Line by Line

break down everything

[linexline]

Dr. Tae asks if skateboarding can save our schools. My question is: what if education were more like a video game?

Instead of grades, have levels. Instead of letter grades, have achievements.

What does it even mean to be a 9th grader? Or to have passed freshman english? It means nothing, and tells us nothing of our students or their achievements.

If the goal is to learn and the reward is to understand, we shouldn't need to sugar-coat or force-feed anything. 

This nation's teachers share a passion for sharing their passion, forgive the instances of "bad apples" who didn't like their profession being reduced to glorified babysitting by unfunded mandates.

The internet will always be a part of education, it's about time education assimilates.

[linexline]

Sports fans or deck hands?

I know people who hate politics. I know people who hate sports. I happen to torture myself by really enjoying both.

One thing I have been observing recently is the similarity of 'fans' of both sports and politics. When a football team begins a game they show no mercy and consider their opponent their mortal enemy. This hatred is often paralleled in the stands.

But at the end of the game, the players of both teams can be seen smiling and chatting because they are actually part of a larger fraternity, the NFL. Many have been college teammates or have long-standing personal rivalries. In any case, they put aside their differences at the end of the game and exhibit good sportsmanship.

In the stands the case is more like what we see in modern politics. More often than not, fans simply don't let things go. We don't consider ourselves to be a part of the larger demographic of sports fans. Our bitterness emboldened, we are only more determined in the future, civility be damned.

In politics, the players on the field still act the same. During the recent Alfred E. Smith Dinner in New York, both President Obama and Governor Romney took jabs at each other and at themselves, but they did it in the same room and with a smile on their faces. I don't think either of their remarks would convince anyone to vote for or against them, but it did serve to humanize the candidates. It also points out that we are still dealing with real human beings being really human.  

Even with the best intentions, our political system tends to serve special interests best. We can either push the pendulum back and forth, ensuring the swing is more drastic and divisive each turn, or we can actualize our own power in this system.

If we don't want to "stumble blindly forward repeating history," then progress begins with common vision.

We can choose our captain to set the course, but without everyone on the ship working together, we'll go nowhere. 

[linexline]

The Circular Flow of Money

If I have $100 to spare, and I am feeling like spending that $100 in one transaction, maybe I'll go out for sushi. 

That $100 toward sushi does a few things to the economy. I eat, drink and be merry. So do 3 others I've brought along. On the other side of the counter, there is a chef and a waitress working with us. Beyond that someone shipped everything to this establishment. It is a good sushi place, but not terribly close to a body of water, so the fish is flown in fresh every day.

Someone flew the fish to us, but it is a different skill set than those catching the fish. So now we've got people catching the fish.

My $100 helps perpetuate or create demand for more jobs like sushi chef, waitress, cargo pilot and fisherman. But where it gets interesting is the fact that each of those people involved in the transaction become benefactors of the demand and are then able to earn more money. 

That extra money, if conditions are right and the people holding it feel like spending it, creates more demand throughout the economy.

This is just a simple example, but $1 isn't just $1 to the economy.

But if that extra $100 isn't much to me, I may just tuck it away until the economy turns around, which doesn't help the economy turn around.

[linexline]

Just a teacher?

Just a teacher? Just a nurse? Just a stay-at-home mom? 

Let's get one thing straight. Nobody is entirely defined by what they do for a living, but to belittle true service professions by implying they aspired for higher and fell short is a declaration of ignorance in my view. The context is never entirely negative, but I have heard many variations of this phrase over the course of my three decades on this planet. 

"He's a great guy, but he's just a teacher, are you sure he can take care of you?"

"She's just a nurse, wait and ask the doctor."

"She's just a stay-at-home mom, she needs someone to take care of her after the divorce."

Simple examples, innocuous intention, but pure ignorance. 

I have never heard anyone say 'just a lawyer' or 'just a CPA'. They must have achieved, but those teachers...

Every single human being you know was influenced, in some way, by a teacher. Whether or not you had a favorite teacher who inspired you, you were influenced by your teachers. If you didn't have a favorite, you certainly had a least favorite teacher. Meet the person who taught you how to deal with a horrible boss.

This isn't so much a research piece as a rant, which is obvious, but I have been feeling this tension for a long time when I hear that phrase and I think it underscores a serious issue in our society. To me, there are only two things which raise a nation to be the "shining city on a hill" we imagine America to be: health and education.

Homelessness, crime, poverty and hunger do not typically exist for a healthy, educated society. As a progressive individual, I see gun crime as an epidemic. As a critical thinker, I have no interest in micro-tuning the gun laws to try and keep them out of the hands of crazy people. 

