For the second time in three years, the football gridiron program of the University of Hawai‘i has been exposed as a fraud by a professional sports franchise major university’s team.

Commentators on last night’s (5 December 2009) 51-10 shellacking of Hawai‘i by the University of Wisconsin had fun early on with the walk-on status of the UH quarterback. Who promptly demonstrated why he was a walk-on (leaving aside the matter of “academic transcripts”, which in this world doesn’t matter anyway until one is caught) by ending his team’s first two possessions with interceptions.

(For those of you who don’t follow American college gridiron, a “walk-on” is a student who joins a team without having been invited, and therefore has to pay for his education rather than receiving wages and perks a full scholarship as do the invited players. So – among other things – while his teammates were chowing down at the training table, this young man, who by rule may not partake of the training table’s goodies, was driving around town delivering pizza.)

When it became apparent that the Hawai‘i team defense was going to provide no more of an impediment to the Wisconsin running game than a thin layer of mud on a pavement would to a herd of stampeding elephants, it was obvious that the Aloha State’s gridiron fans were in for a long night. Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba made it a short one.

I am sure that if I were to waste any time with the paid shill that is “the voice of University of Hawai‘i sports”, I would discover that the failings of the UH gridiron squad were all linked to money.

The facilities are lousy. (Tell it to the Psychology Department.)

The recruiting budget is miniscule. (Most university departments have had their budget for graduate student stipends slashed, often by as much as two-thirds of 2008 levels).

Salaries for coaches are noncompetitive. (The current UH head coach makes $1.1 million, merely tenfold what full professors make in most academic departments – but his Wisconsin opposite number makes $1.5 million, in a city where the cost of living is about half that of Honolulu, and coaches in the really big schools make, like, $3.5 million. Not counting endorsement income, support from “boosters”, etc. etc. …)

I reckon it’s time for Hawai‘i to smell the same coffee as Hofstra and Northeastern universities, and close the gridiron program in favor of other pursuits. Like, finding a building to house the Psychology Department.

Of course, any such move would probably close the University of Hawai‘i, or at least the flagship campus at Mânoa. But We the People of the Great Nation State of Hawai‘i are doing that anyway, by slow strangulation. May as well come right out and get it over with.

I mean, the people of the Mânoa Valley never wanted the campus in their backyards anyway. And most of the worst-in-the-nation rush-hour traffic congestion that plagues Honolulu has been tracked to people getting to and leaving UH Mânoa. Close the campus? Problem solved!

Hey. Do this, and the city won’t even need a rail line.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Well, Reg, can’t say that I’ve heard a lot about the public school furlough days lately.”

“Told you they’d get used to it, Syd. It figures that folk would squawk when the furloughs first hit and they had to change their plans. We stay the course just a little bit more, and those same people will be telling us to keep the furloughs in place, ’cause they don’t want to have to change their schedules again. Which suits us just fine, of course. We have to pay enough to school our own brats, don’t wish to have to pay for anyone else’s.”

“The people are so easily led, aren’t they, Reg.”

“That they are. Not to mention distracted. Throw them the promise of a few bogus bargains, and they’ll curl up at your feet in the cold and wet to have a chance at getting some. Amazing how the promise of $100 off an item that was marked up $250 two weeks before Thanksgiving will make people forget about furloughs.”

“And then there’s that golfer. Guy cracks his SUV into a tree at 2 in the morning and gets a bloody nose out of it, a simple numbskull piece of driving, and there’s nothing else on the news. When they’re not busting themselves shopping, in more ways than one, John Q. Public is trying to figure out Tiger’s dirty little secrets.”

“Bless their filthy little minds, Syd. The more time they spend minding the business of Mr. Woods, the less time they have to mind ours. But you know the story that really warmed my heart?”

“You have a …”

“Syd, I’m ashamed of you. You know I have a soft spot for children. Especially ours. So you can imagine my joy when I heard that another struggling elementary school was being bought out by a private concern that specializes in children of means and sending them to the only schools that matter. The private schools. Our schools. And the staff were happy about it.“

“That is good news. Cognac?”

“That’s top drawer stuff, Syd. Don’t mind if I do.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

I had escaped my university office/lab for a breath of fresh air, and was walking through McCarthy Mall, when I saw, on the normally-barren walls of a vending kiosk, a small, photocopied poster.

Sign the Petition!

“Gasp!“, I gasped. “Student activism!” I could hardly believe my eyes; I had thought the species to be extinct in Hawai‘i. I scanned the poster for the cause. Global warming? Corporate bailouts? Afghanistan? The slashing of education budgets?

SAVE THE TREE!

Right. An impassioned outpouring, complete with website, on behalf of a single misshapen pile of live haole lumber that can’t even be used for bird perches. Standing next to a termite mound prefab building of ancient vintage (euphemistically called an “annex”, and housing … well, the university’s so ashamed of it, I can’t find out which academic unit they’ve stuck in there), which, I reckon, the tree is tearing up by the roots. Literally.

Yes, the tree’s old. So old, in fact, that it was planted just about at the time when the haoles of Hawai‘i decided that the native government of Hawai‘i wasn’t good enough for them. Planted by a haole professor of botany who figured that the native flora wasn’t good enough for them either. (Funny how nobody has mentioned this.)

And it’s this history that makes this tree worth saving until it topples of its own weight (perhaps mercifully taking that annex along with it), rather than chopping it down to make way for the planned recreation center …

The what?!?

Academic department budgets in this year of woe have been slashed by 30%. Academic buildings have been condemned and then quietly reoccupied – until they threatened to collapse. Academic programs have lost teaching staff and course offerings, in the face of record-high student enrollments – and the entire institution faces the prospect of early shutdown (lockout) unless faculty accept wage cuts that will forever dissuade any economically-knowledgeable American from undertaking a career in academia, while the rest of the world aggressively sponsors its intelligentsia.

And this institution is building a recreation center? What is this, a university or a spa?

