Community Servitude *UPDATED*
Bookworm on May 17 2011 at 10:43 am | Filed under: Children, Education
As I’ve noted before, although merely (and gratefully) comfortable myself, I live in an affluent community. I am a Marin resident, after all. In response to this affluence, the local middle and high schools, both public and private, have all jumped on the bandwagon to require “community service” as a prerequisite for grade promotion and graduation. Depending on the grade level, children have to perform six to sixteen hours of “volunteer” work per year.
Just this year, our local school upped the ante by integrating community service directly into the science curriculum. In the second trimester, the students were required to choose from causes — many of which were politically correct, such as anti-nuke, pro-green, anti-gun, etc. — to research. Although I wasn’t pleased with the menu, I didn’t mind the project. It required the children to hunt for data, analyze the data, and write up a report, which included recommendations for dealing with the “problem” — all of which struck me as suitably academic in nature. This trimester, however, the students are required to “act” on the report. That is, to the extent that they’d identified a “problem” and come up with a “solution,” their third trimester grade depends upon their implementing that solution. To that end, my child’s teacher actually signed my daughter up at an internet website to fund raise for a specific cause.
I was on the phone to the principal about five minutes after learning about what the teacher did. I explained to him that neither my child nor I would be fundraising for any causes the school selects. I admit that it’s a bit of a gray area politically. California students cannot be forced to fund-raise directly for the school itself. I’m willing to argue, though, that the prohibition against fund-raising extends to being forced — for a grade — to raise funds for a cause the school selects. The principal was, as always, very pleasant and conciliatory, but I don’t think he quite understands the real issue behind my outrage.
What I explained to him, repeatedly, and what seemed to go over his head, repeatedly, is that I, as the parent, am responsible for my children’s social development, including whether my kids develop a social conscience. If I want them to be spoiled, selfish brats, that’s my prerogative as a parent.
The school’s responsibility is to educate them with information. I understand, more than most, that the information selected will necessarily have an impact on the children’s belief systems (they’ve all been green indoctrinated, regardless of the ostensible subject matter of a given class, and their American history program struggles valiantly not to be too negative about America), but the fact remains that there is still an academic gloss overlaying the traditional subject matter teaching. This forced volunteerism, however, has nothing to do with traditional education, and everything to do with usurping the parents’ role when it comes to imparting values to a child.
As it happens, I do substantial amounts of volunteer work, so I am constantly modeling the virtues of volunteer work for my children. We also speak about those less fortunate than we are and, in past years, my children have been expected to contribute 50% of their gift money to a charity of their choice. I can make them do that because I’m their mother. For a public school to make similar demands on the children oversteps what should be the boundary between a parent, on the one hand, and a public school, on the other.
The most interesting thing about all of this is that, based on my informal polling of my children and their friends, is that the school’s efforts are backfiring. The children I know litter with impunity, never turn out lights, and can’t be bothered with recycling. Having had green-ism force fed to them for their entire lives, they are jaded about it, and do not want to be coerced. It’s true that, when they grow up, they’ll almost certainly hew to the Democrat party simply because their education has been aligned with that party, but they won’t be true believers. They’ll act reflexively, without believing anything at all. (I, of course, am working as hard as I can to stand as a bulwark against this Democrat party indoctrination, but few in my area disagree with the ideology underlying their children’s education.)
As for the enforced volunteerism, the kids are wise to that too. I got an earful from several kids in my carpool complaining bitterly about being forced to do community service as a prerequisite for their grades. They understand that, if you’re forced to do something, as they are because of their grades, than the activity is not true volunteer work. Further, they consider the community service requirement an onerous burden that is to be avoided at all costs. To that end, they routinely engage in whatever scams they can to have labeled as “community service” something that cannot in any way be considered traditional charitable work. Thanks to mandatory “volunteer service” (or, as I call it, “community servitude”), the children I know are disinclined to do any type of volunteer work and much inclined to engage in scams and cheats.
UPDATE: And with perfect timing comes a story about the Obama administration encouraging less actual education and more Leftist activism.
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97 Responses to “Community Servitude *UPDATED*”
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Bookworm: Having had green-ism force fed to them for their entire lives, they are jaded about it, and do not want to be coerced.
It’s always reassuring when government attempts to indoctrinate children fail. The domestic teenager reacted so badly to the school district’s ham-handed attempts at manipulating her that she’s now on track to become a high school biology teacher, where, to put it mildly, Al Gore and his works will be derided on a regular basis.
Bookworm: I got an earful from several kids in my carpool complaining bitterly about being forced to do community service as a prerequisite for their grades.
Well, kids will “complain bitterly” about homework, too.
Bookworm: To that end, my child’s teacher actually signed my daughter up at an internet website to fund raise for a specific cause.
What is the website and cause?
Book, those carpool complaints present a nifty opportunity to segue to a discussion of the cheap-grace approach to ”social justice,” which to replace charity with taxes.
The government are already indoctrinating the kids. Learning how to manipulate programs by dishonesty is the basis of DC politics after all. Why do you think they got rich? not by volunteering or working but by hiding stuff and making out like bandits while other people “volunteered”.
I second Martel’s view that the carpools are a good way to “secretively” intercede on the planning of centralized government.
Remember about data mining on the internet. Don’t provide websites that has your name and organizations listed if you wish to keep your private life separate from the cyber life.
Bookworm: the students were required to choose from causes
Choice is good.
Ymarsakar: Remember about data mining on the internet. Don’t provide websites that has your name and organizations listed if you wish to keep your private life separate from the cyber life.
It’s doubtful the website would post the names of those who sign up. If so, just the general cause would be enough to understand the situation.
“Choice is good.”
That depends on the range of choices offered. Book, what were some of the organizations/causes kids could sign up for?
The government-school kids in my area are strongly encouraged by the schools to log their volunteer hours to earn public accolades by the school, but are not required to do so (yet). Volunteer work done for the same community through churches, however, is NOT counted toward hours earning honors at graduation by the schools. Since I had already brought my children up volunteering for church projects in the community, I was miffed that the school discounted this work in favor of its own officially-approved volunteerism (government crowding out faith yet again). My kids picked up on that and turned up their nose at the school’s pressure to do school-sanctioned volunteer work. The high school’s Habitat for Humanity project each year directly competes for resources and bodies with the church-sponsored Habitat for Humanity projects in the neighborhood. I don’t mind that the school offers an alternative for those who don’t have a faith or a church, or parents to guide them into being generous, but to exclude and ignore all the good work the church-affiliated kids do is a crummy deal and a bad message.
I would protest like crazy if they ever require volunteer hours in the schools. You can see right away how that is an abuse of government power and a usurpation of parents’ rights–not to mention involuntary servitude.
On the other hand, I would applaud like crazy if they ever started making the troublemaker kids clean up and do maintenance or landscaping work around the school.
I was just thinking “cheap grace,” Charles. I read somewhere – here, for all I know – that one reason lefty types give less to charity is that they give themselves unending credit for merely thinking the “correct” thoughts and so let themselves off the hook for having to do anything else.
And I have to wonder about the wisdom of a charity allowing a minor to do any work for it. If it requires training, it’s probably a waste as the child, having been forced into this, is almost certainly only going to do the minimum required for the grade. This wastes the resources of the charity as well as the time of the child.
Normally I try to ignore Zach and abc, but I’m going to point out to Zach that “being required to choose” from a pre-selected list of causes is not by any means any kind of choice at all. When “required” enters the room, “choice” has already left the building. All anyone with any sense needs to know about this is the oxymoron “compulsory volunteering.”
zabrina: Volunteer work done for the same community through churches, however, is NOT counted toward hours earning honors at graduation by the schools.
