Has the Democratic Party Lost its Soul?

Tolstoy plays chess.

The New York Times, a strong advocate of President Obama and the Democratic party, stunned liberals with its article Clinton Tells Russia That Sanctions Will Soon End (P.3, September 9, 2012).

VLADIVOSTOK, Russia — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged Saturday that the United States would soon lift cold-war-era trade sanctions on Russia, but she did not address human rights legislation in Congress that has so far stalled passage, infuriated the Kremlin and become an unexpected issue in the American presidential race.

In a nutshell, the article states that the Obama administration would like to grant Russia normal trade status, but evil Republicans in Congress support legislation that punishes Russian officials for human rights violations.

I'm being sarcastic of course. Congressional support for human rights legislation is bipartisan, and liberals were not stunned by Obama's attempt to normalize trade relations with Russia. Few cared that Russia supports Syria's dictatorship and, along with China, prevents the world community from doing anything. Few cared that Russia capitalizes from the embargo on Iran, giving the mullahs a way to run around otherwise crippling sanctions. Few cared that Putin suppresses civil liberties in his own country, denying free speech and right to peaceful assembly, and increasing corruption in both government and business. The Russian government is even refusing humanitarian aid from the United States, terminating all programs by the United States Agency for International Development (as described in With Aid Cutoff, Kremlin Recalibrates).

A high ranking Democrat criticizes Russian policy as not working but still says “I do think this president and the secretary of state and vice president have been effective and engaged in pushing back and in building a multilateral coalition, in engaging in areas of the world where we've been able to lead.” 

Pure gobbledygook! Well, you can't have it both ways. It seems that the Carter Doctrine--letting human rights guide foreign policy--is dead. We are back to a policy of realpolitik that is closer to 1970s detente than the more usual musings of the American left; that is, caring for the downtrodden and encouraging liberal democratic reforms. Obama has morphed into Richard Nixon. Obama's "reset" with Russia is complete. If you think the leadership of the Democratic Party has lost its soul now, wait until after the election when Obama has promised Russia's Medvedev that he will have more "flexibility" in working together on arms control and other concerns.

I Don't Know My Right From My Left

The following is a guest post from my colleague, classics scholar and philosopher, and accomplished musician (Sly Stone, Grateful Dead), Steve Schuster.

As I grow older, many things , that I once felt were simple, now seem to grow more complex. One of the political concepts I felt I understood as a younger person was summarized by the terms "right" and "left." As I learn more of the world, I find the terms less and less meaningful. I discover the terms are being consciously used to obfuscate clarity and to trigger "knee jerk" emotional reactions. Once one realizes that one is being manipulated, it becomes important to defuse the mechanisms used to perform the manipulation by understanding the process.

Trying to find a consensus for the meanings of "right " and "left" mirrors the difficulty in nailing down a consensus about the processes these simple terms supposedly represent. Before trying to analyze the implied meanings of our terms, it is worth trying to understand how and why we, and the holders of political power, use them.

Manichaeism pervades our public (and private) thought process. It is the nature of our physical brain process to reduce complex questions to bipolar simplicity to expedite finding solutions. However, the number of bipolar decisions we use to make up our perceptual models is dependent on our interest, our intellectual curiosity, and our training. We are trained to think in state run schools and many of us appear to be intentionally badly trained so that we use only very simplified and crude components in our political reasoning.

We are constantly presented with complex ethical situations interpreted in black and white, good and bad. Greys are not presented as options. There are pragmatic reasons that make this simple dualistic view of the world valuable to those in power. Those in power, in a democracy, must control public opinion in order to continue to hold legal power. Using dualistic concepts and terms makes a consolidation of opinions easier. It can create an illusion of a consensus where more accurate, more careful reasoning might present a multiplicity of opinions and choices that would be much more difficult to forge into a unified power bloc. By dividing all questions into only two possible answers, there will always appear to be a majority and a minority answer, rather than a number of nonaligned opinions. Thus , there can always be the illusion of a consensus in a pluralistic society, no matter how fragmented the true feelings of the citizens may be. "Right and left" are shorthand terms for polarizing the possible answers to all political questions. Unfortunately most problems are so complex that breaking everything into two opposing forces merely prevents a real understanding, much less a real solution.

Many of us believe that we can escape extreme distortions of right or left positions by finding a "middle/moderate" position. However, a reasonable position may bear no relationship to either of the polar views presented by the government and the media. It is as though one were offered the option of living in either Los Angeles or New York. Professing a desire to keep to the middle ground would suggest living in Omaha, while one's natural inclinations might suggest San Francisco or Atlanta to be a better personal choice. If the polar ends of the decision are presented only as L.A. or N.Y. C., the attractive options of S.F. or Atlanta are not presented as middle ground.

Since the forces and choices of political alignment are so complex, no one can long embody an unambiguous right or left position. An extreme position in either direction seems to take one full circle. Stalin, for example, seems a paradigm of the most extreme right and left. Recent reports of the attempted coup in the Soviet Union labeled those espousing continued socialized ownership as the "right" wing, and those promoting privatization as "left."

