Several days ago I spent some time reading through an extensive article by Ron Unz at The American Conservative on admissions practices in Ivy League schools in the USA, entitled “The Myth of American Meritocracy“. While I certainly cannot do justice to all the arguments and stories he marshalls to make his points, I want to draw out an implication from one statement he makes. He writes:

In recent decades, elite college admissions policy has frequently become an ideological battlefield between liberals and conservatives, but I would argue that both these warring camps have been missing the actual reality of the situation.

Conservatives have denounced “affirmative action” policies which emphasize race over academic merit, and thereby lead to the enrollment of lesser qualified blacks and Hispanics over their more qualified white and Asian competitors; they argue that our elite institutions should be color-blind and race-neutral. Meanwhile, liberals have countered that the student body of these institutions should “look like America,” at least approximately, and that ethnic and racial diversity intrinsically provide important educational benefits, at least if all admitted students are reasonably qualified and able to do the work.

My own position has always been strongly in the former camp, supporting meritocracy over diversity in elite admissions. But based on the detailed evidence I have discussed above, it appears that both these ideological values have gradually been overwhelmed and replaced by the influence of corruption and ethnic favoritism, thereby selecting future American elites which are not meritocratic nor diverse, neither being drawn from our most able students nor reasonably reflecting the general American population.

The overwhelming evidence is that the system currently employed by most of our leading universities admits applicants whose ability may be unremarkable but who are beneficiaries of underhanded manipulation and favoritism. Nations which put their future national leadership in the hands of such individuals are likely to encounter enormous economic and social problems, exactly the sort of problems which our own country seems to have increasingly experienced over the last couple of decades. And unless the absurdly skewed enrollments of our elite academic institutions are corrected, the composition of these feeder institutions will ensure that such national problems only continue to grow worse as time passes. We should therefore consider various means of correcting the severe flaws in our academic admissions system, which functions as the primary intake valve of our future national elites.

Unz draws attention to the deleterious effects the current process will have on the nation’s economy and society. But students of religion should note that these same schools are producing the “best minds” working on religion. Yet, if we recognize the large influence of corruption, both for financial and ideological reasons, we must, if we are reasonable, adjust our respect for the consensuses of these institutions downward accordingly.

I think one “take-away” from this article on the state of humanities and religion scholarship is this: we ought to simply recognize brilliance and foolishness wherever they appear, rather than give an argument more weight because it came from a prestigious institution, or less because it did not.

I’m infrequently chipping away at John J. Ratey’s book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. What struck me immediately about this book is that, while majoring on science, it recognizes that its practical advice is perennial. The epigram that begins the book:

In order for man to succeed in life, God provided him with two means, education and physical activity. Not separately, one for the soul and the other for the body, but for the two together. With these two means, man can attain perfection. – Plato

He begins his book with the case of Naperville Central High School. This school begins its day with a fitness regiment for students, focused not on “sports”, but, as I said, on fitness. This is accomplished through simple running, with the goal of raising the heart rate of students, determined with monitors for each pupil. The science Ratey goes into in his book suggests there are many benefits to physical exercise on the brain and mental processes in specific. But the most memorable part of the first chapter for me was the following:

Those exams aren’t nearly as telling as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a test designed to compare students’ knowledge levels from different countries in two key subject areas. This is the exam cited by New York Times editorialist Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat, when he laments that students in places like Singapore are “eating our lunch.” The education gap between the United States and Asia is widening, Friedman points out. Whereas in some Asian countries nearly half of the students score in the top tier, only 7 percent of U.S. students hit that mark.

TIMSS has been administered every four years since 1995. The 1999 edition included 230,000 students from thirty-eight countries, 59,000 of whom are from the United States. While New Tier and eighteen other schools along Chicago’s wealthy North Sore formed a consortium to take the TIMSS (thereby masking individual schools’ performance), Naperville 203 signed up on its own to get an international benchmark of its students’ performance. Some 97 percent of its eighth graders took the test–not merely the best and the brightest. How did they stack up? On the science section of the TIMSS, Naperville’s students finished first, just ahead of Singapore, and then the North Shore consortium. Number one in the world. On the math section, Naperville scored sixth, behind only Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan. [13-14]

Ratey does acknowledge that Naperville resides in a demographically advantaged school district, in terms of race and income. Yet he argues that the coincidence of unusual phys-ed and exceptional science scores is too interesting to dismiss out of hand, especially in that Naperville is far from the only “wealthy suburb in the country with intelligent, educated parents. And in poor districts where Naperville-style PE has taken root, such as Titusville, Pennsylvania…, test scores have improved measurably.” (15)

I’ve been reflecting a bit on the significance of the US presidential election. Especially the voting habits of the “millennial” demographic. The following are some unorganized and totally biased suggestions I have for how churches could be discipling their members in political matters.

