By Paul Hsieh @ 8:00 AM
While reading a story in the New York Times about the Texas State Board of Education, I was struck by the parallels between special-interest lobbying that occurs with a mandatory school curriculum and special-interest lobbying that occurs with mandatory health insurance.
The February 14, 2010 New York Times Magazine published a lengthy article entitled "How Christian Were the Founders?" This article described in detail the ferocious political lobbying in Texas resulting from the fact that Texas has established a statewide curriculum guideline for all its schools. Hence special interest groups have a powerful incentive to have their point of view promulgated in this mandatory curriculum.
The NYT article focused primarily on the Religious Right, and their often-successful attempts to promote the theme that "America is a Christian nation" -- by which they mean that "the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts". This in turn has powerful implications for what they believe children should be taught about American history, the proper relationship between government and religion, and what they considered the dangerously flawed notion of "separation of church and state". And they have been successful in using the power of government to include their views within the textbooks in use throughout the state of Texas.
Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the various Religious Right theories of American history, the kind of lobbying they engage in is a completely predictable consequence of a government-mandated educational curriculum. In other jurisdictions, we might see hardcore environmentalists attempt to require school textbooks adopt a radical "green" perspective or leftists require teaching an anti-West, anti-capitalist curriculum.
Basically, the presence of a mandatory curriculum serves as a giant magnet for special interest groups seeking to have their particular viewpoint represented in the curriculum. It turns the educational curriculum into a permanent political football to fought over by the various interest groups.
Hence, there is a parallel with the lobbying that occurs under a system of mandatory health insurance. If everyone is required to purchase health insurance (as they are in Massachusetts), the government must necessarily determine what constitutes an "acceptable" package. This creates a giant magnet for special interests to have their particular pet benefit included in the mandatory package. In Massachusetts, residents must therefore purchase numerous benefits that they may neither need nor want, including in vitro fertilization, chiropractor services, alcoholism therapy, and hair prostheses -- raising costs for everyone to benefit the few with sufficient political clout.
Nor does the lobbying ever stop. As Michael Cannon noted in the August 27, 2009 Detroit News:
In the three years since Massachusetts enacted its individual mandate, providers successfully lobbied to require 16 specific types of coverage under the mandate: prescription drugs, preventive care, diabetes self-management, drug-abuse treatment, early intervention for autism, hospice care, hormone replacement therapy, non-in-vitro fertility services, orthotics, prosthetics, telemedicine, testicular cancer, lay midwives, nurses, nurse practitioners and pediatric specialists.
The Massachusetts Legislature is considering more than 70 additional requirements.
As with mandatory educational curricula, mandatory health insurance thus becomes a permanent political football for special interests to fight over.
Of course, the solution in both arenas is to eliminate the government mandate. Just as parents should be allowed to decide what kind of education their children should receive, consumers should be allowed to decide what sorts of health insurance they wish to purchase. The government should respect and protect these individuals' rights to make these decisions for themselves, rather than making that decision for them.
His plan would thus turn health insurance into an unfair game of permanent political football, where the politically strong perpetually pummel ordinary Americans who lack sufficient lobbying pull. Unless Americans want to become the permanent tackling dummies for the special interest groups, they should remain firm in their current opposition to the President's plan and not let down their guard yet.
According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.
If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don't know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I'm getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on. The idea that a school district would not only spy on its students' clickstreams and emails (bad enough), but also use these machines as AV bugs is purely horrifying.
Wow, just wow. I wish that government officials wouldn't use 1984 as a how-to manual.
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:00 AM
In response to my story from my third podcast about a father teaching his child to evade by demanding obedience from her, Rational Jenn posted some fascinating comments on how parents often substitute their authority for that of reality. Here's a bit from her post:
Please don't misunderstand me--this is not to say that I don't exercise my parental authority. I do have it--you sort of get it automatically when the kids are very small. As they are utterly dependent upon the adults in their lives, they of course learn to rely on them for the things they need, including guidance, and they do view parents as authority figures.
But what I try to do is to never ever make my authority the sole basis for discipline. I explain my reasons--sometimes those explanations need to be provided to the child after the fact (there's that rushing out into the street example again). I try to show or tell them something about the reality of the situation and guide them through what needs to happen. And if they can't or won't do what they need to (like not biting a sibling), then I will exercise my authority and help them stop.
Parenting by Authority does encourage kids to evade. They can learn to squash their feelings, to pretend events didn't happen, and to learn how to game the system. They learn that what Dad decides is more important than what actually occurred. And they lose the ability and the chance to use their minds independently.
