Conservative Donnybrook

A friend of mine has written a book that deals with educational reform. I have just finished reading it and recommend the book. I wrote the following review on Amazon:

I am not a teacher, a student contemplating teaching as a career, or even a parent. I do not play one on television. Nonetheless, I found Mr. Kaufman’s book, Reclamation: Saving our schools starts from within, to be a compelling read. Indeed, I read the book in one sitting. Furthermore, I believe that teachers, students who are contemplating a career in teaching and parents will all find this book to be, at moments, an eye-opening exposé of the plight of our public schools, and also a prescription for reclaiming them.

Teachers who read this book will fall into one of two camps. The majority of them will be infuriated at having their worldview challenged. Those teachers are likely to vilify Kaufman for his positions, chalking it up to political bias, as his fellow teachers in Los Angeles did after he and a coworker wrote an op-ed piece promoting a merit pay proposal. However, there will be others who have spent time in the trenches and who have seen the biases, laziness, and self-centeredness of a large proportion of their fellow teachers and wish for something better – if not for them professionally, at least for the children who are a third, fourth or even fifth priority. Those teachers, even if they do not ultimately agree with Kaufman’s prescriptions, will recognize a kindred sense of moral outrage and will appreciate Kaufman’s attempt to steer a new course for public education.

Unfortunately, many students may be put off by Mr. Kaufman’s bleak portrayal of the culture in public schools where teachers are more concerned with padding their already bloated paychecks, with escaping responsibility, and with running out the clock before they can retire to a fat pension than they are with educating young men and women. There is an element of Kaufman’s narrative that may work to discourage potential young teachers from entering the profession. If so, that would be tragic, although Kaufman’s experience led him to make the same decision. Nonetheless, teachers-to-be owe it to themselves to read this account and to enter into their chosen profession with their eyes open.

Parents should consider sending their children to private school or homeschooling their children. But first, they should read this book.

Kaufman provides a two-chapter introduction, which probably should have been combined into a single chapter, explaining why he wrote this book and what he hopes to achieve from its publication.

Kaufman then goes about his work by establishing the problems inherent in the current public school culture. Lazy teachers, who are granted tenure after two short years, live in a world divorced from reality, but nonetheless believe that they are mistreated, underpaid, micromanaged, and unappreciated – none of which are true, at least after they achieve tenure. Kaufman shares an anecdote, which would be surprising to any but the most cynical, about one of his coworker’s reactions to the above-mentioned op-ed piece promoting merit pay. His coworker sent him an email agreeing that his reasoning was correct and that she largely agreed with him, but would nonetheless support the union, which strongly opposed merit pay.

Kaufman then convincingly shows the perfidy and moral bankruptcy of the teachers unions. He concludes that if any reform to the public schools is possible, teachers must reject the unions whose policies are positively harmful to students. Indeed one union head’s statement reveals the danger posed by unions to the welfare of children and their education when American Federation of Teachers president, Albert Shanker, said, “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, then I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.” Tragically, in light of that attitude, the vast majority of teachers vote the union line.

Competition, which the teachers unions strongly oppose and fear above anything else, Kaufman proclaims, is the great hope for American public education. Vouchers and charter schools, programs that give parents choices and force accountability on schools and teachers, are the path to reform of public schools.

Kaufman chronicles the hardly surprising liberal bias that inhabits American schoolrooms. From pointless field trips to shameful revision of American history and from eco-brainwashing of our children to outright anti-Americanism, the full pathology of the worst of the Leftist agenda is on display in our children’s classrooms. Moreover, any voice of moderation is shouted down, vilified and made into a pariah, all abetted by the administration of these schools.

Kaufman has a true gift for the use of anecdotes to illustrate his point. It is through the retelling of these stories that Kaufman is at his strongest. The book is sprinkled throughout with articles that he either wrote or co-wrote on the topics discussed in this book. While the writing is excellent, there are spots where a stronger editorial hand might have been beneficial to keep Kaufman’s narrative a bit more focused (for example, he spends a fair amount of time cataloging the evils of the anti-Semitic terrorist group, ANSWER, of which the teachers union is a supporter and perhaps loses focus on the main thesis). Overall, this is an excellent book with provocative content. Kaufman’s voice should be welcomed into any discussion of education reform and his thoughts deserve to be read widely.

