When Calvin Coolidge said "The business of America is business," he and very few if any others knew just how deep this sentiment would sink into the American consciousness. Now it seems apparent that the way business thinks has muscled every other kind of thought process out of the American mind. The unfortunate result is that if no business solution exists to an American ailment, it festers into an incurable American disease.

Two kinds of thinking dominate the business mind. One comes from the paradigm of manufacturing; the other from the paradigm of marketing. Both have been used as the basis of education bashing.

If looked at in terms of the manufacturing paradigm, education is likened to the assembly of parts into a product. And the paradigm decrees that if the worker assembles the parts correctly, a good product is produced. If the product produced turns out not to be good, the conclusion drawn is that the worker did not assemble the parts correctly.

The paradigm, of course, is very problematical. It overlooks questions of design and materials among other things. Nevertheless, the paradigm is pervasive. And it is the foundation of some education bashing.

The educated student is likened to a product, subject matter is likened to its parts, and the teacher is likened to the worker. When the student turns out to be uneducated, the conclusion is that the fault lies with either the subject matter or the teacher. So we are subjected to interminable curriculum debates, reform, and teacher bashing.

If looked at in terms of the marketing paradigm, education is likened to selling. The idea is that if teachers packaged the material in attractive ways, the student would buy it.

This paradigm too is problematical. It overlooks the fact that just because a product is bought has no bearing on whether the buyer uses it at all or to its best advantage. Nevertheless the paradigm persists, and when it turns out that the student is unable to use the product or use it well, the conclusion drawn is that the way the product is packaged must be faulty, and since the teacher is the packager, the ultimate responsibility for the failure is, yes, the teacher’s! So we debate teaching methods and tools. We hear things like, "Make learning fun," "Turn the classroom into a game room," "What we need is more toys in classrooms," the toy of fashion being the computer. And we bash the teacher again for not being an entertainer, forgetting that if teachers were entertainers, they wouldn't be in classrooms.

But education fits neither of these paradigms. The educated student is not a product assembled by teachers, and learning is not a game. Furthermore, both of these scenarios overlook things that should be blatantly obvious.

The first of these is that educated people have existed in all the eras of recorded history. People acquired educations long before the school and the classroom were invented, people acquired educations long before anyone even thought of things called teaching methods, so the methods, the schools, and the classrooms cannot be sufficient conditions for the education of students.

The second should be even more obvious. Almost every teacher teaches a group of students called a class simultaneously. Every student in the class is exposed to the same material presented in the same way. Some of these students learn a lot, most learn some, and some only a little. How can this be if the teacher and the material are at fault?

During my many years as a university professor, friends often asked for the names of good colleges to send their children to. My answer always baffled them. Although there are various way of "rating" colleges—the number of professors with terminal degrees, the number who publish, the number of Nobel Prize recipients, the size of libraries, etc.—I know of none that measures the amount of learning acquired by graduating students. So I used to say "If your child is a good student, he or she can get a good education at any accredited college, and if your child is not a good student, he or she will not get a good education at any college."

The point is that, and it should be obvious, education has very little to do with the teacher or the teaching and almost everything to do with the student. Yes, of course, an exceptional teacher can produce exceptional results in some students. And yes, facilities, books, and equipment do have some bearing. But neither of these affect all students. Even exceptional teachers find it necessary to fail some students, and everyone who attends schools that have the best facilities and equipment doesn't graduate either.

So the real question ought to be how do we rear good students? The other questions are really irrelevant, for no matter how they are answered, unless we can find the answer to the first question, the result will be the same, the debate will go on, and teachers and teaching will continue to be bashed.

The ultimate truth is that a social institution can be no better than the society that supports it, and unfortunately American society is not and has never been intellectual. Intellect and scholarship have never been esteemed. Too many parents don't or can't read. Too many homes lack educational resources. Books, magazines, and journals, especially good ones, are lacking in too many homes. Television is pervasive and from the point of view of intellect, is almost universally bad. It deserves its nickname, "boobtube." Intellect and scholarship are not the "business of business" and therefore not the "business of America." And I might add neither is education.

What do children see when they notice what American society does esteem? Entertainment, sports, and marketing. Therein lies the fame, the honor, and the rewards of being an American.

