, Winky.

Climate acolytes are currently very upset about “…the four inches of sea-level rise that has already happened!” Well that’s serious, especially if you’ve been living within two inches of the mean sea level in 1940. It’s also extremely difficult to determine with any precision. But if the seas have risen a couple of inches, their worry and over-concern has to ignore the 400 FEET of sea-level change since the beginning of the reversal of the last ice age. Of course, there was a lot more ice available for melting in the good old days, so small global changes could cause massive meltwater volumes. We’re relatively safe from those kinds of effects, today.
A large part of our ostensible sea-level problem is our own damn fault, since we do enjoy living right on the waters’ edges. I expect we’ll deduce how to avoid drowning slowly, most of us, anyway.

If the entire atmosphere could be liquefied it would be about 33 feet deep, or 393.7 inches. Well great… so what? Well, in fact, CO-2 comprises about .0397% of the total. Let’s see what this means:
1% of 393.7 inches is just 3.937 inches – out of 33 feet. But, CO-2 is less than 4/10ths of that percent, or slightly deeper than 1.57 inches. Around the year 1800 (pre-industry), we’re told, CO-2 was only 3/10ths of a percent of the total, or what would have been 1.18 inches. Now we are told, it is the added .39 inches of the 33-foot total that has caused nearly every problem we face today, hot or cold, wet or dry, cloudy or sunny.

It is a big deal because people literally breath out CO-2, as do our cars and trucks and planes and things. Better, it’s a trace gas that we can BLAME on humans! We can TAX it and buy votes with it and be superior about it. Ohh, Heaven!

Worse, it is swamping tiny atolls in the Solomon Islands and the handfuls of people who like living there (who wouldn’t?) need some of everyone’s money to compensate their moving costs. At least, that’s the trumpeted theory. Still, it fits with the trends of the past 100 centuries or so, which ought to be comforting. Our anxiety derives from changes that have affected things we know from the past couple of hundred years… things that, in our arrogant view, should have remained static once we decided we liked them.

Right? Of course, right!
Since so many factors we have nothing to do with have maintained the direction of change, we are now adopting an amazing attitude that it is within our politics, economics and powers, that we can steer change in a different direction. This is far more remarkable than divinity, but a lot of people have bought it.

Culture, Education

GRADUATED CHANGE

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Prudence attended graduation at a well-known college in Boston’s Fenway section recently.  This particular school graduates no chemists, engineers, lawyers or business majors; no biologists, entomologists or astronomers; no materials scientists or agronomists or hydrologists, and no oceanographers.

Their purview is social work, and a healthy dose of “education.”  That is, education B.S. degree-recipients who, I think, they hope will teach the next generation along the lines of ultra-liberals who have been taking over education aggressively for the past 75 years. Fortunately, they sometimes fail and a graduate escapes with her (mostly hers and wannabes, there) internal philosophy intact, her understanding of reality clear, and her intense desire to educate young kids, rather than indoctrinate them, ready to run.  One such is Prudence’s only reason for attending.

Prudence’s eyes were opened, however, to the existence of this and other nests of socialist vipers, who churn out radical “change agents,” as were frequently referenced in the interminable speeches and last-second directives that made not a single reference to God, although the very last instructress managed to say, “… let the Divine …” which was amorphous enough to get through.  That tiny reference was among the last dozen words of last-second directions to the posse of Bachelors and Masters ready to change America.

The otherwise clear, May, day began with breakfast – free food, so to speak, catered in to the College’s Brookline facility.  Being observant was revelationary.  The professors are constantly professing, we noticed.  Tattoos, for example, profess attachment to the odd fascinations running rampant through society where women, sometimes grossly obese versions, have acres of “body art.”  It’s a statement of inclusion… or a test.  After all, if our campus is one of welcoming and inclusion and non-discrimination for students, then it must be for their instructors, too.  See how it works?

There seemed to be a single statement being uttered by a large fraction of both staff and graduates: There is no weirdness on OUR campus – all are welcome.  Prudence has no argument with the “welcom(ing)” part.  In other words, if you are as different and as unusual as you can make yourself, come, attend our college – we’re just as unusual as you!

Every speech underscored the same concepts of challenging the status quo; the difficulty is, today, that the status quo, having grown fairly weird itself, requires ever more strangeness from those who wish to challenge it.  This might explain, in part, the number of strange appearances of students, but it is unnerving to apply the same measure to staff and professors… at least it was to Prudence.

