This I'll Defend

"This I'll Defend." So goes the motto of my Scottish clan, but what is it, exactly, that I'll defend? This seems like a good start:

I believe in the free speech that liberals used to believe in, the economic freedom that conservatives used to believe in, and the personal freedom that America used to believe in.

Those are my ideals, in a nutshell. I found the quote here.

Saturday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
The OSS, Office of Strategic Services.

Today's question is:
Who was the first US Secretary of Defense?

Friday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Lily and James Potter.

Today's question is:
What was the WWII predecessor of the CIA called?

Thursday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Admiral Farragut, at the Battle of Mobile Bay during the US Civil War. “Torpedo” was the term used to describe what we today would call mines. The quote is not exact, but is a common paraphrase.

Today's question is:
Who were Harry Potter's parents?

Peanut Parents

Allow me (as if you have any choice!) to start this post by quoting from a post I wrote a couple months ago:

It's not that I'm unsympathetic to kids who have allergies, but at some point one kid's allergy cannot impact an entire class or school...

Schools can make reasonable accommodations for students with medical needs. If your child's medical needs are extreme--and life-threatening allergies constitute extreme, in my book--then perhaps an alternative to the neighborhood school would be the appropriate placement.

I am acquainted with another blogger, one who works in the education field but not as a teacher, who wrote a blog post expressing similar sentiments. She may as well have kicked a hornets nest.

It wasn't local parents who got their panties in a bunch. No, it was a group of parents in a distant city who got up in arms because she didn't suggest that schools should do everything under the sun to protect children from the scourge of a peanut. She wasn't sympathetic to their needs, she shouldn't work with children.

She should be fired.

Life got uncomfortable for this blogger when the Peanut Parents decided to march. I'm pleased that her school district didn't buckle.

Again, I'm not unsympathetic to parents who have children with such extreme allergies. However, we have to look at what's reasonable. If your kid has a life-threatening allergy, it's not reasonable to expect the whole school to accommodate that. As I wrote before, what happens when one parent forgets and packs something small in their child's lunch--does the kid get suspended or does the parent get brought up on attempted murder charges?

It's not the school's business at all what I pack in my kid's lunch. If your kid has an allergy, perhaps the school can set aside somewhere besides the cafeteria--where hundreds of kids congregate with all sorts of food--for your kid to eat. Perhaps your kid already knows enough to eat apart, or knows what to do if he/she encounters someone on the playground who might have had a PB&J at lunch.

But to go after someone's job to satisfy your own bloodlust because a school employee doesn't agree with you? I have to wonder if you're really trying to protect your kid, or if perhaps you're lashing out because you're angry that your kid has these allergies.

Peanut Parents, life has dealt you and your kid a difficult hand. I understand that; I have friends and relatives with life-threatening or difficult conditions (cerebral palsy, Parkinson's Disease, Down's Syndrome), and I know how hard it is to accept that. However, your threatening people is not going to make the world a more understanding or sympathetic place. Trying to get someone fired is bad enough--how angry must you be now that you've failed? Stop being angry.

Reasonable people can disagree on where that accommodation line can drawn; that doesn't mean they are insensitive or want your kid to die.

I don't hear anyone suggesting that Safeway not be allowed to have bulk peanuts in a bin over in the produce section. My guess is you just keep your kid away from that part of the store. Likewise, it's unreasonable to expect a school to ban a Snickers bar or a PB&J for several hundred students. Raising awareness in others and teaching your own kid how to cope will elicit plenty of compassion and willingness to help; marching on a school with pitchforks, whether to ban foods or get someone fired--not so much.

Down The Road To Socialized Medicine

Q. What is the market price for setting a broken arm in the US?
A. No one knows. The market has been distorted for so long that there's no way tell what a market price might be.

Reason Magazine has an interesting article on health care reform, and I especially liked these paragraphs:

Right now consumers are locked into the health insurance and health care plans that their employers choose, thanks to previous government meddling with the health care system and the tax code. Consequently, most consumers simply don't have a clue what their health insurance costs. They have no way to reduce those costs, and no incentive to do so, even if they could...

Third party payments are the main source of dysfunction in the American health system. "The devil systematically built our health insurance system," once suggested Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt. As evidence, Reinhardt pointed out that it "has the feature that when you're down on your luck, you're unemployed, you lose your insurance. Only the devil could ever have invented such a system."

So the first step toward real reform is to give consumers responsibility for buying their own health insurance. The employer-based health insurance system must be dismantled, and the money spent by employers for insurance should be converted to additional income. This would immediately inject cost consciousness into health insurance decisions.

