Worthwhile Screed

Thanks to reader,....let's call him "AnotherSlab", for this one!

The College Life Of Dissipation

There's language, and not exactly my choice style of background music....but I must admit this looks like a pretty good time:

We had surprisingly good parties at UPenn, but nothing like that!

I Will Ace Your Kid's SAT For $4,999

So the smart kid gets caught taking the SAT for dumb kids here on Long Island...

Most of y'all have probably heard this HORRIBLE story by now.

While most everyone I have run into thinks this kid is the nothing short of the devil....I happen to find the whole thing HILARIOUS - particularly his *punishment*:

He has heard the notion that deserving students are being left out of those colleges as a result of his fraud, but Eshaghoff is not buying it. “He really wasn’t displacing somebody … I feel confident defending the fact that [my clients] getting into the schools that they ended up getting into didn’t really affect other people,” he says. Eshaghoff regrets the shame his arrest caused his family and says if he could start over, he “never would have done it.” He will serve no jail time. Instead, under a plea deal, he will tutor low-income students on how to ace the exams he received so much money to take for others.

Hah! He has to tutor the dumb low-income students from the Boroughs!

Why are the parents so mad?

Because they spend boatloads of money on SAT prep - at least here in the NYC Metro area - so that their junior and their princess can maybe score 75 points higher and get into a slightly higher esteemed worthless college. And for that privilege they will end up exhausting all of their home equity just so their kid can major in political science, Spanish, or something equally useless like *environmental science* (like my poor niece).

The parents' anger is really, IMO, just poorly articulated, unconscious anger at the whole stinkin' process.

Can Colleges Adapt/Change?

Read this article in The Economist that addresses that very question.

FWIW, I'm not optimistic about the ability of higher ed to adapt; or of the ability of Big Government to effect positive change (short of getting its nose out!).

The only Obamian hope/change that will actually lower costs is drastically reduced student lending from the government AND from government sponsored/subsidized institutions. I mean even in the inconceivable case that the Feds start reducing student loans....if the slack is taken up by the same Moronic banks that wrote trillions(?) of bad home loans these past several years it won't do any good.

And the only thing that will might improve teaching is for the Federal government to stop subsidizing research - *welfare for white/asian nerds*.

John Gatto's characterization:

...the organization of colleges around a scheme called "research" (which makes teaching an unpleasant inconvenience).

And research isn't merely wasteful spending.

Its worst aspect is that it effectively POLITICIZES public knowledge and information. And it's why these schools and their elitist denizens have become nothing short of bought-and-sold flacks for Bigger Government.

I predict that ultimately colleges will have adapt....about as well as newspapers adapted to the internet!

Sheeple - Dumping The Dude/Broad

I lived in a freshman dorm all three years of my stay at UPenn.

Why?

Well the upperclass housing options stunk, I had plum jobs in the freshman residence, and....for *socialization tactics*. Infer from that what you may. And note that I've always been making savvy decisions!

I saw it every year so by my third year amongst freshman chicks it was easy to predict.

My floor that year was 80% female - and almost all of them had residual boyfriends from government high school.

Ever the antagonist I laughed and scoffed at all of them. From the first week I flat-out told each and every one of these nerd-girls that by Christmas break they would be dumping the old boyfriend (or getting dumped!).

"Oh,"..giggling..."Don't say that!"

And I continued to razz them all semester long. My favorite time to do so was after midnight, when they were in the hall on an outstretched phone line. I'd whisper, "He's going to dump you," "It's almost ooooover",...

Sure enough, after Kwanzaa break EVERY SINGLE ONE of them was no longer attached!  (Long distance phone bills, which I delivered, became much, much thinner.)

People are indeed SHEEP, living scripted lives.

Not only will they break up with their sweetheart in December of freshman year...

But they will marry whomever it is they are dating at age 28.

They will have kids right away....OR they will get a dog right away.

They will convince themselves that daycare is good *socially* but really it's the bills in mailbox (fancy horseless carriages, large mortgage, etc.) that chose daycare.

They will convince themselves that the schools in their town are *the best*.

And between the ages of 35-40, if not sooner, they will start to really hate their chosen career, their industry will implode, or they will get laid off/fired.

They will pay thousands for tutors and SAT prep for these same kids who attend *the best* schools.

They will fork over all of their home equity to send their kids to college.

Their stomachs will turn with every little blip in the stock market - which holds their retirement hostage.

