FOUNDATIONS BACK APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAMS: This is very good news. But it also needs to be kept in mind that apprenticeships work better for some jobs than for others. The key tends to be that employers need to know that they will get a return on their investment in the apprentice’s education. Put differently, they need to know that after they spend their time teaching the apprentice he won’t skip out and work for a competitor (which can offer higher wages because it doesn’t have to finance its own apprenticeship program) before the agreed-upon term is over. In practice, alas, it means that jobs that require licenses are best suited for apprenticeships. I am not a fan of unnecessary licenses; we already have too many. On the other hand, if we want businesses to finance apprenticeship programs, the incentive to complete the apprenticeship in order to get a license helps.

MILLENARIAN THINKING LEADS TO HELL, NOT TO HEAVEN: Every once in a while, people start believing that the end of days is near and that if we don’t all repent immediately that end will be very bad. Almost always they are wrong.

It’s hard not to notice that we’re in a bit of a millenarian moment right now.   That’s true even if climate change is a genuine problem that will need, in one form or another, to be addressed. The way Members of Congress flocked to AOC’s “The world is going to end in 12 years” Green New Deal was truly astonishing. Who would have thought that anyone would jump to support a policy that reads like it was cooked up by a college sophomore on a binge weekend?

And don’t get me started about Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager who is leading the children’s crusade against global warming in Europe (and being treated like a sage by European leaders).

If it looks and sounds like millenarianism, it is millenarianism.

Not every society has managed to pull itself back from the brink. Consider the fate of the mid-19th century Xhosa people of Southeastern Africa. Their “prophetess” was Nongqawuse–a teenage girl who was the Greta Thunberg of her day. She led her people to ruin.

One day in April or May of 1856, she went down to the river to do her chores.  When she returned, she said that she had encountered the spirits of several of her ancestors who told her that her people must destroy their crops and kill their cattle.  In return, the sun would rise red on February 18, 1857, and the Xhosa ancestors would sweep the British settlers from the land and bring the Xhosa fresh, healthier cattle.  (Some of their cattle had been suffering from a lung ailment, which may or may not have been brought by the British settlers’ cattle. Millenarianism is often arises in response to a real problem.)

Nongqawuse’s story struck a chord with some.  It started gaining momentum.

Stunningly, Sarhili, the Xhosa chieftain, agreed to do exactly as she urged.  Over the next year, a frenzy occurred in which it is estimated that between 300,000 and 400,000 cattle were killed and crops destroyed.  Historians sometimes call it the “Great Cattle Killing.”

But on February 18, 1857, the sun rose as usual.  It was not red.  And the Xhosa ancestors did not show.  But the Xhosa people had destroyed their livelihood.  In the resulting famine, the population of the area dropped from 105,000 to less than 27,000.  Cannibalism was reported.  Following Nongqawuse’s advice was a calamity of staggering proportions for the Xhosa people.

Like Nongqawuse, climate millenarians tell us that the sun will soon rise red over the land.  Well, maybe.  But already the models that gung-ho climateers have relied upon have been proven wrong.  The intense period of warming that Al Gore predicted would arrive soon never came to pass.  Yet we are repeatedly told that it’s still coming.  In the meantime we are urged put the brakes on our use of energy–the very thing that makes the modern world possible–to avoid antagonizing the spirits of our ancestors … I mean in order to avoid climate disaster.

There are two more parallels to the Great Cattle Killing that are worth pointing out.  First, Nongqawuse’s urgings did not come out of nowhere.  Some of the cattle were indeed sick. The problem is that her proposed course of action was utterly disproportionate to the problem, just as the Green New Deal and other “the end is near” proposals are disproportionate given the state of our knowledge about climate.  Second, some historians believe that the Great Cattle Killing was in part motivated by class animosity.  The Xhosa people had been losing ground to white settlers for years, and some members of the tribe blamed their more prosperous members.  Cattle were a status symbols, and initially at least, the burden of their destruction seemed to be something that would fall disproportionately upon elites. The cattle were, in effect, the big carbon footprint of their time.

We don’t need Sarhilis in Congress.  For the record, I should point out that he perished in the famine.

(This is a re-working of an essay I wrote 10 years ago. The evidence of a coming climate apocalypse decreased during that decade, while millenarian fervor increased.)

POWERLINE:  “Asians as Beneficiaries of White Privilege.”

