Category Archives: Culture

What Copenhagen Might Mean

Alan Atkisson on Copenhagen

The world will never be the same.

But it’s the way that the world will never be the same that interests me, for the events of the past two weeks in Copenhagen signal not just a change in global climate politics, but a change in global politics, period. The primary outcome of these negotiations is not just the Copenhagen Accord, the relative merits and demerits of which will now be debated endlessly in the months and years ahead. The second, and likely more important, outcome is the global realization that the balance of things on this planet has shifted irrevocably. Copenhagen marks a phase shift in the way the world sees, understands, and governs itself.

Performance

Lawrence Johnson on FB has sparked yet another conversation related to education and culture, drawing on an example of textbook company incentives and the seeming de-emphasis of the value of hard work required for excellence in learning: use this tool and student performance will improve. The conversation is proceeding but as I don’t like the FB firewall, I’ve decided to provide a more open discussion on the weblog.

From my point of view the United States is suffering two crises: a learning crisis and a governance crisis. The learning crises is described as a growing disconnect between higher and secondary education, the measurable lack of critical thinking skills of incoming freshman classes, and the amount of resources in education systems, which the current budget won’t really change. The second crises has to do with how we govern ourselves and the belief wall, where every issue and subject is viewed through the ideological glass. This crises is a long one. What’s the significant difference between the Conservative Coalitions now and for Roosevelt? Witness the current gripe on the right on the subject of the CRU Hack. The list of ergo propter hocks is astounding. The best writing on this is still Orwell. When a Congress person can claim miming a baby as grand appeal in the commons, the governance crises shines through in all its ironic illumination. What was it that Twain said about how fast lies can run?

Budgets are lots of things. They are expressions of value. They are also expressions of the future, as every budget will reflect the language of the next. I write this to suggest that the defense vs education budget is a statement of value in the marketplace of ideas and to also suggest that such a budget signals the root of several other problems not directly tied to line items.

In economic terms, things these days are overvalued, which is bad news for homeowners and solar cell makers. A computer’s value, for example, can be assessed by how it’s used and by its potential. Even the stingiest laptop can create what only a movie studio could do years ago. Laptops have lots of “potential” value that goes beyond their “market” value. The value of a thing is tied to the value of its potential, which, is, of course, difficult to turn into data, as good carpenters and surgeons know. We can, to extend the notion, re-conceptualize the value of a college degree to include the amount of effort students and faculty put into gaining learning vs. market vs. system costs. People who waste their time making minimum effort cost the public system more. If it’s a top dollar school, what is fifty thousand dollars of student effort even for best and brightest? If the answer is a grade, then individual grades are now worth $5,000 (and Shadegg would have received an F in public speaking class). But is the significance of learning tied somehow to the cost of lighting and the physical plant? Yes and No. The best answer is No.

Conclusion: Does the United States value education by investing and vesting in it? Not in my opinion. While most people agree that public education is a “need” we don’t really put the money behind it. But every politician will still claim the “need” and “value” of a college education. If you turned them around, however, they would be secretly tapping the keys to their cell phones and updating their Twitter accounts to assure their publics that they will never raise their taxes.

I often ask the question: what does an automobile really cost? This is tough as we would need to assess the value of things that aren’t cars but could be used to make them, from petroleum to the cost of electricity at a given time. Here’s another way of asking the question: what is the value in not making cars? Well, we saw how the bailout responded to that question. What, therefore, would be the value of not providing excellent learning opportunities for adults? What would be the answer to that? More money for defense, I assume.

I have some solutions to the learning crises but the governance crises would see them as anarchical. One item would be to base-line teaching pay at 60K starting but at the same time make education schools very difficult to enter. (My students and I came to the conclusion the other day that to raise pass rates all an institution has to do is triple tuition rates. It’s the same idea but with a different context.) The other incentive is to eliminate grading systems and move to performance measures described in narrative terms. Not A but “this is what this person did and can do,” given that forklift operators know how to drive forklifts and surgeons typically don’t slice into that 30% percent of the brain that they missed on the exam. This method would make learning transfer easier to understand grade to grade as it would involve answering the question why does grade 9 come before grade 10 in ways other than the obvious. There’s a fairly deep elitism in this proposition, but I don’t mind taking the heat for that.

History

How the contexts of history repeat themselves.

At the outset, no one was sure the New Deal would work, but it did. Soon afterward, economist John Maynard Keynes provided the reasoning: Contrary to economic orthodoxy, government action and deficit spending are essential tools to combat the failure of the private economy in a depression.

The essence of the draw above from this San Francisco Chronicle article is not the cursory truth of the recovery but how it recalls structures in Congress at the time, such as the Conservative Coalition. Walker and Brechin are right to argue more now will probably be better than misguide frugality in the future.

Politically, it’s going to be tough to add more money to the economy. I watched the morning shows again and listened to foes blame just about everything on a “public option.” In this insipid, safe climate party politics isn’t about the issues but about future narratives, which is how the sin curve of Congressional power undulates.

