Twilight of the Idols

Another Blogroll Addition


Conservative talk show host / University of Chicago professor Milt Rosenberg dropped me a line about his new blog the other day. While Dr. Rosenberg saves most of his commentary for his radio show, he updates his blog daily Monday through Friday and has links to a lot of good news stories. Drop by and check it out!

Colleges Face Budget Crises, Trim Programs, Build Golf Simulators


Colleges nationwide are facing deep budget cuts and are running short of money, according to the LA Times. This is hardly news, right?

They have raised tuition steeply, often two years running, but public universities around the nation remain so pinched for funds that they are cutting deeply into their academic offerings — eliminating majors, thinning library collections and canceling scores of classes.

So, go look over that article, and then look over this post by Joanne Jacobs. I would link to the original article in the NY Times, but it's pay-to-read now - you can get the idea from the excerpt she has posted. Look at the schools mentioned: University of Wisconsin, Washington State University, Ohio State University, etc. They're all state schools.

So we've got state schools complaining about how their budgets are being slashed and how they're having to trim academic programs on one hand, and then we've got state schools building water parks and the world's largst Jacuzzi on the other. I would typically use something like this as an opportunity to launch into a tirade about how academics are being pushed off the stage in favor of flashy, trendy crap like rooms that simulate golf courses from around the world, but I'm just not feeling it today. I'll let you get mad about this one on your own, heh.

Lowering The Bar


USA Today often features dueling editorials; this past Friday's were arguing rather to leave the SAT as it is or to increase the time for everyone.

The argument for extending the time is simple and predictable:

Because the College Board is wedded to a stopwatch system, it places unnecessary time pressures each year on more than 2 million students whose scores can have a major impact on their college careers. The approach also runs counter to the SAT's goal predicting how students will fare in colleges, which typically provide ample time to complete coursework and exams.

First of all, changing the time will raise scores, sure - but it will raise them for everyone. (This assertion discounts those on the fringes.) Increasing the time limit won't make anyone better in relation to their peers, it will simply make everyone perform at an artificially higher level. The College Board could decide to cut the time limit to an hour while keeping the test the same length and it would have a similar effect - everyone's score would fall through the floor, but they would be basically the same in relation to one another.

By clinging to timed SATs, the College Board also has inadvertently opened up a new way to game the test. Students with designated learning disabilities receive 90 extra minutes to finish the SAT. And starting this fall, colleges no longer will be informed which test takers get extra time, a change the College Board made after disability advocates threatened discrimination suits. But the new policy also creates an incentive to make bogus disability claims.

This is faulty reasoning. The issue shouldn't be "people will game the test, so we should change the test;" the issue should be "people are gaming the test, so we should stop them from doing so." (Side note: this is effectively the tactic SMU took when putting a stop to the affirmative action bake sale. They claimed that there were "safety concerns," and rather than protect students who were being threatened, they told those students to stop the bake sale.) Parents who pay to have their children labeled as disabled (*coughs*Hornstine*coughs*) disgust me. I'm not sure what to do about this issue - that is, how the College Board can weed out the fakers - but that's not really the point here. It's something to think about.

And the issue of disability advocates threatening to sue the College Board is a straw man of sorts. It's not as if increasing the time for everyone will keep said disability advocates happy. If the time is increased for the regular test-takers, the advocacy groups will then press the College Board to offer still even more time for disabled students because it would be oh-so-unfair for disabled students to be forced to take the exam in the same amount of time as non-disabled students.

This should not be construed to mean that I think that disabled students should have to take the test in the same amount of time (although I might - I haven't considered the issue enough); it should be taken to mean that I have little to no respect for advocacy groups in many cases and that I am quite confident that the fact that disabled students would have the same amount of time as before will be lost on the groups who see things like this as discrimination. Anyway, my long-lost point was that advocacy groups are never satisfied, and doing something that benefits "enabled" students while not similarly benefitting disabled students will still get the College Board sued.

Turning off the clock can provide a fairer test for all students.

Check that: turning off the clock can provide an easier test for all students. It won't affect students at the fringes; kids who are getting 600s or 1590s are probably going to get those same 600s or 1590s no matter how much they increase the time limit. But for the majority of students in the middle, their scores will all raise together as a unit, and that simply won't help them. If the average score moves up a hundred points because of extra time, it does not mean that thousands more students will be getting into Harvard each year. It simply means that Harvard will increase the average SAT score they look for by a hundred points.

The "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" editorial was written by Wayne Camara, a VP at the College Board. His responses are simple and to the point:

The College Board has found that at least 80% are able to complete all or all but one item on each test section.

...

Beginning in 2005, the addition of a writing test will make the SAT approximately three hours and 40 minutes long. To increase testing time by 90 minutes for all students would require more than five hours of testing, plus an additional hour for registration, instructions and rest breaks.

...

Ethnic and gender differences would not be affected.

Camara also points out that many students finish before time is called, and that it would be "downright cruel" to those students to force them to stay in the exam room another 90 minutes. Having spent more than my fair share of time staring at the ceiling of testing rooms, I can't help but agree.

School To Distribute Aluminum Foil Hats


Well, not really - but maybe it'd make these parents happy.

A pioneering elementary school district outside Chicago has been sued for installing a wireless (news - web sites) computer network by parents worried that exposure to the network's radio waves could harm their children.

According to the complaint, filed in Illinois state court, parents of five children assert that a growing body of evidence outlines "serious health risks that exposure to low intensity, but high radio frequency radiation poses to human beings, particularly children."

...I mean, really, this is idiotic. Sure, I don't like the focus on computers in schools in the first place, and I certainly think a wi-fi network is a gross waste of money for an elementary school. (Not to mention the fact that almost all wi-fi networks have security holes that you could drive a school bus through, but once again, that's not the point.)

And in case you thought that maybe these parents were just a bit more concerned than they were informed - that is, that they aren't money-grubbing scum just trying to make a buck off of an alleged "health risk" - read the rest of the article:

The parents allege that the district failed to examine the health impact that wireless local area networks pose, especially for growing children. They are seeking class action status for their suit, which seeks to halt the use of wireless networks.