The complexity of government makes a pure, unconflicted right or left position impossible to define, much less hold. Many seem to feel that a belief in the paramount importance of "the rights of property" precludes a support of the rights of the individual. It is odd that the same "right " which espouses freedom of the marketplace appears more likely to support constraints on the freedoms of speech, religion, and the press. A current anomaly of the Left concerns the recent attempts at gun control. Here the left appears ready to concede the individual's rights hitherto guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

Another example of an anomaly is the relationship of the right and left with the military. While privatization of the military (or police) is a dream of only the most extreme right, a strong military, (which is after all an extreme of both common ownership and government control) is frequently claimed as a characteristic of the right. This espousal of a strong military also necessitates an intense redistribution of wealth by the government, from the many (taxpayers) to the few (large industrialists). This entrance of the government into the economic lives of the community is oddly not often objected to by the right. On the other hand we might also remember that the Vietnam "conflict" was conceived and pursued by the "liberal" segment of the government. "Liberal" Kennedy escalated Eisenhower's modest involvement. Lyndon Johnson, whose "Great Society" domestic economic policies were seen as socialist by the right , happily destroyed Viet Nam with the help of his Harvard "left" think tank, before Nixon continued the slaughter with his Harvard "right" think tank.

Realizing that while "right and left" do represent some sort of shorthand for generalizing predictable answers to carefully framed questions, nailing down the true characters of these amorphous terms still remains difficult or impossible. The innumerable anomalies created by the division of complex political thought into "right and left" renders the bipolar model functionally unsupportable. As the terms become less and less intellectually justifiable, the emotional intent of the terminology becomes clearer. Let us try to revolt against the prejudgments created by both the media's and our own internalized use of these terms .

Lower College Costs--Take More Classes

Fay Vincent, in a short and sweet WSJ article, Tuition Solution: A Three-Year Degree, describes how universities and students can work together to graduate in 75 percent of the time, incurring only 75 percent of the tuition.

Steve Pavlina, in his blog, describes pushing even harder, graduating in only three semesters by taking 30 to 40 units per semester. Now that's time management!

However, one does not need to have superhuman abilities to pass a lot of classes in a semester. Please read the Pavlina blog. Additionally, a student I know very well compiled the following record in his last two years at a prestigious military college:

• Fall 2010: Passed 23 units out of 26 attempted
• Spring 2011: Passed 27 units out of 30 attempted
• Summer 2011: Passed 9 units out of 9 attempted (online classes at alma mater and actual classes at University of California, Berkeley)
• Fall 11: Passed 29 units out of 29 attempted (finishing all classwork)
• Spring 12: Passed 12 units out of 12 attempted (student teaching)

This motivated young man wanted to double-major and just got better and better at managing his time. He gave up unnecessary activities and distractions (like Facebook) and graduated with honors. You can do it too.

How Parents Can Help Students Succeed in School--Four Interventions

Many years ago, as a student teacher in an urban high school, I asked a parent for help in teaching an unengaged and out of control teenager. The parent responded that it was my job and not her's to teach the child. While that unhelpful suggestion may be technically true, parents can do much more to ensure their child's success.

Outlining the major concepts of his book, Our Schools and Our Future, Chester Finn wrote in 1991:

“…we need to integrate parents far more directly and intimately into the work of formal education. This is commonly assumed to be the toughest nut of all to crack, and it may well be. Nor am I referring only to what happens in school. Parents are the single most important influence in the 91 percent of children's lives spent outside school. They aren't the only influence on what happens during that time, of course, but they are much the strongest. Engaging parents in choosing the school is part of the solution. Parent participation in education governance is another. Explicit parent education programs are another….Parent-teacher-student contracts may be yet another. Much more imaginative use can also be made of technology to assist the school to reach the home and vice versa."

So close to twenty years later, have we used the most potent force in education—parents? We have not. Parents do not participate enough in supporting education. I am a father of five as well as a high school teacher. I have seen what parents can do from both sides of the fence. Here are four interventions that are comparably easy to implement.

1. Turn off the television
Television reduces school performance. The tube takes time away from educational activities, and it doesn’t matter what programs are watched. Television also serves as a narcoleptic and makes kids fat. The research linking television watching to increased mortality rates is also quite scary. And this just out on Depression should make you want to throw the television out the window. I do not have a television in my house.

2. Limit cell phone usage.
Turn off your kids’ cell phones at the dinner table and make your home a sanctuary from social media. If you don't think that intervention alone will make a positive difference in your family's life, read Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation linked here. See also Daily Media Use Among Children and Teens Up Dramatically from Five Years Ago here.

3. Read.
If parents enjoy books and reading it increases the chances that the kids will too. Kids need background knowledge to succeed in school and reading provides it. I became a good student simply by imitating my father who read his history books on weekends. Active learning, through books, is usually superior to the passive learning of video. We must use our imagination when reading, even somewhat with picture books. A study entitled, Scholarly Culture and Education Success, "based on twenty years' worth of data, found that 'children growing up in homes with many books get 3 years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents' education, occupation, and class'" (Friedman and Mandelbaum, That Used to Be Us, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2011, P.127)

4. Talk about political issues and school assignments at the dinner table.
My August 16, 2010 post described how dinnertime debates opened up a world of ideas for me. My brother is an award-winning concierge and my sister is a university professor. These dinnertime discussions exposed us to the issues of the day.

Andreas Schleicher, the head of Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), said that his organization interviewed three to five thousand parents of fifteen-year-olds his organization tested in sixteen different countries.

There was a clear connection between parental involvement in their children's education and their PISA scores. Those young people whose parents were involved with their education--doing as little as asking them everyday "How was school?" or "What did you do in school today?"--or read books to them clearly performed better on the PISA test than those whose parents were not involved. (Friedman and Mandelbaum, P.126)

Parents can lay the ground work for their children's academic success.

