Saturday, January 31, 2004

Slots and Education The Baltimore Sun asked its readers this week: "Should the state approve slot machine gambling? If so, where would you put the slots?" As you know, I have opinions on the matter. They were kind enough to print my letter: Dear Editor, As a professor in the University System of Maryland who is worried about the state's budget and its effects on education, I favor the legalization of slot machines. Moreover, I believe the classroom is an excellent place to put them. If we are going to raise students' fees to cover the university's budget shortfalls, it is only fair to give them the opportunity to make up the difference. Furthermore, if we are to prepare students to be knowledgeable citizens, it is important to familiarize them with all the benefits and burdens Maryland affords its residents. Finally, with resources such as blue books and paper becoming unaffordable, I have been searching for alternative mechanisms to determine grades. And as a professor of ancient Greek philosophy, I see slots as valuable tools for teaching Stoic indifference to the vicissitudes of fortune. In sum, slots are necessary not only to the funding of education and public access to it, but to education itself. A public university cannot fulfill its mission if its classrooms do not reflect the experiences of the public at large. David V. Johnson Baltimore Another reader makes my point more straightforwardly: Dear Editor, On the question of slots, I think we need to consider some basic questions: What moral pit have we fallen into when we see sense in the idea that we can only pay to educate our children through the revenue from gambling? What kind of society have we become? And is it the kind that we want to be? Ellen Robbins Baltimore And so does C. Fraser Smith, our local NPR news director: Governor Erlich asks lawmakers to cover much of the tab with slot machines. Without gambling, he says now, Maryland can't afford the $1.3 billion education package he promised to fund during his campaign. That linkage -- public education with gambling -- would amount to a withdrawal from the state's historic commitment to public education. 4:22:21 PM    comment [] Epistemology 101 Here's a common way of defining what it means for someone to know something: "A knows that p" is true if and only if: (1) A believes that p. (2) p is true. (3) A has conclusive evidence that p (i.e. evidence that rules out the possibility that not-p). When you consider the question whether the Bush Administration misled the country into war, recall the numerous times that senior officials claimed "We know he has weapons of mass destruction." What they were saying, in effect, was: "We have conclusive evidence that Saddam has WMD's -- evidence that rules out the possibility that he doesn't have them." I suspect an inquiry into pre-war intelligence will show they had nothing close to conclusive evidence. But perhaps they were using the neoconservative sense of "know": "A knows that p" is true if and only if: (1) p would justify A's policy to the public at large. (2) Evidence about p is classified and only available to A and his closest advisors. [Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the Google search tip.] 4:01:00 PM    comment []

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