JFK took us to the moon. Let BHO take America back to school.
But that will take time. There’s simply no shortcut for a stimulus that stimulates minds not just salaries. “You can bail out a bank; you can’t bail out a generation,” says the great American inventor, Dean Kamen, who has designed everything from the Segway to artificial limbs. “You can print money, but you can’t print knowledge. It takes 12 years.”
Sure, we’ll waste some money doing that. That will happen with bridges, too. But a bridge is just a bridge. Once it’s up, it stops stimulating. A student who normally would not be interested in science but gets stimulated by a better teacher or more exposure to a lab, or a scientist who gets the funding for new research, is potentially the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. They create good jobs for years.
Perhaps more bridges can bail us out of a depression, but only more Bills and Steves can bail us into prosperity.
This subsidizes universities which are the least efficient and most costly way of providing an education (usually steeped in liberal biases to boot).
If the US is going to spend 5,000 per person on schooling, let them give it directly to the individuals to pay for or set up a schools for themselves and for their children. Ten kids/adults paying 5,000 each could pay an out of work PhD 50,000 to tutor them full time in a small group setting. Parent could get together and set up their own school focussing on serving various special needs. Same if folks wanted to study electrical work or even medicine. If there were simply college leaving exams, or certification exams for electrician apprentices or physicians (at least for the first two years which is all bookwork) instead of the current university based boondoggle, folks could study with an expert, take the test and be certified as having a college degree in Art History or Philosophy, or as being prepared to enter a trade as a apprentice electrician or as a third year (clinical apprenticeships) medical student.
Education is a good thing. Universities are a waste of money.
It would be efficient and cheap to let individuals set up schools for themselves from scratch?
Personally, I’m quite grateful for having the benefits of a liberal arts education at an American university.
[i]”You can print money, but you can’t print knowledge. It takes 12 years.”[/i]
No it doesn’t. Formal schooling for most people should end at age 14, if not 12. Friedman should know better than to quote the inventor of one of the most ballyhooed gizmo’s in history as a source–but then he wouldn’t be the inestimably fatuous Thomas Friedman.
“A student who normally would not be interested in science but gets stimulated by a better teacher or more exposure to a lab, or a scientist who gets the funding for new research, is potentially the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.”
The idea that all these little Bill Gateses and Steve Jobses are out there, undiscovered and underfunded, is pure hokum. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are at the far, far right of the Bell Curve. They are market makers by virtue of their talent.
Our legislature just cut education by the equivalent of $150.00 per student. That adds up when you count heads.
FSU was also affected, cutting 200 more jobs from the University staff and faculty. Which stinks because I have about a dozen applications there.
#2. If my kids could just take a school leaving examination and go straight to university, I would be glad to set up a school for 10 middle schoolers in my living room and hire an out of work PhD (or for that matter library Jim) to teach them. There are excellent curriculum out there or we could follow the International Baccalauriate curriculum. Five thousand dollars is a lot of money, and does not need to be spent on administrators, cafeteria attendants, or soccar coaches.
I skipped two years of US college and I found that the two years I did take (taking advanced courses at Northwestern U) were significantly inferior to the education I received in my private high school which was a lot cheaper than university.
Choice is useful.
Clueless, I had the exact same experiance. I had a much better education at my private high school (which was cheaper than my public university) than I did at university, apart from independent reading using the school’s library resources.
Well, maybe what we need to do is provide private high school for everybody. 🙂
#7 No. What we need to provide is the opportunity for parents or adults to choose the education that suits them, and to hire the folks they feel are most competant to provide that education. If we provide “private high school” we will have the same inferior and expensive product that public high school and education is.
[blockquote]One of the smartest stimulus moves we could make would be to eliminate federal income taxes on all public schoolteachers so more talented people would choose these careers. I’d also double the salaries of all highly qualified math and science teachers.[/blockquote]
Am I interpreting this correctly? He seems to be arguing that cutting taxes while raising benefits/salary so that improved prosperity will trickle down in the long term via education.
Is Thomas Friedman, of all people, arguing targeted supply side economics here after he has railed against the principle so many times in previous columns?
Now that’s news worthy.
