Would-be Teachers Who Talk About Adult-child Sex?

My post over at Joanne's today involves a 9th Circuit ruling against a potential teacher who--in writing, even!--supported adult-child sex and expressed a view that 9 out of 10 special education students were "fakers".  The University of Hawaii refused to allow him to participate in student teaching, thus depriving him of the opportunity to get a teaching credential, and 2 courts upheld the refusal.

Are DC's Schools Bad, Or Are DC's Students Bad?

The test results aren't good:

Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson called the results of last year’s standardized tests “sobering.” How about painful?

The tests, known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exams, or PARCC, showed that just 25 percent of D.C. students in the third through eighth grades met or exceeded expectations on new standardized tests in English. Only 24 percent met a new math benchmark.

And that was the good news.

Were it not for white test-takers in this majority-minority school system, the results would have been even worse.

Overall English and math proficiency rates reached 25 percent and 24 percent, respectively, only because white students, who make up 12 percent of the school system, scored proficiency rates of 79 percent in English and 70 percent in math.

The stark truth: Black students, who constitute 67 percent of the school population, had a 17 percent proficiency rate in both English and math, trailing Hispanics, who comprise 17 percent of the school population and recorded proficiency rates of 21 percent in English and 22 percent in math.

Translation: Beginning at least in the third grade, an overwhelming majority of black students are on a track that leads in the wrong direction — away from college-level work or a career after high school graduation.

Let that sink in.

The picture isn’t better for the city’s high school students. Of those who took a new geometry test, only 10 percent met proficiency standards. Twenty-five percent met proficiency standards in the new English test.

Again, the presence of white students prevented the dismal high school results from being even worse. Fifty-two percent of white students scored proficient or better in geometry, while 82 percent were college-ready in English.

Stack those rates against the 8 percent of Hispanic students and 4 percent of black students scoring proficient in geometry, and the 25 percent of Hispanic and 20 percent of black students reaching that mark in English.

Anyway you slice it, in this multiracial school system, black students bring up the rear.

Are the tests racially biased, perhaps?

Don’t blame the tests. They measure where the students are. Besides, the new standardized tests weren’t instruments imposed on the city from on high. A consortium of 11 states and the District developed the PARCC tests.

I'm sure some of DC's teachers are bad.  There are bad teachers everywhere.  I can't see how, though, bad teachers uniformly across the country single out black kids and ensure they do the worst of all.

No, I don't think the racial achievement gap is caused by bad teachers.  As I've said 8 zillion times, it's a result of culture.  This is where Occam's Razor leads me.

Guest Blogging

For at least a week I'll be guest-blogging over at Joanne's place, feel free to go take a gander.  My first two posts are
What college admissions officers won't tell you, and
A shout-out to Mark Twain.

Prelude To Axanar--The Lawsuit

I've written before (here and here) about Star Trek: Axanar, the crowd-funded, fan-made Star Trek movie due to be released in 2016.  I even kicked in a few ducats to have it made.  A could of days ago, CBS and Paramount, which own the rights to Star Trek, have filed suit, even though (see first link above) CBS had previously green-lighted the production.  I've been following this issue on Facebook for a couple days, with battle lines being drawn quickly--boycott CBS/Paramount, write them letters, accept the inevitable, etc.  Ed Driscoll has distilled the issue here:

CROWDFUNDED STAR TREK MOVIE DRAWS LAWSUIT FROM PARAMOUNT, CBS: As the Hollywood Reporter notes, Star Trek: Axanar, “the subject of a lawsuit filed on Friday in California federal court, is no ordinary Star Trek film. The forthcoming feature film (preceded by a short film) is the source of more than $1 million in crowdfunding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.”

Perhaps the crowdfunding aspect of this production and the amount of money raised so far sent up a giant red flag with Paramount’s lawyers, who in the past have been remarkably laissez-faire when it comes to the prolific amount of video Star Trek fan fiction, such as Starship Exeter, Star Trek Continues and the long-running Star Trek: Phase II series. The latter two productions have featured a number of actors who’ve appeared on the various real, Paramount-produced Star Trek TV series and movies, sometimes playing their original characters.

I hope the filmmakers and the studio come to a mutually amicable arrangement, as the trailer looked pretty awesome....

Why yes, yes it does.


