This week, Harvard Law School announced a new policy meant to bribe its students to choose careers in government or other forms of “public service.” Concerned over the low percentage (barely 10%) of graduates who choose to go to work as public defenders, prosecutors, or legal aid attorneys, the nation’s second-ranked law school (yeah, Yale still wins) decided to offer free third year tuition for any student who commits to five years of government or non-profit work, shunning the big bucks at the big firms. The saving in tuition fees for a full year of Harvard Law would typically amount to more than $40,000 – a tempting offer to some future legal eagles, no doubt. Elena Kagan, dean of the Law School, estimates that the new policy will likely cost Harvard some $3,000,000 a year, while providing only the intangible benefits of encouraging more “idealism” among the hard-grinding student body. 

With its legendarily lavish endowment, Harvard can certainly afford to give some third year law students a big break, and the university has every right to encourage its graduates to pursue careers deemed more valuable to society. Nevertheless, the new offer reveals one of the crucial mistakes of leftist thinking: the unquestioned (and, in some circles, unquestionable) assumption that government work is always and invariably more valuable than work in the private sector. 

Harvard obviously assumes that taking a job in some legal aid society, suing landlords or employers or polluters or some other designated “bad guys,” will benefit society more reliably than taking a job at a big firm and earning big money. But the corporate job will generate more tax revenue – and may well assist job-creating, wealth-producing businesses that help the community at large. Moreover, if a young man or woman comes out of law school and gets a well-paying job in the corporate world, that new attorney will bring himself or herself that much closer to the ability to start and support a family.  

It doesn’t take much imagination to think of government bureaucrats (at federal, state or local levels) whose work serves to impoverish people and to impede wealth creation, rather than enriching the larger community. Though it may sound like heresy to Harvard, there are government jobs that hardly deserve encouragement or subsidy. 

The instinctive assumption that students who select “public service” are better, more noble, and more worthy of reward than those who choose corporate work represents one of the false, dysfunctional values too often transmitted along with an Ivy League education. 

Nearly forty percent of all elementary and high school students in the US already receive government funded lunches, but school administrators say that’s not enough! They want to remove the stigma in getting free meals, swelling the ranks of federally fed students above today’s 31 million, and increasing annual costs beyond the $8.3 billion we spend today. Bureaucrats across the country told the New York Times they want to destroy the natural – and appropriate – embarrassment many kids feel about getting taxpayer funded meals while their friends buy their own food. Officials in New York say “more eligible students would eat if all school cafeterias offered free meals to everyone, regardless of economic status.” If government feeds all kids for free, then why should any mom take the time and trouble to pack lunch for her offspring? The inexorable growth of “Nanny State” big government increasingly usurps the role of parents and inevitably weakens the importance of families.

A 2004 study shows that a conservative political outlook correlates with values most Americans consider beneficial for out kids.  UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute asked 15,000 college seniors across the country about their goals. The self-identified conservative kids gave top priority to “raising a family” and “doing very well financially.” Liberal students, on the other hand, stressed goals like “developing a meaningful philosophy of life,” “finding creative outlets,” and avoiding “structured work environments.”  When raising youngsters, most parents instinctively understand the importance of stressing values that this study clearly identifies as conservative: deferred gratification, following rules, honoring the importance of family. Few families want kids to reject authority, stress indulgence over success, or concentrate on philosophical exploration rather than hard work. In other words, most of us understand conservative values work better for kids. It stands to reason that that the conservative outlook that generates those values will work better for society as a whole.

The recent school shootings in Cleveland carry several important lessons. Like the previous horrors at Virginia Tech, this sad incident shows that even good schools can’t always redeem deeply troubled kids. Our emphasis on more educational spending, or small classes, or other forms of school reform can’t always make up for dysfunctional homes or student mental illness. The 14-year-old Cleveland shooter, Asa Coon, suffered on both counts and had compiled a recent record of violence, threats, suicide attempts and abuse that should have brought him to a youth prison or psychiatric hospital long before the rampage that wounded two teachers and two fellow students. As with the Virginia Tech mass murderer, it’s amazing that authorities failed to take decisive and preventive action in view of all the warning signs of menace and madness. We’ve gone much too far in placing the personal rights of terribly sick people above the welfare and safety of their colleagues and neighbors.

