December 6, 2015

Gary Stein

The Sun Sentinel

RE: Are you on the road to Damascus? Some comments on your unlinkable column on education and why maybe, just maybe, Big Brother, be he in Tallahassee or Washington, may not know best.

Big Stein, 

First, non-denominational kudos to Little Stein for following his Muse. I suppose a nod to you and his mother, Boss Stein, for providing him with the background music, as Plato said, “to act nobly”, is in order.

Your column about why a top-down, ukase and fiat laden, frozen education structure may not be the best way to teach Johnny to read – Let me quickly add Juanita and Jamal to the lest if only to keep the dreaded PC Word police from my door – suggests a growing discomfort with some of the doublehelixed tenets of the Church of Modern American Liberalism, be it reform or conservative.

Your column a few weeks back, the one that sang the praises of Uber Cabs versus the Yellow Cab monopoly, indicates a stirring in your soul against the dead hand of bureaucracy. 

If anything defines modern American Liberalism it is their singular devotion to the well-intended bureaucrats who only want to help the common man.

Would you hold it against me if I were to suggest a quick look – Scratch “quick”. Quick and bureaucracy cannot appear in the same sentence. Ever. – at the Post Office, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the IRS, the VA, and now, Obamacare? It is risk I take willingly. Can you see where I’m going here?

Today’s column suggests that a menu of calculus and inorganic chemistry may not be best for all students.

If I had a child with an interest in and an aptitude for music I would have Damn well kept him away from a double portion of algorithms. Of course, an exception for Bach would have to be carved out. Ask Little Stein.

I have 2 children, each of whom has 2 degrees; they have held professional licenses in 5 states. When they began looking seriously at colleges I told them that with the exception of accounting Daddy was not going to pay for any undergraduate courses in business. Further, the MBA is an honorable degree made better by an undergraduate degree in History or, quien sabe, Music.

You may be taking a cue from Dante when he wrote the first line of La Commedia.

“Halfway through my journey I found myself in the dark wood of error.”

Once you get knocked off the horse, a la Saul of Tarsus, it is deuced difficult to get back on.

I am much in favor of vouchers in education, particularly for the children of tenants of public housing.

Do you care to comment on why the Obamas, temporary occupants of the largest publicly owned single family house in America, spend about $120,000 on tuition for their daughters? They could walk to any of the really fine public schools in the Washington. I say “really fine” because we are told by the elders of the educational complex that more money means better schools. Nobody anywhere spends more money per pupil than Washington, DC. If the schools are so good why are the President’s daughters not enrolled in them?

I suppose only a true modern American Liberal can believe that while all students are equal some students are more equal than others. I was head of the Irish-Catholic Search patrol. We labored in vain to find evidence of any of the Kennedy whelps ever spending a day in a public grammar school or high school. No sense being just a rat bastard when you can be a smarmy one to boot. 

Perhaps a weekend with Milton Friedman may be the starting purgative you need.

Kevin Smith

WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET 

PS – It may be a whiff of senescence but I have a dim memory of President-elect Obama telling us 8 years ago that he would “cool the earth and calm the seas”. He may be on to something with the former but as to the latter what in the name of Neptune are fish doing in the streets of Miami Beach. Out of respect for Henny Youngman please don’t tell me the backstroke.