Another Cheer for American Education

A hundred years ago, an eighth-grade education was sufficient.  In 1910 only 5% of Americans entered high school.  Then, the “high school movement” began.  The fact that now 30% of Americans have earned post-secondary degrees (associate's and above) promises a renaissance in the coming generation.

 America invested millions of dollars (equivalent to billions today) in the construction of high schools, supported by taxes.  In addition to “operating levies” those property taxes stood behind the bonds that were sold to investors.  America took on a tremendous public debt.  Despite the Depression of the ‘30s and war of the 40s, by the 1950s, the high school education was a ticket to success in the job market.  More importantly, the general education level of the nation was raised.  Did it make a difference?  Daily newspapers still ran (and still run) horoscopes.  But they also ran crossword puzzles on the same page.  The general education level had been raised. 

Now, our high school students lag behind those of 20 other industrialized (informatized) nations.  But my test is this: What can you count on one hand?  Nokia did not come from the high math scores of Finland's gymnasium students.  What other companies are there in Finland?  Where is the economic growth in the Czech Republic? They are doing well, certainly but invention, innovation and enterprise are different from that.  Risks entail losses.  The Japanese are risk-averse.  How many Nobel Prize winners are in Japan?  Then we have to consider the people who never finished college, such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.  Of course, if Edison had Tesla's (incomplete) university education, he would have had the mathematics to get past direct current.  There are no easy answers, but overall, nothing bad can come from mass education.  A hundred years ago, we massively educated ourselves to the high school level. It worked out well enough. 

John D. Rockefeller’s family lived in Strongsville and he rented a room in a boarding house in Cleveland in order to attend Central High School 1853-1855.  He then enrolled in a ten-week course at Folsom's Commercial College to learn bookkeeping.  At sixteen,  he went to work for 50 cents a day.  He was 30 when he organized Standard Oil of Ohio. 

Master of Arts, Social Science, April 23, 2010

American high school students often need remedial mathematics classes in college -- but they take them.  That is the point.  In France, class content at university is less important than the "narrative" your education carries in the corporate and government bureaucracies.  In Japan, getting in to college is the important thing because the university you attend pre-determines the corporation you will work for.  They have a lot of C+ college students in Japan.  So do we.  The difference is that our society encourages individual choice.  Few others do.  So, their best and brightest come here for their university educations.  


The subject of useless college majors was extensively explored on OrgTheory a blog by professors of sociology.

  “I like ‘useless college majors,’ but debt undermines the humanities and other fields (like sociology!). People will rightfully resent education and the labor market. That’s what I’m worried about. When we make education into a high priced job placement test, it undermines the liberal arts. We need to stop that from happening further.” – Fabio Rojas on “Police Beat Unarmed Poet” here.  

 “As long as dance education is inexpensive, that’s not such a big deal. If people want to pursue the dream, that’s great. But huge college debt makes that choice hard to sustain.” – Fabio Rojas on “Dance Majors” here.

 Colleges are filled with people who are there because they think it will lead to jobs. So, then, why are job hungry students flooding non-vocational areas? The explanation is fairly simple.  ”Good” jobs require college degrees as a test of ability and emotional maturity (being able to sit and do work), even if the job itself requires no college level skills.  – Fabio Rojas on Useless College Majors here.

Another possibility is that the Department of Education statistics show humanities BAs have been a fairly stable percentage of degrees since 1971 (decline to mid-80s, more or less a slow rise since then) while there’s been a huge rise in business (peak in the late 80s, but still much higher than 1971) and “other” (which appears to include mostly professional/vocational degrees, and is at its highest point). Also, pre-law and pre-ed people often major in the humanities. It’s almost like those subjects have some use for them. – Andrew in reply

Per Andrew, above, the big jump since 1971 for BA degrees (other than business) has been in what NCES treats as a residual category:
"Includes Agrciculture and natural resources:

• Architecture and related services;
• Communication, journalism, and related programs;
• Communications technologies; Family and consumer sciences/human sciences;
• Health professions and related clinical sciences;
• Legal professions and studies;
• Library science;
• Military technologies;
• Parks, recreation, leisure, and fitness studies;
• Precision production;
• Public administration and social services;
• Security and protective services;
• Transportation and materials moving; and
• Not classified by field of study.  

Without doing a lot of digging, the biggies appear to be Health and Communications.  The latter is a major that seems murky to me. I believe most institutions treat it as part of liberal arts; it would be interesting to know something about career outcomes.  I any event, both of these are overwhelmingly female dominated, matching the change in undergraduate demographics over recent decades.    Eweininger in reply.

