A factory reset in Education is in order, if we want to achieve real, positive and lasting change- here’s how. This essay began as a response to an article in Quillette: Standards-Based Grading Will Ruin Education.
Any real, positive and lasting change usually results from a form of life laundry when looking at our personal and vocational lives. It requires the recognition of both fault and weakness, an acknowledge of past mistakes made and the creation of an action plan, with a forward vision, with a view to creating structural changes in one’s life. What is true of individuals is doubly true of institutions. This is the real failure of attempts to address the school to prison pipeline- blaming community socio-economics or environment is a resignation to the inevitable- no matter how hopeful (and impractical) those on the Left may be about society acknowledging the difficult backgrounds of individuals when deciding hot to treat them when problems arise- at the pragmatic level such efforts are doomed.
In this vein one would hope that educational theorists and the educational Bureaucracy would admit just how disastrous their policies around school behaviour have been. Here is an article by the WSJ detailing how certain Obama era decisions proved disastrous: Obama’s Racial Preferences Made Schools Dangerous. It is the culmination of decades of mistakes and failures- deeply rooted in misconceptions about childhood development and how to aid the life chances of children growing up today. Any real desire for change would recognise the failures of the past, but no, far easier to paper over the cracks and pass the problem further down the line- with the inevitable result that the Criminal Justice System is racist when it is forced to deal with the consequences of an education system which fails structurally to equip many young people with the basic skills and the knowledge they need to participate in legitimate economic life.
‘School psychologist Craig Frisby, for example, has found that successful schools that teach large proportions of minority students focus on core achievement, provide strict discipline, and base policies on the science of learning—and not on trendy sociopolitical ideas.’
Many of us will have grown up with movies depicting the cruel and draconian policies of tough Catholic Schools- exempting corporal punishment as an issue, one wonders whether all those strict Catholic Nuns might have the had the right idea all along, and were simple relying upon the accumulated wisdom and understanding that kids from poorer and more difficult environments needed structure and toughness, rather than the stultifying platitudes of caring and temporary kindness which would see kids with a harder start in life pushed back down into the moral quagmire of their situation rather than pulled up from their morass by tough love.
It is not a cruelty to enforce stricter standards on kids from difficult backgrounds. Sometimes the medicine is bitter- with many on the Left persisting in the erroneous myth that it is really pragmatically possible to weigh a person’s difficult life circumstances when passing judgement in say, a courtroom, when, in truth, such circumstances can really only offer a relatively short discount in sentencing for all but the most activist of judges (which were rare and anecdotal, but served to provide grist for mill for those who, as a corrective, imposed now infamous instances of Three Strike Sentencing and the like).
One wonders what corrective measures will be necessary to overcome the current violent crime wave sweeping America. Here is an appropriately named Atlantic piece by freelance journalist Zaid Jilani: Progressive Denial Won’t Stop Violent Crime. What should become increasingly apparent from the direction of this piece is that there are two clear life path’s for entirely different political prescriptions for children from poor high crime communities. On one, an overdose of compassion-minded thinking leads to the carceral state. On the other, a world of opportunities opens up as a result of structure and strictness applied early on in life.
But conservatives need to revise their thinking somewhat as well. Many will be familiar with the Boot Camp model. Some will be enthusiastic advocates. But the evidence of the relative successes of the Boot Camps are mixed at best, which would suggest than whether a particular Boot Camp program works depends very much upon the participants and the approach taken. Perhaps the best example of a program which does work is with the Violence Reduction Units used by the Scottish Police.
Part of the program consists of an older ex-offender being paired with a police officer as a team, interacting with people emerging from prison, or with those whose lesser offences show a pattern of potential future escalation. The key is goal setting. The team will set the bar low with the first tasks set and achieved- simply making an appointment can be classed as a success. Gradually the goals increase in difficulty. Obtaining help to produce a serviceable CV might be a more substantial one, with the ultimate aim of transitioning into paid and reliable work. The system might be strict and structured, but there is a method to the madness- it affords teenage boys and young men the chance for positive feedback for the first time in their life- whilst also serving the societies larger goal of enabling a safer, more peaceful and orderly society. It was a part of the larger system which saw youthful Knife Crime halve in Scotland within a decade, without substantially increasing prison populations amongst the young.
A good analogy for the approach taken by the VRUs would be Basic Training for the military. Broadly speaking recruits fall into two categories: kids from nice homes and good families, motivated to serve by calling or the need for adventure, and kids from the wrong side of the tracks, looking for a way out. For the kids from nice middle class homes, the transformative change is accomplished mainly through the rousting of barracks and the abuse of drill instructors. For them it’s a shock, meant to first instil fear and discipline, and then steadily racket up aggression on the part of the recruit.
But this approach simply doesn’t work for the kids from broken homes. They’ve been shouted at by adults their entire life. Most have never encountered a positive male role model in a productive sense. Instead, they find their change in the discovery of a system of status and achievement awards- with positive praise from a person they respect the hallmark of their moral transformation. Perhaps they find they can run a course in record time, can strip and reassemble a rifle in record time or have a natural aptitude for shooting on the range. Regardless, this earning of status as reward becomes critical to the accomplishment of service as both vocation and a family. I have heard it remarked by the likes of Ant Middleton, that the kids from the wrong side of the tracks often finish up as the better special forces operators.
In case all of this sounds vaguely familiar, it is because you have probably heard it before. It’s part of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. The admonition to ‘Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world’, or ‘Clean Your Room!’ might not seem as though it contains this wisdom, at face value, but implicit to this approach is the understanding that once you begin to set yourself attainable goals, you can quickly adjust them to fit your level and begin earning praise from those around you. Much as material improvement might seem to be a more powerful motive, the understanding that one can earn the respect and admiration of those around us, is far more profound and life-changing.
But what does this meander through race, education and correctional systems have to teach us? It means we really need to start earlier, before the damage is done- to close the stable door before the horse has bolted. The liberal urge is kindness, if, in the best circumstances and we are honest and fair in our evaluation, and making a clear distinction between the liberal approach and the more extreme pathologies of the Left- a fact only dimly remembered from the time before politics became cynical by necessity- in its requirement to vilify the opposition to detract from one’s own failings.
