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Fixing Schools: A Smart Plan for Jobs
Politicians love to talk about how to “fix” the education system, from imposing standardized tests to shuttering “failing” schools. But they've been ignoring a big, basic fix for the nation's schools—one that might help fix the unemployment rate as well. A comprehensive school renovation program could be a boost for jobs and for public education.
Revamping schools is one pillar of Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky's new job-creation bill, which would provide '400,000 construction and 250,000 maintenance jobs to fix American schools,” among various other public-service related work projects.
The program is known as Fix America's Schools Today (FAST!). Developed by the Economic Policy Institute and the 21st Century School Fund, the proposal points out there's a big job to do in the country's foundering school buildings and facilities:
[S]chool districts have been under-spending on maintenance and repair for many years. Chronic deferred maintenance and repair can lead to energy inefficiencies, unsafe drinking water, water damage and moldy environments, poor air quality, inadequate fire alarms and fire safety, compromised building security, and structural dangers.
By conservative estimates the accumulated backlog of deferred maintenance and repair amounts to at least $270 billion. Including the cost to "green-up" existing schools—and using less conservative assumptions—the cost of needed improvements to buildings and systems could exceed $500 billion....
Most school districts do not have resources to address the maintenance and repair backlog, let alone to make energy conservation and efficiency improvements.
It's not just the buildings that could use some work. A dilapidated school is likely a manifestation of other social hardships affecting the whole neighborhood, including the unemployment epidemic, failing infrastructure and underfunded public services. A study by the 21st Century School Fund showed:
at the school district and zip code levels, that there was tremendous disparity in the spending by school districts to provide healthy, safe and educational adequate school facilities. Over the period from 1995‐2004, the lowest income communities had by far the least spending.
Helping parents get a job fixing their kids' schools may help reverse that pattern of disinvestment and social inequality. So renovating a local school means more than slapping on a fresh coat of paint, according to EPI:
Construction and building repair generally create 9,000‒10,000 jobs per billion dollars spent. Eliminating even half of the entire backlog and improvements could eventually create more than two million jobs, over a period of years. Addressing even one-tenth of the needed improvements could immediately create half a million jobs.
The jobs would be crucial for the construction industry, which has collapsed along with the housing bubble and left devastated laborers, contractors and retail suppliers around the country.
The financing of FAST!, as outlined in Schakowsky's jobs proposal (and possibly in a parallel plan to be floated by the Obama administration) is an open question. But the EPI suggests a funding formula based on the needs of individual school districts and estimates of how many jobs would be generated and how much energy would be saved.
Some of these renovation goals would help green up schools as well: fixing ventilation so students with asthma can breathe cleaner air, installing solar or wind power systems, retrofitting to improve energy efficiency, or modernizing plumbing systems.
For students, a better learning environment means better learning. According to a 2010 report by the Environmental Protection Agency: “health, attendance and academic performance improve with increased maintenance. Furthermore, schools with better physical conditions show improved academic performance while schools with fewer janitorial staff personnel and higher maintenance backlogs show poorer academic performance.”
EPI's scheme provides another ancillary environmental benefit: the program's costs would be covered "by eliminating fossil fuel preferences as in President Obama’s FY2012 budget. Closing these loopholes raises $46 billion over 10 years.”
Fixing up schools isn't the answer to the jobs crisis, but it could be a simple measure to provide meaningful work while addressing critical infrastructural and educational needs, and cleaning up the environment along the way. If only lawmakers were smart enough to spot an elegant solution when they see one.
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Show AllMichelle Chen reveals all that is wrong with discussion of contemporary education. She summarizes her error with the simple words, "the jobs crisis." Rather than education being about preparation for participation in a democracy, Ms. Chen perceives education as preparation for employment. Most employment being service to a superior, Ms. Chen perceives education largely as preparation for service to a superior. Thus, we have the liberally educated Obama calling for more emphasis on "math and science." This is because "math and science" are perceived by economists as the means of producing more goods to consume. Ignored, and by Michelle Bachmann attacked, are the social sciences, humanities, and arts. Providing the preparation for democratic participation, while not providing the means of producing goods for sale, Chen, Obama, and Bachmann, are all joined in the mission of abandoning the democracy whereby the citizen governs, for the capitalism whereby the citizen is governed. Dismissing the Enlightenment, they all seek return to the feudalism which democracy replaced.
