Maggie's Farm

A reader gave a response to my question about unemployment among young black males in the US. He or she made an interesting comparison with the government's approach to American Indians - give them stuff and hope for the best.

When has that approach ever worked in the world?  Now, the US like Europe offers government benefits to new (including illegal) immigrants. Is that a good idea? It has never been tried in the US in the past, and immigrants did very well over time.

From 1925 to 1965 the US permitted essentially no immigration. The people had decided, and the politicians had agreed, that we had enough of them. The country thrived.

You will have to take it on faith (or not) that I have very little racism in me. I find almost all individuals interesting and I can learn about life from anybody.

Perhaps Charles Murray has lots of thoughts about this question: Why is black male unemployment so high today among American-born blacks? Black women work.

When I was young, black guys worked and did all they could to improve themselves. The kids of black tenant farms came up from the south for jobs in industry and the trades. They got married, demanded a lot from their kids, went to church, lived with dignity but some of the women got on the government trough, dads abandoned any progeny, and kids without dads skyrocketed. Today, black male employment is surely higher than it was a decade or two ago. That ain't racism. It's not IQ either, as some argue because I see plenty of fine young black guys working all sorts of jobs - nurses, exercise trainers, UPS guys, etc., and of course as professionals too.

In entry level and second-level service jobs hereabouts, all I see are Bangladeshis, Mexicans, Guatemalans, white kids, Pakistanis, Dot-Indians, Haitians, Africans, and Jamaicans. No European, Russian, or Asian immigrants seem to be working at these beginning levels of responsibility - but no American-born black males either despite their huge unemployment levels. They are not working at all, even at the levels of new immigrants with poor English.

It seems tragic to me. Why is it?

Seven Deadly Progressive Education Myths - Our schools are failing our kids, and 'Seven Myths About Education' explains how politics replaced pedagogy.

It is still a mystery to me why any "progressive education" is needed. The article covers all of the bases. 

From Thank You FedEx, For Standing Up to the Feds:

With more than 4,000 crimes in federal statutes and more than 300,000 more crimes specified in various federal regulations, every complex commercial enterprise is inevitably vulnerable to federal prosecution-and thus, given federal prosecutors' leverage, to oversight through a deferred- or non-prosecution agreement. What that means is that the Department of Justice has sweeping regulatory authority, which according to the D.C. Circuit's April decision in United States v. Fokker Services, federal judges have next to no power to review.

Nobody knows all of the laws and regs. Remember, Three Felonies A Day

Should Employers Be Prohibited from Asking Applicants About College Credentials?   From the article:

 The justices in Griggs thought they were simultaneously applying the Civil Rights Act and helping to make life more fair for people who didn’t have high school credentials or good test-taking abilities. Little did they suspect that a consequence of their ruling decades later would be to keep such individuals from having a chance at numerous jobs just because they lack a college degree.

And the logic of the case seems every bit as applicable to college degree requirements as to the sort of job requirements the Court struck down in Griggs. If companies violated the Civil Rights Act when they set arbitrary and seemingly irrelevant educational requirements for employment in 1971, why are they allowed to use the absence of college credentials to screen out people today?

No it is not hard. It is just not easy for most people. Like learning a language, it requires IQ and mental discipline, and it takes time to comprehend what a mathematical process is about. It's high abstraction.

Each step of math mastery offers advantages in life, but all of the math steps are steps toward yet another level of mastery and, if you choose and have talent, it can never end.

American colleges these days have been backing off math requirements. Wayne State University Drops Math Requirement and May Replace With Diversity. Brilliant!

There are three reasons for this: 1. Math is hard so I'll go to a school that doesn't make me do it.  2. It is often claimed that, statistically, women are worse with math. So make the curriculum less daunting for women.  3. IQ. Math above the ordinary high school level probably takes more IQ than many modern college students possess.

My view is that a college degree means little unless it includes some proficiency in statistics and calc. The more, the better.