We have to recognise that sometimes kindness as a reinforcement of weakness and defect is no kindness at all. It doesn’t end well- it’s the degrading example of the participation medal applied on a grand scale, and with impacts which can last a lifetime. But equally, toughness as an approach which is punitive, or as an endorsement of the idea we should ‘slap them silly’ with rigid enforcement before people become problems- doesn’t work either. It’s in the mechanism of creating systems of positive feedback and praise earning, with every goal tied to the level of the specific individual and their capacities, which will achieve transformative, society-changing results.
And it works! This article from the Newham Recorder shows the example of state school which adopts this approach, the second one shows how:
Students wake up before 5am to get to Brampton Manor Academy for 6am
Where is it written that the liberal goal of engineering a kinder society is necessarily incompatible with a safe, peaceful and orderly society? We just need better standards, or even higher ones- which allow for an ascendant moral purpose. It’s the toolkit which was flawed, not the objectives- the liberal belief that discipline kills creativity in children, or is somehow not in their long-term interest, has a lot to answer for. It is a matter of means and ends- kinder means make crueller ends, stricter means are more compassionate- if our goal is really to help kids find their full potential.
Yes! You make excellent points. Strict boundaries, defined goals and love make a powerful package. It works. The problem is the 'progressives'. How do you change their warped minds? They not only ruin education but the entire nation along with it.
Well, one approach is simply to ignore them, if at all possible from a practical perspective. Katherine Birbalsingh has noticed that they tend to leave her alone- mainly because their philosophical objections are overcome by the fact that she is achieving amazing results with a demographic they purport to champion- poor, multi-ethnic kids, living in high crime neighbourhoods. They must be torn.
Plus, I think it's important to distinguish between cultural progressives and economic progressives. Economic progressivism is still universalist and not needlessly divisive. Some aspects of progressivism seem to actually work out quite well- like certain aspects of stronger worker protections. In particular, the accrual element of statutory redundancy pay, seems to prevent the bean counters from throwing older workers onto the scrapheap prematurely, when they no longer have the ability to compete in the market.
Societies with these sorts of protections don't suffer from the same rates of 'deaths of despair' amongst older men through drug addiction and suicide. It can be possible to engage with progressives, provided one has the research to benefit their case, whilst simultaneously steering them away from the more harmful and destructive policies.
Another good example comes from the world of worker cooperatives. Mondragon, the Basque company is the largest and best example of this type. It is imagined that it is socialist, but when one looks into it in detail, it becomes apparent that it is more a form of community capitalism, where profits are invested in new enterprises to offset the labour losses accumulated through increased productivity.
It reallocated both capital and labour in-house. When their electronics division was forced to shut though fierce competition (mainly from China) they lost 3,000 jobs. But because of their model, they were eventually able to reemploy all bar 60 workers. I haven't managed to turn any cultural progressives. It's not that I doubt agree with many of their aims, such as reducing disparities through better education for the economically marginalised- but our two solutions are basically incompatible.
We will both fail. The difference is my solutions will never be tried, apart from on an exceptional basis- because people won't listen or are too resistant to science which is proven to work (like cognitive load theory), or with examples from around the world where my ideas have already succeeded. Their solutions will fail because they are pursuing ideological solutions to real world problems. These types of solutions don't work and usually proves to be catastrophic in implementation.
Operating in the world of ideas is dangerous unless informed by empiricism and grounded in the practical.
> Bureaucracy would admit just how disastrous their policies around school behaviour have been.
But fundamentalists always double down, don't they? If the faith-healing isn't working that's only because you need more faith.
> the Violence Reduction Units used by the Scottish Police.
If it works it works, but the pessimist in me is saying that many of these initiatives just waterbed the problem -- it doesn't really go away, it just moves around. Or not. The teaming up with ex cons sounds excellent.
> Brampton Manor Academy
I don't notice a single white face in the picture. Good. Segregation should be given another look. When whitey isn't there at all, the race baiters have less chance to do their mischief. An explicitly black school that achieves excellence can and should crow about it and if the *earned* pride there reflects back onto the race in general that's very good.
Brampton Manor is located in the London Borough of Newham, which is the second poorest in London and has endemically high crime rates. It is isn't a matter of segregation in this case- poorer people generally have high ingroup- which means, in the absence of even soft mechanisms which lend themselves towards 'segregation', that people tend to self-select into subcultural groupings which allow high ingroup individuals to feel more comfortable in their homes.
Setting the financial problems created by gentrification aside, ask the average Harlem resident how they feel about their favourite restaurant being replaced by a yoga bar, or their favourite musical nightspot changing to adopt white people yodelling and playing acoustic guitar, and their answer will inevitably be not very.
Multiculturalism is ideal for those of us lucky enough to grow up in the highly educated households which encourage low ingroup- ensuring a thrill whenever we encounter a new culture, with its new food, music, culture, art and architecture- but it is dystopian for anyone who is born in more modest circumstances, where childhood environment encourages the natural human group instincts evolved over millennia to create strong ingroup cohesion as a survival mechanism.
For them, the only solution is the drawing of a shared identity based upon the cultural values of the nation state- drawing a bigger circle of inclusion, as it were. Our current course of attempting to dismantle the civic nationalism of shared language and custom is disastrous, because it will only increase the feelings of isolation and alienation for those who can never feel as though they belong without the emphasis on the pride which comes from owning a particular passport, and being subject to all the rights and protections of a culture which practices value pluralism.
> It is isn't a matter of segregation in this case
I understand. What I'm saying is that I'd be fine with it if it was. In practice of course blacks are permitted to segregate and whites are not. In the US they have 'traditionally black' universities which is code for 'whitey is not welcome' but the reverse case would be racist. I'm saying that the phony integration should be dropped. If BM wanted to declare themselves black only, that would be fine by me.
> that people tend to self-select into subcultural groupings
Exactly and we've tried for 60 years to 'cure' that when in fact it was nev .... no, it was a problem, but the 'cure' has been worse tha ... no, the cure has not be worse than the disease, nevertheless the cure has gone far to far and become itself a problem.
> their favourite restaurant being replaced by a yoga bar
Before segregation was 'cured', blacks had thriving neighborhoods all over everywhere. Hard to love the official nature of segregation, but at the same time, self-segregation should be permitted IMHO.
'Hard to love the official nature of segregation'- loathsome. 'self-segregation should be permitted IMHO.'- provided it doesn't stop people moving into a neighbourhood of their own free choice. Where I have a problem is when people criticise others for their own free choice- but at the same time, if I had a real estate agent pop round with a flyer trying to convince me that Black couples moving into my neighbourhood would devalue my property I would probably punch them.
