Category: Teaching, Learning, and Education

In Texas, maybe it’s better if they don’t learn too much from the textbooks. The math texts included 109,263 errors, 79% of which came from books published Houghton Mifflin Co..

Students may wish some of the errors had not been uncovered – particularly the inclusion in some books of the answers to math quizzes at the end of each chapter. The answers were supposed to appear only in teacher editions of the books.

In other cases, Spanish versions of the books had incorrect translations. And some computations were just wrong.

Six publishers submitted drafts of their textbooks to the TEA hoping to get in line for selection of the next generation of math books that will be used in Texas public schools.

These are, of course, rough drafts — very rough — but if the errors are not gone by Spring (the season, not the Texas community), publishers will have to cough up $5000 per error. However, since the book contracts are expected to be worth $116.8 million, that may be a small price to pay.

In closing:  what a real central bank looks like;  I wish Jill didn’t have a point about how defining life as beginning as conception is a death sentence for a woman with an ectopic pregnancy; Flying Spaghetti Monster under academic scrutiny; a record nobody wants to set; sad but true, some boys use pregnancy as a tool to keep girlfriends in line; who doesn’t love exploding casinos? (ok, imploding); and a conspiracy that may link Republican sexual improprieties, gay sex, a disappearance and possible murder, a tell all book, and may ultimately lead to the White House.  Could it be we may finally find out the truth about Gannon-Guckert‘s White House access?

Those who have been reading my thoughts on education for a while know that I measure anything that happens in a school by whether it is safe and educates children. And I interpret this broadly: the physical maintenance of a school building might not directly impact student safety or education, but the lack of it might result in conditions that do; school lunches do not educate students, but hungry students have a hard time paying attention.

That brings me to this story from the Christian Science Monitor about “The case of an Oregon teacher fighting for the right to take a gun to school for protection from her ex-husband.” On the surface, the problem seems very straight-forward: the district has a strict no-weapons policy, consistent with state law in 37 states; the teacher has a 2nd Amendment right, a permit, and a legitimate safety issue concerning her ex-husband.

Nobody seems to have considered the safety issue posed by having a teacher who is known to have received credible threats from a violent man. What happens if he shows up at school? How many people will he kill or wound before he can get to her classroom? Can she really shoot him without creating a safety risk for the students? She is concerned about her safety and rightly so, but what about everybody else? Having a gun in the classroom isn’t safe, and having her lure a dangerous nutcase to the classroom isn’t safe either.

She needs to consider a job where she does not pose a safety risk to her students. She could work in distance learning. She could become a teacher/coordinator for an organization like K12 or for a homeschooling support group. She could work in a juvenile detention facility, where the same security that keeps the students in and contraband out would keep her ex-husband out.

I truly feel for people who are victims of domestic violence. I have written about the problem several times over the years. I have given time and money to benefit shelters for those escaping abuse. I think it would be counter-productive for employers to fire people on the basis that someone might come looking for them with violent intentions. But in most workplaces, your co-workers are adults who can take actions to promote their own safety and the safety of others, who are capable of preventing someone from entering the workplace, who have a chance of disarming or dissuading or delaying or even detaining an assailant, who can dial 911 at the very first sign of a problem. This teacher’s coworkers, for all practical purposes, are children. They look to the adults around them in a school to see to their safety both on a practical and a legal standpoint. They deserve a teacher whose very presence does not pose a danger.

Cross-posted at Central Sanity.

In closing, college kids don’t know nearly enough about history and civics; one Congresswoman is fighting to stop bullying, as research points out that “Studies show that schools that list all sorts of bullying and tell students, ‘None of this is allowed!’ are more peaceful than those with vague anti-bullying policies”; stay-at-home-mom (who just happens to be a lawyer!) is a crusader against mortgage fraud; “dress for success” applies to protest movements too; and finally the EU may pass a law to lift the “liquids on airlines” ban. Let’s hear it for common sense.

In other news, kittens are cute.