I am not an enemy of humanities but I believe that higher education must be carefully managed. It’s not a problem if *some* people major in fields with poor job prospects. After all, novelists, artists, and other creative types improve the world in important ways. We should have institutions that support the arts. But it’s a big deal when when *lots* of people major in areas with poor job prospects. These people take out massive loans for skills they will never use. – Fabio Rojas on Useless College Majors here.

I think we overemphasize the importance of the kind of bachelor’s degree you get. Yes, type of undergrad degree helps you acquire job skills but isn’t a bachelor’s increasingly being used as a stepping stone for a graduate degree? I’m amazed by how many of the MBA students we teach have their undergrad degrees in “soft” majors, and yet they’re still able to get into a top business school. I think the mistake that Fabio is making in interpreting these numbers is assuming that these are terminal degrees and/or that future employers even care that much about what undergrad degree you have. – Brayden King in reply

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
AMERICAN EDUCATION: AT LEAST TWO CHEERS
EDUCATING THE GIFTED AND TALENTED IN CLEVELAND, OHIO
WHERE ALL THE CHILDREN ARE ABOVE AVERAGE

Education in America: at least two cheers

The greatest strength in the American system of education is that there is no system.  The pluralism of our society allows choices, options, and alternatives at every level.  The USA has more than 14,000 school districts (for primary and secondary education) and over 5,700 institutions of higher education (two-year and four-year colleges and universities).  These all serve 81 million client learners.  About 10% (5 million plus) attend private schools K-12.  Also, about 2 million are homeschooled. Peculiar to the USA, annually, about 65,000 unauthorized immigrants graduate from high school. 

We are a nation of autodidacts, self-taught learners.  Historically, most of the justices on the Supreme Court never went to law school and four of those sitting now hold bachelor degrees, not juris doctorates.  Perhaps we are best explained by the fact that Josiah Willard Gibbs earned a doctorate in engineering in 1863; Thomas Edison was home schooled; Nicola Tesla immigrated to the USA in 1884 after dropping out of university (twice).  In our time, while T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor earned his masters and doctorate from Stanford by inventing VMOS chip technology, it is famous that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs found college less rewarding. 

But no one complains much about American university education.  Most of the world’s best universities are here: 35 of the top 50 and 55 of the top 100, according to Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities (here).

The key is that our colleges all compete against each other: Harvard vs. Stanford vs. Ohio State vs. UCLA… Competition impels toward excellence.  And it allows diversity.  For over 100 years in America “academic freedom” came not so much from the First Amendment, but from the plethora of places to take your teaching.  That also applied to Europe, especially Germany, during the Middle Ages  and continuing until the rise of nationalism.  Once you alienated the king of France or England your goose and you were both cooked: “Play the man, Mr. Ridley and we shall this day by God’s grace light such a fire in England as shall never be extinguished.” 

Moreover, Americans seem to wake up in college: this is the real world, away from home.  As a result, according to Michigan State University's Jon Miller, Americans are slightly ahead of their European and Japanese colleagues in general scientific knowledge, though everyone has room for improvement. 

“A slightly higher proportion of American adults qualify as scientifically literate than European or Japanese adults, but the truth is that no major industrial nation in the world today has a sufficient number of scientifically literate adults,” he said. “We should take no pride in a finding that 70 percent of Americans cannot read and understand the science section of the New York Times.”

Approximately 28 percent of American adults currently qualify as scientifically literate, an increase from around 10 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, according to Miller's research. (Science Daily here.)

It is at the primary and secondary level that our pupils do poorly compared to others in the leading industrialized nations of Europe and Asia.  And there are no easy answers.  Those 14,000 school districts are government monopolies, but so are the schools of Finland.  Our teachers are typically union members, but so are others; and in some countries, they are civil servants.  Private schools may compete well (as in USA and Japan) or exist by permission of the state, or hardly exist at all.  Some nations (France, Germany, Japan) track children early and cull out those who are not college-bound.  Other nations (Singapore and the USA) educate all children.  In Singapore parents who allow their children to miss school are charged with a criminal offense.  Most of the leading nations are small, with unified cultures: the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia.  The USA ranks closer to Russia and India.  But the leader is still Singapore, a variegated society. 

Money correlates only weakly: you do have to spend something; but beyond a basic investment, throwing money at education achieves little. This is known internationally and applies to the G20 nations. (here)  For a parent, the most important thing you can do is simply to be involved.  This correlates  better than money or family status or neighborhood.  There is an old joke known to sales people about the two merchandisers assigned to a remote tropical village. One sent back the message that business was horrible because no one wears shoes. The other expected to sell out since no one yet had shoes. We all play the hand we are dealt. 

"Strong performers in PISA are those countries and economies that believe - and act on the belief - that all children can succeed in school. Among wealthier economies, those that prioritise the quality of teachers over smaller classes tend to show better performance. When it comes to money and education, the question isn’t how much? but rather for what?"  (OECD PISA here.)