No doubt it probably happened with off-base housing and the military- the only colour those guys care about is green. Funnily enough my dad had a Black West Pointer on base who he thought a lot of, given the difficulties he had no doubt faced. Everything was cool within the military, but the Colonel's wife took it upon herself to enforce segregation amongst the wives.
My dad didn't make the connection for me. I only figured it out after his death. But as an MP, when my dad saw the Colonel's wife using the Colonel's parking spot at the commissary/PX, he didn't like it- as far as he was concerned when the spot was marked 'Colonial's Wife' she could park there. Where he was emphatic was that white people shouldn't be made to feel guilty for things that happened before they were born.
> to convince me that Black couples moving into my neighbourhood would devalue my property I would probably punch them.
OTOH, ugly tho it might be, they'd be telling the truth. The question is, putting all posturing and all virtue performance and all BS aside, how do we square the circle of ... see, my mind is in one of these regressions, where every time I think I have a sentence I find myself unwinding the thing to a wider/deeper level.
Correctness ... what we wish was true might not be true. The agent above is telling you something that is true but it could very well be that he doesn't like it any more than you do. I'd *want* to punch him too but I think it's because we tend to want to kill the bearer of bad news. Or ... does he LIKE it? Is he a RACIST? We suspect that he is. I am suspected. Yet while we can't stop hoping for a better world, there's this delicate balancing act between hoping and pretending.
Yet-within-yet, we DO pretend all the time, socialization is pretending. How to resolve this?
Military dad eh? MP too? I'm not surprised, you have that ... how to put it ... that spirit of service, that noblesse oblige about you. Power must be used wisely and in the service of all. Run for Parliament Geary. No, really.
MP as in military police! Whether or not it was true doesn't make it right on the white flight. Mind you I've known blokes who use the obit columns to bid on properties- saves money on the legal and estate agents fees, if you purchase the property direct- so who am I kidding about the outrage. Still, it doesn't make it right.
I realized that half way thru my post, but the thought stands. Anyway that's the point: facing facts and doing the right thing regardless are not the same thing. IOW one should do the right thing, not because you pretend the facts are other than they are, but in spite of that.
Multiculturalism may occur no matter what over time, but I for one dislike many places that lose their mono-culture. I'd hate to one day arrive in Japan and find the Japanese are not in the majority. Same goes for France or England or Italy or Greece, etc. Variety used to be the spice of life, but now it's all being diluted.
I prefer the old formulation- where cultural national identity was the driving force behind society, not ethnicity. There is something inherently comforting about the notion of a Sikh chef like Tony Singh with his strong Scottish accent.
But what is the cultural identity of Scotland once Scots are in the minority?
I personally like a variety of people of different ethnicities. But I also hate living among Americans who longer value the cultural identity that preferred limited government, individual liberty (using terms like free-dumb), bravery, charity, risk taking, adventure, voluntarily associating with others, private property, etc.
The liberty and voluntary association are crucial, especially in terms of preserving civic libertarianism- but the game changer is private property rights- something which both the US and the UK managed to enshrine into law more successfully than most.
A while back I came across an Economics Explained video which showed what happened when private property rights were too vague and easily usurped by government. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brW6-fbvmsQ&t=2s . The video is called The Faltering Economy of Argentina.
I didn't know there were four types of economy: pre-industrial, industrial, post-industrial and Argentina!
My own dislike of multcult is partially based on grand themes of cultural decline and so on, but my main reason for disliking it is simply that it will make the world so boring. I don't want to feel at home in Japan, I want it to feel very Japanese.
Yes, the Basque people, interesting bunch. I was in their region once years ago and right away I felt I could easily live there. You are right, and I like your nuanced version of progressivism. Well done!
I love the food! Although generally I think both the Spanish and the Italians are undersold as food cultures compared to the French. Escoffier has a lot to answer for!
The recent school shooting shows how public schools keep bad students too long, as if the public interest is in ensuring the least capable should get the lion's share while holding back all those actually want an education.
I think it tends to happen more as a result of alienation in the peer group. School shooters and homegrown terrorists share two distinct characteristics- online engagement as radicalisation and the absence of fathers. A father helps a boy negotiate those difficult teenage years with stoicism and a practical guide for how to circumvent the worst of the teenage angst- otherwise there will always be some who will be drawn onto the path of destructive and hateful nihilism.
Perhaps, but sometimes alienation occurs because the person is just too odd. In this recent school shooting, it was the father who bought the gun for his son for Christmas. Also, he was known to be trouble, was even in a parent conference earlier that day because of his misbehavior, but rather than get rid of those who don't want to be forced to attend school (it is legally mandatory), they basically forced him to return, and return he did.
Well, you won't get any argument from me that there is a small percentage of nutjobs in society. One of the scary things about Foucault's impact on mental health is that there is an alarming tendency for paranoid schizophrenics to engage in knife attacks. One of my brothers ex-girlfriends was adamant from her healthcare education that the mentally ill were unduly stigmatised by society- I managed to get her to sit down and watch a documentary on the subject. Thankfully, her views became more qualified.
I was pointing to the statistical tendencies though. From the Boy Crisis, as well as FBI sources, it's apparent that between 80% and 90% of school shooters and homegrown terrorists are from father deprived homes. But your point is well taken- When I was a kid they used to send off the real problem kids to special schools, where they were equipped to deal with the really difficult cases- until the Left, in its wisdom, judged that such schools were unduly exclusionary and stigmatising.
I'm all for kindness bur kindness isn't necessarily the permissive style a lot of people think. Kindness is about structures - a recognition that discipline and standards make life better for people both within themselves and within society. It is not kind to pass a pupil who isn't working or producing on an assignment but it is kind to fail them. Failure is a very motivating lesson and a growth lesson more so than constant passes.
Like you say it's also important to provide a career path particularly in the crafts. It's skills like these which are still needed and always will be. Not everyone can be computer specialists just like not everyone can fix a burst pipe. What needs to change is the value allocated to craft/physical engineering tasks and the steering of young people into these roles.
'Head Hand Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century' by David Goodhart is definitely on my reading list- he is the same author who wrote 'The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics' and delineated people between the 'anywheres' who feel comfortable in any setting, and the 'somewheres' who need the waters of the host culture to thrive and survive.
