Make Americans, and Canadians, Free Again

Make Americans, and Canadians, free again: homeschooling.

Beauty and the Musician

Below is a tweet by Kevin Michael Grace on Liszt's musical education and the legacy of tutorship and instruction he left his students. In this world where money rules, Liszt left an immeasurable amount of wealth in beauty and art to our world, giving us a superior legacy of Western Civilization's riches .

The boy Liszt was taught by the great virtuoso Carl Czerny without charge. This was a particular gift, as he otherwise earned a fortune teaching, but Liszt took it as a commandment. He never charged his hundreds of students & introduced them to all that culture had to offer, free

— Kevin Michael Grace🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇮🇪⚜🇳🇴 (@KMGVictoria) December 6, 2018

"Les Anglais"

The contemporary thinking about foreigners turns them into moral, cultural or social issues, but downplays the most important one: actual logistics.

Foreigners are people who travel to lands which are not their own, with cultures and social structures different from theirs, with languages they don't speak or speak without the fluency of their own languages.

In less progressive eras, when a foreigner came to a country other than his own, he had to understand the country he came to and subjugate himself to these different circumstances, and behave accordingly. He would always remain a foreigner, however many years he has lived there, and however many obstacle tests he has passed (and with distinction even).

There was an intriguing and endearing time in my life in Paris.

When we just arrived, our apartment was in a neighborhood which had its own boulangerie, patisserie, cafe, tabac and all the other accoutrements of French neighborhood life. It was like a mini-village within the large city, as all Parisian residential neighborhoods are (our next neighbourhood was slightly more cosmopolitan being near the Tour Eiffel and the shopkeepers were friendly but too busy to ask for details, although they always greeted us familiarly).

I went to a French bilingual school for the first six months and later we went to the first of two boarding schools in England, in Kent.

We had always been English speakers, having had our elementary education in Addis Ababa at what was then called The English School. I was fluent in English at a very early age.

As is always the case, neighborhood merchants, especially those one frequents regularly and with a Mom & Pop management style, make an effort to know their clientele, and even their names.

This particular French boulanger and his wife would greet us in a familiar way and I'm sure, when we (the kids) no longer came accompanied by their mother, asked: "Ou sont les enfant?"

By then my mother knew some French and no doubt told them as best she could that we were at school in England.

This was an instinctive association by country. If this Arab-looking family sent their children to a pensionat in England, then they must be of the English cultural persuasion and therefore they are English. Most Arabs in France have a French - colonial - association, and they would have kept their children within the French culture.

On a side note, this was the argument - the debate - used to say that North Africans (Moroccans and Algerians mostly) were French because of this colonial past, and that the huge numbers of immigrant North Africans can live in France as Frenchmen. Of course Arabs feel differently: they ARE NOT Frenchmen!!! They would always be Arab.

Back to my Parisian neighbourhood. We became known as "Les Anglais!" The patriotic neighbourhood baker and his wife (his wife mostly because she was the one who ran the storefront and communicated with the customers) associated us with their perennial and historical antagonists, the English, those most foreign of foreigners!

But she loved us! Who wouldn't! This cute threesome, with their coats and hoods in the winter rushing to school early in the morning, or coming in for their favorite "Kim-Cone" ice cream in the summer which they bought with long-saved pennies, now going across the seas to learn things! How brave they are!

"Quand viennent-ils, les enfant?" she would ask my mother those long months when we were away.

But we always remained "Les Anglais."

Classic Mindy Kaling

I recently posted on Mindy Kaling, the successful and popular comedian, who was invited to Dartmouth University, her alma mater, to give the graduation ceremony speech, and the example she uses to the students.

I wrote:

[S]he chooses an alumni: "Poet" Dr. Seuss, of The Cat in the Hat fame is an alumni!. Well we can give her that bit of nostalgia.

But why not evoke (invoke) the spirits of another Dartmouthian poet, the deceased white male laureate and Pulitzer prize winner Robert Frost, who wrote "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference," highlighting the adventurous character of (dead and alive) white men who take on those less travelled worlds out of CURIOSITY! To see where the adventure would lead them! Then they build things like universities.

Well Kaling was a Classics student who - briefly - majored in...Latin!

Kaling began as a Latin major, but decided to pursue a degree in playwriting instead...[Source: Dartmouth.edu

Yes what are you going to do with a dead white language?

Her Facebook page has this introduction:

About

Mindy Kaling is an actress, comedian, writer, producer & shopper. She can translate Latin...

I studied Spanish in Mexico for a full two years (I went to language school and earned a Spanish Language diploma, I read books difficult books, written by Mexican poets, philosophers and politicians, I worked in an all-Spanish research centre, I lived in a rural outpost several weeks at at time, I travelled the country where people thought I was Mexican, and I still don't say I can translate Spanish on a public site! My resume reads:

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY
- English: Excellent speaking, reading and writing
- French: Good speaking, reading and writing
- Spanish: Moderate speaking, reading and writing
- Amharic: Moderate speaking, reading and writing

Kaling makes some quote about the superbowl as a case for her Latin proficiency on her twitter post:

AM I THE ONLY LATIN NERD OUTRAGED BY THE SUPERBOWL DROPPING ROMAN NUMERALS?! LUPAE FILIUS!!!

In a New York Times interview, Kaling is asked:

Whom do you consider the best writers — novelists, essayists, critics, journalists, poets — working today?

She answers:

Cormac McCarthy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith, Gillian Flynn, Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen.

See here my posts on:
- Cormac McCarthy
- Jhumpa Lahiri
- Zadie Smith
- Salman Rushdie

I argue that they are not the greatest.

And about her Latin moments, the New York Times interview:

NYT: You studied classics at Dartmouth. What was the best thing you read there?

MK: I loved translating the “Aeneid” from Latin. Poor Aeneas and his pietas. That guy could not catch a break. I also love stories within stories, and the “Aeneid” is full of that.

Yes as a homework assignment.

I did that. I studied Latin for two years during my highschool years. It is tough and requires the utmost dedication! If Kaling had said that her brief Latin exposure helped her with the English language as I say it does (including French and Spanish - and by the way German too - all that GRAMMAR!) then it would have had a ring truth to it.

Now she just comes off as a show-off who wants to dig in how much of the white man's world she can say "boo" to in her usual infantle comedy.

So much for a Latin (dropped) major.

"Boo, white males!"

Below is the full speech by comedienne/actress/#metooer/Oprah-fan Mindy Kaling.

Kevin Michael Grace tweeted a link to at it his twitter page @KMGVictoria with the comment:

#MindyKaling's commencement address at her alma mater Dartmouth was rather good. I'm disappointed (but not surprised) to see her engaging in this reflexive "Boo, white males!" agitprop in response to the reviews of #Oceans8

A few comments:

1. Why is KMG surprised to see a brown woman diss white men? That is par for the course now as in "those racist, oppressive, anti-women" white men. The whole world is against white men, including a large percentage of white men themselves.

2. How does Kahling's "rather good" Dartmouth speech" exonerate her from "'Boo, white males' agitprop?" That's not what KMG means really and "excuse" might be a better word. But we're talking about big stakes here, as in the the future generation. "Good" at one point meant worthy and responsible and exemplary.

3. And how good really is Kaling's speech? She spends the better part talking about Dr. Seuss!!! How is Dr. Seuss showing these university graduates to be worthy and responsible and exemplary? Or did Mindy Kaling get the venue wrong and she's at a preschooler's graduation? So much for intellectual stimulation and words of wisdom to those 100+ students hanging on to the every world of this famous television personality!

But this is Dartmouth, and she chooses an alumni: "Poet" Dr. Seuss, of The Cat in the Hat fame is an alumni!. Well we can give her that bit of nostalgia.

But why not evoke (invoke) the spirits of another Dartmouthian poet, the deceased white male laureate and Pulitzer prize winner Robert Frost, who wrote "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference," highlighting the adventurous character of (dead and alive) white men who take on those less travelled worlds out of CURIOSITY! To see where the adventure would lead them! Then they build things like universities.

Of course nothing is innocent when with adults, and I presume Kaling is on such. Seuss was a "reformed" racist who drew anti-black cartoons and was vocally anti-Japanese during the WWII years. Perhaps that is the morality in her speech: We may start out bad but we can all be reformed and redeemed.

And another poet from Dartmouth? "Robert Frost? Are you kidding?" would kid (half in jest) Ms. Kaling. "We cannot perpetuate the racist and oppressive America that was built on the backs of others [allusion to slavery and "globalism" here of course]. These riches should be meted out to the whole world [to these hypocritical globalists] to exonerate [there's that word again] those whom Americans exploited."

