It’s a great life if you don’t weaken, and is democracy workable?

Once when I worked as a newspaper reporter/photographer I was doing a photo-story about an old rancher who still drove his cattle through the mountains between winter and summer ranges decades after nearly everyone else had turned to using trucks.

As the bawling herd of cattle broke out of a stand of trees into a clearing and the dust flew, he came riding right past me, turned his horse toward me and grinned, and said: “it’s a great life if you don’t weaken.”

That was more than 30 years ago, but I finally think I can appreciate what he was saying.

After being laid low by cancer and losing my ability to make a living and now, at least for the time being, being able to go back to work at my occupation of the past decade and more, truck driving, I can say with understanding that it is indeed a great life if you don’t weaken, and it’s a great life if you do weaken but get back your strength.

Related to all of this and the blog I am doing right now, my sister called last night and said she had not been able to get a hold of me (she did not have my cell number, but she did manage to find my wife’s finally) and noted since I no longer was doing my blog she did not know what I was up to.

I reluctantly had to drop my blog postings for the most part for the past several weeks because I have returned to work and have not had the time nor the energy nor the capability to blog each day as I had been doing. As I have noted previously I am trying to get my blogging system mobile so I might be able to resume more regular blogging.

Because the truck I am currently driving does not have an operable radio (the head mechanic tells me he is ordering one) and because newspapers do not seem to be a readily available or even affordable and because of time constraints I have been in a near news blackout for the past few weeks but have caught up a little since returning home for a day or two.

The last time I blogged I addressed the continuing health care debate. I don’t want to say much more about that other than I now think President Obama would do well to just push through a package that would ensure that no one is not covered, and some might argue that such is already the case. I would not argue that, but the issue is so divisive, that I think he would do better to move on and work harder on the economy and resolving just what our strategy should be in Afghanistan.

And I now read that so-called conservative columnist and TV pundit George Will has come out against our continued involvement in Afghanistan (I read his column). Could this be the equivalent of the Walter Cronkite moment in Vietnam? When Uncle Walter went there and suggested it was hopeless that seemed to doom the whole project.

Will uses big and often obscure words and phrases and analogies and seems a little more intellectual than your down-home ordinary reactionary type conservative and not quite as devious as your ordinary neocon who uses his or her education to excite and stir up the more ignorant or not so informed masses, but he is conservative and his position could give the right the tools or ammunition to back out of what might be a losing proposition. And wouldn’t it be weird if the right turned out to be anti-war and the left pro.

Actually, I think that in mainstream or at least Main Street America, except for those who have family members directly involved, the attitude is more one of indifference to the war, except that it is assumed that you either support Team America or you don’t.

And personally, even though I think our wars since WW II, the big one, wrapped up a few years before I was born, have been folly, I do think that if the nation decides to go to war (and we have) then the only object can be to win, and winning means complete defeat of the enemy and unfortunately at least temporary occupation of the conquered lands. If we cannot or do not want to do that, then we should not be engaging in war.

And then the issue of the Obama back-to-school speech where many parents reportedly want to forbid their children from listening and many schools are going along. So we are teaching our children to only listen to things you or your parents agree with. So much for democracy, critical thinking and open debate. And besides, it is my understanding that the president was only going to urge children to study hard and get good grades. And I guess originally he was going to ask the children what they could do to help him. And that seemed political. We need to protect our children from politics.

Sometimes I wonder how practical democracy for the masses is. Maybe that phrase I heard attributed to some college professor years ago was accurate: “the masses of asses”.

A U.S. school district has to go to the Philippines for math and science teachers…

I used to listen to a certain super liberal radio talk show host who got sent off to prison for being a pervert, but that last part is beside the point, the point is that he used to end his show with the phrase: “remember, it’s always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission”. And that leads me to stray from the point again and wonder if he is doing just that down in the Lompoc home for wayward souls (okay minimum security federal prison), asking for forgiveness — well he was trained as a Catholic priest, so I guess he should know how to do that.

 

Back to the point: when he was free and still on the air, he explained once what he meant by that little forgiveness tag line. He said that sometimes in a big organization or bureaucracy it is hard to make changes because of the inertia and resistance to change and the just downright built-in slowness of it all. So, if you really want to get something done, it’s far easier to just go ahead and do it and then ask permission later and when you get scolded or into trouble for exceeding your authority or bucking the chain of command you can explain yourself and apologize and ask for forgiveness.

 

And my real point: that’s just what some school administrators did in a Birmingham, Ala. School district. Without consulting the board they went to the Philippines to recruit math and science teachers because they could find none, as in zero, available in the United States. Gee, maybe that’s why we are so far behind the rest of the world in our math and science instruction, at least through high school.

I note that a story in the Birmingham News (upon which I’m basing this) noted that the starting salary for the recruited Philippine teachers is $36,780 per year (and remember, a school year is less than 12 months). Now I imagine that is a great opportunity to someone from the Philippines where opportunities for teaching and wages are far less. But I would think that would not be a bad opportunity for someone in the United States, either just beginning a career or possibly changing careers or retiring from another one or whatever. I have no idea what the cost of living is in Birmingham.