It is not in my interest to say so, but we overvalue intelligence- it's institutional from the very moment we first set foot in school. There needs to be pride and dignity afforded to those who keep society running, as well as for the lower paid within the caring vocations. A better school system would value these other dimensions more- especially as kids begin to develop into adolescence and status becomes an all consuming affair. Much of the antagonism towards the 'nerds' is driven by these resentments- although in many ways, I was lucky- being a good all-rounder and a bit of a class clown helped.
A good education system is a sorting mechanism. The problem with most is that there is only room for the most academically able and no thought with what to do with the rest, other than label them failures. Progressives can’t stand unequal outcomes and kill any opportunity for those not Ivy League bound. Progressives also have a distaste for manual labor so can’t understand that being a viable option for a successful life. We can do better, we used to.
Well, one of the reasons why the Left expanded the portion of the university is because they grasped that it would produce a larger class of highly educated Brahmin Left...
Only a small percentage of people are academically oriented. A larger percentage can learn many useful intellectual ideas, concepts and algorithms, doing well with reading, writing and arithmetic. But there is another large group that simply aren't interested or capable of sitting still, learning information that to them seems to be useless in their lives.
There is also an important crossover in this regard- in particular high energy, highly masculine boys. I've seen of a number of instances where those who became special forces operators were useless at school, but then went to university after their service.
Yes, it just shows there's no such thing as one-size-fits-all, no such thing as central planning knowing the best path, that hardship can sometimes be a driver of strength, and ease can sometimes be a driver for sloth.
That's the fundamental problem with government- central planning. The only areas where it can work better (but not always) is with systems which inherently lend themselves to central planning. I can only think of a couple of highly specific examples. One is highly integrated transport system, such as tube systems- often incremental innovation doesn't work here because the constant medium level disruption is worse, than a phased and planned approach, where customers can take a more circuitous route.
The other is French nuclear power- it may be boring to only have two types of reactor, but standardisation allowed them to achieve very low energy costs. There is also a case to be made for government owning the risk, in terms of Sovereign debt.
One of the few advantages of government is its role as an underwriter- it allows for far cheaper debt which allows for cheaper energy. It's one of the reasons why American Nuclear fails to deliver on cost for nuclear energy- because the market doesn't like the risk, and is poorly equipped to handle it.
Of course, Sovereign debt is only cheap provided one has strong private property rights- otherwise the market will expect higher bond yields. Government does have its uses, though they are few.
Indeed, though I was mostly limiting my comment to government run education's limitations for providing for the variety of human needs, desires, interests, talents, effort and perseverance.
Not to mention the fact that care or nursing home work has one of the highest levels of long-term sickness through injury- it's all that lifting, even though the machines are better these days. Having lifted my great uncle off the loo, over the Christmas season for a few years, I can sympathise with the difficulties of their work. Losing one of his lower legs to poor circulation really didn't shed much weight...
Kindness is helping those who will accept help. If you force kindness, it's not kind and not moral and rarely helpful. Reality, like nature itself, is based on survival of the fittest. We can either invest wisely in kids who want to learn, or pretend that spending our resources on the least capable is kind to the least while harming the most.
With a caveat. The post war British had it formulated correctly. They spent higher than average money on the top and the bottom. The top because they were the future wealth creators, and money spent on them would benefit the rest of society in jobs created. The bottom, because if you could make them functionally literate and numerate, their chances of ending up in prison declined considerably. The rest could be great successes in their future lives, but their success was in areas not related to academic or intellectual excellence.
> The top because they were the future wealth creators, and money spent on them would benefit the rest of society in jobs created.
This is where 'socialism' and meritocracy part ways with TFM -- if if if the success of the best becomes united with the success of all, then *everyone* will agree that -- exactly the opposite of Equity -- we concentrate our resources where the return on investment will be greatest. And, as you say, some of those returns will doubtless be spent helping the genuinely unfortunate. Thus my 'socialism' is methodologically the exact opposite of woke socialism.
It's always hard to know if it was a formula, or just a given time and place. Outcomes aren't fixed by policy. Besides, spending at the top or bottom isn't the issue, it's whether the people are open to receiving that help (and by help, I mean "teach a man to fish" or "giving him a fish," though you may give some fish until they are successful fishermen!). I see plenty of so-called privileged kids who waste their time in schools, party at university, etc., and when the parents waste their own money, that's fine, but when they are wasting other people's money taken by force from them, you just have waste.
It's more about doing the best you can for others so that they benefit. Some young people will respond to pressure and a measure of compulsion when left to their own devices they would just drift. Not all kids who benefit from learning want to learn. The harm I think comes from spending money on levelling down.
Good comment. I had an admin assistant who turned out to be a mentor of sorts. He was a former regimental sergeant and independent financial advisor, who had to re-enter the workforce after his son died in a motorcycle crash and his wife divorced him as a result. He was something of a fan of the Hornblower series, and in particular the Gregory Peck movie.
His view was that one should never flog a willing horse, and applied to saying to me- he didn't like the fact that my senior managers weren't tailoring their management efforts to me as an individual level. He did, however, like the fact that most of the criticisms of me were also highly complimentary.
It was quite nice to have someone to back up what I was saying, when in an office with three senior managers and a director all trying to get me to change something I knew would be disastrous- although to be fair, I wasn't always right- just most of the time.
I think that perception is changing - people with a solid trade and a touch of entrepreneurialism are making a killing in the current real estate market. It is being seen by the same parents who grew up valuing a university education and pass that perception onto their children. Contrast this with most social studies graduates… for the betterment of society they should be offered trades training instead of “activism” as a goal. It’s alarming that many of them think they’re saving the world but haven’t figured out how to be financially independent.
'for the betterment of society they should be offered trades training instead of “activism” as a goal. It’s alarming that many of them think they’re saving the world but haven’t figured out how to be financially independent.'- the two are intimately connected. The one vocation necessarily precludes the other- except with what passes for journalism these days...
I like watching productive discussions between the Left and the Right. In one, the conservative wanted to teach children to be grateful- the Leftist thought this would compromise the ability of society to progress through social activism. There is a Japanese saying which relates to this- 'if you have one foot in tomorrow and the other in the past, then you piss on today'. In this sense, we shouldn't sacrifice the immediate happiness of the young, for some distant utopian future which almost always fails to deliver on its promises.