Ridiculous.

What's Worse Than A Nanny State?


Kimberly at N2P has the answer:

"I didn't think much could be worse than a Nanny State, but a dangerously inconsistent Nanny State that focuses more on sweets than assaults manages it."

Busy (As Always)


Sorry for the lack of substance; I've been busy trying to clean up my apartment and (as always) with reading for class.

In the meanwhile, here's something that I find uproariously funny: perhaps you've heard about the brand-new, ultra-spiffy copy protection for CDs that the RIAA has been touting? Well, guess what - it can be disabled by pressing the shift key.

Read the article, and understand why I say the war has been over for years... The RIAA needs to remove its head from its rear end and realize that the market moved on years ago, and that people simply won't pay for something they can get for free.

Update: Caucasian Club


The Washington Times has an article with more details about Lisa McClelland, the girl who wants to start a Caucasian Club at her high school.

It looks like administrators, teachers, and students - not to mention the NAACP - are trying to thwart her efforts at every turn. Ask me if I'm surprised. I wish her luck; she's fighting the good fight.

Laptops In Education


From the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, an article about schools buying laptops for the students... Read it (and weep).

The Stillwater school district's decision to provide laptop computers to junior high students for use at school and home plunges it into a debate taking place across the country: Are such efforts worth the money?

No, they're really not. I mean, what benefit can people possibly see in dropping nearly $2 million on laptops?

Program proponents predict scores will start moving up as laptop-loan efforts become more entrenched. And in the meantime, they say, giving kids round-the-clock laptop access leads to powerful, often intangible, benefits such as increased engagement in school and development of writing, research and other real-world skills.

Oh. Intangible benefits. Gotcha. I bet they'll really help out those kids who have intangible qualities - like creativity and diversity - that standardized tests don't measure.

Seriously, though, I think it needs to be noted that the laptops sure won't help with research unless they pay for internet connections at home for every student. I won't even mention that none of the major writing styles (MLA, Chicago, etc) have a specific, standardized method for citing internet sources. And I certainly won't mention that there's a little place called a "library" that already has a bunch of these archaic (but still handy) research devices called "books" - and that there are computers with internet access available to the public at the libraries ("Each Library has several "INTERNET" computers.").

Needless to say, administrators across the country were happy to talk about how much computers improved the learning enviroment, etc, etc, etc, and even though test scores didn't noticably change, the laptops were just peachy keen. At least the writers were kind enough to include a solitary voice of reason:

"I'm sure that kids are happy to get a free computer. I would be too," [MIT Professor Joshua Angrist] said. "The simple answer is that it's not a better way to teach. It's costly. It's distracting. And it decreases teachers' ability to control what's going on in the classroom.

"Why not spend money on areas where there is evidence (of improving student achievement)?" he said. "Maybe teacher training or class-size reduction."

C Is For Cookie...


Randomly off-topic, but this headline was on Yahoo earlier: Scientists discover why cookies crumble. Weird.

Administrative Functions - i.e., Blogroll Updates


Changes are afoot over on the left side of your screen!

Paul Musgrave's blog has been added. Paul is a friend here at IU; he's a great guy and a great writer - you should drop by.

Lone Dissenter has been removed because she hasn't found much to gripe about in her senior year of high school. As much as I wish otherwise (for her sake), I'm sure she'll be back next year - once she has to deal with her first "Culture Sensitivity Meeting" during orientation.

Also, Crescat Sententia has a new address and spiffy new Movable Type digs.

Side note: Can someone email and explain how to put those spiffy category divisions in Blogrolling lists? I am apparently far, far too uncool to figure it out for myself (and I'm too lazy to go manually type all that into the template, heh). Thanks in advance!

Nazis And Paris, Circa 2003


Paris, Texas, that is. I was going to write about this story, but it looks like Michael (not George, heh) at Highered Intelligence beat me to it. Go give his post a read for some good thoughts on the subject.

After you read that, here's an update: The school has issued an apology and will be removing all flags except the US flag for future performances. I would say - and I think Michael would agree - that this is a terrible reaction on the school's part. They don't really have anything to apologize for, although interest groups eat up hollow apologies faster than Elvis ate pills and peanut butter sandwiches, so the apology was probably a good move. Removing the flags seems completely wrong to me, though.

Hiding the fact that Nazis existed sure isn't going to make them go away. Much like watching the movie Schindler's List provided a painful but necessary reminder of the Holocaust, this simple high school band show could have helped keep the memory of Nazism alive - so that we can make sure it never happens again.

Math Teacher Re-Assigned For Giving A Lesson In Economics


From the NY Times:

A math teacher at a Queens high school was reassigned yesterday as school officials investigated whether he sold students tickets to last week's free Dave Matthews Band concert, officials said.

The capitalist in me is secretly delighted. I've used Ebay to make money off of stuff I got for free, and you can too: take a free promotional item you get with the purchase of a movie ticket, video game, etc, and sell it to someone who wants it more.

The realist in me points out that this was bad conduct - as well as the fact that the teacher's union will have him back in the job within the month anyway.

At the school yesterday, students in a third-floor stairwell crowded around Mr. Nissen, who was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Students slapped him high fives and several girls shook their heads in sympathy.

"It's the board of education's fault for not paying teachers enough," said Adam Gassman, a student who said he bought four tickets from Mr. Nissen, for a total of $120. "He was doing a good deed. Kids wanted to go, and he sold them the tickets."

The cynic in me wins the day, though, by pointing out that kids this gullible probably deserve to be taken advantage of.

I mean, I knew about the free Dave Matthews Concert, and I live in south-central Indiana. (I don't even like Dave Matthews that much.) If these kids, who live in Queens, didn't know the concert was free, then that's really their fault. If they weren't willing to do the five seconds of research it would take to find out that tickets were free, that's hardly the teacher's fault. Further, these kids now know that the concert was free and that they paid $30 to go see it, and what do they do? Defend the teacher?! Nope, sorry, those kids got exactly what they asked for.

