Education is Everything
By Larry Doyle on July 14, 2009 at 9:00 AM in Current Affairs, Economy, Education, Employment, Sense on Cents (Larry Doyle blog), Unemployment
Has there ever been a time when increased skills and education have not been vitally important to furthering one’s well being? As we move forward in developing our ‘new’ economy, education and advanced skills will be increasingly more important.
I would only wish that the dirty little secrets embedded in urban education were more widely disseminated so that ‘real’ progress can be made. I see evidence of these secrets again this morning in reading the New York Times. The lead article in the right hand column of the front page highlights, Black-White Gap in Jobless Rate Widens in City:
Unemployment among blacks in New York City has increased much faster than for whites, and the gap appears to be widening at an accelerating pace, new studies of jobless data have found.
While unemployment rose steadily for white New Yorkers from the first quarter of 2008 through the first three months of this year, the number of unemployed blacks in the city rose four times as fast, according to a report to be released on Monday by the city comptroller’s office. By the end of March, there were about 80,000 more unemployed blacks than whites, according to the report, even though there are roughly 1.5 million more whites than blacks here.
Across the nation, the surge in unemployment has cut across all demographic lines, and the gap between blacks and whites has risen, but at a much slower rate than in New York.
Economists said they were not certain why so many more blacks were losing their jobs in New York...(LD’s highlight)
What? Not certain? Once again, economists and public policy analysts are not being honest on the disastrous state of urban education.
I highlighted this point the other day in my call for total transparency and honesty on this topic. In writing Warren Buffett: “Wall Street Owes the American People”, I called for:
1. honesty on where we currently stand across all aspects of our economy and society. Publicize our successes and, more importantly, our failures so we can properly address them.
Do not allow urban education dropout rates of 50% to be swept under the rug. Promote the correlation between those figures, single parent birth rates, income levels, and criminal behaviors. BE HONEST ON THESE TOPICS!!!
While economists and the New York Times itself may not want to publicize education statistics, the fact is New York City’s public schools, like most major urban schools, are disproportionately filled with minority students.
For New York City, that breakdown is:
The racial makeup of public school students is 36.7 percent Hispanic, 34.7 percent black, 14.3 percent Asian, and 14.2 percent white.
The specialized high schools tend to be disproportionately white and Asian.
In terms of graduation rates, the New York City Department of Education released on June 22, 2009:
the City’s four-year graduation rate rose to 56.4 percent in 2008 from 52.8 percent in 2007 and 46.5 percent in 2005. The five-year graduation rate rose to 62.6 percent in 2008 from 58.8 percent in 2007 and 55.7 percent in 2006. The six-year graduation rate rose to 61.8 percent in 2008 from 58.5 percent in 2007.
Blacks and Hispanics are narrowing the gap in the overall graduation rates with their white and Asian counterparts, but the overall numbers remain daunting. We learn:
Overall, 51.4 percent of black students in the class of 2008 graduated in four years, compared to 47.8 percent in 2007 and 40.1 percent in 2005. This 11.3 point increase over two years compares to a 7.5 point increase among white students and a 7.8 point increase among Asian students during the same period. Similarly, 48.7 percent of Hispanic students in the class of 2008 graduated in four years, compared to 43.5 percent in 2007 and 37.4 percent in 2005, an increase of 11.3 points over two years.
While progress is being made in NYC’s overall high school graduation rates, are the numbers truly representative of students prepared to move forward in life or is the system still being gamed to a large extent? How uncanny that today’s New York Times also highlights, Makeup Work Allows Students to Slide By, Critics Say:
A year after reports showed that New York City high schools were offering failing students a chance to earn credit simply by completing worksheets or attending weeklong cram sessions, educators say the system of making up schoolwork is still abused.
Not that I have the answers to solving the urban education problems in our country (I am fully supportive of further promotion of charter schools and student vouchers), but I do know that without being totally honest and transparent on the issue, real progress will never be made.
In the process, the very minorities whom politicians and public policy experts claim they want to help will continue to suffer.
LD
(Release: November 13)
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Education is everything — Some cultures have figured that out centuries ago. Some developing countries too in the recent history. When the pie is large and not enough people to share it with, you could get by with your human ingenuity. No need to show education or other such proof of your skills and potential. With competition and a smaller pie comes the necessity to show proof of what your potential is beforehand. For instance, MBA degree is all the rage and fad in India right now. A relative of mine who is a good manager but with only an undergraduate degree in engineering feels the need to get an MBA just to ward off someone else with an MBA taking his job away.