1. Natural law. Christian conservatives sometimes speak and act as if the order of grace totally replaced that of nature. The practical application of this principle becomes a wholly divine positive law approach to policy. A bible verse must be found for everything, and that becomes the whole (or basically the whole) of our argument. I think a recovery of natural law thinking can be a corrective here. It can help both believers and unbelievers to see that God’s commands are not arbitrary impositions of a cosmic despot who wants to spoil our fun; they are instead simply the will of God inscribed in our very nature. God tells us to act the way he made us to act, and when we act the way he designed us to, we flourish, not wither. This suggestion will imply recovering a great deal of Christian jurisprudence, antique, medieval, and modern, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant. It probably should include knowledge of the jurisprudence of other cultures, too (Arabic, Indian, Chinese, Jewish, etc.). Of course, not every individual would need to study all these things, but seminary professors probably should have some knowledge of it all, and it should filter down in vocationally appropriate ways through the ministers to the laity.

2. More specifically, in recovering natural law teaching, the conservative Protestant church should be open to rediscovering a different part of the political “spectrum” than it currently inhabits today. The tradition of the church really is socially “conservative” in most ways, but not economically libertarian. The American libertarian tradition is really the odd one out on this, and it is important to at least recognize this, even if a person or institution ultimately wants to side with it. I think, though, conservative Christians might be able to have a real effect on the political world, in the long haul, if they were to present an actual third way: a politic that strives for the common good in all areas of life, not just sex and death issues.

3. Also more particularly, the church desperately needs to get back in touch with the just war tradition, and to a lesser degree, even its pacifistic heritage. It needs to understand why it is not pacifist, if it is not going to be pacifist, and it needs to understand how its approach to war is grounded in something other than sheer brute desire for conquest and self-satisfaction. The just war tradition, ultimately, is guided by (duh) justice, which means “to each as he deserves”. It means a preferential option (not indefeasible) for the preservation of life, a respect for order, and proportionate and discriminate use of force (not terrorism and blood lust).

4. This may go without saying, but I’d like to say it anyway: part of discipleship in our age needs to be the inculcating of a critical distance from partisan politics. Though we may vote a certain way in elections, we ought not to be doing this out of loyalty to a brand. It ought to be the result of a careful moral calculus. And Christians should not have a problem criticizing even their own preferred candidate or policy if it is defective from the point of view of ideal justice. I am firmly convinced that a vigilant people is the only thing that will keep a society free and just, and the church cannot contribute to such a society if it is basically in the bag for one power-seeking party or another.

FWIW.

My buddy Michael Plato (no relation to a certain expositor of Socrates) teaches Popular Culture, Film, and English at Seneca College in Toronto. He and I both are members at New City Baptist in the city’s downtown core. A week or so ago Mike did a three-part seminar on Mormonism that was fantastic. Some years ago he did a documentary for PBS on Mormonism, and even had the opportunity to interview Harold Bloom for it. Sadly, as with so many documentaries, it didn’t air. Mike’s been a huge resource of English lit for me, you can read about his literary habits in this interview here.

Michael recently wrote a piece for Seneca’s The SELS Review Vol. 2 (Sept. 2012) called “Religion in the Classroom.” In it he reflects on ways that professors can understand and respect the religious perspectives of their students. I asked Mike if I could post it here, even though it won’t be published until September. He was amenable, so here it is (I omitted the bibliography, so you’ll have to chase up the references yourself):

Not so long ago it was understood that if a family was going to survive Thanksgiving, three subjects were never to be raised at the dinner table: money, politics and religion. Extended families being fragile entities at the best of times, this maxim still makes good sense. The classroom, on the other hand, is the place discussion should be allowed to roam freely and widely, the more challenging, the better. That at least is how we like to perceive it in our most idealistic moments. Yet while debate on economics and politics are often encouraged in many classrooms, when religious views are raised, an unease or discomfort is more often the result. I do not think I am the only one who has felt that awkward silence when a student suddenly interjects an explicitly religious view into a class conversation. As religious historian George Marsden notes, even among those with strong religious convictions, “separation of faith and learning [are] widely taken for granted in our culture” (Marsden, 1997, p.5). As such, we are unsure of how to proceed when they collide.

