Happy Independence Day!

On this 4th of July, as we observe the continuing collapse of our economic system and the incipient socialist takeover of the United States, let us try to remind ourselves of the meaning of Independence, its principles and necessity.


"Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgement and nothing can help you escape it -- that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your life." -- Ayn Rand

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers." -- Ayn Rand

"Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel." -- Ayn Rand

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." -- Thomas Jefferson

"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions." -- Thomas Jefferson

"A man's moral sense must be unusually strong if slavery does not make him a thief." -- Thomas Jefferson

"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all." -- Thomas Jefferson

"A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of his friends, and that the most liberal professions of good will are very far from being the surest marks of it." -- George Washington

"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." -- George Washington

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence — it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." -- George Washington

"Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak." -- John Adams

"We ought to consider what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form." -- John Adams



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWv5VZWlwRQ


The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

The Montessori Classroom Part II: Sensorial

For Part I: Practical Life, click here.

The Sensorial area focuses on the isolation and identification of essential characteristics of physical reality to increase a child’s perceptual range and introduce skills for ordering one’s thoughts in a manner conducive to supporting later explorations in mathematical reasoning and language development. It follows introduction to the Practical Life area but may be explored concurrently after the basic prerequisite skills are acquired by the student. This essay will attempt to summarize the purpose of the Sensorial curriculum area, its relevance to the curriculum, the nature and theory of the material design and sequence, the principles active in presenting the work to a child, the concept of the ‘Three Period Lesson’, and how Sensorial prepares the student for future studies in math and language.

The Sensorial area is designed to expand the range and depth of sense perceptions by a child. Percepts are composed of sensory data refined into algorithms of experience. That is to say that the creation of any perception is composed of the repetitive observation of certain sensory characteristics. When a particular sensory experience has been repeated so much that it becomes automatically identifiable, then it becomes integrated into a percept. Percepts are what we access when we perceive something. It is an awareness of a certain quality of an object as opposed to other qualities. Our perception expands as our distinctions in sensory definition become more subtle. For instance, a newborn baby most likely has access only to a very confused array of sensory impressions. As the baby gains experience in noticing differences between these sensations, the baby gains the ability to integrate certain senses into percepts. For example, length, color, size, weight, and so on. The more experience the child obtains, the more refined that child’s perceptual distinctions become. The child becomes aware of graded differentiations which aid its mind in ranking and ordering the attributes of objects in its environment. Children move through this progression naturally. There are sensitive periods that the child passes through which are like windows of opportunity for the child to acquire a wide variety and depth of skills. When a child is in the sensitive period for the development of a particular skill or perception, that child can show amazing command of concentration and repetition for mastery. As the child acquires more depth and variety of perceptions and builds their experience, the child eventually acquires the ability to integrate those perceptions into concepts. This is the child’s first foray into abstraction and opens the door to all later conceptual knowledge. As such, the ability to make unit-based discriminations with various sense perceptions would seem to stand at the very base of human knowledge.

The Sensorial area encourages the refinement of this skill by making available to the child sets of materials which isolate one sensory characteristic and requires the child to master the grading, matching, and distinction of that characteristic. For example, the Red Rods are a series of red rods of various lengths, all graded in differences of 10cm. The shortest is 10cm, the longest is 1m. Through the mastery of this material, a child will gain a refined perception of length measurement based on accepted and functional units. Repetition is built into the design and layout of the materials to encourage mastery and internalization. The Red Rods are ordered once on the rug and then returned to the same order on the shelves. Other Sensorial materials provide similar experiences with other perceptions. Children have a sensitive period for ordering their environment and the activities in Sensorial appeal directly to this predilection. The controlled practice of these skills is also intended to help children reorganize and classify information that they have already internalized. In some cases, a child may have internalized a distorted or inaccurate sense of length or size or some other perceptual faculty. Attention to organizing the materials in a carefully graded unit sequence will enhance their appreciation of perceptions in context and help them correct mistakes in percept integration and the organization of those perceptions in their mind. Furthermore, the fact that all introductory materials isolate one sense perception acts as an early warning system to alert the teacher of any potential disabilities which could impede the child’s progress. This diagnostic function makes it easier for the teacher to quickly assess the needs of the children and offer such support and intervention as would be required. Additionally, the Sensorial materials utilize a child’s need to move, develop muscular control and tactile memory, and help prepare the students for later studies in math and language through developing appreciation of 1:1 correspondences in the matching of identical sets of variegated degree. An example of the latter would be the Thermic Tablets, where the child must find the tablets of matching surface temperature. There is only one tablet of each material, there is only one answer, and the child need not be corrected by the teacher for the differences are self-evident. A more in-depth discussion of how Sensorial prepares children for math and language will follow later. However, it would first be proper to provide an explanation of what exercises are included in the Sensorial area, how are they arranged, and what is the underlying rationale for their design.

The Sensorial area is divided into sections based on each of the five senses: visual (sight), muscular-tactile (touch), auditory (sound), olfactory (smell), and gustatory (taste). The primary sensitivities of young children are to the visual and muscular-tactile senses. Because of this, the greater part of the sensorial materials focus on these two senses, and between these are predominantly based on visual discrimination. The progression of the materials follows a logical chain of building complexity which seeks to develop a series of sense perceptions focusing on just one aspect at a time.

The first materials in Sensorial are dedicated to refining a child’s visual sense of size. The Knobbed Cylinders are a series of 4 similar works. Each one is a block of wood with ten cylinders cut out. Each cylinder has a knob on top by which to be grasped. The cylinders themselves vary by one dimension (either diameter or height) and later a combination of two dimensions (diameter and height). The child practices removing and replacing the cylinders to refine their perception of these differences. These are followed by the Pink Cubes, which are stacked from largest to smallest to develop a sense of order and refine perception of size and height. Next are the Brown Quadrilateral Prisms, which are sequenced horizontally from thickest to thinnest. These refine the perception of thickness. The Red Rods, as stated previously, develop perception of length. Finally the Colored Cylinders are the twin of the Knobbed Cylinders except they are color coded, have no knobs, and have no accompanying wood blocks to serve as a control of error. These represent a step into the abstraction of the previously introduced dimensions from a highly controlled relationship into recognition in the environment—that is, where the control of error is only evident if the dimension being graded is perceived by the child. Previously, the control of error would depend on whether or not all cylinders fit flush into their holes. Once the Colored Cylinders are introduced, the child can now sequence the cylinders based on their visual perception of the graded variation in size. This concept of control of error is a critical point in the design strategy of the materials. Every set of materials must isolate one aspect of sense perception and, for each set, error must be instantly recognizable by the child as they work.

The next sequence of materials focuses on building the perception of various forms. These start with a series of works which expose the child to a broad representation of geometric shapes in two and three dimensions. These are followed by the Constructive Triangles, which are a series of boxes of triangles which are used to construct various geometric shapes from equilateral triangles to rhomboids and trapeziums. Next comes a series of three-dimensional cube-shaped puzzles. Each one focuses on developing visual awareness of an algebraic concept as a concrete spatial relationship years before it would be reintroduced in abstract mathematical form. These are followed by the Square of Pythagoras, which introduces the visual perception of the difference of squares, and the Leaf Cabinet, which introduces children to the study of more abstract geometric forms and prepares them for the study of biology.

The last sequence of materials developing visual perception focuses on defining distinctions of color, and tint. The first of the Color Boxes contains only a set of pairs of primary colors. The six tiles are simply randomized and paired up. The other boxes increase the depth of a child’s distinctions by providing greater variations of color and requiring the child to organize and match them accordingly.