I think you are compressing too much into a small package. K-12 education has always involved preparing children for jobs. Those who finished high school (I am thinking about my aunts, who sent to school in the 1920s) could get civil service jobs. My aunts were not intellectuals, but, for the times, they were educated. They certainly were capable of participating in a democracy.
Regarding your last two sentences, democracy did not replace feudalism. Feudalism involved decentralized political power and a fledgling economic system. Large-scale trade was difficult and dangerous. The trend toward centralization of power which followed the middle ages did not usher in democracies. Instead, monarchies took over nearly everywhere in Europe. What we call capitalism developed before the Industrial Revolution but it flourished after that. It had nothing to do with the Enlightenment, which, it is true, stimulated democratic thinking, but which did nothing to stifle the trend toward unequal distribution of wealth that is characteristic of a full-fledged capitalist system.
Hard to believe that the French Revolution of the 1790's, an outgrowth of Enlightenment thinking, had nothing to with taking down the rich and exalting the poor.
And yet, most revolutions, including our own, were fomented by the the middle class, not the poor. And it is easier for me to put Robespierre and Danton in the same category as Lenin than to compare them to Kerensky, much less to Madison and Jefferson.
Until, perhaps, the late 1970s, and certainly election of Ronald Reagan as President, the standard expressed justification of public education in the United States was preparation for participation in democracy. Employment was portrayed as an important, but, almost embarrassingly, subsidiary reason, rather than a justification. Indeed, it was presented so because professional education, outside of engineering and medicine, were perceived as unnecessary. Graduates were not perceived as requiring a narrow professional education to engage in business, for example. Effectively, trades such as business were considered something one largely learned on the job. Best, then, was a general education which provided flexibility to deal with changes in the world. As a result, students majored in traditional academic disciplines in much higher percentage than currently. Breadth, not depth, was perceived as the most effective preparation. Interestingly, whether the current narrower focus is justified or not does not appear to be actively investigated. What it does achieve, is diminished preparation for the breadth of knowledge necessary for effective participation in a democracy.
It's a stretch to say that Ms. Chen's proposal to renovate our schools has anything to do with the goal of "making education a preparation for service to a superior." She is just suggesting children and the society at large would be well served by an investment in schools. Many schools are wrecks--it is no wonder kids vandalize them. They are standing testimonials to the disregard Americans hold towards public education. How can it hurt anyone to renovate them or build new ones? I taught in a new school once and it was amazing how well kids treated it. They knew the school represented a caring community and they behaved better because of that understanding. We should fix our schools.
DROSERA: I agree that the look and feel of a school says much about how a community regards the education of its young. With that being said, does anyone reading this article really believe that policy makers give a shit about basic citizens or their rights?
Currently the nation's elites are involved in an all-out free for all.
They've managed to monkey-wrench the housing market (bubble, anyone?) leaving home values in free fall.
They continue to waste incredible sums on foreign wars that mean NOTHING but depraved indifference to our citizens.
They continue to give banksters a free pass, while foreclosing on homes that could be salvaged were sane rules of commerce in operation.
They are using the shortfall based on these aforementioned items, to cut into Social Security and Medicare, the fiscal Holy Grails these amoral sociopaths have always lusted after.
Even when the Army Corps of Engineers revealed its "report card," to show that most of U.S. infrastructure, seen in such items as bridges and dams, received a grade of D, where has the will been put in place to improve upon this failing domestic infrastructure?
Even when the BP gashing wound to the Gulf ensued, where was the will put in place to regulate that toxic oil industry? (Now activists have to fight the Canadian Tar Sands pipe-line, even with all the evidence of calamitous ecological disregard in plain view? The outcome to this travesty having been described as "Game Over," by James Hansen.)