I encourage everyone to buy a copy, or better yet, to buy three to give as gifts.

Over the years I have given the education system a lot of thought. I have always thought it would be fun and rewarding to teach. Unfortunately, I have been put off of teaching because of the regulatory overhead that school districts erect as a barrier to entry. Quite simply, I refuse to sit through classes filled with psychological babble about a child’s self-esteem and self-confidence that ultimately results in undermining the fulfillment of the most able students’ potential.

I think about my own childhood education. I was one of those students who never did his homework, but tested very well. I had grades that reflected that – where a class was heavily graded on the homework assignments and less focused on test scores, I did poorly and vice versa. I remember one class in particular – I had an algebra class in 7th grade and the teacher (I wish I could remember his name – Frost Junior High in Schaumburg, Illinois, circa 1982) assigned daily homework assignments. Each day, at the beginning of class, he would walk up and down the aisles and check that each student had completed his homework – it wasn’t actually graded, he just wanted you to do it. And each day, he would pause at my desk, look down and say, “No homework today, Karl?” He would shake his head, mark my failure down in his grade book, and move down the aisle. After each exam in that class, when I scored perfect or nearly so, he would try to talk sense into me, telling me that I could get a great grade in his class if only I would do the homework. I would always respond, “Why should I spend my time doing homework for material that I have down cold?” One day he announced to the class that the math team would be conducting “try-outs” (i.e. take a test filled with tricky math problems) and anyone interested should come to his classroom after school. When I walked into the classroom, his look of disbelief was plain. He even asked me if I was serious. I assured him that I was and proceeded to score second highest on the exam and became one of the math team members. His disappointment that I would not do his homework assignments had caused him not to challenge me, but to dismiss me as a lost cause and he was astonished, I think, when I rose to the biggest challenge with which he could present me.

Teachers would routinely decry my failure to live up to my potential to my parents. The conclusion, according to the educational cognoscenti was that I was bored. Indeed, my nearly daily fist fight during lunch with Brian Brocce was proof of my boredom (either that, or I was a contumacious bastard). That was in the 70s; today I would be diagnosed as ADHD and medicated to treat my behavior problems. The one thing, even then, that never occurred to anyone was to challenge me academically.

If I were to suddenly win the lottery (which would be a miracle since I don’t play – after all, a lottery is only a tax on people who can’t do math), I would want to open a school along the following lines. If I learned anything in my algebra class (other than algebra), it is that capable students will surprise you when they are presented with a challenge. With that in mind I would love to start a school where the student is encouraged to proceed at his own pace. He would not be locked into a single class, segregated by his age peers, all year or semester long. Rather, he would be segregated into classes based upon his ability to master the material. Clearly, some students would master the material faster than others and those students should be passed on to the next level as soon as they demonstrate that mastery. The way the school would be structured would be that teachers would teach a particular subject (say, math) of a certain difficulty level (say, first year algebra). When a student demonstrated mastery of the subject, he would move on to the next level. Teachers would not be Fourth Grade teachers since there would be no such thing as grades based on age group. During the course of a year, a student may sit in three separate math classes while he progressed through the ever-tougher material. At the same time, the same student may only progress one classroom in composition. In the end, it would be the child’s capacity to excel that would determine his studies rather than some rigid age group limitation.

The way schools are set up now, the smartest students are slowed in their progress. The pace of instruction has to be determined by the least capable student in the classroom. To go any faster would be to frustrate that student and cause him undue stress (i.e. undermine his self-confidence and destroy his self-esteem). Meanwhile, the rest of the class becomes bored and perhaps spends its time getting into fights with the Brian Brocces of the world (what did bored girls do?). Under the plan I envision, the slowest student would be challenged, but not pressured by artificial demands to keep up with his age peers, while the brightest students would be encouraged to maximize their progress. Teachers would be chosen, not based on some state credential or possession of a teaching certificate, but on their ability to teach, their mastery over the subject area, and their ability to motivate students. A school such as I envision would serve the needs of the community better in that it would produce the high-flyers who could go on to push the boundaries of mathematical or scientific understanding or who would contribute to the culture through their superior literary development.

