Being Consumed By Irresponsible Consumerism

© 2008 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.
On this college graduation weekend there is one thing not obvious as we watch the graduates walk across the stage waving to Mama. Many have irresponsible debts that their earning potential will not support comfortably.
They do not seem to be worried about the mountain of debt they have gotten themselves into. We might call this “Irresponsible consumerism” or “Dysfunctional consumerism.”
I would not want to cast a disapproving eye at what another person buys, tattoos aside. It is not the purchase of momentary items as much as going into debt for those things using resources that should be used to secure an education.
A college education is expensive though lack of a college education is even more expensive in the long run. What concerns me is the notion that anyone can go to college has changed since college costs have skyrocketed in just one decade. While getting my Ph.D. in the 1990s, I paid less than $600 a semester for tuition and fees. Now that figure at New Mexico State University is close to $2,500 and going up. A four-year degree then involved less than $5,000 whereas now it is closer to $25,000 dollars since many students take five years to graduate.
When I went to college right out of high school in 1968, I worked my way through college and graduated with no debts. That allowed me quite a bit of flexibility in taking my first job, which was not financially lucrative but extended my education in very practical ways.
Today’s graduates carry into their professional lives student loans and other debts in the tens of thousands of dollars. Talk about having a heavy rock around your neck while swimming.
Part of this involves personal property. Both college and high school students have much more personal property than I had at their age. Our family had one car, which I was not privileged to use, no dishwasher other than us kids, no microwave, one each television, phone and stereo.
When I went to college out of high school I realized I could have a car or go to college but not both. So I was on foot for the first three years. It was not my first choice, rather, my only choice. I owned a typewriter, wristwatch, clock radio, guitar and my clothes which had a somewhat thrift store aura along with some books. Not so with today’s students.
These kids have expensive tastes for cars, cell phones, sunglasses, designer clothes, iPods, video game systems and extensive music and movie collections. They have acquired these possessions with student loans and consumer credit rather than earnings and savings.
In one news report I heard that the average college graduate has at least 30,000 dollars of students loans on top of their maxed out credit cards and other consumer loans. How sad.
Those who drop out of college without a degree are in even worse shape. And it starts in high school with families using so much of their disposable income for these things so that college plans are threatened.
The bottom line is that the resources used for non-essentials could not be used for essential expenses. Hence, resources were borrowed, borrowing the income of years to come. This is done without a real understanding of what the long-term consequences will be.
Very few people are saying to parents and students that they need to look anew at their consumer appetites. There is the old saying, “Those who laugh when they borrow will cry when they pay back.” Some think that the government will bail out the students as they are other people who make bad financial choices. But I think not. There is the realization that bankruptcy laws have been changed where these irresponsible consumer purchases are not dischargeable.
Finally, not all degrees are equal in the ability to generate income since the world reinforces the choice of degree disproportionately. In fact, colleges pay their professors disproportionately; engineering professors make three times as much as history professors.
If your heart is set on say journalism I would not dream of changing it, nay, I cannot change it. I remember a joke from when I was in journalism, “What is the difference between a 16-inch pizza and a journalism graduate? A 16-inch pizza can feed a family of four.
The society pushes this irresponsible consumerism on our students with more and more “must have” stuff along with credit cards. Maybe that is the way to learn, but it is an ever so hard lesson. I know that most young people will listen to the warning and shrug, “whatever.”
At least pray for them. They will need it in the coming years. We should also talk to them because some might eventually see the truth. Save those who will be saved.

U.S. educators seek new ideas abroad

Concern over American students’ international test results stirs fresh interest in ed-tech lessons from other countries

By Robert L. Jacobson, Senior Editor, eSchool News

With increasing anxiety, advocates of American education have been looking at other countries around the world and asking: What do they know that we don't know?

To be sure, educational and political leaders in many countries besides the United States understand that their people's well-being depends more than ever on the strength of their educational systems. They also understand the power of technology. READ MORE

Spellings Asks 6th Circuit Reconsider NCLB Ruling

From Education Week - By Mark Walsh
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is asking a federal appeals court to reconsider a ruling that revived a major challenge to the No Child Left Behind Act.

