Here's the Isthmus report on the forum:
The mostly collegial conversation took a turn toward the end of the 90-minute forum, when Flynn took aim at Evers, criticizing him for supporting Walker’s most recent budget and calling him “Republican light.” Evers pushed back against the attack, calling Flynn’s characterization a “cheap shot” and pointing out that he praised the budget as “pro-kid” because Walker adopted 90 percent of the funding Evers had proposed. “I’ll never back off from that,” Evers said. “That is, frankly, an outrageous comment from somebody that I respect. We can win this race without this type of diatribe."Tony Evers is the state school superintendent, and he's leading according to the latest Marquette poll. The primary is next Tuesday. It's a shame there are so many candidates. The forum was very hard to watch — technically amateurish to the point of absurdity. We watched and here's the comment I dashed off in my own comments section last night:
Flynn responded by suggesting that Evers couldn’t stand up to Walker. "If you ask an open question to a liar — to Scott Walker — he'll have you for lunch," Flynn said.
We watched the whole thing. Laughed a lot. At what??! They weren’t funny but we laughed anyway. Something about the mikes malfunctioning, Evers mumbling, that guy who seemed like Andy Kaufman wearing a yellow suit that turned green as the time wore on, Vinehout getting so gosh darn excited over everything and rocking back and forth, Flynn being so weirdly gruff, etc. It all seemed so rinky dink. At one point, a fedora floated by. No one took care of the technical side of this show. They were all seated, yet they stood up to talk and the camera had to tilt up and down woozily."A fedora floated by" literally refers to a man in a hat walking in front of the camera. Figuratively, it's a bit like an empty suit.
And you want to be my governor?
Floating Fedora from Natasha Kirke on Vimeo.
ADDED: Scott Walker won't eat Tony Evers for lunch because he's famous for eating the same thing for lunch every day, and it's not Tony Evers. See "This Governor Is Getting Mocked for Brown-Bagging Lunch Every Day" (Money):
Walker tweeted that for 26 long years in a row, he has eaten not one, but two ham-and-cheese sandwiches almost everyday for lunch. “Like millions of Americans, I bring my own lunch to work,” Walker wrote in the tweet.Walker eating lunch is not a good metaphor for his opponents. It's long been part of his political rhetoric, and they're making me think of it.
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85 comments:
”Matt Flynn says Scott Walker will eat Tony Evers for lunch”
Nah, Evers wouldn’t fit into Walker’s brown paper bag.
“We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think, which scares the hell out of Scott Walker.”
Apparently the purpose of an education is also not to teach reporters for the Wisconsin State Journal how to punctuate.
Which democrat should I vote for in the primary? Suggestions appreciated.
"We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think, which scares the hell out of Scott Walker."
Does this guy (Soglin) understand that the vast majority of taxpayers would prefer that their children (and other people's children) be educated so that they can hold down a career or a technical job rather than be 'taught how to think'?
Ah Mayor (Gene Shalit) Soglin, you truly are living on an island surrounded by a sea of reality. Expanding the mind is s lofty ideal, but in the real world, most of us view education as a vehicle to a better life, which means a good job. Moderate blue collar dems used to understand that. And besides, the left doesn’t want to teach kids how to think, they want to tell them what to think. That’s almost beyond debate at this point.
"he'll have you for lunch"
First, they called us deplorable. Then, they called us racists. Now, they call us cannibals. What's next?
Teaching to think - that is in fact the main failing of American education.
The modern liberal/progressive hegemony in education is dedicated to preventing this.
They are overt about it.
Soglin is absurd.
The ethos of modern American education is to ensure that every youth has been mentally disabled, everything they do is the equivalent of driving icepicks into their charges brains.
I cannot overstate this, it is that bad.
If the purpose of education is to teach young people how to think, then the entire UW-Mad faculty need to resign en masse in shame and humiliation, excepting only the departments of mathematics, physics, and computer science, plus the College of Engineering.
The description of what colleges and universities do these days is more accurately described as "teaching them what to think."
"Education is what remains after one has eaten their pudding." -- A. Einstein
I'd assume he's not so far gone as to believe his own propaganda: i.e., he understands that much of the higher-ed. establishment is not so much about "how to think" as a prescriptive about what to think. And especially about what not to think.
It's about answers first, questions later (if ever).
Sarah Jeong graduated from two of the most prestigious schools in the USA. Does anyone think she learned how to think, as opposed to learning what to think?
Teach them what to think, he means.
I was an English Major, and I was taught how to think, but the feminists were just beginning to appear to shut all of that down.