To be sure, some of this apprehension may be the result of a paranoia stemming from political correctness – the fear that we may unintentionally offend someone of a different cultural background. More likely, it is founded on the growing assumption that religious views have no place in the public square, and by extension, the schools. This view is most succinctly articulated by Richard Rorty when he described religion as a “conversation stopper”. For Rorty, the exclusion of religion from public discourse is a necessary or pragmatic one. It is divisive and time-consuming to constantly argue over religion, while secular reasoning, as he sees it, is universal and available to all (Rorty, 1999, pp.166-167).

Stephen L. Carter of Yale responds, however, that it is impossible to leave our religious views behind when we are dealing with any issues of belief or moral reasoning.

Efforts to craft a public square from which religious conversation is absent, no matter how thoughtfully worked out, will always in the end say to those of organized religion that they alone, unlike everybody else, must enter public dialogue only after leaving behind that part of themselves that they may consider the most vital (Carter, 1999, p.90).

To that, author Timothy Keller adds that many secular assumptions are just as “faith based” as many overtly religious ones: “secular concepts such as ‘self-realization’ and ‘autonomy’ are impossible to prove and are ‘conversation stoppers’ just as much as appeals to the Bible.” In other words, as Keller sees it, “statements that seem to be common sense to the speakers are nonetheless often profoundly religious in nature” (Keller, 2008, p. 16).

So where does this leave us in terms of discussing religion in the classroom? Should we be encouraging it? Having little space here to develop strategies for effectively “managing” religious views in class dialogue, I hope at this point simply to address three common assumptions, or blind spots. Simple awareness of these three aspects of the nature of religious beliefs will not resolve all crises or concerns that may arise, but they will give the classroom facilitator a greater sensitivity to the views of students with strong religious convictions, and may help to make the classroom a more amenable – and less awkward – place for religious, or more generally, “belief based” discussions. They are as follows: 1. The non-syncretistic nature of most religions. 2. The superior claims of religion. 3. Religious beliefs have wider worldview implications.

A common assumption that has been growing in the west, at least since the Second World War, is the syncretistic view of religion. That is, all religions are basically about achieving the same goals or ends. A commonly used metaphor for this view is the one which states that the world’s religions “are different paths up the same mountain.” Promulgated by authors such as Huston Smith and Joseph Campbell forty and fifty years ago, many contemporary religious scholars now consider this view to be well meaning, but incorrect and often, inappropriate. As Stephen Prothero puts it:

No one argues that different economic systems or political regimes are one and the same. Capitalism and socialism are so obviously at odds that their differences hardly bear mentioning. The same goes for democracy and monarchy. Yet scholars continue to claim that religious rivals such as Hinduism and Islam, Judaism and Christianity are, by some miracle of the imagination, essentially the same, and this view resounds in the echo chamber of popular culture (Prothero, 2010, p.1).

One example of religious syncretism that is commonly found in modern western society is what Harold Bloom calls the “myth” of the “Judeo-Christian Tradition”. Though both faiths, Judaism and Christianity, share some historical origins, texts and concepts, the foundational formulations of each are radically “antithetical to each other” (Bloom, 2005, p.234). For believers of these faiths, syncretistic assumptions of them being essentially “the same” can be perceived not as insightful or unifying, but rather as patronizing. The same could be said for the common habit of lumping Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Shintoism, etc., into the category of “eastern religions”.

For many who do not profess faith, religion is no more threatening than when it is being proselytized. Practiced certainly, studied of course, but any attempt to convert someone else to it is seen as both arrogant and wrong. It smacks of superiority, even ethnocentrism. Yet, if we are completely honest, this view itself is likewise just as ethnocentric as any other religious or cultural claim. People from the majority of non-western cultures have no problem saying that their religion and culture is best (Keller, p.12).  For us to say that such a stance is wrong is in fact our own form of cultural superiority. We think that those who consider themselves superior are in reality inferior, in the end securing our own sense of superiority.

Mark Lilla, a professor of government at Columbia University, demonstrates this irony when he realized what was happening when he tried talking one of his students out of becoming a Christian:

I wanted to cast doubt on the step he was about to take, to help him see there are other ways to live, other ways to seek knowledge, love…. even self-transformation. I wanted to convince him his dignity depended on maintaining a free, sceptical attitude towards doctrine. I wanted… to save him…(Lilla, 2005, p.95).

Lilla’s self-knowledge reveals that his doubts about Christianity were in fact a learned alternative faith. We are all ultimately exclusive in our beliefs about religion, but in different ways. As such, when we hear proselytizing in the class, we should be aware of how our response may be its own form of proselytizing.

