My Beauty Best Teacher

Mutumwa Mawere writing in the African Heritage Society:

Africa’s future belongs to builders. Our civilization has evolved and contemporary African civilization is dualistic with one part based on laws and other institutions underpinned by a market system and another that is based on what can be described as African norms, traditions and custom...I have come to the inescapable conclusion that business development is unsustainable without moral capital investment.This view is not only supported by my personal experiences but by the notion that markets and morals evolve together and are, therefore, aspects of the spontaneous order of any society.

More here

In January, a 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti and over 230,000 people tragically died. In February, a 8.8 earthquake hit Chile and over 700 people tragically died. Even though the earthquake that hit Chile was nearly 500 times more powerful than the one that hit Haiti (Earthquake magnitudes are measured on a logarithmic scale), Chile's death toll was only a tiny fraction of Haiti's. Why the difference?

The liberals point to building codes, regulation, and strong government involvement in society are the reason for the difference in death and destruction between the two states. On liberal talk radio, callers and hosts praise the communists who ruled Chile in the 1960's and forced business to adopt strict building codes. They praise the government building inspectors who work hard enforcing these regulations. And they point to the strong and active government in Chile that took control of the situation and told people where to go when the quake struck.

The BBC says this to explain the difference:

People in Chile knew the safest places to go to when the earthquake struck. Chile has developed a seismic design code for new buildings, which has made them better able to stay standing in an earthquake.

Huffington Post, where Obama gets his news and views from, explains the difference this way:

Chile was better prepared, with strict building codes, robust emergency response and a long history of handling seismic catastrophes.

Treehugger.com explicitly advocates the liberal view when it says:

Builders cut corners all the time, and are interested in building at the lowest possible cost. They are perfectly happy to shift the burden to the owners and the insurance companies. And occupants don't know risk either, and happily live in old brick unreinforced structures in the middle of earthquake zones. Building codes, and their proper enforcement, are about the only thing protecting them.

Conservatives point to free market and conservative economic policies that brought Chile from being one of the poorest countries in South America in 1970 to being the richest country in South America by 2010. This wealth, generated by liberty and respect to property rights, led to buildings that were built soundly with good materials. The respect for liberty and freedom in Chile led to a respect for rule of law, which meant that building inspectors were not bought off and codes were indeed followed.

Here is how the Wall Street Journal puts it:

It's not by chance that Chileans were living in houses of brick—and Haitians in houses of straw—when the wolf arrived to try to blow them down. In 1973, the year the proto-Chavista government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile was an economic shambles. Inflation topped out at an annual rate of 1000%, foreign-currency reserves were totally depleted, and per capita GDP was roughly that of Peru and well below Argentina's.

In March 1975, Pinochet had a 45-minute meeting with Friedman and asked him to write a letter proposing some remedies. Friedman responded a month later with an eight-point proposal that largely mirrored the themes of the Chicago Boys- sharp reductions to government spending and the money supply; privatization of state-owned companies; the elimination of obstacles to free enterprise and foreign investment, and so on.

As for Chile, Pinochet appointed a succession of Chicago Boys to senior economic posts. By 1990, the year he ceded power, per capita GDP had risen by 40% (in 2005 dollars) even as Peru and Argentina stagnated. Pinochet's democratic successors—all of them nominally left-of-center—only deepened the liberalization drive. Result: Chileans have become South America's richest people. They have the continent's lowest level of corruption, the lowest infant-mortality rate, and the lowest number of people living below the poverty line.

Chile also has some of the world's strictest building codes. That makes sense for a country that straddles two massive tectonic plates. But having codes is one thing, enforcing them is another. The quality and consistency of enforcement is typically correlated to the wealth of nations. The poorer the country, the likelier people are to scrimp on rebar, or use poor quality concrete, or lie about compliance.

