The Displaced Plainsman

Quotation Of The Day: STEM Edition

2012-02-12T17:03:00.001-06:00

If we want to have a thriving democracy where people think critically about their world, we need to balance STEM with AHEM (Art, History, English and Music). STEM might help us stay competitive in the global pissing contest, but AHEM will teach us to examine our cultural hubris and question whether the goal in life is really consuming more. STEM might teach us the art of solving problems, but AHEM will help us see nuance and paradox to problems. STEM pushes students toward innovation, but AHEM helps students avoid the obsession with novelty and embrace the vintage ideas that we so often miss.

On The Need For Another Political Party Or Two

2012-02-12T13:17:00.000-06:00

This morning Christians across the United States gathered to worship. The following passage's principle from Ephesians 4:1-6 is inherent in each gathering:

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

Despite the implied unity, Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox faiths all met in different buildings. Among the Protestants, Lutherans and Baptists congregates separately; Among the Baptists, North American Baptists, American Baptists, Southern Baptists, General Baptists, Independent Baptists couldn't agree about enough articles of faith to worship together.

If Christians can agree that a First Century Jewish man was born to a virgin, crucified as a criminal, and rose from the dead to save humanity from the deadly wages of sin but can't agree on the proper form of worship, it seems odd that American politics limits itself to two parties. Writing in today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman contends,

I’ve argued that maybe we need a third party to break open our political system. But that’s a long shot. What we definitely and urgently need is a second party —

Friedman concludes,

Until the G.O.P. stops being radical and returns to being conservative, it won’t provide what the country needs most now — competition — competition with Democrats on the issues that will determine whether we thrive in the 21st century. We need to hear conservative fiscal policies, energy policies, immigration policies and public-private partnership concepts — not radical ones. Would somebody please restore our second party? The country is starved for a grown-up debate.

Friedman's analysis made me think about South Dakota's political situation: the state certainly needs a second political party. At the South Dakota War College, an unofficial Republican organ, "Bill Clay" giggles, "can I call the Democrats a major party in SD?" Outside of having some entertaining internecine battles, South Dakota Republicans seem like the Democrats Friedman describes:

the best of the Democrats — who have been willing to compromise — have no partners and the worst have a free pass for their own magical thinking.

I don't see many South Dakota Republicans willing to compromise, and many seem to have some "magical" views about their proposals:

Rep. Steve Hickey, R-Hartford, made himself the target of boos when he said education in South Dakota is not a partisan issue, but if it does divide along party lines, “Democrats focus on teachers and salaries. Republicans focus on students and achievement.”

In many places, politics is a religion; it would be good for South Dakota and country to have a few more denominations.

Quotation Of The Day: Politics And Art Edition

2012-02-10T21:25:00.001-06:00

From E.D. Kain,

But for some reason, conservative attempts at pop culture simply don’t pan out for the most part. So we get complaints about liberal media or liberal Hollywood or whatever. But it’s not liberal Hollywood’s fault that conservatives can’t do art. (Nor is it entirely obvious that Hollywood is liberal, but that’s another story for another time.)

And it’s not as though no good conservative art or literature has ever been produced. It’s just that today’s conservatives have lost any sense of proportion or subtext. Everything is so overt and over-stated. I think that The Lord of the Rings is a basically conservative text. It’s just not explicitly conservative and doesn’t say anything nasty about Obama . . . .

And perhaps that’s the crux of the issue. Conservative art mimics conservative politics rather than the other way around. And so it can never really be art.

I don't think it stretches Kain's analysis to point out that the conservative politics that produced NCLB reduced teaching literature to teaching reading and prioritizes STEM uber alles.

Quotation Of The Day: Santorum Hyperbole And Tale Of Two Cities Edition

2012-02-09T14:17:00.000-06:00

And here I have been spending all my time worrying that the United States was going to go the way of Rome. How silly of me.

From Rick Santorum,

“They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is a government that gives you rights. What’s left are no unalienable rights. What’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the the guillotine.”

Guess I'm going to have to break out A Tale of Two Cities again and look for the best of times and the worst of times. Perhaps Santorum wants to help Rep Hickey encourage schools to teach the Bible as literature; Hickey's guest columnist lists the novel in this post. I've always told students that Sydney Carton's selfless act makes him an archetypal Christ Figure.

If Santorum starts referring to himself as a "resurrection" candidate, I am going to start worrying. On a side note, I have been worried about all of the knitting clubs that I have seen springing up.

I Expect Better From Elected Officials

2012-02-08T12:51:00.001-06:00

From today's Washington Post,

For years, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) has supported a Pentagon program called Starbase that teaches science, math and engineering skills to children in dozens of locations around the country.

Johnson is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Pentagon’s budget. In 2008, Johnson, along with seven other senators, added $4 million to the Starbase budget.

At the time, Johnson’s wife, Barbara, was paid an annual salary of $80,000 as a contract employee to evaluate the program. From 2005 to September, she worked for the Spectrum Group, a lobbying and consulting firm in Alexandria, that has a $1 million Pentagon contract to monitor Starbase. A social worker and educator, Barbara Johnson was also assigned to manage its Web site.

Getting $4 million to a program that pays one's spouse $80,000 a year looks wrong and sends the message that everyone is in it only for the money. I didn't like Mike Rounds putting his family members on the state payroll and I don't like what Johnson did here.

Maybe Senator Johnson did nothing wrong, but he's been around enough to know that elected officials need to avoid the appearance of wrongdoing as well as actual wrongdoing.

South Dakota War College Makes Case For Continuing Contracts For K-!2 Teachers

2012-02-08T08:24:00.002-06:00

Let's get one thing clear right at the start: K-12 teachers don't have tenure; they have continuing contract. Calling continuing contract tenure is like calling a McDonald's fry cook an Iron Chef. Both provide food, but the latter's is far superior fare. Continuing contract offers a few protections but it's not tenure

At the Madville Times, Cory reports on Krist Noem's townhall and, as is his wont, takes Noem to task. At the Dakota War College, "Bill Clay," as is his wont, takes Cory to task. Both are partisans; both take as much as they give. In a side note, the Rapid City Journal posts a picture of Cory and Noem talking after the meeting

"Clay," however, concludes his response with the following: "He sets such a darn good example for his students doesn’t he?"

The not so hidden threat within that statement is that Cory's politics make him unqualified to teach and that if "Bill Clay" had his way, Cory would lose his job. "Clay's" response and its implied threat illustrate why teachers need a modicum of protection. No one should be fired or threatened with losing his job for writing partisan blogs and playing political hardball with the hyperbole that accompanies the game. In fact the only people who should lose their job because of their politics are the politicians who hold elected office.

Let's be clear, "Clay" is likely not one of Cory's students nor his evaluating principal, so he has no idea what Cory does in the classroom. I'm certain that Cory's reading list does not include Sartre, Foucault, or Derrida, so "Bill" doesn't need to worry about radical philosophy.

I've read scores of Cory's debate ballots. He demands intellectual rigor and a logical presentation. He's voted for teams or debaters that espouse positions he dislikes. If I may paraphrase, what happens on the blog, stays on the blog; what happens in the classroom stays in the classroom, and never the twain shall meet.

If "Clay" believes that people cannot change how they behave in a given situation, he should look for statistics on the number of people who praised the Lord last Sunday morning and needed a designated driver after the Super Bowl.

A high school teacher who teaches basic semester classes may have up to 250 students in a year. Some of them will have parents who disagree with the teacher's politics. That disagreement should have nothing to do with whether the teacher gets rehired no matter what "Bill Clay" thinks.

Short Points Disguised As A Blog Post

2012-02-07T12:43:00.000-06:00

Am I the only one who finds a disconcerting irony in the fact that today marks the 10th anniversary of the US making torture part of its official policy and the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens birth?

Speaking of disconcerting ironies, the New York Times reviews Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. The Right Side blog cuts and pastes a review as well. Unsurprisingly, the Times and Right Siders appear to have read a different book.

While I was watching the Super Bowl, I was struck by the idea that the National Football League and corporate America share one common view: they want educational institutions to provide them workers but they don't want to fully support the educational institutions.

Education And Technology: What Works?

2012-02-06T12:49:00.002-06:00

At an Irene cracker barrel, Yankton state senator Jean Hunhoff, said,

“The premise out there is, how do you get performance to improve?” Sen. Hunhoff asked. “The idea was merit. Tell me how you see how something could work to raise student performance, as an option. Let’s not focus on just what’s bad.”

Iagree, but it seems that data frequently conflict. One of the saviors has allegedly been technology. In spite of my desire to follow Senator Hunhoff's injunction, I can't. Michael Hiltzik takes issue with the idea that schools will be well served by increasing their emphasis on technology.

Every schoolchild should have a laptop, they said. Because in the near future, textbooks will be a thing of the past.

Where had I heard that before? So I did a bit of research, and found it. The quote I recalled was, "Books will soon be obsolete in the schools.... Our school system will be completely changed in 10 years."

The revolutionary technology being heralded in that statement wasn't the Internet or the laptop, but the motion picture. The year was 1913, and the speaker, Thomas Edison, was referring to the prospect of replacing book learning with instruction via the moving image.

He was talking through his hat then, every bit as much as Duncan and Genachowski are talking through theirs now.

Here's another similarity: The push for advanced technology in the schoolroom then and now was driven by commercial, not pedagogical, considerations. As an inventor of motion picture technology, Edison stood to profit from its widespread application. And the leading promoter of the replacement of paper textbooks by e-books and electronic devices today is Apple, which announced at a media event last month that it dreams of a world in which every pupil reads textbooks on an iPad or a Mac.

I have a certain agnostic view of classroom technology: Hiltzik seems to have a similar view.

Apple and its government mouthpieces speak highly of the ability to feed constant updates to digital textbooks so they never go out of date. But that's relevant to a rather small subset of schoolbooks such as those dealing with the leading edge of certain sciences — though I'm not sure how many K-12 pupils are immersed in advanced subjects such as quantum mechanics or string theory. The standard text of "Romeo and Juliet," on the other hand, has been pretty well locked down since 1599.

There's certainly an important role for technology in the classroom. And the U.S. won't benefit if students in poor neighborhoods fall further behind their middle-class or affluent peers in access to broadband Internet connectivity or computers. But mindless servility to technology for its own sake, which is what Duncan and Genachowski are promoting on behalf of self-interested companies like Apple, will make things worse, not better.

That's because it distracts from and sucks money away from the most important goal, which is maintaining good teaching practices and employing good teachers in the classroom. What's scary about the recent presentation by Duncan and Genachowski is that it shows that for all their supposed experience and expertise, they've bought snake oil. They're simply trying to rebottle it for us as the elixir of the gods.

It boils down to whether the student is willing to learn and whether the teacher can teach. Hiltzik points out,

"The media you use make no difference at all to learning," says Richard E. Clark, director of the Center for Cognitive Technology at USC. "Not one dang bit. And the evidence has been around for more than 50 years."

The Common Core And Conformity

2012-02-06T06:35:00.026-06:00

The blog at TED.com has an interview with Sugata Mitra, an advocate of self-directed learning. Mitra installed a computer in a hole in a wall in a New Dehli slum and let children operate it unsupervised. He contends,

"Experiments show that children in unsupervised groups are capable of answering questions many years ahead of the material they’re learning in school."

I'm not sure how I feel about the idea of no adult direction in a classroom, but I do agree with Mitra's analysis about how and why our current system works like it does.

The existing Victorian system of education was created to mass-produce identical human beings, mainly to serve an aristocracy, and, in modern times, an industrial elite. Governments find it difficult to move away from this model, because it has worked.

Despair.com provides a succinct reminder and visual proof that schools succeed in their mass production efforts.

Writing in the Answer Sheet, Marion Brady, a teacher and curriculum designer contends that the Common Core standards will continue to produce conformity. She calls the standards "a confusing, random, overwhelming, intellectually unmanageable assortment of facts, specialized vocabularies, disconnected conceptual frameworks, and abstractions — the whole too far removed from life as the young live it for them to care about it."
Later, she predicts,

When the CEOs and the politicians they’ve bought finish the simplistic “reform” they’ve started, when the claim that an order-of-magnitude improvement in learner intellectual performance has been dismissed as hyperbole, when all 50 states have been pressured to adopt the regressive Common Core Standards locking the knowledge-fragmenting 1893 curriculum in permanent place, when standardized subject-matter tests that can’t measure the qualities and quality of thought have been nationalized, when the “standards and testing police” are fully deployed and looking over every teacher’s shoulder, it’ll all be over. America and the nations that follow its lead in education will face a dynamic world equipped with a static curriculum.

I don't know which is worse: being unnecessary or helping mass produce conformists.

A Sunday Evening Musing About Ego And Futility

2012-02-05T18:19:00.000-06:00

³ They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. ⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

⁵ But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. ⁶ The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. ⁷ Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

⁸ So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. (Genesis 11:3-8)

IO9.com reports on a more contemporary Tower of Babel;

In 1986, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Heritage USA was the third most-visited amusement park in the US, behind only Disney World and Disneyland. Now the park that once entertained millions of guests is falling to pieces, and looks more like the scene from a post-apocalyptic movie than a place for family fun.

Photos from Tommy and James.

The Secular Holiday Season

2012-02-05T11:06:00.000-06:00

If Americanism is indeed a religion, consumerism and sports may be it's major denominations and today may mark the start of the sports' faithful's holiday season.

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, a day that combines both sports and consumerism. This ultimate secular holiday's main ritual consists of serious and casual sports fans gathering together with those who don't know the difference between a first down and down-filled pillow to eat too much homemade bar food and keep pizza delivery drivers busy.

The conservative sports fans will have reason to cheer when pitchers and catchers report. Oakland's and Seattle's batterymates report on February 12; the rest of the MLB clubs have a February 19th reporting date. If Orthodox and Western churches can't always agree about Easter, why should baseball teams shouldn't have to agree about starting Spring Training. The main requirement of this secular day of obligation is to mediate about the hope that will spring eternal on Opening Day, April 4.

On March 12, work will stop all over the country as people take as much work time as possible to fill out brackets for the NCAA Basketball Tournament aka March Madness. On March 15 and 16 high school students across the country, even those who don't know the difference between a basketball and a bidet. March Madness also features gatherings and the conumption of copious amounts of bar food.

Happy Holidays.

The Differences Between Americanism And Christianity

2012-02-05T09:15:00.000-06:00

James K.A. Smith draws some contrasts between Americanism and Christianity. Writing about Mitt Romney, Smith points out,

He is primarily interested in conserving America’s role as a hegemon (“preserving American leadership” is the guise under which he segues to talk about religion). And he enthusiastically adopts Sam Adams axiom that it’s not the specifics of piety that matters, but rather whether one is a “patriot.”

Smith claims that in that respect Romney is "like almost every other presidential candidate (from I don’t care which side of the aisle)."

Smith elegantly makes a point I've long believed:

if one pays close attention to the actual theology at work here—that is, if one starts asking just which God is being invoked—one finds that it is a particular deity: “the divine ‘author of liberty.’” The god of the culture warriors has always been a generic god of theism (precisely like the god of the Founding Fathers): a “God who gave us liberty” (to do what we want). The “Creator” is a granter of inalienable rights and unregulated freedoms, a god who shares and ordains “American values.” If evangelical culture warriors had worries about Romney’s faith, his jeremiad today should confirm that he pledges allegiance to the same “God of liberty” that they do. We’re all Americanists now.

Like most Americans, I'm probably built my share of idols of a "'God who gave us liberty' (to do what we want)." Frequent short reflection brings one to the conclusion that one should join the small company that Smith describes:

some of us find it hard to believe in Americanism and its God of liberty. Some of us just can’t muster faith in the generic theism that is preached on the campaign trail, whether from the Right or Left. Some of us Christians have a hard time reconciling the Almighty, all-powerful, law-giving God of liberty with the crucified suffering servant born in a barn and executed at the hands of the elite. Some of us are trying to figure out what it means to be a people who follow one who relinquished his rights rather than asserted them, who considered submission a higher value than freedom. We serve a God-man who wasn’t concerned with “preserving leadership” and the hegemony of the empire’s gospel of freedom, but rather was crushed by its machinations for proclaiming and embodying another gospel.

Let's Meet Stephanie Strong And Look For Propaganda, Especially Glittering Generalities

2012-02-03T15:28:00.003-06:00

I suppose one could look for alliteration too.

