WhackyNation

Parade, the nationally distributed Sunday magazine, has reported what the nation’s print and broadcast mews media have ignored for reasons that are a great mystery. The report is that a California state appeals court has ruled that “unless parents have recognized teaching credentials, they must send their children to school.”

In effect, the court has declared that home schooling is illegal! Only a California court could have come up with such an outlandish ruling. If the court’s ruling is sustained by higher courts in California or in other states, it would send shock waves throughout America and undoubtedly bring demands for legislatures to slap the hands of such courts.

Parents and political officials in California have raised such a wave of outrage that the offending court has indicated it will rehear the case some time this month, June. When it does, I hope it will listen to the tremendous criticism the ruling has evoked from the public, particularly from the parents who are home-schooling their children.

It’s been estimated that at least 2,000,000 children nationwide are being home-schooled — and that they are learning at a much faster pace than the children at public and private schools. Ironically, California, with 166,000 children being home-schooled, leads the list in the number of youngsters being taught by their parents.

The judge, whom Parade did not identify for good reason, referred to a California state education law in commenting that “parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children.” Obviously, all states had better take a more critical look at their education laws if they are going to forestall the national outrage over the California decision.

According to Parade,

“only six states have strict regulations for home-schooling, usually requiring parents to have their curriculum approved, to show test scores, and, in some places, to submit to home visits. Fourteen states, including California, mandate only that parents notify the state of their decision to home-school.”

What right does the California judge — or any judge in any state, for that matter — have to state that parents have no right, constitutional or otherwise, to school their children at home, instead of sending them out to a public or private school? However, I will agree that all state legislatures have a responsibility to see to it that all children are being schooled, whether at home or in a public or private school.

It is probable that the public-school lobby, which is one of the most powerful lobbies in the land, is cheering the California judge’s far-out pronouncement. That doesn’t make it right. Arguing strongly against the judge’s decision is the fact that children who are home=schooled have done much better in higher education than have children trained in public and private schools.

That should be the determining factor in this case. If Congress had any backbone and an understanding that people’s private rights should be guaranteed, it would adopt legislation supporting a family’s right to home-school its children and to legitimize the home-school movement across the land.

How does that old refrain go about “a man’s home being his castle” and that it is his private domain? That says it all.

One of the most remarkable and engaging persons I have ever known was the brilliant Seattle educator, Roberta Byrd Barr, who was principal of Franklin High School in Seattle for many years before she retired. We worked together in a number of civic projects and school think tanks during her extraordinary years of service.

Among one of her most intriguing ideas — and she had many in the years we shared ideas — was one related to the arts. It blossomed in the 1960s and won the immediate acceptance of both school and arts organizations, although it has not yet been fulfilled to its potential promise.

At the time, Roberta and I were serving on a Seattle Schools’ commission to create a bold new, innovative program for all the arts under a 1965 congressional act. The result was a trail-breaking Cultural Enrichment Program, the first of its kind by a state’s department of education. It originated in Seattle but soon spread to public-school systems across Washington by the state’s superintendent of schools.

At any rate, one of the program’s most unusual projects grew out of Roberta’s proposal for the creation of small professional groups of actors to visit the schools and use dramatic skits and techniques to teach American and world history, social studies, current events, and other related subjects.

For example, if the subject were 19^th Century France, the players would do one or two short dramatic pieces from the period to illustrate language, history, and social issues of the time. They would include the music, visual arts, the various crafts, and even the architecture of the era.

Her innovative plan was eventually incorporated into a proposal made to the federal government, and it included the formulation of a demonstration arts and education center for Seattle and each county in the state. The Seattle project, which is flourishing today, was copied thereafter by many cities and states across America.

It was the first such center to be funded in part by the federal government. The center included the feds’ approval of Roberta’s marvelous idea to incorporate traveling professional actors’ groups. While applauding her brainstorm, however, I had to voice a disappointment.

That disappointment came from the federal government’s rejection of one of the many ideas I contributed to the school commission’s proposal. It had been my understanding from a reading of the congressional act that both the arts and the sciences were to be incorporated in a cultural-enrichment program.

