The Line

Eric Kosslyn showed me this:...

Generating Pythagorean triplets:
Let N be the set of natural numbers.
Let a^1=a and let a^(n+1) = (a^n)(a). Exponentiation.
Identity: (x^2-y^2)^2 +(2xy)^2=(x^2+y^2)^2 (work it out if you do not see it).
For all x and y in N, x+y is in N and xy is in N, so
For all x and y in N
If a=x^2-y^2 and b=2xy and c=x^2+y^2 you have a,b,c, in N and...
a^2+b^2=c^2. Pythagorus.

We can use this to generate all pythagorean triplets, and then we can use pythagorean triplets to generate systems of simultaneous equations in two variables which come out "neat".

Example:
<3,4,5> and <5,12,13> are pythagorean triplets.
Let m(L1), the slope of line 1, be 4/3 and let m(L2), the slope of line 2, be -5/12.
Use <3,4> (from <3,4,5>).
Use <-12,5> (from 5,12,13>)
Take common multiples of the first and second elements: 48 is a multiple of both 3 and -12, 40 is a multiple of both 4 and 5.
Use p<48, 40> as the point of intersection. We let L1 and L2 intersect at the point p<48, 40>.

Then, from the vector form of the equation for the line we have...
for all p(x,y) in L1, there exists an r in R such that
(x,y) = <48,40> + r<3,4>
and
for all p(x,y) in L2, there exists r in R such that
(x,y)= <48,40> + r<-12,5>

Read "a => b" as "a implies b", or "a, so b".

Find two integer-valued points in L1:
r=6 => (x,y) = <48,40> + 6<3,4> => (x,y) = <48,40> + <18,24> => (x,y) = <66, 64>.
r=-8 => (x,y) = <48,40> + -8<3,4> => (x,y) = <48,40> + <-24,-32> => (x,y) = <24, 8>.
So {p<66,64>, q<24,8>} is a subset ot L1.

Find two integer points in L2:...
r=-9 => (x,y) = <48,40> + -9<-12,5> => (x,y) = <48,40> + <108,-45> => (x,y) = <156,-5>.
r=11 => (x,y) = <48,40> + 11<-12,5> => (x,y) = <48,40> + <-132,55> => (x,y) = <-84,95>.
So {s<156,-5>, t<-84, 95>} is a subset of L2.

I usually use p1, p2, p3, p4 with subscript 1,2,3,4, but I don't know how to do this in the Blogger fonts . It would be {p1(x1,y1), p2(x2,y2)} subset L1 ("subset" is a U on its side).

An n-dimensional cartesean coordinate system is a function from Euclidean n-space to R^n which is one-to-one, onto, and which preserves the relation "between". Make an analogy with a proper assignment of names to people in a group: each person gets a name, each person gets only one name, no name applies to more than one person.

Let m(pq) be the slope of the segment (pq) (this is not the proper notation, but I don't know how to make the superscript bar over "pq" in Blogger fonts). Slope is a function from intervals to real numbers.
Let d(p,q) be the distance from p to q. Distance is a function from pairs of points to real numbers.
Let u(pq) be the midpoint of the segment pq. Midpoint is a function frrom intervals to points.

Repetition of "function" in this presentation prepares students for later work, where functions become a topic of study in abstract. Students will find this much easier if they have encountered functions before. Writing a Math curriculum shares some features with writing a murder mystery. You cannot have the Great Detective tell the assembled suspects in the concluding chapter: "The butler did it" if the butler never appeared earlier. He has to walk on and serve cucumber sandwiches in chapter 3.

Exercise:...
...........................................................................................................................................................
Let T subset of E^2XR^2 be a cartesian coordinate system.
Let L1 and L2 be lines in E^2 such that

{p<66,64>, q<24,8>} is a subset ot L1
and
{s<156,-5>, t<-84, 95>} is a subset of L2.

Find:...

m(pq)=___
d(p,q)=___.
u(pq)=___
m(st)=___
d(s,t)=___
u(st)=___
point-slpoe form of L1:_______________________
slope-intercept form of L1: ____________________
intercept form of L1: _________________________
Standard form of L1: ________________________
vector form of L1: ___________________________
matrix (determinant) form of L1:__________________

point-slpoe form of L2:_______________________
slope-intercept form of L2: ____________________
intercept form of L2: _________________________
Standard form of L2: ________________________
vector form of L2: ___________________________
matrix (determinant) form of L2:__________________

L1 intersect L2 =___________________ ("intersect"" is a U upside down).
By substitution.
By matrix elimination.
By Cramer's rule.
............................................................................................................................................

That last answer should look like this..."L1 intersect L2 = {p<48,40>}".

Because we used pythagorean triplets for the slope and integers for the multipliers in generating points, the distance comes out integer. Because we used BOTH odd or BOTH even integers for the multipliers in generating points, the midpoint comes out integer. Because we built this exercise from the point of intersection p<48,40> to start, this comes out integer.

Once people know how to add and subtract rational numbers, (by third grade if their parents are doing their job), they are ready to start basic Analytic Geometry of intervals in one-space and lines in 2-space (which schools commonly call "Pre-Algebra" and "Algebra I").

I teach in the following sequence:
1) Linear equations in one variable
2) Linear inequalities in one variable (Let T subset of E^1XR^1 be a one-dimensional cartesian coordinate system).
3) Intervals in 1-space (inequalities with absolute value).
4) Slope of intervals in 2-spae.
5) Linear equations in 2-space.

US textbooks usually save graphing linear inequalities of one variable involving absolute value to the course we call Algebra II. This misses the opportunity to derive the equation of the line in 2-space from the definitions of "interval" and "slope".

Since the line between the points a and b is the set of all points p such that m(ap) = m(ab), the point-slope form of the equation of the line falls out of the defintition of the line.

Palin in '12

Whitney Tilson, normally sensible, supports Barack Obama. Maybe she's right. Were it not for Governor Palin in the Republican VP slot, I would burn my ballot and vote for the Libertarian, Bob Barr. The major parties have never in my adult life (that is, since 1968) offered voters such unqualified candidates for President. Neither candidate demonstrates any appreciation for federalism or the market economy. Senator Obama has no accomplishments worth a mention. His record on Education issues consists of shoveling Annenberg Foundation money to State-worshipful indoctrination programs. He advocates compulsory community service (i.e., slavery) as a HS graduation requirement and high-paid ($4000 for 100 hours), do-nothing community service in exchange for college tuition. Senator McCain's signal accomplishment, the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection and Kiss Your First Amendment Rights Goodbye Act, should disqualify him from all elective office were the Democrats' alternative not ever worse. Senator Biden exhibits a detachment from reality (did you watch the debate?) that must cause one to question the sanity of the Delaware electorate. I mean:...Article I describes the powers of the Executive branch and gives the Vice President no legislative authority? Really? Did this man ever read the document he has repeatedly sworn to uphold and defend?

Governor Palin got my vote with her convention speech, accepting the nomination for Vice President. She did much better than Senator Biden in the debate (others disagree, here). She takes too conventional a line on on education issues, but McCain's advisor (Lisa Kegan) trumps that consideration.

Bill Gates bought me a beer, so I bloged about the Ed in '08 Education bloggers' summit. The goal of the summit was to raise Education issues to prominence. That has not happened. It seems the media avoid all topics which might incline voters toward Republican candidates this year.

Review: Sheldon Richman, Separating School and State

Years ago, the social critic Ivan Illich argued that a compassionate society would have in its constitution a clause, like the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which would read "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of education". In Separating School and State: How to Liberate American Families, Sheldon Richman observes that the arguments for separation of Church and State apply without alteration to the separation of school and State. People use the words "God", and "education" to refer to ...something... which they obviously consider important but which they can define only in terms which others will hotly dispute. People gain from a separation of Church and State by the reduction of costs involved in resolving disputes over the meaning of "God" and the implications of God's revealed word, the Vedas/Torah/Koran/New Testament. The authors of the US Constitution resolved disputes over the meaning of "God" by the (now obvious) device of letting people find their own meaning and barring the State from taking sides.

If only they had done the same for education.

In six chapters, 101 pages of text and notes, plus acknowledgements, preface (by Jacob Hornberger), introduction (by Richard Ebiling), appendix, and index, Richman examines the institution of government-operated school from historical, sociological, political, and moral perspectives.

Chapters 1 ("Whither Public Schools") and 2 ("What's Wrong with Public Schools") motivate the subsequent examination of this institution and possible options. Chapter 3, "Why there are Public Schools", sketches contemporary (historical, at the time of establishment) arguments for tax support of school and for compulsory attendance laws. Richman devotes chapter 4 ("Opponents of Public Schools") mostly to contemporary (historical) critics of government-operated schools. He quotes (p. 66) an early critic of compulsory attendance:...
"When (Auberon) Herbert anticipated an objection to his argument--that the bureaucracy will be responsive to public opinion--he resorted to what has become known as rational-ignorance analysis":...

