Thanks to JimmyB for the title. It’s true, you know. Yesterday, I added one to the list of people that just need to be taken out and shot. Check out the picture (clicky to make biggy):
Yes, you don’t need to clean your glasses. The Color Purple: The Musical. I’m trying to think of something, anything, that could be more tasteless, but I can’t. I wonder: Is there a wife beating number, maybe with kick dancers in the background? And as he beats the hell out of her, does she have a musical number?
Of course, it’s the chicken-brained Oprah who’s producing this sheissfest. If somebody took her out in the alley and shot her, I wouldn’t cry. Thank God — literally –that she has never had children.
And also in Lincoln Center, the New York City Opera. RIP, Beverly Sills:
This, of course, is Radio City Music Hall, where Pat Sajak and Vanna White are filming Wheel of Fortune. The picture after is a (city) block down the street. The picture after that is three (city) blocks down the street — and the line just kept going. A lot of people want to be in the Wheel of Fortune audience.
Rising suddenly amidst all the skyscrapers is St. Patrick’s Cathedral:
And right across from the Waldorf-Astoria is St. Bartholomew’s. I believe it’s the only Romanesque architecture Anglican church I’ve ever seen:
Yesterday was the Met performance: Aïda, with Angela Brown singing Aïda to Dolora Zajick’s Amneris. First, we went to the JP Morgan Library to see the library and another exhibit. I realized I had forgotten the camera, so we walked back to the hotel. We then began a leisurely stroll toward Lincoln Center (more about lunch and dinner later). After the performance, we walked to Zarela, where we had reservations for dinner.
Note the repetition of the verb, “walk.” Feet much sore at end of day.
Individual photos with comments to appear momentarily. Click on the pic below to view the entire album:
I stumbled out of bed (in this hotel room), and without coffee, deleted the akismet (spam filter) queue, so I may have deleted comments. I’m sorry. I should have known better.
In Manhattan, after a long Amtrak ride. Amtrak is comfortable, with lots of leg room, I’ll give them that, but they need to be as long as it takes to get from one place to another.
In search of food. Amtrak’s food leaves lots to be desired.
Hysteria over ice melt at one end of the world, but near-silence at the ice increase at the other. Almost like someone was trying to fool you, or something.
There’s a commercial on right now for parking balls. A parking ball is a tennis ball you hang from the ceiling of your garage. Why would you hang a tennis ball from the ceiling of your garage? Well, so you don’t, you know, drive too far in and crash against the wall, or not drive far enough in and have the butt of your car sticking out of the garage.
Are there really people so st00pid they can’t park in their own garage? Probably. If you’re like me, you’ll want to take your blood pressure meds before you watch this.
I have never understood what the problem with parallel parking is. It’s simple. Nothing to it. I also have never understood how people who can’t park are allowed to drive. Yes, I have a real hot button issue about idiots who can’t park. It drives me nuts.
Wait. There’s a business idea here. Parking school. Hmmmm . . .
The real problem at Columbia is the group that is President Ahmadinejad’s real host — the 24 members of the university’s board of trustees. This is a group that has, throughout the long slog of anti-Israel agitation and occasional anti-Semitism on the campus, refused to take a public stand. We number several of them among our friends. We admire many of them. But as a group, they have let New York down and, were Columbia not a self-perpetuating board, would have lost the trust they were given. There is no difference between going to ground zero and going to Columbia, except that the governing body of the former has a deeper understanding of what it means for a country to be at war than the governing body of the other.
Absolutely. The trustees are ultimately responsible, and they chose to do nothing. The Dartmouth situation is the exception. Trustees (or regents) all over the US have abdicated their duties and become nothing more than rubberstamps for nutball faculty decisions.
If you want to see change on campus, howling at administrators will have minimal effect (closing ranks, collegiality, shared nuttiness, ivory tower isolationism, all kinds of reasons). Howl instead at the trustees, and get alumni to withhold donations.
I’m not excusing Bollinger. But it’s just more academic idiocy (a despicable example, certainly). The trustees chose not to exercise their duties, and the trustees should be primarily held accountable. After all, one cannot expect a moral idiot like Bollinger to make a moral decision. It’s rather like expecting your cat to bark.
