ThomStratton.com

As some of you may have heard, Orson Scott Card’s classic novel “Ender’s Game” has been made into a movie, releasing this winter. You may also have heard that there is a movement to boycott the movie because of Card’s past statements against gay marriage. Recently Card made an official statement acknowledging that recent Supreme Court decisions have pretty much made gay marriage and the recognition thereof inevitable, so what does his opinion matter? He also goes on to suggest that this would be a good time for proponents of gay marriage to demonstrate that they can be as tolerant and understanding of other opinions as they’ve been insisting  those others be of theirs.

So let me go on record as agreeing with Card. It’s time to show that you really value tolerance and diversity as much as you claim. Regardless of how I may have voted on the issue of gay marriage, you have never heard me insist that those who favored it had no right to push for it. You have never heard me say that gay people have no right to be gay. You’ve never heard me say that they should just shut up already. Regardless of my opinions, you have a right to yours, and to act in accordance within the law–up to and including pushing for laws to be changed. That’s what this country is about.

And yet we have people on the other side who are not nearly so charitable. One commenter on an article about the Card boycott said essentially, “It’s time we showed Card and anyone else that doesn’t support LGBT that they have no place in geekdom.”

How utterly sad, close-minded, and entirely ignorant. Perhaps I am equally ignorant, but I don’t recall a movement, back when public sentiment ran the other direction, to “show supporters of LGBT that they have no place in geekdom.” On the contrary, geekdom has long been one area where tolerance and diversity have been hallmarks. One of my best friends in high school was a very strong liberal. We could never discuss politics, and very little of religion, but we bonded over Star Trek and many other things geek. Our favorite sci-fi/fantasy works were important enough to us we could overlook those other aspects of one-another’s background.

Furthermore, I can only wonder if the commenter mentioned above likes “The Lord of the Rings.” If they claim true “geek cred” they probably do. But have they stopped to think about what opinion J.R.R. Tolkien may have had about gay marriage, had anyone asked him back then? I doubt he would have been any more supportive than Card. But I’m sure they’re willing to overlook that little detail. That was a long time ago. Well, so was 1983, when “Ender’s Game” was published. Gay marriage wasn’t an issue then, either.

Science Fiction and Fantasy, especially the former, have long been genres devoted to exploring, questioning, examining, and even debating all aspects of science, humanity, and society. The only requirement has been an open mind (though you’d never know that to see some of the inter-series feuds). A community that can venerate both Jerry Pournelle and George Lucas should be well-accustomed to accepting differing opinions, even if they never budge from their own. It’s been something we can be proud of, really.

So it would be entirely ironic if, with the near-victory of the LGBT community, they were to wrest moral control over “geekdom” and declare that everyone has to fall in line with their beliefs or find themselves uninvited. It would be entirely sad if the people who for so long have been demanding tolerance and respect from others are found incapable of it themselves. How unfortunate if one of the latest group to benefit from the ideals of tolerance and diversity becomes the last, having burned those ships upon reaching the shore.

We’ve heard it or seen the sentiment before: Wouldn’t it be great if teachers were paid like sports stars? While I agree with that sentiment to a degree (I’d prefer only the really good ones be paid that, and there are some lousy ones out there), I wonder if we ever really stop and think what it would take for that to happen. Well, here’s one viewpoint, from an article in the Wall Stree Journal about a South Korean teacher who makes $4 million a year.

To summarize, South Korea’s education system (2nd in the world) is so competitive that most kids come home from their usual day of school and spend the evening with paid tutors. And it’s those paid tutors who are the ones making all the money. According to this survey, South Korean public school teachers make about half of what their US counterparts make per year. But as a tutor, the best teachers can make millions. In the case of Kim Ki-hoon, the subject of the article, he teaches classes, makes videos of those classes, and then sells access online at $4 per hour.

