The Dumbing Of College

I really hate to contradict myself, even an earlier self, but I must admit that the prevalence of screens in the lives of younger generations has had a disturbing impact on the ability to read effectively. Of course, a huge portion of the culpability is a direct result of the inanity of no child left behind and other educational atrocities we have inflicted upon our children.

Competition for scores makes no sense in the collegial and highly social setting of education. It's as if we told doctors that we would pay them according to how many of their patients recovered (or survive,) so that they would hide the secrets to their success in order to can earn more money by letting the patients of their competitors die.

I can give my 40 year younger self a pat on the back for having recognized the stupidity of competitive based education and standardized testing abused as a measure of teacher and school effectiveness; which greatly contributed to the inability of our younger generations to read it understand lengthy and complex texts.

Still, I think screens are playing a part in all of this.  

>Educational initiatives such as No Child Left Behind and Common Core "emphasized informational texts and standardized tests for over two decades," said The Atlantic. As a result, teachers shifted from reading books to short passages, "mimicking the format of standardized reading-comprehension tests." Shifting toward truncated reading was meant to help train kids to better synthesize information from texts, Antero Garcia, a Stanford education professor, said to the outlet. But in doing so, we’ve "sacrificed young people's ability to grapple with long-form texts in general."<

https://theweek.com/education/college-students-read-books

Shoppin' Around

 Interesting post from Facebook so I thought I'd reproduce it over here.

Post: Just want to see how many people think that shop class should be put back in our schools...if you are 1 of the few, re-post.

My two responses:   Thankfully it's not totally extinct though there are fewer offered than there used to be.

Schools should educate every child not just those regarded as college material.

The world takes a lot of skills to run and some of those skills are better paying  than those for most college  graduates.

There is a new kind of shop class called tech classes. For example my grandson just aced his robotics class.  It doesn't fix sinks or cars or wire homes, but at least it recognizes the need for real world skills as opposed to purely academic skills.

Just thought of an interesting story that I should add. Talking to a guy in a bar about five years ago, somehow the discussion turned to the theories of a well-known physicist (can't remember which one). He commented that they had been  classmates back in his undergrad days, but he realized that physicists don't usually make a lot of money so he changed his major and became an electrician. He said he had no regrets.

Old Reform In New York

 Responding to report everything was going to be just fine in New York schools because they have adopted a phonics program that's going to solve all their problems.

And here we go again. A magic simple answer to a very complex question.

Some children do learn by phonics. Others do not. This is a simple reality. I was never any good at phonics but I went to preschool reading at a third grade level. 

Does this mean phonics isn't effective? No. It means phonics was not effective for me. Phonics was a mystery with which I struggled and with which I had difficulty, even while I was usually the best reader in my class. Other children depended very heavily upon phonics. 

It's about time that non-teachers started realizing that teachers know a thing or two about teaching. 

There are no simple answers. There are no magic answers. Every child learns in their own unique individual manner and we should be open to whatever methodology works for any particular student.

It is believed that this is a new start. But it isn't. It's the same old garbage. Everything few years a new magic cure is pushed upon the schools. If only everybody does exactly this one simple minded thing everything will certainly be better. It never is. It never works. I can only repeat a comment from Dr. Tye,  and that is that we keep reforming schools but never have any serious change in schools because we never change the deep structure of schools. We just make superficial changes and offer simplistic solutions to complicated issues.

>“This is the beginning of something new,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) said in the announcement of the new reading curriculum.<

A Rising Tide Of Asininity

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2022/03/05/americas-school-accountability-system-is-broken-here-are-the-issues-that-must-be-addressed-to-fix-it/?sh=575473e57f96

Surprise surprise! I got it right again! (OK, I’m not always right — just almost all the time.🧐). When I took my test and measurements course for my masters degree in school administration, one of the critical points made to us (critical now but at the time just one more data point) was that standardized testing is absolutely useless at evaluating the progress of an individual student, an individual teacher, or an individual school. All it is good for is making a bell shaped curve giving a generalized placement of performance according to a very narrow limited standardized test format and placed in a very broad setting. This is very useful in special education testing but useless for general evaluation of educational quality or performance.

Then President Reagan began screwing things up, as he had to find someone to blame for his policy failures. So he blamed teachers.

