Time to reclaim Education in the US from the Bureaucrats and Central Planners

Bill Neinast

IN PERSPECTIVE by Bill Neinast

Education is a recurring topic in the national and local news.

Nationally, the subjects are the declining academic rankings in international comparisons and the CORE curricula.  Locally, the topics are homework and CSCOPE lesson plans.

A recent letter to the editor in The Banner-Press concerning too much homework gave credence to the concern about declining standards.  There were 23 grammatical and syntax errors in the eight paragraph letter.  Maybe there is not enough homework instead of too much.

The letter brought back memories of my days as a professor of state and federal government at Blinn College 30 years ago. I was appalled then at the lack of basic English grammar skills in my college students. 

Twenty years ago, I asked Dr. Wilfred Dietrich, Chairman of the English Department at Blinn, if the students’ grammar had improved since I left.  His answer, “Bill it’s gotten worse.”

Here is an example.  An end of semester research paper was required of each student.  The grade on the paper would be a substantial part of the student’s final grade.  

Written instructions for the paper were distributed on the first day of class. Although the subject was government, the students were told that one point would be deducted for each grammatical error and misspelled word. 

I suggested that they do their research and writing early in the semester, lay it aside for a week or so, and review it for clarity.  About a week before the paper was due, ask a friend to review it.  The friend might find errors that the author had skimmed over because of familiarity.

In every class, a substantial majority appeared to have been researched and written the night before they were due.

A copy of one of those papers is still on my desk.  The nine pages with very wide margins at the top, bottom, and both sides has 88 grammatical and spelling errors.  I gave the author 50 for content, and that was a gift, then deducted 88 for the errors.  Her research paper grade was a -38.

  That was then.  This is now when some college freshmen are required to take remedial courses in English, math, and other courses in order to progress at the college.

Why is there such a constant slide to lower standards and ranking?

One reason may be the federal and state mandates for standardized test.

I did not take a single final exam during my last two years of high school.  In 1944 the Somerville School District established programs that exempted students with final course grades of 90 or higher from final exams.  The administrators believed that anyone with semester grades in that range obviously knew the subject.

Last week, I discussed this no final exam policy with someone about 15 years younger than me.  She said that was also the policy in her school in the late 1950s.

Those schools graduated students who went on to earn college degrees without the need for remedial courses.  Among those students are Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller who developed the atomic bomb and Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.

In those days, teachers were allowed to use whatever method he or she thought was necessary to get the students to the level of understanding  desired by the teacher.  There was also no “social promotions.”  A student who did not rise to the level required by his teachers would be held back for another try.  Today, in some schools, teachers are not permitted to give even one failing grade.

This summary leads to one conclusion.  Federal and state politicians got into the act and violated a basic law of human activity.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The system seems to have been working fine until money began moving local control higher and higher.  Politicians and judges began to believe that it is not “fair” for some school districts to have more money than others.  So the state legislators said “We’ll fix that by moving money from one district to another. Now that we are controlling who gets what, we have to know that the money is being spent wisely.  The only way we can do that is to have every student in each grade take the same tests. That way we will know what teachers are doing well and teaching the students what we think they ought to know.”

So began the standardized, state-wide tests.  When the bureaucrats in Washington saw how this was placing more authority in their state underlings, they decided they wanted a piece of the pie.  Therein was born federal funds for local school and standardized national testing.

So here’s the perspective.

American education is in the pits and has been there for decades.  In the mid 1990s, I visited with a Polish high school exchange student in Somerville.  She said she was bored to death in the local schools.  They were studying algebra in high school that she had learned in grade school in Poland.

Shortly after that conversation I was having my computer repaired in Austin.  Upon overhearing one of his telephone conversations, I realized that he too was from Poland.  In our following conversation, he stated that he was returning to Poland with his family because the education system here was so inferior to that in his homeland.

The more we engage in standardized tests and curricula, the deeper we sink in ratings.  

Is it time to return to the system working beautifully before the bureaucrats decided to fix it?

Good to see a Coach keep his head and priorities in Order!

Dabo Swinney: All faiths are welcome 
Clemson coach Dabo Swinney has issued his first public statement in response to a complaint filed by The Freedom From Religion Foundation earlier this month charging him with "unconstitutional behavior" at the public university. 

Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said Wednesday he was "a little caught off guard" by a complaint filed by The Freedom From Religion Foundation earlier this month charging him with "unconstitutional behavior" at the public university.

