The Kids Are Alright

It’s possible she was just lucky in addition to being smart. If there are hundreds of thousands of kids who are unsure about three or four questions, odds are a few of them will guess correctly.

sweet!!! love of learning will go a long ways. she just gotta be careful not to drop out of college. happens to the best of us. i mean she’s got tremendous potential, but when you do things only because you love doing it, not because you have to spend hours upon hours laboring over it, you don’t respond very well to the stress of college. anyhow, way too much talking on my part. let’s savor the moment. just cuz Amy’s mom was possibly a former teacher of her, i feel i am part of her success.

OT but why is Harold Ford Jr on my Tee Vee quoting David Broder?

Don’t pay any attention to Harold. He can’t help himself. Like Rainman.

Major health scare right now and what is CNN & Politico doing? Well a CNN anchor with the help of a Politico reporter is talking about how does this play politically. Attempting to rate Obama’s handling of a health scare hours after its reported.

More media scholars. Folks this is our press:
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WALSH: You know, I couldn’t disagree more with my friend Chris. This is not a “he said/she said” situation. This is torture. Torture is illegal. We don’t sit here, Howie, and say he said murder is illegal, but she said, well, sometimes murder’s not so bad. These are clear matters of law.
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Ronald Reagan signed the 1988 U.N. Convention Against Torture where we committed ourselves to prosecuting people who torture. It’s the law. It’s super clear. It’s not a partisan witch hunt or a “she said/he said” situation.
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KURTZ: David Frum.
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FRUM: It’s not super clear, because the key piece of information people need, most people need to make a decision, is missing. Look, there’s a hard core of civil libertarians who will say, I don’t care whether this contributed to the defense of the country. Forget it, we won’t do it, even if it means Americans die. And then there are some people who say, I support the president no matter what.
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But most people want to know, did this contribute to the nation’s safety? If so, we’ll come to one judgment. If it was wasteful, as it’s sometimes alleged, and achieved nothing, then we all condemn it. That’s the thing we need to know, and that’s the thing we don’t know. That’s the missing piece in all the reportage.
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(CROSSTALK)
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WALSH: No, it’s illegal, whether it works or not. It’s illegal whether it works or not, David.
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FRUM: Well, as I said, there’s a small minority who would feel like Joan does.
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WALSH: Oh, really?
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FRUM: Most people want to know, did it — and that is the missing or the contradicted piece. We don’t have a clear answer to that question.
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WALSH: It doesn’t matter.
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CILLIZZA: Howie, I just want to…
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KURTZ: Chris.
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CILLIZZA: Joan, just real quickly, I just want to point out, in our poll that came our this morning, 49 percent of people said no torture under any circumstances; 48 percent, in some special circumstances, depending on the information. That’s not my opinion.
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(CROSSTALK)
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WALSH: But Chris, the point is it’s illegal. In what instance does it matter that 80 percent of Americans would like to murder Dick Cheney? Does that — would that make it legal? It’s not a matter of opinion. It’s law.
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http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/joan-walsh-torture-illegal-whether-it-work

Wonder how much we are going to hear about this today?
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Stimulus bill headed for passage minus pandemic funds.
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Feb 13, 2009 (CIDRAP News) – With money for pandemic influenza preparedness stripped from a huge economic stimulus bill that appears headed for final congressional approval, public health advocates say they have to look to the regular budgeting process for the next chance to get some pandemic funding.
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The House of Representatives had included $900 million in pandemic preparedness funds in its version of the massive stimulus package, but it appeared that all but $50 million was removed by the conference committee that ironed out differences between the House and Senate versions, said Richard Hamburg, government relations director for the nonpartisan, nonprofit group Trust for America’s Health (TFAH).
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The House passed the $787 billion compromise bill this afternoon by a vote of 246-183, with no Republican support, the New York Times reported. The story said the Senate was expected to approve the measure this evening.
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The $50 million left in the bill, listed as a Public Health and Social Services Emergency Fund, is for improving information technology security at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Hamburg said. The sums removed included $420 million for pandemic flu and $430 million for biomedical advanced research and development, he reported.
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Now it’s back to the regular budget process for those seeking pandemic and other public health preparedness funds, leaders of public health groups say.
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http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/panflu/news/feb1309funding.html

Is Smithfield Farms responsible for the swine flu?
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http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-25-swine-flu-smithfield/

Remember when we needed Time magazine and other MSM outlets to report accurately about the stimulus bill and what was in it, and instead they just handed microphones over to Republicans and allowed them to shape the debate and get stuff pulled from the bill? Remember one of the things that got pulled was funding for pandemic preparedness?
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http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/430261
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When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year’s emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.
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Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse — with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.
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But former White House political czar Karl Rove and key congressional Republicans — led by Maine Senator Susan Collins — aggressively attacked the notion that there was a connection between pandemic preparation and economic recovery.