A propaganda report was issued worrying about a “rising tide of mediocrity “. A nonsense phrase meeting nothing. The report was pure propaganda, almost entirely data free. Nevertheless, based on that we desperately sought out an accountability system which would be based on the virtually useless data of standardized testing. This was designed to stimulate competition among schools and individual teachers. It’s actual primary effect was destroying teachers’ willingness to cooperate with each other. A teacher who found a clever way to get high scores on the test would never share that with another teacher because she had to compete. Collegiality and the mutual self-help system which has always been the hallmark of education was instantly corroded.

As always with standardized tests, it is mandated that, by the very nature of the test, a bell shaped curve results from the data. Failure to accomplish such a curve results in a test result skewed negatively or positively. The test will then be considered invalid and a new test created which will form the proper and only acceptable result: a bell shaped curve. When students began understanding how to find averages (because teachers were teaching it) the test manufacturers changed the test. They stopped calling them averages and began identifying them as “the mean“.

In other words, the test was no longer testing the students ability to understand the concept or perform it. It was deliberately making it hard for the children to understand so as to force a bell shaped curve because too many students were learning the concept too effectively and that’s not allowed in a bell shaped curve or any kind of standardized testing.  It is absolutely mandated that no matter how well a group performs or how badly it performs, 50% of those taking the test must be at or above the second quartile (the peak of the bell’s shaped curve) and 50% must be below it. 25% must fall at the first quartile or below and 25% must place at the third quartile or above. Please note that this is regardless of the actual level of knowledge or performance.

 This means that if the competition system really worked and all second grade students in a given year were now displaying at or above college level reading skills, the test would be adjusted until it showed that these incredibly brilliant children in fact were divided into 25% failures, 50% successes, and 25% high-performing extreme successes. The same would be true if the entire system failed so badly that not a single second grade student in the entire nation knew their alphabet. The same bell shaped curve would result.

Standardized testing does not test the quality of performance.  Criterion based testing does.

Now here we are 40 years later and guess what? Accountability and competition have proven to be a disaster for our public education system. Who would’ve guessed? Answer: anyone willing to look at the facts. 

Educational “experts” who never actually worked in the classroom but had extensive degrees, endlessly praised the system and supported and encouraged it to spread. I have stated on the record and will now repeat;  they are the equivalent of a medical doctor who says to his patient, “Thee hast an imbalance of thine humors. Tis necessary for to bleed thee that thee might becometh more balanced.“

At this point I can only say that stupid is as stupid does.

> The foundation of every recent accountability system, from the dawn of No Child Left Behind to the dusk of Common Core, has been the Big Standardized Test. And that foundation has cracked and crumbled. It has produced no results in the evaluation of teachers. It has produced no progress in student scores. Frederick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) has recently detailed how the bipartisan coalition that supported testing has disintegrated, in part because parents have lost faith.

…High stakes testing has had a hugely corrosive effect on education, pushing to schools to see their goal not as the full education of the whole child, but as preparing students to score well on the big test. It has shifted school resources away from any topics not on the test. <

Will no One Think Of The Children?

 A copy of a Facebook post that I thought should be placed here as well.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-schools-weapons-20140917-story.html%3f_amp=true

Breaking news! (No, this time it really is breaking news. I’m not making this one up.)

> The Los Angeles School Police Department, which serves the nation's second-largest school system, will return three grenade launchers but intends to keep 61 rifles and a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle...<

This was a really wise decision on the part of the school police. I personally believe that removing grenade launchers from the discipline program of school children is necessary. I know this is a controversial statement and there are those who believe that without grenade launchers classrooms will spin out of control. I disagree.

That aside, very wisely, the school police will keep their 61 military rifles and their mine resistant ambush protected armored vehicle. Every school teacher knows that this is a reasonable decision. Indeed, this is completely non-controversial. How can you possibly control a classroom of little children without military grade rifles and  a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle?

If you’re wondering why it has to be mine resistant and ambush protected, I ask you, haven’t you ever seen a cafeteria at lunch?

How about a playground at recess?

I know you haven’t because if you had ever seen those horrors you would know why it is necessary to have a heavily armored vehicle capable of resisting ambushes and mines at every school campus.

Lock Them Up! Lock Them Up!

