How to Increase U.S. Competitiveness (High Education Spending/Low Results)

Human Events ^ | 6/12/06 | Dan Lips

[ProCivitas]

"According to the OECD, the U.S. spends much more per student than most other developed countries. For example, the U.S. spends more per pupil for primary education than the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and 22 other OECD countries. Only Luxembourg spends more than the U.S.

In all, Americans spend more than $500 billion annually on K-12 education-nearly 5 percent of the entire U.S. economy. A student enrolled in public school from kindergarten through 12th grade can expect local, state, and federal taxpayers to invest more than $100,000 on his or her education."

Every school board in America should become predominantly Republican/Conservative because we have a huge curriculum standards/accountability problem in this country.

[calex59]

The schools in this country are terrible and parents keep right on sending their kids to them. Get your kids out of public schools or change the schools drastically.

[VOA]

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[doc30]

Sometimes I think it's becoming part of American culture not to excel in school, or to apply oneself as much as possible to education. My wife, who is from Japan, made some interesting, albeit shocking, comments on schools here.

When she was a 10th grade exchange student, she was shocked that the math taught in 10th grade was 5th grade material back home. She essentially lost a year in math by being here. But the real reason was to become proficient in English and she accomplished that goal.

THe second thing was her shock that people would celebrate high school graduatation. She was wondering why people celebrating high school graduation were not embarrassed. According to her, graduating high school is an expectation and you are looked down upon by society if you can't do that. Graduating from college there is considered a major accomplishment and that's where the celebration should be. By celebrating a mere high school graduation, it belittles college graduation. I guess it has something to do with the heirarchial structure of Japanese society.

[mission9]

If you invested the 5,000 dollars each year (first grade through 12th) for each child, in a growth mutual fund that tracked the S&P 500, the end product at age 18 is 100k. Now if fifty per cent of that amount was made available to the child (down payment on a house, college education, start a small business), and the rest allowed to accrue to age 65, the remaining 50k, if allowed to accrue at historical S&P growth rates, would exceed two million dollars. But you say, that child would be illiterate and uneducated. Untrue, require a passing of the GED and reading proficiency to qualify for a driver's license and let the rest of the education be pursued by the child or his parents. End of Social Security Problem, end of Education Problem. As to the unemployed government teachers, the true teachers will find employment from the true desirers of an education, the others can do jobs that Americans just won't do.

[rogator]

""According to the OECD, the U.S. spends much more per student than most other developed countries."

Comparing oranges and apples.

U.S. figures include huge amounts spent on athletics, which is the most important school activity K through college.
Most other countries have club sports not included in the education budget.

[GSlob]

The only way to improve the quality of education is to return to [or institute anew] the rigorous streaming by ability - there need to be several separate and by design unequal educational streams - say, 5: retardees, dullards, normals, brights and the gifted. There ought to be some mechanism for transfer between the adjacent streams - say, based on test results. Otherwise the slowest students in the class will inevitably drag everybody else down to the lowest common denominator. This would require, as a minimum, serious re-interpretation of Brown decision.

[maxter]

A total breakdown but Education demands more and more money. It should be obvious to everybody by now that money is not the needed fix.

[HitmanLV]

Sometimes I think it's becoming part of American culture not to excel in school, or to apply oneself as much as possible to education.

I think there is something to that, but that's not to overstate it. I have attended some of the finest schools, and I think the best approach is to treat school as something you have to do (like pay taxes, or go to the dentist) and that there is a value attached to doing well, but there is no legitimate reason to 'apply oneself as much as possible' as you put it.

I never consistently (or even regularly) applied myself 'as much as possible,' and I didn't know many people who did. I think that's kind of a crazy standard anyway, and I don't use that figure of speech ever because it's not that meaningful.

There are more important things than getting all As in school, that's just the truth. Medium and long-term success in life doesn't have much to do with a very demanding academic backstory. I went to one of the best private high schools in the USA, filled with nauseating Type A personalities, and even they didn't 'do everything possible' to excel.

It's 20 years later and most of them played by the rules, worked hard, married young, and are now miserable, working in small offices and cubicles, tired of their wives & their lives. They can't leave it all because their status quo is invested in their career choice.

School is something you have to do to a certain point, nothing more. Most education is self education, anyway. That's pretty much how the law is taught, and I think that's the best approach.

[HitmanLV]

return to [or institute anew] the rigorous streaming by ability - there need to be several separate and by design unequal educational streams - say, 5: retardees, dullards, normals, brights and the gifted.

Indeed, it has become a brave new world. This is a bad idea. Doing well in school has only very little to do with success in life.

[GSlob]

[In different countries] I have seen it from both sides: a rather strictly meritocratic streaming system and a PC egalitarian one. From my experience, meritocratic streaming is an extremely good and necessary idea.

