August 18, 2008

Search for Missing Students a Lost Cause

The Refugee apologizes for the misleading headling, but is certain the reader will see the point in a moment. In a guest editorial in in yesterday's Sunday Denver Post, Susan Barnes-Gelt questions the benefits of a proposed $434 million bond issue being proposed by Denver Public Schools. Barnes-Gelt claims to be an "unrepentant urban liberal," but The Refugee is sure her credentials have been revoked by now; she presents a very coherent and skeptical questioning of the benefits that the DPS will gain from the additional money.

While The Refugee applauds a rare critical eye by a liberal toward educational funding, he was nonetheless unsurprised by the tenor of the argument. It actually followed traditional liberal orthodoxy in the school funding debate. That is, not once - not even once - did Barnes-Gelt mention the impact on students, either good or bad, from the bond issue.

And, that's the crux of the problem in our school funding debate. Even when benefits of lower class sizes and better facilities are touted, it's really about teacher convenience, not student achievement. A smaller class requires less work and who doesn't want new, modern facilities and tools? If students benefit, it's a happy coincidence.

The Refugee would like the legislature to enact a law requiring school districts to make one declarative statement when requesting funding: "If the schools receive the requested funds, test scores will increase x% and graduation rates will increase y% within z timeframe." Now that's real accountability. Which is why the teacher's union would never stand for it and liberals would oppose it. But, it's a question taxpayers should pose and demand an answer.

Posted by Boulder Refugee at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2008

Wi-Fi Allergy

Stop the earth - I want off.

Seriously, didn't most people have that same reaction to the 1970's nutjobs who wanted to outlaw drilling for oil in this country because it was "dirty?" Leave the idiots alone and look what it gets you - politicians who say things like "gasoline prices are not based on supply and demand, they're being driven up by reckless speculators and obscene oil company profits" and "we can't drill our way out of this problem" when, in fact, that is the ONLY way to bring gasoline prices down. And it makes us "less dependent on foreign oil" at the same time.

Posted by JohnGalt at 3:33 PM

We Don't Need No Thought Control...

As the good folks in Washington State are being sued by the teachers' union for underfunding public education, the union has forced the schools to turn down a $13.2 million grant from Bill Gates's and Michael Dell's National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI).

Earlier this month NMSI announced that a $13.2 million grant slated for Washington state was being scrapped. Why? The contract ran afoul of the union's collective bargaining agreement. NMSI wanted to compensate teachers directly and include extra pay based on how well students performed on AP exams. But under the teacher contracts, the union is the exclusive agent for negotiating teacher pay and union officials refused to compromise. They were willing to turn away free money for their teacher members rather than abide this kind of merit pay.

The WSJ Ed Page wonders if just perhaps "...union chiefs care more about protecting their monopoly than what students are learning?"

Posted by jk at 1:56 PM

March 31, 2008

Times Change

Professor Mankiw links to a story in The Crimson:

When Harvard’s future dean of admissions and financial aid was applying to the College in 1962, the first two teachers he asked for letters of recommendation refused.

“They wouldn’t write for Harvard because they thought it was a bunch of Communists, a bunch of atheists, a bunch of rich snobs, and if you went there you’d flunk out and you’d lose your soul,” said William R. Fitzsimmons ’67.


Mankiw says how things have changed: "Today at Harvard, it is almost impossible to flunk out."

Posted by jk at 10:56 AM

March 2, 2008

You'll Laugh, You'll Scream, You'll Cry

Not NITRO-BURNING FUNNY CARS!, sorry, but this education video from Drew Carey at ReasonTV. Some parents and a caring principal at Locke High School in Watts try to wrestle a failing school away from the teachers' union.

Vikki Reyes has had it with Locke High, the school her daughters attend in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She walked in on class one day and recalls “the place was just like a zoo!” Students had taken control, while the teacher sat quietly with a book.

Frank Wells has also had it with Locke High. When he became principal he says gangs ruled the campus. He tried to turn things around but ran into a “brick wall” of resistance from the school district and teachers union.

Locke seemed destined to languish in high crime and low test scores until Wells, Reyes, and many reform-minded teachers joined with a maverick named Steve Barr in an attempt to break free from the status quo. Their battle is just one example of the charter school education revolt that’s erupting across the nation.


Stunning. Please watch it. I elected to link instead of embed the video viewer on the blog because I have had some trouble with their player. One extra click if you don't mind.

SIDE NOTE: I remain suspicious about the propaganda aspect of video. One watches what Michael Moore can do when he controls the editing block, or VP Al Gore, or 60 minutes. I agree with every syllable, spoken or implied on this video -- yet part of me wonders is it is fair,

The Union stooge is easy to demonize and seems to deserve it. I just wonder now that every kid with a Mac can get his inner Reni Riefenstahl on. The ReasonTV stuff is well done and carries the credibility of the magazine. I read this morning that Nick Gillespie is leaving the book for the ReasonTV site.

I have cheered the rise of blogs, the long tail, and the "Armies of Davids" but it is naive to not appreciate the polemic power of plentiful and professional-looking video.

Posted by jk at 1:15 PM

January 29, 2008

Giants Walked This Earth

A good friend of mine and a good friend of this blog sends a link to an obituary in the Denver Post, with the subject "We have known giants." I took German from this man in High School. But I was an absolute idiot because he taught Russian, Latin and Classics before and after school and I did not sign up.

Martin Globocnik, 88, passed away on January 17, 2008. He is survived by his beloved wife, Vera. Born August 1, 1919 in Cerklje, Slovenia, Martin taught at various elementary and high schools in Slovenia, Italy, and Colorado. He survived Italian and German POW camps during WWII and came to marry Vera Martelanc February 2, 1954, in Trieste, Italy. In 1955 they immigrated to the US and settled in Colorado. Martin taught languages at Machebeuf H.S. from 1962-1982. His passion was Latin. Martin's students competed in national events and won numerous honors. A devoted Catholic, Martin fled his Slovenian homeland as the Communists came to power. He is also survived by various nieces and nephews in Slovenia and Italy.

He was the real deal as a scholar and as an inhabitant of this wonderful planet. A thin, small, academic-looking fellow, he had also escaped from friendly POW camps because of intelligence work. When I was in school, he was indefatigable in his efforts to teach, raise funds for the school, and impact his students. A giant.

Posted by jk at 3:36 PM | Comments (1)
But mdmhvonpa thinks:

It bugs me too that I was so oblivious to the giants whose feet I pranced about as a child. Oh, the folly of youth!

Posted by: mdmhvonpa at January 30, 2008 8:47 AM

November 28, 2007

Thought Jocks

Super Guest Editorial in the Wall Street Journal today (Rupert, tear down this wall!)

Monday: After a long day at his New York City private school, Ben, 16, heads to my creative writing lab to work on his heartfelt memoir about his parents' bitter divorce. Tuesday: Alison, 15, rushes from her elite private school in the Bronx to work on her short screenplay about a gifted, mean and eccentric boy. Lily, 13, pops in whenever she can to polish her hilarious short story narrated by an insomniac owl.

Ben, Alison and Lily, along with another few dozen who attend my afterschool writing program, also attend top-notch New York private schools that cost upwards of $25,000 a year.


Sadly, their expensive private schools are so enamored with the self-esteem culture, there is no academic competition. These gifted students go to tutors for a chance to compete.
But some, and ironically those who attend some of the most desirable schools in the region, feel the reverberations in deeper, more painful ways. "Two years after my son left a school that prohibited him from entering a national math competition," says one mother, "he still writes angry essays about why the jocks in his former school were allowed to compete throughout the city while he wasn't allowed to win the same honors for his gifts." Sam, her son, felt uncool in the eyes of his peers, and undervalued (and sometimes even resented) by the administration.

I have pretty happy memories of being the first to solve a math problem (regular readers know I never won a spelling bee) -- and I have no doubt that this offset my inferior kickball skills. I value competition in all things. I think Ms. Wallace-Segall is right that we devalue thought by not supporting the opportunity to celebrate it.


Posted by jk at 5:00 PM

August 27, 2007

Luskin's Back

The summer just became a little less doldrumy. Don Luskin is back from vacation.

I suspect Paul Krugman will miss his absence. He takes down a Krugman column today where Krugman makes a perfect pitch for school choice. Only it's sarcastic. The idea of government's not running schools is so foreign to the ex-Princeton prof, he finds the idea humorous.

Posted by jk at 12:31 PM | Comments (1)
But Harrison Bergeron thinks:

This was simply one of those times when the big government liberal stands up and facetiously argues for the free market to work while we Hayekians simply chuckle at the preponderance of a government that would somehow be better.

The market as it currently stands (in health and education) is hardly free and thus less than ideal. However, I would never prefer a less-than-ideal government to a less-than-ideal market.

Posted by: Harrison Bergeron at August 27, 2007 12:57 PM

August 22, 2007

No Acronym Left Behind

W shill that I am, I have provided some tepid support for No Child Left Behind on this blog. I always thought that President Bush got rolled by Senator Kennedy in his "fool me once" phase of his attempts to work across the aisle. The President was seeking accountability and the Senior Senator from the briny deep was seeking more Federal dollars to hand out.

Everyday Economist links to Cato's Andrew J. Coulson's take on yet another Federal Education Acronymed Restructuring (FEAR). This time it is America COMPETES. Colson points out that it includes no competition.

Just as with the NDEA, we should not be surprised by these [disappointing NCLB] results. Measures like NCLB, America COMPETES, and their fellow alphabetic travelers are the education policy analogues of perestroika — Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt to “fix” Soviet socialism by tinkering around its edges. Gorbachev’s efforts failed, it is now widely acknowledged, because they omitted certain crucial elements of free markets: prices that are determined by supply and demand instead of by central planners, private instead of state ownership of enterprises – that sort of thing. America’s public school monopolies are like socialist economies in small; centrally planned, uncompetitive, state-owned. Just as Gorbachev’s piece-meal reforms couldn’t fix his system, neither can such half-measures fix ours.

I supported NCLB in the context of the "ownership society" because it seeked to inject some accountability. And, laugh if you will, but anything my Union Teacher Relatives (UTRs) loathed so much had to have some redeeming qualities.

I cannot stand up to Coulson. NCLB had a wisp of competition, but if the Feds cannot break down the union monopoly, they should stay the hell out.

Posted by jk at 12:36 PM

April 27, 2007

We Don't Need No Thought Control...

I've been sitting on this post all week. Professors Gary Becker and Richard Posner have created one of the most intelligent and thoughtful (non-chocolate-bunny) blogs out there. The Economics and the Law Prof take a serious look at a single issue, generally finding some of the internecine disagreement of which I am so fond. It's on the blogroll and I recommend keeping up -- they have a new topic every week or so.

