What the Names We Pick Tell Us About Ourselves

Google searches help parents choose names, according to the New York Times', What’s in a Name? Ask Google.  After looking at specifics for a particular name, many are drawn to the Social Security Administration's website. It allows you to check the popularity of names over time. You will find on the SSA's website the following list:

Top 10 Names for 2010

Rank	Male name	Female name
1	Jacob	Isabella
2	Ethan	Sophia
3	Michael	Emma
4	Jayden	Olivia
5	William	Ava
6	Alexander	Emily
7	Noah	Abigail
8	Daniel	Madison
9	Aiden	Chloe
10	Anthony	Mia

Name data are from Social Security card applications for births that occurred in the United States.

As the Times' article states, some parents want a popular name and some want a more unusual name, as long as it isn't too weird. You couldn't be more of a conformist over the years than by picking my name, Michael. It's been the most popular name in the country from 1954-1959 and 1961-1998. My mom picked Michael because she liked the sound and ethnicity of the name. She didn't do a Google search, and try and find a name that would let me vanish in the crowd.

Can we learn anything about our preferences from the list of names? Indeed, we can. It is quite interesting that four of the ten boys' names on the 2011 list (Ethan, Michael, Noah, and Daniel) are mentioned in the Hebrew bible. The popularity of the ancient Greek name Alexander, derived, of course, from the most famous Alexander (the Great), the conqueror that changed middle eastern history, is popular with Jews, but is not a religious name. Anthony is derived from the Christian Saint Anthony (the Great, the Hermit, or of Kiev, all important Christian leaders). Aiden is an Irish pagan name. William is from the German Wilhelm and also from the Norman invader, William the Conquerer, and Jayden is a hybrid of Jay and Hayden, coming on on the scene from nowhere less than 20 years ago.

In summary, the great majority of currently popular male names are  based on either religious figures or generals.

Only one of the girls' names, Abigail, is from the Hebrew bible. The rest of the girls' names come from all over and show no consistent pattern.

It seems that we want either saints or strongmen for our sons. We are not as interested in profound meaning when naming our daughters.

Peace in the Middle East? Not in our Lifetimes!

Jerusalem, Israel

I was disappointed but not surprised to read the November 1, 2011 headline "Abbas says he'll never recognize a Jewish state." Read the article here. No Palestinian leaders have engaged in serious negotiations with Israel, and the only border state that has, Egypt, has seen its leader, Anwar Sadat, assassinated by Islamic fanatics.

The previous Palestinian strongman, arch terrorist Yasser Arafat, whose picture stands prominently in Abbas' office, spoke about recognizing Israel to English audiences but said something altogether different to Arab audiences and rejected the Oslo accords and the Clinton peace agreement and its famous handshake on the White House lawn. Even Palestinian tourist sites show Palestine from sea to sea. Israel is not on these tourist's maps.

The state department considers Abbas a "moderate" Palestinian, and he is compared to his rivals in Hamas. They propose a "final solution" of killing all the Jews. Publicly, they propose killing only some of them. (See an articles here and here.) So the "moderate" will never recognize Israel, and the extremists want to kill. There is not much to work with here.

Abbas has backed his words with action, planning to go around negotiations with Israel by seeking full United Nations membership, emboldened by their recent acceptance as a member of UNESCO. (Read the article here.)

Israel has no partner for peace, and should act accordingly, unilaterally setting defensible borders. American policy should reflect political realities, not tooth fairy wishes, and the United States can quit trying to be an "equal partner" to both sides. We certainly should not continue to fund the Palestinian Authority. Instead, the United States should support Israel, democracy, and civil rights, opposing Sharia law and theocracy, which are becoming more common in the Muslim world. We can let the Islamists speak for themselves:

“I want to say: citizenship restricted by Islamic Shariah, freedom restricted by Islamic Shariah, equality restricted by Islamic Shariah,” he [Sheik Shahat] said in a public debate.

Grand fundraiser for Islamic extremism, Saudi Arabia, teaches hate to its school children. Saudi textbooks teach annihilation of Jews (link here). Saudi money makes its way to Palestinian extremist groups.

Jews have waited a long time for the State of Israel, from the Hasmonean dynasty until 1948, around 2,000 years. After the Roman conquest it took two Millenia to see a free and independent Israel again. It may take a few hundred years before the Palestinians put peace and the welfare of their people before their rigid claims: a Palestine stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river. Instead, Israel and the United States should be patient and firmly rebuff Palestinian demands. The United States and Israel can work together and tackle other world problems and issues of mutual interest such as creating renewable energy, increasing irrigation and potable water, and discovering new uses for technology (see link).

It appears that the Obama administration does not agree. In response, Jewish voters are starting to question allegiance to Obama and are starting to break away from him. Obama tries to defend his record here. But here is a good rebuttal to his ridiculous statements saying he is a great friend of Israel. If he gets voted out of office, I expect he will turn on his Israeli friends. Obama will reappear as a Mr. Hyde, or as a Mr. Shahat-alike, similar to the transformation of Jimmy Carter to a pro-Palestinian activist.

Reasonably "Good" Scores--Grading Obama's First Term

As a high school teacher I reserve the right to grade anyone, so I might as well grade the most powerful man in the free world. Everyone else is grading the president on economic performance, saving the environment, and foreign policy, so I will choose my own criterion.

Style: B+
Obama is tall and thin. He looks good in a suit and walks stiffly and regally--kind of like those Wall Street bankers he likes hates so much. He should  keep smoking those cigarettes.and stay trim.

Physical Education: C+
Why doesn't he stick to basketball? He's reasonably good at hoops. Instead he plays golf with like those Wall Street bankers he likes hates so much. He gets high scores for playing golf at every opportunity, 88 times so far in his term.

Vacationing: A+
Obama has spent $6 million for lavish vacationing in Hawaii alone. He knows how to relax and have a good time. His planned 17-day December to January 2012 Hawaiian vacation ended up mostly enjoyed by his wife, but he will still spend $4 million this time. Maybe he will give a few speeches on government waste, but he will get a needed break from the strains and grueling hours of his work in the White House. He better tell Congress to stop taking holidays and get back to work!

Overall: B+
As long as the American people grade the president on style, physical education, and vacationing, he gets good scores, much better than Hillary Clinton.