What an interesting idea. Don’t tax people on the basis of their income. Tax them on the basis of the perceived social utility of their jobs. Let’s see. We shouldn’t tax policemen, firemen, doctors, nurses social workers, garbage collectors, etc. etc. At the end of the day , who should we tax? I know – how about Episcopal priests and bishops? On the social utility scale, they rate just below politicians and DMV employees who should be made to carry the nation’s tax burden for the rest of us.
#11 I believe you are referring to the Millenials, who have been the subject of some discussion here:
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/7567
Well, I’d like to see teachers in Colorado paid at least as much as they are in Wyoming, if not in public schools in Montana. A potential $7,000 per year loss in salary cost Colorado the services of
one very fine elementary teacher!
Formal education is fine, if the product is a truly educated person.
I’ve had a couple of recent h.s. graduates show up at the library and tell me, “Our counselor told us that after we graduated we could come to the library and y’all would teach us to read.” Only happened once. And I’ve had college students who could not string 5 words together to make a complete sentence…and I was supposed to tech them technical writing!
The fact that education is publicly subsidized is the reason the majority of college students have no business being there. And colleges themselves have morphed through government externality into bizarre, huge institutions now requiring their own police forces. They are not “collegial” in anything but a formalistic sense. In fact, they are jungles where terrible things can happen.
From pre-K to Ph.D., the state needs to get out of education all together.
#11
I am also a professor (in mathematics.) While I agree with your assessment of our current students, better teachers will not fix the problem. A good teacher cannot help a student who does not believe he has to work, or thinks that learning is all about being taught.
No, what our students need is to be thrown out into the hot agricultural fields and sweat shops to earn $5 an hour, work long hours and live in horrible conditions until they realize that they are worthless until they have skills. Give them a year or two at this and they’ll be back ready to learn, even with bad teachers – or no teachers, for that matter.
Unfortunately, it will never happen because the national mentality won’t let these things happen. We probably need a major economic collapse or a world war to make it happen.
I would also add to your comment about the teachers unions that we need to eliminate education degrees from university curricula. The education professoriate has nothing useful to contribute to the teaching profession.
There is a profound difference between schooling and education. Governments these days focus on schools and call it “education.”
Our schools, at all levels, however, do a miserable job of actually educating our youth. Having taught high school science for two years a generation ago I thought that substitute teaching might be to my liking once again. What I ran into in Grade 12 these last few years would have had a difficult time in Grade 9 back when I was in high school.
Even more than ignorance of basic subject matter, our students have not the first clue about logic and rational thinking. One way, just one, this plays out is in devastating ignorance of important key differences, to name a few:
*precision vs. accuracy
*association vs. causality
*implication vs. inference
*celebrity vs. importance
*money vs. wealth
Forget the sciences for a moment — and my first two degrees are in the ‘hard’ sciences (as opposed to ‘life’ sciences) — at the Grade 12 level there is absolutely stunning ignorance of:
*history
*geography
*our constitution and government
*statistics (and evaluation of data or theories)
*economics
*functional expression of an ideal (oral or written)
Mix in a preoccupation with “feelings,” coupled with a sense of entitlement — any echoes of the Baby Boom there, perhaps? — and you have a toxic mix of young people totally unprepared to contribute to a democracy in any functional way.
This … in a state with fewer than 3 million people, spending 70% of its budget on “education,” not counting all the school board funding, now representing more than half of our county property tax bills. Unfortunately, we in Kansas are far from alone.
The most costly commodity in all America is … ignorance.
Those who wish to spend more on this ongoing debacle are simply fools.
“ideal” —> “idea”
I don’t know if I’d go as far as #14 and demand a complete purge of the State from education, but it’s been clear for several decades now that federal intervention in the area is not the answer to what ails us. A President truly interested in improving education in America would fire everyone at the DoEd on January 21st and have the building either dynamited or turned into a warehouse.
#17 Matt – Okay, fair enough. I guess I have never been particularly inspired by a teacher in my years of schooling (OTOH I have been inspired by the material), but I can see how some people might be different.