And the strongest response to this revelation, by the student body, is a one-man campaign to save a tree?!?

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba never thought he’d see the day when he’d say, in public, “I miss the sixties.” The turbulent, not to mention violent, sixties, when the issues of the day, some of them less momentous than those now confronting university communities, led to debates and demonstrations, arguments and protests, even bricks and tear gas. There was strife and disillusion, and not all motives were selfless. But the world did change.

Now?

A university is on the brink of collapse, and a lone voice in the wilderness posts pieces of paper in a feeble effort to preserve a tottering fig. Surely we can do better …

I have it. We’ll get somebody to sucker the Obama Administration into reinstating the draft …

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Hey, dude!”

“Who you calling a scarecrow, dude?”

“You’d rather I called you a stuffed shirt?”

“Sure, dude. That way, when I’m feeling insufficiently padded, I can fix it by knocking the stuffing out of you.”

“Hey!!“

“No, dude, that belly’s foam padding. Lot better than hay. Doesn’t itch so much.”

“Sheesh, dude. You remind me of my gym teacher.”

“But, dude, I thought you liked your gym teacher. Even if he did call you Junket. He didn’t make you take any tests.”

“Not on paper, anyway – but he was one mean dude with a stopwatch. Remember how we used to pass tests by complaining that they were unfair? Like, when they asked questions that weren’t in the book?”

“Too hard, you mean, dude. Especially for those who didn’t read the book.”

“Same as you, dude. You got as many do-over tests as I did, and we passed ‘em ’cause they were easier.”

“Simple economics, dude. Why work when you don’t have to?”

“Well, dude, we really must have been on to something. Says here that now whole states are doing it.”

“So I see, dude. Uncle Sam says to your State, ‘you don’t get any of my money unless Junior can read’. So the State makes the test so easy that a monkey’s nephew could pass it. He does, of course. That way, the State gets Uncle Sam’s money and gets to furlough teachers all at the same time. It’s brilliant!“

“And because it was my idea, that means I’m brilliant!”

“No, dude, it means you’re a scarecrow.”

“Hey!!“

“I don’t really care what you’re stuffed with. You can join all the other scarecrows who can’t read their high school diplomas, flopping down the yellow brick road and singing their theme song.”

“Which is?”

“If I only had a brain, dude. What else?

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t get it.”

“You called me over for that? I thought you wanted to talk about something new.”

“I don’t get it, dude, but I can pass it on to you. Here. Let me sneeze in your face … ah …”

“Nice try, dude. Y’wanna talk about somethin’, or can I go back to what I was doin’?”

“It’s about these furloughs.”

“What about ‘em?”

“Well, the teachers negotiated ‘em more than a month ago now. And it wasn’t exactly a secret that they were coming. But nobody said or did anything about ‘em until they actually happened. And now everybody’s in a uproar. How come?”

“Because, dude, being graduates of the public schools themselves, people didn’t figure out the high cost of babysitting until they actually had to pay it. Now, of course, they’re all chanting “education” when all they really want is to get their kids out of their kitchens.”

“And now it says here that the state’s Republican party wants to end them by renegotiating the teacher’s contract.”

“So they can fire some people instead of giving them all short time. Which just happens to be what they wanted to do in the first place. Lovely negotiating tactics.”

“But in the meantime, the rest of the state’s workers got contracts with furloughs too. So if the teachers go back to school on Fridays, they won’t have any schools to go to ’cause all the other workers are out on furlough.”

“Same answer, dude. They renegotiate that contract so they can fire people like they wanted to in the first place. Bottom line remains the same. Except that state employees will join the parents who got sacked from their jobs because they had to stay home with their kids.”

“But, dude! The money guys are saying that the recession’s over. Couldn’t they just raise taxes just a little bit to keep these folk working?”

“Republicans raise taxes to keep a pack of Democrats in jobs? Dude, are you getting enough sleep?“

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of its characters to persons living or dead is for satirical purposes, or is coincidental. Apologies to Jean-Paul Sartre.

===================================

Alan Baldwin: “OK, so where’s the torturer?”

Seizen Shigeta: “Shut up! You bring him in here, I’ll wring your neck.”

Kimo Kalakaua (to Shigeta): “Be still, brah. You forget where we stay?”

Shigeta: “A locked room in hell. In this heat, how could I forget?“

Kalakaua: “So you wring da haole’s neck. Where he wen go?“

Baldwin: “I never dreamed that hell would be a room in a huge Waikiki hotel, but one without even a city view. I suppose that minor amenities like toilets and bar fridges are superfluous in our condition, and A/C is too much to hope for.”

Kalakaua (to Baldwin): “What fo you stay dis place?”

Baldwin: “Damned if I … oh, shit. You?”

Kalakaua: “Dunno.”

Shigeta: “Me either. One minute, I’m leading a crucial meeting of the Hawai‘i Teachers Association, and the next …”

Kalakaua: “You one teacher union guy den!”

Shigeta: “Yeah …?”

Kalakaua: “You how come my keiki no can read!“

Shigeta: “Well, maybe if you parents actually sent us kids who were ready to learn to read, instead of spending all of their time disrupting classroom order …”

Kalakaua: “But that your job, to teach, not to be bumboss! An not fo go surf Wednesdays, neither. Teach is fo why we pay you da big bucks!“

Shigeta: “Big bucks?!? Hell made you lolo already? What’re you calling ‘big bucks’?”

Kalakaua: “You no stay in tent in Nanakuli, you make da big bucks.”

Shigeta: “Well, maybe if you people would get off the damned ice, you could get out of those tents. For your information, brah, teachers make less than just about any other field that requires a bachelor’s degree for entry. In Hawai‘i, teachers make maybe half of what they make anywhere else, when you factor in the cost of living on this rockpile. And that was before the damned furloughs. Teachers are hard to get. And if we didn’t have these little perks here and there for our members, and protect them against the likes of you, we wouldn’t have the teachers we have now!“

Baldwin (to Shigeta): “Do those ‘little perks’ include the bloated teaching bureaucracy?“

Shigeta: “Look, none of us asked to have reams of paperwork jammed down our throats! If we gotta have it, then we gotta have someone to do it!”

