Category Archives: Education

Continued Justification for My Own Ignorance Fast Disappearing

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One of the great things about the "Internet Age" is the wealth of information that’s out there for free to anyone who’s looking for it, and one of the great tragedies of the "Internet Age" is that I have many fewer excuses for my own ignorance.  Basically the only remaining explanation for my ignorance is my own lazy-ass habits.  Exhibit A in support of this finding is this:

Dartmouth University has made the textbook Introduction to Probability available for free on its website.  I’ve often mentioned that I’m mathematically challenged and really I should do something about it, but despite having this resource available to me I don’t feel the least bit tempted to study it.  Why?  Because I suspect it might be hard and for a lazy-ass guy like me that just isn’t gonna cut it.  Now if they come out with a free "Probability for Dummies" we might be in business.

Update: I just checked the preface for the book and it contains the following:

This text is designed for an introductory probability course taken by sophomores, juniors, and seniors in mathematics, the physical and social sciences, engineering, and computer science. It presents a thorough treatment of probability ideas and techniques necessary for a firm understanding of the subject. The text can be used in a variety of course lengths, levels, and areas of emphasis.

For use in a standard one-term course, in which both discrete and continuous probability is covered, students should have taken as a prerequisite two terms of calculus, including an introduction to multiple integrals. In order to cover Chapter 11, which contains material on Markov chains, some knowledge of matrix theory is necessary.

I don’t think so.

“Stupid in America” is Pretty Smart

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John Stossel is my favorite TV news guy.  I don’t always agree with him (usually do though) but I find his reporting to be thoughtful and I enjoy that he takes on everyday issues from a kind of common-sense point of view.

Earlier this year he took on public schools in his piece “Stupid in America” and once again I found myself agreeing with him.  He points out that we pay way too much for sub-par education and he feels that the best way to fix the problem is let parents choose the schools their kids go to.  Amen, brother.

Each year we get to see a multitude of new teachers via our kids.  You can always tell which teachers are engaging the kids because those are the subjects they talk about.  Usually, but not always, their grades are better in those classes but they always LEARN more in those classes.  Fortunately we’ve found the vast majority of their teachers to be at least average and some to be very good.

When we moved here we limited our search to a very finite area because of the schools.  It was the number one driver of our decision and we were fortunate that we had the flexibility to choose our location based on school performance. If we didn’t then I’d want the opportunity to get my kids into a decent school on my own.  Hey if I’m going to pay the bills (taxes) then I should be able to say where I’m getting the service.  And if you don’t give me that choice then you should set it up so I can be part of the hiring/firing process.  One way or another there needs to be accountability and the best way I know is the free-market system.  Perform or go out of business.

Our school system, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, is actually pretty progressive, providing parents with the opportunity to pick between two or three alternate schools if they don’t like their child’s “home” school. They call it “controlled choice.”, and they even provide busing to the alternate schools. It’s not perfect because you’re still stuck if all the choices stink, but still it’s better than most school systems I’ve heard of. 

I’d personally like to see a system similar to what they have in western Europe (it’s described in Stossel’s piece) where each student basically has a price tag on them.  The school that attracts that student gets that student’s funding, so the schools are highly motivated to keep their customers, the students’ parents, happy. With that one fundamental change I think you’d make things like “No Child Left Behind” unnecessary since the parents would be able to leave the underperforming schools behind.

Unfortunately I think there will be ice skating in hell before that happens.

More Mason Love

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A couple of economists at GMU have written an article for Slate that explains why Mason’s econ department and basketball team are very similar.  I remember when Buchanan won his Nobel in 86 while I was at Mason; I didn’t have a clue what economics was all about (I still don’t) but I took great pride that our unknown school had a Nobel winner.  Now that GMU can boast two Nobel winners and a Final Four team I’m thinking there might actually be an outbreak of, gasp, alumni pride!

We’re #25!

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My alma mater, George Mason University (GMU), cracked the top 25 in men’s basketball for the first time in school history.  It’s also the first time in almost 20 years that the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) has had a top-25 team. GMU’s RPI rank is #20, just one behind Carolina.

