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Tag Archives: Deep State

Ideology and the Public School Monopoly

15 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by pnuetz in Education

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Claremont Institute, Common Core, Cory Koedel, Darleen Click, Deep State, FEE, Foundation for Economic Education, Horace Mann, J.D. Tuccille, James G. Martin Center, Jay Schalin, John Hinderaker, Justin Spears, Michael Crichton, Mike Margeson, Multiculturalism, Public School Monopoly, Rob Dreher, Ryan P. Williams, School Choice, SJWs, Social Justice, TFP Student Action, Victory Girls, White Privilege, Woke Teachers, Zero-Sum Society

I toured our local public high school not long ago after some renovations. It’s my old school and my kids attended there as well, though it’s been largely stripped of its old character. Our sweet tour guide, when asked about school security and whether any staff are armed, said no, and then proudly informed us that the temperament of the school was “pretty progressive”, and that sort of thing would not go over well. Later, as I stepped into the new library, I happened to notice a table right up-front intended to showcase several books. The first title I laid eyes on was “Social Justice”, a topic emphasizing all manner of grievances, current and historical, the identification of culpable parties (and their unworthy descendants), and presumed correctives. The latter include reparations, redistribution, control of speech, criminalization, and often shaming. At best, these correctives deliver palliatives to the aggrieved that must be forcibly extracted by the state from others, with little consideration for the predictably disastrous second-order effects they engender.

The prominent display of the social justice book and our tour guide’s attitude regarding security were unsurprising manifestations of the educational emphasis our kids get today: the public schools have become indoctrination camps. Of course, a good class in American history will leave no doubt about the injustices that have occurred in our nation over 250 years. There were many individual victims and many groups were victimized. We could say the same about a good class in European history, or the history of events in any region of the world. However, the social justice doctrine being peddled to our children today assigns blame for victimhood to anyone deemed not to be a victim, as well as the growth and very success of western civilization, including capitalism, this despite the unprecedented comforts available today across the socioeconomic spectrum. It’s as if the SJWs wish to convince our children that all economic gains are of the zero-sum variety.

The politicization of the curriculum in our schools is an extremely dangerous phenomenon. Many schools are banning literature, distorting history, subverting science in favor of politicized orthodoxy, and teaching “social justice math“, which I’m sure is heavy on zero-sum word problems. And how about this “Run from the cop” worksheet given to first graders in a Pittsburgh school! Federal and state education authorities are taking an active hand in much of this. For example, a new ethnic studies curriculum for California high schools proposed by the state Department of Education takes a notably anti-Israel perspective. At the federal level, there is the Common Core initiative (and see here) which, in addition to educational inefficacy, is a source of many of the same concerns cited above. President Obama’s school discipline policy, heavy in its emphasis on “disparate impact”, was perhaps even more disastrous (and see here).

Social studies textbooks today are increasingly written by leftist authors who distort U.S. history, present anti-science viewpoints on environmental topics, and promote the divisive tenets of multiculturalism. The U.S. history covered in this prominent textbook is subject to a variety of left-wing biases, but it is not unique in that regard. And it’s not only a matter of bias in favor of collectivist philosophy and leftist interpretations of historical events. For example, it’s way over the top to teach public school children that Christians are bigots.

But God bless the teachers, many of whom are indeed wonderful people, and many of whom are very good at what they do (my daughter being a prime example!). There is little doubt, however, that leftism dominates the faculty in most public schools. John Hinderaker writes of the political activism practiced by the faculty at a high school in Edina, Minnesota, where lessons about “white privilege” are part of the curriculum even in the feeder schools. It’s a travesty that many of our nation’s public school teachers are products of university schools of education with extremely low academic standards relative to other academic divisions within those universities. And these schools of education have been thoroughly politicized. Needless to say, a good many of their graduates are easily cowed by the typical “feel-good”, free-lunch, social justice arguments made by the Left.

In a sense, these civil servants are a local counterpart to the army of federal bureaucrats sometimes known as the “deep state”. They are funded by taxpayers and are often represented by powerful unions. Under-performing teachers are difficult to dismiss, and they are able to exercise great discretion in the messages they deliver to students. As Darleen Click writes, “The ‘woke’ want your children“.

The leftist thrust of public education today descends from a long evolution shaped by “progressive” education reforms, and most reforms receiving attention within today’s education establishment fail to address the single biggest problem: the public school monopoly. That inattention is reinforced by attempts to maintain ideological purity among participants in the debate over school reform. Social studies teachers Mike Margeson and Justin Spears, writing for the Foundation for Economic Education on the motives for establishing public education, say the following about historical reforms:

“The objective was to nationalize the youth in a particular mold. … From Luther to Fichte, the idea to use the coercive power of the state to force kids into schools and indoctrinate them was clear. Horace Mann became instrumental in importing this system and helping it spread throughout the United States.”

Breaking the public education monopoly is imperative to improving both the quality and cost of education. That means choice, in all it’s liberating glory. J.D. Tuccille has a great take on this issue: choice is the only way we can assure that our children are taught from a perspective that parents most prefer. Many parents know that they must take an active part in educating their children. That includes their role in selecting the school they believe will be best for their kids, as well as ongoing scrutiny of the school’s performance. A simple by-product of choice is that schools and their faculties might be more circumspect about shading their instruction with their own political agendas.