Most studies students haven’t figured out that if you mean to change a system you had best first understand the system. They understand little to nothing. Extensively schooled and uneducated.
Yes, it comes from living in the world of ideas- as I mentioned earlier in the thread, theories have to be grounded in empiricism and the pragmatic to be of any practical value whatsoever. It's the rare few who are highly intelligent and high in both trait openness to new experience and conscientiousness are so disproportionately successful, because the openness is balanced by industriousness and due diligence.
Oh the food! Yes, better than the French by far. Spain is my spiritual home for reasons unclear. Will alas never see it again...my days of flying to Europe every year are over. Lots of things seem to be over...
Being a Brit and going to Spain as a teenager provided a sound foundation for understanding things like cultural ingroup and the Big Five trait Openness. As a kid I could never understand why so many Brits would stick to British food or fish and chips (which is nice, but not when there are so many lovely new things to try). It was only when I read Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind that I finally understood that there is such huge childhood environmental influence on how our brains wire for later life, especially in relation to parental education levels.
Reading Jonathan Haidt also helped me come to terms with Brexit as a remainer- and happily came only a few months after the referendum. It allowed me to finally understand why so many of fellow countrymen cared about completely different priorities. I wish he was more widely read in the UK- it might curb some of the obnoxious downwards class resentments which have arisen since the vote. The middle classes have always had a certain disdain and condescension towards the working classes- but recently it's reached a fever pitch of intensity and bad feeling.
On the subject of the food in Spain, I thought this old TED Talk by Dan Barber might make you feel nostalgic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvrgD0mAFoU&t=253s . That's the great thing about travelling- you get to carry the memories with you and immerse yourself in them years after the event.
I often try to recreate the food experience with Spanish omelettes. The key is a good egg pan, preferably an 8 inch one. This sort of thing: https://www.thespruceeats.com/best-pans-for-eggs-5094868 . Personally, I would avoid mushrooms and tomatoes because of the water- I usually prebake some cherry tomatoes in chilli oil and a little balsamic, as a side dressing.
Manchego cheese is a must, use finely sliced potatoes (which I pre-blanch in a deep fat fryer for a few seconds) and finely chopped chilli is also an essential. I usually rest my omelette for a good 10 minutes at least after cooking, and obviously after I've fried the one side, I finish under the grill to get the omelette to rise. It's also essential to disperse the Manchego on the top of the omelette, rather than mixing it in.
thanks for the reminder to read Haight...he was on my radar and then I forgot. Going to Spain as a teenager must have been mind blowing for you. I didn't get there until my thirties, but it changed me. BTW, you should write about food; you're really good at describing the mouth water ing omelette. And of course, Manchego on just about everything...We appear to have similar culinary tastes as well intellectual bents.
Well, it helps that my brother is a chef as well. He was an actuarial technician, but decided upon a career change in his thirties. His training involved cheffing at the Savoy in London...
A bit late to the party here, but good analysis. My dad went to Catholic school and he had a great deal of respect for the disciplinarian nuns and priests who taught him. It was strict, but not in a vindictive way.
There’s a Pro Publica article from November about a school district in Tennessee where a “law and order” judge transgressed laws to punish students (in many cases innocent) out of a vindictive belief that she was providing “tough love.” I’m all for tough love but that second word has to be there.
Yes! You make excellent points. Strict boundaries, defined goals and love make a powerful package. It works. The problem is the 'progressives'. How do you change their warped minds? They not only ruin education but the entire nation along with it.
Well, one approach is simply to ignore them, if at all possible from a practical perspective. Katherine Birbalsingh has noticed that they tend to leave her alone- mainly because their philosophical objections are overcome by the fact that she is achieving amazing results with a demographic they purport to champion- poor, multi-ethnic kids, living in high crime neighbourhoods. They must be torn.
Plus, I think it's important to distinguish between cultural progressives and economic progressives. Economic progressivism is still universalist and not needlessly divisive. Some aspects of progressivism seem to actually work out quite well- like certain aspects of stronger worker protections. In particular, the accrual element of statutory redundancy pay, seems to prevent the bean counters from throwing older workers onto the scrapheap prematurely, when they no longer have the ability to compete in the market.
Societies with these sorts of protections don't suffer from the same rates of 'deaths of despair' amongst older men through drug addiction and suicide. It can be possible to engage with progressives, provided one has the research to benefit their case, whilst simultaneously steering them away from the more harmful and destructive policies.
Another good example comes from the world of worker cooperatives. Mondragon, the Basque company is the largest and best example of this type. It is imagined that it is socialist, but when one looks into it in detail, it becomes apparent that it is more a form of community capitalism, where profits are invested in new enterprises to offset the labour losses accumulated through increased productivity.
It reallocated both capital and labour in-house. When their electronics division was forced to shut though fierce competition (mainly from China) they lost 3,000 jobs. But because of their model, they were eventually able to reemploy all bar 60 workers. I haven't managed to turn any cultural progressives. It's not that I doubt agree with many of their aims, such as reducing disparities through better education for the economically marginalised- but our two solutions are basically incompatible.
We will both fail. The difference is my solutions will never be tried, apart from on an exceptional basis- because people won't listen or are too resistant to science which is proven to work (like cognitive load theory), or with examples from around the world where my ideas have already succeeded. Their solutions will fail because they are pursuing ideological solutions to real world problems. These types of solutions don't work and usually proves to be catastrophic in implementation.
Operating in the world of ideas is dangerous unless informed by empiricism and grounded in the practical.
> Bureaucracy would admit just how disastrous their policies around school behaviour have been.
But fundamentalists always double down, don't they? If the faith-healing isn't working that's only because you need more faith.
> the Violence Reduction Units used by the Scottish Police.
If it works it works, but the pessimist in me is saying that many of these initiatives just waterbed the problem -- it doesn't really go away, it just moves around. Or not. The teaming up with ex cons sounds excellent.
> Brampton Manor Academy
I don't notice a single white face in the picture. Good. Segregation should be given another look. When whitey isn't there at all, the race baiters have less chance to do their mischief. An explicitly black school that achieves excellence can and should crow about it and if the *earned* pride there reflects back onto the race in general that's very good.
Brampton Manor is located in the London Borough of Newham, which is the second poorest in London and has endemically high crime rates. It is isn't a matter of segregation in this case- poorer people generally have high ingroup- which means, in the absence of even soft mechanisms which lend themselves towards 'segregation', that people tend to self-select into subcultural groupings which allow high ingroup individuals to feel more comfortable in their homes.