More from ESPN.com

Clemson has been on a defining run under Dabo Swinney. But the Tigers' coach is still trying to capture the state title, writes Chris Low. Story

The FFRF contends that Swinney violated the Constitution and university guidelines on hiring chaplains when he invited James Trapp to become the team chaplain. The organization also took issue with the coach's decision to schedule team devotionals and organize transportation to take coaches and players to "Church Days," and said Swinney gave Trapp access to the entire team for Bible studies.

"We do things the right way and always have," Swinney said on an ACC teleconference Wednesday. "We'll continue to run the program the way we always have.

Read Now 

Bumps in the Road!

The poem was written by a MARINE CORPS Officer 

THE BATTLING BOYS OF BENGHAZI

We're the battling 
boys of Benghazi  
 
No fame, no glory, no 
paparazzi.
Just a fiery death in 
a blazing hell
Defending our country 
we loved so well.
 
It wasn't our job, but 
we answered the  
call,
fought to the 
Consulate and scaled the wall. 
We pulled
twenty 
Countrymen from the jaws of fate 
Led them to safety, 
and stood at the gate. 
 
Just the two of us,
and foes by the score, 
But we stood fast to 
bar the door.
Three calls for 
reinforcement, but all were denied, 
So we fought, and we 
fought, and we fought 'til we died.
 
We gave our all for 
our Uncle
Sam,
But Barack Obama 
didn't give a damn.
Just two dead seals 
who carried the load 
No thanks to 
us.........
we 
were just "Bumps In The 
Road."

The Difference is Perspective between a Strong America and a Weak America. Elections have Consequences!

Red Lines, not really effective unless you are willing to enforce the Terms

IN PERSPECTIVE

 by Bill Neinast

Blame President Obama if you have problems reading this column.  My computer  keyboard is shaking so much that it is difficult to keep my fingers in position.

You must have noticed it too.  The earth is shaking hard enough to jiggle every thing on it.  The President is the cause.

He has drawn another red line in the sand against Iran and warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that there will be consequences if he interferes in Ukraine.

The new threats from this man, just like the earlier ones from him, have the leaders of every nation in the world shaking in their boots.  The shivers are so hard that the whole earth is quivering.  That is the shaking you are feeling in your chairs.

Wait a minute, however.  There is really another cause for that shaking.  That is the rumble of the Russian tanks and other heavy military equipment rolling into Crimea.  Putin must not have heard Obama say there “would be costs” if he moved into Ukraine.

Those vehicles are all waving Russian flags.  Actually, those are not the national flags of Russia.  They are new caricature flags of Putin thumbing his nose at Obama.

This would be laughable if it were not so serious.  This is not a civil war or civil uprising like those in Egypt, Syria, Turkey and other countries in that area.  This is a threat of international war--one country invading another.

In response, Obama is showing his typical ineptness in foreign affairs.  There is, of course, no option for a direct military intervention by the U.S.  An experienced manager of international affairs or even one with a modicum of knowledge of history would react to this situation with something other than warnings of “cost.”

Instead of a 90 minute telephone conversation between Obama and Putin there should have been a highly publicized conversation between Obama and Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.  In this conversation, Obama could have committed the U.S. to strong and continuing support of the new democratic regime in Ukraine.

As proof of that support, a page from WWII history books could have been resurrected.  Obama could have suggested a renewal of the Lend-Lease Program under which the U.S. provided much needed military materiel to Russia and other allies in the war with Germany.  Now, of course, the support would go to Ukraine.

Obama could have made a show of promising Yatsenyuk things like some of our super effective fighter planes, drones, etc.  If there were no Ukrainian pilots capable of handling those modern fighters, a modern day Claire Chennault probably could be found to organize a replica of the Flying Tigers that helped the Chinese battle the Japanese air force before the U.S. entered WWII.

He could have added that he was also ordering the largest U.S. Navy fleet that could navigate the narrow, treacherous Bosporus or Istanbul Straits into the Black Sea.  This fleet was not to threaten direct military action, but would be the symbolic “big stick” of Theodore Roosevelt.  It would also be available for logistical support for the Lend-Lease materiel, hospital and medical assistance, safe haven under the U.S. flag for Ukrainian officials, etc.

Finally, instead of saying that the U.S. was suspending "upcoming participation in preparatory meetings" for the G8 summit scheduled for June in Sochi, Russia, Obama should have said that the U.S. would not participate in the June meeting if Putin invaded Ukraine.  He should have noted that, instead of such a meeting, he would be meeting with our NATO and EURO allies to plan financial aid to replace the Ukrainian treasury looted by Putin’s friend Viktor F. Yanukovych, Ukraine’s humiliated fugitive president now in Russia.