   Three organizations with impeccable liberal credentials sponsored the most celebrated major national survey about parental attitudes toward sex education. National Public Radio, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and the Kaiser family foundation asked parents in 2004 whether sex education classes should include information about homosexuality. More than half of the respondents wanted schools to mention homosexuality “without discussing whether it is wrong or acceptable.” At the same time, only 8% of the parents of high school students and a mere 4% of middle school kids supported the idea that “schools should teach that homosexuality is acceptable.” Since the survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 6%, it’s entirely possible that the percentage of middle school parents who want their kids informed that “it’s okay to be gay” is, actually, zero.

   But despite the fact that parents across the country overwhelmingly (almost unanimously, in fact) oppose the idea of pro-gay propaganda in schools, their kids are receiving precisely that sort of message. Recent controversies in Washington, DC and Montgomery County, Maryland, center on curricula that include the information that “many people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender celebrate their self discovery.” Some fourteen years ago, New York City schools launched the infamous “Rainbow Curriculum” for kids as young as kindergarten that featured the book “Heather Has Two Mommies,” which definitely conveyed an embracing, accepting message toward homosexuality.

   The fact that school districts everywhere move forward with such lessons, despite the obvious and sometimes fervent opposition of nearly all parents, illustrates one of the most disquieting accepts of contemporary American life.

   On a range of issues, ordinary Americans have begun to feel that their opinions and wishes don’t matter: big institutions and arrogant elites will do things their way, regardless of the wishes of the people. Increasingly, middle class citizens feel powerless, ignored, disregarded.

    The continued and unstoppable moves to undermine the traditional family (how many Americans actually support the idea that a third of all babies are now born outside of marriage?) provide one obvious example, but there are many others.

    On the immigration issue, everyone wants to see vastly improved security at the border and the speedy construction of the fence, but the government seems unable or unwilling to respond to this reasonable and overwhelming public desire.

     Every year in April, we groan and sweat under the mind-numbing complexities and crushing burdens of an irrational, incomprehensible tax system, but it only seems to get more complicated and annoying, no matter which party controls Congress.

    Time and again, citizens tell pollsters that they resent the corruption in Washington, the power of lobbies and corporate interests and the domination of big money in politics, but each election cycle we appear to see a process more out of reach for the little guy. We also feel disgusted with government waste and runaway spending – even welfare state liberals say they hate the idea of “pork”. Yet both major parties continue the disgusting practice or ripping off the public treasury for “goodies” that may deliver votes back home.

    These frustrations help to explain other polling data that show majorities of more than three-to-one who believe the nation is headed down “the wrong track.” This negativity co-exists with remarkably high satisfaction levels about our individual lives. A new Harris Poll released this week showed a startling 94% who say they’re satisfied with their personal situations, and a record 56% say “very satisfied.” By three to one, people believe their personal situation got better in the last five years (as opposed to worse) while by nine to one they think their lives will continue to improve in the next five years.

   If we think things are likely to get better for us, then how can we simultaneously suppose the nation’s on “the wrong track”?

   The answer, it seems to me, connects to this perception of powerlessness – Americans may think we’re doing fine, and feel grateful for our blessings, but there’s also a sense that the country is out of our control --- the wishes that we express over and over again get ignored in Washington, New York, Hollywood and other centers of power.

  Restoring the reality and the realization that we ultimately control our own destinies won’t be an easy process, but one place to start might be the public schools. Why not move immediately to empower parents rather than bureaucrats?

   And if parents want their kids to get only neutral messages about homosexuality, not celebration or endorsement or propaganda, why not give those parents what they want—or else drop the sex education altogether?

   Sometimes, we ought to acknowledge that when it comes to our own kids, father –and mother– really do know best. 

Infant educational videos have blossomed into a $20 billion dollar business, but a new study indicates that products like “Baby Einstein” and “Brainy Baby” do more harm than good. The prestigious journal Pediatrics published research from the University of Washington showing that for each hour a day that babies watched these DVD’s, they added six to eight fewer words to their vocabularies compared to other infants their age. It’s not that the “Baby Einstein” programming directly harms the children, but it does take them away from interaction with parents or other caregivers that would produce much stronger developmental results. By the same token, the problem with heavy TV watching for adults isn’t that the broadcast offerings are directly corrupting or poisonous, it’s just that in our crowded schedules giving passive hours to the boob tube takes precious time away from from more enriching, worthwhile, and satisfying engagement with real people and the real world.

With a big, juicy full moon high in the summer sky, and painting the surface of the lake near my home with silvery-yellow scales, it’s time for Conspiracy Day (Monday) on the Michael Medved radio show.

