Tag: equality

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education and schooling general freedom

Handicapping the Best

Harrison Bergeron, egalitarianism, equality

The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.

That’s the first sentence of Kurt Vonnegut’s short story about how everybody with above-​average intelligence, looks, or talent is chronically handicapped, by law. To enforce equality.

“Harrison Bergeron” is satire. Vonnegut exaggerates and invents. Our world will never be like the world he depicts.

But not for lack of trying.

The latest episode ripe for satire? The decision of the Vancouver School Board to kill honors programs to enforce “equity.” 

What is that?

Don’t bother using an old dictionary.

Today, equity is a code word for bringing everybody down to the same low level in defiance of the real differences in abilities among students — not to mention effort expended.

The board had already killed English honors programs. Now it’s killing science and math honors programs. To foster “an inclusive model of education.”

Jennifer Katz, professor at University of British Columbia, accuses parents angry about the decision of supporting “systemic racism.”

My family has been subjected to this mentality. Years ago, my daughter was advanced in math, way ahead of other first-​graders at a private school. My wife asked the teachers to give her some more difficult problems in addition to what the class was doing so that she wouldn’t die of boredom.

Answer: “No.” Reason: “Then she would be even further ahead.”

We never took our daughter back to that school. How could we? How could we knowingly keep her in a place where she would be allowed to stagnate for the “greater good” of keeping people “equal”?

Whether in my state of Virginia or in Vancouver, British Columbia, children should be free to learn, to progress. Let’s keep Vonnegut’s work fiction, not prophecy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Screenshot from Harrison Bergeron (2013)

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education and schooling

The Panic Over Pods

education, equality, freedom

“You really want to get the best for your child,” a father told NBC News, describing his family’s motivation to secure private educational services.* They are part of the “Pandemic Pod” movement “now sweeping the nation” — as so many public schools offer only remote learning this fall. 

Increasingly, parents are getting together to form small groups — or “pods” — and hire a teacher to better provide instruction to their children. 

It shows initiative — and a refreshing sense of parental responsibility. Of course, not everyone can afford to hire a private teacher. 

“It just seems really privileged,” a Portland, Oregon, woman advised The Washington Post.

“The frantic activity … of families soliciting private tutors for their children,” San Francisco school board member Alison Collins explained, “is frightening to many black parents and parents of color.” 

L’Heureux Lewis-​McCoy, associate professor of sociology of education at New York University, called the private effort: “opportunity hoarding.” 

“For those families that are most vulnerable, particularly lower-​income families, black families, brown families, language-​minority families,” declared the professor, “they are locked out of that.”

“Experts say that will widen the education gap,” NBC reporter Stephanie Gosk chimed in. 

Ah, the experts — and their Procrustean** obsession!

Their fixation on gaps and inequality, as opposed to enhancing opportunities and achievement where possible, leads to the absurd notion that we should deny educational opportunities to some children (our children) unless we can provide those benefits to all children … city-​wide, statewide, nationwide — or worldwide.

Read a bedtime story to your kid or grandchild tonight. Insist on quality … and leave the equality to feckless education theorists.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The father and the family happen to be black.

** Procrustes, in Greek myth, was a robber who made his victims lie on a bed and stretched them out if they were too short for the bed, or lopped parts of them off, if too tall; killed by Theseus on said bed: “Procrustean” is a synonym for absurdly strict egalitarianism.

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general freedom meme

Equality vs. Freedom

equality, freedom, Milton Friedman

“A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.”

–Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose, p. 148.

 

Categories
Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Popular responsibility

Don’t Think Different

Apple, “vice president of diversity and inclusion,” Denise Smith race, equality, diversity, hiring,

What do we know for sure about the resignation of Apple’s “vice president of diversity and inclusion,” Denise Smith?

  1. She is a black woman who landed in hot water for saying that a group of blue-​eyed blond men can also be “diverse,” because “they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation. Diversity is the human experience. I get a little bit frustrated when diversity … is tagged to the people of color, or the women, or the LGBT.”
  2. An uproar ensued among persons who favor making characteristics like sex and skin color — as opposed to talent, perseverance, intellect — a top priority in hiring. 
  3. Smith then apologized, seeming to disparage her own correct and much-​needed statement defending genuinely relevant diversity. 
  4. She has left Apple.