The Seattle commission heartily endorsed my suggestion that cultural enrichment meant the sciences should join with all the arts in such a program. However, the feds lopped off the science function in the experimental section of the Seattle proposal, and no reason was offered for the exclusion, sad to say.

However, the science proposal still lies on a shelf at the headquarters of the Seattle Public Schools’ administration building. And even to this day, I keep hoping that some enterprising school official will dust it off and propose both to the state school administration and to the U.S. Department of Education that it be accepted.

I’ll never forget the time several years ago that a well-meaning but misinformed teacher from Clarkston, Washington, made a trip to Japan on an exchange program and apparently was too close to the forest to see the trees. On her return, she stated that Japanese school children are overworked and should goof off more often, as American school children do.

Like many others who visit Japan, she overlooked the fact that Japan’s tremendous resurgence as an industrial power in the past 60 years stems directly from the rapid rise in the quality of its education — and the discipline of its children in schools at every level.

By contrast, America’s faltering education system can be attributed in large part to our penchant for requiring less and less of our students, and, in fact, promoting more time at the malls and at the Big Mac stand — as well as the many hours we are permitting our children to spend in front of the television set, instead of reading or studying.

Japan’s students are in school about 220 days of each year, whereas ours in the U.S. spend about 180 days in the classroom. Discipline reigns everywhere in Japan’s schools at every level, whereas discipline has virtually disappeared from public and private schools in America.

We demand less and less of our students, while the Japanese demand more and more of theirs. It’s little wonder, then, that the Japanese are outstripping us these days in education, as well as in industrial productivity. The penchant for discipline goes beyond the schoolroom in Japan.

Discipline also resides in the family in Japan, something American families should study and emulate. For the most part, the Japanese family is the crux and foundation of today’s society in Japan. That includes a remarkable trait — children and adults are taught to respect their elders and especially the grandparents and great-grandparents — and that respect includes the seniors’ disciplining of the young.

Whereas divorce and family breakups have become commonplace in American society, family ties are extremely strong in Japan and are reflected in Japanese society, as well as in education. As an example of the strong familial life in Japan, one has only to look at its recent ascendance in the arts.

When a child goes to a private lesson for instruction on the piano, violin, cello, clarinet, or any other instrument, members of the family also attend so that they can absorb the elements of the lesson. Then, when the child returns home, the parents help with the study time — and, once again, practice that important Japanese trait, discipline.

The same applies in training for the arts and letters. Little wonder that, in the past four or five decades, Japanese instrumental soloists and artists have spread across the world to astound audiences and museum and gallery goers with their spectacular talent.

It’s important to reiterate the underlying theme of the amazing progress the Japanese have made in education and all the arts. The theme is discipline.  And it’s a theme I’d like to see copied in the U.S.

Like many other large state-run colleges and universities, the University of Washington has announced it has been forced to reject 8,000 of the 20,000 applicants seeking to enter the university next fall.  It’s the largest number of rejections the Seattle-based school has ever turned away.

The record numbers of high-school graduates seeking entry to the state-run colleges and universities is attributed directly to what has been called the “baby boom echo” — the result of the extraordinary number of children born to the baby boomers and who are now graduating from high school.

In fact, more records are expected to be broken in the next few years as more and more offspring of the baby boomers receive their high-school diplomas and apply for entry to one of the state-run schools.  Of course, one of the reasons for the record-breaking applicants is that the state colleges are much less expensive than the private colleges and universities.

Educators say they see no reduction in the number of applicants for some time.  All of which prompts me to hark back to a suggestion I have made many times in recent years to any state-college administrators who are willing to listen.  Why not create “IT Colleges” — or Internet Colleges — to accommodate high-school graduates who are unable to matriculate at the colleges or universities of their choice?

I know a newly established IT College won’t have a football, basketball, baseball, or soccer team — or whatever — but many, many more youngsters will be able to receive a college education for a lot less money than present-day colleges require of their students.  Run properly, an IT College could prepare students just as well as traditional colleges can — or perhaps even better.