Sexuality is key to both protest and education, it seems.  Prudence needn’t describe sexual appearances and apparent expressions as most are indescribable and likely wide of the target.  But, unusual male-female iterations are more commonplace on college campuses than elsewhere in the world.  Perhaps it’s simply because these are the age groups where “youthful” experimentation is most likely.  Shouldn’t some adults guide these wandering – and wondering – children toward the most appropriate paths of action and belief?

Aren’t we intending to create new adults of our culture and social fabric?  Or is it our purpose to indulge every strange, interruptive feeling and treat it as if it were as valid as reality?  Reality is so restrictive: two genders… huh.  Are we kidding?  I mean, honestly!

Are there any lines a culture shouldn’t cross?  It’s not a trick question.  We used to decry drug use and numerous other forms of debasement.  Why?  Because it makes for a stronger, more nurturing society.

We used to require people to make their own way, no welfare and all the rest.  It inadvertently made for stronger people and children.  Problem free?  Of course not.  Too many fell through the “cracks,” as it were.  Some level of social support was required for simple fairness TO CHILDREN, and civil kindness to the helpless.

We used to require universal education that reinforced moral lessons, some Biblical, without damaging ANYONE, reinforcing shame for bad actions and strengthening the consciences of individuals… and their basic honesty.  These were good, strengthening-of-society kinds of structures.  Phenomenally, we have succumbed not to foreign powers but to our own cleverness, talking ourselves out of our heritage, our very culture, and of shame, itself.

We are so smart.

Murder, for example, now has shades of evil, some not so bad as to require equivalent sanction.  Indeed, abortion-at-will, deemed “murder” by half of the nation, has amorphous codified status and taxation support!  Suicide by drug overdose is a form of murder by drug-pusher, but we, the wealthiest, most sophisticated culture on earth, with more police forces per hectare than any other, has failed steadily for 60 years to clamp down firmly on drug commerce.

Now we are in a race to legalize ever purer and stronger pot despite its risks (there aren’t any, according to pot users) and to arm first responders with Narcan.  We’re smarter than we even realized.

The largest “industry” in the United States is welfare of a thousand titles.  Statists have found that the philosophies of the most rock-ribbed, self-made American stalwarts can be purchased with enough dependency, as recent “conservative” outcries against threats to Medicare makes clear.

The higher education “industry” is nothing if not opportunistic.  With TRILLIONS of dollars flowing from the Federal and state levels, colleges have justified turning out an army of social workers to soak them up.  Here and there people in need are truly helped, but the lion’s share of those dollars goes to the army of concerned, compassionate care-workers and, especially, to the army of administrators who make sure they are not wasting any money.

Somewhere, and here and there, are schools, churches and other institutions that respect and promote the concepts of self-reliance, absolute personal responsibility, honor and sublime integrity.  They must struggle against an onslaught of socialist control of budgets and information.  Is the ultimate success of the ultimate anti-God philosophy certain to overwhelm what made the U. S. great?

That future depends upon the ignorance of a majority of Americans.  How smart did you say we are?

 

Education

SCHOOL CHOICE

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School choice is a big deal for our new president, our soon-to-be Secretary of Education, millions of parents and students, and for teachers’ unions. Three out of these four favor it. The process of expanding school choice and the effects of it are the basis, potentially, of a learning revolution.
“You’re destroying public education,” say public-school educators.

Charter Schools are a hot topic and part of the revolution. Politicians take strong positions on both sides of the issue. Some like to defend “allowing” more charter schools in urban school districts; others, mindful of union support, insist on defending “our public schools,” as if charter schools weren’t “public.” They are public schools, but they aren’t unionized, for the most part, and they can set many of their own policies, work rules… and inspirations.

Public schools have been saddled with tasks that do not improve learning. This has happened in fulfillment of social-engineering intentions, “political correctness,” whatever that happens to be this year, and in reaction to fairly poor management, generally. There is little accountability under unionization, particularly when most middle-level school managers are in the same teachers’ unions.

America has tried to “fix” education… we can give some credit for that, but the fixes are bureaucratic and government-growing, and have yielded spotty improvements. And, they’re damned expensive. In general, learning problems concentrate in “poor” school districts, and these concentrate in urban areas. Simply busing children around to “mix” them with richer kids in richer districts has some individual success, but it reaches very few.

There’s no news about school districts EVER recommending that less money should be spent because they have learned that a lot of it has no value to education.

School budgets start with staffing classrooms and balloon to provide disproportionate numbers of administrative personnel. In the mid-1980’s the Brookings Institution completed a survey of public school districts nationwide. Across every demographic stratum, they found, test scores and other grade performance metrics were lower in inverse proportion to the number of administrative personnel.

Another way to look at that result is to say that in school districts where higher proportions of personnel funds were spent on teachers, students did better. Too many highly energized, highly motivated teachers are ground into robots by having to explain what they intend to do, describing what they are doing and reporting on what they did.

