Category: education

Mission accomplished

June 10, 2016 • 5:00 pm

Tomorrow is graduation, and it might be a weather disaster given the 60% chance of thunderstorms predicted. The University of Chicago has no inside alternative: they just pass out plastic rain ponchos to keep you dry.

I couldn’t help but feel a twinge as I walked home by the empty venue, which tomorrow morning will fill up with happy graduates and their relieved parents.

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I went to such a ceremony twice, and no matter how jaded you are, it’s a thrill. Feeling insouciant, I almost didn’t go to my Harvard graduation, but at the last minute two of my pals and I decided to rent caps and gowns. All that was left in the bookstore on graduation day were remainders—way too large. But I was glad I went, for Alexander Solzhenitsyn spoke, his famous address rebuking the laxity of Western societies. Here at Chicago, the tradition is to have only academics and intellectuals give the graduation address—no movie stars, authors, or entertainers. Solzhenitsyn would not have been invited.

When I remembered the “mission accomplished” feeling I had back then, I remembered that I am still fulfilling a vow I made when young. Observing how stimulating the University was, and the joy I got from a life of learning, I vowed that, as far as I could, I’d never leave college.

I’ve succeeded. 49 years after entering college, I’m still here. I’ve had only about two years of respite—when I worked in a hospital as a conscientious objector and then, after 13 months of that, traveled to Europe for ein halb Wanderjahr.

I’ve been at it nearly half a century—even rock stars can’t keep it up that long!

 

Kristof on the Authoritarian Leftism of universities: Part deux

May 30, 2016 • 9:15 am

On May 8 I wrote about one of Nicholas Kristof’s New York Times columns, “A confession of liberal intolerance.” There he promoted the idea of increased diversity in universities: not just diversity of ethnic minorities, but diversity of ideas. In particular, he called for hiring more conservative professors, since, by and large, academia comprises Leftists. Kristof didn’t favor direct affirmative action for Republican professors, not did he ask for hiring of creationists or other conservative loonies. Rather, citing studies of academic biases against conservatives (e.g., academics say they’re less likely to hire someone if he/she was an evangelical Christian, regardless of the field), Kristof asked us to consider hiring those with a record of scholarship running against the grain of the usual left-wing humanities courses. (Political leaning is, of course, irrelevant in science.)

In the hundred-odd comments on my post, many agreed, but some did not. Academia, they said, is self-selecting against conservatives, who don’t want to teach at universities—they’d rather earn big bucks. I don’t buy that one. While Kristof does admit that conservatives tend to stay away from social sciences for fear of ostracism, why not deliberately seek some out for the sake of diversity, just as we seek out qualified blacks, women, and other minorities? I’m not saying that the discrimination conservatives face is equivalent to that experienced by other minorities, but surely we should make efforts to expose students to a diversity of opinions. Remember, that’s one reason why many of us favor free speech—so that out of conflicting viewpoints one can winnow either the truth or one’s own beliefs. If that diversity of viewpoints isn’t available in the faculty, how are students supposed to adjudicate those conflicts?

Other readers argued that in many areas political viewpoints are irrelevant. And that’s true, as in science. But in many areas they are: the humanities, gender studies, economics, political science, and even divinity school—should a university be so benighted as to have one. Others said that the liberal point of view happens to be true, so what’s the point of dragging in conservative falsehoods? I don’t buy that, either. While it was said that conservatism itself “denies empirical reality,” there are many issues—abortion and affirmative action law, for instance—where there are arguments on both sides, and while facts can be adduced, judgments (like all ethical judgments) must be made on subjective preference. (I general, I agree that liberalism leads to greater well being of society, but that’s a consequentialist argument that not everybody buys.)

Finally, others noted that some brands of conservatism are simply bull-goose looney, such as that of Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and many other Republicans. But what Kristof was calling for was not party diversity, but diversity of viewpoints: a remedy for the liberal sameness that is pervasive on campus. As an example of a quasi-conservative, or at least someone who doesn’t fit the Leftist mold, I offer up my own colleague, Judge Richard Posner, a professor at our law school with some conservative views, and who happens to be the most-cited legal scholar in the 20th century. There is no doubt about his immense value to my University.

