Perhaps a Title IX system which guards equally against anti-White bigotry and the loss of Black agency through inculcated Victimhood is a better solution…
This short essay arose as a result of a thoughtful essay by Michael Shermer in Quillette.
The campaign to ban Critical Race Theory and other ‘woke’ dogmas channels the same illiberal spirit that conservatives claim to oppose. (from the article).
A good article, and one which I largely agree with. Generally, we shouldn't censor ideas or curtail academic freedom. Of course, there are egregious exceptions. I watched one impassioned father telling other parents not to politicise parental concerns over books in school libraries. His point wasn't that he had a problem with a book in the library with the title 'How to be Gay'. His argument was that if there was a book called 'How to be Straight', which advised his twelve year old daughter how to sign up to adult dating apps and sleep with some twenty-six year old man, he would have had a similar problem.
I can't help thinking that the answer might be some version of Title IX for kids and students more generally. Surely white kids have as much of a right not to be slandered by teachers espousing anti-White bigotry as Black kids have not to be exposed to the agency-sapping cult of Victimhood which undermines their chances of joining the middle classes by about 8% in later life.
Besides, other than marginally increasing representation in the top 10% of the socio-economic spectrum it doesn't work. Otherwise, the Blue Strongholds in America would be experiencing better outcomes for marginalised groups. They are not. In K-12 education it's producing somewhat worse outcomes, no doubt because of the distraction of fringe ideas in education. In housing, America is witnessing something of a reversal of the Great Migration, as Black families seek out the jobs and cheaper housing caused by the Right's more libertarian take on zoning and taxes.
Plus, although the Left is largely right about structural racism (although they should have chosen a more appropriate label for it), they are almost completely wrong in assuming it must be caused by racism and implicit bias. There were many things which contributed to the dissolution of the Black family, but by far the greatest cause was deindustrialisation. Quite apart from sabotaging the natural hypergamy which leads to stable family formation, by robbing blue collar Black men of their livelihoods and chances of making a family work, it created the legacy of worse outcomes which stem from an absence of fathers in a community, as well as the primary engine of social mobility.
Dr Raj Chetty's research on social mobility is quite clear in this area- productive fathers at the community level are even more important than the quality of education in K-12. Where conservatives have always gone wrong is in assuming that the individual dynamics of personal responsibility can be applied at the community level. The Opioid epidemic, with its plague of overdoses and older male suicides, has laid waste to socially conservative White communities just as thoroughly as it did to Black communities through deindustrialisation only a few generations ago.
Labour is a Basic Need, especially for Blue Collar men. It's why America could stand to be fairly Laissez-Faire in most aspects of immigration, if only it insisted that the higher status and better paid blue collar jobs- those of trade professionals, construction workers, etc- were the exclusive purview of birthright citizens. The tighter labour markets which would doubtless ensue, might not only lead to higher wages, but also help with issues like holiday entitlements and worker safety, hopefully avoiding the types of corporate malfeasance so recently seen with the Ohio toxic train disaster. After all, the Nordic states seem able to operate political systems which are both more free market than America, friendlier to capital (no inheritance tax in Sweden) and yet also possess stronger worker protections.
But here is an even deeper problem with the implicit bias/racism theory of structural racism. Studies have shown that discrimination in hiring is strongest in customer facing roles. This means mostly the service sector, which in turn means that the manager/s involved are more likely to be women and more likely to Left-leaning liberals. Added to this natural skew, service sector work is mostly in cities, which tend overall to be Blue Strongholds which vote Democrat. The stereotypical staunchest practitioner of implicit bias or racism through discrimination is a middle manager and white women in her thirties or forties who still hasn’t gotten over Hillary.
A couple of things are probably going on. She probably drastically overestimates the percentage of her customer base who care whether their server is Black. The best stats suggest 5% to 10% of Americans are still racist enough to matter, and two-thirds of them are over 65. What’s worse is that our stereotypical white liberal woman is probably publicly virtue signalling on race, whilst acting cynically and in her own self-interest when it comes to her own career- being racist, by drastically overestimating racism in others.
The other problem is the soft bigotry of low expectations stemming from fears over cultural erasure. Most White kids have their speech corrected in order to equip them with the basic unaccented corporate English which is so necessary to service the increasingly non-Western rich found as customers in the better paid service sector. Do Black kids get the same access to corporate English, or do progressive teachers quake at the mere thought of telling a Black kid their speech patterns, mannerisms and pronunciation might need to temporarily modified when commercial opportunity knocks? The White British seem to be able to maintain their rich tapestry of regional dialects and local cultures without cultural erasure. Are White teachers simply too culturally sensitive for minority kids own good? We shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but we do- as do our customers- and this might be creating a structural barrier to opportunity which most liberals and progressives would be loathe to acknowledge.
Perhaps a Title IX system in which both White students subject to anti-White bigotry and Black students made to feel as though they are victims robbed of all agency can anonymously complain specifically on the grounds of their treatment might be better- especially if it was a corrective, rather than punitive system. Besides, it's not as though White Guilt and the need for White Atonement have worked well for Black America in the past. Notwithstanding the Rights Revolution and equality under the law, 70% of Black Americans have joined the middle class not because of government, but despite it.
I don't think the white teachers are too culturally sensitive for minority kids. They are terrified of being called racist and kicked out of their morally superior tribe. Who are these elite white women who are the self-anointed saviors of the black people? Who are the people perpetuating the fallacy that black people need these impostors to receive agency in their lives? Ask any of these saviors to go live in the inner-city and walk what they talk they'll look at you like you've lost your mind. Because virtue singling is easy when you're sitting in your suburban enclaves.
Sure, it's just a matter of whether the motivating factor is the 'you poor dear' mentality of going easy on someone just because of their circumstances, or whether it's sheer terror. Both exist. It varies. I've come across both types. The younger ones tend to want to teach 'empathy' to the neglect of Maths, and the older ones are terrified of losing their pensions.
It also doesn't help that the Obama Admin introduced a mandate which basically enforced separate standards of education, in disciplinary terms- even though family status, neighbourhood and fatherlessness all dictate that some groups will have worse discipline than others. Plus, it's disastrous for Black kids- even moderately disrupted classrooms equate to two years worth of lost education by the end of K-12.
