Words Matter In Making Kids Smarter

    The average SAT verbal test score peaked in 1967 and has never recovered.  Yes, it is true.  Your college-bound son is dumber than his predecessor who drag-raced his Pontiac GTO on Saturday nights.  All of the excuses that have been made to rationalize lower SAT verbal scores have been debunked.

    Writing in the Winter 2013 issue of “City Journal”, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., a professor emeritus in education at the University of Virginia and the founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation, offers an explanation of lower SAT verbal scores in his essay, “A Wealth of Words.”  I recently read in the “Wall Street Journal” that UVA boasts an 87% four-year graduation rate.  Therefore, I take Dr. Hirsch’s remarks seriously.

     Dr. Hirsch’s philosophy is that a strong vocabulary is all important when it comes to learning and intelligence.  He also stresses that the way we teach students to build a vocabulary has changed for the worse over the past fifty years.  Hence, the dumbing-down that we can no longer rationalize, or worse, ignore.

    In my experience, I have noticed that the first vocabulary a child learns is dependent on the local vernacular.  If you were raised in West Virginia, you probably learned that the grassy strip between divided highway lanes is the medium.  The correct word is median.  West Virginians have generally referred to the road shoulder as the berm.  No matter where one lives, the local vernacular has a strong influence on children.

    Once in school, a child begins to learn the English vocabulary.  This is a necessary step.  We need to learn the English vocabulary and its proper usage if we hope to communicate with people who live outside of our
neighborhoods.

    And then, we learn the vocabulary of our trade or profession.  From jargon to technical terms, every vocation has a specialized vocabulary.  “Stuff” and “things” might get you by for a while, but your job demands that you know specific words for specific objects or tasks.

    A doctor once told me that he counseled an illiterate, male patient who was suffering from spinal meningitis.  The patient later told his wife and family that the doctor told him he had “shinin’ mighty Jesus.”  The patient almost certainly recovered because he believed Jesus had intervened!

    Dare I digress to remind you of the importance of a second opinion?  

    We are well into the digital age.  We have Google.  Most likely, a math-brained nerd invented “google” thinking he wrote “goggle”.  Goggle, a wide-eyed stare, is what the nerd thought.  But to the nerd, a word
requires no etymology or derivation.  In the math brain, a word is nothing more than binary code, a unique set of 1s and 0s.  Google was born a bastard and will live and die a bastard.

    As a nation, we have two full generations who are deficient in vocabulary.  What will our nation’s future be if we have three such generations?  The world won’t end, obviously.  But society will regress.  How far we regress and the severity of regression cannot be predicted.

    In the not too distant future, I see our dumbing-down affecting even the BBC—the stalwart purveyor of classical English drama.  As the demand for shows like “Downton Abbey” and “Upstairs, Downstairs” dissipates because viewers can no longer comprehend the dialogue, the BBC will most likely be privatized.  New programming will be attuned to the digital age, not to the past. 

    “Upstairs, Downstairs” will be re-made.  The upstairs people will text the downstairs people for all their needs instead of ringing bells, or orally communicating their whims to the butler.  The downstairs people, of
course, will serve the upstairs people.  The sequel will be called “The Dumbwaiter of the Baskervilles.”

    I have always believed that the English language is civilization’s greatest achievement.  There is nothing to compare to it because it builds on the best words from all languages.  The British Empire was not shy about
Anglicizing foreign words.  For example, anglicize comes from the Latin “anglici.”

    As well, I have always been fascinated with words.  My aunt Mary, an English teacher, gave me a collegiate dictionary in 1962.  It served me well—I took the SAT in 1967.  My dictionary, now 50 and held together with duct tape, still sits on my desk.

    With a great English vocabulary, you can fully enjoy intercourse.  With the digital texting vocabulary taking over society?  Well, that’s just masturbation.  Or words to that effect.
   

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"A Wealth of Words", by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.:
www.city-journal.org/2013/23_1_vocabulary.html

West Virginia: Where All The Kids Really Are Above Average

Over the years, I have read the semi-annual postings of high school honor rolls with interest. Like you, perhaps, I look to see if anyone I know has made the grade. Occasionally, I notice clips about a local student making his or her college dean's list. It's nice to see youngsters doing so well.

But over the years, I have also noticed that the number of students making the honor roll or dean's list has increased far beyond a reasonable level. I define "reasonable" as being between one-in-eight (12.5 percent) and one-in-six (16.7 percent).

Before you criticize my stringency, consider that the education process is a game of skill. There is competition among students as well as competition against the machine — the memorization of empirical knowledge. The element of inter-student competition is critical to the learning process.

