The Education Bubble, Part I
For most of the life of the United States of America one of the biggest dreams was that the next generation would exceed what their parents had achieved. Horatio Alger, “any boy can grow up to be president,” “I want my children to have a better education than I did…” Generation after generation did see increases in terms of better lives, more creature comforts, and the thriving of the Protestant Ethic.
The slow, agonizing death of that dream began in 1913 with the establishment of the Fed. It was damaged further by the behavior of the Fed and the big money men through events which led to the Great Depression, and suffered mortal blows under Roosevelt and Truman. The avalanche of irrational spending and social legislation since that time has lead to impractical expectations that could never have been true in any country at any time…after America in the early nineteen hundreds.
“Achievement” based on our own talents and effort has has been replaced by the entitlement mentality and the politics of envy. Passing lightly, for the moment, over the fiscal impossibility of Mr. Obama’s latest scheme to duplicate a chicken in every pot — “A college education for every young American!” — this is yet another feel-good, gimme, pie-in-the-sky statist ploy. In a nation with the drop out rates and widespread illiteracy among youngsters, how does anyone propose to qualify every last kid in America for matriculation? Where are the extra classrooms, textbooks, and teachers to come from?
The whole idea is ludicrous because no matter what the Constitution says (not that statists care), all men are not created equal intellectually. All men are not created equal in terms of what they want to do with their lives or what they would find fulfilling careers. Some of us do not want a MacMansion if it means living in the city. Some would stay cramped in a railroad flat in NYC for decades just to be in the Big Apple. Some like being mechanics and plumbers and electricians, careers which provide them with considerable personal satisfaction and very much above average incomes. Some don’t want to do anything except lie around watching TV or to talk trash, smoke dope, mug strangers, and “draw” welfare.
I did an analysis in 1990 and discovered that over 90% of all youth going before the courts in Seattle were functionally or totally illiterate. How does Mr. Obama propose to turn such into college graduates? A shockingly disproportionate number of “gifted” kids drop out of school, bored senseless with the watered down curriculum and “social” programs. Some, in time, will earn a GED and go to college; many will be wasted.
Each generation in the last century saw a lessening of expectations academically. Use a search engine to find the final exam for the 8th grade — as high as undergraduate education went late in the 19th Century — for Kansas, I think in 1895, although it may have been 1875. I have two college degrees and have done graduate work in five fields. I could pass that exam, but I certainly could not cover myself with glory.
The HS education of the Thirties was the equivalent of a BA in the Sixties. Very few of those who have been graduated since the Eighties will ever begin to know what the average college graduate knew in the Viet Nam era. The real truth is that most of the erudition the highly-educated have came from work they had done on their own because they wanted to know. They view education as a life-long pursuit.
These days we have a show asking “Are you smarter than a fifth grader?” We have millions who never even heard of diagramming a sentence.
Two years ago a high school junior in a “good” school in Houston took Biology. At her age, we were dissecting angle worms the first day and worked our ways up through rats, eels, and cats. HER class went to nearby Galveston and got a small shark. The course of instruction consisted of keeping the shark alive until the last week of school when the teacher dissected it. This is not the sort of biological “knowledge” that leads to future research geniuses. Neither does “Bowling,” another of her classes, or “Yearbook.” She had yet to have mastered the multiplication tables and was still on “pre-Algebra.” I had my first real Algebra course in the 7th grade and three more in high school plus geometry, Latin, Spanish, and Business Law, which stands me in good stead to this day. A college education these days is little more than a necessary stamp of the ticket and does not begin to guarantee even an entry level job, as witness how few recently-graduated lawyers were able to get jobs in that field ten years ago and ever since. We’ve got more lawyers than we need and nowhere near enough engineers, veterinarians, and butchers.
We cannot make genuine college graduates, with what most of us think that term should mean, out of every bit of the raw material at hand. Kids who read poorly, if at all, have no idea how percentages work, and think they are “entitled” to free food, housing, insurance, and medical care are not college material, any more than all of them can become stars in the NBA, successful actresses, or morticians.