After the visual works come the other four senses. First is the Muscular-Tactile sense. The Fabric Boxes and Tactile Boards develop a child’s sense of touch and texture. The Baric Tablets refine the perception of relative weight. The Thermal Tablets and Cylinders require the matching of materials based on surface temperature. The Auditory, Olfactory and Gustatory senses are refined with primarily stand-alone materials. The Sound Cylinders are used to refine the sense of hearing by requiring the child to match like pairs of cylinders which generate different sounds when shaken. The Smelling Cylinders refine the sense of smell by likewise requiring the child to match like pairs of scent. The Tasting Bottles also require the matching of like pairs based on different tastes: sweet, sour, salty, spicy, or bitter.

All the materials above follow a consistent strategy in design. All the materials involve the grading or matching of variations in a specific, isolated quality. All include a self-evident control of error. All support the development of gross motor skills by requiring the child to physically move the materials a fair distance, assemble them, and then return them to their original place and orientation. They also proceed in the necessary logical sequence of moving from concrete realizations of the perception involved to more abstract realizations. Just as with the Knobbed and Colored Cylinders, the work with geometric shapes moves from handling real objects in the Geometric Cabinet to identification of abstract representations of shape in the form of line drawings on cards. There are also certain guidelines in the presentation of the materials during a lesson which ensure that attention is drawn to the essential characteristics concerned.

First, the teacher must decide when it is appropriate to introduce a child to a given work. Has the child mastered the skills required to handle the materials? Are their fine motor skills sufficiently developed from exercises in Practical Life? Have they indicated an interest in the materials? Have they already had sufficient experience with the preceding materials? Is their maturity such that they can be entrusted with carrying large or delicate objects and treat them with respect? Have the ground rules for showing respect for their peers and the environment been properly established? If the teacher is confident that the answers to these questions are positive, then the next step is to invite the child to a lesson on the proper use of the new material.

The form of the invitation communicates an undercurrent of meaning. This meaning is highly relevant to the child’s perception of the teacher-student relationship and the social dynamic of the educational environment. If the invitation takes the form of a command, the child may interpret this as an authoritarian interaction where the teacher is trying to impose their own will upon the desires of the child. It is because of this that this step is called, “invitation”. If the student asks the child to come and learn this work, the child feels they have a choice and will be less likely to resist instruction. Also, this can serve as a check to see if the child is ready to engage the work for any number of reasons from lack of confidence to lack of normalization. Either way, even a “no” answer would be informative and direct the teacher to assess possible reasons for the hang-up or delay. Forcing the lesson would have no effect. You can put information, in any form, in front of a person’s eyes, but their mind must be actively engaged in the material to learn. The child will learn when the time is right.

When the child is ready and accepts the lesson, the teacher names the material. The names may seem arbitrary but they actually represent the distinguishing characteristic of the work to the child and expose them to the actual vocabulary that they will need in later academic pursuits. For example, “the Pink Cubes” are called the “Pink Tower” in AMI teacher programs, or they could be called the “Pink Blocks” or “Wood Blocks”. The difference is that while being pink and cube-shaped, they could still be arranged in a variety of patterns. Therefore, the name “Pink Cubes” represents more their essential defining features than “Pink Tower”. Also, the word “cube” is an academic word useful in geometry and mathematics. It is better to use these words as soon as possible and in a concrete and physical context. Early exposure to academic language helps children to adopt precise vocabulary without having to comprehend the abstract reasoning for the distinctions. Even better, such attention to precision of language allows children to mentally arrange, with clear distinctions, a variety of subtle concepts—and this without later having to untangle them from vague and imprecise terminology. An added benefit is that the use of these mysterious sounding words from the adult vocabulary will help to entice the children to be curious about the materials and give them an added sense of pride and accomplishment when they have mastered them. Imagine the glint in a child’s eye as they boast that they have mastered the quadrilateral prisms.

The next series of steps helps the child understand how best to prepare the materials for work. The teacher must clearly indicate where the materials are stored in the classroom and he should be familiar with its initial orientation. This is so the child can be successful in finding, retrieving, working on, and then returning the materials properly. Likewise, the teacher should always carry the materials in the manner that they desire the child to carry them. Children learn by watching. Also, some materials are quite large compared to a child’s frame and careful forethought about how best to hold the materials is essential to classroom harmony. Before this, however, the teacher must decide if these materials should be used on a rug or at a table. Some materials will be too large to use at most any table in an average classroom. Some may be small, but have a large number of pieces that must be laid out over a large space. The child, too, is a factor. A sufficiently normalized child who can focus on their work may be well able to handle a complex set of materials on a rug without incident. However, a less focused child may need the visual and physical order and boundaries imposed by the limits of a table and chair.

Once the material has been brought to the rug or table, the physical position of the teacher in relation to the child becomes an issue. Most material instructions assume a right-handed teacher teaching a right-handed student in a one-on-one situation. In the event of a group lesson, the teacher may want to sit opposite the group and reverse the presentation, although this runs the risk of the children reversing the procedure in their minds and doing things backwards. The teacher may be left-handed, or the student may be. Depending on the essential nature of the work it may be necessary to reverse hands or seating position so that the line of sight is not blocked by arm and hand position. Once these issues have been resolved, the lesson proper may begin.

The activity, or principal action of the presentation, must be clearly named. For example with the Red Rods, the teacher would say, “I am going to grade the red rods from longest to shortest.” The teacher should state the action before it is begun. This is closely connected with another aspect of a lesson, which is the arrangement of the materials prior to the principal action. Once again with the Red Rods, they are usually brought to the rug in a certain sequence dictated by their initial position in the classroom and then placed on the rug in a random orientation. Once this is completed, the teacher would name the principal action as stated above and then proceed to arrange the rods in the stated sequence. The random orientation is usually consistent throughout the manipulatives and thus aids in handling new materials. For instance, matching or sorting lessons usually require the materials to be laid out in a line above the work space before they are matched, sorted, or reassembled. The teacher must also decide when, how, and to what extent the child should be allowed to actively participate and to engage the materials during the progress of the lesson. It will be easier to retain the focus of some children by allowing them to touch the materials. Although some lessons will require being shown to completion before the child will be able to appreciate what must be done. The teacher must decide based on experience and familiarity with the given student. Finally, the teacher must demonstrate how to return the materials to their original condition and place in the classroom. Reversing procedures is not something which comes naturally to some children, so it is best to demonstrate the full clean-up process.

Now that the main principles for presenting the materials have been discussed, the method of actively teaching nomenclature must be addressed. The model used by Montessori is based on Seguin’s Three Period Lesson. The Three Period Lesson is presented after the child has already been introduced to a set of materials and had ample opportunity to manipulate the materials for themselves. The rationale is that the child must have had enough experience to develop the ability to perceive the essential characteristics of the materials necessary for their manipulation before they hope to attach a name to that characteristic. Learning to subsume those percepts into the concept of a word describing essential characteristics is the fundamental operation of conceptual abstraction.

In the first ‘period’, the teacher isolates two objects from the materials which differ the most. The teacher then presents those materials in juxtaposition to emphasize their essential difference. At this point the teacher names that difference. For example, with the Geometric Solids, the teacher would place the cube and sphere next to each other. They would say, “This is a cube” while pointing to the cube. Then the teacher would say, “This is a sphere” while pointing to the sphere. Depending on the level of the child, the teacher could perhaps then introduce some other forms such as cylinder, prism, pyramid and others. Generally, though, it is best to keep the first lessons as simple as possible. Also the same set of materials can sometimes be used to introduce various concepts. The Pink Cubes can, for example, be used to introduce the distinction between highest and lowest as well as largest and smallest or even ordinal numbers like “first, second, third”.

In the second period, the teacher tests the child for recognition of the vocabulary taught in the first. The teacher could use a sequence of simple commands to see if the child is properly recognizing the terms. Once again using the Geometric Solids as an example, the teacher could say, “Point to the cube.” If the child correctly executes the command, then the teacher would move on. “Put the sphere under the rug.” If the child happened to select the cylinder by mistake, the teacher would correct in a positive manner. “That is a cylinder. This is a sphere. Put the sphere under the rug.” As long as the child fails to properly recognize the commands with verbal cues only, the teacher continues with the second period. It is important to note here that the teacher never corrects sternly. The teacher must always maintain a calm and nurturing disposition. This process can continue as long as necessary and can be built on in later sessions to further develop vocabulary. Once the teacher is confident that the child can respond to verbal cues, instruction enters the third period.