The 21-minute "prelude video":


#IStandWithAxanar

How The Perpetually Aggrieved, Protesting College Students Come Across To The Rest Of Us

The "child-centered education" chickens are coming home to roost.  But, university students, you don't have to be this way:

The little emperors have grown up. The babies of the late 90s – mollycoddled by their parents, spoon-fed by their teachers, indulged by society – have now reached university. Some of the brighter ones are now at Oxford, demanding that the Cecil Rhodes statue at Oriel should be torn down, because of his imperialist, racist views.

We shouldn’t be so surprised. If you’ve had a lifetime of people saying “yes” to you, of never being told off, you remain frozen in a permanent state of supersensitivity. I wasn’t offended by the Rhodes statue when I was at Oxford 20 years ago. But, even if I had been, I wouldn’t have thought my wounded feelings should be cured by tearing apart the delicate fabric of a beautiful university.

Universities are reaping the whirlwind of two decades of child-centred education. That whirlwind has imported imbecilic trigger warnings – when academics have to warn students that western European literature, from the Iliad on, is full of sex and violence. It has also brought the pernicious idea of “no-platforming” – when students refuse to give a stage to anyone who doesn’t fit with their narrow view of the world. 

Our inclusive society, which only came into being because of the First Amendment, has been developing--and even improving--for the past 225 years.  We don't live in pre-revolutionary France, and you don't want to be the revolutionaries--even Robespierre eventually got his head cut off.

There are more important things in the world than your personal feeeeeeeeelings.

If you won't accept my wisdom, accept my Jedi mind trick (does small, "circle-y" hand movement):  This is not the society you want to destroy.

Old Years and New

50 years ago I was in diapers.
40 years ago I was in 5th grade, and had been to Europe the previous two summers.
30 years ago I was a junior at West Point, having just finished a semester on exchange at the Air Force Academy.
20 years ago I was an expectant father.
10 years ago I was recovering from an emotionally traumatic year.
Tonight I'm confident, content, and growing.

I hope you have a happy new year.

Economics, California-Style

I've been saying this for years.  Anyone with the most basic understanding of economics understands this logical result:

California somehow has managed to have the fourth-highest gas taxes in the nation, yet its roads are rated 44th among the 50 states. Nearly 70 percent of California roads are considered to be in poor or mediocre condition by the state senate. In response, the state legislature naturally wants to raise gas taxes, with one proposal calling for an increase of 12 cents per gallon, which would give California the highest gas taxes in the nation.

Because oil prices have crashed, state bureaucrats apparently believe that the public won’t notice the tax increase in their fill-up costs – even though special California fuel mandates already help make gas prices 25 percent higher than the national average.

Consider California’s upside-down logic.

The state wanted to discourage driving and promote hybrid vehicles by upping taxes on carbon fuels. It worked, though it cost the public dearly. People drove less and bought more fuel-efficient cars. But now, because less gas is burned, fewer taxes are collected. So the state wants to reward motorists for their green sacrifices by raising their taxes even higher to make up for missing revenue. If state motorists drive even less and cram into two-seat commuter cars, will California further reward them with even higher gas taxes? (boldface mine--Darren)

Notice what the state does not consider.

Are highway bureaucracies such as the California Department of Transportation run efficiently? The nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst’s Office recently reported waste and inefficiency in Caltrans, citing a staggering 3,500 unnecessary Caltrans employees, and declaring the agency more inefficient than other states’ transportation bureaucracies.

If California motorists are driving far fewer miles, shouldn’t roads wear out more slowly – and additional taxes not need to be raised for repairs? Could state revenues that have been diverted to the high-speed rail boondoggle instead be used for road repairs?

A Must-Read Commentary On So-called Social Justice

Posted at Breitbart:

I can’t help but share this amazing anonymous smackdown of the odious cult of social justice with readers. It’s currently doing the rounds on Twitter and reddit. If anyone knows the author, do get in touch…

Seriously, go read it. A snippet:

Worst of all, you turn the very principles of freedom against us. We tolerate you because we believe in free speech and civil discourse, not bullying and violence. But that means we have to watch you advocate against that very freedom. We don’t believe in ruining a stranger’s professional life over an opinion, but that means that we can’t punish your actions.

We believe that the rightness of our actions should speak for itself. You believe in bullying, even as you claim to love the oppressed.

Racists

Who are the real racists--people like me, who believe in Dr. King's and Thurgood Marshall's colorblind society, or those who cry "racism!" at the drop of a hat?

