Hi PokerDad - here’s my reply:
“I had been meaning to ask you (though off topic) what Thomas Sowell books you had read. I’ve gone through Race & Culture and have a few others on audio book that I haven’t gotten to yet. I started reading his articles that come out every week or so in Investors Business Daily… mostly since I had read your Amazon review that talked about him.”
I read “Inside American Education” about 15 years ago, and any thought of me sending my kid to public school was quashed - it’s that good, and nothing’s changed. He has more footnotes and references than I’ve ever seen in one place. No one disputes him, simply because it’s not possible. He’s a legend. I first started reading his columns in college, incredible insights. I haven’t read him much lately, but he does talk about how he grew up as a black in Harlem well before the civil rights movement, and how, back then, kids like him were given expectations, not excuses. He’s certain that he would have ended up as a street thug if he grew up now, in that place.
“Sadly, I think you’ll find (especially if you look and think about it hard enough) that most of the social structures in the USA as currently in place, are now a mechanism to disable the typical citizen. It’s quite disheartening. I don’t think it’s “one side or the other” that’s primarily responsible but perhaps the system itself that enables self-interest at the highest levels. I’ll give you an example that is on topic of this thread”
I do think it’s primarily on one side, based on what I’ve seen since college. That is very, very, difficult for people to accept - but bad, malicious, people tend to congregate together throughout history, and good, well meaning people, simply allow it, because they cannot bring themselves to accept what these people really want and have in store for them. For example (without getting too political), when someone says that our country is overpopulated, that scares me, because if they really believe that, then they’ll feel compelled to do something about it, if they get power.
“So David will soon graduate with a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. For the typical student (i.e., a product of the system), this means they’ll be around 24 or 25 years old if they hurry through - they’ll likely be a hundred grand or more in debt and will have given up 6 years of prime working age to pursue academics. Higher education is one of those systems that is currently lining the pockets of some members of society while simultaneously robbing the client (the citizens). I’ve yet to hear a single politician discuss why this is happening, and in fact, only hear solutions that actually feed the problem. Making student loans more affordable (lower interest rates) is not the same as making education affordable - and the two are actually polar opposites.”
I couldn’t agree more. The other interesting aspect of college is that, essentially, it is the only product that I know of which is priced according to one’s ability to pay. That’s done through ‘financial aid’ which includes grants and loans. If you make less money, you pay less, if you make more, you pay more (up to the insane sticker price of private schools). Ever see that at Walmart, or buying a car or a house? That just shows how far out of whack, and maybe even illegal, the pricing system is for colleges. And yes, if the government gave everyone a voucher for $10,000 for buying a new car, and assuming that production of new cars didn’t respond (as colleges generally add capacity very slowly or not at all), then guess what - new cars would cost just about exactly $10,000 more, and the UAW (and auto companies) would be the ones benefiting, not the buyers.
“The result is that you have students coming out of college in excess of 100,000 in debt; often times you have parents that have crippled their financial situation at a time when they could ill-afford it, and this happens in tandem with the monstrous debt or in lieu of it. Coupled with the opportunity costs of gaining traction in a career (especially at a time like this - which by the way - will only get worse in the US) really has made it frequently a stupid choice to pursue education. Three years ago I had to make a personal choice to pursue an advanced degree or not. I really wanted to, but decided to use the cash to buy a house outright. I’d have my doctorate right now, but am reading how the employment in that particular field is so abysmal that it could hardly justify the sacrifice, and that is why I sadly made the choice that I did.”
Good call on your part. I had some ‘debates’ with my wife as to whether David should get a PhD also. I simply didn’t see the benefit in it and I remember the nightmares that some people were having in graduate school (I have a Master’s in EE) trying to finish their PhD’s. It seemed the university was almost keeping them there as slaves, with some pushing something like 8 years there trying to finish. The math simply doesn’t work out, when you compare it to entering the workforce with a lower degree, at least in engineering. As it was with David, he doesn’t want to go further and he’s an adult now, so it’s his call. On broader view - people who work with their hands can make a lot of money, and skip the college game, and, especially the debt. Heck, I live like a king here in Texas, simply because I’ve done both - I work as an engineer and virtually no one else (other than David) ever lays a finger on my house or my cars. There’s a lot of money to be made there in the trades, and I’ve learned them well enough to keep that money to myself…but for others, just learn the stuff well (wiring, plumbing, AC repair, or auto repair, etc.), and the opportunities are endless.
