Happy As Kings

Military bases open their doors to home-schoolers

An article on military homeschooling popped up, so of course I had to read it.  It's an interesting article, but one that follows the pattern of most mainstream articles about homeschooling:  cautious observation but without any endorsement.

Military Bases Open Their Doors to Homeschoolers 

Military families move on average nearly every three years. The transition can be tough for children, and home schooling can make it easier, advocates say. The children don't have to adjust to a new teacher or worry that they're behind because the new school's curriculum is different.

 

Other points in the article are how it seems that only certain people can, or should, homeschool, how military homeschooling has only recently become acceptable, and how homeschooling may make deployment stress worse.

No, homeschooling isn't for every military family. Neither is bowling, or riding motorcycles, or cheeseburgers. Preferences vary across populations, as do results of schooling styles. Whether homeschooling's "long-term social and academic effects" are positive or negative can be weighed against overall developments such as the increase in the need for remedial courses in basic studies for freshman college students. Interested readers can Google "homeschool college acceptance" for a range of results on whether college admissions staffs see homeschooled graduates as good candidates for their schools.

As for the impression that homeschooling among military families is a recently-acceptable development, some parents homeschooled on military installations (and "on the economy" in USAREUR) from the late 1980s on. There were ups and downs, but overall the situation was fairly stable and parents were supported by local homeschooling groups.

It's good that more installations support the children who are homeschooled as well as those who are schooled. I know that I appreciated the work in the mid-1990s of the Heidelberg Youth Center when the staff developed an exceptional art program featuring museum tours and lessons in sculpting and drawing.

Concerning stress during deployment, it's a good bet that the deployment caused the stress (going by all the YouTube videos of children-in-school being surprised by a returning parent) and not the homeschooling. Parents in online support groups say that they are better able to help their children weather the separation because the parents can control when to forge ahead with new material or slow down to 'go with the flow' of the child's emotions.

 

Alleged Benghazigate

I’ve been watching the Benghazi-attack rumor mill ramp itself up into a political cyclone of hysteria. Most of us of a certain age have probably seen the “surgical strike” imagery from Desert Storm.  Jet pilots were able, twenty years ago, to send smart bombs into buildings to destroy the enemy.  The military could put a metaphorical “man on the moon” then (a bomb through a window), so why couldn’t we do it in Benghazi?

A couple differences will set the stage:  The Desert Storm pilots were prepped.  The Desert Storm pilots were there.

 

To me, this political cyclone looks like a version of the “CSI effect” that plagues jury trial:  people think that “the military” can routinely work TV magic by arriving someplace moments after an inciting incident.  That’s fiction.  “The military” does not keep units on permanent alert supported by aircraft revving their engines on the flight line with Harrier/Cobra/Concorde capabilities, and equipped with bad-guy profiling software-guided smart bullets.  An effective response takes planning and that’s probably what was going on.

Another peeve-y caveat:  There is no “the military.”  “The military” is composed of branches of the service, with specific duties and particular units.  One unit must talk to another unit, whether the “unit” I the Department of State, the Pentagon, or a special response unit.  Details have to be confirmed and evaluated to avoid the pitfalls of the childhood game of “Telephone” in which the sentence the first person speaks isn’t the sentence the last person hears.  We need the information to be timely, accurate and specific.  Rushing into a situation, if you’re close enough to actually rush in, usually winds up with more mistakes than solutions.  Ask any mother who tries to intervene in a sibling argument.