A Facebook post in response to an article on how troubled children (especially black troubled boys) face excessive and extreme consequences for behavior which needs to be treated more than punished.

 America’s war on our children continues. We’re making progress. We’re hurting more and more children more and more times.

Behavior which was once praised in boys as “manly” now results in being suspended, expelled, and/or arrested.

I remember fighting the suspension battle with the rest of the school district. I was not against suspension; in fact, at one point I expelled more students than any other principal. My point was simple though. You have to do what actually works with that child. Expulsion is an extreme to be taken only when you absolutely must and there is no legal alternative.

I recall a news report from years ago in which at graduation a student sprayed silly string at the principal who charged him with assault. I know exactly how I would’ve handled that because once at graduation one of my six grade students shook my hand with a joke buzzer in it. I thought it was funny. If somebody sprayed silly string at me at an upper level graduation I would’ve sternly demanded the can, then it turned around and sprayed him back. I would not return the bottle to him though because I know how hard it is for custodians to clean the mess up. I would have insisted that he clean the mess up and I would’ve helped him because I sprayed some it too.

When I knew I had to retire because of my illness I tried to get two things through the school board. One was to restructure our front gate so that you could not enter the campus without passing through the office or climbing a fence. That was successful.

I also tried to get the district to adopt a program, perfectly legal and provided for the education code, which would place disruptive students at a special program. It kept them away from other students while still providing an education.  I argued it that would pay for itself. The board was not interested.

I trace the problem all the way back to our Puritan origins. People are inherently evil but the magic punishment will make everything better. If we just punish enough and in exactly the correct way, everyone will be forced to reform.  Conform?

Cassandra and Me

https://time.com/5775795/education-reform-failed-america/

A very important article which I don’t think will gather much attention. It should. So in the hope that at least one or two people may read it because I am posting this here as well as on Facebook:

I picked a few key excerpts from the article. Please read them, then please read the entire thing. Read it if you care about America’s children, America’s education system, or America’s future.

I do wonder however why no one seem to have looked at the foolish root of all these failures, the No Child Left Behind program, and identified it as the No Child Left Unharmed program back when it was a brand new idea.

Oh, that’s right! I called it that.  At the time it was created. Way back then. Or, to put it another way, “Why don’t nobody never listen to me??!!”

> The “reformers” relied on the business idea that disruption is a positive good. I call them “disruptors,” not reformers. Reformers have historically called for more funding, better trained teachers, desegregation, smaller class sizes. The disruptors, however, banked on a strategy of testing, competition, and punishment, which turned out to be ineffective and harmful.

...But every public school in the nation continues to be saddled with an expensive regime of annual standardized testing that is not found in any high-performing nation.

...Some charter schools get high test scores, but they usually get high scores by excluding students with disabilities and English learners or by high attrition rates.

Voucher studies in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana, and the District of Columbia found that students in voucher schools actually lost ground compared to their peers in public schools. This is not surprising since some voucher schools have uncertified teachers and are free to teach a curriculum that mixes facts and religious stories.

...For almost twenty years, the Bush-Obama-Trump program of standardized testing, punitive accountability, and school choice has been the reform strategy. It has utterly failed. <

Where Have All The Teachers Gone?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/604702/

This article is somewhat interesting. However, what I find most compelling is a segment of the introductory comments, > In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just three years leading a classroom. <

This is a serious problem. One of the finest benefits of the former situation was that young teachers were surrounded by colleagues who were able to help and support them in learning to be better teachers. When you have a staff composed almost entirely of the inexperienced, you lose that resource. The next question, the most important question, is why aren’t there more experienced teachers in our education system?

My own belief is it the American educational system is driving them out.   Good teachers want to teach, not train children to take standardized tests. Yet training children to take standardized tests is exactly what teachers are required to do under today’s structures created by educational “experts” who have never actually taught a child in the classroom, much less a classroom full of children.

Strong on credentials, mighty in theory, appallingly ignorant of reality, and firmly grounded in political ideology; these individuals have guaranteed that a good education is a distant memory in the United States.

The Flying Giraffe

So today I learned why pterosaurs could get so much larger than birds. I wondered about that. How could it be that an Azdarchid like Quetzalcoatlus could be the size of a giraffe (!!) while the largest bird was much, much smaller.