THERE IS NO RACIST LIKE AN ANTIRACIST, writes Theodore Dalrymple. “That is because he is obsessed by race, whose actual existence as often as not he denies. He looks at the world through race-tinted spectacles, interprets every event or social phenomenon as a manifestation of racism either implicit or explicit, and in general has the soul of a born inquisitor.”

And then I saw this article:

In a statistical analysis that controlled for a host of other influences, we found this: Negative racial views about blacks were the single most important predictor of white opposition to paying college athletes.

The more negatively a white respondent felt about blacks, the more they opposed paying college athletes.

To check our findings’ validity, we also conducted an experiment. Before we asked white respondents whether college athletes should be paid, we showed one group pictures of young black men with stereotypical African American first and last names. We showed another group no pictures at all.

As you can see in the figure below, whites who were primed by seeing pictures of young black men were significantly more likely to say they opposed paying college athletes. Support dropped most dramatically among whites who expressed the most resent towards blacks as a group.

Is there no other explanation for this?  Does correlation imply causation?  If you're trying to show racism by whites, wouldn't you show black pictures to some and white pictures to others?

I'm for getting rid of "big athletics" at colleges and having them return to what should be their actual focus, which is education.  Would that disproportionately affect blacks?  Does that make me a racist?  Does it bother me that if our public universities had admissions standards based mostly on academic merit, then even more Asians would attend top-tier universities?  The answers to those questions are "Certainly, at least in high-dollar sports", "no", and "no".

Minority Majority

As a teacher who is not a union member, I'm a tiny minority in California but a majority in the overall United States:

Teacher union membership is dwindling. In fact, it has dipped below 50 percent nationwide, down from a high of almost 70 percent in 1993. 

The number will drop even further if Friedrichs v. CTA goes our way.

Not "Warts and All", But "Just the Warts"

Why renaming places because the honored person didn't hold today's correct views is silly:

A wide range of properties and portraits were suddenly deemed offensive because students, apparently, hadn’t realized that revered Founding Fathers owned slaves, and that most beloved and wealthy Americans born before the 20th century did not treat women, homosexuals, and people of color with great respect.

At Amherst college in Massachusetts efforts to rename the school’s unofficial mascot Lord Jeff picked up steam.

Students did not want to have a mascot honoring a British general, Lord Jeffery Amherst, who supported spreading smallpox to Native American during the French and Indian War.

There were more than a few objections to the noble fight, not least that removing the names of racist figures cannot rectify their past sins—nor does it help those in the present day understand history’s darker moments and complexities.

Removing admired statesman but horrendously pro-slavery John Calhoun’s name from a college at Yale, or racist but respected president and designer of the League of Nations Woodrow Wilson’s name from his school at Princeton, also do not rectify modern inequalities.

“It’s not doing the hard work of education,” University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill law professor Alfred L. Brophy told The Daily Beast. “Once you do the renaming, everyone forgets.”

2015 also saw a ridiculous twist in the renaming battles. While there may be a legitimate debate over how to handle monuments and buildings named for people who are clearly racist, sexist, and homophobic by today’s standards, a group of students at a Pennsylvania college wanted a building renamed because the name merely sounded like a racially charged act.

At Lebanon Valley College, some students demanded that the campus building Lynch Memorial Hall be renamed.

The “lynch” in it is not to honor the brutal and often racist mob murders, but to pay tribute to a beloved college president, Clyde A. Lynch. That Lynch not only led the school through the Great Depression and World War II, but spent his last years helping displaced refugees resettle in the U.S.

As I've said before, I'm entirely OK with teaching history "warts and all", but it seems that too many people today focus only on the warts.  As I once saw on the Facebook, "You are more than just your mistakes."

For The Brotherhood, Everything. Outside The Brotherhood, Nothing.

If you still need evidence of the fascist tendencies of unions, look no further:

Local 412 of the United Auto Workers has placed a spotlight on employees who have chosen to exercise their right to not support the union financially under Michigan’s right-to-work law. In a recent newsletter, the local urges co-workers not to share “tools, knowledge or support” with individuals who chose not to pay union dues.

It then lists the names of the employees to be shunned.

“I hope there is one thing we can all take from this,” the newsletter reads. “Please do not share any tools, knowledge or support for any of these employees who choose not to pay their fair share.”

Jeff Hagler, president of the UAW Local 412 Region 1, and Michael Hayes, vice president of the union, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

If they were sure they were right, if they were secure with what they offer their members, they wouldn't need to act like bullies.