A final point to consider is: what are the larger worldview implications of religion? Religions are not simply a set of ritualistic practices or collections of narratives which engender personal fulfilment, but are in fact sets of presuppositions which are held about the nature of reality and provide a foundation on which the believer lives, moves and has being. James W. Sire points out that worldview answers such fundamental questions as: What is external reality? What is a human? What happens at death? How do we know right and wrong? And what is the meaning of history? (Sire, 2004, p.20)

Understanding religion as encompassing these widely diverse dimensions may help to explain why certain religious traditions respond in the way they do to certain aspects of culture and teaching. A prime example of this would be the antipathy many Christians feel towards the theory of evolution. What offends these Christians about the theory is not the complexity of the science, or that it does not correspond to the description of creation in the Bible, but rather the way certain secular thinkers use evolutionary theory to suggestively undermine supernatural claims which are beyond their scientific purview (Cunningham, 2010, pp. xvi-xvii).[1] In order to comprehend some religious responses to specific, seemingly non-religious subjects, such as the sciences or politics, a deeper understanding of one’s own worldview presuppositions and how they interact with or challenge those of a religious worldview may be necessary.

I do not intend for these cursory observations to be any kind of final statement determining practices within classrooms, much less act as the basis of college policy. Rather, I hope merely to draw attention to the complexities of an aspect of our rich diversity which has only begun to be addressed. For much of the 20^th Century, a working assumption within schools and western society at large was that religion was a dying phenomenon (Keller, p.3). In 1966, Time Magazine asked on its cover “Is God Dead?” The affirmative answer given then was widely accepted. Religion continued its gradual decline over the next few decades. Then, in the few years following the millennium the trend suddenly appeared to be reversing itself. Surveys began to show that religion was again on the rise (Jenkins, 2011, p.6). The world was beginning to respond to Time Magazine’s query that no, God is indeed not dead.[2] Whether we welcome it or shun it, a decade in, the 21^stCentury is turning out to be a century for faith. As educators, the onus is upon us to know exactly what that means… and to talk about it.

So, since being converted back to a kind of “realist conservatism” by Edward Feser (from libertarianism), I have been pondering what this system implies for more particular political policy judgments. I see clearly what it means for matters like marriage and life and death issues like abortion and euthanasia, but what really intrigues me is more the economic and financial matters. Feser argues (see article linked here) that natural law may support a right of a kind of state education system and a state health care system in certain situations, specifically a system where the people who would receive the assistance were in real distress (i.e., not the whole society generally):

A further possible justification of a right to assistance when in distress vis-à-vis health care and education would be to hold that such assistance falls under the “public good” that the state is obliged to provide for under natural law. The operative principle here is that of subsidiarity, according to which the more central authorities within a society should not carry out any functions that can be performed by the less central ones, though the more central authorities should carry out those that cannot be performed by the less central ones. To the extent that those in distress vis à vis health care and education simply have no other recourse, a right to assistance would arguably follow, if not from the Natural Law Proviso by itself, then at least from that proviso together with the classical natural law theory’s conception of the state and its proper functions.

The extent of governmental assistance such a right would justify is another question, and here I will end with three points. First, what classical natural law theory strictly requires and strictly rules out in the way of practical policy is much less than many partisans of various political persuasions would like. What it strictly requires is a system of private property rights that are robust but not absolute. What it strictly rules out, accordingly, are socialism at one extreme and laissez-faire libertarianism at the other. Between these extremes, though, there is wide latitude for reasonable disagreement among classical natural law theorists about how best to apply their principles, and these disagreements can largely be settled only by appeal to prudential matters of economics, sociology, and practical politics rather than fundamental moral principle. (50-51)

It strikes me, too, that “conservatism” itself is not a term that says much about what particular decisions one should make on those issues. If it just means, “what governments traditionally do”, well then libertarianism is certainly not the answer. In the 18th century, as far as I understand, the British government indeed had welfare systems and practiced economic protectionism of a kind. So would a “conservative” be labelled a Keynesian socialist by today’s standard “conservative”? It strikes me that this gets to the problem with the label in general: “conservatism”, as a label, seems to only mean “wants to change slowly”, but doesn’t determine in any clear way what change exactly is desired, or what end-goals are permitted.

If one wants to go back further (perhaps this is the conservative impulse itself?), to the dawn of the modern era, then most political systems would affirm a natural law, and draw from it several policies which would probably include a mixture of a welfare state (in a very broad sense) and a desire to preserve some private property. Is this what the “conservative” policy really is?