When a state department becomes charged with some great undertaking, there accumulates so much technical knowledge around its proceedings that without much labor and favorable opportunities it becomes exceedingly difficult to criticize successfully its action. It is a serious study in itself to follow the minutes and the history of a great department, either like the Local Board or the Education Department. And if a discussion should arise, the same reason makes it difficult for the public to form a judgment in the matter. A great office which is attacked envelopes [sic] itself, like a cuttlefish, in a cloud of technical statements which successfully confuses the public, until its attention is drawn off in some other direction. It is for this reason, I think, that state departments escape so easily from all control, and that such astounding cases of recklessness and mismanagement come periodically to light, making a crash which startles everybody for the moment.

As an aside, George Orwell uses the cuttlefish metaphor in his essay "Politics and the English Language":...

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.

Either cuttlefish haunt the minds of English writers or Orwell recalled Herbert.
Richman does not cite Orwell among the critics of State education, although he could have:...

The terrifying thing about modern dictatorships is that they are something entirely unprecedented. Their end cannot be foreseen. In the past, every tyranny was sooner or later overthrown, or at least resisted because of "human nature," which as a matter of course desired liberty. But we cannot be at all certain that human nature is constant. It may be just as possible to produce a breed of men who do not wish for liberty as to produce a breed of hornless cows. The Inquisition failed, but then the Inquisition had not the resources of the modern state. The radio, press censorship, standardized education and the secret police have altered everything. Mass suggestion is a science of the last twenty years, and we do not know how successful it will be.

George Orwell, "Review of Russia under Soviet Rule by N. de Basily", Essays, (Knopf, 2002).
More?

One has only to to think of the sinister possibilities of the radio, State-controlled education, and so forth, to realize that 'the truth is great and will prevail' is a prayer rather than an axiom.

George Orwell, "Review of Power; A New Social Analysis by Bertrand Russell", Essays, (Knopf, 2002).

In chapter 5, "Without Public Schools", Richman criticizes reform efforts like charter schools and vouchers, which he asserts will succumb to State intrusion following the demand for accountability for tax funds. He makes a valid point here, but "the best is the enemy of the good". The public is wise to fear leaps into the dark. Workable options outside the State school system must evolve before the public will abandon the neighborhood school. Policies, such as charter schools, tuition tax credits, tuition vouchers, and Parent Performance Contracting, which foster this growth and simultaneously reduce the taxpayers' commitment to the State-monopoly system, will more likely bring an end to the State-monopoly system than will visionary arguments alone. In chapter 5 also, Richman attempts to visualize US society society with an uncoerced market in education services.

Richman observes that the State cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education". Operationally, the State defines "education" to be whatever happens to students in those institutions which the State calls "schools" or in those institutions which authorized accreditation agencies call "accredited schools" (unless whatever happens is bad, then the State blames parents). In two earlier posts, "Exercise for the Reader" and "Why School (Part I)" we gave some brief consideration to the definition of "education" without reaching a conclusion. Observe that we got as far as defining "education" as an investment, and then defining "investment" generally. We have not yet specified which activities qualify as "education".

In the appendix, Richman presents a brief and balanced overview of the statistical case for and against a decline in school effectiveness.

In the final section of the appendix, Richman makes explicit one reason for slighting statistical arguments: that they are subject to interpretation and rely on uncontrolled data. Who can say how society would otherwise have evolved without government schooling? He is clearly correct. We cannot rewind Earth's history and run it forward 100 times, in a controlled experiment. Statistical arguments serve two principal functions: as a demonstration of expertise and to rebut assertions from the other side (e.g., homeschoolers' performance belies the argument that high performance depends on schools, juvenile arrest and hospitalization statistics belie the contention that schools reduce crime).

A further argument against (over)reliance on performance data relates to the infinite regress of "why?" questions. As a wise lady from the ETS once observed to a workshop of Campbell High School teachers: "We can't measure what's important, so we measure what we can." Those who rely on statistical summaries of scores on standardized tests of Reading or Math concede too much of the argument to supporters of compulsory attendance and tax subsidies. Who says that these are important, anyway? How much Russian Literature did Olga Korbut read in her early years? What increase in reading vocabulary compensates for how large an increase in taxation and reduction of children's freedom?

Sadly (inevitably), Richman fails to deliver on the promise implicit in his subtitle: "How to Liberate American Families". The system endures, and no reformer has suggested a way around the organized interests which maintain it. It makes no more sense for those of us who are not in government to argue about what government "should" do than it does for the swimming survivors of a mid-ocean shipwreck to argue about what sharks "should" eat. Fortunately, "we" do not have to arrive at a collective answer to the question: "How do we abolish State education?" "We" can, each of us individually, decide to homeschool. If your (US) State makes this difficult, read O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief", and encourage your children to "drop out" in school. Quite a few poor minority children have discovered this option.

Take care. Homeschool if you can.

Truth

These reflections bring to mind a discussion on this point, between the writer and a slaveholding friend in Kentucky, on Christmas morning, 1846. We had asserted, that until mankind were far in advance of what they now are, irresponsible power over our fellow beings would be, as it is, abused. Our friend declared it his conviction, that the cruelties of slavery existed chiefly in imagination, and that no person in D__ County, where we then were, but would be above ill-treating a helpless slave. We answered, that if his belief was well-founded, the people of Kentucky were greatly in advance of the people of New England--for we would not dare say as much as that of any school district there, letting alone counties. No, we would not answer for our own conduct even on so delicate a point.

Olive Gilbert, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth (1850, Dover 1997, p. 48).

Results

From the Office of Elections:

MATSUMOTO, Denise L. 67,851 40.6%
LEE, Carol Mon 37,819 22.6%
KIRKPATRICK, Malcolm 20,519 12.3%

That's a lot of seriously deluded people, whichever way you interpret that result.
One year Denise had two no-name opponents (me and one other nobody). That year, I made it into the general election and 135,000 peple voted for me. Denise got 150,000 votes. She runs on her record of supporting reform, which is a record of failure (given that the DOE has bumbled in the national cellar for the last 20 years).

Honolulu Community College Candidates' Forum

On Monday, 2008-09-15, at 11:30, Board of Education candidates presented their views on reform of the Hawaii DOE to an audience assembled at the HCC cafeteria. The committee who organized the event announced a schedule of candidaies' forums, with Mayoral candidates one day and State Representatives another. With only Board candidates in appearance for this round, we had time for more extended responses to questions. Oahu at-large candidate Garrett Toguchi did not appear, as usual.

HCC Go Vote Committee

Question 1: "Please tell us your background and your qualifications for office. Secondly, please tell us, if your view, what the challenges are that our education system faces and how you plan to address them as a member of the Board of Education." 6 minutes each, 48 minutes total
Question 2: From audience. 90 seconds each, 12 minutes altogether
Question 3: From audience. 90 seconds each, 12 minutes altogether
Question 4: "Please share with us any final comments you wish to make." 2 minutes each, 16 minutes altogether

The Honolulu District candidates sat in the following order (from stage left): Malcolm Kirkpatrick, Denise Matsumoto, and Carol Mon Lee. Denise came prepared; she had a page of double-spaced print in a rather large font. She observed, sotto voce, that the question as the forum coordinator presented it was "obstacles" and not "challenges".

I had no problem winging it: the Hawaii State school system yields one of the worst results, as measured by standardized test scores, of any State in the nation. Juvenile arrests fall in summer, when school is not in session. Juvenile hospitalizations fall in summer. It does not take 12 years at $12,000 per pupil-year to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom. State provision of History and Civics instruction is a threat to democracy, just as State operation of newspapers would be (is, in totalitarian countries). The system has more than enough money. There is no amount of money so great that these parasites cannot waste it. The major obstacle to effective reform is the cartel of public sector unions through whose sticky fingers flows an annual revenue stream of $2.4 billion+ per year. Do not rely on politicians to fix this mess. Homeschool.

As happened at the Hawaii Kai Neighborhood Board forum, one or two candidates spoke of a vision in which there is a highly qualified teacher in every classroom and in which all Hawaii schools perform at or above the 50th percentile nationwide. Again, you might as well envision winning the Indianapolis 500 in a stock D-9 Caterpillar bulldozer. That's not visionary. That's delusional.

Aside from those witless pipe-dreams, I do not recall that anyone (aside from your humble narrator) said anything other than "Vote for me" and "The system needs more money". Perhaps it was the acoustrics that made such work out of paying attention.

One question from the audience concerned enhanced parent input. I reiterated the plea that parents homeschool.

The Makiki Neighborhood Board has a forum scheduled on Wednesday, 2008-09-18, 7:30 at the Makiki Recreation Center Arts and Crafts building.

Rather Biased

Charles Gibson, caught on a live mike on the set of ABC News: "Any distortion or misrepresentation is justified if it helps elect President Obama."

His exact words.

It took CBS two years to fire Dan Rather for his promotion of forged documents smearing President Bush in the run-up to the 2004 election. How long will it take ABC to fire Charles Gibson?

