Tiger and his Tail, er, Tale.

I have to lay out a few items - reveal the writer's biases - before commencing with the commentary suggested by the headline. I have never been a Tiger fan. I have always tended to favor Phil Mickelson, quite possibly because Phil has so publicly displayed his humanity, whether it involved melting down at Winged Foot, or suspending his season to tend to his cancer-diagnosed wife. On the other hand, I have no problem acknowledging that Tiger Woods is the best golfer on the planet, and quite possibly the best of all time. My wife, by contrast, is a huge Tiger fan, and so our mutual enjoyment of golf has been enhanced by the friendly conflict.

I am not surprised, nor outraged, nor betrayed by the developemnt that has put Tiger in the spotlight. I offer no apologies for Tiger's behavior, but I also know that women are shallow and stupid when in the presence of money and fame, and so I suspect that beautiful women have been throwing themselves at Tiger for most of his adult life. So, no, I'm not surprised. Neither am I outraged, partly due to the premise stated above, but also because I believe that everyone can falter, abandon his values, provided the circumstances present themselves in the ideal manner. [I think that those who have never strayed are rarely better or truer people than some others who have; rather, the opportunities have not presented themselves when that person was most vulnerable.] I don't feel betrayed because I have never invested in the media created icon that is Tiger Woods. I remember telling my wife years ago that I just had a sneaking suspicion that Tiger is not a nice person, despite the carefully regulated persona that he has masterfully built.

I am disappointed though. I wanted Tiger to prove my instincts or hunches wrong. I wanted to find out, some day when he closes in on Jack Nicklaus's major tournament vicories record, that he is as upright, true, and exemplary as the fawning media people have made him out to be.

In fact, the fawning media are responsible for my general distaste for Tiger. Toward the end of this past season, I watched more than a few tournaments where, in the final round, Tiger had failed to make a run. Nevertheless, his name was the most oft-repeated pair of nouns in the broadcast. Think of it, TIGER WOODS was uttered more often than BIRDIE PUTT or PAR SAVE or any other combination. "He's not even in the running!" I yelled at the TV, to which my wife replied, "and yet he is still the most interesting thing to talk about."

Honestly, I wanted Tiger to be better than Jordan, another likeable icon who proved himself to be much less than his image. I was reminded of Dr. J., a boyhood favorite and probably the early model for Jordan and Woods' public image, when he issued his apology for fathering a child who turned out to be a pro tennis player. I don't recall why the young lady identified Dr. J. as her father at that time, but I remember being similarly dismayed that Dr. J. wasn't what I thought him to be.

I suppose I shouldn't be dismayed that the pedestal that the media and Woods' built has proven to be as tarnished as his image, but if not Tiger, who? I don't need for any of my sports figures to be perfect, but I want one or two to be awesome in character. I want someone to be bigger and better than the rest. I want someone who can at least keep it in his pants when his drop-dead gorgeous wife and young children are counting on him to be as large as life will let him be.

I can't ask such a thing of Phil Mickelson, who is endearing to me becasue of all of his foibles and limitations. Phil is a phenomonal golfer with whom I can identify, because I can easily see myself making some of the same miscalculations, or falling short of a goal when the time seems ripe. Phil can be my favorite golfer, but he can't be larger than life.

Perhaps I can look to someone like Peyton Manning, who doesn't cast quite the same shadow as Tiger, but who seems to be at least reminiscent of his own image.

I do know this, I will be cheering for the Mickelson's and the Y.E. Yang's with just a little more zest. And I will be hoping that Nicklaus's record remains painfully out of reach. And I will also hope that the media does as Tiger has asked and allows the Woods family enough privacy and dignity to figure out where to go from here. I know the media won't, but I can keep wishing, can't I?

Establishig Priorities (Get Over Yourself)

Some recent events have provoked a bit of thought, and vitriol, and so have become the subject of this latest one-sided dialogue.

I will start with an objection to posturing. You all know the situation to which I am referring. You engage some group of people in a conversation, and one bombastic grunt immediately grabs the imaginary megaphone and overstates his case, solely for the chance to be in the limelight for a few seconds. In a recent instance, an acquaintance adopted his most stentorian tone and pontificated on the outrage of Adam Lambert's performance on the American Music Awards.

Now, while I object to the tastelessness of the performance, and its obvious success in generating buzz, I am equally offended by the feigned outrage and maybe even moreso by the response generated by Adam Lambert. For years, the public has gradually accepted the pantomiming of sexual acts under the pretense of artictic performance. Be honest, how far removed is Janet Jackson's misguided decision to flash her breast [No, I don't believe it was a wardrobe malfunction] and what millions of viewers watch on "Dancing With the Stars" every week? Don't think so? Watch the dance show with a dirty mind. The only reason for the absence of backlash is that we have become inured to the tasteless mimickry. The dancers, as attractive and fit as most of them are, are wearing little clothing and preforming dances that hace been deliberately choreographed to simulate sexual movements.

This acquaintance pointed his intellectual finger and bemoaned the sad state of affairs that made it even a consideration that pretending to perform a homosexual act might make it past the censors. What a load of crap! Just as ridiculous was Lambert's contention that he was exercising artistic freedom in carrying out the maneuver. Artistic freedom? Are you kidding me? The calculated move was designed to offend and to garner attention. That he succeeded says only that our culture hasn't quite gotten to the point where anything goes without comment. I object to the performance too, but I won't go so far as to channel outrage. I find it sad and distrubing, but since we have few standards anymore, I can't summon up even surprise, let alone anger. How can anyone pretend genuine disgust when the airwaves are littered with similar displays of filth?

Get over yourself, EVERYBODY. One may object as I do, and one may find a performance or the public display of any questionable material offensive, and he may announce his evaluation to all the world. But please don't take that tone with me?

The adoption of the flamboyant posture, whatever it is, is an exact replica of the performance or act to which you are objecting. Think about it. Lambert does something over the top, on purpose, so that everyone will look at him. The posturer's answer is to overreact in hopes of making an impression that will draw the attention to himself. Want to make a genuine statement? Turn off those programs that traffic in pushing the decency envelope. If those efforts didn't win an audience, the ubiquity of tastelessness would diminish. Tasteful would rule the day because tasteless has been rejected.

One very funny thing happened as a result of Lambert's maneuvers though. After being upstaged by Kanye West on an earlier music awards show whose name I can't remember at the moment, Taylor Swift - a very pretty girl who cannot sing a lick - was upstaged again on an awards show. Seriously, Taylor Seift's success is further proof of the deterioration of taste. From what I can tell, she is a sweet kid whose success I do not begrudge a whit. Good for her. But for crying out loud, shouldn't our decorated singers have good voices, not just a pretty face and a good marketing strategy? I would go on, but I realize that the popularity of Taylor Swift is no different than the 70's popularity of the Monkees, a musical group comprised of four charismatic guys who hadn't the capacity to craft a musical composition until some marketing group invented them.

Which brings me to the conclusion and what seems to be a unavoidable point: people are remarkably stupid. The collective consciousness can be created, led, and retained in whatever direction the marketing people decide. Only a small percentage of people have a solid sense of taste, decency, and propriety, and they haven't the voice to make much of an impact. I know this makes me something of a self-righteous bastard, but I won't succumb to the stance to which this entire piece is objecting.

Passing the Torch

I don't know where the benchmark is, but sometime in all of our lives we face the dubious prospect of passing the torch on to someone else. If one is an athlete, this happens at a relatively young age, as the fresher legs and stronger drive make it obvious that someone will inevitably take one's place in the larger scheme. Some people experience the milestone on the job, as they become sometimes painfully aware that the new and improved version of themselves is poised to take over a pedestal. However, I think the weirdest passing of the torch occurs between fathers and sons, and maybe mothers and daughters.

The is not destined to be a bittersweet account in any way. In fact, I think it's kind of a pleasant moment because of the category of torch passing involved. Yesterday, my oldest son texted me to ask the name of the goddess of memory in Greek mythology. You see, for all of their lives I was the repositor of all kinds of useless, trivial information. Not that the name of mythological figures is always necessarily useless, but the information the boy wanted was for no significant purpose in this case. I spelled out what I could recall, Mnemone or something similar. I added the comment that I really had no idea, but I thought I was dancing in the right direction. Dutifully, I hit the send button.

WIthin seconds I received the response. I was wrong, and what was more, my other son had texted the right answer MINUTES before me. Now I know we each received the same query at about the same cyber time, and the boy bested me by MINUTES. How the hell long was I thinking about it. In my mind, I answered as quickly as possible.

I long ago bestowed the mantle of music trivia to my older son. When he was younger, I would quiz him on title and artist for any song that came on the radio. Through most of his life, I was pretty good. If the object in question was a song that received redio play, I probably knew the title and artist. When I didn't, it was rarely because I didn't remember; it was usually because I really wasn't familiar with the tune. Unfortunately, my range of silly knowledge was limited to rock and roll from the late fifties to middle eighties. Having been born in 1986, and having been trained almost from birth, my son expanded the range up to and including the present. While it's true that he is not quite so strong at the earliest limits of that range, he far surpasses me because he knows music from a much wider range of genres, and his identification abilities cover about ten more years than he has been alive.

This 'skill' served him well when he did a brief stint as as DJ at a neighborhood bar. He had managed to amass one heck of a library of music because he new which songs to look for. I remember about three years ago, I think, when he scolded me for not including much of Bob Dylan in his mental archives. It was an oversight I still feel apologetic about.