They will PRAY that their graduates get a job, ANY JOB, that first year out.

And they will PRAY that their kids, at age 28, don't marry the loser they've been slumming with for the past 5 years!!!

My favorite part about the graphic above is the weekly cyclicality, i.e. the *Monday reconsideration*.

When College Isn't The Promised Land

Now this was written by a naive unschooler who *stunk at math*....

But despite those two strikes I really enjoyed her article:

A Home-Schooler Goes To College

I Would Have Been Deadly...

...if they had digital cameras back in my college years!

More On The Edu-Bubble

Did you know that national student debt is now $1 trillion, surpassing even total credit card debt?

If you're sick of hearing me go off on the approximate worthlessness of schools and college...

I'd encourage you to read someone else. Check out - Bad Education.

The Brightest Bulbs Skipping College

I played golf yesterday with some random guy. He has a daughter attending her 5th year of undergraduate studies at some no-name school in Ohio. Tuition with room and board is $48,000 per year and she's majoring in....drum roll....ENGLISH LITERATURE!

$200,000+ for that? You've got to be kidding me.

(There were no student loans, this was a full-boat, cash-out-of-pocket situation from a guy who lamented that he was one of the *poorer* people in his neighborhood - Great Neck, NY - and that there were *two Hondas* in his driveway.)

I flat out told him it wasn't worth it.

Self-JustifyingWaster - I think that you can't get anywhere without a degree...

CaptiousNut - What about Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Steve Jobs?

Self-JustifyingWaster - But that was a different time. Nowadays you can't do that.

Really? With the explosion of the internet and the globalization of the economy....does he really think that aristocratic credentialism reigns?

Of course he does. Without believing such a fable he couldn't bring himself to write those tuition checks.

Deeply skeptical of the overall merits of *higher education*, PayPal Billionaire Peter Thiel is launching a small guerrilla attack on the edu-establishment:

Thiel’s solution to opening the minds of those who can’t easily go to Harvard? Poke a small but solid hole in this Ivy League bubble by convincing some of the most talented kids to stop out of school and try another path. The idea of the successful drop out has been well documented in technology entrepreneurship circles. But Thiel and Founders Fund managing partner Luke Nosek wanted to fund something less one-off, so they came up with the idea of the "20 Under 20" program last September, announcing it just days later at San Francisco Disrupt. The idea was simple: Pick the best twenty kids he could find under 20 years of age and pay them $100,000 over two years to leave school and start a company instead.

Two weeks ago, Thiel quietly invited 45 finalists to San Francisco for interviews. Everyone who was invited attended– no hysterical parents in sight. Thiel and crew have started to winnow the finalists down to the final 20. They’ll be announced in the next few weeks.

While a controversial program for many in the press, plenty of students, their parents and people in tech have been wildly supportive. Thiel received more than 400 applications and most were from very high-end schools, including about seventeen applicants from Stanford. And more than 100 people in his network have signed up to be mentors to them.

Thiel thinks there’s been a sea-change in the last three years, as debt has mounted and the economy has faltered. "This wouldn’t have been feasible in 2007," he says. "Parents see kids moving back home after college and they’re thinking, ‘Something is not working. This was not part of the deal.’ We got surprisingly little pushback from parents." Thiel notes a handful of students told him that whether they were selected or not, they were leaving school to start a company. Many more built tight relationships with competing applicants during the brief Silicon Valley retreat– a sort of support group of like-minded restless students.

Of course, if the problem Thiel sees with the higher education bubble is elitism, why were so many of the invitees Ivy League kids? Where were the smart inner-city kids let down by economic blight and a failing education system of a city like Detroit; the kids who need to be lifted up the most? Thiel notes it wasn’t all elites. Many of the applicants came from other countries, some from remote villages in emerging markets.

But the program has a clear bias towards talent, and like it or not, talent tends to be found in private universities. Besides, he’s not advocating that stopping out of school is for everyone any more than he’s arguing everyone should be an entrepreneur. But to start a new aspirational example– an alternative path– it makes sense to start with the people who have all the options. "Everyone thinks kids in inner-city Detroit should do something else," Thiel says. "We’re saying maybe people at Harvard need to be doing something else. We have to reset what the bar is at the top."