Could we pay teachers a million dollars a year here in America? Yes, and no. I don’t think our tax base would support it, for starters. South Korea, with 50 million people, spent $17 Billion on paid tutoring last year. That’s $340 for every person in the country. That’s also on top of their regular taxes paying for public schools. I think the Koreans place a different value on education than we do. This could be because those 50 million people live in an area roughly the size of Indiana. It’s safe to say they’re not relying on domestic agriculture. They have to import much of everything they need, which means they need to be exporting as much as they can. Brainpower is their best hope for survival.

But let’s look at it another way. There are approximately 30 elementary school-age children attending my church, which is grouped geographically. There are approximately 435 members in that same area. So let’s assume a similar child-to-population ratio for my city/state. Now, let’s say we can somehow handle a class-size of 30 students with one rock-star teacher, and pay that teacher $1 million per year. Those 435 people need to pay $2298 each in taxes to pay that teacher’s salary. Mind you, those are total people, not households, and many of them are not paying taxes. So let’s say on average every three people amounts to one household/tax-paying unit, or 145 “TPU”. That comes to about $6900 per household to pay one teacher. That does not include the administrators, school operations, or any other part of the education budget. Nor does it include the rest of state and local taxes.

Who out there is willing to pay $7000 more a year in state taxes just for education? And let’s not even think about all the other public employees who would assume that they should be paid similarly. Even if we just pay teachers, police men, and firemen that salary we’re looking at $21,000 a year per household before any other taxes.

One possibility for ensuring teachers get paid like a sports star in America is to go the South Korean route and view teachers as contractors in free market system. Those who can’t draw their own following, or who teach subjects less in demand will not make very much. Those considered the best in teaching high-demand subjects can become like Kim Ki-hoon, making $4 million a year, and employing 30 people to run his teaching business (assuming he divides this equally between himself and his employees (however unlikely), that would still amount to $129,000 each per year).

Can you imagine the teachers unions ever supporting such a plan? The Department of Education? The American people? But why not? If there was a really good teacher who could turn out first-rate videos so that your child could learn all the math they would need to pass their yearly standardized tests in about 50 hours (an hour a week), for $4 an hour ($200 a year), wouldn’t that be better than sending them to school to learn the same thing?

Like it or not, this model is already gaining a foothold. My state offers an online option for high school, and other programs are available from other providers. Parents who want their kids to spend more time on other activities (ie. Olympic hopefuls, etc.) are taking advantage of such systems. I earned my MBA program through a partly-online program. Many universities have begun or are considering offering videos of some of their courses online.

Going such a direction would turn the education system in this country upside down. Top tier teachers can teach not just dozens but thousands of students (Kim Ki-hoon teaches over 150,000 students per year). This may be more difficult at younger grades, when students need a great deal of individual attention, but it’s not inconceivable that future high schools would have only a handful of Curriculum Counselors, whose job it is to tailor the curriculum for each student, while the students spend their days watching prescribed course videos and doing assignments in individual cubicles. Perhaps as much as 90% of the teacher pool could be eliminated in lieu of “rock-star teachers” who could teach every student in the country.

I don’t know if this would be good or not. But if there’s one thing I’m certain of, it’s that America is not South Korea or Finland or any other of the countries that are getting more for their educational buck than we are. And so I don’t think the key to improving our educational system is simply to pay our teachers more. I don’t think paying someone what you wish they were worth is strong enough incentive for them to improve themselves to deserve what they are paid. We have to rethink and restructure our values as a nation if we’re going to improve our schools.

In lieu of that, parents who do want their children to excel in life will find a way around a system that doesn’t give them what they need. Just like South Korea. We may very well get our $4 million-dollar teachers here, too. But they won’t be in the public schools.

We Americans have a lot of rights and freedoms that citizens of many other countries don’t enjoy. One of those is the freedom to criticize and insult our own country (or anyone else’s, for that matter). After all, we’re only one of the most free, most prosperous countries in the world. What’s there to be patriotic about?

