Voice For Liberty

Author: Bob Weeks

  • On Paul Mirecki

    There are two aspects to the Paul Mirecki matter that I haven’t seen discussed, or discussed only in passing.

    First: What if Professor Mirecki had made condescending and hateful remarks about “protected” or “favored” minority groups such as Jews, blacks, Hispanics, women, even Muslims? I am having trouble imagining what would have happened, but being insensitive to groups like these carries a much harsher penalty than insulting Christians, I am sure.

    Second: Shouldn’t we be concerned that a professor (a department chair no less) at the flagship university of our state, educated at the finest university in the world, writes so poorly? A writer, who seems to know what he (or she) is talking about, one who uses words like “puerile” and “dude” in the same post, analyzed the email on the Wichita Eagle Editorial Blog. (The link is http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2005/11/mythological_do.html#comments.) This writer noticed errors such as, and I quote from the post:

  • omitted apostrophe in “it’s,”
  • a serious agreement error in “THEIR big fat FACE” (should be “faces”)
  • another agreement error “their function” (should be “their functions”)
  • unidiomatic use of “in the light of” (should be “in light of”)

    • Those were some of the errors that I understood. There were more. This writer concluded: “This was not written by a Ph.D. at major university. If it were (note the correct use of the subjunctive mood, found so rarely these days), he should be fired for multiple violations of grammar rules.” That was the point of this writer’s post: that the email was not authentic, that it was not written by a university professor, because no university professor could write so poorly. Later, it was determined that the email was authentic.

    Why are Professor Mirecki and the University of Kansas not embarrassed about the correctness of the grammar and usage in this writing? Why is the whole state of Kansas not concerned about this? Does this send the appropriate message to schoolchildren? For this alone I am ashamed that I graduated from this university. I doubt that I will react positively to its fundraising requests from now on.

  • How government makes us unhappy

    Arthur C. Brooks, associate professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Public Affairs, has a commentary in the December 8, 2005 Wall Street Journal titled “Money Buys Happiness.” Rich people, the author tells us, are much more likely to say they are happy. Although we are becoming richer as a whole, the percent of people saying they are “very happy” is the same today as it was 30 years ago. Some people say it’s the rich having relatively more than others that makes them happy. This excess happiness of the rich being bad, they say, we should use progressive taxation to improve our “moral fiber” by making after-tax incomes less divergent.

    But is this a good idea? “In fact there is another explanation for unchanging happiness levels over time which is rather less supportive of income redistribution. As incomes rise, so generally do levels of government revenues and spending, and there is evidence that these forces work against personal income on the overall level of happiness. For example, a $1,000 increase in per capita income is associated with a one-point decrease in the percentage of Americans saying they are ‘not too happy.’ At the same time, a $1,000 increase in government revenues per capita is associated with a two-point rise in the percentage of Americans saying they are not too happy. In other words, not only can money buy happiness, but it may be that the government can tax it away as well.”

    Mr. Brooks also tells us that donating money and time — that is, the giving of charity — illustrates the link between money and happiness: “Givers of charity earn substantial mental and physical health rewards, even more than do the recipients of charity — empirical evidence that it is indeed more blessed to give than to receive.”

    The actions of government can swamp private charity efforts. In the week after hurricane Katrina, I read that private donations had reached $600 million. I thought that was wonderful, until the next news story told me that Congress had just approved some $60 billion in relief, that being described as merely the down payment on the final spending. Government spending overwhelmed private charity, even though not many seem satisfied with the government response, and there are many stories of effective help supplied privately.

    So when government taxes us to pay for programs that take the rightful property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong, government harms us in two ways: it taxes away happiness and reduces our capacity to engage in charitable activity.

  • More Under Reported Kansas News

    More Under Reported Kansas News
    By Karl Peterjohn, Executive Director Kansas Taxpayers Network

    There are at least two stories that have not received the mainstream news media attention that they deserve in Kansas. Kansans need more information than they have received and the readers should decide whether the following is unreported or just under reported in their daily, mainstream newspaper coverage.

    It was headlines across Kansas when Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison announced his candidacy for Attorney General. Morrison, a liberal Johnson County Republican prior to his announcement, bailed out of the GOP said he was going to run as a Democrat. This announcement and the headline news stories that followed led to analysis pieces discussing the split in the Kansas Republican Party and the “problems” facing Attorney General Phill Kline’s 2006 campaign for reelection.

