tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post1222886032173871041..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Why Republicans Need ChangeJonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger79125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-22789745547516645072012-12-18T20:46:32.513-06:002012-12-18T20:46:32.513-06:00Thanks Jeff, I’ll definitely take a look at that b...Thanks Jeff, I’ll definitely take a look at that book. Elements of the left and right often share a sort of humanistic critique of modernity. I don’t think human nature has changed much since the Paleolithic age, but our societies have increasingly lost their human scale. Adults at least have the capacity to find their own space in this world -- for children, adult protection and guidance is essential, but not adequately provided by the current system. This last point is gleaned from Hannah Arendt, who always had something insightful to say about education.<br /><br />It’s important to look at the system as a whole and change it to be more flexible in adapting to fit our social and personal needs. Simply applying new educational philosophies, top-down through the hierarchy of professional educators, has a long tradition of failure. One particularly perverse outcome was the application of Ayn Rand’s ideas, which became what’s now known as the self esteem movement (and in some ways the opposite of what Rand had envisioned!). So the goal shouldn’t be to found a system influenced by Arendt any more than a system influenced by Rand, but a system influenced more by the real people who live in it.Couveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00926561539205771774noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-56847789904908478942012-12-18T03:30:26.322-06:002012-12-18T03:30:26.322-06:00Couves, I'm very interested in all this and ex...Couves, I'm very interested in all this and expect we'll be discussing it again; meanwhile, I'll try to get up to speed on Gatto, and I repeat that I think you would find much of interest in this book:<br /><br />http://www.gyanpedia.in/Portals/0/Toys%20from%20Trash/Resources/books/goodman.pdf<br /><br />Your comment reminds me of lines from the book like this one:<br /><br /><i>"Education is a natural community function and occurs inevitably, since the young grow up on the old, towards their activities, and into (or against) their institutions; and the old foster, teach, train, exploit and abuse the young."</i><br /><br />It then goes on to describe what that might mean in practice. Goodman is associated with the left, but is hard to peg; at various times he called his own philosophy "anarchism" and "Neolithic conservatism." To me he represents the importance of breaking free from the standard political categories if you're going to reform education, because we're talking about a nest of interacting problems, some of which are easier to see with our right eyes, as it were, and some with our left eyes. As I think this discussion has demonstrated.<br /><br />Jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-16132184928651116242012-12-17T21:14:44.723-06:002012-12-17T21:14:44.723-06:00Jeff, when you talk about your practical education...Jeff, when you talk about your practical educational experience, you sound just like my family members who teach. It's really not hard to find the problems if we just listen more to actual teachers. <br /><br />Anyway, back to Couves' World: <br /><br />I’m also concerned by the possibility of talented kids getting left behind, but I don’t really think it would be a problem. With informal schooling, students would generally be taught by people who were relatives, family friends or otherwise part of the parents' personal network -- ie, people with a very personal reason to see the student succeed. Add to that greater individualized attention and I think you would have a greater likelihood of finding talent. That’s something parents naturally do anyway. I’ve never met a welfare mom who couldn’t talk at length about the individual talents of all her children. She may be limited in some respects, but very few mothers are completely unaware of the abilities and needs of their children. This was of course the case in pre-industrial society just as well as today. The difference being, back then very few people could afford adequate schooling, or to lose the work provided by children at home. Of course today, free schooling is provided to everyone.<br /><br />When you talk about practical experience making students "more regimented to the needs of late-industrial capitalism” -- yea, I don’t want to see ten year olds being led in the “Walmart cheer.” But students who are properly educated early on would be unusually impervious to corporate brainwashing by the time they’re ready to do a little work. No one I’ve met is more independent-minded than someone who was home-schooled and that’s what I see as the model for informal schooling.<br /><br />I guess the worst that could happen is that you’d also have formal schools that would specialize in turning out lots of good little corporate drones. And maybe that’s all that some people want for their children -- it’s arguably better than what they’re getting from a lot of public schools today anyway. In any case, the idea would be to have a system that could tailor an education for the aspiring Daves and non-Daves alikeCouveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00926561539205771774noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-3281391427220817422012-12-17T02:36:33.071-06:002012-12-17T02:36:33.071-06:00Thanks, comrades! Couves, you are right, you and I...Thanks, comrades! Couves, you are right, you and I could find large areas of agreement here; I certainly agree that "The geographic segregation widens the class divide far more than vouchers ever could," although I'd add the word "probably" in there until I saw a voucher plan in more detail. I also like the phrase "comprehensive school of last resort," and in addition would want the future arrangements to ensure that a taste and aptitude best developed in early youth -- say, a talent for higher math -- was recognized and allowed to flourish. (I'm guessing the pre-industrial arrangements lost us a lot of potential Leibnizes, because they weren't giving every child a chance to discover math, or literature, or a bunch of other potential interests, some of which you can't necessarily start acquiring with equal success beyond a certain stage of adolescent brain development.) And I would be worried about the future arrangements aiming to be more "practical," because I think that will quickly become code for "more regimented to the needs of late-industrial capitalism," something I know you agree is to be avoided. <br /><br />But yeah! As Anastasios suggests, let's dismiss Congress and get to work on it! In a blog thread! That's the future of legislating, no doubt about it. What could possibly go wrong?! Jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-5419884732968685172012-12-16T21:46:13.791-06:002012-12-16T21:46:13.791-06:00Anastasios, it sounds like what you’re calling “fr...Anastasios, it sounds like what you’re calling “freedom” is some sort of state of nature outside of civilization. Obviously, that’s not what I meant. I mean freedom within civilization -- where, not only have we increased the number and percentage of free people on this earth, but in many ways we’ve increased the amount of freedom enjoyed by the individual. As a libertarian, I may sometimes focus on the loss of freedom, but it would be foolish to ignore all the progress that’s been made as well. <br /><br />Jeff, you describe the problems with education better than me -- we’d probably agree on most of it.<br /><br />Anastasios and Jeff both make great points about the cultural origins of the education problem. This may never happen, even under a voucher system, but I want to see it impressed upon parents and students alike, that education only comes from hard work, dedication and a personal desire to learn. Too many students and parents today assume that schooling is just a process that’s externally applied to someone. They’re simply participating in a system. Unfortunately, education is becoming “just a system” all the way up through college. The degrees are just a proxy for other things employers hope students will have. In some ways, it’s a pernicious process of social approval, and anyone who drops out without the proper stamps on their forehead will be deemed a failure. Better to let a student drop out at 15 to do simple work (and praise them for it!), rather than be tortured by the system -- then let them get more training or education later when he or she is better prepared. Instead, we’re now debating whether schooling should be mandatory through age 18. When schooling becomes a system almost exactly tied to one’s age, it inevitably comes to be seen by the student as a social rite of passage more than a time of practical learning for the future. We need something that's in some ways closer to the informal schooling of the pre-industrial past, which integrated us more with society and allowed us to shape our young lives more in keeping with our natures, rather than subsuming them to a an all-controlling system.<br /><br />I should also add that some students from the most troubled backgrounds are going to need some very comprehensive school of last resort to give them everything they’re likely missing at home. These students are either in inadequate alternative schools already, or are integrated into the general population where they are making the environment terrible for everyone else. Some people just need extremely intensive help when young, or they’re going to end up dead or in prison otherwise. <br /><br />The two of you are right to be skeptical -- I’m not saying there is any such thing as a sure thing here. But I also don’t think that vouchers will lead to the nightmare of inequality that’s being described. Look at the system that already exists -- the middle class finds the best schools by segregating themselves in communities with high real estate values as barriers of entry to the poor. And of course the very rich just put their kids in private school anyway. The geographic segregation widens the class divide far more than vouchers ever could. A truly deregulated voucher system would, I hope, also help integrate students into their communities in a more meaningful way. There are trends in society far beyond education that make this increasingly difficult, but that should be part of the goal. Given how hyper-individualized our society is in most other ways, it seems like it should be not only desirable to achieve the same for education, but very achievable as well.<br /><br />Anyway, sorry for rambling a bit at this point. I’m obviously groping for some future educational system that I can’t precisely imagine or describe. I can't imagine real change coming from within the current system, but it may yet happen in ways that none of us could anticipate. Couveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00926561539205771774noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-14074979710792360152012-12-16T20:53:40.297-06:002012-12-16T20:53:40.297-06:00I will second that! If only Congress would go hom...I will second that! If only Congress would go home and let the four of us legislate -- we could REALLY mess everything up!!!Anastasiosnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-11400069841139926352012-12-16T15:24:06.714-06:002012-12-16T15:24:06.714-06:00Fantastic valedictory post, Jeff. Speaking at lea...Fantastic valedictory post, Jeff. Speaking at least for myself, it seems we end in (violent) agreement.CSHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-33944563112398341042012-12-16T04:06:21.583-06:002012-12-16T04:06:21.583-06:00One other thing by way of acknowledging Couves'...One other