Childhood and children

Never Mind “Are American Students Prepared for College?”…Are They Prepared For Life?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Well, no.

And framing the problem as one of college preparedness doesn’t help.

Dr. Steven Mintz, Professor Emeritus at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, (aka”The Ethics Sage”,””) posted a depressing essay about the decline of US ACT scores on his blog. He begins, “By now you’ve probably heard that ACT test scores for the class of 2023 were the worst in at least 32 years.” Actually I hadn’t heard, but it’s not surprising: the U.S. education system, as I’m sick of writing and you must be sick of reading, has rotted through. That chart above is one of several alarming graphics the professor’s article features, supposedly listing the top mentioned goals “when I grow up” for Chinese, British and U.S. students.

Unlike the Sage, I don’t think wanting to be an astronaut is a lot more realistic or admirable than wanting to be a “YouTuber”—in fact, I think the chart shows that Chinese students have been pretty much sucked into the same cultural muck that ours have. “When I was a lad,” kids wanted to be lawyers, doctors, and President of the United States. Twenty years ago, my son wanted to be exactly what he is today, an auto mechanic. Today’s culture doesn’t encourage or respect learning, knowledge, or quality thinking. The emphasis is on empty credentials that are believed to lead to fame, wealth and power, and among those credentials are degrees, which Mintz, as an old school academic, naively reveres as the equivalent of education, intellectual enrichment, and broadening perspectives. For most graduates, they haven’t signified those for a long, long time.

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So: When Does The Supreme Court Get Its Apology From The Dobbs Hysterics?

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Statistics based on research by the Guttmacher Institute seem to indicate that legal abortions increased slightly in the United States in the first six months of 2023 compared with 2020. The assumption is that states with more permissive abortion laws absorbed patients traveling from states with more restrictive laws, and access to abortion pills increased.

Thus the feminist and progressive narrative that Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last year created a “Handmaiden’s Tale” hellscape where women were compelled to give birth to children they did not want was, as those inclined to be rational realized, inflammatory propaganda designed to support unhinged attacks on the six Justices in the Dobbs majority. The lie also proved to be a useful Democratic Party election weapon.

As Justice Alito stated clearly in his opinion, the ruling over-turning Roe v. Wade was not a pro- or anti-abortion ruling, but a necessary decision to uphold core Constitutional principles while striking down a badly reasoned precedent. The Constitution does not include a right to abortion, and the Founders would have been horrified at the very thought. Nor is abortion a proper matter for a national law, other than a Constitutional amendment.

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Ethicist’s Diary: A Father Encounters His Son’s Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Yesterday was my son’s birthday (also the anniversary of the Boston Red Sox finally winning the World Series after 86 years, but that’s just why I can remember my son’s birthday), but he gave me the best present: a window into his ethics and values.

I had barely seen Grant for several months, despite the fact that he has an apartment in the lower levels of our home; we’ve both been busy. When he came upstairs last night to get our birthday greetings and a few presents, he apologized for not being in closer touch, explaining that he had been promoted to a management position at the dealer where he is an auto tech.

He said that he had long been frustrated at the inefficiency and mismanagement there, and had set up a meeting with the vice-president to quit. They’ve invested a lot of training in Grant, and the exec said that they could pay him more money. Grant told his superior that his issue wasn’t the money, that his primary concern wasn’t what he was paid but what he could accomplish. (Uh-oh..ominous signs of paternal influence there…) He laid out the aspects of the operation that he found frustrating and unconscionable, and, Grant said, he “wasn’t very nice about it.” Then he described what needed to be done, and that he had suggested many of these solutions without seeing any action.

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Oregon Again Proves You Always Hurt The One You Love…

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

…at least you do if wokeness has eaten your brains and you have the common sense of a shallot. This is just tragic, nauseating news. (Spike Jone’s rendition of the 40’s hit, in contrast still makes me laugh, and that’s why I need to hear it right now…)

The Oregon Board of Education decided unanimously—unanimously!—that high school students won’t need to demonstrate basic skills in reading, writing or math to graduate from high school until at least 2029. The state instituted the elimination of the basic graduation requirements in 2020. The pandemic, you know. It justified wrecking everything, and the more infected with the Great Stupid a state is, the worse its carnage.

