Weather or Not

Severe Outflow by R. Edwards

American Education: Emulate the Asian Model of Rigor and Effort

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Sacrificing scholastic excellence and high achievement in the name of “equity” is destructive to the health of our society as a whole.  Though this story presents more of an India-rooted angle, we’ve known for decades that Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other east Asian nations’ pupils blow ours away mathematically at the same age levels. This has been such a sustained phenomenon that to ignore it is profoundly foolhardy.

It’s not racial, it’s cultural.  Culture is changeable.  The malignant American culture of familial brokenness, parental uninvolvement/apathy, valuing materialism and entertainment over knowledge and diligence, artifice and appearances over results and work, “equity” that undermines excellence, and other contributors to academic underperformance, needs to change for the better here.  We must also strip sociopolitical agendas out of education and return to curricular fundamentals:  reading, writing, mathematics, and factual history.  Apply to it the rigor of late-1800s to early-1900s grade-level texts, but the updated factual knowledge of today, under stern and unyielding expectations of excellence, encouraging the hardcore work ethic of the Asian study model.

I’ve seen first-hand, even back to my childhood as a “gifted student” with such classmates, the readily apparent, tremendous value and time investment that these cultures place on education. Such families (most certainly including first-generation immigrants) are doing something right, and it should be replicated, not ignored nor discouraged.

And yes, poor kids can and do achieve high academically despite the economic handicaps.  I have some first-hand experience there as non-immigrant yet economically poor “white trash”, as did many of those first- to second-generation immigrant Hmong, Han Chinese (escaping Maoist communism), non-Hmong Vietnamese, and Korean and Japanese students I knew who mostly had been treated like trash in their native lands, except for the Koreans and Japanese.  Yet they succeeded in school despite their socioeconomic and linguistic limitations, and because of ferociously diligent work ethics imparted in a close familial setting.  For them there was family honor in high scholastic achievement, not just personal reputation, with family valued over self.

This offers non-scholastic lessons from which we can learn.

Scattershooting 210901

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Scattershooting while wondering why “trust the science” from the left to often abruptly ends at nuclear physics or fundamental human genetics…

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THE ONE and ONLY BEST CO2 and ENERGY-INDEPENDENCE SOLUTION: NUCLEAR: An environmentalist makes a powerful case for nuclear and against so-called “renewables” to supply energy at big scale. There’s a decades-long tradition of unscientific, mathematically ignorant, irrational fear-mongering around nuclear. Never mind that nuclear is (by orders of magnitude!) the most energy-dense fuel source, with the lowest carbon emission, the safest record of all U.S. energy sources (fewest human and wildlife casualties), the least land area used for the amount of energy generated, continual and reliable (unlike solar and wind), has the lowest lifetime total waste volume compared to all fossils/wind/solar, and so on. Truly, nuclear is the greenest of green energy. And the technology to generate more energy with still less waste on an even smaller footprint has improved hugely since currently operating plants were erected in the ’60s through ’80s. Even if the Utopia of fusion isn’t realized soon, nuclear still is the safest, most efficient steady energy source for us all. Only ignorant, petty NIMBY bullcrap, science illiteracy, anti-scientific and illogical fear-mongering, and massive bureaucratic red tape are stopping us from becoming truly energy independent, with the lowest carbon production per capita among all nations. The way there is nuclear. If it were announced tomorrow that a nuclear plant would be built right behind my property, I’d welcome it with bells on. Just tap me into the juice, nuke-man.

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PUBLIC-CRISIS MESSAGING MATTERS: Yes, as a formally published scientist, I know science matters, and changes. I also know messaging is important. As I’ve said before, consistent and clear communications matter in a crisis! Pretend for a minute you’re in a pre-pandemic time machine. SARS and MERS already have happened from remarkably similar viruses, and other RNA viruses have been studied for decades, so much already is known about such viruses in science. You’re told a coronavirus pandemic one is coming and that this will occur. Then, officially…

Let’s deny masks work, tell people not to get them, then mandate masks, then not differentiate between medical grade n95 masks & cloth rags, then say children are fine, then mask only children for a bit while telling the vaccinated to carry on as before the pandemic, officially declare vaccines as the way to end the pandemic, say the vaccines only reduce disease severity and aren’t stopping the pandemic, then reimpose mask mandates on vaccinated people, and then through all this confusing (for most folks, from their perspective) flip-flopping, express incredulous surprise that trust in institutions and expertise is being lost. Can you put yourself in another’s shoes? Do you get this point at all? Of course “the science changes”! Duh. Saying that is a straw man. The sciences of virology, epidemiology and immunology, however, existed before this pandemic, and have not changed anywhere nearly as wildly as the messaging has.

