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March 2001 To be fair Friends don't let friends
kill friends The self-esteem army Groupthink is nothink The Daily Cal ran the ad, then apologized abjectly for doing so when protesters said the ad was racist. UC-Davis also ran the ad, and then apologized. A conservative-leaning University of Wisconsin newspaper was accused of racism, but refused to recant. The ad is provocative, not racist. It makes some good points: Should descendants of Union soldiers or post-1863 immigrants pay reparations? It makes some bad points: Black Americans shouldn't feel grateful for their ancestors' suffering, no matter how much richer they are than Africans. I'm very grateful my great-grandparents left Russia, but I don't think I owe the Cossacks a thank you note. Newspapers can reject ads for any reason, as Walsh and Mickey Kaus point out. Most have guidelines on sexual explicitness, for example. Every now and then, student newspaper editors have to decide whether to run an ad declaring the Holocaust is a Jewish lie. Should they refuse to sell space for blatantly false statements? I'd run the ad with a story explaining why it's nonsense. But thoughtful people may decide differently. What's bad about the reaction to the Horowitz ad is the absence of thought by all parties. The protesters see no obligation to refute the ad's reasoning. They just scream "racism'' to squelch debate. Perhaps students believe that words that hurt their feelings violate their right to be shielded from a "hostile environment.'' The editors have no notion of their responsibility to provide a forum for reasoned debate, or the perils of declaring they won't print anything that's offensive to their easily offended readers. -- 3/8 Chads for Bush This is not a butterfly ballot
issue. That was Palm Beach County. Its not about worn-out voting
machines: The pattern of misvoting suggests that these people didnt
use the voting machine. They lined up the punch card with the ballot pamphlet
instead. Keep it clean Sez who? "Limited empowerment'' is a term in common use by Wisconsin welfare moms? What are they putting in the cheese?-- 3/13 Scared straight At the California Network of Education Charters (CANEC) convention in Burbank last week, New Haven Superintendent Ruth McKenna warned charter high school directors that the era of self-esteem grading is over. High schools must prepare students to pass the test, or risk a lawsuit. That means requiring students to master ninth grade skills to earn credit for ninth grade classes, and offering remedial help to students who fail one or more portions of the exit exam. Some freshmen will need to take no-credit catch-up classes so they can tackle real ninth-grade work the following year; they may need an extra year to graduate. Others will prefer to leave school at 18 with a certificate of completion and basic literacy and job skills. If a 14-year-old hasn't met the sixth grade standards, meet with him and his parents, McKenna said. Be straight about the choices. If a special education student is working for a diploma, make sure she can take standardized tests. "You're more at risk for not teaching them and giving them good grades then you are by flunking them if they can't do the work.'' California ninth graders took the graduation exam for the first time in March. For some, it's a chance to get the test out of the way. For most, it's a first look at what they'll need to learn to earn a diploma. Since many charter high schools specialize in students who've failed in traditional schools, getting everyone to the eighth-grade level is a real challenge. But it's a problem for non-charter public schools too. There's a reason the state didn't put 10th, 11th or 12th grade questions on the exam. The failure rate would be astronomical. Educators are starting to get the message: Don't pretend your students are on track for a diploma if they're not. Johnny needs decent reading, writing and math skills to succeed in college -- or in a union apprenticeship program. He needs to know what he doesn't know while he's still got time to do something about it. So teach him. And tell the truth. -- 3/19 Notorious A prayer for the pubescent The city's Catholic schools spend less per student. They average one teacher for every 21 students, compared to a 1:16 ratio in the pubic system. However, school size is smaller, averaging 345 students in K-8 Catholic schools versus 790 in public elementary and middle schools combined. There could be curriculum differences that explain the performance gap. I think it's puberty. Many students disengage from school in the middle school years. They have more important things to think about than pre-algebra. Like which boy band singer has been chosen most adorable by the popular crowd and who's, like, so last week. Small, cohesive schools led by authority figures -- backed by God -- probably do better at keeping hormone-addled students focused on their studies. Parents who choose private school -- religious or secular -- often are looking for a more controlled environment for their children. Support for vouchers is very high among black parents: Three out of four want a ticket out of their public schools, according to a poll by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Adding older blacks brings support down to 57 percent. Here's a political analysis by The Economist headlined "Blacks v. Teachers.'' -- 3/22 Profit in its own time In January, the Merc's sky-high employment advertising revenues dipped down a bit. In February, revenues plummeted. In March, publisher Jay Harris announced layoffs would be necessary. But it turns out he's the only one leaving. Harris quit rather than cut the editorial budget to maintain Knight-Ridder profits. The next day, the executive editor announced no layoffs will be necessary, though restructuring and a hiring freeze will eliminate about 20 positions. Newspaper people pose as cynics, hard-bitten if possible. Actually, we're mushy romantics. We work for a large, publicly traded corporation and think it's all about serving the people and democracy and free speech. We think it's OK to make higher profits in a boom year like 2000, lower profits in a downturn like 2001. Silly us. Wall Street doesn't want to see high-quality newspapers; it wants to see high profits. I was on the editorial board, so I worked with Jay. I thought he had a good shot at the top job some day. Since he's black, that would have been a very big deal. He'll do fine now; he's a hero to most journalists. But he doesn't have a future as a corporate exec. Mushy romantics don't cut it in the board room. I also worked with Knight-Ridder CEO Tony Ridder, when he was publisher of the Mercury News. He left to go to Miami, then KR corporate headquarters. I know Tony wants to run quality newspapers. But he also wants to boost return on investment, now 19 percent, into the 20s. He wants that more. -- 3/22 Voting counts Representation looks very different for high-immigrant minority groups when it's compared to their percentage in the state's population: Latinos make up 31 percent of residents, and Asians, 12 percent. That is, half or more aren't registered voters, no doubt because many aren't citizens. Blacks, 7 percent of the state, are almost as likely to be voters as they are to be residents. (Non-Latino) whites are half the population, three-quarters of voters and hold 78-79 percent of congressional and legislative seats. -- 3/25 Justice for all Lets hope not. Come
September, 50+ percent of entering law students will be female, the American
Bar Association predicts. Thats up from 4 percent in 1960, 10 percent
in 1970. That trend will affect the way schools operate -- perhaps making classes more teamlike and less adversarial, predicted a March 26 New York Times story. That prompted a letter from Miriam Chesslin, a Justice Department lawyer, who rejected the sugar-and-spice theory: "The experts who espouse such 'difference' theories, which suggest that female lawyers think or function differently than their male counterparts, fall into the very stereotypes that in an earlier day kept women from being taken seriously in the profession." The Times threw in the usual
meaningless stats: Women are 41 percent of associates at New York law
firms, 14 percent of partners. About 20 percent of judges and full law
professors are female. Come on. Tell us the median year of law school
graduation for a partner in a New York firm. What percentage of graduates
that year were female? Do the same for judges and law profs. Then we can
talk about the important obstacles that still remain.