Gap Between Rich and Poor Widest in Berkeley

Communism still exists--not in Eastern Europe but in Berkeley, California. Thus I was intrigued when I read the New York Times article, Gap Between Rich and Poor in Area Is Widest in Berkeley.  Instead of planning protests about American foreign policy, maybe the aging Marxists should take a look in the mirror. Alas, I wasn't able to bask in schadenfreude for long. The NYT analysis has two major errors.

Mr. Berube’s research has shown that the area of central Berkeley bounded by University Avenue and Oxford Street [pictured partly in the background of the photo above--MS] has one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the Bay Area, on par with perennially distressed areas like West Oakland and the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco.

The University of California hosts about 30,000 students, most who live as close to campus as possible, that is, in central Berkeley. (The population of Berkeley is about 100,000.) Most college students live under circumstances of near-poverty, especially Cal's 10,000 graduate students. (As a Cal undergraduate, I survived off an income of less than $5,000 per year.) Mr. Berube is describing much of the student ghetto. I don't think these kids getting PhD's in engineering will be impoverished for long. All cities have chronic poor, those on the way up, and rich people. Berkeley has its poor, but the students shouldn't count as part of the city's Gini (inequality) score.
 Secondly, the reporter writes

Other observers said income inequality persisted in Berkeley because the city’s most progressive policies had been blocked by higher authorities. In 2009, for example, the California Supreme Court let stand a ruling voiding ordinances that require developers to set aside units for low-income residents when they build new apartment complexes.

Huh? Since developers weren't forced to build for low-income residents, fewer poor people were able to live in Berkeley, making incomes more equal, not less. Berkeley's "progressive policies" have nothing to do with income inequality.

But Councilman Kriss Worthington said officials were not giving up in efforts to reduce inequality.

I'm sure the Berkeley government will find ways of poorly combating a non-issue. After all, it is Berkeley.

Review of "For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage"

I enjoy taking my kids to the library and perusing the stacks while they pick out their books and videos. Since my graduate work was in psychology and I am always intrigued by what research has to say about relationships, I was happy to come across science journalist Tara Parker-Pope's new book on marriage.

I am not married but found the book to be quite useful in finding ways to improve my relationship with my significant other. I explored, throughout the book, what the latest scientific studies conclude about the benefits of marriage, why relationships go sour, and what to do to improve your situation with your partner. Just about anyone that wants to improve their relationship or is contemplating marriage or divorce will benefit from the research in For Better.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section discusses the benefits of getting or staying married. The second section diagnoses the health of your relationship and how to improve it, examining typical areas of conflict. The third section guides you in giving your relationship a checkup. An appendix of 19 diagnostics gives the reader an opportunity to test his or her levels of passionate love, happiness of the marriage, likely areas of conflict, issues with money, marriage equality, boredom, and more.

My favorite sections of the book were the author's analysis of divorce rates (which are not as bad as I believed); how marriage in general and fights between marital partners impacts one's health; and proper rules for engaging in the inevitable marital spats.

The author's website is http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Tara-Parker-Pope/45635796/biography
She blogs on wellness issues for the New York Times.

Crime and the End of Cheap Food

Please see the PDF document "foodprices," Crime and the Price of Wheat in 14th-Century Norfolk, England here. The linked chart is from Sherman et al., World Civilizations, Sources, Images and Interpretations, V.I, 4th ed., McGraw-Hill, New York, 2006. It shows a strong correlation between the price of wheat and number of crimes committed in Norfolk.

If we make the reasonable proposition that human nature has not changed much in 700 years, we have much to worry about.

Michael Pollan has inferred that low food prices have kept the American middle class from revolting against the politicians, since middle class incomes have stagnated over the last decade. (See The Food Movement, Rising here.) In fact, he claims that cheap food is at least partly responsible for low wages.

Well, the cheap food party is over. The nanny state looks to raise prices by taxing what it considers "unhealthy." (See my satirical post on the subject here.) Additionally, global food prices are being pressured upward by voracious demand from Asia. Produce and cereal prices have risen astronomically in the last few years, and I see few reasons for that long-term trend to change. As we move past peak oil and energy and fertilizer prices increase, it costs more to grow food. Lastly, national US debt has swollen 40 percent higher over the last three years, (see the link here) and that will lead eventually to higher inflation and higher food prices. Unfortunately, desperate times lead to desperate people in both the 14th and 21st centuries.

I'm not the only one that senses impending problems.

A chain of three stores that sells survival food and gear reports a jump in sales to people who are getting prepared for the “possible collapse” of society.

See the article here.

Health Care Trade-offs and Potential Savings

                                                     Equity-efficiency trade-off

The higher the efficiency, the lower the equity, and the lower the efficiency, the higher the equity.

If health care was purchased without insurance, only the rich could afford the best care. Most people could afford some care. Equitable insurance for all reduces efficiency, however, and more health care is purchased than is needed by society, and it is purchased at higher prices. People with insurance spend too much money on health care. We could save money by banning insurance for all but the most expensive procedures. People would use only the health care they needed. However, it is highly unlikely that the American people want to go back to this type of system.


                                                     Cost-access trade-off

Similar to the equity-efficiency trade-off, the greater the access the greater the costs, and the less the access the less the costs.

The more people have access to health care, the higher the costs society will pay. Medicare and Medicaid spending is taking more and more of taxpayers’ dollars. Medicare and Medicaid costs can only be slowed by limiting access such as by using government panels to decide who gets care. Eventually, this will happen since Medicare and Medicaid are threatening to become the biggest spending items in the federal budget, pushing out spending for national defense and social programs.

                                                      Magic bullets?

Can everyone have access to world class health care without paying world class prices for it? According to health care expert and New York Times columnist Ezekiel Emanuel (Less than $26 billion? Don't Bother.), if an idea saves less than one percent of costs ($26 billion), it's probably not worth pursuing. For example, less than one half of one percent of costs ($26 billion) can be saved by accounting for and confiscating all the profits of health care companies ($11.7 billion). Similarly, savings from expanding generic drug use is likely to be small relative to total spending on drugs. Importing drugs from Canada doesn't add to much cost savings either ($5 billion per year). Emanuel writes that a 2009 study by the Congressional Budget Office on malpractice reform concluded that a package that among other features, capped punitive damages to $500,000, would save about $11 billion a year, less than one half of one percent of costs. Lastly, all the "million dollar babies" added together account for less than one half of one percent of costs. So where is the cost savings?