Last Sunday, Becker posted on "The Benefits of Education," wondering why even more people do not sign up for the obvious benefits and strong return on investment that higher education provides.

It is well documented that the average earnings premium from a college education in the United States increased from about 40 percent in the late 1970's to about 80 percent at present. Not everyone does well financially from going to college, or badly by not going-Bill Gates is an obvious but extreme example of a college dropout- but the average person who does go has far better prospects for earnings, employment, and occupation than the average person who stops schooling after finishing high school. The economic benefits from completing high school also went up relative to those to high school dropouts, although they did not increase as much as the benefits from college. A similar picture holds for Great Britain and many other countries, although the changes elsewhere have been smaller than in the United States.

Posner's Comment hit a theme pretty close to home, namely that "Correlation is not causation."
Suppose what are increasing are not the returns to education but the returns to intelligence, and suppose that people with high IQs both enjoy education more than other people do and are more likely to be admitted to college or a graduate or professional school because teachers prefer teaching (and learning from!) them and because good students are more likely (because they are more intelligent, not because they are good students) to be affluent, and therefore generous, alumni.

Now if this is correct, one might expect many intelligent people to bypass college, because it is so costly; but few do. However, colleges and graduate (including professional) schools provide a screening and certifying function. Someone who graduates with good grades from a good college demonstrates intelligence more convincingly than if he simply tells a potential employer that he's smart; and he also demonstrates a degree of discipline and docility, valuable to employers, that a good performance on an IQ test would not demonstrate. (This is an important point; if all colleges did was separate the smart from the less smart, college would be an inefficient alternative to simple testing.) An apprentice system would be a substitute (and there is evidence that in Germany it is a highly efficient substitute), but employers naturally prefer to shift a portion of the cost of screening potential employees to colleges and universities. Because those institutions are supported by taxpayers and alumni as well as by students, employers do not bear the full cost of screening.


I have always posited this question as: What if you traded the group of current college graduates with those without a degree (Posner says it much better, having all that education to fall back on). I do not mean to run down the benefits of education nor encourage people to drop out. I am a dropout that has lived the life of a graduate. Most of the jobs I have had since I put the old guitar down would have typically been filled by a college graduate.

I realize that there is a sour grapes element to my question, but I have often thought, like Posner, that the successes were achieved by what I call "college people" more so than college graduates.

Full disclosure: a degree would have helped me both personally and financially, and I expect I will finish up an online Economics degree someday here (You can take a course from Art Laffer at YorktownUniveristy,com)

Posted by jk at 12:40 PM

April 23, 2007

Physilicious

Most physics texts are written as if they were supplementary problem books for math courses. They are heavy on the problem-solving, but light (or empty) on the cause-effect relationships, inductive thinking, and reasoning which makes science.

David Harriman is one physicist and teacher who has remedied that. He has a physics course for sale, which is described by the VanDamme Academy, where he teaches, as follows:

David Harriman, philosopher and historian of physics, is the originator of VanDamme Academy's revolutionary science curriculum. An expert both in physics and in proper pedagogy, Mr Harriman developed and taught a two-year course on the history of physics for VanDamme Academy. His unique approach is to teach physics historically, thereby teaching it inductively. From the early Greeks to Copernicus to Newton, this course presents the essential principles of physics in logical sequence, placing each in the context of the earlier discoveries that made it possible and explaining how each was discovered by reasoning from observations.

Teaching physics by this method not only renders physics thoroughly intelligible--it also makes physics an inspiring story of discovery, in which great thinkers triumph in their quest to grasp the nature of the physical universe.

He sells the CD for $495 and the DVD for $695.

He is not the first to teach physics from a historical perspective. Two others are Dr. Michael Fowler and Dr. Herbert Priestley. While Fowler and Priestley probably did not have the philosophic knowledge (e.g., of induction, deduction, and epistemology in general) of Harriman, they did have a knowledge of physics and its history. And they have some things available for less cost for those of us who cannot yet afford Harriman's work.

The homepage of Dr. Michael Fowler, at UVa, has links to his lectures for

PHYS 109: Galileo and Einstein (Lecturer) Fall

PHYS 152: Introductory Physics for Majors (Lecturer) Spring

PHYS 609: Galileo and Einstein (Lecturer) Fall

PHYS 751: Quantum Theory I (Lecturer) Fall

PHYS 752: Quantum Mechanics II (Lecturer) Spring

His also has notes available for Physics 252: Modern Physics.

On another page you can find: (1) a lecture on using history to teach physics; (2) a leture on heat which teaches physics from a historical (and hence inductive) perspective; (3) a lecture on electricity and magnetism which also teaches from a historical perspective; (4) a lecture on the development of Maxwell’s equations; (5) some quizzes, exercises, and another lecture.

Dr. Herbert Priestley wrote a book entitled Introductory Physics. You can find it on a used-book site such as Alibris or Abe Books.

Introductory Physics by Herbert Priestley (Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1958) has the best presentation of physics I’ve ever seen. (I have not heard Harriman yet.) He presents concepts in their historical and scientific context. Priestley presents alternative viewpoints that were being used to understand phenomena such as heat or electricity, discusses why each viewpoint was held and the arguments scientists had, and describes the experiments the scientists did – especially the experiments which validated one side or the other. In showing us the development of ideas in physics, Priestley is showing us the correct view of concept-formation and the formation of generalizations, Priestley is showing us that true concepts and propositions come from applying rational, objective methods to the real world.

Priestley attended the University of Leeds, receiving a B.S. in 1933 and a Ph.D. in physics in 1935. He served in the Royal Air Force as an industrial research physicist, civilian education officer, and air intelligence officer. He came to the US as RAF liaison officer in 1942, but stayed on to teach physics at Ripton College after WWII. In 1952, he became chairman of the physics department at Knox College, where he stayed until he retired in 1980. His obituary is on Knox College Website.

A caveat. Priestley does not give Aristotle proper credit as a scientist. People have insulted Aristotle for centuries, for things that are not Aristotle’s fault – people throughout history blindly believed what was written in Aristotle’s corpus, yes, but that is not Aristotle’s fault. Aristotle, in method, was objective, and referred to experience. If he had the evidence available to him which people did who lived 1,000 years or more after he lived, he could have arrived at the conclusions we have -- even Galileo said this. He was a solid scientist in his context, as can be seen in the work he did most: philosophy, logic and biology.

Dr. James Lennox, Professor of Philosophy and the History of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, has some well-written and well-researched articles on his website regarding Aristotle as scientist and philosopher of science. An article directly relevant to some of Priestley's uninformed, unresearched accusations against Aristotle is Lennox's "Aristotle, Galileo and the Mixed Sciences," which discusses (1) Aristotle's use of mathematics as a tool in physics to explain why things happen and (2) Galileo's debt to Aristotle.

Dr. Michael Fowler, Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia also recognized Aristotle’s solid contributions to science. In a lecture on Aristotle, Dr. Fowler says:

To summarize: Aristotle's philosophy laid out an approach to the investigation of all natural phenomena, to determine form by detailed, systematic work, and thus arrive at final causes. His logical method of argument gave a framework for putting knowledge together, and deducing new results. He created what amounted to a fully-fledged professional scientific enterprise, on a scale comparable to a modern university science department. It must be admitted that some of his work - unfortunately, some of the physics - was not up to his usual high standards. He evidently found falling stones a lot less interesting than living creatures. Yet the sheer scale of his enterprise, unmatched in antiquity and for centuries to come, gave an authority to all his writings.

And on the website of the University of Dayton’s History Department, in an article about the history of science, they say:

Aristotle is the key figure in this history of ancient science and indeed one of a handful of leading thinkers and doers in the entire history of science from the dawn of man to the present. His work in virtually every scientific field--from biology to physics to chemistry to astronomy--became a cornerstone of Western Science until the Scientific Revolution. And indeed his methodology, his reliance upon close observation and interdisciplinary bent, remain with us today.

Here are some excerpts from Priestley’s book. It is impossible to grasp Priestley’s masterful and rational approach in brief excerpts, so the excerpts must be lengthy. Priestley does use math in his textbook (it is algebra-based), but these excerpts will focus on his discussions of cause and effect and the development of ideas.

I. Excerpt 1: Chp. 15, “Electricity and Chemistry,” pp. 201-205

15.1 Galvanism. Electricity and chemistry are closely inter-related. A chemical reaction can produce a supply of electricity for as long as the reaction continues. This, the first source of a continuous supply of electricity, an electric current, is the principle of the electric battery. Conversely, an electric current can produce a chemical reaction, usually the decomposition of a chemical compound into its simpler elements, the process of electrolysis. Both processes involve the conversion of energy from one form to another; in the first case, chemical energy becomes electrical energy; in the other, the reverse takes place.

Every living cell produces electricity. The functioning of living tissue today is studied through its electrical action. The study of electricity in living tissue, which began quite accidentally about one hundred and fifty years ago, led to the development of the electric battery, for many years thereafter the standard method of producing electricity

About 1750, it was noted that pieces of lead and silver placed above and below the tongue, respectively, with their outer edges in contact, produced an unpleasant and pungent taste not encountered when the metals were placed separately upon the tongue. The phenomenon was attributed to some excitation of the nerves of the tongue. By this time, various physicians and experimenters had demonstrated that electricity could be used as a muscular stimulant in man and animals. This fact had been used to distinguish between paralyzed and atrophied muscles, an electric charge producing a contraction only in a paralyzed muscle.

Before the end of the eighteenth century it was known that an electric discharge passed through the body of a freshly killed animal could cause a convulsive action in its muscles, and that the discharge of an electric eel (section 14.2) produced motion in a nearby dead fish. Identification of the origin of these effects was made by Galvani (1737-1798), a professor of anatomy at Bologna. Galvani began experimenting about 1780, using a Leyden jar [A Leyden jar was the earliest form of electric condenser, consisting of “a bottle filled with water into which was inserted a wire held in place by a cork.” p. 191] and an electrostatic machine to test the effects of the electric discharge upon the nervous system of the frog. During these experiments he made the chance observation that nearby electrical discharge caused convulsions in a freshly prepared frog’s leg in conducting contact with the earth.

