This year marked our fortieth “Earth Day”. I rather agree that it is a good idea to remind ourselves—especially if we are of the Christian Faith—that our Bible tells us we were put on this planet to “dress, till and keep” it.
That means we should be conscientious conservators and observant environmentalists. After all, you cannot keep (preserve) what you haven’t bothered to understand. As far as “Earth Day” goes in agreeing with that, I have no problem.
The problem I have with “Earth Day” and Environmentalism as it is practiced today is that it goes beyond this. It almost becomes a kind of worship of the Earth itself, for its own sake. Implicit in that attitude is the belief that man, by himself, both knows enough about the Earth to know what it needs and that he has the power to do something about it, again, by himself.
No. I don’t think so. I disagree profoundly with some very basic assumptions made by “Earth Day” adherents.
The first of these assumptions is that whatever may be wrong with our planet we caused it. The second is that we can fix it, using means and technologies we have at hand right here and now. I doubt both very, very much.
We are not powerful enough—our destructive capabilities not great enough—to produce all the problems this planet is having now or has had in the past. To think so is to indulge in an absurd kind of arrogance. We are saying that not only are we captains of our souls and masters of our fates, but we are masters of the workings of this planet.
Stop a tornado. Turn a hurricane aside. Tell a volcano to cease spewing ash or a forest fire to turn back the way it came. Halt or deflect a Tsunami. Break up El Nino and bring the rains back to our continent—or direct the Monsoon rains to fall, or make them stop. We can neither cause nor prevent any one of these natural phenomena.
We couldn’t stop the last ice age; we haven’t the faintest idea what we might do to halt the next. We have no idea how to stop hot and cold masses of air from crashing into each other and producing violent storms. We can’t keep a sand dune from eroding.
We assume that our power plants and carbon emissions are the cause of global temperature change. This is a comforting assumption indeed. It implies that we had the power to do this—and, as an obvious corollary, we have the power to stop it from happening.
The alternative is to horrible to contemplate. What if we didn’t do it? What if we have no control at all of the natural forces at work here—forces that may have whipsawed the planet a thousand times since it was formed out primordial space dust?
What if we are no more masters of the fate of the planet than we are of our own selves? We cannot guarantee we will not be stricken with a fatal disease or mishap—or Christopher Reeves would be making “Superman VII” as I write.
Equally we cannot guarantee that we caused the climate changes we all sense occurring around us—or that we, by some action of our own, can change them back. That’s a far more scary thought than believing that if we just cut back auto emissions all will be well.
So what happened to the planet that the Biblical writer, Isaiah, says was not created as a “chaos”, but was formed “to be inhabited”? (Isaiah 45:18) The present planet—with no help from humans at all—is closer to chaos than we like to think.
Ask people who’ve faced unexpected Tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or sudden sink holes that swallow whole houses. Or mudslides, forest fires, killer floods, drought, vicious predators (by land or sea), lightning, hail, sand storms, giant seas (vertical walls of water 50 or more feet high that defy all survival rules on the high seas), blinding, freezing blizzards—I doubt if many of them would call this planet “fit to be inhabited” or the least bit benign.
So if our power plants and automobiles didn’t do it—what happened? What reduced the planet to the shattered chaos described in Genesis one. Not carbon emissions. Let’s look at a few clues tomorrow.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Bombs, Oil Spills, Stocks and Prayer
The past few weeks have not been good for the ulcers of anyone trying to run this country. Stocks, for instance, plunged a thousand points in a single day—and no one knows why. Computers becoming peevish with other computers? Mindless panic?
Who knows? No one. They went down a thousand and then came back up a few hundred points—losing all the gains they’ve made so far this year. Which way will they go next. Again, no one really knows.
The Staten Island Ferry loses it and piles into the landing slip. (I remember all the times I stood at the bow and watched this controlled collision as we piled into the slips, bouncing from side to side as we finally settled in. But this one was for real.) Several people actually got hurt. The engine seems to have raced, Toyota style, out of control. (I used to imagine this happening years ago—this time it really did. Again, why?)
Then, again, there’s the little present the Pakistani Taliban left for us in Times Square. We can all heave a great sigh of relief that the bomb didn’t go off—the perpetrators were inept, the disable vets who sell souvenirs in the area were alert, we were lucky.
We were lucky in 1993 when some inept bombers tried to blow up a World Trade Center tower with a van full of explosives. It went boom; the building stayed up. We heaved a great sign of relief and congratulated ourselves, just like now.
Eight years later the same folk came back with a better plan—hijack airplanes full of fuel. Both towers came down. Our congratulations were premature. Yes, boys and girls, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have the ability to learn.
Oh, and Afghanistan is beginning to remind us more and more of Vietnam. The generals in Kabul are sounding ever more optimistic. The surge is working; we are winning against the Taliban. Of course, those generals are ignoring the fact that a counter surge of Taliban fighters is pouring in every night from Pakistani recruitment centers.
The top brass in Saigon remained optimistic about the course of the war right up until North Vietnamese tanks rolled into town and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City. Then, finally, everybody scrambled to put his Vietnamese mistress on a plane and get out.