Pearl City Candidate Forum

The Pearl City Community Association invited candidates to introduce themselves to voters on Friday, 2008-Sept.-5 at the Momilani Community Center. Unusually, Office Of Hawaiian Affairs candidates and Board Of Education candidates preceeded candidates for State House, State Senate, and Mayor. The three Honolulu District candidates appeared. The Oahu at-large candidates appeared, with the exception of Marcia Linville, who notified event organizers that she could not appear. The lovely and charming Representative Lynn Finnegan surprised me by recalling my messages in opposition to institutional early childhood education. Denise Matsumoto graciously answered some of my questions about the powers of the Board even though she seemed irritated with my criticism of the DOE generally. Several legislators recognized me before I recognized them. In a representative democracy people skills matter. A memory for faces and names I do not have (but then, I'm not yet a successful politician). I stayed to hear all candidates although I probably will not change my mind about the Mayor's race. The event helped me make my OHA choice.

Richard Fernandez (Belmont Club) wrote: "... a cynic might argue that a good rule of thumb for judging movements is to conclude that the more high minded a cause pretends to be, the more sordid are its actual motives." A similar thought occurs to me when candidates for our State legislature and State-wide Board of Education speak of children as "our most important resource", when they promise "accountability" in the government school system, when they invite voters to envision transforming the State-wide school district such that every school is in the nation's top 50% of schools, or when they talk of placing highly-qualified teachers in every classroom. Before we consider the gap between lofty assertions and sordid practice, let us consider some specific rhetorical devices.

A. Who says children are "our" resources? Darrow Aiona, a candidate for one of the Oahu at-large BOE seats, for one. "Our" implies collective ownership, and so collective decision-making. This assumprion predisposes the choice of governance methods against control by individual parents. Children occupy an anomalous legal status: somewhere between "people" and "property". Under US law, children do not have the rights of adults (e.g., to vote, consent to sex, enlist in the armed forces, buy firearms, consume alcohol, etc.). In this sense, therefore, children are not legally "people". Adults may transfer legal control of children (adoption). In a market economy, the device of private property combines legal control (including the power to transfer legal control) over physical objects with the incentive to use those objects for benign purposes. The benign purpose is promoted by the proscription on coercion in private exchange. When uncoerced individuals exchange goods and services to which they have title, both sides to the exchange benefit (otherwise, why would they act?). Owners have a strong incentive to maintain and enhance the value of material to which they have title. Similarly, absent a State assumption of control over children, parents have a strong incentive to enhance the value of their children. I argue axiomatically, here:
1. Most parents love their children and want their children to outlive them.
2. If you live among people, there are basically three ways to make a living: (2.1) you can beg, (2.2) you can steal, (2.3) you can trade goods and services for other people's goods and services.
3. Most parents accept proposition #2 and prefer option (2.3) for their children.
4. Therefore, most parents want their children educated to make their way in the world after they (the parents) are gone.

Collective title (e.g., Amtrack, the State school system) and the consequent control exercised through a bureaucracy does not similarly link owners' incentives and owners' control. Additionally, the bureaucracy has proprietary interests in job security and career advancement.

The two different decision mechanisms yield vastly different results. Consider a simple case: 100 people individually buying shoes, versus 100 people using some collective ("democratic") process to select the one size of shoe they should wear. Whatever size of shoe wins the contest, someone's feet will hurt. Collective control over "our" children's education suffers all the defects of socialist production, plus added harm to children, the human "resource".

B. Former Superintendent of Education Paul LeMahieu made "standards" and "accountability" the twin pillars of his allaged reform platform. Neither pillar can bear the weight. Leave standards aside for now and consider "accountability".
"Accountability" rhetoric intensifies as overall system performance falls. this suggests that voters attribute to the term "accountability" a punitive implication. The person "accountable" for a disaster suffers. In reality, no bureaucrat suffers for poor system performance and insiders change the subject to parents' deficiencies whenever some outsider suggests that any insider should lose his job for system performance.

Whatever people intend by the term, "accountability" refers to some feedback mechanism through which the consequence of decisions influence future decisions. Policies which give to unhappy customers the power to take their business elsewhere provide the most effective accountability mechanism humans have yet devised. Internal accountability mechanisms fail for a reason political scientists call "regulatory capture"; insiders have a stronger incentive to distort accountability mechanisms than individual voters have to inform themselves and organize to maintain the mechanism.

For Paul LeMahieu, "accountability" meant enhanced centralization of control. The Board of Education gave him a unanimous vote of confidence scant weeks before he resigned in disgrace, after Tina Mclaughlin testified under oath at a joint House/Senate hearing that Kaniu Kinimaka-Stocksdale (allegedly LeMahieu's mistress) claimed the inside track on a $200,000 non-bid personal service contract as security against a loan she (Kinimaka-Stockdale) requested of Tina McLaughlin. LeMahieu had previously abused his authority, to discipline an administrator who protested LeMahieu's efforts to steer a special-ed personal service contract awarded through PREL to Kinimaka-Stockdale. Evidently this earlier malfeasance did not trouble our Board.

C. At the Pearl City candidates' forum, Carol Mon Lee, the other non-incumbent in my race, invited the audience to envision raising all Hawaii schools into the top 50% of schools nationally. Envision placing in the top 50% of finishers at the Indianapolis 500 in a stock Caterpillar D-9. This isn't visionary, it's delusional. The lady apparently does not recognize any connection between institutional structure and system performance.

D. Several candidates mouth the platitude of "a highly qualified teacher in every classroom", while none indicates an understanding of what this entails. This mantra morphs into advocacy of pay raises, without any consideration of the incentive that higher pay creates for incompetent current teachers to remain in the system and for incompetent prospective replacements to apply. If "highly qualified teacher" is some sort of innovation, what does that say about the current selection mechanism and about the teachers already in place? The Legislature deprived the Board of Education of authority over teacher credential requirements.

E. Representative Cynthia Thielen has no opposition in her race for the seat she currently occupies. I sent her a copy of the questionnaire I describe here, with a supplement: this quote from her webpage.

It is absolutely essential that we improve the quality of public education. It is an essential service that provides equal opportunity for all children in Hawaii to reach their full potential. Quality public education is especially important to our State economy since Hawaii is an isolated island state. We rely upon the abilities of our own residents to build and maintain a diversified, sustainable, growing economy to support our state.

I asked:

By "public education" do you mean "government-operated schools"?
Hawaii's government-operated schools yield one of the most inequal results in the US (as measured by the difference between the 90th percentile and the 10th percentile, NAEP 8th grade Math scores). Why do you assert "...public education...provides equal opportunity for all children..." when it clearly does not?
Why do you assert: "Quality public education is especially important to our State economy since Hawaii is an isolated island state"? What is the connection between State (government, generally) operation of school and insularity? 90% of students in Hong Kong and Ireland take tax subsidies to schools other than those operated by government employees. 40% of Singapore schools accept tax-subsidized tuition payments. These are all island polities.

She did not respond. Successful politicians have a blather generator, which allows them extemporaneously to fill the air with polysyllabic drivel.

So much for lofty assertions. Let's consider the sordid practice. If I am correct, the following are true:...
1) It does not take 12 years at $13,000.00 per student-year to teach a normal child to read and compute.
2) Since normal children will work much harder for the love and approval of parents than they will for strangers, homeschoolers have a large advantage over experts in early childhood education. Institutionalization is counter-indicated.
3) Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom.
4) State (government, generally) supply of History or Civics instruction is a threat to democracy, just as State operation of newspapers would be (is, in totalitarian countries).

I argued earlier that the usual welfare-economic case for State subsidy of education relies on large and questionable assumptions, and the case for State operation of schools relies on even larger wild assumptions. For these reasons, I see two sordid motives behind the lofty rhetoric of "public education": the transfer of wealth from taxpayers to system insiders (children serve as window-dressing, like mannequins in a Christmas storefront display) and State-worshipful indoctrination.

Why (not) blog?

When I started this blog I made no promise to myself about posting at regular interval;s. I certainly don't have Sunshine's excuse for sparse blogging. Some writers have enough to say, but even Jay Greene blogs about movies once in a while. I take a lot of time to accumulate material. Some writers can spin joy and love out of everyday events. I do not have the skill with words of the Anchoress or the Headmistress at the Common Room, who has been following the FLDS versus Texas CPS matter, with links and insifghtful, compassionate commentary. Some writers take the easy way out, and offer hostile theater. This sells, as anyone with a television knows. Viewers will watch car chases, explosions, and gunfire. The blog equivalent is name-calling and relentless hostility: "Did you see what those idiots are up to now?" With a target like the Hawaii Department of Education, that would be easy to do, but I did not, and still do not, want to hypnotize myself into reflexive hostility. Everything we do is practice, and relentless hostility is bad practice.

The HSTA sent me a candidate questionnaire, post-marked 25-July-2008 and due 27-July-2008. I did not send it back. I'll write about it tomorrow, maybe. Maybe I'll finally finish a review of Enlow and Ealy, eds., Learning and Liberty: Milton Friedman's Voucher Idea at 50 (Cato,2006).

