At FEE Stories Kerry McDonald points out something distressing—the United States is experiencing an epidemic of dyslexia:

The earliest documented cases of dyslexia, or a language processing disorder that makes it difficult to read, date back more than a century. For decades, it was considered a relatively rare occurrence, but today it is estimated that up to 20 percent of the US population is dyslexic. What is going on?

She goes on to attribute the problem to the “No Child Left Behind” program:

Advances in childhood diagnosis and treatment of dyslexia have certainly led to higher rates, but that is only part of the story. A national effort over the past two decades to push children to read at ever earlier ages—before many of them may be developmentally ready to do so—is also a likely culprit.

A study by University of Virginia professor ​​Daphna Bassok and her colleagues revealed that in 1998, 31 percent of teachers believed that children should learn to read while in kindergarten. In 2010, that number was 80 percent.

The children didn’t change. The expectations did.

Some of that was due to the passage of federal No Child Left Behind legislation in 2001 and its embrace of top-down “standards-based reform” that emphasized rigid, standardized curriculum and frequent testing, applied to ever-younger students. Kindergarten became the new first grade.

She then gets to the meat of the situation:

Relatedly, in 2006, the US Department of Education modified its definition of childhood learning disabilities to the following:

“The child does not achieve adequately for the child’s age or meet state-approved grade-level standards in one or more of the following areas, when provided with learning experiences and instruction appropriate for the child’s age or State-approved grade-level standards: Oral expression, listening comprehension, written expression, basic reading skills, reading fluency skills, reading comprehension, mathematical calculation, mathematics problem-solving…”

The “state-approved” standards for childhood development and reading proficiency changed and if kids weren’t meeting those new, arbitrary benchmarks, they could be labeled with a learning disability like dyslexia. We continue to see the fall-out from these policies today.

I think that’s only the tip of the iceberg. When it has been determined that a child has special needs that allows certain breaks to be given to the child in testing and requires the school to devote additional resources to the child. Some parents change their views towards wanting to have their child determined to have special needs. Anything to get a competitive edge.

As I’ve mentioned before I failed to learn to read in first grade. It wasn’t until the summer following first grade that I, in my mother’s words, hid behind the couch and when I emerged could read at a third grade level. By the time I was in 8th grade I had skipped a grade, going from being the smartest kid in 6th grade to the smartest kid in 8th grade, reading at a college level.

I’m quite sure that, had I been tested at the end of first grade I would have been diagnosed as dyslexic. But I wasn’t dyslexic as should be obvious from the sequelae. I was rebelling against a harsh first grade teacher. When that teacher was no longer in the picture, I began to reach the full potential of my abilities.

I think it’s pretty clear that what we’re doing is not working particularly well or, at least, we are not rising to the challenges facing us. There are two many kids who don’t read, write, or figure at grade level for that. I don’t know what should be done but I doubt it is directly related to spending.

I didn’t want David C. Hendrickson’s post at Responsible Statecraft to pass without comment. In the post Dr. Hendrickson makes the following blunt analysis:

From the beginning of the crisis, the Biden administration’s approach to the war ran closely in parallel with the course recommended by Mort and Walzer. Eliminate Hamas. Do so while sparing civilians as much as possible. Then be sweet to the Palestinians and give them an independent state.

Israel was happy to take the first part of this formula and to contemptuously reject the rest. Meanwhile, alongside these homilies to humane war, the United States has undertaken a vast effort to resupply Israel’s stock of bombs.

Confronting the escalating death toll, U.S. policymakers are dazed and confused. They’re still on autopilot in support of Israel’s war aim, while ineffectually shrieking in horror at the cost to Gaza’s civilians.

The truth is that there is no way to destroy Hamas without destroying Gaza. Contrary to Secretary Blinken’s words (and Walzer’s advice), Israel does not know how to destroy Hamas while minimizing harm to innocent civilians.

While I think that’s probably a fair statement of Israel’s strategy I think it ignores something. There are strategies which would accomplish the objectives (eliminate Hamas, minimize harm to Gazan civilians) and if those strategies have occurred to me they have undoubtedly occurred to the Israelis. The problem with these strategies is that they increase the risks to Israeli troops and, potentially, civilians which is why I think the Israelis have rejected them and are pursuing a course which will inevitably lead to the complete destruction of Gaza with the attendant loss of Gazan civilian life.

That’s the reason for my position which is that given a choice between Israel and Hamas our choice is clear: Israel. However, we don’t have to support them as vociferously and enthusiastically as the administration has been. Let’s not make this horrific conflict about the United States.

As the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor which led to the United States’s entry into World War II draws to a close, I wanted to mention something that I have been thinking about for some time because it’s directly relevant. In the United States although the normal state of affairs is stalemate political change can happen very quickly. That doesn’t happen because people organize movements and push for change but because other people stop pushing against the change that people have been pushing for all along.

In 1941 some Americans had been pushing for the United States to be involved in fighting Hitler’s advance since 1938. Other Americans had opposed that, both on the left and the right. In June 1941 opposition from the left evaporated when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and then in December opposition from the right ended when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The U. S. then entered World War II without material opposition.

Today there are a number of significant political issues that are at a standstill not because no one is calling for action but because there are people calling for opposing actions.

My message here is that can change overnight if something happens to cause one faction or another to stop pressing their cause. What sort of event could have that effect? I don’t know. As Niels Bohr put it prediction is hard, especially about the future.

I found a certain amount of unintentional comedy in Daniel Bush’s article in Newsweek:

The Palestinian Authority is prepared to take back full control of the Gaza Strip as soon as the war between Israel and Hamas is over and is willing to hold its first national elections since 2006 as part of a broader long-term peace deal, a senior Palestinian official told Newsweek.

