Program Idea for the Department of Education

Dear Mr. President:

The Department of Education should formulate two educational programs concerning socialism.  One would be addressed to fifth graders and the other to tenth graders.  The programs would be the product of leading historians and economists, who would educate students as to the history of socialism, its economic failure, its political failure, and its history of mass murder.  The showing of the two programs would be a prerequisite for states’ eligibility for federal aid.

Zilvinas Silenas, a refugee from Lithuania and the new president of the Foundation for Economic Education, recently appeared in an interview on Dan Elmendorf’s Redeemer Broadcasting (http://redeemerbroadcasting.org/content/plain-answer-podcasts / A Plain Answer: A Case Study - Socialism as it was in Lithuania - Zilvinas Silenas ).  In the interview Silenas describes in vivid detail the horrible realities of socialism. Material like this could be combined with history that short circuits the left-wing indoctrination that is occurring in America’s schools.  Indeed, a discussion of political correctness and biases in the educational system should be a part of the presentation, which would be given in one-to-two-hour assemblies of students. 

The chief argument against this idea is that it can be coopted and turned into a pro-socialist presentation when the Democrats gain power.  However, such a step would create a focal point for debate, for much of the subversion currently occurs more subtly.

Along with Silenas and FEE, Peter Wood of the National Association of Scholars could help appoint a commission that would create the presentation.

Something needs to be done now about the misinformation in which American students are being indoctrinated.   

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Cc: The Honorable Betsy DeVos

HL Mencken on American Education

Daniel B. Klein just sent me this quote.  It pretty well sums up what is wrong with American education, except Mencken wrote it around 1920. (See Mencken, H.L. (1987) Smart Set Criticism. Regnery Gateway. Washington, DC, p. 222.)

Think of what the average American schoolboy is taught today, say of history or economics. Examine the specific orders to teachers issued from time to time by the School Board of New York City—a body fairly representative of the forces that must always control education at the cost of the state. Surely no sane man would argue that the assimilation of such a mess of evasions and mendacities will make the boy of today a well-informed and quick-minded citizen tomorrow, alert to error and wary of propaganda. The plain fact is that such an education is itself a form of propaganda—a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make “good” citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens. Let a teacher let fall the slightest hint to his pupils that there is a body of doctrine opposed to the doctrine he is officially ordered to teach, and at once he is robbed of his livelihood and exposed to slander and persecution. The tendency grows wider as the field of education is widened. The college professor of Emerson’s day was more or less a free agent, at all events in everything save theology; today his successor is a rubberstamp, with all the talent for trembling of his constituent gutta-percha. In the lower schools the thing goes even further. Here (at least in New York) the teachers are not only compelled to stick to their text-books, but also to pledge their professional honor to a vast and shifting mass of transient doctrines. Any teacher who sought to give his pupils a rational view of the late Woodrow at the time Woodrow was stalking the land in the purloined chemise of Moses would have been dismissed from his pulpit, and probably jailed. The effects of such education are already distressingly visible in the Republic; let Dr. Wells give an eye to them when he is among us. Americans, in the days when their education stopped with the three R’s, were a self-reliant, cynical, liberty-loving and extremely rambunctious people. Today, with pedagogy standardized and a school-house in every third block, they are the herd of sheep. (Ovis aries).

To Socialists, the World Is a Classroom

Schools are mostly government-run operations and reflect government values.  Few institutions in American life have failed as badly as the education system.  My claim is that socialism is modeled after the classroom.  The teacher, Professor Obama, stands before the classroom. Any students who disobey the Professor's instructions are disciplined.  The school board, US Congress, concocts ever more elaborate and stricter rules.  If a student does not learn, does not obey, he or she must serve detention.  Those who obsequiously learn the professor's lessons most studiously, the socialists, consider themselves smarter than everyone else.  Because they lack the legitimation of a state diploma, those who would rather not comply with the Professor are intimidated.  But they are productive and competent. The socialist lesson plan is that the state is all knowing; that those who obey are intelligent; that subservience to government is morality; that the Professor and the school board know best.