I know changing labels is not an easy thing to do, but as someone who feels forced to identify with “conservatism” in a broad sense in our culture (for lack of a better alternative), I really wish there were a more descriptive word that identified what “conservatism” really is for.

Here are some attacks ads recently put out by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.

I’m assuming these are geared towards the dastardly Tim Hudak. Oh yes! Heaven forbid cuts are made to education budgets (no matter that Hudak isn’t planning on doing this). If you’re for that you must be a heartless fascist pig who is against children. No matter that if the Conservatives want to make cuts to education they’re probably aiming at the perks that publicly funded teachers enjoy. In the small minded world of the ETFO if you think that public sector unions shouldn’t receive significant wage increases during times of economic hardship on an income that tops out at $92,000, you must hate kids.

And how does Ontario’s education spending chalk up anyways? Education budgets have swollen from $16.6 billion in 2005/06 to $19.5 billion in 2010/11. And all this while the total number of students declined from 1,959,400 in 2005/06 to 1,901,236 in 2010/11. (Source).

Hopefully the public won’t fall for this.

As Ontario prepares for another provincial election I thought I’d post something I came across from an article I’m reading by Daniel DiSalvo in the National Affairs on pubic sector unionism. When examining the damage that public sector unions have done to state budgets, DiSalvo included this gem about liberal favourite, Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

Even President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of private-sector unionism, drew a line when it came to government workers: “Meticulous attention,” the president insisted in 1937, “should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government….The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.” The reason? F.D.R. believed that “[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.” (HT: Washington Examiner).

…from a resident of the UK, Alastair Roberts:

In response to the riots in London and elsewhere, a number of people have responded by accusing society of simply failing to care about such young people. This indifference on the part of society supposedly leads to disaffection in the youth and the anti-social criminal behaviour that we have witnessed on our television screens over the last few days.

While this accusation is not without a large measure of truth – many people don’t care, or fail to care actively enough – it strikes me as ultimately somewhat simplistic and missing important parts of the picture. It seems to me that many within society do care very deeply about deprived and disconnected urban youth, and that there are numerous people who are actively trying to make a difference to their lives. For each group advocating treating these rioters as scum and rats to be eradicated, suppressed, or cynically appeased, there are plenty of others who, although angered by their evil actions, really want to make a positive difference to their lives.

Many of these young people will have been exposed to teachers, youth workers, church leaders and workers, mentors, social workers, and programmes that transformed the lives of many of their peers. They may well be the 10% that slipped through the fingers of the various systems that they belonged to and the people that sought to make a difference in their lives, systems and people that prove profoundly effective in the lives of many. They may be the problem cases that resisted all of the effects of concerned and conscientious people. In many cases wider society can largely wash its hands of any responsibility for their actions: society did all that lay in its power, but they were unwilling to accept or respond to all of the work that concerned parties invested in them.

There are innumerable other cases, of course, cases in which society could have done more. However, as often as not, the key problems here are not simplistically attributable to a lack of care on the part of society, but other matters entirely. ‘Care’ and ‘concern’ aren’t panaceas for social ills, especially ones that are as deeply embedded in dysfunctional social structures, systems, and patterns as these…

Be sure to read all of this thoughts, this is just an excerpt.

Here’s Dr. Richard Pratt on how we should improve our seminary education system. I heartily agree that the East should not model their system on ours. After all, our system seems better suited to turning out seminary professors than pastors on the front line. I mean I’d like to say that the Toronto School of Theology is as useless as nipples on a bull when it comes to discipleship but that would be insulting to bulls everywhere, so we won’t go there.

If I were king and could wave my magical scepter, I would radically change the basic agenda of seminary.

After 22 years of teaching in a seminary, I slowly began to realize something. We were not preparing the kinds of leaders that evangelical churches in North America need. Let’s face it; evangelicalism has seen better days. God is at work in many places and in many ways, but on the whole, the news is not good. Our numbers are dwindling; our theology is unraveling; our zeal for Christ is dissipating. Now more than ever, we need seminaries to give the church leaders who are empowered by the Spirit for radical, sacrificial devotion to Christ and his kingdom. And they’d better do it quickly.

I was recently in China, talking with the president of a house church network of more than 1 million people. He asked me for advice on preparing the next generation of pastors. I looked at him and said, “The only thing I know is what you should not do.” He smiled and asked, “What’s that?” My reply surprised him. “You should not do what we have done in the West. The results of that approach have become clear.”

