Scattershots – 11mar2017 (updated 14mar17)

Of all the Trump conundra, "for now, only one thing remains certain: the candidate whom the Republican establishment most disliked has the greatest potential in a generation to stop the progressive project and enact the agendas that the Republican establishment most wants. And that paradox has become a source of both great wonderment—and fear." Victor Davis Hanson

George Rebane

A “retired educator” Mr Rich Howell contributed ‘Failures of Education’ to the 11mar17 Union which the newspaper printed right below Mr Sauer’s piece (here) on the op-ed page.  Howell loses no time in taking Sauer to task opining that "unwittingly, Mr. Sauer makes a different case for the failures of education than he intends.  Had we, as educators, done better when Mr. Sauer was in school, he would have documented his "facts" and separated them from his biases.”  Apparently Howell is responding to Sauer’s 7feb17 commentary ‘The Democrats are blocking the way to make education great’ (here).

I strongly recommend reading Mr Howell and keeping in mind his introductory admonition to consider his contribution as that from a former educator who still claims some considerable residue as a domain expert in the field.  That the man is in fact a deficiently launched and sadly closeted intellect becomes clear as one penetrates the brambles of his prose while trying to apprehend his logic which is more elusive to pursue than Carroll’s ever-late White Rabbit.  The man is apparently unaware that commentaries are formatted with an intermingling of ‘facts’ and opinions.  They are not like news reports, and most certainly not like academic papers where indeed facts are cited, but in neither case are they separated from the authors opinions (“biases”).

As an example of Howell’s logic consider, “It is not poverty, per se, that makes inner city schools inferior. Anyone who has paid any attention at all to educational statistics for the past century knows that achievement scores follow socioeconomic lines.”  It is amazing that he destroys the thesis of his first sentence with the one that immediately follows, and then blithely goes on to demonstrate that his professional labors took place in world that did nothing to contribute to our country’s deplorable placement on the world’s academic achievement scale.  There is much more wonderment in the man’s contribution wherein he neither recognizes nor ‘separates’ his own biases from the very doubtful and unattributed ‘facts’ that are marbled into his screed.  I’m sure Mr Sauer will have a thing or two to say in his own defense.  In the meantime, please read and rejoice that Mr Howell is retired.

The eleventh sitting for the annual TechTest will take place 9am-1pm on 1 April 2017 in the NUHS Science Lecture Hall.  I was informed this morning by the NUJHSD that someone in our community has started the nefarious rumor that TT2017 had been cancelled.  To correct this misinformation NUJHSD's Ms Barbara Ross, TT Academic Chair, did a considerable amount of phoning and emailing to the county’s high schools to debunk the rumor and set the record straight.  Over the years there has been a constant cry from our Left denigrating this merit scholarship exam as being ideologically incorrect, for no apparent reason other than that I am the test author and hold the annual seminars which precede the exam.  For the record the first of these seminars took place this morning at the test venue, and the second one will be held there next Saturday (18 March) from 10am to noon.  The ideological content of all past exams may be inspected at the SESF website (sesfoundation.org).  It takes some pretty sick puppies out there to attempt to deny STEM oriented kids an opportunity to earn scholarships through demonstrating their academic acumen.

[12mar17 update]  New York scraps teacher literacy test, the bar is again lowered to guarantee that the state’s children will be taught from the bottom of the barrel (more here).  The NY Post pointedly asks (here) ‘Will New York open the door to teachers who can’t read?’.  The obvious answer imposed by the teachers unions is a resounding YES.  For the sake of diversity and to correct quota shortfalls, schools must now also employ the marginally literate, to be made up mostly of blacks and Hispanics.  As most adults and almost all parents know, those government employee unions have been the bane of public education for the last two generations, and have now ensconced legions of classroom teachers whose main talents consist of reliable voting behavior and timely payment of union dues.  However, such policy decisions are supported by their member minions (perversely called ‘educators’) across the country, including retired ones like our Mr Rich Howell above, who insure that the government at all levels remains the employer of last resort, demanding only that the successfully succored supplicants reliably vote for the Left’s agenda.  In short, the kids be damned, because the public schools must first serve a higher political purpose.

[13mar17 update]  Re the House bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

1. Obamacare will collapse because its costs are soaring and its supplier base is diminishing due to the stifling market environment in which it must operate.
2. 24M Americans will NOT “lose” healthcare by 2026. Some number like that may represent those who will not buy healthcare because they will no longer be forced to buy it.
3. The price of healthcare under a more distributed market-driven law will go down just like that of any other product or service whose supply goes up while the costs of delivering it go down due to decreased regulations and increased competition. To argue otherwise is to ignore the economic history of the world.
4. Given the abysmal record of both the OMB and the CBO, no one should allow their predictions to impact the making of public policy.

[14mar17 update]  Socialism on parade.  Here is a video that compares the attitude of double dummy Americans speaking about socialism with what life is really like under socialism in Venezuela.  H/T to reader and correspondent.

