No wonder jobs are being shipped overseas, America has allowed itself to be dumbed down by the commie left, one world pc maggots hoping everyone is secretly bi-sexual or whatever.

I voted for Clinton so I think this person is referring to me as the commie left – although I have to admit, it never occurred to me to hope everyone was secretly bisexual. I have a lot of people in my family who say things like this so I think I’ve grown accustomed to filtering it out.

Think of yourself as a good example. Model the evenhanded politeness you want to see. I would hate for someone as informed as you are to drop out of the sphere of public comment because of the bad behavior of others. The best thing to do with people who are that far out there is to ignore them and then completely demolish their position with your own well structured argument.

You are right that “education can hone and develop everyday reason.” But it’s also true that while you can lead a horse to water, you can’t make him drink. Some people are impervious to reason – suspicious of it even. There’s nothing you can do about that.

In your Lancet 600 000 issue, along with a dispute about the accuracy of the number itself (I like Iraq Body Count far more, and even double that up to 150 000 seems a more accurate number), there is a dispute about what the number means.

When something is “right” or not, the costs don’t matter (so much). If the costs DO matter, than the “rightness” is clearly not absolute.

How many Americans would George Clooney be willing have die to stop the genocide in Darfur? I don’t think he offers a number.

On Drug legalization: how many drug related murders before you favor legalization? Were drugs legal, like gambling sort of is: how many drug addicts must there be before you favor making it illegal?

In order to avoid coming up with actual “turning point” numbers, most arguments are actually driven by the assumption of correctness, and numbers are used qualitatively to buttress that initial assumption.

In budgeting, a similar process is called ‘back calculation’, and seems to be endemic in financial analysis. Fix the final desired number, change the ‘input assumptions’ until the Excel/1-2-3 model comes up with the desired/ required conclusion and one is comfy enough with the ‘assumptions’.
It’s intellectually dishonest, but widespread.

I’m pretty sure most Global Warming models include such input adjustments — I haven’t heard of any that, by going backwards, successfully predicts the drop in temp of the “Little Ice Age” which we may now be coming out of. I support gas taxes for other reasons.

[Iraq / Lancet note not quite inserted]

I don’t think that this is the difference between smart people and dumb people, or nice people and mean people. I really do think on some level it’s a problem with the way people deploy reason. And I’m not sure that has much to do with education, perhaps–it may begin with a kind of moral vision of other people, or what folks sometimes call “emotional intelligence”. I do think education can hone and develop everyday reason, though.

How much work is busy work is also one that I think is difficult to measure – certain skills like reading and math demand repetition, but different kids will need different amounts of that. If teachers assign the “average amount” of repetition needed by the “average child”, those who fall on either side of the bell curve will either be underserved by the lack of sufficient practice or bored by the overkill. There isn’t a way around this.

That said, what Tim also is alluding to here (I think) is a frustration about the types of evidence people use to construct opinions, theories and arguments. I would argue that it would be difficult (if not impossible) for most people to spend the time and resources it would take to form truly informed opinions about everything. This is why most people fall back on the ideology of the group with which they most identify. In fact, the “disciplined demand for evidence to support claims” is a cultural position – the idea that people’s feelings are less important than objective evidence is sometimes true, but sometimes not true and in things like education, where personal preference is sometimes as important as evidenced based practice, people sometimes have to go with their gut.

There is an inherent weakness in using studies which are general to apply a treatment or practice to a particular child (or patient – in medicine). Even the best, well-controlled studies do not have 100% results. Parents have to take their own knowledge and experience with their child into account when deciding whether or not to raise them a particular way. What works for one kid, may or may not work for another. This explains why there will always be people who are dissatisfied with the public schools – the best practice for the group or the average student, even if perfectly applied and executed, will not be the best practice for every child. Parents will see this and become disillusioned, especially if their child is marginalized in the process.