Stephanie Strong, the Rapid City businesswoman not the adult film star, is running for Congress. Cory has covered her website here. The Right Side Blog touts her candidacy with the following propaganda.

She believes in:
•limited Constitutional government;
•the vigorous defense of our Constitutional rights;
•debt reduction by reducing spending, not raising taxes;
•reduction in government interference in business through excessive regulation;
•a strong military;
•traditional Judeo-Christian values;
•US energy independence.

I use the term propaganda academically not pejoratively. Every phrase fits the example of a glittering generality.

Glittering generalities are words that have different positive meaning for individual subjects, but are linked to highly valued concepts. When these words are used, they demand approval without thinking, simply because such an important concept is involved.

I think I'm going to have to stock up on some popcorn. Between Kristi Noem's leather jacket glitz and Stephanie Strong's glitter, this race might be entertaining. I would rather have substantive, but one takes what one can.

A Conservative Gives Good Advice About Being Radical

2012-02-03T10:48:00.005-06:00

I don't make this statement often, but David Brooks gets it perfectly right.

The paradox of reform movements is that, if you want to defy authority, you probably shouldn’t think entirely for yourself. You should attach yourself to a counter-tradition and school of thought that has been developed over the centuries and that seems true.

The old leftists had dialectical materialism and the Marxist view of history. Libertarians have Hayek and von Mises. Various spiritual movements have drawn from Transcendentalism, Stoicism, Gnosticism, Thomism, Augustine, Tolstoy, or the Catholic social teaching that inspired Dorothy Day.

These belief systems helped people envision alternate realities. They helped people explain why the things society values are not the things that should be valued. They gave movements a set of organizing principles. Joining a tradition doesn’t mean suppressing your individuality. Applying an ancient tradition to a new situation is a creative, stimulating and empowering act. Without a tradition, everything is impermanence and flux.

Most professors would like their students to be more rebellious and argumentative. But rebellion without a rigorous alternative vision is just a feeble spasm.

If I could offer advice to a young rebel, it would be to rummage the past for a body of thought that helps you understand and address the shortcomings you see. Give yourself a label. If your college hasn’t provided you with a good knowledge of countercultural viewpoints — ranging from Thoreau to Maritain — then your college has failed you and you should try to remedy that ignorance.

Effective rebellion isn’t just expressing your personal feelings. It means replacing one set of authorities and institutions with a better set of authorities and institutions. Authorities and institutions don’t repress the passions of the heart, the way some young people now suppose. They give them focus and a means to turn passion into change.

On a side note, I wonder if Brooks's insight doesn't explain why many corporate ed reformers seek to reduce reading to mere utility and emphasize STEM. Reading people that help one successfully challenge the status quo might hurt corporations' bottom line.

Daugaard's Merit Pay Plan Begins With Wrong Premise

2012-02-03T07:15:00.004-06:00

High school debaters are frequently intelligent and logical young people. They are also frequently myopic. I have seen scores of rounds turn into debacles because one or both of the debaters chose to focus on a single issue rather than the premises behind an opponent's case.

In some ways, those of us who oppose Governor Daugaard's merit pay and STEM uber alles proposals have done the same thing. We have pointed to Daniel Pink or Diane Ravitch to illustrate that merit pay fails. On the facts, we're right, but sometimes focusing solely on the facts produces a bad debate.

At the same time, it seems that no one is challenging the fact that Daugaard's plan focuses on the teacher. It strikes me that if this were a debate round, I would want my debaters to demand that focus be put on the students or on schools' structure.

Larry Cuban looks at one element in education that seems immune to reform: the age graded school.

The age-graded school is also an institution that has plans for those who work within its confines. The organization isolates and insulates teachers from one another, perpetuates teacher-centered pedagogy, and prevents a large fraction of students from achieving academically. It is the sea in which teachers, students, principals, and parents swim yet few contemporary reformers have questioned this one-size-fits-all organization.

Cuban concludes,

The unintended (and ironic) consequence of frequent and earnest calls for radical change in preparation of school leaders, school governance, curriculum, and instruction through non-traditional teachers and administrators, charter schools, nifty reading and math programs, iPads for kindergartners, blended learning, pay-for-performance, and other reforms preserve the age-graded school and freeze classroom patterns that so many reformers and entrepreneurs want to alter.

Intuitively, Cuban's analysis seems to make perfect sense. I have some successful class sections that combine sophomores and seniors. Cuban notes that few schools have tried to alter age graded schools, but uncertainty about merit pay's efficacy did not prevent Governor Daugaard from proposing merit pay.

If there's one part of school that's as sacrosanct as grouping students by age, it's the agrarian notion that students need not be in school in the summer. At the Madville Times, Cory points out that more contact hours don't necessarily lead to positive results. I wonder, however, if shortening the school day so that teenagers could show up at 9 am or so when their brains wake up might help achievement. I also wonder if a school year that had six week sessions followed by two week breaks might also produce better results.

I've also been intrigued by reviews of Susan Cain's book Quiet: The Power of Introverts. In an interview in Scientific American, Cain contends,

In our society, the ideal self is bold, gregarious, and comfortable in the spotlight. We like to think that we value individuality, but mostly we admire the type of individual who’s comfortable “putting himself out there.” Our schools, workplaces, and religious institutions are designed for extroverts. Introverts are to extroverts what American women were to men in the 1950s -- second-class citizens with gigantic amounts of untapped talent.

Later in the interview she asserts,

Most schools and workplaces now organize workers and students into groups, believing that creativity and productivity comes from a gregarious place. This is nonsense, of course. From Darwin to Picasso to Dr. Seuss, our greatest thinkers have often worked in solitude, and in my book I examine lots of research on the pitfalls of groupwork.

Instead of accepting Daugaard's premise and arguing only that his plan is destined to fail, let's reject his premises about the nature of reform. The past ten years have focused on teachers and best practices. The Governor claims that those reforms have produced meager results. Perhaps a pilot study would develop a way to modify age based schools or create curricula that helps introverts succeed in school. Instead of focusing solely on teachers, let's focus on the institutional practices and the students as well.

[edited for grammar and completeness 10:45 am; one should never blog before coffee]

Creationists Don't Like Bill Mandating The Teaching Of Creation

2012-02-02T14:28:00.001-06:00

I guess South Dakota will get to this legislation next year. From the Discovery Institute,

Indianapolis – A bill approved today by the Indiana Senate to allow the teaching of creationism in public schools is being criticized as bad science education by Discovery Institute, the nation’s leading intelligent design think tank.

If made law, Indiana Senate Bill 89 (SB89) would allow creationism, a religious view on the origin of species, into the Hoosier state’s biology classrooms. In 1987, the Supreme Court struck down similar legislation as an unconstitutional establishment of religion. Instead of scrapping SB89 in deference to legal precedent, the Indiana Senate has amended the bill to allow more religious views on origins, as if more religion could cure the original problem.

“Instead of injecting religion into biology classes, legislators should be working to promote the inclusion of more science,” said Joshua Youngkin, a law and policy analyst at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture. “There are plenty of scientific criticisms of Darwin’s theory today, and science students should be able to hear about them, not about religion.”

The original bill was amended to mandate that science classes teach the creation stories of many cultures in biology classes.

Yesterday's Most Offensive And Ridiculous Blog Post

2012-02-01T08:08:00.002-06:00

Granted I did not surf the entire Web, but this Brad Ford offering from The Right Side Blog can't have many competitors.

Farmers don’t abuse, neglect, or minimize animals under their care because problems will show up. Even slaveowners centuries ago understood this. No, people aren’t animals, but the same dynamics about caring apply. Families know this instinctively.

I will try to make my sentences simple in clear so that the logically challenged Mr. Ford does not get confused.

First, I did not know that members of families were like either slaves or animals.

More importantly, slavery is morally wrong. (For all the readers who possess an IQ above Mr. Ford's, please insert the word reprehensible.) Further, reducing humans to the level of chattel "minimizes" them. As for "abuse" and "neglect," accounts of freed slaves are replete with accounts of both.

I would also point out to Mr. Ford that there are more slaves today than there were at the height of the transatlantic slave trade.

According to research carried out by the organization Free the Slaves, more people are enslaved worldwide than ever before.

In its 400 years, the transatlantic slave trade is estimated to have shipped up to 12 million Africans to various colonies in the West. Free the Slaves estimates that the number of people in slavery today is at least 27 million.

I'm pretty sure all 27 million are abused, neglected, and minimized.

Quotation Of The Day: Reading Edition

2012-02-01T00:44:00.000-06:00

From Jennifer Eagan,

Reading is the nourishment that lets you do interesting work.

SB 146: Nick Moser Gets This One Right

2012-01-31T08:12:00.001-06:00

Representative Nick Moser is one of the South Dakota House sponsors of SB 146, "An Act to provide for an affirmative defense of compulsion for the crime of prostitution." The brief bill states,

Section 1. That chapter 22-23 be amended by adding thereto a NEW SECTION to read as follows:
It is an affirmative defense to a charge of prostitution under § 22-23-1 if the defendant proves by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant is a victim of human trafficking under chapter 22-49 or that the defendant committed the act only under compulsion by another person who, by implicit or explicit threat, created a reasonable apprehension in the mind of the defendant that if the defendant did not commit the act, the person would inflict bodily harm upon the defendant.

As I understand it, an affirmative defense is something like claiming self defense if one is attacked and kills the attacker. I don't know how hard it is to prove "by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant is a victim of human trafficking" but this bill seems a step in the right direction.

According to the UN Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking,

An estimated 2.5 million people are in forced labour (including sexual exploitation) at any given time as a result of trafficking

Further, UN.GIFT reports,

95% of victims experienced physical or sexual violence during trafficking (based on data from selected European countries)

43% of victims are used for forced commercial sexual exploitation, of whom 98 per cent are women and girls.

According to the National Human Trafficking Resource Center, South Dakota had 12 calls from July 1-September 30, 2011, so trafficking may not be a affect a huge number of people, but the magnitude of the crime if it affects even one person deserves all the attention it can get. Its victims deserve all the protection they can get.

Should We Create Education Mortality Panels?

2012-01-31T06:17:00.001-06:00

I'm not sure how I'll feel about this Jamie Malanowski proposal tomorrow or next week , but at first blush it makes some sense.

Here’s an idea. Before my wife worked in education, she worked in health care. It is her observation that when patients have bad outcomes–that is, die–hospitals are very serious about rooting out why. When patients die, especially patients who were not admitted in dire condition, the hospital convenes a Mortality Panel to investigate what happened, with an aim to fixing the problem. Sometimes they find shortcomings by a doctor or a nurse or someone else on the staff, and take steps to address it. But often they find that the outcome wasn’t always within their control. Patients drink, smoke, take drugs, have poor diets, have underlying conditions, suffer environmental insults, and so on. Here’s the idea: if you want to hold teachers responsible for student performance, make the teachers’ performance part of a total evaluation. By all means, examine whether the teacher was up to the job. But other questions should also be asked. Did the student do his homework? Did the student come to class? Does the student possess a learning disability, or an underlying medical or psychological condition that affects performance, and does the school address those issues? Does the student have a parent at home? Did he have breakfast? Did he have a place to sleep? Is the student a discipline problem? What has the school done to address this kid’s challenges? If not, is it because of a funding issue?

I have no desire to defend bad teachers. I have no desire to defend myself when I have a bad day. At the same time, some students refuse learn and others return to situations that make the events in the classroom trivial.

By all means, hold teachers accountable. Better yet, hold everybody accountable

I suspect that Governor Duagaard and Melody Schopp won't warm to this proposal because many education mortality panels might discover that last year's funding cuts hurt student achievement even though many teachers and administrators did their jobs well.

The biggest proble, with this idea is that the patients are dead, but the failed students are alive. Something or someone needs to help them. Nothing in this proposal deals with creating second chances for students who fail.

Are Exit Exams Next?

2012-01-30T07:25:00.004-06:00

The White House followed up the State of the Union speech with the following bit of PR:

The Race to the Top: College Affordability and Completion will promote change in state
systems of higher education. The President is proposing a program that would spur systemic
state reforms to reduce costs for students and promote success in our higher education system
at public colleges. This $1 billion investment would incentivize states to:
o Revamp the structure of state financing for higher education.
o Align entry and exit standards with K-12 education and colleges to facilitate on-time
completion.
o Maintain adequate levels of funding for higher education in order to address important
long-term causes of cost growth at the public institutions that serve two-thirds of fouryear college students.
The Race to the Top for College Affordability and Completion would incentivize governors
and state legislatures around the nation to act on spurring this innovative reform. Through
cost-saving measures like redesigning courses and making better use of education technology,
institutions can keep costs down to provide greater affordability for students.

Writing for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader's "Not District Policy' blog, Josh Verges points to the similarities between Governor Duagaard's proposals and President Obama's and Secretary of Education:s Arne Duncan's Race To The Top plan.

I have a sinking feelig that we'll hear a plan for exit exams as part of graduation requirements and teacher evaluation plans during next year's legislative session.

Teaching Philosophy In High School: Something That Should Happen But Won't

2012-01-29T20:34:00.000-06:00

Brazil is the B of the BRIC nations that some suggest will eventually challenge the United States's hegemony. Boston Review has an interesting article about Brazil's efforts to teach high school students philosophy in order to promote citizenship.

The official rationale for the 2008 law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy.

Given that America's political discourse has devolved, one might think that some states might follow Brazil's lead. Additionally, both Brazil and the United States have some strange people seeking political office.

Voting in Brazil is obligatory, but many think it’s useless. In 2010, the largest number of votes for any member of congress went to Tiririca, a popular TV clown, who ran on the slogan, “I don’t know what a congressman does, but vote me in and I’ll tell you.”

Even a cursory examination of the program, however, indicates that the US will not follow Brazil's lead. First, many in the US would share the practical objections some notable Brazilians have to the philosophy mandate:.

Among the greatest skeptics of the 2008 law is José Arthur Giannotti, one of Brazil’s most respected academic philosophers. He is a close friend of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who vetoed the law when it was first proposed in 2001, after it had already been approved by the legislature. “Teaching philosophy to students who can hardly read and write,” Giannotti said in 2008, “is sad foolishness.”

Students presented with this objection responded,

. . .if you can’t establish a just society democratically without the citizens knowing what justice is, and if you can’t know what justice is without philosophy, it would be impossible to achieve justice in an unjust society like Brazil if studying philosophy presupposes justice.

Given how some responded, to the critiques made by the Occupy Wall Street movement, those practical folks might not like students thinking too much about justice. Further, I can anticipate some practical folk objecting to high schoolers learning Kant's Categorical Imperative, a discussion which might make students begin to wonder if they're being trained to exist solely as means to potential employers' economic ends. The idea that one should always be treated as an end unto oneself is probably as dangerous as the concept of justice.

The article also points out some reasons practical capitalists might object to high school philosophy courses.

Or consider the gap between rich and poor in Brazil, one of the world’s widest. Many here don’t perceive it as unjust. In an elite private school in Salvador, philosophy teacher Luis Rusmando told me, “You’ve come to the most expensive and bourgeois school in town.” An Argentinian Marxist who once wanted to be a guerrilla combatant (two relatives, he told me, were killed by Argentina’s military dictatorship) and joined the fight for agricultural land redistribution when he first got to Brazil, he doesn’t quite know how he ended up at this school. Although about 80 percent of Salvador’s population are Afro-descendants, the only black people I saw in Rusmando’s school are cleaners and kitchen personnel. “Most of my students think that inequality is a law of nature,” he explained. That’s why they find nothing wrong with the social hierarchy that Plato proposes in The Republic. “Only when I tell them that wisdom, not money, rules, according to Plato, they’re confused.”

Off the top of my head, I see two quick objections that the practical folks will make. It's clear that discussing the wealth gap leads to Marxists inciting students to engage in class warfare. Then, of course, there's the dangerous idea that wisdom might be more important than money.

At the Madville Times, Cory offered a counterplan to Daugaard's education proposal. I like Kritiks better than counterplans, so I'll offer mandating teaching philosophy as my alternative part of my K of Daugaard's tired plan planks of tests and merit pay.

Must State Legislatures Be Weird?

2012-01-29T11:31:00.005-06:00

The South Dakota legislature is off to a rocking start. Representative Stace Nelson and the South Dakota Republican legislative leadership are auditioning for a reality TV series. Bob Mercer has details here and here, The effort to change the South Dakota flag has prompted some strong feeling.

