Public Education: 2nd Graders

In my kid's 2nd grade class, this really gives me pause:

1) There is a Capitalists Club (literally) for the kids. And to join, you have to sell a certain amount of Entertainment Books.

2) This week in writing they are focusing on, not poetry, but Brochures. As in, what makes a Good Brochure?

Is This Where School Vouchers Will Lead?

In South's public school children are now mainly low income, the story focuses on the rise of poverty, but is it possible that there was a flight from public schools to private schools in the South?

Many Southerners say the erosion of wealth in the public schools also reveals deeply ingrained attitudes in the South, where strong legislatures, weak governors, fiscal conservatism, and racial stereotypes stymie school progress. "I don't know how many times I've heard that public schools are really for the black kids," says Neal Thigpen, a political scientist at Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C.

Limits of Education as a Means to Equality

Stumbling and Mumbling has an interesting argument for a more equitable income distribution. It is in response to the often made claim that Education is the panacea.

Rich parents tend to transmit advantages to their children in all sorts of ways outside school: home tutoring; good genes; investment in activities and books; social networks; a culture that values learning; and positive attitudes.
To offset these advantages - that is, to create genuine equality of opportunity - poor children must get better schooling than rich ones, perhaps much better.
But this is not feasible. For one thing, it's expensive to improve schools; the link between inputs and outputs in education is weak. And there'd be huge hostility to this; just look at the outrage prompted merely by cheap ways to equalize children's chances of going to good schools. And even if poor areas did have better schools, richer parents would game the system to get their children into them.
Instead, a better solution might be to increase equality of outcome - not just through more progressive taxation, but by flattening organizational hierarchies. International evidence suggests countries with less inequality of income have greater social mobility.

One reason for this is that greater equality amongst parents would tend to reduce inequalities in investments in children. Another reason is purely mathematical. The narrower is the gap between the top and bottom quartiles, the more likely are people to move between them.

I would also add that it would alleviate the modern curse of the guilt due to underachievement well summarized in the first few chapters of Alain de Botton's "Status Anxiety"

Education, Over-education

A somber Krugman post today had me contemplating Democracy and, mixed with my recent enjoyment of MIT's free online lectures, especially Sylvia Ceyer's excellent Chemistry presentations
and the question of how to teach science to youngsters who are not blessed with mild forms of Asperger's,
led me to this post which echoed at least one recent Angry Bear feedback post on a Free Trade post, which begs the qustion of the purpose of education in an economy. This line from the referred to study abstract is significant:

"This adds to the relevance of preventing overeducation, and shows that being employed above one’s level of education contributes to workers’ cognitive resilience."

Essentially, you're happier if you are employed at a job JUST ABOVE your educational level than if you are employed at a job JUST BELOW your educational level.

And the aforementioned blogger, Zubin Jelveh, asserts that "the (U.S.) job market isn't built to help find a new job for a person who is stuck in a position that doesn't use their abilities efficiently.".

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I still am left wondering, however, with each generation of scientific advancement and complexity, what percentage of the population can be expected to fully understand it (and thus contribute to it). I say this as one who considers himself cursed to being somewhere between the elites that do, and the those that don't. I think I understand enough to know where my capabilities end (somewhere in the mid-19th century...just before Maxwell's Equations).

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And why are the Dutch seemingly the only ones studying these things?

Provocative Statement

I found this interesting point amongst an otherwise near scatalogical post. I think it brings together two of my interests very provocatively, Free Trade and History of Public Education:

If, as immigrationists often claim, the economy benefits so much from low skill workers, why continue to spend money educating native born Americans? Think of the economic boom to result if we stopped funding high schools and colleges in order to increase the homegrown pool of unskilled labor.