Baldwin: “Maybe if you did your jobs right, we wouldn’t have to have those reams of data to keep tabs on you.”

Shigeta: “And maybe if we had some resources with which to do our jobs, instead of trying to teach classes in science with chewing gum and baling wire, we’d have a chance to do those jobs and get out from under the paper pile!”

Baldwin: “And just where do you think we’re going to get those resources?”

Shigeta: “Taxes, of course.”

Baldwin: “‘Taxes, of course’. Get in line! You and everyone else on these bumps in the middle of the Pacific. Who’s going to pay them? The tax burden’s already sky-high. Between high taxes, high prices, and strangling regulations, just about every business in this state has gone broke except tourism, and the tourists are sick of getting gouged.”

Shigeta: “And how do you know this, haole? You a Baldwin, or something?”

Baldwin: “As a matter of fact …”

Kalakaua: “A Big Five bumboss?!?”

Shigeta: “Running working people into the ground for the sake of your swollen profits?!? How’s your buddy Bernie Madoff doing?”

Baldwin: “Listen up, commie. Like it or not, profits are what make it possible for society to pay teachers to surf on Wednesdays. If businesses aren’t allowed to make the kinds of money that will keep both their executives and their stockholders happy, they’re going to move or fold. And when they do, there won’t be anything left in Hawai‘i but coconuts and government. And you don’t want the government running things.”

Shigeta: “Damned right. All they do is tie us up with rules and threaten to fire us if we don’t dance to their tune.”

Kalakaua: “Government don’t do nothin’ fo us ‘cept rip up our tents and throw us in shelters. An it no even is ours!“

Baldwin: “And it taxes us to death for nothing! How come we don’t have anyone from government in here?”

Valet: (opening door) “None of them are in this hotel. The Adversary – the one you call (ptui) God – took one look at how they had to try to meet the mutually-impossible demands of the people they were supposed to govern, and decided they’d had their hell on earth. So they’re in that other place.

“Speaking of demands. The other cells are sick and tired of your bickering. If you don’t shut up and learn to get along, all hell’s going to break loose in here. Your only warning.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“So, Reg, I’ve been thinking.”

“Ah. That explains it, Syd.”

“Explains what?”

“Why all these salesmen have been wandering around looking like they’ve just been furloughed. They couldn’t get you to stop thinking, so they couldn’t sell you anything.”

“Actually, it’s furloughs that I’ve been thinking about. You know that story that’s been making the rounds about the couple who couldn’t work out the price of avocados?”

“Yes, I know the one.”

“And how that’s used as a reason why we can’t afford to be losing teaching days out of the school year here in Honolulu?”

“That does seem to be the popular opinion.”

“Well, riddle me this, then. Our avocado-buying hero graduated from a public high school, right?”

“Presumably, yes.”

“Twelve years in the classroom at our expense.”

“Surely, by now, …”

“Let’s say the public’s expense, then. Twelve years, and he still doesn’t get simple arithmetic. How much more time in school does he need?“

“Syd, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you understand this. Ever read The Hobbit?“

“Ages ago. I like to think I’ve outgrown the need for hobgoblins. Except when they come to the door at Hallowe’en. That’s this weekend, isn’t it?”

“It is. Then you won’t be surprised when I tell you for what age group Tolkien wrote the book.”

“What age group was that?”

“The British equivalent of American fifth grade.”

“Fifth grade?? You’re joking, Reg! My son was telling me that it was on the reading list for a literature course in college. And many of the students found it too tough.”

“Exactly, Syd. We keep getting told we have to keep kids in school, get them more days in school, get them into college. The rest of the world is doing it so we have to as well, to keep up. But what good does it do if all that the bachelor’s degree certifies is the ability to do grade school work?“

“Maybe.”

“Oh, right, you once hired a college football player. Didn’t work out well, did it?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Your son doing better in the job?”

“He gets by. I only intervene when I have to.”

“Which is just about every day. Like me and my daughter. They’ll learn.”

“I hope so. But what can anybody do about this education thing? We can’t keep throwing good money after bad.”

“The whole system has to get more efficient. Set the standards and stick to them. No more excuses, no more court cases, no more 9-to-5. Everybody has to buy in, teachers, parents, kids, the lot. You have to meet the need of the nation with this much time and this much money. And if you don’t make the grade, you’re out.”

“The private schools can do that, of course. But the public schools?”

“Why not? Look, there are some people who are never going to learn algebra no matter how hard they try. Why force it on them? Design programs that get them to do what they can do the best they can, and let them go do it. Wait tables, if that’s what they prefer. How much time do you have to spend in school to wait tables?”

“There are people who prefer to wait tables?”

“There sure are. ‘Dependent natures’ and all that.”

“Who said that?”

“Abraham Lincoln, no less. And who am I to argue with a god?”

“Speaking of gods, the accountants aren’t going to be very happy with this scenario. Not those who’re selling college courses to students, for sure, however useless you think those courses are.”

“The accountants get it. They’ll cope. They’re the only ones I know of who do college right. ‘Cause they worked out long ago that their path to riches is by keeping us happy and their labor scarce. So you’d best believe that they have standards, and you, student, will meet them or else. The biologists keep complaining that nobody pays them what they’re worth. Well, dammit, if they had a guild that set strict standards of admission and performance like the accountants have, there’d be fewer biologists, but they’d all be millionaires.

“And you know as well as I do; somebody who tries to cheat the system and run his business with a non-certified accountant usually gets what he deserves.”

“Chapter eleven?”

“Chapter seven. Really, Syd. You sound like somebody who needs more wine.”

“I have to admit, that Château Mouton Rothschild was a nice drop. But the bottle’s empty.”