[HitmanLV]

I have no problem rewarding merit. I think that's a good thing. The problem is that humans have to make the decisions, and the decisions (while nominally about merit) often have as much to do with all sorts of peripheral and personal crap as they do merit.

Your problem, I think, is creating a false choice: it isn't between a strict meritocracy (unrealistic) and a PC egalitarian ethic (immature). I like more of the elements of a meritocracy, to be sure, but I have personally rejected people of greater merit because they were sometimes poor fits for the job at hand. Personal style, maturity, etc are important factors, also, so I am wary of strict meritocracy and loony tune PC egalitarianism, admittedly for different reasons.

[GSlob]

Depends on the kind of job at hand. In one school for the gifted I personally observed 6th or 7th grade kids doing [in their heads, no less] multidimensional geometry exercises, like figuring out the intersection between 5-dimensional hypercube with something else equally complicated [forgot which one it was - it was ages ago]. I would submit that there are jobs [not many, granted] for which such kids [or rather, what would be grown out of them] cannot be replaced by any number of people with better "personal style, maturity, etc...", even if you tried to replace them at 50 to 1 ratio. And to slow down such kids by placing them in the same class with retardees is simply criminal.

[HitmanLV]

Not really my point. And you again create a false choice - its not a choice between a very intelligent adult and an unintelligent once, or a much less intelligent one.

The choice is between comparable (though nonidentical) skillsets. Complex mathematical computations done in the mind are important in some fields, but not terribly important in other fields. The skillset should match the job at hand.

I know one very gifted young man who is very intelligent, but can't hold down a job simply because he can't cope well with day-to-day dynamics that a lot of us wade through with ease (in my case, I tend to just ignore them, but to each their own). That guy was utterly replaceable at every job he ever had: while finding someone with his exact same skillset isn't easy, that's not the mandate. The mandate is to find someone with comparable skillset.

They don't have to be the best, they just have to be good enough. And I'll take a mature person that's 'good enough' with some imagination over a

My point is that performing excellently in school is just one example of intelligence, but certainly not the only one. It;s also probably not the most important one.

The smartest people tend to not do the best in life. We see that time and time again. There is no direct correlation between success and intelligence, though intelligence is a strong factor.

I tend to see this as a good thing. Doing the best in school, in most cases, isn't the most probative quality. There is a remarkable reluctance, i find, to admit what everyone who has been paying attention knows: being very intelligent doesn't have much to do with being successful, and certainly not being happy.

Back to strict meritocracy, if you can include a variety of other factors besides intelligence in evaluating merit, I'd be more on board. I've probably successfully hired 1000 people for all sorts of jobs in my life, and I never considered schooling, grades, or intelligence to be the most important factor in my decision. Sometimes, people with superior credentials are legitimately rejected, though I admit a lot of folks find that hard to swallow.

[GSlob]

What I was about is called "creativity". Not all highly intelligent people are creative, but almost all creative people are highly intelligent - it must be a subset. Most jobs have a very high "routine quotient", and for these you are right - good enough is good enough. The expression about trained monkey pertains there. The fun starts when one is dealing with non-routine situations.

[HitmanLV]

Yep, that's certainly true. I just have never found school performance and pedigree to be reliable indicators of intelligence. That's why I would never overstate their significance.

[doc30]

The smartest people tend to not do the best in life. We see that time and time again. There is no direct correlation between success and intelligence, though intelligence is a strong factor.

It's called Emotional Intelligence. It's like IQ, but ranks how someone relates to others on a personal level. It's been found that people with a high EQ tend to be very successful in life. Coupled with a high IQ and they are even farther ahead. Humans are social creatures and those without that kind of interpersonal empathy just don't build relationships that help lead to success.

[GSlob]

Well, look at Michelangelo. By all accounts, he had a terrible character and was next to impossible to deal with, but he has been an exemplar of professional career success ever since. It must apply only to the lesser mortals.

[RipSawyer]

If you invested the 5,000 dollars each year (first grade through 12th) for each child, in a growth mutual fund that tracked the S&P 500, the end product at age 18 is 100k. Now if fifty per cent of that amount was made available to the child (down payment on a house, college education, start a small business), and the rest allowed to accrue to age 65, the remaining 50k, if allowed to accrue at historical S&P growth rates, would exceed two million dollars. But you say, that child would be illiterate and uneducated. Untrue, require a passing of the GED and reading proficiency to qualify for a driver's license and let the rest of the education be pursued by the child or his parents. End of Social Security Problem, end of Education Problem. As to the unemployed government teachers, the true teachers will find employment from the true desirers of an education, the others can do jobs that Americans just won't do. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Interesting idea but it seems to take no account of inflation. What will a hundred grand be worth in another 18 years. I just turned 62 and I remember when a hundred grand was nearly equal to the projected LIFETIME EARNINGS of a high school graduate. Now it it one good year's income or two years of a relatively modest income.

[doc30]

But Michelangelo understood the politics of the time. That is another big advantage - being aware of one's political circumstances.