Naturally, we cannot set the matter of cost aside. The federal government has beggared this nation for generations and is on a rampage in this century that cannot fail to usher in The Greater Depression. Japan has been suffering from Depression for 19 years, now, and it didn’t spend nearly as much as Washington did. There are so many “social” programs now, and so many more being demanded, that it is not feasible to fund college even for those who qualify even under the current very lax standards.
College is a sheer waste of time for those who have neither the inclination nor the ability to succeed there. Year after year the costs have gone up, and the degree it took four years to earn in my day now takes six. Rather like car loans. Less product for more money.
We can all but guarantee that with true joblessness running nearly 20% (by the standards used during the Great Depression), firms cutting back hours and cutting salaries, and the difficulties universities are having getting operating funds because charitable giving is down, that prices will continue to rise, enrollment will drop (making cost per student even higher), and we will see increasing defaults on student loans. My son has about $75,000′ worth, himself, for which he was graduated summa cum laude and has an MBA. That is also over a year’s salary for him. To add to the strain, through governmental witchery some of those student loans got thrown over into a program with 15% interest rates, breaking the agreement Andrew had made! Nobody consulted him; they just broke the contract and said, “This is how it is now.”
I have written before that the future of higher education is on-line schooling, just as the best option for fortunate children is home-schooling. Three years ago it cost almost exactly what going to the University of Texas for ‘Drew’s MBA would have…but his books were included, classes were never closed to enrollment, and he didn’t spend a great many dangerous, expensive hours on freeways, hunting parking places, or hanging around campus between classes. His work involved all written projects and reports, developing the writing skills he had learned at home. (By the time your mama the editor has marked up all of your papers for three years…)
There isn’t even an illusion of pie in the sky any more. The big rock candy mountain is down to a pile of grubby shards. ALL of the children in America may not and can not go to college for free or even otherwise, and $4000/a year or even a semester is a token. A college education these days costs as much to the families — or a state — as does incarcerating a felon, although it yields a better proportion of taxpayers eventually.
Next time we will discuss other factors which lead to the dismal level of “scholarship” in America and what that portends for the future. Governmental policies have driven away manufacturing jobs, and brains have been drained. There will be less and less interest in “service” industries. My focus is always on what we, as individuals, can do to solve problems for ourselves. We can see that our children do not end up unable to distinguish between they’re, their, and there, or confused over whether to write “companies” or “company’s.” Education, charity, and financial responsibility all need to begin at home, as they did long ago.
Regards,
Linda Brady Traynham
September 16, 2009
Linda Brady Traynham
Linda Brady Traynham is a former editor and analytical project report writer and is now a Whiskey & Gunpowder field correspondent on a ranch in the Republic of Texas. She studied Counseling at Boston University and got her Masters degree in Philosophy from the University of Hawaii.
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Linda,
You have got to quit exhibiting such a perceptive level of intelligence! If you keep this up, at least a few people just might become truly educated. Let that occur in sufficient numbers and the unthinkable could happen…the declining state of education in this country might be slowed, possibly halted or…assuming a miracle on the level of the resurrection…even reversed.
But on second thought, keep it up. Maybe you and I (and the rest of the Texas Ring) are tilting at windmills, but there’s always the one in a million chance that we might help usher in real hope and change…instead of the bill of goods we’ve been sold thru overuse of the same three words.
Hang in there, Linda. We need you.
Big hug. Richard.
