How Should the Education System Be Reformed?

I don’t know. But I do think we need to change education paradigms to suit the world we live in. “Changing Paradigms” is one of the best and conservatively sound presentations I’ve seen on the fundamental problem with education as it’s currently being done. This is a presentation given by creativity expert and education reformer Sir Ken Robinson at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), in which he tackles such questions as the lies the current education system tells to students about the meaning of their education and about their future, the way the current educations system numbs students’ natural abilities and stunts their potential rather than furthering it, and what about its very makeup is based on a worldview from 250 years ago that is now direly outdated, as well as how to reform the system so it serves everyone.

For a short, animated version of some of Ken Robinson’s main points about education reform, see here:

For Ken Robinson’s full-length speech at the RSA, see here:

Even though at first Sir Ken Robinson’s presentation may seem a surprising pick for conservative takes on education reform, in fact it upholds the essential conservative values of democracies: all men are born equal, all should have a chance to work hard and best use their abilities to advance through merit, and teachers (in this case) should be held accountable not to the checklist they can hand in at the end of the day, but rather to the success of having taught their students the information and thinking patterns the students need to be successful in their life after education — including the ability to think outside the box in a constructive fashion, in order to succeed in concrete ways.

Obama Is Made to Feel China’s Newfound Power

This is a translation of an article from the German news magazine Der Spiegel by Marc Hujer, originally published as “Obama bekommt Chinas neue Macht zu spüren” at Spiegel Online on Nov. 12, 2010. I post this here only because I think it is an important article, and no English translation is currently available. I will remove this post as soon as an official translation is available to English-language speakers.

This is what a power shift looks like: During his visit to Asia, Barack Obama is learning that American influence in the region is waning. While the U.S. president is holding speeches, Beijing is creating realities with its billion-dollar investments. During the G-20 summit, China’s delegation even gets away with a diplomatic affront.

One of president Obama’s favorite jokes is that really he’s just Number Two — Number Two after Michelle Obama. He married up, he adds, basking in the friendly laughter he elicits. It is a joke he can afford to make. As president of the United States, he is automatically considered Number One.

Now Barack Obama is traveling through Asia. His ten-day journey leads him via India and Indonesia to the G-20 summit in South Korea and then on to Japan. It is the longest trip of his presidency, and it comes directly after the lost mid-term election.

On the second day of the trip, he sits in one of the back rows at the Holy Name High School in Mumbai. At the front of the room, Michelle Obama dances, surrounded by tenth graders. Absent-mindedly, President Obama sways to the music. It is unlikely that he suspects he is up next, when two Indians walk over to him and bully him into dancing with Michelle.

By evening, these are the images that flicker across news screens. The question arises how seriously to take them. The man dancing there — is that world politics’ Number One?

Last week, Forbes Magazine gave a clear and sobering answer: No. Obama is now only world politics’ Number Two. Number One is someone who can tackle problems, who can overcome resistance. And for Forbes, that someone is China’s president, Hu Jintao. Hu can even re-route rivers, without interference from pesky bureaucrats and courts. What, in comparison, does Obama have to offer?

Obama wants to show China its limits

Obama’s trip to Asia was meant to turn the page by setting a new agenda, away from domestic squabbling after the defeat in the mid-term election, towards foreign policy. It was meant to give Obama, the self-proclaimed “first Pacific president,” new weight. Obama came to evoke common ground, with India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan. These countries are not just economic powers, but also democracies. Obama also came to secure business deals, to negotiate trade contracts that will secure American jobs at home. And he came to show China its limits, to draw a line in the sand for its model of authoritarian capitalism.

China has prepared for this. While Obama travels from Mumbai to New Delhi in India, while he sings the praises of India, the new economic superpower, and while he makes the long-craved promise to India’s parliament that the United States will support the country’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, President Hu pays a visit to France. In India, Obama announces trade deals worth 10 billion dollars. In France, Hu publicizes his own figures: 20 billion, doubling Obama’s.

