Maggie's Farm

Profs begin to worry about online education.

It's all about the money.

It's a very sad story, and it is due, in part but not entirely, to the Obama economy in my opinion because nobody is hiring anybody right now, and neither are we:

The belief that education is both good in and of itself, and also, is practically a guarantee of a good job, was never entirely true. But now it's clearly false in many fields, and insiders who blind themselves to this reality are doing naive kids a great wrong. Increasingly, getting the extra degree may actually decrease peoples' chances of finding jobs, partners, and satisfying lives, because of the debt and time that are poured into them.

What we really need around here are more good plumbers and electricians who do not abuse drugs. We have plenty of skilled, reliable masons, all clean-cut Mexican immigrants. In today's economic mess, it's time for people to get creative and to start their own businesses. Necessity is the mother of invention. Just make sure you don't hire more than 49 employees (same as they do in France). After 49, you get in deep government issues which nobody can comprehend but you just know you will make some error somewhere.

When I wrote my post last week about reinventing government education, I had not been aware that the prolific Prof. Reynolds had written a booklet on the topic: The K-12 Implosion. I will read it.

He has also recently written a short legal essay on a topic dear to my heart entitled HAM SANDWICH NATION: DUE PROCESS WHEN EVERYTHING IS A CRIME. Nobody knows what the criminal laws are anymore, especially the regulatory ones. It's like Alice's Restaurant. The Feds truly can indict anybody for anything if they want to.

Yale is offering a course on bartending. I'm surprised, because I thought Yale College now specialized in the fun of sex toys and at the same time, in some sort of straddle, in combatting the evil and politically-incorrect male sexual interest in females. Not in alcohol. Maybe Yale is trying to compete with Dartmouth in the drinks category. Yale will lose that competition hands-down.

Is the reality of this economy sinking in yet? Admittedly, making a Perfect Manhattan is not child's play.

Weissberg: Higher graduation rates won’t help the economy because college reinforces bad work habits:

The fact that millions of college graduates are unemployed or wait tables is not a temporary aberration; it is an inexorable result of rational incentives.

and

Consider the essential qualifications of a good employee (and I offer this account as someone who once owned and ran a business). He or she must be punctual, honest, be able to complete tasks on time, first time around and as specified. Employees must politely pay attention when spoken to and are not excessively argumentative; they must dress appropriately for the job, have good hygiene (look “clean cut”), speak distinctly and, with few exceptions, possess adequate writing skills as well as being able to perform tasks without explicit detailed instructions.

Such workers get along with co-workers or customers. They show up even under adverse circumstances and if unable to work that day, take necessary steps to minimize their absence. They give a full hour’s work for an hour’s pay and willingly volunteer for extra work if necessary. They also know that work is also not the place to socialize on the firm’s nickel.

The article is here. Of course a shorter summer "vacation" would help kids with continuity.

However, I think it's time that the entire structure of public K-12 education ought to be reinvented.

We started out with home-schooling, with tutors for the wealthy, then neighborhood one-room schoolhouses supported and controlled by the parents of the kids, then we went to the tax-supported, age-cohorted Prussian (yes, our public schools were based on the then-modern Prussian schools) factory model for the poor which we still use today in the US, while the prosperous (and the Catholics) used private schools. One size does not fit any, much less all.

Nobody cares what I think, but I do have plenty of ideas.

One of the first things I would do would be to eliminate the age-cohort system and, with that, those talented and gifted programs. Proceed at your own pace after demonstrating mastery of modules of study. The highly-motivated and bright move faster, the rest more slowly - or never. So what? Most kids cannot handle integral calculus but some kids are eager to tackle it.

Another would be to eliminate the huge summer vacation. It's obsolete. Give them August off, if need be. Why should kids have life easier than the grown-ups who take so little time away from their work and pay the bills for the supposed professional education?