Higher education does not guarantee economic development, progress, invention, or quality of life. In the USA, the areas with the highest percentage of people 25 years and over with a bachelor's degree are the District of Columbia, followed by Massachusetts, Maryland, Colorado, and Connecticut. Lack of higher education does correlate with diminished opportunities. The states with the lowest percentages are West Virginia, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Louisiana.

It may be wrong to look at states, when cities are the true generators of wealth (and learning). At least, that is the theory posited by the late Jane Jacobs, who educated herself with a wide range of classes at Columbia’s extension school while working as a stenographer in New York City.  Most of the cities with high educational percentages are college towns, of course. However, Seattle and San Francisco are among the complexes that draw highly educated producers. According to the Daily Beast, (here) the smartest cities are: Boston, Hartford, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham, Denver, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Washington DC, Rochester. The dumbest are: Las Vegas, San Antonio, Fresno, Houston, Memphis, Orlando, Tampa, Louisville, Miami, and Greensboro.  On the US DoE National Assessment of Educational Progress, of necessity, some states were above average, and others below.  And of course scores vary even greater by local school district.  But education does not necessarily bring prosperity.  San Antonio (among the lowest) enjoys an economy as strong as here in Austin (among the highest). 

Chief Justice John Roberts: LLB Harvard; JD Harvard
Justice Antonin Scalia: AB Georgetown; LLB Harvard
Justice Anthony Kennedy: BA Stanford; LLB Harvard
Justice Clarence Thomas: AB Holy Cross; JD Harvard
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: BA Cornell; LLB Yale
Justice Stephen Breyer: AB Stanford; BA Magdalen College, Oxford; LLB Harvard
Justice Samuel Alito: BA Princeton; JD Yale
Justice Sonia Sotomayor: BA Princeton; JD Yale
Justice Elena Kagan: ABPrinceton; MPhil Worcester College, Oxford; JD Harvard.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Another Cheer for American Education
Educating the Gifted and Talented in Cleveland, Ohio
Where all the Children are Above Average 

There Really are "Civil" Engineers

The Austin chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers partnered with the Greater Austin Contractors and Engineers Association to bring "Be an Engineer for a Day" to about 970 people who visited the Austin Children's Museum  from 10:00 AM to 2:30 PM on Saturday, February 18. 

The Austin Children's Museum always provides many interactions: gears, pulleys, wheels, blocks, bricks, pipes, sorting games, agility tests, a simulated dairy, a restaurant playset, and more.  A special area is set aside for toddlers.


The ASCE brought hands-on challenges to build a tower out of newspaper, a paper airplane and a paper helicopter, a balloon-powered car, building a bridge from spaghetti and marshmellows, and more.  Kids were given a hard hat and an agenda.  As they completed each challenge, they got a sticker on their agenda. A full set of completed projects earned each of them a special t-shirt for their work.

Most of the volunteers were professional civil engineers across the spectrum in seniority and specialty.  Many were members of the ASCE student section from UT.  Working engineers earned "Professional Development Hours" credits.  

Having worked at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum (2005-2006) and having served as vice president in the Daniel B. Jett student chapter of the ASCE at New Mexico State University (1978-1979),  I was stationed at the Paper Helicopters for the afternoon. They twist when they fall because the forces are unbalanced.  You can fold the body long or short, and give it long or short wings.  You can make the two wings different sizes.  For ballast, choose a large or small paperclip. The best results usually come from symmetry in the middle ranges. But you  can spend an hour making them all different ways and dropping them off a staircase.

Austin at Night

Downtown Austin is party central.  The police cordon off streets for the convenience of people walking among bars, restaurants, clubs, and hotels.  Sunday and Monday are pretty quiet.  By Tuesday enough people have recovered from the previous weekend.  Wednesday looks like the weekend in most other places.  Thursday is the warm-up for Friday. Friday night and Saturday night are what it's all about.

David Navarro plays the hackdrum
he bought custom made in Switzerland. 

The Chronicle is the weekly entertainment newspaper, about 60 pages of ads for things to do thinly wrapped in a few liberal editorial complaints about the state and local governments. (Some people just cannot get enough government intervention in their lives... or maybe they just prefer it be in someone else's life...)  The Onion is published here, also.  Once you get past the humor (and the only rational opinions hereabouts on current events), the regular columns and advertising are all about things to do: music, comedy, and theater (live and cinema). The two public broadcast radio stations do not compete.  KUT-FM from the University of Texas carries "Morning Edition" and all the rest sandwiched within hour after hour of original music and new standards.  Musicians come to the studio to play live.  KMFA-FM is all classical (Romantic, Baroque, etc.) and no political news at all: local concerts and recitals only.   "Composers Datebook" lets us glimpse into the present century, "reminding you that all music was once new."

