damn the estúpidos, full speed ahead

I have always found the United Negro College Fund’s famous slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”, intriguing for several reasons, not the least of which is that on the surface, it appears to state an axiom. But the UNCF has it right on a deeper level too because what indeed is happening throughout American society is a waste of mental capacity on a scale that defies the use of ordinary adjectives. “Tragic” just does not do the subject justice.

It is tempting to use this space to document the tragic magnitude of our growing stupidity, but today that is not my purpose. Experts of every political persuasion have weighed in to help quantify the situation and their conclusions as to the state of things are not pretty no matter what agenda they might ultimately espouse. I will let you dig those details out if it interests you. The more important question is to ask what then shall we do?

There are a lot of proposed answers to this fundamental query, but a few ideas stand out to me as worthy of consideration. In all seriousness I must add, however, that just about anything different than what we are doing now could (and perhaps should) be tried as it is hard to imagine what it could possibly hurt. In future blog entries, assuming there is continuing reader interest in the subject of education, I may delve into any of a number of school reforms that I would like to consider, but for today I would like to discuss one of my old favorites, school vouchers.

A great deal of discussion in recent years has focused on vouchers though there has actually been very little actual implementation of voucher programs. A not too old Brookings Institution Forum on this subject can be read here if you want some decent objective background on vouchers.

I have supported vouchers since my Junior year in High School when I read Milton Friedman’s popular book, “Free to Choose”. Friedman’s work was sufficiently inspiring to me that I wrote my Senior Thesis on the subject and was lucky enough to escape my English teacher’s wrath with a decent grade. The Free Market seemed to me then to be just the fix for what was broken in public education.

I have changed a bit since then.

I still support vouchers but my rationale has shifted. In my concept of an ideal world, education would be universal, free and of the highest quality. Sadly, I have given up hope that the current scheme can be expected to attain even a mediocre quality, much less something better. I understand clearly that vouchers are not likely to be comprehensive solutions to the problems that confront education and which reach far beyond the schools to society as a whole. What remains of my idealistic notions, however, is the realization that vouchers do offer near-term hope for the most needy among us.

I have listened to the idealists tell me how disastrous an idea vouchers are for a quarter century. In those twenty-five years of glorious rhetoric and fine speeches education has changed little yet still the politicians still tell us that we must patiently fix what we have. From the “Education President” (Reagan) down to Shrub’s “No Child Left Behind” program, every Presidential candidate and administration has touted its educational agenda often and loudly. Clinton was especially eloquent on the subject.

Listen closely.

That great sucking sound is the rushing of political hot air into children’s minds displacing the intellectual promise that once dwelled there.

At this time of my life I no longer trust the free market with the reckless abandon of my youth. I would prefer certain things, such as education, were not dictated by the market, though perhaps at times this is the best we can do. While vouchers may be a less than ideal solution, they are not in any way a choice of a lesser evil-they are a good choice. Proof of their desirability can be found in the overwhelming support shown for vouchers and charter schools among the poorest Americans. Parents are crying out for help.

Even if you are philosophically opposed to vouchers and market forces as a permanent solution, you need to examine the long term consequences of inaction and immediate benefits of giving it a try as an interim solution. Clearly, the current public system is not going to reform any time soon.

Every year that passes condemns more minds to terrible waste. It is time to quit deluding ourselves.

In order to be clear on what I am advocating, I would like to briefly describe what a voucher is and how they benefit students in both public and private schools. Vouchers are certificates issued by the government to allow parents to pay for their children to go to a school of their choice using money that would ordinarily be used to educate their child in the public school. In most voucher proposals, the voucher amount is a fraction of the annual per student expenditure for public school.

I’ll use some rough round numbers to illustrate how this would work. The national average expenditure per student per year is in the area of $8,000. The government would issue a voucher at a statutory percentage in the area of 75% resulting in a voucher amount of around $6,000. The parent would then be able to use that $6,000 for tuition payment to accredited schools. Studies have show that high percentage vouchers (60 to 80 percent) would be large enough in most areas to cover tuition at existing private schools.

There are two benefits to the voucher scheme that are not immediately obvious. The first is that new educational opportunities would emerge that target parents and students that have now have $6,000 to spend as an education consumer. The second, and perhaps most important benefit is that the public schools end up relatively better off in terms of the financial resources available per student because for every student that leaves, they leave behind $2,000 give or take depending on the exact implementation.

Typical of our dumbed down society, we never hear of these benefits because they are harder to understand than the critical sounds bites of “only the difficult students will remain” and “poor kids won’t be able to benefit”. The truth is that poor parents are the ones clamoring for the hope of vouchers and parents of low performers should be, though often their parents are part of the stupid cycle themselves.

This is not to say that the voucher criticisms are without merit. These criticisms should be fully aired in our public discourse.