Some will say that a student benefits from being kept with his age peers, but I wonder how true that is. All of us of a certain age will have grandparents, especially if they lived in rural areas, who attended one-room schoolhouses where students of varying ages were instructed in a single room. It is not unprecedented to have different ages educated simultaneously. The plan I have outlined would, I think, be an improvement over those schools because every student in a classroom, regardless of his age, would be on the same academic level within that discipline. For instance, look in a college classroom on any commuter campus; one will routinely see a spread of ages present in such a classroom.

I would love to hear your thoughts.

I am headed in to finals for (hopefully) the last time in my life!   So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, good-bye.  I will return to posting duty sometime during the third week of May.

In the meantime, I am sure my fellow cohorts will titillate you with wonderful if not poetic posts.

The developing MSM and liberal memes holding that yesterday’s “tea parties”: 1. were basically a corporate-sponsored “astroturf” movement, and 2. were attended by a collection of paranoid right-wing kooks – can be seen playing themselves out in Krugman’s latest column:

These parties … have been the subject of considerable mockery, and rightly so. … President Obama is being called a “socialist” who seeks to destroy capitalism. Why? Because he wants to raise the tax rate on the highest-income Americans back to, um, about 10 percentage points less than it was for most of the Reagan administration. Bizarre.

Yeah. That is really, really bizarre. That this black-helicopter crowd should find anything to worry about in  Obama’s shoveling of untold trillions into massive bailouts and other black holes and Bernanke’s unprecedented, frenzied money-pumping, and conclude that it might all somehow affect their tax burden at some point and maybe increase the scope of government power — hey, Krugman’s an economist, tin-foil fools, and he thinks everything’s fine. Anyone can see that Obama is basically a moderate tax-cutter!

Last but not least: it turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.

Well, that criticism hits home and it doesn’t. Continue Reading »

To support their savior, Barack Obama, Georgetown University covered the name of Christ during a speech by the chosen one.  Apparently the President asked Georgetown to cover any signage or symbols on the Gaston Hall stage where he was to deliver a soul-stirring speech.

A spokes-hole for the once Catholic institution said:

“In coordinating the logistical arrangements for yesterday’s event, Georgetown honored the White House staff’s request to cover all of the Georgetown University signage and symbols behind Gaston Hall stage….  Frankly, the pipe and drape wasn’t high enough by itself to fully cover the IHS and cross above the GU seal and it seemed most respectful to have them covered so as not to be seen out of context.”

Outrageous!  I sure hope that Notre Dame is paying attention.  South Bend, are you listening?

We know that Obama is no fan of religion and this is nothing shocking.  But the fact that a university that claims to be Catholic would cover the name of Christ in order to appease an enemy of the faith is nothing short of depressing.  It is commonly known that Georgetown University does not represent the faith.  They (and many other Catholic schools) are, as others here have pointed out, CINO.

Thousands of people this evening voiced their displeasure with the level of the government’s spending and ultimately the taxes which will flow from it. Lest the critics charge that the dissatisfaction stems from Barack Obama’s blackness, let it be known that this discomfiture began with G.W. Bush, in particular when he passed Medicare Part D. The protest stems from Washington’s overreach into the average American’s pocket, regardless of the party who deems it necessary make the grab.

In Indianapolis tonight, it is estimated that nearly 3,000 people appeared on the Statehouse steps to protest Washington’s overreach.

Indy Tea Party

All across America taxpayers gathered to voice their opposition to the rampant spending program that promises to impoverish future generations of Americans. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security released a document that defines the ultimate boundaries of extremism. It appears that:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

(emphasis supplied). In other words, if you believe that the Tenth Amendment is something other than an indecipherable inkblot, you are a right-wing extremist. Indeed, if you believe that America’s laws should be enforced, you are akin to an extremist militia member bent on the destruction of America:

Over the past five years, various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point,
and recruiting tool. Debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment, but in some cases, anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.