So, what do some Americans do when they go overseas to countries where people are not so free, but somehow manage to be more patriotic? Something stupid obviously, like assume they have the same rights there that they enjoy here. Case in point: The band Bloodhound Gang in the Ukraine.

While visiting the Ukranian town of Odessa last Wednesday, bassist Jared Hasselhoff (real name: Jared Victor Hennegan) put a Russian flag down his pants, telling the cheering crowd “Don’t tell (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” and pulled it out the rear. The video went on YouTube and quickly went viral overseas.

Whether or not President Putin heard about it or not, we don’t know, but other Russian officials did, and were not pleased. When the band continued their tour to perform in the Kubana Music Festival in the Krasnodar Krai area of Russia they found themselves uninvited.

According to Rolling Stone, culture minister Vladimir Medinsky tweeted on Friday: “Bloodhound Gang packing suitcases. These idiots won’t perform in Kubana.”

But wait, that’s not all! The Russian people were also not amused, many of whom decided to give the band a truly memorable send-off:

The Times also wrote that locals threw eggs and tomatoes at the band as it headed out of Anapa, a town near the venue where their show was canceled. Later, as the band were being deported, Russian nationalists tracked the band down at an airport lounge and assaulted the musicians, trying to smother one band member with an American flag.

Police intervened, but the band’s troubles may not be over. Russia’s top law enforcement agency is considering bringing charges. I can only hope the band has benefited from their introduction into foreign culture. I know there are lessons for all of us in this example:

• Anything done anywhere at any time can show up on the Internet.
• Anything that shows up on the Internet can and will be seen by people who will not be happy about it.
• Some of those people may take legal action. Others may take illegal action.
• In spite of what you’ve heard, Americans are not the least tolerant people in the world.
• Freedom of Speech is not a universal right.
• American patriotism and fanaticism often pales in comparison to that in other countries.

What is most interesting, however, is something said by someone else in the band in response to Hasselhoff’s offensive act, and well before their trouble in Russia:

Not everyone in the band liked what they saw; the video also shows frontman Jimmy Pop telling the crowd he disagreed with what Hasselhoff had just done: “Russia is better than America,” he said, “so I disapprove of that.”

I wonder if he still feels this way now. Perhaps he’s only learned this:

• The safest place to be a Stupid American is in America.

Since reading Dr. Helen Smith’s book I’ve decided to take a step forward from merely feeling frustrated at the anti-male sentiment in society to calling people out on it. After reading this article on a local news site I thought I had a good place to start. I can tell the author, Lyndsi Frandsen, means well, but she just can’t help bashing men. But the more I thought about it, the article doesn’t exactly reflect well on women, either.

Had this been presented simply as an advice article on how men can help their wives adjust to that difficult period following the birth of a child, there would be no problem. Frandsen’s advice is pretty good:

• Be patient and understanding with post-partum hormonal changes.
• Don’t wait to be asked to help out.
• Trust your instincts so your wife can feel okay trusting hers.
• Assume your wife needs breaks.
• Give her reassurance she’s doing okay.
• Feel free to get mushy over the baby.

Unfortunately, that’s not the article Frandsen wrote; that advice is less than half the article–an article is titled “How to be a good dad” when it is really about being a good husband. Had she stopped there it might have been a good article. Men might have read it, thought about it, and perhaps even applied some of it without feeling at least vaguely insulted. There are exceptions, of course, but we husbands generally want to be team players in our relationships, and a little insight on what our wives may be thinking can be appreciated.

But there is the other half of the article.

It’s in that half where the author reveals much of what is wrong with our society. Both sexes go under the bus in very short order. First to go are women:

I’ll just say it. Us women can be all sorts of cray-cray. We expect you to know how to be the perfect husband on Monday, and then figure out how to be the perfect husband on Tuesday (which consists of something completely opposite of what you did on Monday because our needs have totally changed since then.)

And then comes the part where not only do you have to be a great husband, you have to be a great daddy, too. You have to cater to our needs as a wife and a mother.