For all the talk about the morality of liberalism, look at the results of countries where liberal ideas are dominant- when government increases spending, when government takes on more debt, when government owns businesses or heavily regulates private businesses, where tariffs are increased and trade wars are elevated, where corruption and influence buying runs rampant, and when more government is the only solution for all of societies problems. Look at the results! You don't even need to look at other countries- look at what has happened to Michigan under Democrat control- or better yet, look at Detroit, where there are no Republicans to blame.

Conservative policies make the world a better place whenever they are tried. That's the difference between 700 dead and 230,000 dead- liberal policies.

UPDATE: Thank you for linking to this page Newmark's Door! Please look around my site and see what else interests you! And remember- the difference is liberal policies.

Mutumwa Mawere recently addressed the Nigerian diaspora he stated:

...There are countless examples of African entrepreneurs and professionals who have substantial amounts of money in Africa but it is evident that the prosperity has not been democratized to the extent of creating an African ownership class able to take the continent’s majority into a new and dynamically positive direction underpinned by new values of work, combined with saving, investment and an ownership mentality. It is also important to underscore that there is a distinction between being “rich” and being “wealthy”.
Yes, some Africans have made money but because financial literacy and “platinum rights” was not stressed as much as a sense of public justice and civil rights were by our founding fathers and we did not keep it (the money) and we certainly we did not grow it.
Many have made money but no one has really taught us how to keep it in our communities.
Imagine, after 13 years of South Africa’s democratic dispensation, we still do not have a new mutual for blacks? No one taught us about financial literacy and the basic tenets of a free enterprise system that appears universally to capture the imagination of many progressive and successful nations.
The challenge of understanding the free-enterprise system and making it work for the majority of Africans has to become a core part of any conversation among Africans concerned about wealth creation and creating sustainable wealth addresses for Africans. Most of our wealth addresses are not assignable and transferable let alone from one African generation to the next.
Any successful nation building enterprise must necessarily be sustained by a healthy, robust and growing tax base and not foreign aid. Africa’s post colonial budgets still remain principally funded by bilateral and multilateral sources of finance.
Africa must create its own dominant class of very successful entrepreneurs, at all levels. We should have our own wealth builders and not become a continent specialized in distributing other people’s wealth.
As we approach the 47th birthday of Nigeria, we must focus on converting ourselves from cash economy customers into banking (our own banks), tenants into homeowners, small business dreamers into small, medium and large scale business owners, minimum wage workers into living wage workers, economically illiterate into economically empowered citizens.
Many of us are consumed with directionless conversations that are primarily focused on what governments can do for us and not what we can go for ourselves. We tend to be good at being against something and not for something.
Literacy can be a sustainable instrument for poverty eradication. They often say that when you know better, you tend to do better.
Any when Africans know better, I have no doubt that we can transform ourselves from islands of affluence to oceans of hope and prosperity. We have not invested much in literacy and integrated the literacy challenge in our post colonial agendas.

Any nation is as good as the interests that inform it. The only power we have as Africans in any field on endeavor whether it is in politics or the wealth game is the power to organize ourselves. One hand cannot clap but two hands can surely make a noise.
Why then is it the case that we have not been able to use our collective spent to our advantage? Many of our African governments have benefited from the financial illiteracy of Africa’s intellectuals. Africa has invested in human capital and yet such investment has not been able to provide any leadership on the bread and butter issues.
Surely, it is evident to all of us that any consolidation of our pain and opportunities can create a critical mass that is missing in action. Imagine if all Nigerians resident in South Africa could consolidate their mobile phone expenses into one pool, how much impact would they have in the South African economy.
Equally, if all Zimbabweans resident in South Africa chose to use one bank, how much would that bank be worth? Even the obvious things that Africa needs to do are not so obvious to our leaders.
I think it is self evident that the poor need the rich in as much as the rich need the poor. Can you imagine a nation of only poor people with the same means and possibilities? On the key ideological questions, we have heard many people argue that a free enterprise system is not suited for Africa and many of our governments in Africa have perfected the skill of creating ideological and theoretical entrepreneurs/bureaucrats without asking the question whether in fact if all the rich people were eliminated, Africa would be any better.
The post colonial experience has confused many of us to the extent that we are now looking for intelligent leaders to govern us when leadership may have little to do with intelligence. Even in a family, it would not be normal for all the children to be the same. Those who do well in one generation inspire the next generation to do better.