 

Every month, this exercise raises the question: why do so many Americans feel so powerfully drawn to conspiratorial explanations of current events?

 

The instinctive answer involves the sad state of the world today: the idea that with everything going wrong and people suffering from fear, anxiety and insecurity, there’s an irresistible urge to blame all the bad news on mysterious, all-powerful forces.

 

The chief problem with this explanation is that today’s world, while manifestly imperfect, is hardly nightmarish: in most respects, for Americans in particular, we’re living remarkably well and report high levels of satisfaction and optimism and satisfaction in our personal circumstances. Progress in other long-suffering parts of the globe (China, India, Eastern Europe) has been spectacular and benefited all humanity.

 

In 1942, we had reason to wonder about conspiracies: with most of planet earth devastated by war, or suffering horrendous oppression from multiple tyrannies (Hitlerism, Stalinism, Japanese militarism), having just escaped the global hardships of the Great Depression. But with all the reasons for worry and fear, the conspiracy industry hadn’t reached anything like the heights of insanity or popularity it enjoys today. Few people embraced the idiot theories about the Masons or the Council on Foreign Relations or the Illuminati as the hidden forces behind their misfortunes.

 

Twenty-five years later, the United States went through the most traumatic years of our recent history. The late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s not only produced a dispiriting, hugely costly War in Vietnam, but massive (sometimes bloody) protests at home (far more intense than any of the relatively mild protests against Iraq),  a series of devastating urban riots (with whole neighborhoods of Detroit, Newark, LA and many other cities burned to the ground, and serious talk of impending race war), run away inflation, rampant drug use, and the collapse of sexual morality. If any period naturally lent itself to the wildest conspiracy theories, it would have been the ‘60’s in the United States. But the paranoid fantasies remained relatively contained. Even the recent JFK assassination provoked far less skepticism regarding the official (and undoubtedly correct) explanation about Oswald as a lone gunman, than it does today (thank you Oliver Stone).

 

   In other words, by any fair or logical measure, it makes no sense for so many seemingly rational and informed people to turn so eagerly to elaborate, conspiratorial explanations for perplexing present events.

 

   What, then, accounts for the current conspiracy addiction?

 

    I’ve got an answer—which I’ll begin outlining on Monday’s radio show, and continue delineating in this blog.  

 

 My son Danny, 14, is just completing the ninth grade and on Father’s Day (yesterday) I actually learned some valuable lessons from the process of helping him with his homework.

   He’d been given a few provocative questions on Roman history by an altogether outstanding teacher at his high school (a Jewish parochial school), and this assignment gave me the chance to go over the textbook with him.

   Amazingly, his particular history text seemed to pay more attention to historical accuracy than political correctness. “History and Life” (Fourth Edition – from Scott, Foresman and Company) made a credible, reasonable effort to explain the relentless growth of the early Roman state. Under the heading, “Many Factors Contributed to the Military Success of the Romans,” the book listed Geography, Military Strength, Wise Leadership….and “Family Values.”

    The relevant passage related battlefield triumphs to successful home life, with the following words:

 

    “Most of the early Romans were farmers. They lived simply, worked hard, and fought well. In general, the Roman family was a close-knit group held together by affection, the necessities of a frugal life, and the strict authority of parents. Both parents played important roles in family activities and taught their children loyalty, courage and self-control. Most Romans took their civic and religious duties seriously.

   “The stern virtues prized by Roman family life were a source of strength in the early republic. In later years, when increasing power and wealth began to undermine family life, some people were unhappy about the passing of the old order. ‘Rome stands built upon the ancient ways of life,’ warned a poet of the 3^rd century B.C. who felt the need for a return to the strong family values of the past.”

 

   Given the text’s candor in later describing the slow unraveling of Roman virtue over the next five generations, this testimonial to the centrality of the institution of the family counted as a powerful reminder to today’s students.

  The passages I read in my son’s history textbook bear obvious relevance to our current situation where “increasing power and wealth” have also begun to “undermine family life.” The story also reminds us that we’re not the first generation in Western history to seek a return and revival of timeless values – and there’s reason to hope that we’ll find more success in restoring those virtues than our long-agoRoman counterparts.

   Meanwhile, I also felt gratified and reassured by the powerful evidence that some schools, and some textbooks, avoid the traps of trendiness and actually manage to convey, at least occasionally, valuable messages to our children.