                                                     Real Cost Savings
Emanuel writes (Billions Wasted on Billing) that the real cost savings can be found by using electronic billing and credentialing--saving $32 billion a year. That's way over one percent of total costs and would make a difference to doctors, patients, and the government. Secondly, by using concierge care (high touch medicine) and bundling services (Saving by the Bundle) for the sickest ten percent of patients (who use up 64% of the costs)--we improve these patients' care and avoid sending these patients to the emergency room multiple times. Payment is "bundled." All "the bills are rolled into one standard ... charge" for a procedure, instead of the standard charge by fee for each doctor. All doctors and administrators must work together.

They have a strong incentive to eliminate unnecessary tests and treatments and use less expensive implants, drugs and devices that don’t compromise quality, and to prevent infections and other complications that could land the patient back in the hospital.

Emanuel believes that $80 billion is a low estimate of cost savings from bundling. That's more than three percent of costs.

The New Deal and the End of the Great Depression

When I’m on the stationary bicycle I enjoy reading my girlfriend’s New Yorker magazines. San Francisco Bay Area weather was beautiful this summer, so I’ve been running outside and spending less time on the stationary bike. Alas, now I’m three months behind on the magazines. Reading the May 24 issue, I was flabbergasted by lawyer and author Jeffrey Toobin’s article, Activism V. Restraint . Toobin writes about FDR’s failed court-packing initiative, but how he, in the end, made eight Supreme Court nominations. That “is what guaranteed that the federal government was able to address the economic crisis.” The author then relates this history to the problems facing Obama’s legislation.

FDR certainly addressed the economic crisis with New Deal legislation. Let us scrutinize how well these Keynesian programs worked. FDR was president from 1933 to part of 1945. I have collected below the unemployment rates of the years of the Great Depression—late 1929 to 1941 or so.

Year and Unemployment Rate

1923-29 3.3 %, 1930 8.9 %, 1931 15.9 %, 1932 23.6 %, 1933 24.9%, 1934 21.7%, 1935 20.1%, 1936 17.0%, 1937 14.3%, 1938 19.0%, 1939 17.2%, 1940 14.6%, 1941 9.9%, 1942 4.7%

(Source Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20030124ar03p1.htm)

I think we can make three conclusions. First, the unemployment rate did go down, and the number of people employed rose (with the exception of the 1937-1938 period). Second, the unemployment rates were still very high throughout—the best unemployment numbers, eight years after FDR had taken over and twelve years after the depression had started, were approximately the same as what our country is experiencing now. Third, the United States enjoyed full employment only after we started equipping the Allies and mobilizing for WWII. That crisis had nothing to do with the New Deal or unfriendly Supreme Court Justices.

Did FDR’s prescription for unemployment work? We need to examine a control group, a group of Americans that did not receive the independent variable, the New Deal, and compare them with the rest of the country. Obviously, that experiment will not be undertaken.

Would the unemployment numbers have been even worse had FDR not passed New Deal legislation? It is hard to say. On the other hand, UCLA researchers show that the Great Depression would have passed quicker if the New Deal had not gone into effect. (See link )

Historians Kennedy, Cohen, and Bailey, hardly a right-wing bunch, write in the popular textbook, The American Pageant, 12^th ed. (P. 803), “The depression dragged on with only periodic improvement for nearly eight years under his [FDR’s] leadership, until the cataclysmic emergency of World War II finally banished unemployment from the land.” Similarly, New Left historian Barton Bernstein writes (in Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History, 1968, Random House)

the New Deal failed to solve the problem of the depression, it failed to raise the impoverished, it failed to redistribute income, it failed to extend equality and generally countenanced racial discrimination and segregation.

We can conclude that the New Deal transformed American society, but did not solve the unemployment problem of the Great Depression. Obama's Keynesian solution may not alleviate unemployment much either. See what the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) thought of Obama's stimulus package here.The CBO says that the stimulus may have sustained as few as 700,000 jobs and as many as 3.6 million (costing around $200,000 per job). That's a poor return for a $825 billion dollar stimulus and tax rebate package that must be paid back.

Social Studies Teaching Resources on the Web

Use this resource, and you can put together a wonderful interactive lesson plan on most history and social studies subjects. The links have been checked (November 13, 2011) and are presented in no particular order. Just click the purple links!

The home page of Mike Spinrad's blog http://mikespinrad.blogspot.com

Bibliographic records of education literature, plus a growing collection of full text http://www.eric.ed.gov/

High school teacher Paul Ippolito's wonderful collection of PowerPoints on AP Economics and other subjects http://137.164.143.46/pippolito/main.html

A collection of primary resources for educators http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/

Library of Congress digital collections--a primary source bonanza--print, pictorial and audio-visual collections and other digital services http://www.loc.gov/library/libarch-digital.html

More than 220 history PowerPoints http://pptpalooza.net/

History lesson plans written by Mike Spinrad and others http://www.sonoma.edu/tah/lessons.html

National Archives database http://aad.archives.gov/aad/

Center for Civic Education lesson plans http://new.civiced.org/resources/curriculum/lesson-plans

Bill of Rights in Action http://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/blog.html

First Amendment Schools lesson plans http://www.firstamendmentschools.org/resources/lessonplans.aspx

California Learning Resource Network: links, reviews, digital textbooks, video, online courses http://www.clrn.org/home/#3

Social studies lesson plans and resources collected by Marty Levine https://www.csun.edu/~hcedu013/

American Field Guide. PBS teacher resources http://www.pbs.org/americanfieldguide/teachers/

Council for Economic Education Economics and personal finance lesson plans
http://www.econedlink.org/lessons/economic-lesson-search.php


Educational Communications Board: searches for websites, video and more http://www.ecb.org/

Digital History Reader for US and European history http://www.dhr.history.vt.edu/

Digital History Classroom-tested lesson plans created by master teachers

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/lesson_pl.cfm

Fairness versus Prosperity: The Flat Tax

Americans must choose--fairness or prosperity. Certainly we can mitigate income inequality and increase levels of GDP by limiting the most egregious excesses of corporate remuneration. See my post on corporate boards acting on behalf of shareholders and limiting poorly performing CEO salaries here. However, the country must choose, as a matter of policy, high GDP growth and job creation or progressive taxation. You can't have both.