Our education system as a whole is found wanting in many areas, but that isn't to say it's an abject failure. In fact, the way No Child Left Behind plays out, we are actually achieving quite the opposite effect than was originally intended. We are creating an environment where truly getting ahead of the curve means being so far removed from the prevailing, basic understanding of the world that it is often difficult to speak the truth to power without a mass of boos or disagreement. It really is leaving (almost) every child behind.

The few who persevere end up following one of two different general paths. Either they will continue to succeed and strive for more, or they will become bored with their learning opportunities and agitate the environment which offers them no stimulus: the classroom. That isn't to say there is no variation, but in a general sense, this holds based on my own anecdotal experience. 

We need to re-think what we do with schools. Why are we scheduling children in 2012 to learn based on an antiquated agrarian society when we know this is not the most effective way to learn? Why on earth do we standardize tests when student experience is never standard? Who knows how long it takes anyone to learn anything, anyway? And honestly, why aren't the teachers themselves sharing the administrative duties in a way to cut down on non-teaching payroll in schools?

I guess that cuts to the core of the modern understanding of education as an economic sector. Education is now a business. We have added a bottom line because we are too cowardly as a society to deal with ambiguous results. We have standardized tests to "check the pulse" of our system as a whole, only to find that it fails most students. 

We need to get private money out of education. I know a lot of people believe that education is not the government's business, but honestly, I feel uncomfortable with the idea that there are 'good schools' and 'bad schools' to send your kids. We get this illusion of safety and advantage when we are fortunate enough to send our kids to private schools, where they are insulated from poverty and the more dangerous elements of public schools. The problem is that we all share this earth, and in America, we all become a part of the larger whole of society regardless of what school we attended. 

I don't want my children to be the victim of someone who didn't get the necessary tools to succeed. Most of it comes down to how students are prepared for school, but until we get our children to understand the aim of education is to better their situation in life, they will not self-actualize without intrinsic desire. If we don't foster that desire at a young age, it won't suddenly appear later. As a result, you'll have high school kids who can't relate to a teacher wearing a button-down shirt and tie, because they don't even see an opportunity to aspire to be just a teacher.

To everyone who cares about the future of education (and humanity as a whole): value learning more than money. 

Parents: stop dropping your children off at school the way you drop your car off at the shop. "Make him smart, fix him up." 

Teachers: stop binding yourselves to the standards and curriculum. In my classroom, on day one, I told my students point-blank: I am not here to teach you economics, I'm here to help you learn more about how to learn. Economics was simply my tool. And who can't relate to a subject that revolves around money? But the problem was an expectation my students held, thinking I was there to make sure they learned everything there was to know about a subject. For me, if I could see progress, I saw success. 

And a lot of time success is the sum of many attempts, failures, and the tenacity to understand. I have no admiration for people who do not struggle. In my eyes, an easy life means you aren't trying hard enough. Resilience is what I admire most. Never stop trying, never stop learning.

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas. - G. Bernard Shaw

The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension. - Ezra Pound

The mark of a well educated person is not necessarily in knowing all the answers, but in knowing where to find them. - Douglas Everett

[linexline]

A cursory view of the history of American taxation

When Americans were simply a colony of Great Britain, excessive taxes on sugar and tea made life for the colonists unbearable. It was the tax in this case which fanned the flame of political revolution and one of the most progressive political documents known to mankind was an afterthought. Fast-forward to today and it is stagnant credit and high energy or health care prices which stifle the vast majority of this country.

Until the 16th Amendment, the federal government did not have the power to levy taxes. In 1913, the states ratified the amendment, creating an income tax. We paid for wars prior to 1913 by selling federal land.

After Hoover led us into the Great Depression, FDR and the New Deal set America back on the path to prosperity, where we held until the 1970s, after surviving a double-dip recession during the recovery. One thing my reading on the Great Depression and the New Deal has taught me is that FDR was not "far-left" and Hoover "far-right". Most of the new taxation on the wealthy was actually passed by Hoover prior to FDR taking office, much like the stimulus act passed during the final months of the Bush administration. 

FDR ultimately learned that effective fiscal policy is not a black or white matter. As with anything important in life, the answer is in the grey area.

Between 1950 and about 1980, we had fairly stable gains throughout the economy and until the oil crisis during the Carter administration, we had no recessions. Reaganomics changed everything, and this is where most of our disagreements stem from today. Supply side economics became the dominant school of thought in public policy for the last thirty years. I feel like this post provides a great analysis, along with some charts that speak more than words.