"If I had a name, it would be Drummer."

The party is everywhere in downtown, though Sixth and Congress is pretty much ground zero.  Going east on Sixth, you find the younger crowd, university kids and locals.  Going west you have the older set. But generalizations fail in three square miles of anything you want.  And that's only north of the river.  Austin has much more all over; and if South by Southwest is not enough, there is "North by Northwest" an entertainment brewpub near Tech Ridge


Myself, except as I keep some downtown offices safe and secure, I would never see any of this.  When I moved here, I got a library card first and then a driver's license.  I joined the local Macintosh users group, and found Dragon's Lair bookstore for D&D gaming.  I also have lunch once a month with the Austin Tech Republicans who do very little impromptu music.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Around Austin
Stadtluft Macht Frei
South by Southwest 2013
Images from SXSW 2013
South by Southwest 2012

Valentine's Day: Love and Money

"Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy on life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. ... Love is our response to our highest values–and can be nothing else. …" Francisco d'Anconia to Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged.

Common image found all over the web,
likely from the ANS catalog

The gulf between love and money in our culture goes to the root and rock of who we are as a society ... now...  But there is no dichotomy between love and money. Both derive from the same source.  In the near future, when a significant minority of individuals expresses the unity of love and money, that will have changed.




A.N.A. MONEY TALKS Transcript No. 1400
ANCIENT HEARTSby Michael E. Marotta, first aired February 14, 1994

Look around . . . heart symbols are everywhere on Valentine's Day.
Maybe even on a coin.

The first heart symbols that appeared on ancient coins were produced 2500 years ago in North Africa.

The town of Cyrene was founded in the 7th century B.C. by Greeks. Their town was eventually destroyed, but it was near what today is the city of Benghazi, along the coast of Libya.

The city enjoyed modest prosperity . . . until its inhabitants discovered the silphium plant. (The plant is extinct now, but its closest living relative is a key ingredient in Worcestershire sauce.) Silphium was used as an herb. Its stalk was edible. Its pungent sap was the basis for cough syrups, and gave food an interesting flavor. But the most important use for silphium was as a contraceptive.

From The New York Sale XXV 5 January 2011 Lot number: 126
Ex J. P. Rosen coll. and ex Münzen und Medaillen AG,

Basel sale 72 (1987), 424

Modern research suggests that silphium actually worked, and because of this, it was in great demand. Attempts to cultivate it in Syria and Greece were unsuccessful. It only grew near Cyrene--and, starting in 500 B.C., it became a steady source of income for the townspeople. By Roman times, silphium had been harvested to extinction.

Over the centuries, the silphium plant came
 to symbolize Cyrene. The plant appeared on the town's gold, silver and bronze coins, starting around 500 B.C. Often the entire plant was shown. But sometimes, only the seeds of the plant were depicted. The silphium's seeds were heart-shaped, and those heart-shaped seeds that appeared on Cyrene's coins eventually came to symbolize love--a symbol that's still with us today.

 
"Ancient Hearts" is archived at the NumisSociety and Coin Talk websites.  Francisco d'Anconia's speech on "Sex and Morality" is transcribed and posted at "Sharing is Living."

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

To Make Money

Merry Newtonmas 2011

Merry Newtonmas 2012

Nerd Nation 4.5

Republican Rebels

The first tyrants were rebels: self-made men on the rise in the archaic Greek world 700-500 BCE.  They replaced kings just as the parallel invention of coinage replaced cows for money, and philosophy replaced religion, and published writing replaced public speaking.  Tyranny led inevitably to oligarchy and then to democracy.  In 514 BCE, at Athens, Aristogeiton and Harmodios assassinated the tyrant Hipparchos making way for the reforms of Kleisthenes in 508 that created democracy.  Since then, rebels have been republicans. 



Julius Caesar and King George III were both denounced as “tyrants” not “dictators.”  The dictator was a constitutional office in Rome, a leading citizen chosen to take command during a crisis.  The most famous was Cincinnatus, the farmer who returned to his plow after soldiering for the republic.  In his name veterans of the American Revolution founded the city on the Ohio River. 

In our time, the dictator came and went with fascism.  We have forgotten how popular fascism was to the Progressives of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries: it promised a unity of business, labor, arts, and sciences under the coordination of the government.  Even those who opposed it thought it would work. 



American Dime 1916-1945 displayed the fasces symbol of unity.
Right: German half-mark and American quarter of the 1930s.