In the third period, the teacher prompts the child to produce the vocabulary taught in the first two periods. To test the child’s retention of the vocabulary, the teacher makes sure to use no verbal cues. Pointing to the cube, the teacher simply asks, “What’s this?” If the child says, “It’s a cube!” then the child has successfully demonstrated their knowledge and no further guidance is necessary. If the child cannot answer, then the teacher knows that further assistance is necessary and should return to the second period.

The method of applying the Three Period Lesson after the experience of developing perceptual awareness is highly effective in preparing children for work in Mathematics and Language. That the process teaches children technical nomenclature has already been discussed. Almost more important is the series of foundational principles that work with the Sensorial materials helps children acquire. Children not only learn to name objects but to perceive subtle similarities and differences between forms. This is a critical skill in developing the ability to differentiate between written characters—a fundamental reading skill called letter recognition. This is also helpful in helping children recognize the differences between written numbers—a prerequisite skill for all formalized mathematics. Sensorial also prepares the children for comprehension of the base-10 decimal system. All graded materials such as the Pink Cubes and Colored Cylinders have ten pieces to be removed and replaced in a set sequence. They also prime the children for unit measurement because all materials differ in unit differences based on the metric system. This means that as they develop their awareness of the qualities of the materials, they develop a physical appreciation of the unit multiplication of surface area and volume. The Constructive Triangles help prime children for later explorations in formulating geometric proofs and the Knobbed Cylinders help children develop an appreciation for 1:1 correspondence, the awareness that one number corresponds to one thing. Once children realize this, it opens them up to be able to combine numbers through adding, removing them through subtraction and then on to other higher functions. The Knobbed Cylinders can also be seen as introducing the children to the concept of an empty set, or zero. The sight of the wood block with all pieces removed is a perfect visual image of a null set placeholder.

Children are also primed for studies in Language through use of the Sensorial materials. The grading and sequencing of parts is always conducted left-to-right and top to bottom. The layout of the materials on the shelves follows the same pattern. This is because it is the standard pattern for written English and most other European languages. It is interesting to note, that this sequencing and layout can be adjusted in countries where the standard layout is right to left or top to bottom. Children engage in basic problem solving skills like trying to determine logical sequencing and gradation, finding the missing piece, memorization, deconstruction and reassembly. These are fundamental skills used in reading to fill-in meaning from contextual clues, to remember sight words, and to blend together phonetic compounds. Comparing like parts to a larger whole is also integral to breaking apart compound words and longer words for easier reading and comprehension. Finally, the independent, one-on-one nature of the Sensorial materials enables children to develop a sense of self-motivation and a positive attitude towards self-correction. These are necessary for maintaining a positive and productive future attitude in the study of any academic discipline. Nonetheless, the potential for group learning and peer mentoring ensures that if the child has the inclination, they can be fully supported by friends working together to mutual advantage.

The Practical Life area prepares the children for meaningful exploration and participation in their environment and daily lives. Sensorial helps children expand the breadth and depth of their perceptual apparatus and helps prime their minds for the patterns of order and scale which form the foundation for later studies in mathematics and language. Sensorial also introduces students to technical terminology in geometry, mathematics, and biology. The hands-on, individualized paradigm introduced in Practical Life is further developed in Sensorial and helps instill a heightened sense of concentration, independence, and confidence—all skills necessary to ensuring that future explorations of academic disciplines are self-motivated and fulfilling.

Happy Birthday, Ayn....

I just wanted to say happy birthday to Ayn Rand. She was born on February 2, 1905. She's dead now, so my wishing her happy birthday has nothing to do with her personally. She'll never hear my wishes now. No, it has more to do with my hope for a future modeled on her sense of virtue, her sense of life. We are still so very far from that world. There are still so many sleeping their indolent dreams of empire while the gates are molding on their hinges. America is dying. It is our ignorance which is the poison in its veins. While the politicians wax pompous and self-important, our country is falling apart. Oh, yeah, you won't feel it for a while. America really was that powerful. It really was that great. There's still a lot of energy to bleed off. But as long as we stick our heads in the sand, let ourselves bleed out in denial of our wounds, America doesn't have much of a future ahead of it. I hope that my children, when I have them, may still be able to have enough opportunity to become educated and have access to a Montessori school so that their minds can evolve unmolested by those who would imprint their egos on the helpless minds of children...and would imprint them with only obedience. If America collapses completely into either the darkness of fascism or the darkness of communism, then a great light will have gone out of the world. And who can say when next it will be born anew? So Happy Birthday, Ayn. Atlas is shrugging and the socialists are choking on the ideal world of their own making. Maybe the rest of them will listen enough to what you had to say to learn something yet.

Cheers,
American Antitheist

The Montessori Classroom Part I: Practical Life

The Montessori Method is a student-driven, student-centered educational approach which relies on selective control of the environment, peer mentoring, and freedom of choice. The Montessori classroom is divided into curriculum areas, each of which focuses on a specific set of skills and knowledge. The primary curriculum area and the first to which students would be introduced is the ‘Practical Life’ area. This essay will attempt to summarize the purpose of Practical Life, its importance to child development, its principal characteristics and sequence, the role of the teacher in preparing the environment, the concept of ‘sensitive periods’, and how this curriculum area prepares the student for studies in math and language.

All the activities in the Practical Life curriculum serve a function on two different levels simultaneously. On one level, the one the children most readily appreciate, students learn how to perform common household tasks, use common implements, and take care of their person and the environment around them. For example, children may spend their time in this area learning to use scissors to cut along a line, pour water from one container to another, how to use a funnel or eye dropper, dress themselves, or even wash a baby. While this seems to be the direct goal of the child’s action, to the teacher the performance of these tasks are only indirect objectives, not unimportant, but secondary to the directed goals the teacher has in assigning them. The direct objectives of practical life exercises are most commonly to develop the skills of observation, coordination, concentration, and self-esteem. Furthermore, there is a focus on refining the child’s ability to manipulate their own hand musculature in a series of progressively more delicate operations where the hand must manipulate objects in certain ways to achieve desired outcomes. For example, a beginning student may start transferring beans from one container to another by hand. This focuses the child on a specific concrete objective, namely moving all the beans. This procedure is self-correcting. The child knows when the task has not been performed to completion and will strive to perfect its work. This develops concentration. The physical act of moving the beans will develop the hand musculature and coordination. The child will learn to notice spilled beans and beans left in one bowl or the other. They will also notice when other children are doing similar works, whether or not they make the same mistakes. This will increase their observational skills. Successful completion of the task will encourage the child to approach other tasks and build self-esteem paving the way for latter tasks of increased complexity. Once the child has mastered this method of bean transfer, they may be ready for more delicate maneuvers, such as pouring beans between two glasses, and then pitchers. From there, the child may learn to use a strawberry huller to transfer items, and then maybe even chopsticks. At each stage the child develops a greater refinement of manual dexterity, cognitive apprehension, and moral development.