thing by way of acknowledging Couves' and CSH's points: When I was teaching in a business school I was called upon to help college students craft resumes and job applications. So I read a lot of job ads from the corporate world, virtually all of them, often in identical language, calling for "self-starters" and "pro-active" "problem-solvers" and, basically, Dave. Or so they said. (I figured real Daves would last about a week in most of those organizations, but whatever.) I felt I knew what they wanted -- someone who wasn't just a time-server but would be dynamic and compelling in the ways CSH has been talking about. Every organization knows they need this, even if in practice they try to obliterate it as soon as it appears. In a sense, they literally DO advertise for Daves. But I was painfully aware of (a) how far most of the students actually were from having these qualities, (b) how little they even understood what was being asked for, and how ready they likely were to imagine that the ads were nonetheless describing them, and (c) how a big reason for those two facts was that the students were products of 15+ years of deadly, conformist, industrial-style schooling, weirdly married to "self-esteem"-oriented curricula whose explicit goal was to cater to parents' vanity and keep kids from seeing any shortfalls in themselves. (My own energies were marshalled to that system through such mechanisms as (1) no tenure and (2) heavy reliance on student evaluations in performance reviews, evaluations you put at risk if you offended students' sense of entitlement. It couldn't have been more obvious how counterproductive that was, but go ahead, try pointing this out. In the hearing of an administrator. Dare ya! I did, and have the lumps on my skull to prove it.)<br /><br />So Couves and CSH have put their fingers on real problems. I don't dispute that. The issue is finding policies that will work, with most of the good consequences we're imagining and a minimum of disastrous blowback.Jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-59570778844179949322012-12-16T03:43:04.426-06:002012-12-16T03:43:04.426-06:00Couves, I did see the real-world value of calculus...Couves, I did see the real-world value of calculus, I just haven't been in any position since where I had to solve such problems myself. Most people aren't. That said, for various reasons I'm still in favor of kids having oppoortunities to learn it.<br /><br />CSH, I think one answer may be tenure. I know conservatives hate it; yes, it will end up protecting a certain number of malingerers, and we all know that the right to be bad at your job without penalty should be resrved only for investment bankers and the like. But in a large system, a certain number of Daves would appear spontaneously here and there, and the best thing at that point is a clear rule that ensures they won't just get dumped. I'm reminded that my dad was fired from a job as a young special-ed teacher (this was a long time ago) because he wouldn't discipline kids by hitting them. It's not like he was a crusader on this point, he just didn't believe in it, and so the school decided he wasn't a "good fit" with their "philosophy" and yadda yadda. He might have been frustrated enough to leave anyway, but who knows -- with tenure, he might have stuck around and modeled ways of dealing with troubled kids less crude than whaling on them, and other teachers might have found these compelling too. In other words, he might have been one of your Daves. I think that's exactly what the administration feared.<br /><br />As to "freedom," I have the same problem with Couves' otherwise attractive vision that Anastasios mentions: The system will be gamed. The problem is that the term "freedom" is too elastic. Just as administrators will normally define "a good fit" as "not being Dave," the privileged will define freedom as the right to maintain their privileges. Slaveholders fought a war over their "freedom" to own slaves. (True story.) Even today, we hear that a modest rise in millionaires' tax rates is a horrible assault on freedom. What worries me is that in our voucherized future, those with the most power to set the terms of debate will see to it that "freedom" applies mainly to their own community or class. But perhaps, paraphrasing Anatole France, they will condescend to note that now that the old system has been smashed, the new arrangements, in their majestic equality, give rich and poor alike the same freedom to sleep (or study) under bridges.<br /><br /><br /><br />Jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-39674561542720638152012-12-16T00:24:35.225-06:002012-12-16T00:24:35.225-06:00Freedom is infinitely scalable, Couves? No, I am ...Freedom is infinitely scalable, Couves? No, I am glad to say it most certainly is not. Indeed, it is often not possible at all, and God and the law be praised! The loss of freedom is the price of civilization, and in general it is an extremely good bargain.<br /><br />Having said that, how to encourage Dave? Vouchers might be one useful way, I guess. But the problems inherent in preventing the wealthy and well-connected from gaming the system would be immense. A general voucher system would rapidly degenerate into a highly directive assignment system as schools intrigue for the best prepared (I.e. upper-class) students, and parents intrigue for rare spaces in the best schools. The British public-school system after all functions through a quasi-voucher setup, and Britain is one of the few OECD nations with a stronger and more entrenched class system than our own. Nor are British teachers particularly known for innovation.<br /><br />Maybe teaching grants for Dave would help. Or maybe a system of sabbaticals and self-development.