When tax rates were very progressive, in the 1950s, GDP growth was steady if unspectacular. (Source information here.) GDP really took off in the 1960s, after the top marginal tax rates went down from 92 percent to 77 percent in the 1960s. The Reagan boom was also fueled by marginal tax rate cuts, the top earners paying 50 percent. Lower tax rates also lead to greater resources for government. As the Laffer curve (below) demonstrates, when marginal tax rates are too high, people use tax avoidance (or illegal tax evasion) strategies to shield income from the IRS.

Ironically, those that want increased government spending on social programs should not be in favor of confiscatory marginal tax rates on the rich. Setting rates back up to 90 percent will put less money in government coffers.


What would happen if we did away with our ridiculously unwieldy, complicated, and wasteful progressive income tax, and replaced it with a flat tax? (See this.) Both Herman Cain and Rick Perry favor a form of flat tax. The New York Times, predictably, hates the idea. Robert Frank writes in The Problem with Flat-Tax Fever (link here) that the flat tax can be just as cumbersome as our current system if it all the usual tricks are needed to compute adjusted gross income, and the flat tax is unfair because the rich would be taxed less and the poor more. These criticisms can be easily refuted. A good flat tax is a simple tax. Add up all ones income and multiply it by a percentage, say 20 percent. There are no deductions are complications. The calculations can be completed on a postcard. Each American saves hours of time and hundreds of dollars (or more) in lost revenue computing their taxes.

Is the flat tax regressive? No, the rich pay the same percent as everyone else but they still pay more. The woman who made a million dollars pays $200,000 with a 20 percent tax rate. Joe Six Pack, bringing home $40,000, pays $8,000. The rich will still pay the lion's share of IRS inflows.

Most importantly, will the flat tax turn our economy around? Wikipedia has an excellent analysis of the pros and cons of the flat tax. (See the article here.) The article shows how the Russian Federation, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Macedonia, Albania, and Bulgaria have implemented a variation of the flat tax in order to stimulate growth. Lithuania has boasted of strong growth, though it is hard to say if the flat tax alone is most responsible. Many more countries are considering the flat tax. Should the United States give it a try? Arthur Laffer writes that the flat tax is a recipe for growth, proposed (quite ironically) by the current Democratic governor of California, Jerry Brown, in 1992. (See editorial here.)

Will the flat tax increase income inequality? Perhaps, but with unemployment stuck at high levels, our economy needs a shot of strong medicine to grow GDP and create jobs. Recessions lower inequality but also throw many of the poor out of work.Those who have been without a job for months will be hired only when expanding businesses need workers. Extreme poverty has increased in the last year. (See article here.) Our current taxation system is not working well, and the flat tax is worth a try.

Goodbye to the Dollar Bill

Should we replace dollar bills with a dollar coins? The New York Times reports (link here) in Hoping to Save Money for the Government, Some Seek and End to the $1 Bill, the government could save $5.5 billion over 30 years by phasing out dollar bills and replacing the currency with dollar coins which last much longer. Despite proposed legislation to make this happen and U.S. Mint public relations campaigns, Americans will not choose the coins if bills are available. Only by phasing out the bills will Americans choose (rather, be forced) to use the coins.

So again, we have the government acting for our own good when we are unable to do the “right thing” ourselves. Why do most Americans prefer paper money over coins? I’m not sure, but I can state why I prefer paper money.

• It’s more convenient. I have a wallet. I put real money (and I still consider $1 real money) and plastic in my wallet. I throw assorted change in the drink holder in my car or in a plastic jar in my room. I don’t like carrying any more junk in my pockets than necessary—wallet and keys. That’s it!

• It’s less complicated. Cash is becoming increasingly irrelevant. I pay my bills online and use a credit card for almost everything else. I don’t want to complicate my life by remembering to keep coins in my pocket. I’d rather pay for everything with a plastic card or with the paper money I already carry.

What do you think? Do you want to replace the dollar bill with a coin?

Paying CEOs a Little Less--Doing Something About the Gap Between Rich and Poor

I rarely agree with the opinions of socialists and anarchists and cannot empathize with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. However, an increasing gap between the very rich and everybody else is neither economically advisable or, as it turns out, truly necessary.  We need to have some gap between rich and poor. Otherwise, people would have no incentive to work hard, be creative, and serve others, and we would become another decrepit and creaky Soviet Union or an anachronistic Cuba where the people earn $20 a month. But when the gap between rich and poor becomes too great, the poor struggle to survive and the rich have too much economic and political power. One group of the rich, CEOs of public corporations, have been improperly rewarded for performance, and their remuneration packages are ridiculously high.

I was intrigued by an article on Jewish ethics criticizing overly high CEO remuneration packages. CEO pay has escalated once again, averaging more than $10 million per year for leaders of Fortune 500 companies. Some CEOs earn their stratospheric pay, increasing the company’s value and making larger shareholders rich. However, most do not truly earn their millions, making more than 300 times their lower paid corporate employees, even when the company reports lackluster results.

Michael Dorff explains in a number of different ways the reasons boards do not limit CEO pay. In the compilation Money (pp. 45-51, edited by Elliot N. Dorf and Louis E. Newman) Dorff notes that shareholders, the company owners, have a vested interest to keep pay down to reasonable levels. Whatever is not paid out in salaries is left over for the shareholders. Shareholders, represented by the company’s Board of Directors, suffer because the Board does not act in shareholders’ interests. They completely give into the CEO’s demands for overly generous remuneration.

Members of the typical Board of Directors have an easy, high-paying job—a few meetings a year for $40,000 (or more) plus benefits. Dorff remarks that no one wants to turn down such a wonderful situation, hardly working for a lot of money and prestige. If a Board member keeps his mouth shut, he will be invited to sit on other corporate boards and make even more easy money. Management nominates the slots for open board positions, and nominees are unopposed. Who wants to give up the gravy train for criticizing a CEO’s pay package? Shareholders’ interests and the Board member’s interests are not aligned.

I suggest that public companies change the way they pick and pay Board members. Only those stockholders that own the most stock, let’s say the top fifty shareholders, should be invited to serve, and these Board members, once elected, should receive no compensation for serving. Serving on another company’s Board for pay is grounds for dismissal. Thus we have aligned the Board’s interests with the rest of the shareholders, and it is more likely that CEO pay will be based strictly on performance and the salaries will not be overly generous. What has been saved on CEO salary can be reinvested in the business or distributed directly to shareholders.

