Let's Shake On It

By Grant Davies

Many people have heard about the controversy in Kentucky concerning high school athletes shaking hands after sporting contests.

It seems that a few times in the last several years these kids do more than shake hands with each other. A few fights have broken out among teens who have too much adrenaline and too little commonsense. One of the fights took place after a volleyball game. (Really? Who fights about volleyball?)

My reaction is; duh..ya think? Who would have thought HS kids would have raging hormones and show poor judgement from time to time? After all, isn't high school the place where you continue the process of learning how to think before you act? They don't teach you stuff you already know and many kids don't know how to act yet, thus the handshake/sportsmanship exercise.

What to think about all this? Let's face it, there are bigger problems to think about right now. But there is only so much that can be said about the political theater in Washington and others are covering that ad-nauseum. So when this came up it struck me that other stuff matters too. And I'm just the guy to pontificate about stuff.

 If you haven't heard about this yet you can read the story here. Here is what seemed weird to me:

"Kentucky's athletic sanctioning body has ordered high schools not to conduct postgame handshakes in all sports following more than two dozen physical confrontations the past three years."

"Tuesday's directive from Kentucky High School Athletic Association Commissioner Julian Tackett posted on its web site didn't mention specific fights or conflicts but said several fall sports have had postgame incidents. The organization says it's "disappointing" to take such action but that it became necessary because of occurrences statewide and nationally."

So here are some questions that occurred to me:

Am I the only one who thinks that stopping the handshaking instead of addressing the students who have engaged in the unsportsmanlike conduct is a goofy solution? Perhaps the coaching/teaching of the students should be examined as well?  Does it seem like there is some copycat behavior going on after these incidents too?

Did the students who participated receive pre-season instruction about the meaning and the importance of the handshake custom? Did the coaches display the attitude that winning was more important than being a solid person? Were students who engaged in the confrontations excused from further participation in the sport? Were they warned that that was what was going to happen when people lost control of themselves?

Were coaches warned that they would face employment problems if they had these situations repeatedly because of emphasis on the games instead of on the character building of the students? Do they know what their actual job is? If they think that winning games instead of winning hearts and minds is their job, are they the right people to be coaching? If you can't teach kids how to develop character by using sports, then what the heck is your program all about anyway?

The problem is that the kids, their parents, and the coaches/teachers do not "get it." Policies that force them to "get it" by removing them from the teams might be a better approach.

I ask these questions, but as you have already guessed I already think I know the answers. Let's ask those who administer the sports these questions and see if they still think stopping the handshakes is a better solution than actually addressing the problem.

Maybe the administrators are the problem. Maybe the parents are the problem. Maybe I should stick to writing about freedom and smaller government.

Addendum: After writing my commentary, Jim Hayes, a regular reader suggested that I read the comments after the original news story at the link. I did, and one really stood out for me. It seems that a guy who likes math did a little calculating on the numbers in the story to see what would pop up. I didn't check his math since I can barely tally up my bar tab to keep the bartender honest, but I think the comment is too good to leave off this post. Here it is as it appeared after the story:

Drchadh 2 hours ago

Lets Break this down: There are 280 member schools in the KHSAA. There are an average of at least 20 games/year (more for some sports/less for others). There are an average of 7 Varsity [not including JV] High School Sports, including both genders (i.e.- Baseball, Softball, Basketball, Football, Soccer, Volleyball [some schools have much more]). And utilizing the 3 years they included in their decision with 24 physical occurrences, gives us this formula: 280 x 20 x 7 x 3= 117, 600 games over 3 years. Now lets take that into 24 "physical occurrences": 24 "fights"/117,600 games= 0.0002 So what this tells me is 99.98% of the time it WILL NOT happen! KHSAA, here is an idea, lets teach the 0.02% of the participants to NOT fight by suspending and disciplining them, instead of DISCOURAGING sportsmanship for the other 99.98%. We already have a government in place that tells us how to live our life, we don't need the governing body of high schools telling us as well. Thank you and good night.

Good night and thank you Dr. Chad H, wherever you are.

MSU Professor Threatens Students

I bet the folks who fork over tens of thousands of dollars every year for their kids to be educated at MSU are so happy that this professor is "teaching" them.

Of all the unbelievable things this imbecile says the most troubling is the part where he says "if he finds out" if any of the students are "closet racists" he will "come after them." He claims he can do that because he is a college professor. I'm guessing he is the sole arbiter of who is a racist and why. It's hard to know what he is threatening them with. Sounds serious though.

Allegedly this person is a professor of Creative Writing. As a "creative writer" who was not educated by this doofus, and as a frequent critic of the Republican Party, I'm amazed at what these people say when they don't think anyone will call them on it.

I shouldn't be amazed of course, but I'm sure things have changed since the time when I didn't go to college.

Is Political Correctness a Weapon in the War on Freedom?

By Grant Davies

You may have heard this story recently. It's been floating around the net, but of course it hasn't been covered by the mainstream media. At least I haven't seen it. To be fair, I don't watch very much of the mostly useless drivel they peddle as "news"on those networks, so feel free to correct me if you saw it on one of them.

Since the theme of this blog is freedom and individual rights, it only seems right to bring this to your attention. When someone's rights are violated they lose some of their freedom. It doesn't matter which thugs are doing the violating.

It could be common street thugs who steal the liberty of inner city teenagers by attempting to force them into joining a gang. Losing the right to walk the streets freely unless you comply is no small loss.

It could be union thugs who use their partnership with government thugs to force people into joining their gang. Losing the right to work for whom you choose at a mutually agreed upon wage is no small loss.

Or it could be the thugs in government (at all levels) who steal individual liberty in ways too numerous to count. All the small losses add up to a mostly un-free existence.

In the case below it is university administrators who use political correctness to squash individual liberty. Those in charge at Syracuse University tried their best to destroy the career path and aspirations of the young man below by labeling him as a racist (and other vile things). He dared to make a personal post on his Facebook page questioning the opinion of someone who held that he was somehow unqualified to teach non-white students because he wasn't from a traditionally black college.

His right to work as a teacher may be over because of it. He seems to have "won" round one (or two, depending upon what you count) by exposing the thugs. But it remains to be seen if he will be blacklisted for not being black.

If he is, it will be no small loss for any of us.



Comments are welcome.

Why Is the Obama Administration Trying to Undermine Educational Opportunities for Black Children?

The question is asked by Thomas Sowell. The commentary is provided by Dan Mitchell. The posting was done by me.

Many thanks to Dan for his ongoing permission to re-publish his posts on this blog. It allows me to go play golf today. Every day you don't read the posts at his fine blog, International Liberty, is a day lost to learning something you probably didn't know.

March 13, 2012 by Dan Mitchell

If you care about helping the less fortunate succeed, I’m commenting today on a Thomas Sowell column that will make you sad and angry. It is a story about how powerless and disadvantaged people are being hurt to advance the political interests of some elitists.

Here is the clever way he starts the column. I particularly like the reference to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme, which reminds me of this cartoon.

There have been many frauds of historic proportions — for example, the financial pyramid scheme for which Charles Ponzi was sent to prison in the 1920s, and for which Franklin D. Roosevelt was praised in the 1930s, when he called it Social Security. In our own times, Bernie Madoff’s hoax has made headlines. But the biggest hoax of the past two generations is still going strong — namely, the hoax that statistical differences in outcomes for different groups are due to the way other people treat those groups.

Then he gets to the meat of his topic.

The latest example of this hoax is the joint crusade of the Department of Education and the Department of Justice against schools that discipline black males more often than other students. According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, this disparity in punishment violates the “promise” of “equity.” Just who made this promise remains unclear, and why equity should mean equal outcomes despite differences in behavior is even more unclear. This crusade by Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is only the latest in a long line of fraudulent arguments based on statistics. If black males get punished more often than Asian American females, does that mean that it is somebody else’s fault? That it is impossible that black males are behaving differently from Asian American females? Nobody in his right mind believes that. But that is the unspoken premise, without which the punishment statistics prove nothing about “equity.”

Professor Sowell contemplates the motive for this Obama Administration initiative.

What is the purpose or effect of this whole exercise by the Department of Education and the Department of Justice? To help black students or to secure the black vote in an election year by seeming to be coming to the rescue of blacks from white oppression? Among the many serious problems of ghetto schools is the legal difficulty of getting rid of disruptive hoodlums, a mere handful of whom can be enough to destroy the education of a far larger number of other black students — and with it destroy their chances for a better life.

Sowell elaborates further, pulling no punches.

Secretary Duncan and Attorney General Holder want to play the race card in an election year, at the expense of the education of black students. Make no mistake about it, the black students who go to school to get an education are the main victims of the classroom disrupters whom Duncan and Holder are trying to protect. What they are more fundamentally trying to protect are the black votes which are essential for Democrats. For that, blacks must be constantly depicted as under siege from whites, so that Democrats can be seen as their rescuers. Promoting paranoia translates into votes. It is a very cynical political game, despite all the lofty rhetoric used to disguise it. Whether the current generation of black students get a decent education is infinitely more important than whether the current generation of Democratic politicians hang on to their jobs. Very powerful stuff. And it should be disturbing as well.

I’ve already commented on the implicit racism in the minimum wage law and thereprehensible decision by leftists to put the interests of teacher union ahead of the interests of black students.

Now we can add something else to the list.

If you like Professor Sowell’s insights, I’ve highlighted more of his work here,here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And you can see him in action here. A truly gifted public intellectual and a (thankfully) prolific writer.

The Evolution of Education

Good ideas don't come from bureaucrats. At least I can't think of one that ever has. The messy free market is the mother of innovation.

As we learn more about how we learn, the science of education continues to evolve. These new approaches lead me to wonder whether I would have become better educated if these techniques were available when I was a student.

Sal Khan is an amazing person. And his ideas have now attracted the support of Bill Gates and others with the means to aid in their advancement. I found these videos to be enlightening and exciting. I hope you will as well. Quite a number of teachers, active and retired, read this blog and I'll be interested on their take on this. The classroom could look much different with ideas like this.

