Encyclopedia Britannica

Encyclopedia Britannica will no longer publish a print edition. You can still get the 2010 edition, and some years of update volumes, but the 2010 will be be last print edition.

We had a Colliers Encyclopedia when I was a boy. I used Britannica at the library, but never liked Britannica’s division into three parts – Macropedia, Micropedia, and an Outline of Knowledge. Colliers was simply alphabetical.

Our Colliers Encyclopedia had acetate transparent overlays of the internal combustion engine, of the human body, and of a frog; maps of everywhere; articles on everything important (by definition); and an update volume every year for 10 years – an under-rated and under-used feature. I would have kept the Colliers but for the space – 24 or so large heavy volumes plus annual update volumes takes up a lot of shelf, and the encyclopedia was inevitably out of date on many topics.

Since then I’ve had Britannica on CD ROM and DVD, a free copy of Encarta (not a bad product, as I recall), for 5 or 6 years a personal subscription to Britannica Online, and since then varying levels of library data base access to Britannica Online and other things. The local library has a copy of Britannica, which I have occasionally consulted.

I’ll use Wikipedia for casual look-ups – what country is north of Zimbabwe; what’s Upper Volta called today; who plays Raj on Big Bang Theory? But for anything important I follow the reference (if there is one), find the answer in some reliable reference source, or go to the library.

Children

“Children are not a class or kind, they are a heterogeneous collection of immature persons, varying, as persons do, in their reach, and in their ability to extend it when stimulated.” — Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #234

Good penmanship

My late aunt, a Dominican sister, retired from teaching back in the sixties. I can barely remember going to visit the elementary school of which she was principal (They had a globe!) She kept up on trends in education, and years later we were talking about some aspect of it. She said the root problem was that students didn’t learn good penmanship anymore. I was dubious. It turns out the nuns were right.

Education funding in Illinois

The money’s not for the children, and it’s not for the teachers.

“Two lobbyists with no prior teaching experience were allowed to count their years as union employees toward a state teacher pension once they served a single day of subbing in 2007,” says the Chicago Tribune.

According to the article, one of the two lobbyists is on track for “a pension of about $108,000 a year” from a pension system that’s in the red. Basically, Illinois takes out a loan to cover the pay-outs, and tax-payers cover the interest. Of course everyone who draws a pension has contributed to the system some percent of his salary. The Trib says one of these lobbyists earned $93 for his one-and-only day as a substitute teacher.

In another story, half of Illinois public high school students flunked state exams in reading, math and science this year, setting a new record low.

So education taxes didn’t go to pay teachers, and didn’t help the students learn. Maybe they’re part of an economic stimulus package.

UPDATE 25 October 2011: I just noticed this surprising coincidence. According to the Tribune, one of the two people who took advantage of this retirement opportunity is the political director of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, named Steven Preckwinkle. Remembering that somehwhat uncommon last name, I was surprised to see it again today in an unrelated news item. Apparently Toni Preckwinkle is president of the Cook County Board.

UPDATE 5 January 2012: Quinn signs public pension overhaul – “Sweeping reforms are aimed at curbing public pension abuses by union officials revealed by a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation.” I wonder where the loophole is now.

PC vs. pounds

A word problem told of a boat with a limited weight capacity, a two-hundred-pound operator, and an unknown number of eighty-pound children. In any other contemporary word problem, the active person – driver, pilot, carpenter, business owner – would have been specified a woman. In this case, the text book editor left the gender unspecified.

This opens up a whole new field for politically correct word problems involving, say, the change in potential energy of a forester climbing a redwood, or the forces on a 225-pound paratrooper who jumps at 1300 feet and opens her parachute at 1000 feet. We’ll bust us up some stereotypes and make some things explicit, you betcha’.

Obscure humor

How are educrats like machine guns?

They should be unemployed in pairs.

I suggested to a friend that all the assistant principals should be fired to save money. He said the school had to employ them to deal with all the mandates from the state – recording, filing, evaluating, assessing, appealing the assessment, re-evaluating, et cetera. I later realized the guy down in Springfield imposing the mandate and the guy at the high school fulfilling it are symbiots – with each other; they enjoy a different relationship with the taxpayer.

Of course that’s easy for me to say. If they offered me a job at the high school, or in Springfield, filling out forms for $60,000 a year, I’d jump at it, and the state would save about $10,000 a year.^* If they would make me the high school athletic director they’d save even more. It is true I’m not competent to do that job, but neither would I do any harm, and the taxpayers would save a boatload of money.

^*Hey, that’d be a pareto improvement! Someone let Tim Geithner know. Tim, call me!

Double standards and anti-Catholic bias

The University of Illinois is firing Kenneth Howell for explaining to a student the Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality (turns out the Catholics are agin’ it.)

If Dr. Howell were a Muslim, or an atheist, or an Episcopal, the university would have given him every consideration. If his class were Understanding Islam, or Why There Is No God, or LGBTQQP Studies, any student who complained would be sent for “remediation.” Because Howell is Catholic, he can’t be allowed to teach. Impressionable students might be exposed to something besides the prevailing liberal orthodoxy.

Often there’s more than makes the papers in these stories. That seems not to be the case this time. Maybe something will come out in the lawsuit and suggest the UIUC administration isn’t a pack of knee-jerk nitwits. Dr. Howell could have been telling students how to spell “transubstantiation,” or may have speculated about Pope Benedict’s religion. I doubt there’s much more to it though. I think the Big U is just wrong.

Links:

• The academy and pseudo-tolerance
• Instructor of Catholicism at UI claims loss of job violates academic freedom
• UI administrators ask committee to examine academic freedom over issue of fired professor
• Despite letter from UI, religion instructor doesn’t expect to teach this fall

UPDATE 29 July 2010: U. of I. says barred teacher will return in the fall – “A review of whether Howell’s firing by the Religion Department violated his academic freedom is continuing.”

Basic training and primary education

“Compulsory education is conscription.” There’s nothing wrong with going to school, or with joining the army. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with conscription. I see people every day who I profoundly wish could be drafted and sent to Fort Polk. That’s why I’m not the dictator, and at least I know it. But I would oppose universal compulsory military service (that is, with no provision for conscientious objectors) less vigorously than I would oppose universal compulsory education in state-approved schools (that is, no home-schooling.) On the whole I’d rather be forced to do what the state demands than to think as the state teaches.

One question they asked was…

Are you people high?

“The University of Illinois has nixed plans for a nearly $100,000 sculpture of President Stanley Ikenberry after the Tribune asked questions about the work.” — University of Illinois backs off $100,000 sculpture for Ikenberry

School funding in Illinois

The next 20 years will be no better than the last 20

“For much of the last two decades, Illinois schools have lurched from financial crisis to financial crisis, with no shortage of potential solutions floated through blue-ribbon panels, reform legislation, lawsuits and even a constitutional referendum. To date, the only clear winner has been inertia.” — Reliance on local money drives school funding imbalances

For the next two decades, Illinois schools will continue to lurch from financial crisis to financial crisis. Nothing substantive will change for the better. The bureaucrats, the politicians, and the unions will take care of themselves. Parents who need to and can will move out – out of bad districts, or out of the state. Others will send their kids to private school, or will home-school. Taxes will go up, and businesses will go elsewhere.