[I] had dissected and prepared a frog. [While] attending to something else, I laid it on a table on which stood an electrical machine at some distance…when one of the persons present touched accidentally and lightly the inner [thigh or leg] nerves of the frog with the point of a scalpel all the muscles of the legs seemed to contract again and again as if affected by powerful cramps. [One of my assistants] thought…the action was excited when a spark was discharged from the conductor of the machine [and] called my attention to it…I was eager to test the same and to bring to light what was concealed in it. I therefore myself touched one of the other nerves with the point of the knife and at the same time one of those present drew a spark. The phenomenon was always the same. Without fail there occurred lively contractions in every muscle of the leg at the same instant as that in which the spark jumped…

[Thinking] these motions might arise from the contact with the point of the knife…rather than by the spark, I touched the same nerves again in the same way in other frogs with the point of the knife…with greater pressure [while] no one during this time drew off a spark...no motion could be detected. I [concluded] that perhaps to excite the phenomenon…needed both the contact of a body and the electric spark.

Therefore, I again pressed the blade of the knife on the nerve and kept it there at rest while the spark passed and while the machine was not in motion. The phenomenon only occurred while the sparks were passing. [In many experiments with the same knife] it was remarkable that when the spark passed the motions observed sometimes occurred and sometimes not… The scalpel had a bone handle...if this handle was held in the hand no contractions occurred when the spark passed; but they did occur if the finger rested on the metallic blade or on the iron rivet by which the blade was held in the handle…

Now to put the thing beyond all doubt we…not only touched the nerves of the leg [with a slender dry and clean glass rod] but rubbed them hard while the sparks were passing. But…the phenomenon never appeared. [It] occurred however if we even lightly touched the same nerve with an iron rod and only little sparks passed. [William F. Magie, A Source Book in Physics (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1938), p. 421.]

Galvani’s “phenomenon” occurred only when the frog’s leg was in conducting communication with the earth, first by chance contact of the scalpel with the nerve, thereafter intentionally by bringing the leg into contact with a conductor grounded by contact with the human body. He continued his researches, turning to the effect of atmospheric electricity (lightning) on muscular motion. He attached frogs by the nerves to long iron wires, the feet of the frogs being grounded by similar wires. Simultaneously with a flash of lightning the muscles were markedly convulsed.

In both these series of experiments the frog, place upon a body insulated from the ground, became charged by induction (section 14.11) from either the electrostatic machine or lightning. When a grounded metal object (scalpel or iron rod) touched the nerve, the sudden change of potential caused by grounding produced the observed convulsive action.

[I next laid one of the prepared frogs] on an iron plate and began to press the hook which was in the spinal cord against the plate. Behold, the same contractions, the same motions…other metals [gave] the same result, only that the contractions were different [for] different metals…more lively for some and more sluggish for the others. At last it occurred to us to use other [non-conducting] bodies…[dry] glass, rubber, resin, stone or wood. With these...no muscular contractions and motions could be seen. Naturally [this astonished us] and caused us to think that possibly the electricity was present in the animal itself…a very fine nervous fluid which during the occurrence of the phenomenon flows from the nerves to the muscle like the electric current….” [ibid., p. 424.]

Galvani now recognized that here was something entirely new. “to make the thing plainer” he varied the experiment by placing the frog on a glass non-conducting plate. A curved rod connected the hook which entered the spinal cord with the muscles of the leg or feet. Convulsions occurred only when the curved rod was of conducting material and only when the hook and conducting rod were of dissimilar metals.

Two possible explanations of these phenomena suggested themselves to Galvani; that there was electricity in the animal organism, or that there was involved some electrical process depending upon contact of the metals and for which the frog’s legs merely served as a sensitive detector. He leaned toward the first of these – the existence of “animal electricity,” for which the nerves had the greatest affinity and were the repository. His theory further assumed that the inner substance of the nerve served as the conductor of this electricity, while the outer layer of the nerve prevented its dispersal. The muscles were the receivers of the animal electricity, and were charged negatively on the outside and positively on the inside. The mechanism of motion was a discharge of the electric fluid from the inside to the outside of the muscle by way of the nerve (like the discharge of a Leyden jar), and this discharge provided a muscular contractional stimulus to the muscle fibers.

15.2 Volta disagrees with Galvani. Galvani’s experiments and his interpretation of the results aroused considerable interest. Among the physicists, physiologists, and medical men who obtained frogs and pieces of dissimilar metals to repeat the experiments for themselves was Volta (1745-1827), a countryman of Galvani’s and professor of physics at Paris.

Volta, greatly impressed by Galvani’s work, referred to it as “one of those splendid major discoveries which…serve to usher in new epochs, not only because it is new and wonderful but also because it opens up a broad field of experiments that are especially and outstandingly capable of the application. “ [ibid., p. 443.] Volta’s original belief in the correctness of the “animal electricity” theory was weakened when he found that a muscular contraction could be produced simply by allowing a very weak electrical discharge to traverse a nerve without the discharge in anyway passing through the muscles. To produce a contraction required only stimulation of “the nerves that control the motions of the voluntary muscles concerned.”

A physicist rather than a physiologist, Volta now shifted his emphasis to the function of the metallic rods used. Repeating the experiment of placing on the tongue two dissimilar metals, he “covered the point of the tongue...with a strip of tin…With the bowl of a spoon, I touched the tongue further back; then I inclined the handle of the spoon to touch the tin. I expected…a twitching of the tongue…. The expected sensation, however, I did not perceive at all; but instead, a rather strong acid taste at the tip of the tongue…this taste lasts as long as the tin and sliver are in contact with each other. …This shows that the flow of electricity from one place to another is continuing without interruption.” It was “not less remarkable” that reversing the experiment so that the silver touched the tip of the tongue and the tin its middle gave “a very different taste...no longer sour but more alkaline, sharp, and approaching bitter.” [ibid., p. 444.] Bringing together the free ends of strips of dissimilar metal which touched, respectively, the forehead and palate produced, at the instant of contact, a bring flash clearly visible to the eye.

Investigations such as these gradually convinced Volta that the metals not only served as conductors but actually generated the electricity themselves. He accordingly modified his views to the belief that the nerves were merely stimulated by a cause to be found in the metals themselves, which were “in a real sense the exciters of electricity.” By 1794 he declared his opposition to the idea of animal electricity and substituted the term “metallic electricity.” The entire effect arose from the electricity set into circulation when metals were brought into contact with any moist body. This circulation through nerves caused stimulation of associate muscles. He found that the results depended upon the nature of the substances used and drew up a series of substances (metals, graphite, an charcoal) such that the magnitude of the effect produced using any two of the substances increased with the separation of the substances in this series.

Volta now dispensed entirely with the use of nerves and muscles in his investigations, and brought pairs of metals into contact with various moist substances, such as paper, cloth, etc. With a sensitive electrometer which he had previously developed, he was able to show the existence of “contact potential” – that the momentary contact of two dissimilar metals caused them to become oppositely charged, even without any moist substance present. A zinc and a copper disc after being placed in contact were both found to be charged, the zinc positively and the copper negatively. Copper also became negatively charged after contact with iron or tin, although less strongly than after contact with zinc. On the other hand, contact with gold or silver gave copper a positive charge and the gold or silver a negative charge. By numerous experiments along these lines, Volta constructed a series for the metals such that upon bringing any two of them into contact, the earlier in the list became positively charged, the later one negatively charged:

Zinc copper
Lead silver
Tin gold
Iron graphite

Furthermore, the more widely separated the substances in the series, the greater was the contact charge developed between them.

On the basis of his investigations, Volta originally assumed that the exciting electricity was located only at the points of contact of the metals and that the animal or other fluid served only as a conductor. But further experiments showed that an electric charge can be produced not only between metals in contact, but also between a metal and certain fluids. For instance, an insulated disc of silver or other metal brought into contact with moist wood or paper and then removed was found to be negatively charged. Experimenting further with liquids and metals, Volta found that the best results were obtained from two dissimilar metals with a moist conductor between them, a combination called a galvanic element. The effect of such a single element was multiplied by combining a large number of them to form a “pile.”

In 1800, Volta described a pile which produced a constant flow of electricity. By comparison with a Leyden jar, it was “equal only to a [Leyden jar] very feebly charged; but infinitely surpasses the power of these [jars] in that it does not need, as they do, to be charged in advance by means of an outside source; and in that It can give the disturbance every time that it is properly touched no matter how often.” [ibid., p. 428]

The pile consisted of small, clean and dry discs of zinc and silver and discs of a spongy material capable of absorbing and retaining a liquid. On a table or base is placed a sliver plate, then a

plate of zinc; on this…one of the moistened discs; then another silver [plate], followed immediately by another of zinc, [then another] moistened disc…continue in the same way coupling a plate of sliver with one of zinc, always [in the same order] and inserting between these couples a moistened disc. [ibid.]

Such a pile produced a slight shock when the hands were placed in contact with the top and bottom of the pile, and also the previously experienced effect upon the nerves of taste, sight, and hearing. One drawback was that the moist material between the metal discs dried out, decreasing the electric current generated. To overcome this, Volta devised his “crown of cups,” consisting of a row of beakers of non-metallic material filled with brine into which were placed alternate strips of sliver and zinc. Each silver strip in one cup was joined to the zinc strip in the next cup by a metallic jumper. “A train of 30, 40, 60 of these goblets joined up in this manner…in substance is the same as the [pile] tried before; the essential feature, of the immediate connection of the different metals which form each pair and the mediate connection of one couple with another by the intermediary of a damp conductor, appears in this apparatus as well as in the other.” [ibid., p. 431.] This crown of cups was subsequently improved by substituting copper for silver and dilute sulphuric acid for brine.

Volta reported that the “tension” (potential difference) produced by the pile or cups “is less according as they are nearer in the following series…sliver, copper, iron, tin, lead, zinc, a scale in which the first [is positive with respect] to the second, the second to the third, etc.”

The importance of Volta’s discovery of a means of producing a continuous supply of electricity cannot be overemphasized. Sarton, the distinguished historian of science, compares it with the development of the telescope and microscope, with the fundamental difference that the telescope and microscope “were only means of magnifying our vision. They enabled us to see things which we could not see before, but which existed nevertheless… On the contrary, the electric cell was really a creative instrument; it opened to man a new and incomparable source of energy.” [Bern Dibner, Galvani-Volta (Norwalk: Burndy Library, Inc., 1952), p. 40.]

15.3 The simple voltaic cell. Volta’s identification of the true origin of “animal electricity” led to the familiar batteries now used in radios, automobiles, etc. In every case, production of electricity results from the conversion of chemical into electrical energy. To understand the mechanism involved, consider the simple or voltaic cell, consisting of two dissimilar metals immersed in a liquid, and in essence an element of Volta’s pile.


Genius. Thank you Dr. Priestley.

Priestley then goes on to discuss the work of Michael Faraday in discovering the laws of electrolysis, which led to the development of practical cells, i.e., the batteries we now have in everyday life, and which we take for granted.

