Twilight of the Idols

2007-12-05T03:27:00.001-05:00

Although my blogging in general has waxed and waned over the years, my most recent project can be found at UnCivilPro.com/blog - I'm planning on redoing that site a bit and starting it up again over the next few weeks.

Twilight of the Idols, or TotI, as I called it, was my first blogging project and lasted from mid-2003 through the beginning of 2004. Although my ideas and attitudes regarding just about everything, including education, which is what I primarily wrote about here, have changed significantly since those indignant undergrad years - and weren't everyone's undergrad years indignant? - I figure I'll leave these posts here for the perusal of whomever comes long.

I may not necessarily agree with what I wrote here 4 years ago, but write it I did, and since you can't ever delete anything from the Internet anyway, here TotI will stay.

2004-02-07T02:46:00.000-05:00

Argh!
In my absense from posting here - far too long already, I realize - don't forget to read the Hoosier Review. I post regularly there, as I find a lot more things that I can write about a lot more quickly that go with the general themes there.

Writing about education is interesting and rewarding and not something I want to stop, but with stacks of crazy classes and meetings to organize, it's often just easier to put up a blurb or two about more general news events. I'll do what I can, heh.

2004-01-27T09:43:00.000-05:00

Homeschoolers Are People, Too

Of course, this AP Education writer seems shocked by the revelation - but then, I suppose, so are a lot of people. The article is pretty positive about homeschooling, which is a refreshing change. Unfortunately, that postive attitude comes with a price; the writer manages to note that homeschooling is better than traditional schooling because there are no standardized tests:

Such young people have grown up academically with a greater emphasis on learning — rather than testing — compared with conventionally educated students, said Laura Derrick of the Home Education Network.

*sighs* You can't win them all. On an eerie side note, the University of Evansville (which I attended for two years) is mentioned at the bottom of the article.

2004-01-25T12:39:00.000-05:00

Ahhh, Bureaucracy!

Michael Winerip's latest column in the NY Times is worth a read. He gives the dirt on a set of schools in NYC that are doing quite well for themselves, but - due to bureaucratic nonsense - are now labeled as failing.

Ridiculous stuff like this is why federal control of education (heck, of anything) is a terrible idea. Ignoring for the moment that I don't care one bit for public education, I can still readily assert that local school boards know more about what their students need than administrators and legislators in Washington, DC do. We'll see how long No Child Left Behind makes it before either a) it gets overturned, repealed, or otherwise eviscerated or b) it becomes obvious to everyone that the goals it sets will not be met. I wonder which will happen first...

2004-01-18T15:03:00.000-05:00

You Must Be Kidding Me: Student-Athletes Need MORE Money And Benefits?!?!

From the New York Times:

...California Senate Bill 193 was a blinking red light that captured the attention of the organization that oversees thousands of students participating in athletics at hundreds of institutions.

The bill, which has been approved by the State Senate, calls for California universities that belong to the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I to pay athletes the full cost of attendance.

That would include the room and board and books that come with the standard athletic scholarship, as well as extra items, like emergency travel and some out-of-season medical expenses for athletes for injuries that linger after the season.

What the heck do athletes do for society that is so valuable that people's hard-earned wages - after being converted into tax dollars by the state, of course - need to pay for their entire college education (which is almost invariably in "General Studies")?! Seriously, this proposal is so ridiculous as to render me almost incapable of making a well-reasoned point that doesn't involve at least five of George Carlin's seven words you can't say on television.

Of course, I don't support sports in colleges in the first place - they're always a drain on the school's money (as a whole - some individual sports may make money at some schools, but to my knowledge there is no solvent sports program in any school in the US). Sure, I don't think athletes should get scholarships based on their athletic ability - I mean, hello, they're called scholarships, not athletiships! - but it's a longstanding trend in the US. This proposal, though, is absolutely absurd - and of course, California isn't the only state doing this:

The California bill has pushed the N.C.A.A. to mount its own reform effort, including a new initiative that would pay student-athletes an additional $2,400 a year.

The N.C.A.A. membership considers the initiative its issue because other states — including Nebraska, Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma — are considering expanded financial support for student-athletes.

If we're going to have state-run schools and have our tax dollars pay for kids to get a college degree (which I think is a dubious proposal, to say the least - but that is neither here nor there), then the very least the state could do is offer money to people who want to do something a bit more genuinely productive with their lives - offer free schooling to people who are training to be doctors or chemists or teachers - not athletes!

Are college sports so vital to the existence of America, so essential to the very fabric of our being, that we as citizens should be coerced by our state governments to not only pay for their ability to play by funding the stadiums they play in and the schools they attend but to in fact directly pay the players themselves by rewarding them with a college degree as well as a place to live and food to eat while they "earn" it? I think not.

2004-01-15T10:06:00.000-05:00

A Step In The Right Direction

A commission of leaders from a variety of fields has put together a report saying that merit-based pay raises will greatly increase the quality of instruction in schools.

The best part? While the writer naturally interviewed representatives of teacher unions (who aren't so keen on the idea, as one might expect), the teacher interviewed in the article concedes that the idea is fair:

Parrish says it seems fair. The school, she says, has greatly expanded regular training for teachers, and the student evaluation is done in a way designed to minimize factors outside her control, such as whether a child comes from a poor home. Still, she's nervous.

"I tell you, as many years as I've been in teaching, I've had good years and bad years," she said, referring to both her own performance and some unruly classes. "There are years I'd hate to think that I'd be paid based on the performance of the children given the situation I was given. You don't want to make excuses, but on the other hand, it needs to be fair."

2004-01-12T11:29:00.000-05:00

Never Underestimate The Power Of Human Stupidity

This Reuters article is just ridiculous - I'm amazed that this scheme worked once and I'm not exactly sure how anyone could be so dumb as to think it would again. Here is the article in full:

German police are investigating after an angry man returned a computer he had just bought saying it was packed with small potatoes instead of computer parts.

The store replaced the computer free of charge but became suspicious when he returned a short time later with another potato-filled computer casing, police in the western city of Kaiserslautern said on Monday.

"The second time he said he didn't need a computer any more and asked for his money back in cash," a police spokesman said.

Police are now investigating the man for fraud.

Geesh.

2004-01-11T23:08:00.000-05:00

Back In The Saddle Again

Well, I have been back in Bloomington for a few days now. I've got my apartment well on its way to being clean and organized - I didn't move, but I hadn't cleaned in about two months. (ick!)

At any rate, I am feeling a lot better than I did three weeks ago. I slept a lot over break, and I spent most of the rest of the time either hanging out with my wonderful girlfriend or my family (or both - my family likes her more than they like me, heh).

The good news: for Christmas, I received a pile of books - Diane Ravitch's The Language Police, the Thernstroms' No Excuses, Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, and plenty more. Currently, I'm reading Language Police, and it's excellent. The book tends to have less meat than I'd hoped - Ravitch assumes that her readers have thought and read a lot about the subject and because of this she doesn't form her arguments as well as she could have. My opinion so far: while Ravitch may not convince anyone who isn't already convinced, her book is worth reading for the train-wreck value at the very least.

And as for posting, I'm not sure how my workload will be this term, but I know I'll be taking time to keep up with things here. No promises on just how often - I imagine it'll probably two or three times a week, though. For now, expect further thoughts on my Christmas books as I read them as well as whatever other interesting education-related tidbits I dig up.

I hope everyone's holidays went well - and it's good to be back!

2003-12-29T19:37:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year (Almost!)

My break has been going pretty well - and (for those of you who are on break) I hope yours has been as well!

And as always, it's nice to be home... But I can't wait to leave, heh.

2003-12-22T03:57:00.000-05:00

Very, Very Temporary Hiatus

As I'm sure you've noticed, my posts have dwindled from twice a day to twice a week. Since Thanksgiving Break, I've been snowed by massive amounts of reading and paper-writing, and now I'm back at home for Christmas Break and my ability to access the 'net is rather spotty. Thus, I will be taking a break from even worrying about posting until the second week of January. (And besides, next term should be a lot easier on me, and I should be able to post more frequently and more substantially.)

In short: I had a long term and I need a break, so I'm going to take one. I may post something between now and the second week of January - if I see something that I want to say something about, I will - but don't be shocked if you don't see an update for a couple weeks.

P.S.: Do check back - I enjoy blogging/writing and I enjoy the feedback I get from you regular readers. I don't want you to all disappear on me. :-)

2003-12-18T03:52:00.000-05:00

OT: If You're Going To Review A Movie...

...then at least know something about it. I don't think I'm being nitpicky when I point out that Gollum is not a goblin. Is it an apt description? Sure. But given that goblins actually exist in the realm of the movie being discussed, and also given that Gollum is emphatically not one, it's a pretty big error, I think.

Okay, okay, I'll admit it - I do think I'm being nitpicky. Heh.

2003-12-15T10:33:00.000-05:00

Someone Taking Responsibility For Something

It seems that NYC Mayor Bloomberg has realized that there is all-but-no discipline in city schools, and he's taking responsibility as well as doing something about the problem. It sounds crazy, but it's true - here it is:

"We've screwed up," Mr. Bloomberg said on his weekly radio program, offering an unusually blunt mea culpa for the city's failure to move quickly to suspend dangerous students and provide them with timely hearings.

...

"You can't blame anyone else," said the mayor, who fought for control of the school system last year and won. "Blame me. I wanted control. I got control, and I am going to do something about it."

Cool.

2003-12-15T10:29:00.000-05:00

Eureka!

Today's NY Times has an interesting article about a previously-thought-to-be-lost mathematics text by Archimedes.

2003-12-09T23:27:00.000-05:00

I'm Drowning...

...in a sea of work. I've got to write 16-23 pages (between two papers) due Thursday, bright and early. I imagine it'll be at least Thursday night before I post anything else, and probably the weekend. The end of the term has been eating me alive - I also had two papers due last Thursday - and I'm feeling it.

On the bright side, of course, it's almost all over. And then it's Mass-consumer-mastime! Sweet! Presents! Heh.

2003-12-06T16:07:00.000-05:00

No Muslim Head Scarves In French Schools

You've probably seen a news brief somewhere about the debate in France over whether Muslim students should be allowed to wear head scarves or not. The French government is pretty adamant that the students should not be allowed to, and according to the New York Times, this is French President Jacques Chirac's stance on the matter:

President Jacques Chirac of France denounced Muslim head scarves on schoolgirls as offensive and expressed concern about Islamic fundamentalism on Friday as momentum built up in France to bar all religious symbols from public schools.

Speaking on a visit to Tunisia, Mr. Chirac said the strictly secular French state could not let students wear what he called "ostentatious signs of religious proselytism" and saw "something aggressive" in the wearing of traditional Muslim veils.

Yes, you read that right.

As for myself, I think the fact that there's even a debate over this shows the sad state of freedom in the world. What, exactly, is the point of having public schools if they are not left open to the entirety of the public? And I think the religious discrimination aspect of this is blantantly obvious.

Really, at this point, how can France even claim to be a free country? See the AP wire article quoted here:

Each year, there are about 150 complaints involving head scarves, according to Hanifa Cherifi, the Education Ministry's mediator who intervenes in crisis situations. Unresolved cases lead to expulsion fewer than 50 last year, Cherifi said.

...

The Council of State, France's highest administrative body, has said scarves should be banned only when they are of an ``ostentatious character.'' It left schools to make that judgment case by case.

