By J. Larry Miller

The month of February continues and farmers are working on planting plans for this spring and before the end of the month, contracts must be signed for crop insurance on spring planted crops. We are having an informational meeting on Monday, February 18^th concerning crop insurance. This is a breakfast at 7:30 AM here at the Farm Bureau building.

Farmers across the Midwest and literally the world are attending the Louisville Farm Show this week to see the latest and greatest in farm machinery. We traveled there yesterday with a bus from our county and everyone enjoyed the event that continues thru Saturday. Thanks to Farm Credit for their support on this trip.

Grain prices have trended lower the last few weeks as the negative news of the 2012 drought fades into history and buyers are hearing about the prospects of a large 2013 crop.

As predicted during the lame duck session, same sex marriage legislation has resurfaced in the 98^th General Assembly as amendment #1 to SB 10.  The Senate Executive Committee heard testimony by proponents and opponents, had a lengthy discussion, and inquiries were made by concerned legislators.  After much debate, the bill passed the Executive Committee with a vote of 9 yes and 5 no.  A vote could take place on the Senate floor as early as next week according to many sources and media reports. IFB opposes SB 10.  The bill is on Third Reading in the Senate.  

Farm Bureau’s position on a social bill like same sex marriages is a result of our policy that supports traditional marriages. Some question why a farm organization should be involved in such issues but this is a position that has been in our policy statement for many years and continues to be supported by our membership.

The persistent drought is taking a toll on producers of ethanol, with corn becoming so scarce that nearly two dozen ethanol plants have been forced to halt production. Twenty of the national’s 211 ethanol plants have ceased production over the past year, according to data provided by the Renewable Fuels Association to The Associated Press. A concern for farmers is that will these plants come back on line at some point to consume crops produced in the next few years.

Remember we are farmers working together. If we can help let us know.

Thompsonville High School Multi-Media Class created a “Stop Bullying” video at the request of our Assistant Principal, Mr. John Robinson, due to occasional incidents of bullying occurring in the Elementary School and Junior High School.

Thompsonville Superintendent Chris Grant

Prior to the creation, Mr. Robinson invited the Multi-MediaClass to observe and assist in a short discussion about bullying with each of these classes. This was very helpful in many ways. It gave the high school students insight when they brainstormed ideas and planned for the video. They created and prepared a storyboard with each scene they needed to record. They kept in mind the age level and mind set for this video as they filmed it. For the filming, they invited the Junior High Math Study Hall class to be extras in a few scenes.

After filming and during the editing, the high school students thought by adding facts and statistics about bullying it would keep it interesting and add great value to their presentation. Facts and statistics about bullying and victims of bullying were added through voice and lettering in the editing process. Portions of different songs were a nice way to jazz up our video. This whole process was a great learning experience for the High School Multi Media Class.

It made them aware that bullies are everywhere and can be any age. The bullied do not always speak out and some resort to sad means of existence or worse, suicide. They now know it is everyone’s responsibility to help prevent or stop bullies from being empowered. This also let the younger students know that the high school students are aware and are there to help. It created a more personal and caring bond among our student body. Please take a few minutes and view our video at

 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Auqvnk8JZ1M

By Walter Wendler

Universities, especially public universities, have a responsibility to leave ideology behind and focus on ideas.  This does not mean that ideology is not valuable to individuals, but it should take a back seat to ideas at universities.  In too many institutions ideology is creeping up on ideas and will eventually smother them in good intentions. Great universities transcend ideology, as do the best teachers.
“Great teachers transcend ideology.”

Suzanne Fields.

____________________________________________________________________________
Last week, I read with dismay that Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is backing out of an arrangement to donate papers that encapsulate his intellectual and political life of some 40 years under the banner of the Harkin Institute of Public Policy at Iowa State University.  They are going to close the place and give back the donations.
Unfortunate to the power of two:  For math aficionados… it’s sad squared.

Senator Harkins’ letter to Iowa State University President Steve Leath reveals his thinking: “The idea was appealing, for it was at Iowa State where I learned the force of ideas, where I was exposed to a world of diverse opinion, and where I further developed my own philosophy. But after a time, it became evident that the university would not grant the Institute the very freedoms that I learned to cherish at Iowa State.”  I take Senator Harkin at his word. His alma mater provided him insight and vision and the opportunity to expand his view of the world which, for one reason or another, he feels is now absent at Iowa State University.

A harbinger of the future of higher education, I fear.  The Des Moines Register laid it bare on February 6, 2013. Commentary and observations from people in and around the events reveal political ideology, not ideas, at the center of the storm.

When I came to Southern Illinois University, unbeknownst to me a letter had been sent to Senator Paul Simon by the Honorable Anne Armstrong, former co-chair of the Republican National Committee and U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain under President Reagan.  She told Senator Simon that she believed I would be a “good fit.”  While having lunch with Paul sometime later he shared the letter with me.

Senator Simon and Ambassador Armstrong were about as far apart ideologically as two people could be.

Yet, they were idea people and appreciated ideas even when different from their own, maybe especially so because of the whetted edge that ideas provide in the university environment.   Both understood universities as academic organizations, different from political organizations.  Loyalty is the coin of the realm in a political organization and, right or wrong, it is directed to the person whose name is on the ballot.  In the university, loyalty must be to ideas rather than ideology because ideology might become dogma, and dogma doesn’t belong.

There was a very strong bond between these two thoughtful people:  Each loved ideas, but only tolerated ideology.  To our social and economic detriment, too many universities now hold-high ideology, but only tolerate ideas.