But what we have in this excerpt is the scientific history of the development of the modern battery – which came out of experiments which changed fundamentally how we view man, as well. The observation that we had different sensations when metals touched our tongue in different places would have gone nowhere and could have been interpreted in all kinds of ways, without the knowledge that frogs’ nerves and muscles are affected by electricity.

This knowledge was the first step in our modern science of neurology, in understanding how the brain works, and in developing some of the drugs we have today (which have neurological effects because of their chemistry and electrical effects).

And if not for the foundational work of Michael Faraday arising from the research of Volta and Galvani, we would not know what we do today about nutrition and the operation of the cell. What does something so everyday as Gatorade have in it? Electrolytes. Thank Michael Faraday next time you drink some.

Priestley is a genius in taking us from the observation that we had certain sensations when metals touched our tongues, to the modern battery. He presents a missing side of modern scientific texts: causality. Science is about discovering cause-effect relationships. Most modern texts present physics as an exercise in mathematics – the texts could be addenda to math texts, providing word problems and applications of math. They fail miserably in presenting cause-effect relationships, and showing how scientific knowledge really develops. They fail to present the important experiments that led to modern understanding of the material world, and that make physics what it is.

II. Excerpt 2: Chp. 10, “The Nature of Heat,” pp. 135-139

10.6 The measurement of heat. The development of the thermometer opened the doorway to a new science – that of heat measurements – in which the pioneer was Joseph Black (1727-1799), professor of medicine and chemistry at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. Prior to Black’s work, no clear distinction had been drawn between “quantity of heat” and “degree of hotness (temperature).” While something clearly passed from a hot body to one at a lower temperature, whether that something was heat or temperature was not known. Black was the first to conceive clearly of heat as a measurably physical quantity, distinct from, although related to, temperature as indicated by a thermometer.

He began to investigate the general belief that the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of any body by a given amount was proportional to the density of the body. Fahrenheit, by mixing together water and mercury at different temperatures, had found that despite its much greater density, the heating and cooling effect of a given volume of mercury was only two-thirds that of the same volume of water. From these results Black concluded that “the quantities of heat which different kinds of matter must receive to reduce them to equilibrium with one another, or to raise their temperatures by an equal number of degrees, are not in proportion to the quantity of matter in each, by in proportions widely different from this.” [Abraham Wolf, A History of Science, Technology, and Philosophy in the 18th Century (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939), p. 178.] Fahrenheit’s experiments led Back to compare the heating and cooling effects of other substances with corresponding effects of an equal bulk of water, obtaining for the different substances values he called their “capacities for heat.”

He went on to observe that the sensation of cold in a hand applied to a piece of ice indicates that the ice receives heat very rapidly. But a thermometer applied to the water dripping from the melting ice show it to be at the same temperature as the ice. “A great quantity, therefore, of the heat…which enters into the melting ice produces no other effect but to give it fluidity, without augmenting its sensible heat; it appears to be absorbed and concealed within the water, so as not to be discoverable by the application of a thermometer.” [ibid, p. 180.] Back now demonstrated that during the melting of ice, and similar changes of state (solid to liquid, liquid to vapor), large quantities of heat were “rendered latent,” absorbed with no change in temperature, and explained these and similar facts by assuming a union of the matter of heat with ice to form water and with water to form steam; i.e.,

Ice + matter of heat = water,
Water+ matter of heat = steam.

10.7 The caloric theory of heat. The more obvious phenomena of heat – combustion, melting, freezing, evaporation, etc. – have been familiar from early times, and ideas concerning the nature of heat go far back in history. Aristotle conceived of fire as one of the four material elements (section 4.2), while the Platonic view was that heat was some kind of motion: “For heat and fire…are themselves begotten by impact and friction: but this is motion.” But throughout the centuries little or no distinction was made between heat and flame.

Various people, including Francis Bacon, Huygens, and Boyle, advanced the idea that heat is a form of motion of the “parts” of a body. Boyle drew attention to the heat generated during the boring of guns and to the fact that “when a smith does hastily hammer a nail,…the hammered metal will grow exceedingly hot, and yet there appears not anything to make it so, save the forcible motion of the hammer.” [ibid, p. 276.] But there was no direct experimental support of these speculations.

Following his work on thermal capacities and latent heats, Black was led to consider the nature of heat. This he did with some reservations, as may be seen from the following extract from his lectures: “Heat is plainly something extraneous to matter. …Having arrived at this conclusion, it may perhaps be required of me to express more distinctly this something – to give a full description, or definition, of what I mean by the word ‘heat’ in matter. This, however, is a demand that I cannot satisfy entirely…. Our knowledge of heat is not brought to that state of perfection that might enable us to propose with confidence a theory of heat of to assign an immediate cause for it.” [Duane Roller, The Early Development of the Concepts of Temperature and Heat, (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1950), p. 42.]

Black continued with a review of the theories previously advanced as to the nature of heat, theories which fall into two basic categories – that heat is either motion or a material substance. Reviewing the motion theory, Black say that he “cannot form a conception of this internal (vibration) which has any tendency to explain even the more simple effects of heat.” He then goes on to point out that:

…the greater number of French and German philosophers have held that the motion of which they suppose heat to consist is not a tremor, or vibration, of the particles of the hot body itself, but of the particles of a subtle, highly elastic, and penetrating fluid matter, which is contained in the pores of hot bodies, or interposed among their particles…. But interposed among their particles…. But neither of these suppositions has been fully and accurately considered by their authors, or applied to explain the whole of the facts and phenomena relating to heat. They have not, therefore, supplied us with a proper theory or explication of the nature of heat.

A more ingenious attempt has lately been…given by the late Dr. Cleghorn…. He supposed that heat depends on the abundance of that subtle elastic fluid which had been imagined before by other philosophers to be present in every part of the universe and to be the cause of heat…. he supposed that the ordinary kinds of matter consist of particles having strong [gravitational] attraction both for one another and for the matter of heat; whereas the…matter of heat is self-repelling, its particles having a strong repulsion for one another while they are attracted by other kids of matter.

Such an idea of the nature of heat is the most probable of any that I know.… It is, however, altogether a supposition. [ibid., p. 45.]

In 1779, Cleghorn extended the material theory of heat to include Black’s discoveries of thermal capacity and latent heat. The main properties assigned by Cleghorn to the “matter of heat’ or “caloric,” may be summarized in the following postulates of the caloric theory:

1. Caloric is an elastic fluid, composed of particles which strongly repel each other.
2. Particles of caloric are attracted by particles of ordinary matter.
3. Caloric can be neither destroyed nor created.
4. Caloric can be either sensible caloric, which increases the temperature of body to which it is added and forms an “atmosphere” around the particles of the body, or latent caloric, which is combed with the particles of the body in a manner similar to the chemical combinations of the particles themselves, producing as a new compound the liquid or vapor form of the substance.
5. Caloric may or may not have appreciable weight.

When two bodies at different temperatures were placed in contact, it was supposed that caloric flowed from the hotter to the colder body until equilibrium was established. Expansion was attributed to the mutual repulsion of the caloric which entered the heated body. Development of heat by friction or compression was explained as due either to the fact that the particles of a body rubbed by friction lost some of their “capacity” for caloric, which was thus “liberated,” raising the temperature of the body, or to the fact that friction and pressure squeezed out some of the caloric latent in the pressed body, which thereby became sensibly hot. The caloric theory dominated the science of heat until the middle of the nineteenth century.

It should be noted that toward the end of the eighteenth century the “motion theory” of heat was nothing more than pure speculation, a working hypothesis without any decisive experimental evidence in its favor. By contrast the caloric theory offered a satisfactory and semiquantitative explantion of the known thermal phenomena. Furthermore, the motion theory dealt only with the origin of heat and said nothing about its behavior.

10.8 Does heat have weight? Black pointed out that the fact that bodies expanded when heated had led to the supposition that a heated body increased in weight. Various eighteenth-century experiments to test this supposition had produced conflicting results, none of them proving “that the weight of bodies is increased by their being heated, or by the presence of heat in them.” Some observers found that an increase in the temperature of a body was accompanied by slight increase in weight; some observed a slight loss in weight; others could detect no variation in weight with variation in temperature. The most carefully executed experiments were those of Runford, whose results were negative.

Although Rumford was an able administrator, and an authority on military problems, experimenting on heat was one of his “most agreeable employments.” He believed the mode-of-motion theory to be the sounder view of the nature of heat, even though in his time the caloric theory was well established and generally accepted. The primary purpose of his experiments was to attack the caloric theory from as many different points of view as possible.

Identical glass flasks containing equal weights of water, alcohol, and mercury showed equal temperatures and weights after having been exposed to room temperature (61º F) for 24 hours, after 48 hours at a cooler temperature (30º F), and upon being restored to room temperature after the cooler period. Repeated several times, the experiment gave consistent results. Rumford was convinced that “if heat be, in fact, a substance or matter…it must be something so infinitely rare, even in its most condensed state, as to baffle all our attempts to discover its [weight]… I think we may very safely conclude that all attempts to discover any effect of heat upon the apparent weights of bodies will be fruitless.” [Wolf, op. cit., p. 196.]

Rumford’s experiments showed heat had no detectable weight. So caloric must be imponderable, an opinion which Black had considered to be one of the chief objections to the caloric theory. But to many eighteenth-century scientists and philosophers this was not a serious objection. At that time full acceptance was given to a small class of “imponderable” fluids – including light, electricity, and magnetism – which, unlike ordinary matter, were not subject to gravitational attraction to any observable extent. By attributing to these “imponderables” certain other familiar properties of ordinary matter, the various known phenomena could be fairly satisfactorily explained, and new phenomena often successfully predicted Thus the problem of the weight of heat was not critical in resolving the conflict between the caloric and motion theories of heat. Much more critical was the conservation principle, that caloric could be neither created nor destroyed. Here also Rumford performed certain vital experiments as part of his general attack on the caloric theory.

The caloric theory had been particularly useful in explaining and predicting phenomena in mixing liquids or heating a substance over a fire, in which it is reasonable to conclude that there is no creation or destruction of heat during its conduction from object to object or from fire to object. But where did the heat come from when an object was warmed by rubbing it or hammering it? While the calorists believed they could answer this question and still retain the principle of conservation of caloric, other investigators believed the mode-of-motion theory to be a much more satisfactory explanation.

