You never can tell

When my relaxing habit of crank-calling was dealt a fatal blow by the advent of phone technology,  my parents became my default target for pranking. I told them I was applying to medical school, even though the only science course I had ever passed was a watered-down curriculum for dummies. 

Figuring I’d get a dismissive laugh from college admission committees, I pretended that I wanted to become a surgeon and to my amazement they encouraged me. They said that undergraduates who had majored in religious studies or English literature had a higher percentage of acceptance than chemistry or biology alumni and congratulated me on my ambition.

As Chuck Berry said, “Goes to show you never can tell.”

That lesson has modified my former harsh and uncompromising stance on job qualifications and the validity, in many cases, of alternate, unconventional credentials. Many job requirements are arbitrary. 

All that should matter is that the employee can perform to optimal standards, not their path to mastery. Many of the greatest geniuses in their fields could never get a license to teach in our schools if they were a credit short of an elective course. General George S. Patton would not be given command of an ROTC program, because he never passed a course in bulletin board decoration. Mozart had no college credits in music, since his father was his only teacher, so he would not have been qualified to teach the recorder to kindergarten kids.

Congressional hearings have recently included claims that the Secret Service, FBI and many other government agencies and corporations have prioritized DEI over merit on hiring, retention and promotional policies. They allege that “mission” is being sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. They point to female Secret Service agents who were fumbling to holster their weapon during the attempted assassination attempt.

For all we know it was tough Alpha males who enabled the near tragedy by being spooked by a sloping roof.

There was plenty of blame to go around. An adversary of DEI thought he was proving his point by noting that women Secret Service agents get a small break on how many pushups they must do. How is that relevant?  

Nobody should be hired to meet a quota. There must be no compromise on quality. But that quality must be legitimately defined and bear direct connection to the job description. The talent pool of applicants from underrepresented groups is deep enough that hiring goals can be met without sacrificing standards. Filling quotas strictly for the sake of equity is folly. It is also dangerous and demoralizing.

Critics do not limit their nonempirical imputation to the Secret Service. They groan that the country is falling apart because of “wokeness.” The New York Post recently cited a “scathing DEI report last year about the FBI’s degraded recruitment standards and coddling of physically unfit, mentally ill, drug-taking or generally useless agents to satisfy diversity requirements.” Again, DEI is a convenient target. Institutional corruption is more to blame.

A real sinister and ominous problem is that there has been a breakdown in communication among law enforcement agencies and they are withholding information that may be critical to preventing terrorism. A whistleblower stated that agencies “no longer share actionable, substantive information on … intelligence-related activity with the FBI.”

If it is borne out that the FBI’s Security Division does indeed restrict security clearances to agents who pass litmus tests for ideological reliability, and on every level and jurisdiction there is a double standard, then we’re screwed. When government agencies are weaponized against dissenters from the new orthodoxy, then freedom will curl up in a defensive fetal position, but that won’t avert the guillotine.

Years ago, the NYPD regarded a height requirement as a valid and immutable yardstick for recruitment. The effect was to exclude certain demographics that didn’t fit in with the traditional culture of the police department. Hispanics have earned awards for heroism no less than have the Irish.

Let’s “slow down, (we) move too fast, we got to make the morning last,” say Simon and Garfunkel.

And what surer way for New Yorkers to do that than subject them to the latest gimmick: gun scanners in subway stations. How could it possibly work with the number of entrances and exits and volume of short-tempered rushing commuters? No doubt attorneys will soon be trolling for human rights class action suits on late night television. And tourists will be lining up at the gun-scanners to take selfies. 

Another brainless brainstorm that originated with city managers seeking to fast-track their careers by coming up with a novel idea to nurture the illusion of productivity.

But every city agency is a mixed bag. Especially the Department of Education.

The Post reported that only a fraction of 110,000 students registered in the Summer Rising program showed up. Many students, some of them with special needs, were denied a seat. Some languished on waitlists. Some parents never even got the courtesy of any communication all summer. What the criteria were for selecting students is anybody’s guess, since kids with urgent educational deficits were passed over, sometimes for consecutive years and without explanation.

But soon our students will be able to access their schools throughout the year, 24/7 every day of the year, because they will each be awarded an OMNY card good for four daily rides. And if they need a fifth ride, they can always jump the turnstiles as they do already with complete impunity at a cost of three-quarters of a billion dollars to taxpayers annually. No more excuses for missing that 4 a.m. Sunday locksmithing class.

Our public schools, though, do a better job of screening teachers before hiring them than do private schools. A few weeks ago, at a posh “elite institution” where stars of stage and screen can afford the $70,000 tuition, a teacher was accused of “predatory online interactions” This stands out because a couple of years ago, this same teacher pleaded guilty to three charges, including “endangering the welfare of a disabled person” and stealing around a quarter million dollars from a couple in their 90s.  

Periodically there is a comparative rating of subway lines in which their performance records are indicated. There should be something similar for city agencies. A friend of mine nominates the Department of Labor for the worst reviews. 

His daughter is a single parent, with a seasonal part-time income only, and a disabled kid. She phoned the agency on the exact minute that they opened, every day for five weeks, and got nothing but a message about their experiencing high call volume.

Maybe City Hall should give free doses of Vitamin D to its frustrated citizens trying to tap city services, when agencies leave us in the dark and their scandalous indifference to the public never sees the light of day.