I have a 21 year old son who came home from three years in the army, with 15 months in combat. No one would hire him with the top two reasons being 1. you are not 21 and 2. you need at least an associates degree. He ended up making more on unemployment than he could have by taking a job at minimum wage at McDonald’s. So, now he goes to college on the GI Bill in order to get that all-important college degree. He is totally unqualified for college and should not be there. He has great common sense and can repair anything, but a scholar he is not. I was the first in my family to get a college degree and back in the 1960s it meant something and allowed me to get a good job. Now that everyone is going to college the whole thing seems meaningless and a useless endeavor. I have interviewed some of our recent high school and college graduates—dumb as a shoe but feeling great about themselves. The bit about finding percentages in the article rang so true. We taught our kids at home for two years and that was one thing we taught them. Their friends were, and still are, amazed that someone can actually figure out what 20% of 50 is without a calculator. To go to college just for the sake of going to college seems to be what we have become. A college degree no longer means anything. Just that you took a bunch of goofy classes and survived two or four years of nonsense. You’re still uneducated.
You didn’t really touch on “education as a career” and how it absorbed millions of people to teach all of this on top of billions of dollars of tax money. When I talk to parents about what their high schooler is going to do, when they say “teach grade school”, I laugh. Needless to say I don’t get elected to any PTA offices.
I asked them if they had noticed the economy, “education is immune” is many times a response. I asked them if they have noticed the teachers layoffs, “only in california” is the response. Did you notice how many stimulus dollars went into K-12 this year? “They did?” is the question. [Actually I couldn’t believe it when they
passed the bill either, at the beginning of the year. My last question is what is going to replace those dollars
next year, and the answer is “Not any more taxes!”.
My friends aren’t particurally forward looking, let alone aware of “confirmation bias”.
Education is a contracting business with lower and lower demand for workers, and increasingly an outlook for less benefits/wages for the new entrants(union workers) because we can’t afford the current model with the current people and the current (promised) benefits.
An outstanding article. I guess the elitists were working as far back as the turn of the century, then.
Speaking as a former inmate of the “public screwel system”, quoting Rush Limbaugh, I state here and now that what I managed to learn I learned IN SPITE OF, rather than because of, the vast majority of my teachers.
My design flaw is an inability to comprehend higher mathematics. Adding, subtracting and multiplying whole numbers is about as well as I can do without benefit of calculator. Fractions, forget it. Plane, train, and automobile geometry, forget it. Calculus, forget it. Pre, mid, and post-Algebra, forget it.
However, due to the same kink in my brain that kept me from mastering math enabled me to learn to read at an early age. It pissed off my teachers to no end that I could actually read even though I couldn’t read by their rules. I still cannot definitely tell you the differences between verbs, nouns, pronouns, con-nouns, past, present and future tenses, and so forth. I am writing this with a computer, of course, and thank God for spell-check!
I was subjected to the usual “motivational” treatments—belittlement and humiliation, being made the per se and de facto class scapegoat. Until I got big enough and mean enough—and well-armed enough—to make the bastards back off and leave me alone.
I was subjected to the old SRA Learning Lab test (anyone remember those, with those different colors of gold, red, green, pink, aqua, et cetra?) when I was in 8th grade, and, to no-one’s surprise, I did abysmally in math—1st or 2nd-grade level. But, “Surprise, surprise, surprise,” to quote Gomer Pyle U.S.M.C., when it came to reading, English comprehension and so on, I tested at second-year college!
I much later learned that this is not uncommon—people with poor math skills often read and use English very well, and vice-versa.
I dropped out after completing 11th grade and got my GED—and not long later was actually shocked to read that there were high-school graduates who couldn’t read well enough to pass the GED exams!
Well, that’s that. Linda has done well. But will it make a difference in the mainstream society? Probably not; far too many people have their heads up their own a$$, or more likely, Obama’s.
I agree with you on the academic rigor of prior generations at our elementary and middle schools. And I agree that we should reinstitute that level of difficulty and achievement. And I agree that our colleges barely equal what our high schools once were.