And if anyone thinks otherwise, I've got a nice bridge in the Brooklyn area that I'd love to sell you. Cheap. Heh.

That said, I still think it's poor conduct; I don't think I would want this guy teaching at a school I ran. And not because what I think he did was wrong, but because I think where he did it was - maybe these kids thought they'd get bonus points out of it or something, who knows?

Although I doubt it will, the school's administrators should take this opportunity to teach the kids a handy lesson about economics - shop around (hmm, free tickets or $30 tickets?), profits ($30 on a $0 investment is an excellent return), etc. - it could make the whole ordeal worthwhile.

Extracurricular Activities


Today's NY Times has an article about UC-Berkeley's new policy on relationships between faculty and students.

Now, I'm not too sure what I think about all of this. My initial reation is that Berkeley and the dozen other schools mentioned should leave things alone, barring gross misconduct (professors giving extra credit for dates, sex, etc), but I'm certainly open to other opinions. I can safely say that this bothered me, however:

Like other supporters of the policy, [Gayle Binion, a professor at Berkeley] questions whether relationships between faculty members and students they grade, supervise, recommend for graduate school or jobs or otherwise evaluate can ever be truly consensual.

It must be convenient for Dr. Binion to live her life with no consequesnces of her own creation. No, really, this is one of my all-time favorite arguments: "There was no way Person X could have given consent to you, so you abused Person X."

It's not that there aren't situations where this could happen - there are. But I don't think they're nearly as common as people like Dr. Binion would have you believe. Is it possible for a professor to abuse his position? Of course. However, I'd say that it's highly unlikely that most professor/student relationships are non-consensual, and for a policy to (effectively) blame the professor for the occurence and results of any and all relationships with students is simply ridiculous.

But more typical are policies like the one Duke adopted in 2002, which strongly discourages faculty members from becoming involved with their students, but says that if such a relationship develops, the faculty member must report it to a dean and then be removed from all authority over the student.

This still seems overly intrusive to me, but it's a lot more reasonable than Berkeley's new policy. What I wonder, though, is how much of an issue this actually is; don't universities have more pressing things to worry about? Is there any data on the number of professor/student relationships?

I'm In Recovery


From writing a paper for my Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire class, that is - otherwise I'd be posting something of substance right now, heh. I plan on getting my lazy self back to work here (and on the stack of reading I need to catch up on) this evening and tomorrow.

Till then, why don't you whip up a nice batch of fried Oreos for yourself? Full disclosure: I have actually eaten a fried Twinkie. Twinkies are disgusting in the first place, and frying them doesn't help, but what better symbolizes American excess than taking an uber-processed cream-filled cake and cooking it in grease? Heh.

So It Goes...


I wrote a guest editorial for the Bloomington Herald-Times that ran this past Saturday. The link is already subscription-only; I don't believe I have the right to post the contents of the editorial, or I would (if anyone out there knows for sure, drop me an email).

Update (09/30/03, 12:51 AM): Dr. Rasmusen informed me that the editorial is (temporarily, anyway) cached here. Thanks!

The editorial was about the Weblog Situation (what else? Heh). The short version of the editorial is that I make an admission similar to the one below and then question Chancellor Brehm's response to the situation.

Anyway, as you can see from the comment to the post below, I've apparently lost a reader. So it goes. I've also been told that the post below is too sappy, too "kiss-ass," to sound genuine; however, it's not meant to be sappy, and it is meant to be genuine. I made a mistake; I admitted it; I am learning from it (where possible) and moving on (where necessary).

My Long-Awaited Post About Professor Rasmusen


I must have written this post a hundred times and changed my mind about what I wanted to say (or, more often, how I wanted to say it). In the end, I've decided to make it as short and sweet as possible.

I am the student who initially reported Dr. Rasmusen's weblog to the university.

The newspapers - from USA Today to the Chicago Tribune - reported that multiple students, faculty, and staff filed complaints about the weblog. This is true. However, none of them would have ever known about Dr. Rasmusen's weblog if I hadn't alerted the university to its existence. Once a couple people knew about the weblog, the link spread like wildfire through instant messages and campus emails, and we all know what happened after that. (If not, Erin O'Connor has a definitive compilation of links in her posts here and here.)

When I reported the webpage, I was under the impression that Dr. Rasmusen had no right to say what he said on a university web page - similar to the argument put forth by Henry at Crooked Timber. It never even crossed my mind that at a public school like Indiana University, free speech would certainly apply to Dr. Rasmusen's weblog.

For a number of reasons, I find it embarassing to admit that I am the person who caused all of this.

I have long considered myself a libertarian, and free speech to be the most important of the rights afforded to us by the Constitution. On top of that, I hold some highly debatable and/or unpopular views myself; the debate my recent posts on guilt and shame sparked certainly attests to that fact.

So, when confronted with someone whose views I disagreed with, what was my reaction? I did something that seems to come all too naturally to many people in today's society: I attempted to suppress those views. Why did I do this? Because I thought I could.

And I made a mistake.

Thus, I offer my story to you, my readers. No matter what your views on a given subject are, there are sure to be others who disagree with you, and it can be hard to remember that they have just as much right to their opinion as you do to yours. I was upset by something I read, and in my anger, I hypocritically forgot John Stuart Mill's timeless words about opinions:

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

To those who would fault me for the way I handled this situation: you are correct. I can do nothing to defend myself save admit my error. I am not perfect, nor will I ever be. However, I can and will learn from my mistakes, and I share my story with you so that you might learn from them as well.

If Ever There Were Things To Be Ashamed Of...


...then the reactions to most of the offenses listed in this New York Daily News article would have to be among them.

The best example of the rampant stupidity that the article describes:

Maureen Lawrence, a special-education teacher at a residential program in Manhattan, was found to have helped a student cheat on his essay for the state graduation exam. She was suspended without pay for up to six months because of her "unblemished employment record."

Well, yeah, she had an "unblemished employment record" - except for that one time she helped a student cheat on a test. Geez.

The rest of the article is just as depressing - if not moreso. Go and read it for yourself, though.