And I would retaliate:

The Western world built and elaborated by white men now is a refuge for people from all over the world who can take advantage of the structure and system. Kaling's comedy show and her other successful public projects are dependent on this success. She has talent. But so what? What would happen to her and her talent if she didn't have this set-up? What would happen to her back in India, which her parents - both with postgraduate degrees - fled for "a better life in America"? Actually they both went to Africa - to Nigeria - where they met and planned their migration and life n America. They abandoned TWO countries for a chance at the American Pie.

"My parents adopted a kind of Boston-by-way-of-India-by-way-of-Nigeria culture with some Indian flourishes" says Kaling.

No mention of why they abandoned their lucrative degrees (or not so lucrative back in their hometowns), but the prevailing word is "opportunity." Strange, I would think that people would prefer to build opportunities in their familiar places, their homes, where their ancestors have left a legacy.

I call it pure greed and envy, of the type where you say: "If they can have it why can't I/my family/my children?"

And here is some "factual" information:

[Kaling] was a classics major for much of college and studied Latin, a subject she has been learning since the seventh grade.
[Source: Kaling's (heavy edited and upgraded) Wikipedia page]

How does one go from studying Latin to giving a speech wth Dr. Seuss as the protagonist?

How many brown-skinned women do you see running TV shows? Whenever there is ONE successful minority, then he (she) represents hundreds of others. "Oh you know Mindy. She's Indian."

How many white men comedians are there? This is a rhetorical question.

I strongly believe that this is the kind of covert thought processes that lead "comedians of color" to hold deep-seated beliefs which are exposed in moments of seriousness. Like when giving speeches at graduation ceremonies.

The infantile examples of a dubious poet like Seuss come in handy at such critical moments of seriousness in a comedienne of color's juncture in public life.

Fire and Ice
BY Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

---

2018 Commencement Address by Mindy Kaling ’01

Good morning to the Class of 2018, the faculty, the parents, the grandparents, fellow honorees, and the paid laughers I have scattered throughout the audience.

It is an honor to join you this morning for this special occasion.

It is also an honor to speak to you today from behind this gigantic tree stump. Like some sort of female Lorax with an advanced degree. That’s right, you guys; I’m hitting Dr. Seuss hard and early in this speech. Because Dartmouth grads have a privilege unique among all the Ivy League: We will be forced to be mini-experts on Dr. Seuss for our entire lives.

On my deathbed, I’ll be saying, “Did you know that his real name was Theodor Geisel? Did you know he was editor of the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern?” And yes, while no U.S. Presidents have gone to Dartmouth, we can at least lay claim for the wonderful Dr. Seuss.

Another notable alumnus is Salmon P. Chase, the man on the $10,000 bill. A symbolically powerful piece of paper that’s largely useless in the real world. Like a degree in playwriting which I received from this very institution. Thank you for paying for that, Mom and Dad!

It’s a thrill to be back here in New Hampshire, the Granite State, known for two things: the place where you can legally not wear your seatbelt, and Adam Sandler’s birthplace.

New Hampshire has one of the best mottos of any state: “Live Free or Die.” For outsiders, it sounds like an exciting declaration of freedom; but when you’re here in January, “die” actually sounds like a pretty good option.

I remember the days when it was so cold your sneeze would become an ice sculpture before it hit the ground. In Los Angeles, where I live now, if I sneeze, I just call my doctor and have my blood replaced with that of a teenage track star. That’s normal there. I’m mostly track star right now.

Before I get any further, I should actually probably clarify who I am for the parents and grandparents in the audience who are thinking to themselves, “Who is this loud Indian woman? Is that the girl from Quantico? She looks so much worse in person.”

No, no, I’m not Priyanka Chopra, not even Padma Lakshmi. I’m the other Indian woman we have allowed to be on television, Mindy Kaling. Thank you, thank you.

You may remember me from my role on The Office as Kelly Kapoor, who internet commenters said was—quote—“shrill” and—quote—“took up valuable time that could have gone to Steve Carell.”

I then created and starred in my own TV show, The Mindy Project. Thank you, thank you very much. It was an uphill battle to get the show on the air, but it was worth it, because it enabled me to become Dartmouth’s most successful female minority show creator who has spoken at commencement!

Oh wait, no. Shonda Rhimes went here. Yup, and she’s created like 10 more shows than me, so great. No, cool. Cool, cool, cool, Shonda. Friggin’ role model, good for you.

But today is not about famous alumni. No, no. It’s about the men and women who have toiled in obscurity for years so that they might better our country. I speak, of course, of the 51 percent of Dartmouth grads who will go into finance—highest in the Ivy League! Look left. Look right. All three of you will be spending at least ten years in a white collar prison.

I know that going into the real world sounds scary, but it’s exciting too. Finally, you’ll be in control of your own lives. No longer will there be an irrational Board of Trustees telling you you can’t have hard liquor on campus, for the ridiculous reason that they don’t want you to die. Come tomorrow, no one can stop you from filling your apartment with $4.99 handles of Uncle Satan’s Unfiltered Potato Vodka. Go crazy.

It’s a real moment of reflection for me to be standing here speaking to all of you now, because it makes me harken back to my own time at my Dartmouth graduation. Madeleine Albright was my commencement speaker; and while I don’t remember any specific quotes she said, or even a general gist of what she was talking about, I do remember thinking: “I wonder what it will be like to have my own cell phone?”

How things have changed. For all I know, at this very moment, most of you are posting this speech on your Instagram stories with a GIF of Winnie the Pooh twerking. If you are, please at least use my official hashtag, MindyGoesBigGreenTwentyEighteen. Thank you.

I bet none of you remember a time before the internet. Hell, you probably don’t even remember a time before the Facebook page, “Dartmouth Memes for Cold AF Teens.” Yeah, yeah. I know about that. Made me feel like a real creep researching it. “Hello, I’m a 38‑year‑old woman who wants to join your teen Facebook group. It's for research, I swear!”

Meanwhile, when I was in college we didn’t even have Google. If you wanted to find out, say, how tall Ben Affleck was, you were out of luck. You just had to sit there, not knowing, and your entire day would be ruined.

Or, say I wanted to meet up with a friend—I couldn’t just text her. I had to walk outside and hope I accidentally bumped into her. Or, I “blitzed” her. Ah, BlitzMail. You know that feeling you have when you tell your friends that you “blitz” and they don’t get it and you roll your eyes all smug like “Oh, it’s a Dartmouth thing.” That ends today. You try to say “blitz” one hundred yards east of White River Junction and you will get laughed back to your one-room triple in the Choates.

Fun fact: In 2001, the year I graduated, a pinkeye epidemic broke out amongst my classmates because we were all using public BlitzMail iMac terminals and not washing our hands. Those are just the kind of the sexy stories indicative of my time at Dartmouth.

You have so many cool new things here now. Like, look at the new logo, the D-Pine. It’s beautiful. It reminds me of what college-aged Mindy thought a marijuana leaf might look like but I was too scared to actually find out. And this new House System sounds really cool! It's so Hogwarts-y! You know, you're sorted into your little Gryffindors and Ravenclaws, except they’re called … South House. West House. School House.

Okay, come on guys. School House? Really? We’re just saying what we see? That’s the laziest name I’ve ever heard in my life, and I've spent over a decade working on shows called The Office and The Mindy Project.

Still, I remember sitting where you’re sitting. I was so full of questions like, “When is this thing going to end?” and “How many friends can I invite to dinner and still have mom and dad pay?” And, most importantly, “Why didn’t I wear any clothes underneath my gown?”

Now we’re reaching the part of the speech where I am supposed to tell you something uplifting like “follow your dreams.”

In general, advice isn’t actually an effective way to change your life. If all it took to make your life great was hearing amazing advice, then everyone who watched TED Talks would be a millionaire.

So don’t trust any one story of how how to become successful. As Madeline Albright said at my Commencement—see, I don’t remember anything. And I did just fine.

So here is some practical advice that you may or may not remember at the end of this speech because, hey, that’s the gig:

1. First off, remove “Proficient at Word” from your resume. That is ridiculous. You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel of competency there. This is how you become proficient at Word: You open Word on your computer.

2. Most of your post-college life is simply filling out forms. Car insurance, health insurance, W-2s. W-4s, 1099s. Guess what? None of us know what any of those forms mean, but you will fill out a hundred of them before you die.

3. You never need more than one pancake. Trust me on this. Cartoons have trained us to want a giant stack of those bad boys, but order one first and then just see how you feel later.

4. This one is just for guys: When you go on dates, act as if every woman you’re talking to is a reporter for an online publication that you are scared of. One shouldn’t need the threat of public exposure and scorn to treat women well; but if that’s what it’s gonna take, fine. Date like everyone’s watching, because we are.