Some Canadian researches have determined that ” Female tutors best for boys’ reading.” More:

Herb Katz, an education professor at the University of Alberta, took 175 boys in the third and fourth grades, identified as struggling readers, and paired them with a research assistant who worked on their reading skills for 30 minutes a week over 10 weeks.On average, the boys paired with female tutors felt better about their reading skills after the 10 weeks than those who were coached by a male research assistant, the study found.

That’s right, Mr. Katz did not actually determine that the boys read better, just that they felt better about their reading skills. Clearly an educational breakthrough. With educational “research” like this, who needs enemies?

In closing: evidence and supply-siders don’t mix; more on the haves and have-nots; more on wiretaps, one and two; the the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has a whole bag of SHHH! for you; Bruce Schneier is right about the importance of emergency communications; that bankruptcy “reform” bill in 2005 screwed today’s subprime mortgage borrowers; I like Mr. Kucinich too; and last, Congress is protecting that pedophile pervert @$$h47 Mark Foley. You remember him? The guy who was propositioning underage Congressional pages for a decade or so? Disgusting.

Have a great weekend!

Just a few weeks ago I wrote over at Central Sanity about how student loans were sucking young adults dry, and strangely enough this problem began when Sallie Mae started to privatize.

Fast forward to today. The House of Representatives has just passed the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007 (emphasis mine):

The bill will provide the single largest increase in college aid since the GI bill in 1944. The legislation invests about $18 billion dollars over the next five years in reducing college costs, helping millions of students and families. It comes at no new cost to taxpayers, and is funded by cutting excess subsidies paid by the federal government to lenders in the student loan industry.

Yes, the plan is to cut the government handout to a few profitable student loan companies that are raking in the dough while mortgaging an entire generation, and instead give the handout to thousands of young adults who will in a few short years more than pay it back in the form of taxes on higher earnings. Contrast that, if you will, with the fact that some student loan interest is tax deductible and therefore reduces taxes paid. At no additional cost to the government, the maximum Pell Grant will rise over $1000 per eligible student by 2012. I really like that “no additional cost” part. And there’s more — the loan rate on government backed student loans will drop too, both solving a real problem and giving a nod to personal responsibility for things like college.

Oh, but please don’t skip the beautiful rant by Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, lashing out against Republicans who were trying to add poison-pill amendments:

You don’t like the fact that were going to take 5 million middle class kids and extend to them a loan thats interest rate is cut in half? While their families are struggling to get them through college? They’re making sacrifices every year? You’re going to do this? You’re going to kill this bill? Are you proud? Are you proud of this amendment, that you are going to try to kill this bill? Say it louder.

There’s more, and video goodness, so check it out. But please remember, it still has to get through the Senate and probably a conference committee before it even arrives on the President’s desk. And the President has a lot of things on his mind these days.

(via mcjoan at Kos)

In closing: idle hands are the Devil’s workshop, and 60-70% of Iraqis have no job; a man, his lawn chair, and 105 balloons; CNN lets us know that “Billions in subprime ARMs will be subject to higher payments”; oh my, the FBI can prove Gonzales lied to Congress (remember, that is impeachable all by itself); and finally, Mari goes to the White House and gives the President a handwritten piece of her mind. Her mother, who failed to give LBJ a piece of her mind decades ago, is very proud.

No, seriously! Who thought this was a good idea? And how did the kind of person who thought this was a good idea get a job teaching children?

“Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables.The mock attack Thursday night was intended as a learning experience….” The report goes on to say “Some parents said they were upset by the staff’s poor judgment in light of the April 16 shootings at Virginia Tech….” Truth be told, it was poor judgement in any event at any time!

What were the staff members trying to teach in this “learning experience”? How to whimper in fear? How to hide? Or maybe that one man with a gun can terrify over 60 students, who will offer no resistance to attack but will instead hide. Yeah, there’s a lesson we want them taking away from this incident, sure. They have shattered the trust of these students, and given the one kid who is maybe a little prone to violence anyway a very scary data point.

Even the Principal said this “involved poor judgment.” But she wouldn’t even say whether there would be disciplinary action taken against them. More importantly, she didn’t go the extra logical step, that people with “poor judgement” should not be teachers. Maybe she’s just planning to not renew their contracts — and seeing as it’s mid-May I can understand — but keeping people with “poor judgement” in a situation where they are in charge of students that they have personally terrified seems like a liability nightmare to me.