Trump rescinded the mandate, Biden reinstated it. It's worth noting that changes in London have resulted in Black British kids drawing equal in exams at 16 (because of the high percentage of the UK's Black population living in London). There are a host of other factors, but every single exceptional school I've looked at in London has a strong disciplinary approach at the core of its successes.
Here is a story about Brampton Manor Academy from a local newspaper- the Newham Recorder. For the last three of or so years, they've outperformed Eton, purely on merit. Upper middle classes notions about discipline 'killing creativity' have a lot to answer for...
Totally agree. Kids need structure and discipline in their lives, as that article points out. The policy Obama instituted made no sense and still doesn't. He wanted to stop the so called school to prison pipeline. Not holding people responsible for their behavior makes them worse not better.
The best way to deal with the real problem kids (those who are violent) is to expel them into one-to-one programs where their educational needs are met, but they undertake things like boxing with life coaches. This may seem like an inordinate expense, but with a significant chance of reducing them being locked up for at least 15 years, at a cost to the taxpayer of roughly 50K a year- plus all the other costs- it actually works out as a net gain for the taxpayer.
Keeping violet kids in school is the worst possible outcome- entire classes can lose up to a year's worth of education, depending upon the age at which the problems manifest- and this is before we consider the lost future earning potential of everybody else in the class.
Really, Geary? It's not that we have too much unaccountable bureaucracy in the US, it's that it's not the right kind?
"Perhaps a Title IX system in which both White students subject to anti-White bigotry and Black students made to feel as though they are victims robbed of all agency can anonymously complain specifically on the grounds of their treatment might be better- especially if it was a corrective, rather than punitive system."
Anonymous complaints? My God, this is so off the mark that I kind of can't believe you wrote it. We have laws here based on Due Process. That the powers that be have jettisoned a fundamental principle of our society to further their partisan aims ought to be very clear to anyone paying attention: January 6; COVID mandates; racial bigotry baked into hiring practices.
This may be a well intentioned thought exercise, but it is dangerous and uniquely un-American. The particulars of Ron DeSantis' educational motivations can and should be debated at a local level.
OK, you've got me on the anonymous complaints issue- it doesn't work in terms of due process. With the rest, I suppose with me, it's a little like Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football- even though I'm a 'liberal mugged by reality', I can't help myself when it comes to proposing policy solutions...
The thing is- a purely legislative approach won't work. I'm just looking for solutions which might.
Don't get me wrong, generally, Charters and School Choice are good ideas, but on this particular issue, they won't be the panacea the libertarians hope- for the simple reason that most parents lack the knowledge to make informed choices about their kid's education. Most don't even know to look for class layout, and pick a school in which the desks all face the teacher...
Nice to see you back. Here we are going to have a big fight.
The academia people, politicians, the Hollywood people, and all these people are in my most humble opinion, they need to go and start working in a factory from a blue collar/technician/ middle management/clerk perspective. Without being attractive/pretty, and starting there, after being some 5 years working there they can come back and tell us what they think about
1) who we call "the right" (conservative, liberals, neo-liberals, etc.), and who is the "actual right"
2) who we call "the left" (same as above) and who is the "actual left"
Because in my opinion all these people that you have mentioned are for the most part a few privileged that live in a bubble with little idea of the actual world, with zero or nil accountability for their studies and theories. Then they are ready of defining how other people should work or live, but pay attention "do what I say, not what I do".
Then why there are so much prevalent, well because when there is a group of minorities the most ruthless and violent imposes itself.
I would recommend a chapter of the book "the end of work" in which explains why the black people in USA have issues to progress. The country i come from, Spain, we have two regions that have a lot of subsides, where declaring some 35 days of work in a year you get a monthly subside for the whole year. You can now imagine the cunning ways to "declare" 35 days. This has been going on since the 1980's, result these two regions are the poorest and more backwards in Spain, they have very little or no industry, legions of public servants, the highest unemployment and they have to bring immigrants to do many of the agricultural work and the work in the hospitality industry. That will not change because the politicians buy the votes keeping that scheme.
I made an MBA from a university in UK located in Cambridge. On the subject of human resources, my assignment was the case of the Neo-Taylorism being applied in multinationals of the automotive, i knew about it, i had worked for long in one of them. The Assignment did not place the company in a bad view, but that it had some effects (positive and negative), and the strategy matched the company overall strategy. Well i did not get a very good mark, and the reason was, that "talking about neo-taylorism" is not "nice", and was out of the narrative that is being pushed. Should i have made the assignment about a "nice subject" and arrived to meaningless conclusions "inside the narrative" my mark would have been much better, even if the assignment would have been useless as a working document. So if you want to defend these lecturers and their work, we are going to "have fun".
They support these ideas, either because they are very short sighted (a big chunk of them) or because they believe that they will not apply to them (they would escape), and follow the tide for their benefit.
Ask yourself a question, how many, from these guilds will be happy of being associated with Greta, or with the EU politicians (that change parliament every month but we are the kings of the green agenda).
Best regards from the center of the Mediterranean, my bets of last year for some beers still stand.
I read Polly's paper on Taylorism and Neo-Taylorism. It's been a while since I've looked at Taylor, but what a surprise that academics would imagine the very approach they use in their work must be beneficial. The market proves otherwise- most dynamic growth is driven by a ground-up philosophy.
Here's an interesting little stat for you- years ago, the British Standards Institute did some research comparing companies which offered proportional pay (mainly piece rates) with 'managed systems'. The piece rates outperformed the managed approach by 50% across industries- in other words, incentives are a powerful thing.
Manager's loathe this stat. It makes their work seem redundant, but it has to be added that there is wide degree of variation in quality of managers, especially when it comes to fire-fighting problems. That's one of the things I learned in manufacturing. I have mates who think I was just a computer admin- I wouldn't have got a Compromise Agreement and very generous compensation, if my skills weren't highly saleable to competitors...
I liked the structural work- incremental changes to systems to improve things. I did some work on sub-assemblies and equipped the progress chasers with up to date tracking data reports, but I huge amount of time was spent on fire-fighting problems. We also had a supply system which was more 'just in case', rather than 'just in time'. I did some work on that at well, with my mate Lee, the National Purchasing Development Manager. I take the view that stock lists which move to zero, should be balanced by a certain amount of buffer stock.