Pester Your Rep

How well do you know the people who ask for your vote? Politicians will often praise themselves for their ability to make tough choices. Voters can test this assertion with a simple questionnaire. I sent the following list of questions (well, it evolved from one politician to the next) to several candidates for the Hawaii Legislature.
..........................................................................
Aloha, candidates,

1. Do you support tuition tax credits (deductable from taxable income) for K-12 education?
2. Do you support tuition tax credits (deductable from taxes owed) for K-12 education?
3. Do you support tax funded school tuition vouchers?
4. Do you support raising (to 7 or 8) the age at which the state compels attendance at school?
5. If "no" to question 4, above, do you support lowering the age at which the state compels attendance at school?
6. Do you support legislation which would mandate that the DOE recognize the GED as satisfying the HS graduation requirement, at any age?
7. If "yes" to the question 6, above, what fraction (0 < a/b < 1) of the taxpayers' $13,000/year age 5-18 education subsidy would you support allowing students who graduate (via GED) before age 18 to apply toward tuition at any VA-approved post-secondary institution in the State? ___ (specify).
8. If "yes" to the question 6, above, what fraction (0 < a/b < 1) of the taxpayers' $13,000/year age 5-18 education subsidy would you support allowing students who graduate (via GED) before age 18 to apply toward a wage subsidy at any qualified (say, has filed W-2 forms on at least three employees for at least the previous four years) private sector employer in the State? ___ (specify).
9. Hawaii taxpayers spend over $2.4 billion per year (over $13,000 per pupil). to operate the DOE. Is this enough?
10. Do you support any policy which might reduce the tax-funded dues revenue of the HSTA, UHPA, HGEA, or UPW?
11. If "yes" to question 10, above, what?______________(specify).

12. Do you support "shall issue" legislation that would require County Police Chiefs to issue concealed carry permits and so allow citizens to carry concealed handguns?
13. Do you support "shall issue" legislation that would require County Police Chiefs to issue open carry permits and so allow citizens to carry unconcealed handguns?

Thank you for your attention.

Malcolm Kirkpatrick
..............................................................................
Note to mainlanders: Hawaii is an "agency shop" State. UHPA is the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, the University of Hawaii faculty union, an NEA subsidiary. HSTA is the Hawaii State Teachers Association, the Hawaii K-12 NEA subsidiary. HGEA is the Hawaii Government Employees Association, an AFSCME subsidiary to which the State sends agency fees and dues which the State deducts from the paychecks of clerical staff and administrators (in Hawaii, principals must support the union). UPW is the United Public Workers, the AFSCME subsidiary to which the State sends agency fees and dues which it deducts from the salaries of school janitors and cooks.

One candidate responded with a question of her own: what organization did I represent? I answered "none", and that's the last I heard from her. One candidate answered all of these questions (wrong, from my point of view), and one answerred most of them (again, wrong from my point of view) and requested clarification on some others. She then gave no response to the clarified questions.

I tried this once before, when I left with the offices of the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms copies (one for every Senator and Representative, with SASE) of a questionnaire on school policy options. ONE member (Senator Fred Hemmings) responded. How can voters provide effective feedback given such stonewall tactics?

It makes no more sense for ordinary citizens in a mass democracy to argue about what government officials should do than it does for the swimming survivors of a mid-ocean shipwreck to argue about what sharks should eat. The government of a locality is the largest dealer in interpersonal violence in that locality (definition). What is gained by surrendering your money and your children's time to these ... people?

A propos of nothing...
Weasel got this right.

Candidate Forum

Hawaii Kai Neighborhood Board
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Hahaione Elementary School
Mayoral and Board of Education
Candidate Forum

QUESTIONS

Mayoral Candidates – 7:15 to 8:15 p.m.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (Deleted) zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
(I support Panos Prevedouros).

Board of Education Candidates – 8:20 to 9:30 p.m.
(9 of 12 have confirmed attendance)
Opening Statement (up to 2 minutes):
• Why are you running for the Board of Education and how are you qualified?
I want to promote parent control and enhanced student motivation.
I attended Hawaii DOE schools, taught in Hawaii DOE schools from 1982 to 1995, and have been an independent tutor since 1995. I have studied the relation between institutional structure and system performance for nearly 20 years.
Questions (1-minute responses)
1. With 60% of Hawaii's public schools not making adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind, what will you do to improve student achievement?
Student motivation is critical. I will support policies which give parents enhanced control in early years and give students real reasons to do what schools require, in intermediate and high school.
2. Do you believe the DOE’s $2.4 billion operating budget is sufficient, and what will you do to ensure that education funds are wisely spent?
Taxpayers currently spend over $12,000 per pupil-year to operate the Hawaii DOE. This is more than enough. The bureaucratic State-wide DOE cannot use its budget efficiently. Real reform is at least twenty years away. Parents should not wait on politicians to dismantle this corrupt system. Homeschool. Nothing in Hawaii Revised Statutes requires that instruction ocur between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.
3. Since the Board of Education appoints and reviews the superintendent and state librarian, how will you ensure their top performance?
Put a gold-medal Olympic sailor behind the wheel of a supertanker with blacked-out windows, busted navigation gear, intermittent engine power, and 20 tons of driftnet hanging from the rudder. You will not get gold-medal performance.
4. In light of Hawaii’s teacher shortage, what will you do to attract and retain highly qualified teachers?
The Legislature has taken this issue from the Board's hands. I will lobby the legislature to abolish the Teacher Standards Board and the State-wide single school district. Principals should be authorized determine credential requirements and to hire the staff they prefer. Parents should have the power to take the taxpayers' K-12 education subsidy to the school they prefer.
5. With technology providing greater access to information, how can the public libraries best relate to and serve the public?
I would support radical decentralization of the library system. I support community control.
Quickies (30-sec. responses, if time permits):
• Do you support random drug testing as agreed to in the teachers’ contract?
I hope teachers can now see one of the disadvantages to State-wide collective bargaining. Let's live (for now) with the contract we negotiated.
• Do you support replacing the current BOE and DOE with at least seven “local” boards of education and departments of education?
Smaller is better. The job I'm running for should not exist. By some measures, North Dakota generates the highest performance of any US State. The mean school district size in North Dakota is under 500 students.
• Was it appropriate for 651 Hawaii educators to attend the “Model Schools Conference” in Orlando in June at an estimated cost to the state of $1.2 million?
Probably not.

Arguments for School Choice, Condensed Version

Please read this one page Marvin Minsky comment on school.
Please read this article on artificially extended adolescence by Ted Kolderie.
Please read at least the introductory material in E.G. West, "Education Vouchers in Principle and Practice: A Survey", The World Bank Research Observer (Feb., 1997).
Parent Performance Contracting offers to parents a wide range of options while providing to taxpayers financial and performance accountability for their education subsidies.

What's a "Linear Differential Operator" Anyway?

On Tuesday, 12-Aug.-2008 Eugene So presented his Master's thesis, "Linear Differential Operators and the Distribution of Zeros of Polynomials". I didn't understand a word of it. Eugene invited me to attend since I had tutored him years ago, between third and sixth grade.

His parents, Phil and Myung moved to Hawaii from Korea when Eugene was three years old. Myung taught Eugene to add fractions before he entered kindergarten. Eugene attended government schools through third grade, when his G/T teacher recommended to his parents that they consider a more challenging environment. She recommended that they apply to the Center for Talent Youth (CTY) summer program and to private schools. Phil and Myung brought Eugene to the Han Young English Center and my boss, Mr. Han, gave Eugene to me with the instruction that I prepare him for Punahou's 4th grade entrance exam (Math and English).

Eugene already read English fluently and enjoyed science, so I dealt with the Verbal part by giving him a subscription to Science News and passing on my copies of Scientific American. Nothing enhances English fluency like reading science prose. We began our Math instruction with the language of Set Theory and Logic, then worked through basic Algebra. Punahou accepted Eugene and his younger brother Daniel and gave his parents tuition assistance. Punahou tuition would otherwise have been beyond their reach.

My next assignment was to prepare Eugene for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) which CTY uses to determine eligibility. A score of 1200 or better before age 13 qualifies. We continued with Algebra. Eugene qualified and attended CTY camp in Pasadena in the summer between 4th and 5th grades.

Eugene taught himself Trigonometry and in the summer between his sixth and seventh grades a generous instructor (PhD candidate) in the UH Math Department, Monica Vo, allowed him to sit (unregistered) through a Calculus I class at the University of Hawaii. She graded his homework and tests as though he was enrolled. He earned a B. In his seventh grade, Eugene participated in the Math Counts competition and earned the highest score in the Hawaii State-level competion. The Iolani team placed first overall, so the team which Hawaii sent to the national contest consisted of the Iolani team plus Eugene.

Eugene again sat through a class (Calculus II) in the summer between his seventh and eighth grade years. We then appealed to Punahou to configure his class schedule to allow him to attend Math classes at the University during the regular school year. This was not possible due to the rotatinig class schedule which Punahou uses, so his parents decided to homeschool him. In practice, this meant that they went to work and Eugene spent his time in UH Math classes or in Hamilton Library. That year, Eugene participated in the Math Counts competition as a homeschooler, again taking the top place and traveling to the mainland with the Iolani team. Myung graciously listed me as his coach although I had stopped instructing him two years earlier.