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Great phucking job on that one Time magazine. I hope you are ever so proud.

sg-how much you want to bet that since the outbreak seems to have begun in Mexico this turns into another edition of bashing Mexico and illegal aliens. As a bonus the EU has sent out travel warning so they will be labeled as anti American.

Gunny, I was thinking yesterday how much I was looking forward to Lou Dobbs’ thoughtful commentary on the MEXICAN flu outbreak.
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Bigots are nothing if not predictable.

SG-Don’t forget Schumer. Another Democrat who can give great “I’m so concerned press conferences” when in reality he can’t wait to cave.
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[Schumer] said the compromise hammered out between Senate Democrats and moderate Republicans – which has enough support to get it past any threat of a filibuster – was far better than that passed by the House on Jan. 29.
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“All those little porky things that the House put in, the money for the [National] Mall or the sexually transmitted diseases or the flu pandemic, they’re all out,” Schumer said.
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http://web5.nypost.com/seven/02082009/news/nationalnews/angry_gop_lets_off_team_ulus_154056.htm

Pual-I think I will watch Lou tonight. If he is there it should be a load of laughs.

And just when you thought the GOP was going to have to go home this summer with nothing to complain about or at least nothing based in reality, we give them swine flu. Comprehensive immigration is really on the back bench now — these guys are going to go after Janet Napolitano for her failure to crack down on viruses attempting to cross the border.

gysgt and PNNTO
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Actually you will get a two fer out of the wingnuts. On the one hand they will call for the border to be closed, on the other hand they will propose that this might be a terrorist attack. I have already seen or heard both since last week. Michael Savage the bigoted racist self hating Jew shock jock radio host proposed that it was a terror strike last week AND said it was our bad immigration policy that made it a possibility in the first place. Rethugs never miss an opportunity to prey on fears.

Dee-illegal alien viruses. Good ole middle of the America viruses are okay.
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I miss the Golden Girls.
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gunny that was hilarious, still lol…

Interesting how this thread about a brilliant, well-adjusted kid aced all the achievement tests (good for her – and Amy watch your stereotyping expectations about bright kids) morphed into flu and rule of law, both things a very bright kid would understand but that the repugs clearly can’t. On gunny’s and sgw’s and Dee’s comments about th radical right, here’s a bit via Sully: The GOP Base Gets More Radical
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On marriage, immigration and spending, the intensity of the far right is increasing, not decreasing, according to the Politico:
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“My e-mail overfloweth,” said David Overholtzer, a longtime GOP activist in western Iowa’s Pottawattamie County. “Amnesty is still very much a hot-button and gay marriage especially is here in Iowa. The view is that we’ve got to hold our legislators’ and governors’ feet to the fire.”
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“I’ve never seen the grass-roots quite as motivated, concerned and angry,” said Steve Scheffler, the head of the Iowa Christian Alliance and the state’s RNC committeeman.
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Palin awaits.
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When, oh when, is the msm going to start paying attention to the fact that Fox propagandists and AM RW radio are whipping up the repuglican base into a frenzy based on lies and distortions about our new, and popularly elected president. Sounds like a story to me. Also sounds like a threat to our democracy.

wvng
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I see just about every Amy Sullivan post as an open thread. I mean what in the hell are we really supposed to say about this kid aceing their exams other than good job? Would we have this post if it wasn’t for Sullivan’s personal connection? I think not. KT claims this is a blog for politics only and I don’t see where this post fits into that category at all. Much better to transition to serious topics and go from there.

I don’t know if this is an attempt to gain credibility for the paranoids, but I did hear in a press conference a female reporter already ask whether it was too early to eliminate the possibility that this was a bio-terrorist attack? Now NBC news Brian Williams asking about the swine flu how did it get here in a very mystery musicy way?
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Where is the hidden terrorism in a story about a bunch of over indulged, well off teenagers, ignoring cartel danger, headed to drunken fun in the sun in Mexico, do we really expect that they are going to guard against catching the flu or be sober enough to know they are bringing it home?