But back to the mythology example. My younger son never had a course in mythology; he encountered the subject on his own, and with some push from his brother, who was interested for awhile, and whom I directed to read some cool texts designed for whatever age group he was in at the time. I immediately texted the younger son to announce his acension to the throne of arcane factoids, and he was not even remotely impressed. My text said explicitly that the torch was passed, and the older son responded with a text that didn't even acknowledge my concession. He has known for quite awhile that he has caught and passed me in areas well beyond the recognition of musical compositions. The other son was even less impressed, as he didn't think the ceremony warranted any acknowledgment at all.

I asked them both to include me in this game of odd queries at least for a few more years. However, I don't know that they intend to do anything of the kind. Having demonstrated my incapacity, they will probably not think to send the quesiton my way, since the immediacy of the answer is the point, and they will be able to get what they want elsewhere. Whe needs a piece of information that takes the old man an hour or two to remember. By that time, they will have visited any number of cyber sources.

Again, I feel a mild pleasure that they play the game, that they like to house the information and have it at the ready. I am smiling. Oh, and for those of you cursed with the same trivia disease, the name of the goddess is Mnemosyne.

Parenting

*****This was written more than ten years ago, when my children were in that preteen period of existence. I think, however, that it is still relevant, so I am recalling it because I can.

Let’s face it, generally speaking, we suck as parents. That is not to say that all of us parents are similarly sucky in all areas. No, we all have carefully nurtured, over time, our own specialized area of ineptitude. Kids in general know more than they ever have before, yet they are less skilled when they grow up - according to the completely unbiased view of our leading pollsters - and they are more spoiled than we were when we were kids. Ask any parent.
Where have we gone wrong? Our kids get each other pregnant, convince each other to use and abuse drugs, shoot and kill and stab each other on a much more regular basis, and we do more and more to combat this trend with little or no success.
Perhaps a ‘shoot from the hip’ observation might explain some of the causes of our collective parental ineptitude. Your parents and my parents were bastards, and now that we are older, we love them for most of the bastardry. But rather than emulate them in significant ways, we opt to avoid making the ‘same mistakes’ our parents made. My only question is: according to whom? If I ask my dad if he’s sorry that he nailed me with a belt in the back of the knees when I was ten years old, he’ll say what?
In the interest of science, I asked him. He said he was very sorry for nailing me in the back of the legs with a belt when I was ten years old; he had been trying to leave a good, solid three inch welt on my behind. The legs heal faster, he said, although the initial injury is much more painful.
So I found out that mein papa was a quantity man, rather than quality. He wanted a punishment that would stick with me as long as possible, not one that actually had to hurt like the dickens. The point is that he completely ignored the question of whether or not he should have belted me in the first place. The idea that belting me might have been improper or harmful had escaped him.
And now that I’m raising kids, I think he’s right.
My mom had the biggest trouble with my younger brother, though I’m not quite sure why. My older brother and I had taught the young’un that most of mom’s yelling and screaming and gnashing of teeth was just for effect. Her theatrical barks were worse than her thespian bites, you might say. Then again, you might not say anything of the sort. That’s why I’m writin’ all this stuff down and you’re just lookin’ at it.
Anyway, my mom was much stricter and gnash-ready where my younger brother was concerned, and her bite proved to be more formidable than I thought, especially the night she discovered a more effective weapon than my father’s belt or the back of her hand.
For years my mom had tried to discipline me by whacking me with her hand, but my behind was much more resilient than her hand, especially after years of her putting laundry through a wringer-washer in a damp, cold basement. She would wind up and swat away, and I would smile, and she would wince. And to be perfectly honest, I think my self-assessment was altered forever; I thought I was a good kid because I didn’t get smacked. But I didn’t get smacked, mainly because my mom couldn’t hit me hard enough to hurt me.
So one night my younger brother was in the middle of ignoring her bark, when my mom hit upon the idea of whacking the unsuspecting lad over the head with a heeled shoe (I think it was my sister’s). The youngster dared her, with far too much arrogance, to discipline him. And my mom got two good wallops to his noggin.
But then he bled.
As my mom tried to nurse him and punish him at the same time, the injured boy whined and screamed, more out of shock than out of pain, that he was going to die, and that it served my mom right. He asked piteously, “How do you know I’m not going to die? How do you know that I will be fine? Look at all the blood!” And then, after a brief interlude to check on the quality of the bloodletting, he issued the strongest condemnation. “It’ll serve you right if I do die. Then you’ll be sorry!”
I swear to God all this happened – (yes, the dialogue, has been fudged a bit.)
And the point of it all is simple. My Mom and Dad swatted and smacked and belted with some degree of regularity, though being the middle child I tended to escape more than not. Their nine kids, raised with a fairly healthy dose of love and domestic violence, all turned out all right. I mean, we ALL turned out more right than wrong.
I honestly believe that part of the problem with the way we’re parenting is that there isn’t enough corporal punishment going on in households across the country. I know that there are parents who disdain the rod, so they mostly spoil the child. But they also manage to maintain some degree of discipline in their houses. These parents are the exception though. It’s not so much that every kid needs to be beaten regularly, although I think it should be discipline method number one or two at all times before the offspring’s teen-hood. More specifically, the problem is the general consensus that kids shouldn’t receive this brand of punishment.
I am here to announce that all those namby-pamby psychologists are WRONG! - every one of them. One of the worst things the field of psychology ever did was to tell people that they were monsters if they used the rod to instill a healthy fear in their children. Fear is a natural reaction, and one that should keep humans from engaging in all kinds of dangerous behaviors. However, these pantywaist psychologists have told parents that they’ll damage psyches and self-esteem and all of that garbage.
Before I go any further, you should know that I am not in favor of beatings. Overpowering your child and throttling him or her - this is a great way to create a monster. It’s common sense. If I learn that people who say they love me are going to knock me senseless, then I am definitely going to get some screwed up ideas, not to mention some pent-up hostility toward others in general. The brand of corporal punishment that I’m talking about is reasoned, calm, and never spontaneous. In fact, if a parent is ever under great stress, he or she should send the offending child to his or her room. Then he should schedule time for a good solid lickin’ when he or she is calmer.
Why spankings? Reinforcement of the fear instinct. People should learn and relearn that they have every reason to be afraid of things in the world. Fear is probably the primary motivator and inhibitor of human behavior. We go to work because we’re afraid of being poor. We try to be nice to our neighbors because we’re afraid they’ll turn on us. We stay out of lightning storms. Many people act with morals and values and ethics because they are afraid of going to hell. And if hell is only a theological concept to some, then prison should substitute nicely in a pinch.
Fear is good. The world is not a kind place, and the parent’s job is to instill the mechanism for fear in his/her children. We should teach children not to consort with strangers, not to hitch hike, to avoid certain places after dark, never to use credit cards to accumulate high interest debts. You know - all the regular things.
But we as parents should also be teaching our kids to fear the repercussions of their rudeness, their irresponsibility, their smart mouths, their boldness, and their disrespect. They should be afraid of getting whacked immediately upon report of the performance. Eventually, the parent can attempt to explain why politeness, responsibility, courtesy, restraint, and respect are desirable. Before the age of fifteen, children should learn to display the behaviors of these traits for fear of punishment. If they learn the benefits of these virtues before that, that is great. In the meantime, they should know how to present the appearance of all these things.
Now, this may sound silly to you, but it isn’t. You, if you’re in your thirties or above, probably acted with respect and courtesy because you had abject fear of your parents’ reaction to the alternative. If you went to Catholic grade school, as I did, you learned to display the traits the sisters demanded, for fear of having a yardstick broken upon your behind. I was very afraid of the nuns until sixth grade, at which time I developed mere concern.
And if parents would whack their kids a little more, what major change would be wrought? None.
The truth is that none of this will help entirely unless parents and the adult community as a unified front hold our youths responsible for their behaviors.
If you, the grown up, see a child, any child, behaving in an inappropriate fashion - say, breaking bottles in the roadway, it is your responsibility to correct him. And don’t be dismayed or surprised if the kid shows you no respect at all. For awhile, you’ll be the first adult, maybe including his parents, to attempt to redress his behavior. However, if all the grownups of the world would fulfill their duties, the kid would be reminded consistently, and he’d start looking over his shoulder.
Before I conclude this portion, let me present a qualifier/disclaimer. If this sounds remotely similar to Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village, please forget I said anything. I certainly aspire to more wisdom than the wife of a horse’s pitoot.

Politics 2009

This promises to be a short subject, but not because the topic isn't worthy, or because the subject doesn't deserve close scrutiny or broad commentary. Instead, the brevity is due entirely to the ridiculousness of the situation.

Recently, Republican yahoos created a controversy where none really existed for one reason: they perceive the standing President to be on shaky footing so far as approval ratings are concerned, so any and all methods for maintaining the political heat are desirable.

The White House announced their intention to have the President deliver a message to the nation's schoolchildren. The message stood to be similar to the addresses made by George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan before him - affirmation of the nation's need for scholarship, persistence, and integrity as they pertain to achievemnt in school.

Where's the controversy, you might ask? Quite simply, one didn't exist. But Right wingers needed a way to keep attacks coming. After all, they had been able to call the recent stimulus package a failure (even though the jury is still out, since not enough time has passed), and the debate on government usurpation of health care was still raging. The worry was that the majorities in the House and the Senate made passage of some type of government takeover of health care a foregone conclusion. If only they could keep Obama on the defensive.

