Support Home Schooling…But

In the 1980s home schooling was still a concept with which most people were unfamiliar and with which many elected officials were not comfortable. In fact, I often quote former Texas Attorney General Jim Maddox, who said that he did not believe parents were qualified to raise their children, much less teach them at home. In that environment, home schoolers were very happy with an elected official who simply said he supported the right of a parent to home school.

That was then, and this is now. Almost any elected official or candidate for office today will say that they "support home schooling." Unfortunately, what that often translates to is not a supportive position on the home school political, legislative, or legal agenda. In fact, that phrase is often used just before the official tells us he opposes the parental rights or home school position.

I have been corresponding recently with the chief of police for the city of Euless regarding an incident in which Euless police officers stopped some home school children who were walking to their grandparents' home. These officers took the children into custody, took them back to their home, went inside to examine the home, asked to see their curriculum, and told their adult brother they were going to call CPS to report them. This was all done under the Daytime Curfew Ordinance of the city.

More: 

http://thsc.org/2013/07/support-home-schooling-but/

Malala Day

Earlier this month, Malala Yousafzai, the girl shot by the Taliban for standing up for education rights, celebrated her 16th birthday by addressing the UN. Her speech read like history in the making. We were delighted that Camille McGirt, winner of the 2012 Pearson Prize for Higher Education, was on the floor as a youth delegate to witness it. Here's her special report.

***

On July 12, I was invited to serve as a youth delegate and representative for Pearson at the United Nations for Malala Day – an event organized in support of the UN Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative. Over 500 young leaders from around the globe joined Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot by the Taliban on her way to school, in calling for action on reaching the goal of all children, especially girls, to be in school and learning by 2015. My role as a youth delegate was an empowering experience that I will never forget.

More: Postcard from the UN - Malala Day « The Pearson blog

Fear and Schooling

From Seth Godin's Stop Stealing Dreams:

To efficiently run a school, amplify fear (and destroy passion)
School's industrial, scaled-up, measurable structure means that fear must be used to keep the masses in line. There's no other way to get hundreds or thousands of kids to comply, to process that many bodies, en masse, without simultaneous coordination.
And the flip side of this fear and conformity must be that passion will be destroyed. There's no room for someone who wants to go faster, or someone who wants to do something else, or someone who cares about a particular issue. Move on. Write it in your notes; there will be a test later. A multiple-choice test.
Do we need more fear?
Less passion?

Its no coincidence that the Prussian paramilitary school system was the model on which the US education system was built, and it has long since served the purpose for which it was designed. Its time for something truly different. 

Education vs Schooling

From Seth Godin's "Stop Stealing Dreams," in which he describes how the Prussian school system was effectively applied in America in the 1800s, paving the way for the failure that we find our children being pummeled with today:

A hundred and fifty years ago, adults were incensed about child labor. Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working adults.
Sure, there was some moral outrage about seven-year-olds losing fingers and being abused at work, but the economic rationale was paramount. Factory owners insisted that losing child workers would be catastrophic to their industries and fought hard to keep the kids at work—they said they couldn't afford to hire adults. It wasn't until 1918 that nationwide compulsory education was in place.
Part of the rationale used to sell this major transformation to industrialists was the idea that educated kids would actually become more compliant and productive workers. Our current system of teaching kids to sit in straight rows and obey instructions isn't a coincidence—it was an investment in our economic future. The plan: trade short-term child-labor wages for longer-term productivity by giving kids a head start in doing what they're told.
Large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system. Scale was more important than quality, just as it was for most industrialists.
Of course, it worked. Several generations of productive, fully employed workers followed. But now?

Greg Mankiw's Blog: EconRhymes

An excerpt from a new poetry collection on economics:

An Economist 

(Economists study how society produces and distributes its scarce resources.)

An economist pretends to knowWhy things are made and how they flow.He studies men’s biggest woe,He wants it all, what to forego. 

Like a machine with unseen gearsThrough greed a solution appears. By making what men hold most dearProfits are earned by serving peers. 

To boost theirs and the common's gainBecome experts in their domains.To make one thing well they attain,Through trade the rest they obtain. 

But their profits diverge by much.Those with great tools earn a whole bunch.Tools like machines, schooling and such Boost production so very much.

Greg Mankiw's Blog: EconRhymes

Awesome.

Cengage Files Chapter 11, Blames a Changing Publishing Market

Cengage Learning filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week as part of a "restructuring support agreement" to help reduce its $5.8 billion debt.

 

"The decisive actions we are taking today will reduce our debt and reduce our capital structure to support our long-term business strategy of transitioning from traditional print models to digital educational and research materials," Michael Hansen, Cengage Learning CEO, said in a statement.

In the past, the Company and its peers in the educational materials market produced only traditional print products.

From kindergarten to higher education to career training, students, instructors, and institutions depended on printed goods, typically as an accompaniment to live classroom teaching. The publishers in this market provided textbooks, workbooks, and other instructional materials and relied heavily on their profits from selling new print products.

Now, the educational publishing market has entered the early stages of a major transition from print business models to a greater focus on digital products, with digital market share growing as quickly as 20 percent annually over recent years. The move to digital began with the simple substitution of electronic versions of textbooks for the printed forms. Over time, digital products such as homework programs and interactive learning software have increasingly been paired and integrated with print materials.

And in some cases, digital products are becoming a favored medium for learning materials in the classroom. As much as 15 percent of learning materials sold today are sold in digital format, including course materials, homework programs, and interactive and online learning platforms. All indications are that digital will continue to grow in importance in this market.

More: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/723898-dk000015-0000.html#document/p4/a108470

By failing to adapt to a changing market, Cengage essentially signed its own death certificate. I don't think that print is dead, but the publishing industry is changing, and fast. Those companies that didn't see the changes coming years ago don't have time to react now, and those that did and had the foresight to adapt to that coming change have and will survive. Blaming a changing market instead of adapting to it is hardly productive. That sort of debt-to-revenue imbalance can not be sustained. Only the government can maintain long-term losses and get away with it (taxpayer bailouts). Companies must maintain profits to compete and survive by serving their customers.

Considering Class: College Access and Diversity

Each time that the continued legality of race-conscious affirmative action is threatened, colleges and universities must confront the possibility of dramatically changing their admissions policies. Fisher v. University of Texas, which the Supreme Court will hear this year, presents just such a moment. In previous years when affirmative action has been outlawed by ballot initiative in specific states or when the Court has seemed poised to reject it entirely, there have been calls for replacing race-conscious admissions with class-based affirmative action. Supporters of race-conscious affirmative action have typically criticized the class-based alternative as ineffective at maintaining racial diversity. This article presents the results of a study conducted at the University of Colorado in 2008 and 2010 that challenges that common assertion. We present a class-based affirmative action policy that led to increased socioeconomic diversity as well as slightly increased racial diversity in two entering freshmen classes. This study, the first done at a moderately selective university, shows how class-based affirmative action can be an effective tool for admitting a class of students that is diverse both socioeconomically and racially. Even if the Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of race-conscious college admissions, class-based policies are attractive as a supplement to race-conscious policies. The challenges associated with low socioeconomic status are different from those associated with minority status, and there are good reasons to seek equal opportunity along both lines.

Considering Class: College Access and Diversity by Matthew Gaertner, Melissa Hart :: SSRN

I am not convinced that a pure race-based admissions method reduces disparity between races, or even negates any negative discrimination by shifting the discrimination perspective toward minorities. Reverse racism, after all, is simply another form of racism. A merit-based system would be the most equitable, even if certain social or racial classes are under-represented.