The growing delta between educated and less-educated Americans is taking a heavy toll on the health of the US. As long as we continue to favor the most privileged with tax codes there is no reason to think this is going to change. How did we become such a self-centered country, leaving so many behind? I may not subscribe to the "greatest generation" theory but it's obvious that generation was much more interested in the greater good than we see today.
Now another study uses a different proxy for “haves” or “have-nots”—education—and reaches another shameful conclusion: the gap in death rates between Americans with less than a high school education and college graduates has soared since 1993, they will report tomorrow in the May 14 issue of PLoS One.
Supporting education makes fantastic sense but aren't we just feeding the bubble by injecting even more cash? The cost of universities in the US has become crazy, unlike any other Western/rich country. No matter how you spin it, it's impossible to say that the easy money credit hasn't fed the high cost of universities. Take a look at the endowment funds that the top schools have and ask how tuition could be so out of control when these schools are sitting on so much money. A few schools are now changing their tuition plans for normal families but that's only because of pressure (or threats of action) by Congress.
Graduating from college with over $120,000 of debt not to mention credit card debt that students all have these days is a bad way to enter the working world. Sure, we can and we should help but this system needs a drastic overhaul and one that does not center around the credit industry cashing in.
There's been some interesting blogging recently on mobility and meritocracy. A little while ago Atrios wrote, in the context of President Bush perpetuating the harmful idea that professional sports are some magical opportunity for poor people, "Lots of people in this country are basically born on 2nd and 3rd base and then manage to stay there for the rest of their lives. And many of them look down on those who start at home plate and fail to hit a home run." Yglesias, relatedly, goes further in addressing the meritocracy myth (and its stepbrother, entitlement) thusly:
[T]he merit illusion stems from the well-documented fact that people don't have a great intuitive grasp of statistics or large numbers. If your family connections boost your odds of getting into Harvard from one percent to five percent, you'll perceive that as having triumphed against the odds on merit rather than using family connections to quintuple your chances. . . . It's difficult, however, for people to keep in their heads the idea that, yes, you may have displayed considerable merit to get where you are but also you've taken advantage of a lot of undeserved privileges of birth. Similarly, if you wind up needing to compete on merit against a few hundred other people for a couple dozen highly desirable slots, the question of what happened to all those other people who got excluded from consideration for non-merit reasons sort of falls out of sight.
I think this is absolutely right, and extraordinarily important. Nobody wants to believe their successes have been handed to them, or are some kind of accident, especially those who work really really hard to get where they are. After all, successful people (defined broadly) have probably beaten out lots of competition for whatever accomplishments they've achieved. But as Matt said, tons of people never even make it to the competition. A fascinating and stark example comes from this analysis of higher education and wealth, entertainingly using AJ Soprano as an archetype. The data demonstrates that, not surprisingly, if you're rich, you're likely to go to college no matter how bad your test scores are. But that's just college in general, you might say -- dumb rich people going to college unnecessarily isn't a problem, right? So let's look at the "highly selective" colleges numbers. For kids whose test scores are in the bottom quartile, only 0.2% of those whose families make under $20,000 per year go to a selective university. And it seems about right that bottom quartile test scores wouldn't get you into a selective college. But for kids whose families make more than $100,00, in the bottom quartile of test scores, 3.5% manage to sneak their way into "highly selective" colleges. So rich kids are nearly 18 times as likely to get into selective colleges than poor kids with the same (crappy) test scores. 18 times!
The numbers aren't as stark with the next example, but for reasons I'll get to, I think they're even more important: for the second-highest quartile of grades, 27% of students go to selective colleges. This seems pretty reasonable, after all, selective colleges have to dip below the top quartile of test scores, and certainly some of those students will have money. In the under $20,000 category of second-quartile scorers, however, only 6.2% go to selective colleges, meaning if your family makes $100K+, you're more than four times as likely to go to a selective college than a kid whose family makes under $20,000.