“Indeed it is. I’ll order another. Boy! Boy!! Shiftless lazy white coon! Git your ass over here!”

“Yes, massuh.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Hey, dude! How come everybody’s so grumpy today?”

“A lot of ‘em got the day off, dude.”

“They do? And this is bad how?“

“Without pay, dude. Kinda wipes the aloha right off of ‘aloha friday’. And a lot of people who should be workin’ can’t.”

“Why not?“

“Because they have to stay home with their kids. The furloughs have closed the schools.”

“Not. That one’s open.”

“Private school, dude. You think the captains of industry are going to stand for their kids sitting at home on a school day? Hell no. It’s only the public schools that have furloughed the teachers and sent the kids home to get their parents fired for for not being able to be in two places at once.”

“But, dude, it says here that the State Legislature has lined up plenty of places for kids to go and do stuff during the furlough!”

“Government offices open today?”

“Yeah.”

“They can dish it out but they can’t take it, right? Why am I not surprised? Hell, they’re even hiring for themselves while they’re screwing teachers and ripping up the lives of kids whose only sin is they can’t afford Punahou. I love it. You wanna show me that list?”

“Sure, dude. Here.”

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“I thought you said this was a government site.”

“Hawai‘i State House is where it’s announced.”

“But this page comes from the Chamber of Commerce, dude! And you know what the Chamber of Commerce does, don’t you, dude?”

“What, dude?”

“They sell stuff, dude!! Every last one of these goddam ‘resources’ has got a whackin’ huge fee attached to it! This flippin’ list is a service, all right. Frickin’ self-service!!“

“Jeez, dude, chill, willya? You’re turning red …”

“Look, dude. Let’s say I’m a parent, right? I’m payin’ taxes on schools that aren’t open, which means I’m staying home with the kids, sweatin’ bullets over the job that if I lose it I won’t have a home to stay with the kids in. And then my government tells me about a list of stuff that’s supposed to help me through this, and all they want to do is soak me some more!“

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go surfing.”

“Right, dude. You know, don’t you, that, in Old Hawai‘i, if the nobles caught a commoner surfing, they’d kill him?”

“Oh …”

LATER …

“Dude! Look at this. Demonstrations, petitions, even a walk-in! Whaddaya think of that?“

“Mmmffrrmmf.”

“But, dude, I thought you’d be happy! These people are supporting education!“

“Education, smeducation, dude. All they’ve managed to figure out is the high cost of babysitting. And it took them a month to manage that.”

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“Go back to bed …”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

This is the story of Susie, Sherrie, and Britney, triplet sisters from Honolulu who graduated from the University of Hawai‘i at Mânoa in June of 2010, at the age of 22.

Sherrie and Britney dreamed of careers as biological researchers, and set their sights on doctoral degrees, since their dreams depended on joining the ranks of the Piled Higher and Deeper.

Susie, however, was tired of going around in academic circles. She ignored the withering scorn of her more ambitious sisters, and took a job teaching elementary school at the entry salary of $35,000 a year. She loved her job and prospered in it, avoiding both demerits and onerous promotions, and after 40 years of 3% annual raises, contemplated retirement at age 62 having earned a total of US$2,640,000.

Sherrie went off to a graduate school on the mainland, where she was one of the lucky few to receive a tuition waiver and a teaching assistantship, earning her $20,000 a year for each of the next eight years – two to earn the Masters degree, and six more to gain her coveted doctorate. Few of her fellow students achieved these milestones as quickly, but Sherrie was bright, and was consistently willing to work 60-hour weeks.

Her dissertation research earned her a postdoctoral researcher position in a prominent university laboratory, where she spent five more years of 60-hour weeks at $40,000 a year.

Finally, Sherrie landed her first “real” job, an assistant professorship at a smaller university in Montana. Starting salary, $60,000 a year. Of which the university paid $45,000 – the rest depended on her ability to earn research grants and contracts. Thanks to the 80-hour weeks she put in to her teaching and research duties, she won the contracts and her full salary.

The year 2029 was a big one for Sherrie. Her university promoted her to associate professor – a promotion that carried with it the precious grant of tenure. After 19 years of the hard labor needed to survive in the university world, she could finally contemplate taking a vacation.

Where she could work out that, for the first time, her career earnings were less than $100,000 below those of her sister Susie! (She would finally catch up five years later, at the age of 46, and when she began to contemplate retirement at age 62, would have total earnings of $2,860,000 – about $200,000 more than Susie’s.)

Britney was not as fortunate as Sherrie. She was unable to score a teaching assistantship at any university, so she remained at the University of Hawai‘i where she could, for the next eight years, pay in-state tuition of $10,000 a year for her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. She never told either of her sisters where she got the tuition money, not to mention food, clothing, and shelter, but both of them got “Britney” spam in their electronic mailboxes that worried them sick. Between the demands of her studies and those of her means of support, whatever it was, Britney was more diligent and worked more hours than her sister on the mainland, and managed to graduate from the UH in eight years without even once being sent to Queen’s Medical Center on suspicion of a breakdown.

Thereafter, her career track (miraculously – few self-supporting students progress this quickly) was almost identical to that of her sister Sherrie. A five-year postdoc, an assistant professorship at a smaller university, promotion and tenure at age 41. When she reached her 62nd birthday, she totted up her total earnings (including the “negative earnings” of her tuition payments), which came to $2,590,000.

$40,000 less than those of her elementary-school-teaching sister Susie!! She never did catch up.

Susie, Sherrie and Britney had an elder brother, Rupert. He took a degree from the UH in finance, and, at age 22, took a job with a major bank at a salary of $75,000 a year. After a successful 20-year career managing investment portfolios, he retired to Honolulu. Where he became a well-known figure in state and local politics – railing against profligate state spending on public school teachers and the exorbitant salaries paid to academics at the University of Hawai‘i.