I’ve been watching presentations by the Royal Tyrell Museum and found one on pterosaurs.  It turns out that birds are stuck using only their two hind limbs to leap into the air to begin their flight. This limits them. They only have two legs to accomplish sufficient heights to begin flapping. If the hind legs get stronger so they could leap higher, it would add weight and that would require a stronger stroke and larger wings for flapping, which would require more muscle, which would add more weight… this works up to a certain point, but after that you just can’t balance the ratio of the weight to be overcome with the wing load. Eventually the situation degrades into a positive feedback loop.  Birds can only get so big and still be able to fly.

Pterosaurs, however, walked on all four limbs as modern bats do when they are on the ground. And like modern bats, the evidence is that they used all four legs to push themselves up into the air. So the muscles of the wings did add weight, but they also provided extra strength to the wings. This allowed them to leap higher into the air, and still maintain an adequate wing load. They could grow to the size of a giraffe and still fly.

(So why can’t bats get that big? It is peoposed that the answer is due to the fact that bats simply can’t find enough food if they get much larger.  That does not mean that, in the future, bats might not evolve to be as big as, well, a giraffe.)

I found this to be a very satisfactory explanation. I love it when science manages to answer a perplexing question.

I remember teaching science class. I always told the children science was like a never ending mystery story. Every time a mystery was solved it opened up the door for more questions to be answered. It’s one of the things I most love about science. One of the greatest mysteries which fascinated my generation when we were children was how the dinosaurs died out. Paleontologists were also obsessed with the problem, but never could come up with a good answer. A new hypothetical solution would be proposed every few years, only to be quickly be debunked by other scientists.

I remember my excitement when the now accepted impact proposal was first made by Luis Alvarez. Watching it slowly become more and more proven and finally accepted was intellectually exciting and engaging. So also with the mysterious moving rocks of Death Valley or the mystery of how a bumblebee could fly. On the one hand it’s very sad to see the mystery solved, but on the other hand it’s so exciting to learn that there is indeed a resolution and watch the process of that resolution being calculated and determined, and to see how it is finally proven.

My inability to function mathematically put an end to childhood dreams of a scientific career, but my love of science continues.

Unfortunately, I cannot figure a way to post the illustration here. But if you will Google simply three words you’ll get to see it. Type in azdarchid, giraffe, man: and you will see an amazing picture.

A Diatribe With A Side Of Recommendation

 https://quillette.com/2019/12/01/when-disruptive-students-are-coddled-the-whole-class-suffers/

I have two rather different responses to this article.

First, I have a response which, while it is based on my factual knowledge and experience, is profoundly emotional. It provides an excellent example of my attitude that both rationality and emotionality need to work hand-in-hand in order to create a balanced view of the world and, indeed, of reality itself.

Second is my own response to the problem; and it is a very real problem with which every educator has dealt to one degree or another. That is, how to deal with disruptive students.

I will begin with a set of excerpts which I found to be emotionally triggering. (Please forgive me for borrowing a term from those I refer to as the woking brain dead, but it is an effective descriptor in this case.)

> The worst-behaved students effectively are taught that the rules don’t apply to them in the same way they apply to others. <

And > ...where a single agitated student has the power to seize control of any classroom he pleases.<

Finally, > And to the extent that student misbehavior is seen as being a product of trauma, anyone who applies disciplinary measures to the student is accused of exacerbating that trauma. <

I tried to find evidence of the author’s source of his presumed expertise. I didn’t find any evidence that he ever taught in the classroom or worked with emotionally disturbed children.  I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is simply profoundly ignorant of reality.  Otherwise, I would be forced to conclude that he, like so many who made comments on this article, simply believes in magic punishment. Personal responsibility is of course one essential element of proper emotional development for all human beings.  However, to dismiss the fact that children who are this emotionally disturbed are often victims of horrific abuse including being burned, beaten, and otherwise abused with the statement that one “who applies disciplinary measures to the student is accused of exacerbating the trauma” is an appalling attack on the needs of the most damaged and vulnerable members of our nation.

Most disciplinary action normally taken against a healthy, emotionally sound student, if taken against such children, would in fact be exacerbating the trauma. Stating a fact is not making an accusation.

