Tuesday, February 18, 2014

The Many Values of an Education
One common myth is that students working a degree in Political Science or English, Philosophy or History are wasting their time, because they will not find a job and never earn nearly as much as those in the sciences or professional schools.

First, on strictly monetary terms this is an empirically accurate 'conventional wisdom.'


Second, measuring the value of education strictly based on salary is incomplete.  Success after graduation also depends on an individuals capacity to adapt to new and changing work force expectations and we know those who have mastered the communication and problem solving skills, those who have learned to appreciate multiple and competing perspectives, as we would learn in a liberal arts program, are best prepared for these ongoing mid-course adjustments.

Finally, without diminishing the value of a professional degree in any way, even Einstien and Wittgenstein and other great minds who had mastered the mathematics at the root of many non-liberal arts jobs frequently reminded us of the limitations of quantitative analysis alone. And it is important to recognize that there are millions of jobs that pay a living but modest wage but are of enormous importance to society (such as teachers and counselors and care givers). 





Saturday, February 15, 2014

Consider this...
Choice, when used to refer to liberty, does not mean simply having choices...


And if the free market is a natural phenomena, an invisible hand, about choice...

Then the free market of ideas requires us to vigorously contest...like this girl attempts to do... (note to those who may not read my blog often--that is, most of you--while I am critical here of those who see the bible as a science text, I am not suggesting that those who try to live a Christian life are stupid or clueless...if you did read my blog more often it would be clear to you that I take our call to engage with love, to love our neighbors as ourselves, deeply seriously and respect those who attempt to, who struggle to, live this way.)


And ask ourselves how the issues on the agenda actually get on the agenda?



In the FYI category…
A very thoughtful analysis of media misperceptions in a Huff Post article from last week starts with a music journalist and concludes with the recent CBO story.

“The gist of the CBO's projections was that a not-insignificant number of workers would, because of incentives the law provides, choose not to supply the labor market. Which is to say: they'd retire, or reduce their hours, or start a business, or find a better job now that they weren't caught in the trap of "job lock" -- a situation in which you can't leave a job you don't like for a better one because you're too dependent on the health care the employer provides.

The problem is that the media totally ganked on the story. Opponents of Obamacare seized on the report, willfully conflated a decrease in labor supply with a decrease in labor demand (this is the difference between an employee leaving a job or the workforce voluntarily and employers eliminating jobs)…..” 


Watch the embedded Colbert clip as well.  Colbert Report and the Daily Show are particularly powerful at exposing systematic media misinformation.


Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Tim Wise at UA
Anti-racism activist spoke at UA tonight as a part of Rethinking Race.  Those who attended were fortunate. Thanks Tim.

Tim Wise' book White Like Me has been made into a film and here is a panel discussion with the author and Michael Eric Dyson and others that might spark your interest in seeing the film.

In his talk tonight Wise pointed out that the wealthiest 500 white Americans own as much as all 41 million African Americans.  And he cited a recent Oxfam study showing that the wealthiest 85 individuals on the planet own as much as the bottom half, 3.5 billion people.

For those who believe in meritocracy, or for those who look at our world and conclude that those who have made it worked hard and others did not...can you really conclude that 85 people worked harder than 3.5 billion people?

Friday, February 7, 2014

Harm Reduction
Anne Applebaum reminds us that starvation might have been the first and remains among the most potent weapons of mass destruction.  Are there other ways that our terrorism conversation opens up new paths to resistance?

Consider this, however.  2.6 million children die of starvation every year.  While horrific, the 9/11 attacks killed 2,996 by comparison.  We all know this and have known it for our entire lives.  And consider that one thing new about today’s focus on terrorism is the shift to taking into account warlike levels of destruction that are perpetrated by so-called non-state actors.

So, why does our war on terror not focus on the weapon of mass destruction mobilized by non-state actors that is actually causing the most harm?

In a context where elites want to shift military resources to focus on non-state actors deploying unconventional weapons against civilians, we define this as terrorism to make it look like something that will support expanding military budgets. 

This is not a war that is actually designed to reduce those forms of non-state (and state) violence using unconventional weapons against civilians…if doing so does not mean spending more tax dollars on drones.  Focus on the actual source of the harm?  Don’t be silly. 

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Time to Abandon Textbooks?

David Cutler, writing in The Atlantic (January 31, 2014), argues we should abandon teaching based on textbooks.  Here is the essay in full, with three short comments added.

When it comes to teaching history, nothing destroys student interest faster and more completely than a heavy reliance on textbooks.