Jules Crittenden points out that there’s a growing backlash against Bollinger. Now, being a reasonable, intelligent human being with ethics and morals, you assume that this backlash is from other reasonable, intelligent human beings with morals. But you’d be wrong.
You can’t make this stuff up.
A backlash against the president of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, who on Monday delivered a harsh rebuke to President Ahmadinejad, is coming from faculty members and students who said he struck an “insulting tone” and that his remarks amounted to “schoolyard taunts.” The fierceness of Mr. Bollinger’s critique bought the Iranian some sympathy on campus that he didn’t deserve, the critics said, and amounted to a squandered opportunity to provide a lesson in diplomacy.
These people jump through hoops to outst00pid the last st00pid thing they said or did.
58.8% of graduating seniors go directly to college.
67.5% of college freshmen are still enrolled the following year.
66.7% of those students earn at least an associate’s degree.
First, let me get one thing out of the way. I don’t believe, as apparently the Journal-Constitution reporter does (and many others), that too few students are going to college. I would say that there are too many students going to college who don’t belong there (I’ll come back to this in a moment). But that’s not the only reason I don’t agree with this popular notion.
One of my friends from high school, who was also one of the brightest students in our class and all the way through school was in the top 10% of the class, did not go to college. He could have gone. His father owned a highly successful men’s clothing store, and he had two older siblings who had gone to college and were working in lucrative careers. He certainly had the grades and the SAT scores. Nothing stood in his way.
He didn’t go because he didn’t want to go. He wanted to be a policeman. And that’s what he did. He is still a State Trooper all these . . . well, let’s just say years and leave it at that, later. And I say good for him.
The popular idea that you have to have a degree unless you want to flip burgers at MickeyD’s is bogus. What if John wants to work on cars? Why should he go to college? We need good mechanics, and John, if he makes the right choices, can turn being a mechanic into a lot of income.
I am usually impatient with the proudly-oblivious-to-the-real-world ivory tower mindset, but there is at least one way in which it is a good thing: Universities for the most part (unlike primary and secondary schools) have not adapted to this idiotic notion that everybody has to go to college. The result is that universities, for the most part, have not become degree mills for every lazy slacker that comes through the front gates.
Now before you object, yes, there are degree programs any idiot can complete. Drivel degrees. Education. [Fill in the blank] Studies. But even in those departments of mindlessness, where scholarship is neither expected nor present, students still drop out.
University drop-out rates are certainly due in part to ill prepared students. I’ve ranted and raved quite a few times about students who can’t add two and two without a calculator. But that isn’t the only reason. I don’t think it’s even the primary reason, just from interactions with students.
Zeno has published a list of student questions (and his answers) this week, and I’ve gotten every one of those questions. My initial reaction after reading his article was humorous.
But then, I started thinking about those questions. They’re really not so humorous. Let’s look at a few that are, to put it mildly, extremely common:
My next class is across the campus and I’m going to have to leave five minutes early each day to get to that class on time. Is that all right?
I missed class last time. Did I miss anything important?
Do you give extra credit?
And let me add a few of my own:
Is this going to be on the test?
That’s not fair (referring usually to an exam question over the assigned reading material). You didn’t discuss this in class/put this on the review sheet/tell us this would be on the exam.
I won’t be in class Friday. Can I make up the quiz?
And my personal favorite:
Is there some reason we need to know this?
These questions, all as common as dirt, have little to do with being academically prepared for the university. And as many bright, well prepared students ask them as ill prepared ones. Even honors students ask the extra credit question. Every semester on the midterm exam, students across the entire intellectual spectrum are aghast to find that we actually do expect them to read the material we assigned them (and we find that again, very few of them have done so). Every semester, students are shocked to discover that “no late assignments will be accepted” applies across the board, even to them. Every semester, students who for some reason believe that only a small part of what we cover and assign is fair game for the exam, discover to their horror that they are mistaken.
Academic preparation isn’t the issue here. Work ethic — rather, the lack thereof — is the issue. That’s why I said that Professor Haberman’s article applied as well to being in the university as it does real life.