Even when obesity rates, added to Diabetes rates, are rising, still there is little done to improve the quality of the nation's food. (Today's CD artice by Ronnie Cummings articulates this point quite well.)
Other areas can be related that expose a similar attitude of blatant disregard.
The elites do not WANT to invest in education, they do not CARE about the US citizenry. Their ethos is one of naked pillage, plunder, and resource extraction, often at bayonet-point. With Citizens United giving them a free pass (in the purchase of politicians), added to fake elections, disgusting candidates, along with a captured media, and the "fruit" of deregulation decimating virtually every area of our lives... why would anyone imagine that money would be ear-marked for an intelligent program like this?
ONCE the beast falls, anything will be made possible; but until then, we're just dreaming. What's become clear, however, is that the global corporations that operate without conscience as they cast the natural world to ruin, jeopardizing ALL our lives, is that this battle IS global. Eventually the chains will burst, and a different civilization will emerge. Some of us, at least ideologically, are on the front lines of that battle, and Truth is the most reliable, and timeless weapon, at our disposal.
pihlandrel reveals all that is wrong with the lazy, flabby thinking of some "leftists", not least, the inability to read.
Chen nowhere claims that education is the preparation for employment, and certianly not education as as service to a superior.
As for your ignorant rantings on math an science, there is a need for more emphasis, simply because very few American students study them. Look at any science, math, engineering department of any American university. They are filled with international students. American students prefer to study business, finance, and yes, the social sciences, the humanities, the arts.
Also, the sciences teach students to think. To assess the material world, then think based on what happens in the material world.
The Enlightenment dismissed math and science the way you do? Sounds like it is you who like a return to the dark ages, with your disdain for math and science, your disdain for material study of the world.
Having been gone for awhile, I just read rfloh's comment. In reply, rfloh, you've a tendency to portray yourself as learned and thoughtful, but your commentary belies both. Chen need not express something to imply it. Of all individuals, you should be aware of this, because you exhibit a disposition to attribute what is not expressed.
Illustratively, never in my text is it asserted American students are flocking to majors in "math and science." What is asserted is policy makers are obsessed with "math and science," belying valuing "capitalism" over democracy.
As for, "the sciences teach students to think," again you're not making clear what disciplines you consider constituting "the sciences." Whatever these be, do not literature, history, philosophy "teach students to think?" Most especially, "teach students to think" in respect to the inter-human exchange fundamental to democracy?
Additionally, if you limit "the sciences" to the natural sciences, do not sociology, anthropology, government, economics, "teach students to think?" Well, in this respect, you do appear to back off, apparently attributing to "the sciences," teaching "students to think" in respect to "the material world."
Missing in your commentary is concern for teaching "students to think" in concerning phenomenal as well as testimonial knowledge. Science being a social activity of intersubjective verification, testimonial knowledge and incumbent phenomenal knowledge are fundamental to the scientific enterprise. Social sciences address testimonial knowledge, literature phenomenal knowledge, and philosophy in respect to epistemology the foundation of knowledge. Diminution of these studies necessarily, then, diminishes natural science.
By example, we have,
“Many of the abstractions that are characteristic of modern theoretical physics are to be found discussed in the philosophy of past centuries. At that time these abstractions could be disregarded as mere mental exercises by those scientists whose only concern was with reality, but today we are compelled by the refinements of experimental art to consider them seriously.” [Werner Heisenberg, The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory, trans. Carl Eckart and F. C. Hoyt (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1949), 65.]
As for your sentence, "The Enlightenment dismissed math and science the way you do?" it is incomplete, and as a phrase, declarative, not interrogative. It is my hope this does not exhibit a need on your part for remedial education in the fundamentals of grammar.
In your commentaries, here and previously, you seem more keen on attacking, then carrying on a discourse seeking a mutual consensus.
"In reply, rfloh, you've a tendency to portray yourself as learned and thoughtful, but your commentary belies both."
