Category: education and schooling

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education and schooling free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

According to Economics

Tom Woods, Contra Krugman, podcast, healthcare, welfare,

“Everywhere you look, economics is despised,” writes Tom Woods in his Tuesday email letter.

You know what isn’t despised? A daily email letter.*

But I digress; back to economics.

“The gimme-​free-​stuff people hate it because they don’t like being told that there might be undesirable side effects from seizing other people’s things.”

Well, true enough. But turn it around: many people demand free stuff at least in part because they do not understand the bigger picture … which Mr. Woods ably provides in his daily podcast and on his weekly Contra Krugman podcast with economist Bob Murphy.

“Politicians hate it, because it imposes logical constraints on what political activity can accomplish.”

True, but, like many in the general public (from whence they come), politicians’ prior lack of economic knowledge also leads, in part, to their hubris.

“Even some folks in the business world hate it, because (1) they’d rather agitate for special privileges than hear the case for free markets, and (2) they’d rather have low interest rates than be warned about the causes of the business cycle.”

Yes, too true. But, again, business people are generally just people, most of whom haven’t even been exposed to something beyond boring and misleading textbook econ, if that. Mr. Woods knows that, since that’s what his mission is, exposing more folks to ideas beyond what he calls “the index card of allowable opinion.”

Well, I’m all about allowing the unallowable — if it’s right!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Historian Woods is now doing what I’ve been doing since 1999, providing a daily common-​sense thought that is short and easy-​to-​read and dropped into your email box every weekday. Mine goes up online at ThisIsCommonSense​.com; I don’t see his on his website … but I do see a lot of books and podcasts!

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Categories
Accountability education and schooling folly local leaders moral hazard

Ugly Scrutiny

Prince George’s County Public Schools, grading, education, incentives,

Prince George’s County Public Schools have increased their graduation rates faster than all other schools in Maryland. Measuring from 2013 to 2016, the graduation rate jumped from 74.1 percent to 81.4 percent. 

Great! 

Well … a fly has stuck itself into the soothing salve of their success — what county principals called an “unfair, ugly scrutiny.” Said scrutiny came from the Old Line State’s Board of Education, which voted to pursue an investigation* into what the Washington Post described as “grade tampering” to “drive up graduation rates.”

Keith Maxwell, the county schools’ CEO, says he welcomes the investigation. 

Dozens of whistleblowers have reportedly come forward. Several spoke with the Post, anonymously, for fear of retaliation: 

  • “We knew that it wasn’t real,” said a teacher at a high graduation rate school. “It’s just common knowledge that they push kids through who shouldn’t be pushed through.”
  • “I’m not averse to helping a student pass,” one educator explained. “But when people are pressuring you to do it, when it happens behind your back, that’s when it’s problematic.”
  • “For a child not to come to class — maybe been in class three days in a whole quarter — and you’re going to change their grade?” questioned another teacher. “It’s not right. If they don’t come to school, and they don’t do the work, they deserve to fail.” 

She added, “It doesn’t help them.”

Which is the point: the students are being cheated. If graduation doesn’t mean anything, then … their diplomas don’t mean anything.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*The investigation had been requested by Governor Larry Hogan.

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Accountability education and schooling folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism responsibility

Quanta of Nonsense

academics, universities, college, paper, The Skeptic, western civilization, racism, sexism, prank, joke

Last month, two academics wrote a hoax paper. Their preferred journal didn’t accept it, but did suggest an alternative publication. They sent the paper to the recommended outlet, and it was published.

The paper? “The conceptual penis as a social construct.” The Skeptic provided an overview; Professor Gad Saad chortled over its sheer genius. Though a brilliant parody, as a send-​up of postmodern academic insanity it fell a tad flat: it was merely published online, and probably not peer-reviewed.

But before you could say “Western civilization is in the toilet and circling the drain,” an equally idiotic paper came to light, published in The Minnesota Review, and apparently offered in earnest by an academic working in “women’s and gender studies.” Entitled “Assembled Bodies: Reconfiguring Quantum Identities,” the abstract (worth reading in full*) does not mention truth, predictive power, or evidence to advance knowledge of physics. Instead, it pushes the “combining” of “intersectionality and quantum physics” to “provide for differing perspectives on organizing practices long used by marginalized people,” etcetera. Basically, the problem of physics is not that it is hard, but that it is “oppressive.”

Meanwhile, historian Tom Woods** discovered a University of Hawaii math teacher who admits to not finding math interesting. She blogged her confession about wanting white cis-​male mathematicians to quit their jobs “or at least take a demotion” and — if in a “position of power” — resign.

None of this is about the advancement of learning. What we see here is 

  1. a new racism — from non-​whites directed against white people — and 
  2. a new sexism — from women and others who are not heterosexual males directed against, you guessed it, heterosexual males

… all packaged in cryptic, pretentious, prolix nonsense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* I found it quoted on the Powerline blog: “In this semimanifesto, I approach how understandings of quantum physics and cyborgian bodies can (or always already do) ally with feminist anti-​oppression practices long in use. The idea of the body (whether biological, social, or of work) is not stagnant, and new materialist feminisms help to recognize how multiple phenomena work together to behave in what can become legible at any given moment as a body. By utilizing the materiality of conceptions about connectivity often thought to be merely theoretical, by taking a critical look at the noncentralized and multiple movements of quantum physics, and by dehierarchizing the necessity of linear bodies through time, it becomes possible to reconfigure structures of value, longevity, and subjectivity in ways explicitly aligned with anti-​oppression practices and identity politics. Combining intersectionality and quantum physics can provide for differing perspectives on organizing practices long used by marginalized people, for enabling apparatuses that allow for new possibilities of safer spaces, and for practices of accountability.”

