Tagged: education
Been Reading Some Einstein (and Infeld)
Until you do too, or until you read Newton himself, you just need to trust me. Any chance you get, any time you hear someone associate Newton with an apple falling from a tree, stamp it out—fiercely, ferociously if necessary, but effectively in any case. Newton should be forever tied to a David-esque slingshot. In all honesty, Newton’s influence on life on Earth is probably more profound than the “man after God’s own heart.” But however your rank order of the two concludes, they are both whirling a rock around on a rope—no apples in sight. Just stop it!
Teachers Receive Stricter Judgment
Do not, many of you, become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive a stricter judgment.
For all the experimentally-derived information not found in the books of the Bible, it sure does contain many easily deduced sentiments.
For my part, I have been elbow deep in Natural Science essays of late, essays whose subject matter has ranged from stars to candles, from chalk to mountains, and from monkeys to conservation of energy. Essays, I say. Maybe 20 total. About 450 pages worth. And these by the actual discoverers of the subject. I have not been reading a textbook written by some no-account hack with bought-and-paid-for letters after their name, just essays written by the men whose genius advanced material life on this planet so rapidly in the last 400+ years.
After the last two essays which covered such basic topics as the “law of periodicity” and the “law of conservation of force”, of which such simple words like “period” and “foot-pound” were defined—words which none of you (or I) could define upon request, but which we employ at our leisure—I started to get angry.
I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself—I am certain that I have now read more than most ever have or will on from the field of Natural Science. And that thrills me. Instead, I was thinking of my kids and all other kids. They are sitting in schools right now, staring at the periodic table and completely unaware why it is so-named. They are, if lucky, in an auto-tech class turning wrenches, and applying torque, without being able to define what it means that the limit for that bolt is 120 foot-pounds—or from where the expended 120 foot-pounds of energy get replenished.
Before you get all “Well, Pete, you’re forgetting that not everyone…” on me, I want to re-iterate these are kids who are in school! What else are they doing if not learning? And, keep in mind I have already suggested a mere 500 pages would advance their knowledge to within reach of the current peaks of human knowledge of natural science.
Also to be clear, I am suggesting these essays would be the course. Have a teacher lead the kids through them and then see what the kids want to do. I cannot be persuaded that they would choose to stop there. It is a sure bet that their curiosity would be piqued and each would willingly follow the most interesting path they saw available to continue down.
As it stands, “hydrogen will bond with…” inspires hardly anyone and we act little different than the uneducated nations and “emerging” cultures which leave a child to himself as we declare, “Oh look at that! He’s gonna be a football player for sure!”
Since obtaining a step-son from another culture, worlds away, I have seen nothing but the distribution of participation trophies which the adults and kids assign as symbolic displays of new expertise in subjects of which they both are ignorant and of abilities of which they are both wanting.
My step-son’s skin is dark, so this was to be expected as the whites in education are utterly brainwashed into thinking BIPOC folks are genetically inferior.
But I have unfortunately watched this occur all across the spectrum. The entire field of education is one big gold star for trying. The underlying sentiment has become, “You are too stupid to understand the hard stuff, so let’s just stay in the shallow end.” The obvious trouble with this idea is the people doing the hard stuff disagree.
Education, hear me clearly, is directly opposed to the priesthood. If you believe there is some special class of human that children cannot generally achieve, you cannot also believe in education. You might as well burn books. This is no different than how you cannot believe both in a geocentric and heliocentric model of the universe, or girls can become boys and boys can become girls.
In the end, in all my “this is wrong”, I found myself reminded of the scripture I opened with. Most Christians would limit James’ warning to spiritual matters. I disagree. Teachers will be more strictly judged. Teachers are being judged. We are all being judged by their failure.
Knowledge Is Irresistible; It Defies Rebellion
Come close, ya stiff-necked supercargo. This one is important. This is a story about laundry. It is a story about power. It is the story of knowledge.
It may come as a surprise that pilots, especially military pilots or their veteran counterparts like me, spend many nights of each year in sleeping bags. As an Eagle Scout who knows the true value of a quality sleeping bag, I remember being very proud when I heard that our deployed commander used one instead of sheets while in Iraq. You see, I was no longer alone. To this day, I spend about 1/4 of the year’s nights in a sleeping bag—not including camping trips.
