Education Today

I just spent the last 2.5 weeks at Vincennes University working with an early college readiness program. The students had a good time, for the most part, and seemed to get a lot of the experience.

I’ve spent the better part of a week trying to figure out why I agreed to work there in the first place. Then, I ran across this comment on Digg today that pretty much sums it up:

The school system is a joke.

I spent 12 years reading textbooks and taking tests and learned nothing about REAL WORLD problems and how to overcome them.

How to write a check. How to pay bills on time and why it’s important. How to buy a car. How to buy a house. How to NOT get into credit card debt. How to change a tire. How to fix household items. How to get a job. How to keep a job. Communication skills and why they’re important.

These are all skills I had to learn on my own, because in school I was too busy learning how to factor a polynomial and building bird houses.

Autoshop [sic] was OPTIONAL, and 2 years foreign language REQUIRED. It’s great that I can say “Good Morning” in Spanish, but I still have no idea how to change the oil in my car.

I’m home-schooling my kids.

I agree with most of this, but not all. I don’t think the school system is useful today. The students we worked with at VU were on the right track thanks to Ben Davis Univ. HS, Arsenal and Center Grove high schools. They get a HS Diploma and an Associate’s Degree from VU before they’re old enough to drink. Frankly, HS diplomas need to be abolished and Associate’s made the norm.

Some would argue that school “teaches people how to think”, but that’s what everyone says about college. So, that can’t be it.

I’m not sure knowing how to change the oil in your car is all that necessary. Even if I knew how to do it, I wouldn’t want to. And home-schooling should almost be put on-par with child abuse. You end up with too many kids incapable of socializing and functioning with everyone else.

But, they’re a lot of practical things in life that schools don’t teach well or at all. Like financial management, how to live with dignity, respect others, etc. Hopefully, these are all things I helped impart on the students at X-Mester.

Texas Schools Ban…Everything

I’m a big states-rights fan. Little democratic laboratories where the will of the people can be heard. Fortunately, we have a federal system that can step in to fix massacres like this.

The Texas Board of Education has removed the following from Texas school books and could impact a decade of Texas public school children.

1. References to Thomas Jefferson have been removed.
2. There is no church/state separation.
3. The U.S. is now a “constitutional republic”, not “democratic”.
4. Hip-Hop is not an official cultural movement (can’t say I disagree with this. I can get behind early stuff like Run D.M.C. and the like.)
5. Texas will no longer teach students that religions are protected under the U.S. constitution and can’t be “favored”.
6. McCarthyism is protected and favored.
7. Texas will teach students the emergence of the Republican platform in the 80’s and 90’s.
8. No more sociological discussion of “transsexuals and who knows what else”.
9. “Capitalism” is now the “Free Enterprise System”.
10. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy and Justice Sotomayor have no coverage in Texas textbooks. Reagan ranks pretty high up, though.
11. In an odd move considering Texas’ location, no Hispanics died at the Alamo.

I suspect this will get overturned very, very quickly. I’m sure the ACLU is descending on Texas in swarms not seen since the days of the carrier pigeon.

Unemployment Trauma

The NY Times has an interesting piece on the trauma of unemployment:

Nearly half of the adults surveyed admitted to feeling embarrassed or ashamed most of the time or sometimes as a result of being out of work. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the traditional image of men as breadwinners, men were significantly more likely than women to report feeling ashamed most of the time.

There was a pervasive sense from the poll that the American dream had been upended for many. Nearly half of those polled said they felt in danger of falling out of their social class, with those out of work six months or more feeling especially vulnerable. Working-class respondents felt at risk in the greatest numbers.

Nearly half of respondents said they did not have health insurance, with the vast majority citing job loss as a reason, a notable finding given the tug of war in Congress over a health care overhaul. The poll offered a glimpse of the potential ripple effect of having no coverage. More than half characterized the cost of basic medical care as a hardship.

Many in the ranks of the unemployed appear to be rethinking their career and life choices. Just over 40 percent said they had moved or considered moving to another part of the state or country where there were more jobs. More than two-thirds of respondents had considered changing their career or field, and 44 percent of those surveyed had pursued job retraining or other educational opportunities.

My Dad and I were discussing his nearly two-year unemployment stint earlier today. I’ve tried for years to get him to go to school and study harder than he thinks he can. My Dad, I believe, is a good benchmark for most other average Americans. Frankly, I think a lot of people looking for work are just looking for something to plop in their hometown and refuse to do much else. Dad does not believe anyone is capable of going to school and working at the same time because he “has to have time to sleep.”

