education

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Got Your BA or BS Degree? Don’t Stop There!


Most people, by the time the finish their first college degree only consider getting into the job force as quickly as possible.  They feel their college loans have a stranglehold on them, and that it is only responsible to get a job and start paying them back.  While it may be the responsible thing to do, it may not be your best next move.

Now, more than ever, entering into fields that require a college degree only gets you in the door.  Once there you discover that to truly get ahead you are going need a graduate degree of some sort.  And certain professions, teaching chief among them, require a master’s degree within a certain time period.  But what if you are one of those people who get a pretty good BS degree and then find it is not what you really want to do?  Here are a few suggestions of master level degrees that do not require a comparable bachelor’s degree.

Master of Science in Mathematics — I spent a career in the field of engineering.  But one of the most sought after persons in that field was not an engineer at all but a mathematician.  Why?  Engineering, and many other fields, require a lot of mathematics to support it.  Mathematicians are frequently used for their analytical skills in resolving not just engineering problems, by problems in physics, business, medicine, and a large array of research fields.  The demand for a person with a master’s degree in mathematics has been and is likely to always be high.

Master in Business Administration — It is not unusual for a person to get a BA degree in economics, advertising, marketing, and many other fields only to discover that they can greatly improve their situation within their company by getting an MBA.  Having an MBA is attractive in fields that may see far afield from business such as public policy, government, and even engineering.  No organization exists successfully in the world today that does not have someone within who does not have a keen understanding of business, and is therefore likely to have an MBA.

Nurse Practitioner / Physician’s Assistant — While both these degrees require a prior degree in nursing or allied field, they are in great demand today and that demand is growing fast.  Right now it is believed there is at least a 14,000 shortage of physicians.  And while a NP or PA cannot fully take on all the responsibilities and duties of a certified MD, he can help fill in the gaps where they do exist.  The needs for NPs and PAs is expected to grow for the foreseeable future.

If you are expecting to receive your bachelor’s degree in the near future or have recently received one, the time is now to plan for your next degree regardless of you field of choice.  Once you have left college behind it becomes increasingly difficult with each passing year to return.  And if you are in either of these situations and have come to realize that you have the wrong degree, by all means, return to college and get the right degree!  Master or bachelor!  Remember, as long as you are enrolled and attending college your student loans are not due.  And even though it means increased debt, in the long run you are putting yourself in a better position to pay off that debt sooner rather than later.

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A Few Things I Do Not Understand and Need Explained


Health Care Reform a.k.a. Obamacare — Under the new health care reform, millions of Americans will be sending many more millions of dollars to private insurance carriers to cover their health care costs.  How does a new revenue source for private companies hurt America?  How will it ruin our health care system, as claimed?

Reducing the Size of the Military — Democrats think we spend too much money at the Department of Defense and say a smaller military is the answer.  Why is it I do not feel equally as safe under that plan as I do now?  How does that improve our national defense posture?  Republicans claim it is just a leaner more efficient fighting force.  How?

Reducing Taxes — Mitt Romney says he will reduce taxes on the middle class by 20%.  How is that going to work considering our increasing national debt?  He has not proposed reducing the size of government which is where all that money goes.  This is like saying, “I can afford the monthly payments on my Rolls Royce even though I only earn $20,ooo a year.  Believe me!”

Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life — Why are we still trying to legislate morality?

Death Penalty vs. None — In this case, why are “pro-lifers” in favor of killing people?  Isn’t that just a bit inconsistent?

Ending Federal Funding for Public Television — Is Sesame Street really just a liberal thing or do all children benefit from it?  What left-wing ideas are Antiques Road Show, Nova, American Experience, etc. promoting?

Subsidizing Oil Companies — Really?  How do you justify that?  I really don’t get it.

Subsidizing Corporate Owned Farms — Same as above, really?  I mean, really?

Government Ethics — Every non-politically appointed government employee must adhere to a strict code of ethics.  Why are politicians exempt?  In reality, should we not expect the Secretary of Defense to adhere more tightly to ethical behavior than his office manager, or his office manager’s secretary?

Public Education — Why do we expect our students in public schools to get the same level of education when the per student cost of education is four times higher in the private sector than the public?  How will vouchers fix that? (The average cost per student in the public schools is a little over $5000 while at a private school it is over $20,000)  How are our public schools repairable when we are not willing to pay for the level of education we want?

