Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • April 27, 2011 want to cancel field trips if they are really teaching the kids something, but I sense that a lot of my neighbors can’t or won’t go on paying taxes to subsidize education that all too often just does not work. Schools can only teach what the teachers know and what the kids can absorb. The cutoff point for the typical high school course, assuming proper advance preparation, is an IQ of 100, which most kids around here can handle. The cutoff point for the typical Advanced Placement or honors class, however, is probably about 125 – med school country – and kids who try to force themselves through those courses are just asking for a nervous breakdown or a dismal disappointment. As a tutor, I hear a lot of moaning and groaning. I think we’re over-educating mainstream kids to keep providing jobs for teachers who wisely shun the cold, cold waters of the private sector. Being able to pass AP and honors courses doesn’t predict how well you’ll do in life, but might predict what colleges you are likely to get into unless you’re a legatee or a member of one of the groups targeted to be strained out because they’re “over-represented.” To put it bluntly, there is no way to predict who will get into what college except to suggest that people with the highest IQs, not targeted or trammeled by their racial profiles, have the best chance. This tragic wisdom goes against what might be called the propaganda of the school systems: Highly paid teachers can turn any kid into an Ivy League or out-Ivy college graduate. Nothing could be more wrong. Family expectations (read constant nagging and the willingness to pay for tutors) are more important factors than how much the public school teachers are paid. The most important factor, however, is the ambition of the student and that student’s ability to fulfill the ambition. A kid whose life revolves around sports and cutting up in class could take math courses with Albert Einstein and writing courses with Ernest Hemingway or Jack London, and still not get into a top college if he or she couldn’t be bothered to do homework and didn’t much care what the person in the front of the room was talking about. Tom Sawyer and Holden Caulfield didn’t become national heroes of American youngsters for no reason. (Many foreign people who cherish education find them both despicable.) You cannot build a fire by striking flint and steel if the tinder is soaking wet. You cannot motivate kids who don’t want to learn no matter how expensive the teachers are, or even how well qualified they are. If the teachers are costing older veterans and working people the house due to insane property taxes, they’re running down the whole town, even though it’s not entirely their fault if they cannot understand this. I suspect most of us could easily adjust to being overpaid, and with a little rationalizing on the good we could do our own kids as opposed to other people’s kids, we could learn to enjoy it. Being overpaid, as Gordon Gecko said of greed, is good – if you’re not being overpaid by people who cannot afford it anymore. Once or twice in the past I offered free tutorials to people who told me sob stories about not being able to pay. A few weeks into the freebies, the kids whose families couldn’t pay started to show up in designer clothes and skip scheduled lessons at their own convenience. The freebies were terminated forthwith. People who get free lessons and spend their saving on designer clothes don’t get free lessons in the private sector. The public schools, of course, cannot evict people who have misplaced priorities, but the rest of us shouldn’t have to pay for their inability to cope with reality. Here’s reality. The schools appeal to parents to spend some of their own money and a lot of other people’s money so they can churn out high school students who turn out as college graduates. But what do we do with all those college graduates? The United States is no longer the world’s only economic super-power and needs to get over the idea that it is the world’s only policeman. Costing a family $100,000 in property taxes for high school and $200,000 in college tuition to generate an unemployable destined for a crumbling federal or state bureaucracy that is also falling apart due to exorbitant taxation is doing no favors to any family. The impact on people whose kids have long since graduated, or those who have no kids, adds inequity to catastrophe. Most of us would drop off some groceries when someone loses a job for reasons beyond his or her control. I suspect my wife would, because at various times in the past, I’ve seen her do so. Most of us would not pay for our neighbors’ kids’ foreign vacations or ballet lessons. I suspect my wife wouldn’t, and neither would I. It’s cruel to let people starve. It’s dumb to pay for frills that we’ve never had and that others don’t really need or want. The test of the great commander is the retreat to the defensible position: personal or national self-sufficiency. Schools have to gear down and realize that not every kid needs a four-year college education, that spectator sports are not a core part of education, that vocational training is not degrading, and that the bureaucracy of the future is not going to be able to provide a safe haven for people with multiple college degrees and no salable skills. If this year’s board of education candidates can lead that successful retreat – education as a national necessity and not a parental fantasy – they may be the Washingtons of the 21st century. If they get stuck on ego fantasies like Napoleon or the defense of outmoded systems like Lee, it’s a long road back from Moscow and a very short haul to Appomattox. Helmut von Moltke and I go back a long way, and I think he owes me one. Some time around the middle of the last