Private Schools That Work


Wednesday's New York Times ran this article about a private school "in a bleak corner of Brooklyn" that turns out top-notch students nonetheless.

How does Trey Whitfield school work? It gets no government money; in fact, it doesn't spend a dime over the money it takes in from the (quite low) tuition. With the help of involved leaders and parents, though, they turn out exemplary students.

But even educators who admire his success say the school, with 470 students from nursery to eighth grade, is an anomaly, not a model. It is skimming the most committed families from the public school population, they say, and operating without the encumbrances of a system that receives government funds.

Heh. Daryl thought that was a pretty deep insight, as well.

Perhaps those same educators who claim that the school is not a model should consider what would happen if they took away all the "encumberances" that most schools face and left education to the free market. Seriously, if this school can have great students for $4,000 a year - "less than half of classroom spending in New York City public schools" - then I'm sold.

"It's not an apples and apples comparison," said Steven Sanders, chairman of the State Assembly Education Committee. Still, Mr. Sanders said, Trey Whitfield's results suggest that leadership is the key to educational success, followed by parental involvement, with money a distant third.

I think Trey Whitfield's results need to be shown to every educrat who opens their mouth to ask for more money. It's a school that "gets by with no computers, science lab or cafeteria" and it turns out some of the best students in the state.

If only this were the end of the debate, if only I'd never have to read about another new computer lab in another poor, urban district. Let me make one of my main theories about education clear (for any new readers I've picked up recently): Computers do not teach kids. Teachers teach kids. That's why they're called teachers. Easy enough, right?

But Mr. Whitfield treasures the school's autonomy. He has the freedom to reject or expel students. Corporal punishment is permitted, although it has never been necessary, he said. And Christian prayer is part of the school day.

...

Latecomers to the school may balk at the rigid rules. One sixth grader, who arrived last fall from P.S. 297 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, had talked out of turn, complained about her watch-plaid uniform and tried to sow rebellion. But she "conformed in no time," said Deborah Johnson, the girl's social studies teacher.

Do I agree with everything about this private school? No, not at all. But if all schools were private, I can't imagine that I would have trouble finding a school whose standards I completely agreed with.

Anyway, it's cases like this that make me wonder why people think I'm out in left field for suggesting privatization of the educational system. At the very, very least, privatized schools couldn't be any worse than the dysfunctional excuses for school systems at which our government continues to throw money - and examples like Trey Whitfield School leave me inclined to think that they'd be a whole lot better.

Gotta Love The Germans...


Germany has a lot going for it - great beer, great cars, and as Jeff at Caerdroia notes, they have class.

Typically, I'm not impressed by the displays of "respect" countries often trip over themselves to pay one another; that's because countries' displays of respect are typically unimpressive. This one wasn't, however, and kudos to the Germans for it.

Playing With Numbers


I just popped open my browser to check my mail, and I saw this article on the front page of Yahoo.

Now, I think it's been well-established that schools play with numbers a bit in order to make themselves look better, but this is just silly:

Only 52 of the nation's 91,000 public schools are labeled persistently dangerous by their states...

Only 52 schools are persistently dangerous? Yeah, right. And if you don't already believe that there's something shady about those statistics, read these parts again:

Forty-four states and the District of Columbia reported not a single unsafe schools. The exceptions were Pennsylvania (28), Nevada (eight), New Jersey (seven), Texas (six), New York (two) and Oregon (one). The numbers may change after final state reviews or appeals.

...

In Philadelphia, school officials say they are paying a price for aggressively disciplining misbehaving students. The city had 27 of the state's 28 persistently dangerous schools...

So, out of the .05% of schools that are persistently dangerous, over half of them are in Philadelphia, and there are none in Washington, D.C..

Let's just say that I am a tad skeptical of these numbers.

Busy Busy!


It figures.

Today, I've actualy got a couple nice education articles I wanted to write up some thoughts on, I'd like to respond to one of Kimberly's posts, and - wouldn't you know it - I've actually got something else that I have to work on.

It may take till tomorrow, but details will follow. What is it I'm working on? Here's a hint: it's (to a large extent) the post about Dr. Rasmusen and his weblog which I promised but haven't yet delivered on. It'll be worth the wait.

Bloggers In Real Life


Speaking of Will at Crescat Sententia, I had the pleasure of meeting him in person on Monday. He's a smart guy (he must be, since he and I typically agree on things! Heh.), and a lot of fun to talk to and hang out with.

This was also the first time since 1994 that I've met someone in person that I originally met online - although back in 1994, I originally met those people on a BBS, not that "internet" thing we'd all heard rumors about. Crazy.

Final Thoughts: Shame And Guilt


What an interesting ride that little comment turned out to be, eh?

I thought it would be beneficial for both me (the writer) and you (the reader) to wrap this up - of course, I don't mind continuing discussions by email, but I doubt I'll post anymore on the topic. For now. :-)

First, here is most of an email I sent to someone further explaining my views:

I think our difference is more semantic than anything, actually. If you view guilt and shame as constructive emotions that encourage people to better themselves, then I'd certainly agree that I feel both and that I think people *need* both. (that's the impression I got from what you wrote) I feel the emotions that you describe - the drive to do better, the imagining of a better self, etc - but I wouldn't have ever referred to them as guilt or shame.

To me, guilt and shame have always seemed to have an inherently negative overtone. When I think of shame, I think of an old lady "shaming" a gay couple for holding hands in public; when I think of guilt, I think of a pubescent kid who just knows that masturbating is wrong. (I hope that explains what I consider guilt and shame to be, and what I interpret/assume many other people's defenitions to be. I'm honestly not sure how to better word it, but I will try if necessary.) Thus, when I hear someone speak of guilt or shame, I typically see someone referring to what appears to be a purely negative emotion, one that serves but to make a person feel bad for their actions.

Why should one do more than try to simply make someone feel bad? Because it doesn't explain why they *should* feel bad. It's a strong possibility that someone who is made to feel bad will simply learn how not to feel bad, rather than learn not to do something wrong. People need to understand *why* what they did was wrong in order to learn not to do it - an example would be a shoplifter learning not to get caught instaead of learning not to steal.