During my first three years of teaching high-school history I would see students’ eyes glaze over as we reviewed from a 1,000 page textbook. Five years later, I don’t blame them. So much is wrong with history textbooks, I hardly know where to begin, but here is my short list.
  1. Textbooks present history as unchanging, but as time passes, our understanding and interpretation of the past constantly evolves.
  2. Textbooks are one-sided, offering a top-down, often white-male-centric view of history.  
  3. Without a thesis or any semblance or argument, textbooks don’t accurately reflect how most scholars (at least good ones) write and present history. Teachers should assign readings that model effective historical writing.
  4. Most importantly—and this merits repeating—textbooks are boring and intimidating.
  5. Textbooks can serve as a crutch for teachers who don’t know history or the historian’s craft.
I find affirmation from James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. “The stories that history textbooks tell are all predictable; every problem has already been solved or is about to be solved,” he writes. “Textbooks exclude conflict or real suspense. They leave out anything that might reflect badly upon our national character. When they try for drama, they achieve only melodrama, because readers know that everything will turn out fine in the end.”

[In an otherwise great piece, this interests me most, because it suggests that when we approach teaching and learning through textbooks we imply that learning is a conflict-free zone.  We tell stories about leaders or breakthroughs that leave out the doubt and lingering controversy.  This seems, by design or oversight, to create classrooms that fail to prepare students for success in the real world, where managing uncertainty, making decisions with incomplete information, and finding common ground even when we continue to disagree are all essential skills.  They do not tell false stories; they tell misleading stories.  Textbooks tell stories we might hear in films like Pleasantville.]

Loewen has a theory on why textbooks thrive, despite their deficiences: “They meet a need, but it’s a need that should not exist. It is the need for teachers who are not, first and foremost, teachers of history or social studies," he says. He adds that his own high-school American history teacher didn’t care how he taught American history, that the school system didn’t care about he taught American history, and that he was hired and fired on the basis of the basketball team’s record.This isn’t to say that textbooks don’t include information. They are chock full of information (however one-sided), but herein lies a serious problem. With so much dense, mind-numbing text, too many students give up trying to understand what’s really important.

We must abandon textbook-based learning in favor of assigning a myriad of sources.

Teachers who depend on textbooks are likely to test what is in the textbooks: long lists of facts. They tend to give long multiple-choice tests that evaluate students’ memorization skills, not what they have actually learned. To do well, students memorize mountains of facts. Worst of all, in my experience, success on these tests isn’t an accurate indication of what students will remember the following week, month or year.

I learned this lesson as a rookie-teacher, before rethinking my textbook-heavy approach. A returning senior asked if she could retake the United States history final. She had earned an “A” just three months prior, but after a long summer, she wanted to know how much she remembered. My once-shining star had devolved into an average student. Little deep or lasting learning had taken root, and I began to understand why. She really didn’t care about the content—at least not enough to put any real effort into retaining her knowledge. And why should she have? After all, doing so would have meant revisiting Alan Brinkley’s 13th edition of American History: A Survey, her boring Advanced Placement United States History textbook.

While I was earning my BA and MA in history, I never learned primarily from any one book, and certainly not any textbook. My professors made learning exciting, always assigning a diverse, thought-provoking array of primary and secondary sources. For me, that made my understanding of history more meaningful, and thereby lasting. I learned to internalize information, not merely store it in my short-term memory.

[Connecting this back to the story about his star student above and his conversation with his colleague below....  Learning certainly requires us to remember facts, but if we want this memorization to last and inform our lives, to improve our thinking and decision-making, then we need to internalize the information, we need to care about both the specific content and, more generally, about living an exciting life of the mind.  One of the most important skills to learn is to learn to ask good questions and textbooks erase that challenge when they ignore conflict and uncertainty.]

Last week, I talked about textbook-based history learning with Dr. Aldo Regalado, my colleague in the history department at Palmer Trinity in Palmetto Bay, Florida, and a history teacher at the University of Miami and Florida International University.   

“I have never taken or taught a college-level U.S. history course that earnestly used a textbook—ever,” Regalado says. “I provide my students with context using far more efficient means, and then they go deep into case studies, either by reading primary sources or, better yet, by engaging in their own independent research, writing and presentation projects. They come out of that experience with a real passion—a real sense of ownership and an appreciation for questioning and deeper thinking.”