I know the IT students will miss the “rah-rah” atmosphere and the camaraderie traditional colleges and universities offer, but, in time, they won’t miss it one bit.  And, I dare say, it is quite possible that a well-run IT College might prove to be superior in the long run than the schools with football, basketball, and all the other teams.

In fact, I can see the day that all schools, from the grade-school through the high-school levels, could be run on the same plan, with youngsters learning from lessons provided by qualified teachers through the Internet.  Learning via the Internet would also give parents and other family members a chance to oversee the school child’s work and make sure that a child understands lessons and does his or her “homework” properly.

Is all this a fantasy that will never happen?  Certainly not.  First, it is not a fantasy;  the Computer Age has already made it possible.  It is only a matter of time that it will come about.  We can see by the bulging college classes that the day of Computer Age schooling will have to come about to accommodate future generations.

Oh, yes, one more important point must be considered.  As more and more youngsters go to IT schools or colleges, the drain on the American taxpayer is bound to be lessened and, in time, vanish.  Now who could complain about that?

One of the major ongoing disputes in the nation — and a dispute that may never be settled satisfactorily for the two sides involved — is how much homework, if any, is too much or not enough for pupils in the grade schools, the junior-high schools, and the senior-high schools of America.

One side in the dispute contends children are getting too much homework and that it is harmful to them, although the nature and duration of the “harm” done seem to be incidental or even non-existent, depending upon the person or organization doing the most complaining.

The other side proclaims the major need is for teachers to increase the amount of homework given students at all levels of learning, because, it says, the youngsters are not doing enough in all subjects to receive the training they should have — and because American education has fallen way behind that of other nations.

There is a “third side” in the dispute, and even a “fourth side.” The third side says the homework load in virtually all schools is just about right and that it should remain as is. The fourth side, believe it or not, insists that all homework should be abolished and that students should be permitted to learn at their own pace and in whatever direction they choose.

I guess all the angry rhetoric and steamed debate puts me on the “fifth side,” because I don’t agree with any of the combatants. As a onetime teacher and a lifelong student of history, current events, government, and all the rest, I was long ago convinced that the problem with school homework is the word “home.”

My idea, which, I confess, has not made much headway in scholastic circles, is that, what has been called homework since the dawn of time, should not be done at home but in the schoolroom, where it can be controlled by teachers and school administrators and directly advance the students’ learning.

Doesn’t it make sense to tack on an extra hour of school specifically for students to do the additional work they need to enhance their learning and to make certain that every child completes the needed lessons and is thus ready to keep up with all others in his or her class on every subject?

That plan would certainly be much better at teaching students than the present system of relying upon the children themselves to get the “home” work done. And, most assuredly, it would be infinitely better than leaving a child to find time at home in the midst of the many other interests that attract a youngster.

Many surveys have already told us that school children spend four, five, or even six hours each evening watching television. In addition to that major distraction, a great majority of youngsters are involved in team sports after school hours or even in the evening hours. Many other distractions also take precious time from the youngsters’ already busy day.

Entreaties to “Turn off the damned TV!” haven’t worked either, mainly because relatively few parents control the time their children spend in front of the tube or refuse to have a television set in the house. Have I made my point for keeping “home” work at school?

Here is an old political science question for you. If an innocent man is accused of a crime, should he seek a 12 or 15 person jury? The answer, according to Marquis de Condorcet, is a 15 person jury. Famous for what became known as “jury theorems,” Condorcet argued that, given good information, the relative probability of a group of individuals arriving at a correct decision increases as the size of the group gets larger. If that doesn’t make sense, just think of the “Ask the audience” lifeline in the Who Wants to be a Millionaire game show. The audience almost never gets it wrong because the collective knowledge of the audience is so much greater than any one individual.

Jury theorems are important in political science because they provide an empirical rather than a normative defense of democracy. Condorcet’s theorem suggests democratic forms of government are pretty good at “getting it right” because they involve such large a number of decision makers.

A few years ago, a colleague of mine at the University of Oregon hypothesized the existence of a “reverse jury theorem.” He asked, what if people are given bad information? Does Condorcet’s jury theorem conclude that the populace is guaranteed to make the wrong decision?