They’re probably trying to avoid entanglement issues, but they may be violating 1st Amendment law. The exact wording of their policy might clarify the matter.
Having had green-ism force fed to them for their entire lives, they are jaded about it….
Did you think that would go unnoticed
…the children I know are disinclined to do any type of volunteer work and much inclined to engage in scams and cheats.
Thereby prepping the next generation for waivers.
Tonestaple: I’m going to point out to Zach that “being required to choose” from a pre-selected list of causes is not by any means any kind of choice at all.
Being able to choose which book to read for an assignment allows parents to avoid objectionable material, even though having to read a book is required. If you are forced to support causes that are against your conscience, then having an alternative can make all the difference.
“…the children I know are disinclined to do any type of volunteer work and much inclined to engage in scams and cheats.”
Who would have ever guessed that being a Chicagoan is genetic?
I remember this enforced volunteerism all too well. Growing up in the former Soviet Union, we were forced to “voluntarily” collect scrap metal and scrap paper for recycling. To be fair, going around town looking for scrap metal with school friends was actually fun. Certainly, more fun than another half-a-day of classes.
At the end of 7th grade we were dictated a letter of request in class. The request was to be sent to a collective farm, to a “camp of labor and recreation”. No, there was no option of not going. To my question as to why we had to write this letter, since we had no choice in the matter, our teacher did not have an answer. She was a very nice and wise woman, and certainly realized the absurdity of the situation. But she did not have a choice in the matter either. And she would have to go with us.
We called these “voluntary” things with disdain “voluntary-mandatory” (“dobrovol’no-prinuditel’no” in Russian). I shudder at the prospect that my kids might have to live through the same absurdity.
The old country seems to be catching up with me.
Eric.
To that end, my child’s teacher actually signed my daughter up at an internet website to fund raise for a specific cause.
This comes too damn close to the Chinese re-education camps or the contemptible – jizya tax. Choice by coercion.
The LEft brought porn mainstream, and that’s what it is in the end.
Depending on the grade level, children have to perform six to sixteen hours of “volunteer” work per year.
Let’s call it what it is – enforced labor in pursuit of social(ist) goals that have nothing to do with education but everything to do with indoctrination.
In the second trimester, the students were required to choose from causes — many of which were politically correct, such as anti-nuke, pro-green, anti-gun, etc. — to research.
Did that include causes like 2nd Amendment rights, free speech on Campus rights, right of poor people to cheap petroleum energy rights, property rights….?
To that end, my child’s teacher actually signed my daughter up at an internet website to fund raise for a specific cause.
Today, fundraising for baby seals. Tomorrow, fund-raising for the NLEA and SEIU!
Sorting through the mystical dissimulation of Z’s comments, I suspect they think that this is a swell idea!
Just wait until we regain power, Z – we’ve got all kinds of causes and ideas for which we plan to “volunteer” your services. Please report to your local police station and leave your name, phone number, finger-prints and the addresses of your next-of-kin. In advance of your consideration, I will now thank you for your volunteered time.
Now, let me leaf through our computer files for ABC’s info…..
I wrote a blog post some time ago hypothesizing that the the indifference toward litter and graffitti, and the increasing willingness to commit those acts, was a direct result of the human trait to rebel against coercion. The coercive agent in this case the ever-shriller psychic bludgeoning by the neo-pagans.
My first exposure to school-required community service came when I contacted various agencies about volunteering opportunities, only to be told that all the slots were filled by students fulfilling their service obligations.
As you allude, the mandatory community service that many school systems require is indistinguishable from indentured servitude: the awarding of a good (education) is dependent on the forfiture of labor on the part of the recipient over a defined period. I’m surprised that no one has made a Really Big Deal over this, but I auppose it’s easier to go along to get along.
Zachriel asked for more information. To keep my child’s privacy, I have to decline providing it. Suffice it to say that gun rights, pro-Life issues, etc., were not among the list of suggested projects.
As for whining about the work, yes, kids do whine, but I’ve spent sufficient time to understand the difference between preferring to play (don’t we all), versus feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong about an assignment. The kids totally understood that, as eric-odessit said, this work is dobrovlo’no-prinuditel’no.
I currently teach at a small Catholic High School that requires several dozen service hours for graduation. I trust the integrity of the administrators and faculty members who support the policy; I do not share their confidence that the required hours promote a spirit of Christian charity.
When I was a high school student in the 1960s service hours were not counted. Factoring in Boy Scouts, Catholic Youth Organization, parish activities, and personal initiative I could not have logged fewer than 100 hours, if anyone had been keeping logs. I certainly did not. (I am not bragging: I rarely was alone in any activity.)
I am not sure how I would have responded if someone had told me that the things I did because they obviously were the right things to do would be requirements for graduation. I know that I would have resented it; I do not know whether I would have refused to turn in a record; I doubt that the requirement would have kept me from volunteering.
You can model virtue, but not mandate it. You can point out opportunities for charity, but not require anyone to take those opportunities. We are making a mistake.
I should add that at my school the students who are most active in service couldn’t care less about the requirement.
JB: You are correct: “You can model virtue, but not mandate it.” There is also, I think, a difference between public and private schools mandating volunteer work. In a private school, the parents have a say in things, first, because they’ve deliberately picked a school that harmonizes with their values and, second, because they can walk away with their money. Money talks. For those of us stuck in the public school system (and I say stuck because my forcibly extracted tax dollars pay for this system, leaving me without extra funds for private school), we have no market power. It’s a take it or leave it proposition, except without the “leave it” part.
[...] at Bookworm Room, gives an infuriating account of how one of her kids, in a public school in Marin County, California, has been subjected to a [...]
Just one more example of the intrusion of the Nanny State. If it is freely given, it is community service. It it is required, it is community servitude. If students are doing it because it is required, they are simply going through the motions.
Do we wish to teach our children that going through the motions is what counts in life?
Danny Lemieux: Let’s call it what it is – enforced labor in pursuit of social(ist) goals that have nothing to do with education but everything to do with indoctrination.
My Goodness! Next they will force children to read a book. Or even, gasp, write a paper.
Bookworm: Zachriel asked for more information. To keep my child’s privacy, I have to decline providing it.
Not sure how providing the list of topics would violate someone’s privacy. Anyway, that leaves us with a rather vaguely defined set of circumstances.
Bookworm: Suffice it to say that gun rights, pro-Life issues, etc., were not among the list of suggested projects.
So they were suggested projects. That indicates you could suggest your own.
Bookworm: As for whining about the work, yes, kids do whine, but I’ve spent sufficient time to understand the difference between preferring to play (don’t we all), versus feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong about an assignment.
You haven’t provided specific information, but nothing you have said seems in any way extraordinary. Having children interact with the world, rather than just dry reading from a book is well within the educational mission.
Z-group
You seem to enjoy seeing your name in print. I suggest buying a large box of crayolas or magic markers or chalk and a blackboard. If finances allow, by all means invest in neon lights. I recommend chalk – you could at best, erase post #25.
Zach, for heaven’s sake, don’t you ever think things through? This is why I normally ignore you. If a teacher says “Read a book from this list,” it seems safe to assume that there is a purpose to the reading, a goal of learning something, whether it’s a great big subject like English literature or Latvian history, or a teensy weensy subject like how to make a French knot in your embroidery. There is indeed a purpose to enforced labor and the enforced thought that the school doubtless intends to go with it. It’s just completely inappropriate and, given that there is forced labor involved, completely and absolutely immoral.
Tonestaple: It’s just completely inappropriate and, given that there is forced labor involved, completely and absolutely immoral.