A lot of our current problems are down to the ignorance of finance. A few years before I joined Anglian, their share price was worth only twice the annual profits. The reason? The City of London were devaluing any shares for companies which weren't offshoring. They simply didn't understand that the nature of PVC windows and doors is such that huge problems would result from offshoring.
There is also the issue of Private Equity Firms. Years ago, they tended to create more value, but a lot of their profits these days are down to clever financial trickery, and often the assumption of company debt to pay off investors.
I was on a course of "influential Dialogue", i have not idea why my company sent me to that training.
The lecturer started criticizing the incentives pay, i explained that i had seen otherwise on operator level. Long story short the pay incentives were very successful for operations where the reward is directly linked with the output, and finally the lecturer conceded that on the other operations a reward will be expected even if it is delayed.
But his starting was like "going for the carrot", "chasing the money" was a "low level approach", we should aim inside ourselves for excellence, improving .......", the narrative being pushed everywhere.
Pay isn't the only thing, but it does matter a hell of a lot. I think one of the reasons why managers don't like piece rates or incentives, is because it conflicts with the personal ambitions. They all get caught up in that one magical project which is going to change everything- the golden cap. ex.- and know that anything which is going to massively improve efficiency is going to lead to job losses.
They see the incentives as being nullified by the adversities introduced along their path to leading a company- in others words, wasted. The problem is it's very rarely that such plans come to fruition.
The guy who founded Anglian was on the local radio at the time I was there. Apparently, one of the line workers had either spoken to him, or to the media... His view was that he was extremely happy when the blokes were owning loads of money, because it meant that he was making loads of money as well.
Plus, I wouldn't underestimate the role finance plays in setting agendas. At the ned of the day, the key performance indicator for senior management in any publicly listed company is share price- and from the directors down, the pressure will be on to generate press which attracts investors. My label printer guy told me of a company where the cost recovery of the project was over 30 years, easily. The reason for the investment- because it looked good in the press and was likely to bump the share price...
One of the things I loved doing at the credit union was initiate sales incentive programs. I witnessed the tellers suddenly remembering products they couldnt give a fig about mentioning prior to the program. Because it translated to significant extra $$$. But the CEO was worried about the optics and culled it. On one hand they wanted growth, but almost universally kaiboshed programs like that.
I was a sales executive for a while- we used to get a free bottle of wine if we hit over a certain PM target (wine was classified as a wasting product at the time in the UK, and as such was a tax loophole).
I also had a similar experience to yours in relation to a 'Bright Ideas' scheme. First they made me a co-ordinator to save money (because I was involved my Ideas were suddenly free). Then they claimed that ordinary workers should put their ideas forward for free, because continuous employment was part of their job. Sure, it might be true if you're a manager or a supervisor, but certainly not if you are an ordinary worker. Bright Ideas suddenly dropped to nil...
As an engineer in the automotive i had a slightly "above the average salary" (very much bench-marked by the HR department, the minimum amount needed for you to find it difficult to make a move in the same geographical region), but then there were no incentives "because this is the work of an engineer, you should be proud of you work, etc", bonus were random and sparse (never happened even if we were highly praised). Then i learnt that our manager was given an amount a year as bonus for the department to distribute at his discretion, "because it is the manager that makes the subordinates to produce output", no engineer saw a dime of that bonus, the turnover of engineers was very high, HR "did not have a clue why people were leaving, and most of them in a bad note.
Promotion occurred to those proving submission, if you were good in your job, you were stuck there, the company needed your output (immediate profit), not your growth (bigger profit delayed). Further to that the "peter´s principle" is a book that should be compulsory reading after you have been working for 5 years.
on Taylorism/Neo-Taylorism so I could understand your post and points, and in so doing recognized the financial industry, specifically the banks, that I have worked at as being paragons of neo-taylorism despite saying they are temples of 'continuous improvement'. Some smaller firms you might be able to 'continuously improve' but if you have to deal with a mega-sized ops department and a bunch of change averse tellers, good fukin luck. Work towards getting awards even if only for marketing/pr and not improving customer experience in the slightest, and CEOs determined to achieve the icons of progress even as they drive the org backwards. If profs are not teaching kids about this, they are ill equpped to recognize it in the real world. Because it's there.
Great source! On the subject of large corporations, did you know that one of the interesting aspects of the Pareto Distribution is that if you square root to number of employees, those people create half the value? So, in a company with a hundred people, ten create half the value. In a corporation with 10,000 people, 100 create half the value...
Nowadays, they combine Taylor´s ideas with continuous improvement, so you get lessons learnt that from implicit comes explicit (property of the company), you do not learn (learning requires thinking and reflect and the company does not pay you for that), just avoid errors so you are more productive in the shortest time frame. Not just applied to operators but to engineers as well.
In my opinion, back in the times of Taylor & Ford growing up by promotion surely was more accessible and cases of people starting at lowest level and making it to a good positions were more frequent. Nowadays i see that difficult.
Interesting you don’t provide a critique of the DeSantis position on education.
Given the heavy handed approach to indoctrination taken by academia, I’m not sure there is a velvet glove alternative to combatting the poisonous situation you identify.
It's a fair point, but the problem is that educational subject matter is so broad, it's impossible to prevent the ideology seeping in somehow. In this case, the current legislative approach is a sieve. There's been some justified criticisms of a children's rights approach- because it borders on Free Speech issues- but at the risk of engaging in special pleading I think children have a right not to be exposed to content that makes them feel guilty for things they took no part, just as Black kids shouldn't be exposed to content which robs them of agency (after all, only the rare few can receive any benefit at all from activism, or politics once the rights revolution had run its course).
A successful society has a central ethic bounded by reasonable and well understood margins. Without the central unifying doctrine the society can only spin out of control until the central is held by violence or the threat of violence. Florida is attempting to restore a reasonable center without the violence. The natural tendency of society is toward deviancy so we shall see.
Sure, in the West we've lost this shared and common narrative, the belief that our societies are basically good and making some form of progress. The problem is that the Left doesn't seem to understand that the 'Moral Arc of History' probably only exists because we believe in it.
They take too much for granted and simply don't realise that many of things which make the West special are by no means human universals.