Needless to say, if you attended one of the reactionary tea parties this evening, you can be sure that you qualify as a right-wing racist extremist. You probably hate America as evidenced by your love of the Constitution and all its provisions. Nothing is a surer barometer than that.

The day after Barack Obama won the presidential election, I was speaking with my wife about the probable course he would chart.  She, like many Americans, expressed hope that we would navigate our nation away from foreign wars and would bring all of our troops home.  I did not (and do not) believe that he would do such a thing.  I agreed that he would continue with Bush’s plan to withdrawal troops from Iraq.  I then made a prediction that by summer the United States Navy would be involved in a series of attacks against pirate strongholds on the seas and in Somalia.  She disagreed.  Now, just 80 days in to his first term, Obama is faced with a problem of piracy.

After kid-napping the captain of the Alabama, the pirates now seem to be angling to meet up with their comrades as to set sail for the Somalian coast.  While trapped in a life boat, the pirates called for a flotilla of ships previously hijacked by other Somalia pirates to come to their aide.  It appears that they will do so.  Anticipating further detention or worse, Captain Phillips attempted an escape on Friday only to be recaptured.  Meanwhile, U.S. warships watch while FBI agents negotiate with his captors.

What shall Obama order?  Assuming more pirate ships arrive on the scene, will he allow the Navy to destroy the vessels?  Will he allow the pirates to whisk away Phillips to the relative safety of the Somalian coast?  Will he fold like a stagnant sail and pay the pirates for the safe return of the captain?  Will he allow the pirates to escape if they first surrender their captive?

I am no longer so sure of the prediction I so boldly made months ago.  After Obama allowed North Korea to launch a missile towards the United States with virtually no repercussions, I have serious doubts that he has the fortitude to take this threat head on.  And yet failure to act decisively on this situation could spell doom for the historic deterrent effect the United States military.   This is a great opportunity for the president.  He could take on the pirates by sending a volley of missiles down on known pirate hideouts.  He could raid and destroy the numerous captured vessels held by pirates.  He could do a lot of things but he probably wont.  And if he does not take aggressive action now, it will become clear to enemy and ally alike that the President of the United States is a weakling and not seriously concerned about protecting American interests at home or abroad.

UPDATE:

Mr. Phillips is free thanks to the U.S. Navy Seals! It turns out Obama has something like a backbone after all!

And Bloomber News is now confirming my earlier suspicions.

I ran across this article concerning the British handoff of the Basra region to American forces as the British pull out of Iraq and it made me remember this. It seems that Maliki was touting quite a different timetable back in October 2007. [Note: the article from which I took Maliki's quote has disappeared from the Internet]. In fact, the BBC News ran a story then about the handover of power from Britain to the Iraqis. Apparently, the Brits did not clearly annunciate their return policy. Let us hope the Americans are firmer in enforcing the “no returns” policy when the time comes than were the British.

David Brooks wrote an interesting op-ed piece earlier this week regarding Obama’s recent announcement that bankruptcy may be in General Motors’ and Chrysler’s futures. His conclusion is that the announcement is so much smoke and mirrors and that Obama will do like every other president has ever done and determine that bankruptcy is the answer for a few months from now and that, in the meantime, the companies need to continue their perpetual restructuring. In this way the day of reckoning could be put off indefinitely, always a few months hence.

However, Obama did more than simply say the magic word, “bankruptcy.” He fired Rick Wagoner and installed Fritz Henderson in his place. In doing so, Obama now owns the fallout from GM, good or bad. As Brooks wrote,

And yet by enmeshing the White House so deeply into G.M., Obama has increased the odds that March’s menacing threat will lead to June’s wobbly wiggle-out. The Obama administration and the Democratic Party are now completely implicated in the coming G.M. wreck. Over the next few months, the White House will be subject to a gigantic lobbying barrage. The Midwestern delegations, swing states all, will pull out all the stops to prevent plant foreclosures. Unions will be furious if the Obama-run company rips up the union contract. Is the White House ready for the headline “Obama to Middle America: Drop Dead”? It would take a party with a political death wish to see this through.