. A sexual harassment incident at Washington State University highlights some nationwide problems in higher education. Professor Bernardo Gallegos, accused of making advances toward a married graduate student in his home in 2005, resigned his tenured position. In exchange for his resignation, the University paid him more than $87,000. It turns out his yearly salary amounted to more than $132,000 – though he’d only held his academic position for less than three years! Far from the old stereotype of underpaid professors toiling in genteel poverty, today’s faculty often draw lavish pay —even at rural, publicly funded institutions like WSU. Meanwhile, Gallegos held a position as “Professor of Multicultural Education.” –a fashionable but ludicrous discipline, especially in a state where the white, Anglo population represents 86% of the total. The idea that Washington taxpayers provided $132,000, plus additional thousands in benefits, for a post in multiculturalism should anger them even more than the professor’s lecherous misbehavior.

At the big Dem Debate in South Carolina, the Presidential candidates unanimously and repeatedly signaled their intention to "end the war" in Iraq. To the very first question from Brian Williams (regarding Harry Reid's horrible suggestion that "this war is lost") Hillary Clinton shot back that "the American people want this war to end."

 

But do the Democrats honestly believe that simply pulling Americans back from combat will magically cause the fighting to cease?

 

Will Mohammed immediately drop his intention of fire-bombing Ahmed's Shhite mosque simply because GI Joe has been redeployed to new positions at the border of the country?

 

Listening to the Democrats, it became impossible to avoid the conclusion that some of them honestly believe that the continued US presence in Iraq somehow causes the nightmarish violence between Shia, Sunni and Kurd, and the wanton murders by Al Qaeda in Iraq of random civilians in all the sectarian communities. Why, exactly, would these ruthless killers suddenly become less likely to kill if the most formidable military force opposed to them is forced to retreat under fire?

 

Does it sound likely that the war will end as soon as Americans leave—because the terrorists and Islamo-Nazis will say, “oh, those tough Americans are leaving, so it wouldn’t be sporting to go on killing innocent Iraqis”?

 

The talk of “ending the war” is simultaneously delusional and deceptive. The war won’t end, it will intensify, after an American withdrawl.

 

In Vietnam, we tried the policy of bringing peace to warring factions by leaving the scene altogether – and that plan proved a disastrous, bloody failure. Withdrawal of American group troops did nothing to facilitate reconciliation or accommodation or even a lasting ceasefire. It did, however, produce a massive Communist onslaught in 1975 that led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands.

 

As several GOP Senators noted earlier today (before the Senate voted by a slender majority to approve a surrender timetable) a withdrawal now only makes it more likely that the US will attempt to re-insert itself into the conflict when it turns genocidal and disastrous and far more bloody and chaotic than it is today, threatening the world’s energy supplies. At that point, the need to make up for lost ground will cost far more in American lives and treasure than today’s effort to give the surge a chance to work.

 

Despite all their rhetoric, Dems don’t want to “end the war” – they just want to end direct American involvement, and to allow enemy victory, in such a way that they can blame Bush for all the dire consequences sure to follow.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed shocked many Americans with his boastful Guantanamo confession claiming “credit” for some 31 terrorist assaults (including 9/11) and describing foiled attempts to stage many more. The most alarming revelation about this vicious mass murderer, however, involves his background: he received his college education entirely in the United States, subsidized by the generosity of dedicated Christian donors and taxpayers in North Carolina. Born in oil-rich Kuwait to a family of Pakistani ancestry, Mohammed enrolled first at tiny Chowan College, a devout Baptist institution in rural Murfreesboro, North Carolina, and then transferred to the historically black campus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. In other words, he based his life on murderous hatred and hostility to the United States not because our nation harmed him, but because we helped him; not because he knew nothing about the character of America, but because he, in fact, experienced it first hand. While Dinesh D’Souza argues that Muslim fanatics hate us because our elites have abandoned traditional values, in the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed he got to know some of the most wholesome, traditional corners of “red state” America. Those who suggest that we can deflect al Qaeda attempts to destroy us by showing more generosity and openness for the Islamic world ought to consider Mohammed’s sobering example, and to consider what, exactly, North Carolina taxpayers and donors to Chowan College got in return for their generosity in underwriting the education of a criminal, America-hating mastermind.