So what do our children want to be? Actors, rock stars, football players, salespeople, and in some cases, simple criminals, and none of these requires great intellect or a broad education.

Until this cultural attachment changes, America will have a problem with its educational system. So unless you're more optimistic than I, the teachers of America should acclimate themselves to teacher bashing just as they have acclimated themselves to low pay and low esteem, for good students cannot be reared en masse in a culture with these ideals.

What makes comparisons of the American educational system to the educational systems of other countries so insidious is that this aspect of a supporting culture is always overlooked. Students in those countries learn more than American students merely because those cultures rear better students, not because of better teaching, better teaching methods, or better equipment. And as long as we continue to believe that teachers and teaching are to blame, our students will not only learn less, but as time goes on, learn less and less.

Oh, the wailing, weeping, and gnashing of teeth over last week's killings at Fort Hood!—a tragic instance of what Americans call an "isolated" event that happens almost daily.

·        The very next day, Jason Rodriguez walked into an office building in Florida, killed one and wounded several.

·        Gunfire erupted inside a bar near the ski town of Vail, CO Saturday night, leaving one man dead and three others wounded.

·        In Cleveland, TX, authorities called to check a rural southeast Texas home found the bodies of four people who had been shot to death.

·        A British tourist, Thomas Reeve, 28, was killed when a man entered a bar in Amarillo, TX, and opened fire.

·        More than ten bodies have been found in the home of a rapist in Cleveland, OH.

·        Authorities in Reading, PA say a Maryland man is dead after a weekend shooting at an illegal bar that also injured six people.

·        Three people including a young child are dead and six were injured in a drive-by shooting in Walterboro, SC.

·        A son of Washington state's lieutenant governor has been wounded in a workplace shooting in Kent, WA.

All of these "isolated" incidents took place in less than a week. America is a killing field! It has been for a very long time. "Killeen, TX, in 1991 is watching a replay of the spotlight shone on it when a man entered a cafeteria and fatally shot 22 diners."

In America, children kill children (Columbine), children kill their parents, parents kill their children and each other, strangers kidnap and kill children, strangers kill strangers , agents of the government kill citizens (Kent State, Waco), college students kill fellow students (VA Tech), former employees kill those they worked with, anti-abortionists kill abortionists, police called upon to help the mentally ill and otherwise challenged often end up killing them, soldiers often kill fellow soldiers and civilians. Nothing about any of this is unusual. It happens every day. If John Dos Passos were alive today, he would be reissuing U.S.A. in multiple volumes!

So why all the wailing about the shootings at Fort Hood? Perhaps it's the fact that an officer killed enlisted men? That's unusual; it's usually the other way around. Perhaps it's the shooter's name and religion? Is the hoopla all about drumming up anti-Islamic attitudes? Is it part of the war on Islam? Oh, sorry, the war on terror?

I don't know the answer, but I do know that there is nothing unusual about this event. Americans are driven to killing. We are entertained by it in movies and on television. Our children are enticed into playing killing computer-games. And we are often stressed to the breaking point. The lawyer for the shooter in the Orlando office attack has said, "This guy is a compilation of the front page of the entire year—unemployment, foreclosure, bankruptcy, divorce—all of the stresses. It looks like a classic case of stress overload." America is filled with well-armed people who are led to react like cornered animals.

These events are not surprising. What is surprising is who gets killed. While with a group of colleagues on break some time ago, someone said, "Americans kill a lot of people. Unfortunately they kill the wrong ones." Historically, the oppressed have killed their oppressors—the French in the French Revolution, the Russians in the Revolution of 1917, the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the Bader-Manheim gang in Germany, the Red Brigade in Japan, the Tamils of Sri Lanka, the Moslem fighters killing NATO forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines . But not in America, at least not yet. In America the oppressed kill each other. Strange! How long will it last?

American politicians claim that America is the free-world's leader. But what other country would want to follow America down this road? (Perhaps the stupid British from whom we acquired the roots of this vulture—oops!, culture.) It is noteworthy that since 1789, approximately 70 nations have become democratic, but not a single one has copied the American model. Whom are we leading where? Perhaps only ourselves to perdition.

