Steven Pinker is Half-Right on Education

Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker is a standout contributor to our national dialogue. When Pinker talks, people listen. What he says about Harvard’s once-in-a-generation review of its course structure is important.

And what he says tells us a lot about our intellectual elite and the way they experience the world—and more crucially how they impress their opinions on the rest of us.

Pinker looks at the university’s “Report of the Committee on General Education” and finds a couple of problems. First of all he doesn’t like the tone of the committee’s approach to Science and Technology, and secondly he doesn’t like the approach to Reason and Faith.

On Science and Technology he worries about the introduction:

“Science and technology directly affect our students in many ways, both positive and negative.”

Well yes, life-saving medicines and nuclear weapons, “and I suppose one could say that architecture has produced both museums and gas chambers.”

To Pinker, the committee is missing the point.

Missing from the report is a sensitivity to the ennobling nature of knowledge: to the inherent value, with consequences too far-reaching to enumerate, of understanding how the world works. For one thing, it is a remarkable fact that we have come to understand as much as we do about the natural world: the history of the universe and our planet, the forces that make it tick, the stuff we’re made of, the origin of living things, and the machinery of life, including our own mental life.

Exactly, Dr. Pinker. The knowledge we have gathered in the last couple of centuries about the natural world is nothing short of miraculous. And the more we know, the more mysterious the universe appears.

But Pinker is also worried about the juxtaposition of Reason and Faith.

[T]he juxtaposition of the two words makes it sound like “faith” and “reason” are parallel and equivalent ways of knowing, and we have to help students navigate between them. But universities are about reason, pure and simple. Faith — believing something without good reasons to do so — has no place in anything but a religious institution, and our society has no shortage of these.

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Religion is an important force, to be sure, but so are nationalism, ethnicity, socialism, markets, nepotism, class, and globalization.

Oh dear, Dr. Pinker. The reason that reason and faith are juxtaposed is because they are a Yin and Yang: the “Is” and the “Ought,” the facts and the meaning of the facts.

It’s all very well to amass a pile of facts about the world, but what do they mean? And what do we do about it? Faith or Religion is the process by which we breathe meaning into facts and form a judgment about “what is to be done.”

In fact, we can never “know” what is to be done. Everything about the future is uncertain, and that uncertainty is encapsulated in the findings of Kant that we cannot prove the existence of God, nor can we prove the non-existence of God. Similarly in the twentieth century, Kurt Gödel came up with his incompleteness theorem that states that the consistency of the axioms (the givens) in a system cannot be proved within the system.

That means that in order to prove the validity of the axioms of a system you must build a bigger system that tests the axioms of the smaller system. And so on.

Humans have come up with an ingenious system to deal with this radical uncertainty: Faith. We live out our lives on faith, assuming that certain things are true even though we can’t prove them to be true.

And even more radically, we have faith in reason. Why should reason and the application of reason in science be absolutely true? All we know is that reason works, provided it is confirmed by experiment, in all the science we have done thus far.

Reason is a very human tool for living in the world. How do we know that it is universal? We don’t. We just have faith in it.

James Webb's Class War

In his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Democratic Senator-elect James Webb gives us a look at the Democratic class warfare of the future.

The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century.

When did Democrats ever stop worrying about inequality? Please, Mr. Webb.

And what’s all this about a class-based society? The 19th century was characterized by remarkable increase in population and wages among working people. And this unprecendented increase in the prosperity of ordinary people was founded upon the breakthrough achievements of businessmen in railroads, steamships, steel production, and oil extraction.

Those businessmen had names like Rockefeller, son of a snake-oil salesman, Carnegie, son of a hand-loom weaver, Stevenson, engine-man at a coal-mine, Brunel, son of an engineer. Not very elite, I’d say.

So why are you claiming that the 19th century was class-based, Mr. Webb? Did you mean that many of the discoveries and developments were made by men of very humble origin?

James Webb blames the nation’s elite for the inequality, and it is clear he blames the business elite rather than the educational, cultural, or political elite. They just don’t get the point of the deepening divide.