These actions probably would not have any more effect on Putin than Obama’s 90 minute plea with him or the threat of “costs.”  It would, however, have shown a president with the back bone of his predecessors.

Several years ago, pundits and comics humiliated and made fun of President George W. Bush as the Decider.  This was based on Bush’s own statement that he was the Decider, meaning he was the one who made the decisions in the White House.

When will those pundits and comics begin doing the same with Obama by calling him what he is, the Ditherer.  The only decisions he is known to make with speed and finality are the locations and times of his next golf games and which sycophants are to stand behind him while he makes a televised campaign appearance.

His relations with Putin since “hitting the reset button” on Russian relations shortly after taking office and agreeing not to place defense missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic are aptly described by Michigan’s Congressman Mike Rogers, Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.  He says, “Putin is playing chess; Obama is laying marbles.” 

So here’s the perspective.

President Obama’s foreign policy was summarized in a cartoon last week.  The drawing by Gorrell at 1014 Creators.com is entitled “Major Foreign Policy Triumphs of the Obama Administration.”  It is simply a blank sheet of paper.

An Epidemic of Stupidity

by Bill Neinast

IN PERSPECTIVE

Anne Murray”s song “A Little Good News” is a lament about the prevalence of bad news in 1983.  If penned today, the longing for a little good news would be even stronger, because bad news has become even more dominant.  

The little good news that does exist is being pushed further back by the growing evidence that stupidity is contagious. 

The contagion has spread to Texas.  The outbreak of the affliction in the state dominated the national news last week just below the coverage of the tanking of ObamaCare.

The severe case of stupidity in the state is being treated in Aledo. That is the home of the football coach whose team beat the Western Hills team 91-0.  The coach pulled his first string after the first 21 plays, played the last strings of his team for all of the second half, and the game clock was not stopped through much of the 3rd and all of the 4th quarter. 

So what is stupid about that?  It is not the game or the coach.  Stupid comes in as the father of a player on the losing team.  He accused the Aledo coach of bullying.  Even though the coach of the losing team has no complaint with his competitor, the Aledo school system was still required to investigate the complaint.

If Mr. Stupid, the father, is ever identified, there should be no objection to picketing his home with signs reading simply “STUPID.”

On the other hand, maybe there should be more sympathy than signage.  After all, as mentioned above, stupidity is contagious.

The bullying complaint was filed just after the publicity of sheer stupidity in another state.  That is the case of honors high school student Erin Cox, who was captain of her volley ball team in a school near Boston.  She went to rescue a friend who had become wasted at a party and realized that she was too drunk to drive.  So she called her friend to come and take her home.  The sober friend did so in her own car.

The not so brilliant administrators in the school of those two young ladies took disciplinary action against both.  Among the punishments of the girl who kept her drunk friend from being a danger behind a steering wheel is removal from her leadership position on the volley ball team and suspension from five games.

This news was being broadcast over radio stations that are airing the Ad Council’s “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” ads involving the young girl whose arm was broken in an auto accident caused by her friend who is “just buzzed, but not too drunk to drive.”

Are the administrators who disciplined one of their sober star students for “associating” with other students who are drinking, stupid or just caring?

To repeat, stupidity is contagious and is spreading rapidly.  The rare day of news is one in which there is no case of applying rules without exercising one iota of common sense.  

The senseless or stupid actions frequently occur under policies of zero tolerance.  

This altering or closing of the thinking process leads to actions like suspending two students from school for playing with air guns that shot soft plastic balls.  They were not on school grounds but were in front of the home of one of those “dangerous shooters” that the administrators thought was too close to school. 

In another recent case, a high school student was suspended for bringing his fishing tackle box to school.  The box was locked in the trunk of his car in the parking lot, but nestled with the tackle was his fishing knife.  That’s it!!  Another case of zero tolerance.

That case could possibly be fodder for a spirited discussion about what is essential to protect school kids left under the wings of school authorities.  If the conclusion, however, is that there can be no exceptions, even for fingernail clippers in one’s pocket or purse, avoiding use of the word stupid becomes increasingly hard.

Less difficult to place in the stupid column is the case of suspending the two youngsters for playing the ageless boy’s game of cops and robbers and pinging each other with their hands cupped in the form of pistols.  Right beside that one is the suspension of the young boy who ate his pop tart into a shape that looked like a gun to his teacher.

The peak of stupidity, however, is reserved for the federal government.  The brains in Housing and Urban Development spent 2.6 million of your dollars to build a complex of 75 apartments specially designed and equipped for the hearing impaired in Tempe, Arizona. Wait a minute, however, denying residency in those apartments for people who can hear would be discrimination.  As a result, only 18 of the units will be made available for the deaf.  

