Marylee Shrider's columns rarely reveal the workings of a subtle or deep mind.  Her recent piece about Ben Stein's propagandistic drivel "eXpelled" is drivel, which makes Shrider's review a good fit for Stein's movie.  It is obvious to anyone who cares to consider the issue that Kern County lacks a culture of learning:  education is not respected, pursued or earned.  Ms. Shrider is one prominent example of that failure to value education.

Shrider's main point is to promote the teaching of Creationism, specifically that flavor of Creationism called Intelligent Design.  She pursues that objective by promoting "eXpelled." 

Her first argument is that the massively negative reviews of the movie are unfair.  She claims that is because film reviewers are "the most reliably liberal of the liberal mainstream media."  She also wonders "what is it about “Expelled” that has the critics so enraged, so shrill, so frightened?"  I don't think the reviewers are frightened at all.  They're just disgusted.

Shrider is no movie critic.  It's really obvious why she liked the movie:  it panders to her ignorance of science, her right-wing religious zealotry, and her inability to come to terms with evolution.  First, the review snippets she includes, then other movie reviewers, and I'll finish with some scientists' reviews of "eXpelled".

First, Shrider includes, without attribution, several reviewers comments:

***) "creationist crackpottery"

This was in a review by Roger Moore.  The full sentence from his review is:

"Expelled is a full-on, amply budgeted Michael Moore-styled mockery of evolution, a film that dresses creationist crackpottery in an "intelligent design" leisure suit and tries to make the fact that it's not given credence in schools a matter of "academic freedom."

***) “stacked-deck, religious-right propaganda"  and  “shameless, stupid and loathsome piece of propaganda ever to skulk its way into the theater.” 

These were in a review by Ken Hanke.  The full paragraphs were quite well-put:

"Junk science meets even junkier filmmaking in Nathan Frankowski’s Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed—a no more shameless, stupid and loathsome piece of propaganda has ever skulked its way into the theater. Frankowski really should have chosen a different subtitle for the film (my vote is for Win Ben Stein’s Brain Cell), since he seems to have succumbed to the “no intelligence allowed” credo in attempting to make his point... This is nothing but stacked-deck religious-right propaganda palmed off as a serious debate on intelligent design—a concept that the film itself never actually explains."

Secondly, Shrider omits many many other harsh reviews.  I want to present a few of those for your consideration.

***)  Rotten Tomatoes, the go-to site for movie reviews, gives "eXpelled" a full 9 rotten tomatoes, putting it in the lowest category of celluloid trash.

Their Consensus review is: " Full of patronizing, poorly structured arguments, Expelled is a cynical political stunt in the guise of a documentary."

***) Their Top Critics category summarizes and links to the reviews of the most highly-regarded reviewers.  Here is an excerpt of one such opinion by Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times.:

"One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry."

Finally, if you want a solid review of this movie, consider the reviews of scientists rather than of film critics.  

***)  Kenneth Miller, a biologist from Brown University who argues that science and religion can coexist wrote in The Boston Globe that:

"Expelled" is a shoddy piece of propaganda that props up the failures of Intelligent Design by playing the victim card. It deceives its audiences, slanders the scientific community, and contributes mightily to a climate of hostility to science itself. Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science. If we actually come to believe that science leads to murder, then we deserve to lose world leadership in science. In that sense, the word "expelled" may have a different and more tragic connotation for our country than Stein intended."

***)  Scientific American presented a number of reviews, all pretty damning.  Here is a sample of the piece written by Michael Shermer.  Or you can rely on Marylee Shrider's good judgement and scientific expertise and movie review credentials...

"In 1974 I matriculated at Pepperdine University as a born-again Christian who rejected Darwinism and evolutionary theory—not because I knew anything about it (I didn't) but because I thought that in order to believe in God and accept the Bible as true, you had to be a creationist. What I knew about evolution came primarily from creationist literature, so when I finally took a course in evolutionary theory in graduate school I realized that I had been hoodwinked. What I discovered is a massive amount of evidence from multiple sciences—geology, paleontology, biogeography, zoology, botany, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, genetics and embryology—demonstrating that evolution happened.