However, during the 1800′s and early 1900′s a job in a factory or as an electrician or a butcher, or any of a number of other pursuits that did not require a higher education wasseen as respectable and many students who were not academically capable or interested left school to join their parent’s business or to seek their fortune on our Western frontier..or to farm! So the remaining students’ achievements appear more remarkable than todays given those remaining in school past eight grade were generally the cream of the intellectual crop while. Compare this to today. Federally subsidized schools do everything they can to keep each and every dollar…I mean student in class as long as possible. This results in illiterate graduates who are mislead into thinking they are college material only to be humiliated even in what now barely pass for college courses. Meanwhile, the intellectually gifted are forced to work down to the level of these dollar students and are warned away from pursuing intellectual excellence via strong negative social forces (nerd!, smarty pant’s, teacher’s pet, dork, four eyes, geek!…etc.)
And thus you have what is a completely negative outcome in the system: The bad students are rewarded for less than mediocre work and irresponsible behavior and the good students are punished for being responsible and working hard. It doesn’t get any worse than this.
I have the honor to be, respectfully yours.
M.I.T. just put their whole curriculum online so people can actually see what they will be getting for the money . Most schools will never do this, people would soon learn that they have been overpaying for a lackluster education. Thousands spent to have their children become the smartest server at Chili’s. For once I am in total agreement with you. I have learned more important things off the internet then I ever learned in school or on the news for that matter .
Dear Doug:
Thanks, I knew that and intend to go see when I get a few minutes.
Chuckle…”For once?” If you disagree about anything, let’s talk about it. (Is that you, Douglas C. Trant?!)
Thanks for writing. LBT
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Dear Mr. Nicholson:
Your e-mail about your “21 year old son who came home from three years in the army, with 15 months in combat. No one would hire him with the top two reasons being 1. you are not 21 and 2. you need at least an associates degree.” touched me deeply, both because I have “mothered/counseled” boys with experiences just like your son’s and because every sentence strikes home in the America this has become. I’m going to answer you in segments because the SPAM filter grabs my replies if I write “too much.” Please thank your son for his service to his country, and that’s speaking as the widow, daughter, daughter-in-law, and multiple aunt, cousin, and niece of career military men in this generation alone. At least it gave him GI bill benefits, even if he would be happier going to electricians’ or plumbers’ school. Thank you for a very fine letter. Back later, warm regards, Linda
Dear Schoff: Was any author ever blessed with such readers?! Another “Wow!” I’m gettin’ there, I’m gettin’ there. Next time we’re going to discuss illiteracy and THEN we’ll work on what this fraud costs all of us. Ah, how I wish I could answer at the length all of you deserve! I’m cutting John Nicholson’s great letter into segments and the spam filter STILL grabbed what I wrote. There ARE some very fine teachers; I had two myself. Otherwise, that is a typical union: over-paid, underworked, feather-bedding…do you suppose we can outsource education?! Of course we can. It is called “home schooling.” Sincere regards, Linda
Dear Readers: The spam filter eats long letters and, thus, many of my answers. I respond to you in the order I receive mail. #7 was the first and only one to come–last night. In time someone goes and cleans out the trap! So…when you do not get a reply promptly or post when you hit “submit,” that means the spam catcher is chortling, “Got another ‘un, boss!” It HAS to be set that high W&G says or we’d be sorting through thousands of bits no one wants to read. Hitting “submit,” here’s hoping. LBT
Dear Marc: some of the brightest people I know read brilliantly and have problems with “higher” mathematics! I think math ability is genetic! My husband and both our children are genuine mathematical geniuses. I (emphatic) understand arithmetic. REALLY understand it. Drove my husband crazy because I can work algebra word problems in my HEAD. X hasn’t got a thing to do with when two trains meet or how many pounds of different types of coffee…If the “price” of writing as well as you do is having to reach for a calculator…when was the last time you needed the square root of anything? (I multiply to get a close approximation, although I don’t need them either.) I have noted that FAR more gifted kids drop out, proportionally. You’ll like Part Two, which deals with illiteracy! If we have to choose between reading and writing or ciphering, hand me a thick book, please. Warmly, Linda
