[mike777]

A bit off topic. In my local Sunday paper there is yet another article about our local county school district and poor performing schools. Schools that have been poor performers for decades despite multi millions poured into these specific schools. The article points out how 50 million more has been raised by private sources to help improve these schools.

The more I read the article the more angry I got. I noticed a picture which showed a huge modern classroom with only about 10 fifth graders in it. The caption read how the teacher was teaching the kids how to make a paper name card. Yes a name card! The article went on to talk about how the kids got trips to a very pretty park located 5 miles away and a trip to Washington DC paid for by the PTA.

There was basically nothing about the kids reading, writing or doing arithmetic. The schools had less than 22% of their students performing at grade level. Again these poor levels have been going on for decades at these schools. There were plenty of money, clean modern classrooms, plenty of teachers and teacher aids. The Principales complained how the kids came from poverty and high teacher turnover are the reasons for continued failures.

[kenberg]

Education is a topic very much worth discussing as we head into the 2016 elections. Here is a very depressing article from today's Washington Post. The story discusses a general problem but concetrates on one young man, Jadareous Davis. He struggled through life and through high school and after some false starts he is, perhaps, giving a course in diesel mechanics a serious try. I don't know if this will work out for him but I would like it to and I would like such training to be given far more emphasis than I see it getting. Everyone keeps talking about getting kids ready for college. Mr. Davis graduated from a very poorly rated school in a state known to be not good in education. He had his troubles getting thorugh, he graduated at age 19 with , I think, a 1.8 gpa. Maybe his kids (as near as I can tell he does not yet have any) can go to college, I think diesel mechanic would be a fine objective for him and I wish him the very best of luck. I don't mean it as an also ran, I mean it as a good job.

We have a mess. Some schools are doing great. My grandkids are doing fine. I mentioned I took over a class from an ill colleague and I enjoy the students greatly. But that's my life and, to dramatize a bit, my America. Some other places? They need help.

We need to help, and, I believe, we also need to be clear about our limitations. As a society we can and we should provide better opportunity.But Mr. Davis comes from a difficult (not really impossible but difficult) background. We cannot entirely fix that. We can help some, but if people make really bad choices then things will not go well.

A kid should have a decent school to go to. That much is clear to me. Beyond that, I see difficulties that I cannot solve.

[blackshoe]

I've been a diesel mechanic. It's not a bad job at all.

[kenberg]

blackshoe, on 2015-October-18, 17:40, said:

I've been a diesel mechanic. It's not a bad job at all.

That's just what I would expect. I was working a good job making pretty decent money between my junior and senior year in college. Not really much of a skilled job, what I was doing, but it had possibilities and I considered chucking college and going that route. I didn't do it, but I considered it. The thing is, I was really interested in what went on in college. I had taken a summer college course in physics between my junior and senior high school years. I didn't register, I just asked if I could sit in and the prof said ok. On balance, staying in college seemed right to me so I did it. But we have all of these young people who wish to make something of themselves but are not really all that academically oriented. I think it's nuts to try to sell them all on college. Some should go, some shouldn't. The years 17-22 are crucial years. It's a time when people think for themselves and prepare for the future. If those years slip by as the person tries to be something that he has no interest in or talent for, instead of preparing for something he could do enjoyably and profitably, it is not easy to get those years back.

What should a young person do? That's tough. But I think diesel mechanic and college should be seen as good choices, one choice good for some, the other choice good for others. There are more than a few out there whose four years in college prepared them for nothing, and who could have used that time, and money, for something they had an interest in,.

Anyway, we need to give the kids a chance. Some of these high schools are dead ends.

[akwoo]

The worry is that diesel mechanic might be a job that almost doesn't exist in 30 years. It seems like one of those jobs where most of the more routine parts can be taken over by robots, leaving only jobs for master mechanics who can solve tougher problems (though I wonder how they'll get trained) and folks skilled at managing the robots. We might only need the 10-20% most skilled mechanics out of the ones we have today.

The folks who don't want to go to college because they don't want to be in a classroom and see other opportunities are probably okay. The ones who can't make it through college because they haven't figured out how to take in new information and use it to come up with solutions to problems not identical to ones they've seen before are the ones I worry about, because they won't make it as a master mechanic either.