GMU is just off of a big road win at Wichita State (RPI #24, 20-7) and is playing conference rival Hofstra (RPI #47, 20-5) on the road this week.  They win this one they might move up even more.

I just checked out the price of tickets to go to the ACC Tournament in Greensboro and I think I’d rather use the money it would cost to pay one of my kids’ tuition for a year.  Now I’m thinking of road-tripping to the CAA tournament in Richmond to see the Patriots play.  Generally a CAA team has to win the conference tournament to get in, but with a top-25 ranking maybe GMU would get an at-large if they don’t win it.  Or maybe UNC-Wilmington (RPI #38, 20-7), Hofstra (RPI #47, 20-5) or Old Dominion (RPI #52, 19-8) might sneak in.

BTW, you can get all a book of tickets for all 11 games of the CAA tournament for $60.  That’s a lot of quality hoops for the dollar.

I’m Thinking I Need to Take Some Econ Courses

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When I was in high school I literally confused economics with ecology, and things didn’t get a lot better in college. That best explains why I’ve always felt hampered during any discussion of "the economy."  Of course ignorance has never stopped me from opening by big trap before so I do endure.

Evidence of the endurance of my ignorant discourse is my exchange with David Boyd in the comments of this post.  What this discussion drove home to me is that while I do have a rudimentary understanding of economics (and I think I have some pretty accurate instincts about the Bush Administration, but I digress) I don’t quite grasp the cause and effect of varying economic factors.  It occurs to me that I don’t like government deficits because:

  1. Debt is bad.  My wife tells me that whenever we run up a credit card bill and she knows about this stuff because she’s an ECON major!
  2. All the experts say that deficits are bad, but to be honest I don’t really know why they think it’s bad.  I’m taking their word for it.

Then I came across this on the BusinessWeek’s Economics Unbound blog:

Tyler Cowen has an item titled Do future generations pay for deficits?. He starts off this way:

Assume that government spends some money today on
consumption. That money could have been spent on a durable bridge, but
it wasn’t. Some current people benefit from the consumption and future
generations get nothing.

Above and beyond that effect, do future generations bear the burden of deficit spending? 

But of course, there’s a big problem with his scenario. The latest
budget pegs the FY 2006 deficit at $423 billion. But federal spending
on major physical capital, research and development, and education and
training–all long-lived investments–is estimated at $425 billion.

We are not borrowing to finance consumption, we are borrowing to finance long-lived investments.

So a better question might be: Do future generations benefit enough
from these investments to justify the cost of the borrowing?

Now I’m really confused.  It doesn’t help that I think maybe the blog’s author has engaged in an old debate trick here of changing the basis of the argument.  My question to him would be, "Aren’t we borrowing to finance consumption AND investments?" But what do I know?

I came of age during the era of Reaganomics, which I believe was also called supply-side economics, whatever that is.  I seem to remember there being a great deal of disagreement between the economists from varying schools of thought so I came to the conclusion that this might not be an exact science, which it turns out is an oxymoron since every day some scientific proof seems to be overturned, disproved or improved.  Whatever, it’s not exact.

So I know that there’s a lot that economists disagree on, but I’ll be damned if I understand it.  I feel like I’m listening to two people argue in Latin; I can tell by their body language that they disagree but I have no idea what they’re talking about.  Which leads me to the conclusion that I need to get at least a rudimentary understanding of the language of economics.  Maybe I’ll take a course at one of the local schools, but in the interim can someone recommend a book on economics that works on the kindergarten level?

Sometimes It Just Takes 20 Years

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A while ago I wrote about an experience I had with some of the guys from my fraternity (Sigma Chi) when we helped Steve Carlson, one of our brothers who has been dealing with a worsening condition of multiple sclerosis (MS).  That event and the subsequent communication with all those guys I haven’t seen in years reminded me of what a remarkable time my college years were, and gives me even more reason to be proud to be associated with my guys from Sigma Chi-Iota Xi Chapter.