Everything about the Practical Life area is organized to aid the development of these qualities. There is a specific sequence to the materials, top to bottom and left to right. This is meant to assist in the development of eye-scanning habits for later reading. The materials are arranged on trays on shelves. The trays help to separate one task from another so that the child is not lost amongst the arrays of various paraphernalia. There are also themes to the works. There are those, like bean transfer, which focus primarily on hand development. But there are also those which focus on care of the person like the dressing frames. Typically, the shelves would be arranged as follows. The first shelf may contain works devoted to bean transfer. The second shelf may introduce tools such as tongs or scissors. The third may be devoted to water transfer. Moving to the right, the next cabinet may have more refined water transfer works (such as those using funnels or basters) on the first shelf. The second shelf would have tasks requiring finer motor skills like using a clothespin or water transfer using an eye dropper. On the bottom shelf would be more tasks taken from daily life necessity, such as opening and closing jars or lunch boxes. If there was a third cabinet to the right, then it could continue with finer tasks like using nuts and bolts, locks and keys, or can openers on the top shelf. In the middle could be a sorting work, and folding or organizing works, followed by complex works like packing a suitcase or creating soap suds with an egg beater on the bottom shelf.

Once the children had become accustomed to the control of self and body necessary to accomplish these kinds of tasks, they may be introduced to more complicated tasks involving the care of the environment and their own person. They would probably start out with washing small objects like seashells, then move on to leaves of plants which are more delicate and then on to washing a baby doll. They learn to wash windows, tables, and chairs, to polish mirrors, wood, metal, and shoes, and to clean up after themselves. They learn how to dress themselves by focusing on a series of dressing frames designed to focus on specific fasteners for clothing (basically cloth fixed to a wooden frame which must be connected and disconnected using a specific fastening method like snaps or buckles). They learn how to prepare the food they eat and to sew. These works, being left out for the children to freely pick and choose, inspire the children to develop those areas where they are most in need of special practice. Once the child has mastered the skills therein, the child will move on by their own volition, for they will be bored with the task and it will have nothing more to offer them. However, which works will be made available to the children at what time will be something largely controlled by the teacher who bears the vital responsibility to control the environment of the class.

Since the children are free to choose the works they will, the teacher must be aware of the level of work appropriate to the children in the class. If the works are too simple, they will become neglected or be invitations to misuse. If the works are too complicated they will tend to draw the same and worse, they will tend to discourage the students from trying. For instance, a child who cannot transfer beans from one bowl to the other for want of hand strength and coordination cannot be expected to successfully remove the lid from a jar. More likely as not the jar will be thrown in frustration. But if the teacher, patiently observing which works the children are drawn to and how they are used, carefully selects the works to be made available at what time, then the children can be passively directed without infringing on their developing independence by actively assigning them to tasks desired by the teacher.

Also, the teacher has another principal method of controlling the classroom at their disposal. Contrary to what one may think, it is not a monopoly on knowledge. Other children in the classroom may very well be acquainted with all the practical life works and willing and able to instruct their younger peers. Montessori classrooms incorporate a peer mentoring element by teaching children between the ages of 3 and 6 in the same classroom. In this way, children can mentor and be mentored as they gain experience in the various activities available in the classroom. The teacher may be required to conduct larger lessons or to introduce works new to the classroom, but generally the classroom should be self-sufficient in terms of the transfer of knowledge and assuming it has been properly normalized. But the teacher holds authority as the ideal citizen of the classroom and a source of practical knowledge and experience. The teacher models constantly proper behavior consisting of calmness, grace, courtesy and deliberation. The teacher imbues in the students respect for the environment, not through lecture but by example and by maintaining an environment in which the children are able to have access to the tools and techniques necessary to maintain it for their own benefit. The teacher talks politely, and slowly. The teacher moves gracefully and measured. All this serves the double function of modeling polite, civil behavior and also to render one’s actions observable by children. Children, lacking adult proficiency in observation or a knowledge of critical essentials in any given situation, are not as adroit at picking out the salient components of an action, or the critical gist of a lengthy conversation. They need things broken down into readily comprehensible concretes. It is the teacher’s task to tell children what must be done in a way that can be heard and to show them how to do things in a way that can be seen. If a teacher can master these skills of observation and guidance then they will be able to lead children through the critical periods of their development in a way which will enable them to take full advantage of the opportunities they present.

Montessori refers to ‘Sensitive Periods’ of a child’s development. These are spans of time when children are uniquely attuned to a specific sensory input, set of skills, or knowledge. The most apparent example is language acquisition. There is a period of time when children are very young during which the acquisition of language is almost automatic. After this time period has lapsed, other languages can be acquired but it requires a high degree of personal motivation and effort. The same principle can be applied to almost any of the principle skills of human existence. There is a time for the effortless acquisition of gross motor skills, fine motor skills, and even eating and sleeping habits. After these periods have passed, they still may be learned or corrected, but if the proper stimulus is available at the proper time, then the acquisition will be practically effortless. The Practical Life curriculum area accommodates these sensitive periods in several ways. Each exercise in Practical Life is devoted to honing some specific skill. Later exercises build on skills developed in prior ones and create a scaffolding effect which helps children be prepared to successfully engage them. Children are free to select from a wide range of the activities and thus target the areas where they are deficient. As was pointed out before, if they have already mastered the work, it should, in principle, be uninteresting to them and thus something which they would not be engaged with for long. If it is too hard, the task would seem insurmountable. If, instead, the work represented a level of skill exactly in the range where development would be needed, it would also naturally fall in that area of works which would be engaging to the child. The self-correcting control of error present in the works would also help to discipline the child’s movements and help them focus on the tasks which drive their development. Now, especially if the child was in a period sensitive to the skills inherent in the work, they would be even more likely to be drawn to those specific works from which they could benefit the most. The reason is that they are simply more sensitive to and thereby aware of them more than others. As their sensitive period closes and they are drawn to different stimulus, they would move on to more challenging areas. So, too, once they have passed through the periods sensitive to the stimulus of Practical Life, they would be drawn out into the more challenging areas of math and language once they have acquired the basic skills necessary to preparing them to be sensitive to the more abstract works.

Practical Life helps prepare children for the study of math and language in various ways. The focus on hand manipulations in work which involve water transfer using an eye dropper or picking up beans with tongs readies them to physically hold a pencil. The focus necessary to achieving mastery of their work prepares them to focus on the salient variables of a complex problem amidst potential distraction. The social bonds formed during the exercise of their work cycle will also be a motivating influence when they see their peers and mentors investigating the more ‘academic’ works. More concretely, the organization of materials on the shelves and the order of movements in the works themselves are predominantly left to right and top to bottom—the progression in which English and most, if not all, European languages are read. Works like the jars and lids, which involve removing and replacing matching lids from their jars, teach one to one correspondence, an important pre-mathematical concept. This is also found in works which require the matching of nuts to bolts, the counting of steps, or the sorting of objects. Water and bean transfer may even be seen as a preparation for grasping concepts like Piagetian conservation of volume.

On one level, Practical Life prepares children for practical living. On another level, it prepares them cognitively, emotionally, and physically to engage their mind in productive works geared toward enhancing their own existence and apprehension of reality. This curriculum area builds self-esteem, self-awareness, and self control. It develops the child physically and cognitively to go into the world and begin to exert control over themselves and their environment. It also prepares the way for academic study, laying the concrete foundations necessary to ground abstractions in reality—a fitting beginning for an educational philosophy dedicated to unifying intellectual endeavor with physical experience.

For Part II: Sensorial, click here.

Why Open Borders are the American Way

Now first I want to define what I mean by "Open" borders. I don't think that everyone should just be able to stream into the country unscreened. That would be disastrous. No, I think what should be meant by open borders is that the government screens for criminals, spies, terrorists, and diseases. If someone checks out okay, then they should be allowed in.

Now, there are several arguments I am aware of which people use to attack this position. First I would like to dismiss concerns about shifts in primary language or ethnic demographics as purely racist. Over time, populations naturally shift their genetic and linguistic composition. Opposition to immigration on purely linguistic or demographic grounds is therefore unwarranted and clearly motivated by a philosophical perspective which discriminates between human beings on non-essential characteristics. These arguments are not even worthy of attention and so this is all I will say of them.

The other two primary arguments against open borders, as I have already defined them, concern either the economic or the environmental impact of population increase. First I would like to address the environmental argument. Then I will address the economic one.