Will Obama Butcher Health Care As the Democrats Have Butchered Education?

Larwyn just forwarded a Hugh Hewitt Town Hall post that quotes Barack Obama's expression of delight in "creative" education at a charter school in Colorado:

"When you start working with teachers, tapping into their creativity, then you start designing curriculums that tap into the childrens' creativity. I was at a wonderful charter school in Colorado, ah, that had designed the entire school year --each year was designed around a theme-- and this is a majority Hispanic school, but the theme that year, they called it "Passages." And it was all about the African American experience.And so they incorporated music, you know, ah tracing sort of the history of African music through blues through jazz to modern times, along with history, along with literature, and these kids last year, ah, the year before they started this charter school, about 50% of the kids had dropped out, and now a 100% of them are graduating, a 100% of them are going to college because they were engaged in a curriculum that was interesting to them and seemed relevant to them, ah, and they incorporated art and music to make school interesting."

Barack Obama's delight in failed "creative" or "progressive education" approaches is not surprising, because his associate, William Ayers, advocates them. In her landmark book Left Back: A History of Battles over School Reform Diane Ravitch outlines how the quack educationist establishment has rendered America an increasingly illiterate nation through its advocacy of the "progressive" approaches in which Mr. Obama takes delight. The Democratic Party, the chief ally of the educationist establishment, has butchered the education of American children.

Do the Democrats aim to similarly butcher the health care of American patients? Throughout the debate about the need for health reform, none of the advocates has questioned the ability of state-influenced health care to eliminate the need for rationing, and none has explained how the quality of care will be affected by reform. Michael Moore, in his film Sicko, uses Cuba as an example of the kind of care that Americans can expect from a public system. Cuba spends $250 per year per citizen on health care. In comparison, America currently spends better than $3,000 per year per citizen on health care.

Does Mr. Obama aim to butcher patients on a governmentally-dominated operating table much as the Democrats have butchered American childrens' education?

How to Make US Business More Competitive?

Q. Dear Professor Langbert,

I really enjoy the feedback you supply at the end of the forums. I have one question for you- what can be done to "save" U.S. economy, and provide decent jobs for everyone?

A. In my opinion there need to be 6-7 reforms:

1. Reform the education system. Make sure that all elementary students have good training in the three r's as well as socialization and interpersonal skills. Use objective testing and tighter management of elementary schools to motivate such outcomes.

2. Stablize the monetary system by adopting a fixed rule whereby money supply grows at the same pace as productivity times population or adopt a metal (i.e., gold) standard

3. Change the something for nothing mentality that has infected all walks of life, from Wall Street to MTV. The idea that manipulation, deception or luck is the chief ingredient that leads to success a problem. The TV show "Entourage" is as bad as the Jim Cramers
who scream for lower interest rates and welfare for the rich

4. Limit government to a smaller, fixed percentage of the economy than currently. This smaller percentage could not be changed except in times of emergency or war

5. As well, the companies need to became more careful about how they hire directors on the board as well as CEOs. Criteria for promotion and advancement need to be clearly articulated and revealed publicly, and the reasons for the promotions need to be publicly revealed. Hiring criteria at all levels need to be objective. The current fixation on college degrees needs to be either proven/rationalized or eliminated.

6. Companies need to do a better job of training, empowering and using incentives to motivate employees.

7. Adoption of HR strategies that motivate innovation and quality. Many manufacturing firms have focused on costs at the expense of quality.

