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If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education.” In the 19th century, America led the way in universal basic education. Then, as other nations followed suit, the “high school revolution” of the early 20th century took us to a whole new level. And in the years after World War II, America established a commanding position in higher education.
But that was then. The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Education, as one of the largest components of public spending, has inevitably suffered.
Until now, the results of educational neglect have been gradual — a slow-motion erosion of America’s relative position. But things are about to get much worse, as the economic crisis — its effects exacerbated by the penny-wise, pound-foolish behavior that passes for “fiscal responsibility” in Washington — deals a severe blow to education across the board.
About that erosion: there has been a flurry of reporting recently about threats to the dominance of America’s elite universities. What hasn’t been reported to the same extent, at least as far as I’ve seen, is our relative decline in more mundane measures. America, which used to take the lead in educating its young, has been gradually falling behind other advanced countries.
Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies.
Even without the effects of the current crisis, there would be every reason to expect us to fall further in these rankings, if only because we make it so hard for those with limited financial means to stay in school. In America, with its weak social safety net and limited student aid, students are far more likely than their counterparts in, say, France to hold part-time jobs while still attending classes. Not surprisingly, given the financial pressures, young Americans are also less likely to stay in school and more likely to become full-time workers instead.
But the crisis has placed huge additional stress on our creaking educational system.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States economy lost 273,000 jobs last month. Of those lost jobs, 29,000 were in state and local education, bringing the total losses in that category over the past five months to 143,000. That may not sound like much, but education is one of those areas that should, and normally does, keep growing even during a recession. Markets may be troubled, but that’s no reason to stop teaching our children. Yet that’s exactly what we’re doing.
There’s no mystery about what’s going on: education is mainly the responsibility of state and local governments, which are in dire fiscal straits. Adequate federal aid could have made a big difference. But while some aid has been provided, it has made up only a fraction of the shortfall. In part, that’s because back in February centrist senators insisted on stripping much of that aid from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a k a the stimulus bill.
As a result, education is on the chopping block. And laid-off teachers are only part of the story. Even more important is the way that we’re shutting off opportunities.
For example, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported on the plight of California’s community college students. For generations, talented students from less affluent families have used those colleges as a stepping stone to the state’s public universities. But in the face of the state’s budget crisis those universities have been forced to slam the door on this year’s potential transfer students. One result, almost surely, will be lifetime damage to many students’ prospects — and a large, gratuitous waste of human potential.
So what should be done?
First of all, Congress needs to undo the sins of February, and approve another big round of aid to state governments. We don’t have to call it a stimulus, but it would be a very effective way to create or save thousands of jobs. And it would, at the same time, be an investment in our future.
Beyond that, we need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.
225 Comments so far
Show AllThe first thing learned happens before the students/citizens enter the building; the bell rings and they are told to be quiet and get in line.
I don't think its just americans. I'm currently attending a very large school with less than 46% caucasian students. And please don't take that statement as racist, its been a privilege meeting people from all over the world (only use the % to emphasize its diversity). I can tell you though, it's not just americans who lack the ability to have independent thought and critical think.
You can't solely blame schools for not teaching critical thought, the most influential force pushing me to think critically has always been my parents. Without that influence I doubt anything school tried to teach me would have even close to the same impacted on my views.
Over 200 comments so far, surely I can thrown in my two cents worth.
This article reminded me of what I realized just a few days ago, that if our nation decends to something like third-world status or an extended severe depression, our people will be the only people on the planet surprised to see it happen.
One, because overall our culture is too stupid to know it's been dumbed down and too thickheaded to realize the ONLY thing to do at this point is to admit our issues and deal with them as soon as possible. Time erodes our remaining options.
Instead, we look at our health, lifespans and other indicators (we aren't even as tall as the Europeans anymore) and our failing infrastructure and failing schools, our terrible economic situation, our number one in prison population (by all measures, we're number one in THAT)...and somehow our people think this stuff is all going to work itself out. They don't add up the +2 trillion spent on the wars already, and they honestly think our government will make the "rich" people in this country pay for some of it, any of it, forgetting who's pulling all the strings and wanted the wars (but not for oil) in the first place.
While the rest of the world quietly de-couples from us, we yawn and talk about the wars overseas we started. The same people who believed we went into Iraq to liberate them, as if any nation on earth has ever done anything like that for free, for no good reason, and on the cheap. Almost as good a delusion as believing three steel buildings melted down in a matter of hours, straight down into their footprint as good as any demolition team could have dreamed. Three times, in one day, in one place, and all it took was two planes, against all the design specs and most laws of physics. Okay.
It's easy to believe, if you try. Learn something new every day.
Yeah, I'm thinking we might be halfway there already, and maybe we just don't see it because it's happened gradually, with millions of dollars of propaganda thrown at us all the while. And of course, it's us, the best, the US of A. We're Americans, of course we'll be fine.
When I think of the sprawling slums in other nations, Slumdog Millionaire comes to mind, and wonder how they got that way, I think that if it could and if it does happen to us? We'll be the only one's surprised. Don't you think? The rest of the world will surely nod it's head, thinking yes, they were on a downhill slide for a while, they denied it and refused to do anything about it. Didn't even educate their kids, or care if they had food, or a even home, hating the poor all the while. Blaming "illegal" people for working too hard for too little money. No, when times were tough they kicked people OUT of their homes instead, and didn't care that they turned whole neighborhoods into unkept wastelands and allowed the banking industry to wipe out the housing industry too.
Health and homeowner insurance industries so full of fraud, people basically live without insurance coverage without knowing it. They certainly couldn't have known, unless you believe all those people living on the coast by during Katrina would have stood by and done nothing knowing their insurance policies only covered wind damage, but not the complete devestation the water did during the completely predictable "storm surge". Er, can there BE a hurricane without water and a storm surge? Home insurance that doesn't cover the home, health insurance that doesn't cover health treatments, can there be such widespread insurance "policies" without fraud? Our people go unknowingly without insurance while funding million dollar bonus checks to insurance execs. And look now, there goes our Congress giving us ALL over to health insurance companies. Because, you know, they'll keep us all healthy, those insurance companies. Gee. Think they'll get to tell us what we can and cannot eat someday? Ha. Like we'll have food.
And, unlike what it might have been even ten years ago, the rest of the world might not even care that much. They might even breath a sigh of relief, and maybe that's the saddest part of all. After 911, every nation on earth had our sympathy and our support. But now? Now I imagine we're seen as an "opportunity".
I can't say I believe we are for certain going to take a huge fall, but I know denying it can happen at all is NOT realistic. What boggles my mind is that I think we'll be the only people surprised.