The same rules apply to Jewish skullcaps and Catholic crucifixes. But there have been no public incidents triggered by students insisting on wearing skullcaps or "ostentatious'' crosses. There are many private Jewish schools in France, where skullcaps can be worn, but only two such Muslim schools.

In July, a Lyon court ruled against a civil servant suspended for refusing to remove her scarf at work...

Even if one were to assume that the rules are applied equally to all members of all religions - which is a dubious assumption to make, I think - this would still be discrimination. As irreligious as I am, I still have respect for others' faiths, and I can say quite unequivocally that an anti-theist policy is certainly not neutral - it's discrimination.

This whole mess seems to parallel the Locke v. Davey case that the Supreme Court is currently considering here in the US. Should the government (even a state government) be able to deny a student financial aid because of the field the student has chosen to study? What if the government tried to withhold money for students majoring in, say, African-American Studies?

For all the commentary you could want on Locke v. Davey, see Eugene Volokh's post here, Walloworld's here, and John Rosenberg's here.

P.S.: Don't forget, that if we privatized education, not only would we not have to waste tax dollars on ineffective public schools, we also wouldn't have to waste money on having the Supreme Court decide cases about who gets what public money for what education. Call me crazy, but that sounds nice.

2003-12-03T11:41:00.000-05:00

Yet Another "Good Student" Who Can't Get Into College

Today's New York Times features an article on the mess that is the Houston Independent School District.

Most of the information in the article won't be anything new to people who have been following the stories from Texas; if you haven't, then give the article a quick read.

What caught my eye was this story:

As a student at Jefferson Davis High here, Rosa Arevelo seemed the "Texas miracle" in motion. After years of classroom drills, she passed the high school exam required for graduation on her first try. A program of college prep courses earned her the designation "Texas scholar."

At the University of Houston, though, Ms. Arevelo discovered the distance between what Texas public schools called success and what she needed to know. Trained to write five-paragraph "persuasive essays" for the state exam, she was stumped by her first writing assignment. She failed the college entrance exam in math twice, even with a year of remedial algebra. At 19, she gave up and went to trade school.

"I had good grades in high school, so I thought I could do well in college," Ms. Arevelo said. "I thought I was getting a good education. I was shocked."

I can't help but think that this is becoming the norm. Grade inflation (among other things) convinces students that they're doing well when they're not, and ineffective (or sometimes non-existent) testing lets kids who need years of remedial work obtain diplomas. In short: as shocked as Ms. Arevelo may have been, sadly, I'm not shocked at all.

2003-12-02T23:38:00.000-05:00

Milestone: 5,000 Hits

And in less than six months, too. Thanks, everyone!

2003-12-02T00:36:00.000-05:00

Harry Browne Is Out; Harry Potter Is In

Is Harry Potter the new savior of libertarians everywhere? Eryk Boston makes a good case for it over at the Libertarian Party's website, to be sure:

I'm not the first person to point out that the Harry Potter books have a libertarian flavor. The wizarding world in the series has a private banking system and no apparent zoning laws. Wizards have the right to carry a wand -- more dangerous than any firearm -- at all times for the express purpose of self-defense. The schools are largely independent (until this book). Dumbeldore, the most powerful wizard alive, actively avoids a position in government. Independent action is celebrated. Notably absent is any mention of a system of taxation.

The article focuses more on the most recent book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - give it a read. (Hat tip: Milt's File)

2003-12-02T00:14:00.000-05:00

An Interesting Question:

Many people who support limits on free speech (such as making hate speech a crime or campus speech codes) are also quite socially liberal and support things like gay marriage. So here's my question: Which do you support more?

Why do I ask? Well, because a kid in Louisiana recently got in trouble for referring to his lesbian parents as "gay" - "gay" is a "bad word," after all. Wait'll you get a load of his punishment:

The following week, Marcus had to come to school early and repeatedly write: "I will never use the word 'gay' in school again."

Um, news flash: every time he wrote that sentence, he was commiting the same offense. Is this some new form of recursive punishment? Will he have to come in next week and write "I will never write the senctence 'I will never use the word "gay" in school again' in school again?" That could get old really fast. Besides, doesn't this punishment seem a bit odd? I can't imagine a similar punishment being exacted on a student who used a racial epithet.

Naturally, the ACLU is involved on the student's behalf, and Peter over at Catholic School Blogger wonders why; "Wouldn't it have been easier for the school administration to admit they made a mistake and move on," he asks. Well, yes, it would have been. But that'd require an administrator to remove his head from his rear long enough to do so - and I don't think I'm going to hold my breath waiting on that.

2003-11-27T01:55:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mmmm, turkey.

I'm back in Evansville for the break - as always, it's sorta good to be home. Heh. Posting wil be light (or possibly non-existant) until Sunday or Monday, since most of the computers here at the family homestead don't work very well or often.

And besides, we all know that relatives are more fun that blogs. Don't we? Anyone? Aww, never mind.

2003-11-24T02:40:00.000-05:00

Just One Of The Problems With Plagiarism

While reading over EducationNews.org, I saw a Straits-Times Asia article about the ever-growing problems with internet plagiarism.

Chances are if you're reading this, you're familiar with the concept of internet plagiarism. It's not hard to find sites offering essays on any number of topics; sometimes they're free, and sometimes they cost money, but in any case, they're everywhere. The article gives an overview of the issues.

So here's my issue with the article: It starts out with a story about a neophyte teacher who catches five (FIVE!) students in one of her classes using material copypasted off the 'net. What happens next?

After she told her mentor about it, the students received a stern warning and almost scored zero for the assignment, which accounted for 20 per cent of their continuous assessment grades.

But she pleaded on their behalf and they were given five out of 20 marks for handing in their work.

'My heart went out to those kids because I don't think they realised how serious a crime plagiarism is,' she said.

Guess what: they still don't realize how serious a crime it is. Sure, they lost 15% of their final grade, but unless the grading scales in Singapore are significantly different than they are here (which could be the case), then that's not too awful much. Not enough to keep them from doing it again - merely enough to encourage them not to get caught doing it again.

Basically, the problem is that (according to the article, anyway) these kids didn't learn why what they did was wrong; they just learned that they weren't supposed to do it - not an awfully effective lesson, as I said. And of course, this story just happens to be about Singaporean students and teachers. This scenario plays out daily in US classrooms, too - and chances are that students here face even fewer consequences.

2003-11-22T02:12:00.000-05:00

"Free" College Tuition? Yeah, Right.

An editorial in the Indiana Daily Student on Thursday asked students to call for free college tuition. Now, we all know that if the government pays for something, it's not free. Well - not all of us, I guess, since this fact eludes the author.

Anyway, I wrote a couple posts about this over at Hoosier Review, my home away from home. If the permalinks still don't work, just scroll down till you see (or search for) "Nick Blesch" - you'll find 'em.

On a side note, I forgot to point out in those posts that although Mr. Bartet calls for the government to pay tuition, he ignores housing, meal plans, activity fees, etc. Here at IU (and at most universities, I would guess), tuition is often far less than half of the cost of attendance. Thus, I don't think that government-funded tuition would make a significant difference in the number of people who could attend college anyway - but that might just be because I'm part "of the elite in society." Sure. Heh.

2003-11-19T15:58:00.000-05:00

Forecast: Heavy Paper-Writing With Intermittent Blogging

This week has been killing me - I've got one paper down and another to go. On the bright side, the paper is due tomorrow, which means that I'll get it finished sometime today. Heh.

2003-11-18T17:29:00.000-05:00

Why Are We Here? (In College, That Is)

An excellent editorial from the Indiana Daily Student basically poses this question. The editorial staff asks one of the same questions I've often asked here:

Has the very meaning of college become so focused on socialization, sporting events and parties that it has lost sight of its true purpose of higher learning? Have we sacrificed our right to a quality education for the sanctity of sport?

And, of course, you don't want to hear their answer:

Well … yes.

It seems like college has been redefined in the context of the basketball court rather than the lecture hall, and while we wholeheartedly support every athletic squad, we need to take issue with how much attention we devote to campus sports.

I do find it heartening to learn that I'm not the only person on campus who's here for an education, and not good seats at basketball games. Go read the rest of it - it's short and well worth your time.

2003-11-16T23:57:00.000-05:00

A Positive View On Homeschooling In The NY Times

Of course, the person talking about how great homeschooling is says such in a letter to the editor, but that's something, right? The best part, you ask - she thinks organized sports are a waste of time, too!

Now, before you get mad at me in the comments, note that her letter comes in response to an article in last Wednesday's NYT that described the high-pressure world of young kids and traveling sports teams.

Personally, I'm no fan of organized sports, but I realize that they present a lot of good opportunities for kids, etc, etc, etc - you don't have to convince me that just because I didn't like them means that no one does. However, I will say that nine-year-old kids simply ought to have better things to do with their time than play on sports teams organized by parents who are more interested in their own vicarious glory than whether or not the kids are having fun.

Her letter: It has turned out to be a blessing that my children had no interest in organized sports. Skiing, sledding, hiking, biking and swimming have provided them ample opportunities to exercise and practice social skills — at times of our choosing.

The entire family has benefited from our relaxed schedule, and since we parents often participate (instead of simply chauffeuring and watching from the sidelines), it's helped us to stay fit and active as well.

While I'm happy for families who enjoy having their kids on teams, my suggestion to my children when they have their own families will be this: Consider keeping your children barely aware that organized sports even exist!

If they choose to home-school, the way I did, this won't be so difficult to do.

Music to my ears...

2003-11-14T14:37:00.000-05:00

What If He'd Worn A Kilt?

From the New York Times:

Even now, no one is entirely sure why Kevin Dougherty, 15, showed up for school one day last month wearing a floral skirt and matching scarf tied jauntily around his neck. Pantyhose, eye shadow and lipstick completed the look.

When administrators at the high school sent him home for refusing to change clothes, he left, but also called the local newspapers and the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union. Now, nearly two weeks later, the town is still buzzing, though there is no consensus whether it was simply a defiant Halloween costume, as school officials and their lawyers maintain, or a constitutionally protected act of protest, as Kevin says.

I certainly believe that the only way the state can be neutral in its acceptance of people's lifestyles is by taking no stand - in this case, that either means letting people wear what they want or (better yet) just getting rid of public schools in the first place.

The Connecticut Civil Liberties Union told the school in a letter dated Nov. 3 that Kevin's "expressive conduct" was "squarely within the protection of the First Amendment." It also asked the school to "allow both girls and boys the option of wearing a dress to school."

Well, news flash for the CCLU: you're not going to win this one. Good fight, good night. In the unlikely event that they do, to those of you who think that cross-dressing is abhorrent: this is why I support full privatization. Then your kids can go to a private school where they can avoid all the stuff you want them to, and you won't even be wasting your tax money to subsidize the public schools you don't use. Bonus points for that, right?

Side note: I've never understood why Republicans/conservatives, who are allegedly for small government, individual (or at least states') rights, and so on argue just as vehemently against privatization as the left does.

Anyway: Don't forget that in the end no one cares anyway:

There is no indication that other high school students are either riveted by Kevin's act or sympathetic to it.

"This whole entire thing was done for attention," said Vince Ducibella, a sophomore, barely looking up from his homework.

But none of this answers the question I posed in the title - and it's something that I think would have been a better test of the policy - what if he had worn a kilt? It's a traditionally male garment, but let's face it: as cool as kilts are, they are basically skirts.