5. And this might be the most important—buy a toilet plunger. Trust me on this. Don’t wait until you need a plunger to buy a plunger.

Commencement is a time of transition for parents, too. That empty nest you were enjoying these past four years? Gone as soon as this speech is over. I hope you like full‑time lodgers who don’t pay rent, don’t do laundry, eat all the food in your fridge, and binge Family Guy on your sofa for weeks. That is your life now.

Although some of your graduates will be making more money than you—51% to be exact. And to the parents of those investment bankers, consultants, and hedge fund analysts—congratulations. Your kids will be fabulously wealthy but still somehow sharing your cell phone plan because it—quote—“saves everybody money.”

Okay, now let’s get real. Let me rip off the Band-Aid for all you, the ’18s. Next year, the next year of your life is going to be bad. You have been in the comfortable fleece-lined womb of mother Dartmouth for four years now, and you’re gonna go out in the cold, hard world.

Out there in the real world, there will be a target on your back. People will want to confirm their expectations of Ivy League graduates—that you’re a jerk, that you’re spoiled, that you use the word “summer” as a verb. Those stereotypes exist for a reason. I mean come on, the guy from the ten-thousand-dollar bill went to this school.

You’re graduating into a world where it seems like everything is falling apart. Trust in institutions are at a record low; the truth doesn’t seem to matter anymore; and for all I know, the president just tweeted us into a war with Wakanda, a country that doesn’t exist.

So, Class of 2018, you are entering a world that we have toppled—we have toppled—like a Jenga tower, and we are relying on you to rebuild it.

But how can you do that with the knowledge that things are so unstable out there? I’ll tell you my secret, the one thing that has kept me going through the years, my superpower: delusion.

This is something I may share with our president, a fact that is both horrifying and interesting. Two years in, I think we can pretty safely say that he’s not getting carved onto Mount Rushmore; but damn if that isn’t a testament to how far you can get just by believing you’re the smartest, most successful person in the world.

My point is, you have to have insane confidence in yourself, even if it’s not real. You need to be your own cheerleader now, because there isn’t a room full of people waiting with pom‑poms to tell you, “You did it! We’ve been waiting all this time for you to succeed!”

So, I’m giving you permission to root for yourself. And while you’re at it, root for those around you, too. It took me a long time to realize that success isn’t a zero-sum game. Which leads me to the next part of my remarks.

I thought I might take a second to speak to the ladies in the audience. (Guys, take a break; you don’t have to pay attention during this part. Maybe spend the next 30 seconds thinking about all the extra money you’ll make in your life for doing the same job as a woman. Pretty sweet.)

Hey girls, we need to do a better job of supporting each other. I know that I am guilty of it too. We live in a world where it seems like there’s only room for one of us at the table. So when another woman shows up, we think, “Oh my god, she’s going to take the one woman spot! That was supposed to be mine!”

But that’s just what certain people want us to do! Wouldn’t it be better if we worked together to dismantle a system that makes us feel like there’s limited room for us? Because when women work together, we can accomplish anything. Even stealing the world’s most expensive diamond necklace from the Met Gala, like in Ocean’s 8, a movie starring me, which opens in theaters June 8th. And to that end, women, don’t be ashamed to toot your own horn like I just did.

Okay, guys, you can listen again. You didn’t miss much. Just remember to see Ocean’s 8, now playing in theaters nationwide. Ocean’s 8: Every con has its pros.

Now I wanted to share a little bit about me, Mindy Kaling, the Dartmouth student. When I came to Hanover in the fall of 1997, I was, as many of you were: driven, bright, ambitious, and really, really into The Black Eyed Peas.

I arrived here as a 17-year-old, took the lay of the land, and immediately began making a checklist of everything I wanted to accomplish. I told myself that by the time I graduated in 2001, I would have checked them all off.

And here was my freshman fall checklist: be on Hanover crew, on Lodge crew, be in an a cappella group, be in an improv troupe, write a play that’s performed at the Bentley, do a cartoon for the D, and try to be in a cool senior society. And guess what? I completed that checklist. But before you think: “Wait, why is this woman just bragging about her accomplishments from 17 years ago?”—keep listening.

Then, I graduated. And I made a new checklist for my twenties: get married by 27, have kids at 30, win an Oscar, be the star of my own TV show, host the MTV Music Awards (this was 2001, guys; it made more sense then), and do it all while being a size 2.

Well, spoiler alert: I’ve only done one of those things, and I’m not sure I will ever do the others. And that is a really scary feeling. Knowing how far that I’ve strayed from the person that I was hoping to be when I was 21.

I will tell you a personal story. After my daughter was born in December, I remember bringing her home and being in my house with her for the first time and thinking, “Huh. According to movies and TV, this is traditionally the time when my mother and spouse are supposed to be here, sharing this experience with me.” And I looked around, and I had neither. And for a moment, it was kind of scary. Like, “Can I do this by myself?”

But then, that feeling went away, because the reality is, I’m not doing it by myself. I’m surrounded by family and friends who love and support me. And the joy I feel from being with my daughter Katherine eclipses anything from any crazy checklist.

So I just want to tell you guys, don’t be scared if you don’t do things in the right order, or if you don’t do some things at all. I didn’t think I’d have a child before I got married, but hey, it turned out that way, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I didn’t think I’d have dessert before breakfast today, but hey, it turned out that way and I wouldn’t change a thing.

So if I could impart any advice, it’s this: If you have a checklist, good for you. Structured ambition can sometimes be motivating. But also, feel free to let it go. Yes, my culminating advice from my speech is a song from the Disney animated movie, Frozen.

I’ve covered a lot of ground today, not all of it was serious, but I wanted to leave you with this: I was not someone who should have the life I have now, and yet I do. I was sitting in the chair you are literally sitting in right now and I just whispered, “Why not me?” And I kept whispering it for seventeen years; and here I am, someone that this school deemed worthy enough to speak to you at your Commencement.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something, but especially not yourself. Go conquer the world. Just remember this: Why not you? You made it this far.

Thank you very much, and congratulations to the Class of 2018.

"NYT: Talented poor not choosing to attend good colleges"

NYT: Talented poor not choosing to attend good colleges
Lawrence Auster
View From the Right
March 17, 2013

---

(Note: see in the comments a reader’s correction of my speculation that the poor, talented students of which the Times is speaking are primarily blacks.)

But if, as the Times reports, these students do not even know of the existence of better colleges in America, and they have absolutely no aspiration to attend any schools that are outside their local area, how smart and talented could they be? They appear to have very small horizongs and little knowledge of and little curiosity in the world. Don’t very smart people tend to have large horizons?. My guess is that the Times is doing its usual rationalizations for the intellectual and other deficiencies of blacks. I did not read the entire article,but I’d say that it’s fair possibility that it ends up asserting that these students are culturally and geographically isolated by racial discrimination and by the lack of special federal programs that inform them of the existence of better schools. The eternal top-priority project and moral obligation of Liberal America (America 2.0)—at unlimited cost in societal effort, taxpayers’ money, and orchestrated white guilt—is to render blacks in general as functional as whites in general. And that will never happen. And no one who makes his living in mainstream America dare say it..

— end of initial entry —


Daniel F. writes:

I saw from Steve Sailer’s post on the same article that the low-income, high-aptitude cohort under discussion is 69 percent white and 15 percent Asian. So the large majority of the kids at issue are white.

LA replies:

Thanks for the correction. But I wonder if that information was in the Times article (which, again, I didn’t read the whole of and was only making a reasonable speculation on, based on past Timesean behavor), or only in the Sailer post.

Daniel F. replies:

The racial breakdown is in the NY Times article itself, about midway through. I suspect that Sailer is right that the problem is really with white kids, since channels are in place to whisk whatever (relatively) high-aptitude black kids make it through high school (most of whom are female) into elite colleges. Such kids are in extremely high demand, as I’m sure you know. By contrast, the powers that be could not care less about smart white kids from lower middle class or working class backgrounds. [LA replies: That all makes sense, and is not surprising. But it’s still fascinating. By the way, like Mr. Spock, I never say, “Fascinating” ironically, which people often think I do, because such behavior is now so common. I never (well, hardly ever) give a compliment ironically, which, again, has become a common behavior in our increasingly cynical and nihilist age.]

I’m amazed that you are able to do as much as you are still doing with the site. Your will power is amazing. May your pain be moderated and may you continue to make good use of your time with us, however you see fit.

“Blessed shalt thou be in thy coming in and blessed shalt thou be in thy going out.” Deuteronomy 28:6.

