The Apprentice

"Show me an intern who will only triple my work, and I will kiss his feet."
---The Fat Man "House of God"
(Medical resident commenting on how much effort it takes to teach someone else your job, rather than simply doing it yourself.)

One of the few real failings of President Obama was his embrace of the idea that a college education is the key to success for the individual and for the nation.

Surely, for him, college, then law school, that academic track made his fortune, but this is not going to be true for the vast number of folks in the nation, certainly not for the class we call "blue collar" or "tradesmen" or "craftsmen" or middle class.

An NPR piece this morning about the apprentice program in Germany brought this into bold relief.
A German remarked: "When someone attains the status of 'meister' (master) from his apprenticeship, you see the notice in the paper, and they throw a party. When someone gets a Master's degree at university, nobody notices."
In Germany one of four workers works in production of products, as opposed to services. In America it's one out of eight.

apprentice wreslter

Of course for a German style approach to apprenticeship to take hold, or, more accurately, to reassert itself, in this country, we would have to overcome several obstacles. An article in The Atlantic explores why the Germans are so much better at preparing people for careers in industry, and much of it has to do with their willingness to accept "tracking" in public schools and centralized government control over the nation's educational system, two ideas which are close to non starters in America, where the Left abhors tracking and the Right abhors government in general.


Beyond those problems are others: 
1/ Industries, factories, would have to be willing to invest time and money (and profits) into training their own workers. 
In America, we cannot even get the NFL to invest in training the 3,000 professional football players they need. They want colleges to do that for them.

2/ Planners in what used to be called "Manpower" would have to accept the fact we need more craftsmen, blue collar workers.
Currently, the average "machinist" is in his late fifties with few younger men or women in the pipelines. The current factory machinist needs to use computers, his hands, his eyes, and his brain in new ways.

College professors and administrators are unqualified to be guiding students, and planning for the manpower needs of industry or of the nation, although their ignorance has never stopped them from seizing that role. One of the most obvious areas where you would think undergraduate college faculty would be valuable would be training preparing future doctors for their profession, but the opposite has been true. Undergraduate faculties have actually milked aspiring pre medical students mercilessly for their own purposes--insuring a captive audience for calculus and organic chemistry and biology professors--while adding little to the quality of preparation of future doctors. 


 With respect to the willingness of industry to invest in training its workers: 

When Henry Ford conceived of an assembly line, it was an effort to dispense with the need for craftsmanshp. It was a way of exploiting labor. You did not need to teach a man to make an entire automobile; you just needed to teach him to put a bolt in here or a tire on there.
.

In America,  community college programs have tried partnering with local factories to train students for jobs in those factories, only to have the corporate board move the factory to China and the students were left hanging.

Somebody either in government or industry or a working combination, has to be able to predict what kind of workers, with which skills, will be needed.
This is no easy task. 
Predicting the jobs of tomorrow is no easier than predicting economic or financial futures.
Most of the good jobs today involve computers and did not exist five, ten, fifteen years ago. 
Most of the people I meet today are doing jobs for which their college educations played no role in preparing them. They learned on the job or often on their own time, taking computer courses.

Before the Second World War, there wasn't much central planning of labor and industry, but when the United States decided to gear up to produce 10,000 airplanes a month, and tanks and jeeps and weapons and ships, central planning was no longer assailed as communism; it was essential for survival.

Where is all that sort of analysis and planning now? 

Is There An Immigration Problem? Audi Alteram Partem

Bear with me now. 
I am going to sound, for a few moments, like a Build-the-Wall Donald Trumpee (or Trumper as they prefer) but I am wending my way toward a new understanding and that takes some treading through swampy areas.

You will understand I have previously posted in my Six Articles enunciating where all true, thoughtful Dems should be, that there is in fact no immigration problem, only a perception problem, in these United States. 

I came to this conclusion based in part on my experience with folks from the Massachusetts towns of Lawrence, Haverhill and Methuen, where the immigrants I've met struck me as fine  people, struggling to make it, working harder than most citizens and worthy of our support.

