Stick Close to Your Desks

Author Linda Brady Traynham

Stick Close to Your Desks and never go to sea and you all may become rulers of the Queen’s Naaavvvvvy.” Gilbert and Sullivan are timeless.

Consider Admiral Mike Mullen, current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a prime example of G&S, although it is improbable that he is surrounded by his sisters, his cousins, and his aunts. Admiral Mullen is a real blue water sailor’s sailor, indeed, a graduate of the Naval Academy, it goes almost without saying. During his exciting naval career he has commanded three vessals–a tanker, and a destroyer and cruiser both armed with missiles. One would not wish to be mean-spirited, since even the very best admirals cannot fight stirring naval battles when no enemy is available, but the fact remains that Admiral Mullen’s sole “battle experience” appears to be standing off shore and shelling Iraq in air conditioned comfort with linen napery, most probably well out of range of retaliation.

Admiral Mullen has come out in favor of ending the sixteen-year-old policy (a very bad one) of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” This is not ancient Greece where the theory was that a man would fight more gallantly and ferociously if his lover were observing him. The all-volunteer Navy is composed of primarily heterosexual men and women and an unknown but undoubtedly small number of sexual deviants. I have no objection to such people serving their country in any capacity they wish and are qualified to fulfill, but I do object to mixed bathing, since we aren’t Japanese, either. Every liberal in the known world would scream if it were proposed that the First and Second Lesbos Battalions and the Gay Legion were formed (supposing there are enough candidates to form such things), but it certainly seems fair to deny entry to the armed forces on the grounds of “conduct unbecoming” and, ahem, the “right of privacy.” There are circles where group showers involving a lot of giggling and laying on of soapy hands are considered normal, but they, too, should remain exclusively voluntary and demilitarized.

Another excellent example of the G&S principle is found in our own House of Lords where the rising hereditary nobility and entrenched private, union, public, and even less savory sources of money Senators make policies that destroy businesses they have never run and moral principles they have never practiced for the benefit of themselves and those who keep them in power by paying re-election expenses. When the Legions went forth from decaying Rome they carried standards that proclaimed “SPQR.” Senatus populesque Romanum. The things our Senate does in the name of the people of America are frequently more vile and even more destructive and expensive.

Matters are no better at the state level, other than not declaring war on each other. There are, however, occasional bright sparks although most of them are extinguished quickly by politics as usual. New Jersey Governor Christie just fired a real Roman candle which may well start fires in the hearts of many voters. It will certainly evoke torrents of abuse from all oxen who–in theory–will be gored and every other ox in the nation. The primary subject is reform of the bloated pension and health insurance schemes “public servants” and other unions have arranged for themselves which have grown far past the point of being possible to fund. Governor Christie cites: ”
One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits — a total of $3.8m on a $120,000 investment. Is that fair?

A retired teacher paid $62,000 towards her pension and nothing, yes nothing, for full family medical, dental and vision coverage over her entire career. What will we pay her? $1.4 million in pension benefits and another $215,000 in health care benefit premiums over her lifetime. Is it “fair” for all of us and our children to have to pay for this excess?

The total unfunded pension and medical benefit costs are $90 billion. We would have to pay $7 billion per year to make them current. We don’t have that money—you know it and I know it. What has been done to our citizens by offering a pension system we cannot afford and health benefits that are 41% more expensive than the average fortune 500 company’s costs is the truly unfair part of this equation.”

Not stopping there, the brave Governor went on, “School aid is a large proportion of New Jersey’s budget – especially of the amount which has not yet been spent in FY 2010. So we cannot put our budget in balance without putting some school aid in reserve.

The total amount of aid to be withheld is $475 million. I know this solution will not be popular. More than 500 school districts will be affected, and more than 100 districts will lose all state aid for the remainder of the year.”

Since the pay and benefits Congress, in particular, votes itself are a well-known scandal of truly outrageous proportions, let it be noted that the closest correlation between classroom size, funds expended, and outcome in “excellence” is that the smaller, more expensive, and more under the control of the NEA a classroom is the more certain we may be that long abysmal standards and achievement will fall. Obama and friends killed a very successful program sending a few thousand lucky inner city kids to charter schools in DC at half the price of public education. Washington is notorious for having “education” outcomes that would be considered a disgrace in Zaire and Patagonia, to come up with two tiny nations at random. Small class size is not significant, throwing money at the problem worsens it, and Project Head Start is a black hole that has never shown any significant improvement. The problem with inner city and “economically deprived” youngsters isn’t where they live or how much money Daddy makes if there is a father in the home and he is actually employed. The problem in that area is that some 40% of Kindergarten enrolees lack the vocabulary, work habits, and basic knowledge of the world inculcated by “middle class” parents. (One would think that those who work tirelessly to reduce us all to the lowest common denominator would realize that the best solution is a larger, better, middle class with old-fashioned stay-at-home moms, something which could be achieved by comprehensive tax cuts and reducing the welfare plantation to the few who are genuinely physically and mentally incapacitated.)

I have a modest proposal for a trial program based upon modern, scientific principles. My computers all have a splendid feature which allow me to restore the system to the last known time it was running correctly. Let us pick a base year–say, 1950–and set up a school which uses precisely the same curricula and textbooks utilized at that time. True, the little dears won’t learn about the Korean war or Viet Nam, or even about the Salk Vaccine, but it is quite possible they will learn arithmetic, poetry, foreign languages, chemistry, biology, civics, typing, and public speaking. The only other deviation from those standards would be using Webster’s Blue Backed Spellers instead of “See Dick run.” Only through teaching phonics and nothing but phonics can a student be taught to read quickly, easily, and flawlessly with superb comprehension to the level of his or her working vocabulary–and by that time, the student can use a dictionary.

Phonics is a subject it would take me at least half a dozen articles to cover completely, at which time every one of you would know precisely how to teach anyone to read quickly and easily with nothing more than something to write on and something to write with. I don’t have enough to occupy my time, so I will issue a challenge to any and all interested in proving me wrong. Have, say, Literacy Volunteers of America choose six totally illiterate children of at least dull normal intelligence whose native tongue is English, and have a trustworthy source–perhaps Judger Roger Moore or Ron Paul–divide them into two groups, and let’s play Elijah and the Prophets of Baal. Choose three K teachers from the nearby twin cities (population some 155,000) and let them set up their own schedule using the textbooks currently in their classrooms. Send the other three kids and their parents out to the ranch for a week’s vacation, and let’s find out if I’m a blowhard or if I really can snap my fingers and light that barbecue grill one week from the day the trials begin.

Not surprisingly, I don’t offer to make any bets I don’t expect to win easily. If I don’t have my group reading flawlessly on at least a third grade level I promise I will never, ever again criticise how “reading” is taught in public schools. Which is, actually, as though it were Chinese ideographs. I’ll sweeten the deal: I won’t use any actual textbooks at all, and will hand the kids good literature for practice material. No pictures. A panel of judges can test all of the students with standard reading assessment tests or something like Bill Bennett’s Book of Virtues. Harry Potter books would be excellent–interesting stories and a great test of the ability to cope with unusual, created words that can only be read phonetically.

Once we get a literate population with the sort of education oldtimers had, perhaps we can grow and elect a better class of representative government.

Regards,

Linda Brady Traynham

This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Authors, Entertainment, Linda Brady Traynham, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.