In a court filing Feb. 5, Bush administration lawyers asked the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, to reconsider last month’s decision by a panel of the court that suggested states and school districts do not have to use their own money to comply with the education law’s mandates when federal funding falls short. READ MORE

If you're here, the answer is YES

RULES FOR WRITERERS

RULES FOR WRITERERS
Author Anonymous

1. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren't necessary and shouldn't be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Don't use no double negatives.
17. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be ignored.
21. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
22. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
23. Kill all exclamation points!!!
24. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
25. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas.
26. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
27. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
28. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
29. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
31. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
32. Who needs rhetorical questions?
33. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
And finally...
34. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Say Yes to Recess

By Vicky Schippers - Commentary for Education Week
Traditional recess, that half-hour break in the school day when youngsters can run around freely in the playground (or not) is getting a bad rap. All across the country, it seems, elementary schools have decided to make recess a gentler experience, one more suited to the notion that children face danger on all sides and need our constant vigilance. Different schools give different reasons for this shift, but the underlying factor is the possibility that in an unstructured setting, young people may be unnecessarily bruised, either physically or emotionally. READ MORE

Schools aim to solve huge math problem

Poor U.S. showing on international benchmarks prompts new approaches
By Laura Devaney, Associate Editor, eSchool News

With so many studies indicating the United States is dangerously close to a failing grade in math, it’s not surprising that educators are seeking solutions that not only can help students improve their math skills, but also can give them a competitive edge to succeed in a knowledge-based economy.

U.S. students are lagging behind their peers in other countries in science and math, according to the most recent results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), released in December. The test was last given to 15-year-olds in 30 industrialized countries in 2006 and is administered every three years. READ MORE

I wish they would sotp and think

Science academy backs teaching evolution

New report from National Academy of Sciences slams anti-evolution movement

From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

In a new report, scientific advisers to the federal government have highlighted the importance of teaching evolution in the public schools.

The report, from the National Academy of Sciences and its Institute of Medicine, comes as advocates of creationist-style instruction escalate their political opposition to evolution in several key states. The new document follows up on similar past publications, the last of which came out in 1999. But this one includes recently discovered evidence supporting evolution, including an important fossil find. READ MORE

Schools want sun shelters for hot kids

Note: Unless you live in the hot New Mexico sun, you do not realize how this is important.

From The News and Observer, Raleigh North Carolina

Principals of at least eight year-round Wake County schools, worried about how schoolchildren will cope with scorching summer heat, want to raise thousands of dollars to erect large canopies and shelters over playgrounds.

A handful of Wake schools have the shelters, which are more common in places such as Las Vegas. At least one has erected a 40-foot-by-60-foot shelter that covers the entire playground at a cost of $25,000. Even less extravagant shelters can still cost $7,500.

"With year-round schools, you've got kids out in the sun in June, July and August who need shelter," said Chris McCabe, principal of North Forest Pines Drive Elementary School in North Raleigh, a new year-round school. "We're talking about three solid months of high heat." READ MORE

Reading, Writing, Arithetic

Using Research to Create More Literate Students

The National Reading Panel: Using Research to Create More Literate Students
From The International Reading Association - http://www.readingonline.org/

by Timothy Shanahan - professor of urban education and director of the Center for Literacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Controversies over reading education -- the so-called reading wars -- have raged for most of the past decade. In 1997, in response to these disputes, the United States Congress asked that a National Reading Panel (NRP) be established. (Click here to go to an excerpt from the Senate Committee on Appropriations report that accompanied the bill.) The panel was charged with determining what research has shown about the effectiveness of instructional approaches, the readiness of these approaches for translation to practice, and the need for future research. In other words, the panel was asked to decide what works in reading education on the basis of a formal review of research. I am a member of the panel.

P. David Pearson (1999) recently reviewed a series of historical, authoritative reports about reading education, including Learning to Read: The Great Debate (Chall, 1967), Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print (Adams, 1990), Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, 1985), and Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, online document). One could easily assume that the NRP will just develop another report similar to these. Making that assumption would be a mistake, however. The National Reading Panel is unique, and the report that it develops will have several qualities and characteristics that will set it apart from the others in this litany.