I'm sorry, posting this long isn't all that rational either, but I didn't really sleep last night because I don't sleep very well anymore.
aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh. Every day of my teaching career I was certain that one day I would do a rewrite of Ginsberg's HOWL on "Education in America". Not sure if I'm up to it right now but all I can tell you is that the textbook industry, the testing industry, the teacher training/certification industry is too bottom-line focused to evolve to a point where decent sustenance for actually nurturing kids' considerable potential trumps the use of children as a marketing tool. In an ideal world, and even some very conscious families, home/community schooling would be best. It probably sounds harsh, but education is broken because the economy is broken because community cohesion and self-reliance is broken because agriculture is broken because people's ability to even perceive their own strangulation is broken when our capacity to perceive and respect and cooperate with the natural world WE DID NOT INVENT is broken.... So many cognitive dissonant moments occur housed within those factorylike institutions called schools that it is a wonder we can function as well as we do. It is not just the first nations folks (though they are blessed and cursed with the memory of their culture's violent oppression) who have been forced into a situation rendering them powerless against the Masters of the Universe controlling the money pipeline, oil pipeline, weaponry and violence pipeline to assure 'full spectrum dominance', "New World Order", Globalization, "the End of History" or whatever words you want to give this sad delusion of grandeur. Yesterday reading Thom Hartmann's piece on CD on Columbus and the Taino made me remember being asked to help with a social studies' textbook adoption for our school district and how surreal it was looking over those books. They glorified the myth of the beneficent empire (though the E word was never to be seen) and omitted the indigenous perspective and hollowed out the content that might have provided sustenance to students: The actual writings of Columbus, what happened to the Taino, the Nez Perce, the Arapaho and so many other invisible nations now covered by Roundup Readied corn, McDonalds, Wall-Mart and asphalt, Susan B Anthony's courtroom eloquence, Martin Luther King's stance on militarism, let alone what happened in Iran or Guatemala in the 50s...and no mention of union or Indian massacres that might be relevant to students residing in the state where the Ludlow and Sand Creek massacres took place and were headline news for those kids' great-grandparents. I became a teacher later in life than most and did so because of how appalling it was to me to find that my most fascinating 'education' took place in any context BUT in formal schooling. I was told the profession would chew me up and spit me out. It did and now I just try to do no harm.
Matangictia,
Good comment, I especially enjoyed your "broken" explanation.
The only education worth anything is the one that teaches humans how to think critically. Too much time is spent teaching the lower order thinking skills, because it is easier to plan and deliver lessons that deal with memory. The best education facilitates the development of higher level thinking skills, producing an electorate that sees right through propaganda and demands real social change. This kind of education can even overcome the influence of backward thinking parental units, whose ideology is passed down to their progeny as if it were genetic in nature.
Most people think the public schools should be responsible for teaching children EVERYTHING, yet if you calculate out the actual number of hours a child spends in school, compared to being OUT of school, you discover the child spends a little less than 17% of any given year in school!
There was a time when mothers were able to stay home and teach their children some of the basics, but now most mothers have to work, just to help keep the family's heads above water.
On top of that, normal parental pride and defence of their children combined with an army of hungry attorneys have caused a massive increase in the number of things for which a school system can be sued!
As a result, almost no discipline is permitted in public schools anymore! Kids can't be kept after school... can't be made to write "I will not stomp Suzie's head anymore" on the blackboard 100 times, or be assigned additional homework!
For most kids, a good teacher can establish a modicum of discipline, but for many it is virtually impossible to control them... thus hurting everyone's chance for a decent education.
Want more successful schools? Cut the paperwork in half and protect schools and teachers from frivilous lawsuits!-
Sorry Paul,
We're too busy bombing the crap out of other countries, stealing oil, bailing out the criminals in banking and lying about 911 to educate anyone.
Americans are too stupid, by and large, to learn anything anyway. They think the Bible is the word of god. Or the tooth fairy or the Easter bunny... something like that.
If a person learns to count to ten, then learns that 2+2=4, that person, is then able to reason that 2+3=5. The total of what a person has learned is called apperceptive mass and in theory at least the more information included in this mass the better a person's ability to reason. That varies of course but essentially the more building blocks that a person has to work with the better that person is at building. The important thing here is to understand that the ideas created by the combining of learned information has the potential of being original knowledge. All other information is therefore borrowed to an extent.
What is happening in the U.S. is that too many of the building blocks are distortions and falsehoods. As the apperceptive mass becomes infected with faulty building blocks the reasoning process becomes increasingly less worthy of trust. For example, a child learns that "equality" is a "truth which we hold dear" at one point in the educational process; but at some later point that child learns that the "framers" also protected against populism via intended design of the government's institutions. Or perhaps at a more simple level the child's mind is infected with the obvious contradiction between claims of equality and the existence of slavery.
However, this is not to suggest that contradictions and complications can not be learned from, the point is instead that there becomes a tipping point where simple truths become confusing to a degree that the reasoning process becomes a source of conflict. The word "equality" for example means one thing to one person and something else to another person, this makes reason or original thoughts interpretive. This creates a dynamic of arguementation between not only people but also in the mind of the individual. Some of us enjoy arguing of course but for most Americans the reasoning process is too marginalizing and so the reasoning process is avoided and supplanted with cataloged information. This is why most people communicate with cliches as opposed to constucted sentences. This also explains why the hard sciences are advancing so much faster than the soft sciences. For example, the technology to produce enough shoes so that every person on the planet could have an ample supply of shoes has existed for at least decades, but socio-economic solutions are well short of meeting even these simple needs. This because the fields of study are advancing at paces which differ as dictated by truth. Progress is more evident in math-based studies which are less dependent on interpretive reason, Americans are better at producing medicine for instance than they are at administering medicine. But the field of economics includes the extensive use of math yet has enough distorted reasoning to alter outcomes. And so it is a little more complicated than a simple math or no math proposition but until a measurment for truth comes along that might be the best I can explain it in so short an effort. Put simply, a democracy allows progress at a pace determined by the sophistication of its voters.
The solution though is fairly easy to explain. Teach kids to count and that 2+2=4 and challenge them to find the answer to 2+3= . It does not matter how long it takes. Once a person learns to reason, memorizing things that will probably just be forgotten anyway are a pointless waste of time. Once a child learns to reason he or she is then ready to learn how to use a calculator. Not to suggest that all memorization methods should be removed from the learning process, but the balance needs to be shifted toward teaching how to reach conclusions; this then combined with how computers too are redefining the importance of memorizing and the goal of educators could be focused on making the learning process as enjoyable and interesting as possible.
The other part of the solution is to make every possible effort to replace falsehoods with truth. Our collective apperceptive mass must be sorted through and made true and functional. A good start is the conversation our nation is currently having regarding the value to society of bankers as opposed to teachers. When bankers and teachers earn about the same per hour the social sciences will have caught up to their counterparts. The current difference of the value given to those professions, a monetary measurement of vocational worth, may be a good indication of just how confused things are. One could say we have a $400 to $1 confusion rate.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
"Put simply, a democracy allows progress at a pace determined by the sophistication of its voters."
Democracy in the sense of democratic government is an inherently experimental form of governing whose participants seek to best embody an ideal. There is no such government as a democracy in the real world anymore than there is or ever has been a "free market."
The statement that "a democracy allows progress at a pace determined by the sophistication of its voters" might be theoretically true in an ideal sense, but not in the real world. Real world attempts at democracy have too many other complicating factors related to cultural decision making (or preempted or supplanted cultural decision making) besides voters and elections.
A somewhat more accurate observation of America's reality is that our failed attempt at democracy allows progress at a rate determined by the greed and amorality of American politicians--including politicized judges--who are utterly indifferent to the largely ignorant impulses of the electorate except with respect to how they may best be deceived and manipulated into repeatedly voting against their best interests. Moreover, many of the most progressive political changes and cultural decisions in the United States happened outside the voting booth and were only later legalistically confirmed in the court system and with respective legislation.
R.L. often makes some bright observations about real world situations only to subsequently muddy them up by wandering away from the messy conflicted material world and into the maze of R.L.'s own idealized internal logic.
"This because the fields of study are advancing at paces which differ as dictated by truth."
Whose "truth?" What "truth?" Objective and subjective truths are often nested and riddled with both subtle and overt conflicts and prejudices that are in the eyes of both the asserters of those truths and their beholders and may be perceived somewhat similarly or very differently by each. R.L.'s blank assertion here is a gross oversimplification that obscures more than it illuminates.
