Author: Crowhill Report

One increasingly common political tactic is to claim that you’re not doing what you’re very clearly doing. Sometimes these rascals also claim that their opponents are doing what they themselves are doing.

Apparently Fairfax County (Virginia) has adopted this technique. Parents complain that their children are being taught critical race theory, and school officials scoff, mock and deny.

“What? That’s master’s level stuff. It’s what you might learn in the university. We don’t teach it in K-12.”

No, they actually do. Critical race theory is a ‘frame’ for ‘our work,’ Fairfax County Public Schools told teachers

If you can stomach it, you can watch the presentation for yourself. (The presentation doesn’t start until about 50 minutes in. And no, I didn’t watch the whole thing, but I skimmed it.)

I sympathize with the gist of this article: Car accidents cause death, injury and trauma. Why do we shrug them off?

I have two reactions to this article. On the one hand, yes, cars are awful. Lots of people die from car crashes, and it’s somewhat weird that we accept that.

On the other hand, as opposed to what? For whatever reason, we have “shrugged off” the mayhem caused by cars. The fact that we accept it shows that it’s acceptable. Or at least that we’re not willing to pay the price to fix the situation.

And what would that price be?

We could lower speed limits and have more traffic enforcement. We could force people to retire older (less safe) cars. We could invest in better roads. We could require more stringent training to get a driver’s license. We could require every car to have a breathalizer.

Or, if we wanted to go all in, we could require everyone to live in cities with ubiquitous subway systems. We could re-engineer the entire society to do away with cars.

Clearly we’re not willing to do that. Life is apparently not as precious as we like to think it is, and we’re willing to take some risks for the convenience and freedom we get from having cars.

Maybe that’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is.

I saw this article — ‘Holy hell’: WaPo lets education experts explain why parents *don’t* ‘have the right to shape their kids’ curriculum’ — which raises the question, why should parents have a right over their childrens’ education? After all, what do parents know? Why not leave it to the experts?

As I see it, there are two issues here. (1) Who has responsibility for the child? (2) Who knows best?

Which reminds me a little of a conversation I had with crusty old grandma one day. She was raising her grandchildren because the parents were gone. Being a crusty old-timer, she spanked them when they were bad. Some social worker (not sure how she was involved) told grandma she can’t spank the kids, so grandma took the kids to the social worker’s office and dropped them off.

“Here. You raise them. If I can’t raise them the way I think is right, then you do it.”

The social worker didn’t bring it up again because (of course) they didn’t have the resources to take care of those kids. And that was just two kids.

The government absolutely depends on parents to raise children. There is no way the government can raise all the kids.

Some people would like that. They think the world would be better if “scientific” institutions raised children, rather than relying on those horrible unwashed masses who believe all kinds of nonsense and don’t know what they’re doing.

But as with so many appeals to “science,” it’s anti-scientific. Those unwashed masses love their children. They can’t help it. It’s instinctual. While there may be exceptions here or there, a child is far better off with its parents — because parents go to stupidly extreme lengths for their kids. (If you don’t understand that, read Eggs are Expensive, Sperm is Cheap.)

This is why parents are responsible for their children, because nobody else loves the kids enough to do the job.

But aren’t most people, including most parents, dumb asses?

Of course they are.

And aren’t there genuine experts out there? Like doctors and dentists and such?

Of course. And parents ought to yield their medical opinions to the doctor. Fortunately, most do, and we have ways of dealing with the few who don’t.

Which brings us to the ugly part of this question, which is whether there is such a thing as an educational expert. Do professional educators know anything of value?

It’s very hard to say that they do.

Everyone knows that education is a major for the people who couldn’t make it in sociology. People who are in danger of failing out of science go into science education. It’s a dumb person’s major. Which is not to say only dumb people go into education. A lot of smart people become teachers. But on average, teachers are not the brightest bulbs.

Look at the chart on the page I linked above, or look at the second chart on this page. Notice all the majors with a higher average IQ than educators. “Art history” beats education by a mile, for crying out loud. Even “Communications” is above Education.

I don’t mean to belittle people who go into these fields. Most of them do it for very altruistic reasons. (It’s certainly not for the pay.) But facts are facts. People who major in education are not the smartest people.

Aside from this somewhat objective measurement, we all know that education in America is a disaster, and that most of the problem comes from the “education establishment.” That is, from the people who are supposed to be the most educated among the educators.

What would you think about going to the doctor if doctors regularly scored among the lowest on a chart like the ones I linked to? Would you still consider them experts?

In addition to all this, when ordinary parents — with no special training — decide to take matters into their own hands and educate their own children, they usually do a better job! There are lots of reasons for that — like small class sizes, individual attention, etc. — but the fact remains that no matter how you cut it, the idea that we should defer to the education establishment sounds really, really dumb.

To sum it up, parents care for their children more than anyone else, and educators have not demonstrated the kind of competence that would lead anyone to defer to their judgment. So yes, parents should have a say in their childrens’ education.

Alec Baldwin fatally shoots woman with prop gun on movie set

What a horrible story. My condolences to the families.

I grew up shooting. When I was a boy, my dad took me to a range on a military base every week. I was surrounded by gruff old men who would yell at you if you did the slightest thing wrong. Shooting without checking that everyone had their ear protection on was enough to get reamed out.

Guns were serious business, and you’d better follow the rules!

The idea of goofing off with a gun was conditioned out of me.

Consequently, I’ve never liked things that are almost guns — like BB guns. People treat them as toys. I believe there should be a sharp distinction between things that are obviously toys and things that are obviously guns.

I don’t know much about prop guns, but in an age of CGI and such, I don’t see why they’re necessary. You can add the flash and the smoke later.

People often assume the rules aren’t being applied fairly. E.g., “if I (or my guy) had said / done something like that, the reaction would have been ____.”

We all believe it’s true, and we all believe we see evidence of it all the time. But it’s a hard thing to be objective about, since (1) no two situations are precisely the same, and (2) there’s huge variation in the way things are treated that don’t seem to have anything to do with “sides.”

The perception of unfair application of “the rules” might be true, or it might be confirmation bias.

Having said that, I am confident that if Trump had claimed the U.S. has an obligation to defend Taiwan, the mainstream media would have gone into a minor frenzy. When Biden says it, there’s not the same reaction. (The media is covering the story, but it’s not one of these “OMG can you believe this” things.)