Many Oregonians submitted public comments insisting the standards should be reinstated, arguing that pausing the requirement devalues an Oregon diploma. 1) Gee, ya think??? 2) NONONONONO. The reason for an education is not “the value of a diploma,” but the value of being educated.

ARRGGH. The delusion that the credential is what matters and not what the credential should signify is how we end up with policies like this.

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I’m Shocked…SHOCKED!… To Learn That DEI Policies Harm Black And Hispanic Students!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Back when the Great Stupid was really picking up steam in 2020, the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), the second largest school district in California with over 106,000 students, announced that it would be overhauling how students will be evaluated as part of a larger “a larger effort to combat racism.” The school board voted unanimously to eliminate yearly grade averages. Meeting deadlines for assignments and classroom behavior would not affect academic grades. The district decided to de-emphasize discipline and penalties for cheating.

This crack-brain approach to education, essentially rejecting everything that had been learned over centuries about how students learn, was justified as way to eliminate the accumulated deficits of “systemic racism.” Soon “Diversity Equity Inclusion” budgets exploded and almost every school system jumped on board the latest fad. This was reparations, not education; no respectable research supported the theory that holding minority kids to lesser standards would help them succeed, but never mind: Fact Don’t Matter to ideologues and race-hustlers.

Now come Jay P. Greene and Madison Marino of the Heritage Foundation’s Center on Education Policy with a study suggesting that black and Hispanic students had “significantly greater learning loss during the pandemic in the school guided by diversity officers than those schooled in districts without one.” Minority students lost more ground than their white classmates, especially in math, the researchers found. “Racial achievement gaps went from bad to worse in these districts.” Of course they did: having an official directing policy who insists that black and Hispanic students not be held to the same standards of behavior or academic achievement as other students—must combat that structural racism!—was guaranteed to undermine minority student success.

The news gets worse: nearly half of the school districts with at least 15,000 students employ a chief diversity or equity officer, and the number is 89% for districts with more than 100,000 students, the study found.

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ProPublica (aka. Progressives) Believe That Foster Parents Should Not Be Able To Legally Intervene To Stop Birth Parents From Regaining Custody Of Children Removed From Their Care. I Don’t.

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I’ll go farther than that. I don’t believe that parents who have had children removed from their care for neglect and being unfit parents should ever be allowed to regain custody, if the original removal was justified.

To consider and discuss the ethical issue, read this article, ProPublica’s “When Foster Parents Don’t Want to Give Back the Baby: In many states, adoption lawyers are pushing a new legal strategy that forces biological parents to compete for custody of their children.” It’s too long and detailed for me to summarize fairly, and make no mistake, it’s an excellent overview of the ethical dilemmas and conflicts involved even if the author’s bias is clear.

The author focuses on a particular conflict between birth parents and foster parents in Colorado while also revealing the different approaches taken by various states. I learned a lot: for example, having adopted our son Grant as an infant in Russia in 1995, I exhaled a long “whew!” after reading this:

“…It has become harder and harder to adopt a child, especially an infant, in the United States. Adoptions from abroad plummeted from 23,000 in 2004 to 1,500 last year, largely owing to stricter policies in Asia and elsewhere, and to a 2008 Hague Convention treaty designed to encourage adoptions within the country of origin and to reduce child trafficking. Domestically, as the stigma of single motherhood continues to wane, fewer young moms are voluntarily giving up their babies, and private adoption has, as a result, turned into an expensive waiting game. Fostering to adopt is now Plan C, but it, too, can be a long process, because the law requires that nearly all birth parents be given a chance before their rights are terminated. Intervening has emerged as a way for aspiring adopters to move things along and have more of a say in whether the birth family should be reunified.”

The article attempts to focus on what the author apparently believes is an especially sympathetic couple (above) trying to regain custody of a child placed in a foster home:

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Comment Of The Day: “Ethics Quiz: The Consequences For Endorsing Terrorism”

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I am way, WAY behind in posting deserving Comments of the Day, and I apologize to all, both the authors of these excellent posts and EA readers who have not had the opportunity to read them. I’m going to try to post them in chronological order, oldest first, but don’t hold me to that: I have a sinking feeling that this COTD by Sarah B. came after one or more that I intended to post last week. Her comment (I hope I’m not misgendering her!) is actually one of many superb ones on this Ethics Quiz, including those by Michael R, Curmie, and Chris Marschner, among others. I highly recommend reading the entire exchange.