Is Africa’s future safe with a system where the state thinks for its citizens or where the citizens think for themselves and act in their own self interest? Many believe that governments (created by the same citizens) can and should be expected to lead the anti-poverty crusade and yet human history has not given us any good examples of governments acting in the interests of citizens who are not in government.

We must take ownership of our destinies and we must be the change that we want to see in the continent. No one else is going to do it for us. We must sell ourselves as worthy of investment and we must change our attitudes because in the final analysis, our attitude to wealth determines our altitude.

Anyone can make money in a growing economy than can be stolen in a decaying and dysfunctional system. If we look at Africa’s unmet needs, then we can appreciate the possibilities that exist in the continent and yet we think and act in a fragmented and confused manner. Those who should ordinarily lead appear to be visionless preferring to focus on yesterday (which is gone) and not on actions that create a better Africa.
Before we can think of creating an African pool of wealth, we need to understand the meaning of wealth. Wealth has come to mean an abundance of items of economic vale or the state of controlling or possessing such items and encompasses money, real estate and any personal property.
In many countries wealth is also measured by reference to access to essential services such as health care or the possession of crops or livestock. Accordingly, an individual who has accumulated wealth relative to others is often described as wealthy.
Therefore, wealth refers to some accumulation of resources. In light of the above, Africa is not recognized as a wealthy continent because of the inferior relationship between the majority of us and items of economic value. We are generally challenged in the resource accumulation enterprise...

photo courtesy of ZimDaily

Daily on liberal talk shows, and every day in Obama and other Democrat speeches, we have to be subjected to "The Litany"- the list of everything that is supposedly going wrong in the world right now due to Bush/Republican/Conservative ideas- high gas prices, high health care costs, businesses going bankrupt and cheating people out of pensions, houses being foreclosed on, education failing, roads falling apart, and the rising threat of global warming.

The question is, are these failures because of Bush/Republican/Conservatives, or in spite of them? I know it's not fair to lump Bush, Republicans, and Conservatives together, but my point is, look again at all the failures above. Supposedly, the right is pushing for less government, less regulation, more choice, more freedom, and more personal responsibility. But, in the area of energy, healthcare, education, home loans, roads, bankruptcy laws, and management of public lands, the opposite is occurring.

To me, the problem is obvious- as more laws, regulations, and restrictions have been placed on energy development, gas prices have gone up. As the government has placed more laws, restrictions, oversight, lawsuits, etc on healthcare, the costs have gone up. As the government got more involved in providing sub-prime loans to homeowners, the situation got worse. As education became more monopolized by government, received more government funding, the situation got worse.

Liberals are not pointing to places where freedom, responsibility, and choice have been growing and saying 'fix this'- no, those areas are doing quite well. Deregulating telephones resulted in a lot of great things- no one wants to go back. Having many competing soda companies is a great thing. The competition among pencil builders has driven down price. Any example of free enterprise is thriving- the areas that are not are areas that are heavily regulated.

So, what is the solution? Any reasonable person would say- 'if you do more, you get less, so try less, and see if you get more.' Any liberal would say 'if you do more, you get less, so try more, and see if you don't get less.' Less is more!

I think this is called the "Rahn Curve"- I'll have to do some more research on this later, but this blog is a good starting site, which appears to be based on this article.