The world suffered Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini; Atatürk, Franco, Metaxas, and Perón; and still others.  Major. Gen. Smedley D. Butler and Prescott S. Bush plotted a “Wall Street Coup” against the New Deal, itself a form of American fascism.  On March 21, 1933, the Michigan Legislature passed the McNitt-Green bill, granting Gov. William Comstock “dictatorial powers” (literally) over banks and then later over insurance companies.  Gov. Comstock had the good sense to turn them down, but it was emblematic of the times.  The democratic republic was considered dead as civilization was submerged under nationalism and socialism. 

Today, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are nearly indistinguishable as President Obama continues the domestic and foreign policies of the former Bush administration.  Where now are the republican rebels? 

Perhaps resistance comes not from different politics but from abandoning political power entirely.  By its nature, it allows no plurality: once we vote - or the decision is made for us - there is no minority choice. 

In the marketplace, your preference does not prevent your neighbor's equal right to any other decision -- or none at all.  I have never seen a Super Bowl, even though over 100 million Americans enjoyed the previous one.

We all have the same President.  Only one Congressman serves my district.  One school board argues with itself and the public over what children should learn -- and are failing to learn.  Here in Austin, a 1% city sales tax provides the only bus system.  "Political choice" is a contradiction in terms.  If there is a "res publica" a "public thing" it is the agora, the marketplace, where all choices are supported -- and where None-of-the-Above is always your right. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Unlimited Constitutional Government
Contradictions in the Constitution
Debt: the Seed of Civilization
Entrepreneurship

An Objective Foundation for Government

Ayn Rand’s famous essay “The Nature of Government” in The Virtue of Selfishness seems to appeal to almost everyone, right and left.  Whether or not we want the government to do more, we all accept that it must at least provide an army, police forces, and courts of law.  To sociologists, any government that cannot achieve these is called a failed state.  The problem may be more complicated…

Ayn Rand did not invent this theory.  She took it almost literally from German sociologist Max Weber’s 1919 essay “Politics as a Vocation” (Politik als Beruf), originally an address to the Free Students at Munich University. 

“Sociologically, the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends. There is scarcely any task that some political association has not taken in hand … Ultimately, one can define the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar to it, as to every political association, namely, the use of physical force.  …

Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that 'territory' is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the 'right' to use violence.”  (C. Wright Mills translation)

This specific formulation did not come from John Stuart Mill or John Locke or even Aristotle.  For Aristotle, government was a natural consequence of the state as a union of families.  As such, it cannot have the form of rule limited to one family, to that of the master or head of household.  For Locke, we invoke a social contract in which the pursuit of those who violate our property is the work of the state by a division of labor.  Moreover, for Locke, the courts were not a branch of government.  In The Second Treatise, the three functions of government are given as diplomatic, legislative, and executive.  Courts of law derive from the community; and in England, they were a bulwark against the government: the king’s men had to come before a court and apply for a warrant.  For John Stuart Mill (On Liberty, 1869) government’s role was to prevent harm, which is not necessarily the same thing as preventing crime. 

Weber’s essay reflected the structural and functional methods of sociology, consonant with the positivist tradition of objective description, rather than subjective prescription.  However, modern Objectivists insist that fact and value are inseparable.  Therefore, the justification for government must proceed from observations that are abstracted into an explanatory theory which is then tested (and hopefully supported) by other facts.  

Ayn Rand asserted that capitalism requires objective law.  By “objective” she did not mean good, only consistent.  She pointed out – cogently – that dictatorship is not really iron rule, but caprice: the whim of the bureaucrat.  Capitalism requires property rights.  Hernando de Soto has shown how the trillions of dollars of value owned by the poor is lost for the want of such rights in the so-called “under-developed” nations.  

Beyond those observations, little has been achieved to develop a theory of government that is consistent with objective fact and value.  It may be that all that is required is a legislature, meeting infrequently of course, to review the statutes.  Courts and police can come from other sectors of the economy.  

Rand also asserted that only voluntary funding can be moral: taxation is theft.  It may be then that granted voluntary funding and market solutions for adjudication and protection, the primary purpose of government would be social welfare in the Rawlsian sense: a “floor” under every citizen to ensure against the involuntary want of basic needs.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
UNLIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF UNLIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

Teaching Ethics to Student Engineers

Ayn Rand observed that for most people, “integrity” is not putting your hand in your neighbor’s pocket, when, in truth, integrity is having no conflicts between your morals and your ethics, between the ideal and the practical, between what is and what you want.  Rand’s Objectivist ethics derive from a primary consideration of human nature.  Plants and animals do not choose, therefore for them, morality cannot exist.  For us, every choice, by definition, is a moral choice.  Rand identified the fact that in building a bridge, every girder is designed in answer to one question: Right or wrong? 

