Monthly Archives: November 2008

Bashing – I

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I followed a Subaru out the causeway the other day. It got me to thinking.

Coupla things have gone wrong for our kids in the past 40-or-so years. Unfortunately, it’s my fault. And Anne’s. And Bob’s. And Sal’s. And Dangerous Bill’s. And Linda’s. And Gene’s.

Ooh, there ya go. Let’s blame it all on Geno even if he is too old for the blame.

Our generation started out anti-war and ended up anti-everything. Want to put up a windmill to save us from imported oil? Somebody will protest. Want to shoot a terrorist? Somebody will protest. Want to manufacture widgets in Vermont, make some money and put folks to work? Somebody will protest. Want to cut a mangrove? Somebody will protest. NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) wasn’t coined by George Orwell. It came from the baby boomers.

That negativity has spread so it overshadows everything American.

We see one side of it in Jeremiah Wright who said blacks should sing “God damn America.”

We see the other side in that Subaru driver. See, there is a large and growing segment of America bashers who believe anything accomplished here is necessarily flawed and anything built here is necessarily shoddy.

Malcolm Bricklin made a deal with Subaru in the 60s to form Subaru of America and to introduce their cars to the United States.

I almost bought a Subaru Brat in 1978 or ’79. This scaled-down clone of the El Camino and the Ranchero from Chevy and Ford came with 4WD, an optional turbo charger, and standard rust. It was not a good car for Vermont and it cemented my expectations about Subaru quality for a couple of decades, despite the Legacy which was a decent, mainstream car and despite the fact that my daughter and son-in-law are on their third “Subi.”

I’ve looked pretty carefully at this now “National car of Vermont.” Subaru has built owner loyalty among yuppies by building what they see as an economical alternative to the Chevy, Ford, Jeep, and Volvo lines. It’s a worthwhile car.

Subi buyers, with their brethren Honda, Saab, Toyota, and Volvo buyers, won’t consider an American car. America-bashers believe German cars offer superior luxury and performance. America-bashers believe Japanese cars offer more dependability and fuel economy. America-bashers believe Scandinavian cars offer higher safety and quality. (It’s worth noting the Subaru plant in Lafayette, Indiana, the original Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio, the Nissan plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, and the Toyota plants in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Texas, and Virginia. Saab is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors. Volvo is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ford.)

Domestic manufacturers have cars that lead in all these areas. In the J.D. Powers June survey, Mercury passed Honda and the Chevy Malibu was one of the best new vehicles of the year. The Detroit News reports that the survey results are “a pretty good predictor” of long-term vehicle quality and consumer satisfaction. Despite that, the domestic manufacturers may never overcome the usually uneducated bias among America-bashers, particularly those in the general press.

I have examined and driven the world class cars from Cadillac, Chevy, and Ford. The big Caddy STS V-8 can out-luxe and outhandle the Mercedes C300 and it gets 25 mpg on the highway. (Don’t believe me? The 2008 CTS outscored both the Mercedes and the BMW 328i in Consumer Reports’ sport sedan review.) The Corvette can stomp pretty much any sports car on pretty much any road. And it gets better mileage than the Caddy whilst idling down the Interstate. And then there is Malibu. 30 mpg. Comfortable. Good performance. Good fit and finish. Anne drives an Accord. The Malibu is simply better. (Consumer Reports again: “This is a heavy hitter that competes head-on with Camry, Accord, and Altima … Really no reason for GM to build the G6, Aura, Impala, or LaCrosse anymore – just sell these instead.”)

I learned to appreciate the Subaru so it is possible to change people’s minds. Maybe.

I guess others think their “foreign” cars are better than “American” cars. I guess the America-bashers are wrong. Again.

For the record, I have indeed put my money where my mouth is. I own GM stock. I drive a Camaro convertible (29.6 mpg on I95 with the top down in October) and a Silverado.

Is It Art?

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I wonder if a blog is an art site? More to the point, I wonder if my own blog is one?

A blog (shortened from “Web Log“) is a web site for commentary written by anyone; you the reader can leave comments or start a discussion on this blog and on any of the more than 112 million other sites worldwide.

I didn’t want a blog; blogs are too much work. I had told everyone I know that I was not going to commit to writing regular entries for one. That said, regular readers know I wrote an op-ed column for a number of years. This blog, with a new piece due online ever Monday, has forced me to do that again.