That hints at another interesting distinction between the housing bubble and the education bubble: Class. The housing bubble was mostly a middle-class phenomenon. Even as much of the nation was wrapped up in it, there was a counter narrative on programs like CNBC and in papers like the Wall Street Journal pooh-poohing the dumb people buying all those condos in Florida. But with education, there’s barely any counter-narrative at all, because it is rooted in the most elite echelons of the upper class.

Thiel assumes this is why his relatively modest plan to get 20 kids to stop out of school for a few years is so threatening to a lot of the people who have the biggest megaphones to scream about it. "The people who are the most critical of this program are the ones who are most complacent with where the country is right now," he says.

There's not much to disagree with in there - though there're certainly a few little points where Thiel is slightly off.

Of course *homeschooling parents* are already doing this and their kids are far more advanced than the crop that decides to opt-out of Big Education when they are 18-19.

Add Peter Thiel to that ever-growing list of famous self-unconscious homeschooling advocates.

The Anti-College Argument....Staring The World In Its Face!

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

That was Steve Jobs describing himself during Stanford's 2005 commencement speech.

So yeah, he was a perspicacious college drop-out, along with Michael Dell, Bill Gates, and a host of other titanic innovators.

College simply isn't worth the time, the energy, the money, or the humanity it demands.

Not to mention, it's going to take *graduates* at least 10 years - if they are even lucky enough to see what's wrong with themselves - to break off the mental manacles from others-directed learning.  Heck I'm 36 years old and still haven't recovered from the bad advice and false-promises of Big Education.

All these Apple-lovin', Steve Jobs-worshipping geeks...

They have him up on a pedestal but yet still go through with years of schooling themselves AND they send their kids down that path as well!

Too Much Cake and Ale!

Here is a true story someone found regarding exams at Cambridge University. It seems that during an examination one day a bright young student popped up and asked the proctor to bring him Cakes and Ale. The following dialog ensued:

Proctor: I beg your pardon?

Student: Sir, I request that you bring me Cakes and Ale.

Proctor: Sorry, no.

Student: Sir, I really must insist. I request and require that you bring me Cakes and Ale.

At this point, the student produced a copy of the four hundred year old Laws of Cambridge, written in Latin and still nominally in effect, and pointed to the section which read (rough translation from the Latin):

"Gentlemen sitting examinations may request and require Cakes and Ale."

Pepsi and hamburgers were judged the modern equivalent, and the student sat there, writing his examination and happily slurping away.

Three weeks later the student was fined five pounds for not wearing a sword to the examination.

Pretty darn funny!

For a glimpse, and an explanation of the pic above, into the hallowed halls of Cambridge today, click here and here.

Miss-Titled

My wife received a *catalog* in the mail the other day from Title Nine - some upstart women's clothing chain, I guess.

She liked the look of the merchandise but is disappointed that she can't go locally to a store to try the stuff on.

Me? I'm disappointed in the *name*. "Title Nine" is a clear misnomer.

Title IX refers to a federal law - one that is essentially welfare for female athletes at subsidized institutions. It's why colleges have to spend 100k a year on *female crew* coaches and whatnot.

But the insinuation that in the *clothing department* women are somehow under-served, I find that ludicrous.

Rightfully, they should open a MEN'S clothing store called *Title Nine*.

Marginalizing Philosophy

I had a funny conversation with my niece, a college freshman, the other day.

Talking about which courses she's taken, done well in this year, etc...

She enrolled in a philosophy class first semester and found it *stupid*. Hah! I say join the club; we all did the same back in our day and came to the very same conclusion.

I feel like every freshman enthusiastically takes a philosophy course - because it's not offered in high school but more so because it sounds soooo exalted.

I myself have vivid memories of falling completely asleep in my freshman *human nature* seminar. And I wasn't in the back of the class....I was drooling on the square table that the class was seated around. It was 2.5 hours of pure insipid agony!

Similar to the philosophy trap I would have to put *psychology* - a class I think she also took. Innumerable college freshman get sucked into a course on that useless nonsense for probably the same reasons - because the subject sounds like it can explain soooo much.

I steered my niece, who's proficient at math and science, towards economics. I told her it combines logic and math with psychology and philosophy - AND it's grounded in the real world. (Though I forgot to warn her against the sophistry masquerading as *macroeconomics*...)