Third, I would reintroduce technical training. The fancy private schools my kids attended have more technical training than the public schools have. Schools can take their pick: wood shop, metal shop, music shop, forestry shop, computer shop, kitchen shop, farm shop, garden shop, car and engine shop, construction and architecture shop, art and graphics shop, electrical shop, stone shop, ceramics shop, gun shop, etc. Few parents can teach all of these things, and the opportunities to integrate book learning - math, history, etc into real life tasks can be inspiring. If we had stone shop today, we might find another Michelangelo. Our kids' Kitchen Shop ultimately produced a Cordon Bleu four-star chef whose first task in Kitchen Shop was to understand sanitary dish-washing and the workings of a commercial dishwashing machine. Because private schools are non-union, the Kitchen Shop kids work in the school kitchen and take orders from the chef.

Fourth, I would get rid of the costly educational edifice complex. The building doesn't contribute anything. Any old empty mill building or vacant factory would be fine.

Fifth, I would bring back Civics. Every American needs to be taught how to be a citizen of a free republic. It's not easy to be one; it's all about man and God and law. Not all parents explain this plainly, or even by example.

Sixth: Sports. Every kid ought to do some team or individual sports as part of school or outside of school. Not just the athletically-gifted. America is a sports country. Builds character even if you are a spaz. Mens sana in corpore sano.

Seventh: Get rid of the unions. Teaching is a calling, not a factory job and definitely should not be a government job.

Eighth: Abolish the Federal dept. of Education. It's not their yob, and they are mostly idiots who could not change the oil in their car or hammer a nail straight into a 2X4, much less diagram a sentence.

I could go on and on, but that's a start.

I had been under the impression that the reason to spend big bucks for an elite education in prep schools like Andover, Exeter, Choate, Deerfield, etc. was for a very rigorous classical education, traditional and strict moral standards, and, in general, a special culture set apart from ordinary society and its fads, from factory-style public education, and from ordinary mindless and immature teen pursuits.

If these sorts of schools no longer aspire to be different, what's the point?

Heather MacDonald reports from Andover: Hey, Kids--How About Studying Oppressed Sex Workers?

So now Geoff Chaucer, the father of modern English, is voiceless and the whores have voices? Thus the culture progresses, forgetting the Wife of Bath - and the Whore of Babylon.

A national "common core" for lower ed? I do not like that idea at all. I do not approve of any national authorities involved in education, much less curricula. Why do we have local school boards?

Gee, I almost forgot. We have them to apply for federal grants, which are, in turn, used to control state and local education from Washington.

Given the increasing centralization of everything, at least one fellow has something on the ball: David Coleman, Education Hero.

From KC Johnson, A Gloomy Report on the Teaching of U.S. History:

 The failing of a central mission of the study of U.S. history--training future generations of American citizens--is, argues the NAS, based in a misunderstanding of the central mission of colleges and universities: that "they and particular programs within them increasingly think of themselves as responsible for reforming American society and curing it of prejudice and bigotry. When universities and university programs consider it necessary to atone for, and help erase, oppressions of the past, one way in which they do so is by depicting history as primarily a struggle of the downtrodden against rooted injustice . . . The dominance of race, class, and gender themes in history curricula came about through disciplinary mission creep. Historians and professors of United States history should return to their primary task: handing down the American story, as a whole, to future generations."

 

I've discussed the Gambler's Fallacy in the past (eg if you flip nine heads in a row, what are the odds the next toss will be a tail?). The inverse is another matter. Wiki gives this example:

Suppose a man walked into a room and saw someone rolling a pair of dice. Furthermore, imagine that the result of this dice roll is a double-six. The man entering the room would commit the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy if he said, "You've probably been rolling the dice for quite a while, since it's unlikely you would get a double-six on your first attempt."

The point is that unlikely things happen all the time. Here, it's discussed in terms of the recent discovery of the largest structure in the universe.

Judge Napolitano begins:

The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an extension of the natural right to self-defense and a hallmark of personal sovereignty.