And now we’re all up in arms about Rep James King’s tweet in praise of Holland’s Geert Wilders, “Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”  King was clearly talking about the threat to Europe’s cultures posed by hordes of unassimilating migrants, and as he repeatedly emphasized, not about rejecting assimilating immigrants of any race who come to share in our mores and values. (more here)  His drawing attention to such tautological sentiments, as borne out many times in history, was immediately and understandably pounced on by our ‘America last’ socialist contingent.  But what really illustrates our dissolution is the many chickenshit Republicans who leaped on the same bandwagon to denounce King.  What kind of rock ape do you have to be to deny that a country’s culture and demographics are the central drivers of a country’s destiny?

Comments

[Todd Juvinall]

I receive a tweet from Trump yesterday. He liked a tweet of mine. Amazing!

[Russ]

Sending children to schools that do not demand high standards for their teachers should be considered parental abuse. Knowingly registering your child at schools run by illiterate teachers must be considered child abuse, abuse that destroys the potential of children to cope with an ever-expanding world of complexity. One of the basic requirements of dealing with complexity is the ability to read the users manuals. How can an illiterate teacher, who cannot read, teach a child to read, or teach the basic math needed to function in daily commerce?

[Russ]

I want to share part of a comment by Wayne Hild on Mr. Howells article at The Union.

I teach high school math & science, and I am invariably impressed by the sacrifice & dedication of teachers at every level & in traditional as well as in charter schools. But it is painfully obvious to anyone that has studied STEM education in the U.S. that we do not put enough money or time into the critical job of teaching math & science in U.S. schools. (I think this comes down to increasing the effort spent training & preparing science & math teachers. We teachers do not know enough math & science to be teaching it well to our students.)

Mr. Hild is a science teacher who promotes anthropogenic global warming. We have exchanged many comments on this issue in The Union comments section. His argument is my opinion does not count because I am not a climatologist published in a pal reviewed science journal, even though I provided links to articles published in peer-reviewed journals. Now that he admits to not knowing enough science and math I now have a better appreciation of his inability to understand the real science of climate science.

[Bill Tozer]

Todd @ 11:19 am

I do like this Senator from W. Virginia. He is putting America first and even calls into right of center talk radio shows. Heard him myself. He kinda said what you said.

https://www.facebook.com/lastamericapatriots/photos/a.235087906641439.1073741826.235086849974878/810834825733408/?type=3&theater

[ScenesFromTheApocalypse]

Oh jeesh, the narrative gets a bit rickety.

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/840985007090982913

Honestly, I'm a bit surprised that the Kremlin just doesn't release all of their meeting schedules over the last year. There wouldn't be much in the way of intelligence cost and it would raise all kinds of ruckus.

[Russ]

California mulls eliminating income tax for teachers

California legislators are hoping a proposal to eliminate income tax for teachers will help attract young people into the profession and keep them there at a time when the state is hemorrhaging educators and lacks a pipeline.

Notably, the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act, introduced by two state Senate Democrats, is the first of its kind in California and in the country. While a handful of states give retirees tax breaks on their pensions, and others, including Maryland and New Jersey, have toyed with the idea of eliminating income tax for law enforcement officers, it doesn’t appear that any have seriously considered cutting the income tax for the teaching profession.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/california-mulls-eliminating-income-tax-for-teachers/ar-AAo7z5s?

In addition to pricing business out of the state, the Democrats are doing the same for teachers.

According to a survey of 211 California school districts, 75 percent reported having a shortage of qualified teachers for the 2016-17 school year, and 80 percent said the shortages have gotten worse since the 2013-14 school year, especially with regard to special education, math, science and bilingual teachers.

[Bill Tozer]

Dr. Rebane's 12 March Update. More details to Dr. Rebane's link.: NYC schools....

https://patriotpost.us/articles/47937

[Gregory]

Here's a diversion... one of the greatest beginnings by any science fiction humorist:

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Now read this story from Oklahoma City, known as a hub of aviation and FAA bureaucrats,
where the kids mostly can't tell time from round faced clocks:

http://kfor.com/2017/03/12/study-4-in-5-oklahoma-city-students-cant-read-clocks/

I recall my wife Teri, before she passed away in 2001 from ovarian cancer as an adjunct math prof at Sierra College noticed the kids in Nevada County she taught in K-12 student teaching, and subbing, were also awfully weak in reading analog clock presentations. Maybe not as dismally weak as in OKC, but no gloating is due from the NC/GV crowd.

No, not all clocks one finds here and there, including those installed into the control panels of aircraft, are going to be digital.

[Gregory]

Russ 12 March 2017 at 11:48 AM

"His [Hild's] argument is my opinion does not count because I am not a climatologist published in a pal reviewed science journal, even though I provided links to articles published in peer-reviewed journals."

Russ, in a very real sense, your *opinion* doesn't count, nor does anyone else's, including authors of recent research on the subject, peer reviewed or not. Nullius in verba.

Have you a link to the exchange with Hild you are referring to?

[Bill Tozer]

https://www.facebook.com/PatriotPost/photos/a.82108390913.80726.51560645913/10154536806060914/?type=3&theater