Some of the questions I’ve seen floating loose on teh Intertoobz are answered by a reporter in this article I read in this morning’s Kansas City Star:  Questions and some answers about attack on U.S. consulate in Libya

An article I found while researching information for this blog post is also informative:  Pentagon on Benghazi Troop Movements: ‘Swift Action’ on Night of Attack 

From my own perspective of a lifetime in and around military installations, other clarifications are:

• The closest American military installation to Benghazi, Libya is at Sigonella in Italy. Sigonella has no suited and booted instant response team with an airplane waiting on the runway with its engines running. 
• Units on standby alert need something to be standing by for.  It can be argued that “’they’ should have known,” but threats are continual. Someone, somewhere is always pissed off at the U.S. Just as cortisol in a living body damages that body, keeping units on permanent standby alert “just in case” brings on a feeling similar to that caused by the “little boy who cried wolf.”
• The American public isn’t too fond of “fraud, waste and abuse” (to quote ubiquitous signs around the military installations where I spent most of my life).  With reason, bloated DoD funding is a favorite target for cutting expenses so having “just in case” troops twiddling their thumbs waiting for something to come of worldwide threats would be sure to be an effective use of taxpayer money. 
• Troops don’t magically materialize from a place of perpetual readiness to the place that needs defending. It takes time for responders to get from Point A to Point B, to include travel time from where the individuals are to a collection point, travel time from the collection point to an airport, flight time to the area of operations, and travel time from the receiving airport to the target destination.  No, they don’t have to deal with the TSA, but it all still takes time.
• Four hundred miles straight distance flying time from Sigonella to Benghazi doesn’t include the time for a response team to get from Rota, Spain to Sigonella. Special response teams are wonderful, but they aren’t supermen and they don’t have capes.
• We don’t want hair-trigger responses in an international situation.  Libya did not attack the embassy and we should be very careful in retaliating against … whom?  The city of Benghazi?  A mob in the streets? Al Quaeda?  A responding unit needs to know against whom they are fighting and figuring out who this is takes time.
• Fighter jets “popping a sonic boom” over a city of over 600,000 people (a suggestion I saw from a publication I subscribed to before the Republican party went off the rails) would probably result in damage greater than any assistance and would affect those already under attack. The much-maligned “collateral damage” of previous conflicts would have drawn censure for whoever ordered the strike.
• For those advocating a heavily-armed response, haven’t you noticed a problem with invading other countries?  Have you really not noticed?

 

In conclusion, my condolences to the families of the slain Americans.  Chris Stevens. Sean Smith. Tyrone Woods. Glen Doherty.  I’m so sorry the attackers took your family members from you.

Sarah Palin as "poor me"

Without meaning to, yesterday morning I saw the teleprompter reading by Sarah Palin concerning the assassination attempt/murders in Arizona.  The historicity behind the "blood libel" reference aside, what came across to me was that Mrs. Palin seemed to be saying that the true victim of the Arizona tragedy was herself, almost as if someone manufactured the atrocity to make her look bad.

I can't say that I watch any political programs because I don't like being party to my own manipulation. Although I comprehend that any post-production televised material is theatrically adjusted, its emotional content always sneaks past my mental political gatekeeper, so I avoid political theater, whether it fits with my conception of the world or challenges what I see.  I prefer the mute company of a newspaper.  Because of this, I'm not a seasoned Palin-watcher, or watcher of anything other than Dr. Who, Castle or Leonard and Sheldon. When I'm watching entertainment, though, I know the emotional manipulation is supposed to be part of the fun, like manufactured dancy double-entendre bubblegum music.  

To me, the double-entendre emotional load of Mrs. Palin, Inc.'s production concerning the Arizona tragedy was a horning in to the spotlight and tugging the victim shroud away from the dead:  Don't look at them, look at poor me. 

Why wasn't a written news-realease sufficient?

Even though I think that the assassin/murderer's intent may hold as much water as the intent of John Lennon's murderer, the coincidence of an assassination attempt on a target in Mrs. Palin's publicized crosshairs should give us pause and we should take the opportunity to consider what level of civility we wish to live with. 

Thought For the Day from this morning's newspaper:

Noble natures can adapt themselves to any change without loss of dignity; but those who are naturally insignificant make themselves ridiculous by taking refuge in their own sense of self-importance.

