Elsewhere (227)
The College Fix reports on a daring breakthrough in educational standards:
The New York State Board of Regents will consider tomorrow whether to go with a task force’s recommendation to scrap a teacher literacy exam known as the Academic Literacy Skills Test. “Part of the reason,” NBC New York reports, is because “an outsized percentage of black and Hispanic candidates were failing it.” It is expected the Board will abandon the assessment.
Because expecting educators to be even nominally competent is so Twentieth Century.
Victor Davis Hanson on politics and incompetence:
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg used to offer all sorts of cosmic advice on the evils of smoking and the dangers of fatty foods and sugary soft drinks. Bloomberg also frequently pontificated on abortion and global warming, earning him a progressive audience that transcended the boroughs of New York. But in the near-record December 2010 blizzard, Bloomberg proved utterly incompetent in the elemental tasks for which he was elected: ensuring that New Yorkers were not trapped in their homes by snowdrifts in their streets that went unploughed for days. The Bloomberg syndrome is a characteristic of contemporary government officials. When they are unwilling or unable to address pre-modern problems in their jurisdictions — crime, crumbling infrastructure, inadequate transportation — they compensate by posing as philosopher kings who cheaply lecture on existential challenges over which they have no control.
John Ellis on why the National Endowment for the Arts is a bad thing:
From the organisation’s website, “The NEA is an independent federal agency that funds, promotes, and strengthens the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts participation.” That mission statement prompts a few questions… How does creating a false market for art promote and strengthen creative capacity? The NEA model artificially props up mostly unwanted markets by using tax dollars that get funnelled through inefficient and wasteful bureaucracies… Artificially propping up an unwanted market does not benefit the arts. It does benefit the people who work in the NEA office and the many local organisations that help funnel taxpayers’ money to arts organisations, though. What it does to the arts is create a marketplace that supports bad art.
See also this.
And Anthony Gockowski spies a terribly radical approach to being terribly radical:
“The nap-ins are part of the internal journey to diversity. All dreams start while sleeping,” explained Marissa Amposta, student coordinator of the event, noting that her nap-ins will take place in the rotunda of the campus library, and that students will be able to share their dreams on a fabric scroll displayed nearby. The event will take place as part of the school’s “Dreaming Diversity Art Installation” created in celebration of Women’s History Month sponsored by the Women’s Resource Centre. “People forget we are still working for equality,” Nicole Tabor, graduate assistant coordinator of the centre declared. “It might never happen if we stop fighting.”
Yes, they’re fighting, you see, these little warriors. For “diversity,” obviously. And also for “equality,” which the middle-class ladies taking gender studies courses are, it turns out, being cruelly denied. And they’re doing all this – bravely, heroically – by taking naps for three weeks.
Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments.
I once knew an elementary school teacher who was quite proud of her meteoric rise . . . .
and . . . .
It’s all about appearance.
Having The Title.
Can I be a killjoy and point out that the quotation above isn’t by Petronius? (Yes, yes I can). Petronius Arbiter wasn’t alive in 210 BC, either – he was a court favourite of Nero who later fell foul of him and was forced to commit suicide.
“According to the Firehouse website, she lasted all of 10 days.”
Passing drill school(when the goalposts keep getting moved so you can’t fail) is one thing.
Once you get on the floor on your first shift as a probie, that’s entirely another. They probably ate her alive.
They probably ate her alive.
Extending these special exemptions and indulgences to favoured identity groups, even when individuals are worryingly incompetent, seems a recipe for friction and resentment. It can’t be easy to get past the fact – of which there may be daily reminders – that one of you has been promoted unfairly, way beyond her abilities. It’s hard to miss the insult to any staff, including minority staff, who actually earned their positions, and whose job has just become even more dangerous.
Speaking of identity quotas.
From this.
“Apparently, that’s good enough.
If I’m understanding this correctly, apparently it is good enough to fool the dumber people that she claims don’t exist. But of course, the “dumber people” are everyone that don’t agree with her. I suppose.
Or are they actually evil people just pretending to be dumb.
Every time I try to understand Leftist Logic my brane hurtz.
Or are they actually evil people just pretending to be dumb.
I think that’s about as clever as she is, though maybe foolish is a better word. As for evil, I could only guess, but there’s the usual mix of vanity, dishonesty and grandiose unrealism. And were her pronouncements realised, her fantasies of “overturning existing hierarchies,” the effects would be destructive. In the original thread, a commenter, Andrew Zalotocky, described Dr Power’s ramblings as “evil and trivial at the same time, like selling your soul to the Devil for a seat on the parish council.”
They probably ate her alive.
Firefighting? Your life may depend on the raw strength of another firefighter to drag you up a flight of stairs and out to safety while you’re both wearing firefighting gear that can weigh up to 75 pounds.
Not to mention the lives of fire victims who also depend on the physical strength and stamina of rescuers.
That should count for something in a sane world.