Follow up: from The Moderate Voice.

To wrap things up: myths about divorce include that very popular “half of all marriages end in divorce anyways” line; another item on the Fort Dix Six and media coverage thereof; a nice graph of worldwide obesity by nation courtesy of the Korea Times; and the Padilla trial (finally) begins.

This morning, I am inspired by this item on random drug testing of students. The original printing is here, and an article with source material is here. Additionally, there’s some scary propaganda here about how marijuana is (supposedly) getting more potent each year, with recent THC levels of 8.5%, “double” what it was in the 1980s. The funny thing about that is that when I was in school in the 80s, they used the same line to discourage us from using pot, telling us things like “This isn’t the relatively harmless pot your parents smoked in the 60s! It’s twice 5 times as potent, with THC levels sometimes as high as 15%!” I recall thinking at the time “Well, if it were legal, the FDA or ATF could regulate that and put a THC percentage right on the label, just like a proof label on alcohol.”

But I digress.

Dr. Rosenbaum’s commentary is remarkably comprehensive, and worth reading. She feels it is not sound policy because there is no evidence that it reduces drug use, it is expensive, and it is an “invasive medical procedure” which should be strictly a matter between the student/patient, his/her parents, and their physician. She says “physician” too, not Physicians Assistant and not Nurse Practitioner. She does not address issues of privacy or civil liberties or Constitutional rights, and interestingly enough the ACLU’s drug testing fact sheet barely touches upon these issues. It is worth looking at some of their links, such as Drug Testing Fails. It is also worth reading an earlier version of Dr. Rosenbaum’s logic.

Please allow me to list some of the reasons that I feel drug testing of high school students is a bad idea. I think you will find my list focuses on pragmatic issues:

Just say no still doesn’t work. It didn’t work in Prohibition. It didn’t work when Nancy Reagan told us. It doesn’t work with abstinence education. It. Still. Doesn’t. Work. If the laundry list of bad things that can happen to you if you do illegal drugs isn’t enough to make you decide not to do them, the threat of a test is not going to do it either.

Where is the money to run drug tests coming from? In an environment where many schools are strapped for cash, putting off essential maintenance, forgoing soap in the bathrooms (isn’t that a great message about the importance of personal hygiene?), having students share textbooks, crowding too many kids into too few classrooms, whining about the expense of testing and other requirements of No Child Left Behind, how dare school administrators waste money on this nonsense!

It’s a logistical nightmare. Where are you going to run these tests? How will you randomly choose the students? How will you get the students to the test area, make an announcement over the loudspeaker that the following 20 kids need to report — and interrupting the lesson and train of thought of every other student and teacher in the whole building? Who will be supervising these tests, and how do we know he/she is not a closet pervert who enjoys watching young people pee, and shouldn’t that person be teaching a class somewhere anyway? Shouldn’t the kids be off learning something?

It’s dehumanizing. The “old version” of Dr. Rosenbaum’s commentary sums it up nicely. You want an adolescent (who has probably been told scare stories about pedophiles) to pee in a cup in front of a teacher? Assuming the young person does not “die of embarassment” on the spot, how is that young person ever going to have the guts to adequately participate in a class and advocate for his/her own education in front of that teacher? And that assumes there is not some additional embarassing factor, such as being on one’s period or having unusual genitals, or trying to hide bruises from abuse, or simply being on some sort of medication that is none of the school’s damn business. Shut up and pee in the cup. This sends two messages: don’t trust authority figures; you are a number, so submit to authority and do whatever you are told. Neither message is good for society as a whole.

It violates those pesky Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. Read them here. Every citizen — even kids — have the right to be “secure in their persons.” Furthermore, they cannot be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which is exactly what these tests do. This isn’t anything like a locker search, because the locker is school property and the student is not. Although the courts found that people in extracurricular activities had a lower expectation of privacy, the fact remains that the purpose of drug testing is to find evidence of the crime of using illegal drugs. They say these tests are to discourage crime, but the actual usage is to find kids to punish: you’re off the team, you’re out of the club, you’re suspended, you’re expelled, the police are on their way, you are being sent to a rehab program (“for your own good” of course).