To determine a grade, we test the student. It's just like the game show Jeopardy — competition against the encyclopedia as well as between contestants.

As education is a game of skill, you have to look at the grading criteria with an oddsmaker's eye. What are the odds of a student making one A per semester? Then, what are the odds of a student making As in five disparate courses in one semester? The rules apply to Bs, Cs, and so on.

I have reviewed several high school honor roll lists and found that 45 percent to 50 percent of the students are making a 3.0 GPA or better. What are the odds that half the students in a given high school will make a 3.0 GPA?

This is easy to answer. Impossible. Unless you live in a fantasy world.

Years ago, I read about a West Virginia high school that had a dilemma. The school couldn't decide who to make class valedictorian because about a dozen graduating seniors had a perfect 4.0 GPA. I laughed, and I laughed. The school had a dilemma all right — a bunch of teachers and administrators who didn't realize the folly of their handing out easy As.

West Virginia students score poorly when compared to other American students in national tests. United States students are middle-of-the-pack average when compared to international students. Thus, we can imply that an honor roll student in West Virginia would most likely be an average student in Finland or one of the other five top-scoring nations.

Based on statistical analysis, the fact that half the student body makes the honor roll indicates that the curricula have been watered down. Based on anecdotal evidence, we have the examples of foreign exchange students who come here and find that they took all the advanced math and science courses that we offer to juniors and seniors by their sophomore years overseas.

I happen to believe that American kids are as smart as any kids on the planet. The fact that they have lousy test scores is the fault of the grown-ups. From top to bottom in the education hierarchy to home life and parenting, there is plenty of blame to go around. Unfortunately, the kids pay the price.

If you believe what you read in the newspapers, there is a movement afoot in West Virginia to reform the education system. Translation: The landscape will stay the same; turf battles will redistribute the goodies; our Hansels and Gretels will remain lost, just in a different part of the forest.

Before the powers that be reform the system, I would urge that they maintain the status quo. I look at the situation this way: In twenty more years, it is virtually guaranteed that nearly all of our public school teachers will be former high school honor roll graduates.

We're bound to have better schools if we stay the course. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if 80 percent of the student body in 2033 makes the honor roll.

Bridge Designer Earns Fitting Tribute

In recent years, our state has named bridges for people. Personally, I would never want a bridge named for me. When bad things happen to a bridge, the name sticks. Forever.

Do you remember the Silver Bridge? Or how about "Galloping Gertie"? You wouldn't remember them if they did not have names.

I can see the news report about my named bridge. "The David G. Allen Bridge collapsed today as a result of corrosion of the suspension cables caused by years and years of bird dropping accumulation. Engineers for the West Virginia Division of Highways reported that they believe Mr. Allen's middle name is ‘Guano.' A spokesman for the division said, ‘We thought it was a gesture of honor to name a guano-covered bridge after Mr. David Guano Allen for his past service as assistant highway commissioner.'"

After all these years of naming bridges for people, the state has finally gotten it right.

Recently, the Goff Plaza Bridge in Clarksburg was re-named for the late John C. Giese. Mr. Giese was a civil engineer who designed some 600 highway bridges in West Virginia during his six-decade career.

There is only one drawback in naming a bridge for Mr. Giese. The bar has now been set about a mile higher than anyone else can jump. So who do you honor from this point forward? For that matter, how do you reconcile the selection criteria for past honorees once John Giese's reputation enters the mix?

John Giese designed the Goff Plaza Bridge in the early 1980s. The bridge is a tribute to John's engineering skill as well as his common sense. The Goff Plaza Bridge represents the best mix of form and function that I have ever seen. John Giese did not design bridges to flatter his ego. He designed bridges that were uncomplicated and cost-efficient to build.

The original Goff Plaza Bridge was a long span over Elk Creek and its flood plain. When John was asked to submit a design to replace the bridge, he did what no other modern engineer would do. He proposed shortening the new bridge by half and building an earthen fill and roadway to span the void.

It's much cheaper to build an earth fill than it is to build a concrete and steel bridge. By doing this, John saved the taxpayers some $500,000. Perhaps the savings were even more. But you get the picture.

Of course, it follows that John got a smaller paycheck for his work. Engineering design fees are based on a project's cost. But that was John. Over the years, he saved us millions of dollars.

For a design engineer, John Giese had a remarkable keenness for understanding the construction process. When he designed a foundation slab, he understood that the major cost in pouring concrete is the labor needed to build forms and tie the reinforcing steel bars.