Many conservatives wonder how liberals maintain their long-term stranglehold on higher education. A new survey of private donations suggests that one of the reasons universities continue to tilt so sharply to the left is that they continue to rake in big bucks: charitable giving to colleges and universities soared by 9.4% in 2006, to a staggering total of $28 billion. My own alma mater, Yale University, took in $433 million dollars in donations, or some $40,000 per student— without even counting additional millions from the federal government, another billion in profit on the endowment, and yet more money in obscene tuition fees. Colleges won’t change their ideological direction while taking in this kind of dough. That’s why I stopped my own contributions to Yale 15 years ago, and now support only conservative and religious institutions. Until more alumni and philanthropists make similar “tough love” commitments, there’s no hope for ending the hegemony of the left.

Regular listeners to my radio show already know that I proudly nurture, indeed cherish, a long list of idiosyncrasies: the single most consistent element between my life today and my earlier incarnation as a 1960’s liberal involves my refusal to conform to convention. In that regard, it’s always great to see scientific confirmation that one of my personal quirks, frequently derided by friends and colleagues, has received unexpected scientific backing from authoritative research.

Since my college years, I’ve always avoided eating anything substantial before some significant intellectual challenge – like a big exam or, more recently a speech or TV appearance. Every day, I eat next to nothing before my radio show – limiting myself to a muffin or a piece of fruit or, at most, an early morning bowl of cereal before I finish with the broadcast (at 3 PM Pacific Time). It’s always seemed to me that the hunger associated with this habit gave me an “edge” that helped my performance – and now a new study from Yale Medical School supports that idea.

According to a fascinating article in the March, 2006 issue of Nature Neuroscience, the stimulation of hunger causes mice to process information more quickly and to retain it better – in general, making them smarter. According to the researchers, humans almost certainly experience the same connection between hunger and peak brain function.

Tamas Horvath, chairman of Yale’s comparative medicine program, analyzed the impact of ghrelin, a hormone produced by the stomach lining when the stomach is empty. In extensive tests with mice, the bio-chemically “hungry” mice- mice infused with ghrelin – performed substantially better than the well fed critters with normal levels of the hormone. Dr. Horvath explained: “When you are hungry, you need to focus your entire system on finding food in the environment.” This means, he told the New York Times Magazine, “we can use the hormonal discoveries to our cognitive advantage.”

He specifically concludes that when facing “a final exam or a half-day job interview,” it makes sense to “go in mildly hungry, not carbo-loaded for endurance.” In other words, there’s a solid basis for my instinctive desire to avoid big meals before some challenging task—for avoiding dinner until after an evening lecture, for instance, in order to make sure that I give the audience my best. Dr. Horvath also theorizes that the current, well documented “obesity epidemic” among American kids has “contributed to declining test scores and other educational woes.”

He doesn’t make the connection to misguided government “feeding programs” in schools, but I can’t skip the opportunity to slam these utterly misguided abuses of federal power. For years, bureaucrats and do-gooders have justified the daily provision of federally funded “free lunches” and “free breakfasts” for disadvantaged students based on the idea that these kids fare badly in school because they’re not eating properly. The new research, however, suggests that making sure kids face their morning or afternoon classes with full bellies may actually harm, rather than help, their academic performance.

It turns out that our bodies provide their own paraphrase of my favorite quote from Dr. Johnson. “The gallows doth wonderfully concentrate the mind,” he observed. Now, it turns out, that “Hunger doth wonderfully concentrate the mind” – and that stuffing kids full of food to confront the school day may damage them nearly as much as stuffing their heads full of nonsense in the classroom.

  When a book bears the title "100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World" you don't expect a celebration of patriotism, but this new volume contains even less substance and less wit than a reader might reasonably expect. Moreover, when its author (John Tirman, director of MIT's prestigious Center for International Studies) appeared on my radio show, he embarrassed himself in dealing with even the most rudimentary questions.

   After he rambled on for several minutes about "genocide" against Native Americans, for instance, I asked him whether he agreed with Kevin Costner's statement, in promoting "Dances with Wolves," that it would have been better for the world if Europeans had never come to the Americas. "I can't possibly answer that question,"  Tirman replied, and then refused to dismiss the insane proposition that humanity might have been better served if America, as we know it, never had existed.