<br /><br />But in general Dave will not appear until students and parents demand him, and that is unlikely to happen on the large scale. The school system must wrestle with students who do not even have one competent parent, neighborhoods where coke the drug is easier to get that coke the drink, and subcultures in which a stretch in jail is an accepted part of the male life-cycle. When parents and students are freed from those pressures, they will have the time and energy to encourage Dave to a greater degree. Yes, in not encouraging Dave now they are closing off venues for dealing with tese problems, but if frogs had wings they wouldn't bump their butts.Anastasiosnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-1663000621042835172012-12-15T23:16:06.331-06:002012-12-15T23:16:06.331-06:00Freedom is infinitely scalable. If you’re trying ...Freedom is infinitely scalable. If you’re trying to figure out how to make everyone else do what Dave is doing, you’re missing the point. Because what Dave is doing is not about scrupulously following prescribed technique, but in doing what works for him. He may also face barriers in a voucher-based educational system, but at least there he would have more options, including striking out on his own as an entrepreneur. The teachers’ unions are afraid of vouchers, but every teacher I’ve known would have given up pay and benefits if they could only teach as they best knew how. A deregulated voucher system would be great for teachers -- administrators would attract them, not usually by paying them more, but by being more supportive and allowing them to unleash their inner Dave. And for the teachers who are decidedly non-Dave-like (a minority, I think), there would be other schools that would carefully control methods and curriculum.<br /><br />Jeff, I was so bored by calculus that I struggled just to get by… then I took physics and I suddenly realized that this stuff wasn’t pointless, but could be used to solve seemingly impossible real-world problems.Couveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00926561539205771774noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-17094308099687134192012-12-15T18:32:25.494-06:002012-12-15T18:32:25.494-06:00Hard to admit it after all this time, but I'm ...Hard to admit it after all this time, but I'm afraid you're probably right, Jeff. Its awfully difficult to <i>hire</i> Dave, as everyone you interview of course assures you that they are Dave, most of them believe that, and its hard to suss out the difference. <br /><br />Your second choice, as a superintendent, might be to hire away known Daves from elsewhere, but that type of thing costs a lot of money in other industries, money which the superintendent probably can't pay Dave in a bad school, and even if the superintendent could, the union would never allow it.<br /><br />Your third choice is to elicit Daveness from the dormant Daves among the troops. That's not career building to academic leadership, who might not only lose their job but also be followed by a trail of negativity.<br /><br />Damn, it is hard to come up with a half-dozen Daves. If I could get them, I think it would work; to the extent the barrier with the mediocrities is 1) lack of awareness they suck and 2) lack of initiative to take the pain, a few well-placed Daves may indeed be enough to generate escape velocity from the school system's mediocrity.<br /><br />But you're right, Jeff, its incredibly difficult to place those well-placed Daves. Damn.CSHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-411006274706053372012-12-15T17:09:32.577-06:002012-12-15T17:09:32.577-06:00Not to toot my own horn here, but I have BEEN Dave...Not to toot my own horn here, but I have BEEN Dave, in fact quite recently, in an educational setting, with exactly the painful results that Anastasios describes. Which is a key reason that I don't expect moral courage from others -- I wouldn't wish that experience on most other people, and some wouldn't be as free as I was to risk their jobs and reputations. (People don't literally <i>kill</i> the messenger these days, but they do try to smear and ruin him.) Nor do I expect it even of myself in all situations. I join with Anastasios in wishing you luck, CSH, in finding Daves and Jaimes and encouraging them to do their best in hopes of modeling an approach that might move others or create pressure for better results. In addition to the scaleability problem, though, or similar to it, I guess I wonder what exactly this project of seeding Daves throughout the school system would involve: Do you run ads looking for Daves? Do you inform the school principal that such-and-such individual has been put in place with every expectation he'll be a pain in the ass and probably make the principal look bad (or at least unimaginative), but he's nonetheless to be tolerated? Does that mean Dave has some kind of tenure? Can other people also get tenure, then, by promising to be a thorn in the side of the powers-that-be as well? Do others in the same job category as Dave lose points, relative to him, because they're too cooperative or don't upset things enough? Or, granting that the Daves are rare meteors streaking across our skies, do we just sit around and wait and hope that the six you want will show up? Which of course in a sense is what we're alerady doing. I really don't mean to throw cold water on the whole effort, but I see it raising some conundrums that I don't think have easy answers.Jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-12355973813720090442012-12-15T14:33:54.972-06:002012-12-15T14:33:54.972-06:00Yes, CSH, it still makes you a dreamer. I will gl...Yes, CSH, it still makes you a dreamer. I will gladly let you have six. I'll let you have six thousand. But human psychology is not going to change. Asking a mediocrity to admit to their unworthiness is a larger example of wondering why so few of the GOP admit they were wrong about Bush, or asking, if you prefer, why so few Democrats will question diversity programs, or so few gun advocates acknowledge the differences between Europe and the USA in terms of violent crimes and gun deaths. Are people just telling untruths for convenience? Not usually, it's just that the human mind does not work like that. People just rarely admit to lack of merit or being wrong in any situation. If they do admit to being wrong or lacking merit, it is usually in some minor matter, or else they are clinically depressed and take all sorts if blame for everything that comes along.