Tag Archives: education

A Lesson About Discrimination

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A few days ago, The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about a teacher and a principal who taught a 1968 lesson about racial tolerance, using the equally arbritrary blue eyes-brown eyes discriminant as the teaching prop.

A Letter to the Editor response decried both the lesson and the pride in it that was conveyed in that article.

…one of the most disturbing and emotional things I had ever experienced. Teachers whom I once looked up to were subjecting me to irrational and arbitrary treatment based on my eye color. … My father … called my school’s leadership and received a complete apology.

How sad, that letter writer and his father missed the point of the lesson and missed precisely that “disturbing and emotional thing” that real victims of irrational and arbitrary treatment experience.

On the other hand, a commenter in the Letters thread asked this:

Does this same reasoning that this was child abuse apply to the teachers lecturing about “white privilege” and setting up situations to guilt trip children based on their skin color?

How sad, too, that that discrimination is actively practiced today.

Somebody Else

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Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel, who had originally intended to arm his students with river rocks so they could throw them at intruders and thereby resist a mass shooting, has altered the plan.  He’s decided to add armed—that is, with firearms—security to his district’s protection technique.  Helsel claimed that the publicity driven by social media and the resultant NLMSM’s attention drove him to the change.

This unfortunate circumstance has increased our concern regarding the possibility that something may happen because of the media attention.

Because, like Flip Wilson’s Geraldine, it’s always somebody else’s fault.  I don’t like the NLMSM, as the half-dozen of you who read this blog know.  But it’s not the NLMSM’s fault.  It’s not social media’s fault.  Any fault is that of the ones who actually do the deeds, contributed to by those who should have known better but chose to take no preventive action.

It’s personal responsibility, not that of “others,” and Helsel seems not to get that.  This is what we have teaching our children.

An Example

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This is part of what’s wrong with today’s American higher education.  The numbers appear in a Wall Street Journal article about the possibility of ex-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson becoming chancellor of the University of Texas system.

The system has an enrollment of more than 230,000 students, an $18 billion annual budget, and more than 100,000 employees.

That’s ridiculous.  There’s no reason for having an employee for every two students.  How much better would the students’ education be were some of those $18 billion redirected toward books and lab equipment and classroom facilities and away from excess payroll?  How much more opportunity would there be were some of those $18 billion redirected toward lower tuition and housing fees and away from excess payroll?

The 529 Plan Expansion

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Recall that the tax reform enacted last December expanded the usability of 529 Plans to include expenses for K-12 education.  Now some are worried that this will harm State tax collections.  It’s a bogus beef on a number of fronts.

In December, as part of a broad tax overhaul, Congress expanded the accounts to cover up to $10,000 a year in expenses for kindergarten through 12th grade.

State budget officials are now concerned that a large number of parents will use 529 accounts to pay private-school tuition, giving them a new write-off for their state taxes.

School choice—the horror.  How terrible it is that parents have a way to help their children escape failing public schools or simply to transfer them to schools of their choice rather than be faced with the often poor choice of public school or home school.

There’s this bit of disingenuosity, too:

That could result in potentially millions of dollars in lost tax revenue at a time when most states are struggling to close budget deficits.

“I’m worried that families could use these accounts to avoid paying state taxes,” said Illinois state treasurer Mike Frerichs, a Democrat. “This is only going to put a deeper hole in the budget.”

This is especially rich coming from nearly bankrupt Illinois and that State’s Treasurer.  What’s actually blowing a hole in Illinois’ budget is its profligate spending, in Illinois’ case wastrel spending on public union pensions and teachers union pensions in Chicago.  Beyond that, using 529s to defray the costs of educating a child in Illinois isn’t tax avoidance, it’s parents seeing to the welfare of their children.

Then there’s this bit.

The Cruz provision [the amendment that inserted the 529 expansion into the tax reform bill] is projected to cost the federal government $500 million over nearly a decade, but it could cost the states much more, research suggests.

This is nonsense. Aside from the fact that it doesn’t cost the Federal government anything to not get what doesn’t belong to it, it’s also not costing the States anything for the same reason: the money isn’t the States’; the money belongs to the citizens of the States.

Furthermore, instead of worrying about deficits caused by not getting revenue that isn’t theirs, the States should worry about deficits caused by their profligate spending—and that’s not just Illinois.

This misunderstanding by American Enterprise Institute‘s Deputy Director of Education Policy, Nat Malkus, is surprising.

It’s not federalist at all.  I don’t think that the federal government should be cavalierly making problems for states by messing with state taxes.

Federalism isn’t touched by the 529 expansion.  That expansion doesn’t impact State taxes in the slightest; those remain the sole decision of the State governments.  All that’s “messed with” is tax collections, collections of OPM.

A Presidential Library

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Ex-President Barack Obama (D) plans to build a Presidential library in Chicago, and he’s looking at a non-standard concept for his library.  The folks on the Left don’t like it, as exemplified by the Chicago Tribune‘s Ron Grossman.

It seems the proposed library has a test kitchen in it, in which FLOTUS’ views of proper nutrition can be explored.  There’s also supposedly room for a yoga center; although, that’s not defined in the architectural plans.  The horror.  How unpresidential.  How unlibraryish.  Grossman bleated

President Obama, is that how you want to be remembered? As the healthy-eating and meditation-advocating president?

Then Grossman spent the bulk of his missive laying out his Better Idea for the library.  As though it were Grossman’s library and not Obama’s.  Never mind that all of us will remember Obama for his legacy, however we characterize it (and none of those characterizations see Obama as a lotus-eating spinach and broccoli lover), or that Obama gets to set up his library as he sees fit—and kudos to him for not going with tradition for tradition’s sake.  Or taking seriously the morsels of a pressman’s fetid imagination.

Readers of this blog—all half-dozen of you—know that I’m not a real big fan of the Progressive-Democrat ex-President.  But, jeez—this just shows that the Left are a bunch of crybabies who’ll whine about anything.