The general theme of this article is "Stupid S*** That I Wish People Would Stop Saying", or at least stop and explain what it is that they really mean.   Let us start with college basketball.

Stupid S*** One

             No college basketball broadcast is complete these days without the statement that there really isn’t a great team in college basketball this year.   No college basketball broadcast was complete without this statement last year, either, or the year before or the year before; it is simply something that college basketball analysts have to say.    There is no great team, they will add, because there is so much parity in college basketball now, and there is so much parity because the great players only stay in college for one or two years, and then they go on to the NBA.

            This bothers me more than usual this year because

            1)  I kind of think that my team, the Kansas Jayhawks, might be a great team, that they might actually be the best college basketball team in ten years or more—or not—and

            2)  It seems pretty obvious to me that opposite is true, that there is actually less parity in college basketball this year than there has been in years.

            The way the experts know that there is no great team this year is that everybody loses once in a while; Kansas, Duke and Ohio State all have two losses apiece; also Brigham Young has two, and San Diego State has only one, but San Diego State hasn’t played anybody currently ranked in the Northern Hemisphere.

            Two losses—but the NCAA basketball champion normally loses about five games a year.   In the last eleven years the NCAA division one champions have lost a total of 53 games—4.8 per season.   Every championship team lost at least four games except the 2008 Kansas Jayhawks, who went 37-3.

            We’re getting late in the season here, and we still have five teams with only one or two losses.   There is a very good chance that, at the end of the season, we will have our first 2-loss national champion in 12 years—and that there will be one or two other teams with only three losses.  The norm for an NCAA championship team is five.   How does that constitute "more parity than ever?"

            It doesn’t, frankly, and this raises another question:   How, exactly, does ten or fifteen players a year leaving early for the NBA create "parity?"

            Players leaving early from Kentucky and Kansas would have some very, very weak parity-inducing effects, IF the next crop of outstanding young players didn’t also go to Kentucky and Kansas.   In the real world, the NBA-type players—of which there are only a handful each year—tend to go to a very few schools.   John Wall leaving Kentucky after one year creates "parity" in contrast only with an imaginary world in which John Wall stays at Kentucky for four years, becoming a fantastically dominant college player, and is joined by yet more Kentucky-type recruits.

            First of all, that was never going to happen, and second, players like John Wall have been going to the NBA after one year of college (or less) for a very long time now, and a great many other things have changed over that time period.   When was it, exactly, that Moses Malone skipped college and went right to the NBA?   1975?  1977?  It’s been a while, I think.   Envisioning all of the good talent staying in college for four years—in the modern world, where there are so many superbly talented players—is envisioning a world that has never existed.    The reality is that there is more talent in college now than there has ever been. 

            The obvious question that occurs when you say that there is no great team in college basketball this year is "What is a great team?"  What do you mean by that phrase?

            I would assume that the first test of a great team is that they win the championship.   Probably the best team Kansas has ever had was the 1996-1997 team, which had four players who had NBA careers of more than ten years (Raef LaFrentz, Scott Pollard, Jacques Vaughn and Paul Pierce).   I don’t know that there has ever been a college basketball team with more talent than that team; still, if I were to tell you that that was a great college basketball team, someone would point out very quickly that they failed to win the NCAA championship.   You can’t be a great college basketball team, they would argue, unless you win the championship.

            Which actually, I would agree with; it seems to me an entirely reasonable expectation of a "great" team that they should win the championship.    But if we assume that that’s true—if we assume that you can’t be considered a great team unless you win the national title—then what is the point of saying that there is no great team in this year’s field?    In saying that, aren’t you necessarily doing one of two things:

            (1)  Saying that which is axiomatic and obvious—that none of these teams can be considered great yet, since obviously none of them has yet won this season’s championship, or

            (2)  Pre-judging the caliber of this season’s NCAA champion, and saying that, whoever they are, they won’t stand up by comparison to the great teams.

            Suppose that you’re a school teacher, or a college professor.   Would you walk in front of your classroom the third week of class and say, "There are really no "A" students in this class this year.  I’ve had some great students in the past, but there are no great students in this school anymore.   You’re all kind of mediocre."  You probably wouldn’t do that, would you?

            Here’s my real point about this:  (1) It is disrespectful to the game to keep saying that, because it is putting down this year’s players down by contrasting them with some mystical past that never existed, and (2) it is stupid to keep saying that because you don’t know whether it’s true or not.

            There’s a second issue here, which is "What, exactly, is a great college basketball team?"  What are the characteristics of such a team?   What are the greatest college teams ever?

            I have a set of ideas about that, too, but I’m going in a different direction today, so I’ll go on down that other path.

Stupid S*** Two

             Then there is the education debate; this has to do with K through 12.   American kids, we are told by the same savant who seven years ago was telling us that Florida was about to be buried under the Atlantic ocean, are now 21^st in the world in math skills, and 25^th in science, whereas a generation ago we were #1 in both areas.

            I am not saying that this is untrue, but. . .I am skeptical about it on a great many different levels.    First of all, I’m an old person, and I actually remember what people were saying about the American education system way back when, which actually was pretty much the same thing they are saying now.   Remember "Why Johnny Can’t Read?" . . . .anybody remember that?   Why Johnny Can’t Add, Why Johnny Doesn’t Know History.

            Oh yes, our schools from the 1950s and 1960s were terrible; the Russians were far better than we were, the Germans were better, the Japanese were better.   The current generation of Why-Johnny-Can’t-Read alarmists sound, to me, a great deal like the last generation.   I’ve been hearing this for a long time; I always wonder what the specifics are.   What exactly is being tested here?

            This is not to say that it’s not true; if you run around saying every day that Grandma is going to die tomorrow, the fact that you were wrong yesterday doesn’t mean that you are wrong today or that you will be wrong tomorrow.   But if you were told that American kids a generation ago were 1^st in the world in math skills, but now they are 21^st among 30 developed nations, what would be the first question you would ask?

            Is this because American kids are doing worse, or is it because kids from other countries are doing better?

            Of course it makes a difference.    All of life is not a mindless competition.    If our kids have improved by 10% but those from other nations have improved by 30%, that’s one problem.   If our kids have actually gone backward, that’s a different problem.

            If other countries’ educational systems have improved dramatically then we should begin, I think, by celebrating the fact that other countries are doing better than they were.   That’s a good thing.   We will all benefit from that.

            Maybe it’s just me, but. . .my kids

            a)  have worked far, far harder in school than I ever did, and

            b)  are far better educated than I was at the same age.

            I don’t think it’s just me.   I know that when I have written things like this in the past, I always hear from teachers who say "That’s right; the kids do work much harder now than they did a generation ago.   The standards are much higher."

            Look, here is what I think is happening; maybe I’m wrong, I’m not an expert.   What I think is happening is not that we’re doing a poor job of educating our kids, but that we’re doing a very poor job of selling our kids on the value of education.   Many, many more young people go to college now than did when I graduated from high school, but there is this difference.   When I got out of high school, the smart kids wanted to go to college because we wanted to get ahead in life.    Now, the kids from good families are all going to go to college because it’s expected of them.

            What I am concerned about is that there is too much "push" in our educational system, and not enough "pull".    It’s not that we’re not pushing the kids hard enough; rather, we are beginning to push them too hard, and it is time to BACK OFF.   High school kids now work really hard, and a good bit of it is just busy work.   They are better educated, as a group, than we were, but they are also doing a lot of work-for-the-purpose-of work.   In fact, in a lot of families, the kids are now working harder than the parents are.

            Well, what do you think is going to happen if the kids decide that they’re working harder than their parents are?    I can tell you what’s going to happen, if it’s not obvious to you.   They’re going to rebel.    They’re going to start refusing to do it.   Maybe they’ve already started refusing to do it, I don’t know.