Kabul seems to be living in the same dream world. The troops on the ground in dangerous rural areas don’t see quite as many signs of victory as the generals do. But the generals aren’t facing the same waves of incoming Taliban fighters. A Brit in Kabul has opened a bar and grill named after the hill where Afghani guerillas slaughtered an entire British army in 1842. Maybe the top echelon should go have dinner there.
The fancy cap BP Oil built to contain the spill in the Gulf didn’t work. They are down to their last hope—drilling a new well to relieve the pressure and capping the old with cement. This is all going to happen a mile down in the water under unbelievable pressures.
We hope. And if it does, it will take another couple months or so. Meanwhile gallons and gallons of crude oil are spilling into some of the finest fishing grounds in the world. The Icelandic volcano is still shutting down flights all over Europe.
That ash can play hell with jet engines—it can pit aircraft windows so badly you can’t see out of them. Nature keeps reminding us that she is NOT our friend—at best, she is indifferent or neutral. But she has no intent to benefit us.
And, of course, it is becoming less and less legal to pray to the divinity we have, historically, believed could control nature. So, prayerless, ignorant of basic causes, unable to control natural forces, we find ourselves completely at their mercy.
The White House, the Street and our troops can only ask, “What next?”
If we suggested that everyone pray—which we have done throughout our history—we would have whole cadres of federal judges and civil libertarians telling us we are violating the Constitution itself. So, “what next?”
Who knows? No one. They went down a thousand and then came back up a few hundred points—losing all the gains they’ve made so far this year. Which way will they go next. Again, no one really knows.
The Staten Island Ferry loses it and piles into the landing slip. (I remember all the times I stood at the bow and watched this controlled collision as we piled into the slips, bouncing from side to side as we finally settled in. But this one was for real.) Several people actually got hurt. The engine seems to have raced, Toyota style, out of control. (I used to imagine this happening years ago—this time it really did. Again, why?)
Then, again, there’s the little present the Pakistani Taliban left for us in Times Square. We can all heave a great sigh of relief that the bomb didn’t go off—the perpetrators were inept, the disable vets who sell souvenirs in the area were alert, we were lucky.
We were lucky in 1993 when some inept bombers tried to blow up a World Trade Center tower with a van full of explosives. It went boom; the building stayed up. We heaved a great sign of relief and congratulated ourselves, just like now.
Eight years later the same folk came back with a better plan—hijack airplanes full of fuel. Both towers came down. Our congratulations were premature. Yes, boys and girls, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have the ability to learn.
Oh, and Afghanistan is beginning to remind us more and more of Vietnam. The generals in Kabul are sounding ever more optimistic. The surge is working; we are winning against the Taliban. Of course, those generals are ignoring the fact that a counter surge of Taliban fighters is pouring in every night from Pakistani recruitment centers.
The top brass in Saigon remained optimistic about the course of the war right up until North Vietnamese tanks rolled into town and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City. Then, finally, everybody scrambled to put his Vietnamese mistress on a plane and get out.
Kabul seems to be living in the same dream world. The troops on the ground in dangerous rural areas don’t see quite as many signs of victory as the generals do. But the generals aren’t facing the same waves of incoming Taliban fighters. A Brit in Kabul has opened a bar and grill named after the hill where Afghani guerillas slaughtered an entire British army in 1842. Maybe the top echelon should go have dinner there.
The fancy cap BP Oil built to contain the spill in the Gulf didn’t work. They are down to their last hope—drilling a new well to relieve the pressure and capping the old with cement. This is all going to happen a mile down in the water under unbelievable pressures.
We hope. And if it does, it will take another couple months or so. Meanwhile gallons and gallons of crude oil are spilling into some of the finest fishing grounds in the world. The Icelandic volcano is still shutting down flights all over Europe.
That ash can play hell with jet engines—it can pit aircraft windows so badly you can’t see out of them. Nature keeps reminding us that she is NOT our friend—at best, she is indifferent or neutral. But she has no intent to benefit us.
And, of course, it is becoming less and less legal to pray to the divinity we have, historically, believed could control nature. So, prayerless, ignorant of basic causes, unable to control natural forces, we find ourselves completely at their mercy.
The White House, the Street and our troops can only ask, “What next?”
If we suggested that everyone pray—which we have done throughout our history—we would have whole cadres of federal judges and civil libertarians telling us we are violating the Constitution itself. So, “what next?”
Sunday, May 2, 2010
BP This Time--Another Oil Spill
We need oil. Anyone who thinks we can slip out of this fact by adding vegetable oil to the mix or building trucks that run tons of produce on electricity isn’t with us in real space and time. All the conservation in the world isn’t going to get everybody who lives in suburbia to work tomorrow. Windmills are great; they won’t power New York and Chicago. We have trapped ourselves into NEEDING oil.
On April 20, BP became the latest oil company to cast its oil upon the waters. As approximately 200,000 or more gallon pump themselves into Gulf waters from a leak that’s a mile straight down, we have the makings of a serious disaster.
The oil has already created a slick about 130 miles wide. It is threatening some of the richest fishing grounds on the planet and some of the finest shoreline wetlands and beaches. BP is already facing at least a dozen law suits.