So, yeah, a female “probie” firefighter has a lot to prove among her peers before earning acceptance. There’s a lot on the line. No tears for washouts, male or female.
Or are they actually evil people just pretending to be dumb.
This.
how will people from such groups ever qualify for careers in medicine and many other areas which require literacy and the ability to read and analyse complex information?
These clowns will GLADLY permit substandard surgeons to operate rather than admit they are wrong.
How do you know whether your surgeon has good reading-comprehension skills? How do you know whether your pilot can competently compose a paragraph?
School administrators are some of the brick-stupidest people on the planet, meaning that they either cannot tell what competence looks like or they’ll be damned if mere students (or teachers) come up smarter than they.
It’s buckets of crabs all the way down.
her fantasies of “overturning existing hierarchies,”
Meaning: Me and mine occupy the top seats, having destroyed everyone above us.
Sometimes stupidity IS evil. If you have reason to know that you’re not competent to do X, and you insist on doing it anyway because reasons, and you’ve bullied wiser people in to letting you do it, and the disaster caused by your incompetence was foreseeable, then you’ve done an evil thing. The evil being HUBRIS.
I’m a pretty smart cookie, but being a Humanities puke working in IT, I’ve also learned that what I don’t know can hurt me (well, it will brick my machines and maybe other people’s stuff), so I must be cognizant always of my limitations. If I don’t know how doing X will affect things, I need to not do X until I’ve asked someone about it. Even if it appears to me to be an obvious little thing that I can just do.
Otherwise, I risk borking things up badly and then one of my long-suffering colleagues has to spend precious time unraveling it.
I actually prefer working among people who are smarter than I am at the primary task (developing software). It means I get to learn new things every day.
But some people are such pinheaded asses that they can’t endure the idea that they’re ignoramuses, and so rather than patch up their ignorance with learning, they spin delusions about their own abilities and worth, gumming up the works in the process and stomping on the competent whenever possible.
Such ignoramuses are not working in the private sector: if they manage to get hired, they lose their positions soon enough. OTOH, gubmint bureaucracies are filled to overflowing with jumped-up morons, who spend all their time building fiefdoms and jockeying for position and the biggest of the asses ends up being in the top spot.
Thomas Sowell used to be a Marxist. He took Friedman’s courses and still was a Marxist. Then he worked at a gubmint agency and saw all of the braying asses and the multitude of incentives to BE an ass, and concluded that such people should never be allowed within a country mile of the levers of power.
My first tech-writing gig was as a defense contractor at the local air force base.
Sowell came to exactly the right conclusion.
Boy, did he ever come to the right conclusion.
If you have reason to know that you’re not competent to do X, and you insist on doing it anyway because reasons, and you’ve bullied wiser people in to letting you do it, and the disaster caused by your incompetence was foreseeable, then you’ve done an evil thing. The evil being HUBRIS.
Don’t think I can argue with that.
Sometimes stupidity IS evil.
And then of course there are people who are damaged in such a way as to be malevolent. As noted many times, the “social justice” demographic includes a remarkably high concentration of such disordered people. More, I think, than chance alone would allow.
Such ignoramuses are not working in the private sector
Oh, yes, they absolutely are. Now, it’s been my experience that the cycle time in pure software engineering is so short that they’re scarce there, but in conventional engineering the Dunning-Kruger effect runs rampant.
More, I think, than chance alone would allow.
It’s not hard to see how people whose psyche was warped by a childhood of severe abuse would be attracted to a worldview that consists of a host of exaggerated imaginary bogeymen constantly oppressing people, that one can be regarded as heroic and powerful for standing up against without having to actually do anything dangerous.
Then he worked at a gubmint agency and saw all of the braying asses and the multitude of incentives to BE an ass, and concluded that such people should never be allowed within a country mile of the levers of power.
Donald Trump has said something about cutting the federal workforce by 20% (iirc). I think that may only be the deadwood who do nothing at all. When something like 90% of the federal employees in DC are considered “non-essential” (those furloughed during so-called “government shutdowns” when there’s a budget impasse), I’d say a reduction of 50% might begin to make a impact.
David: “As noted many times, the “social justice” demographic includes a remarkably high concentration of such disordered people. More, I think, than chance alone would allow.”
Having worked as a specialist consultant in behaviour management in a state government [Australian] department of welfare I must agree that those in middle/upper management ranked as some of the most dissolute – they lived on alcohol and were quite predatory sexually – and incompetent people I have ever met, yet they could talk the social justice talk brilliantly. One female social worker was married to an ex-Catholic priest who had himself re-trained as a social worker. The woman was in charge of the large child protection department and notorious for her bitchy and two-faced treatment of staff, but she had to be re-deployed away from child protection when it was found out that her social worker husband was in gaol [or jail in the US] for having sex with an under-age girl!