"Progress is more evident in math-based studies which are less dependent on interpretive reason..."
Here R.L. fails to provide examples to support an assertion which is, in turn, crucially dependent on the definition of "progress" which R.L. also fails to address. Progress in what? According to whose definition of progress?
"Once a person learns to reason, memorizing things that will probably just be forgotten anyway are a pointless waste of time. Once a child learns to reason he or she is then ready to learn how to use a calculator."
People's memories function differently based on a variety of physiological, environmental, chemical, emotional and other factors. Some people are better at remembering certain types of things than others. Memorization affects critical thinking skills in different ways for different people. Determining what "will probably just be forgotten" and should therefore be discarded from the learning process is a more complicated process than R.L. seems to grasp. Many math educators have lamented students' over-dependence on calculators that has led to their inability to perform simple mathematical functions like long division without the aid of such devices or to remember their multiplication tables. Those students learned how to do long division, and memorized multiplication tables at one time, but have forgotten these things since they came to rely on calculators to do the math for them.
"The other part of the solution is to make every possible effort to replace falsehoods with truth. Our collective apperceptive mass must be sorted through and made true and functional."
Aye, there's the rub. One conservative Christian fundamentalist's truth is some other atheist progressive's falsehood. One sociologist's definition of social morality is some other capitalist's perceived threat to his or her bottom line. Who is to sort through and make "our" collective apperceptive mass "true and functional," and according to what definition(s) of truth and functionality?
As usual, some good general points surrounded by lazy, poorly articulated thinking and idealized mush.
metal,
I think your struggle with the 'definition of truth' is causing you some serious problems. There are a great many indisputed truths and the fact that I caught you in an indisputable lie will not change with some corny intellectualizing. Opinions and truths do not carry the same weight, and one simple truth can outweigh an infinite number opinions that rely on contrived contexts. If you have nothing better to do with your time than to invest in revenge, that will require that you find where I have made a vain distortion and refused to admit that I was wrong when repeated efforts were made to politely explain.
Your effort here does tell me that you returned to the M.Moore thread and I hope you read my diagnosis carefully, your problem is easily cured with some soul searching. The cliche about truth setting you free is golden but it starts with being honest with yourself. Go back and read our conversation again without presumption. You can set yourself free if you want to. If it is revenge you prefer I posted a comment today on "Barack and Alyn" (considering that you had no comments on this thread, and how infrequently I post on this site, it seems pathetic for you to be searching through these old threads).
In my experience, schools do not provide education, they provide the foundation/tools for a person to go out and become educated. The newly graduated go into industry to become educated.
I have hired many newly graduated engineers. They have learned how to study, they've learned how to investigate a problem, but it takes them years to achieve a valued education.
I am encouraged to see the volume of posts. Times go by when one feels like nobody cares.
We need to get serious about funding education properly and reducing classroom size. Research shows that overcrowded classrooms make it impossible to reach the student who is struggling.
We need to pay teachers enough so they don't have to take second jobs in order to make ends meet.
We need to teach children to think.
We need to understand the history and politics of our own country.
Parents need to see that their children do their homework and treat their teachers with respect. That said, this can be extremely difficult for those struggling to make a living in this economy.
Home schooling is not the answer to our problems with education. Most parents do not have the time or the resources or the knowledge to properly educate their children at home. The do need to take a supportive role of encouraging their children, reading to them and emphasizing the importance of learning.
I did home school my granddaughter when she was in fourth grade and living with us because she was going to return to her former school. She needed to be following the same curriculum, which was not available in local schools. She also needed to keep working in Spanish, which she had been learning since kindergarten in an immersion program. I have a Master's from Purdue and am a former teacher. We still didn't have an easy time of it. It's difficult to keep the social contact a child needs when home schooling. We took music lessons together, went to a Spanish tutor, and used a local class twice a week for social contact. This was a full-time job, and she is an exceptional student. This is why I don't recommend home schooling for everyone. Too many of the kids in the home school class were not really learning very much. We were successful; she returned to her home school and easily passed the tests to return to her former program, greatly surprising the principal.
In short, we need to fund our schools and support them.
All good comments, Seoinaid. Grounded in reality.
Joe
My experience in both industry and education is different. American technical education is better overall, still. A very telling example is that during the exportation of the US industry to Asia, American employees are massively used to train their replacements abroad and here. Trained monkeys don't get the job done no matter how well trained they are. Foreign educated employees are on average below their American colleagues, they beat everyone only in self promotion. Then most Walmart garbage breaks the next day...
No matter how well educated the students are, if they don't get a job quickly and expand their experience, they can't grow, they can't contribute and their education is simply WASTED.
THE SKILLS ARE WHERE THE JOBS ARE - not the other way around.
Unbalanced trade, slave labor and the ongoing race to the bottom are the real problems for America, from there we go to less resources for education, and only then education starts to deteriorate.
To all who think that education deserves better funding - it probably does, but we don't have industry to pay for it. This is the real problem. "Globalization", bank fraud and wars simply suck the funds out of the country.
"To all who think that education deserves better funding - it probably does, but we don't have industry to pay for it. This is the real problem. "Globalization", bank fraud and wars simply suck the funds out of the country."
About 40%-50% of global military spending is spent by the US. The funding exists.
Education had best serve human need rather than industry: these are vastly though not entirely opposed.
That does not mean that people do not learn valuable lessons while employed or that education need provide no training that relates to industry, but it does mean that using industry and job acquisition or performance as a primary yardstick for evaluating education hurts people badly.
Most skills, the most important skills are not where the jobs are, but where human interests lie --- deeply and flagrantly apart from "corporate need" as primarily determined by profit-loss and cost-benefit figures.
The epithet "trained monkeys" fits most corporate-trained personnel at least as well as the often dismal products of American education. In the absence of definition, I assume that "trained monkey" refers to someone who receives only the instructions to carry out a limited set of actions. Nothing could describe corporate-driven and job-driven training better.
A typical example is the recent IMF proposal to the State of Oaxaca in Mexico. The IMF offered Oaxaca a loan on the condition that it close down the system of escuelas rurales that have propelled younger Mexicans past the illiteracy of so many of their parents and grandparents.
The Rurales, unsurprisingly, have often been hotbeds of resistance to the corporate and governmental oppression overseen by mostly foreign capital in conjunction with the PRI and PAN. Their educators and students have stood in various states of resistance against governmental and corporate violence and threats, almost always nonviolently, and often with excellent albeit always measured results.
The IMF, characteristically, wanted them shut down in favor of a system of trade schools whose curriculae would be determined by mostly foreign industry. When the Oaxaqueños resisted, many were imprisoned, some were killed, some were raped, some are just missing.
I do not pretend that advising corporate standards for education is tantamount to asking for the rape of students or teachers. However, the upper echelons of the people who back these things do live in the US and do wish to reduce education to corporate standard. They have engaged in similar vigilante-ism and Pinochetismo in response to Hurricane Katrina, for example, and the so-called "war on terror."
No, a system of education apart from the interests of the corporate community, operates, to whatever extent it does, in the manner of a free press.
To a large extent, American education has failed this -- worse, it has most often failed by taking its task to be the reverse: to "inculcate the values" of empire.
However, to whatever extent and in whatever sense education relates to learning, to thought and to feeling, it becomes intrinsically progressive - revolutionary or evolutionary. It does so even though *systems* of education tend to be oppressive.
The best students - so often not the "good students" - grow past their oppressors (er, "educators").
Let's keep tending and amending the garden, but let's not cut off the funding just because the fertilizer sometimes reeks.
A good number of the "powers that be" have been after the "normales rurales" for years now.