I would suggest that the success of the West was grounded in the belief in a creator God who had provided insight into how people could best form healthy society, among other things. The recognition that mankind is a moral creature, capable of making right decisions is the basis of freedom. The recognition that mankind is corrupt and prone to deliberately make wrong decisions is the basis of government.
Our current thinking rejects all that and, as predicted, pursues power for the sake of power under the guise of perfecting society. The two worldviews are incompatible.
This is clear in the earliest pages of the Hebrew Bible as well as the throughout the New Testament. It is also clear in Greek teaching, Socrates for example.
There is no way to have government schools without politicized curricula.
If we're going to have government schools, insisting on a bias in favor of what is true over what is false seems more worthwhile than allowing other politicizations to take root. The root of our problem is that the half of us who don't believe in politicizing curricula have simply deferred to those who DO politicize, and that's the worst of all worlds.
Peace is preferable to violence, but killing your attacker is preferable to being killed. By the same token, mandating good curricula in government schools is preferable to receiving bad curricula, even if not having government schools is most ideal of all.
It's also a matter of the ideologically committed choosing the wrong jobs for the market in systems which aren't governed by market principles. Think of it this way- the Conservative is drawn to be become a Prison Warden to keep society safe. The Liberal is drawn to leading the Parole Board. I'm sure you would be happier if they were both conservatives, but in a world where political inclinations differ, you really want the conservative to switch jobs to run the Parole Board!
Welcome back - it's been quite a while. I particularly enjoyed the final paragraph of this article. The mentions of factors far too frequently ignored in mainstream commentry on the topic was very welcome.
Cheers, mate. I seem to have gone through I little bit of a creative malaise of late. Christmas always seems to eat up about a month of time, creatively, and a lot of what happens under the auspices of the Culture War seems so irreconcilable, with no positive way forward. On a positive note, I have had a few good ideas for my eventual sci fi novel- I was thinking about juxtaposing an actual legitimate critique of capitalism (government alignment with corporations, crony capitalism, the dehumanising influence of more degrees of separation, delivered by economies of scale) with the very real human harms caused by the Malthusian worldview- in particular, Energy Apartheid in Africa, paired with the hypocrisy of Green Colonialism.
It's pure evil that the billion poorest only account for 1% of the world's energy budget and cannot escape the permanent poverty of traditional (subsistence) farming- all because the West doesn't want them to develop their natural gas for the cheap energy their economies desperately need to industrialise. No one will lend them the money to develop it.
Interesting what you say about farming. It reminds me of a minister in an African country furious because of the environmental organisations campaign against GMO crops which would have lifted his country's farmers out of poverty.
Currently we are blackmailing Indonesia to accept Gender theories (in law) and Climate change (in law) if they want financial help. If they do the first one they will have a big expense in pharmaceuticals, if they do the second one they will not be able to develop a proper industry, or farming system, or anything that would allow them to move forward.
Yes- energy apartheid exists in a lot of places. This is the problem with the WEF and ESG- they are deeply Malthusian in their underlying philosophy, even though Paul R. Ehrlich lost his bet with Julian Simon by every conceivable measure and according to the listed prices of almost all commodities. The truth is to be found in Marian Tupy's co-authored book- Superabundance.
Ironically, there are two problems with the degrowth agenda. First, it takes three things- not two- to reverse alarmingly high population growth- birth control, education for girls AND the types of economic opportunity which only come with energy abundant societies. I ran the numbers, and for Sub-Saharan Africa at current rates of growth and, by 2100, one could either have three people consuming roughly the equivalent of an austere Eastern European lifestyle- or 57 people living in desperate poverty. Even if one discards the moral consideration, the 57 people are WORSE for climate.
And this leads into the second issue. When people are poor they have no choice but to destroy local flora and fauna, whilst the Northern hemisphere now contains more trees than it did a century ago, because relative wealth allows for better conservation. I live in Norfolk mate. The Broads cam into existence because people had already burned down all the trees to keep themselves alive in the winter, and had no choice but to dig up peat to burn... It may be lovely now, but at one point it probably looked something like a movie about a post-apocalypse hellscape.
Yep, "progressives", "liberals", the first thing is misdirect the public with the name, what do they have these individuals of "progress" to be called "progressive", what do they have of liberals if they want to tax everything and kill the private initiative of small business or entrepreneurs?.
"the left" does not represent the interest of the poor people or better say of the normal people that want take opportunities to improve, they represent the maintenance of a "entertained not very clever, or properly educated not critical mass of people" that will remain in their social position (low), so that the managers of "the left" will remain on the upper position.
Energy wise the "back to prehistory" of no scientific climate change is not going to solve anything for the humanity but like the "big leap forward" of Mao will kill many.
What's a more appropriate label for structural racism? Not that I'm a fan of the current label. Seems too vague to mean anything at all?
I'm also not really a fan of your 'Karen' stereotype. Seems like woke-lefty framing.
But I am otherwise a fan of your writing. I've starting using the phrase the 'tyranny of low expectations' which I'm sure I modified from the way you used it, but you used it first around me, and I think it's your concept which best fits the issue of educating minority kids, black kids in particular.
Dr. Chetty is now part of my resource list.
Are you familiar with Jamil Jivani? I've followed him for a while, and he was just on the Agenda with Steve Paikan, last legit news program on TV that I know of. The debate is right up your alley, but you could also just skip everything everyone except Jivani says, since he's the only one arguing with substance. He challenges the new Peel board chair, repeatedly, to provide evidence that DEI approaches work, and all the chair's got are inane talking points.
You wrote 'the other problem is the soft bigotry of low expectations stemming from fears over cultural erasure. Most White kids have their speech corrected in order to equip them with the basic unaccented corporate English which is so necessary to service the increasingly non-Western rich found as customers in the better paid service sector. Do Black kids get the same access to corporate English, or do progressive teachers quake at the mere thought of telling a Black kid their speech patterns, mannerisms and pronunciation might need to temporarily modified when commercial opportunity knocks'?
So, as a (currently still cancelled) English high school teacher in Toronto, I've seen what you describe in action myriad times, but your example is wrong.
It's not a fear of correcting vernacular. At least not here. I've yet to meet a kid who didn't think they should know standard English. The problem is disciplinary. Black kids know they are the B in BIPOC ... in other words, they know that some of their educators are scared to discipline them, or approach groups of black kids who should maybe be in class or something.
