New Topic: The Role of Public Education

 Posted by  Education, Issues  4 Responses »
May 202005
 

It doesn’t seem to me like we have a good idea, nationally, of what public education is supposed to accomplish. The No Child Left Behind Act seems to indicate that the purpose of school is to provide a minimal standard of knowledge. Employers want public schools to provide a reasonably educated work force. Universities want public schools to provide students who are prepared for college. Parents want public schools to be safe places for kids to be while mom and dad are at work. Developmental psychologists (or at least some of them) want schools to be sheltered environments for them to learn basic social skills. It seems to me that we have created schools that do all of these things ok, but none of them well.

Certainly all of these are important goals. Kids need safe places to go while their parents are at work, they need to be prepared for college and/or the work force, they need to learn basic knowledge, and they need to develop basic social skills. But, not all of these things need to be done at school. Therefore, it seems to me that we need to restructure school around one, or maybe two, of these areas, and then provide (as a society) adequate institutions to facilitate the rest of them. Let me explain, by laying out several possibilities:

The European Model: Schools should be a place to learn skills for universities or the work force, whichever the child wants. Elementary education should be a place to learn basic math and writing skills. Sometime around 8th grade, students should have a choice: do you go to a vocational training school or a college-prep school. If you go to the vocational school, you remain in school only long enough to complete your vocational training. Maybe it takes two years to become a mechanic and three years to become a computer-repair technician. At the end of your program, your high school helps you find businesses that want to hire someone with your skills. If you go the college preparatory route, you stay in that school long enough to learn the basics for whatever kind of college or degree you want. Your curriculum ends at whatever point you are admitted to a college that you want. Curriculum, then, is determined by businesses or universities, not by government. To make sure that kids stay busy between the end of classes and mom and dad getting home from work, extra-curricular activities are offered at community centers and such; no real reason to attach them to school.

The No-Child Left Behind Model: The purpose of public education is to provide kids with a basic set of skills that society has deemed important: reading, writing, arithmetic, maybe a little American history or sex education. Each year you take a test that measures these things; as soon as you pass the test, you graduate from public school. If you are interested in college-prep, you need to go to a private school that will fill in the gaps for what you need to know. If you are interested in getting a job, you need to find a job training program of some kind. Again, maybe society offers some kind of community extra-curriculars; call them young people’s athletic clubs that will provide alternatives for the unemployed recent graduates or to fill the gap between the end of school hours and the end of the work-day.

The Day-Care Model: The purpose of public schools is to keep kids busy and out of trouble from 9-5, M-F, until they are 18 years old, and attendance is mandatory. If you have a job or a class to attend you can be exempted from attendance at the Day-Care for certain hours of the day. The Day-Care’s primary goal is to keep kids interested and entertained in a safe environment. Classes in a wide variety of subjects are offered, for those who want them, but no class is required. Athletic facilities, games, etc. are also offered. Any job or college prep training can be acquired from classes at the day-cares or privately.

Certainly all of these concepts are somewhat flawed. The point, however, is that they all have a clearly articulated goal and strive to reach that goal; a point that is lost upon our current educational system. So then, the questions for debate are:

What is the purpose of public education? What should it be? How should we change (or redefine) public schools to more accurately reflect that purpose?

Bring the Boys Back Home

 Posted by  Foreign Policy, Middle East, War in Iraq  2 Responses »
May 192005
 

Bring the boys home. President Bush, yesterday, gave a speech stating what should have been the absurdly obvious all along: new democracies take a lot of time and effort to implement and they face a lot of pitfalls. He even cited significant historic precedent, including the Articles of Confederation, to back up this claim. In other words, this whole Iraqi democratization process is likely to take years and is likely to meet with many failures before it meets with many successes. So much for Mission Accomplished. This does lead to the question, why didn’t he know this before? Has the Bush Administration recently discovered this new version of history, or were they simply so arrogant before that they did not think it applied to them? In any case, those issues are sort of beside the point, despite the reaming that Bush is likely to get from Democrats and liberals about them. The question should be, what do we do now?

So, enter this New York Times article on how a number of top generals in Iraq are worried about the future of that country. One officer expresses frustration with the learning curve of the new Iraqi police. Another expresses concern that the new Iraqi government is facing a steep decline in popularity, and therefore battlefield victories may be meaningless. Not good news for a country that has yet to actually write its constitution.

The combination of these two articles seems to indicate a growing realization within both the Pentagon and the White House that we are likely going to be needed in Iraq for years, and that even then a positive outcome is not guaranteed. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a positive outcome is virtually impossible. Iraq simply has too many internal divisions, it is too poor, too uneducated; it simply lacks the infrastructure, human capital, and political incentives to become a stable democratic nation anytime soon. And that means, I’m not sure what we are there fighting for.