She then discusses some the consequences of Parenting by Authority, but for that, you'll have to read the post. (Later, Jenn posted a fascinating story on catching her son trying to evade.)
Then the discussion continued: Amy Mossoff posted on the dangers of authority-based education. In her view, "Montessori is the only widely available educational system that does not Educate by Authority." Here's an example:
The Montessori method recognizes that external reward systems such as grades are not necessary, and even harmful. Children naturally want to learn. Anyone who has observed small children can see this. The reward for good work is in the work itself, and in the accomplishment. Montessori materials are self-correcting - the children know whether they have done the work correctly without relying on a teacher's stamp of approval. The blocks of diminishing size must be stacked up from biggest to smallest or the tower will not stand. The cylinders of diminishing size must be placed in the proper holes, or they will not all fit in the puzzle.
I love that!
I'm delighted that my podcast sparked this bit of discussion. Here's my follow-up question: In dealing with other adults at work or elsewhere, do you always deal with them by reason to the greatest extent possible? Or do you sometimes lapse into mere authoritarian demands? It's easy to say "I deal with people by reason, of course!" That's the answer we want to give. However, I suspect that the intrinsicism pervasive in our culture has affected most of us to some degree or other.
Personally, I'm going to make a conscious effort to interact with other people scrupulously in "mind of reason mode" rather than "muscles of authority mode." It's not an error that I make often, but I'm pretty sure that I've slipped into it from time to time with people open to rational persuasion -- particularly when tired, frustrated, or hurried. Clearly, that's a mistake. So if I do that, I hope that someone will point that out to me -- preferably without gloating!
...Annie Sullivan, her young teacher (superlatively portrayed by Anne Bancroft), is fiercely determined to transform this creature into a human being, and she knows the only means that can do it: language, i.e., the development of the conceptual faculty. But how does one communicate the nature and function of language to a blind-deaf-mute? The entire action of the play is concerned with this single central issue: Annie's struggle to make Helen's mind grasp a word -- not a signal, but a word.
...To my knowledge, "The Miracle Worker" is the only epistemological play ever written. It holds the viewer in tensely mounting suspense, not over a chase or a bank robbery, but over the question of whether a human mind will come to life. Its climax is magnificent: after Annie's crushing disappointment at Helen's seeming retrogression, water from a pump spills over Helen's hand, while Annie is automatically spelling "W-A-T-E-R" into her palm, and suddenly Helen understands.
The two great moments of that climax are incommunicable except through the art of acting: one is the look on Patty Duke's face when she grasps that the signals mean the liquid -- the other is the sound of Anne Bancroft's voice when she calls Helen's mother and cries: "She knows!"
We had the pleasure of seeing a theater version of "The Miracle Worker" with some friends when it came to Denver last year, and it was a real treat precisely because of the talent of the actresses who played Sullivan and Keller.
If you can't see a theater version live, you can always rent the excellent 1962 film version from Netflix.
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM
I'm delighted to report on the creation of a new mailing list on OList.com: OGrownups. Here's the basic list description:
OGrownups is an informal mailing list for Objectivists interested in raising and educating children well. Its basic purpose is to facilitate discussion amongst Objectivists about child development, discipline techniques, education methods, parenting resources, and more.
Any Objectivist interested in polite and practical discussion about raising and educating children rationally may join OGrownups -- parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, caregivers, and friends. Anyone considering parenthood is also welcome.
The original name of the list was "OParents" but we thought that name was a little too restrictive. We want to encourage any Objectivist who wants to participate in discussions about "raising and educating children rationally" to join. I know that I would have loved to participate in such a list back when we were contemplating parenthood.
The "Grownups" part refers to the end result of childraising--that they will become grownups, hopefully rational ones. The primary parenting question is, what's the best way to get them there (without losing our minds)?
Actually, my thought was that the "Grownups" part refers to us -- the list members -- because we're the grownups in relation to the kids we interact with. However, either meaning will do!
The criteria for membership are similar to that of the other OList e-mail lists:
To join the OGrownups mailing list, you must meet two criteria:
You must be an Objectivist, meaning that you agree with and live by the principles of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism as best you understand them. Newcomers to Objectivism are just as welcome as old-timers. Please do not subscribe if you consider yourself to be a libertarian (or associate with the Libertarian Party), advocate revising Objectivism (like David Kelley's "open system"), or associate with the dishonest pseudo-advocates of Objectivism (most notably David Kelley, Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden, and Chris Sciabarra).
You must be interested in parenting and education based on the principles of Objectivism.