The university hasn’t changed much since I was an undergraduate, or your parents or grandparents were undergraduates in this one way: If you want to succeed, you need to develop a work ethic. Even Professor Moonbat is annoyed, whether she shows it or not, when you turn that paper in a week late, even if she lets you turn it in late. The Drivel Degree programs may not expect much in the way of scholarship, but there are very few academics who aren’t frustrated by students’ lack of work ethic.
If I were a betting man, I would say that even the nutty Alfie Kohn or Johnathan Kozol, for all their blather about evil competition and grading, rant in the faculty lounge about slacker students who don’t do the work. How much would you like to bet? I’ve known many academics with cocoa wheats for brains who lovingly babble about all this cooperative this and free spirit that, but I have yet to meet one who wasn’t annoyed by students’ lack of work ethic.
In my own experience, I’ve had quite a few — far too many — students who were bright and well prepared, but failed the course because they didn’t have the work ethic. They didn’t do the reading assignments, not because they were illiterate, but because they didn’t. They didn’t do the projects, not because they didn’t have the skills, but because they didn’t. They didn’t come to class and therefore missed quizzes, not because they couldn’t come to class, but because they didn’t. They missed exams, not because they had to be somewhere else, but because they didn’t come.
Sure, there have always been students like this, but there have been more of them over the years. No study has been done to prove that, but far too many faculty have noticed.
I said back in February that all this discussion about reading proficiency was moot because whether or not students can read, they don’t. I don’t just mean the assigned readings, although that’s bad enough. They don’t read the syllabus. They don’t read the project (assignment) instructions. They don’t read anything.
This is a dissertation or twenty all by itself, but the relevant point here is why they don’t read. It isn’t because they can’t. It’s because they don’t think they have to. And they don’t think they have to read, or do anything else, for that matter, because they have no work ethic.
You see, despite all the moonbatty craziness here on campus, when it comes down to doing the work for the class, we really couldn’t care less about your feelings, or how many grandmothers in oppressed groups you had, or whether you approve of the assigned work or not. It’s assigned. Do it, or fail. That’s still the reality of the university campus.
Many of the students wake up their freshman year, the first time they find that “no late assignments will be accepted” means exactly that, and develop a work ethic. Some do not. And those that do not drop out.
Over the last few years, parents have been intruding into the university, or trying to. Parents find that university faculty and administrators aren’t much interested in what they think their little Johnny’s grades should have been.
When we caught students cheating — and I mean working together, or one using the other’s answers — and they would claim they didn’t know it was cheating, I used to view that with, how shall I phrase it, extreme skepticism. Now, I’m not so sure. If they have always been able to ask the students in their group what the answer was and submit it as their own, why wouldn’t they assume they could do that on campus?
Since our public schools have no interest in teaching students to have a work ethic, here is my advice to prospective university students and their parents. On campus, you will be required to do your own work, unless you are told otherwise. Do it. Even the nuttiest wackjob professor will expect you to do whatever he assigns. Do it. And before you come to college, get a job. Develop a work ethic on your own, so you don’t have to fail the exam you couldn’t be bothered to take before you figure out how it works here. Better yet, get a job after you graduate and work for a couple of years before you come to college. You’ll have a better idea of what you want to do, and you’ll be a far better student.
(I’m resubmitting this to the Carnival of Education, since last time, it disappeared down the black hole.)
Since your ad for the principal’s position states that you want, and I quote, "A hands-on principal with significant experience as an educator," I’m your man. Read on.
I would not sit on my lazy ass in my office issuing dictates from on high. I would have to insist that I be allowed to teach a class every year. I would not make decisions that affect teachers and students without being in the classroom, with my own students. I would be out of my office more than in, but in the school, talking to students and teachers between classes, sitting in on other classes as well as teaching my own, and keeping my thumb on the school’s pulse. I would have to insist that I be allowed to know my teachers and the students because only by knowing them can I know the school for which I would be responsible.
Likewise, I would have to insist that wherever possible, all administrators in the school teach at least one class a year. Not all employees in administrative positions need to be in the classroom — office assistants, for example — but as a general rule, administrators need to be teachers.