            There’s a different problem that is related.   We have pockets in our society, pockets of poverty, which are perpetuated by the fact that people don’t believe that they can get out of poverty by working hard and getting an education.   I was raised in poverty, and I mean true poverty; as I’m sure I’ve mentioned, my father was a small-town school janitor, and we didn’t have plumbing or television or heated bedrooms.  But I always expected to do better, and I always saw education as the way to do better.  There are pockets of poverty now—black and white—where people don’t get that anymore.

            But we are also reaching a point, I think, of mindless education; it’s an oxymoron, but I kind of think it’s where we are.   We’re pushing our kids to get more education and more education and more education, but we’re not really explaining to them why, and we’re not explaining to them why because we can’t explain to them why, and we can’t explain to them why because there isn’t any why there; it’s just education for the purpose of education.   We’re pushing kids to get Master’s Degrees because the Bachelor’s doesn’t do it anymore; you have to have an advanced degree now, and you have to do better in school because the Chinese are doing better in school, and there’s some sort of obscure competition between us, and they’re going to win.

            Pardon me for being dense, but I don’t see what difference it makes how the Chinese kids are doing on their math tests.    So what?   Do you really think that we’re going to become a third-world nation because the Chinese kids are doing better on their math tests?   Why?   Explain it to me, as if I was an idiot.   I don’t get the connection.   I don’t see what difference it makes.   Cutting-edge scientists, yes, but that’s a different problem.   Owing trillions of dollars to the Chinese because we’re spending money we don’t need to spend is a serious problem that will impact the lives of Americans if we don’t stop it.   Education is not an Olympic competition; in fact, it’s not a competition at all.   Falling behind in some imaginary competition is not a serious problem, and please stop assuming that it is.

            And stop telling the kids to work harder; it’s backfiring on us, and it’s making the problem worse.   If Japanese kids go to school 244 days a year or whatever it is supposed to be, then frankly the Japanese should be ashamed of themselves.  You remember what Bill Russell said when the East German women were winning all of the swimming medals because they took male hormones and ate steroids like candy?   Let them.    At that point, you let them have it; it’s just a medal.   If the Japanese want to go to school year around, let them.   All they’re gaining is a medal.   What they’re losing is their childhood.

Stupid S*** Three 

            In the summer of 1848 a revolution broke out in the streets of Paris.   This was followed, within weeks, by revolutionary pushes in Italy, several German states, Denmark, Rumania and in other places around Europe.

            Most of these revolutions failed.    Most of Europe at that time was governed by old dynastic families which had been in charge, in some cases, for hundreds of years, and in other cases by tyrants who had seized power at some point and "legitimized" their authority by claiming to represent old dynastic families.    After a large number of extremely bloody street riots, in most of these states and provinces the old-line rulers were able to re-establish control—temporarily.

            Everything in history is temporary, of course; the only thing permanent is change.   The old regimes re-established themselves, but in 1871 the same thing happened again;  street riots broke out in Paris, leading ultimately to a series of revolutions all around Europe.  When France sneezes, they used to say, Europe catches a cold.

            Pardon me for saying this, but what is happening now in the Arab world doesn’t have a goddamned thing to do with twitter, Facebook, Mah-jong, or any other social media.    What is happening in the streets of the Middle East is the same thing that happened in Europe in 1848 and 1871 and on several other occasions.   People are demanding better government.    The struggle for just and enlightened government is a long one, stretching across centuries. The Arab world is, for the most part, governed by repressive regimes more focused on their own wealth and power than on the welfare of the people.   At some point, people get tired of it, and start to demand better government.

            When people start to demand better government, that spreads from one person to another, from one region to another, very rapidly.   It always has.    The fact that it now spreads by twitter and social media really doesn’t have anything to do with anything; that’s just stupid political commentators who are focused on the shiny objects.   If the last thing that had been invented was the telephone, the repressive governments would be shutting down telephone service, and these people would be telling you sagely that the thing that’s driving this is the telephone.