Is it art or is it crap with a price tag?

Oh. Wait. This is free.

Leo Tolstoy, a writer whose expansive, never-ending words were art, wrote in an essay published in 1896, “In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man…

“Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.”

I write on an eclectic range of topics. You’ll find big thoughts here on everything from banking and books, to charity and death, to teaching and Zen, four or five hundred words at a time.

Potter Stewart wrote about an entirely different art, “I know it when I see it.”

Perhaps these essays are indeed art.

YMMV.

Didya Vote?

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The polls have closed in the East so I figure it’s safe to tell you how I voted as opposed to telling you over and over how you ought to vote. We have to whisper, though.

I voted for the old white guy instead of the young black guy or the other old white guys or all the other guys.

I know, I know, I said I was going to vote for Paris Hilton. And I did engender a brief flurry of interest in the Pick Dick campaign. I thought about Jimmy Buffett but his running mate never made the news. I would have voted for his uncle but he was never really a candidate.

Down here by the southernmost point in these semi-United States our ballots had 14 bona fide offices contested plus six judges up for retention. We also decided on six amendments to the state constitution, numbered 1 through 8. It’s Florida. Go figure.

I didn’t count how many candidates there were in total but 13 people wanted my vote for President. We have now elected a Congress critter, a state attorney, a state representative, a Sheriff, a property appraiser, the superintendent of schools I wrote about earlier, the supervisor of elections, three county commissioners, and two members of the mosquito control board.

The Mosquito Control Board is a big deal here simply because mosquitoes are. Here, that is. The Board controls about a gazillion dollar budget but no longer flies the old fleet of DC3s at treetop level to scare the mosquitoes to death. Now they drive around spraying from little pickup trucks and fly helicopters lower than Homeland Security. I did not vote for the candidate who was in jail at the time of the election. Joan Lord-Papy was one of three votes I cast for an incumbent.

Mostly I took my own advice to “Throw Da Bums Out.” The other two office holders I voted for were Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida) and Property Appraiser Ervin Higgs, a Democrat. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen ran a reasonably clean campaign (a serious rarity in South Florida politics where the Diaz-Balart brothers, Raul Martinez, and Joe Garcia alone refilled Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades with mud). She may also be the only Republican who retains a seat in Congress this year if my vote has anything to say about it.

Unfortunately, every Democrat running will be returned to office, too.

The negatives were huge on both sides of the State’s Attorney contest so I held my nose and voted for the challenger.

State Rep. Ron Saunders will continue as the Keys representative. It’s nice that he seems like another of the good guys because Republican challenger Ernie Hernandez withdrew from the race in September. Hernandez was a mystery. He did not talk to reporters, attend candidate forums, or gladhand anywhere. His name remained on the ballots printed before he withdrew. The Elections Office will not count votes for Hernandez.

The Sheriff’s Office was an open seat but one candidate has served in that department for 27 years, is currently a Captain there, and got the retiring Sheriff’s endorsement. That’s as close to incumbency as it gets. I voted for the DEA guy.

Two of the three County Commission seats were open so I voted for one Republican, one Democrat, and one NPA. I figure party politics has no business on a Town. City, or County board. The Democrat I chose, Heather Carruthers, runs a “we are not gay” guest house for women only. She got hammered unfairly for that in the campaign. She has also taken the lead in reining in Citizens Insurance, the insurer of last resort who carries my hurricane insurance here at great cost to me. She seems like one of the good guys.

I’ve had trouble finding anything about the judges on the ballot. The Florida bar said their lawyers “overwhelmingly recommend” retaining all those on the ballot. Here’s how they define “overwhelmingly”: A secret ballot was mailed in August to 62,779 lawyers residing and practicing in Florida (the Bar has more than 84,000 members–I don’t know what happened to the other 21,000-odd lawyers). 4,132 lawyers participated in the poll. Yeppers, I’m overwhelmed alright.

The anti-abortion crowd asked, How does Justice Wells vote on pro-life issues? The anti-abortion crowd is, as usual, off base. He’s not a U.S. Supreme Court Justice so his position prolly doesn’t matter. More important in all the retention choices is how closely to the law did the judges hew and how well did they manage their courtrooms.