They’re innacurate. Ok, they may be slightly more accurate than the tests used to “prove” someone was a witch in the Olde Days. They can still be thrown off by legitimate medications (including Ibuprophen), accidental exposure, human error, or just plain being wrong. Ate a poppy seed bagel at breakfast? Live in an apartment next door to people who smoke pot? Took something for that headache you woke up with this morning? Congratulations, you might test positive through no fault of your own. It amazes me that somehow people can sell a test this bad. If a kid turned in a paper with this many errors, he would earn a failing grade.

Finally, it doesn’t address the problem. People who abuse illegal drugs need help, not anxiety and punishment. But as the old saying goes, they have to want help. If we were talking about getting a warrant to for a licensed doctor to administer a drug test to a student suspected of having a drug problem, I could support that. But we aren’t. We’re talking about throwing a blanket on the problem and hoping the actual kids with problems will be a visible lump.

Follow up on the Fort Dix plot: NYT roundup; actual FBI documents; IHT calls it “Dangerous and Clumsy”; as always, an insightful item from the Christian Science Monitor notable for this quote,

“But for many security experts, the men’s motivation is what serves as the starkest warning. “The animosity felt toward the United States isn’t something just outside our borders,” says Bruce Hoffman, a professor of securities studies at Georgetown University in Washington. “There are obviously people inside this country who have the same hostility and are prepared to use violence.”

And in closing, Mr. Dobbs is a little late to Blog Against Theocracy Weekend; Harry Reid comes dangerously close to accusing oil companies of collusion, and Harry knows a racket when he sees one; and differing opinions on the proposal to only fund Iraq for a few months at a time. I am concerned that this will start a trend of a new special finance bill every couple of months. And as for this quote from Mr. Blunt: “If we enact this bill today, you put the insurgents and extremists on an 83 day time clock … see how many young Americans you can kill in 83 days.” Fine. Let’s pass a bill to start bringing them home today. I know most Governors would support that.

or, “I think I’m turning Japanese.”

Those of you who know me personally realize that I’ve been studying Japanese for about 3 years now. And not one of those classes where they teach you how to pronounce things from the Berlitz phase dictionary. Nope, we’ve actually been learning to read and write, listen and speak, vocabulary and grammar.

Frankly, many sushi chefs are impressed by any hakujin (that’s “white person”) who can successfully say that the meal was delicious. The grammar is complicated. Verbs and adjectives conjugate but there is no future tense. Nouns rarely appear in the plural; if you want to express more than one you can say how many, or just say “a lot of”. And then there are particles; put the wrong one in the wrong spot, and instead of eating dinner with a friend, you have eaten your friend for dinner.

Reading in Japanese is complicated by the fact that they have three basic writing systems which are all used at the same time. Hiragana — a system of 46 lovely curved figures, each of which represents a syllable — is learned first, both in Japan and here. Learning Hiragana is like being in Kindergarten all over again, scratching your head and trying to remember which squiggly bit makes an “ah” sound, and worse yet, not really being able to read anything substantive even when you have figured it out. After one learns Hiragana, the next set of symbols is Katakana — the 46 angular figures you might see on package labels or signage — which are used for “foriegn” words and sometimes for emphasis. Great, now the reader can tell that the sign over the bananas says “banana”! To make sense of Japanese writing, one still needs Kanji, a set of (*gulp*) 1945 Chinese characters which impart meaning and one of several pronunciations. For the record, I’m currently about a sixth of the way to that figure.

Actually, Kanji are very interesting. For example, the kanji for “sun” can also mean “day.” It can be pronouced ni, hi, bi, nichi, ka, or jitsu, in addition to other ways one finds while reading. It combines with the Asian “elements” to make the days of the week: Friday is literally “Money Day”. Pair it with the kanji for “now” and you have “now-day,” or “today” (pronounced kyoo, using none of the pronunciations I listed earlier). Pair it with the kanji for “bright” (which is a sun and moon kanji together) and “bright day” is “tomorrow” (pronounced “ashita”, the sun will come out tomorrow). Some pairings are not so esoteric; “sky” plus “harbor” turn unsurprisingly into “airport.”