These little distractions pale in comparison to legislation proposed in Oklahoma; the vanguard protecting America from Sharia Law may soon debate a bill with the following provision:

"No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients."

I guess I will have to check the label on my Campbell's Chunky soups more carefully. I had always thought Soylent Green was a metaphor.

Tod Kelly reports that this bill's prime sponsor, state legislator Ralph Shorty, has a few other ideas. These ideas have the virtue at being at odds only with the Constitution not reality.

Bill that would deny US citizenship being recognized in the state for people born of illegal immigrants

Bill that would allow the police to confiscate the cars, houses and all other property of illegal immigrants

Bill that would require a presidential candidate to produce a Th“real” birth certificate in order to be placed on the OK ballot

Meanwhile, the Georgia legislature will debate protecting the public good by allowing hunters to use silencers on their rifles while hunting wild hogs.

In Georgia this week, the state Senate is considering a bill that would allow hunters to use silencers at the ends of their rifles or shotguns. The main objective: to help them quietly battle the scourge of wild hogs proliferating across the state's exurban fringe.

According to the Morris News Service, Senate Bill 301 was sponsored by Sen. John Bulloch, a Republican from the south Georgia town of Ochlocknee. Bulloch said sheriffs had asked him to introduce the bill to help cut down on noise complaints about all of the hunters currently blasting away at a feral hog population that Bulloch described as a "growing problem."

There's no word on other states following New Mexico's lead about returning Pluto's status as a planet. Of course, one can only hope many legislatures will continue to debate the merits of various regional desserts.

[edited for grammar and completeness 1/29/22 1:53 pm]

Sitcom Nostalgia Part 2

2012-01-28T21:30:00.000-06:00

My nostalgia got me thinking about teaching. The past truly is in the past. Mr.Kotter would never have a chance with the Sweathogs in 2012.

Charlie Moore would have been unemployed if he tried to ask his young group of geniuses about Fidel Castro's baseball career when everyone knows it isn't part of the Common Core Curriculum.

I know sitcoms ain't life, but what the education reformers proposals ain't education either.

My Youth Keeps Slipping Away

2012-01-26T22:49:00.000-06:00

The Los Angeles Times reports,

Robert Hegyes, an actor whose character, Juan Epstein, was one of the Sweathogs on the 1970s TV sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter," died Thursday of an apparent heart attack in New Jersey. He was 60.

I used to love that show; it had a great ensemble cast. I suppose if I watched a few episodes now, I'd find them as dated as that rust colored leisure suit I used to own.

Still, I want to be too young to have the sitcom stars of my youth dying. Being reminded that I'm not makes me feel a lot older.

Charles Murray On Class Inequality

2012-01-25T08:39:00.000-06:00

In the Wall Street Journal, Charles Murray has written a provoacative analysis about inequality in America.

America is coming apart. For most of our nation's history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world—for whites, anyway. "The more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, the great chronicler of American democracy, in the 1830s. "On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: They listen to them, they speak to them every day."

Americans love to see themselves this way. But there's a problem: It's not true anymore, and it has been progressively less true since the 1960s.

He enunciates his core thesis as follows:

. . . .What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality.

When Americans used to brag about "the American way of life"—a phrase still in common use in 1960—they were talking about a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.

Over the past 50 years, that common civic culture has unraveled. We have developed a new upper class with advanced educations, often obtained at elite schools, sharing tastes and preferences that set them apart from mainstream America. At the same time, we have developed a new lower class, characterized not by poverty but by withdrawal from America's core cultural institutions.

It can be said without hyperbole that these divergences put Belmont and Fishtown into different cultures. But it's not just the working class that's moved; the upper middle class has pulled away in its own fashion, too.

If you were an executive living in Belmont in 1960, income inequality would have separated you from the construction worker in Fishtown, but remarkably little cultural inequality. You lived a more expensive life, but not a much different life. Your kitchen was bigger, but you didn't use it to prepare yogurt and muesli for breakfast. Your television screen was bigger, but you and the construction worker watched a lot of the same shows (you didn't have much choice). Your house might have had a den that the construction worker's lacked, but it had no StairMaster or lap pool, nor any gadget to monitor your percentage of body fat. You both drank Bud, Miller, Schlitz or Pabst, and the phrase "boutique beer" never crossed your lips. You probably both smoked. If you didn't, you did not glare contemptuously at people who did.

I don't want to just cut and paste the whole piece, and I don't have time this week to comment the way I should, so I'll make one short comment and urge everyone to read the piece.

The dividing of America seems to me to be more important and pernicious. The rich and poor have always been with us, but now they live apart. Politically, we see conservatives and liberals refuse to watch the same news programs. Murray now shows that Americans seem to be abandoning unifying institutions. I find it a bit ironic and disconcerting that Murray a libertarian is making a similar point that communitarian Robert Putnam made about a decade ago. Lincoln and the gospels tell us that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Big boy bloggers Daniel Larison and Rod Dreher have commented here and here.

Quotation Of The Day: What Teaching Is All About Edition

2012-01-24T07:10:00.002-06:00

From this John T. Spencer post,

I want my students to figure out what matters in life and then have the courage, patience and endurance to live accordingly. The greatest twenty-first century skill is simply this: to learn to live well. text. (Text color in original)

A Minor Musing About Mobility And Education

2012-01-23T08:56:00.001-06:00

The Madville Times posts a Bryan Aukerman guest column. Aukerman writes,

I’m a young teacher in the state who looks at this horribly misinformed Governor and his plan (which has already proven to be a failure to promote student success in other states) and say in all seriousness that I am likely to move out of South Dakota if it passes. I do not want to work in a toxic work environment where the Governor creates an incentive for me to look at my coworkers as competition.

I don't know Mr, Aukerman; Cory vouches for him and that's good enough for me. I hope Mr. Aukerman is able to make the move and find a satisfying place to work, but the odds seem to be against most people.

A New York Times Magazine article contends,

The U.S. has always been a remarkably itinerant country, but new data from the Census Bureau indicate that mobility has reached its lowest level in recorded history. Sure, some people are stuck in homes valued at less than their mortgages, but many young people — who don’t own homes and don’t yet have families — are staying put, too. This suggests, among other things, that people aren’t packing up for new economic opportunities the way they used to. Rather than dividing the country into the 1 percenters versus everyone else, the split in our economy is really between two other classes: the mobile and immobile.

The article goes on to point out that the split is also between the knowledgeable and the ignorant; the split between what one knows and who one knows also continues.

Until now, a B.A. in any subject was a near-guarantee of at least middle-class wages. But today, a quarter of college graduates make less than the typical worker without a bachelor’s degree. David Autor, a prominent labor economist at M.I.T., recently told me that a college degree alone is no longer a guarantor of a good job. While graduates from top universities are still likely to get a good job no matter what their major is, he said, graduates from less-exalted schools are going to be judged on what they know. To compete for jobs on a national level, they should be armed with the skills that emerging industries need, whether technical (computer science) or not.

Those without such specialized skills — like poetry, or even history, majors — are already competing with their neighbors for the same sorts of mediocre, poorer-paying local jobs like low-level management or big-box retail sales. And with the low-skilled labor market atomized into thousands of microeconomies, immobile workers are less able to demand better wages or conditions or to acquire valuable skills.

Young teachers like Mr. Aukerman face a different problem. In another New York Times article, Michael Winetrip writes,

Even if you think the Obama administration’s signature education program, Race to the Top, will not help a single child in America learn more, you have to admire its bureaucratic magnificence.

First, it has had a major effect — reaching into most public schools in America — while costing the Obama administration next to nothing.

The Education Department will spend about $5 billion on the program, and even if you’re thinking, hey, I could use $5 billion, consider this: New York won the largest federal grant, $700 million over the next four years. In that time, roughly $230 billion will be spent on public education in the state. By adding just one-third of one percent to state coffers, the feds get to implement their version of education reform.

That includes rating teachers and principals by their students’ scores on state tests; using those ratings to dismiss teachers with low scores and to pay bonuses to high scorers; and reducing local control of education.

Second, the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and his education scientists do not have to do the dirty work. For teachers in subject areas and grades that do not have state tests (music, art, technology, kindergarten through third grade) or do not have enough state tests to measure growth (every high school subject), it is the state’s responsibility to create a system of alternative ratings.

The whole article is worth reading, but the introduction makes it very clear that teachers who seek a better environment elsewhere may be moving from the proverbial frying pan into the proverbial fire.

I am reminded once again that many people seem to be using Orwell as a blueprint rather than a warning. It seems clear that Daugaard and others want all workers everywhere to emulate Boxer from Animal Farm: Repeat the mantra "I will work harder" or "[The Boss] is always right." and when you're used up we'll kindly send you to the knacker's.

The Republican Candidates And Superheroes: Update

2012-01-22T11:20:00.000-06:00

Andrew Sullivan was kind enough to link to and quote my original observation about the Republican presidential candidates and superheroes.

I should have done a little research about research about Gingrich before I compared him to Tony Stark/Iron Man because I was more right than I knew.

When I made the blurb, I was remembering Tony Stark statements like "I am a Futurist . . . I could see wars coming, chaos, death, and destruction, and I fixed it. Whether you know it or not, I saved the world" Some of the religious aspects of that statement are examined here.

At the time, I had no idea that Gingrich had once called himself a conservative futurist. I remember him as a fan of Toffler's Future Shock, but I had no idea that he had applied the term to himself.

On the personal front, both have commitment issues. Stark has had his share of amorous adventures. In addition to the women on that list, I seem to recall seeing him in amorous embraces with the She-Hulk and Tigra as well. Gingrich apparently wanted an open marriage.

Finally, both seem to be rather divisive figures. Stark/Iron Man's action created the necessary conditions for Marvel's Civil War. According to this Rich Lowry editorial,

If Romney can’t right himself and Gingrich goes on to win Florida, every major elected Republican in the country will panic. Every unlikely scenario to get another candidate in the race will be explored. Because whatever GOP primary voters in South Carolina think about his electability, Gingrich is currently radioactive among the general public.

I wish I were smart enough to figure out if these events are pop culture imitating real life or real life imitating pop culture.

Why I Teach: I Don't Think Daugaard And Schopp Get It

2012-01-20T21:23:00.001-06:00

This morning, I loaded up some of the young'uns in a Suburban and headed to the Watertown Speech Fiesta.

On the trip, without any prompting from the SDDOE or the Governor, we discussed domestic violence, Thomas Hobbes's social contact, the ability of the U.S. to deal with the European debt crisis, the shortcomings of a tech centric mindset, and Yugi-Oh; I suppose the Governor and Secretary Schopp may not approve of the last two topics.

Debate and literature classes promote all sorts of discussion that benefit students even if the state can't develop a bubble test to check on it.

Instead of worrying about all the metrics, the Governor and Secretary Schopp should let teachers teach, an act I accomplished today by listening and driving. They should also let students learn; something my kids did today because what they were learning wouldn't be on the test.

A Plan To Evaluate Legislators

2012-01-19T14:36:00.002-06:00

Bob Mercer reports that Nick Moser wants to amend the South Dakota Constitution "to eliminate the provision that legislators receive five cents per mile for their trips to the Capitol at the start of session and their trips from the Capitol at the end of session."

Mercer writes that "[f]or the rest of their trips they already get standard mileage rates paid by state government." Apparently, legislators want the same mileage rates for the trips to open the legislature and return home at the session's conclusion that they receive at other times

I'm usually not a fan of constitutional amendments, but I will support this one with a few caveats.

First, only those legislators who have degrees in agronomy should be guaranteed the increased mileage payment. The legislature needs more farmers among its numbers, and this mileage payment might provide an incentive for farmers to run for the legislature.

Second, only the top 20% of the rest of the legislators can receive the increased mileage payment.

Third, the evaluation determining whether one is in the top 20% will be determined as follows.

A. The per capita income in the legislator's district is in at or above the state average.

B. All voters in the legislator's district score proficient or above on a test developed by a Texas company. The test will cover knowledge of events that transpired during the past session. After all, legislators should be responsible for communicating information to their constituents.

C. Legislators put a "How am I driving bumper sticker" along with a toll-free phone number on the back of their cars so that constituents can be sure that the tax money is being spent responsibly and complain to the proper authority if it is not

D. Governor Daugaard will dirve behind each legislator and fill out an evaulation on the legislator's driving.

I expect Representative Moser to be "excited about that,”

Surely he will continue to say,

“It is going to come down to what your outlook is on it. It is not going to take away from anyone. I . . . [am] very excited to have the opportunity to get that bonus. If I wasn’t chosen for the bonus, I would be excited for my colleague who was chosen. I don’t see where there would be any criticism from that.”

Kevin Lein Offers An Evaluation Suggestion

2012-01-19T09:08:00.001-06:00

Harrisburg principal*, Dr. Kevin Lein, weighs in on Governor Duagaard's merit pay proposal. In a letter to the editor, Lein suggests,

Designating a portion of the governor’s proposed funding to train and utilize our retired teachers as an independent evaluation team would generate confidence and fairness in the system of rewarding teachers for their hard work and talent. A large percentage, 70 percent, of the assessment process could lie with educators who have worked in this business for more than 30 years, with the remaining 30 percent of evaluation the responsibility of administrators, peers (as per the Danielson Framework suggestion) and connect with pre- and post-testing that displays student growth.

My first quick and dirty reactions are as follows:

1. It's a small step in the right direction.

2. Will the evaluators have paradigms like high school debate judges? Right now, I'm pretty sure that one or two recently retired teachers will like what I do and one will hate what I do.

3. I have seen nothing except Danielson's own marketing propaganda that shows her method is the best way to evaluate teachers.

4. This seems to be an effort to get administrators off the hook. I'm not sure it changes anything for teachers or students. Lein writes, "the difficulty of implementation and designation of those deserving of this extra compensation is a problem that will lead to unintended negative morale and circumstance." I don't know if this plan will mitigate most of those problems. It may keep morale from sinking below its current floor, but I can't see it raising morale.

5. How will this evaluation or any evaluation affect teachers who mentor student teachers?

6. How many teachers has Lein talked to about this proposal? Teachers should bein the room when these discussions are being held.

*An earlier version of this post erronously identified Lein as superintendent.

The Core Of Contemporary Politics

2012-01-18T15:34:00.001-06:00

Stephen Colbert gets it. For the irony challenged, this ad is satire at its best.

Politics: Perception And Reality

2012-01-18T10:17:00.000-06:00

David Frum writes,

Ten years ago, pollsters began to notice a strange phenomenon.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Democrats and Republicans responded fairly similarly when asked to evaluate the performance of the economy. In prosperous years, both acknowledged the prosperity. In bad years, both acknowledged the difficulty.

In the 1990s, however, this seemingly natural connection between perception and reality began to break down. Even in the very prosperous late 1990s, Democrats rated the performance of the economy significantly better than Republicans. Then after 2002, the partisan perceptions abruptly shifted: Republicans rated the economy better than Democrats.As far as anybody could tell, there seemed scant real-world basis for this sudden divergence of perceptions.

It seemed hard to avoid the conclusion: partisanship was overwhelming everything, even direct personal experience. [Emphasis mine]

The bolded part makes perfect sense. In the US, one's partisan outlook may have an effect on where one chooses to live.

. . . partisans additionally prefer to relocate in areas populated with copartisans, a tendency that is strongest among those who switch parties upon relocation. Whether the role of partisanship is central or ancillary, if it is any part of the decision process, it has the potential to make important imprints on the political landscape of the United States

Partisanship also seems to color how often people go to church; maybe it's the other way around, but religion has become increasingly partisan.

The question that keeps bugging me may be a bit hyperbolic, but I wonder how long it will be before the United States becomes two political nations inside a common border.

Quotation Of The Day: South Dakota Merit Pay Edition

2012-01-18T07:25:00.000-06:00

From Bernie Hunhoff in today's Press & Dakotan

[The Governor's] proposal is getting serious attention, even though he acknowledges that it may not work and he doesn’t know where he’ll get the money.

If a legislator of either party proposed a new multi-million dollar program — without a funding source or confidence that it would work — he probably wouldn’t get a co-sponsor or a second in committee.

But now we’re going to spend weeks debating the merits of merit pay when we should be figuring out how to help school districts rebuild from the budget mess created not by them but by Pierre.