Healthcare and Brutal Truths

Professor Richard Edwards posts this article from The Independent entitled “The Brutal Truth about America’s Health Care System.” It’s very sad:

In the week that Britain’s National Health Service was held aloft by Republicans as an “evil and Orwellian” example of everything that is wrong with free healthcare, these extraordinary scenes in Inglewood, California yesterday provided a sobering reminder of exactly why President Barack Obama is trying to reform the US system.

The LA Forum, the arena that once hosted sell-out Madonna concerts, has been transformed – for eight days only – into a vast field hospital. In America, the offer of free healthcare is so rare, that news of the magical medical kingdom spread rapidly and long lines of prospective patients snaked around the venue for the chance of getting everyday treatments that many British people take for granted.

Lunch Time

I’ve been writing in the mornings, gardening, and working on reports and courses for the fall. Usually, I’ll eat a baloney sandwich and watch MSNBC or CNN with it. This has become an unhealthy habit, and the baloney’s not much good for me either.

Afternoon TV news is all commercials and random goodies I have no interest in, so I should have lunch in silence. But there’s a related issue. Apparently, some statewide policy prohibits pizza parties and other “unhealthy” snacks at school, which is slogging into late June along with spring season, as the projections have all the way up to Tuesdays yet in the low seventies.

I went searching for the policy and was unable to find it on the DoE site, which is of poor design and looks like a neglected front stoop and not really designed for assisting people who might want to find something specific. The D of Higher Ed site is simpler but still looks like something built for Mosaic. It’s a little depressing, as State webpages should be designed as human destinations and should reflect the place that owns it, if indeed that place wants to make a good impression. I’m sure there are lots of design and IT people out looking for work who’d be glad to take on the project. What is it about government web sites and information tonnage?

Anyway, later we saw a report on texting and my wife and I, while in agreement, went at the problem from two different directions, as the example on the news was, I thought, a poor illustration of several issues in American telecommunications infrastructure. A family may indeed pay hundreds of dollars in texting usage or they could pay the going rate for another sort of plan which limits the rate but encourages the usage, or simply limit their texting. Texting is kind of interesting, though, so the ten extra dollars on top of an already too expensive plan isn’t all that bad. But the plans are too expensive to start, which is a real concern. The fact that people pay for regular cable and mobile service is just plain odd. Unfortunately, real competition is simply impossible at the moment given the way cable is delivered into the house, as the company owns the line in and probably wont give it away to a competitor.

Do users of mobile service or cable really know why plans are rated as they are? Does the company use a λ algorithm to determine it? And, by the way, why do we all assume that the inside of a plastic bag is clean?

This is the sort of day it’s been, when everything just seems sloppy, lazy, and built and delivered half-assed.

Ignorance

What a wonderful display of ignorance on Morning Joe this morning. All talking heads admitting little understanding about banks and how someone should explain it all, please. Oh, how all of them were tricked and did not see the crisis coming (while reporting for years on proper power tie colors).

Little is required other than some research. Then some further digging. And there were plenty of people who saw the crisis coming.

Twenty Five

I’m not sure what the notorious $25 to the unemployed has to do with relief, stimulus, or economics, while AIG gets billions, but I’m reading HR1 anyway. The billions to Citigroup is taxpayer money but it boggles me why the “common share” question is just an easy decision (see second to last paragraph below). The shares will either be preferred or common, right? This money goes to shareholders.

ARRA is, as most bills are, a tangle and weave of complicated relationships and references to places in the world that are as obscure as the moon’s surface, written in the language of “WLLEBI” (what looks like English but isn’t). In addition, it’s a little scary because if it has veracity then we are in a pretty doomed state to start (what gets lost in political arguments). What the bill appears to do is lay the ground work for more to come and provides a path way for making things move more efficiently or, probably better, at least move. It appears to argue that hefty infrastructure dumps can’t happen until some sort of “new communication and information infrastructure” is in place. Maybe I’m incorrect, but this is how the bill reads. In addition to pumping money into items I have no clue how to understand, the monster reads as lots of thumbs in the dike and as a floor plan.

The politics that surrounds the bill is naked, however. Some are scripting for how, in a few years, they can claim that they fixed their own problems despite the legislation, while using most of its funds; others are arguing that future generations will pay for HR1, which is false, as the future has already lost trillions in “valuations.” Above, money will flow to Citigroup but not to what matters: actual investment.

I’m going to take a practical position and try to help as I’ve leapt to conclusion before about how Obama’s mind works and learned better.

And the cranky economics talk show hosts: that’s all about rating boosts. Not good.

Money and Health

My friend, Bryan Carroll, writing or The Daily Campus, UCONN’s news paper has covered a few stories that deal with education and health, his latest on the subject of John Dempsey Hospital, which has been bleeding in its own way for several years. Carroll writes

An ad-hoc committee with appointed facility of the engineering, nursing and business schools on the respected campuses could provide innovative solutions to streamline the business structure at John Dempsey. The collective partnership of the university community would foster public support (and subsequently legislative support) for the final plan.

I wonder how Dempsey could be streamlined in so fa as care and business balance out. Do any hospitals actually see an even balance sheet, no matter how well they’re run?

Likewise, any university, private pr public? These institutions are interesting, especially in the face of the opportunity and service they provide.