FYI

X
From an article entitled "Founding Fathers," by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, for The Wall Street Journal:

"No matter how devoted, the Founding Fathers were not inclined, as today’s parents are, to lavish their students with praise. ‘Good job’ was not in their vocabulary. ‘Take care you never spell a word wrong,’ Jefferson admonished his younger daughter. John Adams said it best in a letter to Abigail: ‘The education of our children is never out of my mind… fire them with ambition to be useful and make them disdain to be destitute of any useful or ornamental knowledge or accomplishment. Fix their ambitions upon great and solid objects.' The nation's Founders called for passing on the passion for freedom, educational excellence and civic virtue."

Fast forward 225 years – from a more recent article in The Wall Street Journal:

The Koh brothers, "Harold and Howard, are the sons of Korean immigrants and new additions to the Obama administration. Harold Koh, and international lawyer, a diplomat and former dean of Yale Law School is now legal adviser at the State Department. Howard Koh, a physician with board certification in four medical specialties and a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, is now assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services. Says Harold Koh, ‘To be honest I never had a teacher who was as rigorous as my parents.’ Howard says, ‘I guess, like any immigrant parents, they wanted their kids to succeed in this new country.’ His parent’s mantra, he says, was ‘It’s one thing to get a great education and do well in school, but its not important if you can’t ultimately use it to help other people.'"

Questions: One -- Is there a message that we can take from these stories? Two -- Does that message stand the test of time? (like maybe 225 years)? Read more....

Education Pays

X
On Aug. 18, 2009, Dana Mattioli wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal entitled "Few Gender Differences in a Recession." She quotes the U.S. Labor Department:" 5.4% of men and 5.2% of women age 25 and older with college degrees were unemployed in July." This comment brought to mind similar information that a college instructor shared with me shortly after the May 9, 2009 headlines in The DeSoto Sun: "Eighty percent of DeSoto 10th graders fail FCAT reading test."

The national data, compiled by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, came with the following graphs:

Conclusion: "Education pays in higher earnings and lower unemployment rates."

A notable exception to this trend occurs in the DeSoto County School system, where the emperor’s loyal serfs are paid in direct proportion to their degree of political servitude as opposed to their level of education!

Conclusion: "Individuals with less education experienced greater percentage point increases in their unemployment rates than their more educated counterparts did."

The federal data reports "the unemployment rate for individuals 25 years and older with less than a high school diploma increased from 7.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007 to 10.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. The jobless rate for high school graduates with no college rose by 2.4 percentage points, to 7.0 percent, the highest quarterly rates since the series began in 1992"

The report goes on: "The unemployment rate for those with some college or an associate's degree increased by 2.0 percentage points, to 5.5 percent. Among college graduates, the unemployment rate increased by 1.2 percentage points, to 3.3 percent, equal to the previous peak in the fourth quarter of 1992."

And on: "The current national average rate of unemployment is 10%, with states such as Michigan and Ohio having unemployment rates of 15%. From the graphs, unemployment rates above 5% almost exclusively pertain to those individuals without college degrees."

If we compare these national statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor with the local statistic that 80 percent of our high school sophomores can’t pass a statewide reading test, then it is safe to conclude that individuals in this group will become future members of the lowest socio-economic class in our country. They have directly burdened themselves with a very low-income earning capacity, and, what's worse, they are likely to indirectly cost the rest of society plenty.

The generation that is supposed to be the future of our community is more than likely to become part of the predominant group on welfare rolls, food stamp programs and WIC programs. They join others who have driven health care costs to astronomical levels; they are likely to make up a disproportionate percentage of drug users and felons; and they will be the first group to become unemployed in tough times and therefore the first and largest group to seek and get unemployment compensation. Derek Bok, past president of Harvard University, recognized these sad realities long ago when he said, "If you think education is expensive you ought to try ignorance."

If performance reflects management, and if results speak for themselves, then it is reasonable to conclude that our school board members and school system emperor Adrian Cline have failed at their jobs. Their results indicate their willingness to settle for ignorance over education, making them complicit in the degradation of our society. And yet they display a shameless arrogance when they start school board meetings with the Pledge Of Allegiance. Hypocrites! If they truly cared for this country, they would strive to produce "assets" for our society instead of costly "liabilities," which is what individuals who can't read or hold a job become.
The truth hurts, doesn't it?

Read more....

DeSoto High Grad: Ignorant and Proud of It

X
I have a sense of humor, but I misplaced it after reading this morning’s paper. A local-color writer, Luke Wilson, gave me an unexpected -- and probably unintentional -- insight into some of this district’s problems. He calls his school days a "vicious cycle of endless classes."


In a feeble attempt at sweet nostalgia, Wilson writes a column that ends up sending a wrong-headed message about the value of education to local families and the students who are on the brink of starting fall classes in a high school that earned a “D” from the Florida Department of Education: “We were not only held against our will for 12 years, but were fed mostly useless information, right along with cafeteria food,” writes the man who never left Arcadia (from what I can glean from his columns) and is proud of it.

For the rest of the column, Luke Wilson doesn’t merely poke fun at the “useless” lessons he “suffered” in English grammar, mathematical reasoning, physical education and biology. He ends up saying that the shoe-shine box he made in shop was “as important as anything I learned.” He claims it taught him that if you don’t get good grades ... you may be building one of these things to make a living with on the street corner.”

Since Wilson is a local fellow, I zipped over to the high school’s web page to see if he had listed himself with one of the graduation-year groups. It was there that I stumbled on something just as alarming than his limp attempt.

DeSoto High uses a Google map to show its location, and the balloon that pops up offers “3 reviews” that expand when you use your brower’s cursor to activate the link. The first student-written review says DHS is fun and has fewer cliques than expected. Here are the other two:

Zuppa isn't my real name. I want to speak without revenge from some teacher. They play favoriets, change grades for the pretty white girls, and ignore the poor kids. We da losers so why try to help us? I and my friends are really discouraged by the attitude that if your not in, then your OUT, OUT, I want to go to college and I screwed up last year. So theres no redemption for the black man in this skool. I heard the school got a D grade from the government and my english teacher said it was my fault. Sure theres sports but thats for the chosen few. Rescue me like the song sez.
SOme of the teachers are great and really...‎ passionate about their subjects. Others so so new and uneffective. Overall, it is a friendly school but there is one major problem. Most of the teachers and falculty play favoritism.

Between Wilson’s headliner about his useless education, and the state DOE’s official evaluation based on reading scores (80 percent of DHS students aren’t reading on grade level), and the school board and superintendent’s apparent willful ignorance of all things surrounding these conditions –- well, I just made up my mind. I’m going to home-school my kids.


The ocular proof lies ---->



(Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Read more....