The democratic process needs to be progressive and evolutionary in nature.From the young to the less privileged its relevance and resonance need to be maintained and nurtured, various civic minded organisations have a role to play here. One of them "...the African Youth Parliament (AYP) is a continental network of young leaders, peace builders and social activists from 50 African countries working in promoting and advocating for youthful solutions to Africa’s developmental challenges... the AYP is an initiative of the African Action Partners to the International Youth Parliament ..."

As our nation and our party moves forward, we are going to need to identify those kinds of people who have vision and passion and those kinds of people who steal that vision and passion, and back the first kind, even if they don't have the right name, the money, the pedigree, or the backing of the national party. Here are four types of leaders to keep an eye on:

1. People who fuel our passion. These are the role models and leaders whose writing, thinking, and speaking expands and deepens our passion and purpose in life. Someone has observed that what we are tomorrow will be a result of the people we meet and the books that we read today.
2. People who catch our passion. These people are the teachable and the moldable; they are the people who are hungry and their hungry to make their lives count. They want to grow and to learn. They will take what we give and pass it along to others, multiplying our investment many times over.
3. People who enjoy our passion. Most people we know fall into this category. On the one hand, they don’t take a great deal from us, but then neither do they add a great deal. It’s easy to spend a lot of time with these “nice people.” They are fun and easy to be with.
4. People who drain our passion. This is where the major energy leaks can occur. These are the needy people, the people that struggle, or the people who demand hours and hours of our energy, but don’t often seem to profit from it. Yet, they keep returning with the same problems and want more of us. They are often the squeaky wheels that get the most, if not all, of the oil of our passion.

As our nation and party moves forward, we need more leaders who fuel our passion. There are a lot of leaders out there who catch the passion of others and run with it, and they aren't bad candidates, but our party needs to encourage and support those people out there who inspire us and fill us with passion for liberty, rule of law, and conservative principles.

Been pondering on rewards and awards. The inevitable onslaught of upset people after the EDublog 2011 award finals has begun.

But some have asked why we should even have awards in education. Shouldn't teaching be reward enough?

When it means judging the unjudgeable, not a good idea
In my church youth group, my youth minister created an "Eagle Award" for the "best Christian" youth. He said kids needed an award at church to make the kids want to come and compete for that award.

In this case, I didn't like this award and rightly so. As a Christian, walking daily with God IS my reward and the greatest rewards come later in heaven anyway. In this case, the journey is the reward and to create an award is to judge something on the inside that no one can see: motivation. We have to be careful about casting judgement on others and that is what I see a lot of happening.

When you point a finger at someone, you always have 3 pointing back at yourself!

Rewards vs. Awards
The looks on my eighth grader's faces as I knocked it out of the park teaching filmmaking yesterday. That was a blast. By the end of class we were huffing and puffing we were working so hard. That rewarding lesson was great for all of us.

My Daughter "Didn't Win" with her Flat Classroom Video
Today, the Flat Classroom projects will have our awards show at 8 am to announce our winners.

I haven't told anyone until now that this semester's project has a very special student in it: my daughter. She's special to me. She wanted to win the Flat Classroom project video competition more than just about anything.I wanted it for her.
Find more videos like this on Flat Classroom Project


She spent over 20 hours drawing each frame by hand in Paint.net and importing. Julie and I have an agreement that when our students are in a project, that we completely distance ourselves from judging. Fairness is essential.

I've seen the final list and my daughter didn't win anything huge. She did make the list. Am I disappointed? Of course. She's disappointed. Am I glad we had the competition. YES! It spurred her on to do more and be more. She's going to dissect the winners and prepare for NetGen in the spring because she loves making movies. She will learn and do better next time.

She didn't win but did that mean she lost: no! She gained a valuable learning experience.

The Grindstone of Life
Life grinds on you. You can choose to let it either it polish you to a bright, shiny gem or grind you down. It is all how you take it.

Did I lose or did I learn?

So, what about the edublog awards?