Today, our tax system is broken. We could be going after tax evaders. For every $1 spent going after those who owe, an average return of $11 comes back for the federal government. This is based upon collecting existing taxes owed under the current system. We could be creating a more fair system, which taxes consumption at higher rates on a 2nd or 3rd home, a yacht, a luxury jet. These are all things which actually generate a tax break under the current system. Or we could get lost in the nonsense about taxes themselves being an atrocity and realize that taxes are simply revenues for our government to do the things we want them to do.

It is our government. How much we are taxed and what we do with those taxes is something we can, and should, be directly influencing. A free society demands the attention of citizens. Not to tune in to one station, but to look deeper into the research before forming an opinion pitting black vs. white. Really, it's all grey area.

[linexline]

The Preamble

During the last presidential election cycle, I posted frantically about anything and everything that caught my attention from our toxic airwaves. This grows out of the constant stream of misinformation and confusion about the basic underlying facts and key assumptions made by pundits and candidates. 

The American people are being treated like children by the media, and especially by the talking heads on 24-hour cable news. All across the political spectrum, people are less concerned with evidence than scoring political points. What good is winning an election only to get mired in the muck of politics. Politics should be uplifting. Politics is not a zero-sum game. Most of all, politics is NOT this bullshit you see on Fox, CNN and MSNBC with very few exceptions.

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist #51

So the first thing we should get straight is why we have a government in the first place, and what the goals of said government should be. Nothing makes this more clear than the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. It is a single paragraph with six essential clauses laying out the basic goals of our government. It was written last, and placed first in the document establishing this nation. This was a deliberate decision on the part of the founding fathers, and is constantly being ignored or overlooked.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Let's break that down by clause/purpose of government.

to form a more perfect Union - This nation will never be perfect, we only strive to be. We are not above reproach. To call out our failures does not mean one is un-American. In fact, by the spirit of the first amendment, it would be impossible to be un-American simply by speaking. Treasonous speech, yes. Admitting we forcibly sterilized thousands (or more) women for being poor or uneducated until the late 1960s (Buck v. Bell) does not mean "I hate this country" any more than admitting President Obama has not done enough for the environment/ending wars/closing Guantanamo means "I hate the President".

establish Justice - This is pretty straight-forward, but people seem to think the 10th Amendment guarantees states the right to establish their own definitions of justice. Looking to the 'Stand Your Ground' laws in states like Florida, I can't help but wonder if anyone would answer the underlying question without betraying the spirit of these laws. Ultimately, justice relies on general applicability so I pose the question "Do different people deserve different rights?"

insure domestic Tranquility - Here's where things start to get a bit more up for interpretation. Domestic tranquility can imply a lot of things, but we have an idealized vision of the 1950s as being "the good old days". In no way were we a perfect Union at that time, and there were plenty of unresolved issues and racial tension bubbling up that detracted from the overall domestic tranquility at the time. The general driving principle of the vision of that era being a better time was the strong middle class created by New Deal policies and bolstered a lot by programs like the GI Bill, which made it possible for many more people to have access to higher education. Combine that with a burgeoning manufacturing sector and you have general prosperity, and the government can then focus more of the outliers to continue working toward a more perfect Union.

provide for the common defense - Probably the simplest to understand, not the easiest subject for debate. National defense is imperative, and everyone understands some need for national defense. Today it seems like people disagree over justification for wars, hawkish spending on projects even the military disagrees with, and Patriot Act-era programs that violate a common understanding of a right to privacy. Toss in recent military-style retaliations to peaceful protesters throughout the US and you now have a lot of grey area for argument.

promote the general Welfare - Another clause that is somewhat vague (which is another great reason the read The Federalist Papers). Understanding the framer's intent when drafting the Constitution, the nuances of the 3/5 Compromise, the actual human histories of the individual founding fathers is key to forming a solid opinion on what exactly the general welfare includes according to the Preamble. This seems to be the one where most Americans disagree vehemently along party lines. Not specifically just welfare, but this includes education and health care as well. I am a progressive because I believe access to quality education and health care are fundamental human rights. I also believe they pay great dividends to society, because healthy, educated people are less likely to mug you, for example.

and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity - The part of the Declaration of Independence everyone remembers best is "life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Thomas Jefferson borrowed the phrase, and remixed it from John Locke's natural rights: life, liberty and property. The Constitution was written to give us a clear concept of property rights and allow us to work hard, save money and leave more for future generations. The American Dream. Another sticky point of contention when you get into all of the details like eminent domain, indefinite detention and warrantless wiretapping.

I will be expanding more on these general ideas as I begin researching and writing about the latest topics du jour. For now, feel free to contribute to the discussion!