It was with some irony for me, then, that I saw Ben Stein's antievolution documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, opens with the actor, game show host and speechwriter for Richard Nixon addressing a packed audience of adoring students at Pepperdine University, apparently falling for the same trap I did.

Actually they didn't. The biology professors at Pepperdine assure me that their mostly Christian students fully accept the theory of evolution. So who were these people embracing Stein's screed against science? Extras."

***)  And if that isn't enough for the scientific review of the trash that is "eXpelled", perhaps you might consider the review by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this country's premier professional association of research scientists.  Here is a bit about how they took out the trash:

"The AAAS statement responds that evolution is supported by extensive evidence, and rejects the movie as a divisive effort to inject controversial religious ideas into public school science classrooms... AAAS further decries the profound dishonesty and lack of civility demonstrated by this effort. The movie includes interviews with scientists who report that they were deceived into appearing as part of such a production, and advance segments [of the film] broadly depict those who accept evolution as racist and sympathetic to Nazis. Such generalized insults are untrue and grossly unfair to millions of scientists in the United States and worldwide who are working to cure disease, solve hunger, improve national security, and otherwise advance science to improve the quality of human life."

***) The National Center for Science Education, a group which works for scientific literacy, has a whole website devoted just to work against the nonsense that this junk propaganda spreads.  One example of their reaction to "eXpelled" is:

"In practically every scene, Expelled insults the science of evolution and the scientists who study it, accepting the long-ago-debunked criticisms and conspiracy theories of the intelligent design proponents as valid. On the contrary, evolution is well accepted in the scientific community, where it is considered the organizing principle of biology and central as well to the field of geology. The notion that scientists have formed an atheistic cabal to keep intelligent design from its day in the sun is ludicrous."

That one of the Bakersfield Californian's regular columnists endorses such nonsense speaks to this community's deep-seated fear of science and its deep-seated commitment to ignorance.  Her opinions explain a lot about why the Social Science Data Analysis Network puts the Bakersfield Metropolitan Area near dead-last at 300th of 318 cities for percent of adults with a college degree and 303rd of 318 for professional and graduate degrees.  The same analysis has us 13th of 318 cities for percent of adults without a high school diploma, a whopping 1 of every 3 of us, and 14th of 318 for those with less than a 9th grade education, 1 of every 7 of us.  More of us dropped out before starting high school than managed to earn a college degree.

We are among the least-educated communities in the country in large measure because opinion-leaders like Marylee Shrider peddle nonsense to undermine education rather than promote a culture of learning.

I am MtDNA haplogroup K2a and Y chromosome haplogroup I1b. That statement offers a panoramic view of my ancestral past, but it sits atop a mountain of understanding.

A couple of months ago, my wife and I decided to participate in the Genographic Project run by National Geographic and IBM. We ordered 3 kits at about $100 each from their web site. A month later, we got our kits, including welcome materials and DNA sampling materials. We swabbed the insides of our cheeks and sent the vials back in the prepaid envelopes. A few weeks later the lab was finished and our results were ready to access online. This is where to start if you want to participate in The Genographic Project.

Each Genographic Project kit analyzes either your mitochondrial DNA (MtDNA) or your Y-chromosome DNA. A basic understanding of mitochondrial DNA and of chromosomes is needed to make sense of the results.

MtDNA: matrilineal haplogroup

Every one of us has mitochondria in every single one of our 50 trillion or so cells. Mitochondria generate additional energy to power those cells. Mitochondria aren't just organelles in human cells, either: they are found in nearly all species of plants and animals. Mitochondria are intriguing because they contain their own DNA. Mitochondrial DNA (MtDNA) in human beings is a small circular string of 16 thousand base-pairs, much simpler than the DNA found in our cell nuclei. Another important difference between MtDNA and nuclear DNA is that our MtDNA comes only from our mothers.