If education is your joy, go for it. If living in the woods making pottery is, do that. Maybe lying in the sun or surfing makes you happy. An extension on unemployment benefits is the only way any average American got a hunk of the porkulus package.
Never mind trying to get ahead financially in this country. We have been betrayed by the people we elected to serve us from probably the day after Thomas Jefferson died. Insurance companies, home loan and collage loan underwriters, credit card companies, the local bank, all are allowed to legally pick our bones.
And then we hear that if we do manage to get a little ahead and put some money away for retirement, about every twenty years Goldman Sachs will swoop in and take it away - legally.
Why work at all, do what makes you happy and let the government pay your mortgage and feed you.
Also, the deluge of illegals has taken its toll on jobs that in the past were held by working class minorities. In the past, students could easily find summer jobs. Not anymore.
True, there lies the art of globalization. Vast majority of the world’s population are uneducated but they are very capable of doing the simple jobs which do not require a degree -and they work with less money. That’s why all labour work is moving to developing countries and the ones that stay keep hiring immigrants who don’t ask for much. In the US it’s Mexicans, in Europe it’s arabs and africans.
The only way the people of west can get a job is to either lower their salary exceptions or educate themselves so hard that they can work in a field the uneducated can not. Globalization is just going to grow and people need to understand the value of education.
Europe is breaking apart with this “welfare state” -ideology due to the growing number of people who need social security. The boat can no longer carry everyone. The truth is, life is getting harder in the west since we no longer dominate the world. Asia is a big player and Latin America hasn’t even started playing yet. The only tool Americans (or Europeans) can fight with is education. The rest, as cruel as it sounds, have no choice but to stay poor.
Perhaps a good start would be the inadequate way schools are funded.
Local taxation might be sound for a one room school in agrarian America but not today.
There are school districts out there where the buildings if they were apartment or commercial units would be closed and the landlord led away in manacles.
I swear (and get tinfoil) on this because the only way it makes sense is that certain people want to create an under-society that they can exploit for political or monetary gain.
The government wants all Americans to be stupid and held in check by religion so the elites can play.
Oh and just what is this “New Economy”?
Do we all sit around selling each other new and risky financial products or what?
Think about it. What is the use of a technical degree since manufacturing is going overseas? China has its own supply of engineers and technicians same with just about any other developing country. You don’t need a four year degree to stand in the unemployment line.
The new economy is the college industrial complex.
And money doesn’t seem to be the answer to this problem either. Many urban school districts spend more per pupil than nearby suburban school districts.
As long as illegitimacy rates remain high for AAs, their place in the permanent underclass will be guaranteed.
This is a cultural problem. The time is long overdue for leaders in the AA community to campaign HARD against illegitimacy.
I blame the teachers’ union.
I’m getting very tired of hearing how the schools have failed. When will commentators hold the parents responsible?
My wife is a school social worker. She, teachers and school staff do far more to help students than most of us would consider doing in our day to day jobs. At least in the Twin Cities inner city schools, teachers work hard intellectually and emotionally to give kids a behavioral and educational chance to succeed. For some kids, its apparent as early as first grade that the kids behavioral issues and parenting are dooming him/her to crime. Some kids at that age are already sociopaths.
Other kids have a chance and show brilliance but the parents are more interested in drugs, crime, booze or the gang life. Often the grandparents are raising the kid while dad (whomever that is) is absent and mom is in and out of rehab or jail. Is refreshing to see the Latino and Somali families at her school. Both parents come to conferences and school events.
Well, LD, looking at the racial considerations you bring forward for education and unemployment, I would like to throw one other item into the mix:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm
Where does family history (crime family or drugs or alcohol abuse or child abuse) or values (teen age pregnancy or parental educational level or family involvement in schooling) figure into the crime stats?
Is there more of a culture of violence in the urban AA population rather than the urban latino population? What I see in the Twin Cities still seems to fall more along the lines of dysfunctional families with generational histories of drug/alcohol abuse, child abuse and mental illness rather than racial lines. Still why do so many AA families succumb to this and other AA families do not?
I am “white” with distant Hispanic blood, yet my childhood heroes of learning were George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington. They learned against odds.
How do we spread the notion of a “love of learning/value of learning” that seems to dominate in some cultures? Without that as a core value, you can post this important article 100 years from now and it will still be “current” because nothing will have changed. And it doesn’t have to be “education” vs. “living in the woods making pottery” — because both require the love of learning something to achieve satisfaction in this life.