So in short, it's not the effect that (most of) you are implying guilt and shame have that I'm arguing against, it's the purely emotional baggage that I am arguing against. Personal responsibilty is something I value very, very highly - to say the least, after all, I am libertarian - and I would like to think that you can take most people in the world and explain to them why something is wrong (whatever that means - socially, morally, whatever - the meaning of right and wrong is a completely different debate that I might bring up at some point, but not right now), and you can make them understand without all the emotional baggage.

In other words, there are plenty of logical reasons why a 13-year-old girl giving out oral sex on the bus for a audience isn't the best situation to be in.

To continue my email quote:

And to bring this all back around to the actual news item: I have very liberal ideas about sex. Not that I'd have told Daryl, but if he wanted to blame someone for my beliefs, he'd have to blame Robert Heinlein. [ed: Well, Daryl, now you know. Heh.] On top of that, I *am* admittedly a lot younger than Daryl, and kids fooling around on field trips is something that's normal from my point of view - I never did anything like that, but I personally know many, many people who did.

What makes this case, different - and disconcerting - to me is the peer pressure aspect of it. If they were at home and at least being safe about it (protection, etc), then I wouldn't think too much of it. Kids are curious, and especially in a society that makes so much about sex taboo, it seems expected that they might mess around given the chance. However: there's something pretty scary about a girl who would start going down on a guy because the other kids on the bus wanted to see it, and that's where I see the parental failure, if there is one (which I really think there is, but it's not a given).

In short, it's not what they did, it's how they did it. I see nothing wrong with simple pleasures of the flesh when the people involved understand what's occuring. That is, I see a significant and socially useful difference in the ways people have sex (the difference between screwing and making love, to be blunt), and I highly doubt that either of these kids is aware of - much less understands - that difference [ed: or any of the other nuances that accompany physical relationships], which is what makes the situation here so problematic.

And someone needs to slap the mother, because regardless of if she is a failure as a parent (most likely) or if her daughter is just a royal screw-up (not impossible), the mother needs to explain to her daughter why going down on a guy on a bus because other people want you to is a really, really, really bad idea. Regardless of the definition used for shame and guilt, the mother should feel both with regards to her claims that there's no rule against oral sex (improper conduct at the least, and as you point out, it's illegal in the first place).

Is my opinion different than many of yours? In general, yes. In this case, not so much. I consider this, the actual news story, to be the less-important branch of the tree, at this point. If you want to know all the gory details with respect to my thoughts on sex, take some time and read Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein. It's a great book and it'll explain (for the most part) the world as I see it.

Moving on: Daryl, I'm sorry for getting quite so upset. I hope you understand where I was coming from, anyway. (parenthetical cheap shot: Just don't expect me to feel ashamed that I got upset. Heh.) Seriously, though, no hard feelings.

Lastly, about age: Is it possible that my views will change over time? Absolutely. Is it likely? Well, of course, I'd say "no," as would any of you. If I didn't think that what I believed right now was correct, I wouldn't believe it. But I won't rule anything out. The only point I have left on this subject is to note that even if I do change my beliefs when I am older, that doesn't make the new ones correct. People change their minds to an incorrect belief all the time. Either way, time will tell. If I'm still blogging (and you're still reading) when I'm 40, we'll see how things turned out.

In conclusion, with this extensive post, I hope I have addressed all of your respective questions/thoughts/fears/etc. Like I said, I'd be more than happy to continue this via e-mail (I love getting e-mail! :-D ), but I doubt I'll be posting on the topic again for a while.

Update (09/24/03, 9:44 AM): What I forgot to put in the above post: Here are links to two other posts about this, both of which you will probably find interesting. The first is from Will at Crescat Sententia, another young'n who basically sees things from my point of view; the second is from PG at Half the Sins of Mankind, another young'n who thinks somewhat differently.

Lazy Days Of... Autumn


Today has been a pretty slow day for me - caught up on reading, shopping, etc - so I decided to continue my relaxedness with a post about something other than education. The topic? My other passion, cooking. If memory serves, I don't believe I've written a single post about food - there's a first time for everything, I suppose. And besides, if Eugene Volokh is posting recipies, then I'd better jump on the trend!

I love to play with flavor combinations when I cook. I like to use things in ways you wouldn't expect, or even better, in dishes you wouldn't expect them in. So when I found a recipie for the following, I simply had to give it a shot: roasted strawberries with black pepper. My first impression was that this sounded frankly disgusting, but it was so weird that I had to give it a shot. Here's the recipie:

---

2 pints fresh strawberries
3 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh cracked/ground black pepper

1) De-stem the strawberries and cut them into slices about 1/8 inch thick
2) Mix the strawberries and sugar in a bowl; let them chill in the fridge for a couple hours.
3) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
4) Toss the strawberries with the balsamic vinegar and black pepper.
5) Pour the whole mixture into a baking dish and let bake for 8-10 mins, or until the liquid is bubbling but before the berries get mushy. Serve immediately.

---

I just ate a gigantic bowl of these, and they were delicious. I've long been a fan of the strawberry/balsamic combination, and the pepper takes it to the next level. If any of you readers are adventurous in the kitchen, I highly reccomend this as an interesting, different, and highly pretentious (heh) dessert.

Anyway, with school and related events keeping me busy, I'll probably start writing about food occasionally. Blogging about cooking requires far less effort than education - I don't have to go look for articles about food when I can reccomend recipies I've used or cookbooks I'm reading.

The focus of the blog will remain education, of course, but I can only write about so many educrats before I start to lose faith in humanity, heh. I don't want to sound like a One Note Flute, so a little something different to break things up can't hurt, right? (In other words, let me know if you think food is interesting, if there's anything in particular you'd like to see posts about, or if you think it's just a terrible idea to stray from the main topic.)

The California Caucasian Club


I think I'm the last person in the blogosphere to post about the girl in California who wants to start a Caucasian Club in response (or as a compliment to, depending on who you ask) the Black Student Union and the Asian Club at her high school.