The answer, then, is to begin a withdrawal. Transfer all remaining authority to the Iraqi government, leave some advisors to help train the new Iraqi security forces, push the United Nations to give Iraq every help that they ask for in securing their country and preventing an all-out civil war. But bring the boys back home. Leaving them in Iraq is expensive, it creates massive opportunity costs as far as what we can do in other parts of the world, and it is almost definitely going to be fruitless.

Sound and Fury

 Posted by  Education, Issues, The Media  1 Response »
May 172005
 

I have to confess I’m still a little confused as to what we’re talking about here. Seems like there are about three unrelated issues here:

  • Whether sufficient academic freedom exists,
  • How people react when they hear something they don’t like, and
  • How debate and dialogue should be framed to be effective

My quick answers are: Yes, Stupidly, and Non-Offensively If Possible.

Hiren sez in his initial post:

Academics need significant courage these days to do what they are supposed to do – conduct their academic inquiries without worrying about what the evidence will show.

I don’t think that’s true at all — your average chem prof doesn’t need significant courage to run his experiments, or your average BritLit academic or whatever. There’s no type of public pressure vested in the answers a geologist comes up with out in the field. It’s really hard to come up with a hypothetical situation where a CompSci prof faces some kind of PC pressures. (Though see this about how flowering plants are tremendously anti-PC…)

There’s a kind of intestinal fortitude necessary for individuals who might find that their preconceived notions are incorrect, but that’s something completely different and unrelated to political correctness. And even for those fields where the kind of public pressure we’re talking about exists, I think academia does a pretty good job of looking after its own, seeing the big picture, and protecting its freedoms. My anecdotal evidence here is Ward Churchill, the U of Colorado prof who called 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns.” Despite the furor that erupted over his comments and scholarship, here’s the thing: he’s still employed by CU. He’s still got the freedom to write and say whatever he wants. Obviously, there are quite a few people closer to the academic world than I am right now, but I haven’t gotten the impression that good or valuable research is being squelched because of political correctness concerns on anything remotely approaching a widespread basis. Please tell me if I’m wrong about this, though.

I suspect that Hiren’s actual concern is the second point: that people react stupidly when they hear something that they don’t like. Take, for example, the DC Mayor’s aide who resigned for a short time after a controversy broke out after his use of the word “niggardly.” Or a school teacher who was reprimanded for the same thing. That’s just people being dumb, or overreacting out of ignorance.

And there’s not a lot that can be done about the fact that people are stupid and overreact when they hear something they don’t like. Sure, we could probably tweak media coverage a bit, but there’s really no incentive for the media to change their way of doing business — gotta get people’s attentions somehow if you want to stay in business — and, just to cover themselves in the event of a lawsuit, they generally do stick in the context and the provisos and caveats to the academic research they’re reporting on, even if it is tucked out of the way at the end of the article somewhere. We could probably try to address the whole confusion-about-actually-inoffensive-words thing through bolstered public education, but there are a lot of other reasons to do that anyway which are much more important than some people getting offended by a word every once in a while.

There’s just not a whole lot to do with this. People — particularly Americans — are stupid and touchy when confronted with things they don’t like to hear. All part of the charm, really. But I don’t think you’re going to change that any time soon.

The third point is an interesting one, and Mike covered it pretty well in his first point. Also check out this article from the National Review Online, which I think pretty much gets it right (on this issue and this issue only — there are lots of little asides in there that I disagree with, but whatever…): if you’re polite and civil, it’s not hard to communicate effectively in a non-offensive way. The language itself takes a bit of a hit when words are no longer used for older meanings (gay=happy, for example), but y’know, English is a resilient tough language. I think it can handle it.

Deconstructing the Dialogue

 Posted by  Judicial System, Nomination and Confirmation, U.S. Politics  1 Response »
May 172005
 

You have to respect the art of political misinformation, even if it is incredibly frustrating and off-putting. So, if you haven’t been paying attention, these are the latest developments in the filibuster stand-off:

- The Republican leadership offered a “compromise” in which the Senate would debate each candidate for 100 hours before voting. The Democrats have been trying to frame opposition to the filibuster as an unwillingness to debate, and so this is the perfect counter-move, at least from a PR standpoint. The problem, of course, is that the length of debate does not matter. Senators already know how they will vote on the candidates, and giving 100 seconds or 100 hours of debate won’t matter a bit. The purpose of a filibuster is not adequate debate; it is to prevent a vote. The Democrats who framed the issue in terms of debate were being purposely misleading; and this compromise is equivalent to Dr. Frist saying “so, if you don’t want to confirm all my candidates today, how about tomorrow?”

- The Republican leadership is also willing to remove many of the committee barriers to getting all candidates an “up-or-down” vote, in an effort to seem less hypocritical. The problem, of course, is that the Republicans currently control both the Presidency and the Senate, which means that the committee barriers mean very little right now, and really just take even more power away from the moderates who sit on those committees. (Because a Senator can place an anonymous hold on a candidate, it allows moderates to block extremists in committee without having to defy their own party on a floor vote.) Yeah, the Republican leadership wins, for now, but it also means that there are absolutely no checks on a majority party rushing through their own nominees without any serious chance for opposition. I’m not sure if this is healthy for Democracy, even if it is a bit more of a philosophically consistent position to be against all things that prevent floor votes rather than just the filibuster.