2003-11-13T00:59:00.000-05:00

The Discussion After The Town Hall Meeting

To recap: On Wednesday, Nov. 11, there was an Affirmative Action Bake Sale here at IU. I attended both the bake sale and the Town Hall meeting which was called in response.

After the meeting wrapped up - which took quite some time - I walked over to speak with someone who had asked me a question during the meeting. I felt that I had given an incomplete answer due to time constraints, and I wanted to make myself more clear. He remained unconvinced.

Following this, a woman who had been at the bake sale came up to me and she (basically) wanted to yell at me some more. While trying to deal with her, this guy comes up and informs me that I am "ignorant" and that I have a "one track mind" and that I "need to watch talking like that or [I] might get hurt." Barring the typical school-bully stuff in middle school, never in my life have I been threatened with physical violence; on top of being a bit surprised, I was pretty ticked off. So I did what works best: I stopped slouching, so that I was actually 6'5" tall, and asked him if he was threatening me. He walked off, came back a couple minutes later; of all people, Yelling Girl chased him off, apologizing for him as she did. I guess she hates my guts, but doesn't want to see me get jumped - for that, I am grateful.

Anyway, after she left, I found myself talking with a couple people who were pro-AA but were willing to listen to what I had to say (one of them was mentioned in my first post as having been worried that he would have to physically defend me). As I spoke with them, several other people came up, and it pretty much turned into an open discussion about my thoughts on AA.

I fielded questions from everyone; while other people occasionally answered questions, I was the de facto focus because I was the odd man out as far as viewpoints went. (Although my girlfriend, Tina, did arrive pretty early on, and she helped back me up - thanks!) The discussion naturally started out with questions about my opinions on AA, why I thought it was a Very Bad Thing, etc. I provided the best answers I could, and because of the situation - a small group of people who were all open-minded enough to hear me out - things went very smoothly. (For instance, unlike earlier in the afternoon, no one was calling me a racist.)

Then, after making the point that the primary/secondary schools are the problem and that AA covers up that deficiency, one of the women asked me what I would do to fix the school system. (She didn't know what she was getting herself into, did she? Heh.) So I did what I could to make Hayek and von Mises proud, and I explained in detail why I thought full privatization is the only way to go.

Now, I didn't change any minds right off. However, everyone seemed pretty interested in what I had to say about it; the girl who had initially expressed her disgust with the public school system even requested links to a couple articles I had mentioned. And even if she doesn't ever agree with me completely - I realize that my views on school privatization are pretty radical - she's at least going to sit down and think about what I said. That's all I can ask out of anyone, really.

To say the least, out of all the day's events, I got the most pleasure out of the opportunity to explain libertarianism and free-market economies to a group of people.

So, what's left to talk about?

I have one question that's still nagging at me: IU doesn't have an undergraduate AA program, but I had more than one undergrad come up and assert that AA was how they got into IU... Why? Is it the self-esteem aspect? Did these students really think that they couldn't have gotten into IU on their own (even though there was no other way they could have)? Or did they think that institutional racism was so completely embedded in IU's fabric that only a (non-existent!) government policy could get them into IU?

Is there another reason I'm missing here? Or does someone have a better analysis of the situation? Suggestions are welcome.

2003-11-12T02:34:00.000-05:00

Today Was A Busy Day!

Classes, meetings, and a discussion about Professor Rasmusen's weblog kept me pretty busy today - regularly scheduled blogging (including my post about the discussion after the town hall meeting) will resume this afternoon!

2003-11-11T01:39:00.000-05:00

I've Got A New Job! Well, Sort Of

Good news of the day: I've been invited to blog with the crew at Hoosier Review!

Check out my inaugural post here, and Editor-in-Chief Zach Wendling's welcome here.

I'll continue to post here, of course - not only do both blogs have a different focus, but I'll be writing in completely different styles, to boot. So check out Hoosier Review for "rapid-fire punditish stuff" loosely focused on higher education and south-central Indiana issues, and keep coming back here for long-winded rants about all levels of education, the evils of government, and (I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but) Star Wars.

2003-11-10T14:51:00.000-05:00

Geek Alert: Why The Star Wars Sequels Don't Measure Up

Okay, I haven't yet been a real geek on this blog. It's high time I started, so here's a post about - of all things - Star Wars. Paul has a post up in which he (tokenly) compares Joel Silver's sellout of the Matrix series to Lucas' sellout of the Star Wars franchise. I would assert that Lucas committed the larger error.

The Matrix sequels did not, in my opinion, measure up to the original. In fact, I think they're almost parodies of it - in the four years between the release of the original and the sequels, dozens of films came out using the same devices. The slick black leather, the cool shades, and so help me, the bullet-time special effects simply aren't new anymore. Since the sequels seemed to concentrate more on special effects that cool plotline, they suffered.

This isn't to say that the special effects weren't still cool - the epic car chase in Reloaded was worth the price of admission. What it does mean is that all the stuff that made the first movie so cool is now a cliche. What the Matrix did right was stay fairly true to its roots from a plot perspective. The scope of the plot expanded, sure - but the sequels retained the same small-band-of-good-guys (and a messiah) against the huge-band-of-bad-guys (and an anti-messiah) plot perspective that the first movie had.

So, what about Star Wars? No doubt, the original movies were cliches in the first place - they were the sci-fi embodiment of the classic good vs. evil fairy tale. Luke was the (Jedi) knight in shining armor who gallantly rode his horse/X-wing into battle against Evil. The thing is, this is a great story. We've all heard it before, sure - but Star Wars 4-6 did a great job of retelling it in a different light.

Why is it, then, that Star Wars 1-2 (and probably 3) just don't measure up? Because they not only change the story being told (that whole good vs. evil thing went right out the window), they also change the way in which the storytelling itself occurs.

Star Wars 4-6 were great movies because they told a HUGE story from a few small and insignificant (but interesting) characters' points of view. Luke was a nobdy in the first movie, remember? He was Red 5 - not Red Leader - when they went to blow up that first Death Star. He would have remained a nobody if it hadn't been for that "one in a million" shot. (Well, actually, I guess he would have been dead, but you see my point.) Han Solo was just some random smuggler who could fly pretty well; Leia was an insignificant diplomat.

These characters only mattered because of the roles that they ended up playing in the story, not because of who they were in the first place. You learned to care about them because of their individual, heroic actions. And through them, we see a world - no, an entire galaxy - changing. Impressive.

So, the Star Wars prequels are already suffering: by Lucas' definition, they will be telling us where these small, insignificant characters in 4-6 came from. Guess what: nobody cares about the origins of small, insignificant characters. If they're small and insignificant, then the story's going to be boring, and so Lucas makes an even bigger mistake: he pretends that these characters have always been important, and that every trivial event that happened in the past that led to their birth, etc, is Ridiculously Important.

That is to say, the Star Wars prequels are bad because they do precisely the opposite of episodes 4-6: they tell small, insignificant stories from larger-than-life, self-important characters' points of view. We wouldn't know that anything in these first three movies mattered at all if we hadn't already seen episodes 4-6.

Anakin raced a fast car? Who cares? The Trade Federation is blockading Naboo? Who cares? Some random people are tied to sticks, gonna get killed, and the entire Jedi Army (all what, 15 of them?) show up and get mowed down? Who cares? It's assumed that because you know what these characters will eventually do one day, you'll care about what they do now; the fact is, you don't.

So, to wrap up: Lucas screwed up because he took a great idea (epic space opera) and morphed it into a terrible idea (contrived, whiny, special-effectsravaganza), while Silver didn't screw up nearly as bad because he merely took a great idea (slick, stylized, post-modern action thriller) and beat it into the ground.

Okay, okay: Geek Mode is now off. Heh.

2003-11-10T01:05:00.000-05:00

Binge Drinking And Diversity

To be honest, I have avoided commenting on the latest release from Henry Wechsler and the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study that showed that diversity lowers the rate of binge drinking. (The Indiana Daily Student article is here, and here's the website for the College Alcohol Study.) Why, you might ask?

Two reasons: First, other bloggers have written excellent posts about it already. And second, anyone with half an ounce of common sense should know the difference between correlative and causative relationships. Of course, since this study keeps popping up everywhere (and at the behest of my friend Paul), I'll write a bit here; if I might be forgiven, though, I'll mostly just sum up what others have said.

For my part, I want to point out that the definition of binge drinking used by Dr. Wechsler and the CAS: five drinks or more for men, and four drinks or more for women at any time in the past two weeks. (From the University of Virginia Cavalier Daily.) Keep that not-so-strict definition in mind as you peruse what follows...

As for the correlative/causative issue, Erin O'Connor says it far better than I could:

Correlation is not causation, but you wouldn't know it from this write-up. If the article accurately represents the study, there seems to be a major logical problem here with the interpretation of cause and effect, and that problem seems to be licensed by the researchers' evident desire to rationalize demographic social engineering on campus by depicting young white men as collectively incapable of making intelligent behavioral decisions and by suggesting that as such they are in need of the moral example of racial and sexual others who possess more discipline and self-restraint. If the racial roles in this study were reversed, people would be screaming racism. But since the racial profiling of the study conforms to the reverse racism built into the logic of diversity, it's able to present itself as both good science and good samaritanism.

A commenter from John's post at Discriminations says:

There is no way that anyone would a priori believe that there was a relationship between diversity and binge drinking. This is equivalent to studies done by so-called "creation scientists". They know what the answer is and they just look for data to prove it. If the data does not support their conclusions they simply ignore it. In other words they only publish results that are consistent with their biases.

Commenters on Joanne Jacobs' post note that:

"Five drinks in a row" may mean 5 shooters lined up, it may mean nursing 5 beers over 5 hours.

and

I wonder what the reaction would be to a study that showed that Blacks were less prone to drug abuse if they lived around Whites, Asians, and Latinos.

Perhaps after calling everyone a racist, a second study would be undertaken?

So, given the wealth of posts out there already, I don't have much to say - other than how patently ridiculous this study is.

2003-11-09T19:07:00.000-05:00

How Valuable Is A Harvard Education?

Also from today's NY Times, here's an article about distribution of federal funds and how "richer" colleges receive a larger share of funds.

Similar discrepancies emerge across the nation, adhering to a somewhat counterintuitive underlying theme: The federal government typically gives the wealthiest private universities, which often serve the smallest percentage of low-income students, significantly more financial aid money than their struggling counterparts with much greater shares of poor students.

Brown, for example, got $169.23 for every student who merely applied for financial aid in order to run its low-interest Perkins loan program in the 2000-1 academic year. Dartmouth got $174.88; Stanford, $211.80. But most universities did not get nearly that much: the median for the nation's colleges was $14.38, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data on the more than 4,000 colleges and universities that receive some form of federal aid.

Nearly 200 colleges received less than $3 per applicant for financial aid. The University of Wisconsin at Madison got 21 cents.

Interesting. First, I don't think the history of the situation is that important. The article goes to great lengths to explain that a significant portion of this funding was set in stone decades ago, but chances are there were probably even fewer low-income students at these top-tier universities than there are now. Assuming that this is the case, then it means that the number of low-income students never had a bearing on how much federal financial aid a school received to distrbute among its students.

Also, take this into account:

At first glance, it may seem that some universities receive more money simply because they cost more to attend. But try telling that to Heather McDonnell, director of financial aid at Sarah Lawrence College, which costs just as much as its Ivy League competitors, yet in one category received only a sixth as much money as any of them.