Over the past month Kristof has been pondering his column and the reactions to it, and today published a sequel to his op-ed, “The liberal blind spot,” which comes with a nice gif:

29kristof-master768He first notes that he got a tremendous negative reaction to the column—from liberals. He then dispels some misconceptions (“I wasn’t arguing that we should deliberately hire creationists or racists”), and offers up three arguments for increasing “viewpoint diversity”. Here they are, with Kristof’s words in quotes.

  • It’s a form of bigotry. 

    “First, stereotyping and discrimination are wrong, whether against gays or Muslims, or against conservatives or evangelicals. We shouldn’t define one as bigotry and the other as enlightenment.

    When a survey finds that more than half of academics in some fields would discriminate against a job seeker who they learned was an evangelical, that feels to me like bigotry.”

Agreed.

  • Diversity has benefits. 

“Second, there’s abundant evidence of the benefits of diversity. Bringing in members of minorities is not an act of charity but a way of strengthening an organization. Yet universities suffer a sickly sameness: Four studies have found that at most only about one professor in 10 in the humanities or social sciences is a Republican.

I’ve often denounced conservative fearmongering about Muslims and refugees, and the liberal hostility toward evangelicals seems rooted in a similar insularity. Surveys show that Americans have negative views of Muslims when they don’t know any; I suspect many liberals disdain evangelicals in part because they don’t have any evangelical friends.

Sure, achieving diversity is a frustrating process, but it enriches organizations and improves decision-making. So let’s aim for ideological as well as ethnic diversity.”

I agree again, though I’m less concerned with dispelling negative stereotypes against conservatives than with exposing students (and other academics) to arguments they’d otherwise miss.

  • A surfeit of Leftists scholars leads to their marginalization. 

“Third, when scholars cluster on the left end of the spectrum, they marginalize themselves. We desperately need academics like sociologists and anthropologists influencing American public policy on issues like poverty, yet when they are in an outer-left orbit, their wisdom often goes untapped.

In contrast, economists remain influential. I wonder if that isn’t partly because there is a critical mass of Republican economists who battle the Democratic economists and thus tether the discipline to the American mainstream.”

Well, I’m not so sure that leftist professors really are marginalized in society. In liberal Presidential administrations, liberal academics are often called upon to fill government jobs. Rahm Emanuel and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. are examples from the Obama and Kennedy administrations, respectively.

Regardless, despite my own liberalism, I do think the dearth of conservatives on American campuses is a bug, not a feature. Many of us deliberately seek out conservative viewpoints to challenge and hone our own views. Those who don’t do that risk leading the dreaded unexamined life. Students don’t read newspapers, by and large, and a lot of their views are formed when they’re in college. Given that (except in schools like Liberty University), and that they’re marinated in liberal academia, what is the argument against exposing them to conservative views?

Who would I like to see teaching in colleges? George Will, for one. And although Christina Hoff Sommers is demonized by many feminists, she’s an equity feminist and could teach in a gender studies department—if she’d survive! Add your own candidates below.

Unregulated Jewish faith schools constricting the lives of thousands of London boys

January 19, 2016 • 2:00 pm

Muslims have their madrassas and Jews have their yeshivas. The problems come when these religious schools—schools that teach only religion—are used as substitutes for the broader education required by most Western countries. Sadly, that is happening with both Jews and Muslims in Britain, according to new articles in East London Lines (ELL), in The Guardian, and in The Independent. These pieces concentrate on the problem with Jewish schools, and mention that the religious-education issue certainly extends to some Muslim schools.

But the evidence we have is for Jewish schools. Apparently these include both secret “unregistered” schools as well as schools that have applied for legal status, but which have been rejected on the ground of their hyper-religious education. One of the latter includes the Charedi Talmud Torah Tashbar School in Stamford Hill (an area of London), which has just been ordered to close in February. Why? Because its 200 pupils, who attend only that school (students are between ages 3 and 13), are taught exclusively in Hebrew and have no subjects other than religion and a bit of mathematics. Some of the graduates, even in their late teens, can barely speak English!