The quality of teachers is a serious concern. Too many of our teachers are unable to do anything but regurgitate memorized information that might as well be Greek to them. The worst of them equate learning with memorizing mumbo jumbo. They are going to have trouble preparing their students to think for themselves, and they are also concentrated in the poorest schools. We can't replace them because there is no one better to replace them with.

I have colleagues who teach the mathematics classes required for people who want to become elementary school teachers. It is clear from all my conversations with them that anyone with less than an A in that class does not understand arithmetic, by which I mean that they may be able to carry out the standard procedure for adding or multiplying two whole numbers, but they have no idea what this procedure means or why it works, or even that the procedure has meaning. If we only allowed people with As in that class to teach elementary school, half the elementary school classrooms in the country would go empty.

[mike777]

ok ok


I guess my point was missed.

I am angry because these schools are not drilling students in reading, writing and arithmetic.


I grant you can drill in many ways, that is ok...but I did not see in my local article any drilling.

I saw two big and common blame:
1) my students are poor/pverty
2) my teachers are short term, not low level...short term

---


I mentioned this before ...in my mba program the few teachers in it were terrible....they just wanted to pass with the least amount of effort, they were vocal about it...to be fair

--


I know many years ago my Mom's paycheck was based on grad units...

[akwoo]

The problem is that drilling when not accompanied by some kind of understanding is useless.

I'm sure you (at least if you're in a country where pennies are still actually used) have had the experience of going to the store, seeing the register ring up $19.72, paying with a $20 bill, seeing the register show $0.28 in change, and finding 2 pennies in your pocket. You give the 2 pennies to the cashier, who now has no idea whether they now owe you $0.26, $0.30, $0.14, or $0.56.

Most of those cashiers, if you gave them a list of arithmetic problems to do, would probably still remember what they learned from 3rd grade and could do them quite accurately. (At least that is the case around here.) But to them, just as it was to their teachers, those problems are just meaningless hoops they have jumped through, completely disconnected from everything else, including making change for a customer.

If anything, the meaningless drill is counterproductive, because the students now think that they spent all those hours working on arithmetic, and therefore they know everything there is to know about it. This is particularly a problem in those mathematics classes for future elementary school teachers I just told you about, because there are a lot of students in there who think they don't need to learn anything about arithmetic, when in fact they don't understand arithmetic at all.

[helene_t]

akwoo, on 2015-October-18, 20:50, said:

If we only allowed people with As in that class to teach elementary school, half the elementary school classrooms in the country would go empty.

Maybe the problem is that elementary school teachers are expected to be able to teach everything. I am sure many teachers are, but there are also those who are good at teaching only some subjects.

[kenberg]

akwoo, on 2015-October-18, 20:50, said:

The worry is that diesel mechanic might be a job that almost doesn't exist in 30 years. It seems like one of those jobs where most of the more routine parts can be taken over by robots, leaving only jobs for master mechanics who can solve tougher problems (though I wonder how they'll get trained) and folks skilled at managing the robots. We might only need the 10-20% most skilled mechanics out of the ones we have today.

The folks who don't want to go to college because they don't want to be in a classroom and see other opportunities are probably okay. The ones who can't make it through college because they haven't figured out how to take in new information and use it to come up with solutions to problems not identical to ones they've seen before are the ones I worry about, because they won't make it as a master mechanic either.

The quality of teachers is a serious concern. Too many of our teachers are unable to do anything but regurgitate memorized information that might as well be Greek to them. The worst of them equate learning with memorizing mumbo jumbo. They are going to have trouble preparing their students to think for themselves, and they are also concentrated in the poorest schools. We can't replace them because there is no one better to replace them with.

I have colleagues who teach the mathematics classes required for people who want to become elementary school teachers. It is clear from all my conversations with them that anyone with less than an A in that class does not understand arithmetic, by which I mean that they may be able to carry out the standard procedure for adding or multiplying two whole numbers, but they have no idea what this procedure means or why it works, or even that the procedure has meaning. If we only allowed people with As in that class to teach elementary school, half the elementary school classrooms in the country would go empty.