Well our school’s (George Mason University) alumni magazine picked up the story (read it here) and it so happens that on the same day this article appeared I received word that GMU’s basketball team is ranked 30th in the country in the AP poll.  For GMU that’s a big deal, especially since the school (still) doesn’t have a football team, not even Division 1-AA.  Okay, there’s a club team but for a school with 20,000+ students that’s just silly.

Back when I was there we had a top-10 soccer team, and our track team was top-notch. Still, those aren’t exactly glamour sports so it’s nice to see the school doing well in a top-tier sport.

I’ve always been a proud alumnus of GMU, but whenever I tell people where I went to school I get the question, "Who’s that" when I tell them.  (By the way this is who George Mason was). Now maybe if we make a run in March people will know that GMU is a fine Virginia state university that has had Nobel Laureates on its faculty and has one of the better economics and computer science departments in the country.  Oh, and if you’re a conservative you’d love our Law School.  Sad to say, but it usually takes a nationally prominent sports team to make a school recognizable so that’s what I’m hoping for. 

So it may have taken 20 years but now I’m going to be a proud AND vocal alumnus of GMU.  Go Patriots!

School Selection is Always an Issue

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There’s a raging debate over in Guilford County (home to the city/towns of Greensboro and High Point) about school districting.  From what I can tell they’ve been experimenting with various school districting schemes and nothing has worked, and now parents are pushing for neighborhood-based schools.  A couple of good opinion posts about it can be found on Dave Hoggard’s and Sue Polinsky’s blogs.

Sue uses a great analogy to frame the debate.  Basically she says that the forced segregation of schools is an effort to be a lamp to shine the way to a better society and not a mirror of the reality that we all live in.  She also points out the inherent problems with this situation.

From a personal standpoint I can tell you that growing up my schools had a very strong influence on my worldview.  The first 6 1/2 years of school I never had one non-white kid in my class, and then in November of my 7th grade year we moved to Arlington County, VA which is basically an urban environment.  Overnight I was a minority (there were more ‘other’ races than whites in the school).  Definitely opened my eyes. 

My friends came from all over the world: Italy, Japan, India, Mexico, Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Texas.  This was during the after effects of the Vietnam war so we also had a lot of Cambodian kids who’d come over essentially as refugees.  It was interesting to me that many of my friends, who’s dads worked at their countries’ embassies or for multi-national companies, wanted nothing to do with the refugee kids or the children of the illegal immigrants. They viewed those kids as lower class and were actually rougher on them than the American kids, black or white, were.

By ninth grade most of the kids had divided into gangs, all of which were made up of different races.  One day the blacks would fight the whites, the next day the whites would fight the Vietnamese who would then fight the Mexicans, etc.  One thing all the gangs had in common: 99% of their members were either poor or came from "bad" families.  Middle class black kids and white kids didn’t belong to gangs.  Diplomats’ kids didn’t belong to gangs.  Most interesting: children of refugee parents who were doctors, lawyers, etc. in their home country didn’t belong to gangs.  They were dirt-poor but their parents worked multiple jobs and emphasized education above all else.  These kids didn’t play sports either.

The point is that without moving to Arlington I probably never would have seen the disparity within different races.  I realized at an early age that all races were different in things like dress and food, but remarkably similar in one very important way: they all had their own class structure.  That’s an important lesson I don’t think I would have gotten in my white-bread schools and I can’t think of another place after school that I would have gotten it either.  Well, maybe all those public basketball courts I played on growing up, but that’s a whole different world.

Here’s the difference between my experience and what is going on in Guilford County: we had all that diversity in Arlington within neighborhood schools.  School zones could be drawn up geographically and still have the diversity I mentioned.  That’s because it was a little melting pot.  I don’t know that the parents in Arlington would have been any different from the parents in Guilford if their kids would have been forced to go across town to go to school.  It just wasn’t an issue for them, but if you ask me I think Guilford parents have the right idea in asking for neighborhood schools.  If the neighborhoods aren’t diverse then so be it. 