I’m going to look at this as an opportunity to examine prejudice as a general phenomenon. Amy writes this:
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What is surprising is that by all accounts Willa is no vocab-memorizing automatron but rather a normal, down-to-earth kid with a playful sense of humor.
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And no one seems to notice that she’s no less guilty of trying to pigeonhole people that someone would be if they made blanket assumptions about hip-hop fans or Muslims.
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There’s a smart kid who’s otherwise just like kids everywhere. The only thing surprising is that anyone finds that surprising.

sgw, speaking of serious topics, my morning wingnut thread is up.
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As I said above, I am deeply concerned that we have major media in this country (Fox) that has descended into pure propaganda designed to inflame opinion about a duly and popularly elected president. People watch that every day, every night. And get madder and madder. I can’t tell you how many service businesses have the TeeVee turned to Faux in the waiting room.
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As bad as Faux was as a Bush booster, they are ten times worse, and more dangerous, now. I wish I knew the remedy, but I can’t imagine what it could be.

Dee
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Thats not the story. Not all of the people who got swine flu and brought it back to the US were “over indulged, well off teenagers”. One guy in Kansas was there for business and brought it home to his wife. Besides that its probably not a good idea to put unflattering labels on people who may end up dying from the disease, especially when they may not fit that description anyway.

wvng — Personally, I’ve spent way too much energy encouraging Amy to pay attention to the constructive comments trying to help her produce better posts. Apparently, she doesn’t find our comments helpful or doesn’t read them. In any event, we’ve given up and rather than waste our time trashing her posts we’ve skipped to the chase and taken over the space to engage in a more relevant conversation.

SG — you right I was being a bit too snarky — I was jus picturing the GOP trying to imply that teenagers home from spring break as bio-terrorists.

wvng
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The best remedy in the world will be success. As we come out of the recession and we cut unnecessary spending as well as winding down the war in Iraq and having some level of success in Af/Pak the people watching FoxNews that swear by it will come to see it for the farce that it is. They are already looking at polls and noticing that President Obama’s numbers keep going up even though FoxNews continues to bash him and you know that seeds of doubt are already sown. If his policies start to show progress that will go farther to destroy FoxNews than anything else. They will still have fans but it will be just the 20-25% dead enders in this country who won’t see anything right about him anyway.

Paul — yes, pa ul in general prejudice exists, and the most insidious variety comes from those who don’t think they are prejudice. This stems from a belief that prejudice only manifests itself in extreme examples, suck as the KKK or skin heads and other neon sign wearing bigots. The truth is the harm comes from the unintentional, inadvertent little slights like my crack about over indulgent teens. Yes, those 8 students in NY go to an elite prep school, but I should no more show disrespect for the wealthy as they often do of the poor. Our propensity to have a respect for our particular group, that we reserve only for our particular group whether it be based on race, gender, or sexual orientation etc, is the basis of the most detrimental form because this is what unconsciously forms our hiring and promotion decisions, inclusion decisions and out reach efforts. As for the neon sign version of bigotry we’ve all pretty much learned how to avoid or ignore.

Dee –
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I’m with you. Looks like the swine flu is about ninety minutes down the road from my front door, and Amy’s giving us some aberrant product of our marginal public education system.
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The fact that this kid is near unique in her educational success means only that “the kids,” plural, are certainly not “alright,” cutesy reference to The Who notwithstanding.

“What is surprising is that by all accounts Willa is no vocab-memorizing automatron but rather a normal,….”
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‘aoutomaton,’ I think, unless you have immaculate conception on your mind.