His focus on natural rights is the main issue. In my big-picture view, American citizens do not have delimited rights, but government does have delimited powers over the citizen. Neither the "common good" nor the "greater good," however construed, are citizens of the US.

In non-American history, the masses and peasants were forbidden ownership of arms (back when the penetrating weapon of choice was the sword). America was, and remains, different, revolutionary.

Governments are always uncomfortable with an armed populace. Canada, which just gave up on its program of national firearm registration, should not have been surprised to discover that a giant and costly registry of honest gun owners was of no use at all.

Powerline: On Guns, Like Other Issues, Liberals Are Out of Ammo

Q&O: Should we ban “assault” hammers?

And what about high-capacity Nail Guns? Nail guns are dangerous and scary.

Remember Ken Myers? Pop Goes the Culture - One man’s quest to preserve and defend the good, the true, and the beautiful. A quote:

One of Myers’s recurring themes is the ways in which the dumbing down of the general culture has infected American Christianity and conservatism. These are two spheres where we might expect the work of “preserving cultural treasures” to be taken up. Yet wander into a Mass or worship service in any suburban Catholic or Protestant church and you’ll hear “praise songs” that might have been lifted from Sesame Street or, if the service is High Church, the soundtrack of Phantom of the Opera. It’s hard to believe this is the same religion that inspired Bach and Palestrina, whose choral works are no more familiar to the average pastor or parishioner than the chants at a Kikuyu circumcision ceremony. The liturgy, what’s left of it, is either pedestrian or absurd. (The Shepherd who used to maketh you to lie down in green pastures will now, if you’re a Catholic, “in verdant pastures give you repose.”) Among clergy no less than the laity, a desire for beauty and reflection is deemed prissy and dull.

I'm not sure what is driving this movement. Unions, perhaps?

My kids have all had various internships, paid and unpaid, some very well-paid. Internships are an opportunity for the student and, in most cases, a bit of a hassle for the person offering them.

If a person thinks it worth their while to take an unpaid internship, why not? If they were paid, they might not be offered at all.

Asness:

The only way to finance a big European-style state is to have it paid for by massive taxation of everyone, mostly the middle class. Right now, we are avoiding honest debate on this fact.

There will be large tax increases on the middle class. There is no getting around it, if people want so many government benefits. Those Obamacare taxes are just the beginning. With that will come ever-slowing growth of jobs and income.

The downward creep of regular tax increases has already begin (h/t Insty): The Stealth Tax Hike -- Why the New $450,000 Income Threshold Is a Political Fiction.

I remain confused about why Europe seems like a good role model for a vigorous economy with opportunity for all.

Now Democrats Aim for a Trillion in New Taxes.  It's never enough.

The Mrs. recently reported a conversation she had had with a tennis friend who had a rotator cuff repair, and had prematurely discontinued her physical therapy because the insurance coverage cut off after the predetermined number of sessions for that surgery.

This friend of hers drives a new Mercedes every year, owns three houses in various vacation spots, and spends three months/year traveling around the world. However, the notion of actually paying (pocket change) for her own physical well-being eluded her imagination. And her shoulder still hurts.

People have been well-trained to expect to get what they need "for free." And somehow have been trained to imagine that, if insurance doesn't cover it, it must not matter very much. A childlike, entitlement culture.

Who wants a statistician for a doctor?

As I have mentioned before, I have inexpensive major medical insurance with a $10,000 two-year deductible for my family. (Some other Maggie's folks have similar.) After that, it's unlimited. If anybody (God forbid) gets very ill or injured, I will keep my humble abode.

When I see a doctor, I enjoy the look of surprise on the faces of the office staff when I pull out my checkbook. I like to pay doctors. What better use of money is there (other than buying cigars)?

A word to the wise: If you tell them you are paying out of pocket, most docs will give you a discount because it's no staff time, it's instant payment, and because it just seems right to pay for a service - same as an electrician or plumber or lawyer.

If you are on Medicare or Medicaid, or if some insurance pays your bills, what do you do personally for your doctor to let him or her know that you appreciate their care for you?