Nor are women kinder to one-another. She opens the article imagining what would happen if a man wrote an article like this on how women can be better moms:

It would all be downhill from there because a debate would break out about whether or not it’s acceptable to breastfeed in public, which would turn into an argument over natural birth vs. epidurals, and would eventually end with a full-fledged cat fight about why you should or shouldn’t vaccinate your kids.

We’ve all seen it. It’s not a flattering picture of women. The difference is that this is an article on improving men. Frandsen paints women as erratic, irrational, and demanding. But, evidently, they are not the ones that need to change. One even gets the feeling she’s a little proud of her neuroses. Certainly this is not an article on “How to be kinder to men” or “How to avoid the Mommy Wars”.

No, it’s men who need to change. Maybe. She’s even erratic there. She preludes her advice with this:

All jokes aside, you are doing a great job! Really, you are. And here are a few simple things you can do to be even more amazing than you already are …

Not too bad, though the latter sentence undermines her sincerity in the former two. But don’t worry. She sets it straight by the end:

And don’t go thinking that just because you’ve done the suggestions listed above, you are home free.

You see that? Men are doing a great job, and her advice will help you do even better, but it’s not good enough. It’ll never be good enough. But it’s expected that men should continue to try. I’m not sure why. She believes women are “cray-cray” and will never be satisfied. Would it not then be futile for men to try to please their wives? Would it not be futile to even get a wife? Indeed, men are getting married less and less, yet the women are mystified. Isn’t man’s purpose on earth to please women? After all, being a good dad is not about their interactions with their children, but how well they take care of mom. It’s all about what the “cray-cray” woman wants.

This article offers ample proof that Dr. Smith is not just whistling Dixie. There’s a double standard, and Frandsen admits it:

As I sat down to write this article, I started thinking about what would happen if a guy wrote an article for women on how to be a good mom.

Poor guy.

Can you imagine the response?

Men can expect to be castigated (if not castrated) for writing articles daring to give women advice, but there is no hypocrisy in women writing articles giving men advice. Women are allowed to criticize women (and boy do they), but men are not. If gender equality was the goal, I think women overshot. To repeat Frandsen:

And then comes the part where not only do you have to be a great husband, you have to be a great daddy, too. You have to cater to our needs as a wife and a mother.

There may be an unspoken “if” here, but these statements beg the question, “says who?” There’s no promised reciprocity. It’s your job, men. Do it. We’ll still keep you guessing, but do it anyway. No wonder men are starting to say, “No. I don’t want to.” If it was unfair fifty years ago for men to tell women their job was to be barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen making sure dinner is on the table the moment I get home, then it’s unfair now for women to tell men it’s their job to be great husbands and fathers (which to Frandsen is redundant) and cater to their wives’ ever-changing whims.

Now, anyone who has been in a marriage for a while should know that’s what it takes sometimes. You both have to give as well as take, but you should appreciate that your spouse is choosing to sacrifice some of their wants and needs for the greater cause of “us.” The minute it becomes either spouse’s job to make the other happy you have an unequal relationship at best, and “us” becomes not so great a cause.

Men and women face enough challenges in the world. If it’s at all beneficial to face them together perhaps we should drop the demands, the sniping, nit-picking, fault-finding, and the “how to make me happy” articles. Let’s look instead on how to treat one another with fairness, kindness, forgiveness and generosity. Instead of trying to change the other, why not start with ourselves and make sure we’re doing our best to be a good parent/spouse/sibling/child. And then, if there really is improvement to be made in our relationships, let’s find kind, respectful ways to communicate that. Love changes behavior more quickly than demands.

Oh yes, one last thing. While we’re at it, let’s banish “cray-cray” from our vocabulary ASAP, please? It sounds like baby-talk in even the best of contexts, but it’s most often an attempt to excuse and reframe unacceptable behavior as something cute and cuddly, and perhaps even “empowering”. Let’s call it what it is: bad behavior.