LA replies:

Interestingly, Deuteronomy 28, in which God alternatively presents the blessings and miseries he will deliver to the children of Israel depending on whether they follow or don’t follow his ways, is the source of the quote that I used at the end of my speech, “Multiculturalism and the War against White America,” at the first American Renaissance conference in May 1994.

I said:

In Deuteronomy, Chapter 28, God pronounces the curse that will fall on the people of Israel if they fail to follow God’s law:
“Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all the day; and it shall not be in the power of your hand to prevent it. A nation which you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors; and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually; so that you shall be driven mad by the sight which your eyes shall see.”

Unless America wakes up to the threat of demographic and cultural dispossession, and finds the will to resist it, the curse pronounced in Deuteronomy awaits us all.

[end of speech.]

Karl D. writes:

I agree with what you said in the initial entry. Whether they be white or black, how intelligent can these young people be if they are so provincial? I grew up in Brooklyn and Queens and I remember as a teenager there were a couple of kids I knew who had never been over the bridge to Manhattan. Imagine that! They lived a mere three to five miles away from the world’s most famous and celebrated city, and they had never been over the bridge nor had their parents taken them.

March 18

James P. writes:

I went to high school in “the provinces” (Phoenix) but not in a low-income family. Just the opposite—I attended an expensive private school. Many of my classmates attended highly selective and prestigious universities. Yet an appreciable number of them attended the local, low-prestige school (Arizona State). These people had certainly heard of high-prestige schools back East, knew people who attended them, and could afford them, but chose not to attend these schools themselves. The problem was not lack of intelligence, knowledge or money, but motivation. Some of them didn’t want to be geographically far from their parents, others just didn’t know what they wanted to do with their lives. If this problem exists at the higher end of the income spectrum, I imagine it is even more prevalent at the lower end. The article notes, “Low-income students who excel in high school often do not graduate from the less selective colleges they attend”—which indicates to me that the problem is indeed motivation, not brains. You can graduate from high school on autopilot because all your choices are made for you and then wind up floundering in college because there are too many choices.

Thus the idea that these low-income kids in the Times article are “not really” smart and talented may be wide of the mark. I suspect that the system will make a special effort to seek out and attempt to inspire unmotivated black kids, and will be more likely to let unmotivated white kids fall through the cracks. (“If you don’t take advantage of your White Privilege, we have no sympathy for you!”)

LA replies:

This is very interesting and has the ring of truth.
Your observations remind me of someone I know. He is highly intelligent and extremely articulate. He writes like an angel. He is cultivated, being deeply knowledgeable about such fields as classical music and opera.

When he told me that he had never attended college, I was, frankly, gobsmacked, meaning that I was astounded to the utmost degree of astonishment.

He was graduated from high school in a Midwestern state in the mid-1970s. Now if I heard the same story from a person who went to high school in the 1930s or early ’40s, I would not have been astounded, because before the postwar period, as we learned from the Part One of The Bell Curve, before the postwar period people with high IQ were scattered throughout every walk of life in this country; but after the war the American system of education began pushing cognitively able young people into college and the professions, especially via the SATs, which had been deliberately designed to search out the cognitively talented who previously had not gone to college.

So how did it happen that he did not attend college, and how did it happen that he spoke so well and wrote so well without have gone to college? I had never met a person lacking a college education who expressed himself so well, with a perfect command of English usage and grammar. (And readers know how fussy I am about that—I am the man who will sit up in my coffin at my funeral and correct the pastor on a grammatical mistake!)

First, he had not had any intellectual or academic interests when he was in high school. He was into crafts, athleticism, things like that. The thought of college had simply never occurred to him. Second—and this part still astounds me—not a single adult in his life, whether his parents, his teachers, or his school advisors, had ever talked to him about the idea of his going to college. He had not even taken the SATs.

Second, as for his marked intellectual abilities and accomplishments, he only acquired intellectual interests in his twenties. He must have read a great deal, and developed on his own his excellent writing abilities.

I don’t know what general lessons this story offers, as it is in my knowledge atypical, indeed, unique. I’ve told it because I find it so interesting, and because it shows a unique individual.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 17, 2013 11:30 AM | Send

The Weight of the World

Yesterday, I was having my early morning coffee at the central square here in Mississauga, when a young man at a table next to me acted a little strange, moving from one seat to another. I asked him if the sun bothered him. "No, there's a wasp here," he replied. He then asked if he could join me. "Certainly," I said.

I asked him if he was a student at the nearby Sheridan College. He said that he had actually just graduated from high school. He's from Caledon, a town north of Mississauga, And he planned to go to a technical architectural school. He said he is skilled at drawing, and he's thinking about taking an Autocad course. I told him that was a good idea, since drawing is still important, no matter how technical these fields get. I told him I know this from experience, since I have studied design.

He said he was off to the library just across from the fountains, after his breakfast, .

He was pessimistic about job prospects. "It all because of immigrants" he said to me. "The government is shipping them here, educating them, and giving them the jobs, which they take at really low salaries." I was surprised at his forthright manner. I let that go for a while.

He also said that he might go into social work. I couldn't figure out why he decided on this. Later on, I looked him up on the internet,and here is his profile. Here is what his "counselor" says:

Miss Andrew: Ian is a caring individual who works to make others happy. He struggles with putting others needs before his own, however he is getting better at asking for support when having a rough day. Another difficulty that Ian struggles with is his attention span. Ian has worked hard to come up with strategies to help with his attention and is able to focus when he needs to.
This sounds like a typical, female, "empathetic" teacher, the classic diagnoser of "Attentions Deficit Disorder," which is the great mental health fabrication of the ages, meant to put young men on a leash.

She now has this young man thinking he has some kind of psychological problem, and has pulled him into that victim's world, all geared up to help other "victims."

I told him to concentrate on the architecture studies. That these days, we need good buildings. "Look at the horrible high rises cropping up all over. Look at what we have in front of us."

I asked him what he thought of "Celebration Square."

He liked it: "It seems a good blend of nature, design, architecture and recreation."

I agreed with him. I also said that the yellow brick is a traditional Ontario stone, mined from quarries in northern Ontario. Older Toronto homes used this brick.

"And all this glass, what do you think? Some are even falling!" I said. I told him about the Royal Ontario Museum, designed by a German architect, Daniel Libeskind, where falling glass became a joke around town.

He agreed with that too. And mentioned some other buildings in downtown Toronto where potentially falling glass has been a problem.

I told him that there are designers who are working on durable glass, and also glass that doesn't make the interiors into ovens, with sun and heat coming in.

I went back to his original outburst of "it's the immigrants."

"What do you think of Asian students who are filling up university technical fields? It isn't enough to be skillful, it is important to be creative as well. Like the windows. To build the kind of "open" space people like these days, one should be able to invent glass that can prevent people from looking in and maintain privacy, and keep the heat from the sun turning the interior into an oven. And to make them durable and unbreakable. Do you think Chinese have this skill and creativity, and invention, to produce such kinds of structures?"

"Asians have the skills, but equally important as skill is creativity and inventions abilities, and I believe Asians aren't up to par with white students."

He looked relieved that someone was talking to him about these things. He is barely eighteen, but he looks like he had the weight of the world around him. He said his family history is of welders, iron workers, and those who managed construction sites. He got his idea of architecture from that family background.

I asked for his email and promised to send him some of my posts and articles on architecture, and the changing landscape of Toronto. I said I would like his feedback. He seemed happy about that request. I told him to hang in there, and to work at his talents. "We need good buildings," I told him.

He excused himself to go to the library.

I hope I run into him again.

I think whites are beginning to realize that they have been duped! And smart, young ones like Ian (when I asked him for his email, he actually spelled i-a-n for me, as though no-one knows how to spell that name! As though it is Mohammed, or even Kidist!) are beginning to figure this out. I think his "social work" ideas were actually to help those like him, who have been made to feel, by teachers, the media, their society, that they are no good.

And when I think back on his forthrightness when he talked to me, I think he is reacting to the current news, the racial horror in Ferguson, the Mexican illegals in Texas and Arizona, and Islam's war on the world, and especially the West.

I think he will figure things out.

The Lesbian Vs. God and Other Stories

Hernandez (middle) performing Future Folk with her
Sulong Theatre Collective, which is a play based on:
"The experiences of Filipino women who come to Canada to work as nannies.
They send their wages back home, and hope after 24 months of employment
to become citizens and bring their own families to Canada."[Source]

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Our Neighborhood Filipina Story Teller portrayed in my recent post Catch Them When They're Young has quite a resume writing for "minors":

Kilt Pins

In a Catholic high school in Scarborough, Ontario, amidst low-income housing, difficult race relations, and poverty, a young woman struggles to find her sexual identity. In this sincere portrayal of high-school kids pitting the voice of God and thousands of years of scripture against the voice of their own bodies, Kilt Pins cheekily asks “Is your kilt pin up or down?”