Based on faculty recommendations the University of Hawaii finally allowed Eugene to enroll officially, in Math classes only, and Eugene worked through more 200 to 400 level classes than the University requires for a B.S. in Math. He took the GRE (Math specialty) at age 16 and the Math Department accepted him as a graduate student a few weeks before he turned 17. Eugene went straight from intermediate school to grad school, with no high school or undergraduate degree. It took a while, but he finally got his master's degree. The University of Pennsylvania has accepted him into their graduate program, on a full scholarship.

I got a chance to say farewell today (13-Aug.-2008) when I joined Phil, Myung, Eugene, Daniel, and Dr. Marvin Ortel (a key advisor in his carreer) for lunch at Assaggio's. Phil is full-time enlisted in the Army Reserves (he's one of those people who keep Reserve units alive while the units are inactive), so the family will fly MAC to Philadelphia to help Eugene settle in. Daniel will continue at Punahou (he's a junior now). Eugene is not yet 20.

At lunch today Eugene observed that Punahou found ways to accommodate the golfer Michelle Wie's career (she and Eugene were classmates). We had to work to find ways to accommodate Eugene's talents and the path we found may not be easy for others to follow, but I wonder how much talent never finds such opportunities for development. Is it only because we have clear measures of Math ability that the path opened to Eugene? If some auto mechanic or chef were to mentor a mechanical or culinary prodigy, would child labor laws and compulsory attendance laws permit such accommodation as we found for Eugene?

In an earlier version of this post I placed CTY before Eugene's 4th grade year. I corrected the timeline and will ask Myung for confirmation. No big deal, I hope.

Ed in '08: Hawaii Board of Education (2)

At least twenty years must pass before the political system of Hawaii reforms the Hawaii Department of Education. Effective political reform will require:
1) A majority on the Board in favor of policies which give to individual parents the power to determine which institution (if any) shall receive the taxpayers' K-12 education subsidy.
2) A majority in the Legislature in favor of parent control.
3) A Hawaii Supreme Court which puts the interests of families and taxpayers, or a normal iterpretation of the law, above the interests of the public-sector unions and other contractors to the current system.

Provision #3, above, will require Governors who appoint judges who do not contort the law in favor of public-sector unions or other contractors to the system, and confirmation by a legislature similarly disposed. This must occur for long enough that the current Hawaii Supreme Court has been replaced by judges more concerned for the law and for children than for contractors' bank balances. This is decades away.

School voucher legislation will require a Constitutional amendment. The Hawaii Constitution, Article X section 1) says:

Section 1. The State shall provide for the establishment, support and control of a statewide system of public schools free from sectarian control, a state university, public libraries and such other educational institutions as may be deemed desirable, including physical facilities therefor. There shall be no discrimination in public educational institutions because of race, religion, sex or ancestry; nor shall public funds be appropriated for the support or benefit of any sectarian or nonsectarian private educational institution, except that proceeds of special purpose revenue bonds authorized or issued under section 12 of Article VII may be appropriated to finance or assist:

1. Not-for-profit corporations that provide early childhood education and care facilities serving the general public; and
2. Not-for-profit private nonsectarian and sectarian elementary schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities.

Although Parent Performance Contracting (PPC) would require no new legal authority (the DOE already hires service providers on personal service contracts), the public-sector unions would certainly take PPC to court. If the Board enacts PPC, the current crop of judges would rule that the program needed legislative approval. If the legislature mandates PPC, the court would rule that PPC was properly the Board's responsibility. PPC just might win in court if both the Legislature and the Board endorse it, but even that is uncertain and in any case that will not happen soon.

To design reform policies for a political environment in which system insiders and Hawaii judges support parent control or, at least, do not oppose it, is to design policy for a dreamworld. UPW State Director Gary Rodrigues served three successive terms on the Judicial Selection Commission. The damage which system insiders (politicians, public-sector unions, Professors of Education, and contractors) inflict on children, families, and taxpayers might as well occur on the other side of the Earth for all the impact it has on insiders' comfortable air-conditioned lives. When was the last time you wept for cyclone victims in Bangladesh?

Responsible parents will not rely on politicians to fix this broken system. A loving mother can teach her child to read (decode the phonetic alphabet) before that child can speak. Homeschool. Parents need not sacrifice an income to homeschool, since nothing in Hawaii Revised Statutes requires that instruction occur between 8:00 am. and 2:30 pm. As I read it, parents can legally extend daycare to age 18 and provide instruction in the evening.

[§302A-1132] Attendance compulsory; exceptions. (a) Unless excluded from school or excepted from attendance, all children who will have arrived at the age of at least six years, and who will not have arrived at the age of eighteen years, by January 1 of any school year, shall attend either a public or private school for, and during, the school year, and any parent, guardian, or other person having the responsibility for, or care of, a child whose attendance at school is obligatory shall send the child to either a public or private school. Attendance at a public or private school shall not be compulsory in the following cases:...
...
(4) Where the child has graduated from high school;

(5) Where the child is enrolled in an appropriate alternative educational program as approved by the superintendent or the superintendent's authorized representative in accordance with the plans and policies of the department, or notification of intent to home school has been submitted to the principal of the public school that the child would otherwise be required to attend in accordance with department rules adopted to achieve this result;...

Consider this carefully: "or notification of intent to home school has been submitted to the principal of the public school that the child would otherwise be required to attend in accordance with department rules adopted to achieve this result..." "This result" means "attendance at 'the public school that the child would otherwise be required to atend' ". All that is required is "notification". Nothing in this statute authorizes the DOE to impose on parents a requirement that instruction occur between 8:00 am. and 2:30 pm.

Provision 4, above, offers some children an alternative escape route. Some countries condition high school graduation on an exit exam (e.g., the British A-level exams). Parents could take a vacation to such a country and return to Hawaii with a 14-year-old high school graduate, exempt from compulsory attendance.

Why bother? This is what system insiders and their media shills defend.

Roland Meighan, "Home-based Education Effectiveness Research and Some of its Implications", Educational Review, Vol. 47, No.3, 1995.

The issue of social skills. One edition of Home School Researcher, Volume 8, Number 3, contains two research reports on the issue of social skills. The first finding of the study by Larry Shyers (1992) was that home-schooled students received significantly lower problem behavior scores than schooled children. His next finding was that home-schooled children are socially well adjusted, but schooled children are not so well adjusted. Shyers concludes that we are asking the wrong question when we ask about the social adjustment of home-schooled children. The real question is why is the social; adjustment of schooled children of such poor quality?

The second study, by Thomas Smedley (1992), used different test instruments but comes to the same conclusion, that home-educated children are more mature and better socialized than those attending school...
12. So-called 'school phobia' is actually more likely to be a sign of mental health, whereas school dependancy is a largely unrecognized mental health problem...

San Francisco Chronicle 2005-Nov.-01

The UC Berkeley-Stanford study found that all children who attended preschool at least 15 hours a week displayed more negative social behaviors such as trouble cooperating or acting up, when compared with their peers. The discrepancies were most pronounced among children from higher-income families...
Children from lower-income families lagged behind their peers who didn't attend preschool an average of 7 percentage points on the measure of social behavioral growth. But children from higher-income families lagged 9 percentage points behind their peers. These wealthier children did even worse when they attended preschool for 30 hours or more: They trailed their peers by 15 percentage points...
"It's not clear why children from higher-income families exhibit more negative behaviors than their stay-at-home peers. Fuller speculated their peers might be in enriching home environments that include things like trips to the library as well as dance and music lessons. Other studies have found childcare centers negatively affect children's social development", said Jay Belsky, director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues at Birkbeck University of London, in an e-mail interview.
"It is time to come to grips with what all too many have denied for all too long, namely, that all disconcerting news about adverse effects cannot be attributed to low-quality care, which has been more or less the mantra of the field of child development and the child-care advocacy community for decades", Belsky said.

Clive Harber, "Schooling as Violence", p. 9, Educatioinal Review V. 54, #1.

Furthermore, according to a report for UNESCO, cited in Esteve (2000), the increasing level of pupil-teacher and pupil-pupil violence in classrooms is directly connected with compulsory schooling. The report argues that institutional violence against pupils who are obliged to attend daily at an educational centre until 16 or 18 years of age increases the frustration of these students to a level where they externalise it...

"...It is almost certainly more damaging for children to be in school than to out of it. Children whose days are spent herding animals rather than sitting in a clasroom at least develop skills of problem solving and independence while the supposedly luckier ones in school are stunted in their mental, physical, and emotional development by being rendered pasive, and by having to spend hours each day in a crowded classroom under the control of an adult who punishes them for any normal level of activity such as moving or speaking."

Kohn, "Constant Frustration and Occasional Violence", American School Board Journal, September 1999.

(Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of education, Stanford University): "...(M)any well-known adolescent difficulties are not intrinsic to the teenage years but are related to the mismatch between adolescents' developmental needs and the kinds of experiences most junior high and high schools provide. When students need close affiliation, they experience large depersonalized schools; when they need to develop autonomy, they experience few opportunities for choice and punitive approaches to discipline..."

Karen Brockenbrough, Dewey G. Cornell, Ann B. Loper, "Aggressive Attitudes Among Victims of Violence at School", Education and the Treatment of Children, V. 25, #3, Aug., 2002.

Violence at school is a prevalent problem. According to a national survey of school proncipals (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1998), over 200,000 serious fights or physical attacks occurred in public schools during the 1996-1997 school year. Serious violent crimes occurred in approximately 12% of middle schools and 13% of high schools. Student surveys (Kann et al, 1995) indicate even higher rates of aggressive behavior. Approximately 16.2% of high school students nationwide reported involvement in a physical fight at school during a 30-day period, and 11.8% reported carrying a weapon on school property (Kann et al, 1995).
Research on victims of violence at school suggests that repeated victimization has detrimental effects on a child's emotional and social development.

Please read this one page Marvin Minsky comment on school.
Please read this article on artificially extended adolescence by Ted Kolderie.

Ed in '08: Hawaii Board of Education (1)

Three candidates filed petitions with the State of Hawaii Office of Elections for the Honolulu seat on the State of Hawaii Board of Education. The incumbent, Denise Matsumoto, seeks another 4-year term. Carol Mon Lee and Malcolm Kirkpatrick will compete with Denise Matsumoto for the office. In Hawaii, School Board contests occur at the same time as primary and general elections for other offices. The Hawaii Revised Statutes provides that:...

§13-1 Board members; number.
(a) The board of education shall consist of thirteen members who shall be elected by the registered voters of two at-large school board districts as follows:

First school board district: the island of Oahu, comprised of the 11th through the 48th and a portion of the 49th (that portion found on the island of Oahu) representative districts, and the

Second school board district: the islands of Hawaii, Maui, Lanai, Molokai, Kahoolawe, Kauai, and Niihau, comprised of the 1st through the 10th, a portion of the 49th (that portion found on the island of Kauai), and the 50th and 51st representative districts.

(b) Ten members shall be elected at-large from the first school board district. Of the ten members elected at-large from that district, one shall be a resident of the third departmental school district (Honolulu), one shall be a resident of the fourth departmental school district (Central Oahu), one shall be a resident of the fifth departmental school district (Leeward Oahu), and one shall be a resident of the sixth departmental school district (Windward Oahu).

If you think this is complicated, just browse the rest of the "Education" statutes in Hawaii Revised Statutes.

Anyway, I'm in this contest. I recommend the experience of campaigning for elective office. Once the Office of Elections verifies the signatures on a citizen's petition for a place on the ballot, the volume of mail delivered to that citizen rises dramatically. Printers and others with specialized advertising expertise offer their services. Various charitable organizations solicit donations (wait a minute. I'm the politician. Aren't you supposed to bribe me? Oh, maybe that's after I get elected.). I suppose the idea is that the organization's officers will recommend a vote for the candidate who makes the largest donation. Newspapers and interest groups mail candidate surveys. So far this cycle I have received surveys from The Honolulu Advertiser, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the Family Forum, the Hawaii State Teachers' Association, and the Hawaii Rifle Association. In prior elections, the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered Task Force and the Ka Lahui native Hawaiian organization sent surveys. This is fun. For a $25 filing fee I get to criticize the Hawaii DOE in public and the news media get to ignore the criticism I deliver at public forums.

The Office of Elections provides to candidates a platform for a public profile, and I wrote this...

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (11-Dec.-1918--3-Aug.-2008), Farewell

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died today, Sunday, 3-August-2008. The most important 20th Century writer in any language, and a great Russian patriot, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn's non-fiction The Gulag Archepelago exposed at length and in harrowing detail the horror of the Soviet labor camps. Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.

Solzhenitsyn first came to the world's attention during Chairman Nikita Krushchev's brief post-Stalin thaw, with the publication in Novy Mir of the short novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. The thaw did not last but the publication of One Day... prompted many labor camp survivors to write to Solzhenitsyn and supply him with material for his later work. In his autobiographical works Solzhenitsyn expressed his gratitude to the Novy Mir Editor Aleksandr Tvardovsky for his courage in publishing One Day... and most poignantly at Tvardovsky's funeral, where he kissed the forehead of his departed friend.

Solzhenitsyn's literary range includes short fiction (e.g., For the Good of the Cause, Matryona's Home), novels (e.g., The First Circle, The Cancer Ward, August, 1914), historical non-fiction works (The Gulag Archepelago), autobiography (The Oak and the Calf, Invisible Allies), prose poem sketches (The Easter Procession, Freedom to Breathe), plays (Candle in the Wind, The Love-Girl and the Innocent), and polemics (Warning to the West, Harvard Commencement address). His emotional range was as wide, from towering anger through irony, clinical detachment, and gentle humor, on through gratitude, pity, sorrow, and love. The Gulag Archepelago spans all this range. Love radiates from Matryona's Home, for the old woman who provides the narrator a place to live and for the Russian language.

Solzhenitsyn selected his words with care, with attention to their etymology; in the opening passage of Matryona's Home the narrator contrasts the (Soviet) name of the town to which the parole authorities send him ("Torfoprodukt" = "peat produce") with the village where he settles (Talnovo). Two of his novels became movies: The First Circle and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch. In an interview, Solzhenitsyn said he liked the adaptation of One Day... but not The First Circle. The movie "One Day..." was filmed in the middle of the Finland winter, for realism.

I have not read the revised version of August, 1914 or the sequels, November, 1916, March, 1917, in this cycle (the entire cycle is called The Red Wheel), his suppressed and disavowed play The Feast of the Victors, or some essays written for periodicals. The recent Solzhenitsyn Reader contains some new material.

Readers new to Solzhenitsyn will develop a taste for his work if they start with the short stories and shorter novels. I am not a fan of plays by any author, so it may reflect that disposition and not Solzhenitsyn's talents that I find his plays the weakest of his works. People who say that they tried to read Solzhenitsyn but gave up usually made the mistake of starting with the Gulag.... I recommend Matryona's Home or One Day in the Life... to start, then The Cancer Ward or August, 1914. Give yourself a chance to develop a taste for his style before you read The First Circle and The Gulag Archepelago.

Before his exile, friends allowed Solzhenitsyn to stay at a country house where he could work in solitude. In one of his autobiographical works, he describes a daily routine of 16-hour days writing. In The First Circle, and The Cancer Ward, Solzhenitsyn meditates on the responsibilities of individuals relative to institutions. In The Cancer Ward, Solzhenitsyn addresses the question: When may one individual prescribe for another? Solzhenitsyn answers: Where there is a bond of love between them, and this love cannot be an abstract, self-congratulatory Marxist "love of the people", but must be personal. The dramatic peak moment in the story occurs when the doctor Vera Gangart persuades the exile Oleg Kostoglotov to pour away a folk remedy for his cancer and to put his life in her hands.

Returning to my preoccupation, the application to US education policy should be obvious.

I used to tell my students that there are few good people on this planet. We cannot be good, but we can aspire to be better: a bit better today than we were yesterday and a bit better tomorrow than we were today. Solzhenitsyn was one of those few good people.

Update (5-Aug.-2008): Please read this.
Update (6-Aug.-2008): Please read this. Thanks to Five Feet of Fury for the link.

The Church/State question

From The Volokh Conspiracy comes this news:...
Tenth Circuit Strikes Down Exclusion of "Pervasively Sectarian" Institutions from Government-Paid Student Scholarships
COLORADO CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY, Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
WEAVER, et al., defendants.

Judge McConnel's decision:...
"The State of Colorado provides scholarships to eligible students who attend any accredited college in the state—public or private, secular or religious—other than those the state deems 'pervasively sectarian.' To determine whether a school is 'pervasively sectarian,' state officials are directed, among other things, to examine whether the policies enacted by school trustees adhere too closely to religious doctrine, whether all students and faculty share a single 'religious persuasion,' and whether the contents of college theology courses tend to 'indoctrinate.' "
...
"We find the exclusion unconstitutional for two reasons: the program expressly discriminates among religions without constitutional justification, and its criteria for doing so involve unconstitutionally intrusive scrutiny of religious belief and practice."

Judge McConnell might have been channeling Justice Clarence Thomas here. From USSC Mitchell v. Helms:
(Thomas): "One of the dissent’s factors deserves special mention: whether a school that receives aid (or whose students receive aid) is pervasively sectarian. The dissent is correct that there was a period when this factor mattered, particularly if the pervasively sectarian school was a primary or secondary school. Post, at 19—22, 28—29, 33, 38—41. But that period is one that the Court should regret, and it is thankfully long past.
There are numerous reasons to formally dispense with this factor. First, its relevance in our precedents is in sharp decline.
...
Second, the religious nature of a recipient should not matter to the constitutional analysis, so long as the recipient adequately furthers the government’s secular purpose.
...
Third, the inquiry into the recipient’s religious views required by a focus on whether a school is pervasively sectarian is not only unnecessary but also offensive. It is well established, in numerous other contexts, that courts should refrain from trolling through a person’s or institution’s religious beliefs.
...
Finally, hostility to aid to pervasively sectarian schools has a shameful pedigree that we do not hesitate to disavow."