I've Got One--How About You? Looking at Personality

Gordon Allport

  A long time ago, when I was a psychology grad student, mainstream research in personality theory was based on Gordon Allport's studies on traits, the enduring dispositions we use in everyday life to describe people. Later researchers reduced thousands of descriptors to five large domains, nicknamed the "Big Five". University of California psychiatrist Samuel Barondes in Making Sense of People: Decoding the Mysteries of Personality (FT Press, 2012) shows how to use the Five Factor Model of Personality, ie., the Big Five in thoroughly describing a person's essence.

People can demonstrate high to low levels of each of the Big Five domains. Having high or low scores in itself does not make you more or less psychologically fit.

• Extraversion: gregariousness, love of attention and excitement, assertiveness, and expression of positive emotions. Barondes uses Bill Clinton as an example of an American president high in extraversion and Barack Obama as a president low in it.
• Agreeableness: wanting to help one's group, cooperativeness, warmth, kindness. My first grade teacher was high in agreeableness. She was a well-loved by all her students, and I would do anything to win her smile. Many successful business executives, on the other hand, are low in agreeableness.
• Conscientiousness: reliable, trustworthy, organized, punctual. My father would make a dinner reservation a month in advance, confirm a day before, and show up within two minutes of the set time. Always. Jazz musicians, especially the amateurs, are low in conscientiousness and notorious for forgetting about the gig, leaving important instruments behind, drinking, and showing up improperly dressed.
• Neuroticism: feels and displays negative emotions, dysthymic, anxious, insecure. Barondes reminds us that Sigmund Freud was spurred on to success partly because of his struggles with insecurity and anxiety. But who wants to be around someone that spouts negativity all the time?
• Openness: imaginative, curious, artistic, creative. Some people enjoy the consistency of doing the same thing, day after day. Others are more daring, crave novelty, and are willing to put up with the frustrations and exhaustion connected with creative work.

Find out where you stand on the Big Five by taking a computer test created by Dr. John A. Johnson, Professor of Psychology, Penn State University. The link is here. Take the longer (300-item) version here.

(Full disclosure: I took the short test and was scored as average in everything except conscientiousness, where I was rated high. This may not be so bad. University of California, Riverside professor Howard Friedman analyzed the longitudinal data of Lewis Terman's gifted children, and found that high conscientiousness was correlated with longevity. See the meta analysis abstract here.)

There are a lot of combinations of the Big Five. If I simplify scores and assess people as either high, medium, or low in each Big Five domain, I have fifteen possible combinations and the math operation 15! equals about 307 billion possibilities. Most combinations of the Big Five are a good fit to our society, adding to a glorious rainbow of human personality. However, Barondes calls some troublesome characteristics the "Top Ten." These personality disorders can also be described through scoring on the Big Five. For example, a schizoid (extremely detached and unemotional) personality can be described as very low extraversion and a schizotypal (discomfort in relationships and eccentric behavior) can be described as low extraversion, low agreeableness, high neuroticism and high openness.

In summary, Barondes describes his techniques for examining personality:

1. Remember our common humanity and the way personalities develop.
2. Make a Big Five profile and notice what stands out.
3. Look for potentially troublesome patterns.
4. Make a moral assessment using universal and cultural standards.
5. Listen to the person's story and relate it to what you observe.
6. Integrate what you've found (P. 147).

Famous social psychologist Philip Zimbardo and fellow Stanford professor John Boyd examine personality from a philosophical perspective in The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time that will Change Your Life (Free Press, 2008). Rather than describing personality by traits, Zimbardo and Boyd look at a person's time perspective, whether she is past, present, or future-oriented in describing why people behave the way they do. Zimbardo has created two inventories, The Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI) (downloadable here)and the Transcendental-future Time Perspective Inventory (TFTPI) that measure

six time perspectives: two past, two present, and two future. These time perspectives are called the:

• Past-negative
• Past-positive
• present-fatalistic
• Present-hedonistic
• Future
• Transcendental-future (P.52)

People tend to be oriented towards either the past, present or future. Attitudes toward the past may be either positive or negative. Those captivated by the present may be hedonistic or fatalistic, and those planning for the future, the high-achievers among us, may never enjoy life in the here and now. Lastly, those scoring high in transcendental-future look forward to the rewards of the afterlife.
(Full disclosure: I scored high in past-positive and future.)

Studies show that the Big Five domains tend to remain stable over adulthood. Zimbardo, however, shows how one can change his ZTPI score, loosening up and enjoying being in the moment if one is too future-oriented or planning more if one is too much of a present-hedonist.

The book ends quite poetically:

Your time matters to you and, in the end, is all that matters. Time is all that you have. You might as well spend it seeking happiness and purpose--whatever they mean to you (P. 319).

Are Personalized Online Courses Our Future?

Will computers eventually take the place of high school teachers?

I am somewhat familiar with Apex Learning, a creator of educational computer programs that increases "access to high quality educational alternatives for all students through online learning."

Over the last few years many of my high school kept students from self-destructing, AKA, not graduating, by using APEX software (link here) and giving these kids a last chance chance to make up the missing credits. Two teachers oversaw twenty or so students that failed mandatory classes and needed credits to graduate. The units were made up on a pass/fail basis, and just about every student that needed this remedial work successfully completed it. None of these students were accepted to four-year colleges in the fall, but all of them received a high school diploma.

The APEX license is expensive, so my school can afford a limited amount of students that need remedial work.

APEX also provides learning programs for honors and AP classes, though my school has not used them. APEX describes its courses as a "digital curriculum — that comprises standards-based instructional content specifically developed for online delivery, with assessment opportunities integrated throughout, scaffolding to support learning for all students, and resources to support effective teaching." In other words, APEX provides "personalized learning."