You need to understand that these are the schools that produce the teachers for the rural communities in Mexico.
The rural communities are those which are almost entirely abysses of extreme poverty, and because they are also in areas where the multinationals and the vendepatrias governments of Mexico want to grab the natural resources (unranium, precious metals, timber), they receive the bulk of the repression at the hands and arms of the army.
Rural communities know that when a road is being built to communicate their pueblitos with the outside world, it is not to connect them with health services, education or anything else--it is to make it easy for the army to barge into their communities and shoot them, and for the logging trucks of Boise Cascade to access their trees.
The rural normal schools produced folks like Genaro Vazquez and Lucio Cabañas in Guerrero--who created popular armies of the poor to fight against the corrupt state and federal governments.
Of course that puts them in the sights of the IMF, as well as the fatass parasites who "lead" the teachers' union--folks like the plastic surgery disaster Elba Ester Gordillo--who put Calderon in the presidency and her illiterate scumball son-in-law as subsecretary of Public Education.
Vivan las normales rurales.
The key point is that technical education without industry to apply it and practice is wasted. Unbalanced trade ruins the skills by depriving the country of experience. It also ruins the ability of society to fund all kinds of education.
I already commented on the lack of proper humanities education earlier in this thread. HUMANITIES EDUCATION WHICH IS CONTROLLED BY A CORRUPT GOVERNMENT CAN ONLY SERVE CORRUPTION. More funding for it only accelerates the fall of society. It's not about quantity, it's about content and quality. Think about it for a while. This is what we have now.
"Education had best serve human need rather than industry" ----- Oh no, this is so wrong!!! It's not either-or, it's both. These can't be even clearly separated. Even the Ancient Greeks knew better. You are waaay behind the curve.
We don't have systematic public education in this country. Our system is to real education as Jackson Pollack's work is to painting. You throw some paint here and there and see what sticks, what drips. You do the same thing every year.
If you talk to young people who are being educated in Switzerland or Germany, there is a stable system with predictable funding. Teacher training is rigorous and the schedule, benefits and pay attract more candidates than there are openings. There are well thought out and interesting academic and career paths you can count on. The career paths are related to actual opportunities and social needs. There are industries and services to absorb trained people.
I believe our problem lies in a strong belief by some that much of the population cannot or should not be educated. In the past, uneducated people had a place in the factory. Now there is the military. If we had a true green agenda, there would be many jobs requiring educated and trained people at all levels.
Another underlying problem is the localization of funding, which obviously reinforces the existing poverty or prosperity of a community. Education funding should not be a toy to play with. It should be a national concern. Intelligent and judicious efforts to level the playing field would help.
And yes, school systems need to reach out to parents, help them to understand how best to support their children's learning and break any pattern of distrust that exists between the school and the community.
Joe
The last thing America needs is an analysis of Education from economists, the same group that cheered fundamentalist capitalism and made free markets a religion. Like Weekend At Bernies, capitalism now dead, is propped up by citizen involuntary indebtedness in the amount of eighty thousand dollars per person. Hocus pocus economists, who like the weather man, get paid even when they are wrong, are not the gold standard of educational philosophy. IMO, anyone who looks to an economist for guidance in education is brain dead. Krugman, give your ego a rest and stick to correcting the injustice that the economic collapse brought on by those of your ilk birthed, or is cleaning up your own mess too much work? Hopefully, cleaning up your own mess will keep you busy enough so that we are spared any more of your blathering idiocy. In short, STFU !
Manny of the posted comments are good ones. The issue in the article is, however, poignant and of immediate pertinence. I have been a professor of engineering for over 25 years- first at Purdue, and now at Iowa State University. During that time I've traveled 'round the world. Krugman is right on target. The US system of education- especially higher education - is actually in some respects worse than that in some 3rd world countries. In relation to high school and grade school education, we've been woefully sub-par for decades. It has been our university and post-secondary education that has kept us afloat. But in the past 20 years our university bachelor's education has been reduced to an extension of high school. Efforts of dumming down the curriculum have failed simply because there is no lower limit. Worse than that, it has resulted in an educational instability. Students have been exposed to pseudo-education that would insult the intelligence of a 6th grader. They know it, and so, even though they get A's, they know that a million flies can't be wrong- it's merde! And so, often their frustration expresses itself in the demand to be coddled. IF an assistant nontenured professor doesn't succumb the negative evaluations will spell death for him/her.
And now the cracks in the damn have reached the very top. The graduate level of university education is going the way of undergraduate education. Combine this with the advances in countries such as China and India, and what you have is the beginning of the end of any semblance of high quality. The sciences and engineering have relied primarily upon high quality students from those countries. American students could often find a job after the undergraduate degree, and so they didn't have to compete in the GRE competition they they felt was a joke. This is further exasperated by the economic plight. Retiring professors are not being replaced. Professors, many of whose annual raises have been on the order of 1-3% for years are now taking paycuts and forced furloughs. Students continue to be raked ever more over the coals. UC-Berkeley will hit them with a 30% tuition hike next year. Student loans are either impossible to get, or, if gotten, leave students strapped with repayments on the order of $500-$1000/month for the next 20 years. Universities embraced the 'business model' approach to education (i.e. the customer is always right; highly disproportionate raises to the those who bring in the most money; and big bonuses to administrators- even NOW- in spite of insane financial positions resulting from state budget cuts. The university systems have emulated Wall Street in more ways than one. The attitudes of those at the top are very similar to those of the CEOs of major corporations. "I deserve it! Screw the peons!" The US system of higher education is rapidly becoming, in a word- elitist.
Unfortunately, many countries are following in the footsteps of the US. Private universities. Raising costs to students who by their wealth expect to be pandered. And perhaps worst of all, a global job market that is so obscenely obsessed with short term profits that they will outsource jobs to anyone who can maximize their short term profits. I feel deeply sad for young people in the world today. We, their elders, have not only forsaken them, but, what is worse, we have provided them with role models that are killing their spirit and integrity. We lie. We cheat. We bow to the almighty dollar. We, the free love hippie idealists have, for the most part, become the worst nightmares of our youth.
And the market loves us for it. The market of buying and selling souls for profit. Welcome to the 21st century America. I love my students- no less than my own children. They ARE my children. And for that reason I will not pander to them. Sure, they want candy. But they need nutrition. And they are not getting it. Instead, they're getting screwed- royally! Will our university systems and governments (both state and federal) wake up? Not any time soon. And like global warming, by the time they do it will take eons to recover. The irony of all of this is that those who should be in power to stave off the impending tsunami are not power hungry. And those who are power hungry are the ones who will continue to rise to the top.(Indeed, merde floats!) Obama didn't get to where he is by being Mother Theresa. While there is no comparison between him and the last administration, he is, by definition, part of that system. Perhaps Pink Floyd was right: we don' need no education! At least not the type of education that has brought this planet to the verge of collapse.
I hope your writing and spelling skills are not representative of what passes for a professor now...
AMEN!
I can attest - at least to some degree - to the comment above by the Professor in Engineering.
3 decades ago I was a university student in the philippines - and years later , by some "accident" of decision somehow landed in the USA (mainly as a result of doing a favor for a friend who couldn't do the trip with a music group because she was preparing for her doctoral thesis) and things followed from that "off-hand" decision ....
i HAVE compared the levels - and these were both on the "best levels" of each country -
my conclusion instantly was:
I could recall how it was almost "traumatic" in the University back in the philippines because the courses were EXTREMELY difficult to all contend with at the same time..professors were simply very demanding..but they made you THINK and work...when i had to "repeat" courses in the USA because according to the US "Board of Education" - credits could not be transfered because of "different standards" (implying of course how SUPERIOR US standards were) -
taking similar courses in humanities, sociology, etc...