I find the author’s opinion, which appears largely to be let us discipline these individuals as if they were not traumatized children, to be morally repugnant.  I note in the comments a cold, callous and inhuman response on the part of many. The conviction that the way to handle brutalized, traumatized children is to punish them more effectively is inappropriate even in the last century. These children are not being taught to “seize control”.  They are desperately acting out their terror and their fear of being placed in a situation where they feel profoundly threatened. No child wishes to have other children laugh at them, or fear them, or condemn them for being strange. assuming that these so troubled youngsters simply need discipline or isolation indicates something is very very wrong with a person who expresses that opinion.   The spread of civilization and the advance of our culture should have gone beyond this.

So many who have never been in a classroom except as a student, so many who have never worked with the emotionally traumatized, so many who know nothing of the reality of these situations are so ready to make their arrogant, smug judgments. I spent much of my professional career dedicated to working with the poor, the traumatized, the wounded children of our society.  At least when I open my mouth, you know that I have some experience upon which to base my opinions and my judgment.

End diatribe. Begin recommendation.

One of the points which I found irritating is the suggestion that suspension is some sort of magic solution.  Suspension works only when parents respond appropriately to it. One of my students was a particular problem. Although I knew that it would inevitably follow its normal course there were times when I simply had no choice but to suspend him.  The  problem was that once he was suspended,  he went home, took off his shirt, got on his bike, and then would ride around across the street from the school laughing at all the children who were denied his freedom. Then he was off to whatever adventures he wished, since his parents took no action in response to his discipline.

In short, any disciplinary action can be effective if it is appropriate to the child and if the parents are supportive of the school. Any disciplinary action can also be counterproductive and damaging to discipline if it is inappropriate to the child and the parents do not support the school.

As a few commenters pointed out there are very effective programs which can actually help troubled children.  Obviously, they should be utilized. However, I must acknowledge that the author makes one excellent point which must be implemented for the benefit of all, including the troubled children.  

When the policy of placing children in the “least restrictive environment“ was first adopted in California, I was a young teacher. I was asked by our district psychologist to attempt placing such a child in my class.  I thought the idea was an excellent one and gave it a try. To some extent it was successful. Although he did require a great deal of my attention, he was certainly not disruptive or a problem.  I found, however, that the other students tended to take advantage of him. 

So in a sense it was not a success. The least restrictive environment for this youngster was an environment in which he was not in a position where other students would take advantage of his trusting nature. This is the point to be made. Students who are truly emotionally disruptive and may throw a tantrum in which they endanger themselves and other students are not being indulged when they are not suspended. The abuse that is occurring is not abuse by that child. The abuse is being accused by a system which has placed them in an environment in which they are emotionally incapable of functioning.

To repeat for the sake of clarity , a least restrictive environment is an environment in which both the child and those surrounding the child are sufficiently secure that they can function effectively. The mistake the overly liberal are making is thinking that least restrictive is a term which simply means placing the child in a normal classroom. But that is extremely restrictive for a traumatized child. It is in fact in itself a form of abuse.

The problem is complex and difficult. Simplistic solutions will not be effective. There are many ways in which children can be at least partially integrated into the normal school environment. These should be employed. But magic punishments have never worked. They never will.

Bloodletters Unite!

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2019/12/28/the-end-of-education-reform-or-a-new-beginning/amp/

I don’t agree with every point in this article but I do agree with most. It was obvious the moment the great “reforms” were proposed that they would fail miserably and only make things worse. So why did all the experts think the plan was so great? In fact, why are many of them still praising them? Because so many of the experts have never taught a child anything in a classroom. They display high degrees and endless hours of studying about how to do things which they have never actually done. Imagine if, in World War II, instead of pulling our aces out of combat and taking them back to train new pilots we had those recruits trained by experts had never actually flown a plane but had studied and studied how to do so and knew all the theories of how to do it right.

I’m on record as saying and I will repeat again, these modern educational experts with their endless testing and competition theories are the exact equivalent of you going to a doctor with the flu and he declares, “Thyne humors art in imbalance. I shall bleed thee!”

Come Nineveh

Very brief post but I’ve covered this topic so many times over the last few decades I don’t really care to add repetitive commentary. I started complaining about it in the days of Ronald Reagan. Still, here is more evidence that what I said would happen is actually happening.