Flown, this story is not just irrelevant, it is hurtful. Think about it, her personal celebration of one smart student actually reinforces a perception that how well one does in school is directly related some inherited genius. It’s once again the lucky few who get to ace the tests that open the doors to opportunity and they owe it all to the genes they inherited but this one has the added bonus to be well socialized.
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Perhaps if the model we embraced was about working hard, the we would say to students anyone willing to work hard can ace the test that opens the door to opportunity. I think that would eliminate our tendency to look at our students and segregate them based on inherent qualities that places large portions of them in the don’t expect much category before they even start.
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So thanks Amy for continuing to perpetuate a model of bestowing accolades on the student least in need of our public cheerleading, at the expense of the vast majority who could benefit far more from an expectation model that segregates students based on willingness to work hard — a game that everybody could play.

sgw: “The best remedy in the world will be success.”
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You are right, of course, but through the success LimFaux will continue to scream. A friend just sent me this quote: The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum. -Charles Caleb Colton, author and clergyman (1780-1832)
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Speaking of success, our farrier was out trimming our donkey’s hooves last Saturday. When he’s not trimming equines, he should be pouring concrete (his main job) but there is nothing to pour concrete on right now. But that’s about to change – as he knows of a number of stimulus projects that will get his world a turnin again.

Dee: “Perhaps if the model we embraced was about working hard, the we would say to students anyone willing to work hard can ace the test that opens the door to opportunity.”
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But it’s not true. Some people are smarter than others (some vastly so), just as some can run faster, leap higher. What did Einstein say: “It’s not that I feel so smart, everyone else just seems stupid.”
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To pretend otherwise is folly.

Newt Gingrich now says that if you ain’t pro torture then you must be a part of the “anti American left”.
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http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_04/017922.php
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That means you too Joe Klein. Such thought full words from the Village’s idea man. I can’t wait to hear more tales about how smart that ass hole is.

Google Maps has a swine flu tracker:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=p&msa=0&msid=106484775090296685271.0004681a37b713f6b5950&ll=32.639375,-110.390625&spn=15.738151,25.488281&z=5

Speaking about the swine flu, I thought this post by Paul Krugman was simply, funny, and to the point. Ahh, nothing like the GOP to ensure our destruction.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/masters-of-disaster/

wvng, sg, No need to worry about Faux, they are digging their own grave, aside from the pro-torture arguments that are also being driven by the rest of the media, their message is sounding increasingly nutty to their viewership. New poll findings announced on msnbc this morning that only 21 percent of voters self-identify as GOP, lowest in more than twenty years. Conversely, independents increased by similar numbers. While this is not absolute proof that Republicans are abandoning their party in favor of independence, because this data correlates rather than proves a causal relationship, it implies that something is making the GOP less attractive to its former members.
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Now rather than be accused of “doing a repub” (doing a repub = making stuff up to win a political debate), I will just float the idea that this data further supports the theory that the current messages driven by faux news, their chief message apparatus is not helping to keep them together. In fact, as a result of their increasing reliance on absolute nuttiness, it might be driving reasonable members of their party away.

Some people are smarter than others (some vastly so), just as some can run faster.
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This is very true, but consider what Amy said up top:
What is surprising is [...] is [...] a normal, down-to-earth kid.
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There is a great deal of cultural pressure in this country to NOT succeed academically. Without even delving into how such forces can disproportionately impact minority students, anti-intellectualism is a potent and exceedingly harmful force in this country. Don’t beleive it? Let us relive those heady weeks of ‘bittergate’ and remeber how much backlash there was against Obama for the crime of being ‘elitist’

Paul Dirks
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Or you can look at one of those Glenn Beck 9-12 videos where there are calls for burning books and one woman cautions against people sending their kids to college lest the evil liberals brainwash them.

wvng — thats not the entire story and that’s the problem. Take the Michael Jordan example. We think of him as the greatest player that ever lived, yet early on he was cut from the team. What changed was not the sudden ignition of the basketball gene, rather it was a desire to play ball so badly that he practiced religiously. He kept a ball in his hands regardless of what else he was doing. He was obsessed with practice until he practiced his way into the phenom he became.
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Now, I’m not saying that there is no element of inheritance to this thing we call talent or innate abilities, I’m just saying that we wrongly make it out to be too large a part of the equation. By doing so we lower our expectations for the vast majority in the middle who through hard work can do a lot better than they are and elevates the innate talent so much that many really smart kids who need to be challenged by hard work in order to thrive in an academic environment don’t actually get those challenges in an atmosphere where everything comes easy to them Some of them never reach their full potential unless they are caught early and nurtured.