Clueless, Check the laws in your own state. I’ve four kids, ages 47-50. Daughter #1 was less than enthusiastic about high school so, on her own, she found out which course and how many credits were required for graduation. She finished high school in 3 years, short 1/2 credit in English. No problem getting into college. Daughter #2 asked permission to drop out of high school halfway through her soph. year on the grounds that she was afraid of getting sucked into the drug culture. I permitted her to do that (found out 20 years later it was really because her Spanish teacher couldn’t keep his hands off her bosom and she didn’t want me to spend the rest of my life in prison for murder). She spent 6 months managing the household (4 more teens, two her senior) for me so that I could concentrate on my new job. Then she spent 6 month living on a farm to learn farming. She took the ACT at 16 and entered college on the basis of her scores. After earning her college degree in education and teaching 13 years, when she applied for entrance into a Master of School Admin. program, she was required to present either a high school diploma or a GED certificate (figure that one out if you can.) Son #1 dropped out of school at 15 and hit the road.
When he finally landed he found out that he did not need either a high school diploma or a GED to enroll in jr. college and take the architect courses in which he was interested. He has his own business and is the best concrete man in the area. Son #2 was self supporting at 16, had his own apartment. His h.s. principal signed the papers for him to take the GED the day after he turned 17 and he went on to the University of Kansas. He has a degree in French Language & Literature and many grad courses in writing and philosophy. He is an exhibit designer for a science museum.
The 5th kid was living with us temporarily, she finished high school the usual way.
Point: There is usually a way, other than the conventional way, to meet one’s own educational goals. Kids who are independent and creative can manage to find one.
I agree that today’s students are dreadful compared to those of twenty years ago. That goes for many medical students as well. However, the best way to educate a spoiled, lazy, ignorant and entitled 13-25 year old is not by spending more OPM (other peoples’ money) teaching them. The best way is to permit them to be educated by the discipline of the workforce and the economy.
There is no reason why mandatory, free primary education should extend beyond 14. Folks who are motivated could then apply to various schools (either trade, high school or undergraduate depending upon educational attainments and interests) and there should be a stipend (the amount currently spent on high school) to subsidize folks who are accepted. Schools should have the option of expelling people over 14 who aren’t doing well. Those who are not motivated would be well advised to go work at a job that requires heavy labor with payment via piece work, so that they can decide if they would like to put in the work necessary to do something more pleasant.
The problem is not that public teachers salaries are too low (after expenses, and on an hourly basis they are considerably more than family practitioners salaries) but that teachers are expected to educate adults who don’t wish to study but feel they are owed a sheepskin and a “good job”. This makes most public schools zoos where relatively few students are worth teaching and where the working environment is actively hostile to a consciensious teacher. Private schools can get away with paying their teachers next to nothing, BECAUSE they provide students whose parents are more likely to make them work hard, and be respectful of their teachers.
Again, getting the government OUT of education would be more helpful than simply throwing more money at the schools.
“BHO”.
As someone who loves to observe language(s) I thought it interesting that already some are using this abbreviation. Took me a moment to realize what it stood for.
I doubt there are easy solutions to the “problem” of education. The economics of teaching, however, is that there is little incentive for smart people to become teachers. The pay is poorer than professions that reward creative thinking.
There is some evidence (as Malcom Gladwell recently showed in a New Yorker ARticle) that it is the worst teachers that tend to screw up a system: about 10%. The challenge is to figure out who those teachers are before they get tenure. The basic way is through an apprenticeship program. Don’t let teachers teach on their own for a few years, and do solid evaluations of them each year. Identifying poor teachers costs money, but it saves lots in the long term.
There is an interesting correlation between prisons and schools. People tend to be more willing to spend money on prisons than schools, and when one goes down, the other goes up.
Clueless mentions getting the government out of education, but I’m not sure what the “government” is. He describes parents getting together some PhD (and where would these PhDs come from who would work without benefits? why wouldn’t they just teach in a school?), but on the other hand, that’s what towns already do. The economy of scale indicates that it’s easier to herd kids together. Personally, I like Clueless’s idea quite a bit. But its not going to be popular.
But the entire country has a vested interest in a minimum amount of education. It has been, by and large, the engine of growth for the economy. Anyone who has ever gone to a public school has, in some way, benefitted rather than the vague alternative, which is currently TV and Malls: what our economy is built to provide.
There is a large horde of unemployed PhDs and post docs. Currently they drive trucks and flip burgers. They would be glad to work as teachers. I know plenty of folks like this. In point of fact a government job is unusually good in today’s economy. You have great benefits and tenure. Few people outside of government and education enjoys these luxuries, even Detroit no longer can afford them.