> For the first time, China has taken the Nature Index crown as the biggest producer of high-quality research in chemistry, knocking the United States down to second place. <

Once Chinese science was the greatest in the world. Then the fundamentalists and the China First/China Only groups took over. China was quickly surpassed by much tinier nations who had stayed on the science road. Eventually those tiny nations bullied China any way they wanted to as China descended into Third World status. Now the United States, long the producer of the greatest science in the world, is turning to fundamentalism, America 1st/America Only belief while China turns back to science. We are slipping. They are gaining.

Is anyone really surprised?

https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/these-ten-countries-top-the-ranks-in-chemistry-research?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=bf160736fb-briefing-dy-20191212&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-bf160736fb-44635989

Artificial Stupidity Rules!

https://www.fastcompany.com/90399280/aristo-ai-passes-science-test-for-8th-graders?partner=rss&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=rss

Smarter than an eighth grader? Well… In terms of taking standardized tests yes. But standardized tests are absolute garbage measurements of anything of any serious real educational value except the ability to regurgitate mindless facts. And yes, computers are really good at regurgitating mindless facts. Other reports on the same topic of noted that the computer is a total dolt in other areas. In fact it’s not even as smart as a human preschooler in areas such as creative problem solving, social skills, and other abilities important to functioning in human society.

However, when taking standardized tests it’s a genius. Which just goes to show that giving standardized tests to our students is the act of an incompetent.

Privatization By Any Other Name Still Stinks As Foul

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loan-experts-congress-193001992.html

I have been criticizing the privatization movement since George Bush Junior was sitting in the White House. We have gone long way down that antisocial road — and look where we are today. This article shows even more successes for the privatization-cutthroat capitalism model. Very few people who love the ultra conservative economist Hayek remember that he predicted that most societies would destroy themselves. He considered that to be a very good thing. He was, after all, an economic Social Darwinist. Survival of the fittest. The strong survive. The weak die.

America is well along on the road to dying.

> “...debt is tearing our country apart,” Seth Frotman, former student loan ombudsman and the executive director of theStudent Borrower Protection Center stated. <

STEM And Sex

https://cosmosmagazine.com/society/girls-are-just-as-good-at-stem-study-finds?utm_source=Cosmos+-+Master+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=76e3a61790-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3f5c04479a-76e3a61790-180555153

Social justice warriors and radical feminists have a habit of becoming frantic (dare I say hysterical?) when it is suggested that anything other than cultural differences and patriarchal prejudices can explain the differences between the performance of males and females in STEM performance,  this type of irrationality is wrong for several reasons. 

The two most important are that answering one mindless prejudice with another mindless prejudice is a malfunctional way of thinking and does not do anything to solve the problem, it only makes the problem more complex and difficult to resolve.

The second is that denying that reality is real because of your ideological or religious prejudices completely shuts out the possibility of finding out what is actually happening in the real world.  To deny even the possibility that one should study why males and females perform differently as a sort of patriarchal suppression is madness. A properly constructed study would uncover patriarchal suppression while refusing to conduct that study leaves the true nature of the problem obscured and probably unimaginable.

If the results of this particular study are born out, it shows that there is in fact a difference in the structure of male and female brains which does not mean females are inferior at STEM activities, but rather that they process their thinking in a slightly different manner.  A very small adjustment in the strategy of administering tests could be all that is required to eliminate the imbalance. No outrage needed. No protest needed.  Only careful studies, and an open mind.

Being offended, being oppressed, being the victim, and so many other maladaptations to life in a society with our fellow human beings are becoming the norm on both sides of the political landscape. (I must add that it is the absolute default position of conservatives and Republicans while Democrats are beginning to experiment with this tool.)  This is a very serious mistake.It inevitably leads us to a fatal flaw, replacing our facultative capacity to reason and actually solve problems with our obligate capacity to become irrational and emotional.

We each are empowered to make the choice for ourselves — use the capacity our brains have to think clearly and actually solve problems or simply allow our emotions to drown our rationality.

That’s the kind of empowerment I prefer.