Jobs disappear, no doubt about that.But just as someone who made a living by, say, filing tax forms for individuals can adapt when a computer program does what they used to do, a person capable of learning diesel mechanics can learn a variant skill or a new skill as that job disappears. I have to look no farther than my father to see an example. He had no interest in academics, he could not understand why I did, but he was quite capable of skilled physical work and of adapting as needed. We are having someone come out (a few someones) to give us an estimate on replacing our roof. I will not be asking whether their workers went to college.


No doubt making a living requires responding to changes, much more so than in the past. And some people can't. That's a huge problem. But sending everyone off to college is not the answer. With the young man from the article I cited, I would worry that his high school training, and his early life in general, did not give him the skills needed for success at the diesel school. He has to be able to read, and he has to cooperatge with the program. Again from NPR: They were talking about helping young people take the right path. One young woman wanted to be a nurse but had been suspended from school for fighting. There is a lot to deal with to make this work.

[billw55]

akwoo, on 2015-October-18, 20:50, said:

The worry is that diesel mechanic might be a job that almost doesn't exist in 30 years. It seems like one of those jobs where most of the more routine parts can be taken over by robots, leaving only jobs for master mechanics who can solve tougher problems (though I wonder how they'll get trained) and folks skilled at managing the robots. We might only need the 10-20% most skilled mechanics out of the ones we have today.

Seems like I have been hearing things like that for, well, about 30 years. I think diesel mechanic is a pretty safe job actually. I doubt the demand is going away any time soon.

One big problem is that the public school system is now almost entirely dedicated to sending every kid to college. That just isn't realistic. A lot of them aren't going. So a large fraction of the students at many high schools are being force-fed coursework that is useless to them. The vocational education they could actually use has been largely eliminated, and now resides more often at community colleges.

[y66]

Making presidential decisions, making change and repairing diesel engines have some things in common with bridge:

The squeeze is a machine, and the only way you can learn to operate a machine is by operating it. -- Clyde Love

Unless you know what's going on, it's very hard to figure out what to do. -- Bob Hamman

I misremembered that Love quote and had to look it up. I thought he'd said something like "the only way to really understand how a machine works is to build one" which makes sense too, esp. if you think of "operating" and "building" as somewhat interchangeable with "exploring", "modeling", "practicing" and "playing around with".

[Winstonm]

akwoo, on 2015-October-18, 20:50, said:

The quality of teachers is a serious concern. Too many of our teachers are unable to do anything but regurgitate memorized information that might as well be Greek to them. The worst of them equate learning with memorizing mumbo jumbo. They are going to have trouble preparing their students to think for themselves, and they are also concentrated in the poorest schools. We can't replace them because there is no one better to replace them with.

I quibble with the idea that "teachers are the problem" when teachers, both when they were students and later, as teachers, are handicapped by the curriculum with which they must deal. How does one teach critical thinking when one must not corrupt the kids' established belief systems?

[barmar]

mike777, on 2015-October-18, 21:57, said:

I am angry because these schools are not drilling students in reading, writing and arithmetic.
I grant you can drill in many ways, that is ok...but I did not see in my local article any drilling.

That doesn't necessarily mean it's not happening. It may just not worth mentioning in an article, because there's nothing remarkable about it. The article was probably about what the school was trying to do in addition to the basic three R's.

For instance, you hear a lot about STEM these days, but AFAIK these are expected to be in addition to the 3 Rs, not instead.

[hrothgar]

Fox News is claiming that Biden is going to enter the race? This seems ridiculous. I find it really hard to believe that Biden is this delusional.

Other than dead relatives, I find it difficult to understand what he is planning to campaign on...

[blackshoe]

Winstonm, on 2015-October-19, 08:32, said:

I quibble with the idea that "teachers are the problem" when teachers, both when they were students and later, as teachers, are handicapped by the curriculum with which they must deal. How does one teach critical thinking when one must not corrupt the kids' established belief systems?

Seems to me it's often the parents' established belief systems that teachers have to worry about, not the kids'.

[y66]

Guest post from Paul Krugman: Something Not Rotten in Denmark:

Quote

No doubt surprising many of the people watching the Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders cited Denmark as a role model for how to help working people. Hillary Clinton demurred slightly, declaring that “we are not Denmark,” but agreed that Denmark is an inspiring example.