The Manifest Stupidity of *Professional Educators*

Here's a NYT article that speaks volumes about how UNEDUCATED government school *educators* are. My comments are in RED:

Studying Young Minds, and How to Teach Them

BUFFALO — Many 4-year-olds cannot count up to their own age when they arrive at preschool, and those at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center are hardly prodigies. Most live in this city’s poorer districts and begin their academic life well behind the curve.

But there they were on a recent Wednesday morning, three months into the school year, counting up to seven and higher, even doing some elementary addition and subtraction. At recess, one boy, Joshua, used a pointer to illustrate a math concept known as cardinality, by completing place settings on a whiteboard.

"You just put one plate there, and one there, and one here," he explained, stepping aside as two other students ambled by, one wearing a pair of clown pants as a headscarf. "That’s it. See?"

For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready. [COULD NOT LEARN MATH BEFORE 5???]

But recent research has turned that assumption on its head — that, and a host of other conventional wisdom about geometry, reading, language and self-control in class. The findings, mostly from a branch of research called cognitive neuroscience, are helping to clarify when young brains are best able to grasp fundamental concepts. [SO AFTER STANDARDS HAVE FALLEN INTO AN ABYSS....ALL OF A SUDDEN *RESEARCHERS* DISCOVER THAT YOUNGSTERS CAN LEARN THE BASICS??? ARE THEY AN ADMITTING AN *OVERSHOOT* OF THE DUMBING DOWN POLICY?]

In one recent study, for instance, researchers found that most entering preschoolers could perform rudimentary division, by distributing candies among two or three play animals. In another, scientists found that the brain’s ability to link letter combinations with sounds may not be fully developed until age 11 — much later than many have assumed.

The teaching of basic academic skills, until now largely the realm of tradition and guesswork [SAYS WHO?!], is giving way to approaches based on cognitive science. In several cities, including Boston, Washington and Nashville, schools have been experimenting with new curriculums [CURRICULA!] to improve math skills in preschoolers. In others, teachers have used techniques developed by brain scientists to help children overcome dyslexia.

And schools in about a dozen states have begun to use a program intended to accelerate the development of young students’ frontal lobes, improving self-control in class.

"Teaching is an ancient craft, and yet we really have had no idea how it affected the developing brain," said Kurt Fischer, director of the Mind, Brain and Education program at Harvard. "Well, that is beginning to change, and for the first time we are seeing the fields of brain science and education work together." [THIS IS COMPLETE BS!]

This relationship is new and still awkward, experts say, and there is more hyperbole than evidence surrounding many "brain-based" commercial products on the market. But there are others, like an early math program taught in Buffalo schools, that have a track record. If these and similar efforts find traction in schools, experts say, they could transform teaching from the bottom up — giving the ancient craft a modern scientific compass.

Beyond Counting

In a typical preschool class, children do very little math. [I KNOW!] They may practice counting, and occasionally look at books about numbers, but that is about it. Many classes devote mere minutes a day to math instruction or no time at all, recent studies have found — far less than most children can handle, and not nearly enough to prepare those who, deprived of math-related games at home, quickly fall behind in kindergarten. [TO SAY THAT *FALLING BEHIND* IN MATH IS DISASTROUS IS TO SAY NOTHING AT ALL. OF COURSE IT IS! IT'S LIKE SAYING THOSE WHO FALL OFF A CLIFF HAVE TROUBLE REACHING THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN. MATH IS PROGRESSIVE; EACH SUCCESSIVE STEP CAN ONLY BE TAKEN ON THE FIRM FOOTING OF THE PRECEDING CONCEPT. THIS IS WHY KIDS NEED INDIVIDUALLY PACED COURSES OF STUDY; IT IS PRECISELY THE KUMON APPROACH. NO ONE MOVES ON, NO MATTER THEIR AGE, UNTIL MASTERING THE CURRENT CONCEPT.]

"Once that happens, it can be very hard to catch up," said Julie Sarama, a researcher in the graduate school of education at the University at Buffalo who, with her colleague and husband, Doug Clements, a professor in the same department, developed a program called Building Blocks to enrich early math education.

"They decide they’re no good at math — ‘I’m not a math person,’ they say — and pretty soon the school agrees, the parents agree," Dr. Clements said.

"Everyone agrees."

In a Building Blocks classroom, numbers are in artwork, on computer games and in lessons, sharing equal time with letters. Like "Sesame Street," Building Blocks has children play creative counting games; but it also focuses on other number skills, including cardinality (how many objects are in a set) and one-to-one correspondence (matching groups of objects, like cups and saucers). Teachers can tailor the Building Block lesson to a student’s individual ability.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon at the Makowski center, Buffalo’s Public School 99, Pat Andzel asked her preschool class a question:

"How many did you count?"