Teachers make sure that students show up and are engaged in their work at the computers, but other than those exhortative and administrative functions, are teachers needed in the classroom? Right now the answer is yes, because the APEX and other online learning firms are too expensive to use for our entire school body.  In addition to incurring the fee for the license, the school would still incur the costs for hiring prison guards with whips (oops) teachers to keep the students on track, interact with parents, and do grading.

If costs were not a factor, does APEX and programs like it, educate children better than traditional methods? Are teachers going the way of the dodo bird and evolving into classroom policemen?

Esther Quintero writes (in The Real “Trouble” With Technology, Online Education And Learning),

personalized learning uses technology to adapt the presentation of content to students’ strength and weaknesses, as indicated by their prior responses to the material. The basic premise is that, when software is able to gauge a student’s level and adjust subsequent material to his/her pace and style of learning, the result is a more effective and higher quality learning experience.

However, personalized learning may not challenge students in unexpected ways. Quintero continues:

More fundamentally, learning occurs, at least in part, when unexpected things push us out of our comfort zone. Somewhere I read that the purpose of education is to give people the opportunity to learn something they ordinarily wouldn’t. There is a missing ingredient in most models of personalized learning: basically, the natural entropy that characterizes human experience. After all, let’s not forget that adaptive learning is based on the same technology that is used to generate automatic movie and music recommendations – and most of us would agree that that these have their limitations.

I have convinced many students to examine new ideas when they didn't have enough intellectual curiosity or confidence to  tackle them on their own. This may turn out to be my best and most human function in the classroom. Teachers are still necessary.

Update: October 6, 2012:  The New York Times takes a look at advances in computer tutoring, especially for math here. Annie Murphy Paul writes about the creator of ASSISTments, a computerized math tutor.

Computers excel in following a precise plan of instruction. A computer never gets impatient or annoyed. But it never gets excited or enthusiastic either. Nor can a computer guide a student through an open-ended exploration of literature or history....While a computer can emulate, and in some ways exceed, the abilities of a human teacher, it will not replace her. Rather, it’s the emerging hybrid of human and computer instruction — not either one alone — that may well transform education.

Progressive Religious Movements are Losing Members

Photo by Josh Haner/The New York Times

Ross Douthat, in his Op/Ed New York Times column, Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved? sounds the death knell for progressive religious movements in America. Members of the liberal Episcopal Church have watched attendance figures drop 23 percent in the last decade, "and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase." The problem is not contained to the Episcopal Church.

"Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance. Within the Catholic Church, too, the most progressive-minded religious orders have often failed to generate the vocations necessary to sustain themselves."

Judaism shows the same trends. The Jewish Daily Forward reports that "nearly half of Jewish adults raised Reform [the most liberal wing of American Judaism], a new study shows, leave the denomination, most of them in favor of an unaffiliated Jewish life. In recent years, the movement’s growth has stalled, with affiliation holding steady thanks only to new members replacing those who have left."

Why? Douthat claims that "leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don't seem to be offering anything you can't already get from purely secular liberalism." I agree. Those that aren't interested in praying to a transcendent G-d can give charity, support the homeless, work for income equality, provide education, fight injustice, and find a community of like-minded individuals outside of any religious institution. If a church or synagogue membership predominantly serves as a triage officer, directing people here and there for good works and downplays spiritual fervor and a relationship with and, especially, responsibilities to G-d, why not join any benevolence society instead? If G-d won't reward you for taking communion or saying the Shema or punish you for not doing so, why not just join the Democratic party and keep your weekends free?

The Main Difference Between Men and Women: Packing for Vacation

South Lake Tahoe Photo by Mark Miller

My significant other and I just concluded a relaxing five-day vacation at South Lake Tahoe, Nevada. I threw one light bag in the trunk of my car, and that bag was small enough to fit in an airplane overhead. I also added a duffel bag for dirty laundry, two books and two magazines, pencil and paper, and two pairs of shoes (running shoes and dress shoes). I was wearing sandals for the ride. I packed a shirt and work out clothes for every day, one pair of jeans and slacks, my shaver, dental floss, toothbrush and tooth paste. Done!

In contrast the lovely lady packed a monstrous piece of luggage, roughly the size of the Loch Ness Monster, stunning in color and shape, and fit for the Queen of England. She packed outfits for hiking, lounging, running, and swimming (numerous swimsuits, goggles, ear plugs, head cover, and the most stylistic plastic sandals for lounging at the pool). If we ate by the pool she dressed properly. If somehow, every day, we were transported to four-star restaurants in Manhattan (see link), she had different outfits ready for each evening.

My favorite sub-bag (bag within the main luggage) and the main object of my ridicule was her large container housing all her hair and makeup products. I don't know what any of that stuff did. It looked like dangerous potions fit for chemistry class, only it somehow ended up on her face. She had colored pencils that did things to her eyes, I don't know what, and more of those pencils than I have at my desk at work.She had so many different hair condiments that I was able to borrow a shampoo, and she never had to ask for it back. Without any smugness she stated, "See? It's good to pack different shampoos." "I was expecting a free one in the bathroom," I mumbled.

A day after we arrived I discovered that I forgot to pack any underwear other than what I was wearing and the three useful but uncomfortable athletic supporters I packed for the gym and trails. Again vindicated, she suggested I go into town and buy some underwear. Thinking quickly, I called the front desk and found a washer and drier one floor below. Laundry detergent was there for the taking and the machines were industrial size and free. I washed her dirty stuff too.