<br /><br />So, if you want to improve test scores and help individual students, take six or six thousand and I certainly hope you succeed. If you think that your success will cause people to say, "Look at them! How unworthy I feel!" then I expect you will be disappointed. People do not react well to unpleasant truth, and messengers thereof usually get killed. Better to help your six thousand and let the rest think what they will, which will be to belittle you, try to deny your success, and try to qualify away your insights. That is not to tell you what to do, but only what go expect. After all, this is still the same world that nailed a guy to a cross once for saying "You know, you people should really try to be nicer."Anastasiosnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-32193818943498730482012-12-15T13:14:38.184-06:002012-12-15T13:14:38.184-06:00What we arrive at, then, is a charged, empirical q...What we arrive at, then, is a charged, empirical question: why don't folks pursue 10,000 hour greatness, and why don't teachers lead students toward that? I've said that all teachers should be like Dave or Jaime Escalante; this is obviously naive on its face. The counterargument, that the lack of Dave/Jaime Escalante means we should accept that some children or people "just can't cut it" is not only belied by Talent is Overrated but also the obvious implication of Escalante/Dave: they didn't select those poor, hopeless students. They worked with what they had and created outstanding results. Either that was a tremendous piece of good luck in those guys finding just the right impoverished kids to work their magic, or everyone could do it.<br /><br />But everyone doesn't do it. Hardly anyone does. Why not? There are many reasons, such as a fear of being unpopular, inertia, and sheer ignorance. I would argue that there are two reasons that rise above, and aggregate, the rest: the universal human conceit that we are pretty good already ("above average") for where we are, and that the pursuit of excellence is inherently unpleasant. Overcome those two and I think you get a lot more Daves/Jaime Escalantes.<br /><br />But follow me: I won't ask for every one of the thousand+ teachers in a 700,000 person MSA to be Dave. Not even close. Give me, maybe, 6 at poor schools spread throughout town. 6 who achieve the magical results that Dave achieved, which when restricted just to Dave seems like a novelty.<br /><br />Give me six sets of schoolchildren in bad parts of town, achieving magical results via disciplined work, and suddenly the decision calculus that prevents people from reaching up changes: it gets a lot harder for the mediocre teachers to convince themselves that they are above average within their self-defined context, and the unpleasantness that comes with 10,000-hour type effort is superseded by the greater unpleasantness of parents who increasingly want to know why our poor school has such inferior results to the other poor schools in town. I can't, Dave didn't, achieve that groundswell with only one. But a half-dozen, I've got a shot.<br /><br />Can I have 6, Anastasios? Out of several hundred? Does that still make me a dreamer? <br /><br />Because if we break the conceit of the mediocrities thinking they are good, and we further make it more painful not to try then to try, I think we might find a Dave in everyone, as Couves said above. Yes, it isn't easy, and yes it can take a toll on one's health (though I can report, Jeff, that I had the great privilege of meeting Esclante several years after that film, and he was healthy as a horse! He did manage to live an additional three decades after that movie...not saying that Hollywood would over-dramatize that high intellectual effort is way too difficult..no wait, I am saying that :).<br /><br />Finally, curriculum: there's a study mentioned in Talent is Overrated that compared expert violinists. It looked at those who were in major city orchestras, mid-sized city orchestras, and local community groups. The first were all 15,000 hour violinists, the second were all 10,000 hour violinists, and the third were 5,000 hour violinists. The researchers found not a single case of a 5,000 hour violinist making it to a world-class orchestra, nor were there any 15,000 hour violinists who had to settle for community groups.<br /><br />So, yeah, fancier curricula? Sure, why not. The secret sauce is still trying hard, we need to increase the motivation and opportunity to do so.CSHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-13533658122115770522012-12-15T10:35:44.111-06:002012-12-15T10:35:44.111-06:00CSH, thanks for the further explanations. Stand an...CSH, thanks for the further explanations. <i>Stand and Deliver</i> makes MY point, I think. For one thing, Jaime Escalante has a heart attack or something (it's been a long time since I saw it), and the movie attributes this to overwork and drivenness. For another, he is brilliantly charismatic. For a third, he is teaching math, which is not easy, to be sure, but more straightforward than a lot of other things that people would benefit from being able to do. The qualities that make for up-by-your-bootstraps success are much subtler, and aren't easily achieved through repetitive drills. Calculus is not something those kids likely needed later in life; I took 3 semesters of it in college, myself, yet wouldn't know a differential equation today if it bit me in the keister. (Yeah, I know, they were also learning how to apply themselves and be disciplined. But learning something you don't need is an ineffecient way to do that.) <br /><br />Anyway, my point has certainly not been to disparage the Daves or the Jaimes or other heroic figures. It's to point out that they don't represent solutions because what they do isn't scaleable. When you've got tens of millions of children to educate, you're going to need millions of teachers. A few of those will be awful, some will be great, but most, by definition, will be mediocre (which comes from the Latin for "ordinary"). And yeah, I'm what Anastasios is calling a Tory -- though don't tell my British Labourite friends -- in that I don't believe the solution is to hope for heroics, because most people aren't heroes. Even the makers of <i>Stand and Deliver</i> don't really see that as the solution, because not only does his brilliant work nearly kill the guy, but they obviously see him as an exceptional case. How do we know? Because they made a movie about him.