Reserving Board membership to top shareholders may make Boards less diverse. Most rich shareholders are white males. However, since the Boards will be more responsive to shareholder interest it will be worth it. Diversity is not an end in itself but a means to avoid “groupthink” and a good old boys club. Making Boards less in management’s back pocket will avoid these problems as well, leading to a more equitable distribution of the owners’ money.

Bibliography

Dorff, Elliot N. and Newman, Louis, E., Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices, Money, JPS, Philadelphia, 2008

Postscript. June 25, 2012
The New York Times bemoans the fact that corporations have not learned a lesson from the last few years, and CEO pay rose five percent on average for 2011. (See the article, C.E.O. Pay Is Rising Despite the Din here.) Yet, since corporate boards have tied pay closer to performance, and corporations are making record profits, this may not be so bad for stockholders. We will see what happens when profits decrease. Will the CEO pay go down then? Will corporations spread the wealth a bit more, giving their lower paid employees a boost?

Postscript October 20, 2012
In her Fair Game column, Gretchen Morgenson describes a study that shows that Boards are overpaying CEOs. Reasearchers Elson and Ferrere conclude that CEOs cannot "readily transfer their skills from one company to another." So CEOs will not leave simply because someone else makes more money. Boards must reign in CEO pay. In her April 7, 2013 article, The Infinity Pool of Executive Pay, Morgensen quotes an expert: "Don't expect executives to give up on their prized perks anytime soon...even if shareholders can now publicly register their displeasure."

June 2, 2013
Adam Davidson interviews Harvard Law School professor Lucian Bebchuk. "His solution is to pass laws that make it easier for shareholders to vote out boardmembers who fail to discipline underperforming chief executives."

Ethical Issues Raised by Detroit’s Free Lunch Program

The National Review recently criticized Detroit’s free lunch program. All Detroit kids, not just those under the poverty line, are awarded a free lunch under the federal government’s $4.5 billion expansion of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. I’ve seen these meals, and calling them healthy is a bit of a stretch, but what’s wrong with more free lunches, often the best meal of the day for some of these kids? “(Detroit is one of three pilot programs starting this month for a free-for-all that will ultimately cover similar districts nationwide.)”

The government justifies giving wealthy kids the same deal as the poor kids. The National Review quotes the Detroit News: “We’ve worked very hard to reduce the stigma,” according to Aaron Lavallee, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesman. In other words, the federal government does not want to stigmatize poor kids by singling them out for free lunches. Instead, give everyone free lunches. Well, we could, of course, end the stigmatization problem by giving no one free lunches, but that defeats the purpose of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. Giving everyone free lunches, however, raises ethical issues that need to be addressed.

Taxpayers desire a safety net or welfare programs, because they don’t want their cities to look like Nairobi or Cairo, multitudes of desperately poor begging for survival and offering their children to strangers for a few dollars. Taxpayers are willing to support county hospitals, state welfare payments, food stamps, college scholarships, affirmative action, housing projects, and school lunches as long as they believe that the poor (and therefore, society) benefit. When taxpayers no longer trust that the government’s transfer payments are helping the needy, support for those programs will end. Government officials that give everyone the same benefit in order to spare deserved recipients’ feelings erode support for an otherwise worthwhile program.

Second, the money wasted on middle class patrons could be better spent helping the target population. Instead of feeding middle class kids, the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act could spend that money on the needy, giving away free breakfasts or after-school snacks at a homework club.

Third, expanding the recipients to the middle class in order to spare the poor kids’ feelings is a waste of taxpayers’ money. Governments are obligated to spend the people’s money as carefully and parsimoniously as possible. Anything short of this standard is theft.

Lastly, economists explain that people do not efficiently use resources that are incorrectly priced. In the former Soviet Union, bread was kept artificially cheap by government edict. It was under priced, selling for pennies, and loaves were wasted and used for soccer balls. (See Jim Rogers’ Investment Biker for this and other examples.) When schools give lunches away, much of the food ends up on the ground or in the garbage. I saw this with my own eyes while student teaching at an inner-city school. Large amounts of free food littered the school yard after every lunch. Why? Some kids didn’t like what was offered and some, despite their poverty, still managed to buy something else to take the place of the free and unappreciated food. The mess attracted seagulls and other pests. I can only imagine how much food will be wasted if the Detroit pilot program becomes popular.

Students at my school punch in a number at the food service station. No one watching knows if the food is discounted. Cards can also be used. How is it done at your school?

Tiger Mother in the Classroom

 

“My pappy taught me to work hard, but he never taught me to like it.” Abraham Lincoln

Books on tape (or CD) are my favorite technological invention. I listened to Amy Chua’s bestseller, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, on my commute. (See a summary and balanced review here. See a negative, snarling review of the book here)

I think both of the above reviewers miss the essence of the book. Children don’t want to work hard if left to their own devices. Parents and teachers must give children a stomach for hard work and assist them in developing persistence and an ability to weather setbacks. Only then can success and enjoyment begin.

Teaching differs little from parenting. Outside of AP classes, not many high school sophomores want to work hard. Even fewer want to work hard reading history. Fewer still want to study the World History standards mandated by California professors. These standards include Plato and Aristotle, the English Bill of Rights, the French Revolution, and British Industrialization. That’s only part of the curriculum for the first semester.

Good innovative high school history teachers employ partnering, group activities, simulations, debates, and technology. We work hard to keep students engaged in material that isn’t engaging on its own. We’ll do whatever it takes. If they don’t do the work offending students are punished with lectures about what it takes to succeed, remediation sessions, and, of course, poor grades. We will train you to work hard. Like Abe Lincoln’s pappy, we don’t care if you like it or not.

When these kids have matriculated they have a sharper focus on what they want to pursue in life, and some decide to get a college degree. The first two years as an undergraduate are, again, filled with university and major requirements, many not to the student’s liking. The minority that get through those first two years and attempt upper division college work finally explore courses of interest. That’s a lot of years in school satisfying others' requirements, about 15 years, before a student gets to follow his or her bliss. Let’s hope that someone has taught these kids the art of persistence somewhere along the way.