Such an exchange would have been inconceivable among Republicans, who don’t seem able to talk about European welfare states without adding the word “collapsing.” Basically, on Planet G.O.P. all of Europe is just a bigger version of Greece. But how great are the Danes, really?

The answer is that the Danes get a lot of things right, and in so doing refute just about everything U.S. conservatives say about economics. And we can also learn a lot from the things Denmark has gotten wrong.

Denmark maintains a welfare state — a set of government programs designed to provide economic security — that is beyond the wildest dreams of American liberals. Denmark provides universal health care; college education is free, and students receive a stipend; day care is heavily subsidized. Overall, working-age families receive more than three times as much aid, as a share of G.D.P., as their U.S. counterparts.

To pay for these programs, Denmark collects a lot of taxes. The top income tax rate is 60.3 percent; there’s also a 25 percent national sales tax. Overall, Denmark’s tax take is almost half of national income, compared with 25 percent in the United States.

Describe these policies to any American conservative, and he would predict ruin. Surely those generous benefits must destroy the incentive to work, while those high taxes drive job creators into hiding or exile.

Strange to say, however, Denmark doesn’t look like a set from “Mad Max.” On the contrary, it’s a prosperous nation that does quite well on job creation. In fact, adults in their prime working years are substantially more likely to be employed in Denmark than they are in America. Labor productivity in Denmark is roughly the same as it is here, although G.D.P. per capita is lower, mainly because the Danes take a lot more vacation.

Nor are the Danes melancholy: Denmark ranks at or near the top on international comparisons of “life satisfaction.”

It’s hard to imagine a better refutation of anti-tax, anti-government economic doctrine, which insists that a system like Denmark’s would be completely unworkable.

But would Denmark’s model be impossible to reproduce in other countries? Consider France, another country that is much bigger and more diverse than Denmark, but also maintains a highly generous welfare state paid for with high taxes. You might not know this from the extremely bad press France gets, but the French, too, roughly match U.S. productivity, and are more likely than Americans to be employed during their prime working years. Taxes and benefits just aren’t the job killers right-wing legend asserts.

Going back to Denmark, is everything copacetic in Copenhagen? Actually, no. Denmark is very rich, but its economy has taken a hit in recent years, because its recovery from the global financial crisis has been slow and incomplete. In fact, Denmark’s 5.5 percent decline in real G.D.P. per capita since 2007 is comparable to the declines in debt-crisis countries like Portugal or Spain, even though Denmark has never lost the confidence of investors.

What explains this poor recent performance? The answer, mainly, is bad monetary and fiscal policy. Denmark hasn’t adopted the euro, but it manages its currency as if it had, which means that it has shared the consequences of monetary mistakes like the European Central Bank’s 2011 interest rate hike. And while the country has faced no market pressure to slash spending — Denmark can borrow long-term at an interest rate of only 0.84 percent — it has adopted fiscal austerity anyway.

The result is a sharp contrast with neighboring Sweden, which doesn’t shadow the euro (although it has made some mistakes on its own), hasn’t done much austerity, and has seen real G.D.P. per capita rise while Denmark’s falls.

But Denmark’s monetary and fiscal errors don’t say anything about the sustainability of a strong welfare state. In fact, people who denounce things like universal health coverage and subsidized child care tend also to be people who demand higher interest rates and spending cuts in a depressed economy. (Remember all the talk about “debasing” the dollar?) That is, U.S. conservatives actually approve of some Danish policies — but only the ones that have proved to be badly misguided.

So yes, we can learn a lot from Denmark, both its successes and its failures. And let me say that it was both a pleasure and a relief to hear people who might become president talk seriously about how we can learn from the experience of other countries, as opposed to just chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

[y66]

Justin Trudeau's turn to face the weight of expectations. Like Obama, Trudeau has been promising the kind of ineffable change that is so hard to deliver.


Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party, celebrated his party's victory with his wife, Sophie Grégoire, in Montreal on Monday. Jim Young/Reuters

Quote

Stephen Harper is a goner, and humiliated, too, to the near-erotic ecstasy of Canada's chattering classes, who loathed him with such intensity it's hard to think of a comparison in modern politics.

Well, maybe Dick Cheney, George W. Bush's Darth Vader.