century, I was roaming the old Military Museum at West Point and spotted his marble bust, which is not identified by name and is set in a respectful, but incongruous, place. “Know who this is?” I asked one of the guides, who was an enlisted man as I had once been. “That’s Douglas MacArthur,” the corporal said. “Nope,” I said. “That’s Helmut von Moltke. He was commander of the Prussian Army in the wars with Denmark, Austria-Hungary, and France. He never lost a battle commanding Prussian troops. He was fluent in English and his wife was English. He once translated ‘The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ by Edward Gibbon from English to German but never got paid for it because the publisher stiffed him. The day he died, two staff officers swore that they saw his ghost inspecting Imperial Headquarters in Berlin for the last time.” The kid was backing away, terrified. That happens to me a lot. “Look here,” I said, pointing to the medal on the marble Moltke’s neck. “This is the Pour le Merite, sometimes known as the Blue Max. No American ever received this medal. Check it out.” Oddly enough, the corporal followed my orders. The next time I stopped back at the West Point Military Museum, somebody had neatly labeled the marble bust: “Helmut von Moltke, Commander of the Prussian Army, Franco-Prussian War.” They left out Gibbon and the ghost story, but I was cognizant of the limits of a label the size of an index card. Someone once asked von Moltke how he expected to be compared to the great commanders of the past: Frederick the Great, George Washington, Napoleon, and Robert E. Lee. “Not at all,” he replied. “I have never had to conduct a retreat, and that is the greatest test of any commander.” Moltke wasn’t being arrogant. His motto was “sein mehr als schein” (“Be more than you seem”), but he was essentially a modest man for a field marshal, and actually believed what he said. The mark of greatness is not the ability to win every battle, but to save what’s left so you can fight another day. Frederick and Washington did this. Napoleon and Lee didn’t – though they had heavy odds against them and worse causes to serve. The great commander isn’t the biggest bully in the schoolyard, but the leader whose country is preserved and the one who sacrifices the fewest troops to his own vanity. The people now running for the various boards of education in Northwest Bergen County, unlike von Moltke, may some day face comparison to Frederick the Great and George Washington, but hopefully not to Napoleon and Robert E. Lee. The school board army is in a state of collapse. I don’t mean the elite mercenaries who staff the schools, but the conscripts who pay the taxes. A lot of people can’t afford to pay those taxes anymore, and a lot just plain don’t want to. I am not the sort of curmudgeon who thinks schools can exist without computers, and I don’t A test of leadership Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: There have been confusing news reports inaccurately linking my pension status with retirement issues involving other public employees and elected officials. Unfortunately, New Jersey’s complicated public employee retirement/pension system contributes significantly to the confusion, which leads to inaccurate stories that raise unnecessary concerns. So that you know the real, accurate story, I have taken the liberty of providing answers to questions you may be asking. If you have any additional question not addressed below, please let me know, and I will respond directly. Q. Are you retired? A. No. I retired as Bergen County Clerk last year when I was elected Bergen County Executive. This was required as I could not and would not hold two elected positions at the same time. Q. Why did you take your pension? A. I had to under state law. When I retired as county clerk, I could no longer be included in the Public Employment Retirement System. I was, in effect, “kicked out.” My options were limited. I could take my pension, or leave my money in limbo and collect it at a future date. What would you do? Probably exactly what I did: Take it. Q. Would your pension have been at risk if you had left it with the state? A. Quite possibly. It’s farfetched, but the state’s pension plan is underfunded by some $55 billion. Would you risk your money if you didn’t have to? Q. Could you have taken your pension earlier? A. Yes. Under New Jersey state law, I could have retired after 25 years of service (in 2007). I chose not to. I only Executive offers clarification took my pension when I had no other viable option. Q. Are you getting a new pension as county executive? A. No. Neither the taxpayers nor I contribute to my pension any longer. It’s one and done and I’m done. No new pension. Q. Is this compensation? A. No. My compensation as county executive is $134,000 (less than I earned as county clerk). I do not receive additional pension benefits because I have taken my pension as provided by law. Q. Are you taking advantage of a loophole? A. No. This is not a loophole. This is totally consistent with state law. Q. Are you “double dipping”? A. No. I get my paycheck, but no additional pension benefit. A pension is not compensation. It is money put away for retirement. I do pay taxes on my pension as it is now personal income to me, but I get it whether I work or not. It’s not pay. It’s pension. Thanks for your interest. Again, if you have any other questions please e-mail me at: countyexecutive@co. bergen.nj.us. Kathleen Donovan Bergen County Executive Dear Editor: As a rate payer to the Northwest Bergen County Utilities Authority, I am concerned about recent reports that the county executive’s office is considering merging the NBCUA with two other county utility authorities: the Bergen County Improvement Authority and the Bergen (continued on page 19) Consolidation concerns aired