Arrogance, Indifference, Ignorance

In the rise and fall of great nations, power tends to breed a sense of arrogance which sows the seeds of indifference and which inevitably leads to ignorance. Perhaps this is amply demonstrated in the visit of Dr Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad, President of Iran, to the USA and to Columbia University.

Whether we agree with his policies or not, Dr Ahmadinejad is the elected president of a soverign nation. Added to this, he is an educated science academic. Inviting him to address the students at Columbia University was admirable. Lee Bollinger's insulting introduction was America at its worst. Freedom of speech does NOT mean introducing a guest speaker as being a "petty and cruel dictator", nor of tainting the water by claiming that "I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions". Freedom of speech does NOT mean taking up more time introducing the speaker (with your own views) than the time allocated to the speaker (to hear his views). Perhaps Lee Bollinger was concerned as to whether the Columbia students were smart enough to listen to Dr Ahmadinejad with critical ears and thus felt the need to vaccinate them with his own bias before they became exposed to Dr Ahmadinejad?

America sees itself as all-powerful - militarily, economically and politically. We have become arrogant. We have become indifferent to opposing views, we belittle our critics and insult those who disagree with us. And we have become ignorant about the world we profess to 'govern'. And we do this at our peril.

Sun-Tzu said "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." Whether Dr Ahmadinejad is our friend or our enemy, insulting him and denegrating him will not make him go away nor silence his voice - all it will do is silence our own ears and add to our own ignorance.

Education

When I was a kid, my father told me "Finish your food - there are thousands who are starving." Now that I'm a father, I tell my kids "Finish your homework - there are millions starving for your job."

Education in this country is in a poor state with too many students leaving school neither qualified for a career nor for life. Too many of our students are functionally illiterate, cannot write and have a general knowledge verging on the ridiculous. It's all very well to maintain a policy of "No Child Left Behind" IF none of the kids WANT to be left behind. But all too often we're faced with the deadbeats who couldn't give a damn about being educated. They're only at school because they're forced to be there - they're certainly not willing to make the effort to succeed and while the teacher is concerned about not leaving them behind, the smart, willing and enthusiastic kids are being forced to slow down.

Michael in Gr 7 is a math whizz who sleeps in math class because he is bored and still gets straight A's. Is there a fast-track class for kids like him? Yes! But this is the class he sleeps in! Can he do a placement test to enable him to attend Gr 8, 9 or 10 math classes? Not any more - if he finishes the CMS school math curriculum too soon, there won't be a curriculum for him to follow when he gets to high school and he won't be able to do the minimum 4 years high school math while at high school in order to graduate!! And when Sarah picked up all the reading awards at middle school, she was told to reduce her reading so that other kids would have a shot at winning some awards!!

It's time we viewed education as a privilege and not a right. And set a cracking pace which will require from students a solid level of dedication and commitment. It's time to concentrate on giving top-students every bit of support they need to become world-class. And it's time to let the hangers-on and the free-loaders know that their free time at the trough is at an end - either shape-up or ship out.

It's a tragedy for education when one is hard-pressed to think of a single popular icon in society who has achieved greatness through education - these days, the icons my kids know about have achieved success through sport, music, film and by dropping out of mainstream education.

It's time we empowered teachers to do the jobs they are paid to do - to give our children a world-class education and to kick their butts if necessary in order to achieve this objective. And it's time we mandate the schools to clear out the dead-beats - if kids don't perform and if they don't demonstrate dedication and commitment, they're out. I've yet to see a single student being expelled for carrying a gun to school, for raping another student or for assaulting a teacher. And yet at the same time, teachers are expected to teach these kids and are being evaluated against the NCLB criteria - with teaching bonuses being linked to NCLB, it's small wonder that teachers have to cheat test scores to keep the academic detritus moving through the system.

The War on Terror

How do you fight a war on terror? You can't. It's an ideology ... it has no country, no uniform, no face and you can't bomb it. I support the American troops in Iraq because they're giving their lives to do a shitty job. But they're only instruments of policy and I don't agree with the policy. To keep America free? Please! Free from what? Terrorist attacks? Iraq never attacked the US. OBL attacked the US because he hates us. Because the US has a military presence in Saudi Arabia (as well as over 700 other military bases on sovereign soil). And when we couldn't retaliate against OBL, we vented our 9/11 anger on someone else to make us feel good and to make Americans feel proud. We entered Iraq with GWB saying this was only to get rid of Saddam Hussein and that America was not at war with Iraq. True in part - we are not at war with Iraq - Iraq is just the battlefield, half a world away from home-plate, where we've been enticed, by a warped ideology, to expend our resources and to lose sight of other priorities. We use nice-sounding sound-bites like "completing the mission" ... what mission? If our mission is to destroy Al Qaeda, will this happen as long as the Wahabib Schools continue to flourish and preach violence, hatred and suicide as noble and honorable causes in the name of Allah? Is our mission to secure the borders of Iraq and to stop the insurgents? Iran has been aiming to claim a chunk of Iraq for years and if Iran didn't succeed against Saddam Hussein, America is a pussy in the long run. We can't even secure our own borders and if we can't secure Iraq's borders, how will the locals ever succeed? I somehow suspect that America is going to have to abandon Iraq sooner or later and unless we figure on staying there permanently, we should get out now and admit that getting rid of Saddam was probably our biggest foreign policy blunder. Sure, there'll be a civil war and the neighboring countries will grab at the scraps, but we spilled the milk and we cannot spend forever trying to clean up the mess. It's time to stop concentrating on a skirmish and time to focus on world events.

Immigration

So we don't like the 12 million illegals working in this country ... in spite of the fact that all of them are gainfully employed. But we don't seem to worry about the big corporations giving away thousands of jobs to people in foreign countries. We complain that illegals in the USA are not paying taxes or medicare or contributing to Social Security. But we don't seem to worry that every job sent overseas means less taxes paid into the USA, less to medicare and less to social security. It seems to me that corporations like their off-shore sub-contractors because the labor is cheaper and less regulated than it is locally. Similarly, we like employing illegals because it's cheaper and less regulated than employing legal immigrants and American workers. Bottom line is that both the illegals and big business are short-changing Uncle Sam, medicare, social security and the American Worker. There's a message in this somewhere ... has the American Worker spent too much time at the trough, enjoying the good life? Has the American Worker lost his competitiveness against foreign workers? Will the American Worker one day become extinct?