But now I'm reading the New Yorker article by Jonathan Blitzer "Trapped"  detailing the experience on Long Island, N.Y.,  and I realized the inspiring story of immigrant communities in Essex County, Massachusetts may not be what people on Long Island are living. 

Some numbers:
1/ By the mid 1990's more than 90,000 Salvadorans were living on Long Island. 
The population of El Salvador is 6 million, which means something approaching 2% of their population fled north to Long Island. 
Who knows how many fled to Los Angeles?

Honduras has 9 million people. Nicaragua has 6 million. 
These 3 Central American countries then have 21 million people.


2/ In Brentwood, a town of 60,000, nearly 70% of the population is Hispanic, of whom 16,000 are Salvadoran. The Salvadoran government opened a consulate in the town.
3/ MS-13 has 400 members in Suffolk County, LI. In Los Angeles there are 10,000 and in Central America 50,000.
4/ In one year 2016-2017 MS 13 was thought to have committed 17 known murders in Suffolk County, LI.

Is this a pervasive problem? An invasion? Or just a drop of ink in a large tub? 

In my own mind, I go back to images of Ellis Island, where grateful immigrants, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, arrived by ship, the wretched refuse of the teeming shore, ready to transform themselves and their newly adopted country in a soulful ascent to greatness. 

But there is a difference between the wretched refuse disembarking from those ships and the folks who walked across the Southern border of this country. Those huddled masses on the ships, were on ships.  That constituted a sort of control to the process. Rules, unfair or fair, wise or not, racist or not, could be enforced.

If the government decided it wanted to admit only a certain number or a certain type, that spigot could be turned on or off in accordance with by the will of the government, which, in theory at least, reflected the will of the American people already inside the club.

So that was "immigration."

When you have now with Central America is a population which is walking across the border.
That is something different. 
You can call it an "invasion" which evokes the image of hordes of orcs or Huns lead by Genghis Khan on horseback.  Or you can call it a tide, which is less emotive, but suggests a gentler process or you can call it a storm surge, which is more apt, coming as it does because of the tempest occurring in Central America. 
But, whatever you want to call it, Trump was getting a a sort of truth in his moronic way, when he sputtered, "We're not getting the best people. We're getting the criminals."

Of course, we are getting refugees which include some wretch refuse, but we are also getting some thugs, some nasties.

There are at least two sorts of immigrants we have to consider who would be undesirable. The lost souls of MS13 variety, who have no future but violence and early death and will take down solid citizens with them, and the wretch refuse, who by their simple numbers, as a group, not as individuals  pose a problem.
What if all 21 million decided to come to the United States?
And, if we decide to be really big hearted and throw open our borders entirely: what about  100 million Indians or the 100 million Chinese who might move here tomorrow if we threw open our borders.?

The problem with the first group, the illegal immigrants who are criminals becomes a logistical one: identifying, apprehending and sequestering these folks is a no brainer.

The second group simply requires laws, because, like their Ellis Island predecessors, they require a boat or an airplane and there are control points there.

The bigger issue, the harder issue, is what do we do with the illegals already here who pose no MS13 type threat, but occupy space, demand services and act as a magnet for those they left behind who wish to join them here?

Era of Drama Queens and Big Guns

That pendulum must swing. 
So we went from No Drama Obama to the Dotard--to call President Heel Spurs an empty suit is to demean the empty suit. The Hollow man. 

But we see it everywhere, men who are drama queens, carrying guns to heighten their dramatic impact. See, look at me. See how dangerous I am. Watch me, sometime is about to happen.

Look ma! I'm a soldier!

And that is how these bearded children are:  They need to drum up drama to think of themselves as important.

We have no underlying political or social bomb which requires dramatic action: There is no issue like slavery calling for a John Brown or bludgeoning on the Senate floor.

What are these guys, from Bannon to those pathetic neo storm troopers in Charlottesville so agitated about? 

Tantrums looking for a reason. Rebels without a cause. Colicky boys who don't know why they are screaming or what about. 

Hey, at least I've got her attention

The white race is under attack! We are losing the country to radical Islam! Sharia law will rule the land! 

Oh, plueeeze. 