I regularly hear about “social engineering”, in both positive and negative connotations. The idea, however, seems to be to improve society. At the same time I see society growing increasingly permissive, relaxing mores, and discarding traditions, and I can’t help but wonder if we’re going about it all wrong.

Suppose you’re trying to improve the quality of cars you produce. It seems obvious that any such program should include looking at the parts you use. Can you build a better car by relaxing the standards on the parts you accept? Do you want softer metals for your pistons or crankshaft? Do you let it slide if your brake calipers vary in width by a millimeter or two? No, in pretty much every Six Sigma or process improvement program I’ve ever seen you end up tightening standards (that is, after all, the very definition of Six Sigma).

So why is it we think we can improve society by relaxing our standards on people? Do we really think that lowering the standards of discipline, self-sacrifice, and responsibility is going to somehow make society better? Do we really think that lowering our expectations will increase people’s drive to exceed them?

It occurs to me that while we seem to be relaxing our standards across the board, there are still some areas where we resist lowering expectations. Sports is one of them. I almost never hear fans express a desire that their team not worry so much about losing and just get out there and have fun. No, we expect our favorite teams to do better each year, even though the law of averages indicates that only half of the teams will actually do so.

Nor do we plop down $200 for a Broadway play expecting to see actors miss entrances, forget lines, or sing off key. If Hollywood started producing movies using special effects that were state-of-the-art in 1970 or actors just pulled in off the street we’d all stop going to movies (the great exception to this being reality TV).

We want to have our cake and eat it, too. We want things to improve, while holding ourselves to a lower standard. I’m as guilty as the next guy. I want everything my parents had without having to show the same fiscal discipline they did.  I want to have all the nice things other people have without having to work as hard as they did. It’s human nature.

But since when has indulging human nature resulted in better humans? The best of our race, the greatest of the great, as a general rule achieved that status not by giving in to every human whim, but by denying themselves in many areas so that they could excel in the areas it mattered most. They may have tolerated imperfections in others, but they held themselves to a higher standard.

So pardon me if I am distrustful of much of the social engineering I see around me. No society achieves more by expecting less. Perhaps in many areas we need to aim less for tolerance and acceptance and more for pity and disapproval. How can we know that our behavior should change if no one ever tells us that we’re not okay just as we are? It seems the only people we’re willing to send that message to are those who are opposed to relaxing the standards.

I’m sorry, but I think we’ve got things backward. We’re working our way toward some kind of -topia, all right, but I suspect it’s one that should be “dys-ed”.

Not all of my vacation was fun and games. I also started work on the next phase of the Great Fence Project. We have a gravel strip that runs along side our garage to the back yard. We don’t now and probably never will own an RV to park there. We do have other things we would like to do with that space, however. We just don’t want it visible to the rest of the neighborhood. So I’m building a fence to re-attach part of that area to the back yard.

There are advantages to digging post-holes there. Yes, the ground is dry, but there are no sprinkler lines for me to hit. There were surprisingly few tree roots, in spite of the three large Chinese elms just over the fence in my neighbor’s back yard. Not only did I move the scrap wood pile that was in the way, dig out all the gravel along the line of the new fence, and get all three post-holes dug, I was able to put the posts in and pour the concrete around them, all in one afternoon. Another good Saturday effort should complete the entire project.

That’s quite a difference from the ongoing struggle with the first part of the project.

It will feel good to finally have this whole project off my list. This long, hot summer has only seemed longer and hotter with this hanging over me the last several months. Of course next year will likely bring new and amazing projects to curl the toes and curdle the blood. But that’s something to worry about next year.

I’m not sure what made me remember this song after all these years, but of course they have it on YouTube. I’m not entirely what the song is about–or at least what Shawn Colvin meant it to be a bout–but I’ve always found it oddly compelling.

And here’s one I’d never heard before, just for the heck of it.