How I Will Change My Teaching of a Low-Level History Class

Bloom's Taxonomy

Sophomore World History is a challenging class to teach at my high school. The best students are diverted into our AP program, leaving me three or four classes filled with many uninterested and unmotivated kids that have a history of behavioral problems. I taught four sections of these kids last year. Here are the harsh realities I observed working with this struggling population:

• Half the students will do homework some of the time.
• About one third will not complete ANY homework on time for the entire year.
• Half the students hate reading and do not understand what they read
• Half will take notes only if forced. Next to none will use notes to prepare for a test. (They prefer using the textbook, amazingly.)
• The students are unwilling to do true group work. One student in the group would do the work and the rest would watch or be off task.
• Activities such as skits and reenactments are only partially effective, because so many of the kids have too little background knowledge to understand the relevance of the activity.

I do convince a few students that history is interesting. I do help some students to enjoy reading, and I do get some students to take notes more effectively. However, too many students in these classes were not fully engaged by my methods last year. So I plan to do a few things differently.

• I will assign fewer readings as homework. We will do almost all reading in the classroom.
• Most lectures will be read-alouds of the textbook. Only after that will students be assigned an in-class reading of the same material.
• I used a variation of Cornell notes last year. Few students benefited. This year we will learn by presenting the material and going over it with frequent informal formative assessments such as fast-paced in-class questions ("peppering").
• I plan more summative assessments that include writing--short essay questions that ask for items high on Bloom's Taxonomy such as evaluating why one leader was better than another. These questions will be complex, so no two answers should be alike.

I hope these changes result in greater student engagement and achievement.

Postscript: January 7, 2012:  These changes have produced better though not radically improved grades. Additionally, I will examine the results of standardized testing, available in August.2013.

What Can We Take from Finnish Education?

Finland has "created the highest performing [K-12] education system in the world" (California Teacher, Feb/March, 2012). (See the link to the complete magazine here.) Pasi Sahlberg describes in California Teacher how Finland's system creates such good outcomes. I believe that we can replicate the Finnish model in a number of ways. We can't completely replicate the Finnish model, because the United States has a different history and political philosophy, but we can do the most important things. Here are my reactions to key pieces of the Finnish system. (Please read all the way to the end.)

Overcoming poverty: Finland has less income inequality than the United States, and American income inequality continues to grow. The U.S. has been increasing in inequality for twenty years. Short of draconian measures, the US won't share the pie better any time soon.

Free education for all: Finland has no charter or private schools. All the schools are more or less the same. The United States could  not be more different in attitude toward private education and our history of parochial education, and. again, it is unlikely we will change.

Cradle to university care: Again it is unlikely that the United States will enact universal day care for newborns up to age six. However, Finnish high school has academic and vocational streams. At last, here is something we should and can do. The United States used to do a better job at encouraging youth to take classes in auto shop, woodworking, and metalworking. Vocational education is a part of our history, and we should redouble our efforts training students in technology and the shop classes above. Not everyone has the work ethic and talent to be a doctor, lawyer, or professor, and most computer and software technicians make an upper-middle class livelihood. In fact, it is shortsighted and counterproductive to assume, as is fashionable now, that everyone must go to college. (See Beyond One-Size-Fits-All College Dreams and What message Does College for All Send here.)

Finland also provides 65 percent of students free university tuition. This used to be the case in California as well. My semester tuition to the University of California was around $700 when I graduated in 1982. I paid much more for my Berkeley apartment. (Now tuition is about $13,000.) When the state figures out how to better manage its finances, perhaps we will see near-free tuition some time in the future. See my blogs on California finances here and here.

Personalized education: Finland has no grade-level or national standards. Every child is unique, and every school plans its own curriculum. One third of Finnish students are in special education.

Give schools and communities control over their own curriculum? Imagine that! Standards aren't going away, but putting one third of students in special education; that is, giving more resources to the bottom third would, ironically, increase standardized test scores and lower drop out rates. We should do that.

Creative learning: "Finland has the least number of instructional hours of all countries. We have less time to teach and more time to cooperate with other teachers." Finland is also taking away  time for math and reading and adding time for music, drama and the arts.

We are moving in the opposite direction. However, American schools have improved by using collaborative assessment. Merit pay has shown less promise.

Localized assessment: The Finns don't use nationalized or state-level assessments. The schools and teachers assess instead, and education money is spent on teacher development, not on the equivalent of state testing. We should do the same.

Competition to teach: Only ten percent of applicants to teaching schools are accepted to the primary school program.  All have a masters degree and few leave the profession. Teaching is paid well, comparable to those with similar amounts of education.

Here we have the most important and critical difference, in my opinion, the real secret of Finnish success. Finland takes her best professionals and makes them teachers. America takes her best professionals and makes them doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers. Finland  gets all-star teachers. We get Wall Street. If we want better schooling for our kids we need to select and train better educators. We can imitate the Finnish model by making teachers as respected as bankers (oops) presidents (oops) doctors. Credential programs should accept only those working toward or currently holding a masters degree. Credential programs should accept only the top ten percent of applicants. The resulting shortage of teachers will drive up salaries, reinforcing the demand to get into the profession. American society will better compete in math and science, in the global marketplace, and in the arts because of her world-class teachers.
 
If you are still not convinced, please read McKinsey's How the World's Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top. Examining the success of ten systems including those of Singapore and Finland, McKinsey finds that that the top ten percent of high school and college graduates go into teaching. (See link here.)

Postscript: USC professor emeritus Stephen Krashen indirectly agrees with Sahlberg. In a July 16, 2012  letter to the New York Times, he states

The mediocre performance of American students on international tests seems to show that our schools are doing poorly. But students from middle-class homes who attend well-funded schools rank among the best in the world on these tests, which means that teaching is not the problem. The problem is poverty. Our overall scores are unspectacular because so many American children live in poverty (23 percent, ranking us 34th out of 35 “economically advanced countries”).