So, it’s “completely and absolutely immoral” to have children participate in community service, to spend a day at the food bank, to make a holiday basket for someone in need, to form a litter patrol for the school? There are all sorts of activities that are entirely appropriate and even fun for children. What a sad and gray world where taking kids to spend time with the residents of a nursing home is considered immoral.
http://www.kidactivities.net/post/Community-Service-Ideas-for-Kids.aspx
“Having children interact with the world, rather than just dry reading from a book is well within the educational mission.”
I used to do a lot of dry reading. Then I realized that without interaction with the world, my dry reading would leave me a typical reader, very informed but lacking social skills. So I began to combine my dry reading with outside activities, such as reading while attending a bris, reading while administering first aid to an auto accident victim, reading while changing a diaper, reading while trying to seduce Katie Stiles, the love of my life who would never give me the time of day.
Thank God I did all these things. I am ever so much the better and more rounded for it.
Zach, you are misunderstanding what Tonestaple is saying: Forcing or compelling people to be altrusitic or charitable is immoral. There is no other word for it.
Charles Martel: you are misunderstanding what Tonestaple is saying: Forcing or compelling people to be altrusitic or charitable is immoral.
Yes, the point is clear, but nonsensical. Organizing a school trip for the kids to spend some time at a nursing home or to help at a food bank is not “immoral.”
Charles Martel
I enjoy wry reading
Tonestaple meets Tone Deaf.
Tonestaple,
No, Zach seems to insist on not thinking. Unfortunately, the only way to cure people like him would be to have him live for at least a year in a country like the old Soviet Union, as a local. Because the second it is revealed that he is not a local, he would be treated much differently. Thus, there is no way to teach Zach a valuable life lesson. There is no way for him to understand the difference between kids being forced to “volunteer” and forced to learn.
The simple truth is that “voluntary-mandatory” activity is a contradiction in terms. Kids understand this absurdity, just like my classmates and I did when I was a kid in the former Soviet Union.
Eric.
Yes, the point is clear, but nonsensical. Organizing a school trip for the kids to spend some time at a nursing home or to help at a food bank is not “immoral.”
Quite right, Zach. Because a child is free to say no to this organized activity, right? Otherwise it would be. . .forced, which would be immoral because it is coerced altruism.
eric-odessit has commented on “mandatory voluntary service” in the former Soviet Union. I had a roommate in grad school, who as a youth in the Peoples’ Republic of China had been one of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. The PRC spent several generations indoctrinating [word used very deliberately] the masses in altruistic behavior.
Serve the People.
Serve the People.
Serve the People.
According to my roommate, Good Samaritan behavior was nonexistent in China. If someone collapsed on the street on on the side of the road, no one would stop to help- unless there was a monetary reward.
That is the result of government-mandated altruistic behavior.
There is nothing wrong with youth volunteering. Without being ordered to do so. When it comes from their heart, it is truly volunteering. When I was working as an aide in a hospital in my early 20s, a I recognized a high school age Candy Striper whose father worked with my father. She turned her volunteer work into a career as a Physician’s Assistant.
Had she been required to be a Candy Striper, would she have turned Candy Striping into a career? I doubt it. Had she been required to do it, she most likely would have simply gone through the motions. Because she CHOSE to be a Candy Striper, it was something she owned. Candy Striping gave her a chance to try something out, which she liked so much she turned it into a career. You are not likely to be successful in a career if you go through the motions.
Mandating volunteering is simply forcing youth to go through the motions, a behavior which is counterproductive to a successful life.
Zachriel: So, it’s “completely and absolutely immoral” to have children participate in community service, to spend a day at the food bank, to make a holiday basket for someone in need, to form a litter patrol for the school? There are all sorts of activities that are entirely appropriate and even fun for children. What a sad and gray world where taking kids to spend time with the residents of a nursing home is considered immoral.
Yes it is WRONG, and yes I am glad to see you finally rear the totalitarian boot hidden behind your calmer “centralized-planning” persona. You should have stopped while you were ahead.
(And by the way, did Book send you the list privately, or did you make up that list above in your head? Make a “holiday basket”. I sincerely doubt that was on the list. And if there are “all sorts of activities that are entirely appropriate, WHO exactly is making up that list, and deciding which of the “all sorts of activities” are entirely appropriate? And which, AHEM, are inappropriate?)
When the choices are all laughably one-sided… yes it is WRONG.
When the choices advocate a particular agenda… yes it is WRONG.
But it’s good to see you lose your cool; and that’s when the truth comes out. Under pressure.
“Children, I have for you a list here” said the Headmaster, waving his piece pf paper in his hand. ”Everything on the list is good. Why is it good? Well… because *I* say so! And everything on this list is entirely appropriate for you! Why? Well… because *I* say so! You will enjoy it, and everything on this list is fun for children! Why am I so sure each item will be fun for children? Because *I* think it is!”
A child pipes up: “Can’t we come up with our own ideas and list them on the chalkboard, and then choose?”
“Siily, silly, naughty child! You might come up with some… disagreeable… ideas. We mustn’t have that.”
“But if there is a disagreeable idea, then our teacher, Mrs. Rubberstamp, can strike it from the list.”
The Headmaster gritted his teeth, and began turning slowly towards Mrs. Rubberstamp, who visibly shrank behind her desk. ”Mrs. Rubberstamp. You have not… beein training… these children… for their proper role in society, I see. There are *entirely* TOO MANY QUESTIONS going on here! I won’t have it. You’ll take *my* approved list, you little monsters… and you WILL enjoy it.”
eric-odessit: There is no way for him to understand the difference between kids being forced to “volunteer” and forced to learn.
Think of it as a simple learning experience. There’s nothing immoral about organizing a school trip to visit a nursing home to spend time with the residents, or to visit a food bank to help out.
eric-odessit: The simple truth is that “voluntary-mandatory” activity is a contradiction in terms.
If the word bothers you, call it community service like most people do.
Charles Martel: Because a child is free to say no to this organized activity, right?
Just like being forced to learn to read or write, or being forced to learn that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, children can be assigned other sorts of real-world tasks. In this case, they were given a variety of options. Of course, the details are apparently not publicly available, or someone might have already posted the required curriculum. But it is not immoral to organize school trips, either to museums or to visit the elderly at a nursing home, even taking them some homemade gifts and conversation.
Mike Devx: Yes it is WRONG, and yes I am glad to see you finally rear the totalitarian boot hidden behind your calmer “centralized-planning” persona.
My Goodness, what a gray, paranoid world you live in.
Mike Devx: Make a “holiday basket”. I sincerely doubt that was on the list.
Gee whiz. School kids do community service all over the world!
“Feeding the hungry, donating presents to the poor, and performing errands for the elderly are all ways that people can donate time towards the community. Working together, kids learn to solve problems and make decisions and successfully contribute to their community.”
http://www.kidactivities.net/post/Community-Service-Ideas-for-Kids.aspx
“Easy Ideas: Poster Your School With Facts About Hunger, Host a Clothing Drive Fashion Show, Run a Collection Drive”
http://www.dosomething.org/actnow/matrix/16/2/12/77+78+74+123+21+71+72
Mike Devx: When the choices are all laughably one-sided… yes it is WRONG. When the choices advocate a particular agenda… yes it is WRONG.
That’s why we asked the question (our very first comment on the thread). Knowing the exact curriculum requirements is important to understanding what is actually expected of the children.
Mike Devx: “Can’t we come up with our own ideas and list them on the chalkboard, and then choose?”
