Retirement?

Someone at work asked me today if I had considered retirement, and, if so, when I was planning to hang up the gradebook. That made me think about my plans.

There are two ways I think I'll know when I should retire. The first is my physical state. If I can't be on my feet, or I suffer from some malady that keeps me from performing my duties as a teacher, then I'll have to quit. I'm so fortunate that my job is not physically demanding. Teaching is easy on the body. I feel sorry for construction workers, for example, who must face severe tests of their bodies as they age. What do I have to handle physically? Hold a marker in my hand, walk around the room, open my mouth, talk, stay awake in department meetings. Actually, the last item may be tougher than the others . . .

 So, how am I doing with this test? God has given me good health so far--I rarely get sick. I occasionally get students asking me if I ever get sick. I thank them for their concern, assuming they really do care about me and are not asking in the hopes of getting a day off. Sure.

The second way I'll know when to retire has to do with my psychological state. If I start waking up and dreading the day ahead, then I should retire. That hasn't happened. For example, this semester I was afraid that my Bible as literature class might not have enough students and would be canceled. I was relieved to finally reach a reasonable number that allowed the class to go. As part of my psychological test, I monitor my reaction to students. I still enjoy getting to know them; I think of them as my own children, facing so many challenges on their way to becoming useful members of our society.

So, when will I retire? Not now. I appreciate my job so much and thank God for the opportunity to teach on the college level.

The new semester

I teach, so I'm always interested in what's being discovered about the students I will be facing, like today when the spring semester started at my college. I came across an article that said young people have an unprecedented level of self-infatuation as revealed in a new analysis of the American Freshman Survey.

Over the last four decades there's been a dramatic rise in the number of students who describe themselves as being 'above average' in the areas of academic ability, drive to achieve, mathematical ability, and self-confidence. Researchers also found a disconnect between the student's opinions of themselves and actual ability. While students are much more likely to call themselves gifted in writing abilities, objective test scores actually show that their writing abilities are far less than those of their 1960s counterparts. I can vouch for that, having seen a ton of papers over the 40+ years I have taught English. 

There's an unpleasant consequence to this for students. A 2006 study found that students suffer from 'ambition inflation' as their increased ambitions accompany increasingly unrealistic expectations. That leads to an increase in anxiety and depression.

This narcissism is often negative and destructive--where does the article lay the blame? Several culprits are easy to point out--parenting styles, celebrity culture, social media, and easy credit.

There was an interesting aspect to this. Despite a library's worth of self-help books promoting the idea we can achieve anything if we believe we can, there's very little evidence that raising self-esteem produces positive, real-world outcomes.

What does matter?  Self-control is much more powerful and well-supported as a cause of personal success. But our society has pushed self-control to the side. It sounds too constricting, so out it goes. The weakening of Christianity and the rise of left-wing, big-government has effectively brought our society to its current flabby morality and lack of personal responsibility. 

The article concludes by saying that narcissistic people mess up their relationships, at home and at work. Though narcissists may be charming at first, their selfish actions eventually damage relationships.  Sound familiar?

Five simple statements

Someone sent me these five statements as part of an email. I thought they were worth passing along. The Obama administration is trying to prove all five of these wrong. We'll see . . . My money is on the wisdom of the statements. I fear this election has brought to light an uncomfortable fact about the United States today--we have changed from self-reliant to government-reliant.

1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.

2. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

3. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

4. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it!

5. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation.

Pretty simple stuff. A few years ago, most people would have agreed with these five statements. Not any longer.

Global warming and Kyoto--an update

If you've read any of my blogs, you know one of my targets has been the global-warming crazies, who have attempted to wreck the American economy. Now there's a recent  update from  The Wall Street Journal regarding the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. This makes interesting reading.

 The article points out that the lefty environmentalists screamed out that the future of humanity was said to hinge on the Kyoto implementation. Did you know it expired on New Year's Day? I didn't.  Adopted in 1997 and in force since 2005, the U.N. compact was intended to lock its signatories into curbing or cutting their greenhouse-gas emissions relative to 1990 levels. It didn't work out as planned.

Here's where it gets interesting when we see the results of the solemn agreement forged in Kyoto. Japan promised a 6% reduction relative to its 1990 levels, but instead saw a 7.4% increase, despite 20 years of economic stagnation. Australia, where growth has been more robust, pledged to let carbon increase by no more than 8%. Instead its 1990-2010 emissions rose 47.5%. The Netherlands promised a 6% cut but wound up with 20% higher emissions by the end of 2010. Canada, one of the pact's most enthusiastic early backers, committed to a 6% cut but saw a 24% emissions increase above 1990 levels. In 2011 Ottawa announced it was withdrawing from Kyoto to avoid the penalties it would have owed for missing its target. New Zealand, Russia and Japan have followed Canada's lead and are now officially out of Kyoto's carbon strictures, while the world's largest emitters in China and the U.S. were never in. Now only Australia and the EU remain.

How did the U. S. do? Not bad. It saw an emissions increase of only 10.3% between 1990 and 2010, despite economic and population growth that outpaced most of the industrialized world. Some of the thanks here go to the shale-gas revolution, which uses technology that still hasn't gotten past most European regulators. This triumph of American ingenuity might never have happened if Al Gore had managed to drag the U.S. into Kyoto 15 years ago. I'm so grateful that didn't happen.

What have we learned from this?  In its day, the Kyoto Protocol did its share of economic damage by distorting energy markets and encouraging job-killing legislation. Some of that damage will remain. But the main thing we see is the typical pattern--scream about the problem and then watch the science refute your scare-tactics, with the result that wiser heads can ignore the tantrums.