PS: My Internist tells me that a couple of wines and two or three cigars daily is just about right for a guy like me. Like most Americans of my middle age, I take Lipitor and BP meds, and I always take care to use extra salt. The occasional Viagra? I'm not saying. He is a good, sane, practical doc who individualizes things, and thinks it's narcissistic for people to obsess about their health. "Get the most out of life, while you have it" is his motto. "You can't save life for later because 'later' is just a theory."

Reposted:

A resource for those driving around New England this year: Historic Houses of New England -open to the public.

Paul Revere's house below:

I don't care too much about people's energy use, and, if people want to live in McMansions two hours from work, so be it.

However, I do object to the subsidization of urban and suburban sprawl by tax-supported highways. I also object to the public subsidization of home ownership via the mortgage tax deduction. (I am a flat-taxer.) From the Globe:

Nathaniel Baum-Snow of Brown University found that each new highway passing through a central city reduces its population by about 18 percent. The home mortgage interest deduction further encouraged suburbanization, because rental units are disproportionately in cities while owner-occupied homes are disproportionately distant from city centers.

Note - sorry, those older links are now behind a paywall. Greedy capitalists at the Boston Globe are messing up our efforts to give them business.

We frequently point out, here at Maggie's, the similarities between modern Progressivism/Leftism and Feudalism. Of course, Hayek nailed this years ago.

Lifson says it better than I can. He begins:

The changes wrought on the American political economy by progressives have taken us in the unmistakable direction of feudalism. The morphological resemblance between the progressive version of America and the historic feudal regimes of Western Europe and Japan is obvious if one takes a few moments to consider the changes in the proper context.

Wonderfully-informative and enjoyable video lecture here.

Re-posted -

That's the title of Mead's latest. He should have used a more provocative and engaging title, but it's not his style to do so. 

Mead is a sort-of open-minded Liberal (I think) and an academic. One quote from this excellent piece, which (take note, BD) deserves to be on our Best Essays of the Year thing. A quote:

...the biggest roadblock today is that so many of America’s best-educated, best-placed people are too invested in old social models and old visions of history to do their real job and help society transition to the next level.  Instead of opportunities they see threats; instead of hope they see danger; instead of the possibility of progress they see the unraveling of everything beautiful and true.

and

Since the late nineteenth century most intellectuals have identified progress with the advance of the bureaucratic, redistributionist and administrative state.  The government, guided by credentialed intellectuals with scientific training and values, would lead society through the economic and political perils of the day.  An ever more powerful state would play an ever larger role in achieving ever greater degrees of affluence and stability for the population at large, redistributing wealth to provide basic sustenance and justice to the poor.  The social mission of intellectuals was to build political support for the development of the new order, to provide enlightened guidance based on rational and scientific thought to policymakers, to administer the state through a merit based civil service, and to train new generations of managers and administrators. The modern corporation was supposed to evolve in a similar way, with business becoming more stable, more predictable and more bureaucratic.

Most American intellectuals today are still shaped by this worldview and genuinely cannot imagine an alternative vision of progress.  It is extremely difficult for such people to understand the economic forces that are making this model unsustainable and to see why so many Americans are in rebellion against this kind of state and society – but if our society is going to develop we have to move beyond the ideas and the institutions of twentieth century progressivism.

And later in his essay:

The foundational assumptions of American intellectuals as a group are firmly based on the assumptions of the progressive state and the Blue Social Model.  Those who run our government agencies, our universities, our foundations, our mainstream media outlets and other key institutions cannot at this point look the future in the face.  The world is moving in ways so opposed to their most hallowed assumptions that they simply cannot make sense of it.  They resist blindly and uncreatively and, unable to appreciate the extraordinary prospects for human liberation that this change can bring, they are incapable of creative and innovative response.

