“The Washington Post has discovered something heretofore not known to mankind,” Robert of Canada’s Small Dead Animals blog quips. “Giving fake praise to children isn’t such a good thing!” He links to a WaPo article with such unintentionally hilarious lines as, “A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy, unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with significant learning opportunities.”
Everybody (not named Barack Obama) repeat after me: I need a study to tell me this?
But such remarkable “discoveries” from one of the leading temples of what is euphemistically called “liberalism” and “progressivism” is a reminder that that worldview has two directions it which to proceed. Since, to paraphrase a recent Encounter Books pamphlet by Richard Epstein, liberalism is not sustainable, it can either continue on its path towards the Great Reprimitivization (let’s ban or make prohibitively expensive everything! From malaria-preventing DDT to light bulbs and electricity.) Or it can start to embrace what Tom Wolfe once called “The Great Relearning.”
The latter will proceed one way or another, but unfortunately, society (read: liberalism) invariably must relearn its lessons the hard way.
See also: the Costa Concordia.
Sadly, this is another instance of a good idea going too far. It’s been more than 40 yrs since I graduated high school. In those years, it wasn’t unusual for a teacher to berate a student who was a bit slow on the uptake. If the problem was due to someone having trouble with the material, heaping abuse on the student was not going to help. While this seems obvious now, it wasn’t back then at least, it wasn’t part of the generally-accepted knoweldge base of teaching, and thus the self-esteem movement was born. But how it evolved from the rational concept of using empathy and avoiding harsh, gratuitous criticism into the bizarre territory of celebrating the commonplace as tremendous accomplishment is beyond me. I guess the moral here is that there is nothing so stupid that it will fail to be believed if it is written in a book by someone with the proper credentials. Trusting credentials is not a substitute for actually thinking – a point that seems to keep surfacing again and again in our age.
“Let’s ban or make prohibitively expensive everything! From malaria-preventing DDT to …”
To re-coin a certain catch phrase:
A Conservative is just a Environmentalist who got mugged by post-DDT-ban bed bugs in a supposedly upscale NY hotel.
Let’s hear it for social science, not science, pretty much anti-social, but they do love to use children as guinea pigs. On the upside, they have a real profitable future counseling their victims through recovery.
The dumbing down of America is not in our future but our past. One wonders over the coming epiphany of the re-discovery of the 10 commandments or that fire burns.
The Costa Concordia reminds us that large and sophisticated systems still have weaknesses. Like the Titanic, they will fail when they are run outside the prudence of hard won knowledge. It seems that the captain of the Concordia brought his ship too close to shore, to show off its size and lights. The Titanic was trying to break a speed record, unable to steer away from the iceberg which sunk it.
Sinking of the Titanic
I suggest this quote from the movie Titanic:
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Ismay (President of White Star Lines): Most unfortunate, captain!
Captain: [perspiring and trembling] Water fourteen feet above the keel in ten minutes. In the forepeak, in all three holds, and in the boiler room six. That’s five compartments! She can stay afloat with the first four compartments breached, but not five!
Captain: (thinking) As she goes down by the head, the water will spill over the tops of the bulkheads at E deck from one to the next. Back and back. There’s no stopping it.
Smith: The pumps… if we opened the doors…
Captain: The pumps buy you time, but minutes only. From this moment, no matter what we do, Titanic will founder.
Ismay: But this ship can’t sink!
Captain: She’s made of iron, sir! I assure you, she can and she will. It is a mathematical certainty.
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I think most people believe that our country can’t sink, no matter what laws or policies are implemented. But, the iron laws of incentive, energy, and economy cannot be abolished. People will not work hard if their income is taxed away. Investors will not risk their money if they cannot make more money. Great doctors will not work in a profession that requires half of their time to be devoted to paperwork at no benefit to the patients.
Caring and Reality
A conversation in San Francisco.
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I pointed out that California and San Francisco were both hemorrhaging money, destroying jobs, and were fundamentally unsustainable systems.
She said “I know, I know. I’ve heard all that. But, you know, I just love it here so much and I don’t want anything to change. Something will come up and it will get fixed. I just have to believe it.”
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