I would be the first to arrive and the last to leave. I strongly believe that an administrator must take the responsibility that comes with power, and in a school, that responsibility includes being present for teachers and students. When an administrative position becomes a cushy job, changes need to be made.
I am a strong believer in the common sense principle, "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it." Teachers whose students are doing well can expect nothing but support from me. I believe just as strongly that if it is broke, you do fix it.
The two major educational problems nationally are curriculum and educational progress. Educational progress is not an issue in itself, but a product of various other issues, such as pedagogy and assessment. so those are the problems that need to be addressed. The major administrative problem is a dire lack of common sense. Every other issue is trivial by comparison, except for one: Excuses and whining. The first thing I would do is implement a friendly, no excuses, no whining policy. A teacher either is or is not doing his job. There are no "layers of meaning" there. No "nuance." So no excuses, and no whining.
I’m quite aware that factors other than the teacher or what he does in class affect educational progress, believe me. I expect no teacher to pass all of his students. But when a teacher excuses massive failure over years with "If the parents would …" or "It’s not my fault!" that’s giving me an excuse. Whining. And I would not listen to it.
I would implement three school-wide curriculum and assessment policies. No age-inappropriate classwork (macaroni art projects are fine for the third grade, but not after that), and no "integrated" courses or classwork. You cover history in history class. You cover English in English class. You cover math in math class. Period. And I would mandate that no more than 20% of any student’s class grade in any class be assessed on subjective criteria.
So I humbly apply for the priciple’s position. Here is what I would do, in chronological order.
Assess the educational progress of students and abolish all social promotion.
This is the obvious first step, and requires both a synchronous and diachronous approach.
What were last year’s graduation and promotion rates?
What have been the graduation and promotion rates over the last ten years, and how have they been addressed?
Adopt a school-wide policy of promotion, that leaves teachers no way to get around it. You pass, you pass. You fail, you repeat the grade. Period. No exceptions, no special cases, no excuses. Just as importantly, I would insist that teachers assess students weekly, and give students meaningful feedback on each assessment, so students know exactly where they stand, and are best capable to do something about it.
Assess the curriculum (and pedagogy).
How closely does the curriculum match the subject content of the state exams?
How closely are teachers conforming to the curriculum?
How are teachers assessing their students?
Analyze the data from the last 5-10 years to identify problems.
How do teacher assessments (grades) correlate with state exam scores?
Which teachers’ assessments (grades) show low correlations with exam scores?
Make curriculum changes where necessary to better fit exam content.
Address teachers whose grades do not over the five years correlate highly with exam scores.
Leave the excuses elsewhere. If a teacher’s grades do not correlate highly with exam scores over several years, then there’s a problem, and that problem lies with the teacher, either what he is covering in class, or how he assesses his students. I would address the curriculum as a whole first simply because if the curriculum (what teachers cover) doesn’t match the content of state exams, it would create a serious problem across the whole school. But if the curriculum does match the content of state exams and Mr. Beeb’s students are all getting As and Bs while scoring poorly on exams, then I would put Mr. Beeb under a microscope.
First, I would tell Mr. Beeb exactly what the problem is, and that I was going to help him fix it. Teachers will get nothing but honesty from me, no deception, no euphemism, and no crap. I would sit in on Mr. Beeb’s classes. I would scrutinize his course content and assessment methods. If his students are more unruly, or take his class less seriously than, say, Ms. Lear’s classes, I would also put his class presence on that microscope slide. If the problem did turn out to be Mr. Beeb and he were uninterested in fixing it, and if I could not fire him, I would shuttle him to a "job" outside the classroom. If you want to drive a truck, then you have to be able to drive a truck. If you want to teach, then you have to be able to teach. You can’t take and keep a job as a truck driver, yet refuse to drive a truck, and you can’t take and keep a job as a teacher, yet refuse to teach.