I ended up EXTREMELY BORED ...and the moments that I would speak up in classes - everyone often looked at me as if *I* was the teacher...some teachers were good enough to privately acknowledge this and actually became friends with me.
but my point is :
it's a MYTH that the US system of education or even general standard of education is "the best in the world" - at least, to be generous, in determing according to "across the board" comparison.
it is NOT. a lot depends more on what the "test systems" require for which students have to prepare to pass whatever accredition they need...to be applied to the US lifestyles .
In my experience, schools do not provide education, they provide the foundation/tools for a person to go out and become educated. The newly graduated go into industry to become educated.
I have hired many newly graduated engineers. They have learned how to study, they've learned how to investigate a problem, but it takes them years to achieve a valued education.
My experience in both industry and education is different. Trained monkeys don't get the job done no matter how well trained they are. A very telling example is that during the exportation of the US industry to Asia, American employees are massively used to train their replacements abroad and here. I've seen a lot of foreign educated people and they are below their American colleagues... they beat everyone only in self promotion... Most Walmart garbage breaks the next day...
No matter how well educated the students are, if they don't get a job quickly and expand their experience, they can't grow, they can't contribute and their education is simply WASTED.
THE SKILLS ARE WHERE THE JOBS ARE - not the other way around.
Unbalanced trade, slave labor and the ongoing race to the bottom are the real problems for America, from there we go to less resources for education, and only then education starts to deteriorate.
To all who think that education deserves better funding - it probably does, but we don't have industry to pay for it. This is the real problem. "Globalization" and bank fraud simply suck the funds out of the country.
ARKTIG - THOSE ARE VERY WELL CONSIDERED COMMENTS.
there is something that the asiatimesonline writer Henry CK Liu mentioned variously in his exhaustive articles dealing with these things...and i think it bears thinking , similar, in fact to your mentioning of "trade".,,,
in which he notes a certain deranged idea common today that is never examined properly:
the ASSUMPTION , such as in globalization -- which one must admit is a largely US led imperative -- that "TRADE" is the be-all and end-all of civilization or even "economy".
Liu noted that :
"TRADE is merely a subset of global economy. it does NOT have to be the sole or main purpose of any nation....a nation's MAIN purpose is its SOVEREIGNTY and its national prosperity which does NOT depend on Trade but on DEVELOPMENT of its internal economy"
he also notes:
"THE MARKET is merely also a subset of an economy..it is not the economy itself"
"MONEY is NOT in itself wealth, but only an instrument reflecting wealth which is only created by PEOPLE.".
"The true wealth of Nations is NOT money...but PEOPLE..without PEOPLE...there is no Economy".
Is anyone surprised about this? It goes back to a serious question: Why study engineering in the first place?
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220000561#community
To engineer?
I'm sorry. I get the feeling I'm missing some rhetorical gesture that should be obvious, but I'm not sure what it is.
Try reading this article (from the Electronics Engineering Times).
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220000561#community
Summarized: given the lack of jobs and low wages, studying engineering has become less and less desireable; and of those who obtain their degree, the best and brightest move on to other, better paying, careers. Usually, but not always, jobs which have something to do with numbers, such as finance or economics.
I view engineering, etc as very important, and part of the reason this country is declining is because bad sci/eng education.
Par t of the problem is that due to expansion of the fields, you cannot get a real understanding of both sciences and the more socially important but economically irrelevant studies.
Why doesn't anyone question the obvious? Why does the US government spend as much as all of the rest of the world together on armaments and "defense" (actually when you think about it this should be "offense")? Wouldn't some of those funds do more for the benefit of Americans if they were spent on positive things rather than destructive things?
how's this? just a paragraph from a VERY exhaustive Series of ARticles - on US monetary policies, dollar hegemony, Trade Wars as a result, the failure of what the world really is realizing as US "Ideology of Market Fundamentalism" Rather than a real science of economics , and so much more...i just randomly picked this paragraph but just about every paragraph is a continuing , unfolding revelation of what's REALLY been happening....
written by Henry CK Liu for Asiatimesonline...in 2005 - it already DESCRIBED the PRESENT "coming Trade wars" as a result of Dollar Hegemony and IMperialism , and a "bubble economy and Dollar dominance backed up NOT by American productivity, nor hard work, nor competitiveness , nor export ability, nor even consuming ability -- but Merely By MILITARY POWER".
===================
it is about the US IDEOLOGY , unique to america really,
as an IDEOLOGY....
"THE POLITICS OF GREED"...
=============
LIU: (from :The Coming Trade War and Global Depression , 2005)
...........
Rising resistance to globalization
Geopolitically, trade globalization was beginning to face complex resistance worldwide by the second term of the Clinton presidency. The momentum of resistance after Clinton would either slow further globalization or force the terms of trade to be revised. The Asian financial crises of 1997 revived economic nationalism around the world against US-led neo-liberal globalization, while the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) attack on Yugoslavia in 1999 revived militarism in the EU. Market fundamentalism as espoused by the United States, far from being a valid science universally, was increasingly viewed by the rest of the world as merely US national ideology, unsupported even by US historical conditions. Just as anti-Napoleonic internationalism was in essence anti-French, anti-globalization and anti-moral-imperialism are in essence anti-US. US unilateralism and exceptionalism became the midwife for a new revival of political and economic nationalism everywhere. The Bush Doctrine of monopolistic nuclear posture, preemptive wars, "either with us or against us" extremism, and no compromise with states that allegedly support terrorism pours gasoline on the smoldering fire of defensive nationalism everywhere.
..................
Ironically, after the end of the Cold War, market capitalism has emerged as the most fervent force for revolutionary change. Finance capitalism became inherently democratic once the bulk of capital began to come from the pension assets of workers, despite widening income and wealth disparity. The monetary value of US pension funds is more than $15 trillion, the bulk of which belongs to average workers. A new form of social capitalism emerged that would gladly eliminate the worker's job in order to give him or her a higher return on his or her pension account. The capitalist in the individual is exploiting the worker in the same individual. A conflict of interest arises between a worker's savings and his or her earnings. As Pogo used to say: "The enemy: they are us." This social capitalism, by favoring return on capital over compensation for labor, produces overinvestment, resulting in overcapacity. But the problem of overcapacity can only be solved by high-income consumers. Unemployment and underemployment in an economy of overcapacity decrease demand, leading to financial collapse. The world economy needs low wages the way the cattle business needs foot-and-mouth disease.
The nomenclature of neo-classical economics reflects, and in turn dictates, the warped logic of the economic system it produces. Terms such as money, capital, labor, debt, interest, profits, employment, market, etc have been conceptualized to describe synthetic components of an artificial material system created by the power politics of greed. It is the capitalist greed in the worker that causes the loss of his or her job to lower-wage earners overseas. The concept of the economic man who presumably always acts in his self-interest is a gross abstraction based on the flawed assumption of market participants acting with perfect and equal information and clear understanding of the implication of his actions. The pervasive use of these terms over time disguises the artificial system as the logical product of natural laws, rather than the conceptual components of the power politics of greed.
Thanks for the comments and pointers. For some time now I have been joking that people are allowing to be lead to slaughter by the leash of their own 401Ks. I have to say though, that insider interest might be a more potent force. Lowering the capital gains tax increases the temptation to seek quick profits or even pump and dump. There are other conflicts of interest but there aren't any politicians ready to look into all this.
bligh4
The old "throw more money at it" argument.... American kids no longer value a good education, and that starts with the parents.