(Calculations are based on the starting salaries – or, in the case of Britney’s tuition, prices – stated, raised 3% annually. Discontinuities in the 3% annual increment, such as salary ceilings, or furloughs, or inducements resulting from competitive hiring, are ignored. The story, therefore, is based on a simplistic calculation – but Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba, who, he thinks, is about to witness the ostracism of University of Hawai‘i faculty by the rest of the state, including the rest of the state’s workers, who have tamely acquiesced to temporary permanent 10% reductions in their compensation, with more on the path to repealing the 13th Amendment to come, believes that the simplification clarifies the message without distorting it.)

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

It has been an error-prone Friday afternoon for Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba.

Mistake No. 1: Television. Energizing the vast wasteland is always a mistake, but this afternoon, I succumbed. The Steroid Major League Baseball playoffs have begun, and the Boston Red Sox are in the process of being unceremoniously dumped out of them. Like those who gather round a car wreck or house fire, I just had to see.

Mind you, I would have preferred hearing it, on the radio or computer, so I could do other things, possibly even productive things, while the Bosox were going down to the defeat that their late-season record foreshadowed. But even if a radio signal could penetrate my concrete-walled, windowless, computer-laden workspace, no local station broadcast the game, despite nationwide advertising to the contrary. And, of course, the “Listen Live” function on the four-letter network’s radio website yielded only audio talking heads, meandering on about how rugby will become an Olympic sport sixteen years after the nations of the world take down the International Olympic Committee and the rampaging Leviathans that its Games have become, and make them one with the dodo.

(Speaking of dodos, the lead announcer for the four-letter network’s local affiliate held forth on the subject of the Olympics the other day, when the IOC announced its choice of Rio de Janeiro as the site for the 2016 Summer Games. The racist jingoism revealed on that occasion should have shamed the station managers into his instant dismissal, especially since this individual is the principal shill for University of Hawai‘i sports, and you’d think the U of H wouldn’t stand for such things. Then again, the U of H head gridiron coach is still employed … But I digress. Oh, and I won’t knowingly have anything further to do with this person, his radio shows, or his sponsors.)

Therefore, the TV. And while I normally am pretty adept at zapping out the commercials, one of them did an end run around the clicker and intruded itself on my consciousness. I must have been napping. I paid for it. I was brought to full attention, fast and hard.

The ad was a public service announcement recruiting teachers for the Hawai‘i public schools.

Yes, you read that correctly, those of you who have been following this blog for awhile. I couldn’t believe it either. Let me repeat that.

The ad was a public service announcement recruiting teachers for the Hawai‘i public schools!

The very same Hawai‘i public schools whose teachers make the lowest salaries in America, measured in terms of purchasing power.

The very same Hawai‘i public schools whose teachers have just taken the equivalent of an 8% cut in those lowest salaries, and lopped 17 school days (by far the most in the nation) off the calendar to boot.

The very same Hawai‘i public schools whose record for teaching effectiveness and administrative efficiency would shame a ghetto school.

The very same Hawai‘i public schools that could find no place for a master teacher with ten years experience and a proven record of NCLB achievement in Las Vegas public schools.

Oh, wait. She has experience. The kids in the videos? Young. Beautiful. Idealistic. Naive. They’ll never know what hit ‘em. Oh, until their monthly student loan payment comes due and they discover that they can’t pay for that, the rent, and food out of what they earn as teachers in the Hawai‘i public schools.

Hey. Kids. You wish to come to Hawai‘i to surf? You got the money for it (and I’m telling you, Roderigo, put money in your purse), aloha and welcome.

You wish to come to Hawai‘i to teach? Do yourselves a favor. Go somewhere where you’re less likely to be used up and spit out, where you have a better chance of doing good within, or despite, the system. Zimbabwe, for example.

Mistake No. 2: Comment Forum. Way, way back before blogs and chat rooms, James Thurber and E. B. White, in a book called Is Sex Necessary? (written in 1929, long before junior high school college students throughout America decided the question in the affirmative), declared that “Writing Letters To The Newspapers” was a mistake, in fact one of the last signs of a mental collapse. But this afternoon, I succumbed.

The Red Sox having lost, as expected, I turned off the television and started reading the online version of one of the local newspapers. Specifically, I sought out the story on the rejection, by the University of Hawai‘i faculty union, of the State’s latest contract offer. A contract only slightly less brutal than the one agreed to by the public school teachers.

When I first heard the news of the rejection, I felt glad that the faculty union had the gumption to stand up to government efforts to further erode what is already a badly decayed institution. But I feared that the People of the State of Hawai‘i would, on the news, turn on the University and turn its professors into a reincarnation of Ronald Reagan’s air traffic controllers.

With this thought in mind, I turned to the Comments forum (today’s “letters written to the newspaper”) for the news article.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

The hostility was palpable. Some commentators called, not for the 5% cut of the rejected contract, but a 25% cut. Others called for the union members to strike, so they could be fired and the state save money by eliminating their jobs and, presumably, the University along with them. (In vain did a professor counterclaim that such an action, far from saving Hawai‘i any money, would cost the State on the order of $150 million.)

With public sentiment running along these lines, it’s all but inevitable that the State will attempt to shove a more draconian contract down the throats of university faculty. Which will serve merely to drive the most accomplished faculty away, and leave the remainder even less inclined to serve the community that has labeled them “arrogant bastards” than they were before.

Awhile ago now, I wrote that I was glad that I had not trained very many graduate students in my career. Because I felt, and feel even more strongly now, that, in my field at least, the investment in time and education needed to succeed is no longer economically rational, for any but the wealthy in our society. To be sure, America’s competitors (China/Japan, India, Europe, to name three) are investing heavily in the education of their peoples, and have intellectual / scientific / technological communities at least the equal of ours, and improving.

But no matter. We the People of these Untied States have Steroid Major League Baseball. Why then should I subject any bright young people to the bashings of their fellow citizens, who have no intention of ever giving them the chance even to recover their educational costs?