Margaret Sackville, poet and author

Dear editor: going back where we came from

In reply to:  God bless America

The belief that America is a certain kind of country, and has been up until recent times, is dear to the hearts of many people.  A recent writer expressed the desire that the people trying to change the United States into a "socialist country" should go back to where they came from, as if no "Americans" would hold non-conservative views.

An interesting series of red/blue color-coded maps, using information from presidential elections from 1920 to the present to show political trends, demonstrates the error in the belief that the US has always been more conservative than liberal.  Between 1928 and 1948, and from roughly 1960 to 1964, the country was entirely blue, coast to coast and top to bottom.  All other times it was a mix. At no time, concerning the election of presidents, was the country completely red.

The animated map can be viewed at: Isarithmic History of the Two-Party Vote

Flaunt and flout

To flaunt something is to show off about it.

• Missy flaunted her hourglass figure with low-riding jeans and a crop top.
• Millard Julius Bonton flaunted his bottomless checkbook by driving a gold-plated Jaguar.

To flout something is to disdainfully disregard it.

• Lily pointed out the no smoking sign to Jimmy, but he flouted the restriction and lit up.
• I stopped at the red light, but the Mack truck thundering behind me in the right lane flouted the traffic laws by barreling right through the intersection, apparently because there was no cross traffic.  (this one, is not just an example)

Online dictionaries point out the confusion between flaunt and flout, and the shifting value of 'flaunt,' noting that some curmudgeons (they call us "folks" perhaps thinking we'll be jollied along after their lack of condemnation of ungrammatical usage) will object to using flaunt in the place of flout.

To double-check the meaning I've absorbed concerning flaunt (no one ever seems to misuse flout -- or even use it, for that matter), I looked in my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary (the one that comes with a magnifying glass, not the full-sized version).  

Flaunt

"Possibly the word may be an onomatopoeia formed with a vague recollection of fly, flout and vaunt."

Meanings given by the OED are:

To wave gaily or proudly.

To walk or move about so as to display one's finery.

To be extravagantly gaudy or glaringly conspicuous in appearance.

To display ostentatiously; to flourish, parade, show off.

 

One may flaunt one's flouting of the law, but one does not 'flaunt the law.'

Shift happens because living people use living languages, but that doesn't mean shift won't have to work at it.

(I really shouldn't read the newspaper's choice of letters to the editor on a morning after a late night.)

in Econ 101, I missed the chapter on 'betting'

With whom do these firms place their bets?

Cross of Gold   Fareed Zakaria, 23 April 2010, Newsweek

How the rush to crucify Goldman Sachs is clouding our judgment and distorting public policy.

In most of them, the people who bet the housing market would go up made money, and those betting it would fall—Paulson's side—lost money.  ...

And I'm in favor of most of the proposals the Obama administration has put forward. But it would be a mistake to criminalize retroactively what was standard business practice.

Betting on whether or not loans a company makes is "standard business practice" for the companies involved in the lending?  How did that ever become part of legal lending practices?   (backtracking just now to find out what a hedge fund is, plus what is meant by short selling and derivatives, hasn't helped me to understand the betting part)

I understand that anyone can find a bookie and lay wagers on whether X will happen or Y will happen, but not as part of a businesses operations.

Parents as teachers

The Saturday before last, my local newspaper published a front-page story about the Missouri and Kansas state budget cuts.  The story said the cuts would be “A threat to children’s learning.”^[1]  In Missouri, the specific program with reduced funding is Parents as Teachers (PAT)^[2], a service (according to the newspaper) in which workers conduct home visits to mentor parents with little kids.

In reply to this article, I emailed a letter to the editor^[3] suggesting that the state could help more parents using less money by supplying each new parent with a copy of June Oberlander’s book, Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready.^[4]  The book is an outline of five years of activities that parents can use to help their children.  The book, coupled with a publicity campaign, could give needed visibility to easy activities for young children, reduce PAT personnel costs^[5], and put the goal of effective parenting within the reach of everyday moms and dads.  