Mumbai university students ask President Obama how America has changed after the mid-term elections. They ask whether not just now, but over the last few years, the United States has been wielding the same sort of geopolitical power it once did. George W. Bush would have launched into a speech about what is great about America. Obama replies more pensively. He will turn 50 next year, he says. In the nearly 50 years that he’s been alive, the United States has always been able to dictate its position to the world:

The US was such an enormously dominant economic power, we were such a large market, our industry, our technology, our manufacturing was so significant that we always met the rest of the world economically on our terms. And now because of the incredible rise of India and China and Brazil and other countries, the U.S. remains the largest economy and the largest market, but there is real competition.

Obama and the mango tree in his front yard

Indonesia is the second stop on Obama’s Asian trip. It is easier for him to win sympathies here. After all, he lived in Indonesia for four years, so the country is home turf. But in the end, here, too, it’s the numbers that matter. And here, too, the Chinese are well ahead of him. One day before Obama steps off Air Force One, a Chinese business delegation promises Indonesia 6.6. billion dollars worth of investments into roads, bridges, and canals that Indonesia desperately needs. And Obama?

At the presidential palace in Jakarta, President Obama stands next to Indonesia’s president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and does his best to use as many Indonesian words as possible. He talks about his youth, his house in Jakarta with the mango tree in the front yard, about how Jakarta had only a single high-rise building back then. But when it comes to figures, to export contracts and direct investments like the Chinese have announced, he has little to offer: In Indonesia, he concedes, “we’re number three right now in terms of trade volume and investment.”

Democracy is complicated. One gets bogged down. And in a way, Forbes may have assessed correctly that the United States cannot compete on a level playing field with a country that can simply issue orders, and whatever arrangements it thinks will strengthen its power will promptly be made. It cannot compete on a level playing field with a country that knows nothing of majorities and mid-term elections. And, President Obama points out, is it really all about the numbers? ”Prosperity without freedom,” Obama says in Jakarta, “is really just another form of poverty.”

Made to feel irrelevant

On Thursday they finally meet, Obama and Hu, for the seventh time. They sit in a hotel suite in Seoul. Between them stands a table with a vase of flowers, behind it four flags: two American, two Chinese. Obama has crossed his legs. Hu sits straight, both feet on the ground. They exchange diplomatic phrases, the necessary niceties, words without weight, to avoid unnecessarily exposing themselves.

“The Chinese side values its relationship with the United States,” the translator says. And Obama replies, “It’s wonderful to meet with President Hu.” They go on like this for a few minutes, but it becomes difficult to hear what they are saying. The Chinese delegation standing next to Hu chatters loudly and unabashedly. The Americans are irritated, but they do not complain. Today is not about etiquette.

It’s about who can get away with what.

Perfect Metaphor for the Iraq War of 2003

This is exactly what happened. The part about taking the shirt off is Powell in front of the United Nations.

The Math: Random Traffic Jams

I drive a lot, so I’ve become interested in the reasons why traffic so frequently breaks down for no good reason and I have to sit on a perfectly good road where everything would be just fine if everyone did what they should do, which is drive straight ahead at a reasonable speed.

As a result, I’ve been reading a great deal about the technical issues concerning traffic flow, and I’ll be posting about them here occasionally. Civil engineering, after all, is a political issue.

For starters, the Wired blog on cars and car-related things has a short piece on the math behind random traffic jams. You know, the kind that you get to the end of and you think, “Where’s the accident? Where’s the construction? Why did I just waste an hour boxed in on a road made for driving at least 120 km/h — for nothing???”

Researchers at MIT say it has to do with the fact that when the person in front of us brakes, we want to be safe, so we brake harder than they do. It piles up. And thus Chicago’s Stevenson, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Edens Expressways turn into giant parking lots any given weekday from 8-10 am and 2-7 pm. And I’m sure it’s the same in most major and minor cities.

