incompetence

Let’s Play “Spot the Ten Outrages!” (Public School Version)

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Here we have a video, taken with a North Carolina high school (North Rowan High School) student’s cell phone during class. (yes, it just points at the ceiling. It’s the audio that matters):

Now lets’s play…SPOT THE OUTRAGE!

(There are ten!)

OUTRAGE 1: Does this sound like a class in session to you? Students are laughing and joking, barely paying attention. What kind of learning can occur in such a a chaotic environment? Do parents realize this is what school is like today?

Is the fact that a student is recording the class without the teacher’s consent an ethical breach? Once I would be tempted to answer yes: recording without permission is always unfair and a Golden Rule violation unless there are special circumstances. However, special circumstances were present, and may be present in more classrooms than our fragile sanity will permit us to accept. I now think perhaps all public school classrooms should be videotaped, all the time.Then we would quickly know the extent of our education catastrophe, as horrifying as that would be.

OUTRAGE 2: The teacher of the social studies class presents as the“fact of the day” the Washington Post sliming of Mitt Romney based on his mistreatment of a fellow student in his prep school days. In itself, this is not an inappropriate topic for discussion by a high school class, as the story raises many fascinating issues. How much do the students feel their conduct during their tender years should count against their character 50 years hence? Is it relevant to the presidential election in any way? How have attitudes toward “sissies,” gays and less-than masculine boys changed since the early Sixties, if at all? How have attitudes toward and awareness of homosexuality? What does this story say about the objectivity of the  press? Is it fair? None of these legitimate and discussion-worthy questions, however, seemed to occur to the teacher, who was simply trying to show that “Romney was a bully in high school” in a clumsy and transparent effort to indoctrinate her students in her own political views. Continue reading →

Pay Attention, Children! Doing the Right Thing Isn’t Right If It Violates A Stupid Rule!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Then, after this relaxing break, he returned to his supervisor position in Wayne County…

It appears that no-tolerance policies in the schools may not be alienating students after all. Some of them, at least in Michigan, are learning the no-tolerance way and applying it in the workplace.

Not John Chevilott, though: he just doesn’t get it, probably because when he went to school, they didn’t have no-tolerance policies. A veteran public-works employee in Wayne County, Michigan, he was mowing grass in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood when he found a loaded revolver. He called the police and waited for them to  pick up the gun, but they didn’t appear. Chevilott finished the job and took the weapon to the police after work. The gun had been stolen in 2005, records showed, and police told him that he had handled the situation well.

Wayne County, however, has a no-tolerance policy forbidding employees from possessing  weapons on work property. After all, there’s no reason for a worker to have a gun, except in the extraordinary situation where one is just hanging around, loaded, and the worker picks it up. But how often would that happen? It’s no wonder nothing about that situation was written into the rule, and rules, as they say in the schools—the schools where kids chew their pizzas into the shape of pistols and get suspended, the schools where kids disarm fellow students of knives and are expelled, and the schools where four-year-old boys kiss girls and get arrested for sexual assault—“rules are rules!”

John Chevilott, who had been on the job 23 years and scheduled to retire in two days, was fired for violating the policy, even though his supervisors understood that the gun wasn’t his, that he had turned it into police, that it was loaded, that it was as much a threat to public safety lying in the grass as any weapon brought to work by an employee, and that he had “possessed it” only to get it into the hands of law enforcement officials.  To be fair, they also suspended Chevilott’s foreman, who knew about the incident, for not reporting the infraction. Continue reading →

A Dinosaur Brain Fart From Fox

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“All right, who farted?”

Here’s a rule that I would like to propose: if a news outlet can’t find a reporter who has the education and analytical ability to comprehend a complex concept, then the story shouldn’t be covered at all. Better no coverage than misleading coverage. What do you think?

Of course, this would mean that about half of all news stories wouldn’t be covered, since if journalists had the ability to understand those topics, they would have entered professions other than journalism.

Fox News shocked the world this week by announcing that a new study had shown the dinosaurs farted themselves out of existence: Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Eric Wemple

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Talk about ethics blindness.

Find that loose screw, Eric, and then tell Spike where it is...