My own anecdotal evidence is not so clear. I teach plenty of middle class kids that do poorly on standardized tests--and not just in history! Teaching strategies must improve and remediation time must increase to help these kids.

Debt Crisis

I recently finished Michael Lewis' Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World. The book describes the reversals of the economies of countries, Greece, Ireland, and Germany, states, especially California, and municipalities, San Jose and Vallejo. Citizens of these areas traded prosperity for disaster by taking on too much debt, especially the debt created by foolish decisions by bankers, and overpaying government employees.

Now these problems threaten to bring down or at least change the fabric of the European Union. In the United States many will suffer a lower standard of living as government services are cut back and fees and taxes rise. Lewis blames the problem on groups looking out only for their self-interest; ie., the controversy over public sector salaries and pensions bringing down the entire system as in California; and groups that don't look out enough for their self-interest; ie., national governments such as Ireland's that nationalize the debt of banks instead of allowing the banks to fail.

Lewis hints that Greece and Ireland will be paying off debt for a long time to come and Germany may be brought low by the foolishness of her own bankers. The EU may split into a two-tiered structure with Germany, Austria, France, and the Nordics in the top tier, and Southern Europe in the bottom tier. California's fiscal crisis will be felt primarily by municipal governments.The city of San Jose recently voted to cut pensions to its municipal employees, a way out of their fiscal mess. Stockton, California teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and will cut health benefits to retirees as well as renege on debt.

Link to the book here:

The New York Times review of the book can be found here.

Bringing Back High School Research Papers

Will Fitzhugh, in a thoughtful article, Meaningful Work: How the History Research paper Prepares Students for College and Life (link here), bemoans the lack of serious academic writing by high school students.

Much of the problem is lack of practice. The "focus on standardized tests and superficial writing skills has left educators with little time to teach students how to write serious research papers, and even less time to correct and grade them." The problem is worse in public schools, since those schools are most besieged by standardized testing. Somehow, however, educators must fine the time for academic writing or we set students up "for failure in college and in the workplace."

A greater proportion of students' lack of preparation comes from not doing enough rigorous reading. Teachers, starting in elementary school, must assign texts that allow students to acquire knowledge--that is, reading more serious fiction and nonfiction. (See E.D. Hirsch, Jr's blog on core knowledge here.)

To really teach students how to write, educators must give them examples of good writing found in nonfiction books and require students to read them, not skim them, cover to cover. Reading nonfiction contributes powerfully to the knowledge that students need in order to read more difficult material--the kind they will surely face in college.

Electric Cars Still Strike Out

NYT Picture

In The Battery-Driven Car Just Got a Lot More Normal, Berkeley resident (of course) Bradley Berman writes a glowing New York Times revue (link here)of the Ford Focus Electric. The car is "as handsome as its gasoline-powered siblings," and a "full recharge from empty to full [happens] in a little more than four hours when pulling 240 volts" free at public charging stations. It is very quiet, of course, and powers and handles well.

Marin Clean Energy is now offering 100 percent clean energy, so, in theory, a Marin County (Northern California) driver can go to work without putting any carbon in the atmosphere or buying foreign oil. Gas prices are irrelevant. How nice!

Unfortunately, the original problems of battery-driven cars remain: charge time, range, and price. I rarely have four hours free, and when I do I would not choose to waste this precious time at a charging station. Perhaps I could charge from home while I slept if I lived in a house with an attached garage, but I do not. My owners' association would not approve of a large extension cord traveling from my condo to the garage.

Secondly, the estimated driving range of the car is 76-90 miles. My commute is 16 miles each way, so I could go to work for only two days without needing to include time for a charge. I could not use the car at all for a longer trip, let's say to lake Lake Tahoe, without researching the location of charging stations, necessary every 85 minutes or so of freeway driving. It can be done, but charging stations are not yet as ubiquitous as gas stations. However, a day trip, let's say to Los Angeles, would take at least eight hours longer than a trip using a gas-powered vehicle. So the Ford Focus electric is best used for local trips to the store or for errands. Why bother to use the car? I walk or ride my bike to pick up a few groceries or see the dentist.

Lastly, the Ford Focus Electric is expensive, $30,000 after the federal tax credit and California rebate. That's unaffordable for most middle class drivers. Hybrids are cheaper and don't have range problems.

The European Union is Doomed

The Euro is cheap in response to the inevitable exit of Greece and other poorly-run European governments. Perhaps some Americans will be able to afford a Parisian vacation this year. On the continent itself, people are on the move too. Engineers and other highly-trained workers are leaving southern Europe countries, the high unemployment areas of Spain, Portugal, and Italy, for Germany.

The Germans are getting skilled workers for their industries and, because of the collapse of the Euro, lower prices for exporting. How long, however, will Germans be willing to foot the bill for the above countries lack of fiscal discipline and insolvency? Are European countries, even Germany and some Nordic countries, likely to increase their tax base in the next year or two as manufacturing slows? What will happen when populous and central player of the European unity movement, France, joins the deadbeats?

The European Union is doomed. As Chris Mayer has written in Capital and Crisis, look forward to the garage sale, European assets at fire sale prices. See articles by Chris Mayer and Bill Bonner to capitalize on the opportunities.

Voter ID Laws Make Sense

Virginia has a new voter ID law. This is a good thing. The arguments against voter ID are patently ridiculous and unbelievable. I quote two from Voter ID Laws Pose More Challenges than Solutions by Tova Andrea Wang, posted in the March/April 2012 edition of Social Education.