When the male's sperm fertilizes the female's egg, their genetic material recombines, the egg and the sperm each contributing 23 chromosomes to the new zygote. Both the egg and the sperm contain their own mitochondria, but the sperm's few mitochondria are doomed to die: the egg locates sperm mitochondria and destroys them before they get a chance to replicate. At birth, human infants have nuclear DNA which is a fusion of their mother's and their father's nuclear DNA but their cells contain only their mother's MtDNA.

Each of us had a biological mother and biological father: going back a single generation, each of us inherited genetic material from 2 different human individuals, mom and dad. If we regress 2 generations, to our grandparents, we find 4 different individuals contributing to our genetic heritage. The number of people who contributed to our individual nuclear DNA grows exponentially as we go back in time: a mere 5 generations ago, about 125 years ago, 32 different people contributed to our nuclear DNA. One of those 32 people, the woman who was your mother's mother's mothers' mother's mother had the exact same MtDNA as you do, because you got your MtDNA in an unfused line of descent from her. Twenty generations back, about 500 years ago, as many as 1 million different people contributed to your genetic inheritance. One of those million individual people, a woman, passed her MtDNA unaltered down to you in matrilineal descent.

When MtDNA gets copied, rare mistakes and mutations occur, some of which result in still-functional mitochondria. Your MtDNA is almost certainly identical to your mother's MtDNA and your mother's mother's MtDNA, but the further we recede in matrilineal descent, the more likely we are to encounter mutations. Geneticists examine those rare mutations to calculate "genetic distance" between the now 100s of thousands of analyzed MtDNAs. They then use those calculations to trace, organize, and analyze human ancestry and migration. An MtDNA haplogroup is a set of haplotypes, statistical groupings of closely related DNA. Different haplogroups are found in different geographical regions and are due to distinct population histories.

I am MtDNA haplogroup K. That means my mitochondrial DNA differs from the Cambridge Reference Sequence mitochondrial DNA at base pairs 16224C, 16311C, and 16519C in what is called Hyper Variable Region 1 (HVR1): those are the defining mutations for haplogroup K. Those mutations are relatively rare, shared by only about 8% of Europeans. Haplogroup K is also called Clan Katrine, the name retroactively given the first woman whose MtDNA had those defining mutations by Bryan Sykes in his 2001 book, The Seven Daughters of Eve. Clan Katrine includes other famous people, including Stephen Colbert, Katie Couric, and Otzi the Iceman, a 5,000 year-old mummy found in the Alps. Further testing by FamilyTreeDNA located additional mutations at 146C and 152C in HVR2, the defining mutations for haplotype 2a of haplogroup K, making my MtDNA haplogroup K2a, a relatively rare haplotype within haplogroup K. That is only the beginning of the story, however: this piece of information about my mitochondrial DNA opens out to a panoramic view of my matrilineal descent.

Y-chromosome: patrilineal haplogroup

Every one of our 50 trillion or so cells has a nucleus which contains chromosomes housing our nuclear DNA. Human beings have 46 chromosomes organized in 23 joined pairs and containing about 3 billion base-pairs, which function to organize each individual's biology. One of those chromosome pairs is sex-differentiating: men have an XY-chromosome-pair and women have an XX chromosome-pair. When females produce eggs and males produce sperm, those 23 pairs of chromosomes, diploids, are split into 23 single chromosomes, haploids. Any given sperm has either that man's X chromosome or his Y chromosome. At fertilization, the haploid cells, sperm and egg, recombine their nuclear DNA to produce a diploid, the zygote. If a Y-chromosome bearing sperm fertilizes an egg, the zygote will almost certainly differentiate into a male and if an X-chromosome bearing sperm fertilizes an egg, the resulting zygote will almost certainly differentiate female.