I'm encouraged that Rep. Hunhoff expects debate. I'm discouraged that single-party dominance probably means that the Governor will get exactly what he wants

A Modest Proposal For Merit Pay

2012-01-17T07:58:00.001-06:00

Let's all stipulate that all adults want students to succeed. Let's further stipulate that all students want to succeed. Some students may not have discovered that fact; some students may not know how to succeed, but all want to.

For purposes of argument, let's all agree that money does motivate all people to succeed. I don't agree, but the Governor takes it as a matter of faith.

Let's also stipulate that one should apply stimulus as close as possible to the thing one wants to stimulate. That's why those who want people to type faster pay more to the keyboardist who hits the most correct keystrokes. They don't pay the bonus to the floor manager who walks around making sure no one spills coffee on the keyboard.

I'm assuming that principle explains why the Governor has not proposed merit pay for administrators and counselors. Teachers are closer to students. He may wish to gain revenue from reality TV show featuring principals wrestling, but I digress

There is, however, one group closer to students than teachers: the students themselves. Why are they left to their own, apparently inadequate, intrinsic motivations?

I, therefore, modestly propose that all students who score in the upper level of the Dakota STEP or its Common Core replacement be paid $300. Further, all juniors who score one (1) point above the national average on the ACT or SAT be given an additional $500. I would not object if the Governor, who believes STEM is the ultimate end of education, added $200 dollars to those who achieve the overall national average but score two (2) points above average math and science.

I'm not sure why anyone would object to this proposal. It uses the Governor's logic about money being the best motivator. It applies the stimulus to the people with the most at stake. It will probably affect more than 20% of the students, so those with egalitarian impulses should love it as well.

Did Tebow Cause The Italian Cruise Liner To Sink?

2012-01-16T10:32:00.001-06:00

Tim Tebow did not play well yesterday, but this screen cap from The Daily Beast indicates that he may have caused a more important disaster.

Circled at the right is a picture and a headline that indicates he may have been resucued from the Italian cruise liner.

Quotations Of The Day: Daniel Pink Edition

2012-01-16T08:54:00.002-06:00

From this Wall Stree Journal interview:

WSJ: What's at stake for companies that stick to the carrot-and-stick approach?

Mr. Pink: First, it's bad business strategy. These supposedly hard-headed businesses who claim to value facts and evidence are actually in many ways abiding by folklore about what really motivates people. What's at stake is whether business decides to run by folklore or science. I'll take science. The continued overuse of carrots and sticks puts businesses on a path that is extraordinarily dangerous.

Later in the article,

WSJ: Why would employees be less concerned with external rewards, like cash bonuses, now and more concerned about inner motivation, or as you say throughout the book, "the third drive"?

Mr. Pink: Part of it is the nature of work that is this migration from left-brain, rule-based, routine, algorithmic work to right-brain, nonroutine, creative, conceptual work. They're as different as information-age work, industrial-age work, and agriculture-based work. You need a different system to get the best out of people doing different work.

I also think especially now, as we turn the page on this decade, there's a sense that something has gone wrong. That we're not doing things the right way. You see evidence of that in different kinds of business corporations such as the low-profit limited liability corporations -- these are not pure profit maximizers. Even the Harvard Business Review is writing about how profit maximization isn't the answer.

So, reliance on carrots and sticks might be dangerous and profit maximization isn't the answer, but South Dakota will probably go forward with a plan that applies those dangerous and ineffective concepts to education.

Keeping Mind And Soul Together Is Difficult

2012-01-16T07:18:00.001-06:00

When I was a kid, the United Negro College Fund ran PSAs like this one with the famous tagline "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

I worry about the young minds in my class frequently.

"War of Nerves," a classic M*A*S*H episode, contained the following exchange between Sydney Freedman and Father Mulchay added body and soul to the dangerous things to lose list.

Sidney: When Pierce and Hunnicutt lose one, he's out of his misery. When I lose one, I've lost a mind.Father Mulcahy: When I lose one, I've lost a soul.

A recent Barna poll might make those charged with helping souls feel a bit disconcerted.

In a finding sure to disappoint pastors, three out of five church attenders said they could not recall an important new religious insight from their last church visit. Of those who attended in the previous week, 50 percent could not recall walking away with a significant new understanding.

In fairness, "[a]bout a quarter of Americans said their life was greatly affected by church attendance and another quarter said it was somewhat influential."

Daugaard: Vangard Of Old Guard

2012-01-15T14:04:00.002-06:00

The Yankton Press & Dakotan reports that Governor Duagaard promoted his merit pay and STEM uber alles plan "[a]rmed with a PowerPoint presentation." PowerPoint was hardly new when I put together my first deck in 1997. Granted, many still use PowerPoint to good effect regularly, but Duagaard's use seems symbolic of the rather large disconnect between his proposal and current research.

The Governor said,

“Right now, all teachers are paid as if they are average,” Daugaard stated. “You can have teachers who entered in the same year with the same academic credentials, and they will be paid the same, even if teacher A is very good and teacher B is average. That’s not encouraging to teacher A.”

This YouTube video highlighting the work of Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us illustrates that merit pay of the kind the Governor is proposing works only for jobs that rely on mechanical movement.

Instead, people in jobs that require event rudimentary thinking skills are motivated by autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

The Governor's plan removes all autonomy; every major decision is being made in Pierre not in classrooms. The testing regime does not check mastery; instead the tests and the materials designed to teach to the tests seek to raise the bottom not challenge the top. Finally, my job has a purpose: make the kids better when they walk out the door than they walked in. There's nothing Daugaard can do to increase my sense of purpose.

Governor Daugaard is selling his plan with old tools and relying on old motivators that will produce the same old results. In fact, the only new things the plan will produce are unnecessary frustrations.

(HT An Inland Voyage for YouTube video)

Daugaard Fails Logic Test

2012-01-14T09:47:00.001-06:00

Governor Daugaard spoke about his merit pay and testing proposal in Yankton yesterday. According to the Press & Dakotan,

"Some studies have shown that merit pay systems have not improved test scores implemented at schools elsewhere, but Daugaard doesn’t believe those programs were as widespread and all-encompassing as his plan."

Let's follow the logic here. Studies show key parts of his plan don't work on a small scale, but we are supposed to believe they will work on a large scale. I wouldn't accept that logic in a paper or debate round.

Logically, the one thing that can be all encompassing if one makes failed programs larger is failure

I Don't Want To Make Cory Think Republicans Don't Like Him Because He Teaches French, But . . .

2012-01-13T10:27:00.001-06:00

Politico reports that Newt has attacked Romney for speaking French.

A new Web ad from Newt Gingrich's campaign, "The French Connection," stresses the similarities between Mitt Romney and John Kerry, tying the two Massachusetts politicians together with the fact that both of them speak French.

"Just like John Kerry, he speaks French, too," the ad's narrator says of Romney, showing an often-circulated clip of Romney speaking about the 2002 Winter Olympics in French.

Quotation Of The Day: Greed Or Human Rights Edition

2012-01-12T15:28:00.002-06:00

From this post on The Daily Beast,

“A conspiracy theory has taken root in China,” says Liu Yawei, director of the China program at the Carter Center in Atlanta. “Some very influential scholars see the whole currency manipulation as a ploy, along with the dollar devaluation and war with Iraq and Afghanistan, as all meant to make China disintegrate.”

And yet, according to Liu, if the Chinese government could vote in the American election, they would probably side with the red states. “The Chinese elite actually like the Republican Party more than the Democratic Party,” he says. “They believe the Republicans just want to make more money, while the Democrats are more concerned with human rights.”

Plains Pops: Education Around The Web

2012-01-12T13:06:00.001-06:00

Andrew Sullivan links to two views of AP credits here. His readers show resounding support here.

Many conservative began showing their disdain for teachers years ago. Nick Kristoff lets some of his liberal disdain show.

The blog of the Albert Shanker Institute, endowed by the American Federation of Teachers, praised the study as “one of the most dense, important and interesting analyses on this topic in a very long time” — although it cautioned against policy conclusions (of the kind that I’m reaching). [empahsis mine]

After all, teachers know nothing about policy, so one need not take their warnings seriously.

Finally, just because I have been trying and failing to do a bit more to live Philipians 4:8--

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things--

I want to point to this Robin Bates post at Better Living Through Beowulf. She quotes Wayne Booth who writes,

When I “perform” for myself or attend a performance of King Lear, The Misanthrope, or The Cherry Orchard, when I read Don Quixote, Persuasion, Bleak House, or War and Peace, I meet in their authors friends who demonstrate their friendship not only in the range and depth and intensity of pleasure they offer, not only in the promise they fulfill of proving useful to me, but finally in the irresistible invitation they extend to live during these moments a richer and fuller life than I could manage on my own.

Of course no economist is going to consider that sort of richer and fuller life "value added."

Quotations Of The Day: The Governor's Education Policy Edition

2012-01-11T09:22:00.000-06:00

For people who understand reality, there's this conclusion to a post on the Answer Sheet,

The Virginia governor is following right along with the program of the corporate-based education reformers who want to run public education like a business. Given that many — if not most businesses — don’t succeed, that’s hardly a template for the country’s most important civic institution.

Substitute South Dakota for Virginia, one can see an organized Republican effort to weaken public education. The concluding sentence also illustrates why the effort is so misguided and why it should be opposed.

If one prefers to read fatuous statements, there's this gem by Nick Moser,

“If I were a science or math teacher, I don’t know how you could not be excited about that,” Moser said. “It is going to come down to what your outlook is on it. It is not going to take away from anyone. If I were working in a school, I would be very excited to have the opportunity to get that bonus. If I wasn’t chosen for the bonus, I would be excited for my colleague who was chosen. I don’t see where there would be any criticism from that.”

I don't think one needs much more evidence that South Dakota Republicans will give Governor Daugaard everything he wants, or in Cory's words, they will "just shut up and clap for the Governor."

Some Brief Thoughts On Governor Daugaard's Education Proposals

2012-01-11T07:23:00.001-06:00

I should comment about the Governor's education proposal. Today I lack the energy either to effectively curse the darkness or light a candle, so I will be brief.

Because South Dakota is a single party state, Governor Daugaard's proposals to institute merit pay and eliminate the modest job security protections teachers have will pass easily. The facts that merit pay is counter productive and that South Dakota K-12 teachers are relatively easy to fire will not matter to the discussion. The fact that literature. music, history, and foreign languages are as valuable as math and science to a well functioning society will not matter either.

Governor Daugaard is following a classic divide and conquer strategy that pits teachers against themselves. Because teachers tend to vote Democrat, he is also weakening a political foe. It would seem that he has stronger opponents to subdue than a rather toothless SDEA, but I'm not a politician.

The Governor should have given credit to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich for proposing some of these ideas first.

More Signs Of The Apocalypse

2012-01-10T14:52:00.000-06:00

I realize the Mayan Calendar may not have been designed to predict world's demise, and the December 12, 2012 date may be 60 days off, but there are other troubling signs that 2012 may be the last year humans wander the face the earth.

For example, the the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock a minute closer to zero.

Citing ongoing threats from nuclear proliferation, climate change, and the need to find sustainable and safe sources of energy, scientists moved the "Doomsday Clock" one minute closer to midnight on Tuesday.

The clock was moved from six to five minutes to midnight.

If that's not a big enough threat, Hostess Brands Inc. makers of Twinkies and Wonder Bread is contemplating another bankruptcy filing.

Twinkies may be indestructible, but Hostess is having some trouble. Hostess Brands Inc. is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, sources tell The Wall Street Journal, possibly as soon as this week. The company carries more than $860 million in debt and owes more than $50 million to vendors, plus it's under pressure from rising prices for sugar and other ingredients.

A world without the preservatives provided by Twinkies and Wonder Bread is surely one step closer to destruction.

Finally, the 2012 Bronycon, an event for adult male fans of My Little Pony, had the "biggest turnout ever."

I'd weep for the future if I thought the world had one.

Quotation Of The Day: Porn And Mythology Edition

2012-01-09T18:32:00.000-06:00

Writing at The Daily Beast, Lizzie Crocker makes the allusion to draw the link between a California initiative to require actors in adult films to wear condoms and the chief god of Olympus who was known for his many amorous adventures:

Ron Jeremy holds a Guinness World Record for his appearances in porn. He’s starred in 2,000 X-rated films and had sex with more women than Zeus

If Crocker had sat through my mythology class, she would have learned that most of Zeus's conquests could be shown to be a patriarchal religion's efforts to dominate and weaken the symbolic power of the matriarchy, but why should one let facts get in the way of a good one liner.

NCLB: An Anniversary I'd Rather Forget

2012-01-09T12:48:00.000-06:00

Sol Stern sums up 10 years of NCLB with a great article at The Daily Beast. He makes three or four key points. First, NCLB is hopelessly optimistic and has rendered testing rather useless because it now becomes the test has become a goal rather than a measuring instrument.

Though well intentioned, NCLB’s perverse incentives left the door wide open to the corruption of educational standards. The law stipulated that all American students must become “proficient” in reading and math by 2014 --- a hopelessly utopian goal – and then set sanctions for those states that didn’t make “adequate yearly progress” in meeting that goal. But the law also allowed each state to determine its own proficiency standard. Since men are not angels, it was inevitable that state and local education authorities would dumb down the tests to make themselves look good to the feds and to the voters.

The framers of NCLB might have avoided this outcome if they had familiarized themselves with the work of the great American social scientist Donald Campbell. According to Campbell, “when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways.” That’s exactly what seems to have happened.

Second, NCLB pushed schools to lower standards and demand less from top students.

One other perverse incentive in NCLB: Because the law emphasized mere “proficiency” and rewarded schools for getting their students to achieve that fairly low standard, teachers and administrators were pressed to boost the test scores of their lowest-performing students but were given no such incentive to improve instruction for the brightest students – the nation’s future engineers and scientists.

Finally, things may not be getting better any time soon.

“We have to stop lying to children,” Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, announced last year at a meeting of the National Governors Association. “We have to look them in the eye and tell them the truth at every stage of their educational trajectory.” A nice sentiment, but Mr. Duncan concocted the biggest lie of all when he replaced NCLB’s 2014 proficiency goal with the pledge that all American children will be prepared for college-level work by the year 2020.

A Minor Musing: Stop Confusing Continents With Countries

2012-01-08T13:28:00.001-06:00

The Financial Times reports that during last night's debate,

. . . . Mr Romney said a “welfare society creates greater equality, but it creates poverty … I do not want America to follow the path of Europe. Europe isn’t working in Europe!,” he declared.

It's a line that's sure to play well in South Dakota. I'm surprised that the South Dakota War College crew hasn't put the clip on their site along with a Thune comment that mentions socialism.

I really would like someone to explain to me how people who frequently assert, perhaps rightfully, that "East River" and "West River" should be divorced into separate states because of irreconcilable differences can believe that a whole continent somehow shares the same culture, values, and economic realities.

Granted some countries in Europe are having problems, but the continent is not a monolith. Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Adam Davidson points out,

In 1994, Denmark modernized a system, which came to be known as “flexicurity,” that offered American-style flexibility (layoffs, transitions into new lines of business) coupled with traditional European security. Laid-off workers were offered generous benefits, like 90 percent of their last salary for two years and opportunities to be retrained.

And it worked incredibly well. After Denmark’s unemployment rate sank to among the lowest in the world, the flexicurity model spread throughout Europe. It has been successfully implemented, in locally appropriate ways, in Norway, Sweden and Finland. But in other countries — like Germany, France and Spain — similar reforms faced stiff resistance from workers who preferred the old way. Several countries applied the measures in a two-tier system: people who already had jobs were protected by pretty much the same old rules, while the unemployed — who were often younger — were offered less secure work at lower pay. Greek unions insisted on so much security and so little flexibility that now the country has neither. Flexibility has done little to help Italy, which remains effectively two countries. There is a rich nation in the north where workers earn great salaries in highly productive and competitive industries; many people south of Rome are living in a broken, developing economy that’s considerably poorer than Greece.

In short, Europe may share a common currency, but countries implement different economic policies and have experience different results. I realize, it's fun to stretch facts and create bogeymen. Hollywood does that quite well with many horror films. I'd prefer the politics to be a bit more fact based and nuanced.