I agree. The love of learning starts with the love of reading. There are ideas, stories, biographies, histories that are interesting and they are all free at the library.
Take your child there as soon as he/she can read and show them what an amazing special place it is!
The great equalizer in American society is the guarenteed education of all our children. Children are not mature enough to grasp/appreciate the real, life-long significance of working hard in school. Long before a child has entered school, she/he has already learned thousands of lessons, directly and indirectly, from their parents. These lessons include citizenship, responsibility, manners, and a good work ethic, to name a few. Parents are a child’s first teacher. Each child brings the lessons learned during their early childhood to school with them. Some have had wonderful beginnings–and I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about caring and love. These children know that they truly matter to the most important people in their lifes-their parents. It is easy teaching these children. I know.
I’ve been doing it for 35 years.
The challenging children to teach are the ones who haven’t been raised in a consistant, loving enviornment. Most of these children suffer from low self-esteem and a sense of apathy. Nobody that matters to them, really cares how they perform in school. A student in my class this year was always unclean, poorly dressed(clothes NEVER fit ) and unfed. She was fed breakfast and lunch everyday for free. She was given 2 pairs of shoes, three coats and several articles of clothing throughout the year as well. Each time she was given a coat, she would show up on a freezing Pennsylvania winter day wearing only a sweatshirt. She would say that she couldn’t find the coat in her house. She never completed homework. Papers and forms were never signed. She was tardy over 48 times this year–and I don’t mean 5 or 10 minutes late. Her hands were constantly scratched and gouged from a stray cat that moved in with them. She was 6 years old.
This child is very bright. She has the ability to be a very good student. But I can tell you right now that if her homelife doesn’t change, the chances of her being a successful student are slim to none. C&YS were contacted. They spoke to the mother and she promised to get her daughter to school on time. That lasted about 1 week. Kids like this little girl fly right under the radar of Children& Youth services. Not enough neglect to remove the child–just poor parenting. Never the less, these children show up in classrooms all over the country and teachers must do their best to educate them. The trouble is –how do we undo what has already been done for the first 5 years of their lifes?
Forgive this analogy, but in a business or manufacturing enviornment, if the materials used to produce a product are inferior they are returned to the supplier. Educators do not have that option. We take all children and do our best to educate them and move them forward.
I love and nuture my kids all day long, but when the bell rings @ 3:30 they return to the place where sadly no one asks how was school today.
America needs to get very serious about good parenting. And not just to make a teacher’s job easier–but to make every child’s life better so she/he can actualize their potential and become well-adjusted,productive members of society. After all, isn’t that the real goal of education?
Amen to that!
People made fun of the family sitcoms in the 50s as being too goody-goody. They said they were unrealistic - that real families are more disfunctional.
I saw the sitcoms more as being family role models and teaching tools illustrating an ideal.
Now there are no models to follow except what you learn at home.
Sad.
Education is not everything. The looters are in power now and they are in the process of punishing the producers. The 5.4% tax surcharge in the proposed national health care, the expiring of the Bush tax cut at the end of 2010, the task force that is looking at the elimination of business write-offs, state income taxes increases & cap and trade will finish off (anticipation already has) the USA private sector business. Engineering design firms have no business unless it is building a hospital. Why would anyone in their right mind invest in the USA now?
We will have a young group of recently educated potential workers who will not be able to find a job in the USA. They voted for Obama, so deal with it you morons. Educated white males will be on the bottom of the totum pole in order to make diversity numbers look better like they have been for 40 years. Government contracts (the only growing business along with budget deficits) will not award contracts if you have too many white males.
The producers have already figured out that shipping manufacturing job overseas is a good thing for them. With cheap internet phone service, IT jobs, order entry, billing and invoicing, and product technical support jobs are now (and more soon) in India, Malaysia and the Phillipines. Plus they do not get sued for having too many white males, and they are able to fire bad workers regardless of gender, race (hispanic is a culture not a race, but La Raza does not care), or sexuality.
However, I can get my lawn mowed cheap by illegals. They will soon have citizenship to go along with their free emergency room health care. What a deal.
Press #1 for Spanish & 2 for English.
Hope you are enjoying your 401K in your golden years. Goldman Sachs is doing well with the $ you put in them–sucker!
National Health Care will be similar to what was in the Soylent Green movie.
Atlas Shrugged.
Jesuit education.