She claims that 18 percent of Americans over the age of 65 do not have a photo ID. These older Americans must live a very different life than my grandparents. Without photo ID, I assume they reside on an island without the use of banks or airplane travel. I have met only one senior who functioned without photo ID, my great grandmother. Laconic in speech and heavily accented, she, as far as I know, didn't bother getting American citizenship. She died 40 years ago.  I don't think she regretted not being able to vote in American elections as long as the Russian Czar wasn't coming back.

Wang complains that to obtain photo ID, citizens must produce "other documentation and identification, which they are unlikely to have, such as a birth certificate. Such documents cost money to obtain copies" (P.68). No birth certificate? Is it possible that poor people aren't actually born and arrive on this earth by some other means? Where is the birth certificate? If your mama lost it, does that become the state's problem? Don't you need a birth certificate to work as a productive member of society? How can you show that you are an American citizen and get a job without one?

I think we are dealing with a much deeper issue--do people have to be responsible? The answer is, yes. Forcing deadbeats to get a photo ID not only ensures a greater number of voters; it also ensures a greater number of responsible citizens.

August 25, 2012 Postscript: Investment writer and political commentator Richard C. Young argues convincingly for photo identification for voters in Why We Need Voter ID (link here). First of all, leaving your identification at home does not preclude you from voting. In states that have the strictest photo ID laws

Voters who are unable to show ID at the polls are given a provisional ballot. Those provisional ballots are kept separate from the regular ballots. If the voter returns to election officials within a short period of time after the election (generally a few days) and presents acceptable ID, the provisional ballot is counted.

Fraud exists. The Republican National Lawyers Association catalogs voter fraud attempts, and dozens of organized and individual attempts at voter fraud have taken place already this year.Young concludes, "vote fraud, even on a small scale, harms Americans by diluting their most powerful right. It must be prevented."

September 17, 2012 Postscript: Pennsylvania also makes it easier for voters to get their ID together--
"Native Pennsylvanians who need to confirm their birth certificates using the state’s records will soon be able to do so with just one visit to a PennDOT licensing center" See the ink here. The charge that Pennsylvania is suppressing voters just got refuted.
February 9, 2012 Postscript: Voter fraud in the 2012 election was outed in Ohio here.

Move to Marin County--Live Longer

Bay Area Life spans (in years)

                           Men Women
Alameda County     78.6 82.8
Contra Costa Cty   78.5 82.7
Marin County         81.6 85.1
San Francisco Cty  78.5 84.4
San Mateo County 80.4 84.9
Solano County       76.7 81.8
Sonoma County     78.2 82.3
— Source: The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

The Marin IJ's  article, Marin County men have the highest life expectancy in the nation, women rank No. 2 illustrates the benefits of wealth despite scientists arguing otherwise.

Dr. Ali Mokdad who heads the research team that prepared the report, said Marin life expectancy rates are high and getting higher because most residents don't smoke, aren't obese, are physically active and eat a healthy diet.

The wealthy can afford to add more fruits and vegetables in their diet. The rich tend to be better educated, and, as a whole, avoid tobacco and get more checkups (and better health care overall) than the poor. The rich also have more time to exercise and can afford gym memberships. It's true that the warm Northern California sun begs residents to go for a run or a bike ride, but income counts. Mokdad disagrees with me.

"Income has an impact on health but it's not a big player in terms of this variation of life expectancy." Some countries where life expectancy is increasing do not have high incomes.

Life expectancy may increase in middle income areas as word gets out about proper lifestyle changes but there is no substitute for wealth. I find the link between affluence and life expectancy to be quite strong. Look at the chart (Bay Area Life spans) at the top of the page. The top two richest counties, Marin and San Mateo, have the highest lifespans. The poorest, Solano County, has the shortest lifespan average. The difference for males is close to five years. Solano County weather isn't bad--one can run just as many days in Vallejo as in Novato. The difference between the two counties is lifestyle, and that is greatly affected by income.

Why Obama and Netanyahu Don't Get Along

2012 photo/jta-ron kampeas

Douglas Bloomfield's Op/Ed piece, Playing the "Holocaust card" could backfire on Netanyahu, bemoans the lack of warmth between the American and Israeli leaders.

His [Netanyahu's] barely concealed personal antipathy toward the president of the United States was on display throughout his visit to Washington last month. He had high (deserved) praise for Congress and for some select members, and he thanked the president for his speech of support for Israel and the American government’s help for Israel.
But there was not a single kind word personally for the man who has hosted him eight times in the Oval Office. No foreign leader has made as many visits to the White House in this administration, and none has had such a rocky relationship with the president.

 Bloomfield thinks that Netanyahu should be more grateful for American support and should be willing to support US policies as strongly as the US supports Israel's. Bloomfield misses the fact that Netanyahu got along famously with George W. Bush and has a strong relationship with Mitt Romney stretching back to 1976.

Part of the problem is politics.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk said Netanyahu is “much more of a Republican than he is a Likudnik.” The PM himself once told an interviewer, “I speak Republican.”

Part of the problem is style.

Former Ambassador Dennis Ross wrote in “The Missing Peace,” his memoir of the Clinton years: “In the meeting with President Clinton, Netanyahu was nearly insufferable, lecturing and telling us how to deal with the Arabs. … After Netanyahu was gone, President Clinton observed, ‘He thinks he is the superpower and we are here to do whatever he requires.’ No one on our side disagreed with that assessment.”

