Phonics Wins in Britain

In case you were worrying, here’s some good news. The Brits just decided to give up on progressive reading programs and mandate the teaching of “synthetic phonics” in the nation’s schools from age 5.

And think. It’s only 30 years since British Prime Minister Callaghan

highlighted the “unease felt by parents and others about the new informal methods of teaching” in his 1976 speech calling for a “great debate” on education.

So that’s all right then. Hey, here in the United States our progressive educators have been pushing “whole language” reading methods for over a century.

But it’s been a long fight to get the Brits back to sanity. The educational establishment fought against phonics tooth and nail. The teachers boycotted testing for eleven years, so it was only in 1995 that national tests exposed “massive levels of illiteracy.”

In 1997 New Labour failed to push for real reform in reading, allowing schools to choose between four reading methods. So another ten years slid by while nothing was done.

The present change in policy is being driven by

the results of a seven-year project in Clackmannanshire, which taught all children using synthetic phonics throughout primary school. When they were tested at age 11, they were three years ahead of their contemporaries across Scotland.

Think of that, mothers of America. How would you like your children to be taught with trendy “child centered” methods and end up three years behind the kids being taught the right way. How, as the saying goes, does that make you feel?

The question that all thoughtful Americans must ask is why? Why has this folly gone on for so long? Why have the schools of education hung onto these trendy child-centered educational methods in the teeth of evidence that they don’t work?

The answer is, I think, that teaching kids the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic is just flat out hard work. So the education establishment keeps coming up with new ways to make schooling less stressful and more interesting—for teachers.

Advice to the Ankle-biters

Many on the right have criticised the president for not doing enough to maintain support for the war in Iraq. Maybe they are right.

But maybe it is better for the president to wait until his opposition attacks before responding with a counterattack.

Suppose he had spent the whole of the last year making speeches on the progress in the war. Why then his opponents would be accusing him of hyping progess, and the Bush Lied folks would be parsing everything he said and would be writing about how on September 17th there really weren’t 95 Iraqi battalions ready for combat but only 87. And that would prove that Bush’s “credibility” was destroyed. And therefore we should bring the troops home.

In any war there are ups and downs. In any war there are horrible mistakes and miscues. In any war you can make a case for disaster any time up to the final battle. In any war there is always a case to be made that the whole thing has been mismanaged from the start, that the leaders didn’t have a clue, that they went in without a plan, that the military contractors are fleecing the government, that the army is broken, that the generals are fools.

In any war there will always be the Falstaffs, whining before the battle in Henry IV Part 1, “I would ’twere bedtime, Hal, and all well.” Do not we all wish that secretly in our hearts?

So the best strategy for the president is probably to keep quiet most of the time and round on his critics, as he did on Wednesday, when they present him with a favorable opportunity for a skirmish.

The best strategy for the Democrats is to keep up the ankle-biting. With their constant carping they have succeeded in eating away at the president’s popularity, and they have kept their left-wing crazies home. If things go south, they can say: “We told you so.” If things go well, they can tell a war-weary nation that it is time for a change.

Of course, that would be dishonorable. But as Falstaff says:

What is honor? A word. What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon.

Who needs it?

Why GM Failed

The great achievement of General Motors, writes Robert Samuelson, was to figure out a way to build not just one car for everyman, as Henry Ford had done with the Model T, but to build a whole range of cars for every price and taste. General Motors did this, under the leadership of Alfred P. Sloan,

by decentralizing operations (production, distribution) for various products among separate divisions while centralizing policy matters (personnel, finance) at the top.

This strategy worked wonders, at first. But over the years General Motors allowed its costs to increase and it stopped building cars that got people excited and for which it could charge premium prices. Sloan forsaw this problem:

too much success could be fatal. It might dull "the urge for competitive survival," which is "the strongest of all economic incentives." Companies might fail "to recognize advancing technology or altered consumer needs."

In today’s business world, the emphasis is on change, recognizing the “strategic inflection points,” in the words of former Intel CEO Andrew Grove. Its basic reality is a world of change that a business has to ride or fall off. General Motors was built to manage change. Intel is built to respond to change.

General Motors looks like it may go bankrupt. Intel is going from strength to strength.

But really, there is nothing shameful about going out of business. Every business does it, eventually. The day will come when an old and tired Intel will head for the exit, perhaps in a maelstrom of debt and bankruptcy just like today’s auto industry. That’s life.

Having It Both Ways

You’ve got to hand it to veteran Democrats like Washington’s own Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA). After the vote in the House of Representatives a week ago in which the Democrats decided not to vote for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, he allowed as how the whole war was a mistake.
Quoted in The Seattle Times:

Dicks now says it was all a mistake — his vote, the invasion, and the way the United States is waging the war.

But Dicks isn’t calling for an immediate pullout. Nor is he even calling for a pullout in six-months, which is the modified proposal from John Murtha (D-PA). Oh no.

While he disagrees with Murtha’s conclusion that U.S. troops should be withdrawn within six months, Dicks said, "He may well be right if this insurgency goes much further."

But if Dicks voted against an immediate pullout, and he disagrees with Murtha’s six-month timetable, then he is more or less in agreement with the Bush administration policy that troops will be withdrawn as and when the Iraqi security forces are capable of taking over.

Presumably the Bush plan is that some time in January, after the Iraqi elections and after a new Iraqi prime minister is chosen, the Iraqis will formally request that the US will start withdrawing troops.