When I was maybe 7 or 8, my friends and I would dress up in whatever approximations of military garb we could scrape up and we'd carry our toy guns about the gulleys and forests of Northern Virginia, latter day Huck Finns, looking for adventure, playing out our romantic fantasies. We'd launch attacks against imaginery, phantom armies, charge gloriously into battle. 

Bloodied heir to Stonewall Jackson: In his own head

Those guys in Charlottesville look like that to me.

Strap on a gun, dress up like soldiers and now you're important. Scream about the immigrant invasion pouring over the border, the Muslim terrorists at the borders. The dark skinned men lusting after White women, and presto, you're an important person, a soldier in the White cause. 

Is anyone, other than these drama queens, buying it? 

True Grit, Phony Grit

Do these two pictures not say it all?

In one, there is a real man.
"War is not popularity seeking. It is all Hell."

In one there is a pretend man.
"I know more than the generals. I went to military school."

This is my Christmas present to the world: A simple truth.

Merry Christmas.

Happy Days Are Here Again!

Just used the NYT calculator to tell me how much I'll save with the new tax law: $3,700! For 2018, I'll have $10 a day more to spend, to get the economy humming again. 
Wowser!

I'm in the money.
That's $10 a day. I can start living like a millionaire. I can go to Starbucks every day on that kind of money!

And all I had to give up was Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare for my son, the musician, (who got a great policy but will likely now lose it), recovery funds for my fellow countrymen in California, Florida and Puerto Rico, a sense of shared destiny with my nation.

If all the people on my street agree to pool their individual $3,700 savings  we can erect a gate across our road, erect a wall around our block, and maybe even install a robot to restrict entry so we can transform our neighborhood into a gated community and declare ourselves a country club or a private corporation. More savings to follow.

We can wall ourselves off and connect via the web to other one percenters and we can feel smug, secure and superior.

Just ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?"

Well, surely, he would take the money and run.
Merry Christmas!

Ruthless

Writing in today's NYT, Thomas Edsall lays out the details of how the Republicans in Congress have raped and pillaged the American economic system.

The details, of course, will put the "MAGA" crowd to sleep. They won't listen anyway, no matter how simple you make it.

For citizens less ardently attached to the President and his party, some of the explanations may prove disturbing. There are schemes which just beg smart lawyers and accountants to financially rape the system: If you own a factory, you can sell equipment to your wife or your friend and then lease it back, so that machine never has to leave your factory, but you can deduct the full cost of it from your income tax. Government paid for capital investment, no risk to you; it only costs the little guy whose taxes pay for this.

You can declare yourself a corporation--as Mitt Romney once informed us, corporations are people, and that is now coming true with a vengeance--or you can become a contractor rather than an employee and your income tax rate drops from 36% to 21%.

But best of all, about 1/3 of the Senators just wrote themselves tax breaks which range from roughly $50,000 to 500,000. Wow, what a great job! You can actually write yourself legal ways of not paying taxes.

Which all goes to show, the Republicans were right all along. The poor deserve to be poor and the rich deserve to be rich.  The Republicans planned long and fought hard to win the Congress and the Presidency. They fooled enough people some of the time to steal legally what they coveted. 

They have all the scruples of Vikings on a longboat. But they are smarter than the Vikings--they don't burn the village; they just sack and rape, pillage and plunder.

The ancient Romans had an expression for it: Audaces fortuna iuvat. Fortune favors the bold.
The Republicans, you have to admit, are bold.
The Democrats are wimps. They deserve everything that they get.

Does Public Education Dumb Down America?

At the risk of sounding like an ultra-libertarian, or fundamentalist religious person, I have to ask the question: Does public school education, as we currently see it in the United States, actually diminish the intellectual capacities and development of our nation's children?

Let me begin by laying bare my own prejudices:
1. My mother was a public school teacher.
2. From the 1930's to 1950's a job as a public school teacher, particularly in big cities, was a plum--it offered security, a middle class wage, summers off and getting teaching jobs was highly competitive. The faculty of the best public high school in our home town--Bethesda Chevy-Chase High School--was comparable to faculties at many good colleges.
3. My own schooling from K-12 was in public schools.
4. My oldest son went to the same public schools I did.