 

Rahm is Right—A Longer School Day Will Increase Student Achievement

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has offered bonus pay to teachers that waive union contract rules and keep children in school longer each day. See the New York Times article here. A teachers’ union rep calls the mayor a “Republican” and opposes his education policy. The union is misguided, and Chicago students, on the low end of instructional time compared to other urban schools, can only benefit from increased instructional time. How do I know? Just compare a wealthy school district (my kids’ district) and a middle-class district (where I teach), located  about 20 miles from each other.

My children attend a wealthy high school district that tests very high compared to other California schools. I teach at a district that is not as generously supported by taxpayers and private donors, and my district’s API (state test) scores are not as high. This situation is no surprise to anyone who has examined the strong correlation between average family income and standardized test scores. The richer the school district, the higher the test scores.

Do rich parents genetically produce smarter children? Do they buy more books for their kids along with the sports cars? Or do smart people become rich and procreate, cloning kids just like them?

Perhaps the causal link between wealth and API scores may lie elsewhere—in instructional time.

Wealthier families support their local public schools through property taxes and donations to school foundations. That money, in turn, supports additional instructional time for the students, especially the lower level students, and those students increase their achievement. In turn, API scores dramatically increase. Middle- and lower-middle class families raise much less money through property taxes and direct donations. These districts can’t afford increased instructional time. The state of California does not even out the funding discrepancies by contributing more money to the poorer districts.

My kids’ high school exemplifies the disparity between richer and poorer districts. My own children must attend after-school tutoring if they fail an exam. They must attend a homework club if they didn’t prepare well the night before or didn’t turn in an important assignment. These kids would encounter no consequences (besides a poor grade) in a poorer high school (i.e., the high school where I teach) and no chance to relearn the material. Additionally, my children's teachers are contracted to work a lot more than I am: ten hours more per week. That adds up to 400 more hours of lesson planning and evaluating the efficacy of instruction. When my children need extra time with a teacher they get it, and teachers accomplish more in preparing and evaluating their practice. API scores skyrocket as a result. Rahm is right.

How Teaching has Changed in America

The profession of teaching has been altered much more over the past 20 years than that of most other public sector professions. Stakeholders in public education—teachers and administrators, students, parents, and school boards—have been forced to adjust to change at a faster and faster pace. Let’s look at a few examples since I graduated high school in a California suburb in the late 1970s.

NCLB

Unlike a unitary government, such as France, our country was set up as a federalist system, giving state and local governments power to pick what to teach and how to teach it. The passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation has, for the first time, given our central government in Washington, D.C. real power over the teaching stakeholders. NCLB demands that schools perform, as measured over time by a non-stop increase in state test scores. Non-performing schools lose their autonomy and are then managed by someone else. None of the traditional (local) stakeholders have a say when this loss of autonomy happens.

High stakes testing, the only assessment that evaluates whether a school passes muster, has assumed much more importance for administrators and board members. (As an aside, I found the state accreditation process to be much fairer then NCLB in judging the effectiveness and accountability of schools, since accreditation does not assume that we all live in the same neighborhoods.) Therefore, high stakes testing drives the curriculum mapping of my department. We ensure that students have learned about the Cold War, for example, before the April testing. Some teachers would prefer to teach about the Cold War in May, allowing them to spend more time earlier on WWI or the Great Depression. I won’t allow it. I demand, not always successfully, that my department follows an agreed-upon curriculum map, so all students will learn the state-mandated curriculum by the April deadline. Teachers, rugged individualists on the high school level, did not consistently follow a curriculum map when I was in high school. One history teacher might get caught up in the election of 1948 and never quite emerge from the 1950s while another teacher would save her fire for the 1968 political conventions.

Now that the Federal Government is up to its waist in the teaching business, school boards and administrators may be replaced if kids don’t learn the state standards. They will be held accountable to higher levels of student proficiency than was previously demanded. Boards and administrators find themselves lost in a logical dilemma: if they support the tough standards of NCLB, they must continuously improve instruction and risk failing. They take the side of the public, against the side of the entrenched interests--usually veteran teachers and their supporters--risking strife in the internal district organization such as an administration versus teachers internecine struggle. On the other hand, if boards and administrators take the side of the entrenched interests against NCLB, they risk alienating the voters that elected them and incurring the vicious wrath of Uncle Sam.

Traditional Teaching Methods Don’t Work Like Before

At the same time that the Feds demand increased accountability, the students no longer respond the same way to traditional methods of teaching. My generation of suburban high school kids differed little from my parents’ bobby socks generation before it. We used the same educational tools and much of the same technology. Today’s high school students grew up with personal computers and computer games, email, instant messenger, cell phones, and video. I had a pen pal from France and mailed her letters, which took a couple of weeks each way. I played chess and monopoly with people I could see, smell (unfortunately) and touch, and I tried to avoid fist fights after the game. I couldn’t play tournament chess after the Berkeley chess club closed its doors at midnight. I can play tournament chess all day and all night on Yahoo games now. I don’t even need to be near a computer and can play on a cell phone. High school technology academies base instruction on technological platforms.

Television has also changed. Kids play violent video games with interactive controls on the TV. After they get tired of that they may then choose programming from hundreds of cable stations. As a high school senior, I could choose from nine television stations. (Outside of the San Francisco Bay Area consumers had even less choice.) Every ten-year-old in my community watched Mr. Ed or Hogan’s Heroes—no other programming but network and local television was available.

The media of my youth, network television, movies, books, newspapers, and magazines, has taken a back seat to mostly free video and internet. Outside of school, kids read less and engage in little formal writing. Email and texting have taken over these communicating tasks. Both the skills of academic writing and the levels of cultural literacy have declined. Indeed, the overly casual and rushed manic messages in the typical teen’s email, the phoneticism of texting, and the glorification of ignorant thugs as pop culture heroes have shaped many students into semi-literates.

Change in parent-teacher relationships--from teacher’s helper to partisan advocate

Parent-teacher relationships have changed too, though not as radically as the new technology has transformed students. I believe the role of middle class parents has changed in response to increased competitiveness in college entry. When all must contend for increasingly difficult college entrance, the competition changes normal reticent middle class parents into sharks at a feeding frenzy.

Despite the global decline in student academic performance, the elite still perform very well, and there are more of them as our population has expanded. I was accepted into the University of California, Berkeley, but my A minus high school GPA and skills in music and chess were unexceptional by today’s standards. Today that high school record would, at best, gain entry into a second tier school in the University of California system. My alma mater, Berkeley, currently accepts high school seniors with an average GPA of 4.3!