When kids know they can get away with something, they will.
And every parent I've ever met wants me to help them correct their kids on the notion that they are already responsible adults, ready to make mature, adult decisions.
I'm with the Possum below - more bureaucracy is the not the solution.
In my mind, the solution is a sanity party. Working class immigrant families, the working class union guys that used to vote Labour, progressives like myself who worked in the trenches for decades and despair at what has happened to our movement (yes, to your readers, we exist). A class-based party.
We need to build bridges across the left-right divide between working class and middle class communities.
I hope you write more on the subject of education man! You remain a sane voice in an ocean of vague nonsense.
Hey mate! Sorry if I took a while getting back to you- I've been quite busy, and haven't checked my substack in a while. Thanks for the correction on the discipline issue. I was aware of it, but thought there might be another cultural relativism issue at play.
I am familiar with Jamil Jivani. Pretty inspirational story, yes? It's one thing Canada gets right- the one year of college for kids who might not have done well in the conventional approach it primary and secondary education. On the same issue, it's highly anecdotal, but a passing fascination with special forces operators has led me to the conclusion that highly masculine, high energy kids aren't best served by standard education Several documentaries I've seen on special forces operators has shown a tendency to do poorly in school, only for the same individuals to excel at a later date as mature students. This is a particularly worrying tendency, given that estimates of average special forces operator IQ are around the 115 mark.
Here's the thing. It's well documented that Black teenagers are more masculine than average for White teenage boys. This might mean that the approach we take in classes needs to be more suited to these kids, rather than maximised for girls- particularly in the area of reading materials which engage boys. At the end of the day, anything which fosters reading for enjoyment should be prioritised over vague notions of 'social construction'.
Here is an interesting college social science professor, explaining to his students how differences in masculinity by ethnicity can have a profound impact on dating prospects.
Geary!! Nice to see you back and with a Great piece, much truth and the conclusion is powerful. On another note, what are your thoughts on this? Vivek Ramaswamy on the hill discussing his politics. He sounds normal, can he be for real? https://youtu.be/Cl1NFPLexlo
I don't think the white teachers are too culturally sensitive for minority kids. They are terrified of being called racist and kicked out of their morally superior tribe. Who are these elite white women who are the self-anointed saviors of the black people? Who are the people perpetuating the fallacy that black people need these impostors to receive agency in their lives? Ask any of these saviors to go live in the inner-city and walk what they talk they'll look at you like you've lost your mind. Because virtue singling is easy when you're sitting in your suburban enclaves.
Sure, it's just a matter of whether the motivating factor is the 'you poor dear' mentality of going easy on someone just because of their circumstances, or whether it's sheer terror. Both exist. It varies. I've come across both types. The younger ones tend to want to teach 'empathy' to the neglect of Maths, and the older ones are terrified of losing their pensions.
It also doesn't help that the Obama Admin introduced a mandate which basically enforced separate standards of education, in disciplinary terms- even though family status, neighbourhood and fatherlessness all dictate that some groups will have worse discipline than others. Plus, it's disastrous for Black kids- even moderately disrupted classrooms equate to two years worth of lost education by the end of K-12.
Trump rescinded the mandate, Biden reinstated it. It's worth noting that changes in London have resulted in Black British kids drawing equal in exams at 16 (because of the high percentage of the UK's Black population living in London). There are a host of other factors, but every single exceptional school I've looked at in London has a strong disciplinary approach at the core of its successes.
https://www.mylondon.news/news/east-london-news/pupils-6am-detentions-being-minute-21285918
Here is a story about Brampton Manor Academy from a local newspaper- the Newham Recorder. For the last three of or so years, they've outperformed Eton, purely on merit. Upper middle classes notions about discipline 'killing creativity' have a lot to answer for...
Totally agree. Kids need structure and discipline in their lives, as that article points out. The policy Obama instituted made no sense and still doesn't. He wanted to stop the so called school to prison pipeline. Not holding people responsible for their behavior makes them worse not better.
The best way to deal with the real problem kids (those who are violent) is to expel them into one-to-one programs where their educational needs are met, but they undertake things like boxing with life coaches. This may seem like an inordinate expense, but with a significant chance of reducing them being locked up for at least 15 years, at a cost to the taxpayer of roughly 50K a year- plus all the other costs- it actually works out as a net gain for the taxpayer.
Keeping violet kids in school is the worst possible outcome- entire classes can lose up to a year's worth of education, depending upon the age at which the problems manifest- and this is before we consider the lost future earning potential of everybody else in the class.
Really, Geary? It's not that we have too much unaccountable bureaucracy in the US, it's that it's not the right kind?
"Perhaps a Title IX system in which both White students subject to anti-White bigotry and Black students made to feel as though they are victims robbed of all agency can anonymously complain specifically on the grounds of their treatment might be better- especially if it was a corrective, rather than punitive system."
Anonymous complaints? My God, this is so off the mark that I kind of can't believe you wrote it. We have laws here based on Due Process. That the powers that be have jettisoned a fundamental principle of our society to further their partisan aims ought to be very clear to anyone paying attention: January 6; COVID mandates; racial bigotry baked into hiring practices.
This may be a well intentioned thought exercise, but it is dangerous and uniquely un-American. The particulars of Ron DeSantis' educational motivations can and should be debated at a local level.
OK, you've got me on the anonymous complaints issue- it doesn't work in terms of due process. With the rest, I suppose with me, it's a little like Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football- even though I'm a 'liberal mugged by reality', I can't help myself when it comes to proposing policy solutions...
The thing is- a purely legislative approach won't work. I'm just looking for solutions which might.
Don't get me wrong, generally, Charters and School Choice are good ideas, but on this particular issue, they won't be the panacea the libertarians hope- for the simple reason that most parents lack the knowledge to make informed choices about their kid's education. Most don't even know to look for class layout, and pick a school in which the desks all face the teacher...
Hello Geary
Nice to see you back. Here we are going to have a big fight.
