
The Uneducated American - robg
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/opinion/09krugman.html?hpw
======
ShabbyDoo
In how many ways do Krugman's arguments fail? First of all, he's preaching to
the choir by ignoring any need to even suggest a casual relationship between
American economic prosperity and the availability of formal education. Then,
he ignores the difference between public spending on higher education and the
availability of education overall.

>Education made America great;

I'd argue that individual freedom led to American prosperity, and individuals'
choice to partake in education was merely a consequence of a free society.

How can someone look at OpenCourseware, free textbooks, and the self-
organizing study groups surrounding the former two and not conclude that
education is more available than ever before? Up until WW2, going to college
was an unlikely occurrence for the child of parents who had not themselves
gone. Was the "American Century" really the result of upper middle class
education alone? It was not until the GI bill that college became an odd
expectation.

The underlying logical fallacy in Krugman's piece is that attending college is
the only form of "higher" education available or even desirable. Shouldn't we
instead be asking why lower socio-economic status Americans seem to have
adopted an anti-learning cultural bias? Why, as Dean Kamen asks, do we not
celebrate society's engineering achievements? It's thinkers? Government
subsidy of education is one convenient target of many for those who think more
government is the answer to all of society's ills. Never before in America has
so much knowledge been available for free from the comfort of one's home
(star), and yet he argues that we have some sort of education crisis.

(star) Even at minimum wage, an internet connection only costs at most a few
hours labor per month. And, the computer sufficient to partake in this
knowledge can probably be found at some upper-middle class curb on garbage
day.

~~~
mdakin
_I'd argue that individual freedom led to American prosperity, and
individuals' choice to partake in education was merely a consequence of a free
society._

You could argue that but it is wrong (well, at least the education-specific
bit). Mandatory education in America traces back to the culture (in general)
and the enacted legislation (in particular) of the Puritan settlers of New
England. The Puritans believed in universal literacy so that everyone could
read scripture. They passed laws mandating child literacy and required towns
to hire teachers to teach the children. This was all mandated and required by
the government and in some sense that can be construed taking choice AWAY from
individuals rather than giving choice to them. At the time this system and
these requirements were unique in the world.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan#Education>

~~~
tokenadult
Compulsory school attendance (as contrasted with tax-supported provision of
schools) came later in American history. And the history of the colonies where
Puritans were not the majority was also different. But Americans in general
cherished literacy, and got that without much school attendance. When Horace
Mann finally made school attendance compulsory in the modern sense in the
1850s in Massachusetts, he reported in his Common School Journal that more
than 90 percent of the inhabitants of Massachusetts were literate. Earlier,
Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Is it a right or a duty in society to take care of
their infant members in opposition to the will of the parent? . . . It is
better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be
educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible
asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father. What
is proposed here is to remove the objection of expense, by offering education
gratis . . ."

Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Cabell, September 9, 1817, reprinted in
Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition 1904) volume 17, page 423.

<http://learninfreedom.org/Founders_free.html>

~~~
mdakin
My point is that education/literacy in America is not something that magically
emerged on its own but is something that was mandated by the earliest
settlers. These particular settlers, regardless of number/geographic
footprint, exert great cultural influence up until this very day. As time went
on their meme spread out and mutated, and we have what we have now which is
universal public education.

Compulsory school attendance seems like a different question, and more like an
implementation detail to me. At least today school attendance is not
compulsory if the parents arrange for the child to be educated up to the
currently mandated educational standards. (i.e. Homeschooling is legal.)