Joe Bower raised his concerns in a post "Why I Don't Like Edublog Awards" and Melissa (who had commented on my original post mentioning the Edublog awards) said:

"Thanks for posting this! I actually commented on someone who was nominated for said award. She was encouraging her readers to vote for her because she wanted to be awarded the "best teacher blogger." I was really turned off by this because I thought...what message is she sending to her students if she did not win said award. I asked if she needed the award as validation AND was having 1,000 followers not enough validation. I don't think she cared too much for my comment, as she mentioned that I was passing judgement on her...no judgement, just curious of why all the self promotion for an award saying that you are the best teacher blogger. No worries...I will remain a follower."

My response about the edublog awards on his blog:

"I think these are great comments. Melissa commented on my blog. The reason I wrote my post was because I was nominated in five categories and, to me, I didn't feel I deserved a lifetime achievement award after only 6 years of blogging. So, I said which awards I felt that would mean something and best teacher blog was one of them. I also wanted to thank those who nominated me. It is a pain to nominate for those awards and I should acknowledge that. Enough of that.

Secondly, all awards are flawed. Especially ones involving online polls. (Author's note: See my post about the online poll involving a Redskin player trying to stack the poll for his cousin versus our school's quarterback to see just what I mean.) This poll was based on ip address. That means if someone really wanted to and thy had a mifi card, they could turn it off and on again and vote all they wanted. Hopefully no one did that but the fact is that it is easily hackable. The awards were given in most categories with just a couple of hundred votes. Not many.

Online polls are flawed. Period. See these for what they are. The people who win must mobilize their friends, fans, family and schools to win by ASKING. Period. You will see that behind everyone who won. If you want to win. You ask.

Don't ask. Don't win. The name of the game. I don't apologize for telling my readers about the awards for this reason. You never know unless you ask.

But I think it is fine to have these conversations. We should always know that the best value of the eddies or any other award like it that is popularity based is to help us find new voices. Help us see new people. Truthfully, every link to the eddies opens up more conversation.

It is ok. In life not everyone can get an award and not everyone deserves it. The best awards is always knowing that you helped someone. None of us would ever blog just because of the eddies, that would be silly. But it would also be silly to ignore something that recognizes excellence in what you love. I get up every morning at 5 am to write and set up my tweets for the day. Blogging and Tweeting is very near and dear to my heart.

Just see these for what they are and it is fine. But to have nothing to recognize rank and file teachers means the only educational writers would be journalists etc and that would be sad.

None of us will unfollow you for this post. It is well written and has good points. Likewise, Melissa, no blogger worth a flip would take your comment with offense. When you ask like I did it is a risk you run and there are always people to disagree with something in every post. It is the nature of this beautiful wonderful online conversation. Up with edublogging."

It is a fact that the more people who vote in the Edublog awards, the more it will mean and the less likely someone could hack it. Does that mean we should get rid of the edublogs because it is flawed. The Academy Awards are flawed too, but we don't get rid of those. All award systems are imperfect, especially online polls.

I think the thing that bothered me most about Joe's post is this. He says:

I realize this isn't going to win me many fans, and I'm likely to lose followers on Twitter and subscribers to my blog, but I guess that would be my point. 

People often imply that they risk having people not follow them because they have a contrarian viewpoint. Long live the contrarian. We need more people who can disagree respectfully. And we don't want group think. If we are to be bridge builders we listen to all sides of an issue. We include everyone and treat everyone with respect.

What about ISTE?
A note on ISTE. I have NEVER had a session accepted where it was just me. ISTE cares about "we" presentations -- or groups of people. Lots of people will have their feelings hurt. Lots of deserving, amazing people. But ISTE has a rubric as well and when you have groups of people, the rubric is obviously stacked in your favor.

Don't be disappointed, look at what was accepted and learn.