Another sentence also bugged
me : While certainly
seeking the security, income and prestige that have long drawn men to
the law, women are also reacting to the decline in real and perceived
barriers to the profession. My daughter, now a sophomore,
is considering law school. Shes not seeking security, income or
prestige. Shes seeking a chance to work for justice, to do good
in the world. Is that so bizarre a motive as to be unworthy of mention?
By the way, barrier decline may have been a factor 20 years ago. For young women today, those barriers are as relevant as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. -- 3/28 Good reads I also recommend Andrew Sullivan's commentary on the risks of cheap AIDS drugs. Sullivan is HIV positive so he knows how difficult it is to follow the drug regime, and he's very interested in encouraging further research on better treatments for AIDS. That means letting drug companies make a profit. -- 3/28 Stepford students Brooks blames overanxious parents and enriched, structured childhoods. High-achievers parents shuttled them -- in seat-belted safety -- to scheduled play dates with approved friends, violin lessons, Scout meetings, soccer clinics, computer clubs, Chinese classes and SAT prep. They had little time to hang out with friends, free of adult supervision. (An elementary school in West Annapolis, Maryland has banned tag because it violates the schools no touching policy and leads to roughhousing. Children may play tag only in phys ed class under the teachers direction.) The Organization Kid is a team player, not a prickly individualist, Brooks complains. That's not surprising: Today's college students are the veterans of "collective learning'' groups designed to teach cooperation. In angry postings on the Atlantics forum site, Princetonians are eager to make it clear that theyre well-rounded, driven by interest, and not die-hard workaholics, as one put it. They want Brooks to know that they get drunk on weekends. Good grades, social life, extra-currics . . . They have trouble understanding what might be lacking. When Brooks refers to the struggle between the angel and beast within, good and evil and a sense of sin, they tune out. It sounds like religion, which is unmentionable, unthinkable. Besides, they do community service. Organization Kids have been directed by adults in every aspect of their development except for one, Brooks writes. When it comes to character and virtue, the most mysterious area of all, suddenly the laissez-faire ethic rules: Youre on your own, Jack and Jill; go figure out what is true and just for yourselves. In rebuttal, a Princetonian writes: We respect differences and want others to be happy. There's virtue for you. There's a definition of virtue. Virtue Lite. As a parent, I feel no nostalgia for angry, alienated, drugged-out and defiant youth. My daughter is a sophomore at UCLA. She wasnt quite as enriched as Brooks Stepford Students: Shes the only child in Palo Alto who never played soccer and she spent enormous amounts of time hanging out with friends and doing -- I hope -- nothing. But there's no doubt she is respectful, cheerful and diligent. Well-adjusted. When she was looking at colleges, she told me: I dont want to to go somewhere where everyone dresses in black and sits around drinking coffee and talking about how fucked up everything is. Thats not me. Shes also deeply concerned about ethical issues. She assumes shell lead a comfortable life. She worries about leading a good life. Cheerful, well-adjusted people can be morally serious too. UCLA is not trying to shape her character or give her "a concrete and articulated moral system.'' But I am. I want her to save the world. What about you, Mom? she said. Why dont you save the world? Hey, Im trying,
I said. Ive been working on it for 20 years! I could use a
little help! Rebels should have a cause, and there isn't a good one out there. Some college students oppose globalism, seeking to keep the poor in culturally appropriate poverty. They protest biotechnology, rejecting science as long as the beneficiaries are farmers, people they don't know. (Where are keep-genetics-out-of-medicine rallies?) But elite students know too much economics and science to be swept away. One of my daughter's friends attended an anti-WTO rally with only the skimpiest knowledge of what the WTO does because attending rallies was on her check list of what students ought to do. Sort of a generational extra-credit project. I don't think it matters whether young elites are protesting, drinking or studying in the library. The real question is whether they're developing high ideals to go with their high test scores. They're nice. But are they morally tough? I'm more optimistic than Brooks. But perhaps I've looked too long on the bright side. -- 3/29
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