When I was growing up, my dad's insurance covered us for emergency room visits. A routine visit to a family doctor was paid out of his pocket, and it didn't happen often. Under the scenario above, a person could choose such a plan or could choose a costlier plan like those many HMOs offer, if any plan at all. It would be the consumer's choice.

Remember, though, that it was government that was touting HMOs as the so-called solution to health care complaints almost 30 years ago.

Wednesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Six. Anne, Elizabeth I and II, Mary I and II, and Victoria.

Today's question is:
Who was quoted as saying, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”?

Giving Credit Where It's Due--To The ACLU, Of All Groups!

Every once in awhile I'll find common cause with the ACLU, and this is one of those times. They're taking on one of my favorite targets in government, the Transportation Security Administration.

On March 29, 2009, the plaintiff in the case, Steven Bierfeldt was detained in a small room at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and interrogated by TSA officials for nearly half an hour after he passed a metal box containing cash through a security checkpoint X-ray machine. He was carrying the cash in connection to his duties as Treasurer of Ron Paul’s Campaign For Liberty. Steven’s experience is part of a troubling pattern of the TSA transforming its valid but limited search authority into a license to invade people’s constitutional right to privacy.

Steven was detained and questioned as he returned home from a Campaign for Liberty event transporting proceeds from the sale of tickets, t-shirts, stickers and campaign material. He repeatedly asked the agents to explain the scope of their authority to detain and interrogate him and received no explanation. Instead, the agents escalated the threatening tone of their questions and ultimately told him that he was being placed under arrest. Steven recorded audio of the entire incident with his iPhone...

I despise the TSA with every fiber of my existence. They rank right up there with the NEA and CTA, and just above the ACLU (hehe), in organizations I'd just as soon live without. They're nothing more than minimum-wage-caliber people who are given a badge with the power of the US government behind it. They do next to nothing to secure transportation, and they harass millions of travelers a day in what I've heard accurately described as "security theater". It's bad enough that they get to do all that they do; if it takes the ACLU to keep them from going beyond even the stupid limits they're given, then bravo to the ACLU (in this case).

This may very well be one of those "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" situations. So be it.

Tuesday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
He was forced to drink poison hemlock.

Today's question is:
How many sovereign queens has England had, and who were they? (Here England refers to independent England as well as to England as part of Great Britain.)

Strange Views In Academia

Law students protest the hiring of a new professor, and the groupthink isn't pretty:

The trouble is that the petition in opposition to Professor Thio imagines her appointment as a violation of NYU's "own policy of nondiscrimination." In other words, gay students (and members of other historically disadvantaged groups) are said to suffer actual discrimination when the administration hires faculty members who argue against anti-discrimination laws. This confusion of speech and action -- of advocating for discrimination and actually engaging in it -- is common in academia, where academic freedom is too often limited to the freedom to advance prevailing ideals of equality.

Also important:

The refusal of law students even to hear opposing views, reflecting opposing moral codes, is particularly worrisome. I wouldn't want one of these future lawyers ever advocating for me. They're unlikely to learn how to argue effectively if they limit their law school debates to matters about which only presumptively reasonable people disagree. Uniformity of opinion breeds complacency, close-mindedness, and a tendency to mistake attitudes for arguments.

I worry about what passes for higher education these days.

In This Ever Changing World In Which We Live In...

I'm not suggesting we Live and Let Die, but just today I was talking to a friend about things that will be gone in 25 years (he thinks wristwatches). I remember the milkman, twice-a-day mail delivery, and tv station sign-offs at night and sign-ons in the morning (with the national anthem, to boot).

So how entertaining is it to read this list of 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About.

I wonder if my kid will ever look at my bookshelf and ponder what the book "Real Men Use DOS" is about.

Monday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
"Kiss my grits!" I can tell from the answers that many people watched Alice. Here's a great YouTube clip showing Flo saying it (about 34 seconds in)--and no, Larry, it was not an invitation!

Today's question is:
By what method was Socrates executed in 399 BC?

Off To The Races

Today's major Sacramento paper provides dueling quotes from Si Se Puede, the president of the California Teachers Association, and Jack O'Connell, state Superintendent of Public Instruction, regarding the Race To The Top funds which California cannot receive from the federal government unless it changes Section 44662 of state ed code.

California teachers are not opposed to tying teacher evaluations to student scores, said David Sanchez, president of the California Teachers Association. He said, however, that the union would never agree to merit pay or tying student achievement to salaries.

Actually, that's news to me. I don't recall that I've ever heard a CTA president say that the union doesn't oppose tying teacher evaluations to student scores. I wonder who insisted that Section 44662 be put into ed code, if not the CTA.