Scarborough

Scarborough is a low-income, culturally diverse neighbourhood east of Toronto, the fourth largest city in North America; like many inner-city communities, it suffers under the weight of poverty, drugs, crime, and urban blight. Scarborough the novel employs a multitude of voices to tell the story of a tight-knit neighbourhood under fire: among them, Victor, a black artist harassed by the police; Winsum, a West Indian restaurant owner struggling to keep it together; and Hina, a Muslim school worker who witnesses first-hand the impact of poverty on education.

And then there are the three kids who work to rise above a system that consistently fails them: Bing, a gay Filipino boy who lives under the shadow of his father’s mental illness; Sylvie, Bing’s best friend, a Native girl whose family struggles to find a permanent home to live in; and Laura, whose history of neglect by her mother is destined to repeat itself with her father.

And more on Arsenal Press

Arsenal Pulp Press is a book publisher in Vancouver, Canada with over 300 titles currently in print, which include literary fiction and nonfiction; cultural and gender studies; LGBT and multicultural literature; cookbooks, including vegan; alternative crafts; graphic novels; visual arts; and books in translation. We are interested in literature that engages and challenges readers, and which asks probing questions about the world around us.

Of course these welfare artists insist that they get their financial sources from tax payers money courtesy of the Canadian Government (don't let the meek word "suggests" deceive you):

Catherine Hernandez suggests several strategies to redress...deep-seated inequities: hiring more diverse teaching staff; educating teaching staff in anti-oppressive values; implementing a “much more aggressive diverse application process to ensure the student body is multicultural”; and diversifying the curriculum beyond the canonical (white) narratives that dominate it [Source].

Here is one such publisher which has produced Hernandez's children's book, that petitioned successfully to get LGBQT children's books into the school curriculum through the Toronto District School Board:

"Flamingo Rampant is a micro-press with a mission – to produce feminist, racially-diverse, LGBTQ positive children’s books. This is an effort to bring visibility and positivity to the reading landscape of children everywhere. We make books kids love that love them right back, bedtime stories for beautiful dreams, and books that make kids of all kinds say with pride : that kid’s just like me!" tells us the publisher

Hernandez has had a lot of practice with her own daughter who is now around thirteen years old. Hernandez appears to have been married to a male from whom she separated soon after her daughter's birth. She writes: "I parented Arden with little to no help from friends, family and my spouse at the time." She says that her children's book M is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book was inspired by her daughter.

"Based on my many marches with my own child during what she called “Rainbow Time”, the book will follow in an ABC format, a small child as she gets ready to march alongside her mama at Pride.“

Previously-married-to-a-male Hernandez has a daughter now thirteen

Just shy of Arden’s 12th birthday, she approaches my partner, Nazbah, in the kitchen. “I’m so glad you’re my stepparent,” she says. Nazbah considers spearing a fork into their own heart in order to stop the tears of joy.[Source]

Catch Them While They're Young

M is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book
Written by Catherine Hernandez
Illustrated By Marisa Firebaugh

The Friendly Neighborhood Lesbian Storyteller is coming to a gallery near you!

The Art Gallery of Mississauga hosts regular "story telling" session for toddlers.

Here is information on the upcoming session at the gallery's website:

AGM TOT SPOT!
with Guest Storyteller Catherine Hernandez
NEXT SESSION: FRIDAY, JUNE 16, 10 - 11 AM
Art Gallery of Mississauga | 300 City Centre Drive | FREE & Open to the Public

Monthly on Fridays, 10 - 11 AM, join us at the gallery for an hour of stories, movement and imagination!

Catherine Hernandez is a proud queer woman of colour, radical mother, activist, theatre practitioner and the Artistic Director of b current performing arts. Her one-woman show, The Femme Playlist, premiered at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as part of the afterRock Play Series, co-produced by b current, Eventual Ashes and Sulong Theatre. Her children’s book, M is for Mustache: A Pride ABC Book was published by Flamingo Rampant in 2015.
The AGM recommends 1 parent for every 2 children at Tot Spot!

Below is the accompanying image:



Listen to the animated lesbian-Filipina-Canadian story-teller Catherine Hernandez tell the tale of the girl with the 'stache.



From Hernandez' website:

Catherine Hernandez is a proud queer woman of colour, radical mother, activist, theatre practitioner, burlesque performer, writer, the Artistic Director of Sulong Theatre Company and the owner of Out and About Home Daycare.

Yes: the owner of Out and About Home Daycare.

Here is is Hernandez performing The Boy and the Bindi by "transgender" "artist" Vivek Shraya (also an Art Gallery of Mississauga presenter).

And here she is in her pretty pink dress protesting Charlottetown Junior Public School's last minute cancellation of her book reading for preschoolers. This was her daughter's former school in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto.



But your friendly neighborhood daycare story-teller isn't as pleasant as she looks.

" />
Catherine Hernandez: Ethnic Lesbian
Twitter prole photo

Nor as Canadian as she seems

Dancing at the Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts & Culture

My hubs got permanent residency to Canada today! We are so damn happy. #marriedanamerican #welcome #wantadonut pic.twitter.com/YE99TeMyUU

— Catherine Hernandez (@theloudlady) March 18, 2017

#marriedanamerican should really be #marriedanamercanindian

English as a Second Language Teacher

Here is an article which I didn't publish, which I wrote in 2006 when was teaching advanced ESL to "newcomers" to Canada.

Usually at my local supermarket, I read the price off the cashier and repeat it out loud to make sure I’ve got it right. Almost every time, when an "English as a Second Language (ESL)" employee is at the booth, the price is almost always pronounced (or even read) wrong.

Me: Two dollars twenty eight?
Cashier: Two dollars twenty two.
Me: Twenty three?
Cashier:Twenty two.

And I have to strain my neck to verify for myself what if what I heard and what I see correspond. Usually, I have to strain my ears too, since as well as the indecipherable accent, I get such a low pitched response, with face partially turned away, that even hearing the correct figure is difficult.

Now, I’ve been an ESL teacher for a number of years. I’ve also worked alongside immigrants, as what was termed an “education counselor” mostly trying to familiarize them with the Canadian education system, both high school and post-secondary. And I think I understand where this lackadaisical approach to the English language comes from.

While I was teaching advanced ESL to “professional” Chinese, who were supposed to have at least a high level of writing and reading abilities in the English language, I quickly realized that one of the obsessions, if it may be called such, by the Chinese students was to learn as much as possible about the “Canadian culture” from the English classes. Therefore, our classrooms became mini cultural centers, where we enacted Canadian holidays on a regular basis. We had movie and popcorn days. We visited nearby farms to pick apples in the fall and strawberries in the summer, and to cull maple syrup in the spring. There was one teacher who would bring her whole family as examples for some her classes. That, to me, was approaching libel.

What surprised me, and I don't doubt part of the problem was time and perhaps money, was that few of these students took the time out for themselves to frequent and experience this Canadian culture.

These many years later, I doubt this approach to teaching ESL has changed much, and that Chinese and other "new comers" have changed their approach to learning about Canada.

The Scripture Prize

I'm going through some photographs and documents, and I found this. I won the Scripture Prize as a young girl. I don't know how I got that honor except that I remember going to confirmation classes in my primary school (I was thirteen), thinking I would be confirmed. But the protocol was more complicated than that since I was at the school as an Orthodox (Ethiopian Orthodox). I sang in the choir, attended church service every Sunday (with the choir), and probably some other days too. I performed in some of the great cathedrals (they were generous to small school choirs), celebrated Christmas and Easter and other holidays with choral aplomb, but I still wasn't an Anglican!

I think (I don't remember my exact thought process) that attending Divinity classes might earn me an honorary Anglican membership. And I participated eagerly, interested and engaged. And that might have got me the Scripture Prize! That same year I also got the Music Prize, and later on, the French Prize. I think I was the proudest of the Scripture Prize. It was unique and serious. Knowing something worth being rewarded for about religion, the Bible and other sacred things is not an easy feat!
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Osgoode Law School, Toronto

[Photo By: KPA]

This is the Osgoode Law School in Toronto.

The building is hidden behind trees and the dark railings, and the traffic-heavy Queen and University Streets. But, a lot happens behind its doors.

Architecturally, Osgoode Hall represents a blend of Palladianism and Neoclassicism characteristic of mid-19th-century Canadian architecture. The original building was erected in 1829-32 to designs by John Ewart, assisted by Dr. W.W. Baldwin. The building's unusual plan and elevation are a result of numerous successive additions by a series of different architects. Centre and west wings were added in 1844-6 to designs by Henry Bower Lane, establishing the basic composition of the present building. Renovations by Cumberland and Storm in 1857 replaced the centre wing and added other significant decorative and structural components. In 1865, a law school was added to the rear of the East Wing, to plans by William Storm. Additions and alterations to the building continued throughout the 20th century.