There is no guarantee we can turn this thing off anytime in the next three months. By then it will have become the largest spill ever in American waters. So we shouldn’t have been drilling so deep down; we shouldn’t have been drilling in water at all. But we still NEED oil.
Continuing dependence on Arab oil could start limiting all sorts of our options. Can you guarantee that the Saud family will still rule Saudi Arabia in ten years? Will the successors be any more friendly than Iran? Can we rely on Iraqi or Iranian oil? For how long?
Increasingly, they don’t need us as a market. There’s always China, India and Japan to sell to. American oil that could cut back this reliance is increasingly found under water—leaving us exposed to more spills like this one.
My adult years have spanned the oil embargoes of 1973 and 1979, the rise of the Third World as an oil drinking industrial power house and escalation of American trade deficits. I’ve heard lots of discussion on conservation, alternative energies and new oil drilling.
One subject that has completely eluded my awareness—and that I’ve been thinking about since 1973—is the question of completely synthetic oil. Have you heard anyone talk about it? I’ve not heard a mention. Nary a peep.
Before you say, “That’s impossible”, let me refresh our memories with a few historical facts. We were totally dependent on RUBBER tires to run our cars, trucks and military vehicles before World War II. We lost ALL our rubber at the start of that war.
We came up with a substitute—synthetic—substance that makes perfectly fine tires that we use to this day. (Whoever thinks of Vietnam and rubber in the same breath anymore?)
We found ourselves in a deadly race with both German and Japanese scientists during World War II to build a super bomb using a technique that had never been tried, never even been attempted, and we put together a program that delivered an atomic bomb—from pencil notes on an envelope to a major “boom”—in about four years.
The Germans were cut off from most sources of oil during World War II. They came up with a synthetic gasoline that could deliver 100 octane fuel to top-notch fighter aircraft as well as trucks and cars. We captured their notes and took them to Washington.
Big Oil screamed “Foul!” We never even translated the recipe. (Does anyone have any idea if it still exists today—or where?) Even if we destroyed the files, if it could be done once, it could be done again. If a Los Alamos Project could deliver a bomb, a similar project today could reasonably be expected to deliver something that would run my Buick, your Toyota, the trucks on the road and all those big airplanes—that didn’t have to come out of the ground in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf waters. How great would that be?
It would also be PRACTICAL in a nation that has painted itself into a corner where there is no feasible alternative to the gasoline engines that deliver our food, our power, our workers to the office and keep our lawns mowed.
We need oil—like we needed rubber. We found a substitute for the one; why not for the other? We just aren’t talking about it. No one has the political will to order it done. BP will eventually wind up paying a few million in fines and move on.
Somebody’s got to start talking about it.
On April 20, BP became the latest oil company to cast its oil upon the waters. As approximately 200,000 or more gallon pump themselves into Gulf waters from a leak that’s a mile straight down, we have the makings of a serious disaster.
The oil has already created a slick about 130 miles wide. It is threatening some of the richest fishing grounds on the planet and some of the finest shoreline wetlands and beaches. BP is already facing at least a dozen law suits.
There is no guarantee we can turn this thing off anytime in the next three months. By then it will have become the largest spill ever in American waters. So we shouldn’t have been drilling so deep down; we shouldn’t have been drilling in water at all. But we still NEED oil.
Continuing dependence on Arab oil could start limiting all sorts of our options. Can you guarantee that the Saud family will still rule Saudi Arabia in ten years? Will the successors be any more friendly than Iran? Can we rely on Iraqi or Iranian oil? For how long?
Increasingly, they don’t need us as a market. There’s always China, India and Japan to sell to. American oil that could cut back this reliance is increasingly found under water—leaving us exposed to more spills like this one.
My adult years have spanned the oil embargoes of 1973 and 1979, the rise of the Third World as an oil drinking industrial power house and escalation of American trade deficits. I’ve heard lots of discussion on conservation, alternative energies and new oil drilling.
One subject that has completely eluded my awareness—and that I’ve been thinking about since 1973—is the question of completely synthetic oil. Have you heard anyone talk about it? I’ve not heard a mention. Nary a peep.
Before you say, “That’s impossible”, let me refresh our memories with a few historical facts. We were totally dependent on RUBBER tires to run our cars, trucks and military vehicles before World War II. We lost ALL our rubber at the start of that war.
We came up with a substitute—synthetic—substance that makes perfectly fine tires that we use to this day. (Whoever thinks of Vietnam and rubber in the same breath anymore?)
We found ourselves in a deadly race with both German and Japanese scientists during World War II to build a super bomb using a technique that had never been tried, never even been attempted, and we put together a program that delivered an atomic bomb—from pencil notes on an envelope to a major “boom”—in about four years.
The Germans were cut off from most sources of oil during World War II. They came up with a synthetic gasoline that could deliver 100 octane fuel to top-notch fighter aircraft as well as trucks and cars. We captured their notes and took them to Washington.