My guess is that the government values a Harvard (Princeton, Yale, whatever) education more than one from a state school like UW-Madison or an expensive (but not elite) private school like Sarah Lawrence. This seems even more likely once it's noted that the government gives Stanford:

about 7 times as much money to help each one of them through college under one program, 28 times as much in another and almost 100 times as much in a third...

The article doesn't say what these programs are, but one could guess that they would be hard-science majors, maybe Arabic (or Farsi, Mandarin, Korean, etc) language majors. If that's the case, then I can't particularly argue with the way the government is handling the situation - the government needs more hard-science majors and more people able to speak languages spoken in the world's hot spots.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

2003-11-09T18:27:00.000-05:00

Think Before You Write

There was a letter about illegal immigration printed in today's New York Times:

Adding resources to border interception singles out certain kinds of immigrants (those coming from Mexico and as far south as Ecuador), causes them to take increasing risks in crossing through the desert...

Well, yeah. Just as police officers cause bank robbers to take increasing risks in robbing banks, so do border patrol officers cause those seeking to illegally cross our border to take increasing risks in doing so. Assuming that the goal is to stop people from crossing the border, this is one possible solution (although perhaps not the best).

I mean, would this guy advocate decreasing the number of police on beat so as to protect bank robbers from being shot while plying their trade?

2003-11-07T16:16:00.000-05:00

AA Bake Sale: The Town Hall Meeting

In response to the AA Bake Sale, a black fraternity preempted the meeting they had originally planned (about black men's experiences on a predominantly white campus) in order to hold a town hall meeting in conjunction with other black student organizations (NAACP, Black Student Union, several fraternities, etc). Stephen Jerabek, the president of the Committee for Freedom and organizer of the bake sale had been invited; I decided to attend as well, figuring that he'd probably need all the help he could get. I was right.

I arrived just before 7:00, to a small crowd of about 30-40; by the time the meeting actually started a few minutes later, I'd guess that there were about 125 people in attendance. One of the moderators asked Stephen to sit up front, assuming (correctly) that many questions would be directed towards him. And after a few short introductions, the railroading began.

To say that Stephen got creamed would be a severe understatement; people were angry, and he was the obvious target. Unfortunately, I don't think Stephen was any better prepared for the town hall meeting than he had been for the sale itself. It wasn't that he handled himself poorly - I think anyone would get nervous in his position - but he was very unpersuasive and vague when he responded to statements. The crowd smelled the blood in the water.

To the ability that they could, the moderators kept the situation in control - the questions mostly came in an orderly manner, and (with the exception of one overly loquacious professor who attended) no one spoke more than what could have been deemed a fair amount. The moderators, as well as most of the leaders of the organizations represented, were open-minded and willing to give Stephen a chance to speak; unfortunately, the format of the discussion combined with the emotional level and Stephen's unpersuasive answers meant that he really didn't get much across, and he certainly didn't change anyone's mind.

The problems with the comments and questions themselves were numerous:

Commenters offered four (or five, I forget) different definitions of Affirmative Action; they can criticize Stehpen all they want (it is a free country), but they can't even agree on what it is they're supporting.

One commenter wanted to "call out" Stephen's supporters in the crowd (there were probably 6-7 of us at most), and wanted to know why we weren't up there backing him up. A moderator was kind enough to point out that he had asked Stephen to come up front, not anyone else.

Several (black of mixed gender) commenters claimed that "the real benefactors" from AA are white women, and that further, black men receive the fewest benefits from AA. I can't say I know whether or not this is the case, but there are issues with this assertion either way. I mean, if that's the case, then shouldn't these people be against AA in the first place? If black people are being kept down by the white establishment because of their race (as was repeatedly asserted, in so many words), then shouldn't blacks be against programs that benefit white women and offer few (if any) benefits to blacks (especially black men)?

The aforementioned, overly verbose professor used sports analogies to try and make his points. The first of these was related to IU men's basketball: he was trying to show that IU had only looked at white coaches to replace former head coach Bobby Knight, and that IU had overlooked a black assistant coach who had been with the team for quite some time. Sounds pretty cut and dried, right? Well, all except for the fact that the man they hired - Mike Davis - is black. And his point was what?

Not everything expressed was inaccurate or contradictory, however:

The same professor, much to his credit, made two points that can't be stressed enough: First, that he had spent his college career (in the 60s) in the streets demonstrating for equal rights and that he was very disappointed in many of the students he had in his classes today; they were lazy, didn't do work when they bothered to show up, and quite generally didn't seem to appreciate the opportunities they'd been given. (Note that this is not meant to imply that either he or I think all black people or students are lazy; I interpreted him to be expressing the same concerns John Ogbu did.) Second, he made the infinitely important point that just because someone's skin color is black doesn't mean that they automatically support causes like AA; his point of reference was the new president of IU, Adam Herbert, who is both black and a Republican (he served on Jeb Bush's re-election team while president of the University of Florida).

I tried to help Stephen as much as possible; I asked a couple leading questions and responded to a couple questions near the end, but there wasn't much anyone could have done by that point.

Wow, what a long post. I ended up staying for another two hours after the meeting talking with a small group that included both students and staff (all of whom save for my wonderful girlfriend Tina were pro-AA), and it was a very productive discussion on all sides. In fact, I would say that the small discussion after the meeting was probably the best thing to come out of all this - but in the interest of ending this post, I'll write about that (along with some other, more general thoughts on the subject) later.

2003-11-06T16:51:00.000-05:00

OT: If Ignorance Is Bliss...

...then Barbara Streisand must be one of the happiest people in the world. She has a post on her blog titled "A Sad Day for Artistic Freedom" - you'd think the piece would be about the government supressing something, right? Well, you'd be wrong.

The post is about how CBS decided not to show the movie The Reagans; this was a decision made by a private company based on the fact that they were about to severely alienate their core audience. (Full disclosure: I haven't followed this very much, so I could be a bit off here - feel free to email me if I am.) My interpretation of the story (not Babs' post) is that the movie painted the Ronald & Nancy in a pretty bad light, and since CBS' biggest demographic happens to overlap with a lot of Reagan supporters, it only makes sense that they pulled it. So what did Streisand have to say?

I don't believe Democrats often, if ever, try to muscle the First Amendment like this. For example, in 1983, no one stopped NBC from airing Kennedy, a biopic that portrayed President Kennedy and other members of his family and administration as deeply flawed, even though the movie could have potentially been hurtful to Jackie Kennedy, who was still alive to see it, as well as to her children.

Hrm? Muscle the First Amendment? I won't deny that CBS has a right to make terribly ignorant business decisions, but come on - they didn't have to pull it, they chose to. CBS was not obligated to listen, nor should they have been, but I think they were pretty smart to do so.

If the Kennedy movie made her so mad that she felt obligated to do something, she should have gotten together all those Democrats who were upset about it and did what the Republicans just did to CBS. They were free to do so, which is one of the many benefits of living in the US. Simply because she chose not to express her views as given to her by the First Amendment does not mean that other people should be prevented from expressing theirs - referring, of course, to CBS' detractors, not CBS itself. It gets worse:

This is censorship, pure and simple. Well, maybe not all that pure. Censorship never is. Due to their experience with the restrictive English government, the framers of our constitution specifically included a ban on prior restraint in the First Amendment, which is an attempt to stop information from getting out there before the public has a chance to see it at all - exactly what is going on in this case.

I feel bad dignifying this with a response, but suffice to say that someone here has absolutely no understanding whatsoever of the definition of the term "prior restraint." Here's a hint: that person is not me. (I won't even go into the fact that the movie will be aired - just on Showtime instead of CBS.)

Of course, CBS as a company has the legal right to make decisions about what they do and do not air.

Oh, so it's not censorship? They have a right to choose what they air? Really? No, of course not:

However, these important decisions should be based on artistic integrity rather than an attempt to appease a small group of vocal dissidents. Indeed, today marks a sad day for artistic freedom - one of the most important elements of an open and democratic society.

...That's it, I've lost it. How the heck can someone like Barbara Streisand talk about artistic integrity? She doesn't write most (if any) of her own music, she can't sing (she bellows), she's a terrible actress, and further, she's washed up anyway. Even people who would disagree with me as to her artistic virtues would probably agree that she's well past her prime (which would have been sometime in the mid-1970s, I would say). Geesh.

That all notwithstanding, if the artists aren't willing to be at least as vocal as the "small group of vocal dissents," then CBS has no reason to listen to them. If there was a significant number of people writing CBS, clamoring to see this series even though it portrayed Reagan in a poor light, you can bet that it'd be on the air in a heartbeat. Here's the thing, though: nobody's doing that, so CBS pulled the show.

I don't mind people who criticize things - even if I disagree with them. What I do mind, however, is when people make ignorant, ill-informed critiques of subjects on which they lack even the most basic understanding. Grrr.

2003-11-06T02:43:00.000-05:00

Indiana University's Affirmative Action Bake Sale

I certainly had no clue when I woke up that my day was going to be even half as interesting as it turned out being. Wow.

I clicked on over to Hoosier Review a bit before noon today, and found this post:

The Committee for Freedom will be holding an Affirmative Action Bakesale tomorrow, Wednesday, November 5th in Dunn Meadow from 12:30 pm until 2:00 pm. According to the press release, "Cookies will be sold at different prices based on race and gender. White males will pay $1 per cookie, white females will pay 75 cents, Hispanics will pay 50 cents, and cookies will cost 25 cents for blacks."

To think that I almost missed it! I got cleaned up, grabbed a bus, and hustled over to Dunn Meadow as fast as possible and arrived just before 12:30. Let's just say that it wasn't hard to find the bake sale - due to an article in the Indiana Daily Student there was a moderate crowd already gathered, and the shouting had already begun.

I could write for a good hour or two about all the craziness that ensued, but I think anyone familiar with the AA bake sale concept can safely envision what it was like. The pro-AA arguments varied somewhat, but all were typical; AA prevents racism, AA is to make up for what happened in history, etc. I responded as best as I could - it was often difficult to even get a word in, with several people yelling at me from different sides (and of course, all of them complaining that I wasn't listening to them). The best part was that I did meet several students who were open-minded and willing to listen to what I had to say (even if we did disagree).

These students even went so far as to defend my right to speak; speaking to one of them later, he even noted that he had been worried about having to defend me physically. At no point did I feel physically threatened - the discussions were loud and heated, but basically as civil as things like this can be - but I appreciate the sentiment, to say the least. These people were actually willing to tell some of the "screamers" to shut up and listen to my answers - or to stop asking questions! I think this, combined with the fact that IU didn't try to shut the sale down, speaks very highly of the University.

Bonus points: I was on TV! Well, sort of. I'm not actually interviewed, but that tall guy in the olive polo shirt (getting yelled at, natch) in the photo is me; if you watch the video, you can also see me condescendingly adjusting my glasses as I make a point. Heh.

At some point during the action, a town hall meeting was announced for 7:00 PM; it was sponsored by almost all of the major black-student organizations. I attended this meeting (as did Stephen and several other members of the Committee for Freedom), and I'll blog about it tomorrow.

Final thought for the day: At 2:00, things had calmed down a fair bit, and they closed up shop. In a humorous turn of events, Stephen turned and handed me the leftover cookies - I believe that he said they had sold three (all $1 cookies). Here's the thing: I heard the words "white privilege" more times than I could count. And they had this bake sale about how it's easier for minorities to get cookies, right? But in the end, the white guy who had almost all the cookies gave another white guy all of them, free of charge. Maybe white privilege does exist, after all. Heh.