Environmentalists proclaim that we all have an environmental "footprint" and that expansion in population is destructive of the environment. Well, first of all, every single activity that human beings pursue is bound to have some effect on our environment--especially since the only way that human beings can survive is to alter their environment. Environmentalists also conveniently ignore the reality of the scientific advancements that have enabled us to double our population in the last 100 years while the forest population has remained relatively stable.

No, I think that the argument from environmental impact is largely geared at a hatred for humanity, for the desire to eliminate humanity from the face of the earth and leave a pristine, consciousless jungle in our wake. The "irreversible" disaster scenarios promulgated by activists are yet to be substantially verified by science. And even were they to be substantiated, handicapping our ability to deal with them (i.e. restricting the capital development of the sciences to refine our manufacturing technology) is not the road to finding viable solutions. But that's neither here nor there.

Ultimately, the rebuttal to the environmental argument is that they claim that living people are the problem and offer no solution except to hobble our ability to cope with environmental problems by limiting economic growth and in some cases even suggesting such fascist manuevers as forced birth control of the populace. Wouldn't that be pretty? In short, the fear of the environmental impact of population explosion due to immigration is a non-starter by scientific standards. And by economic standards it has even less weight as I will explain next.

(For a more in depth discussion of the environmental argument please see this blog entry by Curtis Edward Clark here: http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2009/01/environmental-footprints-and-starving.html)

(And I also recommend reading this op-ed by physics Ph.D. Keith Lockitch which explains the moral implications of environmentalism here: http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=22271&news_iv_ctrl=1021)

So, we are left with asking what would be the economic impact of massive immigration or population growth? Under our current system...disaster. But the reason for that disaster is the presence of entitlement programs, safety nets, public education, welfare, unemployment, minimum wages, medicare, public health insurance, food stamps, etc. In a laissez-faire capitalist system, there would be no need to screen immigrants for their economic sustainability. If they couldn't sustain themselves in America, then their options would be to go home or die. Not by violence, but from starvation. That's what happens when a population exceeds its resources.

But long before that would happen one of two things would happen.
1. The economy would adjust to accomodate the larger work force, resulting in more jobs, higher productivity, and lower prices.
2. Or, the economy would not be able to accomodate these workers, salaries would drop to unacceptable levels, and we would see reverse migration.

Although I think this second is extremely unlikely. The main reason is that in a free market, prices (especially wages for labor) are determined by supply and demand. A high demand for work may drive down wages, but it also drives down costs and thus prices for product, which effectively compensates for the numerically lower wage.

Another misconception is the idea of a limited amount of jobs or a set load which the economy can support. These concepts only enter into the picture once the economy is constrained by government coercion. If the marketplace is free to allow people and goods to flow without the threat of physical violence (government or individual), then people without jobs could start their own business with little resistance. With the increase in population would also come increased opportunities, an increased customer base with specific needs. In short, the increase in population would increase the economic potential of the nation, not diminish it. With the increase in economic activity would come more jobs, more money, lower prices, and a higher standard of living for all.

A side benefit would be, as Yaron Brook points out in the video below, that if we allow everyone except spies, criminals, terrorists, and the diseased into the country freely, then that means we only have to patrol the border for spies, criminals, terrorists, and the diseased. And as he aptly points out, those are people who we could shoot with moral impunity if they were discovered sneaking in, because those would be the ONLY kind of people sneaking in.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib3nVuw2RQU



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF92vXogERE

As it is, the influx of immigration, both legal and illegal, is motivated by the comparative poverty of other nations around the world. These people want to come to have a better life. Their motivations are largely noble. The only thing which gives us cause to fear them, are the very social institutions which we have put in place to steal from some, to secure the unearned for others, WITHIN the country. If we are aware of the unsustainability of those programs and the social cost of such, then we should be directing our energies at undoing those programs and not in further punishing people for exercising their American rights to decide their own terms of employment. The government has no right to dictate to any person who they should be able to hire. Period. And if it weren't for the minimum wage, which makes it impossible for agricultural concerns to hire citizens for the wages that the market demands for their products, they wouldn't have to face the choice of hiring illiegals or going out of business.

Ultimately, the immigration issue is yet another social ill which has been created by our government's intervention in people's lives. This and so many others will not disappear until the government is properly constrained into it's appropriate social role, the preservation of the individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

Everything else, as they say, is up to you. You should have the freedom to decide who you want to hire. You should have the freedom to decide how much you want to pay them. People seeking employment should have the freedom to decide who they want to work for. People seeking employment should have the freedom to decide how much they are willing to work for. The government has no place in manipulating the job market or restraining economic growth. Economic growth is simply a function of all the activities that people pursue to live their lives and make those lives better. The more the merrier. The larger the economy, the more profit to be made by all.

But we are not free, and so we have these "conundrums". We must focus our energy on being free, on reclaiming our freedom. Being sidetracked with tertiary issues only divides us and makes it easier to continue the systematic unraveling of the American ideal.

Get the Word Out

Obama's socialist policies will result in increased taxes, inflation, the devaluation of the dollar, and the consequent losses of individual liberty that increased government intervention in the economy will inevitably bring. Vote Libertarian or for Libertarian Republicans like Ron Paul in the next election. We need to reject the morality of social cannibalism that the Democrats and like-minded Republicans represent. We need defenders of liberty in public offices at all levels of the government. So vote, even if it's a small election. Vote for Liberty before it's too late and we see the close of the American dream behind bars of our own forging.

Please mirror this video as much as possible. Let's get the word out for Liberty!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQTp3kPnho

Why Do People Still Not Get It?

I received the following question that someone sent to my YouTube channel: bakukenshin, and I thought it fit in nicely with the topics on this blog.

"What do you think of people who have read Ayn Rands books but refuse to believe in or accept the philosophy of Objectivism? Are they simply refusing the ability of the mind or are they afraid of the idea of being responsible for their own decisions? Or does it just go against too much of what they have been "taught"?"

My response was as follows:

I think there are several reasons why people could read her books and not accept the entire philosophy of Objectivism.

1. Most people read a book and they pick and choose what they like about it and what they don't like. Most of the time this coincides with values that they have already decided upon. So a lot of people take Objectivism piecemeal, which results in a lot of what you can see in the Republican party. That is a lot of people who try to push for capitalism and free markets (at least when they're campaigning) but at the same time pushing to restrict civil liberties (such as with the anti-abortion movement, domestic surveillance, etc.).

2. To accept Objectivism, people need to accept three basic premises. Reality is. Existence exists. Consciousness is conscious. Unfortunately most of the gatekeepers to modern philosophy (professors, novelists, poets, scientists, etc.) have been indoctrinated in and come to believe the opposite of at least one of these. Since these are axioms, unless they realize that there is no way to disprove these premises without using them, then they cannot be expected to accept them. In order for someone to change their mind on axiomatic propositions they need to start from the standpoint that reason is the final arbiter of their viewpoints, that they cannot resist what their senses and the rules of logic tell them simply based on their feelings or a priori assertions. But, if they accept that already, then they are already half way to Objectivism anyway.

3. The philosophy of Objectivism isn't self-evident. The reaction of many new objectivists when they've decided to accept it, is to assume that because they read Ayn Rand's works and it makes sense to them, that it must therefore automatically make sense to everybody. Unfortunately, this would be a mistaken assumption. Everybody starts from a different starting point. Some people have devoted a lot of time thinking seriously about fundamental philosophical questions. Some people have not. Even among seriously committed thinkers, it took a long historical tradition starting with Aristotle leading up through the founding of America and it took Ayn Rand's genius building on all that to bring the various threads of history into sharp enough focus to formulate Objectivism. Some people just make some honest mistakes along the chain of abstraction.

4. Some people know better and are consciously malevolent enough to deny it anyway. But be very careful before jumping to conclusions about who you place in this category. Sometimes I think Objectivists need to understand their own philosophy better before they start leaping to judgments about others.

