Month: March 2010

We Fail To Teach Because We Are Afraid of What Will Be Learned

Louann has an inter­est­ing post up at Holt and Beyond con­cern­ing a fifth grade boy she has under­tak­en to tutor.

I scrapped the text­book after one night of try­ing to read it. I swear text­books destroy brain cells. I told the boy that I didn’t like the book. He looked sur­prised and then pleased. He said, “It’s bor­ing, isn’t it?”

Bor­ing indeed. And the boy’s per­cep­tion of that could more eas­i­ly be evi­dence of the boy’s intel­li­gence than it is evi­dence that he is dumb.

And why are his­to­ry text­books so awful? Because too many peo­ple have input into them. On the one hand, there are com­mit­tees of “edu­ca­tors” decid­ing what fac­toids should be learned by all stu­dents. Then the text book is writ­ten to include all of the fac­toids. This ren­ders, at best, a tor­tur­ous nar­ra­tive. Then there are the peo­ple who mon­i­tor all the edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to root out any bias they per­ceive. God for­bid a child learns any­thing that might be ideological.

There is a near­ly end­less sup­ply of great read­ing his­to­ry and biog­ra­phy books, the read­ing of any one of which would lead to more learn­ing than the entire­ty of text­books. But these books can not help but con­tain some bias or another.

The empha­sis on fac­toids yields very poor results. Few remem­ber the fac­toids for long and few have any under­stand­ing of the forces of his­to­ry since that was nev­er taught to begin with.

Note: Some of this was post­ed as a com­ment to the linked Holt and Beyond post.

Rules Are Rules

I have seen a cou­ple of ref­er­ences to the idea of chang­ing the Sen­ate fil­i­buster rules. I am com­plete­ly opposed to this.

In the first place, the Democ­rats were able to pass health care reform with­in the exist­ing rules. The blame for the dif­fi­cul­ty involved lies far more on the Democ­ra­t’s own shoul­ders than it does on those of the Repub­li­cans. True, the Repub­li­cans did every­thing they could think of to stall and obstruct, but the Democ­rats had the votes any time they decid­ed to get their act together.

In the sec­ond place, chang­ing the rules is short­sight­ed. Even­tu­al­ly, the Repub­li­cans will again have majori­ties in con­gress. I do not think it like­ly that when that time comes the GOP will begin by rein­stat­ing the filibuster.

Final­ly, there is Mass­a­chu­setts. The Democ­rats changed the rules there when they were afraid a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor would be appoint­ing a replace­ment for Sen­a­tor Ker­ry. This was com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary since Ker­ry went on to lose the pres­i­den­cy and keep the sen­ate seat. And it bit the Democ­rats in the ass when Ted Kennedy was dying and they had to hur­ried­ly change the rules back so the Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nor could appoint a replace­ment. I won­der how much this play­ing with the rules influ­enced the elec­tion of Brown.

There are times in life when rules need to be ignored. There are times when rules sim­ply do not work any­more and need to be changed.

But this is not one of those times.

More Like Brevity Or Bust

The oth­er day I opened up an old issue of The Paris Review to a poem by Eliz­a­beth Nei­ditz, That I was not Insane, or Worse.

The end­ing lines sound­ed familiar:

And my father, a mas­ter of the two-line letter

And the fifty-six sec­ond phone call,

Liked to say that “brevi­ty is the spice of life.”

My father, to my knowl­edge, nev­er said “brevi­ty is the spice of life”, but he was a mas­ter of the two-line let­ter and the fifty-six sec­ond phone call. My only expo­sure to his let­ter writ­ing was the notes he includ­ed with the checks he sent when I was in col­lege, the full text of which was some­thing like “I know you need this so I won’t waste time writ­ing much. Love, Dad”

The phone call was not real­ly fifty-six sec­onds because Mom would talk longer, but Dad would come on to say hi. Fifty-six sec­onds would have been a long time on the phone with Dad.

I have no idea why con­ver­sa­tions with Dad were inher­ent­ly brief, but a pos­si­bil­i­ty for the brief let­ters occurs to me. Dad was an excel­lent attor­ney. I have been told that a big rea­son for that was his thor­ough­ness. He cov­ered all the details. I sus­pect that this was not a dif­fi­cult skill to learn for him, that he had a nat­ur­al instinct to be thor­ough. The let­ters had to be brief, since any expan­sive­ness would then require a detail or two to be cov­ered. Much sim­pler to keep it down to the bare bones.

Then again, maybe he was just busy.

I know as I blog that my goal is to always be brief. Most­ly because I do not like blogs that con­sis­tent­ly have long posts. I can’t believe I am the only one who feels that way. But my efforts to be brief are con­stant­ly frus­trat­ed by the desire to explain a bit more.

If this PDF (4.06 MB) is rel­e­vant (and I believe it is), then Eliz­a­beth Nei­ditz is now Eliz­a­beth Bene­dict.

I must con­fess that for all of Dad’s brevi­ty in let­ters, I make him look like Dick­ens in com­par­i­son. I have writ­ten too few let­ters in my lifetime.