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FOLLY of CONFORMITY in LANGUAGE FADS: On a somewhat related note, I find it annoying that the “woke” politically correct feel like they have to stick their unwelcome and meddlesome noses into everybody’s business, much like the Puritanical small-town busybodies of days of yore, or over-officious homeowner’s-association pests who nitpick the most minute details of everybody else’s house and lawn in the neighborhood. Same mentality! In the pandemic, they forced spineless and overly compliant news organizations to stop saying “Wuhan” when that is factually where the virus originated, in support of an unproven, subjective perception that systemic racism was happening on massive scales against Asians because of that. Then the factually from India “Delta” variant came along, and media and citizens mindlessly comply without question. Factually, it is the Wuhan virus and the India variant, and that’s what I call them. Don’t like it? As I often say: your problem, not mine. I deal in facts, not what might offend some soft, coddled, overly sensitive, privileged, overwhelmingly white-leftist busybodies. Regurgitating the pre-scripted phrase isn’t an act of wisdom nor kindness nor tolerance, it’s instead the opposite: it’s an act of supine conformist submission to a preapproved set of opinions.

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BIG-CORPORATE SUCKING UP to CHINA:

This refusal to even acknowledge Uighur torture and genocide is craven corporate pandering to red Commie China by Coca Cola, much as we’ve seen from many other big companies and the NBA. Their “human rights” people only care about human rights when it doesn’t impact the bottom line much (if at all). Arguable and disputed sociopolitical events in the U.S.? “Woke” to the core, sucking up to the max to that bizarre conformity cult. Actual mass imprisonments, torture, and genocide of Uighurs, long-standing oppression of Tibet, a stiflingly Orwellian mass-surveillance state, and increasingly brutal oppression in Hong Kong? Cowardly silence. China has these faceless corporate suits and ties bought, paid for and leashed like obedient lap dogs. This guy from Coke even looks like a sniveling, spineless bureaucratic weasel, and is playing that part well. He should be in the movies. He wouldn’t have to act.

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RADICAL PUBLIC-SCHOOL BRAINWASHING OF MINOR CHILDREN: BUSTED! Whistleblowers, gadflies and undercover operatives are some of my very favorite and most respected people, as they are heroes of openness and justice, exposing nefarious, illegal and diabolical activity in many levels of governments and corporations. Public education is a level of government and absolutely should be subject to whistle-blowing activity and undercover reporting. Project Veritas did just that with video of a radical Marxist teacher in Natomas Unified School District near Sacramento, one Gabriel Gipes, who:

  • Placed Antifa flag and Mao poster on the wall of his classroom, and shamed a student who was uncomfortable about that
  • Like some of the Capitol insurrectionists on the opposite part of the spectrum, holds that violent overthrow of the U.S. government is a good thing
  • Assigned extra credit for students who attended extremist left-wing events
  • Promised he’s not the only teacher there inclined toward radicalizing students: “There are three other teachers in my department that I did my credential program with — and they’re rad. They’re great people. They’re definitely on the same page.”

    The superintendent confirmed this “teacher” would be fired. Why was he hired? This tells me the real agenda there is: “We’ll radicalize children to the extent we can get away with it, until the PR gets too intense.” According to freelance journalist Andy Ngo, the school-board meeting included these speakers:
  • A black mom who said her daughter was brainwashed in 13 days
  • A Hispanic dad whose daughter noted that on the first school day, Gipe told the pupils that he e would turn them into “revolutionaries.” That’s consistent with Veritas’ recording where he admitted: “I have 180 days to turn them [students] into revolutionaries … Scare the f*** out of them.”
  • A Muslim parent calling for a criminal investigation into this “teacher”.

    These left-wing “woke” cult radicals are badly overplaying their hand, causing a lot of quiet (and sometimes not so quiet) backlash among the very groups they purport to support: racial minorities (including Ngo, the black dad and Hispanic mom), Muslims, and homosexuals (including Ngo). These lunatics don’t realize this ultimately going to undermine their own cause, which will be so fun to watch. What’s not fun is the damage they do by poisoning young minds with their parasitic ideologies.

