Professor Elam

Sunday Feb 12, 2012

Apparently story telling has fallen out of fashion in the middle and high school years. I find that few to no students know the story of the Six Blind Men and the Elephant.  That is the original story about Point of View.

Now I find that most of you have not read about The King's New Clothes.  No, not the King's Speech, the recent successful movie. Rather this is a 1837 story about hypocrisy, snobbery, and con men. 

New tailors come to town and convince the king he needs a complete new wardrobe. Snobbery is such that even though they do nothing, all adore the new outfit. Finally a small child speak out to reveal the obvious-the King has no new clothes. This sort of ignoring the obvious amid the reluctance to ask hard questions goes on right to today. 

Toyota stops Tundra production 3 months after the start.

The Briscoe museum goes form $16 M to $30M.

The new Perfomring Arts Center costs $195 M while the SA Symphony is in dire straits. 

Corzine cannot find $1.6 B in his own fund, some genius money manager eh?

Barry Minkow stikes again, surprise!

And so it goes. 

The reluctance to tell the truth can take on truly disastrous consequences. After the Battle of Midway the Japanese lost control of hte Pacific Ocean. And so the fighting slogged on across the islands they had captured. Fearful of criticism from the Japanese High command, reports from the battlefields of casualties, enemy planes shot down, ships sunk, etc. were highly inflated. The result was that Tokyo had a false picture of the war. They were losing and did not know it.

Here is the detailed story of the reluctance of Japan to face the obvious and end the destruction of their homneland.  In short, after two atomic bombs, some of the Japanese military still apparentntly thought they had a chance.

But the King had no new clothes.