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My Mention in @CampusReform About Women and the Principles and Practices Engineering Exam
With a new semester starting, it’s only apropos to mention the back and forth I’ve been having about the Principles and Practices Engineering Exam, which probably seems like a pretty arcane topic…until two Kansas State academics noted that women have a lower first-time pass rate than men do.
That occasioned an article by Toni Airaksinen of Campus Reform on the subject. One of the suggestions of the academics was that the exam itself might be biased against women. I found this difficult to believe and wrote a response to it on my vulcanhammer.net blog/site, which concerns itself with engineering topics. While not directly attacking the conclusions, I expressed the opinion that one reason for the disparity may be in the timing of the exam, which is very problematic for reasons beyond this issue and whose fix is an ongoing effort of societies which are involved in this process.
My response was featured in a follow-up article by Airaksinen on the topic, which also includes a response from NCEES (who actually write this exam,) who inform us that they screen the questions for bias. Having prepared engineering tests for a number of years, I have no idea how one screens exam questions for bias against women, but my female students have done pretty well over the years taking my tests.
Since the 1960’s engineering has suffered attacks from the various movements that exploded during that era, some of which challenged the basic good of technological progress. The profession has made a major effort to address these objections, but with the “Running Rusty” mentality in the SJW movement, that’s not easy for anyone. Our society needs to address the reality that, to survive in the world we live in, we need to shift to STEM as the centrepiece of our educational system rather than the appendage. If that happened I believe we’d see women as a larger part of our profession, and that would be a good thing. There are signs of progress but we’ve got a long way to go.
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Sometimes Doing No Murder Can Get You in Trouble
Pope Francis’s condemnation of capital punishment is simple and unambiguous: It is inadmissible. No exceptions for especially heinous crimes; no loopholes allowing execution when other lives might be in jeopardy, as in past Catholic teachings. No, declared the pope; state-sanctioned killing is always an unjustifiable attack on the dignity of human life, it’s always wrong.
My senior year in prep school, one of my teachers was both a recent graduate of the school (which was not even ten years old at the time) and a newly minted “Sixties radical” to boot. He brought this up, using the same commandment as the New York Times to oppose capital punishment. My parish priest (I was a newly minted Roman Catholic) had, in accordance with the teaching of the Church, told us back at the parish that the commandment meant “Thou shalt do no murder.” (Given the place of capital punishment in the old law, that makes sense.) I repeated this to the teacher and he did what his kind are best at: he exploded in my face with rage.
Some things never change…as Andreas Killen pointed out, the issues that were at the forefront in 1973 are still with us, and this is one of them. But now we have a pope, who prefers damage control to solution in the sex abuse crises, going against the teaching of his own church. Personally I think he’s using the capital punishment issue to deflect attention from the abuse crisis, which only gets worse.
But that illustrates the duplicity of those struggling to hold the “moral high ground.” Most of those who oppose the death penalty also support abortion and euthanasia, and now explode in our faces on social media with the hope that many of their opponents can be liquidated. The question is not really keeping people alive but shifting who’s chosen to die from one group to another.
P.S. One of the most impassioned pleas for the restriction of capital punishment except in the most heinous cases comes from Blaise Pascal’s Provincial Letters, but Jesuits like the Pope and James Martin would sooner have us forget this masterpiece, as it shows what happens when you let the Jesuits run wild on issues of faith and morals.
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The “Debt Direction” of the British Empire Needs to be Reversed
While musing over what’s the “morally appropriate language” one should write in, Arundhati Roy was confronted with the following:
Only a few weeks after the mother tongue/masterpiece incident, I was on a live radio show in London. The other guest was an English historian who, in reply to a question from the interviewer, composed a paean to British imperialism. “Even you,” he said, turning to me imperiously, “the very fact that you write in English is a tribute to the British Empire.” Not being used to radio shows at the time, I stayed quiet for a while, as a well-behaved, recently civilized savage should. But then I sort of lost it, and said some extremely hurtful things. The historian was upset, and after the show told me that he had meant what he said as a compliment, because he loved my book. I asked him if he also felt that jazz, the blues, and all African-American writing and poetry were actually a tribute to slavery. And if all of Latin American literature was a tribute to Spanish and Portuguese colonialism.