Note that I would never assume that there was a problem with Mr. Beeb’s class based on only one year. We all have bad classes. I’m not at all unreasonable. But when year after year, Mr. Beeb’s students continue to get As and Bs yet score miserably on the state exams (or just as bad, if teachers in his subject in the next grade complain that his students don’t know what they need to know to do well in their classes), well, Mr. Beeb needs to be looked at closely. Note also that I consider off-topic material to be a problem. If Mr. Beeb is using his math class to make nasty remarks about the President, I would let him know in no uncertain terms that I would not tolerate such behavior. Mr. Beeb is perfectly free to wave signs and giant puppet heads at protests, but not in the classroom. And if he refuses to do his job, there’s always that Subdirector In Charge Of Blackboard Maintenance position.
I despise meetings as much as anyone (and more than many), but one cannot address problems solely by mandate. One cannot just say, "You can’t do this," and expect teachers to know what to do instead, not can one expect teachers who are given mandates to just suck it up and be happy about it. So whereas I would not put crucial decisions that address these problems up to a vote or approval process by teachers, I would not just send out a memo. Instead, I would call a meeting, explain the problem and the solution, and invite discussion. And yes, if one of the teachers came up with a solution that either was better than mine, or as good and made teachers less uncomfortable, I would adopt it.
There would be few group decisions, but there would be no undiscussed or unexplained decisions. And provided that there are good arguments made, all decisions are open to amendment.
I would allow no anonymous or organizational confrontations. If one of my teachers is accused of something, he will be told up front who is making the accusation. I am there for my teachers and my students. Union representatives who are not teachers in my school would not be given a hearing. I will, of course, happily see student organization representatives within the school, but I would treat aggrieved special interest groups the same way I would any external group: They would get no hearing. If the Height Challenged Sikh Organization didn’t like the textbook, they would be welcome to take it up with their state representative, but I’m afraid I couldn’t be bothered.
Disband all committees and study groups, and fire all extraneous middle management.
A school does not need a Diversity Czar, or a Wimmins Issues Study Group. A school needs teachers who will do their jobs, and give their students the gift of education. If those teachers who are concerned about Siamese Twins of Color would like to meet on their own time, that isn’t my concern. But no, I would not allow state funds to pay for their discussion group, no more than I would allow taxes to pay for the Subdirector In Charge Of Blackboard Maintenance. I would grudgingly keep the Subdirector position technically open (though unfilled), just in case Mr. Beeb indeed hadn’t been doing his job and refused to do so (again, provided that this school is not in a right to work state).
I would insist that I be given a position on any board responsible for fiscal decisions related to the school. That is non-negotiable.
Committees and study groups not directly related to the educational mission are not only a fiscal issue. They distract the school, its faculty, and its students from the educational mission. They also potentially damage the school (and rightly so), when parents demand (rightly) to know why their taxes are being used to fund a Three-Toed Brazilian Lesbian study group.
Create committees, study groups, and middle management positions that directly affect the educational mission of the school.
I value input from teachers, particularly those with excellent track records, and would ask for their help in addressing the problems at the school. I also value professional development — real professional development, not attending a seminar at a conference to learn how to do even more brain-dead "integrated" assignments. I would create and attend study groups on pedagogical techniques and assessment, professional presence in the classroom, discipline, and any number of topics that needed to be addressed.
When necessary, I would create middle management. If due to the size of the school, I were not be capable of sitting in on all my teachers’ classes and my teachers were not willing to sit in on other teachers’ classes and discuss pedagogical techniques, I would hire people with extensive educational experience and good track records to help me keep track of what was going on in my school’s classrooms. For reasons both professional and fiscal, I would prefer that my teachers helped me, but if necessary, I would hire others to do so.
Promote a healthy, professional environment.
If one expects teachers to present themselves and behave as professionals, one must treat them as professionals, and encourage a professional environment. This does not mean that I would require three-piece suits, because professionalism is much more than mere appearance. Professionalism is how we see ourselves, how we seek to improve our professional performance, how we conduct ourselves, and how we treat our students. I would encourage teachers to maintain a professional presence in and out of the classroom, and all professional development at the school.
I would implement an open door policy. My teachers would always be welcome to come discuss problems with me. However, if a teacher had a problem with another teacher and had not approached the other teacher, I would send him to speak with that teacher first. If that did not help, I would be glad to step in and do whatever I could to resolve the problem. I would adopt the same policy with students, who would always be welcome to speak to me about problems. If, however, that student had not spoken to the teacher with whom he had a problem, I would send him to his teacher first, then deal with it if that did not help.