She had drilled them on the number seven. She held up a sign with "7" and asked her students what number they saw ("seven!"); had the group jump seven times, counting; then had them touch their nose seven times. As the class finished counting seven objects on a poster, she asked again:

"How many?"

"I never used to ask that," Ms. Andzel said in an interview after the lesson. [SHE NEVER USED TO ASK THAT? THEN SHE OBVIOUSLY HAS ZERO TEACHING APTITUDE....AND SHOULD HAVE BEEN CANNED.] She asks it all the time now, she said, because it drives home a subtle but crucial idea: that the last number they said in counting is the quantity; it is the answer. [SUBTLE IDEA??? ONLY TO ACADEMIC MORONS, AND ONLY TO THE OVER-NUANCED NYT!]

"Many of these kids don’t understand that yet," she said.

The curriculum includes a variety of math-based lessons and activities, as well as software programs, all drawing on findings from cognitive science. When it comes to understanding numbers, for example, recent research suggests that infants can distinguish one object from two, and two from three.

By preschool, the brain can handle larger numbers and is struggling to link three crucial concepts: physical quantities (seven marbles, seven inches) with abstract digit symbols ("7"), with the corresponding number words ("seven"). Lessons like the one Ms. Andzel taught are meant to fuse this numeric trinity, which is crucial for understanding basic math in kindergarten.

Children begin recognizing geometric shapes as early as 18 months, studies find; by preschool, the brain can begin to grasp informal geometric definitions. [THANK GOD FOR THOSE ILLUMINATING *STUDIES*!]

It can when taught properly, that is. Many books use a pizza slice to illustrate a triangle, for example, even though slices are rounded at one end. Once a child has fused the word triangle with a specific shape (triangle = pizza slice), it is hard to break that association later on. [IS THIS REALLY A SERIOUS ARTICLE?]

"The definition," Dr. Clements said, "is a three-angled shape. Period." Building Blocks teaches this definition, illustrating it with triangles skinny and fat, squat and tall. [DEMONSTRATING WHY HE HAS A PHD!]

In all, this curriculum and others link numbers to objects, to rhythms, to the chairs and plates around a table — to the physical world.

"If children have games and activities that demonstrate the relationship between numbers, then quantity becomes a physical experience," said Sharon Griffin, a psychologist at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., who found in a series of careful studies that a curriculum she devised, called Number Worlds, raised the scores of children who lagged in math. "Counting, by contrast, is very abstract." [*CAREFUL STUDIES* ARE NEEDED BY RESEARCHERS TO DISCOVER THAT MATH IS BEST TAUGHT WITH REAL WORLD APPLICATION? THESE IDIOTS! THE REAL WORLD INVENTED MATH!]


In a study published last year, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University reported that playing what seems a simple childhood game, similar to Chutes and Ladders (sometimes called Snakes and Slides), accelerates the understanding of numbers for low-income preschoolers. [WHO PAID FOR THIS MOMENTOUS STUDY?]

"Being told 8 is 2 times 4 is one thing," said Robert S. Siegler, a psychologist who is one of the authors. "It’s another to see that it’s twice as far to the number 8, and that it takes twice as long to get there." [ACTUALLY, IT'S BEST TO DEMONSTRATE 8 AS 2x4 AND 4x2 ARRAYS OF OBJECTS - I USE PENNIES. AND I DIDN'T NEED NO STINKIN' PHD TO FIGURE THAT, MORE OPTIMAL METHOD, OUT!]

The Number Instinct

"Use your eyes like cameras," said Lara Lazo, one of the teachers at P.S. 99, after the midmorning break. "Get ready to take a snapshot."

The children bracketed their eyes with their hands, making "cameras," and Ms. Lazo showed them a paper plate with three dots on it — then quickly covered the plate.

"What number did you see?"

A cacophony of "threes" and "fours" erupted.

"O.K.," she said. "Let’s try it again."

The lesson is intended to teach a skill called subitizing. "The idea," Dr. Sarama said, "is to get them to recognize quantity — to say, ‘I see three’ — not by counting, but by instantly recognizing how many are there by sight." [ANOTHER PROFOUND INSIGHT FROM A USELESS PHD MORON!]

