Something for Flat-Earth Religionists to Ponder

February 7, 2009

by Robert A. Letcher, PhD

[Author’s note: Reading George Thomas’ recent essay on two topics that the recently departed President left me thinking of as having nothing substantive to do with each other: evolution and Texas reminded me of an essay I wrote four years ago. My essay responded to a national effort led by—if I recall correctly—a person whose last name was Horowitz. In Ohio, Horowitz’s flat-earth program was being pushed through the Legislature by State Senator Mumper. The following is a verbatim transcription of a letter I wrote to the Editor of The Columbus Dispatch.]

To the Editor:

Subject: “BILL COULD LIMIT OPEN DEBATE AT COLLEGES: Lawmaker says profs are pushing agendas” (published: January 27, 2005)

History provides another “other side” to the debate over Senate Bill 24, the misleadingly titled “academic bill of rights for higher education”. Consider…

There was a time when most people thought Earth was flat… Until the 1500s, most people believed that Earth was the center of the universe, and Copernicus was excommunicated for arguing that Earth revolved around the Sun…

I’d like to think that Senator Mumper will continue to support teachers persistently teaching that the Earth is round and goes around the Sun, even though his intellectual forebears would challenge HIS right to challenge THEIR values by doing so. I’d also like to think that Senator Mumper would support discriminating against flat-earthers in hiring airline pilots, air traffic controllers, bombardiers, astronauts, and astronomers.

And it’s not just physics, either. For eighty years the US Constitution valued “Negroes” as 3/5 of a person for census purposes, and not even a person for all other purposes… It took decades of persistent discussion of this “controversial issue”–and a war–to get the country headed toward unseating Jim Crow and his successors. (Regrettably, much apparently controversial work remains to be done. FLASH!!!! Obama’s election suggests we have gotten some of that hard work done, though I am sure much still remains to be done.) I’d like to think that Senator Mumper sees thinly disguised racist practices as being far more troublesome than persistent efforts by teachers to challenge such practices for being un-American.

Likewise for women. For one-hundred fifty years, women weren’t allowed to vote. Until recently, they weren’t allowed to work “real” jobs. They were of course free to be barefoot and pregnant. It took persistent discussion of these “controversial issues” for our society to even get started toward giving women full and equal citizenship. And I must confess that such discussions were unsettling to me when I first heard them. I’d like to think that Senator Mumper would reject going back to barefoot and pregnant for being un-American.

These history lessons remind us that learning entails the challenging of personal beliefs. Indeed, they suggest that the most important learning sometimes arises precisely from challenges to the most fundamental personal beliefs. Taking such challenges openly–which is to say, opening up to learning–is what higher education is for.

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Written by Robert A. Letcher, Ph.D. · Filed Under Thoughts

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Letter to the Editor: Good Cars need Good Teams - by R. A. Letcher, PhD

Good cars need good teams -- designers, engineers, line workers… and learning-oriented managers by Robert A. Letcher, PhD [Author’s note: I submitted the following as a letter to the editor of The New York Times, after that paper carried an article under the headline, "To Fix Detroit, Obama Is Said to Drop Plan for ‘Car Czar’", 02/15/2009.] It is widely accepted that you can't win a horse race without a good horse. Of course, it helps to have a lot of money and a good plan for spending it. But, you still need a good horse. The authors reminded me of this when they wrote: “The companies’ plans are required to show progress in cutting long-term costs as a condition for keeping their loans.” I doubt GM and Chrysler can win this most important "automobile race" merely by having better accountants and more muscular negotiators: they still need a good "horse". That means the companies will have to show that their teams can still design and build cars that people are drawn to buy and willing to pay for: winners. I doubt they can. The problem isn't that they didn't know how to; it's that they don't know how to break out of the group-think that ensnarled them, their managers, their whole organizations, decades ago. I would be more optimistic, had the government also required the companies to include plans for transforming themselves into learning organizations. Aye, there’s the rub: learning entails risk-taking, not “yes people”.
Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm
Fiscal Therapy - Getting the economy back on its feet, giving taxpayers a break, saving your retirement fund and your kid's college tuition? Done. And it won't cost you a penny.

For years now, whenever I've been invited to lecture students on how our tax system works, I have asked a simple question: What is the purpose of the United States of America? The most common answer, be it at prestigious universities, elite prep schools, rural community colleges, or crowded urban high schools, is this: To make people rich. This should come as no great surprise. For anyone born after, say, 1970, the world has been shaped by Ronald Reagan's remaking of government's relationship with private interests—a vision of lower taxes, less regulation, and maximum economic leeway for those at the top. In this view, the pursuit of wealth is the warp and weft of America; everything else will follow. By contrast, the preamble to the Constitution tells us the nation's reason for being in 52 words that can be reduced to six principles: society, justice, peace, security, commonwealth, and freedom. Individual riches don't make the list. They are a product of American society, not its guiding purpose. Progress, then, must begin with a return to the best of the values that created this Second American Republic—one born, it's worth remembering, from the failure of the Articles of Confederation, whose principles (weak government, unfettered capitalism) found their resurrection in the economic policies of the past three decades.
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How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely
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