I used to enjoy watching John critique another engineer's fancy footer plans. He usually drew a rectangle around the whole footer area and would say, "Build it this way." Yes, his plan required more concrete. But the cost of extra concrete was always less than building complicated forms. Besides, more concrete makes a stronger foundation. Which is, after all, the purpose of the foundation.

John Giese never designed the biggest bridge in West Virginia. Nor the longest. Nor did he design bridges that appear on postage stamps and quarters. He designed the most important bridges — the ones that get you to and from your home every day.

He designed a lot of the bridges that we take for granted. And we'll always be able to take them for granted as long as the highway department inspects and maintains them.

For the record, I was assistant highway commissioner when the John Charles Giese Memorial Bridge was built. And my middle name is not Guano.

Justices shouldn't split hairs when it comes to the Constitution

I had a dream about the nine U. S. Supreme Court justices.

In my dream, all nine were young. Instead of going to law school, all nine enrolled at Georgetown Barber College. After graduation, all nine set up a barber shop in downtown Washington, D.C., where they worked harmoniously.

One day, I walked by their shop — the Supreme Barber Shop — and decided to go in. My hair had gotten too long; I needed a clip job.

I took a seat and waited for an open barber chair. Finally, John Roberts, the barber, said, "Next."

I told Roberts, the barber, "My hair is too long. I want you to cut off half of it."

"No problem." said Roberts, the barber.

He then split every hair on my head into two and clipped one of them. Half of my hair was cut but not quite the way I expected.

He beamed with pride over his clip job, and he held a mirror for me to see.

It was worse than a Donald Trump-style comb over.

The other eight barbers split hairs the same way, so you can't just blame Roberts, the barber.

Watch out for Georgetown Barber College alumni. And NEVER ask one of them for a shave!



The U.S. Constitution is not a complicated document to read. It is written in English, not Latin, nor any other dead language. But when you ask a judge to interpret what the Constitution says, you have to wonder if judges read off the same pages as do the rest of us.

In the recently decided Affordable Care Act case, the main issue had to do with the constitutionality of the individual mandate. The answer to the question as to whether the government can force individuals to buy health insurance could only be a simple yes or no.

Eight justices read the legislation. Eight justices read the Constitution. Eight justices could not agree on the answer. In fact, the best that they could do was end up diametrically opposed. Four justices emphatically voted "Yes." Four justices emphatically voted "No."

Enter Chief Justice John Roberts, the parser. Only Roberts, the parser, knew what Congress meant. Roberts, the parser, changed some words and declared the individual mandate to be constitutional.

Although Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia were on opposite sides of the debate, they joined together to confront Roberts, the parser, about his convoluted decision. Ginsburg and Scalia were furious, according to the law clerks I interviewed.

Roberts, the parser, told his detractors, "Mongo only pawn in game of life."

If our nation is to be governed by a written constitution, then the document should be easily understood by at least two-thirds of the governed. What good is a constitution if the people don't know what it means?

Historians will remember June 28, 2012, as the day when only one man in America understood the meaning of the Constitution, and further, that he had to re-define key words to make his explanation work.

Can two people really do the same job equally?

The Paycheck Fairness Act failed to advance in the U. S. Senate on June 5.  Proponents of the act said that it would allow equal pay for men and women doing the same work.  Opponents said the act just created more federal bureaucracy and more rules for businesses.

Most news reports declared Republicans defeated the legislation. That is incorrect. The vote taken was for or against:  On Cloture on the Motion to Proceed (Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to Consider S. 3220).  Fifty Democrats and two Independents voted "aye."  Forty six Republicans and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., voted "Nay."  Invoking cloture requires a three-fifths majority, or 60 votes.

Before the votes were cast, everyone on Capitol Hill knew the following:

• All Democrats would vote "Aye"
• Both Independents would vote "Aye"
• All Republicans would vote "Nay"
• Majority Leader Reid would first vote "Aye" and then change his vote to "Nay" as a procedural method to bring the vote up again if he so desires.

Yes, this was another episode of election year politics. Tune in next time to see if Mr. Smith goes to Washington to filibuster the Paycheck Fairness Act!

It has always been my observation that no two people actually do the same work. Thus, "equal pay for equal work" is a sophism — an intentional fallacy.

I took Typing I in high school. I was one of two boys in the class. As I struggled to type 50 words per minute using a manual typewriter, there were a dozen girls who were typing at 90 words per minute.

If my classmates and I had been paid by the job classification "Typist," I would have loved paycheck fairness. The girls would have screamed, no doubt. If we had been paid based on productivity, then I would have been the one screaming.

Forty years ago, there were numerous sewing plants scattered throughout Appalachia. The plants had two things in common. All of the seamstresses were women. All were paid by piecework. 