The part that infuriates is what comes next. Left leaners immediately cried foul, declaring that the right wing fabricated controversy is predicated on racism. While it's true that the righties trumped up some ridiculous objection that the true purpose of Obama's education address was to 'indoctrinate' the nation's schoolchildren, the more ridiculous affect was that people bought it. Given the precarious state of the President's platform, turning the school address into a brainwashing exercise would have been politically stupid.

The fact is that I am not even remotely a fan of Obama's view of goevernment, but I didn't think for a minute that he had any such nefarious plan. He is not a stupid man, nor do I think he is unethical or malicious. In fact, I suspect that he is a good man. I think his politics are grounded in idealism and naivete`, as are the ideologies of all Democrats. People, even Democrats, are prone to ruthlessness, selfishness, and greed. Government programs are run by people bestowed with govenrmental power and authority. Therefore, government programs, regardless of the party line, will ultimately succumb to illnesses that are the inevitable result of the character flaws mentioned above: every government agency - ever - will ultimately become bloated, inefficent, and destructive to the good of the people. The only answer is to limit the number of government agencies and programs, and to regularly dissolve and reinvent the ones that are absolutely a neccessity.

So back to the school address debate. To add to the annoyances, those people who cried 'racism' at the backlash to the planned pep talk to school children were duped into keeping the negativity on the front page of people's lives. The effect didn't change any events, and they served to engender the next fabricated campaign against whatever it is the President wants to do next.

In short, our country still has a problem with racism of all kinds. However, the fact that we elected a minority to the highest office in the land suggests that racism is becoming less of a determining factor in the course of events. Republicans such as myself are going to object and reject future plans proposed by Obama and his staff. That objection will come because he and his advisors genuinely believe that collections of people with good intentions - government agencies - should be making decisions for us because the average citizen can't make those decisions for himself. Meanwhile, I want fewer and fewer government agencies. I want the government to handle the military, some safety nets for those who are in bad straits, law enforcemnt, international relations, justice, and not very many other things.

I am glad that we have a member of a minortity group in the Oval Office. I just wish he stood on the right side of the political aisle, preferably more toward the middle.

Education Part III or so...

Education – Part III or so…
Sometime after he was elected President of the United States, George W. Bush enacted legislation that I believe constitutes the most overarching incursion into education that the United States has ever seen. NCLB – No Child Left Behind – has since influenced the educational landscape more than any other federal initiative with which I am familiar. So why isn’t George known as the “education President?”
Well, influential isn’t necessarily the same thing as supportive, effective, or energizing. NCLB has been the catalyst for some changes in education that will ultimately prove to be powerfully positive, I hypothesize, but the method and/or manner by which that ‘improvement’ has been coerced is appropriately considered dubious.
Here’s the biggest reason that NCLB and almost all of its subsequent implementations, on the national, state, and local level, reveal the stupidity of even some of the most educated and wise people in the business: when they went looking for a model for school improvement, the powers that be determined to use a business model – quality control – as the paradigm. Their thinking was that setting measurable standards, with reliable assessment mechanisms in place, would enable schools to identify the specific objectives, respond to performance gaps, and thereby prevent any and all children from falling behind as they wend their way through their public school years.
Sounds like a decent idea, right? Well, not really. I will tell why after one other major point. The other notable component of the proposed NCLB process was that systematic – read scientific – evaluations, adjustments, and safety nets would allow schools at the local level to implement correctives that would serve to ‘fix’ learning problems for individual students by resorting to identified ‘best practices,’ methods that have proven to be effective according to statistical analysis.
The problem with these two components is fairly simple: Schools are NOT businesses, and teaching is NOT a science. Having been in the education business for all of my adult life, and having often volunteered to utilize most of the school improvement initiatives that I have learned – at whatever point my district decided to promote them – I have concluded the opening statement to this paragraph in a certifiable truth.
The problem with the school as business model approach is that businesses have great control over the materials, approaches, and processes they use on their way to create whatever widget they are inclined to make. For the teacher, the collection of students assigned to him/her at any given point in time is not clearly controlled. Try this analogy. How effective can a manufacturing plant be if it has been contracted to make steel beams for a high rise without knowing the grade or quality of the raw metal ore that it will be using for the task?
The plant can test or diagnose the quality of the raw materials, and then determine the best process for creating the highest possible grade of steel. After all, the raw materials, once identified, aren’t going to change. Consequently, the most effective method for managing the classified raw material is going to be the same method employed the next time a batch of the same grade of material comes through the plant.
If you have been following the analogy, you already know where I am going with this, but if you know nothing about the role of the teacher, I will try to complete the comparison.
I have had students walk into my classroom with identifiable strengths and weaknesses. In many cases, directed efforts to maximize strengths and improve or eliminate weaknesses have predictable effects. However, the student him/herself is constantly changing. While strengths tend to remain strengths over time, external forces ‘create’ weaknesses that were not diagnosed earlier because they weren’t there!
I will be specific. I had a student once whose most noticeable strength was his ability to retain information. He was highly organized, very focused, and predictably capable of working with a high volume of content (information.) Then he lost his father to a terrible accident, and his change in temperament culminated in his longtime girlfriend’s decision to end their relationship. The boy’s state of mind was enough to disrupt his skill set. For a protracted period of time, he lost his ability to manage information effectively.
I contend that while few students have to manage the death of a parent, the daily trials and tribulations of life for an adolescent or young adult exert similar influences and therefore, similar effects. A good teacher notices a problem, provides emotional support, and may even implement some different methods to address the problem. No best practice will take the place of an alert, compassionate, and resourceful teacher.
The point here is that teaching has never been a scientific enterprise, even though scientific principles are of great value to the classroom teacher. The raw materials are not static, and the most effective processes for dealing with that raw material are therefore not scientifically predictable. Furthermore, no development of a best practices arsenal will guarantee that a teacher will know when, where, or how to select the most effective method of dealing with a student’s individual problem. Quite simply, despite the higher level administration’s desire to make schools function as businesses do, and despite the school innovators’ desire to make teaching function as science does, the two fundamental principles of the NCLB movement are fallacies. It would be nice if the fallacies were viable truths, but they are not.
In case I have been guilty of being obtuser [sic] than I intended, I will try to make this as simple as possible. A student will never be analogous to a shipment of iron ore, the raw material most necessary to the creation of high quality steel. Each year the teachers of the world try to diagnose the relative strengths and weaknesses of the student assigned to them. While the teachers’ diagnoses may be accurate when they are conducted, the student, since he is chronically evolving, can’t possibly follow a predetermined learning curve. Yes, once the number crunchers input volumes of data, trends and predictable patterns become apparent. Despite the fact that students do follow significant growth patterns collectively, the premise of NCLB is that No child, not one, will be left behind. If the reader has noted the analogy drawn through the last few paragraphs, s/he knows that there is going to be some behind leaving.
If the preceding paragraph didn’t make sense to you, I will try one other approach. If my class of thirty shows a predictable improvement in skill development or knowledge acquisition during the course of a year, that trend or general truth does not guarantee that one or two of the students will be on the same pace. In short, good scores by the mass of students will disguise the reported difficulties of the few who are not making gains. Therefore, so long as the testing mechanism or the benchmark for efficacy of various methods of instruction is determined by global statistical analysis, the process of “sciencizing” teaching is destined to fail.
Now, the gurus will tell the unsuspecting school administrators that ‘their’ program will create a series of safety nets, all scientifically tested and proven, that will ‘guarantee’ that a student who doesn’t benefit from intervention one will undoubtedly be corrected by intervention two, or by intervention three. The gurus are lying, and they know it. They are in the business of selling their programs. The districts who buy it are then trained in how to sell the same program, using the same fallacious reasoning employed by the consultants and gurus, with the promise that this program will help the administrators to create or develop ‘high performing’ or cutting edge schools.
The really insidious thing about the gurus’ collective programs is that they really are generally good ideas. The problem is rarely with the program itself. These guys have done their doctorates, and engaged in educational testing, and they are correct – usually – in selecting ideas that are viable and noteworthy. What the gurus and the district personnel never seem to consider is that EDUCATION CAN’T FUNCTION LIKE A BUSINESS, and TEACHING IS NOT A SCIENCE.
I taught high school English for more than twenty years, and I would like to think that I was an effective teacher. However, by the time I hit my tenth year or so, I happened upon a realization: For three or so of the twenty-some students enrolled in each section of my classes, I was an ideal teacher. No matter what I did, we clicked, the students learned, and I learned to love those students who validated my efforts. I also realized that for three or four of the students in each section, I was the least likely to be effective teacher. Nothing I could do, no best practice, was going to circumvent the fact that my technique, my personality, my approach, my person - all of these things - were barriers to the education of those three students. Therefore, I had little control over the success of six out of twenty-four or more students. The remaining eighteen were neither resistant to my efforts, nor inclined to benefit. In their cases, my effective deployment of best practices was the difference between educational success and failure. So the current trend is statistically defensible. Teachers should do the things that statistically stand to be effective for the majority of the students.
But I spent my last five years in the classroom experimenting with adjustments that might help me to reach the students who were disinclined to benefit from a year of instruction with me. I think I made some headway, but none of the practices that I adopted are significant components of any of the materials I have read. The reason is that my adjustments were all designed to deal with the identified personality conflict, the most consistently detrimental aspect to the education of those three or four students in each class.
For instance, adjustment number one was to interact in a positive way with any student I could identify as resistant to my natural approach. For some students, it was as simple of a gesture as saying ‘hello’ each day when they walked in the classroom. For those students who seemed to be put off by these exchanges of pleasantries, I would try to refer, without mentioning the name of the student, to a valuable idea, contribution, or response that the student had provided in recent classes. If neither of these approaches seemed to be productive, I might provide a positive evaluative comment for a parent on the interactive grade book on the website created to enhance parental communication. Finally, in some cases, I might add an encouraging comment on a graded assignment. In short, all of these efforts were designed to circumvent that my teaching persona never really came off as warm and fuzzy, and my lack of warm and fuzzy was a critical detriment to some of my students.
To be entirely truthful, I don’t know that any of these practices paid off. What I do know is that I was usually able to reduce the perceived animosity that the student felt toward me. If my teacher’s intuition was accurate, the student then had some energy left to direct toward English class. I should note here that those efforts mentioned immediately above are not innovative, and they are included as ‘best practices’ for teachers in general. The part that I like to think was different is that I particularly dedicated those efforts to the students I thought were reluctant to benefit from having me as an English teacher.
I should also add that in some cases, any effort I made seemed to antagonize the student, and I usually resigned myself to using one of the conventional interventions suggested by the gurus. I am happy to say that they were often effective.
So what’s the real lesson to be learned from my experiences? I think teachers, if the goal is to reform schools and learning, need to focus on the human side of the teaching/learning mechanism. The teacher can have an arsenal of best practices, and really truly know how to use them, but if s/he ignores the personal dimension, students will be left behind. It won’t really be the teacher’s fault, since the source of the barrier to education has little to do with methodology, curriculum, experience, expertise, or anything other than a globally human condition. Sometimes people don’t like other people, and sometimes those unlikeable people are charged with teaching the other person. There is a truth that will stick around and which will be true no matter which program your school district buys.
So ‘best practices’ are significant, but they DO NOT answer all questions, or even pretend to.