The reactions to her proposal were predictable - the NAACP is hopping mad, etc. Of course, I think it's hilarious, and it seems to be yet another example of how "diversity" really isn't in the eyes of its proponents.

My thoughts: I've often wondered what would happen if someone proposed a similar club here at Indiana University (or at any big, left-leaning state school - see also Berkeley). There's a club/group/center for almost every conceivable race/ethnicity save caucasian, and one would think that it would be a given that the school would have to allow such a club... But you never know. If anyone knows about "Caucasian Clubs" on college campuses (or even at other high schools), I'd be interested in any information about them - how they came to be, the administration's reaction, etc.

Follow-up: Personal Responsibility


I had intended to let the subject drop after my post, but a comment I read at another blog begged a response. I knew what I said would raise the ire of the more conservative edu-bloggers (who I hope can respect our differences and enjoy the rest of my posts, which tend to be similar in style and content - for diversity's sake, right? Heh.). Thus, a response such as

I don't think I could respond without sounding arrogant and patronizing. Let's just sum it up to say I think shame and guilt are necessary.

is something I would have expected and that I understand. If I shared this person's worldview and came across the statements I made, I would have reacted similarly, no doubt. This, however, threw me for a loop:

Nick grew up in the Clinton years. 'Nuff said.

Excuse me?

First, let me simply state that Bill Clinton has/had nothing to do with my personal beliefs. I certainly did not form all of my opinions on my own, of course - we are all to an extent a product of the world in which we live, the books we read, the parents who raised us, the friends we keep - but I have been both a strict Southern Baptist and an atheist, I have been both a Republican and a Socialist. I've thought about things a lot. I did not come to my current beliefs simply because they were the easiest, certainly not without much consideration, and absolutely not because Bill Clinton thinks that oral sex isn't sex.

Will my views always remain as they are today? I can't say for sure. What I can say for sure, however, is that I am my own person. I alone am responsible for my own thoughts, words, and actions. To say that someone so truly remote from myself - the President of the United States - could have such an effect on me is an insult, not only to me as a person, but to all persons who believe that responsibility for one's actions lie within.

Would the person who made the above comment so readily agree that his beliefs stem so exclusively from the fact that he was raised in the [Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, whatever] era? Would that person so readily absolve those whom he agrees with of the thought they put into their belief structure? It seems, in a word, doubtful.

Second, and of far less relevance in my opinion, is the fact that I really didn't like Clinton. The "playboy president" thing has never went over well with me, and Clinton rests near the bottom of my list (with Kennedy, especially, as well as FDR) for many other reasons. Who cares if he can play the saxophone? Who cares if he's "cool?" I don't want a president who's cool, I want a president who can do the job well.

In short: To tell me that I am such a product of the era I came of age in, to tell me that I have so little control over what I think, to tell me that what I believe comes from a talking head on a picture box as opposed to many years of thought and consideration, and on top of all that to effectively assume that everyone who is two decades older than me is somehow free from all of those influences - that is the most insulting thing I have heard in a very long time.

Update (9/20/03, 3:45 AM): As I was emailing a friend about this, I had a few more thoughts. I was initially apprehensive about admitting that I was a college student (an undergrad, no less) when I first started writing this blog - specifically because I was afraid that people would take my thoughts less seriously than they would someone who was "older and wiser." This hasn't been an issue before, and I don't know just how much of an issue it is now, but it certainly seems that my fears were not unfounded.

Why do people fall back onto the "I'm older and so I know more" arguement? Why is it that someone would think my thoughts don't deserve a response beyond "he's a product of the times?" Telling me (effectively) that my thoughts are meaningless drivel is, to say the least, a cop out.

If someone thinks I'm wrong, then they should show me why that is - and similarly if they think I'm right. Discourse that consists merely of "he's too young to know any better" is worthless to both parties. To conclude: feel free to disagree with me, feel free to say so, but please, don't insult me - or really, yourself - by using a worthless ad hominem arguement in an attempt to discredit my views.

Feedback on why ad hominem arguements are so prevelant and generally accepted (in all areas of discourse) is welcomed.

Darwin In The Classroom


For those of you who don't read EducationNews (or the Houston Chronicle), you should go have a look at this editorial.

In any case, design theorists are not the only scientific critics of Darwinism, and those asking for more accurate biology textbooks are not asking for the theory of intelligent design to be taught. Instead, they are asking that students learn all the evidence they need to assess Darwinian theory, not just the evidence that happens to supports (sic) it.

Fair enough. It's a great read and by far the best argument I've read in defense of the "teach the strengths and weaknesses" side. It is Darwin's theory of evolution, after all, not his law of evolution, and I can certainly appreciate critiques of a theory.

Shame On Me? I Don't Think So.


By now, I'm assuming that we're all familiar with the story about the 13-year-old girl who performed oral sex on a male classmate due to peer pressure from other students on a field trip. Kimberly at N2P was the first person to post on this (I believe), and she's attracted quite a few comments, including this one:

Were I this mother :::shudder::: I would be too busy hanging my head in shame and moving my family out of state to fight the decision.

Why is she not ashamed?

To which I responded:

Ashamed of what? She should most certainly be ashamed of her own actions (talk about the worst possible way to handle a situation) - but her daughter's actions are nothing to be ashamed of.

Due to the fact that I failed to 1) explain further what I meant and 2) realize that I have a different outlook on such things than most people, later responses included admonitions and requests to meet my (non-existant, I don't want kids until I'm out of college, thank you) daughter. Thus, I shall now try to state better what I meant.

First, I don't believe in shame. Or guilt. I think they're useless emotions, really; they only serve to make people feel bad about things that they have no control over. For instance, I did something a week ago that others might feel guilty about (see forthcoming post) - I, on the other hand, while relieved that the situation turned out quite well in the end, would not have felt guilty had it not. I would have done what I could to right my wrong, so to speak, but I would have never felt guilty.

Shame (defined at Dictionary.com as "A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace.") is virtually the same to me. I don't get it. I've never been ashamed of anything I did. Have I done things one way and later wished I had done them another? Of course, we all have.