Competency Based Education for the Incompetent

Lee of Tampa Bay and grammargrinch.blogspot.com writes

> Professor: What do you mean by "competency-based education"?
>
> I live in Tampa Bay. The Hillsborough County school
> superintendent can't punctuate and makes almost $300,000 a year in
> tax money. The board is potted plants that rubberstamp her dopey
> decisions and thinks her illiteracy is irrelevant. She appoints
> buddies to all the high-level administrarive jobs in a long-
> standing patronage system. They fall into Kallikack IQ range.
> Their incompetence is such that they administer by subcontracting
> decisions paid for by the taxpayers on top of their bloated
> salaries; they have trouble following the recommendations of these
> pricey studies due to the Kallikack factor.
>
> I infer that all the D students went into administration and have
> turned it into a cash-cow racket fo academic weaklings.
>
> Does this situation fall under your "competency-based education"?
> If so, what's its cure?
>
> lee drury de cesare
> grammargrinch.blogspot.com lee_decesare@yahoo.com

My response:

Hi Lee. I take it that you're responding to a blog I wrote? Competency based education can't begin until the fundamental competencies needed for education are mastered. These include reading, writing, arithmetic and also a fundamental level of ethics needed to function competently. You seem to suggest that your school district is run by individuals who have not been competently educated in the first place, so competency-based education cannot proceed. The solution seems to me to be a voucher system that was proposed by Milton Friedman in his book Capitalism and Freedom 40 years ago. If I may, I'd like to post your inquiry on my blog.

PS--Competency based education is where the instruction focuses on a specific skill, just as you focused on the dead man float when you first learned how to swim and then learned the crawl stroke, one step at a time. Rather than emphasize theoretical development, theory is used to support grasp of the skill. For instance, I do not teach about "personality" in an organization class, but rather about "self-awareness" and the importance of understanding yourself. The concept of personality is one of a number of tools that can be used to understand yourself. Obviously, this kind of approach can't be used if the students are unable to understand the (more elementary) concept of personality and also lack ethical foundations that are needed for learning and for grasping why self-awareness is important.

Gotham's Colleges

My following article appears in the December 6,2006 issue of the New York Sun based on an article I wrote in the Spring 2006 issue of Academic Questions.

Gotham's College$
By MITCHELL LANGBERT
December 6, 2006

The College Board recently reported that the cost of a four-year college degree is up 35% from four years ago after adjusting for inflation. At four-year private colleges, costs are currently $13,200 after financial aid adjustments, and at public colleges they are $5,836. The College Board estimates that from 1989 to 2005, college tuition inflation was almost double the rate of general inflation, 5.94% versus 2.99%.The reason for the ever-increasing costs is lax management. The solution is improved university governance.

The adjacent table shows that, in the New York region, baseline tuition ranges from $36,088 at Sarah Lawrence College to $4,157 at the City University of New York. Baseline tuition at Columbia and New York University is $35,166 and $33,420, respectively. University presidents' salaries similarly vary. They range from Shirley Kenny's $287,000 at SUNY Stony Brook to John Sexton's $789,989 at NYU. Note that, with a couple of exceptions, presidents at the higher-priced institutions tend to earn more than presidents at the lower-priced institutions.

Lax administration rather than faculty salaries explains high tuitions. An increasing percentage of professors are adjuncts, parttime faculty members paid on a per course basis. Adjuncts earn peanuts. CUNY's heavy reliance on adjunct faculty explains its modest tuition. Most adjuncts earn under $5,000 per course, even when a large lecture course generates $180,000 or more in revenue. In 2005, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that while nationally, colleges employed 60,000 more professors in 2003 than in 2001, the increase for full-timers was only 2% whereas the increase for adjuncts was 10%, resulting in a 50-50 ratio of full-timers to adjuncts. This trend may be related to adjuncts generally not receiving health insurance as well as to their low direct pay.

Moreover, average full-time faculty pay excluding health insurance has approximately tracked inflation. In 2004, inflation was 1.9%, while full-time faculty pay increased on average 2.1%. If the average associate professor makes $90,000, including health and retirement benefits, while the average adjunct makes $25,000, the average of the two is $57,500 including benefits. The result of averaging the modest pay increases for full-time faculty with the low salaries of adjuncts suggests that faculty salaries cannot explain tuition increases. Indeed, executives in many other industries would envy universities' ability to substitute part-timers for fulltimers.