And a cursory look at various curricula show that coming up with ideas is part of the project. But it’s always easier to say it’s a communist plot without the facts.
ric-odessit: There is no way for him to understand the difference between kids being forced to “volunteer” and forced to learn.
Think of it as a simple learning experience. There’s nothing immoral about organizing a school trip to visit a nursing home to spend time with the residents, or to visit a food bank to help out.
eric-odessit: The simple truth is that “voluntary-mandatory” activity is a contradiction in terms.
If the word bothers you, call it community service like most people do.
Charles Martel: Because a child is free to say no to this organized activity, right?
Just like being forced to learn to read or write, or being forced to learn that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, children can be assigned other sorts of real-world tasks. In this case, they were given a variety of options. Of course, the details are apparently not publicly available, or someone might have already posted the required curriculum. But it is not immoral to organize school trips, either to museums or to visit the elderly at a nursing home, even taking them some homemade gifts and conversation.
Mike Devx: Yes it is WRONG, and yes I am glad to see you finally rear the totalitarian boot hidden behind your calmer “centralized-planning” persona.
My Goodness, what a gray, paranoid world you live in.
Mike Devx: Make a “holiday basket”. I sincerely doubt that was on the list.
Gee whiz. School kids do community service all over the world!
“Feeding the hungry, donating presents to the poor, and performing errands for the elderly are all ways that people can donate time towards the community. Working together, kids learn to solve problems and make decisions and successfully contribute to their community.”
http://www.kidactivities.net/post/Community-Service-Ideas-for-Kids.aspx
“Easy Ideas: Poster Your School With Facts About Hunger, Host a Clothing Drive Fashion Show, Run a Collection Drive”
http://www.dosomething.org/actnow/matrix/16/2/12/77+78+74+123+21+71+72
Mike Devx: When the choices are all laughably one-sided… yes it is WRONG. When the choices advocate a particular agenda… yes it is WRONG.
That’s why we asked the question (our very first comment on the thread). Knowing the exact curriculum requirements is important to understanding what is actually expected of the children.
Mike Devx: “Can’t we come up with our own ideas and list them on the chalkboard, and then choose?”
And a cursory look at various curricula show that coming up with ideas is part of the project. But it’s always easier to say it’s a communist plot without the facts.
To graduate from the local High School, each senior must complete a senior project. It can be anything– but the goal is to encourage the kids to get involved in something they might pursue after high school.
Some kids worked on cars, some donated time to their church, our son volunteered as a coach on a youth soccer team. The school didn’t try and dictate what the activity was– just mandated they get involved.
Some were pretty superficial, some were quite elaborate.
But then, we’re in flyover country.
BrianE: Some kids worked on cars, some donated time to their church, our son volunteered as a coach on a youth soccer team.
Yes, that is a very reasonable requirement. Note the mention of church. Notice they “donated” and “volunteered”, even though some form of activity was required. Presumably, they would report back to the class about their activities, so that each can learn from the other.
Reminder for zabrina:
zabrina: Volunteer work done for the same community through churches, however, is NOT counted toward hours earning honors at graduation by the schools.
They’re probably trying to avoid entanglement issues, but they may be violating 1st Amendment law. The exact wording of their policy might clarify the matter.
Yes, at the end of the year, they have to make a display that chronicles their project. Similar to a science fair.
I was just over at Don Surber’s site, he has a post on the big loss by the union supported candidate in a recent primary. This part of his list reminded me of this post:
“Fifth is the history. The effects from the 1990 teacher strike live on. I know a young girl who was livid when her teachers walked out on her in elementary school 21 years ago.
She is a lawyer now, and she still hates the teacher unions.”
I can relate. I still hate every useless person who inflicted forced bussing on me. Save me the reasoned argument, the bastards imposed it on me and I will always oppose bussing and curse educrats.
Kids have excellent radar for when they are being inflicted upon, not being permitted to have a say. They do what is required but it leaves a foul taste that will persist forever.
That they are being forced to give free labor during their own time to a favored organization of the education idiots, is not going unnoticed. Had there simply been a requirement to get involved but with few restrictions beyond that, the impact would have been less. But as they are required to satisfy the deep desires of the educrats with no real benefit to the kids, that just screams rebellion.
Zach 38:
Mike Devx: “Can’t we come up with our own ideas and list them on the chalkboard, and then choose?”
Zach: And a cursory look at various curricula show that coming up with ideas is part of the project. But it’s always easier to say it’s a communist plot without the facts.
I called it “totalitarian”, not “communist”. I probably did read more into it last night than I ought to have; a better choice would have been “authoritarian”. And nearly all of the time, centralized planners such as yourself are authoritarian – or you wouldn’t be defending centralized planning to the bitter end, unless via the philosophy of simple expediency (Expediency: I’m for action A solely because it works better).
Yes, I do live in that gray, depressing world, but not by choice. By the force of all those authoritarian centralized planners, be they mere authoritarians; or worse centralized planners driven to control the rest of us; or even worse socialists; or even worse than that, Communists or other totalitarians… the world does gets grayer and grayer, by very slow degrees, every day. And I hate it.
Just as with that argument about the orthodox Jewish community that removed women from pictures, this debate is making a mountain out of a molehill, but the similarity is that it exposes divisions of principle. This is probably the wrong example to seize upon to make such arguments, because it is so minor an example. But digressions do occur, and sometimes they’ll take us off into the weeds.
Mike Devx: And nearly all of the time, centralized planners such as yourself are authoritarian – or you wouldn’t be defending centralized planning to the bitter end, unless via the philosophy of simple expediency (Expediency: I’m for action A solely because it works better).
Centralized planning has its place, but should be limited in application as it doesn’t always work better, and in extreme cases, can lead to loss of freedom. That doesn’t make one an authoritarian or a bitter end defender of centralized planning.
Mike Devx: Yes, I do live in that gray, depressing world, but not by choice.
We’re sorry to hear that.
Centralized planning has its place when the people using and planning it aren’t 1. totalitarian dictators, 2. power corrupt bastos, and 3. incompetent.
Thus General Petraeus can be trusted to do “central planning” with the military hierarchy via a theater wide “central” “plan”, but not Obama. Not you. And not the general Petraeus replaced.
See the difference. Centralized planning doesn’t mean your plan is actually any good, Z. Trying to lull yourself into the hypnotic suggestion that because centralized planning is one thing, that it somehow makes your own actions better, is illusion.
So this basically comes back to individual judgment and capabilities. Can someone be trusted to plan using authoritarian power and how much of this power can they handle or is good for the goal.
The options we have been given by Z and Obama are ObamaCare, forced indentured servitude, lazyness, corrupt politician grafts, and Keynesianism.
Is it any wonder why we don’t agree to this “central planning”? They don’t have any competent central planners.
The simple truth is that “voluntary-mandatory” activity is a contradiction in terms. Kids understand this absurdity, just like my classmates and I did when I was a kid in the former Soviet Union.
War is Peace. Freedom is slavery.
Violence never solves anything.
Bombing Libyan dictators to save AQ members from Qadafi death squads solves humanitarian problems.
Bombing Iraq is evil.
Invading Iraq is evil.
Bombing Libya is good.
Doublespeak lives, truly.
“So what should I think about [the war in Libya]?,” asks Kevin Drum in Mother Jones. “If it had been my call, I wouldn’t have gone into Libya. But the reason I voted for Obama in 2008 is because I trust his judgment. And not in any merely abstract way, either: I mean that if he and I were in a room and disagreed about some issue on which I had any doubt at all, I’d literally trust his judgment over my own. I think he’s smarter than me, better informed, better able to understand the consequences of his actions, and more farsighted.”
When you are dealing with fanatics like those that take things on faith alone, you have to realize something sooner or later.