[...]

Since its construction in 1832, Osgoode Hall has served as the headquarters for the Law Society of Upper Canada, the governing body of the legal profession in Ontario. The building was named for William Osgoode, the first Chief Justice of Upper Canada. As law society headquarters, Osgoode Hall has provided a library, dining room and study space for practising lawyers since 1832. During the 19th century it also provided sleeping quarters for students-at-law. From 1889 to 1974 the law society operated a law school at Osgoode Hall, until 1959, the only one in the province. The law society continues to administer the bar admission course for Ontario from Osgoode Hall. Since 1846 Osgoode Hall has also served as a courthouse for senior provincial courts, and many important cases have been heard here. The Province has owned part of the building since 1874, with the Law Society retaining ownership of the East Wing and Great Library. Growth of both the law society and the court system prompted the numerous additions and alterations made to the building over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. [Source: Osgoode Hall National Historic Site of Canada]

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Rural Ontario

Ontario is a strange province. Probably all of the Canada is the same with an uneven amalgam of rural, urban and farmland.

Below, alongside a busy highway, are some houses reminiscent of the old, Victorian era Ontario.

I took photographs of these fascinating buildings, quietly standing and holding their diminished ground, showing us some of this historical Ontario. It is difficult to get to the buildings, but buses do have stops in front of them, although cars have to make a purposeful detour to get to them. Traffic is heavy, with short reprieves from traffic lights which change to red after several minutes' wait.

The William Chisholm House, which is officially known as the Gardner-Dunton House, according to this site is:

Title: Gardner-Dunton House, Britannia
Date Built: Before 1832
Subject: Historic buildings - Ontario - Britannia (Mississauga)
Donor: Planning & Heritage, Community Services
Location: 5520 Hurontario Street, pt. Lot 3 E1/2, Conc 1 WHS

Description: 5520 Hurontario Street. Conc 1 WHS, pt. Lot 3 E¿. Probably built prior to 1832 by William Chisholm, perhaps before Chisholm sold the surrounding land to Joseph Gardner in 1832 for £750. The house, a two-storey, five bay facade Georgian structure, was originally located one mile north on Hurontario Street, but was moved in 1990 to the Peel Board of Education property. Designated under the terms of the Ontario Heritage Act. This is a 1995 photo of the house in its new location.

Here is the screen shot of the house from Google map:



The building is in a field (I don't think it is farmland), a short distance from the city of Mississauga. The high rises can be seen nearby.

Here is my version of the building, with tulips:


William Chisholm House, Mississauga Ontario
[Photo By: KPA]

The building, as far as I can decipher, is now a designated "heritage" building, and is open for public viewing. It is part of the Peel Board of Education, which I suspect is because there is a public school named after Chisholm, in the Peel school district.

This same bus goes further north, and passes another "heritage" building, also in the middle of a field. I once again go off the bus, to see the building.

The door was locked, but there was a group of children playing in the background. I asked the gentleman who seemed like the supervisor if the building was open for public viewing.

No, it is only open on the week-ends, he said.

"How did you get here?" he asked.

"I was on the bus and I got off to see if I could get find out more about the building."

"Well, I can show you in," he said.

So I got a private tour.

The building is a one-room schoolhouse, which was functioning as such until the 1950s.


Britannia One-Room Schoolhouse
[Photo By: KPA]

Here I am, a good teacher, at the front of the classroom, and sitting down, "a good student" as I said to my guide.


Britannia Schoolhouse Interior


Britannia Schoolhouse Interior

The gentleman told me that a group meets regularly to maintain the heritage of the region, and asked me if I would like to join the Friends of the Schoolhouse.

"Definitely," I said. And took down the information to attend their upcoming meeting.

Here is the site with the information:

The Britannia Schoolhouse.

As well as membership information, the site has fascinating documents, photographs, architecture, and other information describing Ontario in the Victorian era. There is a section called "Fun and Games" which shows how these young children amused themselves as they went through their school days. In the "links" section, there is a long list of Ontario one-room schoolhouses.

And here is more on heritage buildings in the Mississauga area, which also includes the Chisholm House:

Architectural Styles in Mississauga.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Reclaiming our Civilization

Wendi Deng and Rupert Murdoch, about whom I've written here

There are a couple of fascinating reports by an anonymous blogger who calls himself The Educational Realist, who is reporting on "The Asian IQ." I write this in quotation marks, because I myself have posted on the much touted Asian IQ superiority, but have found many loopholes in the measurement to conclude that Asian "high" IQs don't tell us much about Asian intelligence.

In fact, regarding many things about Asians, whites in the US and Canada are having a wide-eyed love affair with Asians (literally and figuratively). But I'm beginning to find out that this indiscriminate wide-eyedness is slowly beginning to squint a little, to have a better view of what' really going on.

Here are the two articles:

College Admissions, Race, and Unintended Consequences

and

Asian Immigrants and What No One Mentions Aloud

Excerpts from the first article:

- In November of 1996, the UC system was told by the people of California that it was not allowed to consider race in admissions anymore.

- Asians, particularly recent immigrant Asians, kill whites on grades. The test score advantage is getting (suspiciously) worse, but the grade advantage is huge.

- So in 1995, 14% of Asians, 5.8% of whites, and .6% of blacks scored over 700 in math, which means that the percentile for 700 was 86%, 94%, and 99%. In 2010 (confirm here), those percentiles were 77%, 94%, and 1%.

Only Asians got a lot smarter? Weird. Not impossible. A lot more Chinese and Koreans are taking the test. Not my pick as an explanation, though.

- [E]ither Asian Americans have gotten phenomenally better, the Chinese/Korean nationals are also getting high Verbal SAT scores, or….what? What explains this jump?

- The reason for this is that Asian students seem to be very good at figuring out the technical requirements of UC [University of California] eligibility.

Excerpts from the second article:

- [F]irst and second generation Chinese, Korean, and Indian Americans, as well as nationals from these countries, often fail to embody the sterling academic credentials they include with their applications, and do not live up to the expectations these universities have for top tier students.

- Less delicately put: They cheat.

- Scratch the surface of any cheating story and odds are well above average the school or the class in question is disproportionately Asian.

- Chaos cheating [collaborative cheating]...the testers rush into the room as chaotically as possible, pull chairs close together, sit next to a buddy, whine like crazy when the proctor tries to impose seating order. The proctor sighs, exhorts them not to cheat, and pretty much turns over control of the class to the students. At that point, the kids can quietly discuss answers, text a buddy for help, and basically “collaborate” in any way needed.

- Collaborative cheating also includes splitting up homework assignments and texting answers on in-school tests and quizzes.

- Another cheating scandal that involved both chaos cheating and texting occurred in Orange County, in which students were “allowed to talk, consult study aids, send text messages to friends and leave the room in groups during the exam” [I think by "allowed, the writer doesn't mean it was an official policy of the school, but that no-one stopped the students from those behaviors].

- Prior Knowledge...students are aware of the specific content of the test before taking it. ...Students take advantage of prior knowledge in school by breaking in or in some other way obtaining the tests ahead of time...Notice that none of the schools mention the dominant race of the students involved, but the hints are there and all but one of the example schools are over 40% Asian.

- Then there’s the national high stakes prior knowledge cheating scandals, in which the parties get the actual test information, sometimes from the Korean hagwons who pay testers to take pictures of the test, sometimes from principal whose brother works at a SAT academy that clearly has a large Asian clientele. (Wait–Asian schools in Plano, Texas? No way. Way: 32% Asian. Yeah, surprised me, too.)

- [M]any of the parents, who are recent immigrants, are ruthlessly and endlessly demanding...I know teachers who have quit Asian schools because of the 100 or more emails they get daily, demanding that grades be changed reconsidered.

- The universities look at the resumes of all Asian kids—recent immigrants, long-established natives, nationals—and know that many of them are fraudulent. They know that many of the kids they accept will not be able to function on their campus, whereas others will be able to get great grades so long as they cheat. They know that many of the students don’t have the inquisitive mind, genuine interest in intellectual pursuits that universities like to see in students (or pretend they do). But the universities want the great, if often fraudulent, stats to puff up their numbers for the rankings systems...

