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A letter to my students

blogs.berkeley.edu

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Re: A letter to my students

#171

Post by Starchild »

It's common knowledge that the founders of the United States favored the separation of church and state because they didn't want government interfering with freedom of religion by telling people what to think.

At that time, there were no government-run schools in America. If someone had suggested that government should be involved in running schools, maintain massive "Education Departments", etc., I'm sure Jefferson, Franklin, and the rest would have had the same reaction that they had to the idea of government-run churches.

If it is dangerous to a free society for government to be involved in telling people what to think via religion (and it is), how much more dangerous is it for government to be involved in telling many of the youngest and most impressionable members of society what to think?

We should demand the separation of school and state and end government control over education in the United States. Schooling is not the only means to getting an education (Mark Twain famously said "Never let your schooling interfere with your education"), but if universal schooling is deemed desirable, you could simply take the amount of money spent by government to run schools and maintain bureaucracies, divide it by the number of students, and issue each student a voucher to spend at the non-government, voluntarily funded community school of their choice.

To support freeing children from the dangers of government indoctrination and control, visit and join the Alliance for the Separation of School and State -- http://www.schoolandstate.org/home.htm. As authoritarians are so fond of saying, "Do it for the children!"

-Starchild, candidate for School Board, San Francisco

Re: A letter to my students

#172

Post by gwern »

kenjackson wrote: post #146
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are lying with statistics, albeit possibly unknowingly. That article comes right out and says that IQ does not have an effect on life outcomes, if life outcomes are normed for educational attainment . It then goes on to say that IQ does not predict career success, if career success is measured by money and normed for career type . That's like saying air temperature has no effect on snow cover, if snow cover is co…

And of course, no argument is complete with an anecdotal Feynman story. Two grad students at CalTech were having a discussion about what Feynman's IQ must be. They bandied 180... maybe even to 200. When coincidentally Feynman walks right past them. One of the students pipes up and meekly asks Feynman, "Professor Feynman, what is your IQ?" Feynman turns around and responds, "120". The grad students have a look of disb…

I have previously addressed the issue of Feynman's IQ: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1251164

Re: A letter to my students

#173

Post by gwern »

kenjackson wrote: post #132
gwern wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why those ethnicities then go on to have perfect 4.0 GPAs and rack up countless patents & inventions and start tons of successful new companies, thus proving those standardized tests wrong in the most effective way possible.

Accept of course those standardized tests are the gatekeepers to the best schools, best programs, best networks, and likely even confidence and motivation. A better way to show that standardized tests mean nothing is to have every student take them, but then store them away for the next 40 years. No one knows the results. And then in 40 years correlate the results of these tests with "life success". We've already see…

Any of which should only reduce the magnitude of the ethnicities' outperformance. Not eliminate it entirely. You don't need to go to Harvard to start Apple or Dell or Google. (To give an analogy, Asians are heavily discriminated against in higher ed; but when I look around, it seems to me that unlike blacks, they outperform.)

Re: A letter to my students

#174

Post by leot »

mudil wrote: post #156

Manhattan Project cost nearly US$2 billion ($22 billion in present day value).( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project ) It employed more than 130,000 people. Many labs and plants built in 1940s for the project are still in use today. We have just spend $760 billion on so-called stimulus. The money is gone, and nothing to show for it. That's how bloated gov't works nowadays, in CA, federal, and all other stat…

The reasoning seems to go:

1) The stimulus was supposed to mitigate the effects of the recession, and

2) The recession was still very bad, therefore

=======================

3) The stimulus had no positive effect/was not worth the cost.

Now, who wants to play the game "find the fallacy"?

Re: A letter to my students

#175

Post by speleding »

tmsh wrote: post #47
patio11 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using state figures and the CPI calculator: 1965-1966: $4B nominal ($28B, constant 2010 dollars) 1982-1983: $25.3B nominal ($57.2B) 2008-2009: $144B ($145) 2009-2010: $119.2B ($119.2B) Even if you adjust for California's prodigious immigration-fueled population growth, spending per person in constant dollars has more than doubled. You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less. I feel the urge to get ou…

Actually, I think you have to go back further. My grandfather, a poor kid from west LA, went to UCLA and then UC Berkeley as an engineering student back in the late 1930s / early 1940s. He learned Latin in high school (think inner city kid learning Latin). Grew up with all the airfields in LA and mechanical engineering seemed like the thing, I guess. So despite being interned (he was a Japanese American) he went on t…

What's also missing from the picture is the comparative advantage that the US had in the fifties compared to the rest of the world (with Europe in shambles after WW II). Today it's a lot harder/more expensive to have the best educational system now that the others are doing a decent job again.

Re: A letter to my students

#176

Post by yardie »

achompas wrote: post #34
abcxyz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly. But technology can reduce the amount of labor used. For example, better OCR means typists can do something more valuable. There hasn't been much experimentation in teaching such as using video instructions and that is in part because of a lack of competition. Normally we would expect the marginal productivity of labor to increase with technology level.

Teaching is a weird beast. Computational techniques have improved, but we haven't improved educational techniques much beyond "smaller class sizes" and "online lectures." We can talk freely about the academic labor market, but it's hard to pin down what that labor market produces.

Smaller class sizes weren't an anomaly, larger class sizes were. Going through school the sizes increased from 18, then 20, then 30 when I graduated. My brother (2 years behind me) was at 35 and in demand classes (Math, English, and ESOL) were pushing 40.

It doesn't matter how much technology you through at the problem, teaching 40 kids is unsustainable. Teachers burn out, students lose focus, and it only takes 1 bad student to ruin class cohesion.