Whether Obama follows through with his threat to send GM through bankruptcy or not, by replacing Wagoner, the Obama administration is implicated in the outcome. Brooks is right that by making this move, the White House has opened its doors to automotive lobbyists who will inevitably (and rightly) see Obama as holding the reins at the automakers. As a result, when GM closes plants in Anderson or Kokomo, it will be Obama who will ultimately be to blame. When GM contracts with another, cheaper supplier and a plant closes down in Wisconsin as a result, it will be Obama who is ultimately to blame. It will be interesting to see whether the union members who will bear the brunt of the reorganization will regard Change™ as something they can believe in.

It is ironic that by summarily canning a fat-cat CEO of a multinational corporation, the president may have sealed his demise with the unions. But, by taking that step, he has placed himself in Wagoner’s place. He is now the de facto CEO of General Motors (albeit, the least well-paid one in decades) with all that entails.

Meanwhile, Congressmen like Joe Donnelly (D-IN) from Indiana’s second district and Tim Ryan (D-OH) from Ohio’s 17th district, will be placed in awkward positions. Do they stand with their president in the interest of party unity? They certainly will be exerting pressure upon him to avert plant closures in their districts. But, Obama is going to be faced with incredibly difficult decisions and not every congressman who lobbies the president will be accommodated. As it is written, “Many will say to Obama on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, spare our communities.’ But he will say to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me.’”

Meanwhile, Obama’s staffers don’t drive American cars. Maybe they’re worried about the warranties.

An interesting thing is happening over in Europe these days. It is no secret that the economic meltdown is of global proportions, but not every country has the luxury of throwing wads of cash at the problem. You see, when a country seeks to save the economy today by lavishing government largesse on the problem, it is essentially asking future generations to pick up the tab. But, what happens if the prospect of future generations is sketchy? That is the problem that Germany, Itlay, France and Russia face. With dwindling populations for as far as the eye can see, their hands are tied inasmuch as they cannot, in good conscious, spend future money. There simply won’t be anyone to pick up the bill down the line. Of course, they could dramatically increase immigration (mainly from Northern Africa and the Middle East), but the immigrants have to be aware that it is they who will be asked to pony up the cash. In that position, it is not hard to imagine the prospective immigrant opting for greener pastures – one where the population is still growing.

The United States has been hovering right around the replacement rate for about a decade – that is, we have as many babies as deaths, on average, each year. Simple math dicates that increased spending today (which we have emphatically committed ourselves to), will mean a large debt service per person for the babies being born today as compared to today’s taxpayer. In addition, we seem to be expanding the percentage of the population that pays no taxes (welfare recipients, in essence). As a result, the average taxpayer is already being asked to increase his support of his neighbors. Babies born today will face a double whammy then, as more people will be on the dole (including a segment of those same babies) and the debt will have increased. It does not take a rocket scientist to conclude that we need either 1) dramatically more babies; 2) more immigrants or 3) all of the above.

Perhaps, we could advance the argument: “For the welfare state, consider adoption.” Wouldn’t that leave the Lefties in a bind.

Looking back, I note that I pretty much took March off from posting (five posts all month). I would resolve to do better, but unless I find that I have something to say in April, I’m making no promises. Sometimes it just seems like you have nothing to add. However, as a result of my relative inactivity, I have accumulated a number of miscellaneous thoughts, none of which warrant an entire post.

Dusty Baker

If you are Edison Volquez or Johnny Cueto, are you watching the calendar for the first day you are eligible to demand a trade? With Dusty’s reputation for destroying young guns’ arms, I have to think these guys are counting the days until free agency.

On the same topic, a friend recently sent the following question: “do you think Dusty favors black players?” I had to think about this for a minute. I know that Dusty has a tendency to favor players, usually for inexplicable reasons. (Can anyone give me a justification for the amount of PT Neifi Perez had under Baker?) The list of players that come to mind does nothing to dispell the question: Neifi Perez, Jose Macias, Corey Patterson, etc. Now he is all gigged about the prospect of bringing Sheffield to Cincinnati. Is there anything to this?