Parents have responded to the challenge by advocating for their children. No longer is school the domain of the experts, the teachers and administrators, and if the parents would just get their kids to shut up and behave, all would be well. No, today many parents serve as their children’s assistants and paralegals, doing their homework for them, serving as counsel when they get in trouble or receive a poor grade, and taking their side in disputes with teachers and administrators. As a high school student, when I decided on a beautiful spring day to go to the beach instead of the classroom my parents refused to give me an excuse note even though it was “senior cut day.” My high school assistant principal told me to sign in with one of the secretaries the next day, and I ended up picking up litter on school grounds for a couple of hours. Let’s fast forward to today. This year, more than 90 percent of my students out for senior cut day were “out sick.” Almost every absent student received an excuse note from their parents. The parents’ new attitude has changed: “If we parents take an occasional day off, why not let the kids do the same?”

Changes in Student Health

Similarly, teachers fight on the front lines against disease and poor hygiene. When schools asked that children get their kids vaccinated, my parents lined me up with every other kid outside the grammar school to get a jab from a vaccine gun. Today a small number of parents are persuaded by non-scientific internet claims that vaccinations cause autism and other problems to children with healthy immune systems. These parents think they know more about the causes of autism and immunology than epidemiologists and the medical establishment and put everyone at risk.

Recently the New York Times caught the story about a Whooping Cough epidemic in my Marin County California (New York Times, July 11, 2010, Vaccination Rate Lags as anEpidemic Spreads, pp. 25-26.). See also an article on an outbreak of tuberculosis at Logan High School in the San Francisco Bay Area .The problem isn’t limited to a few anti-immunization fanatics that give an unwanted boost to pertussis bacterium. School boards and state and federal officials allow children of illegal immigrants in the classroom, children that have grown up in the third world and have not had the benefit of American preventive medicine. Not surprisingly, the American classroom has become a breeding ground for nasty varieties of influenza. In 2009 between a quarter and half of my students missed school because of the Swine Flu. I anxiously await the next needless epidemic. This is not a productive change. Teachers must do everything they can to keep themselves healthy—wash hands, get vaccinated, maintain a social support system, and eat right, sleep, and exercise.

Changes in Respect for Teachers’ Authority and Competence

My parents never challenged a teacher’s grading policy, curriculum, or discipline. Other parents would occasionally challenge disproportionate discipline, nebulous grading procedures, or unjustifiable teacher behavior in the classroom. Today my fellow teachers, sometimes rightly but usually not, suffer constant challenges to grading, curriculum, competency, and classroom management. Parents have berated me for disciplining too hard and for not disciplining enough, for not talking about certain historians, or for talking about other ones. After all, they have read a few books too and are not going to let their little Johnny get kept out of Harvard by this uninformed teacher who doesn’t know what to teach. This teacher couldn’t handle a career in the real world and is supported by the taxpayers, so why listen to him? I may have exaggerated the point, but many in the profession have suffered this type of humiliation. Don’t take it personally!

Only one thing may be worse than the over involvement of parents in middle class schools—the under involvement of parents in the inner city schools. I did my student teaching in a high school that served poor and working class families. If I was able to talk to a busy, stressed parent instead of a message machine, I was told that it was my job to fix the kid. That’s what I was paid for.

Changes in Students’ Respect for Teachers

Parental respect for teachers still exists but has declined, correlating with the decline or respect that students have for teachers. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously coined the term, “defining deviancy down.” The school that I teach is comparable to the high school that housed me for four years. Keeping socio-economic status constant, I have found adolescents over the years less supervised at home and exposed to a more violent and sexually explicit media that glorifies criminal behavior and immediate gratification. Some parents choose not to allow the toxic messages of television in their house and belong to religious and communal organizations that instill proper values, even respect for teachers. Good for them. When that doesn’t happen, teachers must socialize as well as instruct. No one ever said our job was easy. We work against strong cultural forces, but the rewards are worth the effort. Most veteran teachers can recall a surly 15-year-old that, through a teacher’s or coach’s mentoring and inspiration was turned into a respectable citizen three years later.

What to do right now: Mentoring is part of teaching. Create a relationship with a few of your at-risk kids, especially students that are young, freshmen or sophomores. Simply talking to these kids one-on-one for a few minutes each week may be the most positive and effective communication they receive at this time in their lives. I find these conversations most effective right before winter and summer vacations—I have developed trust, and they will have some time to reflect about our conversation. Bring up their academic goals and your academic goals for them; their extra curricular goals such as joining athletic teams and school clubs and your ideas; their summer plans and your plans for them; their goals for getting a job and your opinion on whether they should be working and where to look. I tend to self-disclose only if it will humanize me or give me more credibility in the discussion. For example, I talk about college life, what it’s like to work and go to school at the same time; and how hard graduates will have to work at their first serious job. I tend to leave the more entertaining self-disclosures, the name of my cat and how many children I have, to the general classroom, and I use these self-disclosures when I want to warm up the classroom atmosphere. Assume that all self-disclosures become public knowledge, so don’t tell the kids information that would scandalize their parents.

Obama's New Government Stimulus Bill--Will it Work?

My AP economics students ask me why the government has been unsuccessful in getting America back to work. I have written on the inefficiency of the Obama stimulus package here and on the efficacy of Keynesian programs (aka The New Deal) during the Great Depression here. Since government make-work programs did not cure long-term unemployment in the 1930s, and, in fact, prolonged the Great Depression, I was confidant Obama's $825 billion stimulus would not lower long-term unemployment this time either. The tax money has to come from somewhere. Peter (rich tax payers) must be robbed to pay Paul (recipients of government programs), and then Peter has less money to support our consumer-driven economy. The Wall Street Journal,  in it's September 8, 2011 issue, showed how much of the $825 billion stimulus money was poorly spent and often outright wasted. The article, titled Why the Stimulus Failed, reviewed "a pair of new Mercatus Center working papers by the George Mason economists Garett Jones and Daniel Rothschild, who did field research on what they call the supply side of the stimulus." The economists found that the stimulus money was earmarked for items the recipients did not need and had little bearing on job creation. Secondly, "Jones and Rothschild estimate that merely 42.1% of the firms that received grants hired people who were unemployed. Instead, they poached workers from their competitors." No wonder unemployment remained high.