Regulating Wall Street — If Wall Streeters are a bunch of foxes, and we are the chickens, who is supposed to protect us from the foxes if there are no regulations and therefore no regulation enforcers?  Don’t foxes love to eat chickens?

Too Big to Fail — Republicans constantly avow free market ideals.  But is not one of those ideals allowing for corporate failure when the corporate entity becomes inefficient and/or corrupt?

The Liberal Press — If the liberal press is so powerful, so persuasive, how did Bush become President?  How does any Republican ever win in those states dominated by the liberal press?  Is it possible the “liberal press” is largely a myth?

Patriotism — Are Republicans and conservatives naturally more patriotic than Democrats and liberals, or is that just another myth?

Who Can Come to America — Imigration quotas, by nationality, were set in 1922 based on 1900 data.  Why are we still using that data to decide who can emigrate?

Feel free to add to this list.

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Education’s Biggest Problem: Getting Students to Learn, Teaching Them to Study


I am a pretty smart guy.  I have been told so my entire life even though I oft-times doubted it.  I did graduate from college, and then got a graduate degree from Harvard.  But, I did not even come close to achieving my potential.  The reasons for this belief are numerous but are rooted in my primary and secondary education.  At no time during those years was I ever taught how to study, and more importantly, how to deal with failure.

For the past five plus years I have been involved with primary grade school children.  They are expected to learn more, and at an earlier age, than I ever was.  But the most confounding problem for them, and the teachers, is getting any particular student to learn what is being offered.  A minority of student learn in spite of adverse situations and in the absence of being told how to study.  They, the fortunate few, will succeed regardless of circumstances.  But for most students, learning is an ongoing challenge but I contend that it is more of a challenge than need be.

Before I ever finished my junior year in public high school, I realized that any chance I had at getting into college meant I needed to change something.  To that end I convinced my parents to send me to a prep-school where distractions were minimized and I was able, mostly on my own, to gain the grades needed to get into not just any college, but a good college.  The problem was, and I found this out during my first semester in college, was I had absolutely no idea of how to study.

Studying is not natural.  Human beings have ingrained in them the natural desire to eat, sleep, and reproduce.  Everything else we humans need must be gained either via experience or education.  While experience is a fabulous teacher, saying we take experience as a teacher, our ability to study and learn something is neither natural nor guaranteed.  But proper studying need not be a trial and error sort of endeavour.  There are people who are well-versed in the art of study and its application.  The problem is, this knowledge is not being made available to our children, particular at early ages when it is the easiest to apply and practice.  In stead, children are largely left to their own devices.  A young person really has no idea of a successful way to study.

I remember in my young years often feeling overwhelmed by school assignments.  It was not unusual for me to either do them incompletely or not at all.  Too often I was so clueless of how to start that I gave up before I even tried.  Other times, I would have a study assignment of some sort and have no idea of how to retain what I was tasked to study.  By the time a test came I was frantic to do well and too often failed.

Studying is something that requires scheduling which is not natural to humans in general or to children in particular.  Within that there needs to be a plan.  The plan necessarily means breaking up an assignment into parts, completing it as best possible, and returning to the classroom with a list of written questions to bring back to the teacher.  But these ideas are not only not taught to students, they are not even hinted at.  This may be our public education system’s biggest failing.  The thing is, it can resolved easily and without a large insertion of time and money.  It simply needs to be added to every school’s curriculum in every year of a child’s education until he graduates from high school.

One thing every student is confronted with is fear, both of failure and of negative criticism.  A student who needs to ask a question does not do so because it is his belief that his question is “too dumb” or that his having to admit that he has absolutely no idea what a teacher means by what he is saying will be poorly received.  It is incumbant on schools systems to make the learning process as easy and comfortable as possible.  Inherent to that end is giving the student a written form of how to do things.  For example, the student does not understand what the teacher has been explaining.  On his written booklet is a highlighted question that deals with this exact problems and two, or more, ways to deal with such a problem; either the student makes the statement in the moment that he does not understand at all, or, goes up to the teacher immediately following the lesson and states his concern.  Buttressing this is the teacher reassuring the student from the beginning of the class year that such is the good and proper way to deal with problems.  Such problem solving becomes an education unto itself and enhances the education process.