Big Oil screamed “Foul!” We never even translated the recipe. (Does anyone have any idea if it still exists today—or where?) Even if we destroyed the files, if it could be done once, it could be done again. If a Los Alamos Project could deliver a bomb, a similar project today could reasonably be expected to deliver something that would run my Buick, your Toyota, the trucks on the road and all those big airplanes—that didn’t have to come out of the ground in Saudi Arabia or the Gulf waters. How great would that be?
It would also be PRACTICAL in a nation that has painted itself into a corner where there is no feasible alternative to the gasoline engines that deliver our food, our power, our workers to the office and keep our lawns mowed.
We need oil—like we needed rubber. We found a substitute for the one; why not for the other? We just aren’t talking about it. No one has the political will to order it done. BP will eventually wind up paying a few million in fines and move on.
Somebody’s got to start talking about it.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Immigrantion--Arizona On The Firing Line
I’m not sure I’d want to live on the Arizona border. On one side you’ve got the vast sucking vacuum coming from employers in the United States desperate to hire illegal immigrants to harvest their crops or work their meat packing plants.
It’s an ideal labor source. They can be paid less than minimum wage, they have no legal rights, if they make any sort of fuss they can be packed back to Mexico. Some form of slavery has been necessary to maintain every advanced society since ancient Egypt. Illegals are ours.
In the mid-1800s, a flood of induced immigration from southern and eastern Europe kept our factory wages at a dollar a day, year after year after year. Now the Latino immigrants provide us with cheap food and meat.
That’s almost as much suction drawing immigrants in as you have from a Black Hole in space. Then there’s the pressure on the Mexican side of the border coming from people to whom American peonage looks like riches beyond belief.
Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California are caught smack dab in the middle. They didn’t create either pressure source, but the consequences of both pass across Arizona desert by the hundreds and thousands nearly every day.
(Growing up in Michigan, amidst some of the richest vegetable growing muck land in the world, I was always aware that migrant Mexicans came and went with each harvest season. Things have changed today—that irreplaceable muck is now covered over with houses and parking lots. No one harvests celery or veggies any more.
(Fewer and fewer migrants come; more and more stay. Now whole communities—and whole neighborhoods in cities—are Hispanic. They vote; they demonstrate—and they vote instinctively in favor of the migrants they once were.
(They have no love for the majority white/black communities around them and very little concern for what the concerns of those communities might be. Emotion and ancestral memory of crossing the deserts and rivers of the American frontier guide them.)
So Arizona enacted a law like those in nearly every other nation on earth. A police officer in that state can walk up to anyone and ask to see identification to prove he or she has a legal right to be in the United States.
You would think they had been granted the right to strip search them in the public square. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to demonstrate against Arizona’s new law tomorrow. There was a time when objection to such a police power might have been justified.
After all, many of the native born white Americans who settled our frontiers had excellent reason not to be identified as they walked the streets of Dodge City or Yuma. Outstanding warrants or bankruptcy service in Ohio, New Jersey or Alabama were best forgotten.
Hopefully that’s not true of quite so many Americans today. I, for one, would have no problem showing an officer my picture I.D. at any point. I carry it with me almost always anyway. Frankly I’m a bit suspicious of the motives of those who protest.
It seems to me to be eminently reasonable to ask people who look like they might come from Mexico, Haiti, Central America or the Caribbean to show some valid American identification. (Since that designation can cover nearly all colors, including my own, I would expect to be asked from time to time myself.) It’s a first step to getting our borders back under control.
No one has come up with a better idea. I understand the emotion of those who protest—just as I would understand the emotion of a man who fled to Texas one step ahead of Illinois law—but sometimes you just have to pull a weaving driver over and test for alcohol—for the safety of all. For the safety of all, it may be necessary to check the validity of someone’s—or my--presence on the street. I’m content to share my identity with you or anyone else.
Sorry, the days of Doc Holiday and Jesse James are over. These champions of the fabled American right to total privacy are gone. We’re none-the-worse for it.
It’s an ideal labor source. They can be paid less than minimum wage, they have no legal rights, if they make any sort of fuss they can be packed back to Mexico. Some form of slavery has been necessary to maintain every advanced society since ancient Egypt. Illegals are ours.
In the mid-1800s, a flood of induced immigration from southern and eastern Europe kept our factory wages at a dollar a day, year after year after year. Now the Latino immigrants provide us with cheap food and meat.
That’s almost as much suction drawing immigrants in as you have from a Black Hole in space. Then there’s the pressure on the Mexican side of the border coming from people to whom American peonage looks like riches beyond belief.
Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California are caught smack dab in the middle. They didn’t create either pressure source, but the consequences of both pass across Arizona desert by the hundreds and thousands nearly every day.
(Growing up in Michigan, amidst some of the richest vegetable growing muck land in the world, I was always aware that migrant Mexicans came and went with each harvest season. Things have changed today—that irreplaceable muck is now covered over with houses and parking lots. No one harvests celery or veggies any more.
(Fewer and fewer migrants come; more and more stay. Now whole communities—and whole neighborhoods in cities—are Hispanic. They vote; they demonstrate—and they vote instinctively in favor of the migrants they once were.
(They have no love for the majority white/black communities around them and very little concern for what the concerns of those communities might be. Emotion and ancestral memory of crossing the deserts and rivers of the American frontier guide them.)