Setting the financial problems created by gentrification aside, ask the average Harlem resident how they feel about their favourite restaurant being replaced by a yoga bar, or their favourite musical nightspot changing to adopt white people yodelling and playing acoustic guitar, and their answer will inevitably be not very.
Multiculturalism is ideal for those of us lucky enough to grow up in the highly educated households which encourage low ingroup- ensuring a thrill whenever we encounter a new culture, with its new food, music, culture, art and architecture- but it is dystopian for anyone who is born in more modest circumstances, where childhood environment encourages the natural human group instincts evolved over millennia to create strong ingroup cohesion as a survival mechanism.
For them, the only solution is the drawing of a shared identity based upon the cultural values of the nation state- drawing a bigger circle of inclusion, as it were. Our current course of attempting to dismantle the civic nationalism of shared language and custom is disastrous, because it will only increase the feelings of isolation and alienation for those who can never feel as though they belong without the emphasis on the pride which comes from owning a particular passport, and being subject to all the rights and protections of a culture which practices value pluralism.
> It is isn't a matter of segregation in this case
I understand. What I'm saying is that I'd be fine with it if it was. In practice of course blacks are permitted to segregate and whites are not. In the US they have 'traditionally black' universities which is code for 'whitey is not welcome' but the reverse case would be racist. I'm saying that the phony integration should be dropped. If BM wanted to declare themselves black only, that would be fine by me.
> that people tend to self-select into subcultural groupings
Exactly and we've tried for 60 years to 'cure' that when in fact it was nev .... no, it was a problem, but the 'cure' has been worse tha ... no, the cure has not be worse than the disease, nevertheless the cure has gone far to far and become itself a problem.
> their favourite restaurant being replaced by a yoga bar
Before segregation was 'cured', blacks had thriving neighborhoods all over everywhere. Hard to love the official nature of segregation, but at the same time, self-segregation should be permitted IMHO.
'Hard to love the official nature of segregation'- loathsome. 'self-segregation should be permitted IMHO.'- provided it doesn't stop people moving into a neighbourhood of their own free choice. Where I have a problem is when people criticise others for their own free choice- but at the same time, if I had a real estate agent pop round with a flyer trying to convince me that Black couples moving into my neighbourhood would devalue my property I would probably punch them.
No doubt it probably happened with off-base housing and the military- the only colour those guys care about is green. Funnily enough my dad had a Black West Pointer on base who he thought a lot of, given the difficulties he had no doubt faced. Everything was cool within the military, but the Colonel's wife took it upon herself to enforce segregation amongst the wives.
My dad didn't make the connection for me. I only figured it out after his death. But as an MP, when my dad saw the Colonel's wife using the Colonel's parking spot at the commissary/PX, he didn't like it- as far as he was concerned when the spot was marked 'Colonial's Wife' she could park there. Where he was emphatic was that white people shouldn't be made to feel guilty for things that happened before they were born.
> to convince me that Black couples moving into my neighbourhood would devalue my property I would probably punch them.
OTOH, ugly tho it might be, they'd be telling the truth. The question is, putting all posturing and all virtue performance and all BS aside, how do we square the circle of ... see, my mind is in one of these regressions, where every time I think I have a sentence I find myself unwinding the thing to a wider/deeper level.
Correctness ... what we wish was true might not be true. The agent above is telling you something that is true but it could very well be that he doesn't like it any more than you do. I'd *want* to punch him too but I think it's because we tend to want to kill the bearer of bad news. Or ... does he LIKE it? Is he a RACIST? We suspect that he is. I am suspected. Yet while we can't stop hoping for a better world, there's this delicate balancing act between hoping and pretending.
Yet-within-yet, we DO pretend all the time, socialization is pretending. How to resolve this?
Military dad eh? MP too? I'm not surprised, you have that ... how to put it ... that spirit of service, that noblesse oblige about you. Power must be used wisely and in the service of all. Run for Parliament Geary. No, really.
MP as in military police! Whether or not it was true doesn't make it right on the white flight. Mind you I've known blokes who use the obit columns to bid on properties- saves money on the legal and estate agents fees, if you purchase the property direct- so who am I kidding about the outrage. Still, it doesn't make it right.
I realized that half way thru my post, but the thought stands. Anyway that's the point: facing facts and doing the right thing regardless are not the same thing. IOW one should do the right thing, not because you pretend the facts are other than they are, but in spite of that.
Multiculturalism may occur no matter what over time, but I for one dislike many places that lose their mono-culture. I'd hate to one day arrive in Japan and find the Japanese are not in the majority. Same goes for France or England or Italy or Greece, etc. Variety used to be the spice of life, but now it's all being diluted.
I prefer the old formulation- where cultural national identity was the driving force behind society, not ethnicity. There is something inherently comforting about the notion of a Sikh chef like Tony Singh with his strong Scottish accent.
But what is the cultural identity of Scotland once Scots are in the minority?
I personally like a variety of people of different ethnicities. But I also hate living among Americans who longer value the cultural identity that preferred limited government, individual liberty (using terms like free-dumb), bravery, charity, risk taking, adventure, voluntarily associating with others, private property, etc.
The liberty and voluntary association are crucial, especially in terms of preserving civic libertarianism- but the game changer is private property rights- something which both the US and the UK managed to enshrine into law more successfully than most.
A while back I came across an Economics Explained video which showed what happened when private property rights were too vague and easily usurped by government. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brW6-fbvmsQ&t=2s . The video is called The Faltering Economy of Argentina.
I didn't know there were four types of economy: pre-industrial, industrial, post-industrial and Argentina!
Walt Rostow's original quote was that there are four types of economy: developed, less developed, Argentina, and Japan.
My own dislike of multcult is partially based on grand themes of cultural decline and so on, but my main reason for disliking it is simply that it will make the world so boring. I don't want to feel at home in Japan, I want it to feel very Japanese.
Agreed. Cultural distinctness makes the world a more quirky and interesting place.
Yes, the Basque people, interesting bunch. I was in their region once years ago and right away I felt I could easily live there. You are right, and I like your nuanced version of progressivism. Well done!
I love the food! Although generally I think both the Spanish and the Italians are undersold as food cultures compared to the French. Escoffier has a lot to answer for!
