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While Andrew Yang’s campaign speeches sound like he’s free associating based on reading a lot of 2011 magazine articles about artificial intelligence, Julian Castro’s speeches sound like he hasn’t read anything since 1969. E.g. today Castro called for adding women and non-white Americans to textbooks.
Dave Weigel of the Washington Post is following Presidential candidate Julian Castro around:
Castro, after hearing a story of an immigrant kid being bullied at school, says he wants to update textbooks "not to exclude anyone" but to add women and non-white Americans, so kids learn "to love themselves, to not internalize oppression about themselves."
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) July 15, 2019
Julian Castro must not have paid much attention to his school textbooks because nonwhites were massively added to textbooks in the 1970s.
Heck, I can recall reading about Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad in my 1960s grade school reader, only to be disappointed it was metaphorical.
(Recently, novelist Colson Whitehead won the National Book Award for a steampunk novel in which the Underground Railroad is literal.)
As I wrote in VDARE in 2010:
And yet young people do have a finer side—their hunger for heroes—that history books once tried to fulfill rather than exploit. For example, I was galvanized in 1975 when I read Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison’s tribute in his Oxford History of the American People to Orville and Wilbur Wright:
“Few things in our history are more admirable than the skill, the pluck, the quiet self-confidence, the alertness to reject fixed ideas and to work out new ones, and the absence of pose and publicity, with which these Wright brothers made the dream of ages—man’s conquest of the air—come true.”
But the Wright brothers aren’t the kind of heroes we like anymore. In our Age of Oprah, rather than Heroes of Accomplishment, we are addicted to Heroes of Suffering.
… This Heroes of Suffering fetish is exacerbated in modern history textbooks by the “diversity“ imperative.
Take, for example, one US history textbook widely used in high school Advanced Placement courses and in college courses: Nation of Nations: A Narrative History of the American Republic (McGraw-Hill, Fourth Edition).
It’s in many ways an impressive book. The amount of labor that went into it is enormous. And, as you notice the political mandates under which the five historian co-authors labored, you begin to feel sorry for them.
You feel even sorrier for the students, however. The need to include a huge amount of material celebrating each politically organized diversity group has bloated the textbook to 1277 oversized pages. It costs $108.78 on Amazon, and weighs in at a vertebrae-compressing 5.4 pounds.
That’s child abuse! If a kid is assigned five textbooks this massive, that’s a backpack that weighs 27 pounds.
No wonder high school students seldom ride bicycles to school anymore. They’re so top-heavy they’d topple over.
Celebrating diversity just take a lot of space. Even with a tome this immense, diversity awareness means that there isn’t room in all 1277 pages to mention…the Wright brothers.
Nor is there room for the following architects of the 21st Century: the inventors of the transistor (John Bardeen, the only two-time winner of the Physics Nobel Prize, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley); the inventors of the semiconductor chip (Robert Noyce and Jack Kilby); the inventor of information theory (Claude Shannon); or the discoverers of the structure of DNA (James Watson and Francis Crick).
Adding isn’t enough, Steve. We have to start thinking in terms of replacing. Remember this plaintive cry:
Just adding more Latinx to the textbooks won’t help this poor Person of Color. POC will still have to deal with the painful fact that Anglo-America was created by Europeans: John Smith, John Winthrop, William Penn, George Washington, John Adams, etc
To make POC feel at home, creative omissions and distortions will be required…..
Thomas Jefferson’s hometown of Charlottesville, Va., will no longer mark his birthday: report
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/charlottesville-will-no-longer-celebrate-thomas-jeffersons-birthday-in-his-virginia-hometown-report
Can we lay to rest to notion of Jack Kilby as the inventor of the semiconductor chip?
The only sense that Jack Kilby invented the microchip is in the way that the Claims sections of patents was written by lawyers and interpreted by lawyers.
Kilby’s version of the microchip had a bunch of little chips for the individual transistors stuck on top of a bigger-chip substrate and had to have wires welded to connect the little chips. Noyce’s “Fairchild Planar Process” had just one chip on which the individual transistors along with connections between transistor were made by a kind of high-tech silk-screening.