- Of course, the parties are both pulling out all the stops over the filibuster amendment. Republican House members are apparently being charged to harp on the theme that all nominees deserve an up or down vote. Let me reiterate here the two problems I have with giving all nominees an up or down vote. First, it forces moderates to buck their party positions on high-profile, public votes; just the kinds of positions in which it is easiest to pressure them to do things they otherwise wouldn’t do. Second, it leaves to maneuver room whatsoever for the minority party to block an objectionable nominee. Combined, this means that the President and the majority party leadership get to make lifetime appointments without any checks on them. In this case, we are talking about half a dozen guys, all of them pretty far to the right, making these decisions. Who knows, maybe in ten years it will be half a dozen liberal women; either case is equally bad. We should have consensus building on lifetime appointments for important judicial nominees. Democracy is the rule of the people, not the tyranny of the majority, or even worse, the politically active minority.

- Of course, the Democrats are not to be out done when it comes to meaningless demagougery in support of a political position. They are urging members to link Frist with DeLay as two power-hungry, winner-take-all Republicans. I don’t particularly like Bill Frist; I think he is too willing to cater to the worst impulses of the Religious Right (e.g. his participation in “Justice Sunday”, and his statements that from viewing the videotapes it was obvious to him that the medical diagnosis on Schiavo was incorrect). That being said, he is no Tom DeLay when it comes to his hunger for power, and I have never heard any real corruption charges against him like the ones coming up against DeLay. That makes me nervous about trying to link the two in the nation’s conscious.

Which all comes down to the cliffhanger: whose misinformation campaign will be more successful? Stay tuned, this could be exciting…

News Notes

 Posted by  East and S.E. Asia, Foreign Policy, Israel and Palestine, Issues, Middle East, Nuclear Weapons, Religion, Terrorism, War in Iraq  No Responses »
May 162005
 

Bush’s National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley, came very close to threatening North Korea yesterday, should they test a nuclear weapon. Of course, we cannot threaten them with sanctions because they already forbid virtually all economic contact with them, and it isn’t clear that we want to attack North Korea militarily, especially if they test a nuclear warhead. So, I’m not quite clear what we might be threatening them with. The New York Times also mentioned that China and Japan were getting quite nervous with North Korea and were both unhappy with United States policy. The Japanese, like American conservatives, want the United States to take a harder line, although again I’m not sure what that line would look like. While the Chinese want us to let them deal with it, which is probably the only good solution. Only the Chinese have the leverage to deal with North Korea, so the question is what do the Chinese want? The Bush Administration has yet to ask that question, apparently. If you are waiting for them to announce a deal with North Korea, don’t hold your breath.

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An interesting article appeared in the Times about the East Waynesville Baptist Church. Since I last commented on it, the pastor has left and taken a sizable number of the parishioners, especially the younger members, with him. Someone had apparently taped a number of the pastor’s sermons, and this seems to be the key quote: “The question then comes in the Baptist Church, ‘How do I vote?’; let me just say this right now, if you vote for John Kerry this year you need to repent or resign. You have been holding back God’s church way too long.” Let me reiterate that no pastor has any right to say anything of the kind, and he is the one who should be repenting for even implying that there is no place for Democrats in the church. More positively, I appreciate that many Republicans in the church recognized that the pastor was acting inappropriately, and also that whoever delivered this weeks sermon apparently encouraged all members to call up those who had left and invite them back. Church, after all, should be a place for Christians to come together to worship God, and if we really have faith in the Holy Spirit then we will let Him push people to repent for their sins. Church is about inclusion, not exclusion.

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Israel is letting expanding the number of cities in which Palestinian policemen can carry firearms. Not an unreasonable thing to do, given that Israel wants the Palestinian security forces to crack down on terrorists operating in the area. Somehow I doubt that a badge and a billy-club would be all that useful in confronting Hamas… Still, it kind of makes you wonder what other restrictions that Israel has put on the Palestinian security forces all the while demanding that they crack down on terrorism…

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And in Iraq, Secretary of State Rice encouraged the Shiites to do more to include the Sunnis in the formation of a new constitution, while several large Sunni groups have expressed that they might be willing to participate in the process if they were given certain assurances. Sunni participation is necessary if Iraq is ever going to be a single, stable country. On the other hand, expect chaos and gridlock to dominate these proceedings for a lot longer, Sunni participation or not. There are too many complicating factors, too many people with too many divergent interests, for this whole process to go smoothly or quickly. And meanwhile, the body count for both Iraqis and Americans will continue to rise, with no end in sight.

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