Probably the relatively low salaries accounts for the dearth in domestic applications for math and science teachers. And I imagine eventually the motivated and ambitious Philippine teachers may outgrow their positions. Maybe the district can then recruit a new batch.

The demand for teachers over the past many decades seems to have gone up and down like a roller coaster. First you read there is a tremendous demand (I guess that was back in the original baby boom) and then you read that teachers can’t get a job, and then the cycle is up again and down again, and the last I heard is that there is a prediction for another jump in demand in the near future. Ironically in some places, such as my home state of California, even though there is a strong need for teachers (well depending upon the locale) the state is running out of money to pay them, and since local districts long ago ceded their authority and power of the purse to the state government (willingly or not), there is not much of an enticement to go into teaching. And though there is a need for qualified teachers, without money there is no way to fill it.

 

Perhaps the voting-eligible public, the only ones who can do anything about the whole mess, will one day wake up and pay attention and elect people to government who will have their priorities straight.

Something tells me that the so-called emerging nations in the not-to-distant future will have emerged and some enterprising school district official in, say, the Philippines, will solicit teacher applications from the USA — but would there be any qualified applicants?

P.s.

I strongly support the concept of enticing career changers and retirees from what I call the real world to be teachers. They of course should have to get some kind of certification but that certification should be based primarily on the need for standards in the mastery of the subjects they would teach. The entrenched education establishment seems to have put an over emphasis on teaching methodology over actual ontent, kind of like putting style over substance.

 

 

 

High school and college too long; elementary learning pace too slow…

I don’t really know what goes on in high schools these days and I don’t think I really want to.

And to be honest, it probably is no worse than when I was in high school (‘63-‘67).

And maybe that is the point I want to address.

It needs to improve.

In fact, I think we need to revamp our whole system or format.

For one thing, I think the standard four years of high school is too long. And perhaps even the standard four years of college is a tad long too.

There is too much repetition. The first two years of college are often basically a repeat of high school – something like everything you should have learned in high school but didn’t.

Now I should note right here I am not addressing the problems of gifted and/or motivated kids. These folks often forge ahead despite the best efforts of parents and teachers and fellow lame brained students to get in their way.

No, I’m talking about everyone else.

While I know my attitude differs from the long prevailing thought that young people need infinite freedom and time to make up their minds about life, I really am convinced that a lot of our social problems and unemployment problems (Wall Street excess economic disasters perhaps notwithstanding) could be alleviated if people did make up their minds sooner about what they want to do when they grow up. You can change your mind if you change your mind or if things don’t work out a lot easier than you can come up with something after procrastinating well into adulthood and finding yourself in the unemployment line with little to no marketable skills.

I am going by the California model of education since I am intimately familiar with that. I went from kindergarten through four years of college in the state’s public system. Also, I covered schools as a beat for more than one California newspaper. And I spent one fun (not really) month serving as a substitute teacher in one large urban school district in the state. I know what goes on in the state’s schools (a lot of administrative stuff, a lot of disciplinary problems, not so much teaching and learning). I have not been in the schools for more than a decade, but from what I read and hear, things appear status quo.

Starting in elementary school, we need to up the quality of teaching and promote learning at a faster pace. Year-round classes would probably help in that they alleviate the problem of long vacations in which pupils forget and then have to start over on the old material when school resumes.

And maybe even in the lower grades individual teachers can’t be expected to handle all subjects together. Just like I’ve heard lawyers joke, “I went to law school because they promised there’d be no math,” maybe some otherwise adept and knowledgeable teachers need help in some subjects.

This could also apply to all subjects, to include English and social studies, but I would imagine, though, that in the lower grades the biggest demand for single subject teachers would be in the area of math and science.

By the time a student reaches high school, he or she should be able to have a good handle on what general career goals are practical. Those who plan to go into careers where academics is stressed need to be allowed to follow that path and not be held back by those who seem to have no use for wider knowledge.

Those who think they would be better off at what we have called vocational training should be allowed to do so and should be provided the most up-to-date facilities and training. And this is where real-world help could be used. The problem has been that career educators, through no real fault of their own, because they have lived in the sheltered environment, have little concept for what goes on in the outside world of work.

Probably high school does not need to be more than three years, whether the vocational or academic track is followed.

And I do not for a second suggest that those who follow the vocational route should be short-changed on academics. In this modern world people need to be more highly educated. But the emphasis for them would still be more directly related to hands-on work.

Now all of this might seem a kind of stifling and a straight jacket approach, but I think there could be room for some flexibility. I am only presenting a general concept. But there has to be more structure than there is in the conventional U.S. approach, because even in good economic times employers complain there is a lack of skilled labor for both the trades and upper scale work. That’s why we import labor from say Mexico and India (that and the fact employers can get cheaper labor, but that is another subject).

The dumbing down of U.S. education…

If you are wondering what is the matter with U.S. public education please read George Will’s latest column in Newsweek Magazine.