On his Washington Post blog, Eric Wemple gushes like Old Faithful about sweet, contrite, courageous Spike Lee, who appropriately apologized (and paid an undisclosed sum) to the Florida couple whose address he had accidentally tweeted to help get George Zimmerman harassed, attacked or killed—that being his clear intent by trying to send Zimmerman’s address to the world, or more specifically, the New Black Panthers’ vigilantes. Wemple was blown away by Spike’s willingness to accept responsibility for his boneheadedness and admit he was wrong:

“Yet his reaction to the mishap rehabilitates the good name of an honest apology. Lee used no qualifiers, no minimizers, no excuses — and no ‘I am sorry if anyone took offense to my actions.’ Just plain regret and shame. Score a victory for the apology.”

So “I’m sorry I nearly got you killed; honest, I was trying to get that other guy killed!” is an impressive apology, is it? Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz (Trayvon Martin Ethics Train Wreck Edition): Spike Lee’s Incompetent Vigilantism

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

"Doh the Right Thing"??

When we left film director Spike Lee, he had entered Ethics Dunce Valhalla on board the Trayvon Martin Ethics Train Wreck Express for assisting vigilante efforts against Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman by tweeting the man’s address to his 240,000+ Twitter followers.

Now we learn that Lee tweeted the wrong address!

The residence is actually the home of David McClain, 72, and his wife Elaine, 70.  The couple has reportedly fled their home for the safety of a hotel room after being harassed by reporters, threatening mail and menacing  posts by Twitter and Facebook users. The woman has another son named William George Zimmerman, who lived with her in 1995 and still lives in Central Florida. He is no relation to the George Zimmerman involved in the shooting. Lee has removed the tweet the erroneous address, but it continues to be sent around by others, including the California man who sent the address to Lee in the first place.

This isn’t an especially difficult quiz, but I can’t resist the ironic conundrum of the bungled unethical act. So your Ethics Quiz for today is this:

Does the fact that Spike Lee tweeted the wrong address for George Zimmerman to assist those who planned vigilante action against him make his conduct more ethical, less ethical, or no difference at all? Continue reading →

Our Untrusted Professions: Another One Bites The Dust…Or Should.

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Come to think of it, Mr. Gower would have put poison in a boy's medicine if it hadn't been for George Bailey...

America’s trust crisis, which has seen virtually all its institutions decline precipitously in public trust, hasn’t left the professions unscathed. Far from it: Gallups’ annual poll of the public’s regard for the professions, the most recent of which was released last December, showed accountants trusted by only 43% of the public (abysmal for a profession whose only mission is to accurately determine the truth and to relay it—funeral directors are trusted more), journalists at just 26% (which is more than they deserve), bankers at 25%, lawyers at an insulting 19% (for a profession that includes honesty as a core ethical requirement), business executives slightly less at 18% (but no lower than those champions of the 99%, labor leaders, also at 18%). Stockbrokers, who figure to have fallen even lower after Greg Smith’s anti-Goldman Sachs diatribe, came in at a “can’t be trusted to deliver the water bill payment” 12%, and then we’re really in the pits of utter distrust, with lobbyists, used car salesmen, and members of Congress, all tied for last place at 7%.

In contrast, one of the professions that always is on top of the list or near it is pharmacists. In 2011, the friendly neighborhood druggist scored a trust rate of 73%, better than doctors and second only to the perennial champs of the last decade, nurses.

Well, all that trust in pharmacists appears to be misplaced. Continue reading →

An Unreadable Traffic Sign Is A Dangerous Traffic Sign Is An Unethical Traffic Sign

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

 

Question: What does this speed limit sign tell us about the people who erected it?

Answer: They are reckless. They are negligent. They are lazy. They are careless. They are dim-witted. They are irresponsible. They are incompetent.

As drivers in Oakland County’s White Lake District (outside Detroit) complain that it is literally impossible to figure out what the speed limit is while driving past the sign above, various school officials and others are giving reasons for why the sign is so complicated. There are many schools in the area. An electronic sign is expensive. The devil made them do it.

No.