Dear Gus: I feel indulged beyond my desserts. One great letter after another, each of them worthy of pages of my enthusiastic prose–which the spam filter would eat, perhaps forever, as it does sometimes. How well y’all are delineating the problems I’m getting to. Those are the bubbles: the cost, the waste, the disappointment, driving the brightest away, inculcating our kids with false ideas of what success is and how to achieve it, using our tax dollars AND OUR CHILDREN for political purposes. It’s a mess, and a dreadful way to treat deserving youngsters who WANT to learn. I am a giant fan of “Gifted” Education; you don’t have to BE smart to benefit from it, the kids GET smarter using the materials. ‘Drew was sick a week in the 2nd grade. I got EVERY paper his teacher used that week, and Andrew completed them flawlessly in 7 minutes. How can anyone expect a smart, active youngster to be “good” throughout and endless day for well under two minutes of work? Pushing it on length, loved your great letter, Linda
Okay, Richard, who is Don Quixote, who gets to be Sancho Panza, and which one is Rosinante?! Next time I’m going to tear into illiteracy, which, along with driving manufacturing overseas, is the path to the anti-industrial revolution which will leave the oligarchs in charge of peasants grateful for a crust of stale bread. It is a crime to bore our youngsters, teach them false “values,” tell them “success” in school is breathing for a dozen years, and then insist that a college education will cure everything. I wish the Shooters had seen all of Tony’s letter on the demand to improve teaching “credentials.” Every time the bar is raised further, someone works out a way to debase what it stands for. At this rate the next generation will need a PhD. to get a secretarial job. Hugs, Linda
It is good to see some light shown on this topic on a regular basis. Recommended reading is- The Leipzig Connection: Sabotage of the US Educational System, by Paolo Lionni. In this book, the decline of education is attributed directly to the influence of the psychiatric profession in redefining what education is. The book paints a credible picture and if you are reading this article, should be of interest. A good review is here: http://www.sntp.net/education/.....ection.htm
First time I could not finish reading one of your articles Rancherlady. Just too damn depressing…
BTW, I can conjugate any tense of any verb with the very best of them, thanks to my Catholic grade schooling from 76′ to 82′.
God help us all….
Linda,
It was not I, but I searched and found: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/...../index.htm
Douglas C Trant
Dear Hardrock:
Thanks for the compliment and the reading suggestion. That could be part of the problem, although I think the BIG parts are power and social engineering. Once a big publisher hooks a school on his basic reader, the school has to stay with him; the kids are supposed to be learning about 200 words a year, but since the word lists vary from publisher to publisher…the kids can’t read the 2nd grade books if they learned from someone else’s first reader!
Please weigh in any time, particularly on this subject, which is very dear to my heart. My next article is going to be on phonics and how we got into this mess in terms of switching to look-say. Regards, Linda
Dear Jack: Say it isn’t so! Bet you can also go trajo, trajere, traxi, tractus! Let’s hear it for Catholic schools; NOBODY sasses Sister. As I just told hardrock, next time we’re going to trace the decline and fall of the phonetic system for political reasons–and out of sheer stupidity and laziness. Some people will buy bottled water! (a comedy routine my son does that’s very funny.) Regards, Linda
Dear Douglas C: Neglecting me, are you? What’s up in Canada mit der wetter? I hear we’ve got an arctic express headed our way. Linda
Sorry, folks, the world is moving faster than your rage. “Establishment Education” has become redundant even as it has become worthless. The following is from an essay by James Carroll on work (http://www.boston.com/bostongl....._our_work/) which I read while travelling and just “Googled.”
>>The humanities PhD, to take one sacred example, is hard-earned certification signifying the mastery of book-centered research supporting a body of learned expertise, but what happens when book-centered research is made redundant by the search engine, and expertise is not learned but Googled? <<
In another casual reading, the head of a new technical college in Silicon Valley noted that a lot of the students "taking" some of the advanced courses knew enough to teach them.