While engaged in boring cannon at Munich, Rumford observed with surprise “the very considerable degree of heat that a brass gun acquires in a short time in being bored, and with the still higher temperature of the metallic chips separated from it by the borer. The more I meditated on these phenomena, the more they appeared to me to be curious and interesting. A thorough investigation of them seemed even to bid fair to give a farther insight into the hidden nature of heat; and to enable us to form some reasonable conjectures respecting the existence, or nonexistence, of [caloric]….From whence comes the heat actually produced in the mechanical operations? Is it furnished by the metallic chips which are separated by the borer from the solid mass of metal?” [Roller, op. cit., p. 63.] In one experiment, for example, a 113-lb metal blank was heated from 60º F to 130º F while less than two ounces of metallic dust was produced by the borer.

A brass cylinder, placed in a wooden box containing 18 ¾ lbs of water, was made to rotate against a steel borer. The amount of heat produced could be determined by observing the rise in temperature of the water, which was brought from 60 F to the boiling point (212 F) in 2 ¾ hours. As Rumford stated: “It would be difficult to describe the surprise and astonishment expressed in the countenance of the by-standers on seeing so large a quantity of water heated, and actually made to boil without any fire…. We must not forget to consider that most remarkable circumstance, that the source of the heat generated by friction in these experiments, appeared evidently to be inexhaustible….anything which any insulated body, or system of bodies, can continue to furnish without limitation, cannot possibly be a material substance. It appears to me to be extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in the manner in which the heat was excited and communicated in these experiments, except it be motion. “ [Wolf, op. cit., p. 197.]

Here Rumford emphasizes what he considers the chief result of his experiments, the apparently inexhaustible source of heat generated by friction. The calorists claimed heat is rubbed out of an object by friction. Ultimately, then, all the heat in the object should be exhausted. But this was never observed. Furthermore, in Rumford’s experiments heat apparently was created by friction, refuting the conservation principle which is the foundation of the caloric theory, and denying the material nature of heat, the basis of that conservation principle.

Rumford published the results of his experiments in 1798. One year later Humphrey Davy (1778-1829) published an essay directed against the caloric theory and which dealt in part with the production of heat by friction. The best-known of Davy’s experiments is that in which he rubbed together two blocks of ice fastened by wires to two bars of iron.

Some forty years after the experiments of Rumford and Davy, the problem of heat produced by friction was again investigated, this time on a quantitative basis, by Mayer (in Germany) and Joule (in England). By 1850 these investigators had established beyond little doubt that heat is not a separate substance, but is a form of energy, the kinetic energy of the atoms and molecules of ordinary matter.

Again: genius. The interplay between theory, observation, reasoning and experiment is masterfully presented by Priestley.

Priestley goes on to discuss the work of J.B. Mayer and James Joule in determining the relationship between mechanical energy and heat and in discovering the principle of the conservation of energy.

Introductory Physics I highly recommend to anyone who wants a conceptual, rational understanding of the physical world we live in.

Posted by Cyrano at 10:25 PM

April 15, 2007

Tax Day Coffee Smelling

Officially, tax day isn't until Tuesday (due to the 15th being on a Sunday and the 16th being an official holiday in D.C.) but the well known and lamented date of April 15th mustn't go by without some discussion of the state of taxation in America.

"Work hard. Be faithful. You'll get your just reward."

Those words appear on a statuette my father was given on the occasion of the closing of the College of Engineering at the University of Denver, where he had tenure. (The statuette was of a conscientious gentleman with a giant blue screw through his torso.) They can just as well be applied to American taxpayers who have earned a high school diploma or better in their educational career.

sr12_chart7-lg.gif

The preceeding chart comes from a fascinating April 4, 2007 study report by Robert Rector et. al. of The Heritage Foundation entitled, 'The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Households to the U.S. Taxpayer.' The report summarizes the chart this way:

Chart 7 com­pares households headed by persons without a high school diploma to households headed by persons with a high school diploma or better. Whereas the dropout-headed household paid only $9,689 in taxes in FY 2004, the higher-skill households paid $34,629— more than three times as much. While dropout-headed households received from $32,138 to $43,084 in benefits, high-skill households received less: $21,520 to $30,819. The difference in government benefits was due largely to the greater amount of means-tested aid received by low-skill households.

Households headed by dropouts received $22,449 more in immediate benefits (i.e., direct and means-tested aid, education, and population-based services) than they paid in taxes. Higher-skill households paid $13,109 more in taxes than they received in imme­diate benefits.

OK, so you're probably wondering, what's new? What's new is the trend in dropout households in the U.S. According to the World Net Daily article that cites the study:

About two-thirds of illegal alien households are headed by someone without a high school degree. Only 10 percent of native-born Americans fit into that category.

I have advocated on these pages (and stand by it today) that immigration should be free and unlimited to non-criminal aliens, provided that citizenship (and voting rights) must still be earned and that entitlement programs that make immigrants a burden on the taxpayer are first reduced or eliminated.

The Rector report explains the realities we face.

Politically feasible changes in government policy will have little effect on the level of fiscal deficit generated by most low-skill households for decades. For example, to make the average low-skill household fiscally neutral (taxes paid equaling immediate benefits received plus interest on government debt), it would be necessary to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, all 60 means-tested aid programs and cut the cost of public education in half. It seems certain that, on average, low-skill households will generate deep fiscal deficits for the foreseeable future.

Hat tip: The Canadian Sentinel

Click continue reading to see the report's conclusion in its entirety.

Conclusion

Households headed by persons without a high school diploma are roughly 15 percent of all U.S. households. Overall, these households impose a significant fiscal burden on other taxpayers: The cost of the government benefits they consume greatly exceeds the taxes they pay to government. Before government undertakes to transfer even more economic resources to these households, it should have a very clear account of the magnitude of the economic transfers that already occur.

The substantial net tax burden imposed by low-skill U.S. households also suggests lessons for immigration pol­icy. Recently proposed immigration legislation would greatly increase the number of poorly educated immigrants entering and living in the United States.[12] Before this policy is adopted, Congress should examine carefully the potential negative fiscal effects of low-skill immigrant households receiving services.

Politically feasible changes in government policy will have little effect on the level of fiscal deficit generated by most low-skill households for decades. For example, to make the average low-skill household fiscally neutral (taxes paid equaling immediate benefits received plus interest on government debt), it would be necessary to eliminate Social Security, Medicare, all 60 means-tested aid programs and cut the cost of public education in half. It seems certain that, on average, low-skill households will generate deep fiscal deficits for the foreseeable future. Policies that reduce the future number of high school dropouts and other policies affecting future generations could reduce long-term costs.

Future government policies that would expand entitlement programs such as Medicaid would increase future deficits at the margin. Policies that reduced the out-of-wedlock childbearing rate or which increased the real educa­tional attainments and wages of future low-skill workers could reduce deficits somewhat in the long run.

Changes to immigration policy could have a much larger effect on the fiscal deficits generated by low-skill fam­ilies. Policies which would substantially increase the inflow of low-skill immigrant workers receiving services would dramatically increase the fiscal deficits described in this paper and impose substantial costs on U.S. taxpayers.

Posted by JohnGalt at 12:57 PM | Comments (1)
But jk thinks:

Mmmm coffee.

Bastiat talks about "the seen and the unseen." With all due respect, you -- and my brother in law -- and a lot of other people whom I highly respect -- love to point to a datum in the "seen" category and say "See?"

Lower income households provide less revenue and use more government services. Who is surprised? Those without a diploma will earn less than those with; illegal immigrants tend to be less educated than native born citizens, yup.

I contend, still, that the "unseen" value that these workers and consumers bring to the economy more than compensates for the increased use of public services. The educated in your table are able to earn what they do, in large part, because there is a less educated work force (stop him before he says "comparative advantage" -- too late!).

To allow the educated (or ambitious dropouts like me and AlexC) to get ahead and innovate frequently requires allowing them to leverage less-educated labor. As Ricardo showed, both will be wealthier.

Posted by: jk at April 15, 2007 2:06 PM

March 28, 2007

Betting on the Lottery

Not powerball. More and more parents are forced to pin their hopes of their children's future on a charter school lottery.

John Stossel showed some footage of one of these on his TV special, "Stupid in America." I found it to be one of the singularly saddest things I have ever seen on television. People who cannot afford to move to another district or attend private schools show up for a government lottery to award the scarce seats in a public charter school.

The Wall Street Journal Ed page today suggests that New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver attend one of these lotteries. Silver opposes raising the caps that New York places on such schools.

The public charter school, which opened last year, is holding an admissions lottery at 6 p.m. to fill 105 kindergarten slots for next year from the 500 or so families who've applied for them. Harlem Success was founded by Eva Moskowitz, a reform-minded Democrat who formerly served as a New York City Councilwoman specializing in education issues.

In an interview this week, Ms. Moskowitz described the naked emotions on display at such lotteries, which are a common method for deciding who gets to attend these independently run public schools. "I thought I knew a lot about school choice and ed reform," she said. "But until I'd done the lottery last year I didn't understand the desperation.

"Unlike their middle-class counterparts who can use real estate to determine where their kid is going to school, my exclusively black and Latino parents' only option is to go through this process. And literally, people are praying and shaking and hoping to get into a school."


You lose the Colorado State Lottery, you're out a buck. You lose this lottery, you've lost a chance at getting a good education for your child. This is unconscionable.

Posted by jk at 2:43 PM

February 21, 2007

Secular Schools

Arnold Kling has an excellent piece today in TCS. The man who brought us the superb coinage "Folk Marxism" now chooses to be called a "Civil Societarian" rather than a libertarian.

To excerpt the article too heavily is to risk reducing it to a few of its parts. I encourage people to read the whole thing.

A recurring theme is the "religiosity" of progressivism.

As far as I can tell, there is no way to draw the line between church and state in public schools. To me, the only way to separate church and state in schooling is to have private schools. Getting government out of the schooling business would return schooling to the realm of civil society, where values and ethics may be taught without inhibition.

The religion of the public school system tends to be a mixture of environmentalism, political correctness, and worship of big government. Many private schools preach the same thing, so perhaps little would change if we had a system of all private education. However, if there is any chance that students might delve more deeply into issues of ethics and social problems, it would be in a setting that is not constrained by government bureaucracy.
[...]
Liberals worry that religious conservatives will impose a Christian theocracy. That threat is both obvious and far-fetched. Instead, I wish that liberals could recognize the dangers that their own religion poses to civil society. Price controls on pharmaceuticals would represent a much more serious war on science than denial of funds for embryonic stem cell research (although I personally would not oppose such government funding).


There's more in there, including what I think is a reasonable claim about our propensity to tie our beliefs into a larger picture.
We need to love something larger than ourselves. Many people love God. Perhaps civil societarians can love our ideal of a civil society. I am happy to love the flag and the republic for which it stands. Just not in public schools.