The agenda of evangelical seminaries is set primarily by scholars. Professors decide how students will spend their time; they determine students’ priorities; they set the pace. And guess what. Scholars’ agenda seldom match the needs of the church.

Can you imagine what kind of soldiers our nation would have if basic training amounted to reading books, listening to lectures, writing papers, and taking exams? We’d have dead soldiers. The first time a bullet wizzed past their heads on the battlefield, they’d panic. The first explosion they saw would send them running. So, what is basic training for the military? Recruits learn the information they need to know, but this is a relatively small part of their preparation. Most of basic training is devoted to supervised battle simulation. Recruits are put through harrowing emotional and physical stress. They crawl under live bullet fire. They practice hand to hand combat.

If I could wave a magic scepter and change seminary today, I’d turn it into a grueling physical and spiritual experience. I’d find ways to reach academic goals more quickly and effectively and then devote most of the curriculum to supervised battle simulation. I’d put students through endless hours of hands-on service to the sick and dying, physically dangerous evangelism, frequent preaching and teaching the Scriptures, and days on end of fasting and prayer. Seminary would either make them or break them.

Do you know what would happen? Very few young men would want to attend. Only those who had been called by God would subject themselves to this kind of seminary. Yet they would be recruits for kingdom service, not mere students. They would be ready for the battle of gospel ministry.

If you find this interesting, you may want to check out John Frame’s 1978 “Proposal for a New Seminary.”

What do you think?

I’m on a Thomas Sowell kick so here’s a brilliant article on how teachers are different from banks when it comes to decision making:

Two unrelated news stories on the same day show the contrast between government decisions and private decisions.

Under the headline “Foreclosed Homes Sell at Big Discounts,” USA Today reported that banks were selling the homes they foreclosed on, at discounts of 38 percent in Tennessee to 41 percent in Illinois and Ohio.

Banks in general try to get rid of the homes they acquire by foreclosure, by selling them quickly for whatever they can get. Why? Because banks are forced by economic realities to realize that they are not real estate companies.

No matter how much expertise bank officials may have in financial transactions, that is very different from knowing the best ways to maintain and market empty houses.

Meanwhile, there was a story on the Fox News Channel about schools that are using their time to indoctrinate kindergartners and fourth graders with politically correct attitudes about sex.

Anyone familiar with the low standards and mushy notions in the schools and departments of education that turn out our public school teachers might think that these teachers would have all they can do to make American children competent in reading, writing and math.

Anyone familiar with how our children stack up with children from other countries in basic education would be painfully aware that American children lag behind children in countries that spend far less per pupil than we do.

In other words, teachers and schools that are failing to provide the basics of education are branching out into all sorts of other areas, where they have even less competence.

Why are teachers so bold when banks are so cautious? The banks pay a price for being wrong. Teachers don’t.

If banks try to act like they are real estate companies and hold on to a huge inventory of foreclosed homes, they are likely to lose money big time, as those homes deteriorate and cannot compete with homes marketed by real estate companies with far more experience and expertise in this field.

But if teachers fail to educate children, they don’t lose one dime, no matter how much those children and the country lose by their failure. If the schools waste precious time indoctrinating children, instead of educating them, that’s the children’s problem and the country’s problem, but not the teachers’ problem.

Sex indoctrination is just one of innumerable “exciting” and “innovative” self-indulgences of the schools. There is no bottom line test of what these boondoggles cost the children or the country.

Incidentally, conservatives who think that schools should be teaching “abstinence” miss the point completely. The schools have no expertise to be teaching sex at all. We should be happy if they ever develop the competence to teach math and English, so that our children can hold their own in international tests given to children in other countries.

Schools are just one government institution that take on tasks for which they have no expertise or even competence.

Congress is the most egregious example. In the course of any given year, Congress votes on taxes, medical care, military spending, foreign aid, agriculture, labor, international trade, airlines, housing, insurance, courts, natural resources, and much more.

There are professionals who have spent their entire adult lives specializing in just one of these fields. They idea that Congress can be competent in all these areas simultaneously is staggering. Yet, far from pulling back– as banks or other private enterprises must, if they don’t want to be ruined financially by operating beyond the range of their competence– Congress is constantly expanding further into more fields.

Having spent years ruining the housing markets with their interference, leading to a housing meltdown that has taken the whole economy down with it, politicians have now moved on into micro-managing automobile companies and medical care.

They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And that is not going to happen until the voters recognize the fact that political rhetoric is no substitute for competence.