There has already been some movement towards this approach at the AP level. Next fall, the College Board will introduce a redesigned AP U.S. history exam. This change is happening in part, the company’s website says, to “relieve pressure and free teachers to engage students deeply in exploring, understanding, and interpreting major historical events.” I strongly support assessing students on more relevant skills, especially historical interpretation and periodization. I hope this encourages more teachers to move away from textbook-based learning. I also like what I hear from Suzanne Sinke, an associate professor of history at Florida State University and Co-Chair of the AP U.S. History Curriculum Development and Assessment Committee.  “There is still a body of knowledge that is tied to the curriculum, but the emphasis will be based much more on skills,” Sinke said. “It moves us toward making this not so much what you have memorized, but what you have learned.”

If high-school history teachers want to prepare students for college-level history courses (which I hope all of us do), we must abandon textbook-based learning in favor of assigning and teaching from a myriad of sources. My students purchaseThe American Nation: A Concise History of the American Peoplea significantly slimmed-down version of Brinkley’s AP U.S. History textbook. It’s still over 800 pages, but the pages are much smaller (not that this makes it any less of a textbook).

Still, I don’t over-rely on Brinkley, nor do I assign every page or chapter. I certainly don’t give multiple-choice tests. Instead, I give students supplemental readings, which serve as their main learning tools. I elicit excitement by assigning exciting sources, such as Action Comics #1, which I use to help teach about Judaism and immigration in the early-to-mid 1900s. During a unit on the Cold War, I have students analyze and find sources to better inform their understanding of singer Barry McGuire’s rendition of “Eve of Destruction.”

In an age where information is instantaneous, cheap and easily accessible, history teachers will need to do even more to guide students toward credible sources. We must also help students pursue worthy questions in the context of areas that interest them, even at the expense of giving certain periods short shrift. In that environment, there is little need for a textbook-based approach. Students aren’t slaves to a textbook, eventually forgetting a large chunk of what they store in short-term memory. Instead, the learning becomes more meaningful, engaging and lasting by being depth-centered, not breadth-centered.

Teachers should always inspire students to learn more about their subjects. Unfortunately, an overreliance on textbooks accomplishes just the opposite.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Reading the Akron Beacon Journal
With all the conversation about what the President meant by going it alone in the State of the Union it is a good idea to remind ourselves that, despite Fox News nonsense, this has nearly nothing to do with a President threatening new Constitutional violations or a President unwilling to compromise. 



Here is a good, short, primer on the tools any president regularly uses to execute the law, tools President Obama has indicated he plans to deploy more often when faced by Congressional obstruction.

Welcome signs of sanity on the rise in Texas today.  After years of using their market position to transform school textbooks into Young Tea Party recruitment brochures, the state has finally taken action to curb the influence of non-experts who want creationism in Biology classrooms.
A comment by one of the extreme conservatives about the state decision to give preference to teachers and professors and other disciplinary experts in these decisions is telling. 
‘An outspoken conservative on the board, David Bradley, said he did his best to insert language mitigating what was approved. But he said “liberals are really trying to make it difficult for Christians and conservatives to have a voice in public education.”’
On the far right knowledge and expertise are illustrations of a liberal bias. It is a very good sign that there is now, in Texas, some sign of successful pushback against this lunatic fringe that has been damaging both the nation and the Republican Party. 

Why?  We have less trivial conflicts to attend to...

According to the Akron Police Department 98% of an annual 10,000 alarms in the city are false alarms.  The department is proposing that the alarm companies first verify that there is an actual need for police before the police will respond.  The companies response:
‘“It’s basically putting the public in danger,” said David Margulies, spokesman for the Security Industry Alarm Coalition, an advocacy business group.’
This is fear mongering, by a private sector agent trying to preserve what amounts to a tax payer subsidy of their own shoddy business model…a taxpayer subsidy that allows these companies to exist despite the fact that without this subsidy the free market would compel them to either provide a service that is not a waste of time and money 98% of the time…or the free market would drive them out of business. 
Taxpayer subsidies to big business, hidden in plain sight, need more attention and scrutiny in an era when our dominant conversation is how to do more with less.
 
Walmart (and others) executives and stockholders profit from our failure to internalize these externalities and instead providing subsidies to pay for things the companies should pay themselves as a cost of doing business. 

Of course, big business is not the only form we find entrenched power seeking to protect is priviledge and revenue stream at the expense of ordinary citizens. 
 


Here, again, we see fear mongering (about the danger of unions) to protect hidden in plain taxpayer subsidies to private sector elites who believe it is just their right to be beyond challenge.