Note that "I need an A!" is not a problem I would discuss.
Implement a common-sense administrative policy
I would reject nearly all so-called "zero tolerance" policies in favor of common-sense policies, and deal with most individual problems as individual problems. Also, I would not attempt to extend school discipline or authority beyond campus. What a student puts on a webpage from a computer off campus may be troubling, and it may require reporting to either parents or authorities, but it does not fall within my realm of discipline.
I would cut back on attempts by the school to take over parental respnsibilities. I do not believe that the school is, or should be, responsible for teaching students how to put on condoms or perform oral sex or whether to have sex at all. I would strongly stand against both sex ed programs and abstinence classes. My school is not my students’ parents. Whereas I would allow student groups on such topics to meet without discriminating in either direction, I would oppose any attempt to inject extraneous, off-topic material into the classroom.
One of the few zero-tolerance policies I would adopt and strictly enforce would be inappropriate teacher-student relationships. If I have to explain this, I don’t think I want to work for you (or live in the same neighborhood as you, or be anywhere within miles of you).
I would also adopt a zero-tolerance policy on grade retaliation. If you do not understand why, then the same as above applies.
If you really do want a hands-on, teaching principle with educational experience, one who is primarily concerned with the educational mission of the school, then I’m your man.
Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.
Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them cracks and splinters. That is the “loser,” and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.
I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.
Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.
When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3×5 card reading, “Please use this M&M for breeding purposes.”
This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this “grant money.” I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.
There can be only one.”
That qualifies as one of the stranger things I’ve read lately.
The Blogfather says that it’s been a bad week for academia, and points to this article on Volokh:
According to the Columbia Spectator, Barnard religion professor Alan Segal was asked by the university to provide a list of archeology experts to comment on the controversial tenure case of Nadia Abu El-Haj’s tenure–archeologists who “preferably” were not Jewish. Segal quite properly refused, noting that religion “has nothing to do with what you say as a professional.”
That’s not all (and I’m not even considering the Columbia fiasco — speaking of, see Phi Beta Cons for extensive discussion of the Columbia embarrassment).
The AAUP squashed dissent on its mailing list by shutting it down — not what I’d call a wise move for an organization (supposedly) devoted to the free exchange of ideas.
Glenn Reynolds says:
Academics are fond of warning business that, not withstanding free enterprise, abuse of authority will lead to government regulation. This is a warning that the academic world would be wise to heed as well.
Might I point out that supervisory bodies do exist — they’re known as trustees or regents. That’s why they exist, and why they were implemented, you know, to supervise the frequently nutty academics. It’s unfortunate that at most universities, trustees have abdicated their duties and do nothing but rubberstamp academic idiocy.
while I put together an article is Unemployment Training, by Professor Haberman. Here are a couple of snippets:
For many urban youth in poverty moving from school to work is about as likely as having a career in the NBA.While urban schools struggle and fail at teaching basic skills they are extremely effective at teaching skills which predispose youth to fail in the world of work.The urban school environment spreads a dangerous contagion in the form of behaviors and beliefs which form an ideology.This ideology “works” for youngsters by getting them through urban middle and secondary schools.But the very ideology that helps youth slip and slide through school becomes the source of their subsequent failure.It is an ideology that is easily learned, readily implemented, rewarded by teachers and principals, and supporting by school policies.It is an ideology which schools promulgate because it is easier to accede to the students’ street values than it is to shape them into more gentle human beings.The latter requires a great deal of persistent effort not unlike a dike working against an unyielding sea.It is much easier for urban schools to lower their expectations and simply survive with youth than it is to try to change them.
[ . . . ]
The fact that this ideology is not a formal part of the stated curriculum but caught in school does not make urban schools any less accountable for its transmission.These anti-work learnings are inhaled as youth participate in and interact with school policies, administrators, teachers, safety aides, and the entire school staff.Community and religious watchdog groups who seek to control the values taught in schools focus on prayer and sex education.They are oblivious to the actual values caught in schools.Following is a brief description of the beliefs and behaviors which comprise this unemployment ideology.