So here’s the perspective. 

The spreading rash of stupidity can be traced directly to the current passion for political correctness.  Everyone is a winner, no one can be a loser.  If a student gets a failing grade, his or her self esteem may suffer, so do not let anything put anyone else in a losing column.  Treating individuals differently, like recognizing some of their unique abilities, would be unfair and politically incorrect.  So everyone always wins an “A” and “F” and thinking is banished from the dictionary.

This list of idiocy proves the validity of the adage of stupid is as stupid does, meaning that an intelligent person who does stupid things is still stupid. 

Henny Penny or Chicken Little is at it again!

IN PERSPECTIVE

   by Bill Neinast

Henny Penny or Chicken Little is at it again.  This time, however, she has morphed into members of Congress and the TV networks.

Her message has changed too.  The sky is no longer falling but all the guns going off have her clucking that Armageddon is just around the corner.

Members of Congress are getting hours of free TV time bemoaning the spate of mass shootings in this country.  Their agitation, of course, is that the government must do something to prevent this from ever happening again.

Henny Penny did not convince anyone that the sky was falling.  Will Congress have better luck in panicking the country?   

This is not to belittle or treat lightly the tragedies of the Navy Yard, the theater killings in Aurora, Colorado, the Newtown school rampage, the Fort Hood terrorist attack, and similar incidents.  None should have happened.  None should happen again.

The task facing Congress, however, is much  simpler than the one faced by the chicken. Why can the hand wringers not see it?  

All that is needed is a law to prohibit such activity.  Just make it a crime for anyone to kill another person and impose a punishment of life in prison or execution for anyone who violates the law.

What?  You mean there are already laws on the books that do just that?

Well, then pass laws to keep guns out of the hands of individuals who might use them to kill someone.  Requiring back ground checks on anyone who wants to buy a rifle might be the answer.

What?  There are already laws requiring such checks?

Gee, this is harder than it first seemed.  Is there not a single new law that can be dreamed up to stop this slaughter?

What about prohibiting assault weapons with magazine clips that hold more than ten bullets?  That, at least, would prevent incidents like the one at the Navy Yard.

What?  Aaron Alexis did not use an assault weapon?  TV newscasters reported for 48 hours or more that the murder weapon was an assault weapon.

What?  You say he used a 12 gauge shot gun like the one quail and water fowl hunters use in their fall and winter outings?

Well, unless those things are plugged to the three shell limit, they can be loaded with six shells.  So why not ban all weapons that hold more than two or three bullets or shells?

What?  That would ban weapons like the old faithful “six shooters” that helped tame the west?

All of this seems to leave only one solution.  The possession of any weapon, regardless of size, shape, magazine size, and possible use, will have to be prohibited.  This is a law abiding country and every man, woman, and child with access to any prohibited weapon will certainly scamper to turn it in for scrap metal.

OK, it’s time to take my tongue out of my cheek.  The foregoing is a facetious attempt to illustrate the obvious.  Laws to prevent the rash of mass shootings were already in effect when the killings occurred.  In every case, the weapons were either legally acquired or stolen.

Unfortunately, also, the recent mass murders are nothing new in this country.  Grant Duwe’s  2007 book Mass Murder in the United States: A History chronicled 909 cases of mass murder between 1900 and 1999.

There is, however, one major difference between the murders of the 20th and 21st Centuries.  That difference is today’s instantaneous, mass communication, particularly TV coverage.  There is concern by some that flooding the airwaves with the repetition of what was done and how it was done may encourage copy cats or some who want to make a name for themselves.

Aggravating that weeklong repeating of the gruesome pictures and detail of each crime scene is the tendency for the news coverage to be slanted and inaccurate.

An example is the totally inaccurate reporting of the Navy Yards massacre for at least 48 hours.  That slanted reporting was that Alexis entered the facility with an AR 15 and several pistols. 

The facts that finally broke through are that he entered the installation where he worked with a 12 gauge shot gun that he had bought legally a few days previously and acquired the pistols from security guards that he killed or wounded during his shooting spree.

So here’s the perspective.

The loss of the innocent lives mentioned above is hard to understand and accept.  

The grieving surviving family members deserve our sincere sympathy and understanding.

The number of innocent lives lost is those massacres, however, pales in comparison with the number of lives lost in automobile accidents caused on highways every day by drunk driving, speeding, reckless driving, texting, inattention and negligence of every imaginable type.  