The academia people, politicians, the Hollywood people, and all these people are in my most humble opinion, they need to go and start working in a factory from a blue collar/technician/ middle management/clerk perspective. Without being attractive/pretty, and starting there, after being some 5 years working there they can come back and tell us what they think about
1) who we call "the right" (conservative, liberals, neo-liberals, etc.), and who is the "actual right"
2) who we call "the left" (same as above) and who is the "actual left"
Because in my opinion all these people that you have mentioned are for the most part a few privileged that live in a bubble with little idea of the actual world, with zero or nil accountability for their studies and theories. Then they are ready of defining how other people should work or live, but pay attention "do what I say, not what I do".
Then why there are so much prevalent, well because when there is a group of minorities the most ruthless and violent imposes itself.
I would recommend a chapter of the book "the end of work" in which explains why the black people in USA have issues to progress. The country i come from, Spain, we have two regions that have a lot of subsides, where declaring some 35 days of work in a year you get a monthly subside for the whole year. You can now imagine the cunning ways to "declare" 35 days. This has been going on since the 1980's, result these two regions are the poorest and more backwards in Spain, they have very little or no industry, legions of public servants, the highest unemployment and they have to bring immigrants to do many of the agricultural work and the work in the hospitality industry. That will not change because the politicians buy the votes keeping that scheme.
I made an MBA from a university in UK located in Cambridge. On the subject of human resources, my assignment was the case of the Neo-Taylorism being applied in multinationals of the automotive, i knew about it, i had worked for long in one of them. The Assignment did not place the company in a bad view, but that it had some effects (positive and negative), and the strategy matched the company overall strategy. Well i did not get a very good mark, and the reason was, that "talking about neo-taylorism" is not "nice", and was out of the narrative that is being pushed. Should i have made the assignment about a "nice subject" and arrived to meaningless conclusions "inside the narrative" my mark would have been much better, even if the assignment would have been useless as a working document. So if you want to defend these lecturers and their work, we are going to "have fun".
They support these ideas, either because they are very short sighted (a big chunk of them) or because they believe that they will not apply to them (they would escape), and follow the tide for their benefit.
Ask yourself a question, how many, from these guilds will be happy of being associated with Greta, or with the EU politicians (that change parliament every month but we are the kings of the green agenda).
Best regards from the center of the Mediterranean, my bets of last year for some beers still stand.
Ramonchu
I read Polly's paper on Taylorism and Neo-Taylorism. It's been a while since I've looked at Taylor, but what a surprise that academics would imagine the very approach they use in their work must be beneficial. The market proves otherwise- most dynamic growth is driven by a ground-up philosophy.
Here's an interesting little stat for you- years ago, the British Standards Institute did some research comparing companies which offered proportional pay (mainly piece rates) with 'managed systems'. The piece rates outperformed the managed approach by 50% across industries- in other words, incentives are a powerful thing.
Manager's loathe this stat. It makes their work seem redundant, but it has to be added that there is wide degree of variation in quality of managers, especially when it comes to fire-fighting problems. That's one of the things I learned in manufacturing. I have mates who think I was just a computer admin- I wouldn't have got a Compromise Agreement and very generous compensation, if my skills weren't highly saleable to competitors...
I liked the structural work- incremental changes to systems to improve things. I did some work on sub-assemblies and equipped the progress chasers with up to date tracking data reports, but I huge amount of time was spent on fire-fighting problems. We also had a supply system which was more 'just in case', rather than 'just in time'. I did some work on that at well, with my mate Lee, the National Purchasing Development Manager. I take the view that stock lists which move to zero, should be balanced by a certain amount of buffer stock.
A lot of our current problems are down to the ignorance of finance. A few years before I joined Anglian, their share price was worth only twice the annual profits. The reason? The City of London were devaluing any shares for companies which weren't offshoring. They simply didn't understand that the nature of PVC windows and doors is such that huge problems would result from offshoring.
There is also the issue of Private Equity Firms. Years ago, they tended to create more value, but a lot of their profits these days are down to clever financial trickery, and often the assumption of company debt to pay off investors.
I was on a course of "influential Dialogue", i have not idea why my company sent me to that training.
The lecturer started criticizing the incentives pay, i explained that i had seen otherwise on operator level. Long story short the pay incentives were very successful for operations where the reward is directly linked with the output, and finally the lecturer conceded that on the other operations a reward will be expected even if it is delayed.
But his starting was like "going for the carrot", "chasing the money" was a "low level approach", we should aim inside ourselves for excellence, improving .......", the narrative being pushed everywhere.
The stat you showed says it big deal.
Pay isn't the only thing, but it does matter a hell of a lot. I think one of the reasons why managers don't like piece rates or incentives, is because it conflicts with the personal ambitions. They all get caught up in that one magical project which is going to change everything- the golden cap. ex.- and know that anything which is going to massively improve efficiency is going to lead to job losses.
They see the incentives as being nullified by the adversities introduced along their path to leading a company- in others words, wasted. The problem is it's very rarely that such plans come to fruition.
The guy who founded Anglian was on the local radio at the time I was there. Apparently, one of the line workers had either spoken to him, or to the media... His view was that he was extremely happy when the blokes were owning loads of money, because it meant that he was making loads of money as well.
Plus, I wouldn't underestimate the role finance plays in setting agendas. At the ned of the day, the key performance indicator for senior management in any publicly listed company is share price- and from the directors down, the pressure will be on to generate press which attracts investors. My label printer guy told me of a company where the cost recovery of the project was over 30 years, easily. The reason for the investment- because it looked good in the press and was likely to bump the share price...
One of the things I loved doing at the credit union was initiate sales incentive programs. I witnessed the tellers suddenly remembering products they couldnt give a fig about mentioning prior to the program. Because it translated to significant extra $$$. But the CEO was worried about the optics and culled it. On one hand they wanted growth, but almost universally kaiboshed programs like that.
I was a sales executive for a while- we used to get a free bottle of wine if we hit over a certain PM target (wine was classified as a wasting product at the time in the UK, and as such was a tax loophole).
I also had a similar experience to yours in relation to a 'Bright Ideas' scheme. First they made me a co-ordinator to save money (because I was involved my Ideas were suddenly free). Then they claimed that ordinary workers should put their ideas forward for free, because continuous employment was part of their job. Sure, it might be true if you're a manager or a supervisor, but certainly not if you are an ordinary worker. Bright Ideas suddenly dropped to nil...