THIS WEEK IN MY PERSONAL HISTORY: Three years ago this week I received a lot more death threats than usual.

You wouldn’t think that it’s dangerous to assert that Title IX, which was passed in 1972, does not purport to require schools to take any particular approach to the issue of transgender bathroom assignment. But I guess it is. Here is my legal brief on the topic. As you’ll see, it really is a legal argument.  There really is such a thing as law, and it doesn’t automatically say what Progressives want it to say.

In fairness, I should point out that I got a lot more messages from supporters than from opponents. It’s just that the opponents’ messages were a bit more attention grabbing.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY:  To Dashiell Hammett, born this day in 1894.

IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE: Harvard’s dismissal of Roland Sullivan et ux. still bothers me [clarification:  they were dismissed as “faculty deans” at Winthrop, not from Harvard altogether]. There have been a lot of craven actions to satisfy crybullies lately, but the l’affaire Sullivan may be the worst.

I can’t help thinking about the Twilight Zone episode, It’s a Good Life. In it, the adults will do anything to please Anthony, a child with god-like powers to read minds and to punish wrongthink by turning people into unpleasant objects. Once someone is so punished, the other adults beg Anthony to banish him “to the cornfield” to spare themselves the horror of being reminded of his fate. The difference—and it’s an important one—is that at least Anthony really was powerful. Harvard crybullies are only powerful because others respond to their demands.

Here’s a heavily edited version of the episode. Here’s the jack-in-the-box scene, and here’s a radio version.

EVEN CNN IS STARTING TO FIGURE OUT THE MODERN WORLD:  “How an internet mob falsely painted a Chipotle employee as racist.”

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OPENS: On this day in 1787, the Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia. It had been scheduled to start on May 14^th, but on the appointed day, there was no quorum.  Nor was there a quorum on May 15th, 16th, 17th or for many days thereafter.  Some began to wonder whether the convention would be a failure (as a similar meeting in Annapolis, Maryland had been the year before).

But they were worrying unnecessarily.  Their colleagues were on their way, delayed in transit.  Soon delegations from every state except Rhode Island had arrived.  In the meantime the early arrivers (like James Madison, who was so eager that he had arrived on May 4) could cool their heels at the Indian Queen Tavern.

GIRLS WILL BE BOYS:  All the girls I grew up with were tomboys.  It didn’t last.  I wonder how we would be treated today.

MORE ON THE END OF MAY:  June 7 is just around the corner.

HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES GRADUATE PROPORTIONATELY MORE MINORITY STEM MAJORS THAN MAINSTREAM UNIVERSITIES: That’s why the National Science Foundation and other STEM funders are generous with them. (And here, of course, is why they do so well in STEM.)

ISN’T THAT LOVELY?:  British universities can force old professors to retire in order to boost diversity, tribunal ruling suggests.

BABYLON BEE:  “Demanding to Know Why He Allowed President Trump to Get Elected, Dems Subpoena God.”

WHY ARE THE MEDIA IGNORING CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION?:  We all know why, don’t we?

THE FATHER OF MODERN TAXONOMY: Carl Linnaeus was born in Sweden on this day in 1707.

THINGS AREN’T THIS BAD: On this day in 1856, Rep. Preston Brooks (D-S.C.) beat Senator Charles Sumner (R-Mass.) nearly to death on the floor of the U.S Senate. As nasty as things are, they aren’t that nasty. (Not yet anyway.)

THE SECRET BALLOT WAS AN AUSTRALIAN INNOVATION:  It’s interesting that the polls for the recent election in Australia were wrong.  Maybe some voters felt uncomfortable telling pollsters whom they intended to vote for.  (Or maybe there were other reasons for the error.)  But it is worth pointing out that Australia was the home of the secret ballot in the 1850s.  Once commonly known in the USA as the “Australian ballot,” it was not the rule in this country until decades after that.

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME:  An old idea, wrong as ever.

OKAY, BUT TRY TO GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT: Tammy Duckworth, Corey Booker and Tom Carper have formed a Senate Environmental Justice Caucus aimed at eliminating racism in environmental protection. That’s fine. But note that when the Commission on Civil Rights tried to prove that coal ash dumps were disproportionately being located near African-American neighborhoods it ended up finding the opposite: The dumps were disproportionately placed near white neighborhoods.

