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education

It’s the education, stupid …

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The headline on this post is inspired by both the 1992 Clinton campaign meme, and by my personal belief – shared by many – that education in the U.S. is in trouble, and will sink us if we don’t act decisively and quickly to change a broken system.

State of Education infographc
(c) OnlineEducation.net

The infographic tells the story. You can click it to open up the source in a new tab, and get the full weight of the problem broken down pretty darn well.

Some high(low?)lights:

  • only 30% of U.S. students in K-12 are grade-proficient in math and reading
  • 70% (that’s SEVENTY PERCENT, my friends) of 8th graders can’t read at grade level
  • Every 26 seconds, an American kid drops out of school (can you say “brain drain”?)
  • There are only 50 million skilled workers in the U.S. – there are 123 million skilled job openings (still wonder why jobs get outsourced?)
  • In Finland, South Korea, and Singapore, teachers are drawn from the top 1/3 of college graduates. In the U.S. they’re typically from the bottom 1/3 of college graduates. Looks like the old cliché “those that can’t, teach” might be true?
  • Newly-minted lawyers in the U.S.  make, on average, $115,000 per year more than a newly-minted teacher here. Newly-minted engineers and lawyers earn less than teachers in South Korea and Singapore. Is that math you can understand?
  • The U.S. comes in at 30th in math, 23rd in science, and 17th in reading when stacked up against global competition.

Is the picture starting to become clear to you? We’re in trouble, not just right now, but our future’s looking pretty dim, too.

If we can’t educate our children at a level that makes them – and our society – competitive globally, we’re looking like Rome after the lead poisoning set in: bleedin’ dim, and getting dimmer.

Dim and dimmer, that’s us!

The fix should be to put more muscle – in time, in talent, in treasure – behind education. But you and I both know that our fiscal cupboard is bare, and there’s little will in Congress – or money floating around on K Street – for teachers when defense spending is so much more … fun. I mean, education money doesn’t buy sexy new fighter jets, or aircraft carriers to keep those Somali pirates in line. Boo yah!

Uh, guess what? We’ll run out of money to build fighter jets and aircraft carriers if we don’t educate our kids to figure out better ways to build them.

That’s just one industry: defense.

What about healthcare, the hottest topic of the last decade? Rising costs there are bankrupting families, and could bankrupt the country, if we don’t have the smarts to solve the problem

Our middle-tier rankings in science and math education spell doom there, too.

If government isn’t going to take up the challenge, due to budget constraints and broke-ass-ness, who will? Is it time to evaluate a non-public option, and invite American enterprise to invest in charter schools across the U.S. to help us get back to the top of the Best & Brightest List?

Weigh in now. It’s almost too late, kids.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …

 

Why is business expected to pay for healthcare in the US?

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I’ve asked this question frequently over the years, starting in the ’80s, continuing to today … and I’ll keep it up until someone realizes that it’s a failed paradigm.

What we have here, kidz, is what happens when a society decides that socialism is anathema, but doesn’t empower and educate its citizens about how to take responsibility for themselves in ways that will keep them healthy, productive community members.

Business started picking up the tab for healthcare during World War II, when stiff wage controls made it impossible for defense plants to give their employees raises. In place of more money, they started to pay for health insurance – which state and federal government were more than happy to turn into mandated employee benefits over the next 20 years.

What happened then was predictable: three generations have been out of touch with the true cost of  healthcare, and the true cost of their choices about their health. If you’re a good little American consumer, you do whatever your television tells you to do: eat this. Buy that. Otherwise the terrorists win!

Three generations of disconnection from the real costs of our medical care have delivered us an epidemic of obesity – thanks to plentiful empty calories, courtesy of agri-business, and our willingness to beach ourselves on our sofas, in our SUVs, or at our computers, the better to receive more messages about what we should buy and eat.

Health insurance costs have skyrocketed as we’ve become a nation of couch potatoes. Companies are scaling back their employee health benefits as those costs continue to rise, putting more and more people in the un-insured or under-insured bucket. Is that rise in healthcare costs, which in turn drives higher premiums, combining with the federal mandate that all companies offer employees health insurance or face the wrath of Khan, er, the feds the real “job killer”? I think so.

Here’s a suggestion: sell health insurance like auto, home, and life insurance are sold. Put consumers in charge of shopping for, and purchasing, their own insurance. Let business help their employees, if they choose to do so, as a true benefit rather than a mandate. Help every consumer set up a Health Savings Account for their healthcare expenses. And stop the state-by-state divvy-up that lets health insurers essentially gerrymander the health insurance marketplace.