The fundamental idea behind the federal government's establishment of a review panel is something along these lines: A major controversy is compromising the commonweal (in this case, children are not being taught to read as well as they should be) and undermining public confidence (i.e., trust in schools is declining). To ensure a reasonable standard of quality and to protect respect for public institutions and professions, an authoritative group is appointed to carry out an objective review of the research and to decide upon a standard of practice. The federal government then endorses this standard and benefits are provided to those whose professional practice is consonant with it. For example, in medicine, once such a standard is set, private insurance companies and U.S. government programs such as Medicare will only pay for procedures that are in keeping with the established standard. Physicians also gain some protection against liability if their practices match the standard. Although scientific review panels have a long history in medicine, this approach to resolving an empirical controversy is extraordinary in the annals of reading education -- and, indeed, review panels have never before been tried in any area of education. READ MORE

From the Office of the Obvious

Comparing American students to China and India

Americans watch Grey's Anatomy while their international peers study longer hours - By Eddy Ramírez - US News & World Report

Two million minutes is the estimated time that students spend in high school. It is also the title of a new documentary film that suggests American students squander too much of that time. While their peers in China and India study longer hours to sharpen their math and science skills, top students from one of the best high schools in the U.S. are playing video games and watching Grey's Anatomy during a group study session, at least in clips seen in the documentary.

The film, produced by Memphis venture capitalist Robert Compton and promoted by the ED in '08 political organization, is the latest attempt at igniting a national debate about the need to put more emphasis on math and science education if the United States is to remain competitive in a global economy. But supporters of the film acknowledge they face an uphill climb to make education a central issue in the presidential race.

Two Million Minutes: A Global Examination follows six students through their senior year of high school in the United States, India, and China. READ MORE

Sparring Continues Over NCLB Legal Ruling

By David J. Hoff and Mark Walsh from Education Week

A court ruling that revived a major legal challenge to the No Child Left Behind Act is drawing sharply differing interpretations from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and advocates for states and school districts.

“No state or school district should regard the ruling as license to disregard NCLB’s requirements,” Ms. Spellings wrote in a letter this month to all chief state school officers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, ruled Jan. 7 that the states were not on clear notice of their financial obligations when they agreed to accept federal money under the NCLB law.

In a 2-1 panel decision, the majority ruled that state and local officials could “reasonably read” the law’s unfunded-mandate provision to conclude the federal government would pay for all costs associated with complying with the law. ("Court Ruling in NCLB Suit Fuels Fight Over Costs," Jan. 16, 2008.) READ MORE

NASA images to be archived online

Still frame from July 20, 1969 video transmission of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the surface of the Moon. An estimated half billion people worldwide watched this event live, the largest television audience ever to date. Wikipedia Moon Landing

From Yahoo! News

NEW YORK - NASA's images from the Apollo moon landings, the Voyager planetary flybys and the many space shuttle missions will be accessible through a central, searchable Web site under a partnership between the space agency and the nonprofit Internet Archive. READ MORE

Student failure to thrive - Michael Swickard, Ph.D.

Winston Churchill noted that there is nothing wrong with change if it is in the right direction. That is like a German proverb: To change and to change for the better are two different things.

Many politicians are advocating changing the public schools. Will it be for the better? Some say since there are students not thriving, school needs to become less enjoyable and much harder. Let’s see – a third of our students are dropping out because the schools are just too much fun. Nope, that statement does not pass the smell test.

America’s future walks through the doors of our schools every day. Some students do well while others do not. To take from a medical term, some students fail to thrive. Every candidate for national office has a plan to make education better. It’s like the old saying, “Everyone has a plan to make a million dollars that won’t work.”

Every plan is to make the schools more rigorous and to increase accountability. But something else is causing the problems, so they can focus on accountability forever and not get to the heart of the problem.

Simply, the problem in education is the use of the factory model. It assumes all students are basically the same, all teachers are basically the same and all schools should be the same. Anyone spending time in our schools will know that the factory model is crap.

The students, teachers and administrators are all different, as can be expected since they are human. Teacher and author LouAnne Johnson (Dangerous Minds) teaches effectively in a way I cannot. I teach effectively in ways she cannot. That is the secret that the politicians do not get. They want every lesson across America to be the same, every teacher in America teaching the same way and every American child learning in the same manner. The standardized tests required by No Child Left Behind are the darling of the data people who themselves have never taught.