ONE MORE REASON THAT CAMPUSES ARE A HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT FOR MEN:  Study finds that 92% of sex-specific scholarships at colleges and universities are for women.

THIS ISN’T AN ISOLATED THING:  More than 75 universities now host a “blacks only” graduation ceremony.

QUIN HILLYER:  “On the crime bill, Biden is groveling when he should be boasting.”

(I’m inclined to agree that advocates of de-incarceration have become too enthusiastic.  We’ve gotten so used to low crime we don’t realize what a blessing it is.  It was not always thus.)

WORTH READING:  John McGinnis and Michael Rappaport bring peace to the warring factions of constitutional originalism.

SOMETIMES DEALS UNRAVEL: On this day in 1993, President William Jefferson Clinton signed the National Voter Registration Act into law. It was supposed to be a compromise in which Democrats got some of what they wanted and Republicans got some of what they wanted. But for reasons I describe here, it hasn’t really turned out that way.

MOTHER WHO KEEPS WITHDRAWING HER AUTISTIC CHILD FROM SCHOOL GETS UPSET THAT THE CHILD ISN’T IN SCHOOL: If you want a window onto the complicated, over-lawyered world of special education, this article is worth a look. It’s not that the article really gets the story right. To the contrary, insofar as the article sheds light on the problems of special education, it does so by inspiring skepticism on the part of the reader.

We are introduced to 7-year-old Jazmiah, who has been diagnosed with autism and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.   In addition, she has a variety of other behavioral and motor skills problems. She lives in public housing with her mother and another disabled sibling. The key fact is that Jazmiah hasn’t attended school since 2017.

That’s an outrage, right? Why isn’t she at school? The article suggests it’s complicated, but it doesn’t really seem all that complicated. Jazmiah’s mother, who appears to have problems of her own, took her out of the award-winning Success Academy charter schools, despite assurances by the staff that Jazmiah was happy there and that her teachers loved her.

This was by no means the first time the mother had withdrawn her daughter from a school.

The article is vague about her motivation, but it appears she was upset that Success had held Jazmiah back a grade, which is hardly surprising given that the girl had been chronically absent from school during the period she was enrolled. The mother also believed that her daughter required a one-on-one teacher. After she withdraw Jazmiah from Success, she also wasn’t pleased with the schools the school district has suggested that her daughter attend instead.

At some point following the withdrawal from the Success Academy, Jazmiah’s mother evidently lawyered up with a 12-member law firm that specializes almost exclusively in representing parents against schools in connection with special education issues. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t realize there were whole law firms devoted to special education. The article is vague, but it seems that the law firm (or somebody) got some sort of “legal ruling” last October that somehow “faulted the [New York] education department for failing to find a school placement for Jazmiah.”

Whatever the nature of that ruling, it apparently did not result in any immediate action. Jazmiah is still at home playing with shaving cream and Elmer’s glue. Towards the end of the article, however, we learn for the first time that Jazmiah has been receiving individualized tutoring in reading and occupational and speech therapy at home at the school district’s expense. This was deemed insufficient by the mother, though we aren’t told much about why.

One thing that struck me is that a significant portion of the article is spent criticizing the Success Academy charter schools. The author of the article wrote to the head of the Success Academy asking for comment on Jazmiah’s mother’s various accusations against the school. Some of the accusations were provably false, and the Success Academy indeed was able to prove them false.

In a grand display of chutzpah, the author then criticized the school for disclosing the information. This was something I’d never seen before—a journalist attacking his own source for disclosing information to him. The article reads as if the author was angry at Success for messing up his preferred narrative. Without Success’s input, he could have characterized Success and charter schools generally as failing to educate students properly.

Under FERPA, schools do have a duty of confidentiality. On the other hand, under the doctrine of implied consent, most legal duties of confidentiality work the way the attorney-client privilege works: The duty doesn’t apply when the client is defaming the attorney in public. In general, the attorney is permitted set the record straight rather than have to sit back and be defamed.

I don’t claim to know whether FERPA has been held to contain such an exception, but if it hasn’t been it should. The alternative is to acquiesce to biased media coverage of this issue. Parents who are understandably upset that their children have problems tend lash out at schools. Sometimes they do so unfairly.  Schools, charter schools in particular, will be unable to defend themselves. The public will be left with the impression that it’s all the school’s fault. But it won’t be true.