    What is fascinating in seeing the mainstream Kansas press’ bias was a couple of weeks later when Attorney General Kline announced that 89 of 105 county sheriffs were endorsing him for reelection. Even more remarkable was the fact that 8 of 13 Democrat sheriffs were among the 89.

    There has been very little news media coverage of this announcement in the Kansas press. In a few cases the information has been grudgingly and belatedly provided. There have not been any “analysis” articles discussing the weakness in Morrison’s candidacy when over half of the sheriffs in his new party are already rejecting his candidacy. These endorsements have been filling the internet sites with comments about the 89 endorsements. It is noteworthy that the Kansas City Star did not mention this until over two weeks after the news conference where the Attorney General Kline made this announcement. This belated mention of this story in early December in the Kansas City Star is likely due to the pressure from internet bloggers’ commentaries.

    This reflects more badly upon the news coverage in the Kansas City Star, the Wichita Eagle, and the other daily papers that are trying to skew state news coverage the way the New York Times and Washington Post have been caught skewing national news.

    A second story that has been ignored involves the Texas Supreme Court’s decision on school finance. Texas’ highest court threw out their statewide property tax but specifically told the legislature that additional funds were not a solution needed to make their state’s school finance system pass constitutional requirements.

    This case is similar to the ongoing Kansas litigation in terms of subject but not in terms of remedy or violating the separation of powers provisions. So, the Texas case is not only timely but is also quite relevant since it contrasts with the Kansas court’s $853 million in new spending demands. The Texas court ruling is going to set the stage for that state’s 2006 legislative session. However, this ruling specifically avoids the ongoing spending edicts being issued by the top Kansas court’s school finance edicts. Kansas is awaiting more edicts from our judicial masters.

    That’s a notable judicial difference. Kansans should know that five of the seven members of the Kansas Supreme Court are registered Democrats. Kansas Chief Justice Kay McFarland may complain about the fact that citizens are restless about her court’s edicts and activism on school finance, the death penalty, the court’s support for eminent domain abuses, and other hot button social issues. There are consequences to judicial short-circuiting of the political process to arrive at the politically correct conclusions of our new judicial oligarchs.

    The Kansas Supreme Court needs to be seen as the Sebelius court with her appointments, her campaign manager’s family ties to this court, and the Democratic domination among its members. The contrast, as well as the similarities, between Kansas and Texas in this school finance litigation is an important story that deserves more attention than it has received.

  • More favorite computer and Internet things

    More things I like and use. The first article is here: Favorite Internet and computer things.

    A Notebook Computer

    Until this year I had never owned a notebook computer. But now that I do, I understand and appreciate the benefits of portability. When combined with a wireless network, I can sit anywhere in my house and do any sort of computing that I want. The backyard deck and front porch are possibilities, too. Even if the computer was to be totally deskbound, a notebook computer is still nice for its small size.

    Today you can get serviceable notebook computers for under $1,000, and if you spend a little more than that you can get a really nice computer with a lot of memory and disk storage capacity, and a nice high-resolution screen for easy viewing. For accessories, I recommend a carry case if you’ll be traveling. I find a traditional mouse much easier to use than the touch pads built into most notebook computers, so a mouse is nice to have. At work I have a docking station and a stand for mine, so each morning I “snap” my computer into its stand, and immediately it’s connected to my office network and other devices, including a full-size keyboard and mouse.

    An External Disk Drive

    An external hard disk drive is a device about the size of a book that sits on the desk alongside your desktop or notebook computer. It connects to your computer through USB or fire wire connection. Models available today hold from 100 GB up to 300 GB or maybe even more. A 200 GB model can be purchased for under $200.

    What’s so important about this type of drive? Backup. Backup. Did I say backup? I find that most people in their homes — and many people even in their offices — don’t have a reasonable level of backup protection for their data. An external drive can easily provide that. Combined with the backup software that might be included with the external drive — or by using a program like NTI Shadow that I use — the external drive can make automatic backups. In the case of NTI Shadow, as I save a file to my computer’s regular internal disk drive, the software also saves it to the external drive. I have the Shadow software configured to keep several generations of my files so I can find old versions if I mistakenly mangle a file and don’t realize it right away.

    The portability of the external drive is important, too. You can move it from computer to computer. Or, if you realize something bad is about to happen — say a hurricane or tornado — you can grab it and run.