So I have a worm's eye view of public schools, with a decided bias in their favor.

Looking at studies of how well educational efforts succeed, comparing achievement in the USA vs European vs Asian school children is discouraging, from an American point of view. Of course these studies are likely flawed and may be comparing apples and oranges, but the United States consistently comes out looking like a mediocrity, despite high levels of spending. We get far less out of our spending on education than the Europeans and Asians do, if we can believe cross cultural testing.

Schooled by fish --Obadiah Youngblood

There are less scientific, but possibly no less revealing ways of assessing the educational effects of public education in different countries. One of these is listening to people interviewed on TV or radio from England or Germany or Iceland and comparing the capacity for expression, clarity of thought, and the references and allusions you hear people making.

I have learned I am not the only American to listen to these foreigners interviewed and find myself thinking: These Brits (Icelanders, Germans)  are just consistently smarter than we are. Or at least they sound that way.

Listening to the parents of Dutch, Swedish, Irish children who get parked in American schools while their parents are doing a tour of duty at the World Bank or the Embassy or some international company, you understand they are not favorably impressed by American education.  They try to say as little as possible, but if you really probe them they say it: You spend so much time accomplishing so little.
The more time our kids spend in these schools, the dumber they get.

I'm not ready to draw firm conclusions from such diverse and unsystematic sources, but I am struck by how many fewer hours Scandinavians, Brits and German kids spend in school every day and every year and I wonder whether the "crowd control" aspect of American education has somehow purloined the quality of the education we inculcate.
Look at those TV shows where kids from local high schools compete with one another as teams representing their schools and listen to the questions they get asked. At least they are fill in the blank answers, but still, the questions are narrow points of knowledge: What was the name of the man who accompanied Mallory to the top of Everest? Sure, nice if you know that, but really, what does it matter?

My son and I visited a classroom once where the teacher asked the students, who had been reading letters sent home from the commander of a Negro regiment what they had noticed about the attitude of the officer and the students answered: "He began by calling them "niggers" but after a few battles he was calling them heroes and he said he was honored to lead them.
"In my school," my son said, "They would have asked the name of the major's horse."
That is the difference between smart and stupid. No other way to describe it.

Watching kids in Iceland get out of school in the early afternoon, watching them walk home, walk to the swimming pool, the playground, where they played with other kids without parental supervision, listening to kids (who learn English early) and observing their enthusiasm for what they are learning is an experience which makes anyone think: What is their secret?

Remembering my own high school days, arriving at 9 AM leaving class at 3:30 going off to team practice until 6:30, home by 7 PM and homework until midnight. Five hours of homework which was essentially busy work. Designed to keep you busy, not to enlighten.

I particularly recall my science courses: We had the usual chemistry teacher who was just a chapter ahead of us in the text book and could answer no questions.

But we had a young graduate of the University of Maryland who was all about teaching us the newest and most sophisticated biology she had just learned in college. But her idea of rigor was piling on volume of reading to be done at home prior to class and then lecturing during class. I cannot recall anyone asking questions. We had 50 pages of reading to do every night, five days a week and 100 pages for the weekend. We got lots of knowledge, lots of volume laid on us. But quantity is not quality.

When I got to college and majored in biology, I got to understand what quality meant, and that turned out to be nothing like what I was told was the most rigorous, fantastic high school  biology course in Maryland.

In fact, the more our biology teacher piled on, the less we learned. The more guilty we felt and the more we decided the study of biology was an ordeal, not an awakening.

Of course, compared to our middle school biology courses, which consisted of memorizing long lists of species and genus, classification and descriptions, the high school biology course was a joy.

The trouble was, these teachers were themselves not very well educated. They thought memorization was learning. They thought "content" was immutable, like learning Greek, would always be with you.

In college we learned concepts, and it was like going from Latin recitations to "Blue Planet."

Maybe it's the first sign of on rushing Alzheimer's but as I watch American TV, listen to radio, I find myself saying: These people are really stupid. 

Not so much with the BBC or with foreign programs.

Some how, we are surrounded by so much stupidity, it is becoming the norm.
It cannot all be Trump's fault
Can it be he  is simply  the result, not the cause?