I’ll end by saying that where I live now, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County has an interesting system for the schools: If you don’t like your "core" school you can pick from up to two other schools and get free busing.  My oldest son has a friend who buses from another school’s zone and it takes him quite a while to get to and from school, but it’s worth it to his family in order for him to go to a better school.  The price is that the school system has to work very hard to work out transportation logistics, but in my mind it’s worth it because it allows parents to choose the right situation for their kids.  Maybe it’s the neighborhood school, and maybe it’s not, but they get to choose.  Maybe Guilford should look at the Forsyth system.

Blogging Has Changed Everything; I Voluntarily Read a Poem

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Poetry is something I suffered through in college, which is frightening when you consider that I was an English Lit major.  Really the only poetry class I remember attending regularly was a comparative literature class (Wordsworth and some dead white English dude) being taught by a really hot, brunette 26-year-old professor.  Even then I only made it to mid-terms before I began skipping class in earnest. Other than that I remember nada…zilch.

Since college I’ve intermittently tried to read some poetry just to see if my tastes in literature have changed since then (they haven’t) only to discover that poetry still bores me silly.  I’m probably just not smart enough to get it, but for whatever reason I just can’t do it.

Well, today bookofjoe had a poem by Kenneth Koch that I both "got" and enjoyed.  You can read it here, and I can actually say I recommend it.  Will the wonders of blogging ever cease?

My College Degree is Worth Less Today

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I’m sitting here on Christmas Eve doing a little reading and I just came across this post (Business Week) about how the real wages of those with college degrees has declined for the fourth straight year.  I can’t say that I find it surprising, but it is a little depressing.  I’d say that it is evidence that today’s college degree is equivalent to a high school degree in my parents’ day.  Back in "the day" you could be pretty certain that you could get a good job with a high school degree, but as the US economy shifted away from manufacturing and towards "knowledge work" it became more important to have the skills equated with a college degree.

Of equal interest to me was a comment attached to the blog post that was written by someone who obviously graduated from college in the 70s with a degree from a liberal arts college.  She blurted  that old saw about how going to college isn’t about making more money it’s about being able to ask questions, expand your mind, etc.  Then she said that she’d recently been an adjunct professor at a state college in the south and all the students cared about was passing the test, not "learning", and if that was indicative of today’s students then colleges are in trouble.

That cracked me up.  Does she really believe that students in the 70s were that different?  I guarantee you there were as many students just looking to pass the test in her day, but maybe she didn’t know them or hang out with them. Her observations about college in the 70s were just as anecdotal as those about today’s students.  And does she really think that college is just about expanding your mind for the sake of expanding your mind?  No, it’s learning how to think so that you can be more successful later in life (notice I didn’t say wealthier, although that’s often a consequence of being more successful) and essentially a more productive contributor to society.  Believe me, if the average student didn’t expect a positive economic impact from earning their degree they wouldn’t go to college.

And let’s not forget about networking.  As another commenter to the post said it isn’t what you know, it’s who you know.  While that’s simplistic it is partly true.  If two qualified people are in the running for a position or a deal then if one person has a personal connection to the decision maker then they have an inside track.  There’s no doubt that you begin the "who do you know" game in college and it definitely provides a leg up in your professional life.

Unfortunately, it seems from the data provided by the post’s author that the old BA/BS is less valuable today than it was five years ago.  Still, I’d certainly rather have a less valuable BA than none at all.

I Wonder if Teachers are Using This Stuff

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The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission has a website that features a report they’ve published about the epononymous event (thanks to Ed Cone for the link).  It is still exciting to me that I can get this kind of information without leaving the confines of my own office and the thought it sparked is how wonderful it must be for teachers in this day and age to have these resources available to them.  My next thought wasn’t so pleasant: do teachers even use sites like this as a resource, or more accurately, given the atmosphere of "teaching to the test" that they work in today do they have the flexibility to incorporate this kind of resource into their curricula?  Unfortunately I suspect the answer to the latter is a negative.

I know for a fact that my kids use the internet to do their own research (with a lot of guidance from their parents seeing as they might be tempted to quote Runescape as a historical reference), but I can’t think of any recent occurrences of a teacher pointing them to a web-based resource.  Is it because the teachers don’t want to use the web in this way or is it because they can’t?