Between 2012 and 2014, the school was inspected three times, failing every time. And yet it was permitted to operate—because of excessive respect for religion combined with some bigotry. From the ELL:

Campaigns manager Stephen Evans [from the National Secular Society] claimed that a desire not to upset religious sensitivities had led to a ‘softly-softly’ approach. He told Eastlondonlines: ”The lack of political will to make progress has been down to what I’ve previously called a ‘bigotry of low expectations’ – the mindset that says children from certain backgrounds are less entitled to a proper education than others. I hope we’re starting to see this change, nurturing integration rather than promoting segregation and social isolation.”

This kind of religious instruction, of course, not on propagandizes the children and basically forces them into a lifelong religious path, but constricts them and balkanizes them with respect to other children.

The Independent quotes the government inspectors’ conclusions:

Inspectors who investigated the school, which has more than 200 pupils, said that its curriculum, taught in Hebrew, encouraged “cultural and ethnic insularity because it is so narrow and almost exclusively rooted in the study of the Torah”.

The school was found to “severely restrict the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of pupils” and prevent them from “developing a wider, deeper understanding of different faiths, communities, cultures and lifestyles, including those of England”.

But it gets worse. After 13, the age of bar mitzvah, these children are then shunted into completely secret yeshivas to continue their education—again, a wholly religious one. The Guardian gives data from one London borough:

According to the DfE’s 2012 briefing note, there are 800-1,000 Orthodox Jewish boys between the ages of 13 and 16 missing from the school system in the London borough of Hackney. And while this is the UK’s biggest Hassidic community, it is likely that similar situations exist in other areas where smaller groups live, including Salford and Gateshead.

Apparently these unregistered yeshivas are known to the British Government, but the authorities are slow to take action.

We tend to think mostly of Islam as the faith whose children are kept isolated from the greater society of Western countries—and the problem with secret madrassas in England has yet to be addressed—but the isolation is at least as bad for these Orthodox Jews. If you know anything about that way of life, you’ll know how dreadfully oppressive it is. And the children shunted into these faith schools have no choice. They will wind up as bearded and black-garbed promoters of superstition, and will force their wives and daughters into an equally constricting but even more submissive way of life.

It’s time for Britain to stop osculating the rump of faith, crack down on these reprehensible substitutes for “education,” and get rid of faith schools entirely.

h/t: Grania

 

The UK is a Christian nation: damn those pesky High Courts and Humanists

December 28, 2015 • 12:30 pm

by Grania Spingies

Although most Americans correctly regard Europe as a fairly secular place with far lower levels of religiosity than the US; countries within Europe often find that there are still people in positions of power who find this immensely annoying and pine for the imaginary halcyon days of yore when European nations all bent the knee under the One True God.

It’s easy to do, so long as you forget such terms as The Dark Ages, The Wars of the Three Kingdoms (not a Middle Earth saga) and countless other wars and misery and ignorance that characterised the period.

The UK Secretary of State For Education Nicky Morgan has published new guidelines that states that contrary to a recent High Court ruling that atheism and humanism had been excluded unlawfully from the school curriculum; schools do not have to teach non-religious world views and should let students know Britain is “in the main Christian”. Interestingly, the inclusion of material on non-faith perspectives is an issue that had a very high public support level (over 90%) even amongst people of religion.

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The Telegraph reports a spokesperson for the Secretary saying:

“Nicky has had enough of campaign groups using the Courts to try and force the teaching of atheism and humanism to kids against parent’s wishes.
“That’s why she’s taking a stand to protect the right of schools to prioritise the teaching of Christianity and other major religions.”

The whiff of imaginary persecution is strong in this one. Damn those humanists and their dastardly underhanded tactics of resorting to law courts to gain equality.

Religious schools have welcomed the guidelines (quelle surprise).

It is possible that eventually the Secretary will change her mind once she realises that everyone in the UK does not feel threatened by the inclusion of material on non-religious viewpoints. She used to be of the anti same-sex marriage persuasion, voting against it in 2013 but changed her mind a year later when it transpired that her constituents did not agree with her.   If she comes to understand that the public consensus is in favor of including material on Humanism and Atheism, she may come to see the light.

The Princeton dilemma: what do we do about Woodrow Wilson?