2003-11-06T02:13:00.000-05:00

Blogroll Update

I've added two new blogs to the list today:

First up is Josh Claybourn's blog. Josh went to the same high school I did and was a couple years behind me; in a cruel twist of fate, he managed to graduate from college on time and is now in law school while I've still got three semesters left to finish my undergrad. C'est la vie. He's an excellent writer, and just so happens to be the Editor-at-Large of my other addition, Hoosier Review.

Hoosier Review is a group-blog that offers a (mostly) conservative take on happenings here at IU. (Ivory Tower is the liberal side of Hoosier Review - it's also worth taking a look at, as it's well-written, but as I'm sure regular readers know that's not particularly my cup of tea.) While I realize that most of my readers aren't from Indiana, don't let that stop you from dropping by; many of the issues they discuss may deal with Bloomington and IU in particular, but they're familiar to cities and universities all over the country.

2003-11-05T11:28:00.000-05:00

More On HOPE Scholoarships In Georgia

Cynthia Tucker can always be counted on to see things as they are, and her op-ed this week about HOPE Scholarships is certainly no exception. If you've missed the rest of the discussion on the scholoarships, here's the background:

Faced with soaring demand, Georgia officials predict that HOPE funds will start to run short by 2005. The state's Republican governor, Sonny Perdue, and others have recommended that HOPE eligibility be tied to SATs, rather than grades, which are affected by teachers' subjectivity (and inability to resist parental pressure). Perdue wants HOPE scholarships to be awarded to students who score at least 1000.

But that recommendation has run smack into the reality of the achievement gap. Sixty-seven percent of the state's black HOPE scholars score below 1000, while only 32 percent of white HOPE scholars do that poorly.

So Democrats -- black and white -- have lined up to resist any move to tie HOPE to SATs. Black lawmaker Vincent Fort dismissed the governor's proposal as "racist."

Where do these kids end up at? Berkeley?

Seriously, though, the real issue here is not about testing. It's not, repeat not racist to judge applicants for a scholarship based on their scholarship. The issues to be examined are: why do black students do significantly worse on the SAT than their white counterparts, and why do so many students do so poorly on the SAT at all? Tucker addresses both issues:

Overall, nearly 40 percent of Georgia's HOPE scholars score below 1000 on the SATs -- which is, as much as anything, a stunning indictment of the state's educational system. The perfect score is 1600; most of the nation's competitive colleges and universities require at least 1200. How can students have "B" averages and score less than 1000?

Georgia has an obligation to improve its pathetic school system, which has suffered from low expectations for generations. In rural school systems, few white students score above 1000 on the SATs, as Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor has noted. It would be quite unfair for the state of Georgia to suddenly change the rules for HOPE when it has not spent the money nor instituted the standards to teach students what they need to know.

But it is black parents who are responsible for insisting that their own children hit the books and take school seriously. Too many black children are dismissive of scholarship as "a white thing." That has to end. Surely it is more embarrassing to be considered dumb than to be considered "white."

I do disagree with her that it's "unfair" for Georgia to change the rules. If anything, I think the state would be doing kids a favor by doing so, in that they'd suddenly be expecting kids to do something other than show up and warm a seat. Nonetheless, she's spot-on with everything else and (as always) worth a read.

2003-11-03T16:00:00.000-05:00

USA Today Reports On Campus Free Speech

USA Today's article about the speech code / free speech debate hits the nail squarely on the head.

I'm glad to see FIRE and NoIndoctrination getting the publicity they need, and I'm even gladder that a widely-read daily is reporting about the regular supression of free speech on campuses nationwide - campuses like Indiana University.

Hat tip: Erin O'Connor

2003-10-30T20:01:00.000-05:00

Off Topic: I Hate Stupid People!

This letter was printed in the New York Times today, in response to the (suprisingly balanced) article the NYT ran a few days ago about the Free State Project:

To the Editor:

Re "Libertarians Pursue New Political Goal: State of Their Own" (front page, Oct. 27): Elizabeth McKinstry, a spokeswoman for the Free State Project, says, "Many times government gets in the way." In this, she echoes the political sentiments of many conservatives and Republicans in addition to libertarians.

To see through the verbal mask of this ideology and discover the real agenda behind it, I recommend that citizens substitute "the voters" for "government" in all the various libertarian, Republican and conservative pronouncements.

The chances are extraordinarily high that if you're reading this, you're a libertarian, conservative, or a Republican (or at the very least, you have a better grasp of their policies than this guy), and you can come up with vulgar epithets of your own in response.

Of course, this isn't to imply that I think he's 100% wrong; if we're talking about voters who hold the opinion that the government needs to worry and fuss over our every iddle need, then I do think that they get in the way (in the way of my freedom, in the way of your freedom, in the way of even their own freedom). The difference between he and I is that there's plenty of room for him in my Perfect World and no room for me in his.

2003-10-30T19:56:00.000-05:00

Further Update: Crosses In The Classroom

Today's New York Times had an article with a bit more info about the cross in the classroom in Italy.

"The cross has always been there," said Anna Berardi, 56, as she stood outside the elementary school on Wednesday, marveling at the phalanx of television news trucks in the parking lot.

Ms. Berardi, who said that she seldom attends church, was referring to the cross as a visual motif throughout Italy, and she kept repeating herself.

"It's always been there," she said. "It's how we were taught. It's the way it's always been."

And we all know that just because something's always been a certain way, that's the way it should always be.

2003-10-27T16:29:00.000-05:00

Update: Crosses In The Classroom

After looking for some time, I didn't find any particularly new and/or different information about the Italian judge who ordered a cross removed from a classroom. I did notice this at the end of the article, however:

For the time being, no crucifixes have been removed from the Ofena school. Local education board official Nino Santilli said he hadn't received an official order, and he had no plans to take down the crosses yet.

"It's more than 2,000 years that our people and our country have gravitated around the culture of Christianity and the crucifix," Santilli said. "And that goes for nonbelievers, too."

Not to be overly picky, but it's only been 1700 years at most. Constantine had his vision of the Chi-ro in 312 CE, and Constantine is typically considered to be the first Christian emperor. Further, it was a good century after Constantine before Christianity started to become more widely accepted and the debate shifted from pagans versus Christians to the Nicaean Orthodoxy versus Arianists versus Donatists versus... well, you get the idea.

Why should I care about a few-hundred-year discrepancy? Because I'm in a class about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and it makes me feel good to know that I may actually be learning things - however obscure they may be.

2003-10-27T16:15:00.000-05:00

Gotta Love Indiana!

Just when you think you've heard it all: the Steuben County Herald-Republican has a story about how the president of the Hamilton Community School Board was ticketed for ignoring a school bus' stop arm.

Presley, who said he was talking with his son when he drove by the bus at about 10 mph, could face a total of $234 in fines and court costs for the violation.

“I made a mistake,” Presley said. “I will pay the ticket.”

Heh.

2003-10-27T12:35:00.000-05:00

Kenyan Anti-Testing Advocates

From Reuters:

Kenyan students set fire to their school, ransacked the kitchens and looted computers in a three-hour orgy of destruction after teachers banned video shows and discos, newspapers reported Monday.

Color me depressed. Someone needs to grab these kids by the shoulders, shake them really hard, and explain that unless they want to be trapped in a third-world hell for the rest of their lives, they're going to need an education. (Granted that an education doesn't guarantee anything, but there's no way they have a chance without one.)

2003-10-26T18:33:00.000-05:00

Separation Of Church And State - In Italy

I just saw this AP Wire report on Yahoo's front page.

It looks like a Muslim father sued a school over a cross that hangs in his sons' classroom, and a judge in Italy has ruled that the school must remove the cross; this doesn't seem out of line to myself or most Americans. (You may or may not agree with the judge's ruling, of course, but the ruling should sound familiar either way.)

Judge Mario Montanaro ruled that the cross should be removed because "the presence of the crucifix in classrooms communicates an implicit adherence to values that, in reality, are not the shared heritage of all citizens."

Here's the catch, though:

The Italian Constitution says the state and the Catholic Church are each "independent and sovereign," and that "all religious faiths are equally free before the law." However, a 1923 law also says that schools must display the crucifix.

The Education Ministry argued that the 1923 law is still in effect, and it had no plans to apply the court ruling in Italian schools, news reports said.

This presents an interesting conundrum for someone such as myself who equally dislikes courts that make policy and state-sponsored religious displays. I would assume that almost any modern interpretation of the Italian Constitution (based on the two quotes above, anyway) would make the 1923 law unconstitutional, but I am completely unfamiliar with Italy's legal system.

"I consider this sentence deeply flawed," Augusto Barbera, editor of a journal on constitutional law, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. "There are laws in effect on this issue. A judge cannot ignore them."

I'm not sure where I stand on this. Many of the big societal issues in the US (for instance, abortion) wouldn't be issues if they were left to the states (or at the very least, the federal legislature) to decide. I will say that I don't think having lifetime-tenured, non-elected officials making policy is a good way to run things.

However, the law seems pretty clearly in conflict with the Italian Constitution. Assuming that their legal system is similar to ours in the US (and I realize that's a pretty bold assumption), it should be reasonably within the judge's power to overturn the law. The problem with this theory is that the language of the article is quite ambiguous. It seems to imply that the judge ordered the removal of the cross from only the school in particular, not schools in general; this would imply to me that he ignored the 1923 law, rather than addressing its constitutionality. Further, did the judge order the removal of the cross from the classroom, which would seem to be allowed under the 1923 law, or did he actually order the removal of crosses from the entire school?

I'll try and dig up more information about this later tonight.

2003-10-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

For Those Of You Looking To Obtain A "Dimlopa"...

I wouldn't normally announce that I got spam, but this is rather humorous (and has nothing to do with all those distant Nigerian relatives of mine).

Subject: I More bling bling paid to you piae

Body:

Dimlopa Program

Cerate a more proopersus ftuure for ylurseof

Rceeive a flul dipmola form non accredetid
universtiies bsaed upon yuor rael lfie enperiexce

You will not be tested, or itnerviewed
Reveice a Mtsaer's, or Docrotate

Call 24 huors a day 7 days a week

1 - 2 1 2 - 6 2 9 - * * * *

So, right, this sounds like the answer to the educrats' dreams. What we have here is a universtiy that offers flul dipmolas (dimlopas?) bsaed upon yuor rael lfie enperiexce. This isn't like normal universities where students are accepted based on SAT/ACT scores and GPA and receive their dipmolas based on classroom performance; we all know how ridiculously unfair that merit-based scholarship is to students. At this universtiy, you will not be tested, or itnerviewed, and you can reveice a Mtsaer's, or Docrotate - degree paths that are usually closed to people who can't spell words like "Master's" or "Doctorate."

Say, actually, since this is from a non accredetid school, that gives me an idea - just contact me if you want a diploma. BAs and BSs are $19.95; MAs and PhDs are $29.95. If you want your diploma (dimlopa? dipmola?) printed on fancy-style marbled paper, that will be $5 extra (Certificates of Congratulations included free with every order!). Just drop me a line and I'll have you on your way to More bling bling in only a few short days. Heh.

2003-10-22T12:14:00.000-05:00

Too Quick To Judge?

Kimberly at N2P has a post about this Northwestern student who is suing because he claims his professor unfairly docked his grade from a B+ to an F.