We win some we lose some
Yes, it is trite but it is true. Right now, you could say I "lost" the Edublogs. Sure, I was second to Stephen Anderson (@web20classroom) in the Twitter category but still. I didn't "win"... or did I? (Honestly I had like 90 votes and he had 120 - not huge vote counts either way but he has 36K followers to my 26K -- I would agree that his numbers speak for themselves but 26K is nothing to sneeze at. Neither one of us compare to the millions that follow rock stars - just keeping perspective. I know Stephen does, that is why he's such a great guy and so many of us like him.)

There are awards I don't even apply for any more. The fact is that most awards in education judge your pedigree as a major factor in the awards and I don't have it. I'm a private school teacher who didn't go to a school of education. That is OK. So really, there are just a few things I can "go for." Those very few things I can... I do.

The fact is that links build traffic and if your business is online and you are writing books and creating projects that depend upon social media and education, it is important to your livelihood and life to get on every list and awards program you can. I love my babies and this blog is helping send them to college.

I gave up a 6 figure income to go into teaching and am just fine with that but now in a year my first child will go to college. Everything I may get from this blog or book writing is heading to help pay for college. Honestly, today, I have no idea how we're going to do it. If I put my name out there and let people know and they choose to vote for me, then that is great. If I get more people who find my blog and like it because of it, that is a good thing. But I'm not going to sit around and say "poor me" and not at least ask. No way. I love my babies. It is a risk I'm willing to take. I'm putting out there my motivations and not hiding them -- that is transparency. For you to judge me any other way is to judge but certainly that is your right.

I really wanted to get accepted as one of the TED Teachers. I worked sooooo hard on that nomination and even had about 10 of you on Twitter join in and nominate me. It was risky to even mention it on Twitter because if you're doing anything in this world some people are going to love you and some people are probably going to hate you. It is the nature of doing anything worthwhile.

So, we were supposed to hear from TED on Monday. They said we would. We haven't. To me, this means, I didn't make the list or even the cut. Am I dissapointed... of course. Will I try again... sure. Will I take anything away from the 10 who get picked -- NO. I'll tweet them and blog them and share them. They are winners and we all win when we encourage good teachers.

Jealousy is a bitter lunch that will make you sick and anemically unable to contribute.

So, the only way to become a loser is to act like a loser.

Losers wallow in self pity. Losers only care about themselves. Losers whine when they don't get their "fair share."

Well, life isn't fair and few people share.  Awards are part of life but if you teach or blog, you should be doing it for the rewards of the conversation and helping people but if an award happens, then, great.

Win with your actions
Winners encourage others. Winners share in the conversation. Winners root others on and congratulate the winner.  Winners look at their rewards and keep perspective about awards.

Awards are flawed measures. They are an attempt to find best practice and we certainly need that.

If they spur us on to excellence, then great. I know they spur me on to excellence because I want to be the very best I can be. Not because of the awards but the rewards but I make no secret about wanting to be world class.

OH, but you can judge me.

"Vicki needs validation. Vicki should be happy with all her readers and followers."

Oh, yes I am. I'm thrilled with those things. Every time a major newspaper or someone asks me to write - I'm in heaven. I love to write.

But I've lost more awards, competitions and contests than I've won. I've lost 5 beauty pageants and won 1. I lost 15 elections before I started winning as I ran for offices. Each time I competed, I became better.

Competition is life. Awards are part of them. Some choose to compete and some don't want to. That is a personal choice.

But anything that recognizes and rewards excellence in the field of education - as long as the system of judging is fully disclosed -- has my vote.

Keep perspective. You are a winner because you are a teacher -- that is your reward. Awards come to only very few and if you're fortunate enough to be one of those, use it well

but if you don't win --- don't be a loser. 

You're a winner for just being in the game at all. (Please do not imply that I think Joe Bower is a loser for his post. I think he actually expresses his thoughts in a respectful way.)

Remember your noble calling teacher. The only way to lose your nobility is to give it away by acting in ways unbecoming to your profession.

Happy Holidays and thank you for taking the time to read all the way to this extremely long, rambling post. Just had to get this off my chest.