Teaching 101.5

Teaching 101.5

I had a conversation with a new teacher to whom I was offering some advice during his first week of teaching. [This teacher was thrust into service, as many new teachers are, without a great ‘feel’ for what goes on in high school. Yes, he had had his student teaching experience, and he had had his orientation, and he had had his appropriate dose of mentoring, but ‘feel’ cannot be packaged and bestowed upon the neophyte.] While trying to motivate his tenth graders to work on their writing, I suggested that he may want to do some of the same assignments he gives to his students. I proposed that modeling the process might give him a forum for explaining to students how he made some of his writing decisions and presentation choices.
After giving the advice, I thought that I should probably practice what I preach. Though I have regularly written with my students, and though I have found it to be a great method for fostering discussion of what constitutes good writing, I realized that I hadn’t employed the techniques in some time. As a result, I have created the following personal essay, and I think it complements some of the other pieces already composed.
And so, after a lengthy introduction, here is the subject worth considering and writing about: do we make an honest attempt to practice what we preach? As a long-time teacher, I am often telling students to do things a certain way, or to think about things as I say. Do I successfully demonstrate those same principles as often as possible? I try. In fact, after reflection, I think I try pretty hard, and that I often succeed in following most of my own advice. The connection here to the larger topic is that people, teachers included, often undermine their own efforts by demonstrating hypocrisy. This reluctance to do as they instruct is a prime example.
For instance, I tell students that attendance is critical. Like the Denver Broncos and the Buffalo Bills in the late 80’s and 90’s, I always show up. I don’t always win, but I have a pretty good track record for staying in the game. In checking my number of accumulated sick days, I find that I have missed fewer than two days per year throughout my career. Considering that I missed multiple days when my kids were being born, I would calculate that most years I miss one day or fewer.
I also tell kids that if they are going to do something, they should do the absolute best they can. In other words, regardless of the evaluative grade given by some outside source, the measuring stick for achievement is always relative to what a student could have done on his best day. If the effort has been there,days as far as ultimate performance is concerned, but I do manage to give a good effort a high percentage of the time.
So, do I generally live up to my own commandments? I try, and I think I often succeed. However, I also tell kids to set their goals high, and then exceed them, and I don’t know that I have stayed true to that. Life sometimes gets in the way. Yet I will maintain that I am rarely satisfied unless achievement exceeds expectations. Of course, that just makes me a grouchy old man.
Practice what I preach? I’ll keep on trying.

Education Foray 2

Education Foray 2
The following will attempt to elaborate further on a concept mentioned in the first installment on Education. That concept is somewhat damning of the educational establishment. Prevalent attitudes displayed by school personnel suggest a level of stupidity even among the highly educated. What I am referencing here is the educators’ ability to misconstrue academic rigor.
Perhaps one example will suffice. For years, teachers have heard about the importance of writing, in all disciplines, for all students. Many teachers have responded by trying to find ways for students to write MORE. I believe, however, after 20+ years as an English teacher, that writing is more like riding a bike.
Learners do need to write, and they do need to practice, but they really need to learn how to write well ONE TIME! My point is that volumes of poor writing don’t automatically lead to a higher performance, the same way that sitting on a bike for hours on end won’t naturally lead to quality riding. To be sure, practice will definitely help, but the practice should be more for the sake of practice than for the sake of assessment. If a person has written ONE THING extremely well during young adulthood, he or she will be able to write well forever. Of course, after periods of inactivity, s/he may need to scrape away the rust and regain the balance with a little bit of practice.
The preceding example may not seem to jibe with well-indoctrinated attitudes toward writing. Yet I will maintain that the students that I have taught have made their writing progress in big steps. The progress may have been facilitated by the multitudinous practice sessions, but when they ‘get it,’ the quality of the writing is altered forever. Therefore, my only conclusion is that the acquisition of quality writing skills comes in little epiphanies, which, after concerted practice, develop into observable huge improvements.
Take this for an example. A student, by accident, by trial and error, or by recognition in models, ‘sees’ a quality that he recognizes as valuable. Let’s just say that he decides that precise vocabulary makes his writing better. He then uses that particular method often and progressively more effectively, until one day his writing is enhanced by the perceptive use of that technique. This would correspond directly to the BIG STEP mentioned earlier. The improvement began when the student tried to adopt the desirable trait, but the noticeable improvement didn’t come until the student had had enough practice to use the approach well.
To be honest, I think that most learning works in this way. “Getting it” is the first step, and then practicing it until mastery is the next phase. Any student who has truly grasped the value of the appositive, or of the parallel element, will continue to use the technique, because it works. Therefore, the volume of writing assignments is NOT the critical issue. Presenting the material in such a way that the individual understands and is prompted to use the technique is the critical component.
This misunderstanding of the elements of academic rigor is the core of this discussion. Teachers are driven at times to justify their value by demanding rigorous performances from their students. The stupid part materializes when the teacher or administrator misconstrues the method by which rigor is measured. Which of the following describes a rigorous activity: a student composes a series of journal entries in response to three reading assignments; OR a student writes three pages of analysis that must demonstrate points of relevance among three different novels. In each case, the student will read three novels. In case number one, the teacher might require a one page journal entry for each chapter of a book. The student will cumulatively compose thirty or more pages of journal entries. In the other case, the student needs to write three pages. How could the second approach be the more rigorous one?
The answer is again simple. If the three pages of analysis require, via a rubric, a level of thinking and communicating that demonstrates higher level thinking skills, then three pages of meat is infinitely more rigorous than thirty pages of cotton candy. Perhaps that is a weak analogy, but I think I’ve made my point.
Maybe I can make a more visceral mechanical analogy. The journal assignment is analogous to asking a person to cover thirty miles in thirty days, with no demands on the elapsed time of each running session. Therefore, the student could complete his thirty miles by walking. At the end of the sessions, s/he might be in somewhat better shape than s/he would without the exercise, The three page analysis is then comparable to having the student run three miles in less than twenty minutes. S/he cannot meet the requirement, three miles in a limited time, without having done some preparation that requires sustained intensity. Walking a mile a day, for thirty days, is not as hard as training to run three miles in less than twenty minutes.
I think many teachers apply this misconception to their classroom practices. They assign thirty minutes of homework instead of fifteen, citing increased rigor as their aim. Or they require three projects when one will do. The level of required investment should be the measuring stick for academic rigor, not the number of minutes invested, not the number of pages read or composed.
In another manifestation of the disease, some teachers seem to believe that they need to have lower grades to ‘prove’ that they are challenging their students. That is absolute hogwash. All I would need to do to deflate the grades of my Honors English students over the years is to construct poor tests. I could ask questions that I knew I hadn’t covered well, or phrase questions in such a way as to promote confusion. Grades are also reflections of how well a subject is taught, how appropriately the material has been chosen for the course, and how well the test measures the skills and knowledge of the students. In other words, the grades themselves mean nothing.
I always thought that my grades should be skewed to the high end of the bell curve. If natural capacity can be represented by the bell curve, then the signal for the teacher’s contribution would be in moving all of his students up a standard deviation. Try to hang in with this. If the bell curve represents how the grades will be distributed naturally, then the teacher’s goal should be to improve upon that. Otherwise, the teacher is rendered inconsequential. The students arrive, the lessons are presented, and the grades are assigned. We all know that we have on occasion risen ABOVE our natural ability. Shouldn’t that be what the teacher is all about – giving students the tools and resources necessary to rise above their limitations?
In closing, I don’t want to give the impression that the other side of the coin is the answer. If teachers can create tests that encourage their students to score poorly, they can also create tests that inflate grades way out of proportion. The grades themselves are not the aim. Determining legitimate objectives, then devising methods by which all of the students will meet those objectives, is the aim. The grades that students earn are also grades that teachers earn.