I advise people thinking of going into teaching to go to their neighborhood community college and volunteer to teach GED classes. In these classes are students who want to learn but who have struggled in school. It is where teachers find that each student is a separate life and the best-made plans can fall apart amazingly fast.

What you learn is that you cannot administer the curriculum; rather, you have to teach it. Using political solutions for educational problems does not work. But there is something even more pernicious about the factory model of teaching. There is a structural disconnect that is not being addressed in our educational systems. Teachers are all very intuitive about their chosen field, while some of the students are not.

One area you see this is when students learn to read. Every teacher is intuitive about reading, though many students are not. Most of us remember intuitive math teachers who say, “People, this isn’t that hard.” Yes, it is, when math teachers try to teach non-intuitive students. The effect of academic intuition is that some students get subjects quickly and others do not.

Teachers who are themselves intuitive readers often jump to the mistaken assumption that non-intuitive students are just not trying. Or they are lazy. Worse, some assume that non-intuitive reading students are stupid.

What is the effect of this dysfunctional view of reading? Abraham Maslov said, “When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.”

Reading professionals who do not realize that some of their students are non-intuitive think that the way they, as an intuitive, learned reading is the only way to learn. So they concentrate on reading and miss the problem.

They try to increase the amount of time students spend reading with their parents, which will not hurt, but also will not teach reading. When it comes to getting phonemic awareness and really learning the rules of phonics, just reading will never teach non-intuitive students how to encode and decode language. Instead, the students will just fall further and further behind. Additionally, since they do not read well, all of the other subjects will be profoundly more difficult because all of the academic teaching in school is tied to reading.

If we are going to improve as a society we have to get away from the notion that all students learn in the factory way, as the same rate and in the same manner. That is like trying to pound a square peg in a round hole. We have to throw out the notion that students do not read because they are stupid or lazy.

If we do not change the schools for the better, we will regret it. I embrace the words of Dr. Denis Waitley: “There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”

We have to look at the failure of our students to thrive as a call to rethink the enterprise of public education, for the sake of our very future.

New federal web site links research with practice

From eSchool News

The U.S. Department of Education has launched a new web site aimed at giving educators advice about effective teaching practices and examples of ways to implement these practices to improve student achievement. Called “Doing What Works,” the new site offers a user-friendly interface to help users quickly locate teaching practices that have been found effective by the department’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences, and similar organizations. In addition, it provides examples of possible ways this research can be used to help students reach their full potential. Teachers interested in successful strategies for helping English-language learners, for example, can watch a video of eight strategies that teachers at one school use to teach vocabulary. READ MORE

Microsoft launches online teacher network

New project gives educators a forum to communicate and collaborate with their peers worldwide

By Laura Devaney, Associate Editor, eSchool News

Teachers across the United States will have an opportunity to communicate and collaborate with top-notch educators from all over the world through Microsoft Corp.'s Innovative Teachers Network (ITN), a new online forum that promotes the exchange of ideas and methods on how best to incorporate technology into the classroom effectively.

The ITN is part of Microsoft's Partners in Learning (PiL) initiative, a program that gives educators the resources, training, and content they need to complement classroom technology and allow students to reach their full potential.

In this newest boost of funding to PiL, Microsoft officials say educators will see a focus on programs that can support innovative students.

"What the U.S. needs the least is another database of lesson plans," said Mary Cullinane, director of Microsoft's U.S. Partners in Learning program. "What we do need, and what we believe is of significant value, is a place for innovative teachers and educators to have access to high-quality resources, to have an area for sharing best practices in learning communities, to communicate and collaborate with colleagues, and ... to expose [educators] to a worldwide conversation." READ MORE

Experts Eye Solutions to ‘4th Grade Slump’

By Christina A. Samuels From Education Week -
For the first few years of school, struggling readers can usually get by. The material is simple, the lessons are repeated often, and intensive remedial help is common. But for some of those pupils, reading ability starts a dramatic downhill slide right around 4th grade. While good readers are sponges for new words and grammar rules, slower readers are left further and further behind. Some never catch up.