Hi Charlie Suet. If Petronius did not write that wonderful statement, do you know who did? I was given the document and took it on good faith that the author was Petronius. Regardless it is a perfect description of politicised systems that lose track of their original purpose, i.e. service to those who are in need, and start to exist for the good of the in-house staff only
And Daniel Ream: I had some other signs above my desk for which I owe thanks to Walt Disney. One pointed towards the state capital where head office was situated. It read “Fantasy Land”. Another pointed to the Regional Director’s office. It read “Wonderland” The third sign pointed to where my specialist colleagues and I sat and worked. It read Adventure land. As we often worked with severely disturbed children and adults who were very dangerous in their behaviour, some times we found ourselves working in Frontier land. The bureaucrats never worked out the joke.
“systems that lose track of their original purpose, i.e. service to those who are in need, and start to exist for the good of the in-house staff only”
Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
Thanks for that PiperPaul: “Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy”.
I’m a practitioner and only work directly with clients/students and their families. I don’t know anything about organisational theory, but I do know what I want from bureaucrats so I can do my work properly, but, as time passes there are fewer and fewer managers in our systems who have clinical experience. From what I understand, modern management theory states that managers do not have to understand or know anything what they are managing because management is about systems and all systems are essentially the same. Consequently we have people in authority who we now describe as “content-free managers”. They do a lot of harm. Years ago I could count on senior managers having real clinical experience; they had a sense of vocation. Those managers understood what happened in the field so I and my colleagues would not have to explain what we were doing – repeatedly. Nowadays managers are always on a career path and only stay long enough to add another job to their resume before they move on. They are also risk-averse which is no good if one is working in the area of abnormal psychology where clients do not fit a standard “mould”.
From what I understand, modern management theory states that managers do not have to understand or know anything what they are managing because management is about systems and all systems are essentially the same.
This might have been true if people were “human resources,” but they’re not, they’re “personnel.”
From AoSHQ co-blogger Misanthropic Humanitarian, “Quote of the Day”:
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. Thomas Sowell
Seems appropriate. Too bad nobody in government is listening.
For your perusal:
https://twitter.com/RealPeerReview/status/841594454658170880
Petronius quotation is attributed to charlton ogburn at this url:
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/25618.html
I got there via wikipedia.
NTSOG: Major projects engineering is now similar. Management is very often finance types or engineers with MBAs, which is why cheap offshoring is so popular – damn the downstream costs. There is a lot of time between pencils-down and operating facility, which provides ample opportunities to “smooth over irregularities”, screw-ups and incompetence.
There is little mentoring or training going on, as leads/managers are invariably now administrative rather than technical.
Much of this is due to displacement of experienced people in favor of “people who can operate the software” (which is perpetually in dev mode, constantly changing and sold to management often based on whiz-bang demos). Of course, management aren’t the ones who have to use the software…
I could go on, but I won’t bore everyone.
NTSOG said: So if literacy standards are dropped for minority/ethnic groups how will people from such groups ever qualify for careers in medicine and many other areas which require literacy and the ability to read and analyse complex information?
Funny you should ask:
The big brother of Fox sitcom star Mindy Kaling reveals that he got into medical school by pretending to be African-American.
Fifteen years ago, Vijay Chokal-Ingam shaved off his straight black hair, trimmed what he calls his “long Indian eyelashes” and started checking off the “black” box for race on his med-school applications.
Before long, the Asian Indian-American was interviewing at Harvard and Columbia, and found himself on wait lists at the University of Pennsylvania, Washington University and Mt. Sinai — despite his relatively mediocre 3.1 GPA and his family’s considerable wealth.
What could possibly go wrong?
Hopp Singg: ‘This might have been true if people were “human resources,” but they’re not, they’re “personnel.”‘
Thank you for that. I was always irritated by the term “human resources”, but never considered why.
And thank you to the others who have enlightened me with/through the references above.
From what I understand, modern management theory states that managers do not have to understand or know anything what they are managing because management is about systems and all systems are essentially the same. Consequently we have people in authority who we now describe as “content-free managers”. They do a lot of harm.
In Up The Organization, Robert Townsend describes the MBA as a variety of walking meat that only shows up to get handed a title, where actual managers start with the company and learn what the company does and why.
Up The Organization was first published in 1970, and is still in print.
“systems that lose track of their original purpose, i.e. service to those who are in need, and start to exist for the good of the in-house staff only”
Hello Hal: I began to see the rise of “content-free” managers in about 1995 in the organisations in which I worked. They gradually replaced those managers who had a sense of vocation and, as stated, had risen within the organisation. Many did have an MBA or, as is now commonly stated in position descriptions, an “equivalent” qualification. However that “equivalent” qualification may only relate minimally to the actual job and its requirements. The other thing I note is that such careerist “managers” cannot afford to have low, ranked [in terms of political status and authority], but very highly skilled and knowledgeable practitioners/clinicians in the system because they know too much and will not let political expedience over-shadow good clinical practice. It’s just more “Emperor’s new clothes” stuff-ups.