Have you ever been a member of a settlement class in a settled class action suit? Did the award satisfy you or did you find it to be grossly inadequate? Did it make you suspicious of such suits?

In 1996, Epson America announced a settlement of a class action suit over its practice of engineering its printers to monitor ink levels and incorrectly read cartridges as empty and therefore unusable even though there is still ink in the cartridge. It provided a $45 credit for eligible American customers for each purchased and registered printer. But the credit could be used only at Epson's online store, where prices are considerably higher than in most discount stores such as Wal-Mart. The settlement did not require Epson to modify cartridge software and technology so that ink cartridge readings reflect the true level of ink in a cartridge, so Epson could continue the deceptive practice. Epson also agreed to pay the Plaintiff's Attorney's fees, usually one third of the amount awarded. I doubt that many owners of Epson printers took advantage of this credit. I didn't! Instead, I junked my two Epson printers and vowed never again to buy anything manufactured by Epson.

My wife was a member of the settlement class in a settled class action suit that awarded her two dollars and some cents. Unfortunately, I lost this suit's details. But I do remember that to receive the award, she had to download, fill out, and mail a form to the suit's administrator. The expense of doing that would have reduced the award's value to less than a dollar. I remember telling her to forget it.

Recently I was a member of the settlement class in an ERISA suit against ACS. ACS was accused of violations of its fiduciary responsibilities in its 401(k) program. Three law firms ended up representing the plaintiffs (the Belek Law Firm of Houston, TX, Giney & McKenna of NY, and Stull, Stull, and Brody of NY). These firms settled this suit for $1,500,000. $566,482.99 went to the attorneys for expenses and fees; $933,517.01 was awarded to members of the settlement class. But the settlement class consisted of 24,777 members, so that if the award had been distributed equally, it would have been a mere $44.60, hardly anything to get excited about. (The similarity of this number to the credit offered by Epson is interesting. Do these law firms know something about what companies are usually willing to settle for in the same way that those in marketing know that people are more likely to buy something if it is priced under $20?)

But the award wasn't distributed equally. The distribution was based on a negotiated formula that calculated the actual losses in ACS stock ownership over the defined period. The result was that 32% received distributions of approximately 26% of their losses, 29% received a minimal award of $20, and 39% got nothing at all.

I found this to be curious. If ACS violated its fiduciary responsibilities in accordance with ERISA, it did so in to ways: it paid matching contributions in ACS stock, which encouraged employees to put all of their eggs in one basket, and it always employed firms that charged high transaction fees to manage its 401(k) accounts. During the period of time involved (7/1/2001 to 12/20/2007), ACS stock rose steadily until January, 2006, when began to fall. At the end of 2007, the stock price was still slightly higher than it was on July 1, 2001. So whether or not the class members made or lost money depended entirely on how they managed their holdings. ACS' practices had nothing to do with it. Wiser members who sold their holdings when the stock was up made money while those who neglected to manage their accounts effectively lost money. But ACS' practices affected all of the members of the class. In fact, it is likely that those who managed their holdings effectively lost more than those who actually experienced losses. A department of Labor study compared two 401(k) plans with starting balances of $25,000 earning 7 percent over 35 years without additional contributions. A plan with fees and expenses of 0.5 percent annually compared to a plan with fees and expenses of 1.5 percent yields $64,000 or 28% more. So the people who were selling stock when the price was up more likely than not had to pay more transaction fees than those who neglected their holding. So astute attorneys should have known that the formula negotiated to calculate the amounts to be awarded should have been based on transaction fees rather than profits.

The question is why didn't they do that? Why did they settle this suit for such a meager amount? And why did a federal judge (Barbara G. Lynn) approve this settlement? Why do attorneys negotiate any of these meager settlements and why do judges routinely approve them?

Well, the answer is apparent. Attorneys take on class action suits on a contingent fee basis. If the case goes to trial and the defendant prevails, the attorneys don't get paid and lose the resources they have expended in pursuing the suit. So the incentive is for them to settle. Defendant companies know this, and offer meager settlement terms. Accepting these terms is an easy way for the plaintiff attorneys to make one-third of the award without ever having put anything at risk. The three firms involved in the ACS ERISA suit netted a cool half million dollars just for filling out some papers and negotiating with ACS' attorney; most members of the settlement class got pocket change. And oddly enough, it took three firms to negotiate this settlement. Sound suspicious?