Insiders know that administrative and facilities' costs are a large percentage of total higher education costs, though it is difficult to get universities to admit to how much. Currently, the federal government caps the percentage of administrative costs of university research grants — for which colleges have to delineate all expenses — at 26% and allows an unlimited amount for facilities. Yet, colleges argue that the cap is restrictive and should be eliminated.

In the spring 2006 issue of the journal Academic Questions, I wrote an article in which I correlated university expenses, student characteristics, endowment growth, denominational affiliation of the university, geographic region, ranking, and category of institution with university presidents' pay. The strongest correlations are between presidents' pay and revenues and between presidents' pay and expenses. In addition, revenues and expenses per student have strong, slightly above .5, correlations with university presidents' pay.

Economists like to think in terms of incentives. What are the incentives that university presidents face with respect to tuition? They are that higher budgets and higher costs per student are, at least on the surface, associated with higher presidential pay. Thus, college presidents not only have no incentive to contain tuition costs, they also may have incentives to see that tuition increases, especially if tuition is linked to increases in overall revenue and expenditure.

Some economists have argued that budget size ought to be associated with university executive pay levels because decisions of executives of large universities have larger effects than decisions of executives of small universities. However, this claim is debatable because executives of larger universities have larger staffs to whom they can delegate difficult decisions, have larger budgets for consultants to provide them with advice, and find it easier to obtain funding from public and private sources. Presidents' pay should not be increased because they spend more.

One way to resolve the debate is to see whether factors that are unarguably related to institutional performance, such as the entering students' SAT scores, the school's tier, and the percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students, have a larger effect than factors that are unarguably unrelated to institutional performance, such as enrollment, religious affiliation, and the kind of college, such as liberal arts, university, and so forth. It turns out that enrollment, expenses, religious affiliation, and kind of institution explain most of the variability in college presidents' pay, while performance-related factors such as SAT scores explain almost none.

Universities have expended almost no effort to create incentives that might encourage university presidents to cut costs and constrain tuition. Moreover, it is difficult for outsiders to assess management even in the best of circumstances, yet colleges continue to use not-for-profit financial disclosure methods that are designed to leave outsiders in the dark about what university managers are doing.

Thus, those who are concerned about rising college tuition should look to reform the management of universities. In that regard, two steps would be effective. First, parents, students, and government should insist that universities issue financial statements that include information that is specifically relevant to colleges, such as facilities, operations, and instructional costs per student. Second, they should insist that university trustees begin to grapple with the design of appropriate incentives that will motivate university presidents to constrain rather than to expand costs.

A number of approaches are available. For example, university presidents could be paid bonuses when tuition is reduced. They could also be rewarded for improvements in faculty research productivity, students' participation in extracurricular activities, and improvement in performance on achievement tests. Trustees who have the skills and motivation to monitor presidents could be hired, and such trustees could develop strategic plans, linking presidents' pay increases to achievement of specific objectives. Trustees could also increase their interaction with faculty and administration to learn about cost-saving ideas. They could base merit pay for faculty and administration on cost reduction and increased student performance.

To implement such management policies, universities would need to develop objective measures of student performance, student participation, and faculty research productivity that would be made public. The sunlight of public disclosure would likely prove effective in limiting tuition hikes.

Mr. Langbert is an associate professor of business management and finance at Brooklyn College and may be visited at democracy-project.com.

Degree Requirements and Social Stratification

A friend of a friend is a high school drop out. He is Black, an immigrant from Haiti. He has been looking into becoming a truck driver. In applying for truck driving training school, he learned that in order to attend truck driving training school he has to have a GED diploma. What is the relevance of a GED diploma to driving a truck? Is there any wonder that there is more social stratification than in prior eras? Of course, college students don't know trigonometry, so it all balances out. If you can afford to go to college, the three r's are immaterial. But if you can't afford to go to college, you must pass your GED diploma. Our education and credentialing system seems out of whack.