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PEOPLE I DON’T UNDERSTAND: Those who deny there’s a pandemic, or call it a “plandemic” seriously. Those who think males (that’s people with the XY chromosomes, for the biologically ignorant) should be using my wife’s or daughter’s bathrooms (and if I see a dude trying to go into a restroom with my wife or daughter, he’s not going to succeed). Those who stormed the Capitol thinking they were “making America great again,” when they were just being ignorant, herd-mentality fools. Those who think if a dude wears lipstick and a dress, he’s not a dude anymore (like putting lipstick and a pink bow on a boar makes it a sow…suuuuuure). Christians who grovel at an abject, unrepentant sinner and bombastic heathen like Donald Trump. Christians who support abortion, sexual activity of any kind outside monogamous man-woman marriage, or critical race theory (as if Jesus cared about race). Sometimes it seems so many on both sides have lost their collective and individual minds, or at least a moral compass of right, wrong and common sense.

Did I offend people on both sides with this segment? I did? Good! Outstanding! Shows I’m doing something right. Namely, thinking for myself, independently of anybody’s marching orders but God’s. And that’s OK with me. Why? Because ultimately, I will be answering to no mortal human — just God. Nobody on Twitter, nobody on Facebook, and not you either. I wasn’t put here to win popularity contests or conform to the worldly fads, but to adhere to truth. Your judgment won’t matter…only His. If you understand where I’m coming from and are cool with that, great — you get it. If not, learn and grow. Become more truly “tolerant” and “inclusive”.

Downfalls of the Parental Extremes

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It has been a few days since I read Amy Chua’s at once stimulating, frustrating, pompous, enlightening, conceited, deliciously polemic, disgustingly hubristic, and in spots, spot-on essay in the Wall Street Journal, extolling the supposed superiority of the “Chinese Mother.”

Why did I form all those impressions essentially simultaneously? Probably because she is so straightforward and blunt with her ideals, which I hugely respect and admire, while at the same time, intensely disagreeing with some of those ideals and cheering loudly in my head at others. That, friends, is the mark of a timeless essay and discussion piece. Like her or not, Ms. Chua has started a needed conversation in this land.

Instead of itemizing my likes and dislikes of her points, or overly picking nits out of the opposite of them, I shall advocate a medium far from either extreme of the parenthood spectrum. She seems to represent the east pole to the west pole of the hovering, over-indulgent parent, that’s for sure!

I’m far from the perfect parent, but seem to have found a reasonable equilibrium sitting somewhere between those poles. My kids don’t have video game systems (at least at my house) but can do sleepovers (as long as a parent is verifiably present), and are expected to excel but are not materially punished to any sustained degree if they don’t. Nor do I pay them for grades, under the ideal that excellence is, or at least should be, intrinsically self-rewarding. My approval and laud is their reward. My disappointment their punishment, to the extent it may matter to them. Ultimately, they will succeed to the level of their own motivation and interest; I’m just here to equip them with the foundation for it. The rest is up to them!

Whither failure? Actually, I see failure as something manifestly necessary in a kid’s development. It’s a form of tough love to let your kid fail, to step aside as they fall on their faces, and make them get back up, dust off, climb out of the hole they’ve created for themselves, and reap the fruits of their newfound humility in doing so. That’s one of the hardest self-disciplines of parenthood, until one realizes it’s short-term pain for long-term gain.

To the over-indulgent parent–the type that, alas, predominates in America–failure isn’t an option because it would hurt the kid’s “self esteem,” so they feel the need to protect and coddle at every turn. School systems have bought in, such that providing the grade of F for failure and C for average is deemed too harsh, politically incorrect, as if the flimsiest scratch on the youthful psyche will fester and erupt into horrifying and catastrophic psychological damage at some future point. The great disservice that over-protection and lack of accountability does to a kid is well-documented. I’m very familiar with a few such parents, and have seen the ugly side of that first-hand.