A crude "number instinct" is hard-wired into the anatomy of the brain, recent research has found. Mammals can quickly recognize differences in quantity, choosing the tree or bush with the most fruit. Human beings, even if they live in remote cultures with no formal math education, have a general grasp of quantities as well, anthropologists have found. [ANTHROPOLOGISTS, PSYCHOLOGISTS, BRAIN RESEARCHERS,...]

In a series of recent imaging studies, scientists have discovered that a sliver of the parietal cortex, on the surface of the brain about an inch above the ears, is particularly active when the brain judges quantity. In this area, called the intraparietal sulcus, clusters of neurons are sensitive to the sight of specific quantities, research suggests. Some fire vigorously at the sight of five objects, for instance, less so at the sight of four or six, and not at all at two or nine. Others are most active in response to one, two, three, and so on.

When engaged in a lesson or exercise, these regions actively communicate with areas of the frontal lobe, where planning and critical thinking are centered.

"This is what we believe focused math education does: It sharpens the firing of these quantity neurons," said Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Collège de France in Paris and author of the books "The Number Sense" and "Reading and the Brain." The firing of the number neurons becomes increasingly more selective to single quantities, he said; and these cells apparently begin to communicate with neurons across the brain in language areas, connecting precise quantities to words: "two," "ten," "five." [AND COGNITIVE
NEUROSCIENTISTS - WHATEVER THE HECK THOSE QUACKS ARE!]

A similar honing process is thought to occur when young children begin to link letter shapes and their associated sounds. Cells in the visual cortex wired to recognize shapes specialize in recognizing letters; these cells communicate with
neurons in the auditory cortex as the letters are associated with sounds.

The process may take longer to develop than many assume. A study published in March by neuroscientists at Maastricht University in the Netherlands suggested that the brain does not fully fuse letters and sounds until about age 11. [TOTAL EFFIN' BS! PLEASE EXCUSE MY DICTION - THOUGH I CHALLENGE ANYONE TO FIND A MORE APT CHARACTERIZATION. KIDS CAN READ BY AGE 4!]

"As these kinds of findings come in, they will have implications not only for teaching, but also education policy," said Daniel Ansari, an assistant professor in developmental cognitive neuroscience at Western Ontario University. [THESE ARE THE MORONS SETTING POLICY*!]

Explaining Five

In math, there is no faking it. Children either know that five is more than three, or they do not. Either they can put number symbols in exactly the right order, or they cannot. In their studies, Dr. Clements and Dr. Sarama test children one on one and
videotape the results for comparisons.

Over the past four years, the couple has tested Building Blocks in more than 400 classrooms in Buffalo, Boston and Nashville, comparing the progress of children in the program with that of peers in classes offering another math curriculum or none at all. On tests of addition, subtraction and number recognition after one school year, children who had the program scored in the 76th percentile on average, and those who did not scored in the 50th percentile.

By the end of kindergarten, a year after the program has ended, those who had had it sustained their gains, scoring in the 71st percentile, on average.

Many hurdles remain for this and similar curriculums based in cognitive science, experts say. Schools may move away from the curriculum; teachers move around, as do students; and in later grades there is always the risk that children who have mastered basic math will not get the attention they need to advance even further.

But for now at least, education based on brain science has helped hundreds of Buffalo children refine their native abilities in math. In one videotaped exam, a 4-year-old boy in a FUBU jersey and long dreadlocks who entered P.S. 99 in 2006 was unable to count or match cards with 3, 5, 2, 1 and 4 on them to cards with equivalent numbers of grapes. [AND ONE 4-YEAR-OLD BOY IN MY HOUSE FINISHED 5th GRADE MATH...]

In a video of his post-Building Blocks exam, six months later, he instantly says there are 10 pennies placed in front of him, without counting. He easily matches the number cards to their corresponding grape cards — and puts the mixed-up numerals in the correct order. [SIX FULL MONTHS FOR THIS?]

"What’s the biggest, nine or seven or five?" asks the teacher giving the exam.

The boy thinks for a moment. "Nine," he says. "Five is the littlest." Then he holds one palm above the other and says: "Five is like this. See?"

"Do you see what he’s doing?" Dr. Clements said, interrupting the video. "Right there. He wants to explain. He wants to explain five." [A 4-YEAR-OLD EXPLAINING 'FIVE'....THAT MERITS TRUMPETING?]