Why judges approve these settlements is a mystery. Perhaps is just because the law does not exist for you and me. (Most members of our corrupt Congress are also lawyers.)

So if any reader is thinking about filing a class action suit, find an attorney who understands that if s/he is unable to negotiate a substantial award for each member of the settlement class, that you will insist that the suit be taken to trial. And before you settle on a lawyer, analyze the settlements s/he has negotiated. Make sure that his/her settlements amply award all the members of the settlement class; otherwise, you are merely involving yourself in a lawyerly boondoggle in which the lawyers will use your misery to enrich themselves. If your lawyer isn't going to get you and your colleagues substantial awards, at least make sure that s/he doesn't get any either.

The legal profession in the Western world has never had an honorable reputation. As early as the fifteenth century, Erasmus wrote, "Lawyers are jackals." Shakespeare in Henry VI wrote, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." And even Benjamin Franklin wrote, "A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats." Lawyerly jokes are almost as prevalent as dumb blonde jokes. One of my favorites is this: A man says, "Boy was it cold today." His friend asks, "How cold was it?" The man says, "It was so cold, lawyers were seen coming out of the Court House with their hands in their own pockets."

American courtrooms often have statues of the Roman Goddess Iustitia in them. She is always blindfolded. The reason, contrary to what people are led to believe, is that she must be prevented from seeing what goes on in them.

©2009 John Kozy

As an elderly, former university professor, I am deeply anguished whenever I come across shameful academic writing. Such writing not only exposes the inability of the writer but it exhibits the extent of decline in American university teaching and is a symptom of a decadent civilization.

I recently came across a piece titled Future Prospects for Economic Liberty which was published by Hillsdale College. The piece's author is Walter Williams, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He writes, "The Founders understood private property as the bulwark of freedom for all Americans, rich and poor alike." Well, perhaps, but not likely. A few founders, some founders, many founders, or all founders? They certainly didn't put any such statement in the Constitution. There is but one instance of the phrase "private property" in the Constitution. It occurs in the Fifth Amendment and reads, "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation," which clearly allows the government to take private property. As a matter of fact, the Constitution institutionalizes no economic principles as Justice Holmes, dissenting in Lochner vs the People of the State of New York, recognized when he writes, "a Constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the state or of laissez faire.  It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar, or novel, and even shocking, ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States." And although I assume a few poor people own private property, historically the poor were property less and known as slaves or serfs.

Williams also writes, "the Constitution restricts the federal government to certain functions. What are they? The most fundamental one is the protection of citizens' lives. Therefore, the first legitimate function of the government is to provide for national defense against foreign enemies and for protection against criminals here at home." Well what can one make of this claim? Certainly the Constitution's Preamble lists provide for the common defense as one of the things the Constitution was expected to do, but nowhere in the Constitution is there any reference to "saving lives." Defending the nation against foreign enemies isn't a life saver. People die defending nations. The Constitution also doesn't say anything about protecting citizens against criminals, although it does say, again in the Preamble, insure domestic tranquility and promote the general welfare. Making specific acts criminal doesn't insure or promote either of these.

Of course, saving lives is a good thing, and if Williams believes that that is a governmental function, he'd better start advocating universal healthcare, safe working environments, higher wages, market regulation, and a host of other programs not enumerated in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. All of these programs, and many others, save lives.

Williams also writes, "the free market system is threatened today not because of its failure, but because of its success. Capitalism has done so well in eliminating the traditional problems of mankind—disease, pestilence, gross hunger, and poverty. . . ." Well, I know of no disease that has been eliminated. Certainly cures for some exist, and some can be controlled, but I defy him to name a single one that has been eliminated. And "gross hunger and poverty" certainly exist in the America I live in. It has recently been reported that one in six Americans live in poverty and that food stamp assistance currently is at an all-time high of about 36 million.