    In the past backup protection like this was usually provided by tape. Today, hard disk drive storage is so inexpensive, and so much more convenient, that these external drives have largely replaced tape for this type of personal backup.

    PGP and Whole Disk Encryption

    PGP, standing for Pretty Good Privacy, is a method for encrypting data. Whole Disk Encryption is a program sold by PGP Corporation that encrypts all the data on a computer’s disk drive. Many companies have recently implemented a policy that all notebook computers will have their disks encrypted in this way. I have done this to my notebook computer.

    What this means is if that someone were to obtain my computer, they would not be able to use the data stored on it. Even if they removed the disk drive and installed it in another computer, they would not be able to use the data. This gives me a lot of peace of mind. I often read news stories that a computer belonging to an employee of (insert name of well-known corporation) was (stolen, lost, misplaced) and it contained records for thousands of (employees, patients, customers). With whole-disk encryption, I do not have to worry about this embarrassment and liability.

    Picasa

    Picasa is photo management software from Google. It’s free and works very well. I recommend considering it for your digital photos.

    Google Analytics

    In the past month Google made available a service called Google Analytics. This service provides comprehensive analysis of the traffic a web site receives. To use it you install some Google-supplied html code in your web pages. Then you use the Google Analytics web site to view information about the traffic your web site has received. It’s amazing to me that a service this comprehensive can be offered at no charge.

    HTML-kit

    HTML-kit is a free html editing program with many features. I recommend it if you want to write html by hand, the old-fashioned way. It’s available for download at http://www.chami.com/html-kit. Optional registration gives extra features such as a table editor.

    Copernic Desktop Search

    In a recent article Favorite Internet and Computer Things I mentioned how I read many newspapers and magazines in their online versions. I also save many articles using the “Save as ‘Web archive, single file’” feature of Internet Explorer, or sometimes by creating pdf files. (It’s important to save articles, as many publications restrict access to them after some time. For the New York Times, for example, articles disappear behind a “paywall” after seven days.)

    The problem, then, becomes how to search through these articles that I’ve saved. I had been using the generally very good Google Desktop Search, but it didn’t index and search the web archive files. Google Desktop Search does, however, allow other to write plug-ins to extend its features, and there were some available to search web archive files. Try as I might, I couldn’t get them to work.

    I became aware of and downloaded the free Copernic Desktop Search. It, with a little configuration, indexes and searches web archive files very well. It’s free, and works so nicely that I may investigate purchasing one of their personal or professional versions, which look to offer some promising technology for general Internet searching.

    I was able to configure Copernic Desktop search to index all the source code to the computer programs I write, which is a valuable capability.

    You can learn more and download here.

  • Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity

    Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity
    James D. Gwartney, Richard L. Stroup, and Dwight R. Lee
    St. Martin’s Press, 2005

    This is a wonderful book that can teach anyone what is important to know about economics. It teaches the insights that people can use to understand and evaluate the mechanism of our economy and government themselves. It is not a textbook with charts, graphs, and formulas. It requires no special prerequisite from the reader.

    The book contains four parts: The ten key elements of economics, seven major sources of economic progress, economic progress and the role of government, and twelve key elements of practical personal finance.

    This book promotes a restricted role for government. From page 80: “A government can promote social cooperation and enhance its citizens’ economic welfare primarily in two ways: (1) by providing people with protection for their lives, liberties, and properties (as long as the properties and liberties were acquired without force, fraud, or theft) and (2) by supplying a few select goods that have unusual characteristics that make them difficult to provide through markets.” Later, in the section titled “Government is not a corrective device” we read, “When thinking about government, it is important to recognize that there are fundamental differences between political democracy and markets. When a democratic government levies taxes, it does so through coercion. Dissenting minorities have to pay taxes regardless of whether they receive or value the goods that the taxes supply. … There is no such parallel coercive power in the private sector. Private firms can charge a high price, but they cannot force anyone to buy. Indeed private firms must provide customers with value or they will be unable to attract consumers’ dollars.”

    We also learn that when decisions are made through the political process, it is the majority that wins and sets policy, and the minority must yield to the majority. But when decisions are left to the market, each person can choose what they want. If they want something different from what the majority wants, they can get it without also having to pay for what the majority decided on.

