The Uneducated American

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/opinion/09krugman.html?hpw

by robg • 17 years ago

32 30 17 years ago

ShabbyDoo• 17 years ago

In how many ways do Krugman's arguments fail? First of all, he's preaching to the choir by ignoring any need to even suggest a casual relationship between American economic prosperity and the availability of formal education. Then, he ignores the difference between public spending on higher education and the availability of education overall.

>Education made America great;

I'd argue that individual freedom led to American prosperity, and individuals' choice to partake in education was merely a consequence of a free society.

How can someone look at OpenCourseware, free textbooks, and the self-organizing study groups surrounding the former two and not conclude that education is more available than ever before? Up until WW2, going to college was an unlikely occurrence for the child of parents who had not themselves gone. Was the "American Century" really the result of upper middle class education alone? It was not until the GI bill that college became an odd expectation.

The underlying logical fallacy in Krugman's piece is that attending college is the only form of "higher" education available or even desirable. Shouldn't we instead be asking why lower socio-economic status Americans seem to have adopted an anti-learning cultural bias? Why, as Dean Kamen asks, do we not celebrate society's engineering achievements? It's thinkers? Government subsidy of education is one convenient target of many for those who think more government is the answer to all of society's ills. Never before in America has so much knowledge been available for free from the comfort of one's home (star), and yet he argues that we have some sort of education crisis.

(star) Even at minimum wage, an internet connection only costs at most a few hours labor per month. And, the computer sufficient to partake in this knowledge can probably be found at some upper-middle class curb on garbage day.

mdakin3• 17 years ago

I'd argue that individual freedom led to American prosperity, and individuals' choice to partake in education was merely a consequence of a free society.

You could argue that but it is wrong (well, at least the education-specific bit). Mandatory education in America traces back to the culture (in general) and the enacted legislation (in particular) of the Puritan settlers of New England. The Puritans believed in universal literacy so that everyone could read scripture. They passed laws mandating child literacy and required towns to hire teachers to teach the children. This was all mandated and required by the government and in some sense that can be construed taking choice AWAY from individuals rather than giving choice to them. At the time this system and these requirements were unique in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan#Education

tokenadult3• 17 years ago

Compulsory school attendance (as contrasted with tax-supported provision of schools) came later in American history. And the history of the colonies where Puritans were not the majority was also different. But Americans in general cherished literacy, and got that without much school attendance. When Horace Mann finally made school attendance compulsory in the modern sense in the 1850s in Massachusetts, he reported in his Common School Journal that more than 90 percent of the inhabitants of Massachusetts were literate. Earlier, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Is it a right or a duty in society to take care of their infant members in opposition to the will of the parent? . . . It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father. What is proposed here is to remove the objection of expense, by offering education gratis . . ."

Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Cabell, September 9, 1817, reprinted in Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition 1904) volume 17, page 423.

http://learninfreedom.org/Founders_free.html

krschultz4• 17 years ago

But the Puritans were a minority in early America. The economic heart of early America is the Cheseapeake and south, and there was not much public education there. It wasn't until the 1830s that it became common for some primary schooling in the south, and even then it was only 1-2 years for basic literacy and arithmetic. Only the richest went to academies or seminaries (in the original meaning of the word). Literacy became much more common by the mid 1800s. Not sure when near universal literacy took place but I'd say 19th century over 18th for sure.

Wide spread college attendance is really only in the 2nd half of the 20th century.

mistermann• 17 years ago

There's a big difference between mandatory education, up to the level of learning how to read, and college education, as Krugman is speaking of.

I also believe America's success came from its freedom (and perhaps more so just the idea of freedom), and the culture and attitude (optimism, can do anything attitude) that resulted from that, that made it such a successful country.

Not to mention they stole tons of technology from Europe, and didn't get ravaged in WW2.