I think it's a little like teaching someone a skill at which you are highly proficient, but the person you're teaching isn't. Like your native language for instance. You don't even think about it. But try teaching it to someone who only knows Chinese. You quickly find out that you have to know things about the structure of your language at a much more detailed level than you'd ever have dreamed of having to worry about before. More importantly, the process of clarifying your thoughts, so as to better present them to others, teaches you things about your own mode of thought and helps you understand your beliefs better than before.

If you seriously teach any subject for a significant period of time, you will understand that subject in a fundamentally different way than if you had just accepted that you knew it and left it at that. I think this is true of math, English, art, and especially philosophy. If you want to truly understand why people don't get it, and understand better just what it is that makes sense to you, then try to think about how you would explain it to someone, calmly and clearly. Try to talk to people about it. Try to teach it. Through this process of discussion, through refining your arguments, through thinking about the points people raise in opposition, you will come to understand the philosophy that much better. And you will have a much clearer image of what it represents, and which people are the ones who should truly be morally condemned. But remember, in these discussions, if you find yourself losing your temper, resorting to insults or irrational tactics or agencies, then you've already lost. You need to accept that when it happens (as it inevitably will), go back and rethink it through.

Objectivism is ultimately understanding yourself. You have to start there. And it can be the hardest place to start. Especially when you're wanting to rush out and change the world. But it is central. After all, that's where everything in Ayn Rand's philosophy begins.

I hope this helps somewhat. I know it didn't exactly address the question as you stated it, but I, too, am struggling with the line between people who are mistaken and people who are consciously evading truth. So, until I reach a conclusion on that, I like to recommend caution before leaping into judgments on people. It can be tempting, and it can be difficult to see the distinction. (This by the way is the very issue that led to the split between Kelley and Peikoff and why the "The Atlas Society" and "The Ayn Rand Institute" aren't on speaking terms.) The above is my best attempt to deal with it myself. Read as much as you can on the philosophy, both the good and the bad. Don't get sidetracked on following any one person's interpretation. Remember the most important perspective is your own. Try to form it in as balanced and rational a way as possible.

--I think the only thing I can add to this right now is in this prior blog post here. I am still very interested in the opinions of other practicing objectivists. If anybody has an opinion on this matter please feel free to post your comments.

Best premises,
American Anti-theist

100th Post at An American Anti-theist Abroad!!

Woohoo!! OK, so I'm feeling a little self-congratulatory. This makes the 100th post on this blog. Just to sum up. Since I started this blog in April 2008, I've had some more active periods than others. (1 post was actually salvaged from an older blog that I never really took anywhere.) But since I started putting this together, I've been able to write about a lot of different subjects of importance not only to me, but also to a number of people around the world. How big a number I'm not quite sure, but given the recent popularity of Ayn Rand and Ron Paul, it seems like the winds may be changing. So, we all have to do our bit to fan the fires.

Anyways,　just to give a status report on how I've been doing, here are some statistics.

Since this blog started officially in April 2008 it has received 5,825 visits from 68 countries.

THE TOP THREE VIEWING COUNTRIES ARE:

1. USA @ 4948 views
2. Japan @ 529 views
3. UK @ 65 views

THE TOP THREE VIEWING STATES (USA) ARE:

1. California @ 717 views
2. Texas @ 485 views
3. New York @ 395 views

THE TOP THREE VIEWED BLOG POSTS (aside from the main page which registered 1196 views) ARE:

1. Dr. Anne Wortham: Objectivism and the Black Community @ 5010 views
2. Dr. Anne Wortham: Black Victimhood vs. Black Individual Responsibility @ 307 views
3. Happy Science: Religious Cults in Supposedly Atheist Japan @ 142 views

Anyways, I just want to thank all the people who have taken the time to read what I've been posting. Also, more importantly, I want to thank all the people who've taken the time to sincerely think about what I've been talking about here. I'm sure that we can all make a difference. I'm still small fry here, but if I can reach even one person and convince them to look at the world even slightly differently, then I've gotten as much reward as I can reasonably expect. Changing the world is really for all of us. We have to change our morality, the standards of our belief and judgment. The alternative is to horrible to imagine. That's why we have to act. The native state of all systems is entropy. It is only through concerted and consistent human action that we can keep things from sliding into decay, whether that decay is cultural, moral, economic, political, scientific, cognitive, or spiritual.

Finally, I'd like to close with a video from Ron Paul. He's the only prominent figure in politics today who unabashedly supports a rationally integrated world view and truly advocates liberty and justice. Here he is talking about the torture debacle. Republicans and Democrats are both guilty as sin in leading us into such debauchery. For my prior articles on the issue please see these earlier posts:

Sam Harris and the Fallacies of Torture

And this is what happens when thugs get moral license...

Torture: The Madness that Wouldn't Die

Supreme Court Puts Foot Down on Abrogation of Due Process

Not Everything that Parades as a Democracy IS a Democracy

Ashcroft-Torture Bad Call But No Biggie

Enjoy the video:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skeom9K8fww

Celebrating Justice

In the spirit of celebrating the right to life, in the midst of life-hating torture mongers like Pelosi and Cheney, here's an essay that an associate wrote for the Ayn Rand essay contest a while back. It's a discussion of justice as presented in Atlas Shrugged. Enjoy:

“I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine” (979).

This quote at the end of John Galt's address to the world encapsulates the concept of justice developed throughout Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. It is an oath by an individual, a thinking human being. The standard against which this oath is made is the highest possible, that of one's own life. That standard is reinforced by Galt's insistence that he loves his life—a caveat necessary for establishing the value of swearing by that life. What follows is the core: the idea that each and every person bears full responsibility for their own life and that it is both morally wrong to try to shift that responsibility to another and to shoulder the responsibilities of others thereby sheltering them from the consequences of their actions.

Rand's concept of justice is centered around the individual. Individuals have certain rights. These rights are guarantees of freedom based on the necessities of life as a human being. A just government is one which honors those rights. An unjust government violates them. A government is formed with the purpose of protecting the rights of individuals and what that essentially means is protecting people from assaults on their life. “But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one...is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality” (973). Furthermore, because a system of government is simply a group of individuals created and maintained by the consent and active participation of its citizens, a government cannot exist without the sanction of those citizens. An unjust government cannot maintain itself without creating the illusion of legitimacy. But the illusion cannot be maintained without the sanction of the participants. Rearden understands this and thus refuses to participate in his “trial” in any way. Consequently, the judges find themselves powerless and must let him go. They cannot force his consent. They can only move his body or take his assets. But either of those actions would risk surrendering the illusion of legitimacy that is vital to maintaining their power.

“I will not help you pretend that I have a chance. I will not help you preserve an appearance of righteousness where rights are not recognized. I will not help you preserve an appearance of rationality by entering a debate in which a gun is the final argument. I will not help you pretend that you are administering justice.” (443)

Rearden acts in full accordance with Rand's concept of justice. He both refuses to contribute to his own immolation and shrugs off the burden of maintaining the illusions of others. He holds his own life as the highest value and the measure against which other values are judged. It is because of this supremacy of an individual's judgement, consent, and action that justice is not a value which is bestowed by government, but instead a value with which a just government must act in accordance.

Justice can also be seen to apply to individuals in their private interactions. The personal relationships of the main characters consistently echo these same themes. The principles are the same. Contradictions are impossible. If something seems not to fit, then there is something wrong with your assumptions. Power over another's actions cannot be forced, it can only be given or conceded. Lillian controls Rearden only through his own concession of guilt and he is miserable for it. In the absence of force, all interactions are voluntary. Rearden's emotional prison was one of his own making, built by his concessions to an ethical system inconsistent with the demands of reality. Justice entails obtaining what one deserves. In her treatment of Rearden's and Dagny Taggart's relationships, Rand shows how determining what one deserves is a process of rational evaluation that is intimately connected with one's estimation of their own self-worth. The key here being the word “rational”. Initially, Rearden views himself as shameful and lowly, hence he thinks he “deserves” Lillian. He thinks that justice is being served. But his reasoning is flawed. He deserves better. When he finally corrects his thinking, he realizes that there is nothing just about his situation with Lillian and ends it.