The recent school shooting shows how public schools keep bad students too long, as if the public interest is in ensuring the least capable should get the lion's share while holding back all those actually want an education.
I think it tends to happen more as a result of alienation in the peer group. School shooters and homegrown terrorists share two distinct characteristics- online engagement as radicalisation and the absence of fathers. A father helps a boy negotiate those difficult teenage years with stoicism and a practical guide for how to circumvent the worst of the teenage angst- otherwise there will always be some who will be drawn onto the path of destructive and hateful nihilism.
Perhaps, but sometimes alienation occurs because the person is just too odd. In this recent school shooting, it was the father who bought the gun for his son for Christmas. Also, he was known to be trouble, was even in a parent conference earlier that day because of his misbehavior, but rather than get rid of those who don't want to be forced to attend school (it is legally mandatory), they basically forced him to return, and return he did.
Well, you won't get any argument from me that there is a small percentage of nutjobs in society. One of the scary things about Foucault's impact on mental health is that there is an alarming tendency for paranoid schizophrenics to engage in knife attacks. One of my brothers ex-girlfriends was adamant from her healthcare education that the mentally ill were unduly stigmatised by society- I managed to get her to sit down and watch a documentary on the subject. Thankfully, her views became more qualified.
I was pointing to the statistical tendencies though. From the Boy Crisis, as well as FBI sources, it's apparent that between 80% and 90% of school shooters and homegrown terrorists are from father deprived homes. But your point is well taken- When I was a kid they used to send off the real problem kids to special schools, where they were equipped to deal with the really difficult cases- until the Left, in its wisdom, judged that such schools were unduly exclusionary and stigmatising.
Policies Surrounding bad students and the bad students themselves hold everyone in school including the teachers hostage
See my answer above :)
I'm all for kindness bur kindness isn't necessarily the permissive style a lot of people think. Kindness is about structures - a recognition that discipline and standards make life better for people both within themselves and within society. It is not kind to pass a pupil who isn't working or producing on an assignment but it is kind to fail them. Failure is a very motivating lesson and a growth lesson more so than constant passes.
Like you say it's also important to provide a career path particularly in the crafts. It's skills like these which are still needed and always will be. Not everyone can be computer specialists just like not everyone can fix a burst pipe. What needs to change is the value allocated to craft/physical engineering tasks and the steering of young people into these roles.
'Head Hand Heart: The Struggle for Dignity and Status in the 21st Century' by David Goodhart is definitely on my reading list- he is the same author who wrote 'The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics' and delineated people between the 'anywheres' who feel comfortable in any setting, and the 'somewheres' who need the waters of the host culture to thrive and survive.
It is not in my interest to say so, but we overvalue intelligence- it's institutional from the very moment we first set foot in school. There needs to be pride and dignity afforded to those who keep society running, as well as for the lower paid within the caring vocations. A better school system would value these other dimensions more- especially as kids begin to develop into adolescence and status becomes an all consuming affair. Much of the antagonism towards the 'nerds' is driven by these resentments- although in many ways, I was lucky- being a good all-rounder and a bit of a class clown helped.
A good education system is a sorting mechanism. The problem with most is that there is only room for the most academically able and no thought with what to do with the rest, other than label them failures. Progressives can’t stand unequal outcomes and kill any opportunity for those not Ivy League bound. Progressives also have a distaste for manual labor so can’t understand that being a viable option for a successful life. We can do better, we used to.
Well, one of the reasons why the Left expanded the portion of the university is because they grasped that it would produce a larger class of highly educated Brahmin Left...
Highly schooled, but not much educated. But they do mean to rule.
Only a small percentage of people are academically oriented. A larger percentage can learn many useful intellectual ideas, concepts and algorithms, doing well with reading, writing and arithmetic. But there is another large group that simply aren't interested or capable of sitting still, learning information that to them seems to be useless in their lives.
There is also an important crossover in this regard- in particular high energy, highly masculine boys. I've seen of a number of instances where those who became special forces operators were useless at school, but then went to university after their service.
In one instance a Scottish lad was kicked out home at age 16, when his mother's state benefits for him ran out. He joined the British Army. His reading age was 9. After serving his time in the military he became a barrister- hardly a career for intellectual slouches :) https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/15167154.face-face-soldier-turned-barrister-henry-gow-tells-journey-killing-court/
Yes, it just shows there's no such thing as one-size-fits-all, no such thing as central planning knowing the best path, that hardship can sometimes be a driver of strength, and ease can sometimes be a driver for sloth.
That's the fundamental problem with government- central planning. The only areas where it can work better (but not always) is with systems which inherently lend themselves to central planning. I can only think of a couple of highly specific examples. One is highly integrated transport system, such as tube systems- often incremental innovation doesn't work here because the constant medium level disruption is worse, than a phased and planned approach, where customers can take a more circuitous route.
The other is French nuclear power- it may be boring to only have two types of reactor, but standardisation allowed them to achieve very low energy costs. There is also a case to be made for government owning the risk, in terms of Sovereign debt.
One of the few advantages of government is its role as an underwriter- it allows for far cheaper debt which allows for cheaper energy. It's one of the reasons why American Nuclear fails to deliver on cost for nuclear energy- because the market doesn't like the risk, and is poorly equipped to handle it.
Of course, Sovereign debt is only cheap provided one has strong private property rights- otherwise the market will expect higher bond yields. Government does have its uses, though they are few.
Indeed, though I was mostly limiting my comment to government run education's limitations for providing for the variety of human needs, desires, interests, talents, effort and perseverance.
Yes! After seeing nurses and personal care workers help my mother with Alzheimer’s and learning their salaries…
Not to mention the fact that care or nursing home work has one of the highest levels of long-term sickness through injury- it's all that lifting, even though the machines are better these days. Having lifted my great uncle off the loo, over the Christmas season for a few years, I can sympathise with the difficulties of their work. Losing one of his lower legs to poor circulation really didn't shed much weight...
Kindness is helping those who will accept help. If you force kindness, it's not kind and not moral and rarely helpful. Reality, like nature itself, is based on survival of the fittest. We can either invest wisely in kids who want to learn, or pretend that spending our resources on the least capable is kind to the least while harming the most.