Education I

Education – Foray 1

In keeping with the general structure of these discussions so far, this installment will deal with our current American state of education in a more global way. Specifics will follow in later installments. However, the relevance of this topic to the title should be apparent. When it comes to education, almost everybody is stupid, at least for certain periods of time.
Now most people in America are in general consensus that the American educational system is in an awful state of disrepair. This consensus is accepted, despite the fact that it may not be true, and despite the fact that the whiners are the ones with the power to rectify the situation. Hmmm? What’s wrong with this overture? [I was going to use the hackneyed ‘what’s wrong with this picture,’ but ‘overture,’ in its musical context, is more appropriate.] The orchestra of stakeholders and constituents bemoan the current state of academic affairs, but they are really the ones who can make their local schools perform more effectively.
I will elaborate on this, but first I need to establish some important perspectives. If a coalition of people agree that the schools are the problem, and if the schools themselves agree to take some of the blame, (as they have by latching on to school improvement plans that hundreds of gurus use as mechanisms for the publication of articles, journals, and books on the subject,) then why haven’t any of the school improvement plans initiated a sustained, definitive wellspring of support - one that will continue to revolutionize the way that instruction is delivered, and skills and information acquired?
The answer is that the problem is not with the process, but with the clientele. Seriously, most school boards around the country are not being bombarded with stakeholders who are holding their feet to the fire to improve school performance. Most districts hold their board meetings in relative quiet and anonymity. Whether the perception is the truth does not matter; the fact that people don’t come to meetings to ask, implore, or beg for improvement speaks volumes.
MOST PEOPLE ARE HAPPY WITH THEIR SCHOOLS!
Think about that for one second. While most people agree that schools are failing the country and/or the state, few people believe that their own local school district is part of the problem. Remember the over-arching title of these discussions: Is Everybody Stupid! The preceding paragraph should answer the question.
Earlier, I made the comment that consensus says schools are failing, but those members of the consensus group, the group voice, are the very people who can spearhead systemic change. The real consensus is that the American educational system is underperforming, but MY SCHOOL isn’t part of the problem.
So why would most people count their own school systems as successful while simultaneously condemning the public school system in the whole. The answer is simple, and moves beyond the stupidity component. For people to recognize the problems with schools, they would also need to acknowledge the limitations and liabilities of their own children. What parents have really wanted from their local schools is a venue by which their sons and daughters can nominally qualify for the next level of education or training. They want their kids – on paper – to be accepted into college, or into the military, or into one of the many other higher education programs. They also want their children’s compilation of their educational resume to impose on their lives as little as possible. Therefore, educators are often inundated with helicopter parents who advocate for their children irrespective of ethics, morals, responsibilities, or justice. What too many parents want is the sheepskin, the report card, the SYMBOL of success. After all, if the sheepskin serves as a ticket to the next step, then the processes by which the person earned the ticket are meaningless.
So what’s the solution? Simply put, educators need to help the stakeholders be less stupid, or narrow-minded, or limited in regard to the components of a high school education. Schools need to develop ways to encourage students and their parents to EXPECT MORE from the SCHOOLS and from their CHILDREN. The skills and the information are the most important things, not the report cards and the honors and the distinctions. Quite clearly, the push has to be toward raising the aspirations of parents and students, and toward allowing teachers to demand quality from their charges. And teachers have to stop confusing volume or conformity with quality or academic rigor. The next installment on Education will address this issue more precisely.

Religion?

Is There Anybody Up There - Or At Least Within Shouting Distance?

Everyone knows the wise old advice never to discuss religion or politics in mixed company. Everyone also knows that the most enjoyable conversations you will ever have involve discussions of religion and politics in mixed company. Truths like these are part of the reason that human beings are prone to ignore all forms of advice, and even of wisdom. Furthermore, if any of this drivel sounds like wisdom to you, reread all of it again, skipping every fourth word. These thoughts are random observations reduced to simplest form, sort of like a math skill you worked on in fifth or sixth grade.

So we’ll start with the obvious. Virtually every great civilization has been built around human recognition of a higher force in the world. They have called the force by a plethora of names, and with a bevy of incarnations and imagined shapes. To my knowledge, however, God has never been named Hollingsworth, and he or she or it has never resembled a gas grill. Other than that, almost anything goes. Therefore, thus, and hence, there must be a god. The collective consciousness of millions and millions of people can’t all be wrong.

Perhaps this little analogy will work for you. Most of the people you run into in the literature field agree that Shakespeare was a great writer. Why should you or I tend to believe this? How could all those people be wrong? It’s as simple as that. If there is no God, then generations have been duped by an incredible far-reaching and well-orchestrated scam. What are the chances of this? Careful study of people reveals that you cannot randomly collect fifteen people who will agree on any one thing. Try it. Ask a group of fifteen people the color of the sky. We all know that it’s blue, but some one crazy in the group will undoubtedly call the sky azure, or gray, or some other shade that only women and gay men can distinguish. (I mean, what the hell are taupe, mauve, magenta, and fuchsia? If you know the answer to these questions, read the last sentence over again.) Yet that same group of people will probably concede the existence of some higher force in the world. (And by the way, I intend no offense to the gay men of the world. I merely have noted that many of them care about distinctions in color, and I personally don’t.)

So God isn’t dead, at least as far as I know. And though I can’t prove it, I’m more certain of this than the idea that the universe as we know it is some grand accident. We humans are compelled to procreate, to raise our young, to provide for families. Our ability to do so for a number of millennia is an accident?

On the other hand, we have earthworms. Earthworms are food, and aerators. They perform various other functions in the ground that help things to grow, which provides food for herbivores, and materials for building and clothing and so on. They are also still the best bait for catching sunfish, bass, catfish, and your little brother’s trousers.

So these things are true, more or less. But all around us, scientists, naturalists, biologists and the like, find unique harmony and equilibrium and symbiotic relationships between unrelated organisms. Are all these interrelationships incidental, or evolutionary? Is it possible that all of the organisms that didn’t perform some complementary function for another organism became extinct? If so, then where did all those now extinct organisms come from in the first place?

I suppose the simplest way to put it all is this: I am convinced that there is a God, in the most basic way, because the accident theory doesn’t ring true for me. Everywhere I look, accidents cause disorder, devastation, and destruction. Why on this humungous scale would an ancient cosmological accident result in order and interconnectedness? In the end, the accident theory just doesn’t make sense. Maybe there’s somebody out there who can give me a workable analogy to explain how this one giant mistake wrought such a beautiful world, but I doubt it.

So there is a God. If you choose not to believe, then you ought to come up with some workable theory besides the accident concept. If there is a God, or a higher power, then what is it, or he, or she? The only thing that makes sense to me is that God is the force that gives things life.

A human being is composed of all sorts of materials, and elements, and water, but should we dump these things in proper proportions into a giant tub, we would not generate life. So life is the thing, the inexplicable thing, which animates. The force, mystics and philosophers have told us, (though I never fully trust them,) that the force is the same for all living things.

Believing in this force, or this God, is not so hard. Think of it merely as a substitute for the accident that binds or unites all things. God does not need to have a face, though many religious people put a face on their respective gods. What follows the faith in a higher force is the important part.



So What Does Any of This Have To Do With ME?


It seems fitting that I admit at this point that I consider myself a practicing Catholic, although I am pretty sure that I need more practice. But before you write me off as a zealot, or as some heretical Catholic spouting new-age mumbo jumbo, let me put things simply. I would like to be relatively serious here while I explain about the practicing parts of life.

Church is a place to go as part of a routine, so that you have the opportunity to think about all the things that you have no time to consider in the normal course of the week. Church is a place for philosophy, for reflection, and for resolution.

At Church, the readings from the Bible, and the recitation of prayers, and the homily or sermon, and the celebration of the Mass, and the celebration of Communion: these are all designed for one basic purpose. During all these parts of the service, a person has a chance to hear of a firm, fixed, complete philosophy. I don’t care if someone I meet is Jewish, or Protestant, or Muslim, or Hindu. I am a Catholic simply because I was raised to be a Catholic. Sure, when I was little, I teased my Protestant friends about praying to the one true Catholic God, but I don’t feel certain that my religious organization has a monopoly on wisdom, faith, or salvation. Catholicism is the philosophy that I think I know. Any 2000 year old philosophy will probably do for the rest of you.

In the course of the Mass, while I am being reminded of the philosophy, I get a chance to check and to measure my faith with my acts. If the service or the sermon reminds me to be kind to others, and I haven’t been, I get a chance to consider and reflect on where I am and where I am going.

For instance, their Creator has endowed my young kids with the ability to infuriate me. They do so in various ways, such as asking me to rebuild a bicycle the minute I get in the door from work. When the church service preaches kindness, and I reflect on the arc and distance of my child’s free-fall through the living room as a consequence of his untimely request, I get the opportunity to reflect on the advisability of my behavior. In other words, I might refrain from hurling the boy who picks a bad moment to ask a favor.