Those people aren’t good central planners. They’re fanatics and idiots to begin with, period. Central planning is their way to aggregate power to themselves. That’s all it is.
They were the same under Saddam. They didn’t like taking out Saddam because they believed in Saddam more than they believed in Republicans. Because both Saddam and Obama have the same ideological and authoritarian impulses. It makes them feel better to allow a Strongman to dictate to them their beliefs and actions.
Ymarsakar: They didn’t like taking out Saddam because they believed in Saddam more than they believed in Republicans.
Can’t speak for “they,” but many people objected to the invasion of Iraq because they thought the government was rushing into war based on faulty intelligence concerning WMD, that it distracted from the mission to take out bin Laden’s network, and because the people running the war substituted handwaving and ideology for a workable plan for the occupation.
Ymarsakar: So this basically comes back to individual judgment and capabilities. Can someone be trusted to plan using authoritarian power and how much of this power can they handle or is good for the goal.
That was the case in the age of monarchies, but most people find that democracies are much better, in the long run, at making decisions that affect the whole nation.
“but many [italics mine] people objected to the invasion of Iraq because they thought the government was rushing into war based on faulty intelligence concerning WMD. . .”
Cites, please.
[...] Bookworm Room – Community Servitude [...]
Charles Martel: Cites, please.
For instance, France, Germany, Russia and China all promised to veto U.N. authorization for war until the weapons inspectors could complete their work, who were on the ground in Iraq and had found no evidence of WMD. In other words, the Americans were rushing into war before all the facts were in evidence.
I think that the integration of volunteerism into K-12 schools is a wonderful idea, as it allows all children to see the behavior that Bookworm is modelling for her children. A parent has a right to raise kids who don’t recognize the value of voluntarism, but they don’t have the right to insist that the public school does this…assuming a given local community values such voluntarism, as a great many communities do.
My experience with this issue hasn’t been as extreme, and based upon that experience, I would sympathize with Bookworm. My kids go to a school in SoCal that the WSJ recently listed as one of the top 5 in the US. it is private, but it is probably about as liberal as public schools in the Bay Area. They heavily promote volunteerism, but they do not require activity on a narrow set of specific causes, which Marin Public Schools and many schools around LA do, and which I think is a mistake. I understand the desire to teach children to develop solutions to problems, but certainly there are some conservative solutions to conservative-defined problems that can be addressed. Doesn’t the Club for Growth need volunteers for polling data, and wouldn’t that be an viable option alongside Habitat for Humanity?
I do think that parents should be able to maintain a legitimate belief system that is not repeatedly alienated by the school, although the school has a duty to present information that might conflict with it, and the kids are actually better having been exposed to a plethora of ideological viewpoints. But the compulsion to pursue a particular cause, as opposed to learn information, goes beyond what is necessary to produce intelligent, fact-based, analytical future citizens. A parent that wants to shield their child from evolution ought to be forced to pull their kid from school, given the overwhelming scientific evidence of the phenomenon and its established existence in AP course and college course curricula. However, a parent that wants to avoid supporting Greenpeace, the ACLU and the DNC (assuming those are the three choices) should not have to pull their kids out of public schools to do that. Hopefully, Bookworm will be able to find an acceptable substitute to the causes on offer at that school.
None of the entities in the world cared about whether the US was rushing into war. After all, if they cared so much for that issue, CBS would never have allowed Saddam to dictate the terms of their interview in order to portray Saddam in a positive light. If objective and rational judgment was their rationale, they would have applied it to their previous behavior. France and Britain would never have been in Algiers or involved in the Falkands war. Neither France nor Britain would have leaped to the occasion in Libya if they were worried about a rush to war.
No, given the historical behavior of the media, pundits, and national entities, what they were really worried about was Saddam being taken out by the US. They were too invested in the status quo of Saddam and too much of an enemy of the US, to do otherwise.
The people calling for reason and deliberate judgment were never capable of reasonable and deliberate judgment on the issues of war and peace to begin with in 2002. Chirac and Helmut (who loved having feast dinners with Clinton) all would have been considered Vichy collaborators 50 years ago. How time changes.
A parent that wants to shield their child from evolution ought to be forced to pull their kid from school, given the overwhelming scientific evidence of the phenomenon and its established existence in AP course and college course curricula.
As can be easily witnessed, totalitarian wannabes and statists love forcing people to their will. Especially if they can sit back and let the dirty work be done by government goons paid for by other people’s money. Wouldn’t aristocrats consider this right and proper of a way to treat peasants?
Zach,
Germany cannot veto any UN authorizations: she is not a permanent member of the Security Council.
Now, back to that forced “volunteering”. Let’s see if you can see the difference in these 2 situations (and the learning experience they provide).
Situation 1:
Kids have to work on a collective farm (or at some factory) as a part of a curriculum. Alternatively, but similarly, kids have to collect scrap metal or scrap paper, or help elderly World War 2 veterans (shopping etc.), as part of their “Young Pioneers” activity. An explanation: “Young Pioneers” was the Soviet version of Boy/Girl Scouts.
Situation 2:
Kids in class are dictated a letter of request to be sent to work on a collective farm. Thus, there is a pretense that they are volunteering, except they are really not: they have no choice. At the collective farm they are paid very little or nothing at all for their work. All the while they see that the local villagers who are supposed to work on this farm are instead working on their private orchards in order to take the produce to a farmers’ market in the city. That’s at best. At worst, the locals are just drunk.
I’ll reserve expressing my view on these 2 situations for later. For now, I’d like to know what you have to say.
Eric.
Y, am I a totalitarian wannbe and statist if I insist that my local public school teach multiplication tables? What about the periodic table?
Zach, to review:
“but many [italics mine] people objected to the invasion of Iraq because they thought the government was rushing into war based on faulty intelligence concerning WMD. . .”
“For instance, France, Germany, Russia and China all promised to veto U.N. authorization for war until the weapons inspectors could complete their work, who were on the ground in Iraq and had found no evidence of WMD. In other words, the Americans were rushing into war before all the facts were in evidence.”
Two things:
1. Countries are not people. They have people in them, but they are not people. Unless you like to take Lufthansa and look out the window at the landscape below and say, “Hi, Miss France! How’s it going, Mr. Germany?”
2. The Security Council passed the resoution that cleared the way for U.S. action in Iraq unanimously. Apparently the countries named above later removed their objections. Note that Resolution 1441 passed on November 8, 2002, four and one-half months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Some rush to war!
eric-odessit: Germany cannot veto any UN authorizations: she is not a permanent member of the Security Council.
That is correct. It should say “oppose,” not “veto.” We added Germany to the list at the last moment. A veto isn’t necessary if the Security Council doesn’t reach a majority.
eric-odessit: For now, I’d like to know what you have to say.
If you exaggerate the actual situation, then you can make it seem to be whatever you want.
Charles Martel: 1. Countries are not people. They have people in them, but they are not people.
Funny thing about that. Countries have leaders and other people who expressed caution about proceeding with a war without giving the inspectors time to determine the facts about WMD.
Charles Martel: 2. The Security Council passed the resoution that cleared the way for U.S. action in Iraq unanimously. Apparently the countries named above later removed their objections. Note that Resolution 1441 passed on November 8, 2002, four and one-half months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The countries that voted for the resolution,which gave Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations,” don’t agree that they were authorizing war. The U.S. ambassador said that the resolution “contains no ‘hidden triggers’ and no ‘automaticity’ with respect to the use of force. If there is a further Iraqi breach, reported to the Council by UNMOVIC, the IAEA or a Member State, the matter will return to the Council for discussions as required in paragraph 12.”