I wished I had the software or the knowhow to do one of those instant links (I’ll learn), but here is my best shot (it worked for me): http://www.newsweek.com/id/189237/page/2

I want to write more on this later, but if you read that I think you will pretty get as much out of it as I could say. No Mr. Will does not know everything, but I think he has latched on to something.

Comments are welcome.

P.s. If my link to Will’s column does not work, try Googling: Calling the baby ugly.

I’ve outlined a program for economic recovery…

(Copyright 2009)

Okay folks, here it is, in the last couple of minutes I have outlined a plan for our economic recovery (probably not my own, but one for the nation).

1. Let failing banks and other failing businesses fail, declare bankruptcy and move on (we can’t go back in time and eliminate the already done bailouts, of course, but we can cut the rest of them out).

Deposits at regular commercial banks are insured (up to $200,000 now, as I recall), so bank failures, although worrisome, are not the end of the world. We’ll never get back to the free enterprise and prudent investment model if we artificially prop up the private sector.

2. The government should invest in infrastructure improvements, but only ones that are needed. No bridges to nowhere, such as that famous one in Alaska (and I understand by reading a story in the New York Times, that Japan, which has already gone through what we are going through (real estate bust followed by major recession), built a whole bunch of bridges to nowhere. But we do need to update bridges to somewhere, such as we did at Minneapolis after it fell into the river.

Along these lines, we should look at revitalizing our railroads, although we need to be careful on this one. The railroads actually do quite nicely on their own, hauling what they consider to be the most profitable freight for their sector, and we would not want to get in the way of what works. However, we as a nation might find it beneficial to have updated passenger service (not on the Amtrak model though) and enhanced freight moving capability to improve fuel efficiency in transportation. We would still need trucks and buses and cars – they all work together.

3. Increase employment primarily by tax incentives to private business, but also by government work programs modeled after the Depression era Civilian Conservation Corps. And reinstate the military draft. The military is overstretched now, and young people need the work, and we all have a duty to fulfill for our own country (perhaps a non-military service component option could be offered to those who refuse to take up arms).

4. And along with reinstating the military draft, expand the military and dedicate to it a stable funding mechanism. Expand the scope of the military to make it more available for use in things such as natural disasters and augmentation of the U.S. Border Patrol. In the latter, though, Military Police should be used, except in extraordinary circumstances.

5. Scrap the arcane and terribly inefficient income tax and replace it with a national sales tax or retain the income tax, but make it an easy to figure flat tax (yes this does favor the wealthy, but doesn’t everything?).

6. Totally revamp our public education system. We need to concentrate on basics (remember the back to basics movement? Whatever happened to it?). By eighth grade young people need to commit to either following the academic route (but for a specific purpose) or enter into trade training. We waste much to much time and effort throwing anything and everything at students, except what they really need. No one should be locked out of future life choices, but everyone needs to have some insurance. My dad always told me: learn a skill so you will have something to fall back upon. Well, maybe I did not quite do that, but that just proves my point – I would tell any young person, “you don’t want to follow my path”.

And there you have it. Good luck!

Mulling over the libertarian option…

(Copyright 2009)

During our recent presidential election we chose between the two major parties, but there was a third way, libertarianism. Maybe we should have elected Ron Paul president, but of course we would not have done that because as most libertarians he came across as kind of cranky and he has that kind of whiny and raspy voice and he’s totally out of the mainstream.

What made me think about this is an article I read a few hours ago by libertarian economist Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University.

I was also mulling over an opinion piece written by President Obama and published in the Washington Post. And I caught a few minutes of Republican right wing radio.

As we know, Obama wants to push through an ever-expanding “stimulus” bill – it started out at $800 billion the first time I heard about it and now the new reports put it at $900 Billion. It has been heavily criticized for containing all kinds of pet projects, often called “pork”, to include things that seemingly have nothing or nothing directly to do with immediately stimulating the economy, such as family planning and health care.

The Republicans are calling for more tax cuts, their idea being that the economy can be stimulated better by cutting taxes than increasing government spending. By a little legerdemain, Obama proposes to increase taxes and cut spending (by borrowing money).

Obama wrote in his opinion piece that cutting taxes alone as an approach to stimulate the economy is part of the “failed theories” from the previous administration that have been resoundingly rejected by the electorate.

My view of what the traditional Democrats and Republicans want is unchanged. Despite what they claim, they are basically both in support of huge, overbearing government because it is the status quo with which they are accustom.

The Democrats want that big government to use its resources to do all kinds of things for a wide range of people. The Republicans want to use the resources of government to help the business class (there may be somewhat of a split between Wall Street and Main Street).

So anyway, even though I mentioned Ron Paul, I’m really thinking of what Mr. Miron wrote.

I don’t necessarily agree with all of what he wrote, but I think he made some good points. So I thought I might list some of them and give my response:

REPEAL THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX: I’m rather sure the Republicans would agree with this one. Miron thinks this would free up more money for more corporate investment, thus stimulating the economy. Also some argue that corporate income taxes are double taxation since shareholders must also pay income taxes on their dividends. I think this is worth consideration (taxes do have to be collected somewhere, though, and corporations benefit from the services and protections government affords).