This happened recently, and I have concluded that there should be no throwing of children. I also may reflect on the times that I have been surly, gruff, sarcastic, or downright nasty to my wife. I don’t know about you, but there are few things in the daily routine of life that might provoke the recognition of these basic human errors.

Thirdly, and most practically, having reflected on my behaviors, I am given the chance to resolve to do better. Sure, I will probably over time resort to engaging in the same unacceptable behaviors. However, the alternative, not going to church, not reflecting or resolving, I will most assuredly continue most of the dumb things I do. In the end, church provides the attendee a chance to fine-tune his philosophy, to evaluate his behavior, and to resolve to fix things a bit.
Do people really need to do these things all the time, once a week or more? To be honest, I think most people do. I spoke with a friend recently, who bemoaned the lack of time and attention he had spent on his kids recently. The conversation came up because I was talking about taking the kids to Church that morning.
“You do a lot more things with your kids than I do,” he said.
“Then do more,” I said.
“I just don’t have the time,” he replied.
“Are you stupid?” I asked.
He said, somewhat surprised by my lack of tact, “Huh?”
“You feel it’s wrong to spend so little time with your kids, but you won’t make any resolution to do better. Only stupid people see something wrong and accept it. Normal people figure out ways to get what they want.”
“What business is it of yours?” he snarled.
“Two things here.” I told him. “You brought it up. And you made me feel sorry for you and your kids. As soon as you put it in front of my face and engage my sympathies, it is my business. Only stupid people would feel bad about something and not say anything.”
“You’re right,” he said, "you going to go play hoops next Sunday?"

DIGRESSION: I feel compelled to say that the conversation related above is pretty true to form. However, you should also know that the other participant and I have been friends for more than ten years, and he is truly a responsible, loving dad. He felt guilty because he is a good dad. I and other men are sometimes guilty of speaking too bluntly, especially to one another, but in this case, the other father and I were pretty comfortable with it.

I don’t know for sure if the man resolved to do better about spending time with his kids, but I do know that my visit to my friendly neighborhood house of God had caused that conversation. And I sincerely believe that hearing my blunt opinion was a good thing for him. He may have been secretly offended, and he may have tuned me out, but if someone he respects gives similar advice, then the chance for a resolution on his part increases.

Church can do that.

Now there are more opinion, ideas, and benefits to regular Church attendance, but they pale by comparison to these basics. Perhaps I’ve been too superficial here, but I think that you’ve gotten the amount of philosophy that normal people can deal with in one sitting. We should find something to believe in simply because the alternative is uncertainty to the highest degree. It also makes new problems interesting. You can check with your minister what the official answer is to a problem, and then you have one firm idea on how to act. You may not do it, but at least you have a starting point for your deliberation. Three or four visits to church might even give you enough time to figure it out for yourself.

And for those of you who protest that you need no pre-packaged philosophical crutch against which to evaluate your ideas and behaviors --- I say this: isn’t it awfully presumptuous of you? You think that the collective knowledge and wisdom of the ages doesn’t apply to you? A "yes" answer would make you one of the stupid people.

I don’t think you need any particular church or God or ‘ism’ to govern all aspects of your life. But you ought to have a place, a ritual, an operator’s manual at your disposal - and a flawed memory of what you learned in catechism class is not the answer. First of all, it’s out of print, and second of all, you didn’t really get it when you learned to recite it.


So Religion Is A Crutch - For Weak People?


Former pro wrestler and former governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, is a common sense type of guy. I kind of like the fact that he isn't the standard politician. And I believe his 'no nonsense' approach to governing will result in more good than bad for his constituents. But he made a name for himself recently by calling religious-minded people nasty names.

Jesse said that religious people were weak, and cowardly, and that they used religion as a crutch. I say, "Of course, you big dope." Philosophy, and faith, and hope are always the things that people fall back on when they are afraid, or powerless, or temporarily frustrated. The people who rely upon their faith aren't weak and cowardly, or less than stalwart at every moment. Their faith is the weapon of choice when they suffer weakening or strength-sapping setbacks. More importantly, the philosophy they follow is one of the reasons they raise their children well, treat their neighbors kindly, and make the world a more pleasant place.

The problem is that non-religious people have fewer weapons than religious people do. Sure, one can say that non-religious people learn to rely on themselves, but they resort to a stock of weapons that are bad news for most Minnesotans.

No, I am not maintaining that religious people never resort to crime. Of course they do sometimes. However, people with no philosophy, no religion, no faith: they resort to guns and knives much sooner, and with more malice than their counterparts. The weapons of choice when faith is not in the arsenal are brute strength, chicanery, and deceit.

And yes, there are plenty of hypocrites and zealots. The churches have no monopoly on these psychoses. Some NRA members are zealots and hypocrites, as are some pro athletes and entertainers. Don't bother to blame hypocrisy and zeal on religion. These failings are human; there is no escaping them.

The reason it seems that religion breeds these deviants is that religious zealots and hypocrites use their false faith as a platform and as an excuse. Since pro sports do not embody a philosophy, an athlete is hard-pressed to lean upon his organization to justify his excesses. However, some recent idiotic athletes have tried.

Taste in Absentia

Taste in Absentia.

Television and popular culture are based on one infallible truth: the average person is excessively stupid and accepting. Each year millions of people spend inordinate sums of money on entertainment. They buy music, videos, video games and other things produced under the banner of entertainment. They take in movies, and they sit glued to television or computer monitors, or in-home theaters. All of this occurs with a continual increase in the number of items purchased and the number of performances attended. Still, every year the average person complains about the dearth of quality in entertainment options.

Even more, the ‘pushing of the envelope’ has increased the hype and lowered the quality of most entertainment productions. Creativity has been abandoned; quick fixes wrapped in sleaze and tastelessness can more than compensate for poor style, content, and skill. Want to lower production values? The answer is simple; forgo scriptwriters, actors, and anything even remotely artistic. Instead, recruit ‘real people,’ place them in ‘unreal’ scenarios, and through the wonders of editing, audio enhancement, and cutting edge camera work, create the illusion of drama under the pretense of reality TV.

So why do I like music, TV, films, and games? Simply put, when good artistic expression rears its head, I am just as rapt as the next guy.

Let’s take a case in point – popular music. I defy you or anyone you know to go to the music store and purchase an original music CD or tape that has more than three great songs on it. The rules state that the options must be limited to music released in the past year, and compilations and film soundtracks don’t count.
What do you find? You discover that 99% of the offerings have a maximum of three well-produced and well-conceived songs. The others are filler material hastily thrown together to get the CD on the market as quickly as possible. And studio execs don’t care that the play life is limited. They’ll repackage three songs they held back from the last CD, polish them up, throw in some more filler garbage, and people will continue to buy them.

I listen to the radio pretty regularly, and I hear some good songs there everyday. But, when I listen to the CD’s my wife or kids buy, I am ashamed at the trash I’ve allowed into my home. Of course, I can’t be so hard on my wife and kids; based on radio exposure, they’ve been duped into believing the entire album, tape, or CD is similar in quality to the radio songs.

I have not listened widely to rap artists, but I suspect they are the worst offenders, primarily because rap music is so popular now, as it has been for the past few years. My kids bought two rap artist’s efforts in the past year. Three good songs are on each disc, and a cesspool of tasteless, distorted, virulent slime has been added to the recipe.

The story is the same for most movies and TV shows. When people complain about the poor quality of television, I have mixed feelings. Having grown up in the 70’s, I can conclude that some of the best television ever made is being produced today. The problem is that so many of the offerings are horribly bad. Lost, the CSI enterprise, The Office, and a number of other shows are excellent programs, even if they are not all programs that I will go out of my way to catch, and given that I don’t have to with the wonders of DVR and On Demand. Yet the industry must be lucrative and cost efficient, so many of the better shows are placed into head-to-head battles. The public doesn’t stop watching TV at other times, when the crappy shows are on. The general public is stupid. They have been trained to watch TV, and, dammit, they’re gonna do it. How else does one account for the existence of Jon and Kate Plus 8, The Real World and Survivor idiocy, the various rip-offs of the ‘talent’ programs from Britain, whether they focus on dancing, singing, or other abilities. These shows turn life into a competition, and Americans are especially keen on competition. However, my wife and millions of others are rabid fans of shows where the competition is fabricated, and the outcome is predetermined.

Now I know that fans, executives, and players will strongly maintain that the shows aren’t rigged, but while the outcomes may not be 100% predetermined, the voters are led to vote for the contestants that stand to maintain the highest buzz after the intolerable finale episode. Moreover, the shows themselves are edited, modified, and cut into parts so that the smallest amount of footage can be stretched over the highest number of episodes. How do I know this, you may ask, if the shows are insults to my intelligence? Well, unfortunately, I haven’t yet been able to dissuade my wife and kids from turning them on. I fought with them for a few years, left the room during the most insipid programs, but eventually had to learn to tolerate the program being on the air while I worked on the computer or read a book. The only alternative was to spend less time with my family, and I wasn’t willing to do that.