It’s important to note that caution was the correct position to take. There were no significant WMD. The war was unnecessary, and the aftermath was devastating for the people of Iraq.
Zach, help me: After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, what was the number of the Security Council resolution condemning the invasion? Is it the same one as the resolution that recognized the U.S. and U.K. as the occupying “authority” of the country?
Zach,
You just don’t get it, do you? I don’t “exaggerate the actual situation”, I PERSONALLY EXPERIENCED IT! I grew up in the former Soviet Union, in the city of Odessa, near the Black Sea. I attended school there in the 1970s. The letter of request to be sent to a collective farm was dictated to us by our Russian Literature teacher, who was also a class curator. I immigrated to the USA in 1989. By that time I was already an adult.
We did not see anything wrong with collecting scrap metal. As I wrote in my original comment, it was actually fun. Different classes competed, who would collect more. It was actually fun to win (and we were good sports if we lost). We saw nothing wrong with helping old people with shopping. After all, we had grandparents who lived through WW2. Our grandfathers fought in it. So, we could relate to other elderly veterans. We saw nothing wrong with working in school after the end of the school year, before the start of the summer break. We did not like it, but we viewed it as a part of life. The reason was that this all (Situation 1) was straight forward.
It was the hypocrisy of the Situation 2 that we hated. It was clear to us that we were being used as cheap labor (almost slave labor). It was also clear that nobody even cared about the work we did on the collective farm. It was simply done, so someone could report the job as being completed. We also saw that nobody wanted to work on that farm.
You spent you whole life in this great country. You have no idea what life was like in that “socialist paradise”. And you dare to accuse me of “exaggerating”? Essentially, you accused me of lying. How dare you?!
Eric.
eric-odessit
The only thing that we can be sure of is that the z-group reads and writes English. Their capacity for understanding anything beyond their narrow personal experiences and education has now been laid to waste. I was tempted to respond to the z response earlier, but knew you would and should have the first swipe at the gutter snipe. The collective, known as the z-group, lives in a world of robotic words and automated responses that are eerily similar to “I was only following orders”.
Literally and figuratively, they are beyond the ‘pale’.
Charles Martel: Is it the same one as the resolution that recognized the U.S. and U.K. as the occupying “authority” of the country?
Having toppled the Saddam government, the U.S. and U.K. had legal obligations as an occupying power regardless of whether the occupation was legal or not. Resolution 1483 did not condone the invasion.
eric-odessit: I don’t “exaggerate the actual situation”, I PERSONALLY EXPERIENCED IT! I grew up in the former Soviet Union, in the city of Odessa, near the Black Sea.
The exaggeration is comparing having children in the U.S. participate in community service as an educational experience with an authoritarian government using children for cheap labor.
The UN was and is a fig leaf, an organization constructed to check the actions of superpowers. Soviet Russia and China had two chances to veto any resolution, giving them a fig leaf’s excuse for diplomacy. NATO had 3 such chances to veto.
Now that there is only one superpower, the votes at the UN are bought and paid for in order to check the power of the US alone. An organization designed with its goals in mind to prevent China and Russia from starting a nuclear war, is now all about stopping the US from achieving world justice. It’s why they can vote on things like Iraq quickly, but when problems start looking like it may upset US plans, like Turkey, they back off and start sabotaging our plans. It is why when they want a war against their enemy in Libya, they can get it pretty fast.
Y, am I a totalitarian wannbe and statist if I insist that my local public school teach multiplication tables? What about the periodic table?
I don’t believe the Left even understands what 2 times 2 means. After all, they’re okay with multiplying the debt by 10 or so thinking it’s like paying their blackjack gambling expenses.
In response to abc 54:
An entire post that I agree with! I’m worried: Did someone on the left find out where I live and sneak into my home and inject me with something while I was sleeping?
<Devx frantically searches #54 for something, *anything*…>
Ah, found it! (Whew!)
I don’t think that forced voluntarism is a *wonderful* idea. The idea of “forced voluntarism” seems a contradiction though, doesn’t it? (As many have pointed out.) IF it is done in a manner that doesn’t promote specific sets of ideological causes, it’s not horrible… But honestly, it seems more like an extracurricular activity if anything to me, and extracurricular activities (sports, band, clubs, etc) to the best of my knowledge are never forced – that’s why they’re called “extracurricular”. I could even get behind the idea – if voluntarism were offered as an extracurricular activity. Say with enough of a budget to allow local institutions in need of assistance to register as needing assistance, to help those kids out who genuinely want to volunteer and would like assistance in making choices of where and how to help out.
And I could quibble with abc’s “evolution” argument, which he seems to present as though the entire theory of it, top to bottom, were “settled science”. Any room for the presentation of criticisms of current evolution theory? Or if a school decided to give time to alternative theories? I remember in middle school, early 70s, when the Bohr atom model was presented to us as though it were “settled science” – and by then it was well known to be absurdly simplistic and only useful in providing rudimentary understanding of electron energy levels. We should have been told that. But the science curricula in our district where I grew up was rather uniformly bad.
>>The exaggeration is comparing having children in the U.S. participate in community service as an educational experience with an authoritarian government using children for cheap labor. >>
A rose by any other name still smells the same.
As those who oppose any mention of religious principles in schools will tell you, the school is an arm of the government. Requiring ‘volunteer’ labor is exactly the same as ‘cheap’ labor except no one is paid…meaning it’s actually slave labor. You’ve bragged before about Progressives having the accomplishment of ending child labor – yet here the Progressives are…using child labor. Except they aren’t even paying for it! So…if Capitalists pay children for labor, it’s bad. If Progressives require children to work “for their education” then it’s good. Talk about a double standard!
(By the way – while I certainly agree that the practice of having children work long hours in factories is not good, I also think we’ve gone too far the other direction. Children have become the new “privileged” class. Work is good for children’s bodies, good for their souls, good to educate them, good to mature them. Consider the pitiful situation when we have to curtail what they eat because children – CHILDREN! – are so sedentary that their normal appetites cause them to become obese. It’s a fairly normal thing for adults – _not_ for children.)
abc: am I a totalitarian wannbe and statist if I insist that my local public school teach multiplication tables? What about the periodic table?
Ymarsakar: I don’t believe the Left even understands what 2 times 2 means. After all, they’re okay with multiplying the debt by 10 or so thinking it’s like paying their blackjack gambling expenses.
suek: Requiring ‘volunteer’ labor is exactly the same as ‘cheap’ labor except no one is paid…meaning it’s actually slave labor.
Students can be required to do all sorts of things, like do arithmetic.
>>Students can be required to do all sorts of things, like do arithmetic. >>
You really see no difference between requiring students to learn arithmetic, and requiring students to partake in projects unrelated to academics?
What do you see as the purpose of education? No…further. Public schools. What is – or should be – the goal of the public school?
Mike, a couple of things:
1. I view schools as different than democracy, especially at the pre-college level. There is a certain level of indoctrination that occurs with all education, and so if you want to teach good habits that are socially useful, then you ought to expose kids to some level of compulsion. This of course happens already. If you don’t do your homework, you fail out. You are compelled to do your homework. You are compelled to appear at a pep rally or say the pledge (although to the extent that it has a religious phrase, there is apparently an excuse to opt out). While there are obvious limits, compulsion is a part of learning institutions, and for those that believe that this is necessary to teach virtue, it’s not all bad.
2. The disputes on evolution occur at a level that is appropriate for graduate level classes, where such debates occur. Pretending that those disputes should occur in a ninth-grade biology class is beyond ridiculous, as multiple courts have rules and all leading scientific associations have argued.
