Berkeley High May Cut Out Science Labs

The proposal would trade labs seen as benefiting white students for resources to help struggling students.

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High’s School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley’s dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students. He said the decision to consider cutting the labs in order to redirect resources to underperforming students was virtually unanimous.

To me this is nothing but an example of political correctness taken to absurdity. Note the reason – “white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse”, and “information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for white students”.

It’s amazing that the thought of actually making their non-white students study did not seem enter the heads of the school governance council, their measure is to take away the classes dominated by students who are doing better academically. Could it be that they are doing better because they take these classes? No, never, that’s crazy talk.

Not to mention that this measure is blatantly racist. Let’s swap white and black in the announcement. Can you imagine the amount of smelly stuff hitting the fan, if the announcement read:

The proposal would trade labs seen as benefiting black students for resources to help struggling students.

Paul Gibson, an alternate parent representative on the School Governance Council, said that information presented at council meetings suggests that the science labs were largely classes for black students.

Rather than help students reach their full potential, giving those with talent and desire to study, regardless of race, the classes they need, the school is going to take them away, and drop everyone to the same average level. This is the embodiment of socialist concept of equality: rather than giving equal opportunity to succeed, everyone is forced to be equal, which means no one succeeds; rather than giving equal chance to shine, which some will use, everyone is forced to be dull.
Makes me sick.

A loosely related analogy from the way companies work (not that Berkeley liberals would want to take advice from the dirty capitalistic world of business): Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation in which at the beginning of the year a new team became part of my organization. Let’s also imagine that this team was previously managed differently and was held to different, in my opinion slightly lower performance expectation. Out of four possible approaches to this, only one makes sense (if you have difficulty telling which one, you might be a member of Berkeley High’s School Governance Council):
a) Hold new team to previous lower standard, and lower expectations for my “old” team to make things “fair”
b) Set same as previously (high) goals to “old” team, and same as previously (lower) goals to the “new” team.
c) Set same as previously (high) goals to both “old” and “new” team, treating them as one team
d) Set even higher goals for the combined team, give highest percentage of my time to help team members who were having problems meeting new goals, but were working hard and were really trying to meet them, and put on improvement plan and (if needed) eventually fire those who were doing “work as usual”, ignoring changes in their reality.

In this analogy, Berkeley HS Governance Council chose option a) – something for which a middle manager (which is what they are for the HS) in a well-run company would well deserve to be fired.

For the longest time, and with boring predictability, every time conversation went into the need to make detailed plans, I would quote a phrase seen somewhere, and attributed there to von Clausewitz: “No battle plan ever survived the first encounter with the enemy”.

Recently I was asked about the source of the quote, and went looking for it. Picked up “On War”, and since I wanted to read it for a while now, also picked up “Moltke on Art of War”. Didn’t find the quote in “On War”, but here’s what I found in von Moltke’s writings:

“No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.”

So, with belated apologies to von Moltke the Elder, my quoting will have correct attribution now.

Mike Tyson said the same thing in a more concrete and laconic way: “Everybody’s got a game plan until you’re hit in the mouth.”

Well, the TSA has reacted. And, as expected, instead of measures that really work, we have a show-off comedy act more likely to inconvenience travel to the point where it’s not practical, than to improve security more than by a tiny margin:

• You can keep the underwear on, but you will be patted down – body, groin, upper legs. I wonder if TSA will accept volunteers to help check in the Swedish bikini team?
• You can’t get up from your seat last hour of the flight … and for those who really have to go, I suppose since soiling ones trousers doesn’t  present a security risk, it’s not TSA’s problem.
• Also during the last hour of flight: nothing in your lap – no laptop, book or blanket.  My recommendation on how to spend the hour – say a prayer for safe landing, and no lines in the airport restrooms. For the latter, you will need a miracle.

Note to self: do not try to guess how a government agency will react to a situation, the reality will always be stranger than anything you can come up with.

Ever since one idiot set his shoes on fire, the rest of us have to pass through airport security barefoot.

Many experts, including Bruce Schneier, wrote that this is a knee-jerk measure that does little to nothing to improve security, and is mostly a PR thing to show that the administration “did something”. My first reaction back then was: what are they going to do when the next idiot hides a bomb in his underwear (or deeper)?

Now we have a chance to find out, many thanks to Tam for digging out this piece of news.

Today was the first in a series of small local tournaments.

7 people in my pool. I won all of my bouts. One of the bouts ended with time running out – neither of us managed to score five touches in the allotted three minutes. The opponent was one of my “old acquaintances”, and I was fencing very defensively, remembering all too well how the attempts to attack him usually end. Possibly, he had similar memories of attacking me, and both of us ended up fencing very cautiously, with lots of feints, complex blade work, distance games, all to get the opponent to attack first. The time ran out with me in the lead – 2:1.

With the victories in the pool, and 20 point difference between touches scored and received, I ended up first in direct elimination table, and got a bye into 16.

The first DE to get into top 8. First period was consistent with my worst results of last season – I made lots of mistakes, got nervous, and couldn’t hit anything, especially the opponent. Fortunately, this wasn’t entirely like the last season. In the next period I changed tactics, and caught up, winning in the third period 15:9.

Quarter-final. My opponent is young and very fast. It was a pretty tough bout, his speed against my cunning plans. The final score was very close – 15:13.