Dealing with problems is something people experience their entire life.  But a healthy approach to dealing with problems is not a natural process but rather a learned thing.  Leaving such experience entirely to trial-and-error is both extremely inefficient and unnecessary.  Simply by teaching such principles at an early age helps every person with living successful and manageable lives.

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How We Mess Up Our Children’s Minds Everyday


You do not have to be a parent for this post to be relevent.  Just be a member of the human race necessarily means you as an adult contribute to what children learn.  Parents, of course, are who a child models himself after. But children see everything around them and notice a lot more than many people give them credit for.  One way a child learns is through imitation.  They also form the value system through things they see, things they hear, and what any group of people they come in contact with are doing.

I wrote earlier about how we are failing our children in education.  What I did not include in that article is the education a child receives outside school.  Every human on earth learns from his environment, his experiences.  A simple example of this is how we refer to people having “street smarts.”  Anyone who grows up in an urban environment is intimate with that education while someone who grows up in rural America does not have it.  This may seem like simply a matter of where you grow up, which it is of course, but it is a great example of exactly how we learn.

In probably every country on Earth people discuss their future when they are looking towards their children.  But most of such discussions revolve almost exclusively around two things, formal education, and religious education.  I will not comment of religious education but I believe formal education to be an extremely large portion of any person’s ability to succeed in the world.  For argument’s sake I will put that portion at 51%.  But leaves another 49% to be accounted for.

From my experience in the primary education classroom, I can tell you there are informal activities that hugely affect every person’s life experience.  First among these is socialization.  In any group of kids you will find the full spectrum from the social butterfly to the wall flower.  But be warned, the social butterfly may not be any more self-confident than the wall flower.  Sometimes children act in one particular way as a means to cover up their fears.  The wall flower is afraid of rejection but it is possible the social butterfly acts as such because she fears not having friends.  One thing I know for certain, children always give clues as to why they are acting as such.  As much as we need to reassure the wall flower we need to ensure that the social butterfly is  simply having fun and not play acting to cover up a fear.

When I was a boy my mother caught me reading a girly magazine of some sort.  For an instant I thought I was in serious trouble.  My mother was a true disciplinarian.  But to my great surprise, and of course her credit, she told me the pictures of naked women were not in themselves bad things.  It was my reaction to those pictures, or as I think she put it, what  I did with those pictures that made the difference.  The message for me was, enjoy the beauty of the naked body but always respect women in person and in my actions.  I bring this up because as a society we have this predilection of hiding nudity from our children.  But most parent do nothing to hide all sorts of violence from children.  Children are bombarded with images of wonton killing but protected from nudity.  I find that absurd.  Worse,  children take violence as the norm and nudity as “bad.”  A teacher who happened to show young children a picture of Michelangelo’s “David” would chance firing but that same teacher showing a picture of one person engaged in killing another would probably not even be spoken to.  This shows a basic lack of good definition of right and wrong in our society.

What children need the most of are models and depictions of caring and love, of friendship, of good citizenship, of heroes.  These things are woefully lacking, in my opinion, in the lives of too many children.

In school yards today the rule is a child cannot in any respect put his hands on another child.  Boys rough-housing, wrestling, and other such activities are often outright banned.  Someone seems to have forgotten that this is exactly what boys do and it is usually very healthy.  When I oversee children at play I allow for a certain amount of rough-housing.  Even more, when a child comes to me crying about having fallen and hurt themselves I comfort them a little but I do not allow them to go running to the nurse.  I reassure them by noting that they are not bleeding but they are feeling the pain of having bumped themselves.  I send them off by promising them that if they are still hurting a lot after 5 minutes I will allow them to see the nurse.  Not a single child has ever gone to the nurse after that.  What I am teaching them is that you are going to fall, you are going to hurt, but you will be all right if you give things just a little time.  I always allow them their pain but always have them take some time with it just so they can see they will be all right.