Health Care Reform!

Con­gress has passed it. The Pres­i­dent signed it. It is law. We still need the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion to be passed, but I am con­fi­dent that it will get done (may take more effort than one would think, but it will get done).

Seems like a com­mon theme I was hear­ing in recent weeks was how Oba­ma’s pres­i­den­cy was a fail­ure (from con­ser­v­a­tives). Now I hear that the Oba­ma pres­i­den­cy is an his­toric suc­cess (from lib­er­als). In both cas­es it is a bit soon to judge. It is still too soon to judge George W. Bush’s presidency.

This was not rammed through against the wish­es of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. It was passed by nor­mal leg­isla­tive pro­ce­dures against the wish­es of a minor­i­ty of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. 53% of vot­ers vot­ed for Oba­ma. Any­one who vot­ed for Oba­ma and did not know he or she was vot­ing for health care reform was not pay­ing atten­tion. Although there were recent polls show­ing that a major­i­ty were against the health care reform bill, those polls actu­al­ly showed that a lot of peo­ple were against what they believed the health care bill to be, not what it was. And a few were against it because it was not lib­er­al enough.

Don’t believe it when Repub­li­cans claim they had no choice but to oppose the bill at all costs since the Democ­rats refused to nego­ti­ate in good faith. It was the oth­er way around. In par­tic­u­lar, Sen­a­tor Bau­cus spent weeks try­ing to get a com­pro­mise that would gar­ner some Repub­li­can sup­port. Lat­er, the Democ­rats stug­gled to find the ground that would get both the con­ser­v­a­tive and the lib­er­al Democ­rats to vote for the bill. If there were some mod­er­ate Repub­li­cans there to stand in for the loss of the lib­er­al Democrats.….

This is not the sal­va­tion of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pary (though it does and will stand as an impor­tant achieve­ment). There are still seats to lose in November.

This is not the Water­loo of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. The Par­ty is not now exiled onto St. Hele­na to die six years hence. There are seats to win in November.

Now the law­suits begin. Under the head­ing of “be care­ful what you wish for”, if this bill gets thrown out as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al due to the indi­vid­ual man­date, then the next time around the bill that will be passed will be sin­gle pay­er. Yes, it might take a few years to get us back to such a point, but it will hap­pen if this gets tossed.

There are plen­ty of issues to occu­py Wash­ing­ton after health care, but my vote for most impor­tant issue is the deficit.

Make It Say Whatever You Need It To Say

As we, sup­pos­ed­ly, come down to the final hours before the House vote on Health Care Reform, the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee has come out with a poll on the sub­ject. The tim­ing of this poll is clear­ly intend­ed to intim­i­date Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­man into vot­ing no.

From the link:

The RNC poll also holds oth­er good indi­ca­tions of a strong Repub­li­can show­ing in Novem­ber. Among unde­cid­ed vot­ers, 46% said that they would pre­fer a “Repub­li­can can­di­date who would be a check and bal­ance to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and the Democ­rats in Con­gress,” com­pared to 19% who dis­agreed with the state­ment. 53% said that the would con­sid­er vot­ing for a Repub­li­can so as to “send a mes­sage to Pres­i­dent to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and the Democ­rats and make them lis­ten to vot­ers like me.”

If the poll shows that 46% would pre­fer a “Repub­li­can can­di­date who would be a check and bal­ance to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and the Democ­rats in Con­gress,” the poll had to have that lan­guage in the ques­tion. Dit­to with “send a mes­sage to Pres­i­dent to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and the Democ­rats and make them lis­ten to vot­ers like me.”

The result is that the poll is, for all intents and pur­pos­es, mean­ing­less. But it was guar­an­teed to give the result the Repub­li­cans were look­ing for.

The Repub­li­cans are des­per­ate to pre­vent the bill from pass­ing because they fear the elec­torate will like the bill once it is seen for what it is and not through Repub­li­can distortions.

I Live Here and I Would Not Have Guessed

I heard on the radio today that Indi­ana is the third high­est gam­ing des­ti­na­tion in the coun­try tak­ing the place of Mis­sis­sip­pi. Neva­da is num­ber one and New Jer­sey is num­ber two. No sur­prise there. But Indi­ana is num­ber three!?!?!? I con­sid­er this a dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion at best.

I also learned recent­ly that Indi­ana leaped into the upper ech­e­lon of wind pow­er states. I believe that Indi­ana installed 900 some­thing MW of wind pow­er in 2009 and now has a total installed wind pow­er of 1036 MW. This puts Indi­ana at num­ber twelve of the fifty states in installed wind pow­er. Only Texas installed more wind pow­er in 2009 (Indi­ana was not a close second).

Indi­ana has the wind, the man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ties, and the grid.

That’s bet­ter than gaming!

Break Out The Crystal Ball

While watch­ing the NCAA bas­ket­ball tour­na­ment, I notice the PSA’s for the cen­sus say that we should fill out the cen­sus form this March. But the cen­sus form asks for the name of the peo­ple that were liv­ing here on April 1, 2010.