So Arizona enacted a law like those in nearly every other nation on earth. A police officer in that state can walk up to anyone and ask to see identification to prove he or she has a legal right to be in the United States.
You would think they had been granted the right to strip search them in the public square. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to demonstrate against Arizona’s new law tomorrow. There was a time when objection to such a police power might have been justified.
After all, many of the native born white Americans who settled our frontiers had excellent reason not to be identified as they walked the streets of Dodge City or Yuma. Outstanding warrants or bankruptcy service in Ohio, New Jersey or Alabama were best forgotten.
Hopefully that’s not true of quite so many Americans today. I, for one, would have no problem showing an officer my picture I.D. at any point. I carry it with me almost always anyway. Frankly I’m a bit suspicious of the motives of those who protest.
It seems to me to be eminently reasonable to ask people who look like they might come from Mexico, Haiti, Central America or the Caribbean to show some valid American identification. (Since that designation can cover nearly all colors, including my own, I would expect to be asked from time to time myself.) It’s a first step to getting our borders back under control.
No one has come up with a better idea. I understand the emotion of those who protest—just as I would understand the emotion of a man who fled to Texas one step ahead of Illinois law—but sometimes you just have to pull a weaving driver over and test for alcohol—for the safety of all. For the safety of all, it may be necessary to check the validity of someone’s—or my--presence on the street. I’m content to share my identity with you or anyone else.
Sorry, the days of Doc Holiday and Jesse James are over. These champions of the fabled American right to total privacy are gone. We’re none-the-worse for it.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Schools--Are Our Kids REALLY Worth It?
The other day I was subbing in a nice, safe suburban school. When I could let my eyes wander from keeping things from flying through the air or people from slipping in or out of the door, I looked up at a sign I’ve seen on many classroom walls.”
“Our kids,” it says, “are worth whatever it takes”. A lovely sentiment. Repeated over and over in classroom after classroom. Whatever it takes—our kids are worth it. The question crossed my mind—Is there any truth to that sign?
(No! I’m not talking about budgetary woes or millage shortfalls. I’m talking about the emotional and intellectual exertion, the sheer mental effort it takes to get kids to understand, question, learn and grow. Are we putting THAT into them?)
Do we really care? Are “our kids” worth the effort it would take to make serious, growing student s out of them? Let’s ask what would be really “worth it”.
Are our kids worth HOLDING ACCOUNTABLE? Are they worth going through all the hassle and complaining involved in telling them that they have work due tomorrow—and it MUST be done? Are they worth telling them there will be no retests?
Are they worth letting them fall flat on their faces if they have spent sixteen years refusing to listen or respond? Are they worth letting them flunk if they do not do the work? Are our kids really worth that much—or would we really prefer to go on shielding them from reality until it is too late to escape it?
Are our kids worth DISCIPLINING? Sometimes discipline has to be downright unpleasant to be effective. It may even have to hurt. Losing a job, smashing up a marriage or getting arrested can be seriously hurtful. Discipline that might prevent such experiences can in no way hurt more.
The Bible, interestingly enough, doesn’t say, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” It says something much stronger and more thought provoking: “He that spares the rod HATES his son; he that loves his son punishes him when necessary.” [Proverbs 13:24]
Ask yourself, what’s more loving, more caring. Letting the kid careen into flunking and failure, or getting his attention by making him hurt—and preventing the disaster?
Are our kids worth allowing them to reap CONSEQUENCES of really bad choices and actions. Some day you won’t be able to shield the kid from things that really happen. There’ll be no more retests or forgetting about it. Better a few consequences should land on them now than when they are legal adults with real responsibilities.
Are our kids worth INSISTING THAT THEY DO THEIR SCHOOLWORK and not keep sloughing it off? (it is a horrible pain to go through all the excuses, whining and bellowing that kids can throw in the path of a determined parent or teacher.)
That would be really caring enough—showing that the kids are “worth whatever it takes”. You’d have to give the teacher some tools to work with—including punitive ones. I’m sure this is definitely not what the “educator” who composed the sign had in mind. He or she was going for something far more saccharin and feel-good at the moment.
But fear is, after all, one of the impelling reasons people come to work on time and turn their projects in on time as adults. Fear keeps our speed down to fairly reasonable limits. Fear of the sergeant keeps the raw recruits jogging with their backpacks on. (It eventually keeps them alive when live ammunition is flying around.)
It’s sometimes necessary in the home and at school. It is—as any employer or military leader will tell you—a necessary component of leadership and of getting positive results.
Believe it or not, making certain you are at least a little bit feared is a necessary part of showing that your kids are really “worth whatever it takes”. It shows you care enough to go to the trouble to make sure they succeed. That’s real caring.
Just don’t expect to be thanked—now.
“Our kids,” it says, “are worth whatever it takes”. A lovely sentiment. Repeated over and over in classroom after classroom. Whatever it takes—our kids are worth it. The question crossed my mind—Is there any truth to that sign?
(No! I’m not talking about budgetary woes or millage shortfalls. I’m talking about the emotional and intellectual exertion, the sheer mental effort it takes to get kids to understand, question, learn and grow. Are we putting THAT into them?)