After receiving a B-plus on the test, Rozenbaum went to the professor to dispute how he graded the exam. [ok, there's his first mistake. With a B+, what was there to complain about?] During the meeting, he took notes on the exam and the two got into an argument, according to the suit. [So, he's writing notes on his exam as Professor Sontheimer explains his grading scheme, then starts arguing with him.]

(Bold emphasis is on Kimberly's comments; regular italics are from the article.)

Why is it a mistake to question a B+? Sure, it's not a bad grade - but if you think something was graded wrong, then you have every right to question the professor. Just last week I met with my Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire professor and course assistant to discuss the B I received on my paper. (As it turns out, they wanted an "interpretive" paper, not the mostly-research paper I wrote. But since this wasn't made clear in class... *sighs*)

Do I think a B is a bad grade? No, of course not. But since I got docked points for "not hav[ing] a clear thesis" when I most certainly did, I felt somewhat obligated to go talk to someone about my grade. Thus, without knowing the specifics of Rozenbaum's test, I cannot judge whether or not he was wasting time by trying to appeal the grade (if in fact he was even trying to appeal the grade).

Now, back to the matter at hand, Rozenbaum is writing notes on the test; this is a fairly common practice in my experience. I can't offer anything but anecdotal evidence to back myself up here (indeed, most of my reaction to Kimberly's post is based on my own personal experience), but I think anyone would concede that it's reasonable to take notes on a test that you had a question about - although I would say that if you were attempting to appeal the grade, this would be a bad idea. (Reason #1 why I don't think Rozenbaum was trying to appeal the grade (assuming he's not an idiot).)

Sontheimer claimed the notes on the exam paper were Rozenbaum's attempt to change his answers and get a higher grade, the suit states. He responded by reducing Rozenbaum's grade to an F.

Say what? Rozenbaum was stupid enough to change his answers in front of the professor, and then flip the exam around and claim, "But I did write that on here! See?"? If so, that's just pathetic.

So after they get into an argument, Prof. Sontheimer claims that Rozenbaum was taking the notes on the test as an attempt to change his answers and get a higher grade... Are you kidding me? Maybe Rozenbaum is that stupid - I won't deny that this is a possibility. (But I doubt it; that's Reason #2 I don't think Rozenbaum was trying to change the grade.) I think that there's another plausible possibility here: the professor is a complete jerk.

I have met very few professors that I wouldn't trust to be professional, but there are a couple that I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw. And especially given all of the discussion about arrogant professors (admittedly, mostly based in the humanities) over at Critical Mass in the past couple weeks, I can easily imagine an irritable assistant prof throwing a temper tantrum because a student deigned to question his oh-so-infalliable grading.

I rarely (if ever, barring the present discussion) find myself disagreeing with Kimberly; it just bothers me that she would automatically assume that the professor is telling the truth. I just don't see any reason to believe that things happened the way the professor claimed (as opposed to the student's version). It's absolutely possible that there are aspects of the story I don't know that might back up the professor - but until I see evidence that points one way or the other, I'm certainly not going to take sides. I'm only backing up Rozenbaum in this post because I think that it's not unreasonable to claim that he might have gotten railroaded by a bad professor.

One, don't bitch and moan about a B+. Two, don't try to change answers on your exam after the fact, on the assumption that the prof will never remember what you wrote the first time.

I wholeheartedly agree with Kimberly's admonition that one should not try to change answers on an exam after the fact; cheating irritates me. However, I must respectfully dissent and say that if you have a B+ and think you deserved better, go talk to the professor about it. That's what the professor is there for. You pay their salary with your tuition and/or tax money, and they are quite obligated to make time for you out of their day - even if it is over something minor like questioning a B+ on a test. My advice? Buy a digital voice recorder and stick it in your pocket before you go in if you're worried; then you're covered if the professor tries to accuse you of something you didn't do.

Update (10/22/03, 6:40 PM): Kimberly has a follow-up post about this. She dug up Northwestern's code of conduct and found out that Sontheimer couldn't have lowered Rozenbaum's grade without going through a system of due process, which does lessen the chance that Rozenbaum is getting the short end of the stick. I may not be able to rule out the idea that Sontheimer is a jerk - but it's a pretty safe bet to rule out an Uber-Evil Conspiracy of Academia whose sole purpose is to accuse Rozenbaum of cheating, heh.

Further, I realized that all of my post about contesting a B+ may have been a bit misdirected. If you think you deserved a higher grade, by all means contest the B+... But it's extraordinarily stupid to cheat to try and raise a B+ to an A. (I loved the comparison of Rozenbaum to Blair Hornstine!)

2003-10-21T17:53:00.000-05:00

Like Going Duck Hunting Without An Accordion

Kimberly already noted that the policy described in this article is a "zero-tolerance idiocy." What disturbed me most, however, was this:

"It's like teaching a math class without a calculator," said Scott Sabotta, the course instructor.

...sigh. Teaching math with a calculator (until at least trig) isn't teaching math at all, it's Calculator Usage 101.

2003-10-20T01:51:00.000-05:00

Fun, Not Freaky

Just when you thought that there was nothing but bad news coming from our schools, the Lawrence Journal-World (out of Lawrence, KS) comes out of nowhere with an extremely humorous little story.

Free State High School Administrators say problems with the way students dance at such events as homecoming and prom have prompted them to take some drastic measures.

Now if a student is caught dancing in a "provocative" way, they will be warned and then possibly kicked out of the dance.

Student council members have found a way to inform more students through a video (below) of their mascot showing what is and what is not appropriate.

Go there now and watch the video. Heh.

2003-10-20T01:47:00.000-05:00

Why Basic Economics Should Be Required In Schools

This NY Times article is simply beautiful.

Putting educators on notice, one of the Republican lawmakers overseeing higher education legislation in the House introduced a bill yesterday that would withhold federal money from colleges that raised tuition much faster than inflation, a category that could include hundreds of universities.

So, let's go on the not-so-bold assumption that colleges need money, or else they wouldn't raise tuition. (We will ignore for now the fact that many schools are more interested in building jacuzzis than educating students.) If the schools need money, and raise tuition, then this guy is proposing that the federal government should take money away from the schools... meaning that they have to raise tuition even higher in order to compensate.

Now, in all reality, that's okay with me - I'd just as soon see more schools out from under the government's yoke - but I can't help but think that this legislator is a moron.

Most important, the colleges argue, the legislation would ultimately hurt the very students it is intended to help. Although Mr. McKeon's bill would not withhold federal Pell grants and Stafford loans, two primary sources of assistance to low-income students, several other programs would be withdrawn. In particular, campuses could be cut off from federal money that helped pay student workers, provided scholarships and furnished low-interest loans to those in need of financial aid.

Indeed.

2003-10-19T18:12:00.000-05:00

Speaking Of Unions...

NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein says it best:

"Schools will never work because they're governed by a 250-page contract and a 10,000-page book of regulations," the chancellor said in a speech before the Citizens' Committee for Children of New York.

Instead, he said, schools will work when their cultures shift away from what he described as micromanagement and microregulation.

"The outcomes that we see are dictated by risk-reward ratios that would not work in any other sector and will not work if they are perpetuated in ours," Mr. Klein said.

The best is from the Dean of the School of Education at City College, though:

"Teachers want to be treated as professionals; they have to behave like professionals," he said.

Professionals (engineers, doctors, lawyers) are held accountable for their performance, which is measured through any number of means throughout the year. If teachers want to be treated like professionals (instead of cogs in a machine, like assembly line workers), then they're going to have to accept things like merit-based pay. Then the teachers who can perform will get the best jobs and the most money; the ones who can't will be lucky to keep their jobs (and here's to hoping that they don't). That works for me.

Note: the above post should not be implied to detract from people who work on assembly lines. Jobs like that are painfully repetitive, boring, and sometimes dangerous. The difference for my purposes is that assembly line work is something that requires no higher education, and therefore workers can be trained with greater ease.

2003-10-19T17:52:00.000-05:00

Not Exactly A Record To Be Proud Of...

From the LA Times: Marysville, WA teachers have set a record for the longest-ever teachers' strike in Washington state.

Last week, the teachers union began running 30-second television ads targeting the Marysville School Board. The ads, running on local cable channels, ask residents to call board members and urge them to negotiate a fair contract. Money for the ads came from donations.

The two sides, which have met more than 20 times since contract talks began in June, remain apart on salary issues. Veteran teachers in the community are among the highest-paid in the state, averaging $54,000 a year. The union says Marysville salaries must remain competitive to keep its teachers from moving.

So, which is it? Is the current contract unfair - the ads claim that a "fair contract" needs to be negotiated - or is the current contract simply not lucrative enough, which is what the union necessarily means by saying that the already-high salaries "must remain competitive?" Unless one is to assume that only high-paying contracts are "fair," then the union is obviously contradicting itself. (And while I readily recognize that most unions actually do consider only high-paying contracts to be fair, I think that's positively ridiculous, and similar to the argument that "only tests on which all students do well are fair.")

All the 11-year-old [Francesca Rubatino] knows is that she's tired of doing nothing. She misses her friends, and she doesn't like getting scolded by her parents for doing things like ordering hip-hop jewelry from the Internet.

"There's nothing else to do," she complains.

Her mother, Michele Rubatino, is tired of getting up every morning and thinking of things to keep her daughter, an only child, busy.

Why don't her parents tell her not to use their credit cards and/or checkbook? For that matter, why don't they just refuse the packages and cancel the charges? And more importantly, why is her mom angrier about the lack of childcare than the fact that her child isn't learning anything?

The answer to the last question is simple: many schools aren't anything but childcare anyway. Kids who are ahead of the game (for whatever reason) are bored and kids who are behind (for whatever reason) stay that way. I suppose if they changed the name from the Department of Education to the Department of Daycare it wouldn't make things any better, but at least there'd be some truth in the advertising.

The context for the following quote: A judge may rule that teachers have to return to work, and some teachers are saying they'll ignore the order. Note, however, that the typical abbreviation for "association" is "assn." and is used as such later in the article.

"It's an option. It's always an option," says Elaine Hanson, a high school math teacher and president of the teachers union, the Marysville Education Ass. "When the time comes, the teachers will decide whether we follow the court order or continue on."

Someone's Freudian slip is showing, heh.

2003-10-18T01:03:00.000-05:00

Not What I Meant...

Joanne Jacobs had a post about vouchers two days ago, and the comments turned kind of snippy.

Anyway, I reccomended that one of the posters read The Road To Serfdom by F. A. Hayek. Another commenter responded with articles from several places (including this one from Mises.org; Ludwig von Mises was a staunch free-market libertarian, to say the least) saying that vouchers are bad stuff. The catch is, though, I didn't have to be convinced of this; I basically agree already.

I can be pretty cynical sometimes - this is one of those times - and so I am pretty sure I would swing with the above article and say that vouchers might actually be worse. Why? Because I don't support public education at all, and vouchers are a bandage that might keep the public school system alive a bit longer. Well, forget that, I say; let it bleed to death. When it's gone, we can replace this pitiful excuse for an education system with privatization. Full privatization means school choice for all and social welfare for none. Cool.

(Yes, I'm feeling radical at the moment. But hey, I'll just disavow all personal responsibility and blame it on the fact that I'm a college student. At least I'm not a communist. Heh.)

2003-10-15T21:53:00.000-05:00

How Not To Raise Your Children

Daryl at HSOES had a link to this article about kids and file sharing yesterday.