Tim – very few people are as smart as you and few will have the resources you have to construct good arguments – even with excellent education. If you blog or comment in a public forum, you will always have to deal with the full bell curve. I would urge you to approach this with curiosity rather than irritation as even the opinions of the relatively uninformed can form public debate. If nothing else, it tells you what people are thinking – interesting as much as horrifying – and certainly never dull.

The nuture assumption is a unanswered challenge to those types of studies. Conscientious parents have conscientious kids. This means interventions that require parents to follow any new guidelines will have spurious positive effects.

Most ideas, like the PC “women are equal to men”, have certain consequences relevant to policy. They also are subject to certain objective tests: like the number of men vs. women who get 800 scores on the SAT (math or verbal).
I’m certain that more men get 800 math scores than women — in this particular top-end math problem solving ability, women are NOT equal to men in a reasonably objective, fact based result.

Yet Larry Summers was driven out of Harvard by, not claiming this truth as true, but suggesting it might be true.

As a Myers-Briggs personality proponent, I’m pretty sure that some personality types hate homework more than others, and I’m certain that lots of difficult to do busy work is negative. But I’m pretty sure that some required homework is more good for more students than essentially none.

And thus to the culture war issue of one-size-fits all gov’t central planning for schools — I’m against this. There should be more choices for parents to make in finding a school with a homework policy that they, as parents, support for their own, specific child.

The reason so many on-line arguments degenerate into culture war positions is because those of us fighting a culture war have usually thought of lots aspects of our position, and have prepared arguments/ ideas (ammunition) to use in relevant context (targets of opportunity).

The distressing thing is when a comment mocks your own ideas with no alternative — purely negative. If it includes offensive obscenities (thanks to PC & Lenny Bruce?), it’s even worse. I try to disagree based on proposing an alternative policy.

Once, when I was in college, I went to hear a lecture by the famous creationist Duane Gish, and it was a very effective lecture. He wouldn’t have known the term, but what he was doing was “ideology critique.” He showed lots of slides from science textbooks that revealed the ways that those books relied on subtle manipulation of data, mere assertions of “the assured results of science,” and tendentious illustrations — e.g., an artist’s rendering of one of our hominid ancestors who, as Gish triumphantly pointed out, had “the eyes of a philosopher.” When I got to graduate school and studied literary theory I thought, hey, haven’t I seen this kind of thing before? But I also learned to apply the method of interrogation shared by Gish and Foucault — yes, Duane Gish and Michel Foucault! — to the teachings and practices of the church. (Which, by the way, did not destroy my then-recent Christian faith, though that’s another story.)

So, the various participants in the culture wars try to teach young people to be selectively skeptical. But skepticism is a habit that tends to generalize itself. Maybe that’s good news.

And then close your post with “If I could assign homework to the people who care about homework, it would be to rethink how they approach the art and science of debating with others. Strong opinions require strong evidence, not just passionate intensity. Scientific literacy requires scientific thought, not just rote knowledge, which means an ability to engage in exploratory learning and a healthy dose of general skepticism.”

If we emphasize the role of skepticism and critical thought in education, isn’t that in itself a shot fired in the culture wars? After all, there are significant strains of our culture who see skepticism as a pernicious influence. Isn’t this post just doing the same thing as parents who complain that their kids aren’t being prepared to deal with (potentially mythical) hyper-competent Chinese kids? That is, you’re pushing for education to address what you see as the dangers of society. You see the danger as dogmatic fundamentalism, rather than scary foreigners, but the solution is the same for you and for those other parents–you both want to use education to achieve your ideal society, or move closer to it.

In retrospect, that came out a little harsher than intended–rest assured, no offense meant.

Maybe it’s just too easy to pinpoint a specific area like math, and talk about our deficits in that. People acknowledge the job-related value of math and science, but it may not bother them “deep down” if we’re no good at them. The more important deficits may be more difficult to acknowledge. Getting on the soap box with “Our kids are bad at thinking and communicating” makes you a lot less popular than “our kids are bad at math.”