INCREASE CARBON TAXES WHILE LOWERING MARGINAL TAX RATES: Miron opines that upping carbon taxes would be a more efficient way of going green because it would give industry an incentive to clean up its act without risking the likely boondoggles of so-called government green programs. It would also reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil. I like it.  As far as lowering tax rates, I don’t know. Everyone wants to have their own tax rate cut, but someone has to pay the bills. Perhaps a flat tax or a consumption tax is a better way to go. A lot of resources are wasted and and a lot of taxable income is hidden under the present hodgepodge.

MODERATE GROWTH OF ENTITLEMENTS: Our libertarian friend suggests raising the retirement age and putting a hold on increases in various social programs. For my part, I am sure those who have no need for the entitlements (and I don’t like that term) programs don’t mind cutting back. Social Security does need a stable and equitable funding system that is secure from raiding for other uses. Unlike libertarians and Republicans, I think government ought to be able to provide the citizenry with some protections as long as we all pay for it on an equitable basis. But it is true that while all industrialized nations provide social protections, they all face the problem of ever increasing costs. So entitlement spending does have to be kept in check. It could indeed bankrupt the nation. And I want to add that I don’t think raising the Social Security retirement age again is a good idea. We already have too big of a labor pool with too few jobs, and why do we want to work all of our life?

ELIMINATE WASTEFUL SPENDING: And who could argue with this? Problem is that one person’s wasteful spending is another’s much needed project. But included in Mr. Miron’s examples of wasteful spending are fixing levees in New Orleans, thus encouraging folks to live below sea level, farm subsidies, Amtrak, when, according to Miron, buses are more efficient, and the U.S. Postal Service when Fed Ex is more efficient (and I would add e-mail). I could actually write in defense of some farm subsidies because of the stability in agriculture that benefits all, but the problem is that a large portion of those subsidies unfairly go to the super rich (who are super rich due primarily to the subsidies) and also to people not involved in farming. As to the other examples, truly food for thought.

WITHDRAW FROM IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN: And this is true libertarian doctrine. To my knowledge libertarians believe in using our military for direct defense of our country only. During the Cold War era, which included some hot wars (Korea and Vietnam, for example) we were locked into a military spending competition with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union finally and essentially went bankrupt. What we do about our present engagements in the Middle East is a question. But I for one would hope we resist being suckered into war here and there and everywhere. Our present military adventures are a major drain on our failing economy and threaten the immediate defense of our own country by stretching us too thin. And then there are the moral considerations.

LIMIT UNION POWER: The big issue nowadays is card check. It is a system that circumvents the secret ballots workers use to vote a union in. Under card check, union organizers can bully workers into signing cards (and there is no protection of secrecy) in order to push through a union. I am against card check. I am neutral on unions themselves. But workers should not be required to belong to unions. In some cases businesses might find it advantageous to employ workers who belong to unions that stress professionalism. In my own working experience I have witnessed both the good and bad of unionism. The good: excellent wages and benefits and job security (except possibly in this economy). The bad: Work slow downs, refusals to work at a related job when the help is needed, indifference to the needs of the employer. (My experience primarily is from working as a non-union truck driver, who at one point did nonetheless benefit from a wage scale related to union contracts).

People who are paid well indeed help the economy.

EXPANDING LEGAL IMMIGRATION: The libertarian here calls for making it even easier for employers to hire foreign workers with specialized skills. I am not against this if it can be proved that U.S. citizens with the needed skills are not available, but I am against companies using the special visa program to undercut wages, and I think it is highly unpatriotic for them to do so. If we do have a dearth of skilled workers, industry should sponsor education programs to rectify the situation. And needed skill training should get more attention in public education as well.

RENEW OUR COMMITMENT TO FREE TRADE: This is a tricky one. We know from experience that during the Great Depression (the last one) raising tariffs brought on reprisals from other countries and exacerbated the economic woes. Right now, like it or not, we are a consumer nation and our whole economy is structured around free trade. While I think it might not be a good idea to raise tariffs or otherwise officially discourage imports, I do think we need to expand or rebuild our own industry and become more competitive on the world market.

STOP BAILING OUT BUSINESSES THAT TOOK ON TOO MUCH RISK: Nothing more I can say on this other than I agree. As the bailout billions (to become trillions) multiply and the nation goes deeper and deeper into debt and as the economy spirals downwards it may become all too apparent that bankruptcy was the answer the whole time. Bailouts, which have been done in times past, send the message to the marketplace that risk can be hedged at the cost of the taxpayers – wrong message.

Separate from all of the preceding, and of libertarian thought, I personally suggest an expansion of or creation of federal job corps type programs that put people to work doing things that the private sector never gets around to doing but are needed nonetheless.

Also, reinstating the military draft could help relieve our stressed armed forces and provide relief in the ever-shrinking job sector. It would also make our presidents and the electorate itself become more circumspect in ordering or supporting military interventions. Just an idea.