- [T]he cheating I describe perpetuates two frauds. The first, of course, benefits the cheaters and their schools at both high school and university level. But the second perpetuates a much larger misconception: People really believe that our top high school students are taking ten-twelve AP courses during their high school year, maintaining 4.5 GPAs, and have the underlying knowledge one would expect from such study. But this almost certainly isn’t true. And once you understand the reality, it’s hard not to wonder about all the “weeding out courses” in organic chemistry and other brutal STEM college courses, the ones that Americans are abandoning in large numbers. The willingness to accept the cheating, to slap it on the wrist if that, is leading to lies that convince a lot of American kids that they aren’t smart enough for tough courses because they don’t cheat and aren’t aware that others are.

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I've written about this on several posts, but I left the threads alone because I had more positive things to do than investigate Asians' inferiorities. I have a book project, and a long-term movement, which I've called Reclaiming Beauty: Winning Back Our Civilization

But, I will make a brief commentary on these articles.

1. Every single Asian with whom I have been close friends (or close colleagues) has surprised me with his (actually, it is one male and three female) inferior abilities. Now, this doesn't mean that they were stupid or intellectually incompetent, but that the actual results of their performance wasn't up to par with their initial input. Their abilities are also deceptive, since initially, they start out with high abilities, but this starts to wane with time, and with the complexities of the study or the project.

And in subtle ways, they start to find an easy way out, which is a form of cheating.

For example:

I studied on a PhD level in a program called Nutritional Sciences at the University of Connecticut, performing a clinical sciences project. My project was to analyze vitamin B12 levels in blood to test for early B12 deficiency, and eventually to develop a sensitive test for descerning micro-levels of B12 depletion in the body (not full-blown deficiency). One of the objectives of this project was to establish an early detection method for vitamin B12 depletion in susceptible patients. Another was to test and eventually modify a quick vitamin B12 detection kit, again for clinical purposes.

I was good friends with a Korean student at the time. I had serious reservations about my research, and in fact left my program for six months. My friend, in the mean time, was advising me to just "get it done," like her. She ended up doing a data analysis dissertation, which involved doing correlative analyses of Mexican pre-school children's dietary status. Much of her finding was inconclusive, as in no significant correlations. In order to finish the dissertation, and have it published in a scholarly journal, she tweaked and rearranged her data. She received high praise for her "innovative" data analysis. By her own admission, when she discussed her work with me, she said that the correlations were hard to find. The professors were "in" on her methods, approved them and allowed her to pass. At that time, I was too polite, and too much of a friend, to call her out on it and to tell her that her work was basically a form of cheating. She had already abandoned two "international nutrition" (a euphemism for Third World malnutrition) post-graduate programs, in Tufts and in Columbia. Her father was paying all her way through school, and she had to return with some completed degree. She was also expected to teach at university level (with jobs lined up), and that required a graduate degree.

2. Asians in the public sphere, despite an initial spurt, produce inferior thoughts, designs, research, literature, architecture, and any other kind of endeavor they undertake in Western societies.

I compare Asians to whites. They certainly do have abilities, which does place them in challenging positions. But, their credentials and performance are sub-par to whites, as I discussed above.

- I've written here about Vera Wang, the wedding dress designer, who is now designing fluffy, unstructured, wedding dresses in red and black.

- I discuss here and here the mediocre orchestral musicians of Asian origin.

- I discuss here the inferior intellectual abilities of Asians, abandoning higher level positions for lower level ones once they find their up-graded positions too challenging.

- Here is an article who elaborates on: East Asians, though their average IQ is higher than European Caucasians (105 IQ to 100 IQ), are not as inventive, creative, or as historically accomplished as European Caucasians.

- And here is an article by Steve Sailer comparing cheating by "high ability" Asians and by "high ability" Blacks and Hispanics. He concludes:

Cheating by high ability black and Hispanic students is virtually unknown, both in my own experience and a complete dearth of reported stories.

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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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Our Western Heritage

I found this interview "Our Western Heritage" on the website National Association of Scholars. It was conducted in 2012.

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- Carol Iannone is editor-at-large of Academic Questions.

NAS publishes a quarterly journal, Academic Questions, which explores the vices and virtues of the contemporary university.

- Robert George is Princeton University's McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence, amongst other titles and qualification.

Editor’s Note: Robert George, well known to readers of Academic Questions, holds Princeton’s celebrated McCormick Chair in Jurisprudence and is the founding director of the James Madison Program. He has served on the President’s Council on Bioethics and as a presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His publications include In Defense of Natural Law, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (Oxford University Press, 2001), and The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion and Morality in Crisis (ISI, 2002), as well as numerous scholarly articles and reviews in such journals as the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the American Journal of Jurisprudence, and the Review of Politics. Prof. George is a recipient of many honors and awards, including the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Sidney Hook Memorial Award of the National Association of Scholars, and the Stanley Kelley, Jr., Teaching Award from Princeton’s Department of Politics. For the record, he is also a finger style guitarist and bluegrass banjo player.

Iannone: Why is Western Civilization worth studying in your view?

George: By any standard of measure, the intellectual, moral, religious, political, economic, scientific, technological, artistic, architectural, and literary achievements of the West are extraordinary. It would be foolish not to study them, examine their roots, and explore the complex relationships among them, such as the relationship between Western religious ideas and the development of science. Our students are—as we ourselves are—inheritors of these achievements. Their culture—and, thus, their lives—have been shaped by them. They deserve to understand them. And if they are to maintain all that is worth maintaining, and reform what needs reforming, and pass along to their own children a vibrant and healthy culture, they need to understand them.

Iannone: What about Western Civilization is unique?

George: Science as we know it could not have developed outside of the West. It is a great gift of the West to the entire world. Moreover, ideas of natural law, republican government, civil rights and liberties, and the dignity, inviolability, and fundamental freedom of the individual are fundamentally Western insights. These, too, are gifts to the world. Many of these insights were hard-won. Some might yet be lost. Certainly, they have not always been honored, or fully respected, by the people of the West or their political, religious, and cultural institutions. Still, they are exceptional achievements.

Iannone: How important are Judaism and Christianity and the moral values they foster to the maintenance of Western Civilization? Are there other essential elements of Western thought that should be part of any curriculum—certain books, ideas, developments?

George: If there were no Judaism, there would be no Christianity. There is a profound sense in which Christianity is the “other” Jewish religion emerging from the transformations in Jewish faith and practice that resulted from the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem. If there were no Christianity, there would be no Western civilization. Most of the great achievements of the modern West were underwritten by Christian, and therefore also by Jewish, religious and philosophical and moral ideas. Of course, pre-Christian Greek and Roman thought, many of the aspects of which were taken up into Christian thought, were also profoundly important. Can these achievements be maintained if Jewish and Christian faith collapses in the West? Can Western ideals and institutions flourish when utterly severed from their religious roots? Frankly, I doubt it. But it appears that we will know for sure before too long. Much of Europe today is engaged in a vast experiment that will tell us whether cultural and political achievements whose historical roots are in religion can be sustained and nurtured in a cultural and political milieu of extreme secularism.

Iannone: How do the more secular ideas of the Enlightenment fit into the foundations of the West? Is the West a balance of the two elements, religious and secular?

George: Certainly Enlightenment thinkers made important contributions to the Western tradition, particularly in the advancement of personal and political liberty. The “secularism” of the Enlightenment is, however, frequently exaggerated. First, it is worth noting that there was no single Enlightenment, but several different Enlightenments. Some Enlightenment, or proto-Enlightenment, thinkers—especially among the French—were hostile to Christianity and religion generally; others were not. Some Enlightenments were infected with anti-religious zealotry—again, the French Enlightenment especially—others, such as the Scottish Enlightenment, much less so.

Second, there were important Enlightenment figures who developed and built on the classic Christian understanding of a legitimate realm of the secular—an understanding that Christians have always found rooted in Christ’s command to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s. Of course, Christianity is opposed, as it should and must be opposed, to secularism, as an anti-religious ideology that seeks to drive religion from the public sphere and, in its more radical forms, to eliminate religious faith altogether. Christianity does not, however, oppose the idea of the secular or the idea of a legitimate secular domain. Indeed, Christianity can claim the lion’s share of the credit for inventing it.

Moreover, classic Christianity is not fideistic. It holds, rather, that faith and reason are mutually supportive and equally necessary to a rich and accurate understanding of our condition as human persons. In our own time, this conviction was reaffirmed by Pope John Paul II in the opening sentence of his great encyclical on the relationship of faith and reason, Fides et Ratio. There, the late pontiff said that “faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit ascends to contemplation of truth.” This is entirely compatible with what is noblest and best in Enlightenment thought.

Iannone: You have written of the liberal arts as enabling the student to gain self-mastery? Why is that important?