Japanese textbooks are also kind of interesting. They seem to invariably follow the adventures of an English speaker visiting the country with good but limited language skills. This allows us to learn from the mistakes of our fictional travelers. In Japanese for Busy People, for example, Mr. Smith is a lawyer spending some months in Japan on business. Since he doesn’t read Japanese, he ends up asking people to read him business cards. In one case, he asks someone what the department store hours are, while standing in front of a sign listing the store hours. This book is great for people who must cram enough working phrases into their brain to function without worrying about grammar. It is worth noting that you learn in chapter one how to say “Pardon me, where is the American Embassy?” Since it is aimed at the potential business traveler, there is much more formal, humble, and polite language earlier. There is a separate workbook for hiragana/katakana, but no kanji.

By contrast, in Genki: An Integrated Course in Elementary Japanese, we follow the adventures of Mary, and exchange student from the University of Arizona, her Japanese boyfriend Takeshi, and their friends. Mary gets to ask silly questions like “Pork loin? What kind of fish is that?” and “You mean all those Kabuki actors were men??” Because this course is aimed at college students, a lot of time is spent on college and young-adults-coming-of-age sorts of language issues. Chapter one, for example, focuses on “What is your major” and “What year student are you?” As the text proceeds, we learn about studying, part time jobs, seeing a doctor, going to a party, and other things. Grammar is taught early and often. Each chapter has a parallel chapter on the written language. If you have the time, this is really a better book than “Japanese for Busy People.”

Even books like Teach Yourself Beginner’s Japanese focus on a foriegner, this time a high school exchange student. This book addresses the written language only in passing; it’s fine for those who need something a step above a phrasebook, but it’s only a stepping stone for those who want to really learn the language.

This discussion would not be complete without some of my favorite Japan-oriented websites. You may already know Pureland Mountain and Gaijin Smash from my link list. A couple of more news-oriented sites are Japundit and Japan Probe. If you’re looking for help learning the language, there’s flash card generator (as a word of warning, if you use 3×5 cards, they will eventually take up a bit of space), online dictionary, and a leve 4 proficiency exam study page.

In closing: War on Terror == War On You; something that should really terrify you, China may sell some of it’s US Bonds (like oh, maybe a few hundred million dollars worth); if that doesn’t scare you how about climate change; even some evangelicals are worried about the environment; on a related note, the real decline of the American family; even Gretchen Morgenson thinks a “Crisis Looms in Mortgages”; I am very sorry, no papers, no medical care (real sorry about that fire that burned up your kid’s birth certificates; even bigger shame they’re gonna die of something we can fix!); could it be that drunk driving is not quite as big a problem as certain people want us to think?; “Even Republicans Hate Our Health Care System”; Orwell at the Office (please ignore that many of the “Orwellian” intrusions cited in this piece are merely a continuation of school rules); the 10 most important video games of all time?; custom clothes on the internet; and finally, I may be the only person not calling for Halliburton’s blood this morning (CNBC’s caption was that they were Un-American!), but as I read the actual story, I am noting that “The company will maintain its existing corporate office here as well as its legal incorporation in the United States, meaning that it will still be subject to domestic laws and regulations.” Only the big boss and his cronies are leaving for Dubai. Let him go! The bright spot is that this is bringing scrutiny to their contracts with the United States government.

It’s time to talk about education again.

The latest data suggests that kids are doing fine in school, as long as you don’t ask them to take any standardized tests that would actually measure what they know against what they actually should know. The fact that kids entering college now know less than they did even ten years ago has now been documented by college professors, who are understandably alarmed. We’ve got junior high school students being forced to memorize pi to 52 digits instead of learning math.
Math isn’t the only problem, either. Clearly there are big problems with understanding English. How else can we explain how the Christian Science Monitor is actually able to print experts claiming:

“The picture is getting brighter,” and if there’s no recession over the next several years “there are going to continue to be some good strides made,” says Mark McMullen, a senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com….