When I was in college, I interviewed seamstresses at a rural Virginia sewing plant for an economics study. What surprised me the most was that the women preferred piecework compensation to an hourly wage. Regardless of their individual outputs, they believed they earned much more by the piecework method. And it did not bother them at all that some women sewed faster and, thus, made more money. 

It's one thing to pay people a wage based on job classification. It's quite another to pay them based on individual production or quality of work. Wages based on job classification merely hides the fact that no two workers produce equally. 

Your local fast food restaurant hires many burger flippers. It goes without saying that the best burger flippers (male or female) are scheduled to work the lunch trade. Lesser flippers, like "Lefty" (so named because of his nose-picking habit), are relegated to the slow shifts. 

If all of the burger flippers are paid the same hourly rate based on job classification, then the best of the lot are penalized to pay for the Lefties of this world. 

When I was in high school, Miss Pearl Custer ran the office almost by herself. She had an electric typewriter, a nice calculator and the help of female students who would volunteer to work in her office during their free periods.

Miss Custer ran a tight ship; she was not known to make mistakes.

Miss Custer retired after I graduated. Later on, I asked Mr. Jim Bennett, the school's principal, what it was like trying to replace Miss Custer. His answer: "It took three people and a computer." (He did not elaborate as to their gender or pay.)

I should mention that my high school enrolled about 1,000 students.

I have never met two people who perform equally in a given task.  On the other hand, everyone that I have met does have a knack for doing something very well. 

Consider these lyrics from the 1946 song "Choo, Choo, Ch' Boogie":

    You take your morning paper from the top of the stack / And read the situation from the front to the back.
    The only job that's open needs a man with a knack. / So put it right back in the rack, Jack!

According to the news reports that I read, the Paycheck Fairness Act does not apply to the federal government.  Maybe it would be a good idea for the feds to do a five-year test drive of the Act.  Then we, the people who can't do anything right on our own, would know whether it works or not

Even George Orwell Couldn't Have Anticipated Facebook's Draw

    George Orwell’s novel, “1984”, introduced the telescreen, a two-way video device that the government used to completely control society. The telescreen was a camera that spied on citizens.  The telescreen was also a television that broadcast government-approved propaganda.  Telescreens were everywhere in fictional Oceania.

    The telescreen seems like quaint science fiction now.  But in 1948, the year the novel was published, the telescreen was a terrifying concept.  At the time, there were about 44,000 television sets in America, and three-fourths of them were in New York City.

    When I first read “1984”, the concept of the telescreen was no surprise.  What did pique my curiosity about the book was how a society would let itself be ruled by the telescreen.  Why didn’t the citizens of Oceania simply smash the telescreens? 

    To be sure, George Orwell wrote a fascinating novel.  But truth is stranger than fiction.  Orwell, on his most creative day, could never have foretold of a powerful public official named Weiner exposing himself to the telescreen.  You just can’t make that up!

    To a lesser degree than that of the New York Weiner, 900 million other people expose themselves daily on Facebook and Twitter.  They say:  “Look at me!”  “Read my thoughts!”  “I fear not the telescreen!”

    Facebook and Twitter are not the telescreen that Orwell envisioned.  But they are the state of the art in evolving telescreen technology.  Telescreen technology has come a long way from the first RCA television and Ma Bell’s party line telephone system.  The telescreen has also come a long way from MySpace and AOL’s instant messaging.

    Orwell also coined “Newspeak”, the heartless, soulless vocabulary approved by Oceania’s totalitarian regime.  While the telescreen caused people to live in fear, it was Newspeak that bankrupted Oceania’s citizenry of thoughts and emotions.

    Are we not also embracing Newspeak?  Facebook and Twitter are defined as “social media.”  I don’t know what “social media” means.  But it sure sounds like zombie phrase turning. 

    Social media is a glorified term for “Reply All.”  It sounds absolutely Utopian.  It is narcissism.  It is the pond into which we look for our own reflection.  And it is a perfect mirror until an interloper enters the chat screen.

    When that interloper appears, he or she must be removed.  Or rather in social media speak, the interloper is unfriended.

    Unfriend.  What a heartless, soulless word.  Orwell, on his most creative day, could never have coined “unfriend.”

    May 18, 2012 was an important date in history.  Investors spent $100 billion buying Facebook stock—the largest IPO ever. 
   
    The Wall Street experts said in unison—groupthink to Orwell—that Facebook will have to sell more advertising to justify its stock price.  Left unsaid was the valuation of Facebook’s most important asset—your personal information which you freely gave the company.