I might point out that the anti-work ideology he discusses is also largely responsible for the high dropout rate in universities. Read the whole thing. Excellent stuff.
This Thursday, we’re driving to Lewistown (20 miles away) to pick up the Amtrak to New York City. We’ll be coming back the following Wednesday. We could drive, and get there in less time (the train takes 5 hours), but who wants to drive in NYC? And who wants to pay for parking in NYC? Since the train is here, we might as well try it, at least.
Here’s the route. You can see why it takes 5 hours — we’re directly west of NYC, but the train goes all the way down to Philly, then all the way up through New Jersey.
We have no restaurant plans, except for Zarela, a Oaxacan restaurant (she writes a hell of a cookbook). Oh. Why are we going?
We’re going to the Met to see Aïda, sung by Angela Brown (well, that, and to hear Dolora Zajick’s Amneris again). We know Angela Brown from her university productions. It will be interesting to see her on stage at the Met.
And that’s all that’s scheduled. Except that last time, I couldn’t bring myself to visit Ground Zero. I’m going this time. Other than that and the Met, we’re completely open.
Not quite yet, but we’re close. I took these last fall from Skytop, just a couple of miles from here, up on the top of the next mountain ridge. Click on the photo below to see the whole album.
This time, it’s a comment on Don Surber’s article about MickeyD’s sales. It’s too good not to reproduce the whole thing:
Why should we believe another culinary post from Don Surber? He is in the pocket of Big Popcorn Butter.
The “Big Mac Attack†is yet another neocon conspiracy to slaughter the peopleses and childrenses of the world by feeding them lethal food made out of transfats so that Haliburton can steal cooking oil from depeopled and dechildrened countries.
I suppose that this post will earn me another visit from the black helicopters and their mind-control rays trying to silence me. Fortunately my tinfoil cap deflects these attacks on my civil liberties.
Mwalimu Daudi
911 Scholars for Popcorn Butter Truth
911 Scholars for Popcorn Butter Truth (a reference to the “lawsuit” being filed against a theater, if you missed it). There’s money to be made off morons there, somehow. If nothing else, 911 Scholars for Popcorn Butter Truth should at least have a website.
Born Again Redneck posted yesterday about videos he’d seen recently. As it happens, one of them was Apocalypto.
I did a BA in anthropology, remember? My area specialty was Mesoamerica, so I was curious about Apocalypto, but didn’t see it in the theater. We watched it yesterday. (By the way, the whole movie is in Maya, with subtitles. I thought that was prettty neat. It was one of only two things about the movie I liked.)
Usually, I don’t pay much attention to historical accuracy in movies. It’s a frakking movie. Who expects it to be accurate? But in this case, I couldn’t avoid focusing on accuracy. First, there’s that area specialization, and then, there’s the fact that Gibson claimed that the film was accurate. But let’s get the generalities out of the way first.
Like Passion, it’s a beautifully made movie. But Gibson obviously spent all of his energy on the appearance, and let the substance slide. The plot is just a bit thin. Over half of the movie is either watching characters tied to slave poles being marched through the forest, or watching Jaguar Paw running through the forest being chased by the Bad Guys, and during both of these ridiculously long sequences, too little of consequence actually happens. It’s gory, but it didn’t cross my tolerance line (then, I have a pretty high tolerance for gore).
After having seen it, I’m not sure what the point of the movie was supposed to be. When the movie came out, there was a lot of talk about a culture destroying itself, and a culture destroyed by exploiting the environment, but neither of those applies to this movie. The conquistadores arrive at the end of the movie, and that renders the environmental “theme” (which really wasn’t ever established) irrelevant. The other “theme” also was never established. It was kind of a “What was that all about?” movie.
Now, about that historical accuracy.
Everyone is familiar with the Romantic myth about the Maya, that they were peaceful artisans, ruled by astronomer priest-kings. It’s garbage from beginning to end, which most people don’t know. All cultures in Mesoamerica (Mesoamerica is not a geographical designation, but a cultural one, an area defined by shared cultural features) practiced human sacrifice. The Maya frequently sacrificed women and babies — we have the remains of the sacrificial victims in the cenotes, not to mention many painted and sculpted representations of human sacrifice. Mayan city-states were frequently at war with one another — we have artistic reproductions on the walls of those city-states. This “peaceful, in tune with Nature” nonsense is just that. If the Maya were peaceful philosophers, I’m the President of the United States.