Here's Judge McConnell again: "Because we have held that the challenged statutes violate the First Amendment and have no constitutionally sufficient justification, CCU is entitled to summary judgment for the same reasons the State defendants were ot."

Eugene Volokh: "I should note that the author of the decision, Judge Michael McConnell, is one of the nation's leading Establishment Clause scholars (a reputation built on his career as a law professor)."

Judge McConnell wrote the chapter "Legal and Constitutional Issues of Vouchers" in the Brookings Institution/Urban Institute/CED study Vouchers and the Provision of Public Services. Although the chapter on the economics of vouchers requires technical expertise, most of this work rewards study by interested readers who lack that background.

The Agenda's author was raised in no church, and is a devout materialist. Rather than trying to determine what taxpayers do not want to buy with their K-PhD subsidy, why not define what we are trying to buy, and support that? Are there neutral criteria which funding agencies could use to determine if taxpayers get value for the dollar by their support?

Charter school and tuition vouchers

John Ray (2008-June-26) linked this Wall Street Journal article on re-regulation of charter schools in New York. Years ago, Milton Friedman expressed a preference for school vouchers over charter schools, since current recipients of the US taxpayers' $500 billion+ per year K-12 education subsidy will relentlessly lobby legislatures to amend the laws and regulations which create charter schools and which define the limits on their autonomy. School vouchers also invite State intrusion, through the laws and regulations which determine institutional eligibility. Accreditation agencies represent established interests. Parent Performance Contracting offers system insiders fewer avenues by which to intrude.

Just Go There

The Headmistress/Zookeeper at The Common Room wrote this.

Beth Clarkson sent this link to "A Mathematician's Lament". The author's credential should command respect. His enthusiasm for Math probably inspires students. Still... his dismissive position on notation and symbolic manipulation gives me pause. Some problems are hard without notation and easy with notation. See postscript, below.

My bottom line? "What works?" is an empirical question which only a competitive market in education services can answer.

In related news, Georgia and Louisiana recently enacted school vouchers. Georgia, statewide, and Louisiana, limited. More, please.

P.S. A Sam Lloyd puzzle: A milkman has two 10-gallon dairy cans of fresh milk. Two cooks want to buy milk. One cook has a 5-gallon pail and one cook has a 3-gallon pail. Each cook wants two gallons of milk. The milkman has no way to mark the containers. There are no spare containers available. He does not want to pour milk away. How does he make the sale?

Just try this without notation.

TFA

Megan McArdle's guest blogger Conor Friedersdorf linked this article by the Urban Institute on the effects of Teach For America teachers on student performance.

Abstract
Teach for America (TFA) selects and places graduates from the most competitive colleges as teachers in the lowest-performing schools in the country. This paper is the first study that examines TFA effects in high school. We use rich longitudinal data from North Carolina and estimate TFA effects through cross-subject student and school fixed-effects models. We find that TFA teachers tend to have a positive effect on high school student test scores relative to non-TFA teachers, including those who are certified in-field. Such effects exceed the impact of additional years of experience and are particularly strong in math and science.

Last session, the Hawaii Legislature killed a bill to waive current licensing requirements for Teach For America grads.

Update: There's this support for TFA in the Wall Street Journal:...

Teach for America volunteers tend to have much better academic qualifications (than typical College of Ed graduated teachers--my comment). They come from more competitive schools and they know more about the subjects they teach. Ms. Hannaway notes, "Students are better off being exposed to teachers with a high level of skill."

The strong performance in math and science seems to confirm that the more specialized the knowledge, the more important it is that teachers be well versed in it. (Imagine that.) No amount of time in front of a classroom will make you understand advanced algebra better.

Teach for America was pleased, but not exactly shocked, by these results. "We have always been a data-driven organization," says spokesman Amy Rabinowitz. "We have a selection model we've refined over the years." The organization figures out which teachers have been most successful in improving student performance and then seeks applicants with similar qualities. "It's mostly a record of high academic achievement and leadership in extracurricular activities." Sounds like the way the private sector hires. Don't tell the teachers unions.

Public sector unions dominate the Hawaii Teacher Standards Board. Their influence is not benign. The University of Hawaii Professional Assembly, which represents, among others, College of Education faculty, is an NEA subsidiary.

Bill Gates Bought Me a Beer (ED in '08 Bloggers' Summit)

Someone told the organizers of the Ed in '08 bloggers' summit about The Harriet Tubman Agenda and this blog got an invitation. Thanks for the beer and cool event-labeled paraphenalia, Mr. Gates. I owe you. Here goes.

No, I didn't fly Honolulu to DC and back for the blogger's summit. The invitation came after I'd already booked Northwest from Honolulu to Memphis to attend my niece's graduation from Rhodes College, from Memphis to Minneapolis for a week in the woods along the Cascade River (Damn, those woods are cold. Deep, too) with my older sister, then a second-cousin's graduation from Adams-Friendship HS in Wisconsin.

What's the big deal with graduation? I only went to my HS graduation because they made me, and I didn't go to my college graduation. All parties involved took my departure as cause for celebration. Certainly, my experience isn't universal. Others have their own, and better, reasons to celebrate. My neice, the college grad (History), is off to teach English to Sri Lankan youngsters, and the HS grad is on to college. Good on them, I guess.

Viewed from Hawaii, the angular separation between Memphis, DC, and Grand Marais isn't much. DC wasn't much of a change in the itinerary, so I added that detour. The organizers promised Newt Gingrich and Joanne Jacobs, which sounded interesting. Then they began to fill the schedule with bloggers from the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and the establishment media, and the detour began to look less attractive. Sunk costs are sunk, however, so I tried to keep an open mind.

The organizers were generous, courteous, and efficient. Thanks Holly, Mark, and the guy whose name I forget. Sorry. I didn't take a lot of notes. The staff of the Palomar Hotel supplied this wanderer with guidance. Thanks, all.

Day 1. Saturday. Cocktail hour and film.

I spent the cocktail hour cowering in a corner, nursing a beer and admiring the sharp clothes and easy sociability of everyone else. The screening of Two Million Minutes offered the chance to sit in dim light and enforced silence. The makers of Two Million Minutes, a film about the waste of time and talent in US high schools relative to the schools of China and India, followed six students, a male and a female in each country, through their daily routine. They interviewed economists and entrepreneurs who discussed the causes and consequences of the systematic differences between student motivation in India and China, on the one hand, and in the USA on the other. Maybe the economists' dire predictions of US decline will prove correct, but I am not convinced that exceptional performance at the top end of the academic scale matters all that much. The performance of the US economy from 1800 to 1900 suggests otherwise. Richard Arkwright, James Hargreaves, and Thomas Highs were homeschooled or only marginally schooled. Cyrus McCormick was homeschooled. Thomas Edison was homeschooled and went to work at 13. Hyram Maxim left school at 13 and apprenticed. A legal regime of secure title, freedom of association and freedom of contract, and a relatively transparent, small, and honest government matter more than exalted performance by academic stars. The Soviet Union created world-class mathematicians and physicists, and look where that got them. Bill Boryk, who visited the Russia before the collapse of communism, described life in the Evil Empire as "PhDs living in the stone age".

Day 2. Sunday. Panels, lunch, and a conversation with Joanne Jacobs.

The powers behind the Ed in '08 conference recommend three repairs to the US school system: standards, qualified teachers, and time to learn. This will more likely move US academic performance backwards. The major system insiders, the teachers' unions and their allies, will use the "standards" and "qualified teachers" imperatives to enhance centralization of the US education industry. Enhanced "time to learn" means students will have less time to pursue their own interests, outside the failed command economy of the government school system. The largest cost of the compulsory, tax-funded US school system is the opportunity cost to students of the time they spend in school.

One speaker bucked the tide. Newt Gingrich spoke during lunch and extolled self-paced instruction. He endorsed technology and institutional innovations which free students to pursue their own interests and to advance through the required curriculum at a faster pace than the prescribed 12 years to college.

Joanne signed a copy of Our School for me. I gave a copy of these charts to Newt Gingrich as he passed our table.

The weather in DC was fine. I did not meet an unfriendly soul in DC. The man at the National Airport visitors' information desk, the clerks at Motel 6, the bus drivers, and the young man waiting for the bus outside MacDonalds, who left Stockton, California to escape the gang temptation, were all helpful and friendly.

I did not have time to visit any monuments or museums, and flew out at 7 a.m. Monday.

"Their inner Alfie Kohn"

Ho ho ho. Love that line. "Their inner Alfie Kohn".