The Race to the Top funds are part of the $100 billion in stimulus funds directed to education. Duncan said the funds would go to 10 to 20 states that can serve as models of innovation. Applications for the funds will be available in October and due in December. The first round of awards will be given in March.

O'Connell said California will apply.

That signals a change to ed code; I can't believe the CTA would sit on the sidelines on this. Could be fun to watch the bloodletting.

Sunday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
The Crimean War (1853-1856), between the Russian Empire and a coalition including the British and French. The Light Brigade, a British cavalry unit commanded by Lord Cardigan, received ambiguous orders and advanced through a valley under withering Russian artillery fire. Quoting from The Reason Why (ISBN 0-525-47053-00534-160): “Some 700 horsemen had charged down the valley, and 195 had returned. The 17th Lancers were reduced to 37 troopers, the 13th Light Dragoons could muster only two officers and eight mounted men; 500 horses had been killed.”

And that's the end of Disaster Week! Now, onto "ordinary" trivia questions.

Today's question is:
On the TV show “Alice”, what was Flo's signature insult?

Saturday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
1962.

Today's question is:
In what war did the Charge of the Light Brigade take place?

Met A Fellow Blogger Today

One of the extremely enjoyable benefits of blogging is getting to meet other bloggers whose work I respect. Today I had a great time meeting with Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency. He's as personable as he is professional, and comes across in person exactly as he does in his written work.

A couple hours and some Noah's Bagels went by in no time at all....

You'd Think That Smart People Would Run Colleges

You might think that, but sometimes--more often than any of us would like--you'd be wrong:

Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC) has failed to lift an unconstitutional ban on "unofficial" use of the initials "SRJC" in private e-mail addresses and website domain names, chilling the expression of students and faculty. After a faculty member came to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help, FIRE asked SRJC to lift its overbroad ban and to clarify the First Amendment rights of SRJC community members. SRJC, however, has told FIRE it intends to continue with its unconstitutional efforts to ban unofficial use of the college's name...

On May 5, Vice President of Academic Affairs/Assistant Superintendent Mary Kay Rudolph e-mailed faculty members and other SRJC community members a notice claiming that any "use of 'Santa Rosa Junior College' or any abbreviation of the college name" is a violation of California Education Code 72000(b)(4). The code prohibits, among other activities, speech that implies the college's official endorsement or affiliation. However, Rudolph stated in the e-mail that any use of "SRJC" was illegal, that violators would be commanded to "immediately cease using Santa Rosa Junior College or SRJC in their domain name or e-mail addresses," and that "failure to comply could result in legal action."

Perhaps they'll sue me because I'm using the letters SRJC in this post.

Friday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
79.

Today's question is:
In what year did Rachel Carson first publish Silent Spring?

A House Divided Against Itself

What will the California Teachers Association say about this?

States barring the use of student- achievement data to help set teacher pay would be ineligible for $4.35 billion in education stimulus funds under draft guidelines the Obama administration plans to announce today.

The proposal, e-mailed yesterday by the Education Department, would disqualify states such as California, New York and Wisconsin from applying for the grants unless they change rules excluding student-performance data from evaluations of teachers and principals.

President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who have long pressed for merit-pay programs that reward teachers for gains in student performance, plan to announce the draft guidelines today. The nation’s largest teachers’ unions oppose linking pay to pupil achievement, saying test scores aren’t an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness.

Linking teacher pay to student standardized test scores is expressly prohibited under California Ed Code, Section 44662(e), which states:

The evaluation and assessment of certificated employee performance pursuant to this section shall not include the use of publishers' norms established by standardized tests.

So what will happen here? Will the California legislature attempt to change this section of law in order to get a couple billion from the feds? How strongly will the CTA fight this--and fight President Obama on this? If the legislature overturns this section, will CTA obstruct implementation or work to ensure that it is completely defanged?

How will the CTA look when it fights the President over this?

Hat tip to NewsAlert.

Update, 7/26/09: EIA addressed this issue here:

We’re getting a lot of coverage of the goals and not much about how it’s going to happen. EVERYBODY has noticed that the teachers’ unions are going to find a lot of objectionable stuff in these regs. NOBODY is spending time to figure out what that will mean. Here’s a guess: The unions will first work to water down the regs, but Obama and Duncan will still get most of what they want. Then the districts and the unions will take the money, and four years from now, just like magic, everything will be exactly the same as it is now.

Thursday Trivia

The answer to yesterday's question is:
Kamikaze.

Today's question is:
In what year did Mt. Vesuvius destroy the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum?