We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Remember my July 10 post, “Tell me about special reading”? Well, you can all stop thinking I’m just another middle class mama boasting about my wonderful offspring. I am and I do, but not today. The purpose of this post is to downplay my kid and up-play, if the term is allowable, the system that taught him to read so quickly. Evidence that this might be a group rather than an individual effect was provided by a little sign posted up on his classroom door at the end of term. It said that 95% of the children in his year were ahead of the national average in literacy, and 54% of them were more than a year ahead. In case you are wondering, the school is an ordinary state school in an area that is mostly middle and respectable working class but includes some children from welfare enclaves.
So what’s this post doing on Samizdata? Early Reading Research (ERR) certainly is not a system designed to appeal to libertarians. The teacher is boss. The kids listen and participate as a group, in unison. Scientific it may be, but in spirit it is a throwback to systems the Victorians would have recognized.
But that doesn’t matter. The libertarian morals to be drawn are (a) it’s taken thirty freaking years or more to overthrow the fraudulent orthodoxy that monolithic state education enthroned, and the job ain’t done yet; (b) that when you next hear statists moan on about how horrifically complicated, interconnected and hard to solve social problems are, mentally add the words “so long as you refuse to admit that you were wrong”; (c) watch the buggers in the educational establishment. Watch them with the eyes of a hawk. Sure, they are by now in their heart of hearts convinced that phonics is the system that works. But a little matter like the interests of actual children won’t override the fact that the last thing the Special Needs “community” want is sudden, clear improvement in children’s literacy. It would make them look bad. Worse, it would make them look unecessary. Expect them to obfuscate, distort and delay reform in every way imaginable. They’ll tell themselves that gradual change and a “mixed approach” are the best thing all round, which is true when the best thing is defined as covering their tails.
One final point. I can talk “mixed approach” too. I’m not saying ERR is the best and only system for all time, just that it knocks the National Literacy Strategy into a cocked hat. I’m not saying that there are no children with real special needs, just that there are much fewer of them than will keep all today’s legion of special needs teachers in their jobs. And I have no idea of what Jonathan Solity’s political opinions are. If he ever reads this and finds himself agreeing with me, I suggest that he keep very, very quiet about it.
Basking in the anticipated riches from sales of Samizdata consumer durables, Perry e-mails to suggest, “Natalie should consider a shop for her site… a nifty line in ‘Ninja Librarian’ tee-shirts?” Thank you, Perry, but I have already launched my own mug and T-shirt business, and while doing it had the inspiration that will make me the next Bill Gates. As capitalists you might be interested in my business model. Start up costs are zero. Running costs are zero. Depreciation is zero. Losses from theft, breakage and catastrophes of nature are all zero. Profits, it is true, are also currently running at an integer number between one and minus one, but it’s early days yet. The Great Thought came to me while I was thinking of what to give my 48,888th visitor, a chap called Dave. Suddenly it came to me:
“You win a… um… free endorsement of whatever T shirt, baseball cap or coffee mug you happen to own anyway. It is now an official nataliesolent.blogspot.com shirt, cap, mug or other promotional article. Tell all your friends!”
“Virtual micromanufacturing,” as I like to call it is the true child of the information age, with all its virtues of instantaneousness, flexibility and asypmptotically trivial transaction costs. You don’t like the Ronald MacDonald logo on your nataliesolent.blogspot.com mug? Just look hard at your much more tasteful 1802 Sèvres card dish and reassign that coveted Natalie identity at the speed of thought. Just In Time manufacturing has nothing on this! It remains only for the delighted customer to send me his money.
Antoine Clarke is a ferociously well-informed man, so perhaps he can nail down a quotation from Milton Friedman for me. Somewhere in his discussion of market failure, Friedman points out that when someone says, “but if there were no government intervention, this or that bad thing might happen,” it’s a perfectly valid defence to answer, “And with government intervention this horrendously bad thing definitely is happening.” You compare the real option with the other real option, not the real with the ideal.
In his post “If they must die: then let them do so quickly” Antoine makes the same error. He writes,
“Great. “Algeria” is better off for the next twenty years under Islamic fundamentalist rule … Several thousand individual women have had their throats cut in the past decade for not wearing ‘modest dress’. Several hundred children have been slaughtered by similar means. But that’s OK ‘cos in twenty years someone else’s kids might not be shot for demonstrating against the ban on “The Simpsons” or Pepsi adverts.”
No, it’s not OK. It will never be OK. My point and Brian’s was not that either Algeria or Iran are OK but that Iran is less bad than Algeria, and that the main reason for that is that the Iranian army let their fundamentalists keep their genuine election victory, dreadful though the fundamentalists were. The Iranian corpse-pile is lower by a factor of around ten, I believe. How much clearer can it get that the Iranian path is the better one to follow? Of course it would be a million times better yet if
“…consenting Islamic fundamentalists wished to purchase land and build a shining model of the good society for us all to learn from.”
But this was never on the table. It was on the table for the Iranian army, not known for its fundamentalism, to mount a coup at the time of the first Iranian election. It was on the table for the Algerian army not to. And I bloody well wish they hadn’t.
There’s another libertarian point to be made in this case. Don’t initiate agression. Antoine correctly observes that:
“Unlike Iran, the Algerian Islamists are quite open about scrapping elections.”
Now I am relying on memory here, but I seem to recall that the FIS gave the opposite impression at the time of their original election victory. Having their genuine election victory stolen from them gave them support, put fire in their bellies, made them more savage. War made them worse, so that now, yes, they have to be shot like dogs (and I am willing to defer to Antoine’s superior knowledge about the relative evil of the two sides.) Judging from the Iranian experience, it would have been better not to have had the war.
So would everything have been hunky-dory then? No. Quite possibly the FIS were always lying and always intended to scrap the holding of elections. It still would have been better, militarily, practically better, to have let the guilt fall on them. That was the real alternative.
Here’s an interesting thing. I was surprised to receive an e-mail from John Braue of Rat’s Nest, asking whether I had sent him an e-mail headed “Fw:darling” with no text but two attachments.
I had not.
I tried to post a virus warning on my blog, but Blogger wouldn’t let me. My Blogger troubles aren’t the interesting part though. This is: Dawson kindly posted a warning on my behalf and added that he had had similar fake e-mails purporting to come from other bloggers, including himself. Now, am I wrong, or does that suggest not the random spatter-gun malice of most viruses but a individually-targeted campaign to diminish trust within a community, namely ours?
By the way, it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good: I have now discovered the Rat’s Nest: a splendidly outspoken blog. And, apropos of Brian’s post next but one down, the latest blogger blug that takes you to the wrong link is not unique to UK Transport. It’s hit me, and several others too.
UPDATE: I have been advised that my virus was probably something called “the Klez worm” or simply “Klez.”
Following on from Brian’s post on synthetic phonics, here are some words from a guest blogger:
It is great! I don’t even do it because I do my sunshine work. (I am not going to tell you my name) You spell out words and stuff and do synthesis and segmantatean.
That was written by my son. Some of it he typed himself, some of it I typed at his letter-by-letter dictation. He was taught reading at his state school by means of a scheme called Early Reading Research, which is being piloted in several schools in Essex. He says “I don’t even do it” because he has completed the scheme at the age of six years and three weeks. “Sunshine work” is presumably the next scheme on. As you can see, although not yet a giant of literature he is competent to write down in a comprehensible fashion any idea that he can express verbally. He gave up on spelling the word “synthesis”, but so might many adults.
This rather misleading BBC News 24 story discusses the scheme. The article is better than the headline; I bet you 95% of readers saw the words “real books” and either applauded or condemned without reading further. ERR has little to do with the discredited system whereby children had books thrown in their direction and were told to get on with it. Rather it consists of tightly structured sessions of about twelve minutes, three times a day, where they do “c-a-t spells cat” (synthesis) and “dog is spelt d-o-g” (segmentation). Then they finish with some exemplary reading from real books.
The scheme is popular with his classmates and with the teachers. I gather the same is true wherever it has been tried. So why isn’t it famous? Guess.
Brian, I thought your “this is how holocausts begin” article was meant to be a deadly secret, its very existence hidden from all those who have not rolled up their trouser legs and passed the hideous initiation tests* necessary to join Libertarian Alliance Forum. I quite understood the secrecy. Although it was clear to me that you spoke of your fears not your desires, of course such an article is going to be misunderstood and misquoted by those too uneducated or too wilfully blind to make the distinction. But if you are going to hint about it to the whole world, why not publish it?
*The candidate must write the holy word “subscribe” and send it to a shaman of the cult of Yahoo. My life is in danger now I have said this.
It may seem odd to find an answer to this question in a book published in 1889, but if one can ignore merely local labels of party, Trevelyan expressed well the way in which consensus can be overturned by the cumulative effect of many small efforts at persuasion.
“But the outward aspect of the situation was very far from answering to the reality. While the leaders of the popular party had been spending themselves in efforts that seemed each more abortive than the last, –dividing only to be enormously outvoted, and vindicating with calmness and moderation the first principles of constitutional government only to be stigmatised as the apostles of anarchy, [Here my analogy temporarily loses it as some of our more enthusiastic brothers leap to their feet and cry, “Way to go, baby! Down with government! Anarchy forever!”]–a mighty change was surely but impeceptibly effecting itself in the collective mind of their fellow countrymen.
“For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in the main.”
– Sir George Otto Trevelyan, Bart, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay.
Brendan O’Neill asks, “Why is blogging a right-wing thing?” and adds various unflattering remarks about us, our guns and our mid-life crises. As I said to him in a private e-mail, I would dearly love to rend his gobberwarts.* But there’s a problem. I agree with him. He says:
“I have always suspected that the right-wing blogging phenomenon is a result of the right’s increasing isolation from the mainstream – from mainstream politics, mainstream journalism and mainstream debates. Over the past 10 to 15 years, traditional right-wing views have become ever-more unpopular, as Third Way and consensus politics have take centre stage. The Reaganites and Thatcherites who were in the ascendant in the 1980s have found themselves out on a limb in an age where we’re all supposed to be caring, sharing, non-argumentative, environmentally-aware centre-lefties. ”
You can’t say truer than that. It’s like being a sheepdog on a sensitivity training course these days. Pah. But after this strong start the limitations of Mr O’Neill’s mindset soon become clear:
“And rather than build an effective and coherent opposition to the new political orthodoxies, some on the right seem happy to retreat into the ‘Blogosphere’, from where they can throw insults at their enemies without having to challenge them fundamentally.”
Huh? Just what sort of fundamental challenge do you think I was putting up before the blog? Cleaning the toilet in a right-wing way? Non-multicultural clearing up after breakfast? The point about blogging is that it costs next to nothing, anyone from housewives to executives can do it, and you don’t need to go through an editor. Mr O’Neill’s disdain for such low-intensity warfare comes through in his repeated use of the word “challenge”:
“…the very nature of the Blogosphere … means it is best suited to poking fun or poking holes in the mainstream media, rather than actually challenging it at a serious level.”
Er, yes. Such a relief. As I write this post now I know that it is well short of the serious and weighty response that I could be composing were I Gladstone reborn. How nice that I’m not, and it’s just a blog post that I can get done before nipping round the shop for some more milk. For all his romantic attachment to the spirit of 1798, Sir Brendan the Serious has all the attitudes of a nobleman demanding that these oiks put down the longbows and fight properly (with the very important caveat that first they have to buy the horse and the armour i.e. get a journalism degree and a proper job.)
“…it’s safe to say that The Guardian – now the most mainstream, pro-government paper in Britain – won’t be quaking in its boots.”
No, but it’s turning red and shuffling about. Did I ever tell you the story of Matthew Engel’s column that was laughed right out of the Guardian archives?
“…it means that many on the right will end up simply talking to themselves, rather than building a real opposition to the Blairs, Clintons and Schroeders of this world. That is one of the reasons I have a lot of time for Iain Murray. Iain and I disagree on many things, but his Conservative Revival weblog was a good stab are thinking about actual alternatives to New Labour and how such alternatives could be reconstituted as an opposition.”
He means proper politics again. Join a party. Become activists or local councillors or journalists. Get a proper job. (Not that I have the slightest objection to Iain Murray (May his sword arm be ever strong!) or anyone else doing these things. But it all boils down to play nicely! To which I say, “Shan’t!”
“In short, I think blogging is a right-wing thing as a result of the right’s increasing isolation – and as a result of right-wingers’ fancy for short, sharp, pithy attacks on an enemy that, in fact, they don’t feel like they can take on.”
Classic guerilla tactics. And a classic guerilla error is to be tempted before you are ready into full scale battles that you are certain to lose.
Whoah, brakes on. Perhaps I’m in danger of letting my military metaphor push me into conclusions I don’t really believe. Although I do think the right wing three quarters of the blogosphere does indeed do much of its work by pinpricks, it may have its greatest effects through conventional means. As Brian Micklethwait says, ‘Blogging is going to impact seriously on all this, by identifying non-left and libertarian journalistic talent, giving it a start, training it, and then feeding it into the mainstream media.’ So come on Brendan, gis a job.
*As Terry Pratchett fans will know, not as much fun as it sounds.
(Given that Brendan O’Neill threw down two gauntlets in my direction, by sending me duplicate e-mails, one addressed to me alone and one as a member of this mighty Libetarian organ, I feel that I am entitled to scurry out of his way and squeak from the sidelines in duplicate as well. So an almost identical post to this one also appears in my blog.)
- Prams versus pushchairs. I know I was meant to dispense my maternal wisdom earlier, Brian, but I was caught up in dispensing a few maternal whacks round the head. (Only joking M’lud.) There is a fixed quantity of attention available to children or indeed adults. 1,440 minutes per day, less sleep time. That’s why someone-or-other called attention the final currency. It’s like land. They aren’t making any more. That said, we are all using so little of the potentially available attention supply that depriving a kiddie of seeing mama’s face for the time spent in the pushchair is insignificant, and may as you say be outweighed by the benefits of seeing the world. Pity one has to strap them in though. Gets ’em entirely too accepting of safety belts.
This goes the same way as arguments about population and productivity. The Club of Rome deserve our mockery for saying that space / food / oil whatever will run out by 1980. Of course there’s loads more good stuff being created by busy capitalist hands all the time. Eventually, however, the limits to growth doomsayers have a point. And relying on the invention of interstellar travel sometime in the late 2200s does not fully satisfy me as an insurance policy.
- UK Transport. With this Illuminated blog, it’s not how many readers, it’s who reads. Real journalists will go there to research stories, if they are wise.
- A plug if I may, for my own take on His Majesty King Brendan over at my blog.
You could project the keyboard onto the upper back of a suitably placed loved one and combine blogging with giving him or her a massage.
…that project-a-keyboard one you just mentioned, Brian, is the daftest. You’d have to clear your desk before using it.
So Tony Millard was just joshing and I fell for it. Sheesh, coulda been worse. I could have believed that absurd post about Pim Fortuyn thinking he was in danger, or the even more risible one which claimed that a football corresponent for a respectable newspaper would employ the word “f+ck”.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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