Mistake No. 3: A Career In Public Service.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“Hey, dude!”

“Dude?”

“Your internet real slow?”

“Yeah. I told you not to put all those damned commercial widgets on your Payperblaug page. Now look what you’ve done!”

“Dude, if I’m that powerful, how come I ain’t sending you out for coffee?”

“Because, dude, the richest Payperblauger in the world can’t afford a cup of coffee. Never mind the flunky to get it for you.”

“Of course I can’t make any money if the internet’s crashed and no one can see my posts! What are we going to do, dude?”

“Besides reaping the thanks of a grateful world for your silence? How about checking the ISP’s status page?”

“Y’mean, we can?“

“For the moment anyway. Here goes … oh, man, dude! Get a load of this.”

In the event of a cable outage, tune in to this page for the most up-to-date information on your cable services.

“That sounds odd.”

“Odd?!? Dammit, dude, there’s a hole in this bucket. You get your internet from the cable company. When the cable goes out, you’re supposed to use the Internet to check out the status of the cable service. But you don’t have the cable, so you can’t use the cable to access the internet to figure out what happened to the cable!“

“Oh wow, dude. Who thinks up this stuff?”

“The same people who think that the kids of Hawai‘i are so much smarter than everyplace else that, unlike everyplace else, they can afford to lop seventeen days off the school year.”

“Y’mean, like the kids that can’t divide 10 by 10 and come up with 1?”

“They weren’t kids. But, yeah, them.”

PS: Do not read the comments on the newspaper article, linked to above, that details the teacher-furlough plan for the public schools in Hawai‘i. If you’re like me, they’ll make you wish to give the state back to the Hawai‘ian monarchy, and good riddance to bad rubbish.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

On Tuesday 22 September, public school teachers in Hawai‘i will vote voted on a contract, negotiated for them by their union leaders and the State Governor We the People. A contract that, through the expedient of mandatory furloughs, will amount to a salary cut of just under 8%. Since the schools are to be closed during furlough days, the instructional year in 2009-10 and 2010-11 will be several days shorter.

Now that you know this, please consider the following true story.

A man and his female companion walk up to a display case in a Honolulu supermarket. In the display case, avocados are on sale, 10 for $10. Quilly overhears their conversation:

She: “Ten for ten dollars? Sounds like a good deal.”

He: “No it isn’t. Half of them will rot before we get around to using them.”

Quilly: “You don’t have to buy ten to get the price.”

He and She: “We don’t?“

Quilly: “You don’t, I’m sure of it.”

At this moment, a store employee walks by. Quilly poses the question to her.

Employee: “No, you certainly don’t have to buy ten at a time. Take as many as you need; the register will calculate the pro-rated price when you check out.”

Exit the store employee. The couple takes in the information that she and Quilly have given them.

He: “This is great. Now if we can only figure out how much three avocados cost …”

Now tell me how many instructional days our school systems can afford to lose.

When Quilly told me this story, I was reminded of another exercise in instructional arithmetic that has been making the rounds of the blogosphere. She had found it a couple of days ago on a new friend’s blog, but I tracked it back at least to February 2007. In that tracking back, I found a number of versions, several of which showed multiplication skills at least as shocking as those of the avocado-buying couple. I post my edited version of the eldest copy of the tale that I could find.

I, for one, am sick and tired of those high paid teachers. Their hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work nine or ten months a year!

It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do: baby-sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right. I would give them $3.00 an hour, for only the hours they worked, not any of that silly planning time. That would be $21.00 a day (7:45 AM to 3:30 PM with 45 min. off for lunch – unpaid, of course).

Each parent should pay $21.00 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now, how many do they teach in a day … maybe 30?

So that’s 21 X 30 = $630.00 a day. But remember they only work 180 days a year! I’m not going to pay them for any vacations. Let’s see. . . that’s $630 x 180 = $113,400.

What about those special teachers or the ones with master’s degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage just to be fair. Round it off to $7.00 an hour. That would be $7 times 7 hours per day times 30 children times 180 days = $264,600 per year.

The moral is clear. On Tuesday, the teachers of Hawai‘i should reject have rejected the scabby contract that We the People have the damned gall to try to stuff down their throats, shut down the schools (all of the schools, Punahou, Kamehameha, et al.), and opened a babysitting service under the terms of the standard teenager’s agreement. For the first time in their lives, they might have earned a living commensurate with their skills and the costs of their education.

At least, they would have until the Chinese, who understand the true value of education, take over America.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

The other day, a neighbor invited Quilly and me to a party. A football gridiron party. More specifically, a college football gridiron party, to celebrate the kickoff of the local team’s season.

Neighbor had no way of knowing that Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba had just received the following message from the library system of the local team’s university:

The 4% cut plus the most recent cut of 6% mean a total reduction of $1.7 million to the Library’s working budget.

[The cited cuts are to University academic programs, decreed as one consequence of the ongoing squabble between the University and the Governor Legislature People of the State of Hawai‘i over funding for educational programs.]

To address the reduction, the Libraries have cut student employment hours, cut casual hire staff, reduced hours of service, and restricted or eliminated entirely other internal expenditures. The reduction has also affected the purchase of library resources such as books, journals, audiovisual materials and databases.

The rest of this message is to inform you what changes have been made to the available resources. Some of these measures will be felt immediately, while others will not take effect until 2010. We have:

* Ceased getting automatic shipments of books from our major vendor.
* Distributed minimum amounts of money for new book purchases.
* Cancelled some expensive, low use databases.
* Cancelled journals, microfilm and newspapers from various publishers. [This includes online access as well as paper copies.] We will also lose access to some titles from publisher X previously available through a consortial arrangement, because X has changed access rules and increased the pricing for the consortium.

Need I point out the salary of the school’s head gridiron coach? A bargain at a mere $1.1 million.