Perhaps One Should Be A Bit Impractical

2012-01-08T11:28:00.000-06:00

Tomorrow, I am going to hear a student ask "When will I ever need this?" I'll hear it the next day too in a different class. No matter how I answer the question, I'll hear it again next month and next year. It may be the last question I get asked in the last class I teach on the day I retire seven or eight years from now.

Writing for the Washington Post's Answer Sheet, Virginia Postrel asserts

. . . . critics miss the enormous diversity of both sides of the labor market. They tend to be grim materialists, who equate economic value with functional practicality. In reality, however, a tremendous amount of economic value arises from pleasure and meaning — the stuff of art, literature, psychology and anthropology. These qualities, built into goods and services, increasingly provide the work for all those computer programmers. And there are many categories of jobs, from public relations to interaction design to retailing, where insights and skills from these supposedly frivolous fields can be quite valuable. The critics seem to have never heard of marketing or video games, Starbucks or Nike, or that company in Cupertino, California, the rest of us are always going on about. Technical skills are valuable in part because of the “soft” professions that complement them.

The practical folks who believe that everything must have a commercial function argue that STEM education is both necessary and sufficient because it helps ensure that students will be employable. Postrel uses something from logic class, a non-STEM field, to illustrate that error.

Those who tout STEM fields [science, technology, engineering, math] as a cure-all confuse correlation with causality. It’s true that people who major in those subjects generally make more than, say, psychology majors. But they’re also people who have the aptitudes, attitudes, values and interests that draw them to those fields (which themselves vary greatly in content and current job prospects). The psychology and social work majors currently enjoying relatively low rates of unemployment -- 7.7 percent and 6.6 percent respectively — probably wouldn’t be very good at computer science, which offers higher salaries but, at least at the moment, slightly lower chances of a job.

Derek Thompson points out that statistics are often a snapshot of a particular moment.

employment and earnings statistics are variable. Real estate was all the rage in 2003. But four years after the housing bust, it won't surprise you to learn that architecture majors now have highest jobless rate among recent college graduates at 14%, nearly three times higher than for Information Services Majors. Or poll business school grads from 2000 or 2008 how flooding into finance worked out. Stats are moving targets.

Finally, what would a Sunday morning post be without a little scripture. Commenting on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, England's Prime Minister David Cameron reminds us,

Along with Shakespeare, the King James Bible is a high point of the English language……creating arresting phrases that move, challenge and inspire.

One of my favourites is the line “For now we see through a glass, darkly.”

It is a brilliant summation of the profound sense that there is more to life, that we are imperfect, that we get things wrong, that we should strive to see beyond our own perspective. The key word is darkly – profoundly loaded, with many shades of meaning.

I feel the power is lost in some more literal translations. The New International Version says: “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” The Good News Bible: “What we see now is like a dim image in a mirror”

They feel not just a bit less special but dry and cold, and don’t quite have the same magic and meaning.

When everyone is advocating something, in this instance STEM and practicality, it's good to be reminded that

wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat (Matthew 7:13)

The solution might be found in Romans 12:2:

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

A little beauty,a little renewal, and a little less conformity might be more important that the tech that everyone is looking to as a savior.

The Creative Side Of High School Policy Debate: I Think

2012-01-08T10:26:00.000-06:00

I'm positive that a former high school policy debater wrote and produced this Direct TV ad; it has all of the elements of a classic disadvantage. The original script probably had a nuke war impact.

Quotation Of The Day: Television And Human Nature Edition

2012-01-07T21:53:00.000-06:00

From this Los Angeles Times article,

Human beings are such gorgeously contradictory creatures — we demand variety (it's the spice of life!) and hate change. Nowhere is that more pronounced than in our attitude toward television; we regularly decry the monotony of the standard formats and then yelp when someone messes with them.

The Displaced Plainsman Principle: 1% Accounts For 40%

2012-01-06T19:28:00.001-06:00

Wikipedia explains the Pareto Principle:

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.^[1]^[2]

Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.

Some management folk use the principle as follows:

Expressed in a management context, 20% of a person's effort generates 80% of the person's results. The corollary to this is that 20% of one's results absorb 80% of one's resources or efforts. For the effective use of resources, the manager's challenge is to distinguish the right 20% from the trivial many.

Many studies seem to indicate that the top 1% control about 40% of the wealth. In April, NPR reported,

One percent of the U.S. population owns approximately 40 percent of the nation's wealth. That's a distribution that most Americans don't know about, Dan Ariely of Duke University discovered in a recent study. Respondents of all demographic categories mistook Sweden's even wealth distribution for that of the United States. Host Noah Adams speaks with Ariely about his study.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported,

The world’s congested mobile airwaves are being divided in a lopsided manner, with 1 percent of consumers generating half of all traffic. The top 10 percent of users, meanwhile, are consuming 90 percent of wireless bandwidth.

I know that random correlations don't really mean much, but if peas can be used to describe human behavior, it seems that similarities in behavior can be used to create a principle that describes behavior. I just want credit for enunciating the idea that the top 1% in any given situation will consume or hold at least 40% of the resources.

Philosohy Without A License: Rick Santorum Edition

2012-01-06T10:31:00.000-06:00

Writing at Salon, Linda Hirshman concludes

In this context, Rick Santorum’s candidacy, and the Republican Party that hungers for it, looks like a handful of the left-behind fighting a rear-guard action against modernity, which has passed them by. It’s understandable that they would focus their efforts on sex, where Augustine struggled so hard for control. Like Augustine and his unruly member, the modern world, especially modern capitalism, makes people feel like they have lost control. As recent events reflect, this is not foolish. They have suffered from forces way beyond their control. But the solution to gaining some mastery over the environment lies in embracing modernity through modern institutions like the rule of law, collective action, proper regulation, counter-cyclical economic policy, rather than rejecting it. . . . .

Western history since the Enlightenment has been peppered with such revolts against the modern world. Usually they are a sign of desperation and find their way, unassisted, to the dustbin of history. On the rare occasion when they take hold, however, they can be extremely dangerous.

Attacking Santorum voters for "rejecting modernity" strikes me as counterproductive. They have conflated "modernity" with post-modernism and the relativism that accompanies it. For them, Hirshman's accusation is a badge of honor because it means they are upholding eternal verities. They are proud of being a "rear guard" in the war for hearts and minds of American voters.

Quotation Of The Day: NCLB Edition

2012-01-06T07:51:00.000-06:00

Yesterday's Sioux Falls Argus Leader contained an editorial about NCLB and South Daktoa's efforts to obtain a waiver. I'm less sanguine about SDDOE's efforts than the Argus Leader's editorial writers. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the state will preserve or exacerbate NCLB's flaws.

That being said, this analysis is spot on.

For today’s high school freshmen, who started kindergarten the year NCLB became law, it provided a decade of underachieving standards and misplaced efforts. NCLB left behind a well-rounded education, and national test data show that students made greater strides in reading and math before the law was enacted.

Voracious--But Pleasant Company

2012-01-06T06:38:00.001-06:00

In an effort to gain some sanity, I have been reading the daily passages in A Year with Thomas Merton. Yesterday's excerpt from Merton's journals contained the passage "The fire is voracious--but pleasant company."

I certainly cannot match Merton's wisdom, but it strikes me that the attributes "voracious" and "pleasant" create more than a bit of danger. We all have a nearly insatiable desire for comfort and ease--the good things in life. Merton may have been able to be satisfied with the simple things, a fire and coffee. I'm not sure the rest of us can always find the simple so pleasurable.
I also wonder about those of us who follow politics and suffer from Clinton/Bush/Obama/name the politician of choice derangement syndrome. That anger is also insatiable but often pleasant. I'mafraid, however, that it may destroy a large chunk of the soul.

Some Updates

2012-01-05T12:34:00.000-06:00

I posted about 2011 being a bad year here. Dave Barry creates a big picture here. My favorite paragraph:

I’m not saying that the entire year was ruined by sleaze. It was also ruined by other bad things. This was a year in which journalism was pretty much completely replaced by tweeting. It was a year in which a significant earthquake struck Washington, yet failed to destroy a single federal agency. It was a year in which the nation was subjected to a seemingly endless barrage of highly publicized pronouncements from Charlie Sheen, a man who, where you have a central nervous system, has a Magic 8-Ball. This was a year in which the cast members of “Jersey Shore” went to Italy and then — in an inexcusable lapse of border security — were allowed to return.

I pointed to Conor Friedersorf's analysis of Santorum's chances here. George Will seemingly believes that Santorum has a rose colored 3/4 full glass.

White voters without college education — economically anxious and culturally conservative — were called “Reagan Democrats” when they were considered only seasonal Republicans because of Ronald Reagan. Today they are called the Republican base. . . .

Santorum exemplifies a conservative aspiration born about the time he was born in 1958. Frank Meyer, a founding editor of William F. Buckley’s National Review in 1955, postulated the possibility, and necessity, of “fusionism,” a union of social conservatives and those of a more libertarian, free-market bent.

If the Republicans’ binary choice has arrived, and if new technologies of communication and fundraising are repealing some traditional impediments to fluidity in political competition, Santorum can hope to win the nomination. Yes, in 2006, a ghastly year for Republicans (who lost 30 seats and control of the House, and six Senate seats), Santorum lost by 17 points in his bid for a third term. But, then, Richard Nixon was defeated for governor of California six years before being elected president, carrying California.

Even if Santorum is not nominated, he might galvanize a constituency that makes him a vice presidential choice. For Obama, getting to 270 electoral votes without Pennsylvania’s 20 is problematic. But so, just now, are Republican prospects of getting to 270 with their narrowing choice of candidates.

David Brooks also seems enamored with the former Pennsylvania senator.

The Republican Party is the party of the white working class. This group — whites with high school degrees and maybe some college — is still the largest block in the electorate. They overwhelmingly favor Republicans.

direct not just provide voice overs.

It’s a diverse group, obviously, but its members generally share certain beliefs and experiences. The economy has been moving away from them. The ethnic makeup of the country is shifting away from them. They sense that the nation has gone astray: marriage is in crisis; the work ethic is eroding; living standards are in danger; the elites have failed; the news media sends out messages that make it harder to raise decent kids. They face greater challenges, and they’re on their own.

The Republicans harvest their votes but have done a poor job responding to their needs. The leading lights of the party tend to be former College Republicans who have a more individualistic and even Randian worldview than most members of the working class. Most Republican presidential candidates, from George H.W. Bush to John McCain to Mitt Romney, emerge from an entirely different set of experiences. . . .

I wrote about Gingrich as a sandwich here; apparently, he is not content with being a ham, he also wants to produce and

Newt Gingrich is out with his first “contrast” television ad airing in both New Hampshire and South Carolina Thursday, marking a new phase of his presidential campaign.

The TV ad, which calls Mitt Romney’s economic plan “timid,” is a switch from the positive-only ads the campaign was running in Iowa -- all of those ads featured Gingrich doing the narration. .. . .

Keeping the ads “factually accurate,” at least by his standards, is very important to Gingrich, who was heavily attacked by Romney, as well as many other candidates, the weeks leading up to the first-in-the-nation caucus.

“As long as it’s factually accurate, it can’t be seen as a negative campaign to describe accurately somebody’s record,” Gingrich said the day of the Iowa caucus.

The campaign will not confirm the size of this TV buy, but does say it is "significant" and will continue to run similar “contrast” ads in the early nominating states.

Quotation Of The Day: Santorum Election Prospects Edition

2012-01-04T12:51:00.000-06:00

From this Conor Friedersdorf post:

Santorum's position on contraception is so extreme that it'd likely cost him even if only Catholics showed up to vote for the general election.

A Quick Musing On Why Being Displaced Sucks

2012-01-04T08:32:00.003-06:00

I think I have a sense of empathy with Iowa Republican voters.
Before the Iowa Caucuses, David Brooks wrote,

The Republican Party is the party of the white working class. This group — whites with high school degrees and maybe some college — is still the largest block in the electorate. They overwhelmingly favor Republicans.

It’s a diverse group, obviously, but its members generally share certain beliefs and experiences. The economy has been moving away from them. The ethnic makeup of the country is shifting away from them. They sense that the nation has gone astray: marriage is in crisis; the work ethic is eroding; living standards are in danger; the elites have failed; the news media sends out messages that make it harder to raise decent kids. They face greater challenges, and they’re on their own.

The Republicans harvest their votes but have done a poor job responding to their needs. The leading lights of the party tend to be former College Republicans who have a more individualistic and even Randian worldview than most members of the working class. Most Republican presidential candidates, from George H.W. Bush to John McCain to Mitt Romney, emerge from an entirely different set of experiences.

Last evening according to this New York Times article

Republicans appeared sharply divided between those whose top priority is defeating President Obama and those seeking someone representing traditional conservative principles and religious values, according to a poll of voters entering the Iowa Republican caucuses on Tuesday. . . .

Self-identified Tea Party supporters made up almost two-thirds of caucus attendees. But they did not appear to favor any one candidate by a large margin. Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, received about 30 percent of their support.

In short, 75% of the voters voted against winner, and 70% of those who would seemingly be natural Santorum voters turned against him.

This pattern Brooks predicts will lead the United States to vote in another "election that is Harvard Law versus Harvard Law." I'm not opposed to the idea of intellectual folk being in charge. Plato may have been on to something with his philospher kings.

I can however emphathize with Republicans who have trouble finding a candidate that shares their values. I'm not looking forward to choosing between Republicans who seem to gearing up for a war with Iran and a Democrat who Conor Friedersdorf reports

imprudently empowered the executive branch: the fact that President Obama himself concedes as much. "I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens," he said in a statement released when he signed the bill. "Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation." Put another way, our shortsighted president, knowing his own intentions, has assured us that he won't exercise powers in the bill that he regards as un-American, but doesn't mention that the restraint he vows won't bind future presidents one bit.

When it comes to choosing between war mongering imperialists and civil liberty denying imperialists, the choice between Harvard Law and Harvard Law doesn't looks so bad until one notices that both Harvard Law guys are the imperialists.

You'd think a litmus test presidents would use when bills come across their desk would be, "Does this empower my successors to do anything that would break with America's most important traditions and values?" You'd think if the answer were yes, prudence would demand a veto. But Obama has signed a bill that fails that very litmus test. This reflects badly on his judgment.

Quotation Of The Day: Indie Teacher Edition

2012-01-03T09:18:00.001-06:00

From this John T. Spencer post:

I want to teach like an indie listener. I want to be open to quality ideas, regardless of how indie or mainstream they may seem. I want to hear about what works. I want to listen to ideas from public and charter and homeschool and unschool as long as it moves me and makes me think and ultimately transforms my practice.

I want to teach like an indie artist. I want to be a teacher who does something different, not for the sake of novelty, but because it is meaningful. I want depth, not for intellectual snobbery, but out of a desire to think well about life. I want to remember that it's not about being noticed, but about doing what matters.

I blogged about Spencer's earlier use of the term here. This updated definition raises the bar.

A Snapshot Of Rural America

2012-01-03T06:55:00.001-06:00

Rod Dreher points to this Chad Oldfeather post about Oldfeather's Minnesota hometown. Much of the post reminds me of my North Dakota hometown and what I have found on recent visits back.

A place where I walked into a store over twenty years after I had left and conversed with the cashier like I’d been there the week before and would undoubtedly be back sometime soon. Folks generally don’t greet one another with a handshake where I am from, and I think that’s because handshakes are for people who enter and leave your life rather than for those who are part of the community and therefore always around.

The people of this community – my people – are by many measures deeply conservative. A lot of what I took from growing up is that you work hard and you don’t complain and you say the Pledge of Allegiance and mean it and you go to church and mean it. But I also learned that education is important. (To refer to it as public education would, in this context, be redundant.) And that while you don’t ever want to be seen looking for a handout, if you see that somebody’s car is stuck in the snow you stop and help push them out. . . .

I write this from a distance, with all the advantages and disadvantages that confers. . . . [M]y direct experiences as a resident featured me as an insecure, self-absorbed, and generally disagreeable teenager. But even accounting for the distorting effects of my perspective, it is clear that the people . . . .have cared about their community. They kept their houses up. They paid enough in taxes to have nicely paved streets with curbs and gutters and sidewalks, and to build what in retrospect was undoubtedly more water tower than they needed when the old one started leaking. They funded a school system that punched well above its weight in terms of fancy degrees earned by its graduates, even though getting fancy degrees was not the point, and even though that good school led to opportunities for their kids that were almost always somewhere else. . . .