The most accomplished Air Force drone pilot is a high-school drop-out who got the job through his, and our, good luck. After a tour in Afghanistan, he is now training other drone pilots and the Air Force is questioning the necessity of insisting that their pilots all be officers (I know, there is more to flying an airplane than stick and rudder, I usta do it).
I learned early-on to learn what I needed to know when I needed to know it. It helps being a voracious reader. Buy all the gold you cn afford, the world is changing in ways none of us can either imagine or control
Dear Volcano Dan:
I enjoyed your letter greatly and wish I knew the drone pilot. As for advanced degrees in bubble-blowing, as one critic put it…all they take is time and some way to support one’s self and pay tuition while being bored–or worse, while taking one’s self seriously.
I bought a Ph.D in “Metaphysics” (my basic degree being in Philosophy) and I STILL think it is a terrific sociological commentary and joke. To me, “Doctor” will always mean an MD, a veterinarian, or a Dentist. We Jose Ortega y Gasset types learn on our own because we WANT to know. We work on our erudition life long. We make our own success. We march to a lot of different drummers. Isn’t it fun?! Write again, please? Linda
Dear Volcano Dan: Great letter, spam filter ate answer, will check tomorrow to see if it has regurgitated my response. Write again, please, cordially, Linda
Dear Volcano: My first response is still languishing in the spam filter, but tomorrow for sure? The “pilot has to be an officer” stuff has been going on since there has been an air corps. In Viet Nam they condescended to let warrant officers fly. Education is wonderful stuff, but a college degree has nothing to do with mastering the techniques of flight. Or cyclic. Linda
Suddenly occurred to me that perhaps all people do not know that without a college degree it is extremely difficult to become an ossifer and a gennelmun. I have no idea when anyone was last given a battlefield promotion, but it has almost certainly been quite a while. I keep pointing out that I am the widow, daughter, sister, and multiple aunt, cousin, and niece of career military officers. I wouldn’t have it any other way and I LOVED my life in military circles, but success has a lot more to do with politics and getting tickets punched than anything else. Remember Anton Meyers “Once an Eagle?” Great book. The politician officer outranks the warrior hero all the way to the end. LBT
Forgot daughter-in-law!
As I read this, I was reminded of an essay titled “The Comprachicos” by Ayn Rand from 1970. It’s even more true today than when she first wrote it.
Some excerpts:
“The methods of teaching are essentially the same as those used in high school, only more so. The curriculum is an embodiment of disintegration — a hodgepodge of random subjects, without continuity, context or purpose. It is like a series of Balkanized kingdoms, offering a survey course of floating abstractions or an overdetailed study of a professor’s favorite minutiae, with the borders closed to the kingdom in the next classroom, with no connections, no bridges, no maps. Maps — i.e. systematization — are forbidden on principle. Cramming and memorizing are the students’ only psycho-epistemological means of getting through. (There are graduates in philosophy who can recite the differences between the early and late Wittgenstein, but have never had a course on Aristotle. There are graduates in psychology who have puttered about with rats in mazes, with knee-jerking reflexes and with statistics, but never got to an actual study of human psychology.)”
“The methods of teaching are essentially the same as those used in high school, only more so. The curriculum is an embodiment of disintegration — a hodgepodge of random subjects, without continuity, context or purpose. It is like a series of Balkanized kingdoms, offering a survey course of floating abstractions or an overdetailed study of a professor’s favorite minutiae, with the borders closed to the kingdom in the next classroom, with no connections, no bridges, no maps. Maps — i.e. systematization — are forbidden on principle. Cramming and memorizing are the students’ only psycho-epistemological means of getting through. (There are graduates in philosophy who can recite the differences between the early and late Wittgenstein, but have never had a course on Aristotle. There are graduates in psychology who have puttered about with rats in mazes, with knee-jerking reflexes and with statistics, but never got to an actual study of human psychology.)”