Kilby’s version was utterly impractical for the kind of chips we use today whereas Noyce’s version is pretty much how the computer I am drafting my remarks works. This was all tied up in patent litigation because Kilby’s patent claims could be interpreted by the lawyers who don’t understand any of this to include what Noyce was doing, but this was in no way what Kilby was capable of doing when he filed his patent.
I guess there is a similar controversy about the invention of the telephone and certainly such a thing about the invention of television. But Kilby’s patent was the integrated circuit in name only whereas Noyce’s method, very different in execution, is the only practical way of mass production of such circuits at anywhere near the complexity of cell phones and computers and digital TVs we take for granted today.
https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/images/jack-kilby-1.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mBeyJl8pJAw/TuUKX8J2B2I/AAAAAAAAAZA/KIAVH2yNi_Y/s1600/robertnoyce.jpg
Patent attorney (really):
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/calvinandhobbes-100312173313-phpapp01/95/calvin-and-hobbes-9-728.jpg?cb=1268415307Casper Mattress will help you get to sleep by reading you their patent application:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jqS6_upYF-w
Pearson and McGraw-Hill have spearheaded the movement toward 1970s Random House dictionary size badly written textbooks in all disciplines written by committees made up of obscure educators who don’t seem to be checking each other’s work.
Read Diane Ravitch’s The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn (2003) for the story on primary and secondary school textbook publishing, and the inroads that the entire PC/SJW mob had made–before we even realized existence of the PC/SJW miasma.
Her discoveries were beginning even before her appointment as an assistant secretary in the Dept of Education (’91-’93) under President GHW Bush.
It was an eye-opener when I read it a decade and a half ago. It’s only gotten worse.
BTW, Ravitch is no right-wing conservative–a life-long Democrat hired by Brookings when her gov’t experience ended.
Textbooks had been hijacked in the 1970s. There were fringe books and articles pointing this out, but nobody would listen, and in those pre-internet days it was simple to silence dissent.
The Left has been termiting away at white civilization for a long, long time.
Will Castro mention Jewish Hollywood for all those anti-Muslim movies?
Or how about rap music for unkind things said about ho’s and homos?
Who was the first to conquer space?
It’s incontrovertible
that the first to conquer living space
It’s a Castro Convertible…
Who’s tops in the convertible line?
Castro Convertible.
As a formerly bullied kid I am past done hearing about how bullying is an important issue or a source of credibility when a politician needs it to be.
And I remember the laughter and confusion when in one class we examined a reading which sought to introduce diverse character names like “Flip,” which is an ethnic slur against Pinoys, but here was the name of a kid whose parents apparently watched a lot of TV in the early 70s. Tokenism has now been thoroughly demonstrated to be irredeemable. Nobody has a problem with a well-devised three dimensional character of any race, and I can’t think of a time when a token gopher-head-pop wasn’t dumb and a drag on the story. And there’s the part about this not being a new idea.
If that's not adequate impetus for national legislation, I don't know what is!
Kilby or Noyce, the optics are still bad…..too pale, too male….
As our priest said at Mass this morning, a good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge. (Father A. is from southern India, so he knows the score.)
Patent attorney (really):
Casper Mattress will help you get to sleep by reading you their patent application:
Ah, but who can top the contribution to America by Crispus Attucks. He was part of a group of hooligans throwing snowballs/rocks at some British troops and got himself shot in 1770 as part of the “Boston Massacre.”
For that, he got his own little section in every high school history book for the last 50 years.
Speaking of heroes of achievement, Steve, have you seen the just-aired PBS documentary on the Apollo Project, Chasing the Moon? Despite the obligatory WOKE-moments (Far too much time was devoted to Black quasi-astronaut Ed Dwight), it was pretty good….and pretty inspiring….
Her discoveries were beginning even before her appointment as an assistant secretary in the Dept of Education ('91-'93) under President GHW Bush.
It was an eye-opener when I read it a decade and a half ago. It's only gotten worse.
BTW, Ravitch is no right-wing conservative--a life-long Democrat hired by Brookings when her gov't experience ended.
“Her discoveries were beginning even before her appointment as an assistant secretary in the Dept of Education (’91-’93) under President GHW Bush.”
Textbooks had been hijacked in the 1970s. There were fringe books and articles pointing this out, but nobody would listen, and in those pre-internet days it was simple to silence dissent.