With a caveat. The post war British had it formulated correctly. They spent higher than average money on the top and the bottom. The top because they were the future wealth creators, and money spent on them would benefit the rest of society in jobs created. The bottom, because if you could make them functionally literate and numerate, their chances of ending up in prison declined considerably. The rest could be great successes in their future lives, but their success was in areas not related to academic or intellectual excellence.
> The top because they were the future wealth creators, and money spent on them would benefit the rest of society in jobs created.
This is where 'socialism' and meritocracy part ways with TFM -- if if if the success of the best becomes united with the success of all, then *everyone* will agree that -- exactly the opposite of Equity -- we concentrate our resources where the return on investment will be greatest. And, as you say, some of those returns will doubtless be spent helping the genuinely unfortunate. Thus my 'socialism' is methodologically the exact opposite of woke socialism.
It's always hard to know if it was a formula, or just a given time and place. Outcomes aren't fixed by policy. Besides, spending at the top or bottom isn't the issue, it's whether the people are open to receiving that help (and by help, I mean "teach a man to fish" or "giving him a fish," though you may give some fish until they are successful fishermen!). I see plenty of so-called privileged kids who waste their time in schools, party at university, etc., and when the parents waste their own money, that's fine, but when they are wasting other people's money taken by force from them, you just have waste.
Good point.
It's more about doing the best you can for others so that they benefit. Some young people will respond to pressure and a measure of compulsion when left to their own devices they would just drift. Not all kids who benefit from learning want to learn. The harm I think comes from spending money on levelling down.
Good comment. I had an admin assistant who turned out to be a mentor of sorts. He was a former regimental sergeant and independent financial advisor, who had to re-enter the workforce after his son died in a motorcycle crash and his wife divorced him as a result. He was something of a fan of the Hornblower series, and in particular the Gregory Peck movie.
His view was that one should never flog a willing horse, and applied to saying to me- he didn't like the fact that my senior managers weren't tailoring their management efforts to me as an individual level. He did, however, like the fact that most of the criticisms of me were also highly complimentary.
It was quite nice to have someone to back up what I was saying, when in an office with three senior managers and a director all trying to get me to change something I knew would be disastrous- although to be fair, I wasn't always right- just most of the time.
I think that perception is changing - people with a solid trade and a touch of entrepreneurialism are making a killing in the current real estate market. It is being seen by the same parents who grew up valuing a university education and pass that perception onto their children. Contrast this with most social studies graduates… for the betterment of society they should be offered trades training instead of “activism” as a goal. It’s alarming that many of them think they’re saving the world but haven’t figured out how to be financially independent.
'for the betterment of society they should be offered trades training instead of “activism” as a goal. It’s alarming that many of them think they’re saving the world but haven’t figured out how to be financially independent.'- the two are intimately connected. The one vocation necessarily precludes the other- except with what passes for journalism these days...
I like watching productive discussions between the Left and the Right. In one, the conservative wanted to teach children to be grateful- the Leftist thought this would compromise the ability of society to progress through social activism. There is a Japanese saying which relates to this- 'if you have one foot in tomorrow and the other in the past, then you piss on today'. In this sense, we shouldn't sacrifice the immediate happiness of the young, for some distant utopian future which almost always fails to deliver on its promises.
Most studies students haven’t figured out that if you mean to change a system you had best first understand the system. They understand little to nothing. Extensively schooled and uneducated.
Yes, it comes from living in the world of ideas- as I mentioned earlier in the thread, theories have to be grounded in empiricism and the pragmatic to be of any practical value whatsoever. It's the rare few who are highly intelligent and high in both trait openness to new experience and conscientiousness are so disproportionately successful, because the openness is balanced by industriousness and due diligence.
Oh the food! Yes, better than the French by far. Spain is my spiritual home for reasons unclear. Will alas never see it again...my days of flying to Europe every year are over. Lots of things seem to be over...
Being a Brit and going to Spain as a teenager provided a sound foundation for understanding things like cultural ingroup and the Big Five trait Openness. As a kid I could never understand why so many Brits would stick to British food or fish and chips (which is nice, but not when there are so many lovely new things to try). It was only when I read Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind that I finally understood that there is such huge childhood environmental influence on how our brains wire for later life, especially in relation to parental education levels.
Reading Jonathan Haidt also helped me come to terms with Brexit as a remainer- and happily came only a few months after the referendum. It allowed me to finally understand why so many of fellow countrymen cared about completely different priorities. I wish he was more widely read in the UK- it might curb some of the obnoxious downwards class resentments which have arisen since the vote. The middle classes have always had a certain disdain and condescension towards the working classes- but recently it's reached a fever pitch of intensity and bad feeling.
On the subject of the food in Spain, I thought this old TED Talk by Dan Barber might make you feel nostalgic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvrgD0mAFoU&t=253s . That's the great thing about travelling- you get to carry the memories with you and immerse yourself in them years after the event.
I often try to recreate the food experience with Spanish omelettes. The key is a good egg pan, preferably an 8 inch one. This sort of thing: https://www.thespruceeats.com/best-pans-for-eggs-5094868 . Personally, I would avoid mushrooms and tomatoes because of the water- I usually prebake some cherry tomatoes in chilli oil and a little balsamic, as a side dressing.
Manchego cheese is a must, use finely sliced potatoes (which I pre-blanch in a deep fat fryer for a few seconds) and finely chopped chilli is also an essential. I usually rest my omelette for a good 10 minutes at least after cooking, and obviously after I've fried the one side, I finish under the grill to get the omelette to rise. It's also essential to disperse the Manchego on the top of the omelette, rather than mixing it in.
Hey Geary,
thanks for the reminder to read Haight...he was on my radar and then I forgot. Going to Spain as a teenager must have been mind blowing for you. I didn't get there until my thirties, but it changed me. BTW, you should write about food; you're really good at describing the mouth water ing omelette. And of course, Manchego on just about everything...We appear to have similar culinary tastes as well intellectual bents.
Well, it helps that my brother is a chef as well. He was an actuarial technician, but decided upon a career change in his thirties. His training involved cheffing at the Savoy in London...
A bit late to the party here, but good analysis. My dad went to Catholic school and he had a great deal of respect for the disciplinarian nuns and priests who taught him. It was strict, but not in a vindictive way.
There’s a Pro Publica article from November about a school district in Tennessee where a “law and order” judge transgressed laws to punish students (in many cases innocent) out of a vindictive belief that she was providing “tough love.” I’m all for tough love but that second word has to be there.