While I don't advertise it, plenty of people where I work know that I'm an agency fee payer as opposed to a union member.  I don't think they'd respond well to a suggestion like the UAW's if our local union proposed one.

Cultural Appropriation

Here's one way to combat the idea of "cultural appropriation":

Multicultural diversity succeeded in watering down American culture. We have to accept thug music (rap) alongside Beethoven. Now the left is embracing cultural appropriation, a guilt trip laid on gullible white people.

OK, fair is fair. As a white Christian, I won't eat halal. I won't eat Thai. I'll even give up General Tso, which is something I actually do eat.

Now give me back the polio vaccine. It is part of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It was developed by Jews (there are two vaccines).

Also, give back pasteurized milk.

The automobile.

The airplane.

The train.

Electricity, the Internet, skyscrapers, radio, television, and the cellphone -- or any other kind of phone. Transistors, too....

I'm not sure that's the way to go, though, because it validates the very concept of cultural appropriation--among the most racist concepts there is.

Think about it.  Are only certain people, based on how they were raised or where they were born, allowed to wear certain types of clothing?  Are only certain people, based on how they were raised or where they were born, allowed to eat certain types of food?  Are only certain people, based on how they were raised or where they were born, allowed to listen to, or to perform, certain types of music?  Are only certain people, based on how they were raised or where they were born, allowed to wear their hair certain ways?

The answer to all of these questions is--or at least should be, and in an ideal world would be--an emphatic "no!"  But we have people out there arguing each of these even now.  And there are just enough soft-headed lefties, anxious to display their liberal bona fides, who will go along with them since they're part of the tribe.

I'm not saying we should mock people based solely on how they were raised or where they were born, but eating food, wearing clothes or hair styles, and/or listening to music should be open to everyone--and it pains me that such a statement even needs to be said.  I can eat Chinese food if I want to, and I should be able to eat Americanized Chinese food (orange chicken the best!) or Mongolian barbecue without complaints from people claiming that simple act is an affront to them.  You know what's an affront to me?  Your racism and fascism.  Which of us has the better argument?

Is having a "fiesta" themed party truly offensive?  Really?  You can argue it is if you want to, but that answer isn't self-obvious. 

Why should you care if white people want to wear dreadlocks?

There are plenty of other questions I can ask of the "cultural appropriation" crowd, but one wonders if such self-important and hate-filled people can even understand the racism inherent in their beliefs--or if it's the reason for their beliefs.

Republic Under Siege

When you need an underground First Amendment group, the battle really is at our own shores:

At Brown, there is an underground group whose purpose is to allow kids to say what they ought to be free to say above ground.”

So begins Jay Nordlinger’s National Review profile of Reason@Brown. Christopher Robotham, 21, is the group’s founder. He tells FIRE that the by-invitation-only club is a forum where Brown students can engage in free expression in an atmosphere where open and vigorous debate is welcome and valued.

I talked to Robotham, a computer science and math major, about why he started Reason@Brown, what to make of the campus “safe space” crisis, and where we go from here.

And this at an Ivy. The founders fought and thought so much for this?

When What We Know Ain't So

"Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so."  Ronald Reagan

"It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble, it's what we know that ain't so."  Will Rogers

Blogger and teacher Michael Mazenko send me his latest op-ed today, in which he offered a timeline which included the failed educational "contributions" of people who have  more dollars than sense:

It's been 32 years since a U.S. Department of Education report declared America "A Nation at Risk." It's been 15 years since Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates began his education philanthropy, naively believing his wealth and business acumen could solve the country's supposed "education crisis."

It's been 14 years since No Child Left Behind promised all students would achieve at grade level by 2014. It's been seven years since the launch of the Common Core initiative to standardize education. It's been five years since Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg gave $100 million to "fix schools" in Newark, N.J., and turn that poverty-plagued system into a national model of education.

In all that time, academic achievement has remained roughly the same, with national tests like NAEP and ACT indicating a relatively stable, or stagnant, state of education.

I've said it forever, our problem is not as much in education as it is in culture. Sure, we do some educationally-stupid things, but the bigger problem is a culture that doesn't seem to value education as much as it once did.

Despite claims by reformers like Gates and College Board president David Coleman, the establishment of common standards and yearly standardized tests have not improved education. The root causes of education failure often reside outside the school environment, and these are too often ignored by reformers. Non-school factors are the primary drivers of low achievement, and there is little doubt where these needs are greatest.