That was today's 8:30pm *math quiz* for the 5.08 year old Prince C-Nut. Click to enlarge.

And if they gave me those disadvantaged, urban kids....I'd have them counting and computing in no time flat as well. These so-called experts and their methods are profoundly worthless!

A Coach To Watch?

I meant to comment on this one last week:



As the story says, Temple's college basketball team recently upset #3 ranked Villanova.

So why is this blogworthy?

Well, Temple is now coached by Fran Dunphy, a man whom I watched coach my alma mater, UPenn, for years. As far as I could tell, Dunphy was a coaching genius. I continually marveled at what he did there, competition-wise, with some real scrubs. (Though he did have a couple guys get some run in the NBA in Jerome Allen and Matt Maloney).

But the rest of Penn's rosters were constituted of nobodies - nobodies who for years played over their heads. In my calculus, it just had to be the coach.

Three years ago, Fran Dunphy left Penn for cross-town (sports) rival Temple - a school not hampered with *Ivy League academic standards*. Obviously, Dunphy was going to get a chance to work with a significantly deeper talent pool. At the time I predicted he'd flourish.

One game certainly does not a career make, no less a season. But I'll be keeping a occasional eye on Fran's Temple Owls, their record anyway; and won't be the least surprised if he makes a real name for himself there.

Penn has a somewhat of a storied coaching history. NBA coaches Dick Harter and Chuck Daly both did stints there, at the Palestra.



One of Dunphy's *scrubs* was a light-skinned, cocky-a$$, pogo-stick by the name of Donald Moxley.

The guy ended up a starter, albeit only late in his career, and even hit a game-winning shot in a Big Five game at the Spectrum if memory serves me.

Nevertheless, even more prominently, he starred in the capstone of MY basketball playing career. Let's just say that the gap between his self-image and his ability was cavernous. And these types, LONG before my first blog post, were always in my sights!

So during one pickup game, he flew through the lane right past two tall trees,...did some dipsy-doodle, double-clutch....I came out of nowhere and rejected his weak poop not only off the entire court, but I sent it so far down a long hallway that we had to send an Asian kid down to fetch the ball!!! Everyone was ooohing and ahhhing. Quietly he muttered something about it being a *good block*.

Luckily one of my buddies was there and witnessed me schooling one of Dunphy's guys....otherwise there'd be NO WAY any of the scoffers would have believed me.

See also - Obsessions Of Yore.

Razing Kids Via Faulkner

I saw that curious headline last week in my parents' local agitprop rag over Thanksgiving.

HC is The College of the Holy Cross, probably Worcester, Massachusetts' best and most widely known attraction.

The summary quote:

The demolitions are part of a strategy by college officials to cut down on rowdy behavior and partying by students, which have driven a deep wedge between the Jesuit institution and its neighbors.

The college said it will aggressively seek to purchase other homes that come on the market, preventing absentee landlords from buying those properties and subsequently leasing them to students.

So let me get this straight, the college punks are rowdy....so the school is going to demolish nearby buildings?

Doesn't that strike y'all as a pretty *blunt* solution?

Now that same holiday I got to spend extensive time with two of my intellectually superior uncles, both of whom happen to have attended Holy Cross back in the 60s, before it went co-ed, and when it was allegedly ranked *up there with Harvard*.

On Thanksgiving, one of them told me about a professor of English he had at Holy Cross. Every week, the instructor, a priest I believe, would, in addition to a class, meet individually with each student for a half hour or so.

During that time, each pupil would generally have to present/read the paper they were assigned the week before.

So after one such meeting, Rev. Thomas Grace said to my uncle,

"For next week, I want you to read the Snopes trilogy by William Faulkner. And I want your paper to compare imagery, symbolism,...across the three books."

My uncle pooped his pants. Those books spanned *1300 pages* - and not just any 1,300 pages...1,300 PAGES OF WILLIAM FAULKNER with his drunken run-on sentences!

For example, from Absalom, Absalom!:

From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that-a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. There was a wistaria vine blooming for the second time that summer on a wooden trellis before one window, into which sparrows came now and then in random gusts, making a dry vivid dusty sound before going away: and opposite Quentin, Miss Coldfield in the eternal black which she had worn for forty-three years now, whether for sister, father, or nothusband none knew, sitting so bolt upright in the straight hard chair that was so tall for her that her legs hung straight and rigid as if she had iron shinbones and ankles, clear of the floor with that air of impotent and static rage like children's feet, and talking in that grim haggard amazed voice until at last listening would renege and hearing-sense self-confound and the long-dead object of her impotent yet indomitable frustration would appear, as though by outraged recapitulation evoked, quiet inattentive and harmless, out of the biding and dreamy and victorious dust.