What I have seen is too many parents at one end of the spectrum or the other.  There are, unfortunately, parents who protect their children from little or nothing.  These children become adults with bad attitudes, who are very defensive and worse who strike out at others, who are maladjusted and headed for a life of frustration and failure.  At the other end are the overprotective parent.  They will have a boy who wants to play football but the parent will not allow it because they think football too violent.  They are the parents who attempt to control who their children play with.  They are the parents who fawn over their child when the child is hurt and goes out of their way to end the hurt as quickly as possible.  They seem to have forgotten that living through hurtful things is a good thing when the child involved fully appreciates how they will be all right afterward.  They will not have such an experience if the parent takes it from them.

Some of the things no child needs to see are his parents have long verb altercations, or any physical altercations.  They need to see their parents hugging one another, and kissing.  They need to be disciplined.  There has never been a child who does not try to find and push boundaries.  It is a normal learning activity.  But when such boundaries do not exist, what do they learn?  They need to hear their parents apologise to them.  They need to know that telling the truth when they have been wrong is not a bad thing.  That is, they have to experience reward through truthfulness.  Parents should never, ever, lie to their children.  When the child walks in on the parents having sex, definitely do not chase the child out but tell him mommy and daddy were loving each other.  Then tell them it is private time and ask the child to leave.  Children need a healthy response to their missteps.  Most mistakes children make are innocent but they learn better when they are given gentle but firm correction and not being yelled at or worse.

The bottom line is, if we want our children to act responsibly we have to act responsibly.  We must acknowledge our mistakes in full view of our children.  We must never make hollow threats.  We must gently guide.  We cannot condemn failure as failure is a part of life.  We have to remind our children that frequently great success comes after a long series of failures.  We have to make it all right to be less than perfect.  We cannot afford to allow our children to be enamoured with physical beauty over inner beauty.  It is our duty to give good example as that gives our children the greatest chance of success.

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America is Failing Its Children


I think everyone has heard the expression, “You have champagne tastes and a beer budget.”  Well, that is exactly the American mindset these days.  I will qualify  my remarks by stating that for the past four years I have worked as a teacher in the primary grades at a public school.  Not only that, the particular school is in the poor section of a blue-collar city.  The kids, for the most part, are absolutely wonderful.  The majority of them are of first or second generation Hispanic background.  The next ethnic groups are Brazilians, Haitians, people from India, and Tibet.  The caucasian population of the school is around 20% or less.

Four years ago this school suffered a devastating fire that displaced the students to two other aging schools.  Both of the buildings were built in the 1930s.  The students are still a year away from occupying the rebuilt school.  The reason for the long delay is mostly political but under the guise of financial.  To be certain the city does not have the financial means to build a new school quickly, but the state has more red tape than is reasonable.  Unfortunately, occurences such as this are not unusual for America’s cities.  To really understand the challenge you must look only at the city proper and not its extensive suburbs.  What is the economic background of each city?  What does its tax base look like?  What does a cross-section of its inhabitants look like?  All these factors, and more, actively feed into each city’s ability to educate its young.

You can go to the Federal Government’s census site and see a map that shows the distribution of wealth by city in the U.S.  What you will find is the central large cities and their immediate suburbs, as a rule, have significantly lower wealth than its more distant suburbs.  This is important because the ability of any municipality is directly tied to its wealth.  The Federal Government and the individual states do take measures to mitigate this inequality but it is still very skewed.

To fairly evaluate each community it is necessary to consider the challenges the face each.  In Massachusetts, Sherborn, a community of 4200 has a median income of $186,000 while Lawrence, a city of  70,000, has a median income of $36,600.  Lawrence has a school population of roughly 19,000 while Sherborn’s is roughly 1,400.  Lawrence is a distinctly Hispanic city while Sherborn is populated mostly by people whose first language is English.  What does that have to do with anything?  Simple, by law communities are tasked with providing an education that addresses the needs of its student base.  If that base is comprised by a large number of students who have English as their second language, it adds a level of difficulty.

This is just one of the many problems faced by schools located in America’s cities.  These are problems that the far suburbs and rural America do not experience.  obstacles such as poverty, transportation, child care, crime, are just a few of external issues cities deal with.  But they also have to build modern facilities with good educational tools, computers, labs, books, and attract the best staff possible are huge obstacles to America’s cash strapped cities.