Do me a favor by reading his whole essay. Better yet, read it and ask your Lib friends to consider it. If Obama is a personal friend, email it to him and Valerie Jarrett too. These Progressives are stuck in the past, and have not had an interesting new idea since Marx, who died in 1883, and who could never have been able to understand modern America where the poorest have wide screen TVs, two cars, washing machines, and the right to bear arms.

You know my view: Liberalism, aka Progressivism, is over 150 years old, and way over the hill - policy residue from the early nasty years of the early Industrial Revolution.

Pic is Walter Russell Mead, who looks the way I thought he would.

At Acton, The ‘Small’ God Who Brought Heaven Down to Earth. A quote:

This season, which pulsates with nostalgia, memory, sadness as well as with a deep and abiding sense of profound joy and human meaning – and does it all at once – is a season prompted by the very Incarnation of God’s Love, a love that goes beyond words, but rather is a Word – the Logos – that became flesh.

It is for this very reason that the Christian faith which emerges from this proclamation about God’s entrance into the human condition, could build institutions and cultures aimed at concretely reverencing each and every human person from the very first moment of their existence in the womb, in all their vulnerability and potential, without regard to their ethnicity or some other accidental factor. It is the belief stipulated in that memorable passage from Ecclesiastes (3:11): “He has … set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Crawled out of a lovely snowbank in New Hampshire (Loon Mtn, but up to good old funky Cannon Mtn. this morning) today to offer a brief comment.

Re BD's enjoyably libertarian Do American citizens require everything in their lives to be controlled by their "betters" in government?, I would add one simple rhetorical question: Since when, in human history, have governments ever been determined to be the fonts of wisdom and virtue except in theory?

American exceptionalism contains the notion that government is a necessary evil, requiring containment and strict limitations by a virtuous people and a muscular Constitution to handcuff the state. The state is the enemy of individual freedom. GW: "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

Indeed, democratic governments and democratic republics, as schoolmarms often forget to mention, contain dangerous germs of emotional or greedy mob rule which are lacking in ideal philosopher-kings.

GW also said this: "Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth." God knows he knew about teeth, having lost all of his.

Never even went to college, ol' GW. Or high school either. Far from a genius general too but brave as a terrier in the face of bullets. A very great man, greatest in his humility and his aversion to state power.

A powerful report from Heather MacDonald: Chicago's Real Crime Story - Why decades of community organizing haven't stemmed the city's youth violence.

I cannot pick out one juicy quote because the whole sad thing is of a piece: moral, family, and cultural breakdown since the 1960s. These kids are growing up in something between anarchy and Lord of the Flies. One quote:

Some members of Chicago’s Left will argue against holding fathers or mothers responsible for their children. “To blame it on the family is totally unfair,” says Gwen Rice, a board member of the Developing Communities Project. “I’m tired of blaming the parents. The services for the poor are paltry; it boggles the mind. Historically, you can’t expect a parent who can’t get a job to do something that someone with resources can do. These problems have histories; there are policies that have mitigated against black progress. What needs to happen is a change in corporate greed and insensitivity.” Rice corrects my use of the term “illegitimacy”: “There are no illegitimate births,” she says.

Part 1 was Lamp and Lantern Season
Part 2 was Keeping your humidor humid in winter

Winter in central New England entails jump-starters, oil lamps and lanterns, snow-blowers, snow plows, flashlights, snow shovels, plenty of firewood, hats and long-johns, and good gloves and boots of all sorts. Global cooling will be here soon. Oh, and 4WD for the sissies and the city-folk for whom a little snow and ice are daunting - and for your plow truck. Gas generators? We country folk don't go in for those.

I keep one of these charged up in the garage, and it came in handy when one of the tractors, rarely used this summer, had both a dead battery and squishy front tires Saturday. I had been using the Ford all summer, and figured I ought to get the Farmall moving a little to prevent Tractor Arthritis.

What was my chore? Heading up into the woods with the wagon to clear our cross-country ski trails of fallen trees, and to accumulate some more firewood in the process.

This cool thing solved both problems easily: