Probably worth mentioning that Maryland is regularly rated towards the high end on public education, often cracking top 10 depending on the list. The states that tend to outrank it are also blue or purple, not red, and I've never seen a reputable source that puts Texas ahead.
I'll never defend Baltimore City governance but the standards are mostly set at the state level. I get into similar debates in the other direction when we talk about gun laws. No one ever gets shot in my neighborhood but people do constantly in Baltimore despite having the same rules, which again, are mostly at the state level. Similarly the vast majority of children do well and many exceedingly so in Maryland public schools. Unfortunately the problem has a lot more to do with the people than the curriculum.
That said I thought the thing Saul linked to earlier about advertising on porn sites about conservative aims to restrict access to it isn't a bad idea.
That's exactly what I thought I was getting at. I'm not interested in various achievement gaps. I'm interested in whether a minimally acceptable quality of life is being given to people that for whatever number of reasons don't do well at academics. The interest in the academic gaps only exist because they are a proxy for other successes in life, and the gaps arise from the basic circumstances around the human condition, nature nurture, whatever. Hence the academics conversation being both red herring and mistake of cause and effect.
Not sure if this is responsive but I see looking at the issue as a matter of educational performance as a combination of red herring and confusion of cause and effect.
Yea but the way the welfare state works in this country is through federal subsidy and at levels of government where it is a live issue.
To put my cards on the table I don't really care if the kids at the goose egg schools match the kids in my county in trigonometry. That's never happening for too many reasons to count. I do care though that we are able to say we gave them something like a fair shot at self sufficiency in adulthood.
I think what North has been suggesting is forcing a resolution and complete defeat of the Palestinians. Unless you think letting the settler movement succeed in de facto incorporating the Palestinians into the country of Israel would be be better. To me that sounds more like holding a gun to your own head.
The most effective way to defeat the equity people would be to develop a cross partisan consensus that the state nevertheless has a role in making sure those worst performers still have things like health insurance. And yet there's another side of this debate that is hell bent on making sure the equity people always have at least a little bit of a point.
I think this is exactly the issue. I also think trying to create a situation where low performers can have some minimally acceptable standard of living is a lot less quixotic than thinking we're going to find some way to get the least academically successful doing calculus or reading at anything close to the same level as the best.
I think too many people suffer from too much romanticism over what school is and always has been.
That said I think it's pretty clear that the public system has become too ossified. If it's going to survive it's going to need to get more flexible in terms of what it can offer and how it operates.
Right now I think we're going in slow motion towards a worst case scenario. The best and brightest with the most involved families opt out to better options. A lot of cultural conservatives opt out to stupider and/or crazier options. Eventually the public schools become hollowed out husks where they babysit poor kids and maybe depending on the district throw in some progressive fairy tales.
Freddie also references MY's multi part series on the death of education reform. He never reaches a firm conclusion but I think Freddie is basically right, that the results just weren't there. Charters proved a shell game, and no one was ever able to really diminish the teachers unions where they are powerful, to the extent that was part of the game plan.
In light of that failure we've had a progressive movement that seems to want to redefine success as whatever the outcomes happen to be and a conservative movement increasingly defecting from the project of public education altogether. Absent a real sea change my suspicion is that they will both win, probably to the detriment of us all.
I think that what most people are really thinking about with education is less the education itself than the positive externalities associated with public, compulsory education. And when compared to a society where only a select few are literate and have more than the most rudimentary numeracy, the benefits are huge and indisputable.
The struggle now I think is what to do in a situation of diminishing returns, and where all of the low hanging fruit is picked. Should we be sparing no expense and effort on the lowest achievers? Should we be doubling and tripling down on the best of the best? Or do we accept that beyond a certain minimal level the whole thing is just daycare, and its up to those that want more to figure it out for themselves?
It's certainly not what I'd expect to hear on CBS morning or whatever but isn't what Coates is doing supposed to be provocative?
This is exactly what I'm getting at above with the DEI crap, people like Coates claim we need these debates and to get outside of our comfort zones with hard truths, but then require some other authority to intervene when they appear unequipped to handle the conversation they say they want to have.*
*In fairness I understand it's CBS calling for that, not, as far as I know, Coates.
Dokoupil clearly went into it fired up but it wasn't like he didn't let Coates speak for himself. I also think you're overstating how dumb the questions were. In the meat of the discussion he asks basically 3 questions:
-Do you think Israel has a right to exist, especially in a region where there are a bunch of expressly Muslim countries?
-Arent the conditions Israel has imposed at least somewhat understandable in light of the first and second Intifada, the suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks that left dead Israeli children?
-Hasn't peace been offered to Palestinians on several occasions and they have rejected it?
I'm not sure anyone can expect to talk about the subject without being able to address these kinds of questions. We debate them here endlessly, as a bunch of middle aged midwits. A guy who published a best selling writing on the subject should be able to talk about them intelligently in a mildly adversarial environment. Instead you're left wondering if Coates even knows what the Intifadas were.
That's not what Coates is saying. He starts with a pretty strong rejoinder about why he doesn't include any larger context or anything about the Israeli perspective in his essay. He says that story is already widely disseminated in America, everyone knows it, and its the position the powers that be in the US already operate from. I don't think he's wrong about that, and he's right that we could gain valuable perspective from learning what life is actually like for Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Where he falls apart is when he falls back on his own subjective experience as a 'child of apartheid' as if his experience growing up in the US in the late 70s and 80s is some kind of apples to apples comparison, gives him any insight, or even relevant to the topic. In doing this he basically concedes that he doesn't really know what he's talking about and if the conversation had gone on any longer even a pretty weak apologist for what the Israelis are doing would have made mincemeat of him.
Edit, to illustrate my point, he mentions where his parents and grandparents were in pre civil rights movement America. Ask the Jews of Israel where their parents and grandparents were in the same time period.
I just watched it again and want to add a final point, which is that I don't think he comes off like a total fool or anything in that exchange. Far from it. However what he seems unable to do when the heat gets turned up is debate the issue from a place outside of his own personal priors that aren't necessarily strong parallels and that don't always stand up that well to scrutiny. It's why he starts out pretty strong but then falters as it goes on and his lack of command of the larger geopolitical facts become apparent.
I've watched it several times in light of the tempest in a tea pot that has followed. The questioning was certainly tougher than I'd expect in the context of a light fare morning show but nothing a person that aspires to be a public intellectual with important things to say shouldn't be able to handle.
If we're going to bring DEI into it I'd say it proves the critics to its left correct, that it turns its champions into light weights unable to defend their positions.
The ironic thing to me is that I actually think Coates' point is pretty strong on the merits, that the history doesn't mean squat to the here and now, and the here and now is indefensible. I'm just not sure he is capable of making the argument to someone that doesn't already worship him like a god.
That's the TNC I remember from the teens. Making controversial assertions then having the media class treat any tough questioning or debate as out of bounds.
That's also how I'd see the scenario playing out of it were to go that way. Lean R people voting for the GOP house rep they have in the past and whatever other state offices but not making any selection for president or governor.
I have pondered that possibility as well. My (nevertheless totally uncertain) take is that if the down ballot situation is so bad it's actually losing Trump states he would otherwise win, the result is more likely to be >300 electoral votes for Harris, rather than an alternative path to narrow victory. But who knows.
I'm sure Jeffrey Katzenberg appears to Harris every morning in shaolin monk robes encouraging her not just to think like the generic Democrat, but to be the generic Democrat.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “From Freddie: The Basics: School Reform”
Probably worth mentioning that Maryland is regularly rated towards the high end on public education, often cracking top 10 depending on the list. The states that tend to outrank it are also blue or purple, not red, and I've never seen a reputable source that puts Texas ahead.
I'll never defend Baltimore City governance but the standards are mostly set at the state level. I get into similar debates in the other direction when we talk about gun laws. No one ever gets shot in my neighborhood but people do constantly in Baltimore despite having the same rules, which again, are mostly at the state level. Similarly the vast majority of children do well and many exceedingly so in Maryland public schools. Unfortunately the problem has a lot more to do with the people than the curriculum.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
If that is indeed the age range then yes, alas, too old.
"
I'm man enough to know cringe when I see it.
That said I thought the thing Saul linked to earlier about advertising on porn sites about conservative aims to restrict access to it isn't a bad idea.
On “From Freddie: The Basics: School Reform”
To be clear, I used trigonometry as an example to be ironic.
"
That's exactly what I thought I was getting at. I'm not interested in various achievement gaps. I'm interested in whether a minimally acceptable quality of life is being given to people that for whatever number of reasons don't do well at academics. The interest in the academic gaps only exist because they are a proxy for other successes in life, and the gaps arise from the basic circumstances around the human condition, nature nurture, whatever. Hence the academics conversation being both red herring and mistake of cause and effect.
"
Not sure if this is responsive but I see looking at the issue as a matter of educational performance as a combination of red herring and confusion of cause and effect.
"
Yea but the way the welfare state works in this country is through federal subsidy and at levels of government where it is a live issue.
To put my cards on the table I don't really care if the kids at the goose egg schools match the kids in my county in trigonometry. That's never happening for too many reasons to count. I do care though that we are able to say we gave them something like a fair shot at self sufficiency in adulthood.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
I think what North has been suggesting is forcing a resolution and complete defeat of the Palestinians. Unless you think letting the settler movement succeed in de facto incorporating the Palestinians into the country of Israel would be be better. To me that sounds more like holding a gun to your own head.
On “From Freddie: The Basics: School Reform”
The most effective way to defeat the equity people would be to develop a cross partisan consensus that the state nevertheless has a role in making sure those worst performers still have things like health insurance. And yet there's another side of this debate that is hell bent on making sure the equity people always have at least a little bit of a point.
"
I think this is exactly the issue. I also think trying to create a situation where low performers can have some minimally acceptable standard of living is a lot less quixotic than thinking we're going to find some way to get the least academically successful doing calculus or reading at anything close to the same level as the best.
"
I think too many people suffer from too much romanticism over what school is and always has been.
That said I think it's pretty clear that the public system has become too ossified. If it's going to survive it's going to need to get more flexible in terms of what it can offer and how it operates.
Right now I think we're going in slow motion towards a worst case scenario. The best and brightest with the most involved families opt out to better options. A lot of cultural conservatives opt out to stupider and/or crazier options. Eventually the public schools become hollowed out husks where they babysit poor kids and maybe depending on the district throw in some progressive fairy tales.
"
I'm pretty sure FdB wrote a book on this topic.
"
Freddie also references MY's multi part series on the death of education reform. He never reaches a firm conclusion but I think Freddie is basically right, that the results just weren't there. Charters proved a shell game, and no one was ever able to really diminish the teachers unions where they are powerful, to the extent that was part of the game plan.
In light of that failure we've had a progressive movement that seems to want to redefine success as whatever the outcomes happen to be and a conservative movement increasingly defecting from the project of public education altogether. Absent a real sea change my suspicion is that they will both win, probably to the detriment of us all.
"
I think that what most people are really thinking about with education is less the education itself than the positive externalities associated with public, compulsory education. And when compared to a society where only a select few are literate and have more than the most rudimentary numeracy, the benefits are huge and indisputable.
The struggle now I think is what to do in a situation of diminishing returns, and where all of the low hanging fruit is picked. Should we be sparing no expense and effort on the lowest achievers? Should we be doubling and tripling down on the best of the best? Or do we accept that beyond a certain minimal level the whole thing is just daycare, and its up to those that want more to figure it out for themselves?
Not sure there's an easy answer.
On “Open Mic for the week of 10/7/2024”
It's certainly not what I'd expect to hear on CBS morning or whatever but isn't what Coates is doing supposed to be provocative?
This is exactly what I'm getting at above with the DEI crap, people like Coates claim we need these debates and to get outside of our comfort zones with hard truths, but then require some other authority to intervene when they appear unequipped to handle the conversation they say they want to have.*
*In fairness I understand it's CBS calling for that, not, as far as I know, Coates.
"
Dokoupil clearly went into it fired up but it wasn't like he didn't let Coates speak for himself. I also think you're overstating how dumb the questions were. In the meat of the discussion he asks basically 3 questions:
-Do you think Israel has a right to exist, especially in a region where there are a bunch of expressly Muslim countries?
-Arent the conditions Israel has imposed at least somewhat understandable in light of the first and second Intifada, the suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks that left dead Israeli children?
-Hasn't peace been offered to Palestinians on several occasions and they have rejected it?
I'm not sure anyone can expect to talk about the subject without being able to address these kinds of questions. We debate them here endlessly, as a bunch of middle aged midwits. A guy who published a best selling writing on the subject should be able to talk about them intelligently in a mildly adversarial environment. Instead you're left wondering if Coates even knows what the Intifadas were.
"
That's not what Coates is saying. He starts with a pretty strong rejoinder about why he doesn't include any larger context or anything about the Israeli perspective in his essay. He says that story is already widely disseminated in America, everyone knows it, and its the position the powers that be in the US already operate from. I don't think he's wrong about that, and he's right that we could gain valuable perspective from learning what life is actually like for Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Where he falls apart is when he falls back on his own subjective experience as a 'child of apartheid' as if his experience growing up in the US in the late 70s and 80s is some kind of apples to apples comparison, gives him any insight, or even relevant to the topic. In doing this he basically concedes that he doesn't really know what he's talking about and if the conversation had gone on any longer even a pretty weak apologist for what the Israelis are doing would have made mincemeat of him.
Edit, to illustrate my point, he mentions where his parents and grandparents were in pre civil rights movement America. Ask the Jews of Israel where their parents and grandparents were in the same time period.
"
I just watched it again and want to add a final point, which is that I don't think he comes off like a total fool or anything in that exchange. Far from it. However what he seems unable to do when the heat gets turned up is debate the issue from a place outside of his own personal priors that aren't necessarily strong parallels and that don't always stand up that well to scrutiny. It's why he starts out pretty strong but then falters as it goes on and his lack of command of the larger geopolitical facts become apparent.
"
Of course it also occurs to me that the reason he may struggle with that point is the implications it could have for his body of political commentary.
But that goes back to the lightweight thing.
"
I've watched it several times in light of the tempest in a tea pot that has followed. The questioning was certainly tougher than I'd expect in the context of a light fare morning show but nothing a person that aspires to be a public intellectual with important things to say shouldn't be able to handle.
If we're going to bring DEI into it I'd say it proves the critics to its left correct, that it turns its champions into light weights unable to defend their positions.
The ironic thing to me is that I actually think Coates' point is pretty strong on the merits, that the history doesn't mean squat to the here and now, and the here and now is indefensible. I'm just not sure he is capable of making the argument to someone that doesn't already worship him like a god.
"
That's the TNC I remember from the teens. Making controversial assertions then having the media class treat any tough questioning or debate as out of bounds.
On “The Joy Of Opening Time Capsules: The 2024 Presidential Election”
So does that mean if Trump loses or is shot again he gets 4 fewer electoral votes?
"
That's also how I'd see the scenario playing out of it were to go that way. Lean R people voting for the GOP house rep they have in the past and whatever other state offices but not making any selection for president or governor.
"
I have pondered that possibility as well. My (nevertheless totally uncertain) take is that if the down ballot situation is so bad it's actually losing Trump states he would otherwise win, the result is more likely to be >300 electoral votes for Harris, rather than an alternative path to narrow victory. But who knows.
"
I'm sure Jeffrey Katzenberg appears to Harris every morning in shaolin monk robes encouraging her not just to think like the generic Democrat, but to be the generic Democrat.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.