~~~
tokenadult
And my friendly disagreement is that literacy among American colonists was
something more generally sought than compelled, especially if we keep all the
colonies and not just the Puritan colonies of New England in view. (My
ancestors who arrived in America the earliest were New England Puritans, and
they and others of my ancestors were literate before they left Europe. I have
books in the German language at home that have been owned by family members
since they were published in the 1600s.)

~~~
mdakin
I think most people value education and generally seek it without compulsion
(then and now). The idea of codifying the education requirements as law (then
and now) directly serves that small fraction of people who would not have
found education on their own otherwise. (Indirectly it serves _us all_ because
it saves us from trouble uneducated people end up placing on society.) I
believe that the essential elimination of that small fraction of the
uneducated likely would not have happened without the codification of
educational requirements (as law), but that's a point we can't really prove
one way or another. And perhaps that unprovable point is the root of whatever
friendly disagreement you and I might have?

(It might be possible to do a comparative study of countries/cultures which
have codified educational requirements vs. ones that don't-- comparing basic
literacy rates to get some insight into this in the general case. It could be
very tricky to factor out economics though. I know what I suspect the results
would indicate. But I've not the time to do the study.)

~~~
tokenadult
_It might be possible to do a comparative study of countries/cultures which
have codified educational requirements vs. ones that don't_

Singapore is a good example in this regard. Its compulsory school attendance
law is still less than two decades old.

------
markpercival
"The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public
education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated
by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer
dollars. Education, as one of the largest components of public spending, has
inevitably suffered." - Paul Krugman

So Mr. Krugman thinks we should throw more money at the problem by way of
State stimulus? A quick look at the figures would tell anyone that funding
isn't the primary issue.

Current expenditure per pupil in 2006 dollars

1961 - $2,670

2008 - $9,391

<http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66>

~~~
krschultz
It would be hard for me to believe that my parents generation was better
educated than mine.

For one, when they graduated in the early 60s there was a massive gender gap
in college attendance - my mom was valedictorian and went to secretarial
school because her parents told her "women can be teachers, secretaries, or
nurses", by the 70s she knew she should have gone to college. For comparison
the female valedictorian from my HS went to Harvard.

Then there is the general quality of the education. Neither of them took
Calculus in high school. They had Latin and most schools today teach Spanish,
French, and Italian but aside from that they think my education was much
harder. College is unquestionably more rigorous today.

On a shorter time frame, say the last 10 years, MAYBE that argument holds
true. In my home state the last 3 have had serious state budget problems that
affected the schools but until then it was getting better and better every
year.

~~~
kevbin
"College is unquestionably more rigorous today." This is likely true at the
high-end. But the vast majority of college students are not at the high-end.
At the mean, universities have to mop-up after a dysfunctional K-12
establishment based on self-esteem and social-promotion. Remedial reading,
writing, and mathematics are common at second- and third-tier universities.
The scope of "special needs" has been broadened to include customers who are
incapable of producing college-level coursework.

To ensure that students who elect to pursue a rigorous education are not
penalized relative to those who do not so choose, grades at those institutions
have been inflated to meaningless extent.

The educational industrial complex is geared toward growth. Effectively
serving that market requires lower baseline standards and less meaningful
quality metrics within the serviced population. Certainly the market is
consuming more educational product than in the early 60s, but whether this
produces a better educated populace is less obvious--unless "better educated"
is defined to mean "consumed more educational product."

~

"in the early 60s there was a massive gender gap in college attendance" As an
aside, today's gender gap is the opposite: colleges attract fewer males than
females. If you consider graduation and 4-year graduation rates, the gap is
greater and growing faster. I don't know that this marketing failure says
anything about the quality of education though.

~~~
bkovitz
Someone tell me if this is right (it's just guesswork):

Decades ago, there was a clear distinction between colleges and vocational
schools (or "trade schools"). The purpose of colleges was to bring you into a
certain culture and tradition: the culture of educated people. The purpose of
vocational schools was practical job training, nothing more.

Attending "college" was more prestigious, but also of little interest to most
people. (Most people are basically practical.) Social initiatives to bring
poorer people into the educated world put money into colleges, not vocational
schools. But most people don't want to learn about Keats and the Magna Carta
and that sort of thing, they just want to get skills to do a job to make more
money than they could without those skills.

Over time, the purpose of colleges became confused. People today see colleges
as intended to provide job training, and just doing a lousy job of it.
Colleges, with their state funding, grabbed much of the market from vocational
schools, killing off most of them.

So today, we have many colleges, with vast numbers of students. Most of the
students mostly jump through useless bureaucratic hoops for four or five
years, don't learn the things educated people know, and don't get job skills,
either.