Oh good. That means we are all in agreement. Except that Democrats like Norm Dicks maintain that the whole thing was a mistake, and that knowing what he knows now he would never have voted for the war in the first place.

Another way of looking at the Iraq “mess” is from the perspective of the Iranian Amir Taheri. He reckons that the US policy, to hand Iraq back to the Iraqis, is on track. To hand back Iraq to the Iraqis has taken several steps:

The first objective, to bring down Saddam, was achieved in three weeks.

The next objective was to break the apparatus of oppression created by the Ba’ath. Despite some residual problems, this, too, has been achieved.

Another objective: Break Saddam’s war machine, which had been used against Iraq’s neighbors as well as Iraq’s Kurds and Shiites. After just three years, nothing is left of that infernal machine.

The formation of the Governing Council represented the first step toward restoring Iraqi sovereignty. Next came the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, in June 2004.

That was followed by the formation of an interim government, a series of municipal elections, a general election leading to the formation of Iraq’s first pluralist government, the writing of a new constitution and a referendum to get it approved.

The next item on the checklist is the general election set for Dec. 15.

And the first thing that the new Iraqi government will do in February, Taheri writes, will be to negotiate the withdrawal of coalition troops.

Presumably, Congressman Norm Dicks could agree with that. Even though he maintains that the whole Iraq adventure has been a complete mistake.

McCain without a McClue on Economic Policy

Over the years Republicans and conservatives have wondered about Senator John McCain. Who is he and where does he stand on economic policy?

That was what Stephen Moore has been wondering too. “Just who is John McCain, and what is his economic philosophy?” That’s what he wondered as he headed in for an interview with the senator.

I mean, if you are a Republican in the post-Reagan era there is a presumption that you have internalized the lesson of Reaganomics, the idea that you grow the economy by lowering tax rates and encouraging across-the-board business growth. And there is a presumption that you have turned away from the Democratic recipe of targeted privilege and subsidy.

But John McCain has always seemed to act against the Republican grain. First, he was involved in the S&L scandal, the only Republican in the Keating Five that carred water for Charles Keating, the corrupt S&L official. That raised a huge question mark, not just about McCain’s probity but about his common sense. What Republican would want to carry water for an official in a notoriously government-favored (and Democrat sponsored) industry and that was known to be in trouble since the late 1970s?

Then he’s been a thorn in the side of President Bush and was the co-author of the monstrous McCain Feingold bill to limit campaign speech.

So here is what Moore found out about McCain’s economic philosophy. Said McCain:

"I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."

In case you were wondering, McCain was for years chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce,
Science, and Transportation.

Isn’t it getting a little past time for McCain to complete his economics education?

Rachel's Story

Suppose you had been brutally raped back in 2002. Suppose you had battled back and had confidently faced your attacker in court, had testified and sent him to jail.

Suppose you had written an article about your experience and now, finally, here it was, published in Marie Claire on July 7, 2005.

So here you are, riding in the London Tube on the way to work, reading your story in a women’s magazine at about 9:00 am, heading out of Kings Cross station when all of a sudden:

I felt rather than heard an explosion; it was as if I had been punched violently in both ears. The world went as black as if I had been plunged deep underwater.

Well, it’s a survival story, the story of Rachel North, rape victim and terror victim, but none the less compelling for that.

And it is a reminder that we are heading out of a curiously tranquil era in western history when nothing really happened.

But now we are going back into the real world, the world no longer of equable reason, of kindliness and due process and people dying peacefully in their beds. We are returning to the real world of life and death, of the dark chthonic forces that dwell in the ravines between the ethereal peaks of sublime exaltation, of populations on the move, of the clash of civilizations, of religious wars, of heroism and victory, of shame and defeat.

It is a world that has been there all along. Only we chose not to see it.

Keeping the Home Computers Burning

The Brits are having a spot of winter weather right now, what they call “snow chaos.” That is British understatement to describe road conditions where 1,000 cars have been temporarily stranded by five inches of snow in Cornwall.

But Vicki Woods is worrying about the home computers. What happens if the power goes out and there is no power for any of the vital home appliances. Like showers.

My husband observed that the shower wouldn’t work if the electricity went down. The shower? What was he on about? "You chose, if you remember, a power shower. What do you think ‘power’ means?"

Yes, it always comes as a shock when the power goes out. It is even more of a shock to learn that the Brits have jumped from claw-footed bathtubs to power showers in one giant leap. But then Ms. Woods starts to worry about the really important things, like how are we going to keep all the computers running when the power goes out? Time to look for a generator.

The one I liked best was a tidy little yellow object the size of a hat-box, costing £249 ($400). I liked it mostly because it promised "running time approx 10 hours", which would do me nicely if the house was plunged into darkness at three in the afternoon.

The chap down at the pub thought that was the funniest thing he’d heard all week. A little thing like that wouldn’t be able to do anything, let alone power the Woods’server farm.

"You’d be looking at - ooh, what? £500 ($900) down for a serious piece of kit that’ll do all your computers, and all you’ll need then is a gizmo that...

Yes, it’s great fun on a dark November evening to get all snuggled up next to a roaring fire and tap humorous articles about what to do when the power goes out.

But imagine the “scrum” (another classic British word) at the superstore when everyone and his brother are rushing out to buy themselves a generator! How big would it have to be to run the computers, the home theater, the microwave, the power shower, and a light or two?