As an engineer in the automotive i had a slightly "above the average salary" (very much bench-marked by the HR department, the minimum amount needed for you to find it difficult to make a move in the same geographical region), but then there were no incentives "because this is the work of an engineer, you should be proud of you work, etc", bonus were random and sparse (never happened even if we were highly praised). Then i learnt that our manager was given an amount a year as bonus for the department to distribute at his discretion, "because it is the manager that makes the subordinates to produce output", no engineer saw a dime of that bonus, the turnover of engineers was very high, HR "did not have a clue why people were leaving, and most of them in a bad note.
Promotion occurred to those proving submission, if you were good in your job, you were stuck there, the company needed your output (immediate profit), not your growth (bigger profit delayed). Further to that the "peter´s principle" is a book that should be compulsory reading after you have been working for 5 years.
I had to read this paper
https://www.agileleanhouse.com/lib/lib/Topics/_NeoTaylorism/taylorism-neotaylorism-1233776475887140-2.pdf
on Taylorism/Neo-Taylorism so I could understand your post and points, and in so doing recognized the financial industry, specifically the banks, that I have worked at as being paragons of neo-taylorism despite saying they are temples of 'continuous improvement'. Some smaller firms you might be able to 'continuously improve' but if you have to deal with a mega-sized ops department and a bunch of change averse tellers, good fukin luck. Work towards getting awards even if only for marketing/pr and not improving customer experience in the slightest, and CEOs determined to achieve the icons of progress even as they drive the org backwards. If profs are not teaching kids about this, they are ill equpped to recognize it in the real world. Because it's there.
Great source! On the subject of large corporations, did you know that one of the interesting aspects of the Pareto Distribution is that if you square root to number of employees, those people create half the value? So, in a company with a hundred people, ten create half the value. In a corporation with 10,000 people, 100 create half the value...
Crazy!
Get out!! Love how you share these cool stats.
Nowadays, they combine Taylor´s ideas with continuous improvement, so you get lessons learnt that from implicit comes explicit (property of the company), you do not learn (learning requires thinking and reflect and the company does not pay you for that), just avoid errors so you are more productive in the shortest time frame. Not just applied to operators but to engineers as well.
In my opinion, back in the times of Taylor & Ford growing up by promotion surely was more accessible and cases of people starting at lowest level and making it to a good positions were more frequent. Nowadays i see that difficult.
Interesting you don’t provide a critique of the DeSantis position on education.
Given the heavy handed approach to indoctrination taken by academia, I’m not sure there is a velvet glove alternative to combatting the poisonous situation you identify.
It's a fair point, but the problem is that educational subject matter is so broad, it's impossible to prevent the ideology seeping in somehow. In this case, the current legislative approach is a sieve. There's been some justified criticisms of a children's rights approach- because it borders on Free Speech issues- but at the risk of engaging in special pleading I think children have a right not to be exposed to content that makes them feel guilty for things they took no part, just as Black kids shouldn't be exposed to content which robs them of agency (after all, only the rare few can receive any benefit at all from activism, or politics once the rights revolution had run its course).
A successful society has a central ethic bounded by reasonable and well understood margins. Without the central unifying doctrine the society can only spin out of control until the central is held by violence or the threat of violence. Florida is attempting to restore a reasonable center without the violence. The natural tendency of society is toward deviancy so we shall see.
Sure, in the West we've lost this shared and common narrative, the belief that our societies are basically good and making some form of progress. The problem is that the Left doesn't seem to understand that the 'Moral Arc of History' probably only exists because we believe in it.
They take too much for granted and simply don't realise that many of things which make the West special are by no means human universals.
I would suggest that the success of the West was grounded in the belief in a creator God who had provided insight into how people could best form healthy society, among other things. The recognition that mankind is a moral creature, capable of making right decisions is the basis of freedom. The recognition that mankind is corrupt and prone to deliberately make wrong decisions is the basis of government.
Our current thinking rejects all that and, as predicted, pursues power for the sake of power under the guise of perfecting society. The two worldviews are incompatible.
This is clear in the earliest pages of the Hebrew Bible as well as the throughout the New Testament. It is also clear in Greek teaching, Socrates for example.
There is no way to have government schools without politicized curricula.
If we're going to have government schools, insisting on a bias in favor of what is true over what is false seems more worthwhile than allowing other politicizations to take root. The root of our problem is that the half of us who don't believe in politicizing curricula have simply deferred to those who DO politicize, and that's the worst of all worlds.
Peace is preferable to violence, but killing your attacker is preferable to being killed. By the same token, mandating good curricula in government schools is preferable to receiving bad curricula, even if not having government schools is most ideal of all.
It's also a matter of the ideologically committed choosing the wrong jobs for the market in systems which aren't governed by market principles. Think of it this way- the Conservative is drawn to be become a Prison Warden to keep society safe. The Liberal is drawn to leading the Parole Board. I'm sure you would be happier if they were both conservatives, but in a world where political inclinations differ, you really want the conservative to switch jobs to run the Parole Board!
Welcome back - it's been quite a while. I particularly enjoyed the final paragraph of this article. The mentions of factors far too frequently ignored in mainstream commentry on the topic was very welcome.
Cheers, mate. I seem to have gone through I little bit of a creative malaise of late. Christmas always seems to eat up about a month of time, creatively, and a lot of what happens under the auspices of the Culture War seems so irreconcilable, with no positive way forward. On a positive note, I have had a few good ideas for my eventual sci fi novel- I was thinking about juxtaposing an actual legitimate critique of capitalism (government alignment with corporations, crony capitalism, the dehumanising influence of more degrees of separation, delivered by economies of scale) with the very real human harms caused by the Malthusian worldview- in particular, Energy Apartheid in Africa, paired with the hypocrisy of Green Colonialism.
It's pure evil that the billion poorest only account for 1% of the world's energy budget and cannot escape the permanent poverty of traditional (subsistence) farming- all because the West doesn't want them to develop their natural gas for the cheap energy their economies desperately need to industrialise. No one will lend them the money to develop it.
Interesting what you say about farming. It reminds me of a minister in an African country furious because of the environmental organisations campaign against GMO crops which would have lifted his country's farmers out of poverty.