~~~
willchang
I've always thought this way too. The fact that car mechanics make more than
programmers points to the fact that there is actually a dearth of education
leading up to being a capable mechanic, and perhaps a surfeit of education
leading up to being a mediocre programmer. The fact that manufacturing has
been shedding jobs for decades makes it even weirder that competence in the
manual trades is so expensive to hire. Perhaps America has never provided
decent educational support for the trades, and for a long time, the average
manufacturing job required little. I wonder how different the nation would be
if this education had been available all along.

~~~
kevbin
According to the BLS* Computer Programmers (15-1021) average $73,000/yr.
Automotive Service Technicians and Mechanics(49-3023) average $37,540/yr, or
roughly half what programmers make.

* <http://www.bls.gov/oes/2008/may/oes_nat.htm>

------
glen
This ship has sailed. States simply do not have the money to fund more
programs to help strengthen our educational system. Even if they had unlimited
funding, the problems are not a result of a limited amount of money, but
rather arise from a variety of complex, systemic socio-political problems.
Christensen, Horn, and Johnson (2008) have applied the disruptive paradigm to
education and have some really startling insights in their book: Disrupting
Class: How disruptive insights change the way the world learns. Definitely
worth checking out if you are at all interested in transforming education.

Krugman also highlights another problem. The financial crisis has resulted in
real job cuts. Consequently, there will be less specialized classes, AP
classes etc., especially in rural and urban areas. Christensen's point is that
this is a great place to introduce an education based disruption. That is what
we are doing at www.nixty.com. As a country, we have limited "teacher
bandwidth" (David Wiley, 2009). Whether we like it or not, this bandwidth is
going to continue to decrease. We need to find ways to harness the Web,
informal learning, opencourseware etc. to create real learning opportunities
for people of all ages and across different backgrounds. Many of these
disruptive processes are already underway in the homeschooling and unschooling
domains. It'll be interesting to see how they play out and impact the
traditional K-12 and higher education systems in the coming years.

We are looking for people interested in helping us solve these problems. If
you would like to join us, then shoot me an email at glen at nixty.com

~~~
linhir
I wouldn't necessarily recommend Christensen, Horn and Johnson. They talk a
lot about the need for innovative practices in education, but their
recommendations aren't particularly innovative. The details of how the
innovative practices must differ from previous efforts to reform education is
basically not there.

I"m not sure there is a great book that lays out some solutions, if there were
we wouldn't still be talking about these issues. I'd suggest reading some
books that talk more about the problem, just to get a good grasp on the issue.
For that, I'd recommend Susan Eaton The Children in room E4 and Linda
Perlstein's Tested: One American school struggles to make the grade.

------
GiraffeNecktie
I'm fascinated by the contrast between North American and Chinese education.
Chinese students are in class at 6:30 AM and by the time they get out, their
American peers have been playing Guitar Hero and hanging out in the malls for
perhaps five hours. And the Chinese students will probably put in the same
hours on Saturday and Sunday. I'm not saying it's a better system - I actually
think it's bordering on insanity - but there's a middle ground between the two
extremes (and they are extreme) which is probably more sensible. Chinese
students get no freedom to follow their curiosity and American students don't
learn the value of hard work or even of education itself.

------
korch
As American education has become more mass-market and managed like businesses,
I think what is being taught is more watered down in terms of knowledge. I
once was hanging out with a few professors and one remarked "if my current
students had to take the same exams I took as an undergrad, they would all
fail." Just for fun, I'd recommend to dig int some academic archives, and read
the exams and quizes for college courses from decades ago, then compare them
to what you've taken in college courses in this decade. The difference in
difficulty rather leaps out. Idiocracy really is happening.