Naturally, this level of commitment leads to the need to wash a sleeping bag, and wash it with more regularity than your own sleeping bag laundering habits have ever included. In fact, you’re likely thinking this very moment, “Where is my sleeping bag?”
Washing a sleeping bag is an adventure of its own. Not just the washing, but the drying as well. For any ground-pounding, civilian pukes who never have spent a night under the stars (let’s not forget the boldly illiterate hippie camping community), there is a tag right on the bag that says, “Only dry in commercial dryers” or some similar wording that forbids the pilot from his perfect dream of living as an island.
(I have laundered my sleeping bag(s) many times at home and never had a problem. This post is not about rule-following.)
So the other day, despite both cars revealing mechanical issues almost simultaneously, I learned at night that the dryer stopped heating. (LORD? You watchin’?) It made the same noises and tumbled as surely as any other day—even longer when on the “automatic” setting; but the clothes wouldn’t dry. I tracked down that they weren’t getting warm either.
Enter YouTube.
There were two probable issues. One was that a thermal fuse on the heating element had tripped/blown. The other was the heating element itself had broken.
I tracked down an appliance parts guru in town who loved to chat on the phone and he assured me it was the fuse. But I forced him to concede it was worth ordering both just in case his foresight proved dim. During this back-and-forth, he said something like, “It’s all about airflow. The air has to blow the heat from the heating element into the dryer and then that air has to find its way past the clothes, past the lint trap, and through the vent all the way to the outside world. If any part of that path is blocked, the heat will remain and eventually blow the fuse. You may never know why the path got blocked. Could be stray article of clothes got caught in the wrong spot or maybe someone washed too big a comforter. But it’s all about the air.”
Fasten your seatbelts.
“Only dry in a commercial dryer,” the tag reads. Any warm-blooded human says, “Huh?” And we proceed to rebel and possibly damage the dryer.
But…
“It’s all about airflow. If the sleeping bag blocks the incoming heat, the fuse will blow—which is annoying. If the fuse doesn’t blow, the heating element could potentially overheat and cause a fire—lots of variables in that one,” the facts are. And any warm-blooded human says, “Okay.” And then assesses the risks and gets on with their decision.
The passive, uninformed warning fosters rebellion, and well it should. Instinct informs us to demand respect! “Don’t boss me! You have my attention. Now treat me like a man!”
But the knowledge is irresistible and fosters sound judgment and good decision making. “Hmm. Good to know. I’ve dried many things of similar size in this machine and so I’ll risk it.” Or whatever.
What is knowledge? Knowledge is irresistible. It defies rebellion.
Go get some.
PS – It was the heating element. And Speed Queen dryers are super easy to work on—should they not live up to their name.
PPS – Yes, I have gone back to the original name of my blog. I do want to use the fact that I stare down death for a living to get your attention. Whether I can keep it is the thrill.
New Conversational Vocabulary for Resisting the Next Vaccine (Approved and Inspired by Claude Bernard)
While the RFK Jr. news is provocative, I am not persuaded that the lessons the Left learned from COVID and power available during pandemics will ever be forgotten.
I got vaccinated, but not for medical reasons. Like many, I had it at least once.
I am not an “anti-vaxxer”.
Yet, it should not surprise anyone that my sympathies will always lie with people who resist acts of compulsion—notably by the government. Additionally, my own instinct instructs me to recognize that my fellow humans’ instinct which tells them to resist vaccines should be allowed to prevail. In short, “you do you”. But I can’t help but notice the resistance lacked rhetorical skill.
Given my status as exceedingly well-read and becoming more-so daily, I want to lend a hand. I wouldn’t spend so much time in the books if I didn’t believe there is practical value inherent.
In this post, then, I want to give any “instinctive” anti-vaxxer the language, the vocabulary as it were, to successfully repel any future mandates, and their inherent conversational societal pressures. In other words, I encourage you to adopt the following as your script when your own family members make outrageous claims to “trust the science”.
****
Smug Relative: “Just trust the science! It’s harmless.”