As you may know, I'm no fan of intellectual property laws and the like, but this article shows what's wrong with the movement - not to mention how stupid people/parents can be. Just look at the first two paragraphs:

Jon Beeson of Wilmington allows his 16-year-old daughter Rachel to download copyrighted music all she wants. In fact, he does it himself, and doesn't consider it illegal.

"I just don't look at what we're doing as wrong," he said. "If it was illegal, we wouldn't be able to do it."

There are so many issues with this. He doesn't consider it illegal? That's really strange, because downloading copyrighted music is, in fact, illegal. What he "considers" it to be has no effect whatsoever on the law. And just because something is illegal doesn't mean you can't do it; people rob banks, commit murders, and download copyrighted music every day.

Ed and Angelia Johnson of New Castle also once allowed their children to download "anything they wanted" - until the recording industry filed 261 lawsuits on Sept. 8. Since then, they have forbidden their 17-year-old son Marcus from downloading.

The issue here is that the parents are woefully uninformed. The RIAA has not sued anyone for downloading music. All of the suits filed so far have been filed against people for sharing music, not for downloading it. This is for a number of reasons; someone might actually have a legitimate copy of the song they're downloading, for instance, or they might delete it after listening to it. Thus, they could simply tell their son not to share files and that'd be quite safe.

(The delete-after-listening arguement is sketchy, but the logic is this: You can loan a friend a CD and he can listen to it, decide if he wants to buy it, and give it back to you. If people actually did delete the songs after listening to them, that would most likely be okay.)

Of course, this ignores the problem of whether or not they should let their son download music - but I really think that there's no worse decision than an uninformed one.

"I think it's kind of ridiculous, personally, since you can share music with a friend and people have been able to tape music for years," Angelia Johnson said. "But since all this stuff happened with lawsuits, we decided to delete the program used to download music."

Once again, Mrs. Johnson obviously hasn't thought about what she's saying. While copying a cassette is just as illegal as downloading an mp3, there's a huge difference in scale between the two. It takes an hour (give or take) and a blank cassette (not cheap) to dub a cassette without special equipment; it takes just a few minutes to download an entire album (or ten), not to mention that CDRs and hard drive space are quite cheap these days. When people had to go through a lot of hassle to steal music, it wasn't a huge issue, but now that it's ridiculously easy, people are more than willing to do it. And she still doesn't understand that it's sharing - not downloading - that is what gets people sued.

Here are some choice quotes from Rachel Beeson, the 16-year-old mentioned at the top of the article:

"If they started shutting down sites and I had to, I'd definitely pay a little for songs," she said.

...

"I don't buy music because a CD costs $17," Rachel said. "That's outrageous when I can download for free.

"Teenagers aren't exactly the most moral of people, anyway. It's [the industry's] problem to deal with, not ours."

The first two quotes make the issue clear: people simply won't pay for something they can get for free. In my opinion, it is impossible for the RIAA to get rid of file sharing, and they need to adapt now (or become obsolete).

The third quote is the scary one, though. Raised by a father who is apparently too stupid to tell the difference between legal and illegal, Rachel has leared how to push blame for her actions onto other people. Just because "teenagers aren't exactly the most moral of people" (which is debatable in and of itself) doesn't mean that she herself cannot be moral. She can be, but she chooses not to. And file sharing may be "the industry's problem, not hers," but I bet she'd feel differently if the tables were turned.

As for the legality of the practice, Ibrahim [mother of a 14-year-old] said, "I guess I haven't really thought about it."

Why? Don't? People? Think?!?!

Anyway, this post is way too long, so I'll cut it off with a final thought: If you don't agree with a law, that does not give you the right to break it. To borrow a bit from Daryl's analogy, just because you think the speed limit should be above 65 doesn't mean you are somehow allowed to drive 120. However, if you don't agree with a law, you can (gasp!) work to change it. Write your Representatives and Senators, write the RIAA, heck, do what I'm doing and go to law school. And for goodness' sake, at least have some clue what you're talking about before you get interviewed in a newspaper about something.

2003-10-14T23:50:00.000-05:00

Long Day

Edu-posting will resume tomorrow, after I've gotten some sleep.

Today was a long day that involved me getting some grades back that I'm not too happy with; tomorrow will be a slightly-less-long day (I hope) that involves talking to a professor and going to Law Day. Woohoo!

The bright side of the day? While eating lunch and chatting with a friend before a class, a wannabe pretentious jerk overheard us griping about Bowling for Columbine and decided that he wanted to educate us on how Michael Moore is the best thing since sliced bread. He didn't appreciate it when I told him what I thought about Michael Moore ("that gelatinous waste of flesh") - and he walked off when I backed up what I said about his movies with some facts that are right there for anyone who cares to look. Heh.

2003-10-12T23:27:00.000-05:00

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!

2003-10-12T17:19:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-10-12T17:01:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-10-10T00:57:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-10-08T20:19:00.000-05:00

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."

2003-10-08T01:15:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-10-06T01:10:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-10-06T01:05:00.000-05:00

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."

2003-10-03T01:43:00.000-05:00

C Is For Cookie...

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

2003-10-02T17:09:00.000-05:00

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!

2003-10-01T18:25:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-10-01T15:53:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-30T23:45:00.000-05:00

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?

2003-09-30T16:56:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-29T00:41:00.000-05:00

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).

2003-09-26T02:27:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-26T01:29:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-26T00:51:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-26T00:12:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-24T20:25:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-24T14:31:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-24T10:00:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-24T00:56:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-22T19:58:00.000-05:00

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.)

2003-09-21T14:26:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-20T03:04:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-20T02:35:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-17T21:27:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-17T11:32:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-17T00:41:00.000-05:00

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?

2003-09-15T16:56:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-15T11:42:00.000-05:00

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.

2003-09-12T01:04:00.000-05:00

Update: Diveristy Double Standards At IU?

I apologize for the lack of new news, especially to those of you who are newcomers. I've been extraordinarily busy these past couple days - I'm sure you can guess with what - and I'll be out of town over the weekend, so it will probably be the first of the week before I have anything terribly new or interesting (see previous post) up.

However, I do have some good news: the Indiana Daily Student actually ran the letter to the editor that I wrote! It will certainly be interesting to see if Charlie Nelms responds - although personally, I don't think he'll bother. If anyone has any suggestions for ways to force the issue, I'm all ears.

I'd also like to thank everyone who dropped me a link about this (you know who you are, John, Kimberly, and Erin!).

2003-09-12T01:03:00.000-05:00

A Quick Tidbit

First: I will be posting some new information about the Eric Rasmusen situation early next week. I would have written about this already, but the time simply wasn't right. I know my thoughts come a bit late - but I do feel obligated to say something about the issue.

2003-09-10T14:32:00.000-05:00

Yet Another Misleading Statistic From NYC Schools?

Today's New York Post has an interesting op/ed column from Marc Epstein.

[Chancellor] Joel Klein, citing NYPD statistics, says school violence is headed down, but those who work in the schools suspect that Police Department statistics should be taken with large grains of kosher salt.

Our schools have two ways of handling infractions and two sets of books for recording them. The police reports show only crimes that lead to an arrest. But school authorities handle thousands of infractions that never make it into the police figures.

Administrators often bypass the criminal-justice system and use the school-disciplinary apparatus instead. Sometimes the student-victims or their parents are reluctant to bring a charge involving another student; they'd rather let the school resolve the problem. And some problems are indeed better handled quietly. But it's also true that keeping incidents off the NYPD books helps a school avoid a bad record with large numbers of police incidents.

An interesting hypothesis. Given NYC schools' habit of mislabeling students who drop out in order to make it appear as though far fewer students drop out than actually do, this certainly seems like a possibility. Epstein provides numbers to back up his theory:

In Queens, the borough with the city's largest high school population, incidents last year skyrocketed to 1,497 from 1,084 the year before.

This should be easy enough to check; personally, I don't know how to find out, but I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this if Epstein did his research and the numbers check out. And if it is the case that incidents have went up almost 40%, then things will be looking pretty bad for the administrators. Sure, fewer kids are getting criminal records - but are more of them causing trouble?

This sounds decidedly reminiscent of the pushout scandal that broke at the end of July. Why have administrators been assuring the public that schools are safer, when it's not clear that they are? And if the administrators have been erroneously saying that schools are safer (when they aren't), was this error a mistake or a purposeful lie? Hopefully we'll find out more in the coming days.

2003-09-09T19:28:00.000-05:00

A Diversity Double Standard At Indiana University?

Charlie Nelms is the Vice President of Student Development and Diversity here at Indiana University, and is an African American (which is pertinent to the discussion). He has written many editorials for the Indiana Daily Student, the school's newspaper, and I quote two of them here today.

The first is in response to the infamous David Horowitz anti-reparations ad, the second is in response to an editorial cartoon that ran on Feb 05, 2003. The editorial cartoon (which I could not find a link to) depicted a nerdy-looking, small, white male (complete with glasses and pocket protector) holding a sign that said "Perfect SAT - 12 points" and an athletic-looking, large black male (in a varsity letterman's jacket and whistling) holding a sign that said "Minority - 20 points." I am not postive that the signs said exactly that - but you get the idea.

From the editorial about the Horowitz ad:

I can hear the freedom of expression and freedom of the press arguments now! Did we not learn anything from Mahatma, Martin and Nelson? These three, and many others, sought to teach us that what is legal is not necessarily moral. Did the IDS seek to examine the ethics and the morality of Horowitz's claims, or did the debate focus primarily on whether he has a right to be heard? Did the IDS look closely, or at all, at the historical accuracy, or lack thereof, of Horowitz's arguments, or was the IDS more concerned with not wanting to be accused of political correctness by rejecting the ad?

From the edtorial about the cartoon:

I can hear the refrain now, "this is a free speech issue." Since when did free speech give one person or newspaper the right to denigrate an entire race of people?

One would get the impression that Nelms is not a proponent of free speech at all; at the very least, one would assume that he supports laws against "hate speech." However, read his editorial from today's Indiana Daily Student:

[T]he University's decision to allow him to continue to publish his remarks while a review is underway is consistent with what it means to live in a democratic society.
...
In a large, diverse community of learners, each of us must be allowed to speak, and each of us must in turn take responsibility for our own words and actions.
...
The idea of freedom of expression is an easy one to state, but harder to live: we must support the right of those we oppose the most to say what they wish. But we must also speak out for the causes of universal and equal human rights. In the end, truth will win the day.

Nelms seems to have no problem whatsoever with free speech with regards to sexuality-based stereotypes, which presents an interesting double standard, since he makes it quite clear that he thinks racially-based stereotypes should be supressed. The IDS staff points out this very possibility in the staff editorial from yesterday:

Had this Web log promoted hateful views of any other minority group, it seems likely that the mobilization and outrage would have been twice as immense.

Would we as a University tolerate a professor who expressed a preference for "white's only" water fountains? If one suggested that females should only serve as nurses and candystripers, not physicians, would we still offer employment and shout on high the glories of free speech?

Probably not.

I sent a letter to the editor of the IDS pointing this out; it'll be interesting to see if it gets printed and what the response will be.

2003-09-09T08:11:00.000-05:00

Protests Mark First Day At Harvey Milk School

As one might have expected, there was a small but vocal group of protesters at Harvey Milk School when it opened, but the real circus didn't begin until twenty times as many counter-protesters, along with administrative figures, union representatives, and the media arrived. Nonetheless, everything seems to have went well and there were no incidents. Read about it here and here.