You have a tendency to portray yourself as learned and thoughtful, but your commentary belies both: most notably on the England riots, where your commentary, where every single one of your posts, revealed that you know almost nothing about England and the UK. The one on soccer hooligans, on how they are tolerated because they are white, whereas the recent rioters were not tolerated because they were black was especially hilariously ignorant and had little bearing on reality (for many years, soccer fans in England, white or not, hooligan or not, were treated as little better than rabid animals, by the police, by the establishment, pricipally because the majority of soccer fans were in the past from the working class). Not to mention that the majority of the recent rioters were white. You knowing little, just tossed some crappy theory at the wall.
"Illustratively, never in my text is it asserted American students are flocking to majors in "math and science." What is asserted is policy makers are obsessed with "math and science," belying valuing "capitalism" over democracy.
"
And where do you show any evidence for your assertion? Maybe policy makers emphasise science, because very few people take science. Where is your evidence for your assertion that an emphasis on math and science would lead to production of more goods and to a collapse in democracy?
"As for, "the sciences teach students to think," again you're not making clear what disciplines you consider constituting "the sciences." Whatever these be, do not literature, history, philosophy "teach students to think?" Most especially, "teach students to think" in respect to the inter-human exchange fundamental to democracy?
"
Science: chemistry, physics, biology, math, engineering, computer science, astronomy and applied sciences that are based on the 4 pure sciences, math, chem, bio, physics. They teach students to think MATERIALLY. They teach, no they force students to look at the REAL world, and then, assess then asess the real world. They confront students with the material world. No, philosophy does NOT teach students to think that way. In fact, too much of modern philosophy has a tendency to disdain the material world, to be obsessed with thought experiments and pure logic. Scientists use logic as one tool out of many. Philosophers use logic as the main and only tool. In fact, your posts, specifically the ones on the English riots, are a classic example of disdain for material reality, in preference of models that you have constructed in your mind.
History is great, but history teaches students to think in a different manner, not worse, than the sciences.
"Missing in your commentary is concern for teaching "students to think" in concerning phenomenal as well as testimonial knowledge. Science being a social activity of intersubjective verification, testimonial knowledge and incumbent phenomenal knowledge are fundamental to the scientific enterprise. Social sciences address testimonial knowledge, literature phenomenal knowledge, and philosophy in respect to epistemology the foundation of knowledge. Diminution of these studies necessarily, then, diminishes natural science.
"
Yes, phenonemal and testimonial knowledge is important to the sciences. Which is why they are already taught in the sciences. The natural sciences address all the different types of knowledge, whether testimonial, phenomenal, even epistemology.
"As for your sentence, "The Enlightenment dismissed math and science the way you do?" it is incomplete, and as a phrase, declarative, not interrogative. It is my hope this does not exhibit a need on your part for remedial education in the fundamentals of grammar.
"
You cannot answer the question can you? So, you attempt to distract from the debate by whining about grammar.
"In your commentaries, here and previously, you seem more keen on attacking, then carrying on a discourse seeking a mutual consensus.
.."
When you can come up with commentary that is not a regurgitation of the whiny anti-science rant that has been lazily spewed by so many for so long, when you can come up with a post that is not an attack, then I will discourse with you. Your initial post here was an attack. So do not be surprised, and complain, when you get attacked in return.
rfloh, dismissing your use of demeaning language when accusing another of use of demeaning language, your response appears summarized in the following passage:
"Science: chemistry, physics, biology, math, engineering, computer science, astronomy and applied sciences that are based on the 4 pure sciences, math, chem, bio, physics. They teach students to think MATERIALLY. They teach, no they force students to look at the REAL world, and then, assess then assess the real world."
To what this assertion comes is "to think MATERIALLY [is] to look at the REAL world." Ironically, this is a metaphysical assertion about what constitutes reality, metaphysics of course being constituent of . . . gasp . . . philosophy. At best, you are reflecting logical positivism, except not quite. For the logical positivist, as well as quantum theory, the material is an abstraction, a set of possible experiences.