Every teacher knows – contrary to the claims of political commentators left and right – that there is no way to open a student’s head and pour in the answers.  The door to learning swings from the inside.  Ideally, any book on ethics for engineers would be written from the rational-empirical (objectivist) foundation of the scientific method.  The reality of university learning requires that we admit to the existence (if not the validity) of pragmatism, contractarian ethics, deonotology, existentialism, and other limited and limiting offerings.  Students come to the classroom with these assumptions – and others: many kinds of Christian interpretation are common in the English-speaking world.  Generally, we use these formal structures to defend the opinions we bring to the classroom, and take out into the working world. 

When I was in the 9^th grade, our civics class had a debate on capital punishment.  Two of the class were girls from the same Pentecostal church.  They took opposite sides.  Forty-five years later, I took both sides of that debate for a criminal justice class.  While I believe that objectivism offers a better set of tools for analysis, I have to admit that no system can resolve all the conflicts, or even state all the questions, unambiguously.  Ethics is harder than mathematics.

On that basis, 4Es: Ethics, Engineering, Economics & Environment by John St. J. S. Buckeridge (Annandale NSW: The Federation Press, 2011) is a convenient platform for delivering the opportunity to bring students in science, engineering, and technology to the task of asking the right questions about professional ethics.  The book is essentially an outline, 128 pages in all, that opens the door to the lectures, papers read and written, and discussions engaged. 

Because morality is choice, ethics is all about problems.  How do we identify and reconcile competing interests or conflicts of interest?  What consequences will follow? Which of them is important?  To what degree is each relevant? This book begins with ethical problems common to the news.  After a brief discussion of morals, ethics, values, and profession, the first chapter offers case examples of moral and ethical conflicts.  Among them are the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Marsupial Mouse, the rights of indigenous peoples, and the debate over fur and leather garments.  Chapter 2 begins the formal investigation of theories of morality and ethics: Aristotle’s virtue ethics; egoism, John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, and John Rawls’ contractarian theory; deontology; and existentialism.  Chapters 3 and 4 return to the problems.  Examples such as the new mandates for fluorescent lamps are from the recent news, though others such as the fishing of common waters have been continuing for generations.   Most important are the cases of Andrew Wakefield, Peter Davis, and Vishwar J. Gupta involving research misconduct, conflict of interest, and research fraud, across national borders and within national politics.

While intended for upper division university students, the book could easily serve a high school class.  The writing is clear and direct.  The problems are timely.  The treatment can serve an important purpose in providing a foundation for the same investigations later at university and at work.

From my point of view, it would have been better to provide an authoritative source for the section on egoism, just as Mill, Rawls, Kant, and Heidegger were cited in the other presentations. 

The book came to my attention because the author relied on a vignette I wrote about the Athenian “owl” tetradrachma, “Of Owls, Wooden Walls, and Flower Girls.”  Buckeridge uses the reverse of the coin (the owl side) with his own inscription EOS standing for both the Earth and Oceanic Systems Research Group at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and, of course for the Greek word for “dawn.”

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Gregory M. Browne's Necessary Factual Truths
More on Necessary Factual Truths
David Harriman's Logical Leap
David Harriman's Logical Leap Almost Makes It
The Sokal Affair
Reflections on the Sokal Affair
Misconduct in Scientific Research

Junk Criminology as Pseudo-Science

Choose Your Virtues

Virtue is contextual. It is easy to claim that honesty is the best policy.  That would contradict the fact that no dress ever made any woman look fat.  

Jane Jacobs compared and contrasted the Commercial and Guardian modes of survival.  The Guardian is the traditional one, common also to animal packs.  The Commercial was invented with cities.  Both, however, ignore the moral context.  Guardians may be good guys or bad.  Commerical enterprises can be benefactors or swindlers.  For Jacobs, the key consideration was that these arrays were syndromes. Literally, they run together to define a complex system. 

Deirdre McCloskey contrasted bourgeois virtues against those of the aristocrat and peasant.  But it can be a challenge to cull wit from jocularity from humor.  McCloskey's goal was not to elevate the middle class merchant above the aristocrat and peasant.  Rather, she sought only an open dialectic space in which trustworthiness, thrift, and integrity are recognized as being hallmarks of the entrepreneur and the sales clerk.  It is who we are today.

TWO CATALOGS OF VIRTUES
From Jane Jacobs' Systems of Survival: Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics.

From "The Bourgeois Virtues" (1994) by Deirdre McCloskey.

















