The Nightingale And the Rose

Pardon me while I don’t quite bite. Anything can be spun, including facts and numbers - like ‘the economy is improving’ and ‘unemployment is decreasing‘ and ‘green‘ jobs are the future. It’s generally done by introducing a ‘new’ method of counting, using ‘new’ parameters and a different basket of assumptions. In education, overall results are generally improved by lowering the bar and dumbing down tests.

All this frantic fudging does not change a single thing of significance. Obama is still a socialist (whether we say it or not). And he may even be a card-carrying member of the Muslim Brotherhood for all we know (whether we even dare ask the question).

Partisanship has nothing to do with it. The proof is in the pudding. America is slipping, the dollar is slipping, our educational system is not producing and we are making mistakes in every area of endeavor relative to the rest of the world.

Whether we point it out or not, whether or not we’re turning off our radios because we’re sick of hearing about it, it’s happening at an alarming rate.

I note that the Batchelor show has one big advantage over everybody else in the business: he doesn’t take calls. Therefore he’s spared the tedious bleating of the inarticulate, the partisan poisoned, and the uninformed. Batchelor only talks to ‘experts’; meaning, that what has made them experts is in large part their familiarity and comfort level regarding language. This translates well to radio. It does not mean, however, that the ‘great unwashed’ - the rest of us - have nothing to say.

While everyone likes to claim the people’s support for whatever murderous scheme they might find themselves accessories to, they remain prepared to drop public opinion for expediency’s sake. In Beck’s case, I am not so sure his being dropped from major markets has so much to do with poor ratings as with his fingering of the great puppet master himself: Soros, who seems to have his fingers in every conceivable pie - just as I never believed that the re-elections of Reid and Pelosi were entirely free of electoral fraud.

I just finished reading ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ by Oscar Wilde. It is one of the stories that came in a volume published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin. Like Grimm’s fairy tales, the themes in these stories are not necessarily all clover and honey. Some serious issues are explored here under guise of clear language and simple metaphor. ‘Nightingale’ for instance explores the notion of personal sacrifice for a lost cause. It can bring tears to a child’s eyes and continue to haunt into adulthood.

In America, there have been many more such sacrifices than those currently living here. In fact, it could even be said, that every grave in America holds the remains of a martyr who had some sense of the eternal. What would any of them say if they were to come back today and watch the rose tossed carelessly aside to be crushed by an unseeing wagon wheel? Would they be impressed by the gloss of manipulated polls and surveys? Or would they be moved to weep at the flag (they fought and died for in some cases) being dragged through the muddy streets of our relentless discontent?

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The Happy Prince

How vain we are to think that we are capable of destroying things - either by our actions or inactions - what has taken millennia to build. Egypt, for one; our own country for another; the world. How self-important! Mere ants on an anthill.

Dresden was bombed to smithereens, and today it is the thriving metropolis it was always destined to be. Hiroshima was laid waste by the atom bomb and today it glitters like a rare jewel at night.

Egypt too has existed forever it seems. Recent upheavals will be but a footnote in texts tracing Egypt’s eternal history a hundred years from now. In all that time, swallows will continue to escape the unforgiving winters in the north and migrate to the land of the Pharaohs, alighting on the pyramids, ‘flying up and down the Nile, and talking to the large lotus-flowers… they will go to sleep in the tomb of the great King. The King is there himself in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen, and embalmed with spices. Round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are like withered leaves.”

The peasants will continue to scratch some semblance of livelihood from the dry desert sands. And all will be as it ever was after the sirocco of news print has passed and the dust has settled.
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Italics from Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Happy Prince’.

http://pkoelliker.blogspot.com/

A Sputnik Moment

I understand that the title ("George W. Obama") of JB’s post above is meant as a dig at Democrats. It is they who shrink from any comparison with Bush like Dracula shrinks from daylight. There’s no way that Obama and Bush can in any way be seen as the same. Though both are despised equally, it must be noted who is doing the despising, calling to mind the adage, "You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies." (Wilde)

In this morning’s WSJ, there is an opinion piece by Chester E. Finn, Jr. entitled, “A Sputnik Moment for U.S. Education”. The pull quote reads, “China delivers another wake-up call to those who think American schools are globally competitive.” Mr. Finn is referring to the results of the 2009 PISA test in math, reading and science which shows Shanghai’s 15-year-olds topped every other jurisdiction in which the test was given. Hong Kong was also in the top five, while the U.S. was somewhere in the middle of the pack of sixty-five. The article closes with the question, “Will (this news) get us beyond the excuse-making, bickering over who should do what, and prioritizing adults over children?”

It remains unclear what the former assistant secretary at the DOE wants us to do. Finn points out that Beijing has made education a high priority, especially in key cities like Shanghai (population, 20 million); that this success will likely be duplicated in 10 cities by 2019 and 50 by 2029; or even faster. I know, for example, that qualified, native English teachers willing to work in China can command considerable perks. At the same time, they are exporting teachers to teach Mandarin all over the world.

It would be interesting to know just how much the PLA is paying (per student) to be able to exhibit such success. I expect it’s much less than we pay to keep the doors of our own failing schools open. For too long now we’ve been under the impression that money can buy anything - literacy, peace, love, respect, politicians, immortality, solvency and the like - without the effort and discipline involved in actually maintaining such things hands-on. With the dollar buying ever less these days, we’ve run out of money. Scraping the bottom of the barrel for the dregs, we’ve managed to choke off opportunity for generations to come.

Time to reassess the root of what defines 'value'. IOU’s just don’t cut it anymore.

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