These claims of Mr. Williams certainly are dumb, but he makes even dumber claims. For instance, "if I offer my local grocer three dollars for a gallon of milk, implicit in the offer is that we will both be winners. The grocer is better off because he values the three dollars more than the milk, and I am better off because I value the milk more than the three dollars." Not only is this statement nonsense, it is based on a gross misuse of English diction. Consumers in grocery stores don’t "make offers" to "local grocers." There are places commonly called "farmers markets" where that kind of offer may take place, but not in any grocery stores in the communities I have lived in for more than seventy years. The local grocery stores are massive corporations. How could any consumer make them an offer for a gallon of milk? The managers of these local grocery stores are often even hard to find. How would a checkout clerk respond to an offer to pay so-and-so for a gallon of milk?

But the dumbest claim is this: "Another common argument is that we need big government to protect the little guy from corporate giants. But a corporation can't pick a consumer's pocket. The consumer must voluntarily pay money for the corporation's product." In a sense, but what if the consumer has no alternative? And what about products that don't work as advertised? That's certainly a way of picking a consumer's pocket. Our local Fox television station regularly runs a feature called "deal or dud" during which it tests highly advertised products. I presume that Mr. Williams would be shocked to learn that most are duds. Corporations certainly use such products to pick consumers' pockets.

Mr. Williams is a shameful example of a university professor who has adopted an ideology, parrots it, and has never had an original thought of his own. His references to the Constitution are asinine and his reasoning ability is far weaker than sophomoric. What's worse, however, are the two institutions mentioned above—Hillsdale College and George Mason University and others like them. They can be likened to Mideastern madrasses—pure purveyors of ideology. These institutions have abandoned the classical educational ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty for belief, greed, and exploitation. And not only Americans but the whole world is paying a horrid price for it.

How people can so easily be taken by so-called honors has always puzzled me. The press regularly touts Pulitzers, for instance, but why? Joseph Pulitzer was not interested in truthful journalism. After purchasing the New York World, he changed it to focus on human-interest stories, scandal, and sensationalism. Excellent journalism was never a priority of his, and the prizes reflect it. So does the mainstream press which is yellower than ever in both the conventional journalistic sense and the colloquial sense of cowardly.

Even worse, however, are the Nobels. Alfred Nobel established the prizes in his will after having been called a "merchant of death" by a French newspaper. Although mostly remembered today as the inventor of dynamite, Nobel was mainly an arms manufacturer. Apparently he established the prizes to assuage his guilt, which is reminiscent of the Emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity on his deathbed in hopes of escaping eternal punishment for his many horrid deeds.

And the prizes have not been distinguished. Nobels are political prizes. They are almost always given to those committed to Western civilization and Capitalism. When given to non-westerners, the recipients are always those who are critical of the non-western civilizations they live or lived in. From the Nobel Committee's point of view, nothing is prize worthy that isn't Western.

Most of the economics prizes have gone to conventional American economists, and look at the mess they have gotten the world-wide economy in. And the Peace Prize recipients are a study in themselves. Arafat, Peres, Rabin, Wiesel, Sadat, Begin, Kissinger, Chamberlain all received it. If you survey the complete list of ninety recipients, you will not even recognize most of the names. If anything distinguishes these people, it is their failure to produce peace. In fact Alfred Nobel didn't even call it a peace prize: "the fifth prize is to be given to the person or society that renders the greatest service to the cause of international fraternity, in the suppression or reduction of standing armies, or in the establishment or furtherance of peace congresses [emphasis mine]." The attainment of peace is not one of the criteria. Mother Teresa received the prize; she had nothing whatsoever to do with war and peace.

So now Obama has gotten the prize. Big deal! Why was it awarded to him? Because he, like all Western diplomats, talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. He talks change but implements none. He appointed people with deep ties to the banking industry to the treasury who then bailed out the bankers and protected their bonuses. When the treasury bailed out the auto industry, it reduced the wages and benefits of workers. He reappointed a Bush holdover to Secretary of Defense (read perpetual war) and is in the process of expanding the war in Afghanistan and extending it into Pakistan. He continues America's unqualified support for Israel which is the main destabilizing circumstance in the Middle East. His healthcare reform has turned into an insurance industry, medical provider, and pharmaceutical company income enhancement bill. He is a protector of the economic status quo and a hegemonist—a true child of a decadent civilization, exactly what the Nobel Committee looks for. The deadly arms manufacturer would be highly pleased.