Reflections  

Guessing game — I stopped by Borders for just a minute the other day and saw a display for a new book I hadn't heard about: "The Assault on Reason," by former Vice President Al Gore.

I didn't have time to peruse the book in the store, so I really don't know what it's about, or what exactly it's supposed to be. I have, however, formed three hypotheses, based on the title:

1. an autobiography
2. a how-to book
3. a novel, a futuristic political-philosophical thriller. The first sentence, under this hypothesis, would be "Who is Wesley Mouch?"

What else could it be? — Ross Levatter

Dwarf-tossing and truth — The front page of the website of the California Virtual Academies, an online alternative to traditional public schools in California, boasts: "Pluto has been demoted to a 'dwarf planet,' and the K12 science lessons have already been updated!"

A link takes me to a fuller explanation. There are snapshots of two graphic lessons, one from before Pluto's demotion and one after. In the second picture, Pluto is erased from the virtual textbook, as it is undoubtedly being erased from the newest print runs of paper textbooks. The reclassification of Pluto, the page glibly says, "changes lessons about our solar system — the old textbooks are now wrong!" It's that simple: the books were right, and now the books are wrong.

I thought of Winston Smith at his desk in the Ministry of Truth, altering historical newspaper clippings according to what the state decided was true. The purpose is not nefarious, as in Minitrue, but just as creepy. Altering lessons in such binary fashion implicitly says to a child: experts have decided that reality has changed. What was a planet, no longer is. We will call it a "dwarf" and take it out of your textbook, and the truth changes, and there's nothing more to say.

Of course textbooks should be updated to reflect the best information available (if they are to be used at all — another question entirely), but worthwhile education can't be boiled down to conceptions of truth that flip like transistors, switching from one to zero and back again with shifts in expert consensus.

If kids are to learn to think, they must be taught what a definition is: an arbitrary construct, a tool. The definition of a planet is harmless, but misused definitions can be powerful weapons. If the government tells you something is "a privilege, not a right," you might be easily convinced, if you weren't trained as a child to think about definitions and symbols and the use of metaphor.

Those two virtual-textbook depictions of the solar system, one with Pluto and one without, reminded me of Neil Postman's discussion, in his excellent book "The End of Education," of the importance of definition, question, and metaphor in pedagogy. Postman cautioned that, if they are not taught to think about how as well as what they learn, "students come to believe that definitions are not invented; that they are not even human creations; that, in fact, they are — how shall I say it? — part of the natural world, like clouds, trees, and stars." And planets, and things of greater consequence. — Patrick Quealy

Mailing it in — Having written that the United States Postal Service is driving itself into threatened bankruptcy (and thus a demand for yet greater subsidy from public funds) by raising its rates in the face of competition from both UPS and email, I'm reluctantly pleased to report that on May 14 they did it again. Not only has the USPS increased rates yet further; it also announced more complications in determining prices. This will surely usher in its extinction. When I asked the week before in my lower Manhattan (SoHo) post office for a flier with the new rates, the clerk behind a continuous clear bulletproof partition (resembling those in liquor stores in slum neighborhoods) advised me to find them on the internet, which would be reasonable — if I were dealing with a private company.

When I recently airmailed a letter to Sweden at the old rates, it came back, stamped "insufficient address" and "do not remail in this envelope," with a further stamped demand for additional postage. Apparently the USPS clerk failed to recognize not only the country code but also the name of the capital city. Since nothing on my envelope specified how much additional postage was required, I went from usps.com to the link for "International Mail Services," which said nothing about new rates.

Another letter, addressed to NYPL, 5th Avenue & 42nd Street, New York NY 10036, likewise came back marked "insufficient address." The clerk to whom I showed it at my SoHo post office handwrote into the address "New York Public Library." I then added, "Look for the huge building with the lions in the front." (Wish I were making this up.)

From the other side of our country, Steve Cox reports that in his local post office, "there are and have been no postings of the new rates, on walls or bulletin boards, so one has to stand in line and confer with a clerk who doesn't speak English, then ask for another clerk, to make sure one got it right." May I suggest that a central difference between his clerks and mine is that mine speak English, often as their mother tongue, even if they aren't always comprehensible.

My hunch is that these latest changes were instituted to make customers go more often to the local post office, where the lines have long been interminable, even for common mailings, thus prompting a demand for more postal employees, even at a time of decreasing revenue! Am I alone in smelling a conspiracy initiated by the postal workers' union? When the post office offered to sell first-class, postage-guaranteed-forever stamps, did it assume that the bargain really would have a short life? Much as unions sabotaged the American automobile industry, so they will kill mail delivery, in this case with government support. Perhaps once the USPS goes under, as it surely will if these self-defeating practices continue, the union will be demanding government benefits comparable to those awarded veterans of a war that was lost. How neat!

Legislators beware. — Richard Kostelanetz

Disorganization — A Dutch television producer promised a reality show in which three patients in need of a kidney would compete for the approval of a single donor. This was later revealed to be a hoax, which left me extremely disappointed. I would have loved to watch a show like that.

The hoaxers claim their purpose was to bring attention to the massive donor shortage worldwide. I think they unwittingly brought attention to another issue: the need to allow organs to be bought and sold. If this were a real commercial venture, one of those contestants would have gotten a kidney. Instead, all three are still on waiting lists. And here I sit, with two perfectly good kidneys, wishing I had the money to buy a sailboat. — Tim Slagle

Paradise restored — The vagaries of municipal government will beat your favorite sitcom in giggle power — every time. Take a major component of civic responsibility: our city streets. To my way of thinking, streets are a proper concern of city government, totally unlike libraries and buses, which, freed from the constraints of profit, are bungled beyond repair.

Streets, to my simple mind, are to facilitate the use of vehicles, which cannot traverse muddy meadows or forest trails or rocky canyons. We build streets to ease the paths of powered vehicles. This is the first lesson taught in Civic Planning 102. It's even taught at great universities like the University of California at Berkeley, where there's a deadly prejudice against cars, trucks, and motorcycles propelled by the fearsome, fuming, foulsome internal combustion engine. A UC physics lab is working feverishly on a windmill-propelled family vehicle that resembles a four-masted schooner and moves at six miles an hour in a howling gale. ("Meet you at Starbucks in eight hours, unless the wind stops.")

But the point is that, theoretically, streets promote the rapid passage of all kinds of motorized vehicles. So it is assumed, even at UC. Yet if this is true, why are the slowskies, all over the U.S., building asphalt barriers in the streets that resemble the barricades of the Paris Commune in 1870? Speed bumps, they're called. Their primary and only purpose is to impede the flow of traffic. This is a concept opposed to the concept of "street." And don't dare offer safety as a rationale. Bouncing over one of these fortifications, considering the damage done to axles and springs and suspension coils and brake systems, is not safe. (Have you seen the latest study proving that speed bumps prevent accidents? I haven't either, because there ain't any. It's one of those "seems like . . ." theories.)

Talk about the law of unintended consequences! I just collided with four of these auto traps, and now I'm approaching a lighted intersection, but the four collisions have wounded my braking system and I run over four little schoolgirls on their way to first grade. I mash their furry puppy, too. That's safe?

And it's worse than that. Where there's government there's corruption. It's rumored that the speed bump crew canvasses the neighborhood selling tickets for the Speed-bump Builders' Ball. "Uh, Mr. Roberts, if we could just sell 40 tickets on your block: maybe instead of these 16 obstructions we could simply accept your oath that you will follow the existing speed limits on Sylvanpath Lane."

Have you noticed that they never blockade the streets in the neighborhoods of the city council? I've never seen a mayor's street with a single speed bump.

And here's the supreme irony. Mother Nature, during her cycle of seasons, efficiently contracts and expands the roadway, such that it's full of free potholes, which the city, of course, is too busy to repair. (Too many speed bumps to build.) These immense craters are great traffic impeders — axle-shaking, spring-cracking, frame-rattling holes. And completely without cost to us taxpayers! But no, that's not good enough for my muni-gov. They rush to spend a hundred thousand or so on more impediments. Why not just sprinkle inexpensive tacks in the street?

Or, even cheaper, let Nature take back her own. Let her reclaim her streets, boulevards, and lanes with oaks, willows, birches, maples, and all the tough spikey undergrowth that turns asphalt and concrete into wilderness. How safe we'll be then! — Ted Roberts

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