What it comes down to for me, is that I think guilt and shame are negative emotions; that is, they encourage one to think about how things could be, or should be, or would be, when the reality is that things are as they are. Guilt and shame do not encourage people to change their reality. And really, sitting around and bemoaning life's miseries has never been a pastime of mine.

In short, since I was old enough to think for myself and realize the futility of such emotions (guilt, shame, embarassment, et al), I have avoided them at all costs. I have been able to do this because I simultaneously realized the virtue of making the best choice I can with the information I have (as well as personal responsibility). If I make the best decision I can given the data I have, then I simply cannot feel bad about that decision at a later date. If I know I did everything I could to do things right, and someone else wants to fault me because something went wrong in spite of my efforts, then they can feel free to - they may even be obligated to - but I refuse to fault myself.

This naturally extends to things that are out of my control. If someone else makes a poor decision which I had no control over, then I see no reason to feel bad about that myself.

And there's the catch, right, in the case of the 13-year-old girl? The mother should have had some control over the situation - that is to say, why didn't she teach her daughter about sex? About the dangers thereof? (In hindsight, perhaps also about how some adults like to do things in public that they shouldn't necessarily do?) Yes, perhaps the mother should feel ashamed of her daughter's actions; if the mother was lax in her parenting, then she is in a sense responsible for what happened. However, isn't it possible that the mother has done all she could, and yet her child makes bad decisions in spite of her efforts? There would be no shame (to the mother) in that.

I do feel that the mother should feel guilty/ashamed for her actions with respect to the school's decision. No one with even an ounce of common sense could possibly think that going after the school's lack of a ban on oral sex on field trips was the right way to handle this situation. Thus, as a member of society who wishes that all people would think about their actions before they commit them and who also wishes that people would accept personal responsibility when necessary, I must necessarily find fault with the mother's actions in this case.

As for the girl, unless she knew she was doing something that she thought was wrong, she has no reason to be ashamed of her actions. Does she need to have the ramifications of her actions explained? Absolutely. Does she need someone to shake her and tell her that she's a bad person and that she should feel guilty, should feel ashamed? Absolutely not. Given the two possibilities (she felt what she was doing was wrong, or she didn't), she will either already feel guilty/ashamed, or she won't. If she does feel ashamed/guilty, then she doesn't need anyone else piling on her emotionally when they should be explaining to her why going around giving out oral sex at the age of 13 probably isn't a good idea. If she doesn't feel ashamed, then she needs someone to do the aforementioned explaining - not someone to make her feel bad.

In the end, my point is twofold: First, it's not clear-cut to me that anyone should feel ashamed about what happened on that school bus. Second, regardless of whether anyone should feel guilty or not, what happened, happened, and the sooner someone explains to that 13-year-old girl why what she did was a bad choice - instead of explaining why it was wrong and she should feel ashamed and guilty - the better.

And that was what I meant to say in my comment.

From The "Duh" Department: College Textbooks Are Expensive


I think everyone appreciates an opportunity to complain about how expensive textbooks are - and the NY Times was gracious enough to give us a chance to do so!

It's actually a pretty good article - it talks a lot about students who go online to buy books, which is really the only way to go these days. The article did seem a little off base in one respect, though:

Humanities texts are generally cheaper, and much less likely to be bundled: French literature classes, for example, may ask for only an $8 copy of "Madame Bovary" and a $9 copy of "The Stranger."

Come again? I've never seen a literature class that required only two texts - and Madame Bovary and The Stranger (combined online purchase price: $2.99)? Sure, Madame Bovary is a drag, but the Stranger is a good book and a fast read - what kind of sorry excuse for a French Lit class only reads two books in a whole semester?

Further, humanites classes don't really end up being significantly cheaper overall; they just end up having cheaper individual books. For example, I'm taking three history courses and one philosophy course this term, and my books ran right about $450 (I got most of them used at the bookstore, so that I could just pay for them with my bursar account). The total ended up being so high because each one of these classes has at least five books.

The moral of the story: if you don't have financial aid covering your bursar bill, buy your books at Half.com. Sell them there, too - you get a lot more than the $5 that the bookstore offers you.

Something like this is just another one of the many important ways that the Internet is changing the world. The important stuff isn't what you see on TV, it's what you use daily and take for granted. Places like Ebay / Half.com are showing the world how a true free market economy works to everyone's benefit, crazy as it sounds. (I can buy something I want for a price I'm willing to pay? Perish the thought!) I can't wait till I can buy my education - and not just my books - in a similar fashion.

Parents Upset About... Recess?!


A friend of mine (hi, Erinpuff!) sent me this link - it's from the newspaper in her hometown, the Evening Star, and concerns her old elementary school. It's a refreshing reminder that not all education news is about "diversity" or NCLB, actually. It seems that parents are up in arms because the recess/lunch period have been cut from a full hour to a half hour.

A controversial reduction in recess time brought an audience of 80 people to the Hamilton Community Schools board meeting Monday night.

Two mothers told the board that 30 minutes is not enough for a combined lunch-recess period at Hamilton Elementary School.

After hearing stories about tiny Hamilton, Indiana, I was kind of surprised to find that 80 people even live there - but I digress. Personally, I think 30 minutes is enough time to eat lunch and play a bit - it's all the time we got at my elementary and middle schools, and at my high school, we only got 25 minutes to eat.

“The effect of confinement and overwork stress is already apparent in many children and adults in the building,” [parent Susan] Griffith said.

How stressed out can elementary school kids be? Overworked? What, they just can't deal with all the pasting and coloring? I realize that elementary school isn't the same now as when I was there, but it can't be that crazy. I've got a younger brother in third grade, and he sure isn't overworked. (Yes, I know that that doesn't mean that these kids aren't - but really.) To me, it seems like these parents are who's overworked and confined, and they're just projecting this onto otherwise happy kids.

Anyway, the article goes on and on - the parents are desperately worried that their kids aren't getting enough playtime. I want to shake them all and scream, "Your children are in school! They go to school to learn, not to play! L E A R N! That's what school is for!" But that's probably because I'm too tired to be anything much other than bitter right now, heh.