Posted by jk at 1:53 PM

February 2, 2007

Government Accounting

Here's a story that's hard to believe...

    A recent audit of cash-strapped Camden, N.J. school district's finances found it was paying an employee $130,000 annually — and he's been dead for more than three decades.

    City officials were shocked by the discovery.


No!! Not as shocked as the poor f*cker is going to be who's been cashing those checks....
    Camden has been plagued with scandal and is known as the nation's poorest city.

    The audit also found outside vendors have been overpaid more than $17 million. In one case the district forked over $953,000 for copy equipment even though the purchase order was for only $55,000.


So who got the $900K?

This is criminal.

A lot of people need to be hauled into a courtroom. Outrageous.

Posted by AlexC at 11:09 PM | Comments (2)
But jk thinks:

Come on, ac, you worry too much. The dead teacher probably did a lot less damage to the children than his living peers, didn't overuse the health care benefit -- don't always look on the dark side.

Posted by: jk at February 3, 2007 11:14 AM
But TrekMedic251 thinks:

It isn't criminal, Alex,..its ops-normal in Camden ( and probably in Philly, too, if we ever get a chance to dig a little).

Posted by: TrekMedic251 at February 3, 2007 12:05 PM

Gettin' By on $47/hour

A new study of public school teacher compensation has been published this week, and its authors publish a summary in the Wall Street Journal (free link).

Who, on average, is better paid--public school teachers or architects? How about teachers or economists? You might be surprised to learn that public school teachers are better paid than these and many other professionals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker.
[...]
It would also be beneficial if the debate touched on the correlation between teacher pay and actual results. To wit, higher teacher pay seems to have no effect on raising student achievement. Metropolitan areas with higher teacher pay do not graduate a higher percentage of their students than areas with lower teacher pay.

In fact, the urban areas with the highest teacher pay are famous for their abysmal outcomes. Metro Detroit leads the nation, paying its public school teachers, on average, $47.28 per hour. That's 61% more than the average white-collar worker in the Detroit area and 36% more than the average professional worker. In metro New York, public school teachers make $45.79 per hour, 20% more than the average professional worker in that area. And in Los Angeles teachers earn $44.03 per hour, 23% higher than other professionals in the area.

Yes, it would be nice if legislation were based on real data instead of public sentiment. Who believes that is going to happen?

Posted by jk at 10:47 AM

January 31, 2007

Modern Math "Education"

There is a good video on YouTube which shows how math is "taught" in some modern schools: the anti-conceptual way.

Watch the video, then just imagine the fun and cognitive clarity which must ensue when students get to algebra, and work on quadratics or cubics. (OK, it's really "pain and cognitive dissonance.")

Imagine trying to solve the equation x^2 + 14x + 40 = 0 by the methods shown in the video.

"OK, I have to add some numbers to get 0. Let's see...um...since I didn't learn that x^2 is always positive -- necessity is such an old-fashioned, oppressive idea!! it causes global warming!! -- anway...since I can't use an oppressive concept like "always," I can't reason that 14x must be negative, to cancel out the 40 and the x^2. So I have to guess and check, like I was taught. Let's see...10^2 is (pause to use calculator) 100. Um...now what?...oh, yeah, put 10 in for x in 14x. That gives me (pause to "construct" the answer or to use a calculator) 140.
So let me tabulate:
100
140
That adds to 240. Then, uh, 240 + 40 = 280. No, that didn't work... So let me try 11."

Ick. I used to actually have kids -- back when I tried teaching in public schools -- who would do something like try 11 after 10. They never learned the "number sense" to try a lower number!! (But that was not in solving quadratics as illustrated above; the lack of "number sense" would show up in everything.)

Here's how I (and probably you) learned to solve this. Factor it out:
(x + _)(x + _) = 0. What factors of 40 add to 14? It's obvious at this point, but kids could list them:
1, 40
2, 20
4, 10
5, 8

It's 4 and 10. So our factorization is:
(x + 4)(x + 10) = 0. Solving this gives x = -4 and x = -10.

But of course, this method depends on TELLING the kids about the "zero product property," instead of letting them "discover" it, as some educators want the students to do.

Or, worse, try x^2 + 7x + 11 = 0. This quadratic is not factorable!! The solution has the square root of 5 in it!!

There are other anti-conceptual methods used specially for "teaching" algebra and geometry.

Posted by Cyrano at 12:15 AM | Comments (1)
But jk thinks:

I have heard so many horror stories about math curricula, Cyrano, that I truly expected to be horrified. I read about a test question "if math were a color, what color would it be?"

The terc (sp?) method codifies how I would solve any of those problems. If I have to grab paper, I'll grab a calculator. That method lends itself to solving 133/6 in your head.

I'll agree that teaching traditional long division and multiplication is valuable. What separates people who "do math" from those that don't is the more abstract relationship with numbers. I don't know that this would teach it, but I can't say I'm horrified. (The lattice was pretty cool.)

I think it's much worse that they leave this Math class and go to a science class where they're taught recycling, then onto social studies where they learn how cruel white settlers were to the indigenous peoples.

Posted by: jk at January 31, 2007 10:25 AM

November 27, 2006

The School Year

Charlie on the Pa Turnpike looks at his kids' school calendar and it leaves him with a few questions.

    Why are these "essential" Staff Development Days always at the beginning or end of a weekend?

    Why do teachers routinely complain about their work schedule, when they are typically scheduled to work just 185 (or so) days per year? And they are paid a full years salary!

    Why is the national holiday of Labor Day recognized, but not the national holiday for Veteran's Day?


... among others.

Posted by AlexC at 11:30 PM | Comments (2)
But jk thinks:

Many many teachers in my and my wife's family. They all seem genuinely surprised every year that I don't get two weeks off for Christmas.

Say what you want about teachers' salaries (I think they're way too low because of a lack of merit pay), but any look that does not take 15+ weeks of vacation into account is not valid.

Posted by: jk at November 28, 2006 4:34 PM
But AlexC thinks:

Hear hear, a good teacher making $100K wouldn't break my heart.

Posted by: AlexC at November 28, 2006 4:57 PM

November 17, 2006

Keep Friedman Spirit Alive

Stephen Moore relates a recent lunch with the late, great, economist Milton Friedman in today’s WSJ Political Diary.

I had lunch not long ago with Milton Friedman, the most influential economist of the past half-century or more, who died yesterday at 94. I asked him the three economic policy changes he would recommend to President Bush to achieve a high rate of economic growth. His first prescription was free trade: "I think that free trade is the most important single way to promote growth. The Bush administration has protected three industries: steel, timber, and agriculture. Those should all be repealed," he advised.

No. 2 was cutting government spending "as much as you possibly can." Friedman long maintained that resources contribute more to human betterment and happiness in private hands than government hands.

But it was on school vouchers, a cause he had championed for 50 years, that his passion for improving the lot of humanity through sound economics shined most brightly. "The third policy, which really should be the first, is to move however quickly you can to get to a competitive educational system. One of the most negative features in our society is the national educational system. There is no other branch of government, no other branch of the economy, let alone the government, which is so technologically backward. We teach kids the way we did two centuries ago. That's because 90% of our kids go to government schools. And most of the other 10% go to privately subsidized non-profit, mostly religious, schools. All should go to a form of free market school. There would be a revolution in schooling if you could get a competitive educational system with parents deciding where their children should go, with parents paying for them either from their own pocket or through a government subsidy which they right now get but cannot control."


The civil rights issue of our time: rescue poor, inner-city kids from union-ruined public education. Continuing to fight will keep Milton & Rose's dream alive.

Posted by jk at 12:59 PM

September 30, 2006

"Cawwy the Wun"

I recently commented that American adults are poor citizens, poor parents and poor teachers. This is a geometric problem since their children will one day have those same responsibilities and, like their parents, will be ill prepared to exercise them, making their own children even less capable. I posited that this cycle has been playing out for at least 20 or 30 years and perhaps longer. (It's genesis likely coincides with the advent of the Dewey Decimal System - not because that system is bad, but because the rest of Dewey's educational ideas were bad: New Math, Creative Spelling and Esteem-based teaching plans all derived from Dewey.)

Now there's a positive, if not altogether flattering to the American psyche, trend in American education. Reuters - 'U.S. homework outsourced as "e-tutoring" grows.'

"I like to tell people I did private tutoring every day for the cost of a fast-food meal or a Starbucks' coffee," Robison said. "We did our own form of summer school all summer."

The outsourcing trend that fueled a boom in Asian call centers staffed by educated, low-paid workers manning phones around the clock for U.S. banks and other industries is moving fast into an area at the heart of U.S. culture: education.

It comes at a difficult time for the U.S. education system: only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school, a proportion that slides to 50 percent for black Americans and Hispanics, according to government statistics.

China and India, meanwhile, are producing the world's largest number of science and engineering graduates -- at least five times as many as in the United States, where the number has fallen since the early 1980s.

Parents using schools like Taylor's say they are doing whatever they can to give children an edge that can lead to better marks, better colleges and a better future, even if it comes with an Indian accent about 9,000 miles away.

Yes, it is truly embarrasing that Americans can't help their own children learn, but the positives are many: Parents investing in their children's future on the free market, technological enabling of a new paradigm, and most importantly, smarter kids. (Well, within the limitations of the public schools to challenge them.)

One way to judge the worth of an educational initiative is by the reaction to it by the NEA:

A New Delhi tutoring company, Educomp Solutions Ltd., estimates the U.S. tutoring market at $8 billion and growing. Online companies, both from the United States and India, are looking to tap millions of dollars available to firms under the U.S. No Child Left Behind Act for remedial tutoring.

Teachers unions hope to stop that from happening.

"Tutoring providers must keep in frequent touch with not only parents but classroom teachers and we believe there is greater difficulty in an offshore tutor doing that," said Nancy Van Meter, a director at the American Federation of Teachers.

But No Child Left Behind, a signature Bush administration policy, encourages competition among tutoring agencies and leaves the door open for offshore tutors, said Diane Stark Rentner of the Center on Education Policy in Washington.

UPDATE: I should have given a hat-tip on this one... to dagny's "article of the day" email on Friday. (It's a private subscription service with a membership of one.)

Posted by JohnGalt at 10:15 AM | Comments (3)
But mdmhvonpa thinks:

Shameful.

Posted by: mdmhvonpa at September 30, 2006 10:59 PM
But johngalt thinks:

Shameful yes, that parents are incapable of understanding the school work of 13 year olds (or too "busy" to help them.) But those who engage tutors to help their children exhibit the classic American desire for their children to achieve as much or more as themselves. For this they are to be commended.

