#GED--The Old School Home School

When I was a young private in the infantry the officers in my battalion suddenly caught the bug to glue clear plastic stickers in the rear windows of their cars that would tell the rest of us the name of the educational institution from which they had obtained their diploma. So, you would see all these CJ-7s and 4Runners in the parking lot emblazoned with USMA, Citadel, University of Texas or whatever on the back.

We the enlisted knew at one level that it was just school pride that was driving this phenomenon, but it was a bit aggravating nonetheless. After all, it was not your platoon leader's history degree from North Dakota State that made the man worth following, it was his leadership ability (if any). It was if they were rubbing it in our faces.

At some point, my squad leader got fed up with those I Love Me Stickers and decided to make a (uh) statement in response. Now, this guy (whose name was Jones) was odd. He was both one of the smartest men I've ever known AND one of the least capable men I've ever known of going with the flow. He grew up in Pennsylvania near Amish Country and used to tell us stories about arguing with them about the foundations of their worldview. His primary point: why pick 1780 as the year when history should have stopped? "It's random!" Jones would rail. Jones was a great non-commissioned officer, but you just knew he was never going past a certain level. He got thrown out of ANCOC for having dirt on his face two days in a row--in the same exact place! Stubborn. Jones was stubborn.  

Of all of his idiosyncrasies (and they were Legion), Jones' biggest grind-able axe was his antipathy to Expertise. Jones just hated the concept of the appointed, credentialed and labeled man called the Expert. Jones would tell us that once you accepted another man as an Expert in Thing X you surrendered your right and responsibility to do Thing X for yourself, and once you started down surrender street you were never going to stop.

Jones' blanket rejection of Expertise extended to education. He believed that a man had the duty to educate himself that was not delegable to any other man, school or Expert. Per Jones, as long as there were libraries, a man could find the knowledge he needed. Jones handed me a copy of The Fountainhead in 1986 and gave me two weeks to read it. Then we talked about it--a lot. That was heavy stuff for a 20 year old kid who had never gotten past the 10th Grade, but he opened up my mind.

So, here was Jones' revolt against the officers' college stickers. He had a bunch of stickers made up that said "GED" on them. We all put them in the back of our beater Dusters and rusted out F-150s. When the officers asked us why we would want people to know that we never graduated from a "real" high school we just smiled, because it proved Jones' point about men who relied on the Expertise of others for their education and reputation.

I have not spoken to Jones for twenty years and have no idea where he is now, but he had a huge effect on the way I see The World and my place in it. I don't wait around for some Expert to tell me how to do things. While I am upright I can figure things out for myself and share what I have learned. I'm a graduate of the Old School Home School who spends no time whatsoever on Surrender Street.

The @StifflersMom Problem

UNC's crisis de jure is part of a larger problem. There does not appear to be a culture of accountability at the university. Some, by no means all (and probably not that many), of the people in power are corrupt. Not grossly corrupt, but corrupt enough to fake grades and allow a guy to fly his girlfriend around to her sons' basketball games on the state's dime. It's soft corruption that is being justified in kind of an ends/means way. Keeping Peppers on the field/court was more important than getting him a real education--and he got rich anyway, so no harm no foul. Kubek was raising big bucks for the school, so why not let him stay loose on the road. It's not that big a deal.

True, it's not that big a deal--if that is where it would stop. But corruption never stops. One corrupt cell kills the cell next to it, and so on until the body dies. The @StifflersMom Problem is not that there a few rule-benders at UNC, but that the leadership is tolerating it. That toleration is a signal to the majority of dedicated people at Carolina who are trying to play it straight that their efforts to do so are in vain. When cheating is tolerated, cheating wins and non-cheating looks pretty stupid. So, it's not so much the Peppers and the @StifflersMoms that are the problem but the leadership that tolerates it. That tolerance encourages vice and discourages virtue. 

UNC will survive this bump in the road, but only if this culture of toleration of soft corruption is ended. It will take leadership to do that. The current leadership has proven incapable or unwilling to do so. 

#Rejectorama

The way I see it #F3's power is built as much on what it doesn't embrace as what it does. There is a whole bunch of conventional wisdom that #F3 simply does not accept.

In no particular order:

   1)  Well, this is the way we've always done it. Who cares? If it doesn't work, don't do it that way anymore. If it does work, the fact that it's never been done that way does not matter.

   2)  We can't do this for ourselves. Yes, yes we can.

   3)  Make sure everybody can keep up. No, make sure the guys falling behind know where you are going, and encourage them to go faster.

   4)  It's not a competition. Yes it is. Everything is a competition. Sometimes, it's only against yourself. You get faster and stronger by hitting it with guys who are faster and stronger. Not the other way around.