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Get politically uninvolved!
The great P.J. O'Rourke:
All politics stink. Even democracy stinks. Imagine if our clothes were selected by the majority of shoppers, which would be teenage girls. I'd be standing here with my bellybutton exposed. Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I've got three kids and three dogs in my family. We'd be eating Froot Loops and rotten meat.
But let me make a distinction between politics and politicians. Some people are under the misapprehension that all politicians stink. Impeach George W. Bush, and everything will be fine. Nab Ted Kennedy on a DUI, and the nation's problems will be solved.
But the problem isn't politicians -- it's politics. Politics won't allow for the truth. And we can't blame the politicians for that. Imagine what even a little truth would sound like on today's campaign trail:
"No, I can't fix public education. The problem isn't the teachers unions or a lack of funding for salaries, vouchers or more computer equipment The problem is your kids!"
Hat tip to Newmark's Door.
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on May 6, 2008 at 07:10 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
Ah, but kinds aren't problems. They are opportunities!
Posted by: Andrew at May 6, 2008 7:33:44 AM
Always a pleasure to read P.J. O'Roarke... truth and humor. Hey we
economists would love to see vouchers and more charter schools but the
most important input - fewer stable families - are the biggest problem.
That's the input we, as free citizens, can control and we tend to foul
it up.
Posted by: Martin Kennedy at May 6, 2008 7:59:58 AM
Hard not to take issue with this:
"No, I can't fix public education. The problem isn't the teachers unions or a lack of funding for salaries, vouchers or more computer equipment. The problem is your kids!"
The problem is all of the above. Progress can be made focusing on the teachers, kids, and parents. Politicians need to halt the funding until structural changes are in place.
Posted by: toscani at May 6, 2008 8:21:28 AM
Politicians also tend to stink, selection biases and all.
Posted by: josh at May 6, 2008 8:55:07 AM
I found his advices a bit weird. Besides the political one, there's 4 times "greed is good" based on the "pizzas can get bigger" argument.
That's all fine, but then his one example of getting rich is a corporate lawyer, which is probably the one job most concerned with dividing a given pizza.
The next time two corporations get in a dispute, they should try his arguments: "forget about fairness" "Don't be jealous" "Stop bothering me, get rich on your own" "Your just a bully"
Posted by: Great Zamfir at May 6, 2008 9:05:23 AM
One of the convincing arguments agaist organised religion is that P.J. O'Rourke is right much more often than the average preacher.
But this time he is wrong about one thing. Fairness is good; it is a superior strategy for getting rich.
And he is confused about one thing. If you just want to get rich, getting into US politics (and the politics of much of the third world) is a not unreasonable strategy for the purpose. The trouble is that getting rich through politics IS about dividing the pizza and leaving some poor slob to eat the box.
Posted by: Diversity at May 6, 2008 9:48:13 AM
"Impeach George W. Bush, and everything will be fine. Nab Ted Kennedy on a DUI, and the nation's problems will be solved."
A Quantum solution would be to get the impeachment and the DUI at exactly the same time, so we can smooth out both sides of the landing zone.
Posted by: Matt at May 6, 2008 10:04:55 AM
Your comment does not make sense. Politics is an abstract, you can not touch
it or grab it. People you can touch and grab and shake them too! As far as your idea
your argument about the problems with education, one only has to look at
available research to know that the quality of teachers has the most impact
on how our children do at school. When you have the highest qualified
teachers assigned to the richest school districts how can progress be made.
Only when PEOPLE learn to allocate all resources based on need and not their
beliefs and the beliefs of others will it change. This can ony be blamed on
the people themselves and not politics.
Bill
Posted by: bill at May 6, 2008 10:30:18 AM
Bill,
Surely you realize that allocating resources according to need is a recipe for disaster? If not, you may want to read Atlas Shrugged. If no one has an incentive to be productive, no one will be, and everyone will be worse off.
Posted by: Cliff at May 6, 2008 10:35:54 AM
Cliff,
You apparently assume that all people who are poor have no incentive to be productive.
This is part of what I am taling about, people who make decisions on their own beliefs
rather then reality and research. I see the lack of prioritization skills and what I like
to call just plain Pizz poor planning by the people in positions of power. If we allocated
teachers based on need rather than letting them choose the schools that they wish to
teach at, we would see a big difference. What if corporations followed the same logic,
allowing their highest quality people to work where ever they wanted and then fill the gaps
with mostly low quality, unskilled workers? Do you think that would be successful. How
about resources, if they allocated the company's best resources to only certain departments
would the the company see overall success or would their be higher success in those areas
that had the attention, and a low level of success or no success at all in the others.