In considering the quality of education any one student receives, you must first consider what is that student’s educational environment.  Is the building that student enters large enough, and equipped well enough to meet that student’s needs?  Or is it overcrowded, broken down, and out-dated?  Does the community have the funding level to compete with other localities in the state in attracting the best teachers available or must it rely upon something less?  To put a point on that last question, consider that most school districts require that its teachers obtain a master’s degree within a certain amount of time from hiring, if they do not already possess one.  The average salary for someone with a master’s degree in excess of $75,000.  The average salary of a teacher with a master’s degree is $50,000.  That is a serious problem!  Even more, consider the fact that someone with a master’s degree in math can command in excess of $100,000 why would they opt for something less, or, why would they not consider their options outside of teaching should they become disenchanted?

The thing is, this whole political argument about how education is failing our children is very disingenuous.  The problem starts mainly with those in politics failing to accept that they themselves have set unreasonable standards of education given the level of funding they are willing to commit.  It is similar to saying “Here is $25,000.  I want you to go out and bring back a new Cadillac.”  How is that possible?  It quite simple is not!  The offer that a voucher system will resolve such problems!  Really?  Same level of funding but changing the distribution model, how does that improve education?

America, if you want your kids better educated, if you want all Americans better educated, you have to stop kidding yourselves that there is any equality in the quality of education from one locality to another.  And before you can expect a better education system, you are going to have to address each and every problem urban educators are faced with.

 

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Why History is Boring — And What Can Be Done About It


I remember when I was in high school, a very long time ago, history as it was taught bored me to tears and nearly put me to sleep.  I did not know then that I not only had a lot of interest in history, but that I had the ability to be an exceptional researcher.  Like most people, history seemed to be an endless string of dates to be memorized and that was something I really detested.  I could not understand why I had to remember dates at all and why all that history was important in the first place.

I now have a master’s degree in U.S. History.  The irony of that was not lost on me and I considered for a long time why I had been previously so bored by history.  The reasons were quite simply actually.  Historians typically wrote in a very narrow manner.  That is, they would attach a single or maybe two events to why something historic happened.  That methodology was challenged in the later 1970s by Clifford Geertz, a sociologist, who wrote a treatise on why Napoleon was defeated by Wellington at Waterloo.  He contented that his “thick interpretation” took into account every factor involved in the battle and did not allow the fact that Wellington had the high ground to be the most important fact leading to Napoleon’s defeat.  This thick interpretation of history changed the way many historians chose to retell events from then on.  Dates became secondary and circumstances or all sorts primary.

A couple of years ago I reviewed five different texts commonly used in high schools.  What I found was a group of texts that were mediocre at best, and some, published by well-known publishers, to be complete failures.  These text engaged in disparate ideas that were not logically presented and poorly tied together.  None of the texts took the time to define some of the most basic concepts presented to the students, i.e. what is a civil war, what is the definition of a revolution, and why is the event they are presenting important historically.  The books assume understanding by the students where it might actually be lacking.

The books, and the teachers, fail to engage students in the pursuit of historical knowledge.  Today’s students find it difficult, for example, to understand the fear that existed when America started its revolution with England.  My proof came when I presented that subject to a group of students.  To give the students perspective, I told them how many people lived in Boston, Cambridge, Lexington, and Concord.  Then I presented them the size of the British army that was descending upon the residents of those towns.  This simplest of processes allowed the students to gain a quick understanding of the situation in 1775.  I further engaged them by relating how boys as young as 14 were a part of the patriot force.  This, of course, is unimaginable to them but it kept their attention.

I have found that the way to engage people in a way that gets their interest in a particular historical event, is to lay out the sights, smells, temperatures, and when possible, the individual accounts of that event.  Tell people, for example, that “strikers awoke to the acrid smell of coal-burning, the stink of horse manure in the street, and the biting cold of the day, that they chose the warmest clothing with the fewest holes,” gives a person today a much better feel for the actual day.  It makes it come to life.

History is a truly amazing subject and, when properly related, is more gripping than anything the best “reality tv” or movie drama can give us.  In my blog about 10 must read books, I put in one historical novel, “Ghettostadt.”  I found that book to be a page turner.  That was entirely because the author took the time to relate what the people saw, how they felt, among all the other details of the Lodz Ghetto.  It took that historical event down to a personal level, and in my opinion, there is no better way to relate history.