 

 

Closing “Nonessential” Government

19 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by pnuetz in Big Government, Regulation, Uncategorized

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Adam Brandon, Border Wall, Council of Economic Advisors, Deep State, Federal Compensation, Government Output, Government Shutdown, John Tamny, Matthew Walther, Nonessential Functions, Reductions in Force

Contrary to the cartoon above, it’s not back up and running, though tax withholding and the impacts of regulatory rules continue unabated, and almost assuredly surveillance as well. After all (!), the federal government shutdown affects only “nonessential” activities of the federal government. Federal workers who are furloughed will receive back pay when the partial shutdown ends, but for now, federal spending is down roughly 25%.

The very real inconveniences for furloughed workers are regrettable. TSA employees continue to work while their paychecks are deferred indefinitely, though rates of absenteeism are high. So, we have slowdowns in security lines at airports, a lack of services at national parks (at least those not managed by private firms collecting revenue from visitors on-site), and a variety of other disruptions. For the time being, however, the lives of most Americans are largely unaffected. Except for the news coverage, my life hasn’t changed in any way, though I haven’t traveled during the shutdown.

Unfounded rumors about the shutdown have been rampant. For instance, I’ve heard that Social Security checks and weather forecasts would be suspended. Nancy Pelosi said the Secret Service would be unable to protect the President at the State of the Union address in the House chamber, a statement which the Department of Homeland Security promptly refuted. Many of the federal agencies with the highest shares of furloughed employees are regulators whose services are arguably counter-productive.

The White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) estimates that each additional week of the shutdown will reduce first quarter GDP growth by 0.13%. That means the interruption would take about 0.5% off first quarter growth if it lasts through January (say, from an annual rate of 2.5% to 2.0%). To the extent that people view the shutdown as temporary, and most do, the so-called “multiplier effects” of the shutdown should be relatively minor.

GDP is intended to measure of the value of the economy’s physical output. It is calculated in two independent ways based on 1) all income earned, and 2) the total of all spending on final (not intermediate) goods and services. Most components of final spending are well defined by the values assigned to goods and services traded in markets. Likewise, most incomes are based on the value assigned by labor markets to a given productive effort. Government “output”, however, is rather suspect as a component of spending because it is generally not subject to a market test of value. On the income side of the ledger, do government workers produce actual outputs? Some do, of course, but those outputs cannot be measured except by assigning a value based on what the workers are paid, and the payer is spending other peoples’ money! It’s not too speculative to suggest that the government’s output is a fraction of its spending. If that’s the case, the actual reduction in output caused by the shutdown is much smaller than the measured reduction in GDP. Therefore, the CEA’s estimates are a fiction.

To put an even finer point on it, many nonessential functions absorb resources while contributing very little to the nation’s wealth. Adam Brandon and John Tamny assert that private economic growth gives us the luxury of a large government sector, not the other way around. Government absorbs resources when it spends, but only by virtue of the taxes it imposes on private activity that is otherwise more highly productive. In the long run, as Brandon and Tamny argue, a smaller government (given a permanent shutdown of certain functions) might well yield greater economic output, not less.

Read this interesting essay for a discussion of the wasted, even counterproductive, utilization of human resources in government:

“They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands — administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. ‘Process is your friend’ is what delusional civil servants tell themselves. Even senior officials must gain approval from every rank across their department, other agencies and work units for basic administrative chores.

Process is what we serve, process keeps us safe, process is our core value. It takes a lot of people to maintain the process. Process provides jobs. In fact, there are process experts and certified process managers who protect the process. Then there are the 5 percent with moxie (career managers).

Again, many and perhaps most Americans view the shutdown itself with a certain degree of cynicism. In “America’s shutdown indifference“, Matthew Walther recalls this entertaining aspect of the last shutdown under President Obama:

“…of barriers being erected around various D.C.-area landmarks, including open-air war memorials. To this day I cannot think of any good reason for this save sheer caprice. If the idea was that 550-foot obelisks made of granite simply could not be meaningfully serviced during those lean two weeks in 2013, then who was responsible for putting up the rent-a-fence barricades around them? Civic-minded volunteers? The U.S. Marine Corps? Barack Obama himself? It was beautifully cynical, and I congratulate whoever came up with it.”

Both sides of the aisle play politics at the expense of the federal workforce. I certainly don’t wish to denigrate all federal workers. They perform varied functions and many are hard-working individuals. But still, it’s hard to feel very sorry for them given that they out-earn their private sector counterparts at almost every education level. Again, here’s Walther:

“Government employees, at both the state and federal level, are among the only workers in the United States who continue to be represented by powerful unions, despite the fact that by definition they’re not bargaining against capital but against their fellow citizens.”

I haven’t even mentioned the debate over open borders and the proposed wall, but that’s not my purpose here. All parties to that debate seem to think the shutdown is unlikely to harm their side politically. That’s either because the shutdown isn’t perceived as very impactful, or the “other” side can be blamed. One theory making the rounds is that the shutdown is part of a larger plan to institute permanent Reductions in Force (RIFs) at federal agencies, which are permissible after a furlough of 30 days or more (by January 19th). The argument plausibly suggests that some federal agencies might operate more effectively once the bureaucracy is pruned back via furloughs and/or RIFs. That’s especially true if “deep-state” sabotage of efforts to roll-back regulations are as common as the author asserts. Is the shutdown therefore a trap for unsuspecting congressional Democrats? Who knows, but to my way of thinking, government RIFs might even be worth the trouble of building a wall!

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