The problems that you speak of can exist in a system that is not properly managed. For
this lack of management you can thank the people who are put into positions of power within
your government, and those people who are supervising and managing the programs that allocate
resources. Fraud, wast and abuse is tollerated, and poor management and lack of postive
outcomes are rewarded. It all boils down to people. You want to blame the wrong people
for your irrational concerns.
Posted by: bill at May 6, 2008 11:00:48 AM
Get politically uninvolved? And that improves the situation? If you can see the problems you are the very people who SHOULD be politically involved. Yes politicians are not the problem, it is the people who vote for them who are. You get what you deserve.
Posted by: reason at May 6, 2008 11:24:24 AM
"If we allocated
teachers based on need rather than letting them choose the schools that they wish to
teach at, we would see a big difference."
Yes, we would see a big difference as teachers fled the profession in droves.
Posted by: Thelonious_Nick at May 6, 2008 11:50:26 AM
O'Rourke is backed up by the chapter on education in Freakonomics. Steve Sailer has a new column on the nonsense involved in public discourse on education. As Arnold Kling said, we have a preference for ignorance in that area.
Posted by: TGGP at May 6, 2008 12:00:12 PM
Thelonious,
If teacher qualifications were not mandated by the state, and controlled by the Union, education could be a lot better. For example, a person could have a phD in Matematics yet be unqualified to teach high school if he so desired until he was able to earn at least a BA in Education. Teaching is the only discipline that has this requirement. I would like to see the teachers flee in droves, for these are the ones that are not there because they want to help all children learn. How many jobs can you find that allow you to have 100 days paid vacation and have your raises voted on each year. Not to mention the 14 states that have their own teacher retirement funds, the rest of the teachers actually pay social security taxes. Imagine that!
Posted by: bill at May 6, 2008 12:17:39 PM
As a data point,
I am a teacher. I would flee in droves. ;)
Posted by: josh at May 6, 2008 12:37:33 PM
"Only when PEOPLE learn to allocate all resources based on need and not their
beliefs and the beliefs of others will it change."
Then why did communism fail miserably?
Posted by: Jay at May 6, 2008 12:38:54 PM
Assuming a state-run system as a given, a simple solution to the "teachers can chose where they want to teach" thing would be differential payment (e.g., teaching in the inner city earns you twice as much as teaching in the nice suburb). No coercion involved.
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at May 6, 2008 1:03:05 PM
"Imagine deciding the dinner menu by family secret ballot. I've got three kids and three dogs in my family. We'd be eating Froot Loops and rotten meat."
Huh, vivid imagery here, but seeing as we deny the vote to minors and non-humans, this statement isn't particularly relevant to democracy. Unless of course, he's constructing an analogy where some of his fellow citizens are dogs or children.
And lemmus, it sounds like you're proposing linking teacher wages to their marginal product. That's a revolutionary idea!
Posted by: Phil at May 6, 2008 1:23:41 PM
For Josh: Teaching is not for everybody i.e. The law states a free and appropriate education for ALL, not just those I want to teach!
For Jay: This is not communism, this is how democracy is suposed to work. If not then show me in the declaration of independence or in the constitution where it is stated as you imnply.
Bill
for TGGP: I visited Steve Sailor's page that you provided a link to. His ideas go back to the very begining of the history of organized public education back in the 19th century when a system of testing was conducted and children were placed into program "A" Liberal Education, or Program "B" Vocational Education based on testing results. We have come a long way since then and I don't think that there is any single acceptable instument that Pshchologists can agree on to measure intelligence. I believe that by the time students reach middle school they should be offered vocational tracks of education to full the blue collar needs of our society, i.e. Air Conditioning and refridgeration; welding; small engine repair; auto mechanics; fire fighting and public security jobs, public works jobs, transportation jobs etc., and another track that would be geared toward careers that require college degrees to be qualified i.e mechanical engineering, bioengineering; higher level medical careers (nurses, doctors, psychologists etc.). I notice this is happening in more and more High Schools, but my feeling is that middle school is the time to make these decisions so that the student will be more successful. More emphasis needs to be place on Elementary educaiton grades pre-K through grade 5 to give all children the opportunity to show their potentials. The blank slate theory of learning is no longer accepted, but neither are intelligence tests given at a very early age. Cultural literacy must be a strong part of early education in order for children to have equal starting knowledge. If cultural literacy is an integral part of early education we might see a higher level of success in all children. Each school system has built in program for children that are above or below proficiency levels i.e. magnet schools, gifted programs, honors classes etc..
