Education Reform

Everybody knows that our current educational system is broken.  It is broken at a fundamental level.  But all the fixes I've ever seen just nibble around the edges.  School choice and vouchers are important, but not enough to cure the rot.  (Money doesn't teach children.  Good teachers do.  And the teachers' unions are the enemies of education.)  We need to end the State-run daycare system that substitutes parenting with systematized socialist indoctrination.  Naturally, I have a proposal.

Children should not begin school until they are 8 years old.  They need their childhood to run around outside, play, and learn their culture from their parents.  If they can't sit still and focus (and 5 year olds cannot), they can't learn.  Discipline must be enforced in the classroom, for the betterment of the individual and the health of the group.  Spankings (administered by the school Principal) are a healthy, natural way to teach children to obey.  (Corporal punishment has worked for thousands of years.  We've seen what happens when you don't punish children for misbehavior, and it isn't pretty.)

Primary school should last 5 years.  Children would finish this stage when they are 13 years old - when they are no longer really children.  Five years is enough time to teach everything important, especially since most children will already know how to read and do basic arithmetic before they start.  More importantly, beginning formal education at a later age will not teach children that they are too dumb to learn, just because they are late bloomers.  Math is only difficult to most kids because we expect too much of them too soon.  Kids aren't stupid, but their minds don't work the way adult minds do.

What subjects to teach?  Mathematics, of course.  We should be able to teach them up to introductory algebra and basic geometry before they're done.  English: reading, writing, spelling grammar, the classics of children's literature.  (I include Terry Pratchett's novels here.)  Social studies: how our society works, and why America is the greatest place in the world.  (Yes, this is a bit of propaganda.  Kids need this, just like they need heroes and role models.  "We are the children of children and we live as we are shown.")  History: real, positive stories of America and the world.  (History is not a list of names and dates.  It is the story of how we got here, and why things are not otherwise.)  Geography, to go with the history and social studies.  (Different people are the way they are for reasons.  Humans are the apes that swim and eat fish!  Every major city in the world is on a river or coast.)  Safe gun handling and marksmanship.  (Start with Nerf guns and work them up through soft air guns to BB/pellet guns.)  Gym, including dance, organized sports, and marching in formation.  (Dodge Ball is mandatory.  It teaches valuable life lessons.)  Music, especially singing.  (You have to have marching cadences, of course.)

After completion of primary school, every young person would then move on to their choice of apprenticeship.  This would consist of 3 to 5 years of a mix of formal education and practical work experience.  The formal education would have a few common elements, such as classes in home economics (cooking, cleaning, sewing, child care), civics (voting, paying taxes, how the government works), and economics (paying bills, balancing a checkbook, how banking and the stock market work).

What apprenticeships to offer?  All the building trades.  Entrepreneurship.  Computer skills.  Nursing.  Police work and firefighting.  Nail and hair grooming.  Child care.  Primary education.  Farming.  Ranching.  Truck driving.  Heavy equipment operation.  Surveying.  Mechanical drawing/CAD/architecture.  Whatever the local community thinks is worthwhile and can afford.  (Political apprenticeships, with the mayor or town council?)

College prep is just another form of apprenticeship.  However, it should be limited to the top 15% of students at a maximum.

Zero Point Energy

Zero Point energy, or the energy of empty Space Time, gives physicists fits.  One the one hand, observation shows a tiny, tiny amount of energy.  (This is the probable source of the "dark energy" that pushes distant galaxies apart.)  On the other hand, the calculations show an enormous amount of energy.  How enormous?  120 orders of magnitude more than the observations show.  That is a lot!

This discrepancy is easily solved.  The calculation show the total amount of energy in empty space.  This is the amount of available energy in space-time, from which all other fields draw energy.  (Gradients in the space-time energy field have an effect that we call gravity.  You have to understand gravity as a push from empty space, not a pull by matter.)  This energy source must, of necessity, be enormous.  It is also relatively equal at all places.

Relatively equal - there's the source of the problem.  The uncertainty principle tells us that nothing can be completely equal all the time.  And thus the "surface" of space-time is awash with tiny differences.  These aggregate into waves with real, albeit tiny amounts of energy.  How much energy?  About 120 orders of magnitude less than the total amount held in space-time.

Traversing these frothy waves is what reduces the energy of photons traveling intergalactic distances.  The aggregate addition to the energy of space-time over remarkably long distances is enough to accelerate galaxies away from each other.

Once you understand the true nature of gravity and space-time, everything else makes perfect sense.  There are no contradictions in nature, merely in our flawed understanding.

Re: Richmond

It's amazing how much common sense breaks out when you have several thousand armed men surrounding the police.  Somehow, the police managed to not cause a riot inside the cordon.

There's a lesson to be learned here.

Richmond police presence 1/20/2020

Why, precisely, is the government at Richmond, Virginia using plain clothes officers at the pro-civil rights rally today?  What possible use do plain clothes officers have in performing crown control?

To ask the question is to answer it.  None.

Unless their goal is provocation.


Why are the police allowing only one entrance and exit to a massive rally?  Don't they know that's an offense against public safety, and a violation of fire and safety codes?  And why have the police already announced that they will not separate the marchers from the counter protesters?

Unless the purpose is harassment, surveillance, and intimidation.  Remember, the police created the gauntlet of "counter protesters" in Charlottesville.

It's almost as if the Leftists have something planned...


Is it normal for the military to take control of the airspace around a State capital during a pro-civil rights protest march?  I don't think I've ever heard of that sort of thing before.  It's almost as if they're expecting something...