You: “First, ‘No, thank you.’ First Part B, what you mean by science, and what we both agree is its prime definition, is ‘same conditions, same result—every time’. In short, science is certainty. Anything less than certainty is not science. If I may, you don’t trust the science, because one cannot trust the science, because the vaccine—unless you claim it is certain—is not science.
“To conclude, say what you mean. You’re trusting something—but it ain’t the science.”
“Second, harmless? What is the difference between harmless and failed? Because when you say harmless, you seem to be implying that no one put any effort or investment into the attempt to develop a compound that will teach my body to defend itself from the virus. But I believe people most definitely put effort and investment into developing a material that will teach my body to defend itself from the virus. (And I believe you, here again, actually agree with me.)
“Therefore until they are certain, harmless must mean “they failed.” And I am not interested in putting failure into my body from the outside; I have enough trouble keeping it from being generated in the inside.”
Smug Relative: “There is never going to be certainty in medicine.”
You: “Again, we find ourselves in agreement.”
Smug Relative: “I see. So what? You need me to explain the statistics?”
You: “Nope. I don’t require anything more of you. Thanks for hearing me out. I’m glad we chatted.”
The Image of a Microscope which Accompanied the Science Article—That’s What Bothered Me Today
The Sunday paper had an interesting article about the current war with China. Interesting as it was, there was no call to action. Or at least not a memorable one. There certainly was nothing for citizens to do. I think what I’m suggesting about the op/ed was that the scale wasn’t appropriate.
On the other hand, there was an article suggesting two “Life Science” bills be voted down. One of the two stock “science-y” images the paper used was of a microscope. Of all the articles and opinions in today’s paper, this irked me the most. Why? Because unlike the other author’s claim that China is an existential threat to America (the sky is a-falling!), this image is one which an individual—likely an editor—can do something about.
“Science” is not merely tool use. If anything, science is to tool (science:tool) as man is to wheel (science:tool::man:wheel). Science invents tools; science is never the process of using tools.
And an editor should know this—could know this. And that editor would be doing a service to truth, and his bottom line, if they put a bit more reason into their product.
What image should the editor use to capture science?
There are many that would work. But an easy one would be of someone writing an excellently organized paper, with a title which sufficiently describes the paper’s purpose.
Schools: Please Stop Sending Emails
Stop sending parents emails of every little thing you do. This request is especially for high schools. Who has time? And they’re boring. They only satisfy your need to feel whatever it is you want to feel. No one cares. And they do not influence life on earth. The kids care or don’t.
Please stop sending emails.
Instead, use the newfound free time to…teach!!!
If I was President Trump Answering the Three Shorty Interviewers
“Mr. President, I want to start by addressing the elephant in the room, sir. A lot of people did not think it was appropriate for you to be here today.
“You have pushed false claims about some of your rivals, from Nikki Haley to former President Barack Obama saying that they were not born in the United States, which is not true.
“You have told four congresswoman who were American citizens to go back to where they came from.
“You have used words like animal and rabbit to describe black district attorneys.
“You attacked black journalists, calling them a loser, saying the questions that they ask are, quote, ‘stupid and racist’. You have had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort.
“So my question, sir, now that you are asking black supporters to vote for you, ‘Why should black voters trust you after you have used language like that?’”
****
(Again, that takes a second to reproduce. You’re welcome.)
Below is how I would “handle” these three women. I offer two rhetorical paths.
****
Thank you for the question. Elephant in the room? You suggest the elephant in the room is that I ‘have been painted as a racist, but think that I need black votes?’
I think the elephant in the room is there are no black men up here. Where are the men? Three black women? I have heard the blacks are a matriarchy, but until just this moment I didn’t ever really consider how true it is.
Scan the audience
Gentlemen? This is how you want to play the game?
****
OR
****
Thank you for the question. Elephant in the room.
That expression describes the idea that there can be some huge topic on everyone’s minds that each person simultaneously avoids chatting about.
You suggest the hidden topic is that I am a racist but need black votes to win.
I don’t think the fact that I need black votes to win is the elephant. And my opponents have thrown so much mud my way, social and legal, that I think we would all agree that it would be silly to make time to defend against every smear. So for the same reason I won’t defend myself to you today either—especially because that wasn’t your question.
But I want to answer your question about needing black votes.
Can anyone tell me, just shout it out, where USA ranks on total black population among all countries?