The full article is here: “MIT Hopes to Exorcise ‘Phantom’ Traffic Jams”

And if you’re the kind who feels happy to complain to their elected official about how the roads and traffic flow on your commute are so poorly engineered that they’re taking years off your life, here’s a website that helps you write to them and let them know: http://www.mycommutesucks.org

Red Envelope Day

If you have a moment to spare, please check out the Red Envelope Day initiative. (Or on Facebook.)

On March 31st, participants in Red Envelope Day will send empty red envelopes to the White House. Each envelope will have the following message written on it:

“This envelope represents one child who died because of an abortion. It is empty because the life that was taken is now unable to be a part of our world.”

This is a non-aggressive, awareness-raising approach that makes the Pro-Life point while being respectful and to-the-point. For those of us who believe that human life should not be at the whim or convenience of those who feel that they have power over it, this is a chance to show an increasingly ruthless federal government that we care.

If you’re interested in the plain, objective numbers behind why this is necessary, here they are.

Why It’s Important to Keep on Pushing for a Ban on Abortions

Public Transport, Crime, and Racism

Over at the Freakonomics blog, Stephen Dubner kicked off a discussion about the demerits of public transport in certain areas of St. Louis. Apparently, inner city teenagers have been using the metrolink extension there in large numbers to travel to an upscale mall, spiking the shoplifting and assault incidents at that mall.

I’m a big proponent of public transport and think it should be expanded in all metro areas as much as is feasible, so I’m not going to dwell on that part of the argument. All traffic policy experts agree more public transport is a good thing, and if it’s properly administered, it ends up saving the community and the taxpayers money. I’ve yet to see a good argument against public transport, period.

In this particular case, if St. Louis built even more metrolink lines, I’m pretty sure that particular mall would be less of a focal point for delinquencies. The solution here would be better planning, more focused investment, and better enforcement of loitering laws — not griping. (In fact, I bet that simply patrolling the trains better to check that all passengers were ticket holders would reduce the problem further — and create jobs.)

What gets my hackles raised is the comment section of that discussion. A lot of the commenters seem to think that this is about “the rich” against “the poor,” and that “the rich” (meaning the shop owners at the mall) somehow deserve to have their products stolen by inner city punks.

I’m all for aiding the poor, even systemically, if that aid has pragmatic results. But I absolutely cannot stand it when people who are themselves middle class sneer at those of their peers who get robbed or stolen from and then complain about it — as if being prosperous earns anyone the duty to be victimized.

There is no excuse for the victimization many lower class citizens suffer for bad reasons, but surely that doesn’t mean they’re entitled to commit crimes against those loosely associated with their own grievances. The fact that more poor people get pulled over by cops doesn’t mean they can then go and beat up suburbanites at malls. Most of those cops don’t live in those suburbs. They live just down the road from the ghetto. And even if they did live right next to the mall, stealing from those cops’ neighbors, robbing and beating up their kids, and heckling their daughters doesn’t solve the problems the poor face, nor do their grievances justify that sort of behavior.

I’m not saying this as one of those suburbanites, either. Hyde Park in Chicago, where my university is, is safer than the rest of the ghetto that surrounds it. But here’s something interesting that happens to aforementioned sneerers, of which the university has its fair and smug share: Once it’s them who gets robbed or sexually assaulted, which happens rather more frequently than in the burbs and is almost never perpetrated by anyone who isn’t part of the poor inner city population, the former sneerers change their mind rather quickly. All of a sudden, the rule of law doesn’t seem so bad. I guess it’s just as long as it’s the other guy who gets beat up and robbed that it’s the just revenge of the underprivileged. Hypocrites.

And one last thing. A lot of those sneerers seem to be saying what they’re saying out of some misplaced sense that they’re combatting racism by advocating crime and putting down the victims as deserved victims. The opposite is true. The implication is that poor African Americans or poor Hispanics can’t help themselves, that crime is part of who they are, intrinsically, and that it’s their way to Get Respect. To say someone is inherently immoral because of their ethnic background is about as racist as it comes. So shut up, move where poor minorities live, and then get back to me about how that bit of self-righteousness worked out for you in a year or so. I have the feeling those safe burbs won’t look so bad.