We never answered that question, but the recent votes in Ohio and Texas provide some evidence that he hypothesized correctly. According to exit polls of Democratic primary voters, 80% Ohioans and 59% of Texans blamed NAFTA for job loses in their manufacturing sector. This means that 80% of Ohio Democrats are simply wrong. Since the passage of NAFTA Ohio has gained 900,000 new jobs and the losses in manufacturing have nothing to do with trade agreements.

The reason Ohio, and everyone else in the world, is losing manufacturing jobs is because productivity is up. Way up. Since 1994, US manufacturing production is up 66%. This means we can make more stuff with less people. Manufacturing jobs are not going to China, they are going away. China has lost more manufacturing jobs than any other nation in the world. Between 1995 and 2002 the US lost 2 million manufacturing jobs. China lost 15 million. I wonder if Chinese workers are blaming NAFTA?

Nothing new is happening here. Two centuries ago 98% of all Americans worked in agriculture. Today it is 2%. We didn’t lose 96% of our farm jobs. With increases in productivity 2% of our people can now do what it used to take 98% of our people. This is a good thing. It frees up labor to do something else: build houses, make clothes, write poetry, make music.

So the question remains. How did Condorcet get it so wrong? With millions of Ohio voters, his theory suggests they would have to get it right, but they got it completely wrong. What happened?

There are three culprits in this tale. Politicians, the media, and me.

Take Senator Obama who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He tried to get votes by telling Ohio voters that NAFTA took their jobs, but at the same time he was telling Canadian officials he didn’t really believe that. Of course he didn’t. He is a Harvard graduate who knows trade doesn’t kill jobs. But he lied to people to get votes. Shame on Obama, Clinton, and any other politician who lies about trade to win elections.

But, why did the lie work? Unfortunately, it worked because our citizens are not educated enough about trade and trade policy to call the politicians on their lies. An economically educated public would have been able to expose their demagoguery. The mainstream media, having already drunk the Obama cool-aide, didn’t challenge any of his unsubstantiated assertions. Where was the full court press on our half term senator?

The fact that so many Ohioans got it wrong also means that people like me are complicit in this failure. Unless high school economic teachers, college economics professors, and those who teach political economy do a better job educating our students, they will continue to be victimized by manipulative presidential candidates. It also means that economics, like English and mathematics, should be required courses at all our public universities.

Political candidates go on and on ad infinitum about education and how to solve the myriad financial problems facing all schooling from kindergarten through college and graduate schools. Talk, talk, talk, yak, yak, yak… But they never come close to the real solution.

This is a perfect instance in which to bring up the old saw once again: As the late President Ronald Reagan said, government is the problem, not the solution! And politicians of both major parties continue to talk about programs and legislation that require government control and, worst of all, taxpayers’ money.

When are they going to learn? It seems to me that we should create a private school designed primarily to teach politicians how to run a city, a county, a state, and a country. They need instruction on the values inherent in a free-enterprise system and private institutions, rather than government agencies and monopolies.

The first lesson in such a school would be require politicians to understand what the U.S. Constitution says and what the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote and approved it. It should be drummed into legislators’ minds that the founders insisted that most governing powers were to be exercised by the states, not the federal government.

And when, at last, they understand the true nature of the Constitution, they should begin removing the federal government from education, for starters.

Why are the public schools, the colleges and universities, and the graduate schools facing grave financial problems? The No. 1 reason is federal control.

Congress — and the states, too — should act, first, to privatize all state-run colleges, universities, and graduate programs and then remove federal government from all controls over the public schools from kindergarten through the high schools.

Colleges and universities that feed on the public trough provided by the federal government should divest themselves of all frills and the many programs that don’t belong in the advanced curriculum — like “Appreciation of the Gay and Lesbian Life.” Too many of the courses and programs offered are created through the whims and personal wishes of educators succumbing to the demands of pressure groups.

Billions of taxpayer dollars could be saved through courageous pruning of unnecessary and even ridiculous courses of study.

At the same time, billions more could be saved by lopping off the terrible waste of funds that can be traced to the layers of unneeded administration in the bureaucracy that has grown through all federally controlled programs at all levels of government.