Vocational training needed at junior colleges

(Copyright 2009)

Here in California they used to call it junior college (the two-year college) and then they changed to the term community college, but whatever, I think I am correct in saying initially the emphasis was on vocational or trade training, as opposed to the conventional academic model of four years of college.

And it worked well, very well. It worked for kids right out of high school, young men and women fresh out of the military, older people looking to change careers or find better job skills, and let’s don’t forget employers always in need of skilled workers. And on that latter point, even though business people are usually conservative and don’t like the government to spend too much money, they appreciated having future employees trained at no direct cost to them.

So it was with some dismay that I read in my local newspaper this morning that our local community college is faced with a $2 million budget shortfall and to deal with it is considering dropping several vocational classes.

One of those classes is one to train heavy equipment operators. A local construction company official said it concerned him too. He said a lot of current operators are starting to retire and people are needed to replace them, but employers need trained operators, because for one thing, that equipment is expensive. And I would think clients for construction companies would prefer that those operators be professional.

(And as one commentor said on the newspaper’s online edition: this is a bad time to cut training in construction when Obama is talking about using much of that stimulus money for improving the infrastructure.)

Of course the problem here is the state’s huge budget deficit. California lawmakers with the help of the governor push through far more in spending than is brought in by taxes – tax collections have dropped off drastically with the devastation in the economy (even in good times, the state government spends more than it takes in, as governments seem wont to do in this country).

So what to cut.

Sure the decision has to be made. The community college offers a myriad of programs these days, everything from basket weaving to computer technology to appreciation of Zen Buddhism (well I think I made up that last one, but I was trying to cover the alphabet).

While the community colleges may have begun as primarily vocational in nature, over the years they became kind of a second chance at college. Even before I graduated from high school, I recall that some representatives from our local community college told us seniors that if we had slacked off in high school but now decided we might want to go to college after all – no problem, anyone can get into junior college, and then after successfully completing two years, one could transfer to a four-year institution, if need be. And in my age group, a whole lot of returning Vietnam and Vietnam era veterans made use of the GI Bill education benefits (which for the time were generous) and either got themselves trade training, such as mechanic, carpenter, welder, heavy equipment operator, and so on, or they did the four-year college thing and if they were wise (unlike this writer) got into a good paying profession.

People of all ages have taken advantage over the years of the wide array of classes offered at the community colleges. The costs have been relatively low and the benefits high (costs have risen more sharply in recent years). The colleges offered a lot of night classes and outreach classes in the various communities and even on-line classes.

I think the much needed vocational training should be continued. I do think, though, that industry groups (construction, equipment and auto repair, and so on) should pool together and on their own (separate from the normal taxes) help finance some of these training programs (and maybe they do to some degree).

And by the way, one of the most popular courses offered is our local community college’s nursing program. I have not read that it is in danger of being cut, but it is overcrowded and has a waiting list for prospective students.

As for the academic side, that’s a tough one. I think academic programs should be continued, but I think there probably needs to be some higher standards for students as they continue in order to weed out those who are not too serious. Non-serious students don’t usually make it through vocational programs, but they sometimes waste their time and the time of instructors and other more serious students on the academic side.

Administration is always a good area to look for saving money. For some reason education seems to be always top heavy in administration. The system in which a separate assistant administrator (who adds nothing directly to the instructional program) must be hired to administer each section of the government education codes (title this, title that) is the main culprit – it should be streamlined.

Trying to figure out which classes to cut is often an exercise in subjectivity. But I would say that the basket weaving classes and all the ones designed for primarily enjoyment (not a bad thing) probably should be subject to cuts in lean budget times.

Among other areas besides heavy equipment operator training that are being considered for budget cuts at my local community college are the school newspaper (ouch that hurts, me being a former newspaper reporter, but it is a sign of the times and it would be replaced by the electronic mode, I understand), real estate program (not a bad idea, we have a lot of local real estate agents with little to do already), closing the school pool between November and February (most years that would seem a good idea– this year you could swim most days without a heated pool – and just why does the school need a pool?), athletic programs (and just why do we have to pay for athletics with education dollars?), and as I mentioned, it’s always a subjective matter.

(I didn’t mention that enrollment needs to be measured, since programs with low enrollment would usually be cut anyway, I would think).

There are private trade schools (not too much in this local area), but I notice that many of them depend upon government funding. Again, I do think industry should step up to the plate and support vocational training as much as it can. But everyone benefits from vocational training.

Next time  your car breaks down on the freeway or your toilet overflows think how much you want someone with good training to come to your rescue.

Algebra can be taught, but it’ll cost you…

(Copyright 2009)

If algebra is so important for our school kids to learn why aren’t most adults knowledgeable in it? Why is it so hard to find teachers competent to teach it?

Math teaching or lack of it is a pet peeve of mine – one I will likely take to the grave.