If you do not clearly meet those criteria, you should not subscribe without first e-mailing the list administrator, Jenn Casey, rationaljenn@gmail.com.
The OGrownups list is managed through Google Groups. You can request a subscription via this web interface. You will be asked to confirm that you meet the two criteria for membership. Subscription requires an account with Google. (It's free and easy to create.)
After you subscribe, please feel free to post an introduction.
The rules are the same too, namely:
Please be friendly or at least civil in posts to the list. Subscribers who behave like asses, such as by insulting other list members or attacking Objectivist intellectuals, will be removed from the list.
Please respect the purpose of the list. Subscribers who prove disruptive to the basic purpose of the list -- such as by attempting to arguing against Objectivist positions or posting on irrelevant topics -- will be unsubscribed or subject to moderation.
I've been really pleased to see the serious and thoughtful discussions on parenting that Jenn's blog posts have generated. In less than a day, this new list has acquired 44 members, with discussion already in progress. Wow! Thank you, Jenn, for taking charge!
About 14 percent of U.S. adults won't be reading this article. Well, okay, most people won't read it, given all the words that are published these days to help us understand and navigate the increasingly complex world.
But about 1 in 7 can't read it. They're illiterate.
Statistics released by the U.S. Education Department this week show that some 32 million U.S. adults lack basic prose literacy skill. That means they can't read a newspaper or the instruction on a bottle of pills.
I'm appalled, but I suppose that I shouldn't be entirely surprised. Earlier this semester, I discovered that none of my thirty students this semester at Colorado's best university know the meaning of the word "egregious." And on Wednesday, a student was seriously confused by a potential test question that used "former" and "latter." (I'm very, very glad she asked me!) My students should have been acquainted with that kind of language by reading classic literature, even if they didn't hear it from their parents. That's what an education is for. One cannot read Jane Austen -- as I am currently doing, yet again -- without learning the meaning of "former" and "latter"!
In teaching, I eschew technical philosophical terms unless I've introduced and defined them. Yet terms like "egregious," "former," and "latter" are part of my ordinary thinking, writing, and speaking. So I use such language in teaching; I don't consider it high-flown in the slightest. It should be comprehensible to any college student. Yet how many students are unprepared to hear it? Far more than I used to think, apparently.
I blame the government schools for this sorry state of affairs, but I also blame parents. Through many conversations, I've found that parents almost always support and defend their government schools, even while recognizing that the failure of the "public" education system. (Principled opponents of government schools are an exception, obviously.)
I'm sick of that: I see that it cannot be true, as 90% of my students are unprepared for college-level work. So I'm going to start being rather more pushy with parents in my criticism of government schools, I think. Their all-too-convenient delusions are suffocating the minds of their children. Even if parents have no other option -- and many don't, and I feel for them -- they ought to recognize that their beloved "public schools" are not equipping their children with the knowledge and skills required to live sensible, independent, and happy lives.
By Paul Hsieh @ 1:38 PM
For a blog called "NoodleFood", we don't often use actual noodles to illustrate interesting ideas. I'm going to correct this deficiency right now. Here's a classic video using noodles to illustrate powers of 2, as well as to discuss about the size of atoms:
By Paul Hsieh @ 1:37 AM
This short satirical video mocks the arrogance and paternalism of the bureaucrats who run the British educational system, but most of the arguments apply equally well to socialized health care. Or socialized anything!
The American equivalent in health care would be ABC News Medical Editor Dr. Tim Johnson's comments on individuals buying health insurance directly from an insurance company instead of through one’s employer. He stated (halfway through the following video):
The idea that individuals are going to have enough knowledge and enough savvy and enough insight and, frankly, enough guts to make choices all by themselves is pretty much a pipe dream.
When Berkman's team asked about the teachers' personal beliefs, about the same number, 16% of the total, said they believed human beings had been created by God within the last 10,000 years.
And what do science teachers actually teach in the classroom?
Despite a court-ordered ban on the teaching of creationism in US schools, about one in eight high-school biology teachers still teach it as valid science, a survey reveals. And, although almost all teachers also taught evolution, those with less training in science – and especially evolutionary biology – tend to devote less class time to Darwinian principles.
...[A] quarter of the teachers also reported spending at least some time teaching about creationism or intelligent design. Of these, 48% – about 12.5% of the total survey – said they taught it as a "valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species".
I find it deeply disturbing that an American child's only formal exposure to one of the fundamental principle of modern biological science may come from a government school teacher who is willing to let his own personal religious beliefs bias his portrayal of the facts.
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