The lone remaining grocery store has been through a couple periods of municipal ownership to keep it going. (Some might call that socialism. I think the folks back home would call it doing what needs to be done.). . . .

Too often, in the circles I now tend to find myself in, I am part of conversations in which I hear a casual disdain for rural people. I find the prejudice inherent in these comments every bit as misguided as the prejudices the speakers seem to imagine all rural people harbor. No doubt there are small places where many or even most – it is never all – of the people hold views that we should rightly condemn. But I can assure you they are not all that way, and I am skeptical of the suggestion that there are even all that many that are that way.

I don't want to wax too idyllic about small town America. Like Dreher, I understand that Mayberry never was real:

It won’t do to replace one flawed vision with another. This is one reason I find Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon stories so interesting is that he manages to write with affection about the people in his fictional small town without sentimentalizing them (well, without overly sentimentalizing them), or ignoring their flaws and foibles. I find that people who denounce the “Mayberry” view of small towns (charming, folksy, etc.) tend to do so with some sort of agenda. Of course Mayberry is a lie! But who actually believes in Mayberry? Nobody who actually lives in a small town, unless they’re some sort of kook.

Even with that caveat, small towns seem to give more than they demand of their expatriates.

Modern Technology Makes Classic Comic Books Creepy

2012-01-02T20:29:00.001-06:00

I don't know enough Freud, Jung, sociology, philosophy, history, art, Nietzsche, or Nitschke to make sense of this.

IO9.com has more here and here.

Plains Pops: Quitting While Ahead Edition

2012-01-02T11:59:00.001-06:00

I found this CNN opinion article discussing Tony LaRussa's decision to retire after winning the World Series with the St. Louis Cardinals interesting. The contrast between the Beatles and Michael Jordan was provocative, but these paragraphs really caught my eye:

There is one kind of resolution, though, that very few of us will ever be in a position to make.

Somewhere today, someone at the very pinnacle of his or her career is thinking of doing in 2012 what Tony La Russa did in 2011:

Get out on top.

Willingly walk away and declare victory

The cynic in me wonders if people don't quit on top because they never get to the top or because being on top in a normal career doesn't offer enough financial security.

On a slightly happier note, Jim Kleinsasser retired on his terms after a 13 year career with the Minnesota Vikings. As a fellow North Dakota native, I have always rooted for Kleinsasser who may have been one of the best blocking tight ends of the past twenty years. I do wish they would have targeted him for a chance at one pass completion.

Finally, gamblers seldom get out while ahead, so the increase in Power Ball ticket prices may cause problems for some. I voluntarily tax myself about $25-$50 a year playing Power Ball. I get as much entertainment value out of it as I do taking my wife out to a movie. If I buy popcorn and soda, the movie probably costs $30. Still, South Dakota uses scratch games and Power Ball to generate revenue by taxing the most gullible; this price increase may cause trouble for some.

2012 Resolutions

2012-01-02T08:14:00.000-06:00

I'll start with the boring albeit necessary ones everyone makes: eat better, exercise more, be more frugal.

I want to read more. I think I'm going to try reading a fiction and non-fiction book every month. I also want to read the daily reading from The Intellectual Devotional and A Year With Thomas Merton. I want to check in on John T. Spencer and Alan Jacobs more regularly than I have during the past year.

I should do a better job of using time shifting tools like Hulu and DVR to watch TV.

I would like to listen to music a little more.

I need to do a better job of responding to social emails and keeping in touch with people. I also need to call my mother more.

I need to find the tools to calm down; worrying is depriving me of time and energy.

Finally, I need to write more concisely and proofread better before I hit publish. I need to upgrade my snark game a bit too.

Barbara Walters Gets Her Own Color

2012-01-01T18:51:00.001-06:00

Rod Dreher posts this little tidbit on his blog at the American Conservative:

Have you ever heard of the color “Barbara Walters Beige”? You have now. I’m told by a friend who works at Angola State Penitentiary, which is in the northern part of West Feliciana Parish, that a few years ago, Barbara Walters did a show from the lethal injection room at the prison. In doing pre-production prep work, she decided that the color of the paint on the wall did not flatter her skin tone. So she had her own people come in and repaint the walls of the death chamber to go better with her skin. At the prison, the new death chamber color is informally referred to as “Barbara Walters Beige.”

I may be reading too much into this anecdote, but this little event, if true, says a lot about America's cult of celebrity and cavalier attitude toward retribution.

New Year's Eve Musings

2011-12-31T22:45:00.001-06:00

I've never been one to do much celebrating on New Year's Eve, but as I get older, I appreciate the chance for new beginnings. Hope springs eternal on the opening day of each sport's opening day. (As a side note Major League Baseball's opening day should be a national holiday.) Kids may lose their optimism quickly but most seem to relish the chance to start a new school year with a fresh start.

2011 started with a long winter followed by dreary local, statewide, and national political outcomes. The usual distractions failed to provide solace (the Twins sucked.) At a personal level, the year seemed to have more downs than ups.

Tomorrow is a chance to start over. Here's hoping 2012 will be better. Happy New Year.

Twelve Predictions For 2012 (Part 2)

2011-12-30T13:57:00.001-06:00

I posted my first six predictions here.

7. The Yankton School Board will pursue a second opt out. The fact that the downtown Yankton post office is closing or has closed will be used as a reason to reject the opt out.

8. Trying to prove it's a real sport, NASCAR will have a work stoppage during 2012.

9. The San Diego ComicCon will have to be shut down when geeky fanboys and fangirls start a brawl during a session that has panelists discuss whether action movie sequels or Marvel/DC crossover events are more annoying.

10. The Republicans will select either Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity as the vice presidential nominee. Rick Perry will take over as talk show host. No one will notice any difference.

11. A group of Republican legislators will try to amend current civil rights law to gain minority status for the richest one percent of Americans. Those sponsoring the legislation will seek protection for themselves as "irony challenged individuals of wealth."

12. Because each party has appropriated every President of the other party, political consultants will counsel candidates of both parties to claim the legacy of William Henry Harrison. In protest, Michael Beschloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin will refuse to do Sunday morning interview shows.

Quotation Of the Day: Politics As Cult Edition

2011-12-30T07:29:00.001-06:00

From this John Avalon commentary at The Daily Beast:

At a time when our politics is looking like a cult, there is no tolerance for principled dissent. Dissent is disloyalty and punishable by either the threat of excommunication or electoral execution.

Descriptions of and discussions about the South Dakota version of the principle Avalon enunciates can be found here.

The Conspiracy Hits Just Keep On Coming

2011-12-29T16:32:00.002-06:00

South Dakota isn't quite as isolated as residents or comedians would like us to believe. I've talked about local conspiracy theorists here, here, and here.

Although he is writing about the national scene, Conor Friedersdorf could be talking about Steve Sibson and his fellow South Dakota conspiracy buffs. Firedersdorf takes on both Ron Paul and the mainstream Republicans who criticize Paul's colorful worldview but promulgate their own equally preposterous theories.

. . . Rep. Paul's critics are on questionable ground when they write as if he alone among Republican Party members fails to confront -- or even leverages -- conspiracies in which his supporters believe, or that he is unique in consorting with conspiracy theorists. Alex Jones broadcasts some indefensible nonsense, from what little I've heard of his show. I've insufficient basis to compare it to other broadcasters I've listened to much more frequently, but I can say this: if Glenn Beck's show on Fox News was less nutty than the Alex Jones Show, as it may well have been, it nevertheless was rife with nutty conspiracy theories -- and lots of prominent conservatives were happy to appear on it. Sarah Palin, for one. Is that where she told us to fret about death panels? How many prominent conservatives slyly said that they hadn't personally examined Obama's birth certificate, and couldn't know for sure if he was born in the United States? How many conservative talk-radio hosts sold commemorative coins at a substantial markup because they're supposedly the last gold the government would confiscate?

How many election cycles has the conservative movement used the canard that reinstating the Fairness Doctrine was agenda item one for Democrats if they regained control of the government? How many Sean Hannity radio listeners think that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim? Haven't Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Herman Cain all played on conspiratorial fears that we're on the verge of sharia law being implemented right here in America?

National Review employs as a national-security journalist a man who alleges that President Obama is allied with our Islamist enemies in a "Grand Jihad" against America, and Gingrich dissents from that theory only because he believes the Dinesh D'Souza thesis that it is actually Kenyan anti-colonialism that guides Obama's behavior. In some parts of the GOP, the theory of evolution and all climate science are also regarded as elaborate conspiracies. And don't get me started on Clinton-era conspiracy theories. The notion that this pathology is somehow unique to Paul or the libertarian wing of the Republican Party is flat-out indefensible.

Friedersdorf also provides several historical examples to illustrate the dangers ignoring verifiable wrongdoing while concentrating on shadows:

Governments, ours included, are frequently complicit in unthinkable acts, whether sanctioned from the top, like forcing water into the lungs of prisoners in secret CIA facilities, or perpetrated by rogue actors, like Abu Ghraib. Peruse the Church Report. Read about the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. Or if it's domestic matters that interest you, read Radley Balko's work on bite mark analysis.

In yet another example of someone writing something I want to say better than I can, Friedersdorf concludes,

We'll never be without conspiracy theories, but decreasing their presence and power in American politics would be a lot easier if the government would stop doing wildly controversial and corrupt things, often in secret, whether at home and abroad, on Wall Street, in the halls of Congress, or at the Fed. It would also be easier if Paul critics were as outraged by the conspiracy theories that are deeply ingrained in the conservative movement, and the subject of frequent pandering.

I suspect that one trip through The Madville Times comment sections tomorrow will prove the first sentence of the preceding paragraph prophetic

Gingrich As A Sandwich

2011-12-29T10:13:00.000-06:00

I may have to take a road trip to the Coffee Works, a Sioux City coffee shop. From this New York Times blog post about the campaign,

Newt Gingrich’s “jobs and growth” bus tour is visiting small businesses across Iowa to highlight the economic challenges of entrepreneurs, who the candidate argues will benefit from his calls to repeal “Obamacare,” the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law and onerous environmental mandates.

But not all small businesses are on board. As Mr. Gingrich entered the Coffee Works here Thursday morning, a chalkboard advertised a sandwich special, “The Newt: Ham (lots of it), American cheese, on White Bread. Price increase on this one!’’

Noem One Of The Poorest Members Of Congress

2011-12-28T22:20:00.001-06:00

At least financially.

According to this Washington Post slide show, Noem had net worth of -$111,996 in 2010.

The Republican Candidates and Superheroes

2011-12-28T19:57:00.002-06:00

Andrew Sullivan posts this clip of a 9 year old New Hampshire boy asking Republican candidates which superhero they'd be.

Unsurprisingly, most of them named Superman. Surprisingly, none of them mentioned that they wanted to be Superman because he stood for truth, justice, and the American way. I have to hand it to Rick Santorum; he stays on his family values message when he discusses Mr. Incredible.

At the risk of being presumptuous, allow me to match superheroes with the candidates.

Mitt Romney is Plastic Man. The name matches the candidate's smile and the power to stretch oneself matches Romney's ability to tie himself into knots as he tries to explain his rapidly evolving political positions.

Herman Cain should have selected Booster Gold. Cain's candidacy was more of a book tour than a campaign; Gold is as much a huckster as he is a hero.

Lest I be accused of ignoring the Marvel Universe, Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, the Fantastic Four's scientist extraordinaire, should have been Jon Huntsman's choice. Huntsman is the only Republican who accepts a scientific consensus on climate change. At least he used to accept the scientific consensus.

Newt Gingrich and Tony Stark match up pretty well. Stark, aka Iron Man, claims to be a futurist just like Gingrich claims to be an idea man. Both have personal lives that have been shambles.

The only hero who matches Ron Paul's stand on the gold standard is The Lone Ranger who uses silver bullets. They both have been linked to some questionable stances on race issues as well.

The Scarlet Witch can alter reality; Michele Bachmann wants to

Rick Santorum wants to be a first tier candidate, but he comes up short. In that respect, he's just like Bucky Barnes who wants to be just like Captain America but doesn't quite measure up.

Finally, Rick Perry and the Thing both need to think things through a bit more than they do. Sometimes a simple message isn't quite enough.

Yes, I have no life. I am, however, married and do not live in my mother's basement.

Twelve Predictions For 2012 (Part 1)

2011-12-27T17:54:00.001-06:00

1. Because Republicans seemingly don't want to nominate Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich or any other current candidate, Speaker of the House John Boehner will link all upcoming votes about raising the debt ceiling to a constitutional amendment allowing 21-year olds to serve as President. A brokered Republican convention will then nominate Tim Tebow who will unite the Republican base with a campaign pledge to use Tebowing as an enhanced interrogation technique.

Tebow will narrowly lose to Barack Obama because the Supreme Court will reject Republican claims that a Mike Prater 59-yard field goal should count as electoral votes.

2. Justice Anthony Kennedy will become the first documented case of spontaneous human combustion when he bursts into flames while trying to decide which way to vote on health care reform cases brought before the Supreme Court.

3. Joe Biden will resign as Vice President. Democrats will create a reality show combining the worst parts of Survivor, American Idol, and Jersey Shore to determine his replacement. South Dakota state senator Frank Kloucek will be one of the contestants.

4. The NBC, CBS, and ABC television networks will merge. No one will notice.

5. South Dakota Democrats will field no legislative candidates in 2012, South Dakota Republicans will win every seat in the legislature and immediately complain of being a persecuted minority.

6. Eminem and Carrie Underwood will release an acoustic opera album featuring electric auto-harp accompaniment.

I May Watch Too Much TV

2011-12-26T20:33:00.000-06:00

I don't think New Year's Resolutions work, but I may have to resolve to watch a little less TV. I saw this picture of London's trains setting idle because drivers undertook a 24 hour strike,

I was disappointed, however, when I didn't see this version of an English train.

I suppose Thomas never sat idle.

The Conundrums Of Christmas

2011-12-26T09:48:00.000-06:00

Christmas has always been a incongruous holiday. It's the season when hope confronts cold. As winter begins we experience the longest nights; during Christmas those nights are lit up with often garish displays of light that fight back the darkness During Christmas we celebrate a baby born of humble circumstances destined to have the

government . . . on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

That promise will be result in a crucifixion and an empty tomb. At the risk of dramatically overstating the comparison, Christmas is about living well while knowing death is imminent.

Yesterday, the incongruity hit home. I was a human jungle for my elementary school aged niece and nephews, and I read an email telling me that a friend from college had died.

This morning, the Christmas trees are still up; there are a few scraps of wrapping paper on the floor, and Skip Bayless is ranting in support of Tim Tebow on ESPN's First Take.

Death in the midst of life and life in the middle of death seems to be what Christmas is really about, a lot of hope during a season when fear and darkness dominate.

Christmas Nostaligia And Best Wishes For A Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T19:13:00.000-06:00

I made my father play this 78 dozens of times every Christmas season, Hearing the scratches from the old record makes the nostalgia hurt a bit more.

The flip side is equally awesome if one is of a certain age.

I'm sure it's probably politically incorrect for a German from Russia to use a Swede to offer holiday greetings, but I really don't care. Merry Christmas!!

SD Education Leaders And School Funding

2011-12-23T08:14:00.000-06:00

The SD Rushmore Political Action Committee trumpets that "Education Leaders Have Positive Outlook On Gov. Daugaard's Budget Proposal." The post links to this article that contains the damning faint praise such as

“This budget puts South Dakota schools back on track to regular increases using the current formula in statute,” said Linda Whitney, Sanborn Central Superintendent of Schools. “After a tough year last year, we appreciate the Governor's commitment to a return to the funding formula.”

Let's parse that a bit. Whitney doesn't say she's happy with the funding; she's just happy there won't be cuts and that the Governor intends to "return to the funding formula."

The article also contains these paragraphs:

Jason Selchert, President of South Dakota United Schools’ Association and Gayville-Volin superintendent of schools, affirmed his organization’s optimism for the FY13 budget.

“SDUSA is a group of 111 school districts and we support the premise of the budget. Our schools are committed to working with Governor Daugaard and the legislature to have a positive discussion about the future of education in South Dakota. This budget signals an interest from the Governor in having those discussions, and we hope the Governor and legislature will continue to work with schools in the future.”

Again, Selchert doesn't support the actual numbers; he supports "the premise of the budget" and expresses "hope the Governor and legislature will continue to work with schools in the future.” Hope and support are not necessarily synonyms

Allow me to offer a visual of what the administrators are saying..

