Tag Archives: education

A U.S. President Cannot Have a C Grade in U.S. History

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rick-perry-transcriptRick Perry got a lot of C’s and D’s in introductory courses that are frankly not at all “college level”. For example, as the following transcript shows, he got a D in trigonometry, a C in U.S. History, and a D in Principles of Economics, just to name a few.

This should be something he is ashamed of, instead he uses as an anecdote to present himself as one with the common man, one who would rather fight for his country than fight for a C+. That might be an effective political strategy, but the side effect of that is the devaluation of education in our public discourse. A D in trigonometry should be a disqualifier for a presidential candidate.

While the political bickering over tax policy continues, we have to remember that what made this country prosperous and what is behind any future growth is innovation. It’s difficult for me to imagine that a person who failed in scientific disciplines in college can properly inspire a new generation of bright productive minds.

And joking about the whole thing is just terribly irresponsible. Just don’t talk about it!

Half of the Children Are Below Average

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The title of this post is one of the simple truths that the author of Real Education outlines. Actually, it’s a trivial fact stemming from the definition of “average”. Yet, I bet many people when reading “half of the children are below average” feel a sudden urge to disagree.

Ability varies. That’s a simple reality of education. We have to recognize that. In the classroom, I believe in competition. To me, the way to bring up a failing student is to call him out for being lazy, or as the author suggests: to humiliate him for under-performing. This applies to the F students and the A students alike. In fact, the author particularly emphasizes knocking down the ego of the gifted students. With that idea I especially agree. In my experience, great performance is most often achieved in the long process of overcoming: striving with everything you have for the things that you suspect may be impossibly difficult.

Every student needs to learn that good education is a serious challenge. Hours of listening to lectures, reading textbooks, doing homework. Every day. For years. In order to succeed in that environment, a student has to develop a passion for overcoming their limitations. If they do not, then guess what, college is NOT for them.

Too many proposals addressing the reform of our education system do not acknowledge the elephant in the room, as the author says “some kids are just dumb”. To me, that’s a too harsh a way of putting it. I would perhaps phrase it differently. But ultimately the “value” of a human being does not depend upon his/her intelligence or performance. There are plenty of good men with an IQ below 100, perhaps even more than there are with an IQ above 100. So, I don’t know why we are so ashamed as a society to acknowledge the intellectual abilities of others, in the way that we do for athletic abilities for sports. “All men are created equal” does not literally mean we are all the same. It means we all deserve the same fundamental human rights. School should be based on the latter idea not the former one.

We should care for all students, as teachers, passionately, but also be reasonable objective observers of reality in the classroom. Perhaps, those two goals are tough to balance.

I don’t like how Randian I sound in this post. This is definitely one of the times when I wish I had more time to soften the language and clarify the argument. Oh well, this is just a blog that no one (except sometimes my dad) reads, not a dissertation.

State of the Union: Winner of the Science Fair

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Thomas Edison

I wrote the State of the Union Speech that the President delivered yesterday. I know this because he said everything that I wanted him to say:

“We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.”

Too often, major political speeches focus on the issue of the day that captures the short attention span of the public due to overwhelming media coverage. Katrina, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, healthcare reform, the economic recession are all examples. The economy seems to always be a major topic, with proposals all sounding the same from year to year: cut wasteful spending, cut taxes for people making less than X.

This year’s State of the Union speech, however, spent a good 20 minutes on the importance of innovation and education. This, in my opinion, is the foundation of major economic growth. Aggressively funding and prioritizing research and education is the silent engine that has made America the leader of the free world with the airplane, the computer, the first step on the moon, the internet, etc. It’s not as exciting to talk about perhaps as the justification of war in the Middle East or the intricacies of tax policy for the very rich, but it’s the key catalyst of our incredible growth in the 20th century.

We need to nourish the inventor ideal. And I’m glad that Obama recognizes the essential value of that.

Why the Hell Don’t the Unemployed Vote

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The chart below reveals a fundamental problem in our democracy. That is, the less educated you are, the less likely you are to vote. Coincidentally, you are also more likely to be unemployed.

Chart showing the percent of the country that has graduated high school or college and the percent of the country that votes.

Source: Ezra Klein article in Washington Post

People complain about the “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission” case and how it allows corporations to “buy” candidates. While this is true, perhaps that’s a tiny problem compared to the fact that uneducated people don’t vote. They are therefore under-represented. It makes perfect sense then that politicians would be more concerned about tax cuts for the very rich as opposed to extending unemployment insurance.

Who is to blame here? It’s hard to say and still sound remotely objective. But I think everyone likes to blame the media. Why is the mainstream media feeding bullshit to the people? Partly because the very rich pull the strings to achieve specific goals that benefit them, but mostly because the general public for the most part lacks intellectually curiosity. I don’t like to make such sweeping generalizations, but from my limited experience of the world, it’s an empirically-reasonable one.

Ridding Your Vapid Soul of Intellectual Curiosity

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When asked why he was doing away with free college in California, Reagan said that the role of state “should not be to subsidize intellectual curiosity”. The source for this comment is Thom Hartmann’s “Rebooting the American Dream”.

Here, like for decades after, the ideal of “intellectual curiosity” is talked about as if its an immoral sexual act that the kids are doing these days and it must be stopped. You can disagree with whether college education should be free or even if public universities should exist. I think you’re wrong, but it’s a legitimate dependable point of view. What is not legitimate is an assault against intellectual curiosity. Such curiosity is what gives birth to great ideas. It allows a political leader to integrate the lessons of history with the new challenges of today. I would even argue that the patience required for learning is the kind of patience that leads to genuine compassion.

Perhaps the reason a president can say something as absurd as the above quote is that most of the people in public life are not scientists. They are lawyers, businessmen, doctors, etc. And while members of all of those professions are certainly intelligent and curious about the way the world works, “intellectual curiosity” is not quite the staple for them that it is for scientists. Science progresses through a mechanism of rigorous skepticism, which requires one to constantly ask “Why?” and seek proof in whatever form possible. So, I think the fact that scientists are for the most part absent from public life in the United States contributes to the simplification of political discourse, and Reagan’s statement is just one of many examples of it.