Dee
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I have seen you use that Michael Jordan analogy more than once and I just want to point out that Jordan also grew quite a bit after he got cut and he didn’t get those hops from just working out. Yeah he worked his ass off no doubt, but he had physical tools that nobody else had when his body matured. That didn’t guarantee him a position as greatest player ever but it for damn sure helped a lot. Going from a “just work harder and everything will work out” position isn’t realistic and in truth in a lot of ways its counter productive. It obscures other problems that may be underneath the surface. Case in point a lot of people have never heard of vision problems being a learning disability but its probably the most common and least address hinderance to kids learning. I know because I went through it with my daughter. Because I knew she was intelligent I just couldn’t understand why she could study for hours at home then go to school and blow the test. Well it turns out that the muscles in her eyes were weak and they shut down with over use which mean just working harder was actually counter productive. Now there is no doubt that one of the scourges of public education is that some kids get labeled early on that they won’t ever be a great student and then are treated as such, but I don’t think that justifies going overboard in the other direction either and lying to the kids and ourselves that if each kid works as “hard” as the next then they will all succeed. In a perfect world every kid that was struggling early on in school would get tested free of charge for any and all learning disabilities and then for those who are found to have one be put into a parallel curriculum that is focused on overcoming those disabilities. But that isn’t the world we live in and until it is there is going to be a gap between those who have innate intelligence and those who have problems with learning, whatever they may be.

SG: “I’m not saying that there is no element of inheritance to this thing we call talent or innate abilities, I’m just saying that we wrongly make it out to be too large a part of the equation.”
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Like you I also dealt with a learning disability, only for my daughter it was auditory based and it prevented her from distinguishing between short vowel sounds and this severely hampered her reading and spelling abilities. Of course it was me and not the school that figured out the problem, because they saw her obvious intelligence in other areas so they assumed it was behavioral. However this is more about our schools having a single method of teaching. It’s adequate for the brains that are sight learners, but tactile and auditory learners get screwed in this model.
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The hard work model takes this into consideration. If you believe that students who work hard can achieve, and you see a student obviously working hard, then you are more likely to search for a learning style obstacle (I prefer to call them learning style differences than disabilities) than is done in the inheritance model. Often it takes years and even then it some times takes luck for these students get noticed. These students are usually highly intelligent and because of that they recognize the social importance of not being labeled as unintelligent and early on develop phenomenal masking skills so it becomes harder to find them out.
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Now I use the Jordan example but there are others. Yes, inheritance plays a role, but I know plenty of ball players back home who had some innate skills and what the coach likes to say has potential, but fail to take advantage of the opportunity because they often lack drive.
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I’m not saying that innate abilities aren’t a part of the story but we fail generations of regular students by making it the largest part of the story when it is only important to a relative few. I think a number of years ago Harvard did a study, if I can find it I will pass it on that concludes that the best predictor of which students would do well was not how well they did on sat scores, but whether they came from blue collar homes. This finding fueled the testing debate in admissions because the tests advantaged one specific kind of student and adhering to a belief that limited resources should be reserved for those who would put them to the best use, these findings suggested that aptitude tests weren’t the entire story. Once again, after accounting for scores and other factors o that they were looking at like students, it was found that the extra something that gave students the drive to succeed was cultural (blue collar, wanting to succeed for parents, community) rather than innate.

ok, Amy Sullivan, you pulled my pop culture pedant chain.
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it’s w00t, not woot.
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back to the Monday grind. bye!

Dee: No need to worry about Faux, they are digging their own grave, aside from the pro-torture arguments that are also being driven by the rest of the media, their message is sounding increasingly nutty to their viewership. New poll findings announced on msnbc this morning that only 21 percent of voters self-identify as GOP, lowest in more than twenty years.
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I agree they are digging a political grave. I agree they are peeling away the remaining sentient beings that still call themselves repuglicans. But that will leave maybe 20% of our population (60 million people?) that they are making more and more radicalized based on delusions and fear and lies. Plenty of audience to make them plenty of $$, and plenty of people to cause plenty of problems. No way that is good for our democracy.

@paul dirks “…anti-intellectualism is a potent and exceedingly harmful force in this country. Don’t beleive it? Let us relive those heady weeks of ‘bittergate’ and remeber how much backlash there was against Obama for the crime of being ‘elitist’”
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I think Amy proved your point in both of her posts today. Heaven forbid we should laud bright kids in this country even if they are shy or geeky – after all, high-scorers in her world are vocab-cramming automatons (Amy, in her attempted use of that word, indicates she could do with a little vocab-cramming herself). And heaven forbid that our president should passionately, even “stridently,” promote science, when such promotion might offend the sensibilities of the sectarian community.