When will the public be aroused to the full fury needed to force members of Congress and all the Legislatures to act to save American education from the mediocrity that has been produced by government interference and control?

In an impassioned plea to Congress on Wednesday, Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, the world’s largest software firm, outlined a list of admirable proposals for improving American education and particularly for our schools to turn out the proficient technical workers the nation will need to maintain its position as the world’s technology leader. According to the Associated Press, he told the lawmakers

“the shortage of scientists and engineers was so acute that we must reform both our education system and our immigrations policies.  If we don’t, American companies simply will not have the talent to innovate and compete.”

Good for Mr. Gates!  I agree with him for the most part, but I think he left out an important point in his appeal.  It’s a point I have brought up many times with regard to similar appeals made by the Microsoft genius.  I must make it again, with the hope that its premise will eventually make its way into the Gates prospectus.  Here it is:

Microsoft is constantly expanding its facilities in Redmond, Bellevue, and Seattle, and the remarkable company continues to draw billions in profits as its products lead all others in sales in the U.S. and abroad.  Depending upon which week the “wealthy” statistics are announced, Gates is either the richest or second richest man in the world.

Why, then, don’t Gates and Microsoft establish a school or college or their own in which high-caliber students are trained for the jobs Gates wants to fill with foreign imports?  Aren’t our young people just as talented and ready for specialized careers as are the people Gates wants to bring in from other lands?

Microsoft and other computer firms have already been bringing in skilled workers from India, China, and elsewhere in the Far East.  If we don’t call a halt to the importation of many, many more workers from foreign countries, aren’t we creating a nation in which American-born students will not be able to find a job because foreign workers work for less pay?

Some time ago, I tried to encourage Seattle University, for example, to invite Gates and Microsoft to create a “new communications college of the future” under the banner of Seattle U.  In my proposal, Gates would not only finance the college, which he could do easily.

He would also have complete control over the curriculum of the new Gates College.  There he would be able to train the people he and other Computer Age companies will need in the future — as well as to train the new breed of communicators the news media and related fields will need in the years to come.

Unfortunately, Seattle U. did not follow up on my proposal.  But there is still time for Gates and Seattle U. — or some other university — to adopt the proposal.  Wouldn’t it be far better to train our own young people than to add millions more immigrants to a nation already overburdened with newcomers from other lands?

Friends studying the proposed budgets in Olympia tell me that although the Senate Dem’s funded all day kindergarten, the House D’s did not and instead are using the money to give the teachers an extra one percent raise.

Doesn’t this expose the hypocrisy of the D’s?  Screw the children and pay off labor’s support!

Let’s see now. America’s principal, overriding problem is the international war on terror and its manifestation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At home, one of the major problems, as I see it, is Big Government and the continuing slide toward Socialism. The economy is good, but the stock market keeps fluctuating.

Anything else? Of course, there are other problems here and there. But one that is alarming and growing is a problem seldom referred to and for which no solutions seem to be forthcoming. That problem may turn out to be the most serious of all, because it involves what is sometimes referred to as “the American dream.”

The problem? Americans are growing soft and spoiled because they are “over-entertained,” as I see it. Historians have told us time and again that prospering nations, from the old Roman and Greek Empires to those of recent times, begin fading away when their populations become too comfortable, too well fed, and “over-entertained.” That’s my description, not that of the historians, but it suits the situation extremely well.

Our adults and our children have become accustomed to the “easy life” and daily doses of entertainment. We crave entertainment — sports of all kinds, an unending supply of movies, parties (not the political kind), night life, and, now, the worst of them all because it affects adults and children alike, TV watching.

It may be that the last one, hour upon hour of being mesmerized by the electronic tube, symbolizes our greatest challenge because it is so convenient and so persistent. Children, especially, are its greatest victims, because they are “trapped by the tube,” as it were, instead of reading or doing their homework.

It’s little wonder that America has fallen so far behind most other developed nations in education. Some say the reason for that is our failure to provide the funding our schools need to produce better-educated youngsters. I don’t buy that. I think the main reason is that our children waste too much time being entertained and not enough time with their books, their homework, and their learning.