Currently we are blackmailing Indonesia to accept Gender theories (in law) and Climate change (in law) if they want financial help. If they do the first one they will have a big expense in pharmaceuticals, if they do the second one they will not be able to develop a proper industry, or farming system, or anything that would allow them to move forward.
Yes- energy apartheid exists in a lot of places. This is the problem with the WEF and ESG- they are deeply Malthusian in their underlying philosophy, even though Paul R. Ehrlich lost his bet with Julian Simon by every conceivable measure and according to the listed prices of almost all commodities. The truth is to be found in Marian Tupy's co-authored book- Superabundance.
Ironically, there are two problems with the degrowth agenda. First, it takes three things- not two- to reverse alarmingly high population growth- birth control, education for girls AND the types of economic opportunity which only come with energy abundant societies. I ran the numbers, and for Sub-Saharan Africa at current rates of growth and, by 2100, one could either have three people consuming roughly the equivalent of an austere Eastern European lifestyle- or 57 people living in desperate poverty. Even if one discards the moral consideration, the 57 people are WORSE for climate.
And this leads into the second issue. When people are poor they have no choice but to destroy local flora and fauna, whilst the Northern hemisphere now contains more trees than it did a century ago, because relative wealth allows for better conservation. I live in Norfolk mate. The Broads cam into existence because people had already burned down all the trees to keep themselves alive in the winter, and had no choice but to dig up peat to burn... It may be lovely now, but at one point it probably looked something like a movie about a post-apocalypse hellscape.
It’s not the West that opposes energy sustainability, it is specifically the Progressives; Democrats in US.
Yep, "progressives", "liberals", the first thing is misdirect the public with the name, what do they have these individuals of "progress" to be called "progressive", what do they have of liberals if they want to tax everything and kill the private initiative of small business or entrepreneurs?.
"the left" does not represent the interest of the poor people or better say of the normal people that want take opportunities to improve, they represent the maintenance of a "entertained not very clever, or properly educated not critical mass of people" that will remain in their social position (low), so that the managers of "the left" will remain on the upper position.
Energy wise the "back to prehistory" of no scientific climate change is not going to solve anything for the humanity but like the "big leap forward" of Mao will kill many.
Glad to see you back man!
What's a more appropriate label for structural racism? Not that I'm a fan of the current label. Seems too vague to mean anything at all?
I'm also not really a fan of your 'Karen' stereotype. Seems like woke-lefty framing.
But I am otherwise a fan of your writing. I've starting using the phrase the 'tyranny of low expectations' which I'm sure I modified from the way you used it, but you used it first around me, and I think it's your concept which best fits the issue of educating minority kids, black kids in particular.
Dr. Chetty is now part of my resource list.
Are you familiar with Jamil Jivani? I've followed him for a while, and he was just on the Agenda with Steve Paikan, last legit news program on TV that I know of. The debate is right up your alley, but you could also just skip everything everyone except Jivani says, since he's the only one arguing with substance. He challenges the new Peel board chair, repeatedly, to provide evidence that DEI approaches work, and all the chair's got are inane talking points.
https://www.tvo.org/video/is-the-peel-school-board-ready-to-lead
You wrote 'the other problem is the soft bigotry of low expectations stemming from fears over cultural erasure. Most White kids have their speech corrected in order to equip them with the basic unaccented corporate English which is so necessary to service the increasingly non-Western rich found as customers in the better paid service sector. Do Black kids get the same access to corporate English, or do progressive teachers quake at the mere thought of telling a Black kid their speech patterns, mannerisms and pronunciation might need to temporarily modified when commercial opportunity knocks'?
So, as a (currently still cancelled) English high school teacher in Toronto, I've seen what you describe in action myriad times, but your example is wrong.
It's not a fear of correcting vernacular. At least not here. I've yet to meet a kid who didn't think they should know standard English. The problem is disciplinary. Black kids know they are the B in BIPOC ... in other words, they know that some of their educators are scared to discipline them, or approach groups of black kids who should maybe be in class or something.
When kids know they can get away with something, they will.
And every parent I've ever met wants me to help them correct their kids on the notion that they are already responsible adults, ready to make mature, adult decisions.
I'm with the Possum below - more bureaucracy is the not the solution.
In my mind, the solution is a sanity party. Working class immigrant families, the working class union guys that used to vote Labour, progressives like myself who worked in the trenches for decades and despair at what has happened to our movement (yes, to your readers, we exist). A class-based party.
We need to build bridges across the left-right divide between working class and middle class communities.
I hope you write more on the subject of education man! You remain a sane voice in an ocean of vague nonsense.
Hey mate! Sorry if I took a while getting back to you- I've been quite busy, and haven't checked my substack in a while. Thanks for the correction on the discipline issue. I was aware of it, but thought there might be another cultural relativism issue at play.
I am familiar with Jamil Jivani. Pretty inspirational story, yes? It's one thing Canada gets right- the one year of college for kids who might not have done well in the conventional approach it primary and secondary education. On the same issue, it's highly anecdotal, but a passing fascination with special forces operators has led me to the conclusion that highly masculine, high energy kids aren't best served by standard education Several documentaries I've seen on special forces operators has shown a tendency to do poorly in school, only for the same individuals to excel at a later date as mature students. This is a particularly worrying tendency, given that estimates of average special forces operator IQ are around the 115 mark.
Here is the story of Henry Gow, an SAS man who joined the British Army at 16, with a reading age of 9- now a barrister. https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/15167154.face-face-soldier-turned-barrister-henry-gow-tells-journey-killing-court/
Here's the thing. It's well documented that Black teenagers are more masculine than average for White teenage boys. This might mean that the approach we take in classes needs to be more suited to these kids, rather than maximised for girls- particularly in the area of reading materials which engage boys. At the end of the day, anything which fosters reading for enjoyment should be prioritised over vague notions of 'social construction'.
Here is an interesting college social science professor, explaining to his students how differences in masculinity by ethnicity can have a profound impact on dating prospects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcDrWKwbx6Q&t=10s
Geary!! Nice to see you back and with a Great piece, much truth and the conclusion is powerful. On another note, what are your thoughts on this? Vivek Ramaswamy on the hill discussing his politics. He sounds normal, can he be for real? https://youtu.be/Cl1NFPLexlo
Nice.
Thx, Geary.
Cheers mate.