  His book also contains a number of howlers, beyond the expected leftist platitudes. Included in his listing of the "Ways America is Screwing Up the World" are such classic national virtues as the tendency to see our country as "Number One" ("Among the more obnoxious tendencies of redneck culture," Tirman sniffs) and the boost to the economy every year provided by the near-universal celebration of Christmas ("As a modern economic engine, Christmas is very much an American invention.") He also names Mel Gibson as one of his "100 Ways" -- not for his alcoholism or his anti-Semitic outburst (the book was written before that embarrassment) but for his direction of the film "The Passion of the Christ." Tirman loathed the movie and rejected the notion that "all this suffering somehow proves Jesus's uniqueness. But of course many thousands of political prisoners have endured years of torture, flagellation, and horrid (and anonymous) deaths. Many of these have been tortured and murdered by American Christians..." (italics added)

   On the air, I read this passage back to him and asked him to tell me which political prisoners he had in mind who had been "tortured and murdered by American Christians." He refered once more to Native Americans, but then backed off when I pointed out that fierce warriors on the battlefield hardly counted as Christlike victims and "political prisoners." After I posed the question several times he acknowledged that he couldn't name a single prisoner "tortured and murdered by American Christians" without doing further research.

   I didn't have the chance, however, to question him on another laughably inaccurate statement in his "Mel Gibson" chapter. He writes: "Hollywood has green-lighted new pseudoreligious projects to capitalize on Mel's pioneering trail." Does Tirman possess some inside information heretofore hidden from the public and all reporters? What "pseudoreligious projects" has Hollywood greenlighted after the spectacular success of "The Passion"? Is he thinking of "Superman Returns"? "Snakes on a Plane"? The striking thing about the entertainment industry, as I've commented many times, is that Gibson's success has inspired no notable imitators -- and no rush to cash in on religious projects.  

  The appalling aspect of this entire interchange involved Tirman's lack of preparation, his inability to defend his own work against my challenges. Of course, Mr. Tirman lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his list of most admired Americans (at the end of the book) includes his neighbors and fellow academics Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn -- both of them also former guests on my radio show. These people function in an hermetically sealed, nearly all-leftist bubble in which few students or faculty will question the America-bashing assumptions they so smugly promote. If I were to begin my own list of "100 Things That Are Screwing Up America," sloppy and instinctively anti-nationalistic professors would rate a prominent ranking.     

   I know it's a bad habit to point out grammatical errors in the work of other people, but as a former seventh grade English teacher I can't help myself. I cringe whenever I see obvious, embarrassing mistakes (especially if they happen to be my own), and I particularly loathe the current tendency to promote political correctness by substituting the pronoun "they" when it should be "he" or "she." Example: "Each individual makes this common mistake, whether they know better or not." Obviously, "they" (plural) disagrees with "Each individual" (singular). The right wording, of course, would be "Each individual makes this common mistake whether he knows better or not." 

   In general, this sort of clumsiness counts as merely an irritant, but if the error occurs in a much-publicized statement from a large group of educators, then their unprofessional stupidity deserves the broadest possible exposure and the strongest possible condemnation. In last month's convention of the American Federation of Teachers, representing 1.3 million educators in every state of the union, the preachy pedagogues adopted a resolution slamming the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. More than 90% of the delegates voted to endorse the resolution, and apparently none of them noticed its appallingly ill-chosen wording:

  "Resolved, that the American Federation of Teachers oppose the war in Iraq and call upon our country's leaders to withdraw all troops....."

   Okay, class --- is "American Federation of Teachers" (the subject of the sentence) singular or plural? Obviously, it's singular--- only one "Federation" though it represents many (too many) teachers. And what about the verbs, "oppose" and "call," singular or plural? They are plural, obviously--- teachers can "oppose and call" but a federation "opposes and calls." The AFT, in other words, gets a failing grade in middle school English.

   This is not quantum physics, nor rocket science (I couldn't have taught those subjects-- they are my father's area of expertise). To paraphrase the signature line from "Cool Hand Luke": what we have here is a failure to communicate--- grammatically. For educational professionals to vote on a resolution wiithout noting its illiteracy, and then to issue the resolution to the public without embarrassment, highlights one of the problems with the education unions: too much emphasis on political correctness, and not nearly enough on the classroom basics.

   Wouldn't a reasonable educator think that the proper use of the language is a more important obligation for a teachers' union than taking a gratuitous position on the Iraq war.... one of 143 political resolutions, by the way, pushed through this convention?

   The rebel conservative rock band "The Right Brothers" recently performed a world premiere on my radio show of a song called "Shut Up and Teach!" -- urging educators to concentrate on education, rather than indoctrination. If the AFT and individual teachers paid heed to that advice they'd stand a better chance of avoiding bone-headed grammatical miscues in their public proclamations.