Here's the thing, though: I would guess that if you're in the bottom quartile and you get into a highly selective college, you know it's not because you're smart, and you probably know it's because your family has money. But that second quartile group, that's chock full of kids who think they made it *purely* on merit. They had very good scores! They worked really hard! They beat out lots of other kids who came from relatively wealthy families! They don't see, though, that they're overwhelmingly more likely to get into that college than the kid with the same grades and much less money. This leads to a sense of entitlement, not only that the achievement was self-made, but that the people who didn't make it must not have really been trying. That the other kid just didn't study or work or think as hard. And some of these effects are similar with regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, or other "other" that people don't really think about when they consider class/financial/education/etc stratification.
Now, in the end, I'm not entirely sure what to do about all this, especially on an individual level. Certainly I would and do support public policy that helps create an equal playing field, and personally I find it important to recognize that my successes, whatever they have been or end up being, are in many ways tied to the fact that I hit the privilege jackpot. People who look like me and who have the financial security that my parents were able to provide don't exactly have a lot working to keep them down. But even without knowing what should be done, exactly, acknowledging these realities seems important in its own right.
Tomorrow, check back for how this relates to the blogosphere . . .
The British teachers union, thankfully, is not as enthusiastic about teaching the glories of invading a country and killing tens of thousands of civilians. How long before this tripe ends up in US schools, though it's probably already part of the program for home schoolers and in the deep South. The British school program has been provided by the UK Ministry of Defence.
At the heart of the union's concern is a lesson plan commissioned by an organisation called Kids Connections for the Ministry of Defence aimed at stimulating classroom debate about the Iraq war.
In a "Students' Worksheet" which accompanies the lesson plan, it stresses the "reconstruction" of Iraq, noting that 5,000 schools and 20 hospitals have been rebuilt. But there is no mention of civilian casualties.
In the "Teacher Notes" section, it talks about how the "invasion was necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein" but it fails to mention the lack of United Nations backing for the war. The notes also use the American spelling of "program".
Addressing whether the MoD should be providing materials for schools, Mr Sinnott said that he did not object, as long as the material was accurate, presented responsibly and contained a balanced view of opinions.
The union has protested to the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, who has referred the complaint to the MoD. In a letter to Mr Balls, Mr Sinnott said: "I have to say that were the MoD pack to be distributed and followed without the legally required 'balanced presentation of opposing views' there would, in my view, be very serious risk of a finding of non-compliance with section 406 (of the 1996 Education Act) at least.
Both teams refreshingly discussed science and investment in science. This is yet another reason why either candidate will be a welcome change from the extremist GOP crowd who deny science and learning whenever they can. The McCain and Huckabee teams had "scheduling conflicts." I'm guessing - and this is just a guess - they were wrapped up viewing important videos of Jesus riding in a saddle on the back of a dinosaur or some other "science" documentary rolled out by the religious right. Even just recognizing that dinosaurs existed is progress for them.
Hard work has always played an important role in America, but so has compassion. This is a troubling study that needs to be addressed. Nobody is saying to throw money at a problem but this needs attention. Families trying to raise kids need to be able to provide proper diets if they have any hope of moving up and on to a better life.
One study shows that low-income Americans now would have to spend up to 70 percent of their food budget on fruits and vegetables to meet new national dietary guidelines for healthy eating.
And a second study found that in rural areas, convenience stores far outnumber supermarkets and grocery stores -- even though the latter carry a much wider choice of affordable, healthy foods.
Plenty of education is needed in the US though will the corporate food giants that we have allowed to grow allow it?
Three Democratic issues, and on each issue, the GOP states are at the bottom of the barrel. Yet they still vote Republican because stopping a gay couple from getting married matters more to them than keeping their children alive, getting them a good education, and then a good job. You deserve the government you get.
What kind of country do we live in where teachers let high school kids write articles about tolerance in the school papers? Next thing you know, we're going to be teaching children about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Yes, better our high school kids be writing essays about velvet dogs playing poker.