Suddenly, in Justin Trudeau we have a prime minister-designate who's banging on about hope and trust and inclusiveness and believing in yourself and being better and listening to everyone and diversity and all sorts of other happy thoughts. He even threw in tolerance for hijabs...

Over the last several weeks, there's been a lot of eager, nostalgic liberal talk about returning Canada to a nation of peacekeepers and neutral conciliators and environmentally concerned moderates. You know, the friendly world where travelers with little maple leaf flags on their backpacks drew instant affection and respect in even the nastiest foreign land.

The fellow who did win last night sort of promised all those things, at least in the subtext of his campaign speeches.

Real change was one of his slogans. That, and hope, and national reconciliation and uniting behind the common dreams of all Canadians.

Sound familiar?

There was another night, back in 2008, when American liberals were weeping with happiness, too.

Suddenly, their warmonger president was gone and America had a new leader, an inspiring master of gauzy rhetoric: "We are the ones we've been waiting for!" he would shout to delirious crowds.

No one knew what that meant, but it sounded great...

Change in tone

Our new prime minister might say he's going to sit down and negotiate with Canada's premiers "with deep respect," but wait until he gets a load of what's involved with that. His father knew.

What Trudeau can do, of course, is change the tone. That costs nothing, and a lot of Canadians want it to happen.

He can make Canada's positions abroad more nuanced, less absolutist and replace Canada's swagger at the UN with some actual diplomacy.

He can walk back the talk about how terrorists threaten us daily in our very homes, and perhaps speak honestly about the effectiveness of our combat mission in Iraq and Syria.

He may end up joining the rest of the Western world in supporting the nuclear deal with Iran, and perhaps even recognize that there are two sides to the question of Israel and the Palestinians.

But sweeping reversals of Stephen Harper's legacy? It's been almost a decade, and Harper changed the status quo. Even Trudeau himself seems to understand that.

Here's another Trudeau quote, uttered after Stephen Harper was closeted by security officers during the gunman's attack on Parliament Hill last year. He might want to keep the gist of it in mind:

"I think it's hard to know how one deals in situations of confrontation until you're actually in there, so I'm not going to speculate on what I would do."

[billw55]

hrothgar, on 2015-October-19, 16:12, said:

Fox News is claiming that Biden is going to enter the race? This seems ridiculous. I find it really hard to believe that Biden is this delusional.

Other than dead relatives, I find it difficult to understand what he is planning to campaign on...

As opposed to living relatives?

[Al_U_Card]

y66, on 2015-October-20, 06:08, said:

Justin Trudeau's turn to face the weight of expectations. Like Obama, Trudeau has been promising the kind of ineffable change that is so hard to deliver.


Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party, celebrated his party's victory with his wife, Sophie Grégoire, in Montreal on Monday. Jim Young/Reuters

Plus ça change...

[kenberg]

My error, ignore this.


The Krugman article is of interest. I have several thoughts.

I don't recall what Sanders said about Denmark. I remember that he mentioned Dnmark, but beyond that I draw a blank.

I'm all for learning from the experience of others, to the extent that I can manage it. Thinking about Amercan policies and experience is tough enough, if I have to study Danish society to form an opinion about what the US should do, I will need help.

I would oppose raising my own income tax rate to 60%. Imagine a national referendum on whether everyone's income will be taxed at the rate of 60%. What are the chances of passage? Would any contributor to this thread vote for it? If retired mathematicians are exempt I might reconsider my vote.

If we agree that a 60% tax on the income of everyone will not be our policy, then any discussion of adopting the Danish model has to take that fact into account. If the Danish model won't work without a 60% income tax rate, then there is no point in discussing the wisdom of the Danish model.

Now looking carefully at what Krugman says, I am not sure who that 60% rate applies to. The kid who earns a few bucks mowing lawns for neighbors? This gets back to my earlier point that it is tough enough to discuss US policy, where I live and can observe, without trying to discuss Danish plicy where I don't live and have little familiarity. Mathematics being an international activity I have known a few Danes in my life but not so well that I have any feeling for how things are there.

I'm open to hearing about good programs from Denmark or from anywhere, but I do not foresee acceptance of a 60% tax rate in this country anytime soon.

Regarding Sanders, I am not even very familiar with Vermont. I am pretty sure I have been through it going from somewhere to somewhere, but I don't recall any details. A pretty state, I think.