"The point is not to elevate bourgeois virtue over the others in some universal sense. The point is to sidestep universal senses. In some personal and social circumstances, courage is a virtue. ... So is humility.....  But when the class left out by the virtue-talk is half the population, on its way to all the population, the vocabulary of the virtues is not doing its job." -- McCloskey

LIBERTARIANS AND RACISM

Ayn Rand's essay on “Racism” in The Virtue of Selfishness was unequivocal: racism is the crudest form of collectivism. 

Anyone who discriminates among individuals on the basis of anything other than moral character should be shunned.  Ancestry is irrelevant.  Yet libertarians broadly excuse racial discrimination as your right.  It may well be for a libertarian.  To the libertarians, you have a perfect right to use heroin, work as a prostitute, and join a Wiccan collective.  So, for them, racism is just one more silly thing that people do.  They defend it on those grounds.  Objectivists think differently.  For them, rational individualism begins with the law of identity: A is A.  From that absolute, they derive ethics and politics.  

Thus, for an Objectivist, racism is irrational and therefore immoral. 

Being immoral racism is anti-life, by definition.  Seldom will you find any self-identified Objectivist defending the irrational as your political right except, perhaps, as a marginalized counter-example.  By the same standard, you have a political right to attend religious services; but Objectivists are atheists, so for them, the question is moot.

However, racialist ideology permeates the entire conservative-libertarian-objectivist spectrum.  Among Objectivists many do argue well against it.  Nonetheless, the existence of racialists among them cannot be denied.  On the Objectivist discussion board Rebirth of Reason, racist “Brad Trun” posted his “libertarian realist” ideas.  He was relegated to the Dissent forum because his posts directly contradicted Ayn Rand on Racism.  The ensuing discussions revealed racialist ideas among several of the strong and regular posters. 

It gets so complicated so quickly ...

On the Rebirth of Reason site, Objectivist Steve Wolfer offered peer-reviewed publications from mainstream anthropology in support of his claims that races exist.  Wolfer was firm – even adamant – that race is not a moral status.  Good people and bad come from all such groups, however defined.  Still, he accepted the existence of races.  He is not alone.  The US Government insists that I must choose a race, though they recently allowed me to select “Two or more” which I do, as I deny the existence of race, except as a social construct among the uneducated.

Remaining uneducated may be your right to a libertarian.  Majoring in criminology, I took many sociology classes, including “Race and Ethnic Relations” (SOC 205) at Washtenaw Community College.  It was interesting.  In the first or second class, one young woman said to a fellow student, “I do not see you as a Black man, but as a person.”  Replied the man with the dreadlocks: “If you do not see me as a Black man, I am insulted.”  We all have a right to self-identification … and a right to worship the moon and do our financial bookkeeping in Roman numerals…  An Objectivist sees the situation differently.

Addendum January 29, 2012
This page has received an inordinate visibility and therefore I want to clarify, if possible, that my classmate with the great hair was only uneducated about race.  We were, after all, in the same class and therefore equally educated.  He chose to identify with his African, not European, forebears.  As a numismatist, I confess that I found the Greeks and Cartheginians of Sicily interesting; and I collected a set of coins from the Hungarian Malcontents Revolt.  Call it ancestor worship; it is not rational.  So, I get the hair. And he had at least one good story:  Visiting Nigeria, people stopped him on the street and gave him money because they thought that he was a holy man; whereas in Detroit, the police on patrol, pulled over and demanded to see his identification papers. It was a cogent point from an insightful campus peer -- and all the more reason for us all to abandon the social construct of race.

Ayn Rand’s essay “Racism” by LibertyPen “C. M. Herdert” narrator here

and a different presenter here

And another speaker here

Printed format excerpts from  “Racism” by Ayn Rand here

“Money dissolves skin colour on contact. The fact that Silicon Valley, the freest market in the world, has produced the United Colours of Geek proves it.”—Dan Gardner.

Most Popular Necessary Facts

According to the Stats provided by Google, these were the most popular pages in 2011.

• Firefly: Fact and Value Aboard "Serenity"- June 5, 2011 -164 Pageviews
• ...that goddam Ayn Rand book...- October 9, 2011 -103 Pageviews
• Nerd Nation: Natalie Portman, Danica McKellar, and Felicia Day - July 2, 2011 - 96 Pageviews
• Unlimited Constitutional Government - January 17, 2011 - 95 Pageviews
• Karl Marx and the Dustbin of History - April 25, 2011 - 84 Pageviews
• Junk Criminology as Pseudo-Science - June 16, 2011 - 72 Pageviews
• The Roots of Poverty - September 17, 2011, - 71 Pageviews
• Capitalist Culture - May 29, 2011 - 71 Pageviews
• Austin Science and Engineering Festival - November 7, 2011 - 55 Pageviews
• MerryNewtonmas! - December 12, 2011 - 54 Pageviews

Readers came from these geographies:

• UnitedStates 4,060
• Russia 310
• Germany 242
• France 196
• United Kingdom 191
• Canada 155
• Brazil 135
• Ukraine 115
• Latvia 94
• Netherlands 60

 I am surprised by the traffic from Russia. A website there, Domar, seems to be some kind of portal to here.  I never go there.  I never go to Russian or Chinese websites. Ever.  But I am happy to have the readers.  I trust that they are enjoying the experience.  I wonder what it is about Firefly and Serenity for them, because other statistics indicate that that one blog entry is the most popular driver for the Russians.