    This part of the book also explains how special-interest groups are usually able to get the government to implement laws and policies that benefit the group at the expense of the rest of the country. An example is the sugar tariff, which is very valuable to a small group of people. They focus tremendous energy and money on getting politicians to keep the tariff in place. The average American may not be aware that the sugar tariff costs them an additional $20 per year in the form of higher prices for products containing sugar, and even if they are aware, well, what’s the use of getting worked up over $20? Even the employees of American candy makers who have moved out of America to somewhere where they can buy sugar at world market prices may not know who to blame for the loss of their job.

    This part of a book also contains a section titled “Unless Restrained by Constitutional Rules, Legislators Will Run Budget Deficits and Spend Excessively.” This is certainly the case with the recent Congress, and in the state of Kansas too, except that our state can’t deficit spend. The root of the problem is this: “Legislators like to spend money on programs to please their constituents. They do not like to tax, since taxes impose a visible cost on voters. Debt is an alternative to current taxes; it pushes the visible cost of government into the future.” The solution, we are told, is political modifications such as a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, or supermajority requirements for spending proposals.

    The book concludes with a good section on personal finance. The authors strongly recommend, as I do, that investors use low-cost stock index funds instead of actively managed funds or individual stocks.

    This book is very easy to read, and contains a great deal of valuable information. I strongly recommend it to people just starting to learn about economics, and to people like me who had some college training in economics, but didn’t really learn how economics and its relation to government affects our wealth, prosperity, and freedom. If you couple this book with Thomas Sowell’s two recent books Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy, Revised and Expanded Edition and Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One you will have an excellent understanding of how our economy and government work.

  • Wal-Mart. More hypocrisy.

    Writing from Jackson, Mississippi

    Currently it is quite fashionable to criticize Wal-Mart as the starting point for everything evil about American business. Critics allege that Wal-Mart earns too much profit, pays its employees too little, doesn’t provide its employees health insurance so they have to rely on the government, it exploits low-paid workers in China, and might even be responsible for avian flu, for all I know.

    There is no doubt that Wal-Mart is a powerful force in the economy. The Wall Street Journal on December 3, 2005, wrote “Wal-Mart employs about 1.3 million people, about 1% of the American work force. Its sales, at around $300 billion a year, are equal to 2.5% of U.S. gross domestic product.”

    But bigness doesn’t necessarily translate to profitable: “It is not, however, an especially profitable company. Its net profit margins, at about 3.5% of revenue, are broadly in line with the rest of the retail industry. In fiscal 2004, Microsoft made more money than Wal-Mart on just one-eighth of the sales.”

    Is Wal-Mart bad for poor people? Writing in The Washington Post on November 28, 2005, Sebastian Mallaby wrote: “Wal-Mart’s critics allege that the retailer is bad for poor Americans. This claim is backward: As Jason Furman of New York University puts it, Wal-Mart is ‘a progressive success story.’ Furman advised John ‘Benedict Arnold’ Kerry in the 2004 campaign and has never received any payment from Wal-Mart; he is no corporate apologist. But he points out that Wal-Mart’s discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least $50 billion a year. The savings are possibly five times that much if you count all of Wal-Mart’s products.”

    That’s a lot of money saved for consumers. Critics alledge, however, that Wal-Mart suppresses wages. It does, as it turns out. From The Washington Post article again: “Set against these savings for consumers, Wal-Mart’s alleged suppression of wages appears trivial. Arindrajit Dube of the University of California at Berkeley, a leading Wal-Mart critic, has calculated that the firm has caused a $4.7 billion annual loss of wages for workers in the retail sector.” Compare that with the amount that Wal-Mart has saved consumers. “Indeed, Furman points out that the wage suppression is so small that even its “victims” may be better off. Retail workers may take home less pay, but their purchasing power probably still grows thanks to Wal-Mart’s low prices.”

    As for health benefits, John Tierney in The New York Times on November 29, 2005 writes: “Wal-Mart is often denounced for getting ‘corporate welfare’ because some of its employees rely on Medicaid for health care and on other government aid. But so do some employees at other companies or at government institutions like public schools. Wal-Mart offers health benefits that are generally comparable to what other retailers offer.”

    For those who claim that Wal-Mart receives corporate welfare in any form, I think that readers of this website know my feelings on that. Corporate welfare is wrong.

    From The Wall Street Journal again: “But suppose Wal-Mart did look more like the company its detractors would like it to be, with overpaid workers, union work rules, and correspondingly higher prices on goods. It would not only be a less attractive place to shop, and hence a considerably smaller company. It would drive up the cost of living for the millions who shop there, thus hurting those in the bottom half of the income-distribution tables that Wal-Mart’s critics claim to be speaking for. One might expect this fact to trouble the anti-Wal-Mart forces, except that their agenda is very different from what they profess it to be.”