Not Guilty! OK, Maybe Partly Guilty

https://quillette.com/2019/04/01/prescriptive-racialism-and-racial-exclusion

While this article makes an interesting point, It also makes a grievous intellectual error. I'm reposting this article because of the following comment:

> The Islamic philosopher Al Ghazali did the same when he railed against the Greek pagan influence during the Islamic Golden Age, and in doing so he extinguished the brilliant flame of scientific thought of his era. The Middle East has been dark ever since. <

In fairness to the author of this article, it has been a common belief, almost a universal belief, among philosophic scholars that her statement is accurate. But a look at Al Ghazal's actual philosophy and his statements indicate  a somewhat contrary reality.

While his positions are very complex, on the issue of scripture verses objective reality he clearly stated that there can be no such contradiction. Reality is reality whether observed through a religious or an empirical lens.  When a contradiction does appear, he insists that objective reality must be accepted as real and that religious scholars must then acknowledge that the Koran cannot be taken literally on that particular issue, but must instead be interpreted as symbolically true, not literally accurate.

This is the declaration of an individual who strongly supports science and its empirical, objective base. A  fair-minded person must acknowledge that Al Ghazali is not only innocent of the supposed offense but in fact is an exemplar of  the opposite position.  But equally in fairness, we can not ignore the fact that Al Ghazali was a religious extremist who also caused a great deal of harm to his culture and society.

In other words, he's not single-handedly guilty of destroying Islamic science but he did support and increase religious extremism. Which is to say he was a very mixed bag, like so many other human beings who tend to be regarded as exemplars of one particular trait but who are actually complex characters displaying both good and bad sides.

So who can be accused of single-handedly bringing down his own civilization? While it is very popular in the Middle East to blame the Crusades, there's no question it was an internal rot, a form of intellectual and spiritual cancer, which caused the destruction of the most highly advanced technological civilization on the planet, leaving it a desperately poor Third World entity to this day.

No one person was actually guilty of this offense, but one of the greatest contributors was Nizam al-Mulk. As visier, He established a highly influential set of madrasahs which firmly established the Islamic position of higher education as one of extreme religious fundamentalism.

These two highly influential men, living at the same time, did cause a great deal of harm and damage to their own society and civilization.  Still, I feel compelled to point out that Al Ghazali did not rail against science. Although he did contribute to the dominance of religious extremism and fundamentalism which led to the fall of the Islamic empire, he most certainly did not do it single-handedly nor did he do so by attacking science or objective reality. 

 Let me now note that I have previously stated over a period of decades that the anti-science movement founded in American religious fundamentalism constitutes an existential danger to our society. China was destroyed by turning inward into religious fundamentalism and away from science and objectivity, as was the great Islamic empire, as we will be if we do not reign in it's extremist excesses.

Rights And Wrongs

In response to a post which reported that high school students were expelled in punishment for their Facebook posts supporting neo-Nazis and the murdering of Jews I posted:

Talk about a mixed bag!

1.  The postings were disgusting. There is no excuse for them. It's clear that at least some if not all of the parents were shocked by their children's behavior. I repeat, there is no excuse for this. I make none.
2. Once informed of this, Facebook correctly took down the posts.
3. This is exactly the kind of hate speech the Donald Trump calls politically incorrect. It is exactly what he has authorized and made acceptable again.
4. The school was completely and totally wrong and punishing the students for these actions.

How can I say on the one hand of the actions deserved punishment and then immediately add that the school should not have administered punishment? The answer is very simple. This was none of the school's business.

Once we begin to allow schools to punish students for actions taken off-campus and after school hours, we have given schools an unbelievable excess of authority over parents and children and at the same time we have put upon schools a terrible and impossible burden.

Should schools also punish children for talking back? Not eating their dinner? Not cleaning their rooms? Parents are in charge of the children when their children are not in school. It is been traditional, and  may still be a cultural fact, that Japanese teachers are superior to parents. Parents  traditionally bowed more deeply to teachers than teachers bowed to parents. Teachers were considered to be failing in the duties if they did not spend at least some nights checking to make sure the lights in students' bedrooms were on well after normal bedtime. This was accepted as evidence that the child was studying hard. If a teacher felt parents were not doing their duty, the teacher was expected to give the parents a stern lecture. Parents were expected to listen and comply.

I do not think this would be appropriate in America.

This  also places  a ridiculous burden upon the schools. Every teacher in the high school is to be held accountable for disciplining their students for their behavior of those children after school hours?  Only the principal? So he's now responsible for all the students in the school?