When I raised this issue with corporate leaders during the recent political campaign, I was met repeatedly with denials, and, from some, an overt lack of concern for those who are falling behind. A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation's most fortunate.

They live in a different world, you see.

Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars.

To create a better world,

It should be the first order of business for the new Congress to begin addressing these divisions, and to work to bring true fairness back to economic life.

Well, that’s your opinon, senator-elect, and you are entitled to it.

But for my money, I would hesitate to blame the business elite. They’ve reformed and reengineered their businesses again and again. That is why the U.S. economy is the most productive in the world.

But then there’s the Democratic elite: politicians, educators, and cultural content producers. It is their program of the last 100 years to make everything fair that has ruined the working class and made tens of millions dependent on Big Government for their livelihood.

Why do the rich send their kids to private schools? Because the government’s school are no good. And whose fault is that?

Why have the corporate pension plans collapsed? Because business and labor looted the corporations that promised the benefits and government stood by and let them do it.

Why are Americans losing their jobs to illegal immigrants? Because Democratic politicians and activists have prevented the enforcement of the immigration laws, thus making illegal immigration highly profitable.

Over the last century, Democrats have played a fine game, complaining about the results of their own policies and blaming it all on somebody else.

We are not going to let you do it this time, Senator-elect. It is people like you, with your cheap class-warfare rhetoric that are the problem, not the solution.

Baby-Boomers Break the Budget

What will happen as the baby boom generation retires? Will they break the budget and saddle Gen X and Y with enormous taxes and debt?

Or will the taxpayers of the era just say no?

Richard Fairbanks and Paul S. Hewitt rehearse the gloomy predictions.

Say what you will about global warming or Iraq, over the next generation no trend will more directly shape the substance of American politics than the looming self-impoverishment of legions of middle-aged, middle-class voters.

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As recently as 2004, one-third of Baby Boomers had no financial assets.

The startling thing is that the largest share of the Baby Boomer retirement costs will be in Medicare and Medicaid:

Of projected new spending on the aged, $3 in every $4 will be in the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

No doubt it is there that the government will try to economize. Especially if the Democrats succeed in nationalizing health care. No doubt it won’t be much fun being a health care professional.

Of course, what will happen is that the health care professionals will unionize and demand to be well-paid for doing not very much.

Goodness knows what that will do to the federal budget.

And goodness knows what that will do to the well-being of the aged.

The Boxed-in Democrats

When they were in opposition in Congress the Democrats opposed, ferociously. Now they are the majority, committed to increase subsidies for the already subsidized in education and health care, as provided in their New Direction for America.

But will their instinct to increase the welfare state be possible? Michael Barone has his doubts.

In their hearts, most elected Democrats would like to move us some distance closer to a European-style welfare state -- slouching toward Scandinavia, some conservatives might call it.

But they probably won’t be able to do so, at least not very much.

They want to increase the minimum wage, but very few people work at the minimum wage. They could increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, but they have kinda boxed themselves in with a “pay-go” rule that prevents tax cuts unless they are balanced by spending cuts.

Then there’s the Alternative Minimum Tax that is unindexed for inflation and deliciously hurts the rich, but hurts the liberal rich in blue states more than the conservative rich in red states.

Former Clinton aides like Gene Sperling are concerned about the insecurity felt by many workers. Yet the security offered by mid-twentieth century corporations isn’t likely to be on offer. Instead Sperling

is for a "universal 401(k)," which would give all workers tax-sheltered savings accounts, funded by employers and employees.

That sounds rather like President Bush’s reform of Social Security, that “Democrats scorned.”

Republicans may be downhearted at their mid-term losses, but more important than Republican positive self-esteem is national hygiene.

And national hygiene demands that Democrats stop opposing and start proposing. The problem is that first of all they have to break out of the box they have put themselves in.

Are The French Toast Yet?