No? We’re somewhere around 10th. Outside of Africa, we’re 2nd.
But nobody knew that.
Is the elephant that I need black voters? Or is the elephant that black voters need me?
But that’s still not the real question you want answered.
Your real question is, “What are you going to do for us”?
The answer is “charter schools”. Thomas Sowell, a national treasure, has a great book, Charter Schools and Their Enemies, that has affected me greatly.
I know that education is not an immediate fix to immediate problems, by which I mean mostly money problems. So my answer probably seems like a disappointing answer. But you know that education is the ultimate fix to problems. ‘Folks who know better, do better.’ That’s not just a great quote by great black preachers. It is also a universal truth.
I have to get going now. Have your people call my people. I’d love to do this again sometime.
Science Teachers: Teach the Truth
I was at an FBO (airport gas station—incidentally, this means very, very wealthy people are frequently around. I assure you, they do not inspire). Anyhow, I was there awaiting some maintenance on the helicopter for an afternoon the other day and I couldn’t help but notice that on the TV was a silly show where a “Science is fun!” guest teacher was visiting an inner city school to pep up the otherwise dry material.
It caught my attention, as you might expect, faithful reader, because the topic of my guided reading through the Great Books of the Western World is “Foundations of Math and Science”. So when I hear, “Newton”, “Force”, “Inertia”, and certain other keywords, I am always interested to take a closer look.
The particular concept the energetic guest was bringing to the kids was inertia. His whole game was to demonstrate inertia by yanking the tablecloth from under some dishes as they remain in place.
He says, “Inertia: the tendency of an object to stay at rest until a force acts upon it.”
The definition isn’t troubling. The troubling thing is…can you name it with me? On three. One, two, three: Everything in the universe is demonstrating it!
Whether this zany, cooler-than-your-teacher (and actually, kinda disrespectful) man shows up to a school and says the words “learn” “newton” “inertia”, or not, inertia is demonstrated by not only every object in a student’s immediate observation, the student’s body itself, but also by every object in the entirety of the universe!
But the man adds, “Isaac Newton would be so proud that you’re learning!!”
And there is the whopper. Isaac Newton would be proud if kids were learning (they’re not), but he would not be proud that a man claiming to be an expert is teaching kids that he is demonstrating inertia.
With me?
Inertia isn’t “demonstrated”. Inertia is.
“Pete, you’re being way too sensitive here.”
Am I?
****
Why does learning have to be fun?
From what I have read, the math and science greats do not seem to have had much fun while attempting to communicate their ideas. Moreover, many of their lives were fairly difficult—as they were battling commonly held conceptions held by nearly each and every fellow man.
Instead of “fun”, I say let’s teach the truth to kids.
Straight from the man.
Definition III from Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principle of Natural Philosophy.
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The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting, by which every body, as much as in it lies, continues in its present state, whether it be of rest, or of moving uniformly forwards in a right line.
This force is always proportional to the body whose force it is and differs nothing from the inactivity of the mass, but in our manner of conceiving it. A body, from the inert nature of matter, is not without difficulty put out of its state of rest or motion. Upon which account, this vis insita may, by a most significant name, be called inertia (vis inertio) or force of inactivity. But a body only exerts this force when another force, impressed upon it, endeavors to change its condition; and the exercise of this force may be considered as both resistance and impulse; it is resistance so far as the body, for maintaining its present state, opposes the force impressed; it is impulse so far as the body, by not easily giving way to the impressed force of another, endeavors to change the state of that other. Resistance is usually ascribed to bodies at rest, and impulse to those in motion; but motion and rest, as commonly conceived, are only relatively distinguished; nor are those bodies always truly at rest, which commonly are taken to be so.
(My underline.)
****
If that doesn’t do it for ya, if you still don’t understand what Newton means by the word inertia, then the only sentiment I may offer as a last ditch effort is this.
Imagine a man moving while inside a moving vehicle. Got it? (It doesn’t have to be a car with a man reaching back to grab a snack from the back seat, or a pirate ship approaching a storm while the captain paces to and fro by the helm, or an airplane with a man squeezing down the aisle after a bathroom break. It can be any vehicle, any person, but the vehicle and the person inside must be moving.)