In my opinion, what has led to the "downfall" of America, is about 10-15 years of, in my opinion, decidedly unstrategic thinking on the part of manufacturers, specifically hi tech. In many cases, the technology that took generations to develop has essentially been given to the cheap labor manufacturers (China)....this was one of America's most strategic advantages, and they no longer have it.

timwiseman• 17 years ago

Beautiful points. To add to them, I highly doubt that people who truly want failing to go to college due to the cost of college is common occurrence. Student loans are relatively easy to get, much financial aid is need based, and if all else fails the military will pay 100% tuition in most cases.

I do know of people that had to leave college in order to financially provide for family members, for instance an unexpected pregnancy, but that is different than the cost of college itself being a problem.

linhir4• 17 years ago

As Sandel points out, there are three classic ways to categorize justice: welfare, freedom and virtue. Although I doubt that we need to have a long conversation here, I think that what is great in America has not been that it maximizes freedom over all else, but rather that it has continued to find an appropriate balance between these conceptions of just government action. To dismiss the idea that promoting welfare--through education--is a worthy ideal of our government, and rather to say that freedom is the paramount ideal is short-sided, and naive.

Krugman's point may not be convincing, but neither is yours that unfettered liberty is the reason that America has prospered. Krugman's inaccuracy, in my opinion, is not that America's education was a driving force in economic growth, particularly in post-war America, but rather that the federal government was a driving force in the growth of education.

The sad thing is that the arguments we have today are not all that dissimilar from the ones that were had on the local levels during the common school movement in the 19th century. Some felt that certain segments of the population were not worth being educated, which is essentially what a lot of people today are supporting with a radically inequitable system, especially for those from poorer (both monetarily and 'culturally').

OCW is a laudable example of open education, but that does little to address one of the key points that Krugman is making. Namely, that on indicators of educational success far lower than college education, we are failing so many of our students. The fact that I can read graduate level micro notes from MIT doesn't help someone who can't properly add because they were provided with poor primary education in the Bronx.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that we rise and fall by our citizens, and it is sad that so many of our citizens are provided with substandard education. To that end, whether you think that federal government does or does not have a role in the educational system, I think we can all agree that something needs to be done, or we will continue to fall behind the rest of the industrial world.

markpercival• 17 years ago

"The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Education, as one of the largest components of public spending, has inevitably suffered." - Paul Krugman

So Mr. Krugman thinks we should throw more money at the problem by way of State stimulus? A quick look at the figures would tell anyone that funding isn't the primary issue.

Current expenditure per pupil in 2006 dollars

1961 - $2,670

2008 - $9,391

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

krschultz4• 17 years ago

It would be hard for me to believe that my parents generation was better educated than mine.

For one, when they graduated in the early 60s there was a massive gender gap in college attendance - my mom was valedictorian and went to secretarial school because her parents told her "women can be teachers, secretaries, or nurses", by the 70s she knew she should have gone to college. For comparison the female valedictorian from my HS went to Harvard.

Then there is the general quality of the education. Neither of them took Calculus in high school. They had Latin and most schools today teach Spanish, French, and Italian but aside from that they think my education was much harder. College is unquestionably more rigorous today.

On a shorter time frame, say the last 10 years, MAYBE that argument holds true. In my home state the last 3 have had serious state budget problems that affected the schools but until then it was getting better and better every year.

Alex39172• 17 years ago

The point is that funding isn't very well correlated with achievement outcomes. Schools could easily do a much better job with a fraction of their current budgets.

kevbin3• 17 years ago

"College is unquestionably more rigorous today." This is likely true at the high-end. But the vast majority of college students are not at the high-end. At the mean, universities have to mop-up after a dysfunctional K-12 establishment based on self-esteem and social-promotion. Remedial reading, writing, and mathematics are common at second- and third-tier universities. The scope of "special needs" has been broadened to include customers who are incapable of producing college-level coursework.

To ensure that students who elect to pursue a rigorous education are not penalized relative to those who do not so choose, grades at those institutions have been inflated to meaningless extent.

The educational industrial complex is geared toward growth. Effectively serving that market requires lower baseline standards and less meaningful quality metrics within the serviced population. Certainly the market is consuming more educational product than in the early 60s, but whether this produces a better educated populace is less obvious--unless "better educated" is defined to mean "consumed more educational product."