By using Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready, parents could regain confidence about raising their smaller children.  Added to that, schools could again focus on their legal responsibility of serving children of compulsory attendance age.  How much money is diverted from compulsory schools by the mission creep of cradle to grave school?

Groups have successfully used publicity programs to focus awareness, develop support and give people knowledge about many issues. With sustained, low-key publicity the idea about the need for quality baby play would reach new parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and co-workers.  A blanketing awareness of useful, inexpensive early childhood exercises ought to influence more people about the small children in their lives.  A book for each baby would give more information to more people at a lower cost.^[6]

Returning to the letter to the editor, by the following Saturday, the newspaper had not responded about my email, not even an auto-reply (and no mailer daemon message indicating I’d used an invalid address).

On Monday the newspaper’s Opinion page featured a “blog bit” that again pushed for “high-quality early childhood programs^[7].”

On Tuesday (today), the Letters page includes a letter^[8] titled by the Letters editor, “New school funding” about support for a federal “Education Jobs Fund.”

After seeing this, and after decades of hearing that ‘education’ is ‘at risk’ (and according to the continued media reports, it never seems to improve, no matter how much money is added to fund basic schooling^[9]), I’m feeling that the point of the newspaper’s publicity for programs is the programs themselves, not helping parents bootstrap.

Buying a book for the parents of each baby born would cost perhaps 1/10^th the amount of the PAT program^[10] at its lowest funding rate.  The newspaper’s movers and shakers seem to prefer to lodge useful knowledge about early childhood know-how within programs instead of broadcasting the idea of trusting parents with a book containing five years worth of simple, useful child development tools,

A country that spends a half-trillion dollars^[11] in one year on K – 12 schooling could afford a publicity campaign directed at parents about early childhood learning.  Parents are the first teachers of their children, and that is where the work must focus.  The example of home visits teaches that parents need supervision to live in a family. Instead of encouraging dependence, we need to build a structure of confident family life, starting with each family’s mom and dad.  Publishing a letter to the editor would be a small start.

 

---

[1] [1] “Missouri budget cuts would trim Parents as Teachers by 50 percent,” 17 April 2010, Kansas City Star  http://www.kansascity.com/2010/04/16/1882634/feeling-the-cuts-initial-budget.html

[2] Parents As Teachers national website  http://www.parentsasteachers.org/site/pp.asp?c=ekIRLcMZJxE&b=272091

[3] Letter:  “In reference to Saturday’s article about children’s learning threatened by budget cuts to the Parents as Teachers program, one way the state could slash costs could be to change from the home visitation program to giving each new parent a copy of June Oberlander’s book, Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready. The book provides five years of weekly birth-to-five activities for parents to do with their children, complete with explanations and self-evaluations.

“Distribution and publicized use of the book would allow for the reduction in staffing costs in state programs, and allow schools to focus on their legal responsibility, ie, children of compulsory school attendance age. 

“Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready is online at Google Books.  Low-income parents can use a library card and branch library computers.

“Children’s learning is not threatened, you just have to know where to look.”

[4] Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready http://books.google.com/books?id=oxWzt6mYfLcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=slow+and+steady,+get+me+ready&source=bl&ots=JDzjSb1XCa&sig=ltoVDsi4Yf4HG-v8M1aT-6AZVV4&hl=en&ei=Rq3VS_bnHITQsgPP9_yMCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCkQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

[5] “Missouri budget cuts …” $34,000,000+ in 2009; $28,000,000+ in 2010; projected $13,000,000 in 2011

Individual copies of Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready run just over $16.00 (plus postage) at Amazon.  ($13 million divided by $20 [cost plus s+h] = 650,000 books)

[6] 2006 live births in Missouri:  81,359  http://www.dhss.mo.gov/VitalStatistics/MVS06/Table10B.pdf   The number of births in 2006 divided by the reduced 2011 program funding = ca. $160 per child.