Do we really care? Are “our kids” worth the effort it would take to make serious, growing student s out of them? Let’s ask what would be really “worth it”.
Are our kids worth HOLDING ACCOUNTABLE? Are they worth going through all the hassle and complaining involved in telling them that they have work due tomorrow—and it MUST be done? Are they worth telling them there will be no retests?
Are they worth letting them fall flat on their faces if they have spent sixteen years refusing to listen or respond? Are they worth letting them flunk if they do not do the work? Are our kids really worth that much—or would we really prefer to go on shielding them from reality until it is too late to escape it?
Are our kids worth DISCIPLINING? Sometimes discipline has to be downright unpleasant to be effective. It may even have to hurt. Losing a job, smashing up a marriage or getting arrested can be seriously hurtful. Discipline that might prevent such experiences can in no way hurt more.
The Bible, interestingly enough, doesn’t say, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” It says something much stronger and more thought provoking: “He that spares the rod HATES his son; he that loves his son punishes him when necessary.” [Proverbs 13:24]
Ask yourself, what’s more loving, more caring. Letting the kid careen into flunking and failure, or getting his attention by making him hurt—and preventing the disaster?
Are our kids worth allowing them to reap CONSEQUENCES of really bad choices and actions. Some day you won’t be able to shield the kid from things that really happen. There’ll be no more retests or forgetting about it. Better a few consequences should land on them now than when they are legal adults with real responsibilities.
Are our kids worth INSISTING THAT THEY DO THEIR SCHOOLWORK and not keep sloughing it off? (it is a horrible pain to go through all the excuses, whining and bellowing that kids can throw in the path of a determined parent or teacher.)
That would be really caring enough—showing that the kids are “worth whatever it takes”. You’d have to give the teacher some tools to work with—including punitive ones. I’m sure this is definitely not what the “educator” who composed the sign had in mind. He or she was going for something far more saccharin and feel-good at the moment.
But fear is, after all, one of the impelling reasons people come to work on time and turn their projects in on time as adults. Fear keeps our speed down to fairly reasonable limits. Fear of the sergeant keeps the raw recruits jogging with their backpacks on. (It eventually keeps them alive when live ammunition is flying around.)
It’s sometimes necessary in the home and at school. It is—as any employer or military leader will tell you—a necessary component of leadership and of getting positive results.
Believe it or not, making certain you are at least a little bit feared is a necessary part of showing that your kids are really “worth whatever it takes”. It shows you care enough to go to the trouble to make sure they succeed. That’s real caring.
Just don’t expect to be thanked—now.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Obama and NASA
Obama has slashed the space program budget. This will offend people of my age who remember the Glory Days when we beat the Russians to the moon (“Rah, rah, rah—go team”) as well as those who profess a love of knowledge for its own sake.
Neither are adequate reasons for maintaining the space program in its present form. Were I in Obama’s place, I would probably have cut NASA way back too. Years ago I began looking at the space program through the eyes of historical precedent. I didn’t like what I saw.
Compare NASA today to the court of Henry the Navigator in the 1400s. Henry knew there was land (planets) out there; he knew there was MONEY to be made from those lands. He invested on a century long program of exploration that eventually paid off in billions if not trillions.
We can’t say that about NASA or any aspect of the space program today. (Yes, to paraphrase “Cabaret”, “Money, money, money is what makes exploration go around”.) Columbus was sent to make money. When he didn’t find it, they tossed him in jail.
Cortes found it—and began a long chain of successful exploration that brought back vast fortunes in gold, silver, spices, tobacco, sugar, furs, cotton, coffee, bananas, diamonds, rare metals and oil. To merit serious funding, the space program has to pay for itself the same way.
NASA has to begin working on four things, right here on earth, before we buy it any new, big toys. ONE) Ships with bigger payloads. Right now over 90% of the space on our space rockets is wasted on fuel. The payload (cargo) is limited to a few hundred pounds.
It’s going to be hard to build mining and living stations on other planets transporting materials in such tiny increments. We won’t be able to bring the goodies back in large enough amounts to pay for the huge number of flights needed.
We’ve got to get past gravity. Fantastic? No more so than taking building blocks of the universe that we cannot even see and creating atomic energy. We don’t even understand electricity, but it seems to make my computer and my refrigerator work just fine. In the 1940s, we had to build an atomic bomb; today we have to get past gravity. Improbable—but we did it then.
TWO) We have to start working on locating stuff we need. We have to make plans (and equipment) for how exploratory teams are going to look for it once we get to this stuff on other planets. How are we going to get it on the ships? How are we going to get it onto the planet?
If our spectrometers locate an unknown substance on Mars even now (like sugar, oil or potatoes in the new world), we have to be figuring out possible uses of it even at this stage. No one in Henry’s court could have told you what they were going to find in Montezuma’s back yard.
THREE) We’ve got to work on speed. Admittedly, the entire “age of exploration” took place in times when it took weeks and months to cross from one land mass to another. But the industrial age, which eventually produced a slave-free modern society, didn’t really get rolling until we could cross oceans in a few days.