What brings the subject up this time is an article by political columnist Thomas Elias that mentions that a California Superior Court judge has blocked a controversial plan aimed at requiring all of the state’s school children to be tested in algebra in the eighth grade at the latest. While the article does not explain what the consequences of failing are, I’m sure it would mean kids flunking and/or schools losing funding.

But that, what the consequences are, is not my concern. My concern is this sudden push to get all kids to learn algebra when for decades most have not and grew up to be adults who still did not and nothing has been done to rectify the situation, if indeed it needs rectifying. I graduated from high school in 1967 after taking nothing more than general math (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing) as a freshman. Yes, about two decades later I had to pass intermediate algebra to get a four-year college degree, and if I had been a little quicker at getting that degree I would not have been required to do that.

Some of us find math difficult. And if no one will teach it to us and if no one even requires that we learn it, then chances are we won’t learn it (and I was finally fortunate enough to have some first-rate math teachers at the community college level).

I personally think math is extremely important and I think any educated person ought to at least be able to master intermediate algebra and probably more. I have noted, however, that most adults who have taken algebra often faintly recall it as an unpleasant memory, something they worked hard to master and then immediately forgot (even those who liked it, usually admit they forgot it). I think, however, they learned something along the way and probably subconsciously developed a somewhat better understanding of the relationship of numbers. For one, you work with a lot of fractions in algebra.

The afore mentioned judge apparently realized you can’t just mandate that math instruction will happen from a court bench and it will magically be done. The will of the public and the will of the taxpayers (which really are one) has to be there, and the will of the education establishment has to be there too.

And most any math teacher I am sure would tell you that education has to begin early and can’t let up.

I have seen that at least a lot, if not all, schools these days are attempting to introduce higher forms and /or more complex forms of math at much earlier ages. How well they do this, though, is dependent upon the knowledge of the instructors available.

Usually in the lower elementary grades pupils have only one teacher who has to teach multiple subjects.

When I was in my late 30s I was sitting in a community college class taking introduction to algebra and sitting next to me was a kindly old woman who was a veteran school teacher. She had to master rudimentary algebra to pass a state teachers’ test, one that was just then being mandated. And, really, the level she had to pass was barely algebra (I know. I later took that test and it was easy, believe me – I did not become a teacher, though). No offense to her, but why was she allowed to teach children arithmetic all those years when she was lacking in proficiency herself? And that my friends is why we are still trying to figure out how to get our children to learn algebra.

(I was taught what probably was third or fourth grade level arithmetic in high school by a gym teacher. My oldest daughter had an athletic coach for a high school algebra teacher, who refused to help his students ; maybe he didn’t know the subject himself.)

I have observed enough now at age 59 to believe that a working knowledge of some level of algebra would be quite valuable for all adults. It’s not the algebraic method itself as much as the need to understand math (which you do when you master some level of algebra) that rules so much of our life, from using recipes to cook at home, to doing home repairs, to balancing our check books, to figuring out how much interest we are paying or are receiving, to understanding the wonders of science, to master job skills and so on. Without that understanding we are all at the mercy of those who do. And please don’t tell me all that you need is a computer or hand-held calculator (garbage in, garbage out).

But if it is so important, then why have we not built up our math instruction after all these years?

It’s partly a question of money. Those who allocate the funds and some taxpayers don’t want to admit that it takes some expertise to master and teach the subject, so in that way they can avoid paying the bill.

P.s.  So, do I remember any algebra? Not too much. Do I have a solution to the math teaching problem if there is one? Maybe: Math may be challenging enough that we need single subject specialists to be introduced into the lower grades. Also, while adequately training current teachers who may be deficient in the subject may be problematical, certainly we must up the standards for those going into teaching. If the standards become too high and the pay is seen as too low, it will be difficult to recruit new teachers. Legislators and school boards will have to figure out what they want and whether they are willing to pay for it. Simply paying existing teachers more without requiring that they demonstrate proficiency will not work. I took the California teachers test, known as CBEST, many years ago. Hopefully, they have strengthened it. When I took it, you only had to demonstrate a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic (using some basic algebra) to pass. Had the test of been adequate, I would not have passed it.

And finally, my apologies to any teachers or former teachers who might read this and think I am criticizing them. There are a lot of good and qualified teachers out there – just not enough.

Street rampage is the wrong reaction…

(Copyright 2009)

The video I saw on the web of the shooting of a man by a (San Francisco) Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cop was not clear enough for me to make out exactly what happened, but when you compare what you can see with eyewitness accounts and the various journalistic accounts available, it does seem to be murder by a police officer – an ex-cop now, since he quit his job rather than be forced to tell his side of the story.

So anyway, people have a right to be outraged. But breaking other people’s windows and torching their cars seems an unjustified reaction to say the least, but that is what happened in the last 24 hours or so. Unjustified or not, there is an element in our society that will act that way.

Even the family of the victim is pleading for calm, saying that the dead man would not want people to react that way. One of  the family members said she was a business person and empathized with those who had their windows broken.