Too many, who never were highly motivated, are protected by unionized tenure, sometimes reporting to lounges to do what they wish because no principal wants them – still paid as if one did. Will more money correct that?

Although the premise of the public complex says that now that we have calcified all of this waste and misspending, more money will make things better from this point forward, little evidence exists to show that it does.

Charter schools, by and large, have few administrators and are non-unionized. Their teachers may be fired if they don’t teach with zeal and initiative and love. The schools, themselves, will go out of business when they screw up, fail to educate or mis-spend their budgets. Public schools never close due to failures like these – they get more money… and administrators.

Choice is what makes freedom work… Free Will: the essence of our Judeo-Christian ethics and heritage. “Thou mayest choose from evil.” We can choose to accept the responsibilities of freedom… of our choices. Or we can choose foolishness, crime, irresponsibility… socialism, in effect, not to be confused with humanity or even humanitarianism.

We can choose what is best for ourselves, and still be responsible. We can choose to marry and be a parent and a dedicated spouse, and thereby to raise our children and choose their educations in fulfillment of our philosophies and responsibilities.

We are not obligated, except by the public school monopolies, to turn our children over to different philosophies and relinquish our responsibilities. We can choose – or should be able to in a free society of sovereign citizens – to direct our children along the responsible path of our choosing. We can choose his or her place of education and the teachers who will help us create a new adult one day.

Somewhere, a town or school district will vote to charterize all of its schools and provide separate, superb facilities for individuals who cannot contribute to or grow within standard classroom environments. May God bless their endeavors. Otherwise and in spite of that, the resources the polity has decided to spend on each school-age child should be available for parents to spend as they see fit. Universal vouchers, universal responsibility. Let a teachers’ union prove that it delivers better education.

Education

TRUTH IN EDUCATION

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Members of the University of Maine class of 2010 keep a beachball aloft during the commencement ceremony at the Alfond Arena in Orono Saturday. The university held two ceremonies because of the large number of students graduating this year. About 1700 students received their diplomas this year. BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY GABOR DEGRE
Members of the University of Maine class of 2010 keep a beachball aloft during the commencement ceremony at the Alfond Arena in Orono Saturday. The university held two ceremonies because of the large number of students graduating this year. About 1700 students received their diplomas this year. BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY GABOR DEGRE
LEARNING TRUTHS
Truth in education would seem to be a perfect sequitur. That is, educators will naturally be imparting truths to their students… without question. Go to school – society’s best expression of its worth, strength and future – and truth will be your reward. Naturally. But, increasingly it seems, not necessarily.
HISTORY AND TRUTH
What has happened in the past, for example, to the best of our ability to discover and document, provides a body of truth that should be the basis of a History course. In order for our children to know our nation’s origins, our standards of action and cultural “traditions,” we are obligated to convey to them what the facts are and were. We are obligated to tell our children the truth… I think.
Adults – and teachers – sometimes forget that what they show and what they tell their kids is grasped as TRUTH. It can take years for those who have the good fortune or good parenting to unlearn opinions, biases or hatreds, and replace them with “truer” truths. Unless they also have the good fortune to go to most colleges.
COLLEGE LEDUCATION
There they’ll listen to deeper biases, radical anti-Americanism, lists of words that can’t be used any longer, while learning about “trigger” words or concepts that can damage their fellow students… although they won’t be allowed to say “fellow” students. That’s a micro-aggression.
The “Education Industry” used to open minds to new ideas, challenge them with opposing views, teach them to embrace exploration for ever greater and purer TRUTHS. That is a habit that serves American citizens and other humans, for their entire lives.
TRUE HATE
How did higher educators become sources of so much hatred? Inordinate amounts of effort are expended teaching students whom they ought to hate, largely by accusing their targets of being haters! No debate seems to affect this process. Then they demand campus cultures that protect their charges from hearing hateful opposing views. Often this includes agitating to prevent certain people – some quite accomplished – from speaking on their “safe” campus.
WAR ON TRUTH
The college war on TRUTH includes cleansing courses of books written by white people that have been judged by today’s irrelevant attitudes to have been hateful, regardless of truths they may have understood or discovered. There are, apparently, no reasons to learn about truths discovered or described by people we no longer approve of. The entire basis of the United States, going back 500 years, is now rejected as distasteful and properly hated by our delicate “students.” One wonders if they are students if their areas of exploration keep shrinking.
The Constitution and its intellectual premises are well documented, forming a certain body of truth worthy of study (“worthy” is an opinion). At least, one would hope that raising new citizens would include truths about their own country.