Every person's nuclear DNA is a recombination of the nuclear DNA of their biological parents. The exception is the male Y chromosome, which is almost certainly identical to the father's Y chromosome. That men inherit their father's Y chromosome unaltered by their mother's DNA allows researchers to trace patrilineal descent. A mere 5 generations ago, about 125 years ago, for example, 32 different people contributed to a man's nuclear DNA. One of those 32 people, the man who was the father's father's fathers' father's father had nearly the exact same Y chromosome as the man does, unaltered by any other ancestor. And 20 generations back, about 500 years ago, as many as 1 million different people contributed to that man's genetic inheritance. One of those million individual people, a man, passed his Y chromosome unaltered down to him in patrilineal descent. 

When the Y chromosome gets copied, rare mistakes and mutations occur, some of which result in still-functional chromosomes. A man's Y chromosome is almost certainly identical to his father's and his father's father's Y chromosome, but the further we recede in patrilineal descent, the more likely we are to generate mutations. Geneticists examine those rare mutations to trace, organize, and analyze human ancestry and migration. A Y chromosome haplogroup is a set of haplotypes, statistical groupings of similarity in DNA: they allow geneticists to organize human descent. Different haplogroups are found in different geographical regions and are due to distinct population histories.

I am Y chromosome haplogroup I1b. That means the 12 locations on my Y chromosome which were analyzed for their short tandem repeats (STRs) fit a particular genetic pattern which places me in Y chromosome haplogroup I. I have a particular mutation called marker P37.2 that places me in subclade I1b. Researchers call that particular haplotype I1b Dinaric, named after the Dinaric Alps region of the South Slavic Balkans which have the highest concentration of this genetic pattern. This, too, only begins the story, however: this piece of information about my Y chromosome DNA opens out to vast vistas across time and space.

My deep genetic past

Scientists, using DNA evidence, put the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens at about 200,000 years ago. The oldest bones of our species that we have found have been dated to about 130,000 years ago. A very important member of our species has been termed "Mitochondrial Eve". This woman lived from about 150,000 to 170,000 years ago. She is special not because she was the first woman: there were many other women alive at the time she was. Mitochondrial Eve was important because her mitochondrial DNA has been passed down, in matrilineal descent, to every single person alive today: she is our common mother. Eve lived in East Africa.

The mitochondrial DNA of the daughters of Eve mutated after a number of generations into 2 different forms, termed L0 and L1. The concentration of the L0 and L1 variants of mitochondrial DNA is, to this day, highest in East Africa. After thousands of years, a variant of L1 DNA emerged. Today, L2 mitochondrial DNA is most concentrated in West Africa. About 80,000 years ago, a woman with L2 mitochondrial DNA gave birth to a girl with mutations which would develop into a new haplogroup, L3. Persons with L3 MtDNA are found all over Africa, but they are in high concentrations in Northern Africa. Members of haplogroup L3 moved north through the Middle East and were the first humans to leave Africa, probably around the time of the African Ice Age 60,000 years ago.

My MtDNA past so far is: MtDNA Eve (160,000)--> L1 --> L2 --> L3 (80,000)

The African Ice Age of about 60,000 years ago is where my patrilineal descent begins. A male with Y-chromosome marker M168 lived about 50,000 years ago in northeast Africa and his Y-chromosome DNA is in every non-African man living today: his was the only lineage to survive outside of Africa.

About 45,000 years ago, there was a mutation in the Y-chromosome in the M168 line: the M89 marker is found in 90-95% of all non-African males. The first man with marker M89 was born in Northern Africa or the Middle East.

The story of my Y-chromosome DNA thus far is: M168 (50,000) --> M89 (45,000)

On the female side of things, about the time that M89 emerged, a woman with L3 MtDNA had a baby girl who gave rise to a new haplogroup, termed N. Her descendents lived in the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia. After a few thousand years of exploration and settlement, the descendents of the founding member of haplogroup N, gave rise to a woman with a new mutation. This woman gave rise to haplogroup R. Some of the members of haplogroup R migrated north across Turkey and into the Caucasus mountains of Georgia and Russia.