Obama is also known for lecturing people. Put two "lecturers" in a room and no one is a listener. That doesn't make for a good relationship. Obama and Netanyahu have enough combined ego and narcissism to fill Madison Square Garden. Each thinks that the world should just shut up and listen. That doesn't help their relationship either. However, I believe their partnership was poisoned by their very first meeting on May 18, 2009. Obama, hoping to reshape the middle east, demanded that Netanyahu agree to an immediate settlement freeze. I would guess that was not a good opener. Offering Netanyahu a ham sandwich would have worked better! Netanyahu's team, quite upset by this tactic met and decided to go home rather quickly.

Later we had the infamous interchange with the French president.

"I can't stand him. He's a liar," Sarkozy said of Netanyahu, according to the website [Arret Sur Images]. Obama replied, "You're tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day," the site reported.

I'll bet that Netanyahu will be hoping Romney wins in November.

Update: Obama takes the politically-risky move of snubbing Netanyahu in September of an election year. See the Haaretz article here.

Was Bin Laden a Leftist at Heart?

Steve Coll in the New Yorker piece, The Outlaw, writes that Osama bin Laden

issued about half a dozen audiotapes during each of the past two years. Occasionally there were gaps of many months between releases, but he seemed eager to speak about Al Qaeda-related headlines, as well as to promote authors he happened to be reading--these included Noam Chomsky and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, co-authors of "The Israel Lobby."

These authors are anti-Israel (Mearsheimer and Walt) or anti-Israel and anti-Jewish (Chomsky) so it makes sense that bin Laden was reading their books. Chomsky has gone as far as appearing in Syrian media as supporting Iranian interests over those of America and Israel and writing the forward to Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson's book, Memoire en defense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire. 

Osama bin Laden was portrayed as a reactionary that would lead us back to the rule of the Caliphates. Yet the secular section of his book shelf resembled that of a Berkeley radical with a violent streak. Perhaps the thought processes of totalitarians on the far right and far left, like Hitler and Mao, are more or less the same.

What is American Foreign Policy?

If you are trying to understand the Obama administration's foreign policy, you must read The Consequentialist by Ryan Lizza  here. Lizza, no arch-conservative, but rather a supporter of liberal causes as a writer for the New Yorker, explains that Obama had no foreign policy experience before running for Senate. Obama read the right books and hired talented people from previous Democratic administrations to help him craft his policy. His views wavered between "realism," acting when American interests are at stake, and supporting human rights irrespective of America's international interests.

Lizza argues that Obama has no coherent policy and manages by the seat of his pants, following trends rather than leading them. Sometimes he's a realist, staying out of civil strife in African countries, sometimes he's a late supporter of democracies such as elements of the Arab Spring, opposing authoritarian regimes. In sharp contrast to a Truman or a Reagan, no one really knows where he stands, and he makes decisions after the dust has settled and Britain and France have already acted.

Obama's style (or lack of one) makes it difficult for foreign diplomats to know what the United States desires. For example, does Obama wish to increase the tempo of arms control agreements? Certainly, Obama does not want to be limited during disarmament negotiations with the Russians by having to defend his evolving views before an election. Nor does he want to work with a hostile Congress as shown by the recent "hot mic" gaffe (here).

I personally would trust a politician more if I could predict his behavior.

You Must Purchase the History Book, "The Fifties"

David Halberstam's The Fifties was the most entertaining 700-page history book I have ever read. Much of the charm comes from  Halberstam's style. A trained journalist and experienced writer, he glued together the book by writing biographies of the most important political, economic, and cultural figures of the decade.

The book lacks a table of contents, so I will provide one, giving you a taste of the breadth and depth of the book.

One: Robert Taft, The Hiss Case, Dean Acheson, and the 1948 Election
Two: Harry Truman, J Robert Oppenheimer
Three: Joe McCarthy, Mike Hammer
Four: The Korean War
Five: Douglas MacArthur in Korea
Six: Edward Teller and The Hydrogen Bomb
Seven: MacArthur's Downfall, Matthew Ridgway
Eight: Alfred Sloan, Harley Earl, and General Motors
Nine: Bill Levitt
Ten: Eugene Ferkauf
Eleven:. McDonald's
Twelve: Holiday Inn
Thirteen: Radio to TV
Fourteen:. Kefauver
Fifteen: Television
Sixteen: 1952 Campaigns
Seventeen: 1952 Campaign and Advertising
Eighteen: Ike Biography
Nineteen: Brando, Kazan, Williams
Twenty: Alfred Kinsey
Twenty One: The Pill
Twenty Two: The Beats
Twenty Three: Nixon biography
Twenty Four: Oppenheimer and JE Hoover
Twenty Five: Coup in Iran
Twenty Six:  Dulles Brothers and Coup in Guatemala
Twenty Seven: New Look Foreign Policy
Twenty Eight: The Warren Court
Twenty Nine: Civil Rights in Mississippi
Thirty:  Blacks in the South and the Cotton Picker
Thirty One:  Elvis Presley
Thirty Two:  GM
Thirty Three: Advertising
Thirty Four: Television Shows
Thirty Five: C Wright Mills
Thirty Six: Rosa Parks and MLK
Thirty Seven: Marilyn Monroe
Thirty Eight: Paperbacks
Thirty Nine: Postwar Femininity
Forty: The Pill (2)
Forty One:  American Space Program
Forty Two:  Foreign Cars
Forty Three: Quiz Shows
Forty Four: Little Rock
Forty Five: U-2 Flights and Ike's Legacy
Forty Six:  Fidel Castro and 1960 Election

Buy it! You can get a used copy for a little over a dime plus shipping.