One thing I’ve discovered about just about anyone who grew up in a former British colony is that they really don’t like either the concept or the reality of British colonial rule. Americans, who themselves were the first to head to the exits, don’t really grasp this. Roy offers some interesting observations on the effect of English in India (it’s been an advantage to Indian expats who head to some of those other former colonies) but I think that the following, which I observed in an appendix to my Positive Infinity New Testament, bears repeating:
The use of Bahamian paper explains how many of the pounds, shillings and pence got on this page; it came out of having to learn how to count it and spend it while in the Bahamas. The good news was that this education could be had in a place with a warm climate and people. This also illustrates one of the characteristics of the old British Empire: many of the colonies were improvements over the mother country. Why else would two small islands be able to populate two entire continents with the people who either wanted or had to leave, to say nothing of the “expatriates” in places such as South Africa and India?
If we compare the British Empire (especially in its early stages) with the, say, French or Spanish, the whole settlement pattern was different. France and Spain wanted New France and New Spain to be echoes of the official idea of the mother country: no religious or political dissidents, etc. With the Brits things were different: they were happy to export their malcontents (religious and political dissidents, economically distressed like the Scots-Irish, etc.) to their American colonies, and later to their others. People wonder why there was a French Revolution and no English Revolution. Actually there was an English revolution; it just took place over here and not in England. Although the colonial system required the export (temporary or permanent) of officialdom, many of these (along with others) left because they could find a better life elsewhere than “Old Blighty.”
And the colonies returned the favour: they saved the “Old Country’s” bacon in two world wars (and that included just about all of them, including Canada, Australia, NZ, the US and yes India) and made English the global language that it is. So perhaps next a Brit “imperiously” (how else would he or she do it?) waxes about the greatness of the British Empire, it’s worth reminding them that not only did the UK export the people, it exported the greatness too. The debt of Empire is reversed.
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You Can’t Always Get What You Want When You’re the State Church
That was certainly the case with Peter Ball, whom John Major appointed to the see of Gloucester, much to then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey’s horror:
LORD CAREY has expressed his horror that the former Prime Minister John Major was persuaded by a senior aide to choose Peter Ball over another candidate for the see of Gloucester against the wishes of the Crown Appointments Commission (CAC — now the Crown Nominations Commission).
That’s basically the deal with a state church: the church gets the privileges of official status but must submit to the state’s will. I’ve noted this problem before (and so did Bossuet, who preached at the court of Louis XIV,) but it hasn’t stopped many in North American Anglicanism from pining for communion with Canterbury, even as the drift in the culture was reflected in the attitude of the state.
I think now that the consequences of this signal weakness are apparent to just about everyone, as was evidence as the recent GAFCON meeting. Better late than never.
As far Ball’s appointment being recommended by Sir Robin Catford, recalling this is impossible to resist:
That could be applied to a large number of Anglican and Episcopal prelates and clergy as well…
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Chesterton to be Canonised? Bossuet Hasn’t Been Either
His canonisation is being considered:
Is he or is he not on the road to being canonized?
In the coming weeks, the fate of Gilbert Keith Chesterton will be known.
Soon, all eyes will turn upon Canon John Udris as he presents his written report to the bishop of Northampton, England, with, thereafter, a decision being made.
I’m not optimistic about seeing “St. Gilbert” anytime soon, although the Roman Catholic Church is full of surprises. Some of that is due to his anti-Semitic remarks, which should endear him to the current Labour Party. But frankly I’m surprised that the RCC in England, as liberal as its hierarchy is, is even allowing consideration of Chesterton for anything.
On a broader view, the Roman Catholic Church has always had an aversion for canonising or even celebrating its best post-Reformation thinkers and preachers. Whether you’re an Old Folk Mass or #straightouttairondale type, Catholics in parishes are presented with some of the most banal examples of Catholic thought and life out there. For the better ones, one in particular whose cause is a main item on this blog is Jaques-Bénigne Bossuet. AFAIK, he’s never been considered for canonisation, although he is the Church’s best and most eloquent defender since Trent. Perhaps it is best that Chesterton be left to his fans to insure his legacy.
In the UK, he is known mostly for the Father Brown series; his magnificent apologetic works are mostly admired outside of Old Blighty. With Bossuet it’s different; the French still consider him a major literary figure of the XVIIth Century, in some ways the country’s Golden Age. But then again the French are better at appreciating their literary heritage en bloc, as they did recently when they re-entombed Simone Veil (a Holocaust survivor) in the Pantheon.
Another good reason for Brexit?
Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Positive Infinity 