[7] “Early childhood programs can help reduce crime,” http://voices.kansascity.com/node/8727

[8] “New school funding,” 27 April 2010, Kansas City Star  http://blogs.kansascity.com/unfettered_letters/2010/04/new-school-funding.html

[9] “Last year, as a nation, we spent more than half a trillion dollars on K-12 education. This was on the local, state and federal levels. Our nation's educational efforts are a large financial endeavor—rivaling spending on the defense, agriculture, transportation, telecommunications or entertainment sectors.”

Remarks by Secretary Paige at the Executive Leaders Forum, Committee of 100, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. U.S. Department of Education, 28 June 2004  http://www.ed.gov/news/speeches/2004/06/06282004.html

[10] The number of births in 2006 divided by the reduced 2011 program funding = ca. $160 per child.  ‘Books for all,’ based on $16.00 per family, would cost 1/10^th of the home visitation program.

[11] Remarks by Secretary Paige

Where is the media coverage of the tragedy for Poland?

This morning when I opened my newspaper, I expected to see reports about the possible effects on Poland by the loss of their president and other top government officials.

Nothing.

So I went to the television to see CNN's reporting of the tragedy.  After all, based on the International CNN reports in Europe when Princess Diana died, you'd have thought one of the four horsemen was sitting atop his horse on a cliff, eyes burning like Sauron's.

Thus far (8:55 am) one teaser, with the result of one report @ 9:02 - 9:07 that was a discussion of the 'why' of the crash.  So far, CNN has had no discussion of the effects of the loss on Poland, the Polish government, the Polish economy, and the reports have not included the reactions of everyday Polish citizens, other than one lady attending a spontaneous memorial.

In light of this lack of reports, I booted up the computer to view MSNBC's raft of stories.  What did I find?  One plank of a raft that, after clicking back to the main page, had already been replaced in the rotation.

• 'Designing Women' star dies at 70
• At 47, Holyfield wins a heavyweight crown
• 'Wizard of Oz’ Munchkin actor dies
• Video: 'Boss' blows his cover, more TV
• What's ahead for the stock market?
• 'Glee' star confirms she's engaged
• Video: Fey returns as Palin on 'SNL'
• Video: Town elects 19-year-old mayor

The results of a Google search for "Poland mourns" gives the top hit to Voice of America, the second result to Yahoo, and the third to Al Jazeera.  The next results go to British sources and a Canadian report, with the first American result from NPR: Download 2010 04 Apr 12 Google polish mourning.

If this tragedy had happened to American leaders, the world would have stood still and terror threat levels would be lava-red and boiling over.  Not only would the news reporting be wall-to-wall and head-to-toe, but I can imagine that supermarkets would be emptied of food, gasoline stations would have lines out to the streets, and gun sales would go through the roof.  But Poland tragically loses a planeload of top government officials, and what do I see on CNN?  A golfer sinking a putt and kissing a woman I presume is his wife (sound is muted).

After the World Trade Center atrocity, "everyone was American."  Today, in solidarity with Poland, are we all Polish?

Kansas City still the wild, wild west

I don't know what's going on here (too far out in the 'burbs to see the city dynamic), but the evening news snips I see, and the newspaper reports are giving me more reason to avoid driving near KC, as if last summer's "stray bullets" haven't been enough.

Police arrest 10 after armed robbery, kidnapping, carjackings, standoff

Twenty years of being a potential terrorist target in Europe via the distinctive American military car license plates didn't give me the sense of unease I feel here.

Health care bill debate and political positioning

I like Howard Dean's position as he described it on this morning's Meet The Press. 

A comment of his that resonated with me on the debate around the changes in how the American system is structuring itself to manage medical costs is that the Republican legislators have put "party before country."  That observation's overtones were echoed in Eugene Robinsion's op/ed this morning in the KC Star on Sarah Palin's change in direction on climate change.