The Left has been termiting away at white civilization for a long, long time.
White Man’s Burden never goes away.
In the Age of Empire, white imperialists said non-whites were unfit to rule themselves(at least very well), and so, white people had to colonize non-white lands to bring the light of civilization to non-white folks.
In the Age of Globalism, white immigrationists say non-whites are unfit to build nice societies for themselves, and so, they must come to white-ruled nations to have nice things like modernity and rule of law.
In both narratives, only white man has the magic, and non-whites depend on white rule to have nice things.
And I remember the laughter and confusion when in one class we examined a reading which sought to introduce diverse character names like "Flip," which is an ethnic slur against Pinoys, but here was the name of a kid whose parents apparently watched a lot of TV in the early 70s. Tokenism has now been thoroughly demonstrated to be irredeemable. Nobody has a problem with a well-devised three dimensional character of any race, and I can't think of a time when a token gopher-head-pop wasn't dumb and a drag on the story. And there's the part about this not being a new idea.
Anti-bullying = anti-vaxxing for social skills.
Textbooks had been hijacked in the 1970s. There were fringe books and articles pointing this out, but nobody would listen, and in those pre-internet days it was simple to silence dissent.
The Left has been termiting away at white civilization for a long, long time.
I worked a summer for Thomson (then becoming Cengage). Most corrupt, inane, incompetent place I ever worked.
I noticed the bloated textbook problem as soon as my kids got to middle school. The math books bothered me most. Every chapter started with math vocabulary words – in Spanish! 1200 pages, six pounds. My texts from middle school were a crisply edited 225 pages, and weighed less than a pound in durable hard covers. We didn’t need a recentered SAT in those days, either.
Castro exemplifies the problem with affirmative action: it elevates mediocrities beyond their capabilities.
I’m thinking also of his suggestion of a Marshall Plan for Central America that you tweeted about. Honduras’s per capita GDP is less than 1/20th that of the U.S. – you’d have to be a moron to think that any aid plan would close the gap enough that Hondurans wouldn’t want to come to the U.S., given the opportunity.
I'm thinking also of his suggestion of a Marshall Plan for Central America that you tweeted about. Honduras's per capita GDP is less than 1/20th that of the U.S. - you'd have to be a moron to think that any aid plan would close the gap enough that Hondurans wouldn't want to come to the U.S., given the opportunity.
Let’s put it this way, Hondurans are not Germans…..
I'm thinking also of his suggestion of a Marshall Plan for Central America that you tweeted about. Honduras's per capita GDP is less than 1/20th that of the U.S. - you'd have to be a moron to think that any aid plan would close the gap enough that Hondurans wouldn't want to come to the U.S., given the opportunity.
Castro has a long way to go to make it to mediocrity.
It seems like just last week that the Lord Mayor of San Antonio was arguing for abortion rights for men. He’s cutting edge stupid last week, trailing edge plod this week. Can somebody find this guy a board of directors to take care of him, please?
I only have time for a quick comment before I come back.
Keep in mind that in the 1830 Mexican census of Texas (what we now know as Texas, not Cohuealla de Tejas, the merged states) there were only just north of 2k Mexicans (Hispanos, Tejanos, whatever) living in Tex. There were over 30,000 gringos. By the start of the 1835 revolution, the number of Tejanos was probably close to static, while there would have been many more Anglo settlers. Spain/Mexico only held Texas in name only. I’m not sure about Arizona or California (but I think the same holds true in large degree), although there seems to have been a permanent presence in New Mexico.
I'm thinking also of his suggestion of a Marshall Plan for Central America that you tweeted about. Honduras's per capita GDP is less than 1/20th that of the U.S. - you'd have to be a moron to think that any aid plan would close the gap enough that Hondurans wouldn't want to come to the U.S., given the opportunity.
If the US were to ramp up involvement in Central America, it’s likely the only long term humanitarian fix possible is full on Macrophage Rapid Convergence (#96).
Cooper Minor Keith did nothing wrong.
There’s no need to ramp up involvement in Central America to have that convergence; open borders will do that on its own eventually.
