The Post-Gazette reports that more and more Pittsburgh-area school districts are eliminating individual students’ class rankings.
Says the P-G:
“The move is one that school districts across the country have been making for years as colleges and universities lessened the weight put on the ranking number and as districts worked to help students better manage their mental health.”
And as one local school director put it:
“When you’re chasing that class rank high, you’re taking all of the AP [advanced placement] classes and you are stressed out beyond belief because you’re in five really hard classes. Are they necessarily classes that have anything to do with what you want to be when you grow up? Probably not.”
Pardon us, but one of the greatest lessons that come from academic rigor is mental discipline – the kind of discipline that is so important to instill in youngsters in order to help them lead productive lives as adults.
Undisciplined minds are lazy minds. And lazy minds are a societal recipe for disaster, as we increasingly experience in sectors private and public.
As we like to say, “Oh, what a tangled web is weaved when first government practices to intercede.”
Consider Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s “’Lightning Plan’ to strengthen [the] commonwealth’s energy leadership, create jobs and lower costs for consumers.”
“My energy plan will power Pennsylvania forward by incentivizing the building of next generation energy projects in the commonwealth,” the governor said recently at Pittsburgh International Airport. “We have to meet this moment – and this plan builds on the work my administration did last year to bring together leaders from the energy industry, organized labor and environmental groups and consumer advocates to develop a plan for the future.
“I look forward to working with the General Assembly to get this commonsense plan to my desk so that we can lower costs for consumers, create more jobs and position the commonwealth to continue to be a national energy leader for decades to come.”
One of the generally stated rationales for this and similar pushes is the growth in electricity demand associated with the explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) research.
But as The Wall Street Journal recently reported, “China’s AI startup DeepSeek has laid bare one of the power sector’s greatest fears: The AI boom might not need nearly as much electricity as anticipated.”
The Journal recounts that DeepSeek, “a generative-AI model,” uses “substantially less energy than its American competitors,” thus reducing the need for power companies to ramp up their capacity.
But the question now arises if the Shapiro administration will ramp down its latest attempt to have “The State” command the electricity-generation market in Pennsylvania.
Sadly, the answer to that question likely will be “Don’t count on it” – the product of yet another pol’s boast of government infallibility.
From the email inbox, one of our dedicated readers adds some insight to Monday’s At Large regarding Mainspring Energy’s coming linear generator manufacturing project at Pittsburgh International Airport:
“This sure looks like another Biden infrastructure bill – a multi-level boondoggle.
“Let’s see, union jobs, check, minority participation, check, green energy, check. You forgot to mention the on-site daycare requirement that is usually tied to these projects.
“There is also no mention as to the cost-effectiveness or reliability of the company’s products.
“My son … used to work as a site manager for a company that specialized in power-generation systems on everything from offshore oil platforms to office building and manufacturing facility backup generator systems. They use turbines that run on natural gas, landfill and coalbed gas, as well as Jet A.
“By the way, biomass is just another way to produce natural gas that has proven to be more expensive than it is worth. As for hydrogen power, right now, by a large margin the most cost-effective way to produce it is by converting natural gas. … So much for green energy or cost-effectiveness.
“My guess is that within five years, there will be an empty facility at the airport, unless the Trump administration can cancel the payments for this dubious project before they go out the door.”
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