<br /><br />I said earlier I'm not necessarily averse to unconventional new approaches, like school vouchers, if they're done right. But that's another and related point: Human enterprises usually aren't done right, or at least, we have to assume that they're going to be flawed and mis-executed in various ways, and that if they're meant to serve very large numbers then they're necessarily going to be delivered through, and to, lots and lots of mediocre people. Applying this to education, it's easy to design reforms that will work well in the hands of great teachers; the trick is finding approaches that get at least decent results even in the hands of the second- or third-rate, because in practice that's all we're going to have available most of the time. What I would really like to see is a movie, not about a heroic teacher, but about a heroic curriculum designer, somebody who finds a way of learning calculus (or whatever) that turns out to work reasonably well, even if not always with award-winning results, in thousands of classrooms across the length and breadth of the land, preferably while avoiding the deadening conformism that Couves rightly criticizes. And this person would be even more of a hero to me if s/he did this while also living a healthy life and getting plenty of rest.<br />Jeffnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-85984851567595045422012-12-15T10:28:26.406-06:002012-12-15T10:28:26.406-06:00Well, CSH, you dream great dreams, and I say that ...Well, CSH, you dream great dreams, and I say that with affection. I guess I would return to Lincoln (great movie) to show a good and effective balance in all of this. Lincoln certainly broke a lot of China, but he also knew that the time came to bend the knee to Preston Blair, and to tell Thaddeus Stevens, correct and impressive as he might have been, that if you let the perfect get in the way of the good, you and up with the bad. So Lincoln knew that Dave was right, that breaking china will make Progress. He also knew that there comes a time to tell Dave to sit down and shut up because now isn't the time for dreaming and annoying people, now is the time for vote buying and anal osculation.Anastasiosnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-45993040532838627592012-12-15T09:26:41.732-06:002012-12-15T09:26:41.732-06:00Yes to Couves just above. Amen, even. To the iss...Yes to Couves just above. Amen, even. To the issue of who is a conservative: if not being a conservative means not being a water carrier for Hannity and Limbaugh and the rest, guilty as charged. However, long long ago in this subthread I outlined a "lottery philosophy" which is, I believe, awfully close to a Hayekian view of the world, certainly if we draw a line from Marx to Hayek the lottery model is much much closer to Hayek than Marx. But whatever. Maybe y'all think I'm lying about that, for which I guess there's little I can do.<br /><br />More even than Hayek, I worship at the secular altar of 10,000-hour excellence, for the 10,000th time here's <a href="http://www.geoffcolvin.com/books/talent-is-overrated-by-geoff-colvin/" rel="nofollow">my secular bible</a>. On the crazy chance that someone actually clicked through and even - gasp! - read Talent is Overrated, they would discover several hundred pages worth of scientific research proving, the way only science can, that Anastasios' and the Swedes' view of the underclass <i>is empirically incorrect</i>. Its not that they can't, its that they don't. Talent is Overrated proves that as much as it can be proved, and if you still question the power of "hard work leads to excellence, in each and every case", well, there are some people on the right who doubt AGW too. Takes all types.<br /><br />The place where Carnegie fits in: 10,000 hour of disciplined effort makes any and all of us great. No true Swedeman won't end up excellent if he follows that path! But - 10,000 hours is unpleasant, and we like to feel good about ourselves, and frankly, the Anastasios/Swedish world view vamps off desire of the underclass to feel good about themselves by declaring them helpless, indulging their vanity, (criminally) encouraging underachievement.<br /><br />A more famous parallel to Dave is Jaime Escalante of the famous movie Stand and Deliver. Those poor kids in inner city LA were the losers that the Swedes give up on, no? In the Swedish model, they are incapable of becoming the 3,000,000th best high school on the Calculus AP test, much less the 3rd best that Escalante led them to. That process was unpleasant. It felt bad for those kids. But it was, eminently, doable.<br /><br />Unless you liberals believe that Escalante's kids were not "just like" all the other poor kids in LA but rather comprised of some special magical secret sauce that made them fundamentally unlike their less high-achieving peers. <br /><br />Escalante, like Dave, had a system, but as Couves said, it didn't infantilize people, it didn't indulge their desire for comfort, and most importantly, it didn't start from the (empirically false) assumption that these kids couldn't make it.