And in case you don’t know the story: in the middle of the night after this year’s New Year’s celebration a white cop shot a young and reportedly unarmed black man in the back at an Oakland, Ca. BART train station apparently while other officers were already restraining him – and no one, but the officer, now ex-officer, appears to know why at this time. There is some speculation that the officer mistakenly grabbed his revolver rather than a stun gun (of course stun guns cause fatalities too). Oh, and there are also charges that racial epithets were made by police officers during the incident.

Why anyone would want to live in Oakland or most of the East Bay, as it is called, I have no idea. Maybe a lot of the population doesn’t want to but feels trapped. I’m not an expert on the area, but I’ve been there and it is not someplace you want to hang around. And it is definitely a place you don’t want to be at night. (And some will say, oh, there’s nice areas – but they’re so close to the bad areas and you probably have to go through or near the bad areas to get to the nice areas.)

And yet, I have been there. I have delivered and picked up freight there. To be honest, I never ran into any trouble and I sometimes was in one of the high crime areas in the wee hours of the morning. But there is an extremely high crime and murder rate in those East Bay communities, such as Oakland. Even worse or just as bad is another one called Richmond. Really it’s all one big dangerous city to the outsider.

I believe I am correct in saying that the perpetrators and the victims of the crimes are predominately black. And I suppose high unemployment and frustration lead to much of the lawlessness. But the part I find puzzling is that when I went there to pick up and deliver freight, employed black people were often among those who I dealt with at warehouses. I am nearly certain it is not those employed folks who are causing all the problems. They suffer from them, though, especially if they live anywhere near that area in which they work.

I used to work with a truck driver who was born in Mexico but had settled in the United States. He longed to find a home where he would be among his own countrymen, but he insisted: “no cholos”. He explained to me that is what they call gang members. He was a working man and had a family. Gang violence was not something he had any use for.

And really, isn’t that the way? On the surface to a white bread observer, such as yours truly, it sometimes seems that the problems of the East Bay and other such areas are mostly tied to race. And while I still don’t discount that notion entirely, I have to acknowledge that among any group of people there are those who seem to have more time to cause trouble than to do things that are constructive.

Disturbingly to the rest of the population who pays the bills, most of these people who get into so much trouble were afforded most or all of the same opportunities in life as those who do not – free education through 12th grade and even assistance for higher education and/or training, and the usual social programs. But among those with little family background in work – and there have been several generations now who know little of the concept of legitimate work – there is an attitude that says only fools or those trying to be something out of their own race or their own kind try to do well in school and that it is demeaning to do a conventional job and be someone’s employee – thus the lure of drugs and crime and lawlessness, or at the least, just plain idleness.

There has been more than one story in the East Bay and elsewhere of a black high school athlete looking forward to going to college on a scholarship only to be gunned down by someone who was apparently jealous of someone gaining success through his own ability and hard work.

And then there are the police. There is a conflict here. You need someone who is tough enough and brave enough and just willing enough to police the mean streets of the ghetto areas or rough neighborhoods if you will. But not everyone who answers the call is really up to it. You don’t want a psycho with an itchy trigger finger.

The DA indicates if the evidence warrants he will prosecute for murder. So far, the accused is not cooperating.

But from what is known now, some black youths were pulled off a BART train on reports of fighting. Somehow the victim wound up being pulled off and at some point being restrained by officers face down on the pavement. And then one of the officers shot the victim to death. Can there be any justification here? It hardly seems likely, but of course we would have to have all the evidence first.

The authorities need to act with all due speed to both get to the bottom of this incident and to calm the justifiably upset community.

In the video I saw, all the BART officers were white. I am not a fan of affirmative action quotas, but I certainly would hope that BART, considering the population of the areas which it serves, would have a goodly number of black officers and Asians and Hispanics as well.

Who knows? one night a black officer lawfully commanding someone to do something and fearing that someone was out of control and posed a threat might have to make a split-second decision and might choose to defend himself and the public.

It would be interesting to see in such a case what the public reaction would be – but of course we don’t want that to happen, especially not just to satisfy our curiosity.

The East Bay has a lot of poor schools, plagued by a lack of funding, gross mismanagement, and disorder in the classrooms. Oakland has had white mayors – most recently Jerry former “Governor Moon Beam” Brown, and has had one black mayor in the past, and has one now, Ron Dellums, who is a former congressman.

But Oakland is still Oakland. And until the working part of the population, black and white and of all races, decides to band together against the lawbreakers nothing can be solved.

And more attention needs to be paid to the hiring practices and training of police officers (in this particular case, the entity involved is BART). The lawless love to exploit incidents like the one in question.

P.s. I read that the BART Board of Directors Thursday issued a public apology for the incident and indicated it might set up some type of public review board to look into pubic concerns.

Math: you have to begin at the beginning…

(Copyright 2008)

I once had an English teacher who admitted that she wasn’t good with spelling. Ouch! That’s kind of like having a math teacher who is not good with adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.

As much as I liked that teacher – she was a character – she had no business being a teacher.

My eighth grade math teacher was a nice man, but I don’t think he should have been a teacher either.