And yet, assorted repackagings of the same old, hackneyed, touchy-feely bullcrap arise from the halls of educational academia (many of whom aren’t even parents) on a yearly basis, psychological flavors-of-the year rolling off the assembly line and touted as the cure for the woes that ail American education, each trendy method soon discarded in favor of something newer, in what seems like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. The fashionable rubbish is, in turn, peddled to the publishers of books on parenthood, the chimney-mouthed chirpers of cheer on morning talk shows, and the developers of breathlessly promoted school curricula, all of whom leap from fad to fad like fleas on a hot brick, change for the sake of change and not for the sake of kids, in blind and futile probing for the educational Holy Grail. Meanwhile, the best method of all–common sense!–lies unseen and rotting away right under their noses.

The “Latest and Greatest in Education and Parenthood” is quite a fiscally lucrative industry, but nothing particularly helpful to parents or kids who sway hither and yon with each new wave, only to find themselves still anchored in the same spot at sea. Meanwhile, over-indulgence and lack of self-discipline create a nation of spoiled, mentally dependent and academically barren whiners who expect to have only the current moment’s necessary knowledge spoon-fed to them. Those are the exorbitantly needless and wasteful pitfalls that the “Chinese Mother,” to her credit, largely bypasses.

Still, I see Ms. Chua’s system as only marginally better. Yes, I tremendously admire the emphasis on hard work; that’s a facet of her system well worth propagating in an era of pervasive, collective individual laziness and smug delusions of entitlement as we see all across young society today (with plenty of exceptions, thankfully). That said, her method overemphasizes excellence in the name of competition, at the expense of excellence for its own sake, a subtle but profound distinction with enormous implications, whether or not she would admit or intend for this to be the case.

Her philosophy barely tolerates the tiniest of imperfections and doesn’t even contain the concept of failure; so how will her kids ever deal with it when it eventually happens? Debilitating depression? Suicide? I hope not. The prevailing psychobabble is way, way overblown in general, but has its roots in the reality of too many tragic endings to stories of extreme parental fascism.

Chua’s approach seems to work for her kids for now; I just hope that they’ll be well-adjusted adults who can find success and satisfaction in more than merely the arena of victory in competitive endeavors. Right now, to me, they look for all the world like automatons, robots, mechanized semi-humans who can calculate every equation error-free and play every note to impeccable correctness of pitch and timing, exuding monotonic seriousness to the Xth power of Y*Z while engaged in high achievement. Fine, as far as it goes…yet woefully incomplete! What about the vast remainder of the brain’s capacity–other forms of intelligence that all that incessant drill-practice doesn’t leave time for, like interpersonal skills, abstract thought, gut-busting humor, intuitive thought, or creativity in problem-solving?

Can the products of such homes fully appreciate the ephemeral beauty of a storm-tossed sky, evolve rigidly rule-bound mathematical construction into applied conceptual understanding, laugh heartily at both a great joke and at themselves, think “outside the box” to develop marvels of innovation, question unjust authority, or paint amazing imagery in others’ minds with creative writing that evokes and inspires a multifaceted raft of emotions?

The other thing that has bothered me about the Chinese approach is the intense emphasis on rote drills and memorization. That’s fine if you want to create self-programmed machines disguised in the form of human protoplasm, emotionally foot-bound but technically near-perfect beings who can do amazing feats of mechanical and mathematical prowess. Congratulations to such parents: you successfully raised Mr. Spock.

News flash: memorization is not the same as understanding!

There are places for such people, for sure, but not in any vocation requiring creativity, adaptability or imagination. Chuck Doswell, renowned both as an atmospheric scientist and an iconoclast, once described some peers with that apparent mental construction (whatever their actual nationality), eventually pigeonholing themselves deep into overspecialization, who “learn more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.”

Instead of the whiny, spoiled slacker, or the automaton bereft of appreciation for the beauty in the abstract and unfamiliar, how about this state of childhood learning and growth: excellence and hard work are their own rewards, little extrinsic motivation is needed or given, yet legal and rip-roaring fun within specific and unambiguous limits is seen as healthy; and creativity and problem-solving skills are combined with a strong practice ethic to yield the well-rounded child? Is this middle ground too much to ask? Of course, it is hard to accomplish; but nobody ever said parenthood was easy. Nor should it be.

Again, I can’t claim to be the ideal parent. My kids will be the first to tell you that I ain’t, especially after I have disciplined or corrected them. 🙂 But at least, I hope, they will be equipped with the tools to turn into well-rounded and productive members of American society, capable of utter greatness, impeded in their pursuit thereof only by their own self-limitations in using those tools.