    John Tierney of The New York Times again: “It’s easy to understand the motives of some of Wal-Mart’s enemies. Local merchants don’t want to match its prices. Labor leaders know that they’ll lose members and dues if unionized stores suffer. But why would anyone who claims to be fighting for social justice be so determined to take money out of the pockets of the poor?”

    Whatever your feelings, Wal-Mart operates in the relatively free marketplace, so it must meet the needs of its customers, or it won’t last very long. From The Wall Street Journal again: “To the extent that mom-and-pop stores are threatened by Wal-Mart, it’s because the same people who supposedly so value their Main Street hardware store find that Wal-Mart’s selection, or prices, or parking lot — something about it — is preferable.”

    That’s the free market — people voting with dollars rather than professed feelings — at work.

  • The Random Walk Guide to Investing

    The Random Walk Guide to Investing: Ten Rules for Financial Success
    Burton G. Malkiel
    W.W. Norton & Company, 2003

    The title of this book derives from the author’s famous book A Random Walk Down Wall Street, published in 1973. That book, and this too, refer to the theory of efficient markets. In the author’s words: “The main premise of the theory is that the stock market is an extraordinarily efficient institution for reflecting without delay any information that arises. When news arises, an army of profit-seeking Wall Street professionals pounces on it rapidly, driving stock prices up or down. As a result, stock prices reflect whatever good or bad news there is about each individual company or about the economy as a whole.”

    News is unpredictable. If not predictable and random, it wouldn’t be news, and today’s prices would reflect that information. So the price of a stock tomorrow is based on unpredictable — and therefore random — events. There is nothing contained in the past prices of a stock that has any value in predicting tomorrow’s price.

    This is quite a powerful theory. It has many implications. For example, have you seen the stock analysts on television known as “technical analysts?” They look at charts of past prices, and spotting things like “support,” “resistance,” or “head and shoulders,” they predict what will happen in the future. But according to the efficient markets theory, there is not a single thing in those charts that is useful in predicting future prices.

    It also means that in the long run, there is no hope of beating the market as a whole. That means that a huge chunk of the financial services industry is engaged in selling services that don’t work in the long run or even the short run, and, in fact, are harmful to the average person.

    Consider “actively managed” mutual funds. These are funds where the managers, by using various strategies, attempt to earn large returns. These managers are among the smartest people on Wall Street. Yet each year about 80% fail to “beat the market,” which is to say they didn’t perform as well as broad market indexes such as the S&P 500 index. In fact, for the 10 years ending December 31, 2002, the S&P 500 index beat the average equity mutual fund by 2.09%, and for the 20 years before the same date, by 2.42%.

    Of course, each year there are some funds that do very well, and some that are able to maintain high performance for a few years in a row. These are the funds that everyone talks about, and many people buy. But on page 129 there is a sobering table of figures. It shows the 20 best-performing funds (out of the 851 funds with more than $100 million in assets) from 1997 to 1999. These funds averaged annual returns of 44% to 66% during those years. Their managers were hailed as geniuses and treated as celebrities.

    The next columns of the table report the funds’ rank for the period 2000-2002. The highest rated of these was at position 500 (out of 851 funds). Most were ranked worse than 750, and there are quite a few ranked worse than 830. Their returns averaged negative 32% per year. (In three years at -32% per year, $100 turns into $31.) Patterns like this were found in earlier time periods, too.

    We might think that we would be smart enough to get out of these high-flying funds as they start to tumble. But the managers of most of these funds have wide latitude as to the strategies they can use, and they weren’t smart enough to switch to some other investment. How can the average person expect to know more than these managers?

    Some people believe that they can do well by purchasing last year’s best funds. Professor Malkiel reports on a study where he took the funds with best recent performance, and these portfolios produced below-average returns. He also took Morningstar’s best-rated funds, and found that a portfolio of them produced much lower returns than an index fund. From 1990 to 2002, the Morningstar best rated funds grew in value by about 110% (judging from a graph), while the Wilshire 5,000 Index grew by about 300%. Over a lifetime of investing, that’s the difference in being relieved there’s Social Security and being independently wealthy.