STEM and Economics and Law are nearly the only programs left in universities that teach anyone how to think.
Paul Soglin got a BA in History, incidentally. No wonder he thinks engineers are just glorified tradesmen.
He probably is one of those people on the left who thinks "elitist" refers to an educated person, rather than an educated person who doesn't know shit about the real world but thinks he is smarter than everybody else.
LOL "how to think" = You don't need a job-- be a community organizer, agitator, antifa, government bureaucrat or some other drain on society. Become one with the hivemind.
Every liberal arts college and high-end high school says that. So far, only the University of Chicago spelled it out correctly in its semi-recent Welcome Letter to Freshmen. Teaching young people how to think doesn't mean teaching them what to think.
"the purpose of education is to teach young people how to scare the hell out of Scott Walker"
35 years ago, I decided not to pursue an academic career and chose private practice.
It was not about money. It was my sense that universities were no longer teaching kids HOW to think but WHAT to think.
It has only gotten worse since then.
Teller’s comment, +1
The purpose of education is to teach people what to think, which delights and gives hope to Soglin.
Democrats make for a tough choice. Which is stronger -- the tendency to be idiots or assholes?
It is rinky dink, as is the similar event in every other state. For the ones in Massachusetts we get to laugh about the various accents - I contend the candidates here try to fine tune theirs to the locals they hope to win over seeing as there ain't a spits worth of difference in their politics and policies.
-sw
The purpose of education is to leave graduate with large debt, and little chance of landing a job with which to pay it off.
there ain't a spits worth of difference in their politics and policies
Maybe. Overlapping and convergent interests, certainly. Which manifest in quantitative, if not qualitative, differences. There are no mortal gods, but most people strive.
We understand the purpose of education is not a career or a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people what to think, which is to the hell out of Scott Walker."
fixed it for you
We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think, which scares the hell out of Scott Walker.
"Think" about it: why should I repay my student loans for a useless [fill-in the blank] -studies degree?
"For What?!"
'taught how to think'
in just the right way.
No, the Madison establishment bubble, given their infatuation with identity politics, wants to teach people what to think.
By the way, blacks have suffered terribly in Madison since Soglin became mayor. Just ask him how blacks are doing. He'll tell you a sad tale. I think he hates black people.
the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think
And what to think.
They're no longer content with letting the mask slip.
They've ripped it off and thrown it away.
Good. Say exactly what you mean, leftists.
“We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think, which scares the hell out of Scott Walker.”
This hits home for me and really, really pisses me off.
Former Creighton president Fr. John P. Schlegel famously said about a Jesuit education, "We don't teach you what to think, we teach you how to think."
I was a liberal when I was a student at Creighton. Now I'm very conservative. My Creighton classmate, Dr. Andy McGuire, entered college as a Republican and she ran for governor of Iowa as a Democrat.
My firmly held view is that a smart, honest, tuned into current events, fully awake and well-educated person today has no home in today's Democrat party unless you are getting some of the graft. That explains the Street's and Big Business' support of the Dems.
I suppose if I didn't have a Jesuit education I'd still be a liberal. if I'd have gone to Harvard or Yale I'd still believe all this liberal crap and think Obama was a great president
I should add that Scott Walker went to Marquette and is some credits short of earning his degree.
"We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think, which scares the hell out of Scott Walker."
Left wingers always have these fantasy beliefs about what they accomplish. In reality they invented social promotion because they can't teach anything effectively. Somehow this reality never interferes with their fantasizing or pursuing their hatreds.
A Jesuit education, at least in the US, isn't what it used to be.
That would have more than zero currency if our public schools actually even tried to teach people to think.
I thought the moderator/MC/DJ brought an appropriate degree of gravitas to the affair.
You should be able to teach students that thinking is valuable by the end of high school. That is indeed a much needed skill, but having a job or a career is tremendously important in life, too.
I believe strongly in technical courses being available in school for students on that tract. Somehow we've created this idea in America that going to college makes you a more worthy person in life, but that just isn't true. There are great ways of earning a living that don't involve college, and great ways of incurring debt that does involve college.
This is one area where we rarely talk about what Europe does, but they have some good ideas when it comes to schooling and careers.
'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him,
Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea;
'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots
Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off;
'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm,
And two worms he whose nippers end in red;
As it likes me each time, I do: so He.'
Education is very popular in the US.
Our current "educators" are not.
“We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think, which scares the hell out of Scott Walker.”
That's just the weed talkin'.
Teaching students how to think is why you have to separate boys and girls.
Education is very popular in the US.
Not in some subcultures, it isn't. And I'm not just referring to urban blacks slamming one of their own for talking or acting white because they do well in school. It's just a prevalent in poor rural white neighborhoods. Same reason, different terms. It boils down to the perception that by speaking a certain way or doing well academically, the target thinks he or she is better than their agitated peers.
The purpose of computation is understanding, not numbers.
- R.W.Hamming Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers
"Not in some subcultures, it isn't. "
True. Still, even in those there is a sub-subculture thirsty for education.
It expresses itself oddly sometimes, but its very common. Hence, for instance, the explosion of Youtube historical video series.
I have to think that a different approach to literature and history, that is, as narratives, as fun, would change things a lot vs the modern dogmatic litany approach. History is violence and heroes and romance and adventure, clever stratagems and clueless idiocy, irony and comedy, scoundrels and saints - who, very importantly, get martyred in fascinating ways.
Macaulay had the right idea, in setting tales out of Livy in then-popular verse form, and very importantly keeping the spirit of it, of romantic legends.
This was well understood throughout history. The Song of Roland and the Cantar de mio Cid are not bullet-pointed checklists of constitutional amendments or a catalog of complaints by history's losers.
The reason we need every kid to go to college is that political indoctrination is too difficult at HVAC school.
"We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think, which scares the hell out of Scott Walker."
First comment: why not both? Why does the speaker seem to assume they're mutually exclusive?
Second comment: why do a certain subset of liberals disdain skilled trades? I've even come across academics that look down on medical school and law school; those are "just" trade schools, they said. As if trade school was bad.
Education, whether religious (i.e. moral) or secular (i.e. material), serves to constrain our perception and presumably behavior. Its primary purpose is two-fold: function in the scientific logical domain (i.e. near-frame) and within the established consensus (e.g. Nature, democratic). Education forces alignment and conformance of our thought processes. When executed in a limited fashion, it can conserve individual diversity, while promoting civilization and productivity.
We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job
Soglin is not a fan of the deplorable men and women who engage in rational and practical pursuits to improve our quality and quantity of life, and women who choose life, Posterity, and career in order of priority. Who characterized women with the derogatory and demeaning turn of phrase "barefoot and pregnant", and denied their franchise (and the baby her life) with Pro-Choice two choices too late? Who resuscitated the progressive concept of Jew... White Privilege, and languishes in rabid diversity and class convulsion? Who progressed political congruence and selective exclusion? Who is behind the monopolies and practices of Obamacare and the most expensive underpeforming education system, immigration reform to obscure Choice, perpetual smoothing function to destroy human spirit, rend families, and destabilize communities, and prevent assimilation and integration within a generation?
Public education is more about teaching kids what to think than how to think. If you actually taught people how to think, the whole liberal ideology collapses under its dead weight.
"barefoot and pregnant"
This is an ideal.
This is what nature made women to be, which evokes in men instinctive pleasure, because this is the condition nature made men prefer, the goal to which to strive.
It is hard coded in our brains in the same way as the ideal landscape.
"...tastes across the globe all gravitated toward a specific kind of landscape - a bluish scene with trees and open areas, water, human figures and animals."
Are some things universally beautiful?
tim in vermont said...
The reason we need every kid to go to college is that political indoctrination is too difficult at HVAC school.
Imaging trying to teach the students at a HVAC school that there was no difference between male and female plugs, or that a male plug could change to a female plug if it wanted to.
Blogger Hunter said...STEM and Economics and Law are nearly the only programs left in universities that teach anyone how to think.
I agree with you about STEM programs but we've lost the fight in Economics and definitely many years ago in Law Schools.
If the purpose of education is to teach people to think, the average Eloi-like "liberal" State cultist is sorely in need of education.
Projection of the highest order.
No doubt Paul Soglin learned to think for a fraction of the cost of today’s UW-Madison tuition. He was probably trying to insult Walker but he ended up looking like the effete snob that he is.
I've heard this "how to think" trope for so long now, along with "critical thinking," I don't even know what it means anymore. Like deductive logic or stats or something? It's just supposed to be obvious. The college tout says "critical thinking!" And the parents go "ahhh!"
Reminds me of when the cure for all social ills was Education. I finally asked a prof what that was supposed to mean but he didn't have an answer. Seriously, he wouldn't elucidate.
It's like this, we will "educate" you into agreeing with us.
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; the rest go into government.
The education will continue until morale improves.
"critical thinking"
I have actually asked several teachers to define that.