George: Self-mastery is important because it is a basic, irreducible dimension of the well-being and fulfillment of rational creatures—and, as Aristotle taught, we human beings are just that: creatures whose nature is a rational nature. Moreover, self-mastery—the capacity to exercise rational control over one’s emotions, passions, and desires and direct them toward good and upright ends—is indispensable to the project of self-government. If we believe in republican democracy, as we should; if we believe in the ideal of free persons, who participate as equal citizens in the project of self-government, as we should; if we believe in the dignity and rights of the individual in a regime of ordered liberty, as we should; then we must dedicate ourselves to educating young people for self-mastery. A political regime of self-government can only be sustained among people who are capable of governing themselves. People incapable of self-mastery will quickly prove to be unfit for self-government.

Iannone: The idea of self-mastery seems so opposite of everything that is promulgated today—being true to ourselves, satisfying our desires, if it feels good do it. Do you think self-mastery has appeal for most of today’s students, cultivated so much to the opposite? After all, what you might call slavery to the self many call freedom and liberation.

George: Well, it is Plato and Aristotle versus Charlie Sheen and Lady Gaga, isn’t it? And the old Greeks aren’t given equal time on MTV and E! But, look, as a teacher, I have faith in our young people. They are capable of rising to meet great challenges, if only we, their elders, are willing to issue those challenges and point the way. Fundamentally, the problem is not with their generation, it is with ours. It was our generation that lost faith, not only faith in God, in any meaningful sense, but faith in man—in reason, in beauty, in truth, in moral, aesthetic, and intellectual standards of any type, in the very ideas of good and evil, right and wrong. It was ours that dubbed ourselves the “Me Generation,” and proclaimed the imbecilic doctrine of “if it feels good, do it.” We are the generation that produced widespread slavery to “recreational” drugs, a sexual revolution that has had devastating consequences for millions of children—especially in the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of our society—and the collapse of intellectual standards.

True, the result is a culture in which young people have been cultivated to identify “authenticity” with acting on one’s feelings and desires, whatever they happen to be. But that is not set in stone. We really can challenge our children and our students to have higher aspirations and to lead richer, nobler lives. Young people in every generation are naturally idealistic. They are open to prophetic voices that challenge the moral-cultural status quo. They are capable of being inspired. It’s just a matter of doing it. So I have an idea: let’s do it.

Iannone: What particularly about study of the past can counter the debased form of freedom or misconception of freedom popular today?

George: I believe in going forward with all cylinders firing. Expose students to the thought of the Greek philosophers and Roman jurists. Make sure they know all about the Hebrew prophets and the Christian saints. Teach them about the philosophical and theological ideas that made possible the emergence of modern science and the development of republican democracy. For heaven’s sake, introduce them to Shakespeare and Bach and let them see why Snoop Dogg and Hank Williams, much as I love him, don’t represent quite the same level of achievement.

Iannone: Do you see the freedom and self-mastery this study brings as something that goes beyond the individual to be of benefit to society, or is it mainly about the individual?

George: The last man on earth, living out his remaining days with no hope of interaction with another human being, would still do well to strive for self-mastery. His nature would remain a human nature, a rational nature. His flourishing would still require developing his own character in a way that would place reason in control of passion or desire. He would not be morally free to live the life of a brute animal. He would be a fool if he did so. But, of course, none of us is that man. All of us are members of various communities—the community of a family, the community of a faith, the community of a locality and a nation. For those communities to flourish, for them to have integrity, their members must be people who are masters of themselves. Someone who imagines that there can be well-integrated communities composed of poorly integrated individuals, imagines (to borrow words from Thomas Jefferson) “what never was and never will be.” Communities pay a heavy price for the lack of self-discipline, self-control, and self-mastery among their members. This is a proposition for which ample empirical data is available, alas.

Iannone: Do you see a study of Western Civilization enabling students to realize what is at stake in upholding the West and defending it from those who would destroy it?

George: In my experience as a teacher—and as a student myself—I find that the more deeply people understand Western civilization and its achievements, the more profoundly they appreciate them. So, it seems to me, in the face of contemporary challenges to Western ideals and institutions, there is nothing more urgent than deepening the understanding of our people of the traditions of faith, thought, and social and political life that made the West. Does this mean that we should neglect the study of non-Western traditions or denigrate their achievements? No. That would be a decidedly un-Western thing to do, since a cardinal tenet of Western philosophy is to embrace truth and value wherever they are to be found. We mustn’t fear teaching our young people about other cultures, but we should not disdain to teach them about their own.

Iannone: What would you say are outstanding flaws or shortcomings in Western thought that need corrective, perhaps from the study of other cultures or sources?

George: It is a tenet of Western thought that the whole world—indeed, the whole of reality—is to be explored, investigated, reflected about, and to the maximum possible extent understood. Furthermore, wisdom is to be cherished, no matter its source. That is why ethnocentrism and chauvinism are antithetical to the Western tradition, though there are certainly people in the West who have fallen into these errors. And so, as recent popes, among others, have taught, there is much to be gained from engagement with Islam, for example, and the great religions of the East, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. The West is truer to itself when it is open to such engagement.

Iannone: We think of American values and by extension Western values as universal. But is there a way to maintain our own cultural heritage while still being open to the entire world?

George: Well, yes, we do believe that our values are universal values. We do not suppose, for example, that the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family is true in Utica but not in Uganda. We believe it is true always and everywhere, and that all people and all peoples are bound under the moral law to honor the principle in the design of their political and social institutions and in the practices of their governments and societies. So we reject any form of “multiculturalism” that regards opposition to slavery, for example, or the reduction of women to the status of sexual objects, as mere local Western values that do not hold in non-Western societies or morally bind non-Western governments. But that does not mean that non-Western societies must be made to look just like Western ones or even that we should wish that they did. Our most basic values are universal; but many of our institutions and practices are not. There is vast room for cultural variety reflecting different histories, religious and other traditions, prudential judgments, and even preferences. Between moral relativism, which is contemptible, and chauvinism, which is appalling, there is a sensible and rationally completely defensible position that distinguishes between universal—and fundamental—principles of right and wrong, justice and injustice, and non-basic matters on which a diversity of cultural practices is to be expected, accepted, and, in many cases, celebrated.

Iannone: And what about our own culture? Do we have a right to preserve it as the means through which the universal principles are realized in our present situation? Some cultures may not be compatible with our own; Islam permits polygamy, for example, as part of the religion itself. Can our culture tolerate polygamy, whether officially or unofficially recognized? Are there times when we would have to say that theoretically the universal values hold, but not every culture is able to profess them at present to the same level as ours and that therefore their absorption into the West is problematic?

George: Yes, of course we have the right to protect the principles and institutions we believe serve the dignity of the human person and the causes of justice and the common good. If we judge, as we should, that marriage is the exclusive conjugal union of one man and one woman, and that the institution of marriage is the foundational unit of society whose role is indispensable to the transmission of core values and virtues, then we must fight off efforts to redefine marriage as something that it isn’t or weaken it in any way. We certainly should not recognize polygamous or polyamorous sexual partnerships as marriages. Does the rejection of polygamy mean that Muslims, whose religion accepts the practice, cannot be good citizens? I think not. Vast numbers of Muslims in America are already proving themselves to be good citizens—excellent citizens. As the Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf has noted, no Muslim is required to practice polygamy or advocate laws permitting it, and Muslims are bound by Islamic teaching to respect the laws of the communities in which they dwell.

It is worth noting that there was a time not long ago when Catholics in America were held in suspicion because their religion did not profess a robust doctrine of religious freedom. This was understandable on both ends. The teachings of nineteenth-century popes included statements about religious freedom, as well as democracy itself, that made Protestant Americans very nervous about their Catholic neighbors. On the Catholic side, the Church’s understanding of the meaning of democracy and religious freedom had been shaped not by the American experience, but by the ideology and practices of the French revolutionaries. The wonderful thing is that American Catholics—and others, including Catholics living under atheistic tyranny in Soviet puppet states—were able eventually to persuade their mainly Western European church leaders that embracing a robust conception of democracy and religious freedom would not entail accepting such French Revolutionary ideas as religious indifferentism or relativism, or the notion that religious vows don’t bind, or that it is immoral to take them, or the complete subservience of the Church to the state. Once that happened, the Church became a powerful force for democracy and religious freedom across the globe.

Iannone: As a follow-up, could there be a difference between those who have fallen into ethnocentrism and chauvinism, as you say above, and those who conscientiously believe we can’t be so open as to allow our principles and the culture that transmits them to be overtaken by those who think and practice very differently, who can use our openness to undermine us?

George: Absolutely. But that means vigilance not only against those who would undermine our principles and institutions in the name of religion, but also against those who would undermine them in the name of secularist, including liberal secularist, beliefs.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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