<br /><br />CSHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-56816110037597172012012-12-15T01:24:52.894-06:002012-12-15T01:24:52.894-06:00Anastasios: But Dave is the educator who gets rea...Anastasios: But Dave is the educator who gets real results, not a hopeless romantic. I’m sure your tory school administrator cares about results too, but his form of pragmatism demands that he only teach in a way that pleases the appropriate bureaucratic gods. <br /><br />At the risk of speaking for CSH, the problem isn’t systems, but technocratic systems that manage, control and infantilize people who are perfectly normal (if flawed) and capable of better things within a system that incentivizes them appropriately. Couveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00926561539205771774noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-45106403847676018942012-12-15T00:23:48.121-06:002012-12-15T00:23:48.121-06:00Oh, and CSH I would agree with Jeff that you are n...Oh, and CSH I would agree with Jeff that you are not very conservative. That is an observation, not a criticism. Rather you are fundamentally a romantic, believing in great, semi-mysterious forces that shape history and human destiny. It's true that the forces you believe in a moral and you place the locus of these forces in the individual, but that is well within the romantic tradition. Which is perfectly respectable, but not very conservative. Jeff and I, on the other hand, are hard headed Tories, which is to say we take the world as it is and don't expect it to fundamentally change, and we accept people as they are, without any belief that they are admirable or capable, or that much can be expected of them. Both sides can believe in progress, but whereas the romantic sees progress in sweeping terms, the Tory is happy if we can just get the Verbal scores up, because Lord knows that is hard enough with the students and parents, and yes the teachers, God has, errrrr, "gifted" us with. The romantic looks at the Tory and trembles with exasperation and the desire to shout, the Tory smiles and says "You are a wonderful person. Now get the Hell out of my office because I have to explain to one of my dolts, I mean one of my wonderful parents, that Johnny will never learn to read if he doesn't do his homework. And I have five more dolts, I mean parents, lined up after that, and then I have to go wring a pittance out of the tightwads, I mean the school board. But you do dream lovely dreams, I'll give you that.". The romantic then goes outside and kicks in a locker door. The romantic then may do wonderful things that afternoon teaching his students. The Tory smiles again, in admiration this time, the quickly reaches for the phone knowing he has a school board, a PTO, and a faculty to placate, else the romantic will be giving those wonderful lessons in the back booth of a hamburger joint out on route 50.Anastasiosnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-81232810634832059102012-12-15T00:09:24.799-06:002012-12-15T00:09:24.799-06:00CSH: Even if Dave's world is an idealized fre...CSH: Even if Dave's world is an idealized free market society, the problem is this: Would you consider the best stock trader in Dave's world to be more deserving of his salary than even a mediocre public school teacher today? I'm not sure many people would answer "yes" to that. <br /><br />In a perfect free market, the only thing that your salary measures is the value that markets place on your labor. So while the hotshot stock broker, as a crucial cog in the capitalist system, may have some great unseen importance to the general welfare, it's hard for us to say that he's more ethically deserving than many people who might work harder, suffer more, care more, etc. I just thought that had to be said even though that’s not really your point. <br /><br />What conservatives want to see from society is a system that induces the inner Dave in all of us to come out -- and everyone has him waiting to come out, even the most flawed among us. The free market is an unplanned system that does this to a much larger degree than does the planned public sector. Liberals focus on what is planned and like to point to how much we owe our prosperity to basic public services. And perhaps Hobbes is right, that we’d still be brutes living outside of society if there hadn’t been some seminal moment of coercion that made society possible. On the other hand, the easy comforts and amazing technology that are available to us today are the result of centuries of deferred consumption being invested into capital improvements. None of this was planned and most of it was inspired by greed, but it’s the reason that you and I can be employed in easier work than wandering the landscape in hunter-gatherer groups. It’s a system that deserves credit for the fact that we live in a society in which bored teenagers and too much food are bigger concerns than death and deprivation. Indeed, we’re consuming ourselves to the point of sickness, both physical and economic. Markets, harnessed by the nation-state, came to dominate the world. That same combination, in slightly different form, now threatens those same nations with destruction from within. Couveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00926561539205771774noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-24453869465569246112012-12-14T22:21:40.344-06:002012-12-14T22:21:40.344-06:00Well, CSH, like Jeff for the first time I really d...Well, CSH, like Jeff for the first time I really do not follow you, except that you are concerned about an unearned sense of merit or entitlement or some such. Fair enough, but to eliminate that you would need to fundamentally alter human psychology, which is not a task I would recommend. Very few people think of themselves as benefiting without merit from any situation, just as very few people think of themselves as evil. And as it is the nature of humans to live in society, and as merit is in the eye of the beholder, it follows