The first video is about the ideas and the second is about the person.

No Citizen Should be Left Behind on This Education Law

Rand Paul isn't running for President, but in my opinion he should be. We need some straight talk and some rational non-Washington thought before perpetuating this arrogant law. Common sense is becoming a lost art.

It's Ten Thirty On Thursday Morning, Do You Know Where Your Teacher Is?

Younger readers may not remember the TV ad of the 50's and 60's which asked a similar question to encourage parents to keep track of their kids. The ad was a reminder that 10:30 pm was the curfew time on a school night.

If you are a parent in Wisconsin, perhaps you think the ad should be revived with the above question instead. Particularly if you were wondering why your children's school was closed. It seems there was an illness that was widespread among teachers in Milwaukee, Madison and Janesville. So many called in sick that the schools were locked up. The epidemic was confined to those cities and thankfully the children didn't seem to have the same malady.

All kidding aside, there is a serious problem afoot in America's dairy land and many other states as well. And I have been asked to write about it, so I will.  I try to avoid pontificating on these well covered stories in favor of letting the more well informed and more talented writers and commentators do it because... well because... Ok, I'll admit it, because I stink by comparison. But I promised, so I will make two quick points instead of pontificating at length.

I'll leave the issues that others are covering to them and only address that which I have not seen elsewhere. No matter what your opinion is on this issue or which "side" you are on politically, there are points worth making in my opinion.

First, the lawmakers who have fled their state and are hiding like common criminals to avoid doing the job they were elected to do are cowards. They should be impeached, arrested (what they are doing may be a crime) or just plain unelected next time up no matter where people stand on the budget arguments. They were sent to represent their fellow citizens and they have abdicated. It is shameful behavior.

Second, the education employees who called in sick are acting cowardly as well. They have a job to do. They promised to educate the kids but they broke that promise so they could flex their political muscle at the expense of the kids and in violation of their legal and moral commitment.

Even if you agree with them on the budget issues, you should be mad as hell. They should be sued for breach of contract, disciplined or simply not rehired next time up, the same way as any employee of any private company should be. It doesn't take courage to do what they did. If it's possible to be ashamed of people you have never met, I'm ashamed of them.

So if I lived in Wisconsin I would have one question for each of them at the next town hall meeting or teacher conference. Where were you at 10:30 am on Thursday Feb. 17, 2011?

Credits Could Lead To An Armistice in The School Wars

The only K-12 education I ever received as a child was provided at so called "public" schools. And any failure to become "educated" at those schools falls squarely upon my shoulders, not those of the many fine teachers who worked hard to pound some knowledge and reasoning skills into my thick skull.

Of course there were good classes and bad as well as competent and incompetent teachers but since none of the schools then or now were located in Utopia it was to be expected. I learned at least as many useful life lessons from the bad teachers as the good ones because it was obvious even to a dimwit kid that if you see mistakes being made you try to avoid them yourself in the future. So for me the government schools worked out OK even if I never became a rocket surgeon or a brain scientist.

Some of the better teachers taught me to always question things even if they seemed obvious. And I have spent the rest of my life questioning everything that the majority has already decided was elementary. It makes me a pain in the ass to many of my friends who nevertheless suffer me gladly.

One of the elementary things I have always questioned was the need for "public" schools in the first place. I accepted the given reason for government provided schools was to make sure that those too poor to educate their own children would not have uneducated kids. But what I couldn't figure out was why the government was providing a "free" education even to those who could afford it on their own. (Leave aside for the moment the fact that even though my family had very little money, in my neighborhood even the kids who were way "poorer" than us went to private schools.)

It never made sense to me that just because some people couldn't afford it everyone was provided with a government paid education. Even "rich" people. Why shouldn't the government just give the poor people a subsidy so they could send their kids to the schools all the other people sent their kids to? That way no kid would be left out just because his parents were too poor, lazy, drunk, stupid or some combination of that list. It had to be cheaper to make an education available that way than building lots of schools and hiring duplicate administrators, teachers, custodians and the like.

Back in those days it never occurred to me that perhaps the government schools weren't primarily designed to be for the the purpose of educating poor kids. But back then I was actually in one of those institutions so maybe it wasn't the plan for that to occur to me.

It's only been in the last few decades there has been a lot of debate about this concept so I must not have been the only one to have simple concepts not occur to them. Of course the past debates were/are usually about what gets taught in the schools and other issues, but now that children in this country have fallen so far behind much of the rest of the developed world, folks are starting to debate all kinds of things to remedy that problem. George Will wrote a piece that appeared in today's issue of the Investors Business Daily which addresses that issue with facts and figures and I highly recommend reading it. It can be found here.

In the meantime, the following video has some interesting concepts about how to pay for education and improve it at the same time that haven't gotten too much press coverage from a media obsessed by ever expanding government influence on our lives. You may agree or disagree with the concepts and as always you are encouraged to leave your thoughts on it in the comment section below.