Dennis, you do a wonderful job trying to get people to think with their minds rather than with their patellar tendons. This caller you just had, trying to shred you because you went to Columbia instead of joining the armed forces, is one of those non-thinkers. Obviously he's done most of his thinking with throwing adjectives and other acts of labeling things he doesn't like as "things I don't like."
Oh, well.
But for years I've been gnashing my teeth over the way you use the language of reaction and feeling when you're trying to get people to think. A few examples,
"When we come back I'll take your reactions to this." It should be replies or answers. People who "react" aren't thinking.
"I'd like to get your feelings on this issue." Sure, feelings are okay, but I'd rather hear their "responses".
"We differ on this." No, we disagree on this.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
"You're the perfect candidate for what I recommend, taking a year off before college"
Dennis, reconsider this statement, please. That kid, if he's like most homeschoolers, spends two to three hours per day on his schoolwork. (Doesn't that say a lot about public school?) And unless his parents are monsters, he's out and around doing stuff the rest of the day. Most homeschoolers have a stay-at-home mom who drives the kids to scouts, karate lessons, community orchestra, activities at the Y, and field trips with other homeschooled friends to museums and the library. This takes place every day. If they're religious they volunteer at the church soup kitchen where they mix with adults every Thursday afternoon for several hours. They get jobs at Mcdonalds at 14 years of age or they muck stalls at the local race track. They really don't need the "life experience" that your Grand Tour* is meant to provide because they have grown up with "life" rather than putting it off.
Now, where this homeschooler is concerned, yes, a Grand Tour year off traveling the great cities of Europe will be a wonderful experience, but for homeschoolers, it's not exactly a needed one.
I assumed you know what the Victorian "Grand Tour" was, since that's where the "year off experiencing Real Life before you go to college" comes from, but I may have assumed incorrectly.
Now, where this homeschooler is concerned, yes, a Grand Tour year off traveling the great cities of Europe will be a wonderful experience, but for homeschoolers, it's not exactly a needed one.
I assumed you know what the Victorian "Grand Tour" was, since that's where the "year off experiencing Real Life before you go to college" comes from, but I may have assumed incorrectly.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
"Unlike the federal government, the state of New Jersey can't print money."
Amen to "that is the line of the year."
Sadly.
It's probably not the most important thing anyone could say, but it stands a good chance of becoming the best line spoken even though this is an election year, when many very intelligent things ought to be said about the rather foul stench emanating from Washington, D.C. these days.
Kudos to Governor Christie for having the nerve to say "no" to that whiny little teacher. I believe when Ann Coulter wrote that the one group of people in the country you can't criticize is teachers, she spoke a very harsh truth. Every American is expected to kowtow to the saintly icon floating over the holy altar of Education; speaking ill of them is blasphemy.
This teacher knew that and was trying to exploit it. You can't cut a saint's salary, you can't claim I don't do it for the love, you can't tell me I have to make do with a salary that's 40% higher than the national average--I am a college grad-yoo-ait!
Sadly.
It's probably not the most important thing anyone could say, but it stands a good chance of becoming the best line spoken even though this is an election year, when many very intelligent things ought to be said about the rather foul stench emanating from Washington, D.C. these days.
Kudos to Governor Christie for having the nerve to say "no" to that whiny little teacher. I believe when Ann Coulter wrote that the one group of people in the country you can't criticize is teachers, she spoke a very harsh truth. Every American is expected to kowtow to the saintly icon floating over the holy altar of Education; speaking ill of them is blasphemy.
This teacher knew that and was trying to exploit it. You can't cut a saint's salary, you can't claim I don't do it for the love, you can't tell me I have to make do with a salary that's 40% higher than the national average--I am a college grad-yoo-ait!
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
"That's what she was taught at college"
Where have you been? I thought you talk to kids in high school, too.
You don't have to wait to learn garbage like "men are just women with hairy chests" and "there is no such thing as truth" and "a good society is an equality-based society"--all the garbage you keep insisting "you have to have gone to college to think a thing like that."
Dennis, I'm so sorry, but this is standard fare in high school and even in middle school. The teachers are the same people who "went to college and were taught these extremely stupid ideas" and then they went to teachers' college where they learned that their task was to enlighten their students and that "teaching skills" is a bad idea because it gets in the way of enlightening the children. In other words, their teachers' college gave them carte blanche to teach nothing and instead pour out their ideology for the purpose of enlightening the students.
A few months ago a woman called Rush's show to congratulate him on converting her. She hadn't listened to him very long before she realized that everything she had believed was a leftwing lie, but to her they were underlying premises for the Truth, that she just accepted leftism as true, and that she taught it to her students as a matter of passing on the truth to the next generation. Now she was busy trying to recant her old ideas in the classroom. The moral of the story is that teachers live in that liberal bubble you mention so often (much to your credit, because it's the truth) and feel authorized to teach their truth in their classrooms.
Please stop blaming it on colleges, because that's not where the problem starts. Our elementary and high school teachers are just as much to blame, and we need to keep them in mind as we fight this classroom-based propagandizing.
On a slight tangent, I just want to remind us of an insight I realized two decades ago, and which I mentioned a week or two ago: When a conservative imagines a liberal parent teaching his child liberal values, the conservative shrugs, thinks "poor kid", and adds, "It's the parent's right." When a liberal imagines a conservative parent teaching his child conservative values, the liberal says to himself, "We have to stop this atrocity!" and perhaps, "No parent should be allowed to indoctrinate his child that way!"