And remember their educational shortfalls resulted from that same attitude by their parents. Educational "innovations" were sold to parents as improvements upon outdated "brute-force" methods. That these parents were sold a bill of goods brings shame primarily to those who championed the "innovations."

Posted by: johngalt at October 1, 2006 11:22 AM
But jk thinks:

Wait a minute. What is shameful?

1) Parents want the best for their kids, check.
2) Parents see education as important, check.
3) Parents see benefits in private tutoring which results seem to certify, check.
4) Parents look for the best value for their money, check.
5) Comparative advantage in a global free economy creates the best value in the Democratic nation of India, an ally of the United States, check.

I liked your post and agreed with all of your assessments, jg. I cannot say that I grasped the path from "parents cannot" to "parents choose another option." Perhaps a parent would rather work or spend family time in other pursuits, or simply feels an outside source would be most effective.

India does not equal "bad." Protectionism and foolishly parochial capitalism is bad. This is great in every way. I'm going to write a song about it...

Posted by: jk at October 1, 2006 2:53 PM

September 1, 2006

Must See Tv

I blogged before about John Stossel's education special, "Stupid in America." Set your TiVo, stay home, do whatever, but don't miss its reprise on 20/20 tonight.

In the show school officials complain they need more money, but that's a myth. American schools spend about $10,000 per student, totaling about $250,000 per class. Think about how many good teachers you could hire for $250,000! Yet the schools say they still need more. I ask South Carolina school official Dolores Wright, "How much money would be right?" Wright answers, "Oooh. Millions. And it would really make it right. ... The more, the better."

The more the better? That's another myth. Most of the countries that outperform us spend less per student than we do. American high school students fizzle in international comparisons, placing well behind much poorer countries, like Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea. American kids do pretty well when they enter public school. A recent study claimed public school fourth-graders outperform kids in charter schools, but as time goes on, they do worse. By high school, they are well behind.

Why? Foremost, it's because of the government's monopoly over the school system, which gives parents no choice in where to send their children. In other countries, choice fosters competition, and competition improves performance. I question government officials, union leaders, parents and students and show some of the innovations that have occurred when choice is allowed.


They will rerun the original show and update it with the union's reaction and a contretemps with Stossel. They waved signs and beat drums and yelled outside of ABC Headquarters, demanding Stossel try teaching a week so he knows what it's like. When he said "yes," they backed down and could not find him a slot.

Posted by jk at 11:50 AM | Comments (1)
But jk thinks:

And check out Stossel's column in this month's "Reason" magazine, where he details the "How to fire an Incompetent teacher" flowchart he displays in the TV show.

Posted by: jk at September 2, 2006 5:41 PM

August 5, 2006

Multiculturalism Shrugs II

Two days ago I blogged about Tony Blair's newfound respect for the western cultural values of freedom, tolerance, and respect for the rights of others. Today I was reminded of a radio interview around the same time as Blair's comments, wherein former Colorado governor Richard Lamm proclaimed black and hispanic cultural values as inferior to white and asian values. The message was documented in a Denver Post op ed by the former gov:

"How do we lovingly, yet honestly, diagnose the large economic, education and success gap between black/Hispanic America and white/Asian America?

[...]

We need to think about these problems with a new sophistication. Increasingly, scholars are saying "culture matters."

[...]

I suggest that those groups whose culture and values stress education, hard work and success are those groups that succeed in America - regardless of discrimination. I further suggest that, even if discrimination was removed, other groups would still have massive problems until they developed the traits that lead to success."

The sentiment Lamm attributes to scholars that "culture matters" is in direct conflict with the prevailing multiculturalist status quo in academia that says there are no "right" or "wrong" cultural values. Serious academics, few though there may be, are slowly recognizing that the emperor has no clothes.

Posted by JohnGalt at 12:50 AM | Comments (2)
But dagny thinks:

What jg neglects to add is that ex-governor Lamm was thoroughly excoriated in the media for daring to make such suggestions.

Posted by: dagny at August 5, 2006 12:27 PM
But jk thinks:

Huzzah! I've had many disagreements with "the man who walked the state but couldn't run it" most notably his Malthusian population concerns. But this is good.

Earlier today, in contrast, I read an essay about how the character Charles Gunn in "Angel" lost his authenticity and "became white" as the show progressed, losing his street lingo and ultimately (gasp!) becoming an educated lawyer!

Posted by: jk at August 5, 2006 4:44 PM

July 11, 2006

$66 Billion in Unearned Guilt

I've been thinking about how to blog this story since it broke: Megabillionaire Warren Buffet recently donated (evading the estate tax in the process) $37 billion of his $44 billion in personal wealth to a charitable foundation established by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda. Combined with the $29 billion already under foundation control the resulting $66 billion is five times the wealth of the next largest, the Ford foundation.

I won't belabor the contradictions of Buffet praising the estate tax as an "equitable tax...in keeping with the idea of equality of opportunity in this country, not giving incredible head starts to certain people who were very selective about the womb from which they emerged." Or of his criticism of "dynastic wealth" coupled with the likely, though I haven't been able to document it, multi-million dollar inheritances he'll leave his own children.

I'm most interested in the issue raised by John J. Miller on the Opinion Journal page of July 7th. "The Microsoft mogul and his wife should not leave their foundation to posterity," he writes.

I fully agree with many points made in this editorial. For example:

"Surely there are better reasons to embark upon the world's biggest grant-making program than to salve the conscience of a guy who has no business feeling guilty in the first place."

And, "If Mr. Gates views his foundation as a vehicle for guilt riddance, chances are his grants will fail often and spectacularly. Yet if he views it as a way of furthering his already enormous contribution to society through nonprofit rather than for-profit means, then perhaps he will make a positive difference in the areas where he is focusing his efforts: global health and American education."

But Mr. Miller's principal point is not just that a charitable foundation should be used to further the values of its benefactor(s), but that it must necessarily be constrained to shut itself down after some arbitrary number of years for fear of the "harmful trend" of "an organization that exists in perpetuity, clinging tightly to its assets and ever further removed from its benefactors and their intentions."

It seems to me that if you want your wealth to live on and contribute in your image after your passing, you'd want it to do so for as long as possible. The trick here is to build something that can't be highjacked by others for their own purposes after your passing. This is exactly the problem that faced the founders of the United States government. So here we have another instance of resignation that nothing can retain its original nature and purpose against the pressure of revisionism.

The irony here is that the Gates Foundation, which has chosen to make a positive difference in the areas of global health and American education, has an opportunity to counteract such pressures. The reason the American Constitution, the American government and the American way of life are under threat today is precisely because of revisionist pressures endemic to modern American education. If the Gates Foundation threw even a fraction of its weight behind a return to accurate and objective teaching of American history and civics it could single handedly save the nation from apathetic disintegration.

Alas, such an effort is unlikely from a man who says, "We really owe it to society to give the wealth back."

Posted by JohnGalt at 4:13 PM | Comments (4)
But jk thinks:

Well said.

It strikes me that this giveaway is the world’s largest Rorschach test. Folk Marxists can either coo in delight that the Gateses have discovered "what's really important" or more likely think "damn well time those robber barons gave some back!"

I'm guessing a rare moment of unity for ThreeSourcers believing this will end very badly. I suggested when it happened that they clearly would do less good for society giving it away than they did when they earned it. Now I fear O'Sullivan's law will kick in [Every non-Conservative organization becomes more liberal over time] and that this money could become a colossus of unintended consequences, doing far more harm.

Posted by: jk at July 12, 2006 9:04 AM
But howard thinks:

"Or of his criticism of 'dynastic wealth' coupled with the likely, though I haven't been able to document it, multi-million dollar inheritances he'll leave his own children."

-as far as I've heard in previous interviews with, and statements from, Buffet, he has no intention of leaving millions to his own heirs. And his beliefs against dynastic wealth are purportedly based on the idea that inheriting abstract sums of material wealth begets more laziness than not. I don't believe his support for the estate tax is any more elaborate than that.

Agree or disagree, there's very little hypocrisy in his position on this - unless you know something about his motives that I don't know. But then it seems like a lot of people are in the business of questioning what others do with their money, and here I thought that was a liberal tendency.

Posted by: howard at July 12, 2006 11:32 PM
But jk thinks:

Howard, I said in my post on this topic that "Mr. Buffett can do what he chooses, indeed that's the best benefit of having billions, is it not?"
http://www.threesources.com/archives/003037.html

Two concerns you'll hear around here are, one, that the foundation will devolve into something that doesn't match its founders' wishes, and that its gifts will do more harm than good. And, two, there is a distinct disconnect between his objection to dynastic wealth and his use of tax shelters for his own estate. The WSJ says:

"In explaining his charitable motivations this week, Mr. Buffett also went out of his way to say that he is "not an enthusiast for dynastic wealth." This is fair enough, and is also one of Mr. Buffett's arguments for so vocally defending federal death tax rates of 50% or more. But we can't help but point out that Mr. Buffett's gift will itself be shielded from Uncle Sam because it is going to a foundation. So in practice he is in favor of death taxes only for those whose estates are too small to hide in foundation tax shelters.

In addition to his Gates Foundation gift, Mr. Buffett also said he will give major donations well north of $1 billion each to separate foundations run by his three children and another in the name of his late wife. These gifts, too, will be shielded from taxation and will allow his heirs to wield power and influence long after the 75-year-old has gone to his just reward."

Gates and Buffet did a lot of good for people as they assembled their fortunes. I doubt they'll do half as much good giving them away, but that it sheer speculation.

Posted by: jk at July 13, 2006 9:43 AM
But johngalt thinks:

Thank you Howard for the eloquent comment. I did try to learn what Buffet has or will leave to his children but was unable to find even the $1B donations to his children's foundations that JK informs us of by way of the WSJ.

So even if they don't receive direct cash inheritance, each will certainly award himself a salary as full-time director of the foundation. (Hey, a guy's gotta eat, right?)

I also wanted to clarify: The liberal tendency is not to question what others do with their money, but to control it. (Or prevent it altogether.)

Posted by: johngalt at July 13, 2006 3:56 PM

June 6, 2006

Modern Sexism

In this post at Phi Beta Cons Blog, the last line says it all.

CNN reports that federal statistics released last week reveal that the gender gap is widening — with women in the lead. "Women now earn the majority of diplomas in fields men used to dominate — from biology to business — and have caught up in pursuit of law, medicine and other advanced degrees."

This is not news. It makes perfect sense, since women also outnumber men in college and dominate the rankings in elementary and secondary school. Why are the boys failing?