Let me get this straight: things will get better unless they don’t. Brilliant analysis. Furthermore, the nice folks at The Mess That Greenspan Made point out how the “experts” are trying to redefine basic economic terms. Perhaps they hope Joe and Jane Average are too stupid to notice.

Now we have arrived at the point where the basic inability to understand written English is going to be harmful to some people’s health. Ezra Klein points out that the average American is no longer able to read and understand basic information about their medical care. You really ought to go read the Washington Post article he references.

Nor is this problem limited to America. The BBC reports that poorly educated workers are costing their employers money.

Oh, do I have your attention now?

The saddest part of this whole mess is that we do know how to educate children using time tested processes. Effective programs like Direct Instruction and Kumon exist, and have been used successfully for decades. Fine, these programs may be a little dull for the instructor, but school isn’t about entertaining the instructor; it is about educating the student. More importantly, programs like these don’t require lots of extra money. They do, however, require starting with what the student already knows, and accepting the fact that some students will move through the material more quickly than others.

In closing: a man without whom few Japanese folktales would have survived; a unified No Fly List is so important to the Feds that it’s 5 years behind schedule; two items on how things are tough all over, but it turns out that’s because poverty is at a 32 year high; a mandatory health proposal from a hospital group that should know better, this one would cost $115,000 Million in federal dollars to “provide subsidies for individuals to buy insurance from their employer if they cannot afford it, or to buy tax-subsidized coverage in the open market”; some people are saying money spent on health care will double in 10 years, but I disagree and think the whole system will collapse first; must read from NYT on Making Martial Law Easier; you can’t find mad cow if you don’t run a test; and finally, “we don’t need no regulation, passengers don’t need no federal protections.”

There’s a strange phenomenon that just didn’t happen when I was a kid, and it appears to be more popular in certain regions: parents tend to start their kids — particularly white boys — in kindergarten a year late. The school office and adminstrative staff just smile and say that’s fine, because they arrive in school more mature and academically prepared. They just ignore the fact that every class will have a minimum two year age spread, and this will eventually mean they have fifth graders hitting puberty hard. Now, we are not talking about kids whose birthdays fall close to the state mandated cutoff for kids starting kindergarten. I can understand letting those kids stay home an extra year rather than have them be the youngest kid in the class, and maybe not developmentally ready.

This odd practice is called “redshirting,” based on a collegiate sports practice of benching a freshman athlete to allow better development and more reliable performance. And when all is said and done, I beleive it is done with kindergarten boys for the exact same reasons. It turns out that there are few academic advantages to being the oldest, biggest kid in class. But come high school, there are a number of advantages on the sports field. I wonder, when these kids reach high school, are coaches going to be enthusiastic about having these bigger, more physically mature players? And will coaches still be as enthusiastic when they realize these kids will legally be adults by the end of Junior year?

The parents who are thinking of the future sporting career of a kindergartener are not merely being vain either. They are thinking towards college. Or perhaps more accurately, thinking towards college scholarships. Joe and Jane Average can see that the cost of a college education is rising far faster than inflation, and far faster than their paychecks. They may not know is that financial aid isn’t keeping pace with the rise in college costs, either. And as if that isn’t bad enough, many familes find themselves sandwiched between aging parents, underfunded retirement savings, and kids going to college. It’s enough to make kids rethink going to college at all, and that’s a shame. The Chicago Sun Times pointed out just last week that “Huge college costs are a barrier to a smart workforce.

But frankly, none of that is my point today. The article that got me thinking about all of this stuff is Parents low-ball college costs. Here’s a great quote:

The study found that 87 percent of parents believe scholarships and grants will cover at least part of their children’s undergraduate expenses, and nearly three-quarters think their children are “special or unique” enough to win a scholarship.

Financial aid administrators said 92 percent of parents overestimate the amount of scholarship money their children will receive.