    The investors who spent $100 billion are not banking on more ad sales.  The investors are betting on the power of the telescreen to collect even more personal information.

    George Orwell believed that only a Fascist regime armed with guns and spies could dominate a country like Oceania.  Orwell’s premise was grounded in Fascist rule of Germany and Italy in the 1930s.  Hitler and Mussolini, both murdering thugs, were role models for Oceania’s Fascists.

    Now we see that Orwell’s premise was wrong.  You don’t need guns or thugs to interrogate the minds of a people.   Give the proles their moments of vanity in front of the telescreen, and they will tell you everything. 

    Many of you will say that I am overreacting.  And that would appear to be true for the present.  You don’t fear the telescreen; you don’t fear the people who own your information.  For now at least.

    We are simply in a lull.  So much information has been collected so quickly, that no one has had the time to sort it out and figure out how to use it.  But the day is coming that the geeks will profile you accurately.

    In the future—we don’t know when—the question facing you is this:  What will you do, and how far will you go to avoid the thing you fear the most—unfriending?

    In this regard, Orwell had the ending right.

Carmen Sandiego’s Secret Hideout Was In Clarksburg

I just love our computer age and how people trust the Internet to provide infallible information.  I especially love how drivers trust the directions that float down from the map gods of cyberspace. 

Having been a reconnaissance platoon leader in the U. S. Army, I trust old-fashioned, paper maps.  If I want to travel from point A to point B, I look for a paper map to guide me.  I do not trust Internet maps.

Take my residence for example.  You cannot locate it by using MapQuest, Google or Yahoo.  Ever since MapQuest went online, the service has located my domicile about two miles south and west from its actual site to a spot on Old Davisson Run Road, a secondary road. 

I live on Davisson Run Road, the fast lane, state Route 98, also known as Clarksburg's South Bypass. So MapQuest performed bypass surgery and grafted me onto another neighborhood where, presumably, people live in the slow lane. Yahoo must rely on MapQuest, or the same source data, because it displays the same (wrong) map location.

Google, on the other hand, is the mother lode of all information. Google is infallible. Google has mapped the Earth and scanned every book published since Gutenberg's Bible. Google does not use the map god's directions.  Google is The God.

And so it is that Google, The God, points to my domicile as being located at 300 Davisson Run Road. Google even provides a street-level view of the entrance driveway.

Google goes the extra mile in its map search.  Google tells us that 500 Davisson Run Road is also located at the same spot as 300 Davisson Run Road. When I say that Google goes the extra mile, I mean this: 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, and even 1000 Davisson Run Road all show up at 300 Davisson Run Road.

But wait!  Reboot your computer, go back to Google, and search these addresses again.  On this go around, Google might point you to the same spot on Old Davisson Run that MapQuest and Yahoo point to.

You cannot get here from anywhere if you rely on the cyberspace map gods.

The best computer map story I have heard came from a nurse.  Her agency supplied her with a laptop and map software. One day, she had to drive from Shinnston to Smithburg.  Her laptop selected the shortest route which took her across Five Points hill, a place so-named because five county roads meet at the top of the hill.

Five Points is a place accessible usually by Jeep or Land Rover.  Fortunately for our nurse, her trusty sedan made it through, but at the cost of an extra hour driving time to save a few miles.

As smart as computers purport to be, they are illogical linear thinkers when it comes to routing a trip.  Why?  Because computer programmers are illogical linear thinkers. 

A friend of mine who trusts his OnStar recently took a scenic, backroads trip from Ithaca, N.Y., to Rochester.  I would have looked at a road map and opted to drive to Elmira and then follow Interstate 86 and Interstate 390 to Rochester. 

Just for kicks, I asked Google for directions from Elmira to Rochester.  Google, The God, ignored the Interstate 86 routing because it was several miles longer than backcountry New York Route 14 to Watkins Glen and along Seneca Lake.

When I travel, I know that Interstates are the fastest way regardless of mileage.  If I have time to sightsee, then I will do a map recon. In this regard, I am like John Travolta as "Michael" when he detoured to see the world's biggest ball of twine. 

Now that's a real map quest!

If you are looking for Carmen Sandiego, she has gone.  I will miss her as she has been a good tenant.  But she had insisted on a lease clause that allowed her to terminate should I ever divulge the secret nature of 640 Davisson Run Road, and by extension, Carmen's sublet.

"Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?" went off the air a year or so before 640 Davisson Run Road was built, and the U.S. Postal Service provided it with a street address instead of a rural route and box number.  That's when Carmen showed up and why you haven't found her since.

Carmen, best wishes in finding your new safe house.  Let me know when you are settled in, and I will forward your security deposit.