What outsiders don’t know for sure is whether Apple asked Smith to leave because of what she said. We can be merely 99.99 percent sure that Apple requested her departure for making her excessively un-​same and sane observation. 

Not good, Apple.

Excellence and common sense should never be sacrificed to “diversity.” Sub-​perfect “diversity” has not impaired Apple’s ability to make popular and effective smartphones bought by persons of every description.

Indeed, no company should be in the least concerned with promoting “diversity” if this means trying to increase the proportions of employees of a certain race, sex, weight, height, blood type, timbre, etc. even when such traits are blatantly irrelevant to prospective job performance. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people moral hazard

Is This Even Funny?

Amy Schumer, comedy, equal pay, feminism, The Leather Special, PC, HBO, equality

Stand-​up comic Amy Schumer made headlines in Variety, this week, for her re-negotiations with Netflix over her recent comedy special, The Leather Special.

It initially garnered her a “mere” $11 million, while, Variety reported, comedians “Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle were given $20 million per special as part of their deals with Netflix,” according to a summary at Vulture​.com.* “Schumer then went back and negotiated for ‘significantly more compensation,’” scuttlebutt has it.

After-​the-​contract negotiations seem weird to me … almost … indecent.

But then, this might be apt, considering Schumer’s characteristic form of humor, which is almost relentlessly of an intimate sexual nature. Like many another Netflix watcher, I could not finish her special. “Indecent” is the nice word for it.**

The special was so relentlessly panned that Netflix created a new feedback system to discourage viewers from leaving severely negative criticisms and evaluations. It was a big deal months back.

So why did she think she could get more? Though she now denies it, the early reports said she demanded some sort of parity with Rock and Chappelle. And that “equal pay” for “equal work” ethic does seem to be behind the very idea of her ex post negotiating strategy. 

The thing is, Rock and Chappelle got more money, obviously, because their ability to make money for their venues is amply proven. Schumer, though she is not without talent and definitely has her partisans, is not as big an audience draw.

Like wages in the normal labor market, it’s about productivity.

And you’d have to pay me to watch The Leather Special in its entirety.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* Variety is behind a paywall. I’m quoting Vulture because, like any good scavenger, I’m not paying for Variety.

** No idea whether I would have made it through a special with Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle. I get the impression I’m not in the target audience.

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Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture individual achievement media and media people national politics & policies

Parker and the Pope

Kathleen Parker, Pope Francis, Bernie Sanders, economic fairness

Kathleen Parker is far from my favorite columnist, but her Sunday column comparing Pope Francis and presidential aspirant Sen. Bernie Sanders regarding their shared message on economic fairness and equality of outcomes was well worth the effort.

She treats the men differently. She gives Pope Francis a pass because, as a religious leader, he “wants to raise consciousness about our obligation to the less fortunate,” while bashing Sanders, the politician, who “wants to restructure America’s economic institutions to ensure that money trickles down — mandatorily rather than charitably.”

“Let’s face it, most of us work hard … for a paycheck.” So Parker pointedly asks, “As the tax man chisels away at such monetary rewards, where goes the incentive to work hard?”

How persuasive — encouraging actual, real-​world achievement — would a Sanders Four Year Plan be?

Addressing the Pope’s harsh words for individualism, Parker argues, “The ‘rampant individualism’ that Francis condemns is precisely what has driven American ingenuity, entrepreneurship and a level of prosperity unmatched in human history.”

Precisely.

In other words, maybe — just maybe — we did build it. Through our own sweat and toil. Individualism is decidedly not big government. And it is not public-​private crony capitalism, either.

So, considering that it was America’s laissez-faire-ism that created such great wealth and prosperity, which presidential candidates are promising a return to more robust and vivacious individualism?

Not the ones promising everything. Nor the one promising the “best deal.”

The job of the next heroic leader will be to shovel whole layers of intrusive government out of our way.

Parker seems on board, boasting, “This is common sense.”

Hey, wait a second, Kathleen, that is my line. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Kathleen Parker, Pope Francis, Bernie Sanders, economic fairness

 

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