And the downward trend is growing worse by the year. Is there anything we can do about it? In commentaries in recent years, I have offered one practical solution: End the homework schools dish out to the kids, homework they don’t do anyway or don’t do well. Add an hour to the school day, during which the students can do the “homework.”

Of course, there are other ways we can help reverse the downward trend — like increasing discipline in all the schools, requiring parents or other relatives to become interested in the child’s school work, offering some incentives to children to encourage them to read more and study more, and raising the standards of scholarship in all schools, from grade school through the colleges.

We should heed the warning of the historians, who have indicated that the American Empire could emulate the demise of the Greek, Roman, and other empires because their people became “over-entertained.”

A few months ago, I wrote a book, The Right Opinion: A Heretic’s Voice from the Ivory Tower and Mark reviewed it here on the site.

As a follow-up, I wanted to alert you to two great articles in the Washington Post which take up this debate.

The first article by Robert Maranto (who was a Clinton appointee)argues, ala Goldberg’s thesis in Bias, that academia is accidentally homogeneous, but there are subtle ways to push conservatives out of the field. It’s a great read and I won’t summarize it all here.

Then, there is a response to Prof. Maranto’s essay by his mentor at the University of Maryland. He basically argues that conservatives won’t go into academia because they value money too much. As a conservative academic who makes less than $45,000 a year, I obviously disagree with his thesis. I would also point out that in my 10 plus years in academia, I have ONLY heard academics complain about their pay.

Either way, I hope you find time to read both articles. They are a little long, so it may take the not-to-bright folks over at EFFin Unsound about a week to understand them, but it’s worth the time.

About 17 or 18 years ago, a courageous University of Georgia professor dared to say what I have been writing and saying for a long time. His name was Stuart Katz, and he was right on in declaring that the Scholastic Aptitude Test on which so many schools depend in judging students has outlived its usefulness and should be junked.

The trouble is that the educational bureaucracy in America’s public schools functions even more slowly and ineffectively than the governmental bureaucracy, it that’s possible. And one of the oldest and most unreliable hang-ups in that educational bureaucracy is the S.A.T.

It’s a test that is given to more than two million high-school students each year, and, unfortunately, it wields far too much influence with institutions that use it to pigeonhole students. In fact, that influence dogs students throughout their four years of high school.

As I recall his statement, Professor Katz sided with many other bright minds in the educational world who have been urging development of new tests and methods to measure the potential of students. I can recite my own frustration in that regard. While serving in state government as the chief policy adviser to Governor Dixy Lee Ray in the late 1970s, I was her representative to the Education Commission of the States, meeting in Denver.

On the governor’s behalf, I tried to introduce a boldly innovative career-training program that would have been far more comprehensive than present methods — and would have helped young people find careers that best suited their skills, talents, and their wishes, whether it took them to college or directly into industry, business, or any other field.

The plan died before it had a chance, and I left state government when Governor Ray left and could not press my case. The lack of proper career training is a national disgrace, and it is one that is costing us dearly, just as it is costing those young people who never have a chance to follow the career that suits them best.

The S.A.T. is a symbol of our continuing ineptitude. In the years since I tried to get the U.S. Education Commission to embrace a national career-training program, several other tests have been introduced in school systems across the country — and none of them have come close in value and promise to the career-training program I proposed.

Since the bureaucrats in the various school systems won’t consider the program, I think it should be up to the many parent-teacher associations throughout America to take up the cudgels for the career-training idea and force the schools to give it a fair trial — or suffer the consequences.

One of the strongest arguments I have used over the years in trying to promote the career-training program is to cite the cases of the millions of Americans who go into careers they don’t like or for which they are not trained nor suited. It would not have happened if they had had the benefit of career training at an early age.

I have a great suggestion for Bill Gates, the brilliant chief wizard of the Microsoft Corporation, and I hope someone carries it to him, since I have been unable to break through his wall of receptionists, secretaries, and others for several years, even though I have many more valuable ideas for him and Microsoft.

The suggestion referred to involves a complaint he has been making for some time now and which addresses an issue that grows more serious by the day for the U.S. In his most recent statement, Gates lamented the fact that the nation is not turning out the technicians and engineers that are needed to keep our economy going and steadily improving.