    One of the reasons why actively-managed funds fail to beat the market in the long run is that the actively-managed funds have large costs. Index funds are very inexpensive to operate. Costs like this are very important in investing. Small differences, even just 1% per year, make a lot of difference when subjected to compounding over a lifetime. That’s why Malkiel strongly recommends reducing the costs of investing. Still, many people purchase “load” funds where perhaps as much as 6% of your investment goes to sales charges, and funds that have large ongoing management fees to pay every year (including marketing fees). Now there are “wrap” accounts that many people are lured into using, where the investor pays an annual fee, usually 1% to 3%, for the services of a professional money manager. I recently had experience with someone who had a wrap account from a very large investment company, one whose advertisements on television are commonplace. The advisor charged 1.5% per year, and the investor’s portfolio consisted of a variety of mutual funds, all actively managed, and all of which had high sales charges and high annual fees. This investor had absolutely no hope of earning anything near what an index fund would return.

    It’s no surprise that Malkiel is not well-liked by Wall Street and investment professionals, as the efficient market theory tells us there’s no way to beat the market in the long run. Yet a huge industry tries to sell us products we are led to believe will beat the market. As the advisor I mentioned a moment ago said to me in an effort to get my business after I told him I was a self-directed investor, “You pay a little more, and you earn a lot more.” He may even believe that. The sad fact is that most people have no idea how well their investments are performing. Calculating returns, especially when investment is made periodically, is difficult. Do you remember the Beardstown Ladies, an investment club that produced fabulous reported returns for several years running? It turned out that their calculations treated their contributions as though they were returns that their investments earned. Mistakes like that are easy to make. A few years ago a well-known website had a portfolio-tracking service that I used for a while to track the returns of my 401(k) plan. I thought I was doing really well, until I realized that it treated my twice-monthly contributions as through they were investment returns. I inquired about this, but the service admitted no error. Since then, they have discontinued this “service.”

    The first chapter of this book, titled “Fire Your Investment Advisor,” is quite blunt about its topic. If people are willing to study a little, perhaps by reading a short book like this, and then to trust themselves, I agree. Otherwise, you may want to use the services of an investment professional. In this case, people would do well to use a fee-based planner instead of one who is paid by sales commissions or annual fees.

    The next two chapters explain the four investment categories (cash, bonds, stocks, and real estate), and the important relationship between risk and returns.

    Then the rules start: Start saving and investing now, in order to take advantage of the powerful effect of compounding over time. (“The most powerful force in the universe,” Einstein reportedly said.) Save and invest regularly. Have proper insurance and cash reserves. Invest with an eye towards minimizing taxes. Allocate assets amongst the four categories according to your time horizon and your capacity and temperament towards risk. Diversify appropriately. Bow to the wisdom of the market (this is where the efficient market theory is important). Invest in index funds. Don’t be your own worst enemy: avoid stupid investor tricks.

    This is a valuable book for anyone who is interested in their financial security. Please don’t think that because you may not have a lot of money to invest that it isn’t important for you to take investing seriously. The less money you have, the more important it is to start saving and investing now, and to invest wisely. This book will show you how.

  • Every state left behind

    In Kansas, according to Standard & Poor’s Statewide Education Insights, about 60% to 70% of students are proficient in reading, as evaluated by the Kansas state reading test. But on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, only 33% to 35% of Kansas students are proficient. A similar discrepancy exists in the math test scores.

    Diane Ravitch, in the New York Times on November 7, 2005, writes “Idaho claims that 90 percent of its fourth-grade students are proficient in mathematics, but on the federal test only 41 percent reached the Education Department’s standard of proficiency. Similarly, New York reports that nearly 85 percent of its fourth graders meet state standards in mathematics, yet only 36 percent tested as proficient on the national assessment. North Carolina boasts an impressive 92 percent pass rate on the state test, but only 40 percent meet the federal standard.” So this problem is not isolated to Kansas. “Basically, the states have embraced low standards and grade inflation.”

    Ms. Ravitch tells us that the reasons for the huge gaps in proficiency rates include the fact that local education officials and politicians want to present good results, so that we will believe our local officials are doing a good job and that the ever-increasing funds sent to schools are wisely spent. The federal testing program hasn’t faced these pressures.

    What is the danger of these local tests that show fairly good results, when in fact the picture is quite bleak? “The price of this local watering-down is clear. Our fourth-grade students generally do well when compared with their peers in other nations, but eighth-grade students are only average globally, and 12th graders score near the bottom in comparison with students in many European and Asian nations. Even our students who have taken advanced courses in mathematics and physics perform poorly relative to their peers on international tests.”