Being an abstraction, we have,
"Berkeley criticizes Newton’s fundamental concepts in a way that sounds most modern. [Max Jammer, Concepts of Force (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1999), 203.] . . . The only objective of physical science, according to Berkeley, is to find out the regularities and uniformities of natural phenomena and to account for the particular appearances ‘by reducing them under, and shewing their conformity to, such general rules.’ [Siris, sec. 232; Works of George Berkeley, ed. A. C. Fraser (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1901), vol. 3, p. 232.]"
Berkeley being a quintessential17th-18th Century idealist, that he "sounds most modern," is indicative of your rather archaic conception of the material. Indeed, your conception is not even Newtonian, failing to incorporate the, “Lord God Pantokrator . . . . a certain most subtle Spirit, which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies.” [Isaac Newton, “General Scholium,” in The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. Andrew Motte (London: Benjamin Motte, 1729), 393.] Tellingly in this respect, you avoid comment on the Heisenberg quotation. As to what led Heisenberg to this conclusion, it is the very set theoretic conception of "matter" I've already discussed.
Roots of this evolution go back to the philosopher Immanuel Kant's first and second antinomies concerning infinity. Applied to Euclid's fourth postulate, an objective mathematics by which the universe could be mapped appeared no longer viable. Attempting to resolve these antinomies, George Boole incorporated Kant's conception of categories into the development of mathematical set theory. This is extended to scientific observation by August Comte's theory of positivism.
As for,
"No, philosophy does NOT teach students to think that way. In fact, too much of modern philosophy has a tendency to disdain the material world, to be obsessed with thought experiments and pure logic. Scientists use logic as one tool out of many. Philosophers use logic as the main and only tool,"
we have a conundrum manifest by Richard Feynman. While asserting,
“There are no ‘wheels and gears’ beneath this [the physicist’s] analysis of Nature, if you want to understand Her, this [calculating probabilities] is what you have to take,” there is no, “difference between pure mathematics and physics,” [Richard P. Feynman, QED: the strange theory of light and matter (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006), 78.]
Feynman also asserts,
“the difference between pure mathematics and physics is that the equations of physics have a conceptual component. . . . There may be, and likely is, an irreducible metaphysical element to all physical concepts.” [John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin, Richard Feynman, A Life in Science (Dutton, Penguin Books, 1997), http://www.friesian.com/feynman.htm.]
Thus, when reducing the material to an abstract set, like you, Feynman still insists on an "irreducible metaphysical element." This, while unable to provide a mechanism with which physics can identify this "metaphysical element." Caught within the inconsistency of these conflicting conceptions, unlike you, Feynman concludes, “although we humans cut nature up in different ways, and we have different courses in different departments, such compartmentalization is really artificial.” [Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I (Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1964), 22-1.]
It is the unwillingness to recognize "such compartmentalization is really artificial" which is the crux of my criticism with the popular and, especially, political obsession with "math and science."
Finally, by the way, if you think me hostile to mathematics and physics, I've academic publications in both. Indeed, my current interest is in a rather new field of mathematics.
"To what this assertion comes is "to think MATERIALLY [is] to look at the REAL world." Ironically, this is a metaphysical assertion about what constitutes reality, metaphysics of course being constituent of . . . gasp . . . philosophy. At best, you are reflecting logical positivism, except not quite. For the logical positivist, as well as quantum theory, the material is an abstraction, a set of possible experiences.
"
Congratulations, you have demonstrated in one para why modern philosophy has become useless. Lots of rhetorical word games, lots of mental masturbation, but saying nothing much. You can argue as much as you want what is reality, whether our experiences are real, or imagined, or some dream of some more powerful being, or some lab experiment of some more powerful being with us nothing more than being the equivalent of lab rats, etc ad infinitum. Irrelevant. Whether our lives are real or not does not matter. What matters is we are living in them. Whether the world we are living in is real or an illusion, does not matter. What matters is that we are living in that world, imagined or not. Thus, study the world we live in. Modern philosophy has chosen to abandon study of that world, choosing to instead engage in rhetorical games, logical games, thought experiments, mental masturbation. History has not chosen to abandon study of the world, BTW.
Just as your posts on the English riots were lots of word games, mental jerking off against the wall to see what sticks and what does not.