So what do I want? I want the general public to hurry up and lose patience with ALL the reality, faux competition programs. I’d like them to realize just how infantile and manipulative the programs are. I’d like them to stop being duped into believing that these programs present anything even remotely akin to true drama.
Have I been ranting? Quite possibly so, but I believe I have reason to rant. With a bit of time for TV watching, radio listening, and movie reviewing, I could probably find cause to work up to a serious rave to go along with my rant.

Political Correctness

Now, I realize that many of the preceding presentations have addressed the issue of political correctness in one way or another. Nevertheless, I think that PC needs to be discussed overtly.

In simplest terms, political correctness, or adherence or avocation thereof, is a sure sign of stupidity. Now, I must be careful in stating that political correctness is not the same as common courtesy. Racial, ethnic, gender epithets, or any form of name-calling designed to attack a group of people is not acceptable. The type of political correctness I am referring to involves people’s refusal to address issues, or their soft peddling of responses. I suppose I am in a sense differentiating between maliciously motivated actions and intentions, and mere words.

Perhaps we should start with a less controversial example, and then build up to the strongest of opinions, and therefore the things that really piss people off. Somewhere about a generation ago, firemen became firefighters, with the theory being that the language itself created prejudices that influenced the perception that women could be firemen. I will concede that words create perceptions, and therefore that words can be instrumental in changing the way that people behave and think and such. However, did we really need to have that period where all the compound words that ended in ‘men’ were replaced by ‘person?’ I mean, seriously. Couldn’t a busboy still be a busboy even if she were a female? What was the benefit in the increase in the number of chairpersons, and committee persons, and longshorepersons?

Okay, the longshoreperson label never really caught on, but why not? I contend that the sheer idiocy of the ‘man’ to ‘person’ exchange became obvious when we came to words like longshoreperson.

Perhaps a bit more volatile of a term will help to illustrate my point. I understand completely why the word ‘nigger’ is inappropriate in conversation. The original coining of the term and its earliest usage was intended to denigrate a race of people. Consequently, using the term, even when no offense is intended, is careless, tactless, and wrong. Quite simply, the baggage that the word carries precludes its effective use. What I don’t understand is the adoption of that same word by contemporary Black Americans, or African Americans or persons of color. You see, I intended no offense there at all; I honestly don’t know what is currently the acceptable term of address. The component of political correctness to which I object is this very example. If I were a person of color who was using the term in the context of addressing a friend of mine who is also a person of the same color, then the term becomes some sort of an inside term of endearment.

Bear with me for a second. What if the law enforcement officers of the world decided, capriciously, that their exclusive term of address for other law enforcement officers was ‘pig’? In the squad car or the squad room, they could inoffensively call each other ‘pig’ without fear of offense taking. After all, it would just be a buddy calling a buddy a name. Such things happen everyday. Now suppose that a whole bunch of singing policemen sold millions of songs in which policemen call other policemen pigs? When the general population hears the disparaging term on the radio or on their pirated downloads to their ipods, will they also be able to use the term to address the policeman who pulls them over for speeding? Will the policemen be offended, not reasoning that the offensive term has been revived by the very people the term is meant to denigrate?

Hopefully, you are starting to follow my reasoning. Political correctness is a cowardly business that can often prevent people from saying what they really mean. For fear of choosing the potentially offensive term or phrase, they adopt some circumlocution that muddies the informational waters.

Having saved the most recent example for last, let me go on record as saying the backlash and subsequent firing of Don Imus for saying ‘nappy headed ho’s’ among other stupid things, is illustrative of my position. Don Imus is a shock jock. That is, he was hired and has been gainfully employed for a long time expressly because he says politically incorrect things. He doesn’t lack the sense to avoid the offensive; he is being paid to find it. The game, on his end, is to walk the tightrope between rattling the cage and grabbing the bird by the neck and thrashing its brains out on the rec room floor.

So to be blunt, I don’t think Don Imus should have been fired, and I don’t think that the public outcry should have been able to twist the short hairs of the radio execs. I think those execs should have been able respond to the public umbrage by saying, “Don Imus says stupid things. That’s why hundreds of thousands of people tune in daily. We don’t like what he said, and we don’t condone his opinions or his delivery. He is being paid to entertain people, and for some reason, the current public taste embraces the abhorrent things he says. So shut up. We ain’t firing him. He’ll be back on the air in the morning, and if you think he is crossing the line, stop listening to his program, you dopes.”

Had the radio execs responded in such a way, the outcry would have grown exponentially for about three days. Then, when the same radio people repeated their position a few days later, the outcry would have dwindled to a whimper.
Now, don’t get me wrong, though I generally despise the litigious nature of our culture, I think the offended basketball players had every right to accuse Imus of slanderous or damaging remarks that could adversely affect their status in life. However, I think the judge who heard that case should have said, “Look, a public figure said a stupid thing on the radio. Each of you, so far as I have seen, carries herself with a degree of dignity and class that further exposes the stupidity of his comments. Why not continue to show the fool what a dimwit he is by being above the whole thing?”

The negative characterization, in fact, had little true damaging effects on the character or public perception of those young ladies. Why did the girls lower themselves by accepting the public viewpoint? In effect, the public lived down to the standard thrust upon it, and the ‘victims’ followed suit. Our current culture has established a set of items that are presumed to offend, and everyone waits for the signal to feign offense.

Here’s the simple point. Most political correctness is false in every way. If black people call each other by the ‘n’ word, in what they say is proper context, then the word isn’t the source of the offense. If the word isn’t the source of the offense, then the offense emanates from the speaker. That is, the offended person or group is offended because the speaker hasn’t the right to traffic in a term that has been historically and traditionally offensive. In other words, the victims feel offense because they are supposed to, not because they feel any genuine offense. Hence, the political correctness issue is almost always grounded in pretext, presumption, and falseness.

I don’t have a reliable test for these issues, but I wish I did. So, let’s invent a test using an example of relatively harmless political correctness. I was once chastised for referring to middle-aged women that I work with as ‘girls.’ They should be considered as ‘women’, or ‘ladies’ I was told. However, when I said to my seventy-year-old grandmother and two or her friends, “How are you girls doing today?” they giggled well, like girls, and thought it was cute. In two contexts, each with women older than thirty, I was supposed to know whether reference to them as girls was offensive or not.

So the test is this: if the speaker has to guess about the propriety of a particular term, then the problem is not with the speaker, but with the listener. If there is not definitive intention to offend inherent in the derivation of the term, then there is no offense. Using this test, the ‘n’ word is verboten, and that’s ok with me. But it’s verboten in ALL public discourse, even if the speaker and the listener are complicit in adopting acceptance of the term in their own private context. In short, if it’s wrong, it’s wrong. If one has no definitive reason to know that it’s wrong, it’s not wrong. How’s that?

Marriage Part II

Marriage Part II

So you want to be married, eh? Well, let’s be frank about this enterprise. You, like everyone else getting married for the first time, have no idea what you’re getting into. Tenet number 1 is that marriage is a journey into the unknown, and if you don’t admit that, you stand less than half of a chance of remaining married for any extended period of time. If you do accept your ignorance, you stand a fifty-one or higher percent chance of prolonging the relationship. And don’t even think about protesting, those of you who have lived together. Spouses and roommates are not of the same species. They may walk and talk alike - to strangers, but they have only superficial appearances in common.


Mind reading, at least the expectation thereof, is a critical component of married life. If you’re the husband, you are supposed to anticipate – and here’s the yoke – and to act upon the projects, chores, and routines that your wife has thought about at lunch. That means that if your wife has a momentary impetus to rearrange the living room furniture, or to clean out the basement, then the only way for you to come out looking good is to have completed those tasks before she gets home. No matter that you go to work, and you get home half an hour later than she does. “Common sense!” your wife will say, should have told you that the job lay in wait for you.

That’s a good thing to know too, by the way: common sense is actually the cumulative opinions that your wife may have encountered in the supermarket, workplace, or at the bus stop. Common sense also entails any and all contact that your wife has had with her mother, your mother, her girlfriends, (but not your girlfriends) and can be profoundly influenced by tabloids, magazines, and Oprah. If, for example, Oprah does a segment on making your kitchen more efficient, common sense would have told your wife that, of course, you need to re-tool the kitchen.

Men, by nature, don’t get to come into contact with common sense. It is secreted in those locations to which only women have full access. A man believes that he’s showing common sense when he goes out to buy the new power drill rather than to borrow the neighbor’s for the thirteenth consecutive project. But if your wife’s family and friends – cathode, periodical, or otherwise – have not stumbled onto this idea, then your purchase is whimsical and foolish. The purchase of the ten-person van, with TV and video arcade in the backseat, is entirely common sensible. After all, there’s an outside chance that you’ll be making a twelve-hour trip with yours and the neighbor’s children sometime before the kids all go off to college.

Another problem to consider is the division of labor in your household. Don’t waste time nor breath trying to pretend that you and your spouse will devise a way to make the division 50-50. Someone is going to do more than the other, and if you’re the one most concerned about the split, then you’re the one who’s going to do the higher percentage. It is a time-proven fact that the spouse who is least concerned about the division of labor is casual about the issue for a reason: s/he has no intention of doing his/her 50 percent. S/he will rationalize, equivocate, and explain, but the last 15 percent of the chores will not get done.

In fact, marriage can be a wonderful estate, for other people that you know, but never for you. And that is actually the largest part of the problem. Married people judge and interpret other marriages so favorably that they always see their own union as falling short. The only good news about this is that other people will misjudge your marriage just as badly. If this happens, and you get the chance to respond, tell them how wonderful everything is all the time. Complaining will put you in a bad temper and make you even less accepting of your spouse’s flaws. More importantly, he or she will find out about your gripes, and then get even.