Almost 75% of parents think their kids are “special” enough to earn a scholarhip! Now don’t get me wrong, all parents think their kids are special and unique. It’s part of the job description. But don’t mistake your son’s ability to play “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” using nothing but his armpits for a future music scholarship! Sure, everybody is unique and special; not everybody is unique and special in a way that is valuable to a university. They go on to point out that most parents only end up saving about one year’s worth of college expenses. And that’s assuming a public school.

This country needs to get realistic about college, college expenses, vocational schooling, and financial aid. And they need to do it before the age of an average high school senior is 21.

Today I present two wildly divergent things from two vastly different regions of the world.

First, American higher education.

Years ago, I had an argument with my father. I had graduated high school and had been admitted to the University of North Texas. We were standing in the kitchen and it went something like this:

The school says I am required to live on campus until I have completed 30 credit hours.

But for what room and board cost, I could buy you a decent car and put gas in it and you could still live here.

But they say I have to live in the dorm.

But the dorm costs $X and that’s more than a Hyundai costs.

But they won’t let me enroll without living in the dorm.

You get the idea. I have no idea how long this went back and forth. The short version is I didn’t go to UNT. Even though I could have afforded tuition, I couldn’t afford tuition and room and board.* I went to another local school, which I could only afford due to some grants and a merit based scholarship. It was the sort of school that considers things beyond an SAT score.

College expenses have gone up since then. Tuition isn’t the only culprit, as the average college student spends $900 per year on textbooks. And Pell Grants have gone down. And there have been many changes to the student loan system since then, none of them particularly good for students. And changes in the bankruptcy code makes matters worse for those who got buried under student loans, following the Pied Piper who sang “education is the key to good paying jobs.” Oh, and that was before the FBI started poking through student financial aid records looking for terrorists.

And as if that isn’t bad enough, many American teens have unrealistic life goals. Sorry, Harvard only has so many slots, and American Idol only has one winner per season. And thankfully, the job of being Paris Hilton has been filled by Paris Hilton.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, getting to college can be the least of kids’ concerns.

The Associated Press summarizes it nicely: “The good news is that child labor in Asia is decreasing. The bad news? It’s not declining fast enough.” And solving the problem is not as simple as “just say no to products built with child labor,” because “a crucial problem was that there were too many people who, despite wanting their children in school, either could not afford fees or related costs like transportation and uniforms or would find it hard to get by without the extra income.” In other words, putting kids out of factories merely moves them into worse occupations.

As bad as this sounds, it gets worse! About 1,200,000 children are trafficked each year. These kids are sold, kidnapped, or just plain tricked. Some get involved in illegal adoptions, some become slave laborers, some become part of crime or begging rings, some become prostitutes. It is a huge problem.

I stumbled across some figures on this yesterday and was horrified. In some areas of the world, a child’s chance of being trafficked by age 16 can be as high as 30-40%. That in turn led me to RiverKids. They are trying to prevent trafficking on a small scale by making sure the kids they sponsor stay in school, have the resources to continue their education, and have safe places to go after school. If you like what you see, check out their financial statements (posted regularly) and click the “make a donation” button.

In closing, we are getting fatter; the good news is household income is (slightly) up, but that’s only because “more family members were taking jobs to make ends meet, and some people made more money from investments and other sources beyond wages”; once again Japan has learned to take the best from the West; the DNC says The Bush Administration Has Made America Less Safe (how dare guys like Limbaugh say the Democratic Party wants America to loose the War on Terror!); and two items from the Christian Science Monitor, “Legal landmines emerge in ‘dirty bomber’ case; The Jose Padilla trial is a test: Can US avoid legal tangles of its ‘war on terror’ tactics?” and “Opposite ends of the labor market face opposite problems: Rising efficiency and technology are adding work for highly paid professionals while taking it away from low-skill employees”.

* My problem was hardly a new one. And I can see why colleges might want to make sure their (theoretically) youngest students are semi-supervised in a dorm environment. But there should be an automatic exemption for students who are either a) over 21, b) married, c) formerly married, d) have kids, e) have served in the military, or f) can prove they will be living with a close blood relative in the same or adjacent county. There’s nothing more pitiful than a college freshman living in the dorms with his wife and kids.