That is the Newtonian picture of the universe as described at the end of that definition. Because, Newton says, the vehicle we’re in (which you didn’t know we’re in—and he doesn’t mean merely planet Earth) is moving; there is no “rest” in the plain sense.
Inertia, then, is the conception (defensible by math and experimentation) that all bodies resist. It’s an action. Or a force. To resist, there must be something to resist. (Period.)
And I’m out.
Children Grown Older
“What are you doing, A-? Just get in your seat!” I begged my toddler daughter as she almost finally got into her car seat.
“I’m looking at the pictures,” she replied, un-phased by my pleading tone.
“The what? Oh. Those are instructions for people who can’t read,” I retorted, no less annoyed. Instructions for people who can’t read, I repeated to myself.
That’s about right. We have plastic seats for children. The poor and illiterate didn’t invent them, and wouldn’t think to use them if it wasn’t for the wealthy and literate. So what do the literate do? Write instructions on the seat, as if that solves any problem.
****
I would’ve thought this experience was a one-off. Wouldn’t you? This “providing help in an utterly un-useful manner”.
Then we were at the local mega-playground today. And there is a sign with English, Spanish, and Braille. But the Braille is not textured—ie, not Braille.
In English, our native tongue, then, “It gets worse. It always gets worse.”
Real Fears of a White Step-Dad
“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me today. I want to talk to you about something that is generally taboo, but especially given the details (often in footnotes) of the recent Supreme Court case on affirmative action and university admittance, it is important that we chat.”
“Um-”
“I’d ask you to not interrupt and I request this indulgence because I am the one with something to lose here—not you. Thank you.
“I see the supposed excellence of your school. While I am fully persuaded home school is the best way to educate a child, a future citizen of America, I am also fully persuaded that a charter school like yours is far superior to public school.
“I struggle to believe that the way my step-son was admitted to your school was fair. You have exceedingly few black students as is, and while regular demographics of our city account for it, there is some sick love/hate relationship with educated—do not hear intelligent—educated whites and what they see as possible black success.
“If you enroll too many black kids, then no whites will find that school desirable. If no black kids, then whites will be painted as racist. So ya’ll are stuck in a pickle, the way I see it. Precisely just how many blacks can you afford your school to enroll and still keep the whites coming?
“Here’s the rub: A- is not black. I have already made it clear that I suspect we disagree on this matter. So let me repeat myself. A- is not black. You all let him in to your school. I believe it is because you saw him (especially as he is an immigrant, not the really difficult American black) as able to help keep the whites happy. Whether your gamble was well-informed or not, we will all find out together. But he is not black. Do you hear me?
“For the last four years I have watched and listened to educators get run over by, ignore, and turn a blind eye to A-, all because they see a little black boy they can use to fulfill some twisted quota. Everything has been graded on a curve and relative to other students. The calendar hasn’t existed. Endless ability to retake and correct assignments and tests has been proffered. In a word, he has been in “schools” which have absolutely zero accountability for A-. He has a grand total of no understanding of where he stands in relationship to his fellow man, and worse, he seems to think he hasn’t ever failed. This has to stop.
“Did I introduce myself? Apologies for that oversight. Here are the vital stats. I am A-’s step-dad, not you. Second to that fact, I have and will always perform better than any of you here on every mental subject and assessment you can develop. And I have used all my brain power to decide that it is worthwhile to give you the benefit of the doubt to start.
“But I am watching. And if I start to get even the slightest feeling that A- is receiving special treatment because you can’t shake the feeling that he is some little black boy available for use in atoning for your perverse understanding of life, then we will be done here. I will pull him from your school and you will know why.
“To be clear: I am not asking for fair treatment. This isn’t funnel cakes and ferris wheels. I am asking for you to teach him to know he has failed where he has failed and for him to know he has learned where he has learned. No more “stars” for effort, or on time work, or completed assignments.
“Maybe I am asking too much.
“To conclude then, I put the choice in your hands. What do you say? Can you do this for me? Will you agree, no matter how this relationship started, that A- is not black, that he is not some project?
“Will you agree that he will fail if he doesn’t perform appropriately? I can pull him right now if you won’t. There is no need to waste anyone’s time. So what do you say?”
Captain’s Log 