What (if Anything) Did Dorothy Learn?

One of our favorite morality plays ends with a vacuous non-sequitur.

At the end of the 1939 movie version of The Wizard of Oz, Glinda the Good Witch says that Dorothy could have gone home any time, but she had to learn that for herself.  Scarecrow asks Dorothy what she learned.  She replies:  

"Well... I think that it ... That it wasn't enough just to want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em.  And it's that if  I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any farther than my own back yard because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with."

 Clearly, what begins as a cliche ends as a contradiction.

In addition to Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf, 15 more writers contributed to the script.  Bert Lahr improvised some dialog; and Ogden Nash also wrote.  This scene is not in the original L. Frank Baum story.  There, having recovered the one silver slipper taken by the Wicked Witch, Dorothy flies home instantly, but drops both silver slippers over the desert.  Historians, economists and numismatists have read much into this yarn, calling it an allegory for the political campaigns of William Jennings Bryan and the question of "free silver" versus a gold standard.  

Be all that as it may, in the context of the film, Dorothy could have encapsulated her experiences in many ways.  She learned that anything truly important is worth overcoming obstacles to achieve.  She learned that while some people are wicked, very many more are not.  Certainly, on the eve of a great war that was obviously about to break out, she learned that small, apparently weak, and seemingly helpless people can defeat evil, if they work together.  She learned that the servants of wicked people are happy to throw off their oppressor. She learned that our limitations are often of our own making: Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Man each already possessed what they sought.  The first thing she learned was that not all witches are ugly.  

Why did 18 screen writers fail?  It is easy to cite cliches about too many cooks and the committee that designed the horse.  Such folk wisdoms endure because they are so often right.  It is possible that the producers, Mervyn LeRoy and Arthur Freed, feared that any strong statement would ruin the mood of an unintellectual fairy tale.  Speculation may be fruitless.  The fact remains that as a closing statement, Dorothy's summation is best heard once rather than being read closely.

Addendum
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been variously reinterpreted, often by historians, economists and numismatists.   Does Scarecrow represent the Farmer, while Tin Man stands for the industrial worker?  See The Wizard of Oz under Numismatics on WashtenawJustice here.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
The Wizard of Oz and the Anti-Intellectual Tradition 
The Philosophical Breakfast Club 
The Scientific Method 
Scorpio and the Precession of the Equinox 
Do You Know Your Military?
"Soldier's Heart" by Elizabeth Samet

The Origin of ... (What?)

Fertile hybrids demonstrate the limitations of strict Darwinian taxonomy.  According to the easy definitions, a species is a genetically distinct group of plants or animals.  In fact, fertile hybrids are common. And they seem fundamental to evolution.

Dozens of Hybrid Sharks Found Off Australia
January 2nd, 2012 - 10:59 AM ET
The world's first hybrid sharks have been discovered in substantial numbers off the coast of Australia, and scientists say it may be an indication the creatures are adapting to climate change.
Australian researchers say they've found 57 animals that are a cross between the Australian blacktip shark and the common blacktip shark, two closely related but genetically distinct species.  (More here.)

Since 1874, at Halle, a series of successful matings of polar bears and brown bears were made. Some of the hybrid offspring were exhibited by the London Zoological Society. The Halle hybrid bears proved to be fertile, both with one of the parent species and with one another. Polar bear/Brown bear hybrids are white at birth but later turn blue-brown or yellow-white.   DNA studies indicate that some brown bears are more closely related to polar bears than they are to other brown bears. All the Ursinae species (i.e., all bears except the giant panda and the spectacled bear) appear able to crossbreed. (Wikipedia on Ursid hybrids here.)

Granting that hybrids are possible between species of the same genus, such as donkeys and horses, it is too easy to expect them all to be "mules", i.e., sterile.  Macroevolution.net is a blog by biologist Eugene M. McCarthy, PhD.  His site includes biographies of biologists, helpful glossaries of Greek and Latin for science, and much more.  He also provides an authoritative explanation of the prevalence of fertile animal hybrids.  Read here.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life
Epigenetics
Disruptive Diagnostics and the Business of Science
Austin Biobash November 2012
Bob Swanson and Genentech
Mayim Bialik