Put consumers fully in charge of their insurance, and their care. Turn the health insurance market into a car-insurance model. People can buy minimum levels of insurance, and assume the risk of that choice. They can opt out completely, and assume all the risk for their healthcare costs. Make it a true marketplace, rather than the giant mess that we currently call health insurance. Employers are certainly able to help their employees with HSA deductions and matching contributions; smart companies will help their teams figure out managing and negotiating for insurance as a group. But they shouldn’t be expected to foot the bill.

Radical? Perhaps. Necessary? I’d say it’s essential.

Until we’re put in touch with the costs of our healthcare, we won’t be encouraged/empowered to take control of our health. As long as we’re using other people’s money to pay for healthcare, we’re stuck where we are.

Which is a very bad place to be.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’  to it …

Dear kids: school is your job. Act accordingly.

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image of kids in class
image credit: misstabithasclassroom.com

It has become accepted wisdom that public schools in the US are failing their students.

I confess to believing some of that conventional wisdom: I think we’re losing generation after generation of inner-city and rural kids with sub-par schools and technology. I also think that inner-city schools have become both a dumping ground for teachers who shouldn’t be teaching, and a road to exhaustion and defeat for teachers who arrive fired up and get ground under the wheels of budget shortfalls, bureaucracy, and bullsh*t.

But I digress.

The Washington Post Answer Sheet blog shared a post by Will Fitzhugh, editor of the Concord Review – the world’s only English-language quarterly review for history academic papers by high school students (smart kids + smart teachers = intellectual advancement for all!) – that puts the blame for poor student performance at the feet of … students. The title of the post: “Teachers Not Enough? Who Knew?”

And he’s 110% right there.

I’m now going to sound like the geezer I’m becoming, but just roll with me for a minute here. When I was in school, my job was to go to school, do my work, and learn. That was my job. The one that would set the stage for all the jobs coming after, the one without successful completion thereof I would be stamped with the storied “L on my forehead” and consigned to the career-and-success scrap heap. It was up to me to learn as much as I could, and use that knowledge to forge my way in the world.

Am I nuts, or does it seem as though students in K-12 now believe it’s the responsibility of the school to pry open their brains and pour in knowledge without much in the way of student effort? And that expectation is being driven by parents, and the community at large?

I watched the documentary Waiting for Superman recently, and found it compelling. However, something nagged at me as I watched it, and after, that only became clear when I read Fitzhugh’s Concord Review post: the film left the viewer with the impression that schools, parents, and the community were responsible for the entire education cycle. What was left out was the obligation for students to work to learn.

I’m not saying that a kid in a failing inner-city school who fails to learn is solely at fault for his/her lack of academic progress. As a society, we must make sure that each of our kids has the chance to learn as much, and go as far, as s/he possibly can in life. Charter schools can be a terrific answer for places where public schools are letting down the kids who try to learn there … but they’re not the only, or even the first, answer.

That first answer is: kids, school is your job. Act accordingly. Pay attention, do your work, do not expect to have learning pass through your ears and into your brain without any effort on your part. Life requires that you be present, pay attention, and act to further your own progress. You will not be borne through life on Cleopatra’s barge, much as your helicopter parents might have led you to believe that was your destiny.

Work. It’s what makes things happen. So go do some.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …

The Powerful + Multifaceted Story That Is Temple Grandin

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Temple Grandin is a cross-species hero. Her appearance at TED makes me wonder: what took them so long to invite her?

Her work with animals, particularly in the design of slaughterhouses, revolutionized the cattle industry. As an autistic, she is the living representation of what’s possible with what she calls “unique minds” – her passion is in direct opposition to the standardization that has strangled education in the US for decades.

The current economic landscape is driving school systems toward more standardization as budgets get slashed, particularly for the subjects that engage outlier minds: shop, art, music.

Einstein was likely an autistic-spectrum mind – probably Asperger Syndrome – so what does it mean for innovative thinking in our society that we’re taking non-standardized minds and forcing them down paths that will cut them off from their ability to think in new ways?

Sounds like the essence of cruelty. In fact, it’s intellectual slaughter. We’re forcing kids down chutes, prodding them toward the end of the track – in this case, a high school diploma, not a killing bolt to the forehead, but how many minds are killed by the process?

What can we do? Fight to keep visual and verbal arts in the curriculum for public schools, for one. Another would be to consider a 2nd or retirement career in the classroom, particularly if you’re a scientist or artist.

Be an innovative thinker yourself.

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…