This sounds like a great idea and so of course it will never happen. A country that can't even enact universal health care after all these decades is not likely to have a nation-wide program to improve the school infrastructure. We have a whole party that is dedicated to defunding government because they "hate" government and any sensible regulations.
JJ: You left out the "other" party that goes along with all of these defunding options. Curious, that level of complicity... makes one wonder whose interests are being served.
Apart from very real organizing efforts on the part of Christian Theocrats to gain control of this nation's levers of power, a sane person might come to wonder how it's possible that such a crew of complete and utter misfits could be displayed--like the political version of a Miss America contest--as candidates for the Amerikan throne?
Of course if the REAL powerbrokers were dedicated to veering the nation continuously to the Right, then by putting the crazies up on display, "adult" thinkers would, of course, opt for those who appear sane and intelligent in comparison. By this machination, the true fact that both sets of pretenders serve the same interests becomes far less ostensible.
I wonder if Hollywood helped to engineer this script? And if anyone thinks that idea is farfetched, they ought to know that there are always black budgets made available to Hollywood (and in the past, some notable writers), to come up with films and books that vividly portrayed the necessary enemy du jour as just that.
The muscle of state, in the form of militarism and its "adventures," is greased along by a population already culturally conditioned to accept said "enemy" as the necessary scapegoat to purge.
Michelle, there is nothing not to like about your suggestion.
But, have you heard the freely spoken agenda of ending all "entitlements," of which public education is considered prime, by certain ideologists and their partners in government? So, I don't think your good idea is going to fly in today's Congress for a Few of the People.
Disagree with Chen on this one.
First, school construction and maintenance spending should be managed at the state and local levels where voters have more direct say with political leaders in regards to taxation. As it is, state and local politicians are continually being challenged by voters on policy, and that is healthy although the results are not always positive. What Chen doesn't mention is one of the reasons that schools maintenance spending is deferred is that many voters have been voting to cut their own property taxes, which funds the schools. Also, a risk with Federal grants is they will just substitute for local spending as local spending is cut.
As it stands, for better or worse, we currently live in a period of scarce tax funding resources. That won't change until we as voters elect out politicians from both parties. In these times of scarce tax funding resources, teachers are getting laid off, class sizes are increasing, and schools are being closed and consolidated. If we are going to dedicate massive spending on education, it should be to address these problems first.
If the Federal government is going to get involved in a jobs program, I'd rather see something that will create lasting jobs without having to rely on Federal spending, such as funding towards a greener society, whether it be in transportation, energy, or whatever.
The oldest elementary in my town was built in 1936 as a result of a local bond and FDR's stimulus package aimed at rebuilding schools, etc. The federal government can fund local projects without controlling them. The source of stimulus money could be a transactions tax, increased corporate taxes, increased taxes on the rich, winding down military spending, as well as the federal government expanding credit through offering near zero interest credit to school districts for rebuilding schools. As far as near-permanent jobs go (Do those exist?), there is enough infrastructure improvement work to keep us busy far into the future, thanks to conservative disinvestment in all things public over the last thirty years.
One thing to watch out for (IF such a program ever implemented) is the process of issuing contracts for the construction.
Katrina is a prime example of this.
What will happen is bids will go out to contracting companies which will take a significant portion of the dollars in the way of "Profits" for shareholders. Subcontracting will then go on down the line with each subsequent contractor trying to maximize profits.
Laborers will be paid a pittance and the stimulus of such will be minimized.
Insiders will grow wealthy. See all that reconstruction that went on in Iraq as example.
No, fixing schools is a bad idea. With the lack of funding for schools the emphasis should be on human capital, students and teachers.
I have a better idea. Since corporations are flush with trillions of cash, require them to retrofit their plants and offices to a much higher standard of energy efficiency. DO NOT OFFER THEM TAX INCENTIVES TO UPGRADE. They have the cash and they can easily afford to pay for the upgrade. Since "trickle down economics" does not work, at least they should be required by law to spend their excess cash on energy efficiency while the have the cash to spend. That would benefit energy efficiency, create jobs, and be non inflationary. Get er' done!