Why might it not "start" anywhere in the cycle?
After all, would you not say that parents who do not value education are not poorly educated?
Bligh,
You're kidding right? That's such an empty and dismissive right wing platitude that shows no understanding of America's relatively poor investment in public education. Krugman is right. It is a critical investment in the nation's future. Do you really want a country run by tea-baggers?
You're right, parents are a vital part of it, but we've really never tried "throwing money at" eductation. That's just a propagandist's door-slammer. First, the very concept of equal (educational) opportunity is a cruel joke considering the vast differentials in funding through highly unequal local property taxes. Then think about the federal DOE budget, around $46 billion annually last I checked, which is about one-half-of-one percent of the the bankster bailout, just the down payment, BTW. And then to put priorities in better perspective: the DOE's budget is about 0.7 percent of DOD "defense" spending at north of $600 billion. But wait, that does not even include spending on the wars themselves---all extra, to the tune of maybe $3 trillion according to noted ecomomists.
Overpaid teachers and opulent classrooms are a Wall Street myth and the tired old "throw more money at it" line is a throw away argument.
bligh4
No, I'm not kidding. I went to my son's school the other day for a meeting on academics-one that I was notified about over a month ago. Want to guess what percentage of parents showed up? Maybe 10%.
My county spends $9000 per student per school year. And this is an "urban" county. When I speak to the teachers I have never heard mention the fact that a better education would result from more money.
What I do hear is the opinion that students would do much better if parents were more involved in their kids education, and that students that were EXPECTED to excel by their parents generally do.
I also happen to know that teachers are underpaid, overworked, and expected to buy supplies for their classrooms out of their own pocket. Meanwhile, money that could be spent on these things go to layers of "administration types" that seem to infest the public school system.
So, spend the money better. Get the parents to do their part. Have expectations for the kids.
You could spend $1,000,000 a kid and not fix the problem.
"So, spend the money better. Get the parents to do their part. Have expectations for the kids."
That doesn't make sense. Why not pay the parents then so that they don't have to stress themselves just to earn a few extra dollars. Either government pays the school or pays the parents to educate the kids.
"When I speak to the teachers I have never heard mention the fact that a better education would result from more money."
No teacher would talk about money to parents at a PTA meeting of all meetings. Your story doesn't sound credible whatsoever.
"You could spend $1,000,000 a kid and not fix the problem."
You could spend $1,000,000 per weapon of mass destruction and not fix the problem.
bligh4
Did it ever occur to you that I might know teachers personally. Go ahead and wait for the government to to teach your kids the value of a good education. Good luck with that.....
You don't even know what you are talking about.
Actually, I have met parents who personally know their kids' teachers very well and 99% of the time, the parents and the teachers engage in corrupt ideas and practices only to spoil the kid. I have come across parents who take great pride in buttkissing the teachers so that the teachers will cut their kids all the slack. You cannot blame public education for that. The fault would lie with bad parents who have no business getting personally involved.
I don't have to wait for government to teach kids whatever. They have been doing that for decades. You're doing a great job acting corrupt like the Congress critters. You don't appear to know anything about teaching kids the value of a good education yourself. LMAO !
Parents can only teach so much which is why homeschooling has its limitations. If you're a perfect parent, then good for you but most parents aren't well educated to begin. It could be because of financial worries and troubles in the past, domestic abuse, or disabilities. If all parents had to teach their children everything, where would they find the time to work and earn for a living? We pay taxes for a decent public education for everyone. Public education in return is supposed to relieve the burden on parents. Parents should take some part in educating their kids but you have to draw the line somewhere. Do you homeschool your kids and if so, just what have they learned compared to public education?
Don't forget us single parents. I used to be able to homeschool my children but after my husband passed away, I had to work for a living to earn and pay my monthly bills and look out for my children. I'm tired of those anti-school jackasses saying "public education is bad, parents should do all the teaching!" and these are the same jackasses that send their kids to school and then invent phony complaints. Why would a teacher care to talk about his or her salary to parents at a PTA meeting?
There is, I believe, a fundamental misunderstanding as to what constitutes an education. In his book, the 17 Tradiditions, Ralph Nader reflects upon how his father would ask him if he'd learned to 'think', or if he'd learned to 'recite' in school. All too often we hold the mistaken belief that because one can recite information, that one is 'educated'.
A QA "instructor", might tell people to look for a particular attribute because of a particular requirement. This is not a teacher, only a presenter of information. A teacher might have had them research on their own why the requirement exists and what might happen if the attribute was not adhered to correctly. Alas, neither industry nor the government pays for such a luxury in today's society.
I believe that Mr Krugman misses this point in his article. We are too intent upon presenting 'information' in order that the 'student' might succeed in the industrialized work force, and have stopped trying to teach him/her to research on their own and draw their own conclusion. Even our colleges have devolved to this point (for the better part), and give out degrees upon regurgitation of information presented and not upon critical thinking.
The reasons for this are many. A growing population, a rapidly changing technological society, foreign students paying higer premiums to be educated in American schools, cookie cutter teaching colleges, etc.. I've long advocated for 'cooperative' education, in lieu of competitave education and believe that there is the logical starting point... not sure, only an opinion...
nobodyknown: Good points! Allow me to add: All the knowledge and information in the world cannot constitute wisdom.
The first step in attaining Wisdom is about embracing opposite viewpoints, critical analysis, and THEN arriving at spiritual discernment. Only through discernment comes wisdom. Discernment is a act of the human spirit. Discernemt transcends the egoic mind.
Education is the lifeblood of a democracy. Without education, there is no informed citizenry and any demogogue can rise to positions of leadership and control.
A dumbed-down population is easier to control. A population that doesn't think for itself is in little danger of staging an uprising as long as they get their steady diet of "reality-tv" and high-fat foods.
After having been a teacher, on and off, since 1956, I have come to the conclusion that the educational system in the US does more harm than good. When I sent my own child to school, I always told her to not believe everything that they would teach that day.
Being educated is good. Sometimes going to school prevents real education and the development of critical thinking skills.
Notice how many graduate from US high schools and then are so ready to join the military and kill people. I used to be one of those super patriotic young adults. Now I know better.
"If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be 'education.'"
no - that word would be "ruthlessness".
Two words: Michelle Kree. Business plan for American schools. Say no more.
Ms. Kree has a lot to account for in her treatment of DC teachers. And no, I am not one of them. Just a reader of the news.
Two words: Michelle Kree. Business plan for American schools. Say no more.
Ms. Kree has a lot to account for in her treatment of DC teachers. And no, I am not one of them. Just a reader of the news.
How about repealing the No Child Left Behind Act and bringing back critical thinking?
I couldn't find any place to insert my comments so opened this one here. If you read the "1.h. jones nv" first blog answer that appears in the NYT's edition of this article I think you will find it very interesting. I agree with this person's thoughts on education. You first must get the students to respect the teachers, have a good discipline in our schools and have parents back up the teachers' requests for homework assignments. Without discipline required by the school, students will not learn in an environment where everyone is talking and carrying on and going about what they want when the teacher is speaking and teaching class. I've seen this first hand back in the mid 80's with my son's class. There was no one paying attention to the teacher. Schools and parents need to bring back the idea that this is a learning place not a social hang out. Education is so important. In other countries, like in Europe, they start teaching their children English as a second language in their 5th year. Many students even learn an additional language by the time they get to high school, given them 3 languages that they know. We as a nation should take lessons from our past teaching methods from the 30's through the 60's and apply it to today's classroom. Respect for the teachers is uppermost, once that is established, a teacher can commence teaching a class.