Yeah, yeah, he took a 10% pay cut this year. It wasn’t exactly voluntary. One of the rest of us pulls that kind of stunt, we’re fired. ‘Course, the point is moot. The coach can’t keep his starters healthy, he can’t recruit worth beans so his team has no depth, and his team will be lucky to win five (out of 13) games. So at the end of the year, he’ll be gone for committing the one unforgivable sin.

Losing.

Not that that’s going to help the library. After all, someone else will come in after him and demand more money to lose games. And We will demand that the University pay it.

Ah well, at least we know where the People’s priorities are.

LIBRARY CLOSURE, phr. Book burning by other means.

We declined our neighbor’s party invitation. YFNA is in no mood for gridiron.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

More fiction. As in a few other efforts of late, certain images might disturb some people. Perhaps including those that are amplified reflections of everyday events a century ago or so in America.

The inspiration for this post was the email circulation, by a forwarding-addicted colleague, of a short diatribe aimed at university-level educators entitled Ten Worst Teaching Mistakes.

I read this list with an increasing sense of unease. For example. Cold calling (where you ask a question, then call a student’s name and demand an answer) is listed as a mistake. Because (it says here) it stresses out the student called, and lets the rest stop thinking. But if this is a military classroom – hell, if it’s a class on the playbook for the university’s football team – you don’t get to stop thinking. You’d better be ready when the instructor calls. Or you’ve lost the veteran’s benefits. Or the scholarship.

So. We can infer from the relative levels of standards applied to students that performance in, say, chemistry, is far less important to society than performance in the defensive backfield. Why is that? Oh. Wait. Duh. Unlike the football coach, the chemistry prof can’t throw anyone out. In fact, the chemistry prof needs to put as many bum$ in seats as possible, and keep them there. The competence of his students is far less important than the number on the Accounts Receivable ledger in his university’s accounting office.

This is the role and function of the Ten Worst Mistakes – to help the prof keep those bums in those seats. A task that he’s being forced to spend time and energy on while his institution is simultaneously chopping his salary, firing his assistants, restricting his work hours, and doubling his class sizes.

Good thing we don’t run the army along these lines. Oh, wait, I forgot about Abu Ghraib…

Aren’t We the People of these Untied States lucky, with Our per-capita wealth and our technologies, to have the luxury of allowing our young people to fritter away four, five, six years of their lives, at $30K and more a year, on an education that even its providers don’t value? To say nothing of the workplace?

Hasn’t always been that way, of course. In plenty of times and places throughout the world, the resources were scarcer, and the educational stakes much higher. What, I thought, if such times were to return …? And with that thought, this story popped out.

A tip of the propeller beanie to the premise, and especially the opening sequences, of the Kurt Russell movie Soldier.

============

Keisha willed out of her mind both the pouring rain and her rising tide of panic. She jammed the bicycle, as neatly and as near to code as the situation permitted, into the rack at the head of the driveway, and she walked, as fast as regulations allowed, to the front door of the schoolhouse. She pounded her right palm on the lock, opened the door and strode into the hall, unlit except for three phosphorescent signs that read “Exit” and one that read “Timeclock”. She marched a straight line to the timeclock, her heart trying to crawl up her windpipe, and slammed her left thumb on the touchpad.

The timeclock’s battery-powered display panel flashed into gray-on-gray life. “INSTRUCTSPEC KEISHA WILLIMSEN. IN. 05:59:59.”

Ten demerits – a day’s pay – avoided by a single second. Keisha would have collapsed on the floor in relief, but there was no time. She would probably get a demerit for the way she parked her bicycle, but she didn’t have time to worry about that either. Too much to do before Assembly at 07:00, too much to lose if she didn’t do all on her list, and to code, by then.

“Damn that Kevn”, she grumbled to her inner ear as she headed to the “Exit” sign that led to the furnace room. She and Kevn had spent all last evening poring over their credit and behavior accounts, calculating how much longer it would be before they could apply for a cohabitation license, how much longer still before they could be granted permission to take the tests needed to get one of the few, incalculably precious, procreation licenses. As usual, it looked like it would take forever to get the one, and beyond forever for the other.

They had fought about it right up until curfew, and it was only by luck that they didn’t set their futures back still more by not making it to their sleeping cubicles before lights out. She had sacked angry, slept poorly, and almost didn’t wake up in time to arrive at her duty station.

The furnace room was pitch black except for phosphorescent strips in the floor that led her to the stationary bicycle in the middle. She stepped on and started pedaling. Slowly the room lights brightened. Two minutes of this, she knew, and she would be able to see well enough to complete the next task. Her body, slim and straight from genes, sparse diet, and constant exercise, and already wet from the rain, slickened anew with the effort.

When she could see the furnace and the coal bin beside it, she dismounted. She shoveled the day’s ration of coal – precisely measured by weight – into the scuttle, and heaved the scuttle to the furnace. Apprehensively, she opened the grate – and sighed with relief. The instructspec on duty the previous evening had known what she was doing. Keisha heaped the prescribed starting coal ration onto the live remnants of yesterday’s fire, and closed the grate.

Now, the hard part. Keisha got back on the bicycle and pedaled as hard as she could, to fan the fire into life and activate the blowers to distribute the heat through the building. Twenty-five minutes of hard riding before the town’s electricity grid was activated at 06:45 and could take over the task. That left her fifteen minutes to ditch her fatigues and dress for Assembly at 07:00 – formal dress, with no sweat or coal dust allowed to show, and hard prayer that her efforts had brought the building temperature to the February regulation 10 degrees Centigrade.

At 06:59, Keisha marched into the Assembly hall with the five other members of her instructional cohort, and stood at attention in front of the central podium. InstructCap Lira Ligle, a hard-faced veteran, white chocolate to Keisha’s milk, received their salute.

“Specialist Willimsen.”

“Captain Ligle.”