Dagny's relationships, too, are a series of character judgements. She is with Francisco, Rearden, and Galt in turn because they represent progressively purer models of her own rational values. She ends with Galt because he is the embodient of perfection in man as she sees him and she is the embodiment of perfection in woman as he sees her. However what makes this just is not only their mutual assessment but that that assessment is grounded in reality. Rearden's initial assessment of Lillian as someone who was worthy to be his wife (i.e. the best reflection of his own values) was flawed and not based on anything evidenced in her personality by fact of action but simply the desire to see that in her. This is supported by the parallel descriptions of their rationales for getting married.

The idea that justice implies a balance between values—that what you get out should equal what you put in—is not new. Neither is the idea of reality and reason being the fundamental determiners of what is just. Many cultures have viewed these as desirable. However, there is not a single example of a culture that does not create a contradiction at some point and thus undermine one or another. For example, Buddhism promotes an awareness of reality and one's place within it as fundamental to determining morality. However it then proceeds to say that wisdom is understanding reality as it “is” and not as it “appears” to be. What reality “is” is not defined, neither is what is meant by “illusion”. This vacuum is not rare in religious works. In the same way that fortune-telling may seem accurate, the definitions are left vague so that people can fill in their own assumptions. If someone believes that reality, really is, then they can interpret the religion as mirroring their own beliefs by interpreting illusion as being the lies people tell to cover their evasions. Conversely, if one is actively seeking to evade reality, they are free to loathe the “illusion” that is this world and claim that those involved in worldly affairs are somehow inferior or misguided. Judeism, Christianity, and Islam tend to cut out the whole issue of reason and claim that what is claimed to be just is so because God so ordained. Even thinkers such as St. Thomas Aquinas had to make compromises to accommodate their religion. In modern thought, too, there are few advocates of truly rational justice. The most prominent were the philosophers of the Enlightenment—Locke, Paine, Mill, and Jefferson among others. However, none of them ever made the explicit claim that it is equally as immoral to shelter people from the consequences of their actions as it is to expect others to shelter you. It is in this sense that the concept of justice in Atlas Shrugged stands apart.

And Justice for All? But what is Justice?

With the resignation of chief justice Souter, Obama has yet another chance to skew the machinery of government so as to sustain his socialist agenda long after he has been replaced. Check out the link below for an article detailing why Obama's pragmatism really means amorality in a legal context.

When It Comes to Judges, 'Pragmatic' Means Unprincipled: How the president reasons that disregarding the rule of law can be a virtue.

Capitalism Didn't Fail...Just saying so doesn't make it true

So many leftist pundits are spouting off about the death of capitalism and how Greenspan was a libertarian so that proves that free-market policies don't work. Well, bullshit.

Greenspan was not a libertarian, he wasn't even an objectivist except perhaps in his youth when he contributed to Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and advocated a return to the gold standard. But, of course he sold those views out right quick when they threatened to dampen his career goals. No, Greenspan was a soulless mercenary, who knew enough to know what was the right thing to do, and then did the wrong thing anyway. There can be few more damning indictments of a person's moral character than to knowingly choose to do the wrong thing.

As for the so-called failure of the free market system, well our market was not free of government intervention before, so it baffles the mind to think how people can actually convince themselves that we were actually under a free market system before this whole crisis developed. Of course it didn't help that Republicans were preaching free market principles while expanding government like there was no tomorrow, but all that proves was that the majority of Republicans were and still are hypocrites. At least if they have the sense to rally behind Ron Paul this time, perhaps we may see some change for the better. But with all the new legislation that Obama and his gang are going to be able to cram through the legislature, it's a bit like closing the barn doors after the horse has already fled.

Anyway, there's a very good article by objectivist Dakin Sloss over at the Stanford Progressive. It's a very succint and easy to understand explanation of how the government was involved in the economic collapse. I highly recommend it, so please check it out:

http://progressive.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/article.php?article_id=343

Best premises,
American Anti-theist

In Mourning for America

Do the math:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-budget7-2009may07,0,4310621.story

A 3.55 trillion dollar budget....17 billion dollars in budget cuts...a deficit of 1.2 trillion dollars...

Now, seriously....any investor....any one sitting at home doing their finances, would they seriously think that these numbers are acceptable? When you're in debt, do you spend more hoping that you'll magically bring in increased revenues somewhere down the line? Do you buy 2 new cars, a GM and a Chrysler with the hope that if you give them some money, they may give you a job, or a raise? Does it make any sense to increase debt beyond our ability to pay it back? If you're in business, do you expand your company's operations when sales are down? If you're managing a household, do you go on a luxurious vacation, when the creditors are knocking at the door?

No, of course not. Anyone who did that would be at least grossly irresponsible, and possibly insane. Does it justify it any more to demand that our children and our children's children, that generations, yes, generations of our descendants will have to pay for these excesses? Doesn't that make it all the more evil, to assign debt to those who have no say in the matter, to burden them with an obligation to feed our folly? Is it satisfying to mark our children with the mark of Obama's breed of original sin?

This madness seems to know no bounds. I do not see a bright future for America until a significant libertarian presence is felt in Congress and the White House. As such, I've darkened the background of my page to reflect the feeling that America has entered a dark age of decline. Hopefully the grassroots efforts of advocates of liberty across the nation will one-day be enough to lift this blinding curtain of self-righteousness and end the orgy of self-immolation which is the American politic.

Just think of it, and does it make any sense:

$1,200,000,000,000 deficit
- $17,000,000,000 budget cuts
=$1,183,000,000,000 remaining deficit

....Just what kind of difference is Obama making?

A Proposal for a Rational Code of Morality

I was just sorting through some old papers and ran across this thought experiment I wrote up almost 10 years ago. At the time I didn't understand objectivism anywhere near as I do now and was still rather tolerant of religious beliefs. At the same time, I was already very libertarian in my political beliefs. I'm posting this, not because I see it as the final word on morality or anything. On the contrary, I'm sure there are more than enough flaws...especially in my all too brief assessment of epistemology. However, I think it still raises some interesting points, and a novel way of thinking about moral decisions. Anyways, if you're interested, you can check it out here:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddt4f3w9_4hmscz7hk

As always, please let me know what you think of it. Good or bad. And then we can discuss it.

Best premises,
American Anti-theist

The End of Public Education

I've chosen the title of this article as I have, because I intend to address several points relating to the "end" of public education. First, what is the "end", or goal, of public education? Second, I intend to address the failure of public education as it nears it's practical end, or finality. Finally, I want to address the benefits of fully-privatized education and why we should advocate it's adoption as well as what we will need to consider in the conversion period. For the most part I don't think these arguments are new, and I don't believe they were originated by me. But I do believe in their validity, their urgency, and their relevance. I will do the best I am able to do justice to these arguments, but like always, I urge people to go back to the original sources and check the arguments for themselves. I am not an expert in most of the fields concerned, although I do have credentials and experience in education and finance, and have personally studied philosophy for most of my life. So, I am not an expert, these are simply the views of one man trying to express them in as clearly and concisely a manner as possible. I will be the first to admit that there is still a lot I don't know. But based on what I do know, I have confidence in the validity of my stances on these issues. I welcome any critiques, and I will respond to any valid criticisms with as reasoned a response as I am able. If I am wrong, please try to prove me so. Perhaps we can learn something together.

In that interest I would first like to clear up a concern that Keahou has brought to my attention in a comment here.