And not only did my uncle have to read all those pages...

He had to PAY ATTENTION, UNDERSTAND, and COMPOSE A PAPER that would *take about 20 minutes to read* - all in a week's time!!!

(Not to mention keep up with his other classes.)

Do you think he and his classmates were throwing raucous keggers every weekend? Do you think they constituted a public nuisance?

Now this is Massachusetts, and I'm sure the *rowdy off-campus* behavior of today's Holy Cross students has been blown way out of proportion...

But still, if that school wants to sedate its student body, all that's really needed are a few more manly book assignments!



Shoot, that's Ted Williams at Holy Cross' Fitton Field!

WILLIAMS, FIRST at BAT, Holy Cross April 1939 - Baseball great Ted Williams at Fitton Field, Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts taken on April 14, 1939. According to popular historical information, the occasion was a pre-season exhibition game which turned out to be rookie Williams first day in a Boston Red Sox uniform in the team's home territory. In his first time at bat, shown here, Ted Williams belted in a Grandslam homerun, driving in three famous teammates and future hall of famers Jimmie Foxx, Bobby Doerr and Joe Cronin.

BC Converts To Catholicism

The Boston Globe today has an article on Boston College - how BC is adding religious icons to the campus to remind everyone, including itself, that it's a Catholic institution.

So, is a Catholic school adding crucifixes really a big deal? It is to the secular Morons running the Globe. They titled the article - Catholic Symbols Stir Diverse Feelings At BC.

On the plaza in front of Higgins Hall at Boston College, there is a new oversized statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola, robes flowing and his hand over his heart. For the university's nearby Newton campus, a large statue of St. Thomas More is being designed.

On each side of the foyer in Lyons Hall is a new mosaic, one depicting Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic worker movement, and the other Pedro Arrupe, a former superior general of the Jesuit order.

And suddenly, in all 151 classrooms, there is a Catholic icon, in most cases, a crucifix above the lintel.

I had thought the Globe was generally pro-diversity (of feelings)....hmmm.

Student reaction has been generally supportive, but among faculty, there is division over the appropriateness of the step. A meeting last month of arts and sciences department chairs turned into a heated argument over the classroom icons; a handful of faculty have written to the administration to protest, and some unsuccessfully circulated a petition asking to have crucifixes removed.

"I believe that the display of religious signs and symbols, such as the crucifix, in the classroom is contrary to the letter and spirit of open intellectual discourse that makes education worthwhile and distinguishes first-rate universities from mediocre and provincial ones," Maxim D. Shrayer, chairman of the department of Slavic and Eastern languages and literatures, said in an interview.

Can you imagine the stones of a Boston College professor telling the administration, telling his employers to remove religious symbols?

AND, the fact that they are Moronic enough think a crucifix *limits intellectual discourse* ought to disqualify them *intellectually* from teaching anyone - particularly in a college that costs over 50k per year now.

This article reminded me of a blog I wrote waaaay back - on a BC professor who was an admitted invert and communist. Read Self-Marginalizers.

A lot of real Catholics fulminate against the faux Catholicism of Boston College. And these same critics are likely to inveigh against the school's founders, those liberal Jesuits.

But the 465 year history of the Jesuits ought not to be judged by a present-day snapshot. Members of the Society of Jesus, as missionaries and educators, have done yeoman's work for Catholicism over the years. They forged new ground and sacrificed much while venturing into the scary frontiers of civilization Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam - "For the greater glory of God".

So the Jesuits were far afield, in Japan, China, and the Amazon jungle where they took some license with the dictates from the Rome. They weren't *liberal* or *heterodox* so much as they were practical. Can they be forgiven?

They've probably gone too far - and are now circling back.

Disclosures - I went to a Jesuit high school that may as well have been a *feeder school* for BC. My wife went to BC; so did my sister. AND, just about every 3rd person I meet on the South Shore (of Boston) also went to BC.

I DO NOT consider it a good school - though everyone who went there or paid a tuition certainly does!