Indeed, I share the same concerns. It will be difficult for poor kids to get transportation to the school of their parents choice and there probably will be a greater exodus of high performing students than low performing ones. But there are ways of addressing transportation issues if we can get it out on the table. And frankly, given the extensive tracking that is already going on in the classroom, the best students do not mix much with the low performers in any school as it is now. Unlike the status quo there is hope for those “left behind”: additional financial resources available due to vouchers can be used to increase the teacher-to-student ratio finally giving the low performing students the extra attention they need and deserve.

If you can not tell from my passionate tone, I could discuss this forever and produce a blog entry that would make for an even more effective insomnia solution than my typical offerings, so I will restrain myself. But let me return to where I started and suggest that regardless of the merits of the arguments and where we might determine to head as a long-term solution, vouchers have sufficient merit to compel their implementation NOW.

Vouchers may be flawed and imperfect, but the critics have been empty handed for the last four decades. Further patience will breed more stupidity; more dysfunctional youth; more decay in our weakened social fabric. It is time to act decisively.

Philosophical debates are wonderful. In general, I’m a chief instigator when it comes to this kind of careful deliberation, but America is drowning in stupidity before our eyes. Let us deliberate long and vigorously on this most crucial of subjects yet not forget to throw a few life preservers to the drowning.

Maybe this will buy us some time to figure out how to build a seaworthy boat.

its the stupid, stupid

When you are a schoolboy, you do not necessarily stop and think about the education you are receiving in any structured way. Like you, my gentle suffering blog readers, I learned to think critically as a part of the process of learning. This is a most normal and natural thing.

I did not give it a thought that is until my Sophomore year in High School when I began tutoring. What stunned me in my experiences as a tutor was the discovery that most of my students were actually extremely bright and though obviously intellectually capable, they amazingly, had never learned how to think deductively. This was stunning because I never gave much thought to such matters. Stunning because the lack of these basic intellectual tools substantially impaired my student’s abilities to comprehend anything that required more thought than simple memorization. Suddenly it was brought into clear focus for me how poorly our schools were serving the majority of it’s students.

This whole experience jarred me in a profound way.

So, from a very early time in my life, it has seemed blindingly obvious to me that there is little in this world of greater importance than the proper education of our youth. It did not take any special insight then or now to see that a citizenry that does not possess even the most fundamental tools for critical thought dooms its nation to ultimate failure. How is a citizen who must exert themselves strenuously in order to make the simplest of deductions, if they are capable of even that much thought, to be expected to cast an intelligent vote? How can they be expected to hold any but the most menial of jobs? They obviously can not and the social ramifications of the resulting mass stupidity are of empire destroying proportions.

Sadly, very few Americans are concerned about the state of American stupidity. A bit of Googling unearthed an interesting summary of polling information about the priorities of voters that can be found here. What is clear both from my personal experience and this data is that though education may be on the list of the concerns of Americans, it is down there among the list of “other” things that people worry about in addition to the “big” problems.

Education is not a problem. Education is the problem.

It may in fact be reasonable to question my assertion that education is the most critical problem facing our society. Issues such as Global Terrorism and the Healthcare System meltdown have a rightful place at the center of our attention. But the present state of American stupidity is such that it exacerbates the pressing issues that typically top priority lists and therefore education assumes a position of greater significance than the politically minded might suggest.

A superficial examination of current events demonstrates the centrality of the role of stupidity in our current affairs. An America whose citizens reasoned well would have better understood the Middle Eastern powder keg and taken action long before the fuse was lit. If We The People were equipped by our schools to think critically, we would understand that not proactively fixing our healthcare system is inviting disaster. Eschewing substantive analysis, the people instead passionately respond to the sound bites that invoke symbols such as Patriotism and Socialism.

The undeniable passion of the people’s response can sometimes be so overwhelming that you can almost lose sight of the fact that there is no real content buttressing the convictions.

The political elite have learned to play this game well. A stupid America consistently elects politicians with no concern about any future which might exist past the next election. Politicians do not need to concern themselves with the Future because stupid Americans do not hold them accountable in a serious analytical sense of accountability. Rather, the political elite only need to concern themselves as to how effectively they can “spin” the outcomes when experience demonstrates their sweeping rhetorical flourishes to be nothing more than salesmanship.

That the word “spin” has become so much a part of our language that I could have properly omitted the quotation marks in the previous sentence speaks volumes regarding our intellectual devolution.

It is clear then that ranking education among the other issues confronting our society is dangerous and short sighted. While it is true that the incremental cost of additional stupidity is low, when you take the longer view there is nothing so certain to produce our downfall than a poorly educated electorate.

This process of destruction is in full swing already-just look around you. Or better yet, watch the upcoming Presidential debates. It will be sobering if you understand that the presentations, which are only nominally debates, are packaged for the level of education which is actually out there in our formerly great nation.

Once you understand the state of stupidity in our land, it is better for your mental health if you avoid the next step of logical deduction. Better to not realize how irrelevant you have become to our political process.

Far better to not grasp that swaying the stupid people is all that matters.