The truth is that being married to someone, and using your combined efforts to achieve a common purpose or goal, is entirely out of the question. No two people ever see things the same way, so why pretend that love, loyalty, and commitment can alter that? What you must hope to do is to agree on a goal or purpose in theory. Don’t even consider that you’ll approach the objective in the same way. Your spouse should be someone you can have fun with, who will let you tilt at your windmills while he or she tilts at hers. You need only agree that some personal windmills require serious tilting.

Your spouse should allow you your quirks, while you allow him/her his/hers. (Is that right? All that he/she, him/her stuff?) You are supposed to be in a semi-chronic state of individual evolution together. The things you try to accomplish, together and apart, are the glue that holds your relationship together.

Here’s an analogy. It’s like a bed of rocks. Some are igneous and some are metamorphic. Others are sedimentary. The rest are fool’s gold, but that’s another story. Time throws things down onto the rocks, and pressure either pushes them apart or together. Sometimes you pick up these sedimentary rocks that have somehow bonded without losing their individual identities and characteristics. Other times the pressure and the forces of nature (think HEAT!) melt those babies down so they appear to be one rock. In still other circumstances, fiery volcanoes throw up molten rock that has nothing whatsoever to do with this analogy. So you see, marriage is like that bedrock. At least, it should be like that bedrock. You and your partner rock are going to join with identities intact, be melted and compressed into a single entity, or pushed apart until you lose sight and contact with one another. In any case, once you’re in that little swale, you’re not getting out. I mean, you can’t just get up and leave. You’re a rock for Chrissakes!

On the subject of other important components of betrothal, you need only consult Glamour, Cosmopolitan, or Redbook. Of course, if you want to find out the truth, you’ll just continue reading.

At least one other component of marriage should be mentioned. The first marriage chapter dealt with staying married and this one has dealt with daily, married life to an extent. Of course, it was all very philosophical and abstract and general and such. But if you are upset with your spouse, even as you read this, you should consider a few things. You married the person, for crying out loud; are you really so surprised at how s/he is behaving? Or are you upset because you expected to have completed substantial makeovers by now? Seriously, write down the character traits that you have always known that your significant other has. Is he or she impatient, picky, opinionated?

Well, let’s bet last month’s salary that the reason you’re mad right now is directly related to one of the traits you’ve known about all along.

What I’m really saying is that trying to alter someone’s makeup or disposition is another lesson in futility. Sure, you might have some success in getting your spouse to be nicer, more courteous, or more conscious of your feelings, but even these changes take great concentration on the part of your spouse. S/he won’t be more anything without tremendous effort. Why not love the man or woman for all the reasons you originally did? Make a list of what you loved to start, and try to appreciate any efforts being made to accommodate you.

You’re probably thinking that it’s easy for me to say these things, but I assure you it’s not. My wife is emotional, moody, sensitive, and strong-willed: all of the things I am not. (OK, maybe I’m pretty strong-willed too.) But that is not to say that I am any better. I have my own set of negative traits, which I like to call quirks, because it makes me look better. We are polar opposites, and her empathy, sympathy, sensitivity, kindness, and caring are what I originally loved. Sometimes I have to remind myself when she is driving me nuts. What I loved about her is what can make me want to pull my eyes out of my sockets – or hers. And asking for those traits to disappear because I’m in one of my moods? Well, that’s unrealistic and shows a lack of common sense. I read about that in last month’s Maxim.

For better or worse, with only a smidgen of expectation that you and your commitment can change anything substantially, concentrate on having as much fun as possible. Psychologists, who I trust only occasionally, report that our personalities are determined during childhood. What makes us think that marriage will reconfigure what it took ten years to build, and another ten or more to solidify? Again, we can work toward getting some behaviors altered slightly, but genuine personality traits are here to stay.
Love your spouse. It’s more fun and much more productive than the alternative.

Marriage Part I

Anyone who doubts that we have culturally encouraged our current divorce rate is stupid. People divorce for only a handful of reasons, each of which can be addressed in some fairly simple ways. However, discussing the ins and outs of marriage, no pun intended, is impossible unless we consider how easily and how often marriages end.

First of all, we have to agree that divorce is undesirable, if only for the reason that people would improve their chances to be happy, if they could avoid the ugliness that usually cavorts with divorces. If we can agree that the world would be a better place if marriages didn’t fall apart, then the remedies to the high divorce rate can be discussed.

Prior to marriage, prospective spouses should be given the following warning: you will not be able to end this marriage unless you are fully prepared to end your spouse’s life. The day you file for divorce, a team of referees will come to your door. They will lock you in a rubber room with only a blunt penknife for a weapon. Your opponent/spouse may or may not be armed, but if s/he is armed, it will be with more firepower than you have. The great thing about the plan is that you won’t know if your prospective ex is armed before you file. If you come out of the room under your own power, your divorce has been granted. If not, then your spouse’s troubles with you are over, one way or another.

Sure, this sounds harsh, but what if we all conspired and told all potentially-betrothed that this was the case? It seems pretty obvious that one cause of divorce is that people marry without seriously contemplating the potential for marital trouble. Lord knows they should think of these things, but people in love are not entirely human. They live on a spiritual plane – temporarily – that will be defined in a later chapter. If couples honestly believed that the only alternative to staying married was to commit murder, how many would expect to manage the trouble that inevitably occurs in marriage?

Forethought is part of the problem. When people are in love, they are more than a little retarded. Despite the rational part of their brains telling them that their marriage will be like others they’ve seen; that is, fraught with difficulties, they seriously believe that their little romantic heaven is impervious to time and trial. A rule that makes divorce close to impossible could go a long way toward reducing the number of marriages that should never happen, and which are doomed to failure.

Be honest, how many of your friends have been married and divorced? Didn’t you suspect that the marriage was doomed from the start? Did you say anything to them?
No, of course not. It wasn’t any of your business, you thought. And when others intervened and tried to talk you out of the intervention with your friend’s doomed union, you should have said, “Don’t tell me it’s none of my business.” Anything that causes you heartache – your friend’s heartache, for instance – has to be considered your business.

The second way to reduce divorce rates is to re-think the division of property issue. How about this idea? If two people get divorced, they each get ---- NOTHING! All their property is sold and the proceeds given to an agency which takes care of kids. Or diseases. Or especially kids with diseases. How many people can afford to get divorced, because half of a lot is still enough?
Children of divorced parents aren’t biologically, physically, or intellectually worse off than children of married parents, yet children of divorce are more likely to have all kinds of emotional problems. Furthermore, kids whose parents divorce are much more likely to get divorced themselves. So let’s take all the money and property from divorcing people and give it to kids.

The prospect of starting over, with absolutely nothing, will encourage troubled married people to try harder. Of course, trying harder won’t solve all the marital difficulties, but those who survive divorce proceedings won’t be completely out of luck. They could re-marry, this time with a little forethought, and no prospect of improving their station in life by divorcing again. Moreover, if we take away the property fights, divorced people won’t be reinforced that they have made the right decision. Every time an ex-spouse makes the property issue ugly, the other spouse feels vindicated. “See,” he or she says, “I was right to end it. Look what a vindictive person s/he really is.”

All of the preceding comments have been precipitated by some serious philosophical views. The first one is simply that our society is more stable with two parent households in the majority. But I don’t think that most societies have developed an expectation of monogamous relationships, married or not, by accident. Belief in monogamy is inextricably linked with a fact: throughout history, those groups that prized two parent households or living arrangements fared better than those that didn’t. I think it’s reasonable to suspect that early societies which didn’t keep parents together were unable to sustain themselves, or they were over-run by hostile neighbors who were better organized. We haven’t publicized a great deal of information on how humans have come to try to practice monogamy, yet monogamy has had the upper hand. Why?

Sociologists and psychologists of different bents have contended that humans, men anyway, are not monogamous by nature. I don’t know the validity of this contention, but it does make some sense, given my own interactions with men. However, if men by nature want to frolic with as many women as possible, then why haven’t they done so more prolifically, and with society’s approval? A simple hypothesis is that those societies who have endorsed freedom to frolic, without repercussion, have been largely unsuccessful.

In fact, some of the men who have tested the waters of infidelity will tell you the same thing. Staying with the mother of one’s children is the most stable, most productive, least painful option in the long run. Maybe this isn’t true for any one person, but for the society as a whole it is most certainly true. Yet the knowledge that this is so hasn’t really reduced the number of husbands who stray. So it may be true that men are not monogamous by nature. They have to learn to be monogamous. Or they must be cowed into exclusivity.

But before this part about marriage has ended, we must acknowledge that some marriages, even those approached with significant forethought, will end in failure. So long as nobody wins, I suppose divorces have to be a rare option. Both parties get a fresh start, but no other stuff. Property is forfeited, and children are made as financially comfortable as possible. This is not a great situation, but it must be better than having former spouses fight over property, children, and responsibility.

The attitudes expressed so far are meant to be taken somewhat seriously; the illustrations somewhat less so. People should be encouraged to proceed with caution, to fight through the tough times, and to stay together. We can’t possibly hope to encourage these behaviors unless we make divorce an even more unpleasant condition. “Till death do us part” is an order, not a suggestion.