Zach, you didn’t answer my question: In what resolution did the Security Council condemn the invasion of Iraq (empahsis mine so that you’ll better understand the exact thing I am asking)?
I wouldn’t have ninth graders debate evolution in a science class. I would, however, expose them to contrary ideas in a logic or history of science of class so that they could see valid and proper ways of presenting evidence. For example, in many debates about the subject there are constant appeals to authority. Those appeals may be valid, but children should be taught to see when they are not, such as when one side or the other is attempting to evade a straight answer.
The idea isn’t to train 14 year olds in every aspect of formal logic or how to conduct a Behe-Fox debate. The idea is for children to understand how to detect fallacious reasoning or faulty logic in the presentment of any side of a debate. I realize that many people who believe in the Darwinian version of evolutionary theory simply refuse to admit that there are serious questions about their particular take on evolution. That’s fine with me—I don’t think you should try to force true believers to the podium to defend themselves. But I do think that any school worth its salt would recognize that when you have a debate still raging 152 years after the publication of “On the Origin of Species,” you have a ready made lesson in how cultures within a culture can clash loud and long—religionists (literalists and not), scientists (pro and con), journalists (skeptical and not), and men on the street (informed or not, believers in scientism or not).
Teach the clash, and in so doing, give kids an idea of how societies change, what different groups advocate and fear, and the differences in thinking processes among them. But tie it together with a rigorous look at logic and the demands of the scientific method because both sides must use those tools well to advance their arguments. Most of all, teach children to know when they are being conned or left out of the loop, regardless of who’s doing the conning or omitting.
Charles writes: “I wouldn’t have ninth graders debate evolution in a science class. I would, however, expose them to contrary ideas in a logic or history of science of class so that they could see valid and proper ways of presenting evidence.”
See, that would make a fantastic high school class, just not a biology class since that is not biology. My wife, who is a Harvard summa in chemistry and a radiologist, teaches parttime at a local private high school. She can barely get through the entire AP biology curriculum in a year, since it is so massive. She could not possibly include your suggested lesson, nor would anyone qualified to teach biology want to include it. But as a senior gut class, once the AP exams are out of the way, it would be a lovely addition…
Behe has been totally and soundly discredited, by the way. Irreducible complexity is a bogus idea that no one in the scientific community believes in. And the courts that have looked at the evidence have reached a similar conclusion (e.g., Katzenmiller).
suek: You really see no difference between requiring students to learn arithmetic, and requiring students to partake in projects unrelated to academics?t
It is meant to be educational. You didn’t answer the question, so let us help. If there is a significant economic value attached to what students do, then it could be considered a type of theft and subject to abuse. Hanging posters about how to save energy, or putting on a play about a community issue, while under the supervision of a teacher who has no economic benefit, doesn’t appear to be such a situation.
suek: What do you see as the purpose of education?
To teach children the skills they need to be productive members of society, including language, mathematics, science and technology, creativity, and social skills. Such education should be in addition to, not a replacement for, what the family provides.
Charles Martel: In what resolution did the Security Council condemn the invasion of Iraq (empahsis mine so that you’ll better understand the exact thing I am asking)?
Don’t worry, Charles Martel. No one’s going to arrest America. The U.S. has veto power in the Security Council.
Charles Martel: … Darwinian version of evolutionary theory …
Strawman.
Charles Martel: But I do think that any school worth its salt would recognize that when you have a debate still raging 152 years after the publication of “On the Origin of Species,”
There is no serious scientific debate about the basics of the Theory of Evolution, that life has evolved and diversified from common ancestors by natural mechanisms (selection, variation, speciation, contingency, etc.). The debate is cultural, not scientific. Such a discussion might be included in a class on the philosophy of science, in the section on pseudoscience.
abc, as I clearly said and you needlessly repeated, I did not suggest the [ninth grade] course as a science class but as a logic or history of science course. (But it was a great opportunity to slip in your wife’s Hahvahd summa, no?)
As for the thorough discrediting of Behe, I’ll defer to your blanket statement that that is the case. “So let it be said, so let it be done,” declared King Mongkut/abc.
Zach, someday you will learn how to answer a direct question: In what resolution—proposed, debated, passed or vetoed—did the Security Council discuss, attempt, try, undertake to condemn the U.S. invasion of Iraq?
Also, someday you will learn how to read: I was not at all debating the merits of the various theories of evolution, I was suggesting a course where in discussing the debate over it students would learn about logic, the scientific method and cultural dynamics.
You need to see a doctor about your knee. That damned thing twitches and jerks so reflexively that it’s making me worry about you.
20 to go.
Charles, I am very proud of my wife’s academic accomplishments, and feel justified in that pride. As for your little retort on Behe (As for the thorough discrediting of Behe, I’ll defer to your blanket statement that that is the case. “So let it be said, so let it be done,” declared King Mongkut…), does that apply to members of the flat-earth society as well? Should the burden be on the vast majority of scientists to prove Behe wrong (which they have done)? Or should you have to maybe establish his credibility (which you have not)? Just wondering…
Charles Martel: did the Security Council discuss, attempt, try, undertake to condemn the U.S. invasion of Iraq?
As we have already indicated, of course not.
Charles Martel: Also, someday you will learn how to read: I was not at all debating the merits of the various theories of evolution, I was suggesting a course where in discussing the debate over it students would learn about logic, the scientific method and cultural dynamics.
Indeed, you weren’t debating, but merely indicating there was a legitimate debate concerning the strawman “Darwinian version of evolutionary theory”.
I’ll do a twofer here for the room pests:
Zach, honesty at last regarding your reflexive take on the Security Council! Congrats.
I give up on trying to get you to read what I wrote regarding a class on the debate over evolution. You see what you choose to see.
abc, notice how you contradict yourself? You go from “Irreducible complexity is a bogus idea that no one in the scientific community believes in” to “the vast majority of scientists.” Which is it?
More telling though, is your continued insistence on putting words in my mouth, a practice that has driven almost everybody here to distraction. I mentioned Behe in passing with regard to the debates over evolution. I didn’t say anything about what I think of his theories. Now all of a sudden the World’s Greatest Name Dropper has given me an assignment: Establish Behe’s credibility.
Sorry perfesser, I don’t take orders from stuffed shirts.
It’s the involuntary servitude, dhimmitude, serfdom part of labor, that is the problem for free people. If you refuse or quit, there are negative consequences (not “no pay” since there were no material benefits promised for the doer of the activity). It’s not “voluntary” when it’s “Voluntary-Mandatory”.
All authoritarian cultures use work as part of brainwashing. People are much more easily propagandized and controlled when separated from familiar places and put under physical and mental stress doing repetitious tasks.
This is where the revolution starts. All we need are suitable and available targets. The difference between us and Soviet Citizens is that we have the AK-47′s this time. The beneficiaries of our efforts have yet to begin understanding how different things really are.
Cheers.
Charles, I fail to see the contradiction. No one in the scientific community takes Behe and his discredited theory serious. And I ask whether the vast majority of scientists, a subset of the entire scientific community, should be required to establish facts while you make unsupported claims. Those do not contradict each other. Stop playing semantic games. Either you produce uncontroverted evidence that Behe is right, or you should not bring up his name as a serious voice on the topic of evolution.
And Charles, I would like to mention Bozo the Clown’s name in passing with regard to this debate as well…
abc, you don’t realize that you are Bookworm Room’s Margaret Dumont, do you?
Evolution is a digression on this post of Book’s but I’m enjoying it enough to add another comment. (Feel free,by all means, to skip right on past! I’m enjoying the start of this break from work, including probably too many comments here in Book’s thoroughly enjoyable domain; I’ll slack off soon I promise, too many other things looming on my plate…) And yep, here I’m talking evolution, not Darwinism.