With all due respect the fine administrators of Gayville-Volin and Sanborn Central along with the 111 schools of the South Dakota United Schools Association, I'm certain that they represent fewer than half of the students in the state. Without the stats in front of me, I'm guessing they represent approximately a third. I'm certain that a consensus is not built on faint praise from leaders representing a third of the state's students.

The post continues,

why is South Dakota being sold on a TAX INCREASE whose supposed purpose is to fill budget gaps in education. Its not right that we are being asked to pay more in taxes to solve a problem that the Governor has already addressed.

Let's be clear, I'm not sure I'm going to vote for the sales tax increase. I'm not convinced that the legislature and Governor won't alter the funding formula so that only the sales tax revenue provided by the initiated measure funds schools.

More importantly, the sales tax is the most regressive tax imaginable, especially when food is not exempted.

I don't care if one opposes or supports the sales tax initiative, but I do care when one misrepresents the situation.

Ending The Boredom Of School Reform

2011-12-22T18:33:00.000-06:00

At the Answer Sheet blog, Mark Phillips writes an important post that many education reformers will probably ignore because it challenges entrenched paradigms.

Phillips contends that the current debate bores him because it repeats the same questions:

Standardized testing, useful or harmful? Charter schools, the answer or the new problem? Teachers maligned, teachers defended, teachers resistant to change. No Child Left Behind, revise or eliminate?

Phillips then offers a few thoughtful and thought provoking suggestions, a few based on Native American culture and mythology. First,

Perhaps we need a trickster to wake us up and boot us into another dimension. To many Native American peoples the trickster is the raven, the rabbit, the coyote. The trickster is the teacher who surprises people and wakes them out of their routines. It is also the trickster who sometimes provokes us into leaving the safety of our present worldview.

Of course, Phillips never had to deal with parents who begin every conversation about education with "when I was in school. , ... " That fact allows him to make this provocative proposal:

we’ve had ideas from educators with some vision that extends beyond our same old room, ideas . . . . And there are teachers who could help take us there, if we would provide them with the luxury of time to develop their ideas.

As one example, years ago Louise Berman, in New Priorities in the Curriculum , challenged the idea that we must organize our curriculum in the present way. She focused on processes rather than our traditional way of organizing subjects. Her organizers (perceiving, communicating, loving, knowing, decision making, patterning, creating, and valuing) are debatable, but at least she stepped out of our present dimension and challenged our preconception of subject organizers.

I've long advocated breaking down department barriers and having more team teaching. No one seems to want to listen. I believe debate seems to cover "communicating," "knowing," "decision making," "creating," and "valuing" as the terms are commonly understood, so a department of argumentation might be fun.

Phillips goes on to suggest placing

a teaching consultant in every school, a seasoned tribal elder, to continually guide younger teachers. Certainly too, each school would have a full-time psychologist/counselor, not just a part-time person or one who focused almost exclusively on college admissions.

This suggestion makes a lot of sense, but I fear that administrators would turn the consultant's main job into creating cookie cutter teachers.

I realize that Phillips and I might argue vehemently about the details. I certainly agree with him about how to start:.

I also think it would be refreshing if educational reform wasn’t such a ponderously serious business. Maybe we need a Brigade of Educational Tricksters, to keep waking us up, making sure we aren’t taking ourselves and our varied positions too seriously, helping us to see beyond our present paradigm, and making sure we are able to laugh at the absurdity in the educational world we inhabit.

Why I Continue To Wish A Pox On The Houses Of Both Political Parties

2011-12-22T12:37:00.002-06:00

The New York Times recently reported that Mitt Romney continues to make millions of dollars per year from Bain Capital., an investment company that makes millions laying off workers, even though he left the company over a decade ago. Anyone who criticizes Romney for earning money by increasing the misery of average American workers loves the Soviet Union, at least that's Mitt's spin.

Democrats may not be able to take advantage of Mitt's record, however. Writing at the Frum Forum, Fred Bauer points out,

However, there are numerous reasons not to overestimate the potential effectiveness of White House attacks on Romney over Wall Street connections.

Perhaps foremost among them is the White House’s own very deep connections to Wall Street. Cabinet figures like Tim Geithner and White House allies like Jon Corzine are the embodiment of Wall Street insiders—they make Mitt Romney look like a secretary at the Merrill Lynch branch office in Fargo, North Dakota. Many of Obama’s top advisors come from the world of Wall Street. Any attacks on Romney’s Street connections immediately open Obama up to the countercharge of hypocrisy: if Wall Street is so bad, why do you choose to people your administration with Streeters and have Wall Street tycoons as central fund-raisers for your presidential campaign?

Bauer is overstating his case, Kennedy was a son of wealth and privilege and he was able to paint Romney into a corner. Obama probably can do the same.

That being said, Wall Street will continue to dominate both parties, so I guess we'll keep seeing pictures like this one.

What Sites Are Found In My Open Tabs?

2011-12-22T08:09:00.001-06:00

It's that merry time of year when everyone starts publishing year end lists; I've decided to play along a bit and do a few lists between now and the start of 2012. Up first, in no particular order, the daily reads.

The Madville Times: Everything about South Dakota that's fit to publish along with Cory's interlocutors who add comments that range from witty to paranoid. I still want to know where he gets the energy to walk as fast as he does and publish as much as he does.

Andrew Sullivan: He writes a lot and covers everything.

Lifehacker: Quite frankly, the site was better a couple of years ago, but they do provide lots of geeky advice about technology and organizing one life.

The Daily Beast Cheat Sheet: The Daily Beast surveys the news and updates top stories regularly. I can check in here and not have to channel surf and risk seeing the demonic Nancy Grace.

Yankton Press & Dakotan Opinion Page: The writers they syndicate don't really impress me, but the letters to the editor and the local editorials let me keep up on local news. The comment trolls frequently provide ghoulish entertainment as they cannablize each other.

io9.com gives me my pop culture geek fix.

Conor Friedersdorf: Quite frankly, I should hate this guy. He's younger, better looking, and says what I want to say better than I can.

Eunomia and Rod Dreher at The American Conservative. I'm counting these guys as one. Dreher gave the world the term "crunchy con" and Larison has good foreign policy insight.

South Dakota War College because I think I have to. Actually, the site used to be good, but now there are too many posts straight from the Repbublican Party Headquarters or Thune/Noem office press releases. Although, in fairness, this post is a pretty good reminder that principles should produce actions.

That's what I make sure I get to every day. Anything grand I'm missing?

The Ron Paul Conundrum

2011-12-21T13:30:00.000-06:00

I have trouble getting my head around Ron Paul. The big boy bloggers seem to have the same problem.

Andrew Sullivan endorses Paul for the Republican nomination because Paul is relatively strong on civil liberties and doesn't seem to be a politician for hire.

And I see in Paul none of the resentment that burns in Gingrich or the fakeness that defines Romney or the fascistic strains in Perry's buffoonery. He has yet to show the Obama-derangement of his peers, even though he differs with him. He has now gone through two primary elections without compromising an inch of his character or his philosophy. This kind of rigidity has its flaws, but, in the context of the Newt Romney blur, it is refreshing. He would never take $1.8 million from Freddie Mac. He would never disown Reagan, as Romney once did. He would never speak of lynching Bernanke, as Perry threatened. When he answers a question, you can see that he is genuinely listening to it and responding - rather than searching, Bachmann-like, for the one-liner to rouse the base. He is, in other words, a decent fellow, and that's an adjective I don't use lightly. We need more decency among Republicans.

On the other hand, Jon Chait asserts,

Ron Paul is not a kindly old libertarian who just wants everybody to be free. He’s a really creepy bigot.

Around four years ago, James Kirchick reported a lengthy story delving into Paul’s worldview. As Kirchick writes, Paul comes out of an intellectual tradition called “paleolibertarianism,” which is a version of libertarianism heavily tinged with far-right cultural views. The gist is that Paul is tied in deep and extensive ways to neo-Confederates, and somewhat less tightly to the right-wing militia movement. His newsletter, which he wrote and edited for years, was a constant organ of vile racism and homophobia. This is not just picking out a phrase here and there. Fear and hatred of blacks and gays, along with a somewhat less pronounced paranoia about Jewish dual loyalty, are fundamental elements of his thinking. The most comparable figure to Paul is Pat Buchanan, the main differences being that Paul emphasizes economic issues more, and has more dogmatically pro-market views.

Tod Kelly damns with faint praise.

And for all the talk of him being a crackpot, in my mind he in not nearly as bats**t crazy as Gingrich or Bachmann.

In short, the big boy blog community seems to indicate that a man who has published or, at the very least, has lent his name to racist, homophobic publications and who wishes to return the country to the gold standard has more character, is better on civil liberties, and has a range of policy ideas that are sounder than those of every other Republican candidate in the race. It is indeed a curse to live in interesting times.

Newt Or SuperVillain Quiz

2011-12-21T06:25:00.000-06:00

Comic books and politics combine; plus it's a self-scoring quiz, something that makes every teacher happy. In short this little exercise sums up 80% of what I blog about.

The mind boggles at the geniuses of the interwebs: Newt or Supervillain.

HT: Andrew Sullivan

The Threats One Sees Are More Dangerous Than The Conspiracies One Can't

2011-12-20T06:17:00.000-06:00

Cory calls out conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Steve Sibson. As Cory points out Sibby fervently asserts bogeymen lurk behind every rock, tree, curtain, and atom. The Four Horsemen of Sibby's Apocalypse are socialists, ”Masons,” [the] “New World Order,” and “New Age Theocracy.” Sibson's trust issues and search for black helicopters would be humorous if they did not dangerously distract from real and imminent assaults on freedom.
Conor Friedersdorf reminds readers that President Obama

has previously been subject to complaints about his war on whistleblowers, the humanitarian and strategic costs of his drone war, theillegality of the war he waged in Libya, his use of the state secrets privilege, his defense of Bush-erawarrantless wiretapping, and his assertion of the power to kill American citizens accused of terrorism. . . . .[and] Obama plans to sign rather than veto a bill enshrining indefinite detention into U.S. law and failing to exempt American . . . .

All of these decisions frighten me far more than any Masonic Socialist.

One could, of course, hope that candidates hoping to win the nomination of the party of limited government would be more amenable to preserving civil liberties. Newt Gingrich quickly destroys that hope. Tod Kelly writes,

The war on drugs, I admit, is worrisome. The surveillance of American citizens without a warrant is troubling. Holding people not charged with any crime for an undetermined period of time is deeply disturbing. And yet as chilling as I find those realities, none of them frightens me to the degree that this idea does:

“During an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gingrich suggested the president could send federal law enforcement authorities to arrest judges who make controversial rulings in order to compel them to justify their decisions before congressional hearings… When host Bob Schieffer asked how he would force federal judges to comply with congressional subpoenas, Gingrich said he would send the U.S. Capitol Police or U.S. Marshals to arrest the judges and force them to testify.”

Granted, Newt doesn't seem ready to be establish a secular theocracy with New Age requirements that all school children learn to play the flute or "non Western instruments." (Those New Age Pagans are a conniving bunch.)

Still, that separation of powers thing was important enough for the founders to put it into the Constitution. A president who decides that he can abolish courts and arrest judges who issue rulings he disagrees with is acting like a dictator not a president. The real danger to Americans' freedom comes from politicians who refuse to take seriously their oath to uphold the Constitution not some secret cabal.

Let Them Chew Gum

2011-12-19T06:28:00.001-06:00

Jonah Lehrer points to a study about the gum chewing's cognitive effects.

Gum is an effective booster of mental performance, conferring all sorts of benefits without any side effects. The latest investigation of gum chewing comes from a team of psychologists at St. Lawrence University. The experiment went like this: 159 students were given a battery of demanding cognitive tasks, such as repeating random numbers backward and solving difficult logic puzzles. Half of the subjects chewed gum (sugar-free and sugar-added) while the other half were given nothing. Here’s where things get peculiar: Those randomly assigned to the gum-chewing condition significantly outperformed those in the control condition on five out of six tests. (The one exception was verbal fluency, in which subjects were asked to name as many words as possible from a given category, such as “animals.”) The sugar content of the gum had no effect on test performance.

There are a few limits; Lehrer writes, "as gum chewers only showed an increase in performance during the first 20 minutes of testing. After that, they performed identically to non-chewers."

Gum also helps keep people awake.

Last month, scientists at Coventry University found that people chewing mint gum showed a dramatic decrease in feelings of sleepiness. The subjects also looked less exhausted when assessed with the Pupillographic Sleepiness Test (PST), which uses the oscillations of the pupils as a metric of tiredness. When we chew gum, we gain alertness and attention, but without the jitters.

Lehrer offers this priceless conclusion:

Given the uncanny power of gum, it seems a little silly that we don’t allow it in the classroom. (If a pill achieved these same results, we’d all be popping it.) Of course, gum is disgusting and unsightly once it becomes litter, but it also appears to be a wonderful stimulant, allowing us to benefit from the attentional boost of eating without having to swallow or ingest calories. (Plus, fresh breath!) A recent review of the gum-chewing literature summarizes the science: “Gum appears to be a functional food with function but no food.”

A cynic might say that Lehrer answered his own question about allowing students to chew gum a little over a year ago when he blogged about elementary teachers' responses to creative students.

Would you really want a little Picasso in your class? How about a baby Gertrude Stein? Or a teenage Eminem? The point is that the classroom isn't designed for impulsive expression - that's called talking out of turn. Instead, it's all about obeying group dynamics and exerting focused attention. Those are important life skills, of course, but decades of psychological research suggest that such skills have little to do with creativity.

Let's review: gum may create a sticky mess and help students thing better. With those qualities, I'm surprised that Congress doesn't make it illegal for everyone.

After all no one wants smart voters, just followers.

A Minor Musing About An Atheist And Christian Intellectuals

2011-12-18T14:01:00.000-06:00

Ross Douthat's New York Times tribute to Christopher Hitchens, the greatest essayist of the past 25 years, contains the following paragraphs:

Intellectually minded Christians, in particular, had a habit of talking about Hitchens as though he were one of them already — a convert in the making, whose furious broadsides against God were just the prelude to an inevitable reconciliation. (Or as a fellow Catholic once murmured to me: “He just protests a bit too much, don’t you think?”) This is not a sentiment that was often expressed about Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or any other member of the New Atheist tribe. But where Hitchens was concerned, no insult he hurled or blasphemy he uttered could shake the almost-filial connection that many Christians felt for him.

Some of this reflected his immense personal charm, his willingness to debate with Baptists and drink with Catholics and be comradely to anyone who took ideas seriously. But there was something deeper at work as well. American Christian intellectual life is sustained today, to a large extent, by the work of writers very much like Hitchens — by essayists and journalists and novelists and poets, from G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis to W. H. Auden and Evelyn Waugh, who shared his English roots, his gift for argument and his abiding humanism.

These paragraphs prompt a couple of observations. First, living a life that allows for debating Baptists, drinking with Catholics, and being "comradely to anyone to [takes] ideas seriously" should allow for a good deal of fulfillment, whether it be social, intellectual or spiritual

More importantly, Douthat correctly points out that British intellectuals nurture American Christianity's intellectual life. That fact prompts a two simple questions: Why do American Christians have to turn to the British for intellectual nourishment? Why are there no new thinkers to replace Chesterton who died in 1936, Lewis who died in 1963, Auden who died in 1966, and Waugh who died in 1973?

I accept that Christian truths are eternal and unchanging, but its intellectual challenges are not. It stretches credulity that no American Christian intellectual with the grace, wit, and intellect of Chesterton or Lewis has come forward to engage deconstruction or any other recent intellectual trend. Unfortunately, no such Christian has emerged.

That sad fact is probably the best illustration of the sorry state of both America's intellectual life and American Christianity.

Christ Is In The X

2011-12-18T13:00:00.000-06:00

Mental Floss corrects a common misconception:

Lots of people think that the X in Xmas is a secular watering down of the word Christ. You know, “we love to celebrate the holiday but don’t believe in Jesus,” sort of thing. However, this is not the case. The X actually comes from the Greek letter Chi, which is the first letter of Χριστός. Now, if that’s all Greek to you, Χριστός, of course, means Christ. And the “mas” in Christmas, well, this is mental_floss, so I need not explain where that comes from, right?