Is Europe toast, or merely warming up the toaster? Mark Steyn has advanced the theory that the lack of heat between the matrimonial sheets (indeed the lack of any matrimonial sheets) in Europe and the demographic deficit in Eurobabies pretty much defines Europe as over, unless. But it’s a pretty big Unless.

Ralph Peters isn’t buying the Steyn gloom-and-doom. Europe has done a pretty good job in the past of euthanizing problematic populations, he writes.

This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebrenica.

Yes, but what have they done for us lately?

We need to differentiate between the articulate elite, the one that we read and hear because they are the people who write and talk. They are the people who can get up and leave Europe if things get too tough on the Muslim front.

But the ordinary European cannot up and quit. And it is their rage and hate that would fuel any anti-Muslim cleansing. But will they fight?

An early indication should be the French presidential election in 2007. It was six years ago that Jean-Marie Le Pen came an unexpected second in the French presidential election. At that time the reaction of the bien pensant was shock and amazement.

But this time the nationalist banner has been raised by the current interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy. That means that the Muslim problem will actually get a voice from one of the respectable parties.

As the riot of soccer hooligans in Paris after the defeat of Paris Saint-Germain by an Israeli team shows, there are plenty of young French men spoiling for a fight: with Jews, black, Muslims, whoever.

Fortunately the French government is going to “eradicate violence from the stadiums.”

"We do not want racists in stadiums any more, Nazi salutes, monkey noises. Football is not war."

So that’s all right.

The results of the French election should tell us a lot about the future of Europe.

RMC Third World Index

As you travel around the world how do you tell if you are in a Third World country or not?

It’s a ticklish question and a challenging one. But here at the Road to the Middle Class we have devised the RMC Third World Index so you can tell immediately where you are.

It is simple really. As you drive along, check the side of the road. Are there any tracks winding into the fields or the bush, tracks that look like they are used by foot traffic or by bicycles?
If there are, then you are in the Third World, because the tracks mean that the country still has subsistence agriculture where people walk to and from the fields, and may live in a village inaccessible to four-wheeled traffic.

You can see these tracks in China and India. And you can see them in the Kingdom of Cambodia, where Lady Marjorie and I just visited.

But you do not see them in Thailand. There are no traditional agricultural villages left in Thailand; the agriculture is machine-powered. Even in the tribal villages up in the north of Thailand in the national parks the villagers drive to their rice fields on their Honda 100cc motorcycles.

So as you drive by Thai farms on Thailand’s excellent highways, the farms look like they could almost be in the United States. Farm yards are stocked with tractors and with trucks. Just like you’d expect to see in the good old USA.

Clamber over Angkor Wat, While You Still Can

SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA —
You haven’t lived until you have seen the gigantic rush hours at Siem Reap, the closest town to the monster palace and temple complex at Angkor Wat.

In 2005 they booked 1.5 million visitors to Angkor Wat, and this year they are predicting 2 million.

In consequence the sleepy village of Siem Reap has got itself an airport with a spanking new international terminal, and a permanent construction zone in which over 80 tourist hotels have been built in the last few years.

When the tourists are heading out of their hotels for the temple complex at 8:30 am, you can visualize the torrent of buses and Toyota mini-vans.

And when the tourists get to the ruins... Prepare to be shocked.

We westerners, trained to worship the environment before we even get out of diapers, expect to be firmly roped off from fragile ruins.

In our US National Parks we are used to the slow and relentless project to confine us to the road, or the trail, or the bus. Because if we stepped off the trail we would irreversibly damage the fragile ecology—of the alpine meadow, or the arid desert, or the cultural heritage of the adobe village—and that would never do.

But not at Angkor Wat. At least not yet.

They do have ropes up to stop you from fingering the amazing 150 foot long bas-relief of the monkey god Hanuman’s battle with the demon king.

But you can clamber over pretty well everything else, at least for now.

You’d better get on an airplane and get out here real soon. Because the euro-snots will pretty soon decide that ordinary people need to be kept off the sacred precincts—where only accredited researchers ought to tread.