** In his daily email for Tuesday this week.

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education and schooling folly nannyism national politics & policies too much government

D.C.’s Diaper-​Dandy Regulation

Washington, D.C., daycare, day-care, licensing, regulations, bureaucracy, laws, rules, accreditation

Where is child care most expensive? 

In America, it is in our shining, shimmering national swamp. Yes, in Washington, D.C., infant care averages nearly $1,900 a month, more than $22,000 a year.

So naturally, if you’re a politician, you see that as too … low?

It has been decreed, since last December, that workers caring for infants and toddlers must upgrade their educations to keep their licenses. The District’s brave new world-​class day-​care regulations, the Washington Post informs us, are designed to “put the District at the forefront of a national effort to improve the quality of care and education for the youngest learners.”

Yesterday, at Townhall​.com, I provided the details on 

  • which day care workers or home caregivers must acquire 
  • what type of college degree in early childhood education or, 
  • if currently degreed in another field, how many semester credit hours in early childhood education they must have, or 
  • whether a Child Development Associate (CDA) would suffice, and 
  • by what date …

… just to keep their relatively low-​paying jobs. 

You may be shocked, but these new regs do not apply to the politicians and bureaucrats regulating the “industry.”

The costly credentials required to provide child care will certainly raise prices that D.C. parents already can ill afford. And won’t help those newly credentialed, either: “prospects are slim,” the Post admits, “that a degree will bring a significantly higher income.”

In a perfect world, every child-​care worker would wield a Ph.D. in early childhood development. Be a pediatrician. As well as a psychiatrist. 

And a former Navy SEAL, to fend off terrorists.

But who can fend off this regulatory attack on common sense?

I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration based on photo by Carolien Dekeersmaeker on Flickr

 

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Accountability education and schooling free trade & free markets national politics & policies responsibility

The Leading Edge of Higher Ed

apprentice, Praxis, education, training, skills, college, costs

“People are paying tons of money to be kept out of the real world … being taught by people most of whom have never even worked in the business world. It’s kinda crazy.”

Well, yeah. There’s a lot of crazy in modern college life.

Which is one reason to work around it. That’s what Isaac Morehouse — quoted above — has done.

Morehouse is the founder of Praxis. You may have heard him on The Tom Woods Show or seen him interviewed on Fox News. “The mindset of ‘obey the rules, follow procedures, chase credentials, chase grades, and wait to be told what to do and you’ll be handed this magical ticket to a job,’” Morehouse told Fox’s Tucker Carlson, “it’s just not true.”

His alternative is simple: leverage the apprenticeship idea, combine it with counseling and instruction, and arrange with participating companies a guaranteed job at program’s end.

Our college system deserves a failing grade. Colleges sponge away fortunes (often borrowed) from students, while neglecting to train them to do much of anything but … college work.

This means not only that college grads have trouble finding work, but, as Mr. Morehouse discovered before he hit upon the Praxis idea, there are many, many companies trying to hire competent workers, but unable to find them.

A market opportunity!! Praxis unites demand and supply, connecting companies needing smart, energetic, cooperative workers with willing, eager young folks seeking meaningful (and well-​paid) employment.

You can find a good overview of his effort — and a way to sign up! — at discoverpraxis​.com.

Praxis’s testimonials are inspiring.

As the future should be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling ideological culture moral hazard

The Damage Done

black, father, racism, children, race

In his Washington Post op-​ed, “The dangerous myth of the ‘missing black father,’” Mychal Denzel Smith argues that “responsible fatherhood only goes so far in a world plagued by institutionalized oppression.”

He asks:

If black children were raised in an environment that focused not on bemoaning their lack of fathers but on filling their lives with the nurturing love we all need to thrive, what difference would an absent father make? If they woke up in homes where electricity, running water and food were never scarce, went to schools with teachers and counselors who provided everything they needed to learn, then went home to caretakers of any gender who weren’t too exhausted to sit and talk and do homework with them, and no one ever said their lives were incomplete because they didn’t have a father, would they hold on to the  pain of lack well into adulthood?”

Hmmm. The first question answers itself. If all children get everything they “need to thrive,” it is assumed they’ll thrive. The second question is impossible to know … at least until the creation of that perfect utopia with universal material abundance, a flawless education system and indefatigable single-parents.

Fatherlessness is not just a black problem. And let’s agree there are great single-​parent (or no-​parent) homes as well as terrible two-​parent homes.

Still, fathers are nice. Oftentimes they help children thrive, in part by providing “electricity, running water and food” as well as “love” — both tough and nurturing. Proclaiming that fathers would not matter in a society where everything’s automatically supplied is … simple-minded.

Often called socialism.

Smith raises the issues of “racist drug laws, prosecutorial protection of police officers who kill, mass school closures … the poisoning of their water.” He’s right: having a father won’t magically solve those.

But it would solve the problem of not having a father.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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black, father, racism, children, race

 

Original photo by Sunil Soundarapandian on Flickr