The Palestinian Authority would accept the Biden administration’s proposal for a reunification of Gaza and the West Bank under the authority’s control if the international community supports the reconstruction of Gaza and pushes Israel to agree to a two-state solution, Ahmad Majdalani, a senior member of the Executive Committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, said Wednesday in an interview at a government office in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian administration in the Israeli occupied West Bank.

As part of the arrangement for taking full responsibility for Gaza, the Palestinian Authority would be willing to hold its first national election since the one in 2006 that swept Hamas into power in Gaza, said Majdalani, an ally of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

In the light of the poll I mentioned yesterday characterizing the view of a member of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as “Palestinians” is a bit of a stretch. The PA has only slightly higher approval among Palestinians as Israel and that is none at all.

I was reading a post by Paul Marik at RealClearHealth on the new generation of anti-obesity drugs hitting the market and read this:

Human beings survived on a diet of mainly lean protein for thousands of years, fasting for most of our waking hours and often eating only one large meal during the day. That changed dramatically in the 20th century, culminating in the U.S. Department of Agriculture publishing a “food pyramid” in 1992 recommending a diet heavy in bread, cereal, rice and grain. Thirty years later, we can see the tragedy of these good intentions. Americans are addicted to carbohydrates and other processed foods that our bodies metabolize as sugar—constantly spiking anxiety, accentuating hunger, and fueling an obesity epidemic that is driving higher rates of chronic disease.

My immediate reaction to that was when was that? The earliest actual examination of a human being’s stomach contents of which I’m aware is that a “bog body” from about 8,000 years ago. Those stomach contents were largely grain. Then there was the examination of the stomach contents of Ötzi the Iceman and that dated from about 5,000 years ago. It showed that he ate a combination of preserved meat and fat, grain, and vegetables. I think it’s pretty well established that after about 8,000 years ago the main component of most human beings’ diets was grain.

The studies of human behavior from the Late Paleolithic (10,000 – 15,000 years ago) of which I’m aware cf. studies by the Braidwoods, found that humans were similarly omnivorous then, preferentially seeking out the protein sources with the highest fat content. That is completely consistent with the high fat content of Ötzi’s last meal.

So, when did human beings subsist primarily on lean protein?

I agree with what I think is the overall premise that we’re eating far too much fat in our diet as well as too much sugar and highly processed grains. I’ve gone so far as to suggest that you won’t go far wrong if you eat what your great-grandparents ate as closely as you’re able to approximate it.

But imagining that human beings behaved in any discernable past in a way that differs drastically from what the best intelligence suggests was the case isn’t particularly helpful.

If there was a fourth Republican presidential candidates’ “debate” last night, I know nothing of it and, frankly, could care less.

Time’s Person of the Year is Taylor Swift as predicted by Peggy Noonan. Ms. Swift is the first entertainer to be so honored.

’tis folly to be wise. But it isn’t and it’s not as poli sci prof Ron E. Hassner demonstrated by commissioning a poll of 250 college students which he describes in this Wall Street Journal op-ed:

When college students who sympathize with Palestinians chant “From the river to the sea,” do they know what they’re talking about? I hired a survey firm to poll 250 students from a variety of backgrounds across the U.S. Most said they supported the chant, some enthusiastically so (32.8%) and others to a lesser extent (53.2%).

But only 47% of the students who embrace the slogan were able to name the river and the sea. Some of the alternative answers were the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) and the Atlantic. Less than a quarter of these students knew who Yasser Arafat was (12 of them, or more than 10%, thought he was the first prime minister of Israel). Asked in what decade Israelis and Palestinians had signed the Oslo Accords, more than a quarter of the chant’s supporters claimed that no such peace agreements had ever been signed. There’s no shame in being ignorant, unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions.

Would learning basic political facts about the conflict moderate students’ opinions? A Latino engineering student from a southern university reported “definitely” supporting “from the river to the sea” because “Palestinians and Israelis should live in two separate countries, side by side.” Shown on a map of the region that a Palestinian state would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, leaving no room for Israel, he downgraded his enthusiasm for the mantra to “probably not.” Of the 80 students who saw the map, 75% similarly changed their view.

An art student from a liberal arts college in New England “probably” supported the slogan because “Palestinians and Israelis should live together in one state.” But when informed of recent polls in which most Palestinians and Israelis rejected the one-state solution, this student lost his enthusiasm. So did 41% of students in that group.

A third group of students claimed the chant called for a Palestine to replace Israel. Sixty percent of those students reduced their support for the slogan when they learned it would entail the subjugation, expulsion or annihilation of seven million Jewish and two million Arab Israelis. Yet another 14% of students reconsidered their stance when they read that many American Jews considered the chant to be threatening, even racist. (This argument had a weaker effect on students who self-identified as progressive, despite their alleged sensitivity to offensive speech.)

In all, after learning a handful of basic facts about the Middle East, 67.8% of students went from supporting “from the river to sea” to rejecting the mantra. These students had never seen a map of the Mideast and knew little about the region’s geography, history or demography. Those who hope to encourage extremism depend on the political ignorance of their audiences. It is time for good teachers to join the fray and combat bias with education.

that echoes something that’s been effectively claimed here in comments—that the slogan is just a noise and the students don’t actually understand what it means. AFAICT that’s a further indictment of higher education. These students are not children. They’re adults of voting age. They should be able to engage in critical thinking without being taken aside and prompted.

A poll taken last month, after the October 7 attack of Israel by Hamas, by Arab World for Research & Development, produced the following heatmap of approval among Palestinians:

Let me translate that for you. The highest approval,89% was for the military arm of Hamas with other very violent Islamist groups following behind.

That’s not just a majority or a supermajority but the overwhelming preponderance of Palestinians supporting Hamas.