There are ample laws on the books to prevent every one of these deaths at the end of a gun, in an automobile, or under other circumstances.

Let’s send Henny Penny back to her cage.  Quit screaming about the lack of protection of life and begin enforcing existing laws.  One more law will not avert a single heinous act being hatched in the minds of sick individuals.

For all Liberals, all History begins Tomorrow AKA the Stupidity of Political Correctness

Bill Neinast

IN PERSPECTIVE

The light flicker of common sense early last week was quickly snuffed out by the end of the week.

The flicker of hope was the announcement by the Suffolk, Virginia, School Board that it was canceling the zero tolerance policy that eliminated the discretion of administrators in some cases of “misconduct.”

This sensible action was a response to the two day suspension of Driver Elementary School second grader Christopher Marshall on May 3. 

Marshall’s misconduct?  He pointed a pencil at a classmate and made machine gun noises.  The classmate, who was also suspended, then pointed his pencil at Marshall and mimicked a rifle shot.   

In my school days, that every day occurrence was called playing war, cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians.  No one was ever hurt and many who played those games went on to become The Greatest Generation in defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

The Virginia incident was just one act of craziness in a string of lunacy. 

In January, an elementary school student was sent home for building a gun out of legos. In February, school administrators in another Virginia district suspended a youngster for bringing a toy gun to school.  In the same month, a Colorado grade schooler was suspended for pretending to throw an imaginary grenade and trying to save the world from evil.

The same thing happened in Massachusetts and Colorado in March. In the latter case, a seven year old was suspended because his teacher thought the breakfast pastry he was eating was shaped to look like a gun.  The boy claimed that he was merely shaping his strawberry pastry into a mountain, but the teacher believed it looked more like a gun and took him to the principal’s office.

Calmer, saner heads began to realize the absurdity of the actions about 18 months ago. The first to return discretion to administrators may be the Philadelphia public school system.  In September, 2011, that district removed the "zero tolerance" policy from its student code of conduct.

Other districts began to follow Philadelphia’s lead and the Suffolk, Virginia, board joining the crowd was that flicker of hope welcomed last week.

On Friday, however, political correctness (PC) stormed right back in.  This was the absurdity of the Paula Dean saga.

Dean was born in Albany, Georgia, in 1947 and now lives in Savannah.  Hearing just two words out of her mouth will convince anyone that she was bred, born, and reared in the South.

Through grit and determination, she built a successful business empire of a TV  cooking show and a restaurant chain and has published a number of cookbooks.

Recently, she was sued by a former restaurant employee for failure to promote or  improper termination.  In giving a deposition in that case, she was asked if she ever used the “N” word.  Without hesitation, she answered, “Yes, some years ago.”

Dean’s acknowledgment that she had used a common word of her day that is now taboo went viral on the internet, and her TV contract is not being renewed because of her “insensitiveness.”

This craziness is due to the PC crowd’s disdain for history.

History is a record of facts.  As some facts are unpleasant, those hooked on PC urge that they be ignored.

This is the history or facts of Dean”s early years that some wish to ignore.  

Humanity was considered to be composed of four races:  Caucasoid (white + south west Asian people), Negroid (black people), Mongoloid (east Asian + indigenous American people), and Australoid (Aboriginal Australian + south Indian people).  

The terms  Black and African-American had not been invented. Both white and black southerners called members of the Negroid race either coloreds or niggers.  With the rare exception of someone saying Negro, there was no other reference recognizable for them.  Colored was normally used in reference to a group or organization, such as the Colored Methodist Church.

The fact that this now maligned word was common in every day conversations  is best illustrated by the American literary classic, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.  The book first published in 1885 is a scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism. 

Nonetheless, and despite the fact that both Huck Finn and the tenor of the book, is anti-racist, because the word nigger is used more than 200 times, the unedited book is anathema in public schools today.  Youngsters must not be capable of learning the real history of the country.

With that history, asking anyone who was reared in the South during Dean’s young years if she ever used the word nigger is like asking anyone six years old or older if he or she ever used the word Mom or Dad.

Even worse than asking the question, is firing or refusing to renew the contract of someone who admits to using that word when it was common among both whites and blacks and is still in use in the black community.

So here’s the perspective.

This is not an argument to accept the use of words of any kind that are considered offensive to others.  It is an argument, however, that punishing someone today for using a word 60+ years ago when it was a common expression is equivalent to suspending grade schoolers for pointing their pencils at each other.

So let the hackles rise over repeating or acknowledging facts, but let common sense reign when someone admits living through those facts.