About 50,000 years ago, a woman in MtDNA haplogroup R gave birth to a girl with a set of mutations which are considered to be determinative of a new haplogroup, U. This founding mother of haplogroup U has been given the name Ursula. Clan Ursula, as it is now called, spread throughout Europe and settled into isolated refuges as the Ice sheets descended from the north in the last Glacial Maximum.

Thus far, the matrilineal descent looks like this:

MtDNA Eve (160,000)--> L1 --> L2 --> L3 (80,000)--> N (60,000)--> R --> U (50,000)

On the male side of things, about 20,000 years ago, in an isolated refuge from the last Glacial Maximum, the last great Ice Age, somewhere in the Balkans, a man with Y-chromosome DNA M89 gave birth to a son with mutations which would come to define haplogroup I.  Those mutations are defined by marker M170.

As the ice sheets of the Last Glacial Maximum began to retreat in Europe, many of the descendants of haplogroup I followed northward. My descendants probably did not. About 15,000 years ago, a boy was born to a haplogroup I male with Y-chromosome mutations which defined haplotype I1b. This mutation is determined by marker P37.2 on my Y-chromosome. This man lived in central and southeastern Europe, likely in an Ice Age refuge in the Adriatic region of modern-day Croatia. As far as our personal ancestry goes back, my patrilineal ancestry is confined to the same small geographical area in the Dinaric Alps of the South Slavic Balkans. The men of my past are homeboys of the first order: they seem to have lived in the same neighborhood in every generation for about 20,000 years back. No wonder moving has always stressed me out so much!

My complete Y-chromosome deep ancestry looks like this:

M168 (50,000) -> M89 (45,000) -> I (M170 20,000)-> I1b1 (P37.2 15,000)

Back to the women. About 16,000 years ago, Katrine, the founding mother of MtDNA haplogroup K was born, probably in southern Russia or the steppes of the Black Sea. Katrine was a descendant of a woman in Clan Ursula, specifically in subclade U8. The most likely explanation has Katrine being born in a haplogroup U8 tribe moving north in Europe, following the retreating ice sheets as the last Glacial Maximum retreated north. My specific haplotype, K2a, emerged from haplogroup K in the last few thousand years in Europe and my mother passed that mitochondrial DNA down to me.

My complete MtDNA deep ancestry looks like this:

Eve (160,000)-> L1-> L2-> L3 (80,000)-> N (60,000)-> R-> U (50,000)-> K (16,000)

I am MtDNA haplogroup K2a and Y chromosome haplogroup I1b. That statement offers a panoramic view of my ancestral past, but it sits atop a mountain of understanding.

The Reverend Wright story has been annihilating Barack Obama's support as likely voters flee to John McCain and Hillary Clinton.

On Saturday, for the first time, McCain took the national RealClearPolitics lead against Obama in the polls with a 0.8% edge.  That may seem paltry, and it is, but it represents an 8% turnaround in a month.

This morning RealClearPolitics has McCain's lead over Obama expanding to 1.2%.  That is much worse than it appears, because the 2 tracking polls that include this past weekend are Gallup's poll of 4400 registered voters which gives McCain a 3% edge and Rasmussen's poll of 1700 likely voters which gives McCain a whopping 6% lead over Obama.  The Gallup poll is really bad because polls of registered voters usually substantially bias to Democrats:  a 3% McCain lead underestimates his real lead and is consistent with the Rasmussen 6% edge.  RealClearPolitics averages recent polls so the 2 registered voter polls from 2 weeks ago showing Obama leads are factored in, dampening the McCain leads to only 1.2%.

But make no mistake, the Wrong Reverend Wright has convinced millions of Americans to vote for John McCain.

The Democratic nomination will hinge on which candidate gets the most popular votes.  That's why Hillary Clinton will stay in it no matter what is happening with the delegate count.