As partisan politics more pervasively impact public higher education, the “Harkin Incident” may become commonplace. Worse yet, it may be justification for the success of online education.  As detective Joe Friday used to say in the TV series Dragnet, “Just the facts ma’am.”  Better to have unadulterated facts — that is what digitally delivered instruction claims to provide — than ideology paraded as an idea. People engaged in the interplay of ideas represent education at its zenith.

My college experience was an excellent one.  Like Senator Harkin, I was exposed to ideas. It was an eye-opening experience for me.  I bumped into people with ideas, which in many cases were foreign to me. It always felt like that was supposed to happen.  Nowhere did I find institutionalized fear of ideas. I never saw the university having a particular political perspective.  Evidently Senator Harkin thinks that might not be the case.  I am concerned he might be right, not just about his alma mater but about public universities around the nation as partisanship leaks into scholarship.

There is a link here between effective educational experiences, and the purposeful free flow of ideas. This coupling is being shackled to ideology too frequently on public university campuses in the 21st century.  The quality of ideas colored and/or diminished by partisan political objectives is always diminished.

And victories accumulated thusly are seasonal, shallow, small, and toxic to the purpose of a university.

Tom Harkins’ political ideology should never get in the way of anyone’s academic aspirations, nor should President Leath’s.

Our universities need and want ideas. The Senator voted with his feet.  Good universities should vote with their heads. What might work in the statehouse should not dominate the schoolhouse.

By Walter Wendler

Those who champion the $10,000 bachelor’s degree want the imitation to equal the real thing.  It is not that the imitation is without value, and surely a real B.A. incorporates too much waste, but neither is justification for the equalization of two fundamentally different human experiences.
“The belief that obtaining a college degree is the only way for young people to find good employment and enjoy a prosperous life is widespread, but mistaken. Having a college degree is neither necessary nor sufficient for success.”
George C. Leef — The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy ___________________________________________________________________
Last week, my friend Alan sent me a note with a referral to a New York Times Op Ed, My Valuable, Cheap College Degree, posted January 31, 2013, by Arthur C. Brooks. He is president of the American Enterprise Institute and provides an interesting portrait of the rising cost of university attendance: up 18 percent in five years in comparison to a 7 percent drop in inflation-adjusted household income over the same five-year period.  The cost increase for university attendance is twice that in healthcare costs over the past 25 years, says he.

Federally backed loans to all who come calling, regardless of societal need or individual ability, has escalated the cost of university attendance. Emblematic of a broken marketplace at work, “cheap degrees” are supported by a fretwork of manufactured demand, deceptively developed desire, and taxpayer subsidies warped into wicked wizardry creating high demand, high cost — $10K is not a paltry sum —  and often, low value results.
Now, I like the American Enterprise Institute. It stirs my soul and my love of free enterprise. In this case however, Mr. Brooks is all wet and Mr. Leef’s comment, “Having a college degree is neither necessary nor sufficient for success.” is a tall tree.

Brooks argues that his $10K—B.A. earned from Thomas Edison State College in 1994, “… was the most important intellectual and career move I ever made.”  And leaps:  it is equivalent to a brick and mortar B.A. This is akin to Abraham Lincoln arguing that everyone should study the law by candlelight in a log cabin because he did.  It would have been a good idea for Mr. Brooks to take a statistics class on-line or on-campus to better understand the power of inference from a sample of one.

Technological support for learning will positively change the experience for the pervasive access to insight and knowledge at the touch of a button: most of it roboticallymanaged with human support, and amortized over so many users that the cost approaches zero at the speed of light.
Mr. Brooks’ parents recall his “gap decade” as a musician, concluded in Spain on a nearly nonexistent bank account. I would argue, and if Mr. Brooks were transparent he would agree, that “the musician decade” was a lived experience that changed his life. I would not suggest that this experience could or should be codified at a university. But, writing off the cost of Atlantic passage and 10 years of lost-opportunity-cost into the $10K—B.A. changes the tab significantly, in time and money nearing or eclipsing the price of a Harvard B.A.

The lived experience is part of the educational process. Can a person become successful with a low-cost, zero-cost bachelor’s degree or no bachelor’s degree at all? Absolutely!  Great innovators and thinkers have made stunning contributions with no formal education. However, it does not follow that a university experience is hollow, although far too many are shallow.

Professional educators in places like Syracuse, where Mr. Brooks worked and earned tenure, would believe a $10,000 educational investment might have great value.   But to equate that with a campus B.A. is creating a straw man.  Memorializing the experience with “certification” is perfect.  But, “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” should never be a question.

The concept that the mirage of an experience is equivalent to the experience itself is antithetical to American capitalism and the free market Mr. Brooks and I cherish, especially when government subsidies are involved — which is the case in 99% of post-secondary education: public, private, and for-profit.

Yes, our universities need to change. They are archaic in many ways, bastions of patronage, fat administrative structures, bloated union leadership, political correctness, athletics programs that resemble professional franchises, and coffee houses that belong on the upper west side. These accoutrements might not support the university mission. The $10K–B.A. as the cure-all for of our nation’s ills is likewise a contrivance.
I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Brooks’ assertion that “…the case for the $10K–BA is primarily moral not financial.” But the most worrisome immorality lays in equating an online $10K–B.A. with a B.A. from a time-tested university. That is a mortal sin, not an ill-defined moral imperative.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. showed more wisdom and insight than a legion of contemporary pundits and educational leaders when, as a student, he penned these words in the Morehouse College paper, The Maroon Tiger, in 1947: “Intelligence plus character–that is the goal of true education.”  Encourage education, not mere certification.