It does not ask who will be liv­ing in this dwelling on April 1?, it asks who WAS liv­ing in this dwelling on April 1?

So we are to pre­dict the future in the past tense.

You Will Have To Take My Word On It

The New York­er has post­ed a pro­file of Supreme Court Jus­tice John Paul Stevens. It is a bit lengthy and I con­fess I did not read the whole thing even though I found it interesting.

A lit­tle more than halfway through, there are a cou­ple of para­graphs on the 1989 flag burn­ing case. Stevens “dis­sent­ed from the deci­sion that pro­tect­ed the right to burn the Amer­i­can flag as a form of protest.”

I remem­ber that con­tro­ver­sy. I know I told a few peo­ple that it did not make any sense. If some­one did not want the flag to be burned, then the best thing to do would be to make it legal to burn the flag. Mak­ing flag burn­ing against the law would assure that there would be more flag burnings.

The court said flag burn­ing was pro­tect­ed speech and could not be crim­i­nal­ized. The result:

“The fun­ny thing about that case is, the only con­se­quence of it — nobody burns flags any­more,” Stevens told me. “It was an impor­tant sym­bol­ic form of protest at the time. But nobody does it any­more. As long as it’s legal, it’s not a big deal. You just don’t have flag burning.”

Exact­ly as I pre­dict­ed. But you will just have to take my word on it.
An inter­est­ing side note here is that Stevens tells The New York­er that he will retire in the next three years.
Note: I copied and past­ed from The New York­er’s post twice. Both times the fol­low­ing came along with the copied text. So I include it here at the end:

Art Director Should Be Product Designer

This is a pic­ture of a cov­er­let on a store shelf. The col­or of the cov­er­let in the pho­to is much more vibrant than the col­or of the actu­al coverlet.

If the more vibrant col­or helps sell the item, then would it not make sense to give the actu­al prod­uct the more vibrant color?

At least the untruth of the pic­ture is clear­ly demonstrated.

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

I recent­ly con­nect­ed on Face­book with an old friend from high school. I offered an apol­o­gy to her for my sad teenage ways and assured her I’ve spent decades get­ting my head out of my ass. She respond­ed with

Sounds like you’re being a lit­tle hard on yourself…You always seemed to have your act togeth­er — respon­si­ble job, car, etc.

Well, I did have a job. I worked at a cor­ner phar­ma­cy through­out high school. I have no doubt that my employ­er con­sid­ered me to be gold. I was con­sci­en­tious, depend­able, and com­pe­tent. So I con­cede that.

Car? No. I had no car. I had ready access to my moth­er’s Ply­mouth sta­tion wag­on. If she knew how I drove it, I would nev­er have been allowed to dri­ve a car belong­ing to my par­ents again. I street raced con­stant­ly. I was rou­tine­ly dri­ving 50, 60, 70, 80 or more in 30 and 40 mph zones. There was a train cross­ing that I drove over fre­quent­ly that was pitched just right so I could “jump” it (I don’t know if the car left the ground or not, but it sure felt like it. Peo­ple stand­ing on the cor­ner would dis­ap­pear as I came down the street after “land­ing”). There was one late night vari­a­tion of the game of chick­en that could have eas­i­ly end­ed with Mom’s car in the lake. I was a mani­ac. How I nev­er got caught I’ll nev­er know. I am pos­i­tive I am only alive today because I was always stone cold sober. Mom and Dad usu­al­ly kept cars for four years. They trad­ed that wag­on in two think­ing it was a lemon since it con­stant­ly need­ed brake work, sus­pen­sion, etc. But I nev­er scratched it.

OK. I con­cede the point that not doing drugs or drink­ing booze would be con­strued as hav­ing my act togeth­er. I did smoke though. And I had tried mar­i­jua­na three times and found it to have no effect oth­er than to smell bad and irri­tate my throat. I tried to like drink­ing but I could not stand the taste and the one time I got drunk felt like the end of the world the next morn­ing. I was­n’t sober from lack of effort to be otherwise.

I was a ter­ri­ble stu­dent. I had no clue what I want­ed to do in life. In ear­ly grades I always got good grades with­out hav­ing to put out any effort. So when the mate­r­i­al got hard­er I had no study skills to apply to it. I rarely stud­ied. I occa­sion­al­ly read assigned read­ing. If I liked the teacher (which usu­al­ly meant if the teacher liked me) I paid atten­tion in class and if I did not like the teacher I paid lit­tle atten­tion in class (and in one case I sim­ply slept through every class the entire year while sit­ting in the front row).

Then there was my vio­lent tem­per which I seemed to have no con­trol over (though I don’t believe it ever appeared while at school, and cer­tain­ly nev­er at work, so I must have had some con­trol). For­tu­nate­ly I was the prover­bial 98 pound weak­ling so I nev­er actu­al­ly inflict­ed harm on any­one while flail­ing away with my fists. Ves­tiges of that tem­per still linger.

So while I may have always seemed to have my act togeth­er, appear­ances can be deceiving.

useless