Update (09/17/03, 6:45 PM): My friend has just alerted me that her "hometown's paper is the Hamilton News. The Evening Star is Auburn, Indiana's paper." Mea culpa.

Further, we were discussing this when she pointed out that the third-graders and below still have an hour of recess (on top of a half hour for lunch); I think that's pretty silly. Is the school board saying that the younger children's test scores aren't as important, and that they can have more goof-off time? Or is this just one of those seemingly random administrative decisions?

And In Old News, Are College Athletes Disconnected From Academic Life?


Another NYT article, this one about a new study/book coming out that claims that college athletes "have little connection to student life." What a shock.

...the study found that the recruited athletes were admitted with significantly lower grades and College Board scores and then performed more poorly than would be expected for students with those grades and test scores.

There are a number of ways to explain this, but I'm a fan of Occham and his razor: these "student"-athletes concentrated on their sport more than their studies. They passed their high school classes because nobody likes a teacher who fails the star quaterback and messes up his academic eligibility. They got the SAT scores they did (I'm sure there are statistics on athletes' scores, but I'm not sure where) thanks to special tutoring - or perhaps they didn't even bother with that, knowing that they'd be accepted into college or not based solely on their athletic ability. Then, once in college, they concentrate even harder on their sport - after all, the big leagues only take the best - and their studies languish off to the side, meaning that they can't even live up to the meager expectations set by their inflated (yet often still low) high school GPAs.

[Authors of the study and book Sarah A. Levin] and Dr. [William G.] Bowen said greater competition in college sports and the fear of having losing teams had increasingly led top colleges to recruit athletes who had trained intensively from a young age, often to the exclusion of other interests.

"One driver is the fear of humiliation," Dr. Bowen said.

...

Although many college officials lamented the problem, they said they could not make changes unless others did, too, or they would have losing teams.

"Reform has to be simultaneously local and national," William D. Adams, president of Colby College, one of the schools in the study, said during the presentation last week. "No one wants to go this alone."

Looks like Occham and I would be right - but we would have forgotten to address an important question: why would a college accept someone with a middling GPA and dismal test scores? Humiliation. That's right, humiliation. God forbid that the University of Chicago should lose a football game.

Now, frankly, I think that the elite schools that were studied should feel humiliated because they have readily admitted to accepting vastly inferior students so that their athletic teams can perform well. To make clear my views: I don't believe in public schools, so in my perfect world where all schools were private, if schools wanted to focus on athletics over academics, they certainly could - but I think that such a focus would be to their detriment. Either way, it seems odd to see the Big Names in academia ("Williams, Amherst, Tufts, Wesleyan, Bryn Mawr, Smith and Wellesley") worried about being humiliated on the track and/or field.

On the bright side, Vanderbilt seems to have some good ideas:

Last week, Vanderbilt, which was not in the study, announced that it was reorganizing its athletic programs to try to integrate them more into academic and student life.

"What Bill Bowen is saying is tragic but true," the Vanderbilt chancellor, E. Gordon Gee, said in an interview on Friday. "But I am not going to accept that that is the way it has to be. We are trying to break that barrier down. I think we can be competitive on and off the field, and create a model where our athletes are scholars and learners too."

Early readers of this blog will recall that some of my first posts were about sports and schools; I don't think they have anything to do with each other and I do think that the focus on athletics (especially in public schools, especially at the high school level) is abhorrent. However, since they now seem inextricably linked, the least schools could do is mimic Vandy and take the effort to make sure that they're more than $40k/year sport clubs.

An "E" For Effort


That's what NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein should get, at the very least. I don't agree with everything he's done - the new, universal curriculum, for instance - but he sure is giving the NYC schools his best shot, for what it's worth.

Today's NY Times reports that schools are going to have to do a much better job at tracking students who drop out - starting by actually marking the students as dropouts.

The new procedures call for each school to assign an assistant principal to be responsible for discharges, and compile a monthly record of every student who has been called in for the planning conference required before a student leaves the school.

At the conference, school officials will be required to explore educational options open to the student, including re-enrolling at any time before the end of the school year in which they turn 21.

That's a good idea. Like Joanne Jacobs, I don't necessarily see the pushout problem in the same light that the NY Times does; some kids just aren't cut out for high school. However, I do think that these students need to be aware of their rights, and as ridiculous as I think New York's laws are (21 year olds in high school? I wonder who will have the best parties...), it's only fair that the counselor at least lets them know what they can and cannot do.

I would say that most of the kids who were pushed out probably couldn't care less one way or the other, but maybe some of them will change their mind and turn their lives around - and if they do, then they need to know that they can re-enroll. Easy enough, right? But, of course, you can't make all of the people happy all of the time:

"I don't see how this prevents people from telling students, `You should leave and go to G.E.D.,' " said Elisa Hyman, a lawyer for Advocates for Children, which has filed a class-action suit over the issue. The G.E.D. is a battery of tests taken to qualify for a high school equivalency diploma.

I don't see the issue here. While it's not exactly the same (and it's purely anecdotal), I spent four years of my life skipping class and avoiding homework at expensive private colleges; I really wish someone had grabbed me by the shoulders and shaken me until I decided to take some time off to figure out where I was going with my life (which is what I eventually did). If these kids are skipping class and getting into fights (like the ones mentioned in the summer articles exposing this were), then maybe they need someone to tell them to just get on out of the school system, get their GED, and move on with their lives.

Those who teach at equivalency programs say that only a small minority of the high school-age students actually finish the program — while most reach an academic dead end soon after their discharge.

...That's the student's fault, not the state's. In almost every (if not every) case, what prevents these former students from getting a GED is a lack of motivation. On top of the programs that the NYC public schools offer for such students, community colleges also offer remedial courses to help out students who are trying to obtain a high school equivalency. These programs are designed to fit into the schedules of busy people who work 40, 60, sometimes even 80 hours a week. Sure, it's tough - but if these kids wanted their diplomas/equivalencies, they're there for the taking.