The Federal Reserve

The seed for a post has been floating around my head for a few days, but doesn’t seem to be developing into anything worthwhile. The seed is this: Conservatives tend to look askance at the Fed as an unaccountable (sometimes sinister) organization with an inordinate amount of power. Any number of conspiracy theories center on the Fed’s dealings and potential to make mischief. But, what is the alternative? Giving the power to regulate money to Congress? Thinking about that prospect makes my knees weak and causes me to break out in a cold sweat. Can anyone think of any organization that Congress runs well? Hell, it can’t even manage its own cafeterias profitably. Or maybe we should just kill it altogether.

Last weekend Timothy Geithner appeared on Meet the Press and George Stephanopoulos’ shows. Steph asked him if he was worried about inflation. Geithner quickly answered, “That will never happen.” He went on to add that the Federal Reserve would never allow it. That seems to me to be too glib by half. Paul Craig Roberts has a piece (not all of which I agree with) that spells out the peril that we face due to all of Obama’s (and Bush’s before him) spending. I recently finished rereading Milton and Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose, and I have to agree with Roberts that inflation is a looming spectre (although I do not share his prescription for raising tariffs) that is going to be painful to combat. Of course, that pain will occur after Obama is a mere footnote.

On a similar note, I thought George’s interview was much better than David Gregory’s. Boy, do I miss Russert.

Barack Obama and Foreign Policy

Is he really as bad or worse than Bill Clinton was? The Obama administration is now calling for “global oversight” or corporate regulation, so as to end corporate regulatory arbitrage. Does he mean that Brussels bureaucrats should have control (or even just a say) over how “American” corporations are run or how the U.S. government intends to regulate them? Yikes.

And, did Barack Obama really just supplicate to the Saudi king?

Answering my own question

It looks like the answer is that we have not yet hit the bottom. Today, the unemployment numbers jumped again to 8.5%. Do we start printing the “Obama Lied” bumper stickers yet?

Iowa? Really, Iowa?

It appears that the justices in Iowa have legislated gay marriage for Iowans, making them the third state to do so. So much for separation of powers in the Heartland. Coming to a state near you…

North Korea is set to launch what appears to be a ballistic missile.  The launch could happen as early as Saturday.  What is really shocking is not that the DPRK is saber rattling, but that the U.S. is acting like such a weenie on the world stage.

Initially, Admiral Anthony Keating suggested that the U.S. Navy was in a position to shoot down the rogue state’s threat.  “We’ll be prepared to respond,” he said, adding that “the United States has the capability” to destroy any missile.  Then the Obama administration, Via Secretary Gates, said “...we’re not prepared to do anything about it. If we had an aberrant missile, one that looked like it was headed for Hawaii, we might consider it, but I don’t think we have any plans to do anything like that at this point.”

Let me get this straight, if the missile looks like it will hit Hawaii we may do something about it?  This is ludicrous and dangerous.  The DPRK is calling this a communications satellite launch and if it is, we should not shoot it down.  But the very second it looks as if it will land on Earth, we ought to shoot it out of the heavens.  We have pandered to this totalitarian menace for too long.  Its time we used our defenses to demonstrate to Kim Jong-Il that his missile program and his nuclear development are useless.

Instead of ending the threat, Obama will allow the DPRK to advance their technological know-how.  Hell, maybe we should just send them a series of Titans.  Show some backbone Mr. President.

President Obama’s administration has announced the end of a southern tradition: American automobile involvement in the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.  That’s right, Obama has removed Chrysler and GM from the racing circuit effective as of the end of this season. His reasoning?  Racing is expensive and both companies could stand to spend money on product development instead.  And should Ford ask for cash, they too will have to stop racing.  With the loss of both corporations, only Ford is left to represent North America against Toyota (and possibly Hyundai) in the once traditionally American racing series.

The news is sure to be a blow to Miller High Life drinking- stained white T-shirt wearing southerners everywhere.  When asked for comment, one southern fried fan responded, “All I ever had was pork tenderloins, Miller and NASCAR.  Now I am left with only pork and beer.”  Well put Josh, well put.