Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Don't ride the one trick pony!

Well, Spotty's pups are all installed at college now. Boy, it is really quiet around here. Dogs are pack animals, as you know, and Spotty doesn't like it much.

Now, where were we? Ah, yes, Katie's latest column entitled Private schools do more for variety of kids. Katherine Kersten tells us once again that there is no such thing as a public good or the general welfare of the citizenry. Katie is a veritable Glenn Gould, humming to herself as pecks away at her Underwood, spinning multiple Goldberg variations of the same basic anti-social theme.

Here's the general setup: Katie found a couple of low income families who wanted to put their kids into religious schools, and were able to get scholarships to do so from Katie's heroes, the Waltons. (See Jesus Saves.) Apparently, the kids and their parents are pleased with the results. From this, Katie concludes that private schools are better.

Either Katie is a blithering idiot, or she thinks her readers are.

Some of Spot's lawyer friends have let him in on a little trade secret, and he is going to share it with you now, gentle reader. It is called inductive reasoning. It permits the grandest of conclusions to be drawn from the scantest of evidence. And of course, that is why courtroom lawyers, especially, like it.

Suppose someone saw Spot, Mrs. Spot and one of the Spot pups strolling across the green lawns of academia last weekend. He says There are three dogs, and they are all spotted. From this evidence I conclude that all dogs are spotted. Perfectly good inductive reasoning.

The more specifics you have, the better the inference that you can make. Katie's use of inductive reasoning is always gas baggery, however. That is because she is striving for ideological conclusions, not objective truth. Katie is a sanctimonious charlatan.

Katie's true aim is to destroy public confidence in public education. Public education is the backbone of this country and this state.

Spot will have more to say about some specific things in Katie's column, probably later today.

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