I respected John McCain on the campaign trail last year for telling people their factory jobs aren’t coming back to America. He was right about that and people like my Dad are dragging their feet in adapting to this brave new world. Dad said just today that rather than “helping people go to school or get a degree, the state should just be ‘creating jobs’.” That’s a dangerous kind of reliance on the government that demands the easiest solution for the populous. Not to mention the fact that government doesn’t just “make jobs”. No need to learn something when you can just show up and move boxes for $20 an hour.

For many others, what kind of a boom would we have if healthcare were granted to everyone? The people trapped in their dead-end cubicle jobs could finally be freed to develop new businesses and industries because they wouldn’t be shackled to someplace just for the health insurance. I think businesses know that and want to keep that Ace up their sleeve.

It’s a brave new world.

Too Cool for School

I’m not sure where I fall on this matter:

When the Indiana Education Roundtable met last month, Gov. Mitch Daniels had recommended reading for its members. He gave each a copy of Charles Murray’s “Real Education.”

“Provocative,” the governor told the Roundtable at the meeting’s end, and the author’s views have “changed the way I think about education.”

A few of Murray’s primary assertions:

•“There’s not much that even the best schools can do to raise the reading and math achievement of low-ability children.”

•“One of the most damaging messages of educational romanticism has been that everyone should go to college.”

•“The proposition is not that America’s future should depend on an elite that is educated to run the country, but that whether we like it or not, America’s future does depend on an elite that runs the country.”

Honestly, at first I thought, “Oh. That all makes sense. Not everyone can do everything. Some people, quite frankly are just dumb. Always were and always will be.” Then, I kept reading and it turns out my initial thought makes me racist and terrible. Turns out, educators on an education roundtable don’t like it when someone tells them that what they’re doing might not be that great.

On one hand, I don’t doubt that some geneticist could come along and say, “Look at this, I found the “smart” gene” that proves people are capable of scoring well on some standardized test that doesn’t mean much anyway.

On the other hand, I don’t doubt you could find a “dumb gene” that makes you do one piss poor job on a test like ISTEP or the SAT, either. Thus, why can’t we just realize that some people do better at some things than others? Why can’t schools just try to give people a decent chance to dabble in lots of different things until people find a niche? We can all agree that everyone has a niche in life, right?

Frankly, you can’t easily write off children when they’re 8 and plop them into some sort of tiered educational system like the article suggests. BUT, speaking from my own experience, I know what I’m good at and what I’m not. Here is a list of things I can’t do:

• Math
• Car repair
• Sports

I’ve never been any good at any of those things. Ever. And I never will be. I don’t have the body for sports. I don’t have the patience or desire to get dirty enough to work on a car (I get mad when I have to get out of my car at the gas station because it smells bad). And I don’t have the ability to do math.

Some would say, “Sure, but you can learn math.” Um, no. Actually, I can’t. It’s been 22 years and I still do basic math on a calculator. Ask me to subtract 23 from 402 and I’m flustered. So, why do we keep wasting money trying to teach me something I clearly can’t do? Beyond basic arithmetic and financial stuff, leave it at that.

I’m not ready to write off Daniels’ or Murray’s opinion. They might be on to something. I’m not, however, ready to slice up kids into class systems that will still favor the wealthy. In my dictatorship everyone gets a chance to dabble in everything — from engineering to dance. Help people find what they can naturally do best and make them great at doing just that.

UPDATE: Abdul over at RTV6 has similar commentary posted on the Capitol WatchBlog.

Indiana is not California

Well. This sucks:

California may need a $7 billion emergency loan from the federal government to pay for “teachers’ salaries, nursing homes, law enforcement and every other state-funded service” this month, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger warns.

California is running short on cash, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger warns in a letter.

…

California State Treasurer Bill Lockyer issued a statement a day earlier saying because of the national financial crisis, California “has been locked out of credit markets for the past 10 days.”

Thankfully, I live in Indiana where we figured out a few years back how smart it was not to spend more than you take in with taxes and other revenue:

Credit rating agency Standard and Poor’s (S&P), citing Indiana’s “continued strong management” and economic development efforts, has raised the state’s issuer credit rating to AAA, the highest rating it assigns. State officials say it is the first time in history that Indiana has attained S&P’s top credit rating.

You know, you Californians can just come to Indiana and get away from your broke crap hole. Heck, come soon and you might even get two free years of education:

The Hoosier College Promise would be available to Indiana students from families who earn about $60,000 or less annually. They would receive two years of free tuition at Ivy Tech Community College or an equivalent amount of $6,000 to use for their first two years at another college or university that is recognized by the State Student Assistance Commission of Indiana (SSACI).

Governor Mitch Daniels will ask the next Indiana General Assembly to approve the Hoosier College Promise, a program that would provide Indiana high school graduates with more affordable access to higher education.