Of course, MRC as described above is a highly speculative, yet possible workable fix, in response to Will Wilkinson’s call for “Convergence in income, political institutions, and safety between origin and destination countries.”
https://twitter.com/willwilkinson/status/1115636851413590019
I love history, and not long after finishing college I thought I wanted to be a high school history teacher. Going into a suburban high school for observations at the beginning of the certification program, I noticed that the student body was quite mixed. It got me to reconsider. History is taught at least partially to help the student understand who they are, but given diversity, whose history should I teach?
For example, our ideas about separation of Church and State were informed by, among other things, the Reformation and subsequent wars of religion, by the investiture crisis, by the events at Canossa in the 11th century, by the philosophy of St. Augustine, and by “Render therefore unto Caesar….” As a teacher, how could I possibly get a teenager from Somalia or Afghanistan or Cambodia to care about any of these?
I decided to go get a job at Home Depot instead.
Different everything.
Because life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the concepts of fraternity and justice, are universal.
Now, you do realize that nativists said the same thing about Eastern and Southern Europeans about their definitive inability to comprehend such values, right?
I remember flipping to the index of my history textbook back in elementary school- this would have been the late 80’s. I turned to “World War II” and saw that every sub-entry was “Women in World War II,” “Blacks in World War II,” “Japanese-Americans in World War II,” etc. etc. etc. (Ken Burns did something pretty similar in his “documentary” on the war.) I remember thinking, “Can’t we learn about the, you know, *war*?”
And I remember the laughter and confusion when in one class we examined a reading which sought to introduce diverse character names like "Flip," which is an ethnic slur against Pinoys, but here was the name of a kid whose parents apparently watched a lot of TV in the early 70s. Tokenism has now been thoroughly demonstrated to be irredeemable. Nobody has a problem with a well-devised three dimensional character of any race, and I can't think of a time when a token gopher-head-pop wasn't dumb and a drag on the story. And there's the part about this not being a new idea.
Yeah, but this time an immigrant kid was bullied!!!
If that’s not adequate impetus for national legislation, I don’t know what is!
To make POC feel at home, creative omissions and distortions will be required.....
Thomas Jefferson's hometown of Charlottesville, Va., will no longer mark his birthday: report
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/charlottesville-will-no-longer-celebrate-thomas-jeffersons-birthday-in-his-virginia-hometown-report
https://lovelace-media.imgix.net/getty/539756690.jpg
You’re exactly right: it’s like Diversity w/r/t Negroes. You’re not Diverse until you’re 100% black.
I was in school in the 1970s too. It was a nonstop awokening campaign. Though, as we didn’t have so many latins and asians in residence, it was mostly focused upon the Numinous Ones.
But we are perhaps too quick to disparage. Because there’s a good reason why pandering is so popular among Dems (and even some Reps): it works.
You can make an analogy with Kamala and AOC promising mega-billions for votes. Nothing about their ‘plans’ has to work: it only has to bring in votes. Sic transit…
Exactly right, and (for us) completely tragic. But let’s look at it this way: for the Hondurans and Guatemalans it’s positively wonderful!
Similarly for the countless millions of Africans, Indians, and other Asians on their way, or here already. It’s working out great for them.
An America which is dragged three-fourths of the way down toward third-world status is still better than what they had before.
So look out below.
I prefer the “Bring Back The United Fruit Company” plan.
Cooper Minor Keith did nothing wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCbfMkh940Q
Well, Mr. Castro is definitely part of our political elite. He thinks that it’s still 1955.
It’s far from given that an immigration-triggered violent reaction within CONUS would expand to an international-reach MRC as described: The US blockades, invades, and depopulates Mexico and Central America with extreme prejudice—with all our current immigration invitations (de facto or otherwise) immediately rescinded.
If it were to happen—for the goal of reducing simultaneous resistance and carnage within US borders—the ideal international MRC trigger would trip sooner rather than later.
Of course, MRC as described above is a highly speculative, yet possible workable fix, in response to Will Wilkinson’s call for “Convergence in income, political institutions, and safety between origin and destination countries.”
There need be no problem with bloated textbooks being too heavy for children’s backpacks. Just give ’em each a kindle or similar.
In fact, this would enable us to give each little one a raft of texts referring only to their own tribe. Written in their ancestral language. And with videos for those who reject Western literacy.