Nothing.
It is a meaningless statement.
"Reminds me of when the cure for all social ills was Education."
"Education" was once an article of faith in development economics. That is, education, according to a variety of metrics, was supposed to be a leading indicator, a factor in the predictive regression models for future increase in rates of growth. But real world data did not support it. Education usually lagged, not led, that is, increasing economic sophistication created a demand for education. Education is in many ways a luxury good.
Soglin said, “We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think, which scares the hell out of Scott Walker.”
Soglin said, “We understand the purpose of education is not a career and a technical job, the purpose of an education is to teach young people how to think [as liberals think], which scares the hell out of Scott Walker [and all died-in-the-wool conservatives].” FIFY
"barefoot and pregnant"
This is an ideal.
This is what nature made women to be
With respect to Nature's fitness function, yes. With respect to people's fitness function(s), moral and individual, no. The ideal is a reconciliation of moral, natural, and personal imperatives, that neither denies individual dignity nor engenders dodo dynasties or worse.
The problem with "barefoot and pregnant" is that it implies a captive audience, which denies human (women and men) agency, and forces a cognitive dissonance in men and women who reconcile their differences despite the popular culture. It's not that the couple synthesis was complete, it wasn't, but couples did/do strive to maturity, equitable treatment, and Nature's fitness.
" which denies human (women and men) agency"
A great deal of our "agency" is vanity, defended by rationalization.
A great deal of our "agency" is vanity, defended by rationalization
Perhaps. Other than through observational myths of limited, circumstantial evidence, we cannot discern origin or expression of freewill in the scientific logical domain, and individual dignity is a moral axiom or article of faith, the swipe of a scalpel or machete, or a first raised in riotous retributio0n.
Oh, sure, Ann, Scott Walker would like you to think its ham and cheese in those sandwiches.
But is it really so hard to believe that its some hapless Democrat teacher, named Tinker? And now he's ready to move on to Evers, before devouring Chance.
My Soglin Story: Madison, August 1974 and Nixon has just resigned. Joyous crowds are dancing in State Street. At State and Gilman, Soglin gets up on a pickup bed to address the crowd. They shout him down. Jubilation ensues. I can't believe he's still around.
Walker will drink their milkshake. He'll drink it up!
College taught me how to drink. And some other stuff that got me employed.
Many student learn to think of their college years as a huge waste of time and money, so there's that.
"Second comment: why do a certain subset of liberals disdain skilled trades? I've even come across academics that look down on medical school and law school; those are "just" trade schools, they said. As if trade school was bad."
Brooks and Dunn sang:
I can ride, rope, saddle, and paint,
Do things with my hands that most men can't.
And those that can't hate those that can, if all the unskilled can do is bullshit.
Look at Andy-DeSitter Sadist de Sade here on this site for example.
Critical thinking means thinking in a critical way, as opposed to being asked to think in an empathetic or guilt-framed mindset.
For example questioning premise', considering extrapolations which disprove any supposed statements of fact, challenging definitions used to reach the supposed facts, questioning why history has many seemingly contradictory statements of differing facts, in addition to many other things could be what is meant, at times, by one who uses the phrase.
You are critically thinking when asking others to do what they haven't thought of defining before when using the phrase "critical thinking" natch.
Can we say professional, oh let's say film, critics view films differently because of their position?
Or auto critics?
The "critic" matters, and I ain't talking about no damn cartoon neither.
Yes they and we layman share a lot, like buttholes, so we all have opinions, but there can be, and often is, genuine difference. Some evolution of some thing(s) started long, long ago.
It is surprising that even with all your knowledge and wisdom you missed this relatively un-complex human phenomenon.
Maybe this is your way of being cute.
"critical thinking"
I have actually asked several teachers to define that.
Nothing.
It is a meaningless statement.
The statement is not meaningless. The usage was meaningless because the people making the statements were uninterested in teaching the skill. But the fact these people incorporated the idea into their brand doesn't mean the core idea/skill lost its value. It just means people have to look through the branding to the reality.
You might call this critical evaluation.
Education is there for many reasons. Getting a good job in life is defiantly one of them!!!
They say that black children in Wisconsin who mostly live in Milwaukee or Madison have the worst chances in life of any in the US. But Mayor of Madison Soglin is proud of his record. They asked the candidates at the forum: If you were not on the ballot, who would you vote for? Mayor of Madison Soglin said: "If I were not on the ballot, I would write myself in." And Evers, the Superintendent of Education in Wisconsin, responsible for the terrible record on educating black kids, is the leading Democratic candidate for governor.