There is only one reason: they are utter incompetents. If a road sign can’t be read by drivers, than it takes the IQ of a slug to conclude that there is no point in erecting it, and in fact, it is dangerous to put it up. A sign that can’t convey information isn’t a sign, it’s a menace. Or pop art. Or a monument to stupidity, but it isn’t a road sign. That White Lake installed an unreadable road sign that was supposed to protect school children just puts the unethical frosting on the irresponsible cake.

Unbelievable.

Comment of the Day: “The Priorities of U.S. Higher Education Defy Understanding”

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

When the topic on Ethics Alarms is education, Michael frequently scores a Comment of the Day, and he did it again following the post on the University of Maryland spending a fortune on its president’s residence. Here is his effort to help us understand the conduct discussed in The Priorities of U.S. Higher Education Defy Understanding. And I’ll have a closing comment at the end.

“I have asked these questions about what is driving up college costs. Here is what I have found: Continue reading →

The Priorities of U.S. Higher Education Defy Understanding

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

The next president of the University of Maryland, apparently. Wait---that was the previous post!

The out-of-control costs of higher education are one of many systemic problems that plague America, and it is one that I confess baffles me completely. I do not understand why tuition is so high and continues to climb. I do not understand why universities pay professors huge salaries for minimal teaching duties, and I don’t see what expensive buildings and beautiful surroundings have to do with education. I don’t understand why students pay outrageous sums to be educated then take trivial and absurd courses, like the now-cancelled Columbia University undergraduate course that was to consist of hanging out with the Occupy Wall Street gang to endear oneself with course’s OWS-loving professor.

Most of all, I do not understand the persistence of the myth that a college education can, does, or should qualify a graduate for good job, when it appears that a large percentage of students, if not a majority, leave the campus unable to write, think, or name the men on Mount Rushmore. Decades ago, as an administrator at major law school, I was shocked to discover that the school held remedial reading and wring courses for some first year students, one of them a graduate of Yale.  Do you think the problem has improved since then? A college education in the U.S. is a poor and declining product that is over-priced and over-hyped, and I don’t understand why people are willing to go into debt to purchase it, and why the manufacturers haven’t cut costs, improved the product, and lowered the price.

Well, maybe I do understand. Like so many other problems, the reason for this one may be no more mysterious than the fact that those in charge are irresponsible, incompetent, and unaccountable.

This week brought the news that crews will begin demolishing the president’s house at the University of Maryland, and begin construction of a new 14,000-square-foot mansion that will cost the school at least  $7.2 million. The palatial new digs for Maryland U’s president is being built in the midst of the university’s pleas for donors to contribute funds to rescue Maryland students who may be forced to drop out because of their family’s financial plights.
Meanwhile, the current president, Wallace D. Loh, has said that he will cut eight varsity sports teams in June to save an estimated $29 million over the next eight years. Do you understand this? Continue reading →

A Lesson From Georgia: Schools Too Stupid To Be Ethical Are Also Too Stupid To Be Trusted To Teach

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Handy Tip: Don't trust this man to educate your children.

Rick Jones, proprietor of Curmudgeon Central,  launched his Curmie Award last year, “honoring” educational professionals who embarrass their profession. Rick discovered a  Curmie-worthy story that he blogs on here, from the Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, GA. A teacher gave her third-grade class a Monty Pythonesque math test in which all the questions revolved around slavery:

  • “Each tree had 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?”
  • “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?”
  •  “Frederick had 6 baskets full of cotton. If each basket held 5 pounds, how many pounds did he have all together?”

Moron.

Naturally the school got an earful from parents, and naturally the school, which had no possible justification for such wretched judgement on its teacher’s part, apologized and backtracked. It’s not enough. Why are such incompetent idiots hired to teach anything more sentient than a poodle? How can a parent trust a school that allows teachers like this in the front door? If your child is taught by a moron—and technical definitions aside, that is not an unfair or uncivil description of a teacher who thinks it’s reasonable to give the question, “If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?” to a third-grader, your child’s likelihood of growing up moronic is vastly increased.

And yet, as Richard Dreyfus’s character says to Quint the shark-hunter as they compare scars in “Jaws,” “I got that beat.”In fact, Rick, I got that beat in Georgia. Continue reading →