The doctrine of separating the children from their parents' values forms the foundation of modern public education.
You don't have to wait to learn garbage like "men are just women with hairy chests" and "there is no such thing as truth" and "a good society is an equality-based society"--all the garbage you keep insisting "you have to have gone to college to think a thing like that."
Dennis, I'm so sorry, but this is standard fare in high school and even in middle school. The teachers are the same people who "went to college and were taught these extremely stupid ideas" and then they went to teachers' college where they learned that their task was to enlighten their students and that "teaching skills" is a bad idea because it gets in the way of enlightening the children. In other words, their teachers' college gave them carte blanche to teach nothing and instead pour out their ideology for the purpose of enlightening the students.
A few months ago a woman called Rush's show to congratulate him on converting her. She hadn't listened to him very long before she realized that everything she had believed was a leftwing lie, but to her they were underlying premises for the Truth, that she just accepted leftism as true, and that she taught it to her students as a matter of passing on the truth to the next generation. Now she was busy trying to recant her old ideas in the classroom. The moral of the story is that teachers live in that liberal bubble you mention so often (much to your credit, because it's the truth) and feel authorized to teach their truth in their classrooms.
Please stop blaming it on colleges, because that's not where the problem starts. Our elementary and high school teachers are just as much to blame, and we need to keep them in mind as we fight this classroom-based propagandizing.
On a slight tangent, I just want to remind us of an insight I realized two decades ago, and which I mentioned a week or two ago: When a conservative imagines a liberal parent teaching his child liberal values, the conservative shrugs, thinks "poor kid", and adds, "It's the parent's right." When a liberal imagines a conservative parent teaching his child conservative values, the liberal says to himself, "We have to stop this atrocity!" and perhaps, "No parent should be allowed to indoctrinate his child that way!"
The doctrine of separating the children from their parents' values forms the foundation of modern public education.
"Hahaha! How many of my listeners know what 'icythyology' is?"
How many of your listeners care that the Italian title of "The Four Seasons" is "Le Quattro Stagioni" ?
How badly can you underestimate your audience?
May I smack you?
By the way, I know your boss forced you to abandon the 'due cornetti' you used to play but you need to inform that troglodyte that the majority of us still prefer it (or any other baroque or classical period music) to that unpleasant garbage from the Fifties you make us listen to nowadays.
How badly can you underestimate your audience?
May I smack you?
By the way, I know your boss forced you to abandon the 'due cornetti' you used to play but you need to inform that troglodyte that the majority of us still prefer it (or any other baroque or classical period music) to that unpleasant garbage from the Fifties you make us listen to nowadays.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
I speak English better because my studies of several other languages taught me to
Did your studies of those other languages teach you to drop the "I spoke English since I'm a young boy" structure? Someone challenged you on that form once, because it's not good English. You replied you'd been using it all your life and it made you feel you were speaking in a "more immediate" sense, that you were more present in the setting of your past. And you continued resolutely using it, making my ears hurt every time you did. I'm willing to bet it was the product of some relative who grew up speaking Yiddish, perhaps your grandparents, or else you unconsciously imitated some adults you often saw as you were growing up.
I was unable to listen to you for a year, but when I found a radio station that carried you and I was able to start listening regularly, you had dropped that construction, so I don't know why you did, but I doubt it was learning another language that did it.
I have to tell you that I don't think I speak better English because of my knowing a six or ten* other languages. I think my English is good because of my extensive reading in works written before 1948.
_____________________
*Is it kosher to count languages I've forgotten?
I was unable to listen to you for a year, but when I found a radio station that carried you and I was able to start listening regularly, you had dropped that construction, so I don't know why you did, but I doubt it was learning another language that did it.
I have to tell you that I don't think I speak better English because of my knowing a six or ten* other languages. I think my English is good because of my extensive reading in works written before 1948.
_____________________
*Is it kosher to count languages I've forgotten?
"Sin is this taint that gets passed down"
Spoken by someone who doesn't understand original sin.
There are two things going on: one, Adam sinned and the world fell, beginning man's separation from God; and two, all of us share Adam's fleshly nature which is the thing that makes it impossible for us to live a perfet, sinless life. Sooner or later (virtually always so "sooner" as to be "immediate") something jumps up and grabs us by the heart and we do our own will rather than God's.
That's all.
As for wrestling with God, all I can say is that God has made it unnecessary to fight with him.
You need to read the epistle to the Hebrews, Dennis. It would appeal to your rational nature. It's my suspicion that if you have, you weren't paying a lot of attention. And put down the KJV, read the NIV thx.
There are two things going on: one, Adam sinned and the world fell, beginning man's separation from God; and two, all of us share Adam's fleshly nature which is the thing that makes it impossible for us to live a perfet, sinless life. Sooner or later (virtually always so "sooner" as to be "immediate") something jumps up and grabs us by the heart and we do our own will rather than God's.
That's all.
As for wrestling with God, all I can say is that God has made it unnecessary to fight with him.
You need to read the epistle to the Hebrews, Dennis. It would appeal to your rational nature. It's my suspicion that if you have, you weren't paying a lot of attention. And put down the KJV, read the NIV thx.
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