November 27, 2015 • 1:20 pm

If you’ve followed these pages, you’ll know that, among the welter of college protests, student activists at Princeton have asked for expunging the name of a Princeton icon, Woodrow Wilson, from its infrastructure. Wilson was not only president of Princeton, but President of the United States, and apparently a progressive one. But he was regressive in an important respect: he was an unrepentant racist, and as President took deliberate actions to disenfranchise black government employees. Because of this, the protesting students at Princeton, many of them black or minority, have asked for changes in the name of the school’s elite Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, of its residential part, Wilson College, and for a public admission of Wilson’s racist legacy. (The New York Times reported on this issue on November 22.)

In a major editorial three days ago, “The case against Woodrow Wilson at Princeton,” the Times‘s editorial staff took sides with the protestors. Without discussing Wilson’s positive accomplishments as President of both Princeton and the U.S., the editorial concluded:

In a few short years, Mr. [historian Eric] Yellin writes, the Wilson administration had established federal discrimination as a national norm.

None of this mattered in 1948 when Princeton honored Wilson by giving his name to what is now called the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Black Americans were still viewed as nonpersons in the eyes of the state, and even the most strident bigots were held up to public adulation. This is certainly not the case today.

The overwhelming weight of the evidence argues for rescinding the honor that the university bestowed decades ago on an unrepentant racist.

The counterargument, one made by my colleage Geoffrey Stone at the University of Chicago Law School, is that Wilson was a man of his time, and most white men of his time were, by and large, also racist. In a piece at PuffHo, “Woodrow Wilson, Princeton University, and the battles we choose to fight,” Stone not only argues that we should judge Wilson by the mores of his time, but also enumerates Wilson’s progressive contributions:

During his presidency of Princeton, Wilson renewed and reinvigorated the institution. In only eight years, he increased the size of the faculty from 112 to 174, paying special attention to both teaching and scholarly excellence.

Wilson also made progressive innovations in the curriculum, raised admissions standards to move Princeton away from its historic image as an institution dedicated only to students from the upper crust, and took strides to invigorate the university’s intellectual life by replacing the traditional norm of the “gentleman’s C” with a course of serious and rigorous study. As Wilson told alumni, his goal was “to transform thoughtless boys . . . into thinking men.”

Wilson also attempted (unsuccessfully because of the resistance of alumni) to curtail the influence of social elites by abolishing the upper-class eating clubs, appointed the first Jew and the first Catholic to the faculty, and helped liberate the university’s board of trustees from the grip of tradition-bound and morally-conservative Presbyterians. Given that record of achievement, it’s easy to understand why Princeton has chosen to recognize Woodrow Wilson as one of its greatest and most influential presidents.

. . . As President, Wilson oversaw the passage of a range of progressive legislation previously unparalleled in American history. Among the bills he signed into law were the Federal Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Adamson Act, which for the first time imposed a maximum eight-hour day for railroad workers, and the Keating-Owen Act, which (before it was held unconstitutional by the-then-very-conservative Supreme Court) curtailed child labor. Samuel Gompers, the most visible labor leader of the time, described Wilson’s achievements as a “Magna Carta” for the rights of the workingman.

Among his other accomplishments, Wilson, over bitter opposition from anti-Semites, appointed the first Jewish member of the Supreme Court – Louis Brandeis, and offered his Fourteen Points and his strong support of the League of Nations in the hope of promoting international peace and averting future world wars.

Unlike the Times, though, Stone also looks at the other side, arguing that “Wilson’s support of racial segregation was deplorable.” Let me add here that Stone is a progressive himself, a liberal, and someone who’s been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court Justice, though that’s unlikely given the relatively young age of conservatives currently on the court. Whatever you may say about Stone—and I’m an admirer—he’s neither racist nor reactionary. And yet, he claims, “Wilson should be judged by Princeton, as he has been judged by historians, not only by the moral standards of today, but by his achievements and his values in the setting of his own time.” If we judged Wilson solely by today’s standards, then tributes to many other famous American figures would also need to be removed from the public arena:

After all, if Woodrow Wilson is to be obliterated from Princeton because his views about race were backward and offensive by contemporary standards, then what are we to do with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson, all of whom actually owned slaves? What are we to do with Abraham Lincoln, who declared in 1858 that “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races,” and that “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people”?