Re: A letter to my students

#177

Post by hammmatt »

parfe wrote: post #134
hammmatt wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on many of your points. I would have to say I agree with you that the world will keep on improving, but to say that there aren't at least a FEW flaws with California's financial system and educational is not very conducive with the evidence. I can't find a reasonable human being that can agree with the pension system for state employees (I am actually unsure if it applies to teachers), which has to b…

>I can't find a reasonable human being that can agree with the pension system for state employees (I am actually unsure if it applies to teachers), which has to be the biggest money whole I could ever conceive. The issue with pensions is that everyone used to do it. Private and public sector both. It's just easier for the private sector to declare bankruptcy and throw away their obligations. Pensions themselves are a…

To address you comments:

PENSIONS

I didn't mean to criticize all pensions. Just the State of California's where you can retire and make 90% of your PEAK income for rest of your life. It is simply an unsustainable amount given how much the public sector workers make. There was a case a few weeks ago of a police chief from a small town in California who was going to earn ~$900,000 a year in retirement. It is purely ridiculous.

HOMELIFE

I don't think that has degenerated that much. I do think that we see the population of people who are dysfunctional emotionally, socially, and intellectually is growing at a faster rate than those who socially responsible.

I do not have numbers to quote here, but is it unreasonable to assume that main factors that determine children per generation, period (in years) of a generation, and survivability of said generation.

One could argue that survivability is a huge factor when it comes to inner city youth. Gang violence, malnutrition, high infant mortality rate, ext. However, in terms of the total population it is very small.

However, we have a real division in class since the dawn of birth control in our country. One where people wait to have children and build a career and what-not. And another where people do not. There has also been a steady rise in teenage pregnancy. This creates a separation in the rate of a generation.

We can assume that the number of children born per family are close to equal. But the truth is that families that are poorer typically reproduce more. Or maybe, the families that reproduce more are more poor. Or it could be that the people who have more money, have less children.

This all doesn't mean much until you throw in a little human psychology. Given that most family dysfunctions are generational (alcoholism, sexual abuse, ext) and that these dysfunctions are commonly tied children who have poor education scores in poor families. You quickly begin see an inflation of emotionally damaged people, who just quite frankly don't have emotional resources to invest themselves in an education. Every once in a while, you get some that power through, but the human condition only permits so many.

However, why the kids in functional families systems are screwing up in school? I have no idea. If I had to guess, I'd say that the way our brains learn have been changing rapidly since the invention of the internet.

Re: A letter to my students

#178

Post by maxawaytoolong »

hammmatt wrote: post #177
parfe wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can't find a reasonable human being that can agree with the pension system for state employees (I am actually unsure if it applies to teachers), which has to be the biggest money whole I could ever conceive. The issue with pensions is that everyone used to do it. Private and public sector both. It's just easier for the private sector to declare bankruptcy and throw away their obligations. Pensions themselves are a…

To address you comments: PENSIONS I didn't mean to criticize all pensions. Just the State of California's where you can retire and make 90% of your PEAK income for rest of your life. It is simply an unsustainable amount given how much the public sector workers make. There was a case a few weeks ago of a police chief from a small town in California who was going to earn ~$900,000 a year in retirement. It is purely rid…

Or it could be that the people who have more money, have less children.

I don't have real numbers, but it also seems like the very rich also have quite a few children. Super rich financial people in NYC have loads of kids, almost like a hobby. I've met super rich guys here who have 8 kids with 3 different wives. It seems to have a lot to do with whether or not your kids are going to effect you negatively economically. Super rich? Who cares... Super poor? who cares. Middle class or even sort of rich? Kids are going to make your life a financial headache.

Re: A letter to my students

#179

Post by hammmatt »

maxawaytoolong wrote: post #178
hammmatt wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To address you comments: PENSIONS I didn't mean to criticize all pensions. Just the State of California's where you can retire and make 90% of your PEAK income for rest of your life. It is simply an unsustainable amount given how much the public sector workers make. There was a case a few weeks ago of a police chief from a small town in California who was going to earn ~$900,000 a year in retirement. It is purely rid…

Or it could be that the people who have more money, have less children. I don't have real numbers, but it also seems like the very rich also have quite a few children. Super rich financial people in NYC have loads of kids, almost like a hobby. I've met super rich guys here who have 8 kids with 3 different wives. It seems to have a lot to do with whether or not your kids are going to effect you negatively economically…

I found some numbers to support and condemn my earlier statements.

http://www.russellsage.org/chartbook/householdform/figure4.5...

Shows that poorer households on average have more children. However, it also shows that that population is shrinking in unison. Relatively.

However, addition graphs on the website show how many dysfunctional households there are in poor communities. Which have been growing, so I stand by the original argument.

Re: A letter to my students

#180

Post by ataggart »

eli wrote: post #121
ataggart wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pension and health care outlays are not exogenous givens. The economy is not some external entity which government passively receives prices. Likewise the recession is not some external thing that can be waited-out like a hurricane. Our actions, and particularly those of that blunt club called government, entirely affects what emerges from the market making up the economy.

That's easy to say, but what specifically do you suggest they do about it? Given where we are right now (and setting aside CA's ridiculous laws regarding how they can reallocate their budget), what would you change to free up hundreds of billions of dollars without raising taxes? Take over healthcare and beat back prices? Hey, I'm all for it, but I think that's gonna cost more in the short term.

>Take over healthcare and beat back prices?

I guess you didn't really grok my point about prices not being exogenous entities.

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