Gates referred to the problem as one for Microsoft in particular. He said his firm, a world leader in computer technology, relies on “thousands of engineers skilled in math and computer science” and that the jobs are there waiting but the workers needed to fill them are not being trained.

My idea for Gates has several potentials I hope he will consider. The first concerns Microsoft itself, as well as Gates and Steve Balmer, who is now running the company as Gates devotes most of his time to his foundation. Why don’t Gates and Balmer create their own school at Microsoft to train the engineers they will need?

Another potential goes this way: Why don’t Gates and Balmer take their case to school systems in Washington State and to all other state school systems, as well? For years, I have been pleading for all states to follow the lead set by states like Ohio, Illinois, and a few others in establishing technical high schools to train the much needed workers of the future?

I was a graduate of such a high school, East Technical in Cleveland, which was one of two high-tech schools in the Greater Cleveland area. While there, I was enrolled in the five-year preparatory course under the Smith-Hughes Act, which Congress passed back in the 1930s to begin filling the need for high-tech workers.

As a result, East Technical and West Technical High Schools were soon filling the skilled-worker needs of Cleveland’s mammoth industrial complex — and has continued to do it to this day. In this day and age, the computer sciences are very much a part of the skilled training courses needed — and which Gates says Microsoft needs.

Still another potential has just been announced by the Federal Way School System, which is creating a special course that will concentrate on science and technology, very much like the technical schools in Cleveland. The new academy will include youngsters from Grades 6 through 12.

The sad note in Federal Way’s case is that the much larger Seattle Public School System has rejected proposals for establishing science-and-technical schools for the past three years and shows no signs of doing so in the future. Now, there’s a target for you to work on, Messrs. Gates and Balmer!

Technical-training schools would accomplish at least one other desirable goal — which is to reduce the number of technically trained migrants from the Far East, who have been taking the jobs that should have been filled by American-born students.

I am amazed that my liberal, socialistic friends think they are so “progressive” while Republicans are so “conservative,” when, in fact, it’s been the Republicans who advocate change in public policy while the Democrats adhere to the failed policies of FDR and Lyndon Johnson.

I am inspired by an insight that my colleague Matt Manweller has in his new book, The Right Opinion: a Heritic’s Voice from the Ivory Tower. Matt’s idea is worth expanding.

For instance, public education.  Democrats stick with a failed system that supports corrupt teacher unions and “old fashioned” tenure.  Republicans say change: try vouchers and create market competition.  Actually Republicans are “Pro Choice” in education, aren’t they?

Transportation.  Democrats want 19th century trains and bicycles.  Republicans want modern cars and highways and are open to futuristic transportation systems.

Taxation.  Democrats adhere to old theories of high taxation rates.  Republicans embrace newer theories that lower taxes actually raise more revenue for government through increased velocity of money in the economy.

Trade.  Democrats stay protectionist and traiff-loving.  Republicans espouse the newer theories of open markets and lower tariffs.

Social Security.  Democrats conservatively stick with an old FDR game plan that everyone agrees will end up in bankruptcy some years out.  Republicans want to try something new, and privatize some of the investing.

Welfare.  Democrats cling to the FDR Nanny State.  Republicans reform welfare encouraging people to work for a living.

Foreign Policy.  Democrats cling to 20th Century isolationism.  Republicans see America’s leadership roll in the 21st Century, especially in the area of fighting global terrorism and Islamofascism.

Ending world hunger, disease and poverty.  Democrats advocate slowing the world’s economies in the name of an old “Mother Earth” religion called environmentalism, while Republicans advocate improving productivity which will finance the solutions to rid the world of hunger, disease and poverty.

I can go on.  But you see the point.  Republicans advocate change and new approaches.  Democrats stick with tired, broken principles of the New Deal and Great Society.  Historically, Democrats are the party of slavery, lynchings and female oppression.  Republicans have been the party of reform, racial equality and women’s suffrage.

Just what party is conservative and what party is progressive?  Maybe it’s time we stopping looking at the world through mirrors and rethink the labels of our political parties.