Irreducible complexity is an interesting enough *idea* to at least mull over. I don’t consider it a competing theory myself, as (to the best of my limited knowledge) it has no backing data. And it’s going to be *very* difficult to provide backing data for, under scientifically controlled, experimental circumstances.
As has been said, the Cambrian Explosion is bedeviling scientists, and I don’t believe current theory has successfully accounted for it (yet). The explanations for it seem to me closer to the level of rigor associated with irreducible complexity, in that backing data for actual proof of the explanations is lacking.
I’ve been lambasted – well, at least roasted and basted – for bringing up another concept, that the rate of genetic mutation combined with the process of natural selection is mathematically impossible to stand as part of evolutionary theory. Now, since my college background is partly in mathematics, that claim made me sit up and say, in my best Keanu Reeves mode, “Woah.” So I was quite interested. I haven’t yet been able to track back to find any actual mathematics – heck, I can’t even find the set of articles I was reading at the time – but I’m still interested.
The claim, though, goes something like this:
1. The physical mechanism of how evolution occurs is via genetic mutation.
2. Genetic mutations occur singly, not in combinations, and in single organisms, not across entire species.
3. The vast majority – the *huge* majority – of genetic mutations are harmful, not helpful. And they often result by themselves in death.
4. Therefore the rate of genetic mutation that would lead to natural selection benefits or other benefits within the theory promoting speciation can be supposed to be X. (Can’t remember the number, damn it.)
5. When you extrapolate this over the billion (?) years of evolution, and you consider the sheer number of such mutations that would have to occur to cause the visible level of speciation found today and in the fossil record – they threw in their own “Y” number, which again I can’t remember) the mathematics just don’t hold up. And according to the articles, the mathematics was not even close.
So perhaps you can see what fascinated me. I’m not claiming this as a theory or even (yet) as a legitimate criticism of current theory. And the articles were hardly rigorous in explaining the nature of the “debate”. You’ll have to excuse me for watching for it, though. There are huge holes in the points I’ve just written, of course, including any number of posited values for “rates” that would need to be solidly backed up with data. I do not find the chain of reasoning to be pure nonsense, though. (Feel free to again reiterate the claim that merely paying attention to this makes me a blithering idiot – I don’t mind. In the best sense of “black vs white Western dichotomous thinking”, the claim that this makes me a blithering idiot certainly does make ONE of us a blithering idiot in the end!)
I think it’s unfair to idiots to always have them blithering. Can’t they do other things, too?
Mike Devx, Stephen Jay Gould developed a theory known as punctuated equilibrium that has become the mainstream understanding of mutation rates under evolutionary theory. It actually accounts for the Cambrian explosion, and I’ve never heard anyone propose a mathematical model of mutation rates that undermines it. You’ll have to source the theory and data, but until I see some kind of data and explanation, I will continue to maintain that the Cambrian period also can be explained under the existing theory.
Stephen Jay Gould developed a theory – abc
“John Maynard Smith, one of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists, recently summarized in the NYRB the sharply conflicting assessments of Stephen Jay Gould: “Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the pre-eminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists.” (NYRB, Nov. 30th 1995, p. 46). No one can take any pleasure in the evident pain Gould is experiencing now that his actual standing within the community of professional evolutionary biologists is finally becoming more widely known. . . But as Maynard Smith points out, more is at stake. Gould “is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory”—or as Ernst Mayr says of Gould and his small group of allies—they “quite conspicuously misrepresent the views of [biology's] leading spokesmen.” Indeed, although Gould characterizes his critics as “anonymous” and “a tiny coterie,” nearly every major evolutionary biologist of our era has weighed in a vain attempt to correct the tangle of confusions that the higher profile Gould has inundated the intellectual world with.* The point is not that Gould is the object of some criticism—so properly are we all—it is that his reputation as a credible and balanced authority about evolutionary biology is non-existent among those who are in a professional position to know. *These include Ernst Mayr, John Maynard Smith, George Williams, Bill Hamilton, Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Tim Clutton-Brock, Paul Harvey, Brian Charlesworth, Jerry Coyne, Robert Trivers, John Alcock, Randy Thornhill, and many others.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Jay_Gould
I know, I know– the dreaded Wikipedia source.
Mike Devx: 1. The physical mechanism of how evolution occurs is via genetic mutation.
Point mutation is only one of many mechanisms of variation, and variation is only one aspect of evolutionary theory.
Mike Devx: 2. Genetic mutations occur singly, not in combinations, and in single organisms, not across entire species.
That is incorrect. For instance, the average human has more than a hundred mutations (though most are probably unrelated to one another in function). However, you are right that they occur in individuals and have to spread into the future composition of the population.
Mike Devx: 3. The vast majority – the *huge* majority – of genetic mutations are harmful, not helpful. And they often result by themselves in death.
The vast majority of mutations are neutral, or nearly so. However, of those with phenotypic effects, most are probably deleterious. That’s expected, of course, because most structures are already optimized. They are on local fitness peaks.
Mike Devx: 3. The vast majority – the *huge* majority – of genetic mutations are harmful, not helpful. And they often result by themselves in death.
4. Therefore the rate of genetic mutation that would lead to natural selection benefits or other benefits within the theory promoting speciation can be supposed to be X.
If there were a simple mathematical disproof of evolution, then there would be a consensus to that effect within the mathematical community, and of great concern to evolutionary biologists. In fact, the situation is just the opposite. Mathematicians have been inspired by evolutionary theory, and emulating the process to solve problems within their own field.
To relate this to our subject, this is an example of a meme which is easy to debunk, but is adopted within a social group. Simply look in the mathematical literature for a consensus that evolution is impossible. Instead, you will find just the opposite. Evolutionary algorithms are very powerful tools, and are used to explore many complex spaces beyond the capabilities of other methods.
Zachriel: To relate this to our subject, …
Oops. It does relate to the ”Vested in the herd” thread.
>>If there is a significant economic value attached to what students do, then it could be considered a type of theft and subject to abuse. >>
What’s minimum wage these days? $7.50 per hour? If they are required to do 40 hours, that’s about $300 worth. Maybe not a huge amount…but then if your school has an enrollment of 500 or so, it amounts to $150,000. Is that significant?
You might be considering that because they’re children and have no skills that minimum wage would be too high – but try using that excuse if you’re a businessman and want to hire a 16 or 17 yr old who has no skills. Or of course, you might consider the child labor laws. I don’t think schools have a waiver. If they did, they could require miscreants to do maintenance chores instead of suspending them. They’d learn stuff doing maintenance as well.
suek: What’s minimum wage these days? $7.50 per hour? If they are required to do 40 hours, that’s about $300 worth.
They should be paid to solve long division! Who knew? People get paid to write essays, too. Those two-bit words add up! If the kids put together a thought-provoking play about a community issue, they should probably be paid scale. Don’t want a problem with the union.
Children have been doing community-oriented projects for generations.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4011/4629595058_11c4bb6c87.jpg
It’s not as if kids are being forced to work 14-hour days in factories in order to eat, or the teachers are hiring out the students and keeping the money, like a chain gang. Students can choose their projects so that they can experience just a bit of the real world rather than simply reading things in books or listening to the teacher drone on. Going to the nursing home to visit the residents or dressing up as a ham for a school presentation isn’t tyranny. It’s ridiculous to conflate an educational experience with forced child labor.
suek: I don’t think schools have a waiver.
A clue!
Did Zach get a writer? His latest stuff is pretty good!
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