If Barack Obama gets the most popular votes, he will be the Democratic nominee.  He will have the most delegates at the convention even if Michigan and Florida go substantially for Hillary.  That means the only way for Hillary to get the nomination in this case is for the superdelegates to go her way despite the elected delegates and popular vote:  they won't do that because it will certainly cost the Democrats the general election and generate so much ill feeling that the Democratic Party might be crippled for a generation.

If Hillary Clinton gets the most popular votes, she will get the Democratic nomination.  Barack Obama will have the most pledged delegates but the superdelegates will go her way. 

Obama will argue that the superdelegates are somehow obliged to vote with the pledged delegates, but that wasn't the deal:  the Democratic Party gave the superdelegates independent decisions about who they can support.  Too, no one who has followed the primaries thinks the number of pledged delegates is privileged:  caucasses are weighted,  caucasses give small numbers of voters inordinate numbers of pledged delegates, and differences between open and closed primaries delegitimize raw pledged delegate counts.

Obama will, in the end, seek accomodation with the superdelegates because if he doesn't, his political career will be over.  Oh sure, there will be a lot of threats and anger and yells of unfair play, but Barack is too young to do anything other than make his peace and pocket the difference to lock in the next Democratic nomination.

The superdelegates will go for Clinton under cover of the popular vote.  That will be the only reason they need to give, that Democrats voted in greater numbers for Hillary than they did for Barack.  And there is no effective retort from Obama to that argument.  Every Obama supporter who says "elected delegate majority" gets answered with a Clinton supporter who says"caucasses not elections" and "more Democrats voted for Hillary."

The superdelegates will go for Clinton because they know her and don't know Barack.  These folks are savvy elected officials and crusty Party insiders and elder statesmen:  choosing Barack is just too much of a leap of faith given the experienced alternative.  Too, she won the big states and the states that will decide the general election while he won the Red states.

Right now, RealClearPolitics has the popular vote:

Obama 13,584,182

Clinton  13,282,272

That is about zero given Pennsylvania and possible revotes in Florida and Michigan.

Condeleezza Rice is one of the most accomplished persons on Earth.  She would be a spectacular choice for vice president for very many reasons.  Those who don't know much about her might want to start with the Wikipedia entry about her.

There is one reason in particular that she would make a wise choice for McCain's running mate.  She is a black woman who would instantly draw tens of millions of  Democrats and Independents in the General Election.

The Democratic nominating process is getting uglier and uglier.   The polls show more and more Democrats saying they won't vote for the other one if theirs loses.  Either Barack or Hillary will get stiffed:  tens of millions of minorities or women and tens of millions of independents will be royally torqued that their candidate was robbed.

The Democratic convention will be held in late August,  the week before the Republican convention.  A timely announcement, 1 week after the bloodletting ends, that Condeleezza Rice is the Republican vice presidential nominee would clinch the win. If it is tens of millions of minorities and independents that are ticked, well, Condi is a fine choice.  If it is tens of millions of women that are ticked, well, Condi is the way to go.

John McCain should make sure that everyone knows that Condi is on the short list of prospects well in advance so he doesn't appear to be an opportunist.  It will seem like he is playing to the electorate unless its well known that he is considering Condi well ahead of time.  That makes the next few weeks a good time for him to ask her.  Nicely.

In Saturday's story about Assemblywoman Jean Fuller's proposal to make driver's licenses conditional on school attendance, Laura Maldonado, a counselor at Vista Continuation High School, argued that while the proposal would, undoubtedly, get some kids to attend school, she supported increased funding for counseling and programs to attend to their emotional and development situation. 

It seems to me that there is no forced choice here:  a mix of incentives, both carrots and sticks, is likely to have the most effect.  If attending school as a precondition of getting a license gets more kids to come to school, then we should do that.  Just because other ideas might also be a good idea is no reason not to do this one.