“My point is that David does not have to worry about opportunity costs. By the time his peers get their masters in mechanical engineering, David will have SIX full years under his belt. That could prove to be a lifetime in the sense that he might be the guy on the other side of the table in a job interview (okay, I might be overstating, but you get the idea).”
Thanks, I’ve thought about that and agree. He was young, and really couldn’t work. He was also small (not any more, now full-sized), and he struggled to work on cars and bend #12 wiring on to screw terminals. But that’s over, and now he’s likely stronger than myself. In other words, you try to finish off educating the kid before that tradeoff becomes necessary. Earlier this year, a doctor had done the opportunity cost trade that you mentioned, comparing himself to a UPS driver, who started that job right after high school (it was on the web). The doctor eventually came out ahead but not until he was almost 50 years old. He simply took the amount of hours he put into his education and practice and the eventual revenue - and compared it to a UPS driver starting at maybe $12 per hour, working the same number of hours (including OT). It was amazing - and we’re not even talking the trades here.
“It’s not inconceivable that your actions saved your son in excess of $400,000 in lost wages and tuition. That’s a really sizable chunk of money.”
Agree - since David wasn’t going to go public school, regardless, the college tuition money would have been spent on high school and junior high school tuition, so that was a push for us. Texas A&M has a job fair this week, we’ll see what (if any, just to cover myself) offers he might get. Assuming that he actually finishes this semester in good standing, he’s done and can start work at age 18.5, with a Master’s. Although it sounds a bit selfish, he could even help us (wife and I)out for a while if my job disappeared (my wife doesn’t work), and we lost 3 of 8 power channels on the Space Station last week (we’ve since recovered 2 of them) - simply because he doesn’t have debt or a family to worry about. But, for now, we don’t need his money, so he keeps it.
“Who does it serve to create a generation of serfs? Hmmm. Sadly, they are not of the age nor wisdom to see how they’re being fleeced and robbed blind. Current political polling tells me all I need to know on this matter.”
Agree. I even see it with David’s friends from UH, who are engineering graduates, in their early 20s. They’re making good money (~80k) in petro-chem, but seem to blow it as fast as it comes in. I’ve had some ‘discussions’ with him regarding meeting up with them and ‘going to lunch’ as they seem find places that I would never even dream of taking my wife, just due to the cost. As for debt - that’s simply a human weakness - two thirds of people (in my estimation) will simply grab money that’s held out in front of them and worry about paying it back later (hence the housing bubble/crisis). I’ll never forget that when we finished building our house and had something like $40k left available in our construction loan (we ran the project), I told the loan officer that I didn’t want that money - he was SHOCKED. No one rejects that kind of money. And…if I didn’t have to pay it back, sure, I would have taken it too.
“Regarding math in today’s school. You really were spot on. They didn’t start teaching me until I was in 8th grade! I remember being in middle school in particular, and hating my math teacher because she seemed so stupid. The specific memory I had was when she was teaching how to calculate cubed volume. This is really simple stuff - and the way she talked down to us, I was so offended. The worst was when she required that we put the measurements for length, width, and height in the “proper order”… which pissed me off to no end because my child logic told me that if you turn the box in any direction, the multiplication problem doesn’t change nor does its answer.”
Yep, and people blindly trust their kids to that system. What I remember when I was young was having a great 6th grade math teacher (honor’s math)…and then entering junior high where 3 or 4 other schools were folded in. Guess what, their math teachers were not as good. So we spent the first 8 months doing arithmetic, and the last month in a very-compressed pre-Algebra - when most of the school year should have been pre-algebra. I had 100% on every grade in the first 8 months (knew it all inside out). I collapsed into B’s and (mostly) C’s once Algebra started, and right through college. I’ll never, ever, forget that. That was a driver in my life. The other driver was going bowling with friends before they had automatic scoring machines. I could add up my score instantly - probably due to bowling twice a week. The other kids struggled like hell to add up their scores (this is 5th through 8th grade). I guess the ‘improved’ math they were teaching did not see a need for arithmetic anymore. I can give a similar example for reading. Given all of that, there was no way in hell that I would let a virtual stranger ever teach my kids something that important, never.