Semi-final. My opponent is a lefty with very solid technique. This was probably the toughest bout of this tournament for me, especially considering my track record against lefties. This time I got lucky – 15:13.

Final DE bout. Opponent has weapon problems, and gets first a yellow, and then a red card. Despite starting the bout with one point lead, and the opponent getting another red card for turning his back to me, while parrying my blade (it’s a safety issue, back of the head is not protected by mask), by the end of first period I was four points behind.
In the second period I was able to adjust to his actions, caught up, then got a small lead.
By the start of third period I was couple of points in the lead, and changed to very defensive tactics – time was now on my side, he was feeling the pressure to catch up as the last three minutes were running out, and I scored a couple more points when he was forced to attack in unfavorable situations. The bout ended on time with the score 14:10.

My first medal!!! And first gold!!!
Feeling very tired, and extremely happy. Can’t stop smiling.

First competition of my third season was an open tournament a few hours drive from home. For a medium size tournament, the level of competition was quite high – out of 37 people, 7 As and 7 Bs.

In my pool: one A, one B, two Cs, one E, and me. To my big surprise, I only lost one bout … to the E … the only lefty in our pool. And ended up 7th in seeding for direct elimination.

First DE was with an “old acquaintance”, who by then got his D. Victory 15:11.

Second DE was with a very strong C. The bout was very tough, I got a few points lead in the first period, he caught up and got ahead in the second, and all my attempts to catch up in the third were in vain. Defeat 15:13.

As a result, I took 10th place, and got a D rating. Considering that this was my goal for the season, and the season only just started … what do I do now?

I am happy. Looks like my fencing got to a new level, and it feels great!

It’s still summer, everyone is fairly relaxed, but formally the season already started, first tournaments are pretty soon, time to get ready.

There’re five of us at the club meet. I win three bouts, lose one. One of our fairly strong girs Cs has same result. Since we don’t do DEs at club tournaments, the result is decided by indicators (touches scored minus touches received).

And our indicators are the same too, so we end up sharing 1st place.

A local club organized a weekend camp – two full days of training, each day ending with a tournament among “campers”.

I really wanted to go there, but was worried about my heel – having just recovered from the injury, it still hurt a little, and I was worried that a full day of fencing practice might be too much. I called the coach, who was organizing the camp, and explained my situation to him – ok, he didn’t see a problem with me picking which parts of the camp program I could do.

Wow, it’s been a while since I had this much exercise … it’s been decades. Both days started with running. The first day we ran to a nearby lake and back; the second day we also ran full circle around the lake, and that made the run about 3 miles. I surprised myself by making it in one piece, and not crawling behind everyone. Many thanks to a very nice girl athlete who gave me encouragement, and ran the final 100 yard burst with me.

The run was just a warm-up. After that, the real practice started …
No issues with the heel. That is, it did hurt, but doctor told me that it’s ok to practice “as long as you can stand the pain”, and I could. But the last time I’ve done this amount of abs exercises was … never!!! This was the part of practice where I did have to stop a few times.

The rest of the practice went better. In individual lessons the coach was correcting me to use a different technique than what my coaches teach. That was a little strange, but ok. I adjusted technique to what he required, and will add it to my repertoire – need to try and see in which situations this is more applicable – it will help both in bouts with my clubmates, and in tournament bouts with this coach’s students.

The end-of-day tournaments went very well:
On Saturday, I won three pool bouts, lost five, won first DE, and lost in semi-final, sharing 3rd place out of 9.
On Sunday, I won six pool bouts, lost two, won two DEs, and lost 15:14 in the final, taking 2nd place out of 9.

For righ-handed fencer, right heel is a highly likely point of injury. The reason is simple – in a lunge, one spot on the heel takes an impact that is several times the body mass. This makes selecting the shoes with good heel protection very important, and fencing shoe designers give this (among other things) a lot of attention.

Still, despite really good shoes, combined with additional heel protector, I managed to hurt my right heel during one of the “epee nights”. The pain appeared after a lunge. At first, I didn’t pay it a lot of attention, it didn’t hurt that much. By the end of the bout I couldn’t lunge – any kind of footwork that required landing on the heel, was painful. I fenced one more bout, bouncing on my toes the whole time, then iced the heel, and drove home. Driving was somewhat uncomfortable.

The next day I could barely step on the toe. Doctor’s diagnosis – deep bone bruise. I’m lucky, it could have been a fracture. The way it is, I need a week of rest, and then I can fence again, if the pain is bearable; this may prolong healing process, but won’t get in the way of it. I think I’ll rest for a couple of weeks, to be on the safe side. Thankfully, I can work from home.

I changed the schedule for this summer. One of the clubs not too far from my office started doing “epee nights” once a week, and I’ve been going there for the last two months. Unfortunately, as a result, I get to spend less time working with my coach, but since this arrangement is only for the summer, we’ll catch up once it’s over.

And the “nights” are proving extremely beneficial. We get 10-15 people each time, several As and Bs, at few first ones we had a guy from Hungarian Olympic pentathlon team. And every “night” is similar to our club tournaments – everyone fences everyone else, no direct elimination.

I never had this amount of bouts with opponents of this level before. This is an extremely important experience that you just cannot get any other way. The result is usually quite predictable, but I’m not handing out easy wins, and on rare occasions I get victories too.

Looks like these “nights” are becoming a permanent thing, not just for the summer. I really don’t want to lose practice with my coach, but will try to make it to the “nights” once a month or so.