The reason I say that is that he had a class full of not-good-at-math students and rather than teach us he threatened us with the warning that we would never make it when we got to high school and had to do algebra. Ha! I showed him. I didn’t take algebra in high school. I was too scared, too lazy, and the powers that be were too lenient. Had I gone through college straight out of high school in the late 1960s I would never have had to take algebra. While it was required for some majors, it was not required for others. I would have taken the others.

By the time I made it to the second half of my college studies California had upped its requirements and mandated that I at least pass intermediate algebra for what ended up being a BA degree in political science. Of course that meant I had to take beginning algebra first.

Actually I had tried to take beginning algebra through a night class while I was working at a newspaper. I couldn’t keep up with the homework demands, though. Later I took a summer course which as I remember was three hours per night, five nights per week for several weeks. The instructor warned everyone that they would not be able to hold down a job by day. We would be spending all day doing homework. He was right.

That cost me a lot. It would have been better to get it when I was supposed to, in high school.

Actually, these days they start teaching algebra in grade school. I think they introduce algebraic concepts before youngsters even know it is algebra or at least the building blocks for it. Anyway, I think this is good.

On the other hand, I keep reading that as a nation we are deficient in math and science (and, as most of us realize, those two subjects are virtually inseparable).

It seems that even though we were put on notice back in the 1950s when the Soviets launched Sputnik we might have a math and science problem, we haven’t come a long ways.

Well, in reality we were not behind or, if we were, not as far behind in the space program as we were led to believe. But I think the problem is that we still have not greatly improved our approach to math and science instruction.

I’ll just zero in on math here. Those who have a natural inborn talent with numbers usually progress despite any lack in instruction. They are interested enough to seek out the answers and go on to places where that is the specialty.

For the rest of us, it is catch as catch can, and it can be quite discouraging.

Anyone who has read some of my previous blogs is likely to notice that I’ve covered some of this ground before, but reminders in everyday life keep bringing me back. Today I saw a headline on Yahoo News that said our nation needs more math and science teachers (I think that headline has been running for several decades now).

Those of us who have managed to slip through life being a little more math deficient that we know we should be, might be tempted to console ourselves by saying, who needs it? We don’t do complex calculations and we have calculators and computers.

But of course all that means is that we cede our power over to those who do know what they are doing. No, most of us have no desire to be rocket scientists or number theoreticians, but we do want to know how good of a deal we are getting on that after-Christmas percentage markdown, our home mortgage (sorry, a bad word), or on those canned food items packed now in odd sizes.

Even the wizards of Wall Street were fooled by the mathematicians who used complex algorithms to split and bundle those mortgage securities that have thrown the whole nation into a financial catastrophe (well at least that was part of the problem).

I talked to my oldest brother, who worked with electronics and computers in the Navy and who later taught math.

He tells me that for instructors at the college level, one of the major problems is that their students did not get the basics down in elementary school. And before I go further I will say that what follows is a combination of what he told me and my own observations and opinion:

Elementary school teachers are often not comfortable with math themselves. Sometimes they teach the minimum and in the process fail to make sure their pupils are well grounded in the basic operations of arithmetic. Without that background it is impossible to succeed in algebra or higher math.

Teachers must make sure that their pupils or students understand fractions, really understand. They need to know how to manipulate fractions. They certainly need to be able to know the various notations used to represent fractions.

And here’s one I like: they need to understand word problems and understand what the individual words mean math wise in a problem. An example, the word “are” usually means an equal sign. I’ll just go off track here a little and mention that I once did a newspaper story about, well I don’t remember the education-speak term, but maybe “interdisciplinary learning”. At any rate, it goes something like this: you have to be able to read (English instruction) in order to do your arithmetic (word problems).

Still another one I like: teachers should devise and use word problems that fit their students’ familiar surroundings so they can identify with what is trying to be accomplished. I know I once did a photo-story about a college farm. One of the captions explained that the student was calibrating a fertilizer spreader. She told me she had to do an algebraic calculation to know how to set up the equipment. Now even allowing that in the real world things are often dumbed down enough that you don’t have to do the figuring yourself, you also have to know that someone did. And do you really want to always be in the dark? Equipment does not always work right and things don’t always fit the pre-programmed plan, and knowledge is power.

And I have always thought that a good way to teach fractions would be with rulers (measuring boards and such) and with wrenches, in order that one might have a visual and a real world application.

Let me just wrap up this tome with another anecdote from the tony walther file:

After doing graphing in algebra and working with those numbered pairs, I still did not see the real world connection (well yes there was map reading in the Army, but that’s a different story) and then years later I watched a school administrator calculate test scores, create her own numbered pairs, and proceed to do a graph showing a bell curve. Well I am too rusty to do that now (implying slyly that I could have done it before), but at least I have some mental picture of the process.

Just one more thing: if there is a math teacher reading this, please explain to your beginning students what algebra or whatever form of math you are using is for and what its practical applications might be. Also, test everyone to make sure that he or she actually understands the words used. When we define our terms, we can get somewhere.