First of all, the advice that Pinochet decided to follow resulted in the "Miracle of Chile". That is, that a military junta adopted free-market reforms which drove Chile's economic growth and laid the foundations for a strong democratized society that eventually ousted Pinochet. Pinochet was a murderer and a despot. But he happened to have some good economic sense, which put his nation into a leading role in South America. Now, it can't be said to have been a free government at the time, because free governments don't allow the government to go around murdering people. But comparatively, in that Chile was more laissez-faire than other South American countries, it proved that the freer the market, the stronger economic growth. But as China has also proved, economic growth is not necessarily specific to democratic systems. The long-term democratizing effects of free-market reforms on the social status of China will, however, be interesting to observe. I don't think they will be able to oppress human rights with impunity forever. I would bet that, like Chile, the source of their prosperity will ultimately lead to the dissolution of their centrist government. Either that, or they will choose to crush the source of that prosperity and fade into the background like we are doing in America. The miracle of Chile is that the military junta opted for it's own obsolescence to preserve the country's economic prosperity, something which would seem to defy expectations.

Now that has been cleared up, we can get on with the privatization of education. What is the goal of public education? Simply put, it is to ensure a uniform standard of education to all students from elementary to post-secondary education. Now this hinges on two critical points. What do we mean by education? Also, has public education been effective in meeting that stated goal?

Education has several meanings depending on its context. The dictionary doesn't provide much more than a circular definition, although this is largely due to what Rand pointed out was the epistemological errors of lexicologists who try to define a word independently of its referents. Practically speaking, there are two basic interpretations of what is meant by education. One has as its goal the accumulation of a certain list of facts and formulae. The other has as its goal the acquisition of skills and processes. The former measures its success by the ability of students to answer questions correctly. The latter measures its success by the ability of its students to actually do things with their knowledge. The former is relatively simple to test quantitatively. The latter can only be assessed qualitatively by analyzing the child's productions. For ease of reference, then, let's define the former interpretation of education as the Textbook & Testing Approach (TNT) and the latter as the Cognitive Development Approach (CD).

Now regardless of whether a school system is public or private, teachers can tend to be attracted to either of these approaches. However, in a public, standardized system, the emphasis is systematically placed on the standardized testing, which means that the emphasis is consequently placed on the list of facts presented in the test. Now, the criteria that the test-makers use to select those facts is largely irrelevant. If the standard of measurement is simply a list of facts and formulae, then the success of teachers, schools, and methods are based on a measure of the ability of children to have memorized those facts. Whether or not they can actually use that information is not as clearly testable in a quantitative format. If school funding is based on quantitative performance measures, then schools which are the best at TNT will be the most funded schools. While it can be successfully argued, I think, that CD approaches would result in ultimately higher attainment on TNT measures, the practical upshot is that unless a school has at the very least a mixed system of CD and TNT, students still won't do very well on the quantitative tests. (They will still have to remember the specific facts and formulae on the given test.)

The problem with qualitative tests is that they don't produce results which can be easily assessed by non-specialists in education. A public system is ultimately responsible to the least specialized authority, the elected government official. Their interpretation of test results is bound to be based on the number crunching of quantitative assessments. Especially, the less autonomy schools and teachers have in making relevant educational decisions, and the more dependent they are on government for support, the less they can afford to concentrate on their students' cognitive development, if it will risk even a marginal decrease in their performance on TNT testing. If you doubt this, please come to Japan and visit a junior high school English class.

Japan is the model of top-down education. All the things I've just proposed are, in Japan, a stark reality. Despite the awareness of teachers that the methods they are constrained to use are widely accepted as being ineffective, the pressure to conform to and produce quantitative standardized results in the testing system, prohibit them from initiating the very innovations that would serve their students best. Japanese students are very good at memorizing a certain list of terms, short-term, for the purpose of passing a test, without understanding the rhyme or reason very well. But, even after 6+ years of English study under this methodology, most Japanese adults can't speak more than a few words that have been incorporated into Japanese as loan words or some memorized set phrases. If anything, it teaches students that they can't ever understand the subject, that it is hopeless, and that the best they can do is to try to stuff as many of the facts and formulae into their heads as possible so that they can pass the entrance exams into high school and college, facts which are promptly forgotten. Everyone involved understands this, and yet nobody can or will change it, because the people in charge of those decisions are the ones most removed from the process, the politicians. The people sacrificed? The children.

But of course, it's only appropriate to view the children as being sacrificed, if the standard of success of education is functional ability. If the standard of success is simply obedience and rote memorization, then these public schools would seem to be a great success. Or are they?

Even in a system of largely TNT dependent teaching and increasing standardization, the measure by those testing standards indicate that public schooling costs more per student and produce a lower quality of education. Just look at what's happening in Washington, D.C. since they instituted the voucher system. Of course, since the democrats are on the rise, that'll soon be eliminated. After all, who wants the ugly evidence of the comparative ineffectiveness of socialist educational practices to hang around under the advent of a socialist regime?

I don't think the failings of our current educational system are debatable. Pretty much everyone understands that private schools offer better education (even Obama's children aren't going public) and that maintaining teacher quality standards is well nigh impossible in a system that doesn't adequately reward competent teachers (watch the second part). The main objection to privatization, I think, is the potential cost.

So, what, really, would be the cost to parents of phasing out public education into privately run schools? As it is, parents are all taxed to pay for education. For example, in Washington D.C. the cost per student for education was about $12,979 a year making it #3 out of the top 100 largest school districts in the nation. Despite this fact, they ranked pathetically low compared to the national averages. 33% is the national average for 4th graders who lack basic skills in math, in DC, the percentage was 62%. 49% is the average nationally for 8th graders who lack those same basic skills, in DC it was more like 74%. That's why they instituted a voucher system to try and get these kids into higher quality educational programs. Those vouchers are good for $7,500. The average cost of going to a private school in the DC area is currently $4,500. Only 39% of private schools in the DC area are more expensive than $10,000. That means that, if the tax burden for parents was reduced by the amount the government would no longer need if the system was privatized, parents could easily afford the price of private education.

Students would receive better quality education. Teachers would also have to be more accountable, because private enterprise will be less tolerant of teacher incompetence then socialized unions. Standards will have to produce children who are capable of using their knowledge to further their goals, because that will be the product that parents and children will notice the most. Parents will be more involved in school, because they will want to make sure they're getting their money's worth. If anything, parents would be saving money, getting more for it, and everyone would be happier.

Vouchers are not an end in themselves. They are a means of privitizing the educational system without causing a massive system shock. As public schools become progressively outmoded in pace with the development of a private infrastructure, the schools could be absorbed into private organizations. Once the public funding and relevant taxes have been replaced by a privitized system, then there will be no more need for vouchers and no more need to make it a political issue.

Inner city schools are suffering as it is, and a critical problem is the lack of incentive for talented teachers to go to those schools, or for people to send their children there. People who can afford to move to a more affluent region, already do, taking their tax money with them. If the government's coercive monopoly on education was relaxed so as to stimulate private investment in education and the efficiency of free markets, then private schools could be instituted to compete with the faltering inner city schools for those temporary vouchers and thus raise the standard of education for all who live in those areas. It would effectively remove one of the constricting influences which drives money out of those areas. As education improves, the social climate will improve, and those abandoned areas will become revitalized.

As Keahou says, there are indeed "so many practical issues to be considered".

So, to sum up, privatized education should be cheaper, more efficient, allow teachers to develop innovative techniques in an environment that will offer incentives for efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation, will encourage the revitalization of impoverished areas and increase the competitiveness of our children in the global market place by effectively raising their comprehensive abilities in reasoning skills (the foundation of math and the sciences.) Either that, or we can continue to squander money on the floundering system that we have now, where everybody recognizes that the emperor has no clothes, but love Obama too much to tell him. I wonder what practical considerations I'm leaving out? Well, I hope somebody will let me know so we can continue this discussion.