The popular version of this myth is that the Maya as a whole were bong-sucking peaceniks, as opposed to, say, the Aztecs, or Mexica, who (according to popular myth) were the bloodthirsty, bellicose culture in Mesoamerica. Well, the Aztecs were no more so than the Maya, or any other group. They were just better at it, and because they were in power when the conquistadores arrived, the best documented.
Gibson has taken this mythical juxtaposition and contracted it. In the world of Apocalypto, we have the serial-raping Maya from the city-states, and the kumbayah-singing Maya in the forest villages, the noble savages.
Incredibly, our hippie Maya seem to be completely ignorant that our evil patriarchal Republican Maya exist. That’s established almost as the very beginning. Given the number of large Maya city-states and their sphere of influence, the idea that these peacenik villagers didn’t know they existed is ludicrous. These villagers would have lived within the protection of one of these city-states, not running around naked in the forest being one with the Earth Goddess. The only way this could have been possible (and then, only remotely) was if this were happening during the late Pre-Classic or early Classic, and that didn’t make any sense, because that was the rise of the Maya, not the fall.
You need to know that the whole noble savage thing really, really, really annoys the hell out of me. I was annoyed, really, really, really annoyed, throughout the movie. But I kept telling myself, “It’s just a movie,” and watched it, pushing aside the Rousseauan idiocy that permeated it. It was like being in Dr. Moonbat Hyphenated-Name’s class all over again, everything was peace and love and smoking dope and being matriarchal and being in harmony with Nature until those evil white people came along, except here, the evil corrupters of barbaric innocence were the “urbanized” Maya.
The only cliché Gibson forgot to add was the ritual cannibalism.
Jaguar Paw is our noble savage hero. When his village is attacked, he successfuly hides his pregnant wife and young son at the bottom of a sink hole. He is then captured by our evil Maya and taken away to the city.
Insert 25 minutes of being marched through the forest, with very little happening.
They arrive at the city — and we get by far the best part of the movie, the extremely creepy little girl prophetess. She was really quite good. Here is really the only “environmental message” to be found. They’re clearing the forest to build the city. But if it was meant to be some central theme, Gibson dropped the ball as soon as he’d picked it up.
The city channels Mad Max. Over the top corruption, insanity, and evil prevail. Been there, done that, it’s tired, move right along, Mel. Jaguar Paw and the other men from the village are taken to the top of the pyramid to be sacrificed, and we have another historically nonsensical element.
They have no idea what’s going on. Ridiculous. Unbelievable. Impossible. The Idiot Rousseau raises his ugly head again.
Jaguar Paw escapes and gets back to the forest. Insert 30 minutes of trying to outrun evil Maya here.
He defeats evil Maya, and at the end of the movie, the conquistadores arrive. So we’re actually at the late Post-Classic, and the whole movie is even more historically unbelievable than it would have been had it been the late Pre-Classic or early Classic.
The presence of the conquistadores at the end destroys the “culture destroying itself from within” thing Gibson sets up at the very beginning as the point of the movie. You know. Muskets. Horses. Smallpox. Syphillis. All of those render his whole point moot. Interestingly, the final scene implies that the conquistadores are purifiers, when Jaguar Paw tells his wife they will go back into the forest and seek a new beginning, sort of, “Let’s go take off our clothes and be free-range hippies.” You could almost hear Good Morning, Starshine playing in the background.
I’m pretty anal about movies. I burn most to DVD, even movies I’m not really nuts about. But I deleted this one from the hard drive the minute the credits started.
Browned the chops in some butter, splashed in a little sherry and heavy cream, covered them, and turned them down to smother. Ready to eat now. And I went with plain old fried corn. Less to distract from the corn, important since it may be the last until next year.
This will stay at the top for a while — scroll down for updates. From Bruce:
“How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of.”
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