Several folks expressed the opinion that this proposal would burden schools.  I am not sure exactly how much more burden would be created, but if a drivers license as a reward for school attendance reduces truancy, then I would think that would actually reduce the burden on schools.  True, more kids attending more classes would be more of a burden, but surely we can all support that, no?  And surely requiring our schools to keep accurate and up-to-date attendance is a burden we can help them shoulder as needed, no?

Several students expressed their opinions about the matter, and they were uniformly negative.  But, you know, their thumbs-down arguments sounded like reasons FOR the proposal to this educator.  Sometimes students don't like something BECAUSE its good for them and these opinions sure sounded that way to me.

One student articulated that "our education ain’t got nothing to do with no license."  Well, that doesn't address whether it should or not.  Perhaps the threat of no license might keep some students coming to their English classes. 

Another argued that this proposal would undermine education: "Kids will go to school just to keep their license, so school wouldn’t really be important."  Although well-stated, this argument grants the most important reason for the proposal:  "Kids will go to school.."  We would all rather that students go to school because they understand that their futures and our common future depend on them becoming educated, but I will settle for almost ANY reason for kids to go to school, including hanging out with their friends, having nothing better to do, because the truant officer makes them, and, I know this is old school, but even because Daddy will shellack their behind if they don't.  If they attend only because they want a drivers license, that's disappointing but it's a good enough start. 

That same student offered a pessimistic assessment of law enforcement: "No matter if you take them or not, they’re going to be out of a school, out of a license and still driving."  I am a college debate coach and think that this young man has a promising future on the debate team.  But, alas, this argument doesn't come to much, either.  It assumes some things that are just not so.  It presumes that a student can get a CAR without a license.  Now I know a few parents might be willing to get their child a car even without a license, but they are a tiny exception.  The vast majority of parents would have an easy reason to just say NO to a car, which gives a huge incentive for their child to go to class.  Also, for those few kids who do get a car without a license, the police stop younger drivers often enough to substantially deter this behavior.  The response might be that the kids will all just cruise around with a kid who has a license but is willing to skip with them.  Although possible, a car with a bunch of kids makes an excellent choice for a chat with an officer.  Too, the kid willing to do that more than rarely won't get to hold onto their license long.

A final student made what I call the "culture of ignorance" argument.  Now, I am not calling this student names, this argument is made by a lot of folks, she isn't the problem.  This student argued that: “Most times, students drop out to get a good job, so taking away a driver’s license is just making them fail more.” 

The first thing wrong with this argument is that they are not getting "a good job."  They are getting a crappy job, the sort of job that unskilled and uneducated kids can do, that pays minimum wage and helps families out a bit but doesn't offer much of a future.  Don't get me wrong, work is work and I spent summers digging ditches and canvassing door-to-door while in grad school:  those jobs built character and motivated me never to have to do them again.  When those jobs terminate a student's education, they are not only NOT "a good job," they are a life sentence to a mean, hard scrabble for both that student and their children.  In another post I mentioned that the difference between a high school grad and a dropout is $500,000 over an earnings lifetime,  about $10,000 a year.  If they managed to stick with it for a college degree, that's an additional $1.2 million over their adult lifetime.  A job that, essentially PREVENTS you from earning an additional $1.7 million is a "game over" job.

The second thing wrong with this argument is that it ignores the basic argument that Assemblywoman Fuller makes.  Kids care about cars.  They all want to get a license to drive and a car to do it in.  Today, like when we were kids, cars are the ultimate freedom, the first giant step.  There is nothing cool about a kid without a license or a car.  If the drivers license is the reward for attending school and if taking away a driver's license is the punishment for NOT attending school, then that is one giant incentive to attend school. 

Finally, even though the kids may not think so, not having a license is NOTHING as punishment, compared to not getting an education.  In the worst instance, the kid committed to ruining their own future will be able to get the license once they turn 18 anyway.  Then they can drive to their dream job digging ditches for minimum wage and start the life they have chosen for themselves.