In January, Newsweek ran an interesting cover story investigating "The Trouble With Boys." In "Sexism in the Classroom," my analysis of the article, I quoted a stunning statistic that underlies the root of the problem. The statistic, "In elementary school, boys are two times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and twice as likely to be placed in special-education classes," lends credence to a quote from Lindalyn Kakadelis of the North Carolina Education Alliance: "[Blame it on] 30 years of a politicized attempt to remediate societal unfairness to girls." The boys aren't broken, but maybe the system is.

Even the Newsweek article admits, boys are being treated "like defective girls."

Thanks to Kant, here we have another application of attacking the law of identity. (As well as the technique -- followed by Seattle Public Schools in "defining" racism -- of attacking something by defining it out of existence.)

Posted by Cyrano at 10:47 AM

Modern Education's Results

Phi Beta Cons has another good post about the self-hatred being inculcated in out public schools and our modern society, leading to self-abuse.

AP:

CHICAGO - Nearly 1 in 5 students at two Ivy League schools say they have purposely injured themselves by cutting, burning or other methods, a disturbing phenomenon that psychologists say they are hearing about more often.

For some young people, self-abuse is an extreme coping mechanism that seems to help relieve stress; for others it's a way to make deep emotional wounds more visible.

The results of the survey at Cornell and Princeton are similar to other estimates on this frightening behavior. Counselors say it's happening at colleges, high schools and middle schools across the country.

Remember what SPS said about "racism?" They defined it to be a universal characteristic of "whites," inherent in their very being. Teaching children that they are racist by nature is teaching them that they are guilty of sin and evil by nature. Guilt leads to punishment.

Besides that, individual thought is stamped out in modern education; belonging to a group is taught as normal and natural. Individuality is abnormal. That breed self-distrust and self-hatred. The "be yourself" crap taught in schools goes only skin deep. "Love yourself" is a euphemism for accepting and valuing your psychological problems.

Besides that, reasoning is stamped out, too. There is a major absence of method and hierarchy in schools. Education occurs on a perceptual level, but when it rises to the conceptual level, it is only to the level of an arrested, stunted mind. Teaching is compartmentalized, lacking in connections, and does not build upon itself systematically.

Children are drugged up because of alleged "learning difficulties." Many "learning difficulties," are in fact, system-generated: students are so damn bored and have their minds so systematically attacked, they cannot learn. And so they turn against education and become problem students. Been there, seen that.

Posted by Cyrano at 10:27 AM | Comments (1)
But johngalt thinks:

This self-abuse thing is completely foreign to me, although I have known children who resorted to it. Cyrano's analysis of the cause is, I think, exactly right.

Human beings, as rational animals, are born with the innate ability and need to reconcile all they know. When they are taught ideas that contradict their knowledge of reality, something's gotta give. Without dependable rational adults to help resolve the error the resulting conflict often renders the child's brain into the same state as that of the android "Norman" in the famous Star Trek episode "I, Mudd." (The logically contradictory loop initiated by the statement, "Everything I say is a lie" causes Norman's "brain" to overload and fail.) http://www.ericweisstein.com/fun/startrek/IMudd.html

Cyrano has revealed the single most important factor in the continued excellence of western thought, or even it's very survival: Our children must be taught to reason and to discern balderdash from reality.

Al Gore serves as an excellent contemporary case study.

Posted by: johngalt at June 6, 2006 2:58 PM

June 3, 2006

Update: Marxist Racism

Nicholas Provenzo at Rule of Reason Blog has some excellent commentary on SPS's racist definition of racism:

In response to the mountain of criticism it received for its definition of racism which included having “a future time orientation” and “emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology” [blogged about at ROR here], the Seattle Public Schools has issued the following statement [on their Website]:
In response to the numerous concerns voiced regarding definitions posted on the Equity & Race website, we have decided to revise our website in a way that will hopefully provide more context to readers around the work that Seattle Public Schools is doing to address institutional racism. The intended purpose of our work in the area of race and social justice is to bring communities together through open dialogue and honest reflection around what is meant by racism and the impact is has on our society and more specifically, our students. Our intention is not to put up additional barriers or develop an “us against them” mindset, nor is it to continue to hold onto unsuccessful concepts such as a melting pot or colorblind mentality. It is our hope that we can explore the work of leading scholars in the areas of race and social justice issues to help us understand the dynamics and realities of how racism permeate throughout our society and use their knowledge to help us create meaningful change. This difficult work is vital to the success of our students and families. Thank you for sharing your concerns.

Warm regards,

Caprice D. Hollins, Psy.D.
Director of Equity & Race Relations
Seattle Public Schools

I love how the Hollins’ apology still manages to make a muck of it, this time attacking the “unsuccessful concept” of the “colorblind mentality.” Yeah, you know, that old chestnut that leads one to actually believe that race is immaterial to what one thinks or does. And I also love the ode to “open dialogue” and the desire to avoid an “us against them” mindset. Sure, your mentality may be failed, but we still can talk about it.

I take the above as proof that one can be an utterly flaming idiot who attracts national attention through their buffoonery and still not get fired from the government’s public school system.

Notice also how they are not backing down from their position: "we have decided to revise our website in a way that will hopefully provide more context to readers around the work that Seattle Public Schools is doing to address institutional racism." In other words, we just don't get it. They are going to try to explain better -- or hide better -- the fact that they are racists, and that they are seeking to punish and flagelate "Whites" for their "inherent evil."

They also say "It is our hope that we can explore the work of leading scholars in the areas of race and social justice issues to help us understand the dynamics and realities of how racism permeate throughout our society and use their knowledge to help us create meaningful change." Well, it's those very "leading scholars" who informed SPS's defintions of racism, in the first place!!

If SPS had said they were getting new, rational scholars, there'd be some hope. However, SPS shows their continued irrationality and support of the overthrow of the "White establishment" (ain't no such thing!!) -- which will be violent, as Marxism -- in any form you choose it -- always is.

Posted by Cyrano at 10:37 AM | Comments (3)
But jake thinks:

"you know, that old chestnut that leads one to actually believe that race is immaterial to what one thinks or does"

It IS an old chestnut and it IS an unsuccessful concept. Race is NOT immaterial to what one thinks or does. That's the point exactley (among others) that the Seatle board is making. The dynamics of race do indeed "permeate throughout our society". The best way to understand how this works (and therfore change it's effects) is through dialogue, which again is exactley what the Seattle board are trying to foster.

And incedently, there was nothing in that statement that led me to believe it was an "apology". I personally don't think the Seattle board have anything to apologise for. It's unfortunate that most people misread the section on cultural racism in their original definition, hence the revision, but their's certainly no reason for the board to have to apologise.

Posted by: jake at June 4, 2006 1:56 PM
But jk thinks:

I would concede that race affects our outlook, actions, and impacts American life significantly.

The original post referred to an assertion by the Director of Equity & Race Relations that individualism (the glue that binds the factious, fractious voices of ThreeSources together) was intrinsically racist, and that collectivism was some sort of antidote.

The idea that a child would be taught by the government that individual achievement is racist is appalling.

Posted by: jk at June 4, 2006 8:40 PM
But dagny thinks:

The fact that dynamics of race, “permeate our society,” does not excuse the severe inaccuracies in the SPS definitions of racism.

Additionally, conversations on race should not overshadow the appropriate purpose of any school which is to teach children, among other things, to reason, write, and spell. Invariably, when you encounter someone who doesn’t do two of these things properly, he also neglects the third.

Posted by: dagny at June 5, 2006 1:41 AM

May 26, 2006

Islamic Textbooks

We have heard about the "cleaned-up" Saudi textbooks; now here is a claim about Malaysian textbooks, from Jihad Watch. I don't know about the validity of this story, but it is credible -- it is fully consistent with what Saudi textbooks say, with what some students in London are taught, with what students are taught in Palestine, with the Quran and Shari'a, with current events in Afghanistan, etc.

Malaysian textbooks advocate the death penalty for apostasy -- which should not really come as a surprise to anyone who knows how mainstream this idea is in the Islamic world. "School textbooks advocating murder," a letter from "Very Concerned Mother," in Malaysiakini, with thanks to Nicolei:

I wonder if the present government is aware that violence and murder is being preached through its own curricula and textbooks. This is not an exaggeration. I urge the government to seriously consider if its curriculum for Islamic Education is what it wants to feed young minds.

I was shocked and disturbed to find out that the secondary school syllabus for Islamic Education (Pendidikan Islam) includes learning how to deal with apostates and that one of the prescriptions is to kill them off.

In many widely-used Pendidikan Islam workbooks (which base their texts on the Ministry of Education’s syllabus), imposing a death sentence on apostates is offered as a religious duty. Allow me to extract some of what is written (and the original Malay version for readers to check on context and accuracy).

For example, under the heading ‘Ways of Dealing with Apostates’ (Cara menangani orang murtad), the following precepts are given:

1. Advise and persuade the offender to repent and return to Islam (menasihati dan memintanya supaya bertaubat dan kembali kepada Islam)

2. To impose a death sentence (melaksanakan hukuman bunuh)

The text also has a heading which reads: ‘The death sentence against an apostate who refuses to repent and return to Islam has several virtues’. (Hukuman bunuh terhadap orang murtad yang tidak mahu kembali kepada ajaran Islam mempunyai beberapa hikmah).

Among which are:

1. To show to others at large that Islam is not a religion to be mocked at will (menunjukkan kepada orang ramai bahawa Islam bukanlah agama yang boleh dipersenda dengan sewenang-wenangnya).

2. So that no one will dare to denigrate the Islamic religion (supaya tidak ada orang yang berani memburuk-burukkan agama Islam).

Posted by Cyrano at 9:34 AM

May 21, 2006

Marxist Racism

Nicholas Provenzo has a good post on his Rule of Reason blog.

According to the Seattle Public Schools, if you’re an individualist, you’re a racist (HT: Volokh Conspiracy). On a web page that lists various forms and definitions of racism, the school system defines “Cultural Racism” as:
Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers. [Emphasis added].
This definition is racist itself; it ascribes racist thinking to white people only—if one “overtly and covertly attribute[s] value and normality” to black or Asian races, one falls outside its definition of racism. More fundamentally [however], this definition attacks the very notion of treating individuals as individuals. In her 1963 essay Racism, Ayn Rand observed that
Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage—the notion that a man's intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman's version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.

So why then are the Seattle Public Schools smearing the antidote to collectivism as racist? At root is the Marxist theory that history is nothing more than group struggle, and according to such a theory, we are always defined by the group.

You can see the Marxist interpretation of racism in the Seattle Public Schools “definition” of racism:

The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have rel