Just The Facts Ma'am! Even If They Bum You Out .........

Now I can’t watch Bill Maher because I don’t like “potty mouth” and because I refuse to add to his left-wing audience or that of his host network, MSNBC. Mind you, looking at published audience ratings, that hardly makes me unique.

But, occasionally, I hear about some Maher interviewee and such was the case last week when one of his guests tried to blame the mortgage crisis on our education system. Instead of placing blame where it belongs, namely the Community Reinvestment Act of the late‘70s and its vigorous enforcement under later administrations. But, if you read this Blog, you know this already because we’ve discussed it at length as the financial crisis deepened.

Anyway, this genius postulated that, if Americans had been taught more mathematics, they would have understood that a $2000 a month mortgage payment was likely to place something of a strain on a household income where the only breadwinner was on minimum wage. Familiarity with the intricacies of integral or differential calculus would be vital one assumes. Naturally, the thinly-veiled inference was that we don’t spend enough money on education. Thus it was interesting to learn that precisely the opposite is the case.

Perhaps we can divide our world into the “Have Lot’s”, the “Have Not’s”, and then the ones in the middle. Clearly North America, Western Europe, Australasia and Japan fall into the first category and, according to UNESCO, educational spending in this country is second only to Luxembourg on a per student basis. Now, if money is the key, logic demands that we should be number two across the curricula.

However, that is emphatically not the case. According to independent surveys, the US ranks number 18 out of 36 industrialized nations across all subjects and 35^th in mathematics. The one aspect where we are in first place is “Self Esteem”. In other words, we suck but we are very proud of the fact.

A more granular analysis of the numbers within the United States reveals an even sorrier picture when we see that in certain areas, such as Detroit, the average teenager displays competency across all subjects at only the 4^th grade level, in other words the ripe old age of 10. Now that is just about the literacy and numeracy level of parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

But, I can already hear the screams from the liberal Left claiming that the racial diversity of our student body puts strains on our system that are not shared by other nations. Now that might be true for Japan but it is assuredly not the case in say, Western Europe. Anyone who claims that the UK or France, for example, are homogenous societies has no clue what has been going on there, basically since the end of World War II.

Actually this explains a lot.

For a start, it explains why so many young people voted for Obama. Put bluntly, they didn’t think but simply felt. And, I guess you could also lump in even some older voters. However, it is clear from last November’s mid-term results, that a lot of those had had a lot of time to think over the previous 2 years.   

Mathematics is the language of science. It explains how stuff gets done in the natural world.  This could be as simple as Zn + H2So4= H2 + ZnSo4 or as mind blowing as E= MC2.

Is it any wonder, therefore, why so many on the Left still cling to the myth of global warming? Even when they are faced with the distortion of facts and the manipulation of data?

Of course it’s understandable because, as we said,  too many people have not been taught to think but, rather just to feel.

Because, that’s what “Self Esteem” is all about. It’s how you feel about yourself not what you know to be the truth.

I’m willing to bet that somewhere, someone has a PhD in Self Esteem,

And, if not and you like the idea of displaying a doctorate on your office wall, dig out your transcripts, the oral is unlikely to be that tough.