“Bicycle not parked in accordance with regulations. One demerit.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Coal smudge over the right eyebrow. Half a demerit.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Wet spot on the toe of the left shoe. One demerit.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Commence your instructional duties.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

After nearly five years in this instructional session, all day every day for those five years, Keisha knew better than to even think about the rain and sweat being responsible for that wet spot. It was another demerit, and her own fault; she didn’t police herself well enough. At least it wasn’t two demerits. It could easily have been two. Kevn’s image flashed in her mind for a moment.

Her instructional duties waited for her in the back of the hall, standing at attention in column of twos. Twenty eleven-year-olds. “Two over quota”, a placard flashed in Keisha’s head, “and with thirteen weeks left in this fifth year of the session. Not much time.” Well, Keisha thought, they have a major algebra test today. That usually helps.

The classroom into which Keisha marched her class was cold. “Not regulation”, she thought, wondering how her superiors could have missed a chance to demerit her. The students marched in perfect order to their desks and stood at attention besides them, silently.

“Sit and prepare!” Keisha barked the order.

With one smooth motion, the students sat, reached into their satchels, brought out notebooks and pencil, and laid them out on their desks, their hands outstretched besides them.

Only one boy – Hedrik – was slightly out of step. Either from the cold, or anxiety over the upcoming test, or both, the pencil under Hedrik’s left hand chattered as he laid both upon his desk’s platform.

Instantly, Keisha was upon him, a steel rod in her left hand. She brought it down with a sharp, sinister smack upon the offending hand.

Fragments of pencil flew in all directions from underneath the unnaturally splayed fingers. Blood welled up from under the palm. Hedrik tensed as if to scream … and then sat straight, eyes front, in perfect “seated attention” posture, moving nothing.

“Please”, urged Keisha silently, “just one little move. A snivel, even.”

It was not forthcoming. Hedrik’s posture and composure were identical to those of his classmates, except for the pool under his left palm. Without the provocation that so much as a tear could have provided, Keisha had no grounds for action. Her class would remain two over quota – and if she didn’t fix that soon, the demerits that would earn her would dash forever her hopes for that procreation license, and probably lose her Kevn too.

“Why”, she asked the silence, “do I always get the overachievers?” Slowly, she flicked the setting on the maser in her right hand from kill to safety, lowered the weapon, holstered it.

“Hedrik!”

“Teacher Willimsen!”

“Five demerits for conduct unbecoming a student, and five demerits for making that mess under your left palm.”

“Thank you, Teacher!”

“At the first take five, you will clean that up and file a report.”

“Thank you, Teacher!”

When Hedrik filed that report, Keisha thought, he might get the hand looked at. Or maybe not. Medical staff usually resisted treating wounds related to discipline. Unless a priest happened to be visiting the school, treatment of discipline-related injuries was left to the parents. They may not have cared for that, but they knew better than to let the school know about their concerns. They understood that school staff would give them no sympathy whatsoever. After all, they had acquired the wealth to obtain a procreation license, and there were always nasty questions to be asked about just how the parents had attained that wealth. Uncovering secrets was a great way to meet quotas.

“Class!”

“Teacher Willimsen!”

“In five minutes, your algebra test will begin. You know the rewards for success, and the penalties for failure. In preparation for this examination, we will recite the creed.”

“Thank you, Teacher!”

“Why are we here?”

“To learn, Teacher!”

“What shall we learn?”

“To waste nothing, Teacher! Not time, not energy, not talent.”

“From whom shall we learn?”

“From the holy Ezra the Redeemer, Teacher!”

“What is his message?”

“Greed and waste nearly destroyed the world, Teacher! To save the world, we must reject greed and waste.”

“How shall we reject greed and waste?”

“Through controlling ourselves, Teacher!”

“How shall we control ourselves?”

“We shall know the rules, love the rules, and obey the rules, Teacher, that we may be saved!”

“So shall it be, class. Prepare in meditation.”

And the classroom fell silent. No movement, no sound … except for the occasional drip, drip of Hedrik’s blood.

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.

“What you got there, dude?”

“A letter from the state governor, dude.”

“Since when is the governor writing you letters, dude? You holdin’ out on me or somethin’?”

“Not that kind of letter, dude. A form letter. Wants me to go to college.”

“You go to college? With what, dude? You’re unemployed!“

“Says here I can get this grant thingy to help. A Pell grant, whatever that is.”

“That the Federal government thingy?”

“Yeah.”

“Got a month?”

“Why a month?”

“It’ll take you that long to fill out the paperwork. How much?”

“Oh, I dunno. Oh, yeah, here it is. Five grand.”

“Five thousand dollars? Are they serious? Five grand won’t get you a frickin’ textbook these days! Where the expletive deleted are you going to get the rest of the money?”

“Borrow it, I guess.”

“But you’re unemployed, dude!!! And the economy’s in the tank because the banks were loaning money to people like you. Who’s going to give you anything but a cross to the chops now?“

“Says here that, if I’m going to college, they’ll help me find loans.”

“Riiight. This makes sense. Rack up 30 K bucks a year in debt and get a degree so you can make the same money you did flippin’ burgers without it. This governor friend of yours on ice or something?”

“I told you, dude, I got a form letter.”

“Yeah. All form, no substance. Besides, where are you going to get this flippin’ degree? The colleges are so broke, they’re even resorting to cutting the salaries of the honchos. By the time you get that Pell grant paperwork finished, and they get around to giving you that piddly little allowance, the colleges might be gone … Oh. I get it. Cattle for the ranch. You’re going in the hole to prop up their campuses. I’m an idiot not to see that.”

“My God. Alert the media.”

“For why, dude?”

“The ‘idiot’ thing. You finally admitted it.”

“Takes one to know one, dude. Tell me, what did you do in high school? When your education was free?“

“Um … party?”

“And how do you feel about that now?“

“OK, dude, you made your point. You think the folk out there will get it?”

“You would think that going 30 K a year into debt so you can make, with a degree, the same $10 an hour you would at Arby’s without one, would have already made the point, dude. But I suppose ‘late’ is better than ‘never’.”

  - O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.