Now here is Sarah B.’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quiz: The Consequences For Endorsing Terrorism”:

***

Actions have consequences. Speech has consequences. We can talk all we like about the Freedom of Speech (or Religion or Right to Assemble, etc), but while the government cannot punish us for our speech, our fellow citizens can and will make judgements about us despite that.

There needs to be some determination of how to decide what to do with adults who proclaim stupid things in an institute of learning while respecting the value of free speech. I propose that for professors, lecturers, administrators, and those in positions of power,they required to give a two hour session on their position, open to all. The first 45 or so minutes would be reserved for what they have to say, with the remaining time being devoted to questions A moderator (or perhaps two of opposing positions) should be present to step in when the speaker does not answer a question. Ex. “Why do you believe that is is fair to intentionally target and behead young children and the elderly non-combatants?” “Well, Israel doesn’t belong there so it doesn’t matter.” Moderators can point out that this is not an answer and require a real answer to the tough questions before continuing. On the other hand, “Does this mean you deny the Moon Landing?” would be thrown out by the moderator as completely stupid. Of course, anyone, teacher or student, who tries the heckler’s veto or shouts down another person should be immediately escorted out. Professors who support the heckler’s veto should be immediately terminated.

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Ethics Dunce: The California State Government, But You Knew That.

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed Senate Bill 673 into law. The measure will create a missing child alert system for black children only. This is the guy who wants to be President.

NBC News reports, “The law, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, will allow the California Highway Patrol to activate the alert upon request from local law enforcement when a Black youth goes missing in the area.The Ebony Alert will utilize electronic highway signs and encourage use of radio, TV, social media and other systems to spread information about the missing persons’ alert. The Ebony Alert will be used for missing Black people aged 12 to 25.”

If a white child is missing, well, too bad, honky’s got their own alert. “California is taking bold and needed action to locate missing black children and black women in California,” Democratic state Sen. Steven Bradford said in a press release. “Our black children and young women are disproportionately represented on the lists of missing persons. This is heartbreaking and painful for so many families and a public crisis for our entire state.”

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How Can Parents Be Expected To Trust Schools And Teachers When This Could Happen?

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I’m not referring to the sexual predator teachers who deflower boys, or the LGBTQ indoctrinaters who see it as their mission to initiate kids into the joys of alternate sexuality, or the social justice warriors who teach kids to hate whites, the Founders, and the United States of America, or even the teachers whose intellectual skills, judgment and knowledge base better qualify them for work at a bait shop than in a Kindergarten-12 school.

No, the topic today is the Miami Springs math teacher employed by The Academy of Innovative Education, a charter school, who showed his fourth grade class of 9-year olds “Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey,” the trailer for which you can see above, if you dare.

You know. Math.

The so far unnamed teacher showed the class about 30 minutes of the horror movie. His defense was that the class chose it, probably misled by its title. I suppose he also would have shown the kids “Piranha 3DD” or “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” if they asked for those films.

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Confronting My Biases, Episode 3: Illiterate People

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

An infuriating story yesterday reminded me of a long standing bias, which is in truth not my greatest problem with the tragedy that occurred in Oregon, Ohio.

Police responded to a call about a 4-year-old boy outside, apparently alone except for a dog. When they they found the child and returned him and the dog back to their home, the police learned that the mother had been asleep. They reminded her of “safety measures that need to be taken to ensure the well-being of her children,” the news accounts say.

Somehow, I don’t think this is sufficient when a mother allows a toddler to wander out of the house unmonitored. Good dog, though…

For some reason, the mother never mentioned to the officers that her younger son, 2-year-old Marcus Hall, had also apparently wandered off. Why wouldn’t she do that? Was she afraid of getting in trouble, as she should have? Did she forget she had two boys? Was she stoned?

About 45 minutes later, sleepy mom called 911 to report that Marcus was missing. Again officers arrived, began a search, and found the little boy dead—drowned— in a neighbor’s above-ground pool directly behind the Hall family’s property. The pool was not fully enclosed. “Police noted that Marcus’ unidentified 4-year-old brother was unharmed in the incident,” the news story says.

That’s nice. I wonder for how long he’ll remain unharmed.

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