Great idea but Barry wouldn't even bother. It would be like trying to get him to repeal the "Patriot" Act or support single payer health care. He doesn't want to leave any children behind either just like Dubya. The only difference between the two is Dubya wants them in Iraq while Barry wants them in Af/Pak. That'll be easy and what with the flying butt monkeys on the Nobel Committee rewarding Barry the Nobel Peace Prize. YUCK !
Jennifer, "Barry" couldn't do that on his own if he wanted, and your hero Ralphy couldn't either. Have you been in contact with your state Congresspeople on this issue?
Critical thinking was never a big part of mainstream gringo education.
When I started teaching in 1968 at Northern Illinois University, in fact, I was faced with a mass of students who had been taught that Please the Teacher was the only acceptable "learning" posture. Took all the energy I could muster to convince them that if I saw any of that shit they would be failed.
Fortunately, the threat of failing put them in a box that they were able to get out of by thinking critically--and reading a lot of Wittgenstein.
Critical thinking was a big deal where I went to School. We were taught how to write-at a very early age we were churning out papers-and how to build arguments and tear them apart.The downside to this, was that we often practiced on each other, elevating the practice of 'slashing', as we called it, to a minor art.But on the whole, that 'elite' secondary education has been a big advantage in life, and an excellent tool for penetrating the fog of bullshit that surrounds us.
I taught middle school science for thirty years. My coworker next door had a mattress in the lab store room where he slept during lunch, planning, and sometimes classes.
My coworker on the other side was a dim witted holy roller who once lectured me incorrectly on my use of exponents and gabbed to anyone who would listen about sessions with her psychologist.
Christ, I DON"T KNOW Maybe the one on the right imparted wisdom about which I could only dream, maybe the one on the right saved souls, but for me, from my perspective, it was Goddamn demoralizing.
This is a rich country. Money for education, not space probes, war, or God forbid, raises for members of congress.
You sons of bitches in congress, do you know how the rest of us live?
Stop............
1. The G.I. Bill after WWII and right thru till today is a concrete example of what government CAN do..........and of the value of investing public dollars in education.
2. China's top 10% of all students and India's top 10% of all students represent populations that are nearly as large as our total student population.
We need to get serious about funding education and it needs to be made available to everyone.
Unfortunately, many of the comments here are evidence of the fact that you can provide people with an opportunity for a good education but it does not mean that they will take advantage of it.
I notice home schooling is spreading like a crown fire from sea to shining sea, and a lot of home schooled students entering college with high marks and strong credentials in social activism.
It's not really known how good homeschooling is. Some parents do a terrific job, and others do not. We tend to think of homeschoolers as being children of upper middle class parents that offer wonderful learning experiences to their offspring, but sometimes the kids get little education at all, only a thorough indoctrination in religious dogma. Not every child comes out of homeschool like Mozart--sometimes he/she can barely read and cipher--let alone interact with other children from a variety of backgrounds.
The Quiverful lot, of which that TLC stalwart, the Duggers, are subscribers to, is a good example of this, little education, but a very twisted religious dogma. These pious and rather unChristian Christians are creating "armies of God" and their goal really is to work their way into politics and take over America one city at a time, cleansing out the "undesirables" as they go. NPR had a very chilling report on this bunch a few months ago. This is homeschooling at its worst.
TLC - The Learning Channel -- sick joke.
Glenn Beck homeschools his kids.
Not that this is a warning against homeschooling or anything, but that's scary.
Education? It's just a bullsh-t word to plop yourself up. We didn't need no stinkin' education back in the 1960s to get a good job. Passing high schoold was enough back in those days. To hell with education. Politicians aren't well educated so why must we?
So we don't grow up to be like politicians.
For what Krugman is to be congratulated is NOT attaching his educational claim to Lawrence Summers' "math, science, and maybe economics." Many of the responses to Krugman's article here appear to presuppose this as the model, presumably because it has been the dominant representation of education in the United States since probably the moon landing. Other responses write of the fine arts, and fewer of the liberal arts, with very few of the social sciences. Even those in praise of the liberal and fine arts, though, provide no basis for their praise. A bit of history is helpful in understanding their significance. It is in the 1980s that "math, science, and maybe economics" became educationally wholly dominant as business absorbed public education into a mercanilitic servant to business interests. Liberal and fine arts, and social sciences, other than economics, became dismissed. My suspicion as to why is portraying alternatives to existing society, they were deemed dangerous. Dismissed as irrelevant, they have practically disappeared from Americcan public life. Why they are essential is they provide the knowledge necessary for a democratic citizenry, not "human resources" in service to merchant interests. Relevant here is diminishment of the occurrence of the word "democracy" in public discourse, and increase in the use of the word "economy" and its cognates. It is democracy which has been sacrificed, even by the "math, science, and maybe economics" policy makers. The agents of democracy have dismissed their own agency for "no child left behind."
Krugman takes the Nobel Prize in the category "uneducated". The corrupt Nobel committee gave him the prize in economics for his tireless efforts in promoting "globalization". He's been mum on his beloved unbalanced trade for a year now... it didn't bring the prosperity he was promising. The education system Krugman supports fails the American students but not in math and sciences, but in humanities, especially civics, politics and economics. One can teach math and science till the cows come home but without domestic industry, there is no place to apply them productively. Knowledge of math and sciences is not rewarded, only corruption is rewarded in this country.
How hard is it for the "economist" Krugman to grasp the concepts of balanced trade and balanced books? He fails at every step, he's drowning in the same corruption which his favorite policies perpetuate.
I'm pretty sure that Krugman doesn't support globalized monopolies and oligopolies.
Arktig distorts Krugman's arguments.
Arktig: I agree -- Krugman does support free markets and globalization.
I just finished watching Ron Suskind interview Chris Hedges on Book TV -- and they address some of the same issues that you raise in your post about education. It's worth watching -- if you have time.
www.booktv.org
Enter Chris Hedges in the search box.
Thanks for the link, Kay. Chris Hedges appears to be as close to the truth as it gets on the left side of the spectrum. I'm not sure if that's close enough, but he is worth listening to.
We always hear from various quarters that American students had better become more adept at math and science. In and of itself, this is a laudable goal; however this is not requested for "in and of itself," that is, for the following of mysterious fact for the enlightenment of the seeker.
We must learn the calculus: we can design faster and more efficient fighter jets and predator drones, using in addition the fluid dynamics we learn in engineering-physics.
We must study biochemistry and microbiology for their potential use in bacteriological and chemical warfare, or to bleed the public white in private medicine.
We must major in computer science and computer engineering so that the state and industry may spy more effectively on anyone using a computer.
What good does it do to graduate if you didn't get an education? Our colleges today are turning out uneducated twits.
The "we don't have enough money" scam is done. There are few schools that don't have enough money. Look art what is being taught, look at all the needless requirements for teachers, look at all the poor teachers that are retained....just a start.
No one can teach in a classroom full of chaos and disrespect.
If money is not an issue, I take it right wingers such as you have would have no problem if all private schools, all private colleges are closed down, and everyone has to go to a public school? That everyone goes to the same schools regardless of how rich or poor they are?
But oh wait, the little precious princes and princesses, such as Malia and Sasha Obama, just MUST have the best teachers, the best facilities that money can get. Anyone who can't afford that can go rot.
Yesterday the newspaper La Jornada released the names of the top 3 schools for the junior high level achievment tests nationwide. All 3 were telesecundarias--where the t.v. is supposed to be the transmittal vehicle of lectures.