A discussion: A Meaningful Math Requirement: College Algebra or Something Else?

Americans are drowning in regulation,

Just try starting a business. He begins:

The federal government’s massive $4 trillion budget and $19 trillion official national debt (the real tab is much higher) are evidence of an out-of-control government that seeks to seep into every aspect of Americans’ lives. But even these spending and debt measures fail to account for the full reach of the government.

More difficult to tabulate are the plethora of regulations emanating from numerous federal agencies...

She will not give in to bullies: I’m not giving students ‘trigger warnings’

Related, If you don’t want to study white writers, don’t major in English

A Letter to a Bright Young Woman

It is all almost entirely true. However, higher ed still can be somewhat like it used to be if and only if a student and his parents together make a plan to navigate the place so as to get the most out of it. A solid traditional education can usually be designed from their offerings just as a nutritional meal can be designed despite all the the junk in the supermarket. Seeking the most rigorous coursework and diving into constructive extracurriculars are good starts.

When the structure of a school would once make sure the student was a product of which the school could feel proud (literate, well-rounded, and, as they used to say, able to comprehend every section of the Sunday New York Times), now it is up to the paying parents to ensure that that happens.

They are Canon Fodder. A beginning list of the canonical minds who must be banned. Basically, anybody smarter than you. That is, the people whose brains, talents, and accomplishments damage your self-esteem and make you feel small. I guess admiration is passe.

It feels like the Cultural Revolution in China.

Why would any adult take these spoiled brats seriously?

Related,  Multiculti U. - The budget-strapped University of California squanders millions on mindless diversity programs.

A Roger Kimball shout-out to all interested in St. John's.

I think this admirable boutique school ought to shutter its failed Santa Fe campus and build on its Annapolis campus.

It depends on how accurate. Stereotyping is a form of mental shorthand. We all use stereotyping during the day, whether of people or of things and of situations. Rules of thumb. Sometimes wrong, but with limited information we have to go by something.

Truth about Stereotypes Revealed

"Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed."

Thomas Sowell, via Carpe

At Norbert Michel's piece on the topic:

... virtually all financial market activity has taken place under the watchful eye of federal regulators since at least the 1930s. True deregulation would establish a market where no government agency regulates the types of products and services people are allowed to produce and purchase. This type of financial market does not currently exist in the U.S., and it certainly did not exist prior to the 2008 crisis. Financial regulators have increasingly micromanaged financial firms’ activities despite the fact that this approach has repeatedly failed to prevent financial market instability.

A Superficial Solution to the Student Debt Problem

Higher ed is expensive, but today it is far more expensive than it needs to be.  It's a mess, and government has only made it worse.

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned. 

From The Mourning Bride by William Congreve (1670-1729)

The Battle Against ‘Hate Speech’ on College Campuses Gives Rise to a Generation That Hates Speech

Kristof:  The Liberal Blind Spot

He misses the point.  The new liberalism is totalitarian.

Free speech, lesbian gorillas, and related topics

"In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."

Theodore Dalrymple

The Chronicle Supports the Case Against College for All

The higher ed marketing machine has done a good job for its booming industry over the past 50 years,  but it has gotten ridiculous. A college degree means nothing. Anybody who wants to can now cheat, drink, and bs their way to the piece of paper as long as they can find a way to come up with the cash.

Let's face it. If you can't or won't handle Calc. and Aristotle, you can't use it. Get a job and learn something real. And read books.

Oberlin Is An Insane Asylum

It certainly does seem to exist in a cocoon of unreality, but so does much of higher ed to varying degrees.  The comment on this piece about how the adults have let the kids down is to the point.

Abandoning Defensive Crouch Liberal Constitutionalism

It is a subtle, long term strategy. I suspect that Obama thinks similarly. Constitution is obsolete, which means the nation is obsolete.

A new translation of Cicero by Philip Freeman: How to Grow Old: Ancient Wisdom for the Second Half of Life