that no one ever receives any benefit without someone else, generally a lot of someone elses, regarding them as benefiting undeservedly. You might call that envy, but envy like merit is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. I guarantee that many saw Dave as a selfish, narcissistic crank who was thoroughly undeserving of praise or reward. You speak of unearned status. Earned by whose estimation? Earned by whose recognition? Earned by what standard? To be able to answer that one must appeal to a set of beliefs and practices, in other words a system. That is the nature of people, and of society, which after all is only a system. I am afraid that systems are inevitable, there is simply nowhere to stand and no way to formulate a thought outside of them. So, like Jeff, just don't see what your point is. Or maybe I do, but if you are saying what I think you are saying it amounts to wishing we could do without society, which we can't, or wishing that humans were different, which they aren't, or that God was more just, which he isn't.Anastasiosnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-60744122978387142912012-12-14T21:25:46.325-06:002012-12-14T21:25:46.325-06:00Or perhaps this: there are crucial similarities be...Or perhaps this: there are crucial similarities between Tagg Romney's impossibly connected, otherwise-fledgling consulting firm and the loser beneficiaries of Swedish largesse:<br /><br />1) Both are helped net of any intrinsic merit<br />2) Both are helped for extraneous reasons, and<br />3) Neither has any idea that either 1) or 2)is true.<br /><br />After all, the rising aristocracy discussed in this thread is a system, too, though it no doubt offends sensibilities sympathetic to liberal systems. But the aristocracy is good to recall here, as it sheds light on the flaws of cherished liberal systems:<br /><br />Why do liberals/non-aristocrats hate the ascendent American conservative aristocracy? Many reasons, but chief is that the New Aristocrats think they are hot shit because of their (unearned) status, which places a burden on the rest of society. Those New Aristocrats, like Swedish losers, are just humans, no? The dollars may be smaller, and so the burden may be lesser, but in an otherwise similar way, failed Swedes benefiting from liberal largesse also think this a result of merit (or at least, earned) and thus places a burden on the rest of society. In the context of a high school, where hormones are high and wisdom is low, unearned status is especially toxic.<br /><br />You can criticize Dave all you want, but here's the thing he always has going for him:<br /><br />No one ever feels good about themselves for no good reason in Dave world. That's worth a lot, it seems to me.CSHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-82587568265958838562012-12-14T20:47:03.346-06:002012-12-14T20:47:03.346-06:00Leave aside Newtown for a second; we don't yet...Leave aside Newtown for a second; we don't yet know. Columbine: apparently Klebold and Harris were disgruntled idiots who idolized Holden Caulfield and lamented (and eventually shot up) the "phonies" in their high school. Think of those phonies in the context of the helpless losers in Sweden discussed in this thread.<br /><br />Those phonies don't annoy Holden (and later Klebold and Harris) because they are helpless. They annoy because they suck and think they are awesome, and in the process make life difficult for the complainers. Whether or not they annoy a Holden Caulfield/Dylan Klebold/Eric Harris type, everyone who sucks thinks they are awesome, because - cue Dale Carnegie - everyone thinks they are awesome.<br /><br />So when you see fools in Sweden and say well we need a big safety net to help these folks because they can't help themselves, by the universal power of How to Win Friends, you <i>know</i> the recipients of your largesse don't see it that way. They think you are doing them favors in recognition of their awesomeness! The kindness you bestow on them does not cover off against their weakness; it validates their greatness. And so those failed Swedes feel empowered to see themselves as the winners they are confident they are, an objective fact that must be visible from here to Anastasios. <br /><br />In the context of social policy, it probably doesn't matter much that delusional people feel justified by largesse. In the context of a high school, the danger is fairly clear. There's an argument that Dave too is creating a system, though it is explicitly not for the sustenance of losers, and Dave is by no means, in any context, a "cool guy". Succeeding in Dave's system renders no one "cool", or if it does, its only because of objective accomplishment, not because some loser was meant to be comforted and instead felt validated.<br /><br />At a 30,000 foot level, what you are recommending is a series of social programs designed to help folks who are too helpless to do much for themselves. Recall that How to Win Friends eventually became the 3rd most read book in Western history, behind only the Bible and Sears Catalog, which speaks to the incredible power of the idea that those too helpless to help themselves <i>never see themselves that way</i>. Largesse as an antidote to despair is instead an invitation to conceit. <br /><br />Dave rails against systems that make losers feel good. Anastasios cautions us against too much Dave, as Dave makes the beneficiaries of said systems feel uncomfortable. Well, that's no doubt true.<br /><br />Then again, better Dave than Dylan Klebold, no? CSHnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-88453424632044807182012-12-14T19:47:13.726-06:002012-12-14T19:47:13.726-06:00CSH, I hope my respect for you is clear. But: For ...CSH, I hope my respect for you is clear. But: For probably the first time ever, I'm not sure I have any idea what you're talking about. Can you please try stating your point in another, "CSH for Dummies"-type way?Jeffnoreply@blogger.com