Just like atomic energy and gravity, we have to get past the speed of light. Trickier, no doubt. Not an immediate need—but our imaginations are already nibbling at it. We’ll certainly never get to the age of Kirk and Spock without doing so. We should work on it, beginning now.
FOUR) We have to come up with “shields” of some sort to protect our ships and space stations. Space is full of nasty little projectiles that hurtle about at dangerous speeds and smash into things. Our atmosphere mostly protects us from them. Ships in space don’t have protective atmosphere.
Scientists tell us that our current space station has just been lucky so far. A fleet of ships that travel regularly from one planet to another will probably need more than luck. When we put people and equipment up there we will need to protect them from meteorites, asteroids and who knows what all else may be whizzing about.
Tell NASA, stay home and worry about basic things like these. When you’re on your way to solving them, we can talk about big budgets and voyages of exploration. We should still dream of “boldly going where no one has gone before”, we just aren’t ready yet.
Neither are adequate reasons for maintaining the space program in its present form. Were I in Obama’s place, I would probably have cut NASA way back too. Years ago I began looking at the space program through the eyes of historical precedent. I didn’t like what I saw.
Compare NASA today to the court of Henry the Navigator in the 1400s. Henry knew there was land (planets) out there; he knew there was MONEY to be made from those lands. He invested on a century long program of exploration that eventually paid off in billions if not trillions.
We can’t say that about NASA or any aspect of the space program today. (Yes, to paraphrase “Cabaret”, “Money, money, money is what makes exploration go around”.) Columbus was sent to make money. When he didn’t find it, they tossed him in jail.
Cortes found it—and began a long chain of successful exploration that brought back vast fortunes in gold, silver, spices, tobacco, sugar, furs, cotton, coffee, bananas, diamonds, rare metals and oil. To merit serious funding, the space program has to pay for itself the same way.
NASA has to begin working on four things, right here on earth, before we buy it any new, big toys. ONE) Ships with bigger payloads. Right now over 90% of the space on our space rockets is wasted on fuel. The payload (cargo) is limited to a few hundred pounds.
It’s going to be hard to build mining and living stations on other planets transporting materials in such tiny increments. We won’t be able to bring the goodies back in large enough amounts to pay for the huge number of flights needed.
We’ve got to get past gravity. Fantastic? No more so than taking building blocks of the universe that we cannot even see and creating atomic energy. We don’t even understand electricity, but it seems to make my computer and my refrigerator work just fine. In the 1940s, we had to build an atomic bomb; today we have to get past gravity. Improbable—but we did it then.
TWO) We have to start working on locating stuff we need. We have to make plans (and equipment) for how exploratory teams are going to look for it once we get to this stuff on other planets. How are we going to get it on the ships? How are we going to get it onto the planet?
If our spectrometers locate an unknown substance on Mars even now (like sugar, oil or potatoes in the new world), we have to be figuring out possible uses of it even at this stage. No one in Henry’s court could have told you what they were going to find in Montezuma’s back yard.
THREE) We’ve got to work on speed. Admittedly, the entire “age of exploration” took place in times when it took weeks and months to cross from one land mass to another. But the industrial age, which eventually produced a slave-free modern society, didn’t really get rolling until we could cross oceans in a few days.
Just like atomic energy and gravity, we have to get past the speed of light. Trickier, no doubt. Not an immediate need—but our imaginations are already nibbling at it. We’ll certainly never get to the age of Kirk and Spock without doing so. We should work on it, beginning now.
FOUR) We have to come up with “shields” of some sort to protect our ships and space stations. Space is full of nasty little projectiles that hurtle about at dangerous speeds and smash into things. Our atmosphere mostly protects us from them. Ships in space don’t have protective atmosphere.
Scientists tell us that our current space station has just been lucky so far. A fleet of ships that travel regularly from one planet to another will probably need more than luck. When we put people and equipment up there we will need to protect them from meteorites, asteroids and who knows what all else may be whizzing about.
Tell NASA, stay home and worry about basic things like these. When you’re on your way to solving them, we can talk about big budgets and voyages of exploration. We should still dream of “boldly going where no one has gone before”, we just aren’t ready yet.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Black/White Distrust II
Over the past decade I’ve had the interesting experience of substitute teaching in over 50 different buildings, ranging from inner city to completely rural, from less than 10% black to better than 90%. It has been an education.
I cannot say that I have particularly enjoyed my time in schools that were mostly black. Interestingly, the district wouldn’t let me sign up for the blackest schools. “They don’t want you, and you don’t want to be there.”
When I took an assignment in a middle school that was only about 90% black, a black teacher’s aide who seems to have pitied me warned, “You are an older white male. When you walk around here, you have a target on your back. Don’t forget it.”
She was so right. In that school—and only in that school—I had my briefcase rifled. Some days I had to break up two fights before the bell even rang. There were non-stop accusations that I was racist—try telling a black student that he has to do the same assignment anyone else has to do. He is almost certain to try to back you off with that charge.
I came up at a time when whites were being forcefully re-educated about using the term “black” rather than “Negro”. (W.E.B. DuBois had forced us to switch from “black” to “Negro” fifty years before—it gets confusing.) One day an angry young student vituperatively corrected me again, “We are called ‘African-Americans’!” she snapped at me.