2003-09-08T15:54:00.000-05:00

More On Florida's Fast-Track Graduation System

This AP Wire article has a rehash of the debate surrounding Florida's early graduation policy.

Supporters of a law granting a high school diploma in just three years said it will help curb crowding in Florida's schools. Critics fear it will deprive early graduates of extracurricular activities and senior year milestones.

Hrm? Critics fear that students will miss out on homecoming and senior prom and like, totally, some varsity football, man, you know? Geesh.

I think the fast-track graduation policy is a prety good idea, actually, and would agree with the Education Commissioner:

"It was meant for a small group, a band of students, who were not only mature enough but smart enough to graduate," Education Commissioner Jim Horne said.

If kids can get through the required classes - core stuff, no art, gym, or whatnot - and pass the FCAT in three years, why should they stay around for another year? Of course, not all critics are worried about the missed extracurricular activities:

"Kids are having a hard enough time as it is in college," said Okeechobee County School District Assistant Superintendent Lee Dixon. "You're giving up the fourth year of high school math, and high school science. You don't want to leave it up to kids to shortchange themselves."

If the kids are driven enough to push through all their core classes and pass the FCAT in three years, then I'm sure they're driven enough to succeed at most four-year colleges. Even if these students aren't quite ready for a four-year school, they're ripe candidates for community colleges that could serve as a great bouncing point between high school and a university.

Strangely, it seems like Florida just can't do anything right; they've got groups protesting that the FCAT is unfair and prevents kids from graduating on one side and groups protesting that the course requirements and the test aren't enough and kids need to stay longer on the other. Go figure.

Update (09/09/03, 8:30 PM): Kimberly at N2P is of a similar opinion about the above article.

2003-09-08T14:48:00.000-05:00

St. Louis Schools: Why People Are Angry

Here again is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch article I linked at the end of the previous post; it is a rather lengthy explanation of what happened in St. Louis and why people are so angry.

Hundreds of loud, angry, mostly black parents and school employees were complaining and berating the majority white School Board and the new white superintendent.

Racism and a continued history of neglect, the crowd said, were behind the board's decision to close the schools in their neighborhoods. They didn't believe the board's claims that the school system was $90 million in the red. This was just insensitive white people up to their same old white tricks, they said.

In all reality, that sums up the issue. It's not about education in the least; it's about the fact that race relations in St. Louis appear to be in about the same place as they were "in the South 15 to 20 years ago." If a significant number of people genuinely think that the school board is lying to them and simply shut down the schools because of racism, then it should be unsurprising that parents are protesting and Al Sharpton is stirring the pot.

Anyway, as you read through the article, it becomes rather clear that the school board did not handle the situation as well as it could have; indeed, they often moved quickly where it might have been better to eke along and apply some finesse to smooth tensions.

"I don't know why they didn't just stand up and say, we're going to spend $5 million so we can save $40 million that will go directly into educating your children," [board supporter Howard] Denson said. "When they didn't, it set a nasty tone. All they had to do was explain it."

My favorite part of the article is probably this:

It was the same old tune, critics charged. Because most of the closings were in north St. Louis, the "black community" unfairly was bearing most of the burden, they said.

Why would that be my favorite part of the article, you ask? Because the "black community" is not a minority in St. Louis, and African-American children are not a minority in the schools (the article gives all of the details). In fact, as the article makes clear, it would have been impossible to close more than three schools without closing one that was predominantly black - and to have done as such would have meant closing schools at the expense of a minority racial group.

I don't want to imply that a majority cannot be discriminated against; they most certainly can. However, it seems quite apparent to me that if African-Americans make up a majority of the population, then they will naturally (and quite fairly) bear a majority of any burdens placed on the population.

The article goes on and on; the school board continued to remain aloof as the people got madder and more irrational. At one point, one of the board members even called a group of protesters Nazis, which certainly didn't help the school board's standing in the community. The board certainly handled the PR side of things poorly, but things could work out for the district in the end. If some real changes start to show up, it stands to reason that a lot of the protesters will fade away. If the district doesn't show improvement, however, tensions - both with respect to education and race - will continue to rise.

Final note: I feel like John at Discriminations right now. I'm not sure whether to laugh or to cry at how ridiculous the protesters' arguments are. It's bad enough that in the year 2003 - not 1973, as you might have thought from reading the article - there are still large groups of people who are more willing to believe that an entire city government is racist from the top down than to believe that the school system had been mismanaged for decades. Instead of claiming injustice and racism, why don't these people fight for accountability in the school system, fight for better teachers, and therefore fight for something that could lead to a real improvement in their children's quality of life?

2003-09-08T14:01:00.000-05:00

Protests Mark First Day Of School In St. Louis

It looked like another day of he said/she said articles about the Houston school district and Yale strikes, but then this article popped up in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

A contentious first day of school began Monday in St. Louis with a rally and march by more than 100 protesters seeking a boycott of classes over an interim management team's decision to close 16 schools and lay off 1,400 workers.

At a pro-boycott rally before the opening bell, Democratic presidential candidate and activist Al Sharpton urged protesters to remain resolved despite those who would suggest that keeping kids out of school is counterproductive.

"I think that any parent would be irresponsible not to make sure their child is protected and that their child is serviced," Sharpton said. "It's a sad day but we must turn this time of sadness into a movement to redress that."

What a way to start out the school year, eh? I can't say enough how much I loathe Al Sharpton; the man is a bona fide racist, and the fact that he is being taken seriously as a democratic candidate for president shows how low the Democratic party has sunk in recent years (not that I'm necessarily complaining). I'm not sure how keeping one's children out of school furthers the goal of said children being "serviced," but common sense has a tendency to slice right through anything that comes out of Sharpton's mouth.

At some schools, like Vashon, which had only 37 percent attendance on the first day last year, were predicting attendance of nearly 80 percent today.

I concede that I don't know too much about typical first-day attendance numbers, but even 80% doesn't seem like much to brag about - and 37% sounds downright dismal. Are numbers like these normal?

David Klaus, 48, walked near the route with son Kevin Thompson, 12, who is entering sixth grade, purposely showing protesters that he was taking his son to school.

"I'm sure many of them are doing what they think is right," Klaus said. "To deliberately deprive the district and its children of more money is counterproductive at the minimum, stupid to be more blunt."

...

[T]he Rev. Sammie E. Jones urged church members to support their children by sending them to school. He accused some of the people leading the opposition of having personal agendas that do not meet the best interests of children.

"It doesn't make any sense to keep them out of school. If you want to march, march, but don't use our children," Jones said.

Well said. Not only are they pulling yet even more money out of a district that is - like most in the nation - strapped for cash, they're denying their children the opportunity to learn. It's not that I think money will solve all of the problems (it won't), nor is it that I think that the children are missing much (even in the best of schools, the first day is light on learning). But really, there's no excuse for exacerbating the problems here.

Protester Donna Jones, 46, took a vacation day to keep her three children -- ages 14, 12 and 5 -- out of school. She believes the kids are getting an education about civic involvement -- standing up against a school district she believes has ignored input from the public.

I've found a second article (read it here) that details what led up to this and how the school board managed to completely botch what should have been a welcome change. At any rate, once wonders if Ms. Jones' children will learn enough from this experience that they will one day major in social activisim.

2003-09-08T00:55:00.000-05:00

Indiana University And Freedom Of Speech

I have remained silent thus far on the subject of Professor Eric Rasmusen and his now-infamous weblog, which is hosted (once and again) on Indiana University's servers. Since I realize that my silence probably seems a bit uncharacteristic (especially given that IU is where I attend school), let me just say that I am still considering what my exact opinion on this subject is - and until I have resolved that, I will refrain from saying anything. For a quick roundup of all the news articles and blog posts about the story, see Will's post at Crescat Sententia and Erin O'Connor's post at Critical Mass.

2003-09-08T00:41:00.000-05:00

Changes Afoot

As you may have noticed, my Blogroll has underwent some changes; I pulled off some of the dead weight and added a number of other excellent edu-blogs. I've read all of these blogs for longer than I've been writing my own, but Blogrolling.com's software is only marginally easier to use than just typing in the HTML, so I've been a bit lax. All of the new additions are great blogs with intelligent people who make insightful posts, so if there are any that you're unfamiliar with, make sure to stop by their site.

Thanks go out to Highered Intelligence in particular - I've always been a sucker for a good compliment, heh.

2003-09-05T14:04:00.000-05:00

Slow News Day

It appears that today is one of those rare days where, quite frankly, nothing interesting is going on.

The AP is reporting that the Landmark Legal Foundation is asking for a government inquiry into the NEA over possible misuse of dues money. Obviously, I don't know if the NEA did anything wrong or not, but the idea of an extremely large and powerful union misusing funds to influence elections doesn't seem so far-fetched to me.

In other, unrelated news, I am (finally) a full-time student again; I got into two of my waitlisted courses. Since I'm full time, that should mean that I will be eligible for financial aid - and then I'll be able to escape the pit of despair that is Blogger/Blogspot. Yay!

2003-09-04T00:19:00.000-05:00

Computers Grade Essays, Eliminate All Need For Human Teachers

Maybe I'm just getting old, but even as an ardent technophile, this just seems like a bad idea to me.

For example, a high score almost always contains topically relevant vocabulary, a variety of sentence structures, and the use of cue terms like "in summary," for example, and "because" to organize an argument.

Using the phrase "in summary" is terrible style, same as "in conclusion." If you have to make it that obvious that you are summarizing or concluding your ideas, then there's something very wrong with whatever it is you just wrote.

The testing service recognizes that e-rater could yield a high score on an essay with a well-written but illogical argument. "Right now, e-rater looks at an essay like a bag of words," Dr. Burstein said. "If you use the right words, you could in theory get a good score without the argument necessarily making sense, because it's not at this point tracking a logical line of argumentation."

But Dr. Burstein points out that deliberately fooling the system is unrealistic, given the time it takes to do so. Normally, she said, test takers "give their best attempt at what they can do, and then you get reasonable, reliable results."

If I were taking an essay exam that I knew was being computer graded, chances are I would write the silliest argument I could come up with - I'd just use lots of "becauses" and "in summaries."

I don't care that the computers agree with human graders almost 100% of the time. I can't really believe that the computer does a good job of correcting grammar errors (which are typically far less important than errors in thinking), because I know how bad Microsoft Word is at correcting grammar - and don't we all remember that study a while back (no link, sorry) showing that students who used Word's spell/grammar check actually made more errors than those who didn't? And besides, anything that would accept the argument that "All men are ducks. Socrates was a man. Because of this, in summary, Socrates was a duck." is, by my estimation, 100% ineffective.

2003-09-03T10:03:00.000-05:00

A Campus Fad That's Being Copied: Internet Plagiarism

Yes, I borrowed the title of this NY Times article. But I also gave credit for it - something that about half of college students don't seem to think is necessary, according to a new study.

The survey solicited students' comments about cheating, and one student wrote, "If professors cannot detect a paper from an Internet source, that is a flaw in the grader or professor."

Unfortunately, it seems like we're at a point where I must agree with this student. Professors: if there are any of you left who don't use Turnitin or Google to check papers for plagiarism, then you'd better get on the ball. Students can't be bothered to write their own papers; after all, college is supposed to be about drinking and hooking up, not this "education" nonsense, right?

The rest of the article is worth reading, although it's quite depressing to be reminded that lots students have no sense of personal responsibility whatsoever.