"in the early 60s there was a massive gender gap in college attendance" As an aside, today's gender gap is the opposite: colleges attract fewer males than females. If you consider graduation and 4-year graduation rates, the gap is greater and growing faster. I don't know that this marketing failure says anything about the quality of education though.

bhousel• 17 years ago

Would be very interesting to see a comparison of a typical 1961 operating budget vs a typical 2008 operating budget, to see where the differences are.

My guess would be that the biggest differences would be for teachers' pensions and benefits, extracurricular activities, technology, facilities -- but that's just a guess.

I can't imagine that they spend 3.5x as much on textbooks..

linhir4• 17 years ago

Just FYI, nominal price figures over time are pretty meaningless due to inflation.

What cost $2670 in 1961 would cost $19,226.05 in 2008 (BLS calculator: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl), which means that expenditure per pupil, in real terms has decreased quite a bit. Based on that same calculator, the amount of money we are spending now is $1,304 in 1961 dollars, far below the 2.6k you mention.

Luc• 17 years ago

Numbers given are inflation adjusted to 2006 dollars.

korch• 17 years ago

As American education has become more mass-market and managed like businesses, I think what is being taught is more watered down in terms of knowledge. I once was hanging out with a few professors and one remarked "if my current students had to take the same exams I took as an undergrad, they would all fail." Just for fun, I'd recommend to dig int some academic archives, and read the exams and quizes for college courses from decades ago, then compare them to what you've taken in college courses in this decade. The difference in difficulty rather leaps out. Idiocracy really is happening.

glen• 17 years ago

This ship has sailed. States simply do not have the money to fund more programs to help strengthen our educational system. Even if they had unlimited funding, the problems are not a result of a limited amount of money, but rather arise from a variety of complex, systemic socio-political problems. Christensen, Horn, and Johnson (2008) have applied the disruptive paradigm to education and have some really startling insights in their book: Disrupting Class: How disruptive insights change the way the world learns. Definitely worth checking out if you are at all interested in transforming education.

Krugman also highlights another problem. The financial crisis has resulted in real job cuts. Consequently, there will be less specialized classes, AP classes etc., especially in rural and urban areas. Christensen's point is that this is a great place to introduce an education based disruption. That is what we are doing at www.nixty.com. As a country, we have limited "teacher bandwidth" (David Wiley, 2009). Whether we like it or not, this bandwidth is going to continue to decrease. We need to find ways to harness the Web, informal learning, opencourseware etc. to create real learning opportunities for people of all ages and across different backgrounds. Many of these disruptive processes are already underway in the homeschooling and unschooling domains. It'll be interesting to see how they play out and impact the traditional K-12 and higher education systems in the coming years.

We are looking for people interested in helping us solve these problems. If you would like to join us, then shoot me an email at glen at nixty.com

linhir4• 17 years ago

I wouldn't necessarily recommend Christensen, Horn and Johnson. They talk a lot about the need for innovative practices in education, but their recommendations aren't particularly innovative. The details of how the innovative practices must differ from previous efforts to reform education is basically not there.

I"m not sure there is a great book that lays out some solutions, if there were we wouldn't still be talking about these issues. I'd suggest reading some books that talk more about the problem, just to get a good grasp on the issue. For that, I'd recommend Susan Eaton The Children in room E4 and Linda Perlstein's Tested: One American school struggles to make the grade.

GiraffeNecktie• 17 years ago

I'm fascinated by the contrast between North American and Chinese education. Chinese students are in class at 6:30 AM and by the time they get out, their American peers have been playing Guitar Hero and hanging out in the malls for perhaps five hours. And the Chinese students will probably put in the same hours on Saturday and Sunday. I'm not saying it's a better system - I actually think it's bordering on insanity - but there's a middle ground between the two extremes (and they are extreme) which is probably more sensible. Chinese students get no freedom to follow their curiosity and American students don't learn the value of hard work or even of education itself.

The Uneducated American

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