What are we to do with Franklin Roosevelt, who ordered the internment of 120,000 persons of Japanese descent? With Dwight Eisenhower, who issued an Executive Order declaring homosexuals a serious security risk? With Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act? With Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both of whom opposed the legalization of same-sex marriage?

And what are we to do with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who once opined in a case involving compulsory sterilization that “three generations of imbeciles is enough”? With Leland Stanford, after whom Stanford University is named who, as governor of California, lobbied for the restriction of Chinese immigration, explaining to the state legislature in 1862 that “the presence of numbers of that degraded and distinct people would exercise a deleterious effect upon the superior race”?

And what are we do with all of the presidents, politicians, academic leaders, industrial leaders, jurists, and social reformers who at one time or another in American history denied women’s right to equality, opposed women’s suffrage, and insisted that a woman’s proper place was “in the home”? And on and on and on.

Not having any personal connection to Princeton (other than my affection and respect for its current president), I don’t really care one way or the other whether Princeton erases Woodrow Wilson from its history—except to the extent that such an action would inevitably invite an endless array of similar claims that would both fundamentally distort the realities of our history and distract attention from the real issues of deeply-rooted injustice in our contemporary society that we need to take seriously today. This, quite frankly, is not one of them.

As Stone implies, women could make an equally strong case for the removal of names of figures who would, by today’s lights, be seen as misogynistic or sexist.

I don’t really have a dog in this fight, but I can see points on both sides. Were I a black student, I’m not sure I’d be happy being around the name “Woodrow Wilson” given his racism, which was not only deep, but on which he was able as President to act, ruining (as the Times editorial recounts) the lives of many black people. On the other hand, if we’re to judge historical figures in light of today’s mores, and (as Steve Pinker shows) those mores have grown ever more liberal, inclusive, and progressive, then you’re going to have to completely revamp our institutions. Do we take Lincoln off the five-dollar bill and slaveholder George Washington off the single? Do we blast the face of Thomas Jefferson off Mount Rushmore? How racist or sexist must someone be before we bow to the demands of the offended that we efface them from history, or at least from public adulation?

If Wilson was simply a racist who expressed his views in public, I’d side with Stone. But he actively injured black people through his racism, and that’s different. On the other hand, Jefferson, Washington, Jackson (on the $20 bill), and many “founding fathers” actually kept black people in bondage, which is even worse.

So I throw this one to the readers: should Princeton get rid of the honorifics bestowed on its former President? And how far should we judge historical figures and their legacy according to our ever-expanding circle of morality?

In misguided attempt to achieve gender equity, kindergarten teacher prohibits boys from using Legos

November 25, 2015 • 12:00 pm

We are living in an Onion world now, where no act of political piety surprises me. When I sent this article to a colleague, he even thought it came from the Onion. But it didn’t, it comes from CBS in Seattle, and I’ve verified it from other venues.

As  CBS Seattle reports, a kindergarten teacher in Washington state, trying to promote gender equity by not restricting her pupils to “gender-appropriate” toys, has made a misstep by taking Lego blocks away from the boys. And then she lied about it:

Bainbridge Island Review reports that Captain Johnston Blakely Elementary teacher Karen Keller doesn’t allow male students to play with the blocks in order to encourage use among females. She even makes up excuses sometimes to set her agenda in order.

“I always tell the boys, ‘You’re going to have a turn’ — and I’m like, ‘Yeah, when hell freezes over’ in my head,” Keller told the Bainbridge Island Review. “I tell them, ‘You’ll have a turn’ because I don’t want them to feel bad.”

Keller says she started doing this because boys were flocking to the colorful blocks during their “free choice” playtime, while girls tended to play with dolls or crayons. Keller hopes by blocking use of the toys for boys that female students may be encouraged to play with them.

The teacher says that Lego play helps with development acceleration and math skills, while dolls offer little challenge or opportunity for growth.

So she’s lied to her pupils, and simply prohibits the boys from having Legos. I’m wondering what notion she was laboring under when she decided to rectify the tendency of boys to go for Legos and girls for dolls and crayons. Most likely she sees that as a result of the kids’ previous social conditioning—conditioning that to her is both sexist and an impediment to future achievement when the girls grow up. And it might be.