Some of my colleagues closed their gradebooks two weeks before the end of the school year and dumped the last two week's assigned student work in the trash. Shouldn't this prompt doubts about the enterprise? Like much assigned classwork throughout the year, the last week's work was for show. I believe that teachers often assign classwork and homework with no larger instructional purpose than to keep students occupied or to prove to parents or supervisors that they (teachers) are doing their jobs.

As a rule of thumb, if you have to lie, you're doing something wrong.

Early in my career, I assigned enough classwork to keep students busy. I assigned homework. The problem was, grading enough work to occupy students' time in class kept me busy for hours after class (and I was a Math teacher. For English or History, it's worse). Grading assigned homework involved another problem: who's work was I grading, anyway? What can a grade mean if I don't know where the student got the answer?

So I stopped. We practiced on worksheets of my own composition (teachers routinely violate copyright). I graded a short test once a week, but not classwork, and a quarter final each quarter. The only homework that mattered was a file of all collected classwork and tests, which counted 1/2 of a grade point (i.e., C+ => B).

Really, now. If you lift weights for an hour a day five times per week, you'll bulk up. If you trot around the track for an hour a day five times a week, you'll get fit. Use class time honestly and you'll find you use it well. You'll save the students' time and your own.

Unoriginal Thoughts

Chester Finn wrote a book,Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik. Neal McCluskey wrote a review of this book for the Heartland Institute's website. Finn wrote a review of McCluskey's review, for the Fordham Institute's Education blog, Flypaper, and I left a comment.

That comment, expanded, and with a typo or two corrected (and more added, probably), appears here.
.................................................................................
I read Neal McClusky’s review. I doubt I’ll read Chester Finn’s book.

Mr. Finn raises two objections to the free market vision for the education industry:
1) Accountability: Market-driven schools are accountable to parents. The most effective accountability mechanism humans have yet devised is a policy which gives to unhappy customers the power to take their business elsewhere.
2) Affordability: School may be expensive. Education is potentially cheap. It does not take 12 years at $10,000 per student-year to teach a normal child to read and compute. Much vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom. State-controlled Civics instruction is a clear threat to democracy, just as State control of news media would be (is, in totalitarian States).

The education industry is not a natural monopoly. Beyond a very low level, there are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the education business as it currently operates. “Natural monopoly” and “economies of scale” are two usual welfare-economic arguments for State (government generally) operation of an industry. Even when an industry qualifies as a natural monopoly or exhibits significant economies of scale, the case for State (government, generally) operation is not decisive, and in any case, the education industry does not qualify as a natural monopoly and does not exhibit significant economies of scale at the delivery end. Education only marginaly qualifies as a public good as economists use the term, and the “public goods” argument implies subsidy and regulation at most, not State operation of schools. Further, the "public goods" argument does not imply the conclusion which many people commonly suppose. As the Palgrave dictionary of Economics observes (in different words, in its discussion of "public goods"), since corporate oversight qualifies as a "public good" (all shareholders benefit from the research and activism of concerned shareholders), and since the State itself is a corporation, the "public goods" argument for State subsidy or operation of an industry has a gap in the logic. The State may collect taxes "for" education subsidies, but then State agents may apply the collected resources to other uses (e.g., elected officials may buy support from constituencies of insiders, bureaucrats may steer resources to friends and relatives). The State's assumption of responsibility for the production of "public goods" transforms the problem but does not eliminate it.

Critics of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers' K-12 education subsidy (aka "the public school system") vary in the degree to which they accept the current system, and they vary in the direction from which they see improvement coming. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn somewhere applied the term "small causes" to those reforms advanced by discouraged critics of the Soviet system: If we cannot abolish State control of the economy, maybe at least we can get better cages for the gorillas in the zoo. The "small cause" critics of the US school system advocate reforms such as a different sequence in the Math curriculum or a different canon for English classes. Following Robert Benchley, who observed that there are, broadly speaking, two types of people, those who assign people to one or another of two types and those who do not, I assign advocates for large-scale structural change to one or another of two types: those who favor greater centralization and those who favor greater decentralization.

In his work Socialism, Ludwig Von Mises suggested that socialism is at root a revenge fantasy. I believe this applies as well to system critics like Chester Finn, who seek salvation in some central authority. People who advocate national standards imagine if only the right people wielded the national measuring rod, we could spank the NEA, but good. Suppose, as I do, that current recipients of the US taxpayers' K-12 education subsidy pose the greatest obstacle to structural reform. Suppose, as I do, that insiders deserve a caning for the atrocity of inner-city schools. Still, revenge fantasies becloud the judgment of centralization advocates about the likely consequence of centralization: insiders will gain greater control and overall system performance will fall below current low levels.

The social critic Ivan Illich once wrote that a compassionate society would have in its Constitution a clause like the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which would read: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of Education".

I have argued elsewhere that there is a lot of "play" in the description of the current system. Charter schools play with the concepts of "public" ownership of facilities and "public employee". Virtual schools play with the concept of attendance.

Compulsory attendance statutes mean nothing unless some school is compelled to admit students rejected everywhere else. Call these default-option schools “the public school system”. Likely, these default-option schools would cost more, per pupil-year, to operate than would schools which assembled their clientelle by mutual agreement. Legislators could save taxpayer money if they periodically put the contract to operate default-option schools out to bid, and gave to individual parents the power to determine which schools shall receive the taxpayers’ K-12 education subsidy.

Myron Lieberman suggests that financial pressure (the looming retirement of the baby boomers) may eventually compel legislators to end the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel’s exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers’ pre-college education subsidy. An end to the State’s presence in the education industry is not likely. While charter schools, school vouchers, tuition tax credits, and subsidized homeschooling would be big improvements on the current State-monopoly school system, I prefer a policy I call Parent Performance Contracting.

What do Reporters Know (and when did they know it)

Composed 2007/09/29

What hapened to Utah's State-wide voucher referendum (it lost, after mendacious opposition from the NEA)? Guaranteed, the papers give a defeat more publicity than they give a voucher victory. Is it just that Schools of Journalism act as filters, or Professors of Journalism as gatekeepers? This is a puzzle.

Anyone who has ever been on the scene when a newsworthy event occurred, and then has read or seen subsequent newpaper or broadcast news accounts must have wondered what alternate reality journalists inhabit. Why do reporters almost always get it so wrong? Inevitably, journalists filter reportage through their own preconceptions and predispositions. When an event is actually news, a house fire, say, rather than some staged performance like a press conference, journalists usually arrive after the fact and must derive their accounts from others, who filter events through their predispostitions (to get their 15 minutes of fame, for example). That's one source of distortion. This does not account for the systematic selection bias of journalists at staged events, where reporters have every opportunity to record the entire story and quote every speaker at a committee hearing, for example.

Likely, journalists calculate that institutional insiders come with ready-made authority. While a journalist will have to spend some effort to justify to readers using a comment from an individual selected at random from the phone directory, institutional insiders need little introduction. Professors of X benefit from the presumption of expertise in X.

A journalist may also calculate that various institutional insiders, sufficiently cultivated, will allow the journalist to make a few small modifications to a press release and claim the work as his own. This energy-saving tactic obviously requires that the journalist maintain cordial relations with institutional insiders. A less extreme variation of this syndrome would be cultivating sources for ease of access to material.

A review of a recent book on CIA intelligence failures suggests that the CIA knowingly fed shoddy intelligence to Executive and Congressional policy makers because CIA employees had nothing better to offer. Rather than admit their utter dispensability, they defrauded taxpayers and deceived policy makers. Something like this may be at work in journalism as well. Artificial drama sells newspapers. "If it bleeds, it leads." Journalists need to be needed.

Has anyone done for Schools of Journalism what Rita Kramer did for Colleges of Education?

National Standards and Federalism

Someone once said that the problem with national standards is that the right won't abide "national" and the left won't abide "standards".
John Ray linked to this Washington Post article on low-level "Advanced Placement" courses. Edespresso linked to this Education Next article by Chester Finn and Mike Petrili advocating national standards as a substitute for the thicket of Federal laws which interfere with local control of education.

NCLB is an unconstitutional intrusion by the Federal government into an area reserved to the States or to the people. While that objection may sound antique to those who believe that the US Constitution is a living document, the Federal principle recognizes that human rationality has limits and allows numerous experiments in public policy. To a devout Federalist, the Department of Education is unconstitutional, and so are Federal minimum wage laws, Federal child labor laws, Social Security, and Federal subsidies to agriculture. To avoid that larger fight, an administration concerned simultaneously for the Federal principle and for education might consider that the Federal government exercises legitimate authority over four pre-college school systems: the Washington, DC, schools, the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, the Department of Defense schools, and the US Embassy schools. All the Federal government has to do to inject competition into the K-12 education industry is 1) to create exit exams for a 12 year sequence of courses which meets graduation requirements in these schools, 2) to offer credit-by-exam at any time, at any age, 3) to allow any US citizen the option to sit for these exams, 4) to offer HS diplomas to students who accumulate sufficient credits, and 5) to authorize independent institutions to administer these exams. Let competition between Sylvan Learning Centers and the Kumon Institute drive the cost of an accredited K-12 education to the marginal cost of administering and grading exams.