Instead of $250 billion of new spending that the Obama administration currently proposes (out of a $500 billion jobs bill), the Wall Street journal recommends "incentives for people and businesses to invest, produce and grow." The greatest incentive we can offer is letting men and women keep more of the money they earn. If we have less wasteful government programs we can enjoy the blessings and incentives of less taxation.

Educational Ideologies and Applications

One of my favorite textbooks in graduate school was Theories of Human Development by Michael Green. Years later I rediscovered a section in the back,  Educational Applications (pp. 219-235). Green looks at three ideologies, the Romantic, Traditionalist, and Progressive, and how educators teach from each of these three particular perspectives.

The Romantic Ideology closely parallels the endogenous view of developmental theories. Children are viewed as possessing an innate “inner worth” that demands respect and consideration. This view is exemplified by the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau—naturalness is good and schools should provide freedom where children can develop naturally.

Educational practices should be flexible enough to permit their inner “good” to develop unshackled by the constraints, values, and rigid expectations of teachers. Children know best what interests them. “We don’t need no education…” (Pink Floyd) The child's mind works like a plant—just let it grow.

The Traditionalist Ideology corresponds to the exogenous view of development. Traditionalist educators make extensive use of concepts derived from operant conditioning and social learning theories. This is the philosophy of John Locke and the British Empiricists—the mind as a tabula rasa.


W.A.Mozart was trained by his father using the best pedagogy known. The Hungarian Polgar sisters, later known as chess geniuses, were trained early on by their father as well. Research shows that one needs 10,000 hours of training to become an expert in anything.

The purpose of education is to transmit to each generation a specific body of information that reflects society’s value, and the teacher must transmit specific facts, skills, and moral values.  Children are believed to be inherently malleable and are shaped by the consequences of their behaviors. Effective education uses the science of learning, derived from behavior analysis.

The Progressive Ideology reflects an interactional-constructivist orientation. Unlike the Romantics progressives do not assume that development occurs as the unfolding of some natural plan or that education should foster children’s own self-interests. Unlike the traditionalists, progressives view learning in terms of problem-solving ability rather than the learning of specific facts and skills, reflecting the philosophy of John Dewey.

      Educators should provide problems and cognitive conflict that stimulates the development of logical and critical thought—thinking and reasoning.  Open classrooms, schools without walls, cooperative learning, whole language, the social curriculum, experiential education, and numerous forms of alternative schools all have important philosophical roots in progressive education. Which approach one prefers, Romanticism, Traditionalism, or Progressivism may be determined by the task one is teaching. Is it shooting free-throws in basketball, choosing which board game is the most fun, increasing moral development, learning a new language, loving a friend, becoming a better chess player, learning to play the drums, or deciding whether to major in psychology or mathematics?

Liking and Respect—Working with Difficult Boys in the Classroom

After many years of working with high achieving students I decided to teach a more diverse population this year. A good number of these kids will misbehave, either refusing to work, acting on impulses and attempting to steer the class in a direction of their own choosing, or clowning around for peer attention.

While not all the misbehaving students are boys, most are, so I will concentrate on males for the purposes of this discussion. Boys want to like and respect their teacher. Liking and respect are two sides of the same coin. Teacher reasonableness and listening generate liking. Teacher qualities of firmness and fairness create respect. If I am able to build a relationship with a troubled boy, he is less likely to act out in my classroom. If I punish him immediately, effectively, and proportionately for infractions, he is less likely to act impulsively in the future.

When I show interest in boys’ lives and listen to them tell their stories, I build a relationship. Fortunately, this is not hard to do. Boys wear their interest on their sleeves, literally, and wear shirts and hats that affiliate with athletic groups, hobby interests, and favorite music groups. All I have to do is ask about those things. I reciprocate by mentioning to the entire class a few of my favorite foods (burritos and pizza) and playing ten seconds of drums in class. Most boys like fast food and an athletic drumming display. My pizza and burrito stories become an in-joke, used whenever I need an example of an enjoyable time.

I also build relationships with boys by being “real” as we used to say in the 1970s—an authentic person with weaknesses. Of course I get to choose what foibles I will make public. I make fun of my own handwriting, artistic abilities, mispronunciation of certain words, and receding hairline. “Bob, you’re supposed to be reading. My big bald forehead will not reflect the words from the book!” I believe that when teachers refuse any self-disclosure they are hiding their humanity from the students. On the other hand, I don’t tell them anything I don’t want the whole world to know.

Despite my best intentions, early adolescent boys will occasionally let their impulses get the better of them and come late to class, make a mess, throw things or engage in rough play. I recommend acting on the minor infractions as well (talking out of turn, inattentiveness, chewing gum, wearing a hat), but I am referring to major infractions here. It is easy to simply tell the offender to knock it off or give a warning, but I have found that warnings rarely work in the long run, and you will see a similar rule violation quite soon. A fair consequence is more effective. I try not to let the minor infractions interrupt my teaching and the lesson, but you have no choice but to go to the mat when a kid has challenged your authority with a major infraction.

Perhaps the most difficult thing to do, after you convince yourself that he really did throw that banana against the wall, is to keep calm. His behavior has nothing to do with you, and you will calmly set him straight.

After a deep breath and making sure I’m not angry, I deal with the offense immediately: “Pick it up right now. Here’s some paper towel to clean up, and you owe me 10 minutes of detention after class ends.” The detention will be the time you can examine more thoroughly what the kid was thinking, and what will happen if there is a next time. If boys are engaging in rough play I take them out of the classroom immediately and assign them a chore such as taking out my recycling, and tell them what will happen if the rowdiness happens again. My kids know they will get an interrogation reminiscent of the FBI interviewing commie spies if they are late: “Why are you late? Do you know you lose credit every time you are late? That excuse is lame—don’t be late again.” Most of the time I do not berate students publicly—they quickly turn into your enemy if you embarrass them—but I make an exception for lateness. “If you aren’t here, you can’t learn, and look; I’m acting in your best interest.” My school district lowers kids’ grades for lateness, but the boys don’t conceptualize that nearly as well as the unpleasantness of a public chastising.

No one said walking a tightrope of affability and strict enforcement of rules was easy, but it is what teachers must do if they want to successfully manage a classroom of teenage boys.