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December 20, 2007
Profound Truth On Education
Walter Williams nails it (via Free Republic):
American education will never be improved until we address one of the problems seen as too delicate to discuss. That problem is the overall quality of people teaching our children. Students who have chosen education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major. Students who have graduated with an education degree earn lower scores than any other major on graduate school admissions tests such as the GRE, MCAT or LSAT. Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university. As such, they are home to the least able students and professors with the lowest academic respect. Were we serious about efforts to improve public education, one of the first things we would do is eliminate schools of education.
The emphases are mine. I've often said that if I were elected president, I'd handle the failing ed schools the same way Franklin Roosevelt handled the failing banks he inherited when he took office in 1933: close them all, and allow them to reopen on a one-by-one basis only after demonstrating solvency. In the case of the education colleges, that would be intellectual solvency.
And no, I'm not concerned with how hard you or your sister/mom/dad/cousin/friend works, or how many hours a week you put in after school, or how ill-parented your students are. Those may be valid issues, but they are separate issues.
Maybe if we increased the quality of the education professors, the ed school students would attract brighter students. But that would require raising the quality of the academy as a whole, and good luck with that.
December 12, 2007
Whither Condi, Part IV
I remember a time in the dim and distant past when Condi Rice was considered to be a rising star in the conservative movement. There was even water cooler talk of her as a presidential candidate. Remember the Hillary versus Condi speculation?
And then Condi set to work on the Middle East. I've noted a few of her very questionable episodes here, here and here. In light of these, her latest pronouncement provokes not outrage, but merely familiar resignation. In the Jerusalem Post Michael Freund notes two more examples of Condi's idea of statecraft (hat tip to Glenn Reynolds, who is more charitable to her than I am):
Speaking at a private session at the close of the Annapolis conference, America's top diplomat said that having grown up "as a black child in the South, being told she could not use certain water fountains or eat in certain restaurants, she also understood the feelings and emotions of the Palestinians.""I know what it is like to hear that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian," the Washington Post (November 29) quoted her as saying. "I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness," she added.
Needless to say, the fact that American blacks were victims of violence and hate, while Palestinians are its proficient practitioners, seems to have escaped the secretary of state's attention.
Moreover, Rice's comparison between Israeli security measures and America's Jim Crow laws is both intellectually dishonest and morally obscene.
There is no similarity whatsoever between Israel establishing a checkpoint aimed at catching Palestinian suicide bombers and the state of Georgia's 1960s era prohibition against serving blacks and whites in the same restaurant.
Intellectually dishonest and morally obscene. Check. Freund goes on to note that Rice has a selective application of principle, filtered through a pair of Palestinian issue blinders, when it comes to an Israeli plan to build some apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood of Jerusalem:
After Israel announced the approval of tenders for the construction of 307 housing units in the capital's Har Homa neighborhood, Her Excellency went into what can only be described as a tizzy.Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Friday, Rice told reporters that she had raised the issue of Har Homa with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - not once, but twice! "I did, in fact, bring up Har Homa, both earlier in a phone call and then today in our meeting," Rice said. "[...] I've made clear that we're in a time when the goal is to build maximum confidence between the parties and this doesn't help to build confidence," she proclaimed.
CONFIDENCE? Did she say "this doesn't help to build confidence?" And what, Madam Secretary, of the constant Palestinian rocket attacks against southern Israeli towns and cities? Do they "help to build confidence"? Or how about the daily incitement to violence on official Palestinian radio and television? Or the murder last month of 29-year old Ido Zoldan by members of Mahmoud Abbas' own Palestinian police force? Strangely enough, not one of these odious deeds merited a public comment from Rice about their impact on the "building of confidence" between the two sides.
Two-facedness in regard to holding terrorists responsible for their actions? Check. Note that Har Homa is an established neighborhood; this is not a new settlement. Freund acidly wonders how someone with Rice's personal experience with discrimination could, in effect, be endorsing the planting of "No Jews Allowed" sign in parts of Jerusalem.
What an embarrassment.