I call this the "culture of ignorance" argument because it is one of the central arguments which make it okay for our kids to be ignorant, to not finish their education.  They think they will be just fine without an education, which is as huge a mistake as having unprotected sex with the most promiscuous person in school.  When parents believe it, it is doubly tragic and when an entire community believes it, they end up with 18% of its citizens living below the poverty line, with 7.5 % unemployment, and a huge high school dropout rate.  All three of those are 50% above the national average in Kern County.

Taken together, those "thumbs-down" in the story and video from Saturday seem to me to be pretty good reasons FOR Assemblywoman Fuller's proposal.

Only 14% of adult Kern County residents has a bachelor's degree: that's half the state and national averages (1).   The Social Science Data Analysis Network puts the Bakersfield Metropolitan Area near dead-last at 300th of 318 cities for percent of adults with a college degree and 303rd of 318 for professional and graduate degrees. (2)  The same analysis has us 13th of 318 cities for percent of adults without a high school diploma, a whopping 1 of every 3 of us, and 14th of 318 for those with less than a 9th grade education, 1 of every 7 of us. (3)  More of us dropped out before starting high school than managed to earn a college degree.

Nearly 30% of us are illiterate, worse than many underdeveloped nations.  The Kern Adult Literacy Council points out that over 200,000 of us can't read well enough to perform daily job functions or speak English well enough to function in daily life. (4)  Professor Jack Miller of CCSU  ranks all US metropolitan areas which have more than 250,000 people in "America's Most Literate Cities." Bakersfield scrapes the bottom, getting 64th of the 69 cities evaluated in 2007. (5)

We seem determined that our kids will be as uneducated as we are.  Last year, our kids scored far below state averages in every subject in every elementary and middle school grade.  By the time they reach the 8th grade, our kids know half of what the average California 8th-grader knows. Our 8th grade science proficiency, for example, was 20%, less than half the California average of 42%. (6) A crushing 32 of the 40 Bakersfield City schools which tested under California's Academic Performance Index ranked in the lowest 1/3 of the state's schools and half of our schools are currently under sanction by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. (7) 

Harvard University released a study in January 2007, entitled "Children Left Behind" where they examine children and education in the 100 largest American cities.  Bakersfield is cited again and again as an example of a city that fails its children.  On page 2, for example, they list Bakersfield as one of the 3 worst cities for hispanic children, then again for asian children, and a third time as one of the 3 worst for white children . (8)  Yes, that's right, one of the worst 3 cities for children in all of America.

At our high schools, every now and then, we score at or above the state average in a subject or 2, but the overall picture remains grim.  Lets face it, our kids aren't heading for the nation's top schools.  Or to any schools, really.  Less than 1/4 of Kern County kids even bother to take the SAT, compared to a statewide 37%, and those that do take it manage only a combined verbal, math and writing score of 1418, a full 79 points lower than the rest of the state's kids.  (9) As of 2006, only 13% of Kern County high school graduates make any attempt at a 4-year program, compared to the state average of 18%.  (10)

Is there at least some improvement occurring?  It can't stay this horrible forever, can it?  The good news is that we have improved a bit over the last 25 years.  The bad news is that we are falling even further behind because almost everywhere else is improving faster than we are.  According to Professors Edward Glaeser and Christopher Berry, in their March 2006 study published by Harvard's Taubman Center entitled "Why are Smart Places Getting Smarter?", over the last 25 years, Bakersfield has been one of the 10 slowest-improving cities for educational attainment in the entire country.(11)

Notes:

(1) The US Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey Data for Kern County
(2) http://www.censusscope.org/...
(3) http://www.censusscope.org/...
(4) http://www.kernalc.org/
(5) http://www.ccsu.edu/amlc07/...
(6) http://www.greatschools.net...
(7) http://www.markhowellnews.c...
(8) http://diversitydata.sph.ha...
(9) California Department of Education dataquest report on Kern County SAT scores for 2006-2007
(10) PEC http://www.cpec.ca.gov/OnLi...
(11) http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/...