But we should consider that perhaps there are real biological (i.e., genetic) differences in those preferences which don’t result from cultural indoctrination. Should she still try to rectify those; and, if so, who is she to make that decision? (The source of behavioral differences that cause future inequities might, of course, be completely irrelevant to what we do.) Regardless, it seems to me that the children should have equal access to the toys. After all, what the hell is wrong with crayons? And I had stuffed animals when I was a kid (I still have my teddy bear here in my office.) How does that differ from a doll? After all, I played for hours with Toasty and his faithful sidekick Tiger (Tiger’s here, too!).

Keller also deceived her bosses as well as the kids:

She first used pink and purple Legos to try to attract the girl students to play with the toys, but she found this ineffective. Soon after she requested funds from the school to purchase Lego Education Community Starter Kits. She did not tell school officials that access to the toys would be denied for male students.

“I had to do the ‘girls only Lego club’ to boost it more,” Keller said. “Boys get ongoing practice and girls are shut out of those activities, which just kills me. Until girls get it into their system that building is cool, building is ‘what I want to do’ — I want to protect that.”

Keller says the practice is “fair” because she’s giving different students the tools they need to succeed.

“I just feel like we are still so far behind in promoting gender equity,” Keller added.

While Keller’s motivation is admirable, the way she’s achieving her ends is not. What we’re seeing now, and this holds for campuses, are ironic attempts to address perceived inequalities by promoting actions that are inherently divisive, or in some cases punitive. This holds whether we are talking about buildings designed for the use of only one ethnic group or the shaming of certain classes of people for “appropriating” types of clothing, food, or hairstyles invented by one ethnic group.
Now some attempts to address inequities by “divisive” actions are justifiable. I am, for instance, in favor of affirmative action in hiring and schooling for historically oppressed minorities, though some whites see that as divisive. On balance, though, I think such things are good for society. But when denying boys Legos, forcing students and administrators to take propagandizing courses in “cultural competency,” or denigrating “cultural appropriation,” you run the risk of creating—on balance—increased discontent, misunderstanding, and resentment.

I think most of us would favor children being given the choice of all manner of toys from the very moment they start playing with toys, and then letting them choose what they want. But I don’t think that any child should be denied toys as a mechanism of social engineering.

“All shall have prizes and non shall be disappointed”: a teacher writes in about the coddling of American students

November 4, 2015 • 9:00 am
Last night I received this email from a high-school teacher in Texas, who gave me permission to put it up but, for obvious reasons, asked to remain anonymous. Here it is:

In light of recent discussion about the hypersensitivity of college students, you might be interested to hear what just happened at the high school where I teach. The administration announced today that faculty members should refrain from discussing college admissions with students, including those for whom we have written recommendation letters. The reason? “We know that you want to express support for your students during the application process, but by asking them which colleges they have applied to, you are reminding them of the possibility that they might be rejected.”

Perhaps you are retiring at just the right time, because with current high school students being coddled to this extreme, the future crops of college students are likely to be even more fragile than anything we’ve yet seen. It doesn’t bode well for free speech on campuses. And now in Texas, these kids who can’t handle a subtle reminder of even the possibility of rejection are going to be allowed to carry concealed firearms on campus. Soon it’ll be free A’s for everyone, and for more than one reason.

Well, I don’t have much to add. American colleges and high schools have increasingly opted to coddle students, trying to insulate them from the disappointment and offense that they will surely encounter in the real world.  It’s gotten so bad that professors who could support students, or help them during their application to college, aren’t even allowed to discuss college admissions with them. (I went through that process, and know others who are advisors, and to a person they’re supportive and helpful.) I guess when a student says, “Where do you think I might apply, or which college might be best for me?”, you’re supposed to say, “Sorry, I’m forbidden to discuss that.” Apparently the possibility that students might get nervous when reminded about colleges to which they’ve applied outweighs the benefits of giving support or advice to those students.

Though I’ve never encountered the “offense culture” as a teacher of biology, it still disturbs me to see the American educational system everywhere catering to the easily-bruised feelings of students rather than treating them as adults or near-adults. Yes, we have to avoid imposing unwarranted distress on students, but the request of this Texas school is simply silly.