What is the evidence that possessing a PhD makes one a capable, competent teacher? I know some PhD’s who are better suited to flip burgers than to teach kids.
#27 I agree. I’m simply saying that it is not difficult to find somebody with sufficient formal education to teach at the secondary school level. I know plenty of teachers who are also better suited to burger flipping. The solution is to make the teachers (whether they have Education degrees or Physics post doctorates) accountable by allowing parents to take their stipend and go find somebody who can teach their kid better, rather than insisting that everybody send their kids to the current, government run monopoly.
[i]There is some evidence (as Malcom Gladwell recently showed in a New Yorker ARticle) that it is the worst teachers that tend to screw up a system: about 10%.[/i]
That’s what the market does: allows consumers to reject the bad product for the good product. But if it’s OPM, then that winnowing mechanism is removed. But that’s not the statistic to worry about. The one to worry about is that education majors–a largely made-up discipline–are in the bottom half (Walter Williams says it’s the bottom third) academically.
[i]The economy of scale indicates that it’s easier to herd kids together.[/i]
Sure, if you’re a gigando bureaucracy that exists primarily for the employment of education majors. In reality, children are not blank slates who can all be sat down in one place for 12 years and taught the same thing and all go off to college to become software developers, or aerospace engineers, or whatever trendy occupation out there that the Left believes anybody could do given the right schooling.
So you read Malcolm Gladwell and the New Yorker? Never would have guessed.
#29 The New Yorker is a great magazine, Byzantine. Malcolm Gladwell is a great popularizer and a superb writer.
Byzantine, although I do think choice and incentives matter, even for schools, I don’t think it would work as easily as you think it does. I’d also scrap the education degree for an apprenticeship program, and probably give teachers much more power than hire bureaucrats to fill out forms for the government.
I don’t think, however, people would like to spend money – raising taxes – to compete for the best teachers, however.
Clueless may be right about the number of PhDs who are flipping burgers, but if they were good teachers, why wouldn’t they work in public schools? Perhaps a PhD doesn’t make a good teacher. They might know stuff, but be unable to help students.
And in this economy, I’m glad there are some people who have government jobs. They probably aren’t the ones foreclosing!
#30. It is not that easy to work in a public school. I looked into switching from medicine to education recently. I would have to work part time as a substitute teacher while getting bogus education credits over the course of a year. Then I would need to take a certification test which mostly covers garbage like child psychology. Then I _might_ be hired as a teacher, or I might simply stay on as a permanent substitute teacher.
There is a similar problem in the private schools which also now require teaching certification in my state. This is despite the fact that there is a shortage of math and science teachers. The teachers union has managed to protect their jobs by making it difficult for folks who know more than them to replace them.
As to in this economy government jobs make sense, that is true for individuals. Government teachers get a paycheck that is paid for by taxes confiscated by folks who are actually productive. However the idea that a nation can grow stronger by taxing the dwindling number of folks who create value to do the bureacratic equivalent of paying people to dig holes and fill them up is misguided. It simply transfers the risk of forclosure from those who are most productive to those favored of the government.
Having said this, government jobs do help the individual. I will be trading my risky, high pressure, long hour and litigenous private sector job for a much easier, government job with better hours and no risk, and almost as much money.
[Slightly edited in part as requested by commenter – Elf]
Can the last sentence of my post above. I thought I had deleted it.
Also that should have been transfering the risk of forclosure from those favored of government to those who are most productive.
We home school our children. We receive nothing from the government for this. We continue to pay onerous property taxes to fund the public school system that graduates about half the kids that enter it. Of those that graduate, about half are functionally illiterate.
It costs us about $1,200 total per year for our curriculum for our two children. We don’t have strangers raising our kids. They aren’t being constantly exposed to the most base and vulgar of our society. They are not being bullied. They do not endure peer pressure or worry about their appearance. They are safe from assault, sexual predation, drugs, alcohol, and smoking. As part of their education, they receive instruction in the Bible and morals. They are using computers and audio/video materials in their rigorous course work.
They love it. They are happy. We are happy.
We have forsaken the second income and scaled back our lifestyle accordingly. Yet, I have money set aside to place into ROTH IRAs for both children when they get part time jobs. God has liberally provided for all of our needs and most of our wants.
By the time they are my age, they will have more in their retirement accounts than I do now.
There are a couple of million just like us and our numbers are growing.