I asked her what in the world THAT term meant—pointing out that I have a French neighbor who was born in Africa and is now an American. John Kerry’s wife qualifies—she is Portuguese, born in Africa, now a naturalized American. I admit my frustration resulting from accusation after accusation of being “prejudiced” or “bigoted” came to the fore.
My oldest friend, I went on, is married to a lovely French woman born in Africa, now American. I’ve known Dutchmen and Englishmen who qualified. I could have pointed out that my two lily-white sons could qualify—descendent as they are from a Swede who was born in Africa in 1635. For good measure, he was probably a slave trader.
The young lady marched to the principal’s office and declared me racist. The principal, a black man who had grown up in the neighborhood and even gotten himself expelled from that very school—and who knew me quite well—took her to his computer and showed her the history of “black” nomenclature. Then he sent her on her way.
Then there’s the line, “I ain’t your slave!” (I was citing a school rule.) Or, “You’re only telling me to be quiet because I’m black!” (No, because you are the loudest most disruptive fellow in the room—he had to grace to shut up.)
Walk into a largely white school at 7;00am. There will be smiles, occasional greetings. If they know you, they will call you by name and even ask how you are. Walk into a black school. They will studiously avoid looking at you. If accidentally they do meet your eye, you will see raw animosity. Eventually you feel like an idiot for smiling yourself. I definitely felt like I was a prison guard coming on duty—with the need to watch my back constantly.
The hostility is rooted in the absolute certainty that I am not there to do any of them any good. They trust no white person. It has to come from things their families inculcate in them—rather than any experiences they have yet had in their young lives.
And, if I’m in my right mind, I’d better no trust any of them. One time I left my reading glasses on the desk as I walked to the door to excuse the class. They were deliberately broken when I got back to the desk. (The school eventually replaced them—but they dragged their feet for months and, shortly after, dropped me from their list of available subs. I don’t miss it.)
Mendela showed us the way. After 27 years in prison, he dropped his own animosity and proclaimed everyone, black and white, to be a South African. If we can’t do that here—and make it stick—we are in for a long, rough future.
I cannot say that I have particularly enjoyed my time in schools that were mostly black. Interestingly, the district wouldn’t let me sign up for the blackest schools. “They don’t want you, and you don’t want to be there.”
When I took an assignment in a middle school that was only about 90% black, a black teacher’s aide who seems to have pitied me warned, “You are an older white male. When you walk around here, you have a target on your back. Don’t forget it.”
She was so right. In that school—and only in that school—I had my briefcase rifled. Some days I had to break up two fights before the bell even rang. There were non-stop accusations that I was racist—try telling a black student that he has to do the same assignment anyone else has to do. He is almost certain to try to back you off with that charge.
I came up at a time when whites were being forcefully re-educated about using the term “black” rather than “Negro”. (W.E.B. DuBois had forced us to switch from “black” to “Negro” fifty years before—it gets confusing.) One day an angry young student vituperatively corrected me again, “We are called ‘African-Americans’!” she snapped at me.
I asked her what in the world THAT term meant—pointing out that I have a French neighbor who was born in Africa and is now an American. John Kerry’s wife qualifies—she is Portuguese, born in Africa, now a naturalized American. I admit my frustration resulting from accusation after accusation of being “prejudiced” or “bigoted” came to the fore.
My oldest friend, I went on, is married to a lovely French woman born in Africa, now American. I’ve known Dutchmen and Englishmen who qualified. I could have pointed out that my two lily-white sons could qualify—descendent as they are from a Swede who was born in Africa in 1635. For good measure, he was probably a slave trader.
The young lady marched to the principal’s office and declared me racist. The principal, a black man who had grown up in the neighborhood and even gotten himself expelled from that very school—and who knew me quite well—took her to his computer and showed her the history of “black” nomenclature. Then he sent her on her way.
Then there’s the line, “I ain’t your slave!” (I was citing a school rule.) Or, “You’re only telling me to be quiet because I’m black!” (No, because you are the loudest most disruptive fellow in the room—he had to grace to shut up.)
Walk into a largely white school at 7;00am. There will be smiles, occasional greetings. If they know you, they will call you by name and even ask how you are. Walk into a black school. They will studiously avoid looking at you. If accidentally they do meet your eye, you will see raw animosity. Eventually you feel like an idiot for smiling yourself. I definitely felt like I was a prison guard coming on duty—with the need to watch my back constantly.
The hostility is rooted in the absolute certainty that I am not there to do any of them any good. They trust no white person. It has to come from things their families inculcate in them—rather than any experiences they have yet had in their young lives.
And, if I’m in my right mind, I’d better no trust any of them. One time I left my reading glasses on the desk as I walked to the door to excuse the class. They were deliberately broken when I got back to the desk. (The school eventually replaced them—but they dragged their feet for months and, shortly after, dropped me from their list of available subs. I don’t miss it.)
Mendela showed us the way. After 27 years in prison, he dropped his own animosity and proclaimed everyone, black and white, to be a South African. If we can’t do that here—and make it stick—we are in for a long, rough future.
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