    Further: “Last month, the National Academy of Sciences released a report warning that our nation’s ‘strategic and economic security,’ as well as our leadership in the development of new technologies, is at risk unless we invest heavily in our human capital; that is, the education of our people. The academy report made clear that many young Americans do not know enough about science, technology or mathematics to understand or contribute to the evolving knowledge-based society.”

    Having produced results like these, the education establishment in Kansas insists on keeping their monopoly on education tax dollars and the minds of young Kansans. We need to rethink the wisdom of this.

  • Book review: Class Warfare

    Class Warfare
    Besieged Schools, Bewildered Parents, Betrayed Kids and the Attack on Excellence
    J. Martin Rochester
    Encounter Books 2002

    In Lake Wobegon, “every child is above average,” Garrison Keillor says. In my personal experience, I can’t think of any parents I know who don’t have children who are not gifted or doing much better than average. After learning about the theory of Multiple Intelligences in chapter four of this book, I now know why all children are gifted.

    Multiple Intelligences is a theory, just over 20 years old, that says that besides the traditional areas of intelligence — linguistic and logical-mathematical — there are these additional areas to consider: spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. To this list might soon be added naturalist intelligence, and maybe others.

    On the surface, this seems reasonable. Not everyone is good at the same things. We generally believe that besides the three Rs, it is also good to learn about physical fitness, the arts, and music. What MI does, however, is to treat all abilities as equal. If a child is not good at writing or math, they may possess some other of these intelligences, and that’s just as good.

    MI leads to teaching exercises where, for example, to help learn punctuation symbols, the students might form punctuation marks with their bodies. That’s using bodily-kinesthetic intelligence. Or students might assign an animal sound to each symbol, thereby using naturalist intelligence. If the only way that some students might learn the punctuation symbols is to engage in exercises like these, I can see how that would be good. But with MI, all students must do these things, even if they already understand.

    As an example, the author’s son, for studies in Greek mythology, was assigned a project where he was to “produce a cut-and-paste collage that consisted of pictures, newspaper clippings, or any other items they could cull from newspaper sources that contained references to ancient Greek culture and showed the relevance of that culture to today’s society.” This was the “capstone project in a high school class whose subject was English and which was an honors class no less.” Evidently exercises like these have replaced the written essay or term paper, even for motivated students.

    Other examples: “Choose a chemical element and write two paragraphs telling why it is your favorite. Be creative.” “For homework in the science class, students created collages and drew pictures of scientists.” “… the Clayton High School English teacher who had students produce bright yellow Cliff Notes covers and the CHS history teacher who had students draw a picture of any structure in their neighborhood that had meaning for them” “… required her students to do a project expressing their feelings about prejudice, using any ‘communication’ medium they wanted. This was classical progressive education — note the emphasis on personal affective, emotive learning; the social, ideological agenda of combating prejudice; and the child-centered license to express oneself even if it is not really using language as such.”

    At a time when American students are being outpaced in math and science by students in other countries, when many young people have difficulty composing a coherent sentence, when large numbers of college students must complete remedial work in writing and math before taking regular college courses, this is the present and future of American K-12 education.

    I learned a lot from this book, although I did not read every page of it due to time constraints.

    Does the theory of Multiple Intelligences influence Wichita public schools? It appears that it does. Quite a few schools mention it on their websites. Here is a portion of the Mission/Vision statement from Wichita’s McCollom Elementary School: “Staff will enhance students’ performance using research-based instructional strategies that include multiple intelligences, hands-on and real world experiences.”

    Supplementary reading: Reframing the Mind.

    A joke, the source of which I do not know:

    A Logger Sells a Truckload of Lumber

    1960: “A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?”

    1970 (traditional math): “A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price; in other words, $80. What is his profit?”

    1970 (new math): “A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100, and each element is worth $1. Make one hundred dots representing the elements of the set M. The set C of the costs of production contains 20 fewer points than set M. Represent the set C as a subset of M, and answer the following question: What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?”

    1980: “A logger sells a truckload of wood for $100. His cost of production is $80, and his profit is $20. Your assignment: underline the number 20.”

    1990: “By cutting down beautiful forest trees, a logger makes $20. What do you think of this way of making a living? (Topic for class participation: How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?)”