Fortunately, one of the top 3 only has a t.v. for other uses, as there is no connection to the public education system. There is one computer--full of viruses--that students in all 3 grades take turns using with their teacher.
The school itself is "built" of corrugated tin and cardboard, and there are no toilets--boys go out back and girls run to their houses when they have to go.
What's the key here? Why is this the best prepared junior high in Mexico?
Motivated TEACHERS, plus a lot of distance from the public education system.
This school is in rural Chiapas.
I believe that the twits are being educated and though it does take some intelligence to get a degree in criminality, it really takes a higher degree of learning and self motivated greed and the charm of a cobra to keep getting away with it.
So when a school offers courses in criminal justice, don't just think it is for catching the crook and punishing him/her, that would be for the 'underlings' of america, the real criminal justice is double speak of course and what is being taught as legitimate courses of learning were actual criminal activity not so far in the distant pass, and thus what was criminal is proper behavior and what was proper behavior is criminal.
Being educated doesn't always guarantee a great economic future especially if you are female and/or minority. I had to go through hell just to get a somewhat decent job despite all my troubles getting well educated.
Jennifer: I agree! When a human being is consistently paid a lower salary -- just because she is female -- economic equality is NOT possible. The same is true for minorities, as you stated in your post.
Women are still paid 1/4 less than men -- and that 1/4 amounts to savings, emergency and discretionary spending. For instance, if a man earns a salary of $40,000 per year, chances are a female will earn about $30,000. That is a big difference.
At one time, and I suffered through this -- females were paid as much as 40% less than males -- that is almost half. My level of education had nothing to do with it. I used to wonder how men could support families on their salary -- and I couldn't support myself and my son, a lesser number of people. DUH!! I was working the same management jobs that men were, and sometimes, putting in more hours -- being afraid to say no for fear of losing my job.
Even though there are laws to help protect women and minorities, today, it's not easy to bring suit against a corporation. Acquiring the hard evidence to proceed is not always easy. And, the after-effects can be devastating -- not being able to find another job in your field.
The earnings aren't the only issue. Getting promoted in a company is also tougher for women to accomplish and I was the victim a couple of times and I had to fight tooth and nail to overturn a prejudiced promotion. The guy who was promoted didn't even have half of the qualifications while I made sure I met all the requirements. Before I moved to the city, I used to not be as well aware of the ongoing discriminations against women and minorities. The more I visit people of different religious and ethnic backgrounds, the more I find out the covert racism that's going on underneath our noses. I don't know what on Earth Obama was thinking when he voted yes to limiting lawsuits against corporate wrongdoing in 2005 as if the Federal courts would do jack about it. The judges there are corporate friendly for the most part.
Jennifer: I agree -- getting a promotion, a promotion that constitutes a raise, is also more difficult! I, too, have had those experiences. And, once a person is able to recognize the subtleties of the discrimination, when it happens to you, it's much easier to recognize it when it happens to others.
This whole article is about the 'government' and what it needs to do to educate the kids and the higher education that is next but as essential as the government is to education and that not including the corporate control on education, I say emphatically that the parents are the starting point of a youngster's education and what the parents are most likely to be, the kids will be too and now back to the corporate side, they are a very heavy influence on what and how a kid learns and that presents the problem of their having turned kids into junkies of corporate marketing that has the huge effect of channelling a young mind away from real knowledge versus the trinkets, flashy and shinny things that have no other purpose than to distract or prevent a touch with reality.
A young mind must be given a chance to learn without the distractive outside manipulations of consumerism and that every little 'neat and cool' product that comes around is not a healthy thing for leaning much akin to kids today can turn on the computer and see information but do they know the back ground that makes up that information or 'neat & cool' product just waiting in the store for the kid to buy.
u c d duks
s i c dem
bu em r not duks
Seville dar dago
Towsan busses inarow
Nojo demis trux
Summit cowsin
Summit dux
Maybe phonics is a way to teach eaglish but yours and mind are a pitiful reminder of what passes for education, communication and articulation but most especially what the 'elite' want or not want for people to understand or comprehend.
Sorry, duplicate
No one has mentioned the Internet. Today one can become well informed in moments on virtually any topic by judicious use of the Internet. Wikipedia, for example, is one of the greatest inventions ever.
No worthwhile discussion of education can ignore the Internet.
Wikepedia is okay if you already have some knowledge about what you are looking for, and just want to consult it to jog your memory.Or as a tool to suggest other things that you might want to look at in something more authoritative. If you actually know a great deal about the subject you're referencing, you'll find many mistakes on Wikepedia.Which makes you doubt the accuracy of entries in areas you know nothing about.So I take Wikepedia with a grain of salt, and defer to the opinion of experts in their respective fields.Which makes me an elitist, but WTF.
ricardohead October 9th, 2009 4:46 pm -- Others have answered your comment, but I want to add a little. Of course you can't depend on Wikipedia (or anything else) on the Internet to be accurate or perfect; the same goes for written and broadcast media. However, when you come across something questionable, you can quickly find out about it through participating in forums like CD in conjunction with researching sources like Wikipedia.
For example, recently I received by email from my conservative relative who circulates such things an anti-immigration article on the costs of illegal immigrants. I posted a comment here in CD about it and asked if anyone could refute the claims in the article. Sure enough, someone provided, not a refutation, but a link to a site that specifically purported to refute the article, which it turned out had been on the net for years. I then followed this up with further research in Wikipedia. Although many of the issues in the anti-immigration article appear to be anything but clear-cut, I gained enough knowledge, if in some instances only about the lack of certainty on the issues, that I realized the real problem with the anti-immigrant article was not factual errors (which it has plenty of), but its focus on demonizing people who come to the U.S. illegally to try to live out family values and a laudable work ethic. I realized that those people (as opposed to drug dealers and other criminals) come here because they are invited by employers who reserve jobs for them.
This is only one example of the way the Internet can assist you in developing understanding of difficult issues -- not just learn facts. By all means, if you think something you hear or read about anywhere is erroneous or misleading, ask about it on the Internet and I'll bet you'll be happy with the result if you're willing to invest a little time.
Students have no idea starting out that this sort of thing can be done. I think at the very least it's our duty to educate them about this marvelous resource, and instill in them appreciation for the knowledge and insight they can gain through the Internet. Kids by age three already understand the Internet in terms of games, and by ten, twitter (which I don't understand), email, and frivolous web sites (I don't mean to put down You Tube, but most of the stuff there is frivolous, in my opinion). Teachers could show kids how to use their computers to learn important facts and develop understanding of issues.
Another aspect of the Internet with vital significance for education is the availability of art of all sorts, which I think would make it well worth the cost and trouble of getting on line even if there was nothing else you could do but experience works of art on your computer. Schools are cutting art programs and classes. I know from my grandchildren that they have no idea of the really good art available on line because they don't have anyone showing them; that's something teachers should do. Kids won't relate to great art on their own, but teachers can open their minds. It troubles me that so many children are growing up with no exposure to great music and other art, which I was lucky enough to discover as I grew up, and without which my life would be meaningless.
The other day I played a movement from Shostakovitch's 5th symphony downloaded from the Internet for one of my grandchild, age 6 months, who danced up and down and was entranced by the lengthy (by pop music standards) piece and the visualizations that the computer showed along with it. Sadly, unless I'm around to repeat this for him, the chance of him ever again, during his formative years, hearing even one musical piece by Shostakovitch is very small, unless educators expose him to this.
In case anyone is still reading this thread, in my 10/10 9:05 pm post, I misstated my grandson's age. It's actually 10 months, not six months. He doesn't yet walk, but dances while being held.