There is no crisis in public education, but there are many crises in individual communities. Thus, declaring a crisis in "education" and instituting state and national programs is not helpful because it aims at too big of a target. There is no reason to declare a crisis in the thousands of successful schools. Education is not "in crisis," but 30 percent of schools and neighborhoods are. We already know which schools and students struggle. Thus, reformers and educators and media and legislators must focus directly on them.

It's almost cliche to point out all the so-called reforms and counter-reforms that educators ourselves have put out or latched onto over the years, reforms and counter-reforms backed up by "the research" that is usually found lacking after the reforms and counter-reforms have failed and students have paid the price.  Educational fads are insidious, and the so-called learning styles myth is among the worst:

One such myth is that individuals learn best when they are taught in the way they prefer to learn. A verbal learner, for example, supposedly learns best through oral instructions, whereas a visual learner absorbs information most effectively through graphics and other diagrams.

There are two truths at the core of this myth: many people have a preference for how they receive information, and evidence suggests that teachers achieve the best educational outcomes when they present information in multiple sensory modes. Couple that with people's desire to learn and be considered unique, and conditions are ripe for myth-making.

“Learning styles has got it all going for it: a seed of fact, emotional biases and wishful thinking,” says Howard-Jones. Yet just like sugar, pornography and television, “what you prefer is not always good for you or right for you,” says Paul Kirschner, an educational psychologist at the Open University of the Netherlands.

Learning occurs best when the material is taught in the modality most appropriate for the content.  One would think that would be obvious, but clearly it's not.

The Things I Learn

I don't like to admit it, but I've been very naive.

I used to believe that every teacher (except for those couple everyone knows about at every school) generally does what I do--planned out lessons weeks in advance, prepared for them, taught to the best of their ability, assessed fairly, etc.  But then I thought about all the examples I know of where teachers don't do that, and I thought that perhaps I shouldn't write that post!  I'm not interested in having someone drum up accusations of "unprofessional conduct" against me for writing about all the things I know about!

So I'll just write about the one I heard about today, on the Facebook.

A former student of mine posted the following from Tumbler:

I'd never heard of this term "shipping" before, but as you can see, the context makes it pretty clear that it involves teachers' playing matchmaker for students.

Anyway, here's part of our exchange (yes, she gave me permission to post this):

I don't want to know anything about my students' sex lives.  As far as I'm concerned, they don't have any.  I don't see how any good can come from my having such knowledge or being involved in any way.  I want to stay as far away from that as I possibly can.  But others don't, so much so that not only are there different types of involvement, but there is a term, "shipping", to describe this particular type of involvement.

What the heck?!

Points Break

Yesterday I was at Walmart and thought it couldn't hurt to check out the $7.88 blu-ray bin.  In it I found the 1991 Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze movie Point Break.  Knowing that a remake was just released, I bought it.  A friend and I watched it and then headed to the theater to see the new one.

The original was a good action movie, but the action mostly involved surfing (and one scene of parachuting).  Well, if some action was good, more must be better, right?  The new movie gave us not only surfing but dirt biking, freehand cliff climbing, flying squirrel suits, and parachuting.  It gave us exotic locales, sweeping vistas, ADD-inducing action, and a less believable story.  Still, I have to admit it was fun to watch.

The original certainly had a more believable story.  Its biggest flaw, though, was the wooden acting of Keanu Reeves, who at the time had already done Bill and Ted but had not yet starred in Speed.  Reeves' acting was almost Hayden Christensen-worthy, and I don't say that lightly.

I probably enjoyed each of these movies more than I enjoyed Star Wars VII.

Which Degree?

From The Economist:

"Earnest, Unmarried, Middle-aged, White, Liberal, Multiple Cat-owning Teachers"

The anger in this post is justified.  Hyperbolic, yes, but justified.

Merry Christmas, and if you don’t like it you can stuff it in a stocking. This is the time of year when terrified souls offer up the ubiquitously bland “Happy Holidays” in order to avoid pointing out that what we are celebrating are different religious observances. Naturally, we must suppress any such hint of the fact that we are doing so in the name of diversity.

Ah diversity, the last refuge of the fascist. Remember, like everything else leftists yap about, “diversity” is a lie. When they use the word, it means the ruthless imposition of grim, lockstep, staggeringly boring conformity. When we are all the same shade of pale gray, bereft of unique ideas, traditions, and spirituality, it’s much easier to lead us into the socialist Utopia they yearn to rule.

A Cuppa

My friends and family know what I like:

Merry Christmas :-)