Of course, facts don't matter is all one wants is to make religion a political football.

The Perfect Sunday Satire: Sports And Religion

2011-12-18T11:13:00.000-06:00

The 12 Day Of Christmas Reasons Students Won't Be In Class Next Week

2011-12-16T14:01:00.001-06:00

I guess I'm not in the Christmas spirit yet. With sincere apologies to the composers and lyricists who gave us "The 12 Days of Christmas," here's a really bad and cynical adaptation.

12 Early Family Christmases

11 Colds and counting

10 Parents who live out of state

9 Chances to earn overtime

8 Ski trips with the church youth group

7 Last minute shopping trips because it's Mom's day off

6 I'm too tired from last night's band concert

5 I couldn't find my bling

4 I'm not ready for the test

3 My car wouldn't start

2 My brother needs me to get him from the airport

And My car hit the partridge flying out of the pear tree.

Quotation Of The Day: What's Wrong With Republicanism Edition

2011-12-15T12:42:00.000-06:00

From this David Frum post:

The thing most wrong with present-day Republicanism is its passivity in the face of the economic crisis, its indifference to the economic troubles of the huge majority of the American population, and its blithe insistence that everything was fine for the typical American worker up until Inauguration Day 2009 or (at the outer bound of the thinkable) the financial crisis of the fall 2008.

It is the lack of concern to the travails of middle-class America that “reform Republicans” should most centrally be concerned with.

Never The Twain Shall Meet . . .

2011-12-15T06:30:00.002-06:00

These recent threads at the Madville Times illustrate that the the atheist vs believer conflict shows little sign of abating. The local comments echo the comments of noted atheist Richard Dawkins and religious philosopher Alvin Plantaga

Mr. Plantinga and Mr. Dennett do agree about one thing: Religion and science can’t just call a truce and retreat back into what the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould called “non-overlapping magisteria,” with science laying claim to the empirical world, while leaving questions of ultimate meaning to religion. Religion, like science, makes claims about the truth, Mr. Plantinga insists, and theists need to stick up for the reasonableness of those claims, especially if they are philosophers.

Plantinga, at least as he is portrayed in the NYT profile, takes positions that both sides in the local dust up might find a bit off-putting.

Plantinga will anger the local atheists when he asserts,

The so-called New Atheists may claim the mantle of reason, not to mention a much wider audience, thanks to best sellers like Mr. Dawkins’s fire-breathing polemic, “The God Delusion.” But while Mr. Plantinga may favor the highly abstruse style of analytic philosophy, to him the truth of the matter is crystal clear.

Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, “is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism,” with its random process of natural selection, he writes. “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’”

On the other hand, some of the more vociferous believers might take umbrage at the following:

Mr. Plantinga says he accepts the scientific theory of evolution, as all Christians should. Mr. Dennett and his fellow atheists, he argues, are the ones who are misreading Darwin. Their belief that evolution rules out the existence of God — including a God who purposely created human beings through a process of guided evolution — is not a scientific claim, he writes, but “a metaphysical or theological addition.”

I suppose that one can hypothesize the fact that Plantinga will probably anger both sides of the contentious debate means that he's stumbling close to a truth.

A Post For All The Comment Spammers Who Tell Me To Get A Facebook Link

2011-12-14T08:57:00.000-06:00

I am a Facebook conscientious objector, a term I stole from Laurel, a former student. It turns out that I am not alone. According to this Jenna Worthman NYT article,

As Facebook prepares for a much-anticipated public offering, the company is eager to show off its momentum by building on its huge membership: more than 800 million active users around the world, Facebook says, and roughly 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population.

But the company is running into a roadblock in this country. Some people, even on the younger end of the age spectrum, just refuse to participate, including people who have given it a try.

As a contrarian I welcome the fact that people get a little hot and bothered when I say I don't want anything to do with the social networking giant. I will probably get to confuse and perhaps anger a few more folk. According to Worthman,

But the peer pressure is only going to increase. Susan Etlinger, an analyst at the Altimeter Group, said society was adopting new behaviors and expectations in response to the near-ubiquity of Facebook and other social networks.

At least I won't be depressing people. Facebook does that on its own. Worthman writes,

One of Facebook’s main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated.

“I wasn’t calling my friends anymore,” said Ashleigh Elser, 24, who is in graduate school in Charlottesville, Va. “I was just seeing their pictures and updates and felt like that was really connecting to them.”

This morning Andrew Sullivan points to this Dan Gulati post that points out that Facebook is making users miserable.

But this new world of ubiquitous connections has a dark side. In my last post, I noted that Facebook and social media are major contributors to career anxiety. After seeing some of the comments and reactions to the post, it's clear that Facebook in particular takes it a step further: It's actually making us miserable.

Gulati, who must have been an extempter in high school offers three reasons:

First, it's creating a den of comparison. . . .
Second, it's fragmenting our time. . . .
Last, there's a decline of close relationships . . .

Given these observations, it seems to me that I'm doing everyone a favor by refusing to join Facebook. My stubbornness means that I'm not making anyone else miserable.

Some Musings About Newt And Poll Responses

2011-12-13T21:24:00.000-06:00

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg muses that Newt Gingrich might be the next great conservative revolutionary, a fact that Goldberg apparently believes would be a good thing.

But there's another possibility: It's true. Moreover, the times may be ripe for precisely the sort of vexing, vainglorious and all-too-human revolutionary Gingrich claims to be. That's the argument a few people have been wrestling with. Gingrich, after all, is the only candidate to actually move the government rightward. While getting wealthy off the old order, he's been plotting for decades how to get rid of it. To paraphrase Lenin, perhaps the K Streeters paid Gingrich to build the gallows he will hang them on?

Meanwhile, South Dakota War College flags a CBS poll that shows that finds that 54% of Americans don't believe that President Obama deserves a second term.

The good folks at SDWC don't mention that the same poll shows Congress's approval rating at 11%.

Congress' job approval rating is far lower than the president's. Eighty-two percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, while 11 percent approve - just two percentage points above the all-time low of 9 percent recorded last month.

When it comes to the difficulties in reaching agreements and passing legislation in Congress, Americans put more of the blame on the Republicans in Congress than Mr. Obama and the Democrats. Forty-two percent blame Republicans more, while just 26 percent blame Mr. Obama and the Democrats, though 22 percent volunteer both are equally to blame.

One of "the difficulties in reaching agreements and passing legislation in Congress" seems to be the fact that both political parties seem to have imposed a parliamentary discipline on members of a system designed to ensure regional balance. Tip O'Neil famously created the cliche, "All politics is local." That axiom has now been turned on its head.

At first blush, Gingrich and his Contract with/for/on America seems to be the person most responsible for turning the House of Representatives into the House of Commons and the political logjams that Americans hate.

Maybe that's why Goldberg has experiences like this one:

The other night while having drinks with some prominent conservatives, I said I thought there was a significant chance that Gingrich will not only win the nomination but that he might be the next president. Going by their expressions, I might as well have said I put a slow-acting poison in their cocktails.

And maybe Newt's history is a reason for SDWC not to count their electoral chickens before they hatch.

I Love It When Politics And Pop Culture Come Together

2011-12-12T06:40:00.002-06:00

In a League of Ordinary Gentlemen post that can only be described as pure genius, Tod Kelly uses the Highlander franchise to analyze the Republican presidential primary.

That post got me thinking about other movies that fit the election season. It's become a cliche to cast the race in terms of Romney and anti-Romney, so this scene from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome seems equally accurate..

The Running Man also could work if one substitutes Romney for Ben Richards.

Set in a totalitarian society. Ben Richards is a cop who was blamed for a massacre which wasn't his fault. He would be sent to prison and breaks out with some other inmates. He tries to escape but the woman whom he dragged into his plan turns him over to the authorities. Damon Killian, who is the host of THE RUNNING MAN a game show wherein convicted felons are given the chance to run to freedom but have to elude the stalkers; men who hunt them down and kill them in gruesome manners.

Anything else come to mind?

Babies Understand Grammar

2011-12-11T20:29:00.001-06:00

So why don't high school students? According to IO9.com, Jill Lany asserts that babies understand grammar before they learn how to talk. She doesn't answer the question about high school students, however. She does make me feel like a rotten teacher when she asserts,

Babies are constantly looking for language clues in context and sound. My research suggests that there are some surprising clues in the sound stream that may help babies learn the meanings of words. They can distinguish different kinds of words like nouns and verbs by information in that sound stream.

If babies can distinguish between nouns and verbs, high school freshmen should be able to as well.

Lany speaks about her research in this YouTube video:

A Minor Musing About Religion In America

2011-12-11T16:23:00.003-06:00

Over at the Madville Times, Cory has a post about Americans' perceptions about atheists. As a believer who would sooner consult a competent atheist doctor rather than an incompetent Christian doctor, I find the findings he reports harsh.

The New York Times has seen fit to examine Americans' views about God. The Almighty maintains followers.

Apparently, a growing number of Americans are running from organized religion, but by no means running from God. On average 93 percent of those surveyed say they believe in God or a higher power; this holds true for most Nones — just 7 percent of whom describe themselves as atheists, according to a survey by Trinity College.

Nones are the undecided of the religious world. We drift spiritually and dabble in everything from Sufism to Kabbalah to, yes, Catholicism and Judaism.

I'm guessing that much of that dabbling can be attributed to the U.S.'s consumer culture and fixation on choice. We love buffets and big box stores that allow us to pick and choose whatever our greedy little souls desire. Less charitably, one might argue that the drifting reflects an unwillingness to seriously develop the discipline that many faiths demand. The cynic in me often wonders if unwritten scripture that informs the American gospel doesn't contain phrasing similar to "shun that which is difficult; cling to everything easy."

The article's most damning indictment of American religion strikes me as extremely accurate.

If a certain spiritual practice makes us better people — more loving, less angry — then it is necessarily good, and by extension “true.” (We believe that G. K. Chesterton got it right when he said: “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”)

Given that American political discourse is getting angrier and the economy is a cause of constant worry, America's religious leaders of all stripes would do well to ensure that their faith allows followers a few self-deprecating chuckles. Maybe we should be nicer to atheists too.

By that measure, there is very little “good religion” out there. Put bluntly: God is not a lot of fun these days. Many of us don’t view religion so generously. All we see is an angry God. He is constantly judging and smiting, and so are his followers.

Melody Sings Off Key Again

2011-12-11T12:47:00.000-06:00

Scott McCloud asks the key question about education reform

What will it take for Americans to stand up and fight not just against our schooling systems but also against educational reform efforts that take those systems in wrong directions?

McCloud points out that U.S. efforts are a model for reform; unfortunately, it's a model for how not to reform education. He quotes a an Alberta Views article that concludes,

By contrast we can also learn what not to do from reform in the US, whose education system is in decline. Its elements, implemented over the past two decades, are largely ideological: "market-based" reforms (the application of "business insights" to the running of schools); an emphasis on standardization and narrowing of curriculum; extensive use of external standardized assessment; fostering choice and competition among schools, often with school vouchers; making judgements based on test data and closing "failing schools"; encouraging the growth of charter schools (which don't have teacher unions); "merit pay" and other incentives; faith that "technologically mediated instruction" will reduce costs; an overwhelming "top-down" approach which tells everyone what to do and holds them accountable for doing it.

On the other hand, McCloud notes,

it's pretty clear what we should be doing instead. As a recent book, Surpassing Shanghai, notes, school systems around the world (like Japan, Finland, Singapore, and Shanghai) that consistently outperform the U.S. on international assessments do things very differently:

Funding schools equitably, with additional resources for those serving needy students
Paying teachers competitively and comparably
Investing in high-quality preparation, mentoring and professional development for teachers and leaders, completely at government expense
Providing time in the school schedule for collaborative planning and ongoing professional learning to continually improve instruction
Organizing a curriculum around problem-solving and critical thinking skill
Testing students rarely but carefully -- with measures that require analysis, communication, and defense of ideas.

Marc Tucker makes a similar point in this Atlantic post

You would think that, being far behind our competitors, we would be looking hard at how they are managing to outperform us. But many policymakers, business leaders, educators and advocates are not interested. Instead, they are confidently barreling down a path of American exceptionalism, insisting that America is so different from these other nations that we are better off embracing unique, unproven solutions that our foreign competitors find bizarre.

Some of these uniquely American solutions -- charter schools, private school vouchers, entrepreneurial innovations, grade-by-grade testing, diminished teachers' unions, and basing teachers' pay on how their students do on standardized tests -- may be appealing on their surface. To many in the financial community, these market-inspired reform ideas are very appealing.

Yet, these proposed solutions are nowhere to be found in the arsenal of strategies used by the top-performing nations. And almost everything these countries are doing to redesign their education systems, we're not doing.

Melody Schopp's Department of Education, however, continues to focus on tests. South Dakota will continue to "hold schools accountable for student proficiency and closing achievement gaps through continued annual public reporting of disaggregated student outcomes in math and reading." A high school's "student achievement score will be based on the percent of students scoring proficient or advanced on the statewide assessment in reading and math delivered in 11th grade."

Other alleged reforms are not specified because Schopp is looking for an "appropriate" or "valid" "assessment tools" from SMARTER Balanced consortium. Since, SDDOE's document is jargon laden, I'll lapse into a cliche: it seems as if SDDOE is trying to sell a pig in a poke.

There's nothing in Schopp's draft that will improve South Dakota's K-12 education. The draft indicates that SDDOE will continue to push schools to test more and insure that students learn less. Instead of adapting what works, SDDOE will conform to the nationwide trend of serving as bad example of education reform.

I Really Wouldn't Mind Seeing These Buzzwords Retired

2011-12-09T06:18:00.004-06:00

The site Meeting Boy publishes a survey of the most hated buzzwords.

1.think outside the box (16%)

2.circle back (15%)

3.synergy (14%)

4.it is what it is (13%)

5.touch base (13%)

6.at the end of the day (13%)

7.let’s take this offline (12%)

8.low-hanging fruit (11%)

9.value-added (11%)

10.proactive (10%)

11.paradigm shift (9%)

12.best practices (9%)

13.going forward (8%)

14.take it to the next level (7%)

15.30,000-foot view (or any other multi-thousand foot view) (7%)

16.win-win (7%)

17.on the same page (7%)

18.leverage (6%)

19.a lot on my plate (6%)

20.robust (6%)

21.work smarter (5%)

22.impactful (4%)

23.rockstar (4%)

24.holistic (4%)

25.no-brainer (4%)

26.net-net (3%)

27.do whatever it takes (3%)

28.plus-up (2%)

29.flawless execution (1%)

The South Dakota Department of Education is fond of "next generation." Judging by this draft proposal, I'm going to hate that one more than any of those on Meeting Boy's survey.

I'll try following up on some of the specifics of SDDOE's proposals over the weekend.

A Political Debate I'd Like To See

2011-12-08T19:51:00.000-06:00

The December 27 potential debacle hosted by Donald Trump is now thankfully down to two people: Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich. If one is too chose leaders on their judgement, prudence, or discretion, the fact that Gingrich and Santorum are still considering attending indicates that both men lack the judicious nature the Presidency demands. By calling those who decline to attend an event hosted by a blowhard with an ego worthy of a Homeric epic, albeit a comic one, Santorum shows himself to be totally unsuited to any executive office.

Conversely, Gary Gutting describes an event that I'd like see:

The best evidence of how capable candidates are of fruitfully interacting with intellectuals would be to see them doing just this. Concretely, I make the follow suggestion for the coming presidential election: Gather small but diverse panels of eminent, politically uncommitted experts on, say, unemployment, the history of the Middle East, and climate science, and have each candidate lead an hour-long televised discussion with each panel. The candidates would not be mere moderators but would be expected to ask questions, probe disagreements, express their own ideas or concerns, and periodically summarize the state of discussion. Such engagements would provide some of the best information possible for judging candidates, while also enormously improving the quality of our political discourse.

I suspect that both political parties will do everything in their power to prevent such an event from happening, but one can always hope

Plains Pops: Random Stuff From Around The Web Edition

2011-12-08T08:21:00.000-06:00

Cory gives some good analysis of Rick Perry's desperate attempt to get right wing fundamentalists to vote for him.

This Marc Tucker article about how to fix American education: quick hint, technoloy isn't the answer.

Nathan Johnson covers love and hate from the police logs.

Finally, this overview of income inequality throughout the world is interesting and distrubing.