“This particular school left me in remedial math during my 7th grade year while the kids exposed to a few more concepts had pre-algebra. At the end of that year, they tested EVERYONE on how well they could LEARN math. I scored near the top and placed into algebra for 8th grade… I remember when I took Algebra 2 in high school… I finished the class in February and sat around twiddling my thumbs for months goofing off while everyone else caught up. This happened because I had a teacher that did worksheets and allowed me to study on my own.”
See, it took you 6 months to finish Algebra 2. Had ‘the system’ allowed you to continue at your pace, you would have finished off another year of math (at least if you include the summer). That was exactly David’s pace at the Algebra 2 level - he was nothing special (a nice kid, though), I simply took advantage of the time that was available to him.
“When I look back, I could have learned so much more in mathematics - but the system, geared to teach to the lowest common denominator, failed me.”
Yea, that’s a given. Like I’ve said a number of times, I know the mindset of the people that run the system. They simply want equalization of results, and they do not care at what level that is. I once read an article that said credit card companies consider people that pay off their cards every month (like me) to be ‘deadbeats’, in the sense that we’re not helping their bottom-line very much (i.e., no interest or penalty charges). Likewise smart kids, to the schools, are, essentially, looked at in the same way - as a nuisance that they have to endure. I really think some of them consider an advanced kid as an abused kid (by their parents) and want to ‘save’ that kid from further abuse - be ready for that.
“I remember helping a few of my friends with their math in high school and was shocked at how horrible the teachers were. They made simple concepts difficult, and in turn, the students felt stupid (IMO).”
Dr. Sowell is clear that the people that go to the “Schools of Education” are not the brightest in the lot, so that doesn’t help to begin with. Second, these “Schools of Education” spend all of their time in theoretical crap and don’t bother teaching their students how to actually teach kids. And then they politicize the students. There is absolutely no way that Whole Language and Fuzzy Math could have be where they are today, without teachers actually wanting, badly wanting, those failed approaches - and there are surveys that prove it.
“I will not allow my little boy to be processed like this. That’s why I’m here. I do have a bit of a hurdle - my wife is one of those educators, and I see fallacious thinking everywhere and beliefs that are proven (via cognitive psychology studies) to be false and yet the system just churns out dogmatic BS which in turn, cripples the populace.”
Sorry about your wife…I can’t help much there.
“Why does the system allow fully capable children to just sit there like dummies? Just remembering all this stuff has me angry as can be.”
You answered that: Lowest Common Denominator. If you randomly grab 20 cars off the street, and have them all drive 500 miles as fast as they can, there will be a lot of drivers waiting around at the end for the race to end.
“I’m with you Robert. Not in my house. I’m specifically here on a early learning forum because I have a few years before he’s school aged - and if I can get him off to great start, they won’t have the chance to mess him up.”
My sample set is limited, but I’m convinced that just about any kid can do this. Best of luck there, and remember what I always tell parents - make sure that junior knows who’s in charge, and it’s not subject to negotiation, ever.
“Regarding the goal of equality. It will never be achieved. It cannot ever be achieved in education in any form (including equal “opportunity”) nor can it ever be achieved as an economic outcome even under the most severe Marxist ideals. The only way you might have some form of equality in education would be to adopt policies of eugenics - and we’re not the Third Reich so that won’t happen (nor am I saying that it should). Even though there’s little we can do, it’s not to say that our current system is tenable. Every where I look I see people talking about “it’s the middle class stupid” - these people, all the way up to types like Robert Reich, are either liars or imbeciles on the topic; I’ve yet to hear a single one of these political types mention fractional reserve lending and how it has stripped wealth from the people. Oh well I guess. Not much I can do about it.”
Well stated…that’s obvious to us, but not to everyone.
“But the education system in our country is so misplaced it’s not even funny. There is something I can do about that - I can take matters into my own hands the way you did.”
Exactly. You don’t need to participate on their terms. That’s what I did. You will get flack, maybe lots of it, so be prepared. Even family and close friends often think a kid is being abused because you have him do math problems for 3 hours a day, rather than sitting like a zombie in front of a TV screen or ‘saving the world’ in his video games for those 3 hours (even if he still has other hours to be a zombie).
“I think you’ve nailed it, so no need for me to continually beat the dead horse while among the choir.”
Yes, this was a fun post to reply to.
you will find that this forum is filled with many parents with different teaching methods. What we have in common is loving our children, exposing them to early learning and respect for differing views.
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