Researchers have called the phenomenon the “4th grade slump,” because it tends to occur when reading instruction shifts from basic decoding and word recognition to development of fluency and comprehension. But questions remain. If there is a slump, what is causing it? And can children at risk of “slumping” be identified much earlier than they typically are, and their problems eased or eliminated? READ MORE

Why Go To School

Early one morning, a mother went in to wake up her son. "Wake up, son. It's time to go to school!"
"But why, Mom? I don't want to go."
"Give me two reasons why you don't want to go."
"Well, the kids hate me for one and the teachers hate me, too!"
"Oh, that's no reason not to go to school. Come on, now and get ready."
"Give me two reasons why I should go to school."
"Well, for one, you're 52 years old. And for another, you're the principal!"

Don't just talk about increasing vocabulary

NANCY DUGGIN, Daily News Journal Columnist, Murfreesboro, TN
When I was in undergraduate school training to be an elementary classroom teacher, there was very little emphasis on a teacher's role as an academic diagnostician. It is difficult to effectively treat a child's academic needs if the teacher does not know the specific area of need and what is causing the lack of academic achievement. READ MORE

Phonemic awareness: What does it mean?

Dr. Kerry Hempenstall, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Over the past two decades, but particularly in the last 10 years, there has been a burgeoning consensus about the critical importance of phonemic awareness to beginning reading success, and about its role in specific reading disability or dyslexia READ MORE

They are really precise in this district

Tearcher Story - Allergic To Peanuts

Janet writes: At lunch we were eating cafeteria prepared Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches. My Educational Assistant commented, “I didn’t think they could serve anything with peanuts because some people are allergic to them.”

At that moment one of the boys from my class who was at the table looked up and said with a mouthful of sandwich, “I’m allergic to peanuts.”

The EA and I gulped and conversation lagged. I was about to dial 911 when the Youth To Youth assistant – a high school girl said, “I think you’re lying.”

The boy slowly blinked and agreed, “I think so, too.”

Whew!

Send your Teacher Stories to: Michael@AcademicRD.com

36 Methods of Mathematical Proofs

36 Methods of Mathematical Proof
Author unknown

Proof by obviousness - "Proof is so clear it need not be mentioned."
Proof by general agreement - "All in favor?. . . "
Proof by imagination - "Well, we'll pretend it's true. . .
Proof by convenience - "It would be very nice if it were true, so . . .
Proof by necessity - "It’d better be, or the entire structure of mathematics will crumble to the ground."
Proof by plausibility - "It sounds good, so it must be true."
Proof by intimidation - "Don't be stupid; of course it's true."
Proof by lack of sufficient time - "Because of the time constraint, I'll leave the proof to you."
Proof by postponement - "The proof for this is long and arduous, so it is given in the appendix."
Proof by accident - "Hey, what have we here?!"
Proof by insignificance - "Who really cares, anyway?"
Proof by mumbo-jumbo - " (B Ì P ) , $ (C Î W )
Proof by profanity - (example omitted)
Proof by definition - "We define it to be true."
Proof by tautology - 'It's true because it's true."
Proof by plagiarism - "As we see on page 289......"
Proof by lost reference - "I know I saw it somewhere......"
Proof by calculus - "This proof requires calculus, so we'll skip it."
Proof by terror - When intimidation fails ...
Proof by lack of interest - "Does anyone really want to see this?"
Proof by illegibility - (scribble, scribble) QED
Proof by logic - "If it is on the problem sheet, then it must be true!"
Proof by majority rule - Only to be used if general agreement is impossible
Proof by clever variable choice - "Let A be the number such that this proof works. . "
Proof by tessellation - "This proof is the same as the last."
Proof by divine word - "And the Lord said, 'Let it be true,' and it was true."
Proof by stubbornness - "I don't care what you say-it is true!"
Proof by simplification - "This proof reduces to the statement 1 + 1 = 2."
Proof by hasty generalization - "Well, it works for 17, so it works for all reals."
Proof by deception - "Now everyone turn their backs. . ."
Proof by supplication - "Oh please, let it be true."
Proof by poor analogy - "Well, it's just like . . . "
Proof by avoidance - Limit of proof by postponement as it approaches infinity
Proof by design - If it's not true in today's math, invent a new system in which it is.
Proof by authority - "Well, Don Knuth says it's true, so it must be!"
Proof by intuition - "I just have this gut feeling. . ."