Youth & Education
Less college? First, define your terms
Mon, 08/30/2010 - 10:36 — Dave CulverA more educated workforce is a must, but schooling can take various forms.
Jennifer Godinez and Matt Kane, Minneapolis Star Tribune | MN
In "Maybe fewer people should go to college'' (Aug. 15), Mitch Pearlstein laid out some key challenges in higher education, especially the problems with soaring college costs and debt, and the inordinate time many students are taking to acquire a four-year degree nowadays.
And it was courageous of Pearlstein to suggest that some current university students from affluent families might not really be motivated or qualified for the demands of traditional four-year colleges.
Unfortunately, the headline may have implied to many readers that fewer students overall should obtain some form of post-secondary education. That would be about as wrong a signal as one can send on this subject. And it's especially discouraging to the aspirations of our students of color, who need to dramatically improve their higher-education completion rates.
Related:
Maybe fewer people should go to college, Mitch Pearlstein, Minneapolis Star Tribune | MN
Maybe they'd be happier learning a trade. ... Or maybe nothing will change.
Schooling Scholars on Classroom Success
Mon, 08/23/2010 - 10:32 — Dave CulverTeachers are workers who, like the rest of us, need and deserve better working conditions and better pay. What’s good for teachers is good for the rest of us.
Moshe Adler, TruthDig
Beverly Wilson leads her kindergarten class through a song at Lakewood Elementary School in St. Albans, W. Va., in September 2007 AP / Jeff Gentner
These days everyone seems to think teachers need improving—even people who uncover evidence to the contrary. A group of economists from Berkeley, Harvard and Northwestern recently made headlines when they published a study that was ostensibly about the relationship between teacher quality and student success as adults. The economists made three observations. The first is that when children are assigned to kindergarten classes randomly, test scores in some classes are higher than in others. The authors argue that these differences must be due to differences in teacher performance (as well as peer effects). The second observation is that children who attend high-score kindergarten classes earn more money in their adult life. Based on these two observations, the economists conclude that we should invest in raising the quality of teachers, and The New York Times goes a step further and argues that teachersshould be paid according to their performance.
Playing With Teen Sex Statistics: A Lesson in Lies
Fri, 08/20/2010 - 14:44 — Dave Culver
If most high school kids aren’t having sex yet, that means that it’s that much more important to get them good sex education, so when they start having sex---and statistics overwhelmingly show that they will---they know how to make healthy choices.
Amanda Marcotte, RHRealityCheck.org
There are many goofy aspects to this Life Site News story arguing that because a slim majority of teenagers don’t have sex, we don’t need to teach them about contraceptive methods. Perhaps the most puzzling is why they came out with the story on July 14th, since the report came out a month and a half ago. (In classic Life Site fashion, they don’t actually link the report, for fear that a stray reader may actually read it an clue into the fact that their spin is dishonest.) Did it take the American Life League (ALL) this long to craft a response? If so, you’d expect them to come up with something less transparently silly than this:
Wear wristwatch? Use e-mail? Not for Class of '14
Fri, 08/20/2010 - 09:07 — Dave CulverRon Nief, a former public affairs director at Beloit College (WI), and English professor Tom McBride have assembled the Mindset List for 13 years. They say it's given them an unusual perspective on cultural shifts.
Dinesh Ramde, Associated Press
For students entering college this fall, e-mail is too slow, phones have never had cords and the computers they played with as kids are now in museums.
The Class of 2014 thinks of Clint Eastwood more as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry urging punks to "go ahead, make my day." Few incoming freshmen know how to write in cursive or have ever worn a wristwatch.
UN focus on youth
Wed, 08/18/2010 - 07:57 — Dave Culver"87 percent of people 15 to 24 live in developing countries," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the body's General Assembly. "The global economic crisis has had a disproportionate impact on young people. The have lost jobs, struggled to find even low wage employment and see access to education curtailed."
Dan Margolis, People's World
On August 12, the UN launched the International Year of the Youth, aimed at alleviating the grinding poverty, record joblessness and problems affecting millions of young people across the globe while various affiliated agencies noted that, in many ways, the situation for young people worldwide has never been so bad.
August 12 is International Youth Day, and this is the 25th since it was first declared in 1985. The year's theme is "Dialogue and Mutual Understanding."
"87 percent of people 15 to 24 live in developing countries," UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the body's General Assembly. "The global economic crisis has had a disproportionate impact on young people. The have lost jobs, struggled to find even low wage employment and see access to education curtailed."