Discipline and lessons are clearly in order for these children, but since these activities took place off-campus and after school hours, the school should not be involved in individual responses unless the parents ask for assistance. The school is responsible for being aware of this conduct and making it a part of lesson plans to prevent such actions as a part of educating our future adult citizens.  This, however is a general action not specifically aimed at individual pupils.

As a parent I did not want the government, not even in the form of the school system, taking responsibility for the actions of my family outside of school hours and activities. As a parent, I will deal with my children.

As an retired educator I would have objected to being required to deal with private disciplinary problems which should be in the hands of the parents.

There is one possible excuse for the school's actions. While the article strongly implies the students were expelled for being a part of the group and for the posts, it also mentioned that at least some students reported being threatened and harassed by members of the group. Such behavior, if it took place on school grounds, would be a valid reason for the expulsion of the students who actually threatened or harassed other students.

Notes:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/14/nazi-facebook-group-alt-right-execution-jews-black-people-colorado-students-expelled?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

The report about parent teacher relationships in Japan is from Samurai's Ghost, a book written by an American who taught in Japan for a number of years.

Banzai!

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/01/fashion/denim-japan-weaving-shibusa/index.html

The classic tale of modern Japan. You guys invent something, we'll perfect it.

A few examples:

➡ Having been introduced to the idea of clockwork figures from China via Korea, The Japanese produced a remarkable number of complex devices including amazing little clockwork puppet figures which many regard as the seed from which the Japanese fascination with robots has grown.

➡ Shortly after Commodore Perry forced Japan to open her ports, modern guns were introduced from the West. This struck Japanese society at its roots as peasants could now be formed into a brutally effective fighting force with minimal training, which threatened samurai supremacy. Soon Japan was producing the finest guns in the world. The corps of musketeers was so effective that eventually Japan did a remarkable thing, they banned a highly effective and desirable technology and made the ban stick! Probably this only happened because all the samurai class, from lowest soldier to the Shogun, were deeply committed to the concept of honor and guns were clearly a dishonorable weapon (which also happened to threaten their own power).

➡ Japan eventually realized that their military system was inferior to the west. During the Meiji era, the country used the British as a model for the Navy and the Prussians as a model for their army. They quickly became one of the finest militaries in the world. At the beginning of World War II there is no question that the best operational air supremacy fighter in the world was the Mitsubishi Zero.

➡ Disney style animation swept the nation after WWII and today Japan produces much the world's most popular versions.

➡ Electronics was largely an American invention, but, as Marty McFly declared, "Japan makes the best stuff!"

➡ Interestingly, the Japanese recognize serious failures in their educational program. They have long envied the invention and creativity that America's system produces. This has been so for at least the last 20 to 30 years. Ironically, we are now imitating all the flaws of the Japanese system and weakening or even destroying the strengths which were once inherent in our own.
Read "Samurai's Ghost" for more on this topic.

The One Way

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/08/22/341898975/a-picture-of-language-the-fading-art-of-diagramming-sentences?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social

This is a most interesting post. I am generally regarded as good with words, yet I always found diagramming sentences onerous and difficult. I thought it was a pointless and obfuscating exercise with no benefits. Then one of my colleagues told me how much she loved it when she was a child. She declared it had given her much insight and helped her to write better and comprehend more.

A good teacher teaches in many different ways because students learn in many different ways.

I went to preschool reading years ahead of expected grade levels. Phonics was a senseless burden for me -- confusing, meaningless work.; but for other students phonics opens the door to reading itself.

Good teachers teach in whatever way it takes for their students to learn.

Race And Economic Staus Rule!

Nick posted:

One reason inequality is self-perpetuating 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/29/upshot/money-race-and-success-how-your-school-district-compares.html?_r=0

I responded:

Nick, it starts long before school, as teachers have known for decades.  The article below reports, "children from families on welfare heard about 616 words per hour, while those from working class families heard around 1,251 words per hour, and those from professional families heard roughly 2,153 words per hour. Thus, children being raised in middle to high income class homes had far more language exposure to draw from."

http://literacy.rice.edu/thirty-million-word-gap

Of course, we must hold teachers accountable for the way parents talk to their children in their homes before the children are even old enough to go to school. Accountability is good!