Of course, the more material you provide, the more likely it will remain unread. But, hey, most kids don’t read text books anyway.
Cooper Minor Keith did nothing wrong.
What about Ellen Louise Ripley?
No clearly it will be invented in Wakanda soon anyway. Why muddy the waters?
For example, our ideas about separation of Church and State were informed by, among other things, the Reformation and subsequent wars of religion, by the investiture crisis, by the events at Canossa in the 11th century, by the philosophy of St. Augustine, and by "Render therefore unto Caesar...." As a teacher, how could I possibly get a teenager from Somalia or Afghanistan or Cambodia to care about any of these?
I decided to go get a job at Home Depot instead.
Different races, different creeds, different heroes, different histories.
Different everything.
Textbooks had been hijacked in the 1970s. There were fringe books and articles pointing this out, but nobody would listen, and in those pre-internet days it was simple to silence dissent.
The Left has been termiting away at white civilization for a long, long time.
My point is Ravitch’s comprehensive documentation of the PC/SJW torture of school textbooks, not the proximate starting date of those revisions via anecdote and personal experience. The lengths taken to refashion textbooks is rather more complex and convoluted that most can imagine–which has wholly corrupted education and learning.
I'm thinking also of his suggestion of a Marshall Plan for Central America that you tweeted about. Honduras's per capita GDP is less than 1/20th that of the U.S. - you'd have to be a moron to think that any aid plan would close the gap enough that Hondurans wouldn't want to come to the U.S., given the opportunity.
The Peter Principle declared raycist in…3…2…1…
Of course, MRC as described above is a highly speculative, yet possible workable fix, in response to Will Wilkinson’s call for “Convergence in income, political institutions, and safety between origin and destination countries.”
https://twitter.com/willwilkinson/status/1115636851413590019
Yup. The US should learn from Europe because Europe has no immigration issues or questions…
Mediocrity – that would be a start.
This is very typical in patent litigation – someone will patent an invention that is the “real thing” – the actual implementation that leads to the marketable product. Competitors looking to break the patent will find try to find earlier inventions that, while not quite viable or the same thing, are close enough to invalidate the patent claims. In addition to the examples that you gave, they busted Eckert & Mauchly’s patent on the electronic digital computer in that way. There can be millions (or today billions) riding on such a patent so it really pays for competitors to dig around and find something that will bust the patent. In the case of the computer they found a guy named Atanasoff who had, prior to ENIAC, built a device that while binary and electronic, was not Turing-complete nor programmable – it was hardwired to solve one particular set of linear equations and lacked the ability to store programs in memory. This is more like say a modern digital thermometer or timer than what we would call a computer today. But it was enough to bust the patent. As you say, the fact that this stuff gets presented to a jury who are in no way qualified to understand the technical matters involved (and sometimes on appeal to judges who don’t either) sure doesn’t help, but that’s our system.
For example, our ideas about separation of Church and State were informed by, among other things, the Reformation and subsequent wars of religion, by the investiture crisis, by the events at Canossa in the 11th century, by the philosophy of St. Augustine, and by "Render therefore unto Caesar...." As a teacher, how could I possibly get a teenager from Somalia or Afghanistan or Cambodia to care about any of these?
I decided to go get a job at Home Depot instead.
“For example, our ideas about separation of Church and State were informed by, among other things, the Reformation and subsequent wars of religion, by the investiture crisis, by the events at Canossa in the 11th century, by the philosophy of St. Augustine, and by “Render therefore unto Caesar….” As a teacher, how could I possibly get a teenager from Somalia or Afghanistan or Cambodia to care about any of these?”
Because life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as the concepts of fraternity and justice, are universal.
Now, you do realize that nativists said the same thing about Eastern and Southern Europeans about their definitive inability to comprehend such values, right?
Different everything.
Not as different as you make it out to be, ol’ chap.
“As you say, the fact that this stuff gets presented to a jury who are in no way qualified to understand the technical matters involved (and sometimes on appeal to judges who don’t either) sure doesn’t help, but that’s our system.”
Typical attorney talk. You and The Anti-Gnostic ought to compare notes. The fact of the matter is a barrister worth their salt will ensure that the material, if rooted in technological jargon, is easily understood for all parties involved.