The spouse of circuit judge candidate Tegan Slaton is Public Defender Rosemary Enright; that requires him to recuse himself from cases defended by the P.D.’s office. I hated to vote against Mr. Slaton because he was the better candidate on paper, but his inability to hear the majority of criminal and juvenile delinquency cases took him out of the running.

In addition to wanting term limits for elected officials, I disapprove of changing a constitution every time the wind blows. Two amendments are life-changing.

Fortunately, Constitutional amendments need 60% support to pass.

Number 1 asks to delete the provisions that allow the Legislature to prohibit ownership of real property by aliens who cannot become citizens. In 1926, that meant Chinese immigrants. 80 years later, alien means anyone who remains a citizen of some other country.

You already know what I think of Defense of Marriage amendments. I expect Number 2 to fail here in Monroe County but this is red state Florida and it has a lot of advertising oomph around the state. The amendment failed to get enough signatures to make it to the 2006 ballot but the supporters pushed it on this year. It’s a bad amendment because it segregates citizens and because it will cost a fortune to defend.

That’s the only citizen-sponsored amendment on the ballot–the others are housekeeping, put there by the Legislature and a tax commission to “clean up” language that governs how properties are assessed: a couple of current use tax exemptions, 15 cents on the property tax to pay for the air ambulance, and the penn(ies) on the sales tax for community colleges. I apologize, but I did vote for allowing assessments based on current use. I voted against all the others.

Back to the old white guy.

<sotto voce> Denny Crane </sotto voce>, of course.

Unfortunately, the election is over. We all lost.

I Am Not an Educator (or When Academia Trumped Teaching)

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I am not an educator. I am, however, a pretty good teacher. I know this for a number of reasons. My grandfather taught chemistry at Temple for about a million years. He was not an educator either but he was a tenured professor. My cousin teaches biology at Perdue. I taught computer apps and technology at Vermont colleges. My students learned the material I taught and learned how to expand on it. I got pretty good grades, too.

I am not an educator. I didn’t vote for one to be superintendent of schools either.

So, what’s the difference between a teacher and an educator?

Educators talk about “graduation rates” and “resources” and “administrative needs” and “professional leadership.” Teachers simply make sure every student learns.

An Educator should make the system work.
A Teacher does make the student work.

I didn’t vote for the incumbent Superintendent of Schools here in the Keys because he advertised proudly that he had raised graduation rates “to 84%.” The Monroe County schools make up a “State of Florida A Rated School District.” In a state where a quarter of the kids drop out of high school, that statistic means more kids stay the course here. Unfortunately, it also means he still isn’t teaching 410.5 kids what they need to know and that’s just wrong. (As of 11/3/08, all Florida Keys public schools have a total of 2,566 students enrolled in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12.) I want to know what to do with the half a kid.

Our kids aren’t learning. Everybody knows it. And everybody points fingers. It’s the parents’ fault. No, it’s because the kids don’t eat breakfast. No, it’s because of television/Internet/cell phones. No, it’s because kids don’t get enough sleep.

Didya ever think it might maybe be the “educators” themselves?

Have you followed the trends in your school district? All of the techniques tried and discarded to improve test scores? Buzz words, all of them. Edu-speak designed not to improve teaching but to make education seem more professional. Professional? At the end of his term as president of Yale Kingman Brewster said, “Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession.” He may have been talking to British managers but academia should have listened.

I have lived through Critical Thinking, Emergent Literacy, No Child Left, Portfolio Assessment, and Whole Language. I watched in awe as my cousin learned that 3 plus 5 equals purple. I have taught in a college that believes in neither tests nor grades (I gave both anyway). I learned about Discovery Learning, Lifelong Learning, and Mastery Learning.

Don’t get me wrong. Parents do need to read to their kids and to set boundaries. Kids do need nutrition and sleep. Kids do watch too much television. And so on.

Kids need teachers who teach.

Put up your hand if you had one. You know whom I mean, the life-changing teacher who inspired you. The teacher you visited when you went back to your school. The teacher you talk about at cocktail parties.

Want a superintendent who will fix your schools? Vote for the one who will fire all the educators and hire some teachers.

Of course if that many kids do drop out of your school, they can become garbologists instead of ordinary trashmen. God knows we need more trashmen.

A couple of interesting links:

Eduspeak: Learning the Lingo
Choosing a School