If you frequent the more popular academic sites, like chronicle.com, you will find that many of the articles and comments take a position that most Americans would find odd and at least a little frightening.
That position is that it is the job of academics, especially in the humanities, to critique American society & work to "improve" it. That is their job #1.
That is what Soglin meant by "teaching people how to think."
This is the air that many academics breathe; their purpose is to critique the lives and social arrangements of other people. They themselves are subject only to the judgment of their peers, and they decide who the peers are.
As far as I can tell, none of these academics questions their own biases, especially their own class biases, despite the fact that most academics come from bourgeois backgrounds. They can't see it. They think, for example, that what one chooses to eat is fraught with significance. Most people only care that their food is tasty, nutritious, and not expensive. The educated class insists that what one eats is morally and symbolically powerful. Yet they do not see this as a class prejudice. For them, it is a universal truth that only they recognize, and their job is to enlighten the rest of us and make us adopt their values.
When a child is sent to Catholic School, Lefties tell me that they will lack an education because they are being indoctrinated, not taught.
When a child is sent to a madrassas to learn the Koran, I am told they are being propagandized, and not taught.
So we have established that children can be indoctrinated during their school years.
And yet, when we send a kid to college, they have no propensity to protest EVERYTHING, burn businesses, and spread Marxist cant...but they do when they come out...
Just as a follow up question: What percentage of kids can READ coming out of St. Ange's or a Saudi Madrassas vs. what percentage can read coming out of the New York City Public School system?
If I were an educator of any stripe, facing their horrible statistics on reading and math, I would be a bit more humble in one's ability to teach 'thinking' cause they sure as hell suck at teaching the basics.
have actually asked several teachers to define that.
Nothing.
It is a meaningless statement.
Why would you consider your search for a definition exhausted because you asked teachers? Teachers are not thinkers. Critical thinking is about questioning premises, questioning conclusions served up by others, questioning, questioning, questioning, then coming up with your own conclusions, even if that conclusion is that there is not enough evidence to support any conclusion, or that the original conclusions were correct.
I always go back to climate because it’s so rife with examples. For example, you have the Climategate emails where Phil Jones I think, says “We have to get rid of this warm blip in the ‘40s.” and then you read a study on a glacier in Europe that comes to the conclusion that they have found other causes for glacial melting than higher temperatures because the found a glacier that melted faster in the ‘40s even though the climate record, overseen by Phil Jones, showed it was not warmer in the ‘40s.
Reading comprehension leads you to accept the conclusion of the scientists on glaciers in the ‘40s, critical thinking causes you to reject that conclusion. People call it “thinking outside the box” but if you are good at critical thinking, the concept of a “box" is ridiculous.
I've even come across academics that look down on medical school and law school; those are "just" trade schools, they said. As if trade school was bad.
They think of themselves as aristocrats, a ruling class, for whom a life in “the trades” was unthinkable. By that even doctors and lawyers count as “tradesmen.” Look at Downton Abbey. But if you wanted to spend your time scribbling in your library, that was OK.
Critical thinking is about questioning premises, questioning conclusions served up by others, questioning, questioning, questioning, then coming up with your own conclusions, even if that conclusion is that there is not enough evidence to support any conclusion, or that the original conclusions were correct.
In other words, critical thinking is an advanced skill. Critical thinking requires that you have a body, many bodies, of knowledge, to set against each other and sort out conclusions. I hate to support anything, but I think this is what they mean by dialectic? I mean, thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
Point being, if you don't know nuthin' but have a skull full of mush, critical thinking is a lie. Learn your times tables before saying we didn't go to the moon or fire can't melt steel.
I hate to support anything commie-esque
I can't perfectly define "how to think," but like the beard in the old philosophical conundrum (is one whisker a beard? Two whiskers? When is an accumulation of whiskers a beard, and when not), I know when someone knows how to think, just as I know when someone has a beard. I was in corporate America in the early stages of the Yuppie Age, and encountered all these young people who had MBAs and yet just didn't know how to think. They would make the most bonehead business decisions, that would get accepted by management because, "Hey, they've got MBAs."
tcrosse wrote: “My Soglin Story: Madison, August 1974 and Nixon has just resigned. Joyous crowds are dancing in State Street. At State and Gilman, Soglin gets up on a pickup bed to address the crowd. They shout him down. Jubilation ensues. I can't believe he's still around.”
Five years later, I worked at small shop on State and Gilman. People still talked about that night.
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