Another issue and problem with education today, IMO is that many teachers do not follow the process that they were taught while earning their teaching degrees. First of all what should a child know by the end of 1st grade; 3rd grade; 5th grade etc. The current method of determining this criteria is that the criterion objectives are created at the state and then local county level, and a list of criterion objectives (bits of knowledge) are provided for each grade level. From this list each teacher is suposed to develop their scope and sequence, i.e. which bits of knowlege requied by the state do I teach when. Then from their scope and sequence they develop individual lesson plans to meet all of those objectives. If this is done correctly, the child will not learn the test, the child will learn the knowledge that he or she will be tested on, because the testing should come directly from the criterion objectives that are given to teachers by the state. Now how many teachers follow this to the letter? You tell me! I bet very few. This is where the process breaks down and we end up with children that are not learning what they need to learn to succeed in life.
bill
Posted by: bill at May 6, 2008 1:37:23 PM
He's got a point, but hasn't PJO'R been saying the same thing for the last 20 years?
Posted by: Colin Danby at May 6, 2008 2:38:36 PM
"What if corporations followed the same logic,allowing their highest quality people to work where ever they wanted and then fill the gaps with mostly low quality, unskilled workers? Do you think that would be successful. How about resources, if they allocated the company's best resources to only certain departments would the the company see overall success or would their be higher success in those areas that had the attention, and a low level of success or no success at all in the others."
I am of the opinion that the best corporations run in exactly this fashion.
One of the keys to a great company is getting everyone's incentive structure well aligned into their highest value activity. Typically through a well-designed compensation structure.
As an investor I want employees of my firms to be working in exactly the areas they want. And I want them to be extremely well compensated for work that add to the bottom line. If I cannot figure out a way to get people to enjoy their jobs and be motivated to work hard to make money for me and for themselves, then you need to radically re-think how the firm is structured.
The key is allocating resources and time to those activites which are going to add most to the operating profitability of the company, and to create an incentive structure that makes people extremely happy and motivated to work in those activities.
Posted by: lannychiu at May 6, 2008 2:43:07 PM
Lannychiu,
I agree with you, people should work in jobs that they want to work at. Tons of research supports the intrinsic incentives of work rather than the extrinsic qualities i.e. more pay. Of course teachers don't like these studies and want you to believe that money is the only motivator. I think that you are missing the point of my postings. Are you really lowering the standards in the positions that are left unfilled i.e. are you downgrading the ademic requirements, for example if you have a vancancy that requires a BS degree are you accepting a person with a HS diploma. I would think not because there is not the kind of shortages in the corporate world that public education has to deal with. A teacher that can not get a job at the school that she/he wants will just as soon change school districts or move to another state leaving the vacancy becasue no other academic discipline has the kinds of requirement that teachers have in order to teach in our public education system.
Posted by: bill at May 6, 2008 4:22:18 PM
LemmusLemmus has the best solution to the problem yet when in his post "Assuming a state-run system as a given, a simple solution to the "teachers can chose where they want to teach" thing would be differential payment (e.g., teaching in the inner city earns you twice as much as teaching in the nice suburb). No coercion involved"
I also believe teachers should be rewarded based on merit, as well as the difficulty level of their assignments. A teacher that is highly qualified could be rewarded with higher pay for working with at-risk kids who may live in the poorest areas of the community. This policy would make sense and would give teachers a way to increase their pay without having to wait for a vote.
Bill
Posted by: bill at May 6, 2008 4:33:29 PM
Well I would say a few things. First off, as an investor, I care not at all what level of education my employees achieve, as long as they can get the job done well. I don't really know what you mean by standards. The only standard I care about is doing the job well and generating wages for the employee and profits for the company.
Personally I went to MIT for undergrad and Columbia for grad school, but if we were in the gardening business I would be woefully underprepared and many high-school drop-outs would be far superior to me and should demand and earn a much higher wage.
As for shortages, the job of every corporation is to set wages for each position such that you can fill the existing need of the company and each employee generates at least as much profitability as they cost. This is clearly easier for some positions (for example sales with a readily definable output) than it is for others (for example the CEO who falls into the bucket of corporate overhead).
If you do this correctly you do not get shortages.
If you cannot fill a position at a wage that is profitable for the company, then you have to think about whether that position should exist or if it happens too frequently if the company should exist.
Posted by: lannychiu at May 6, 2008 4:47:53 PM
Huh, vivid imagery here, but seeing as we deny the vote to minors and non-humans, this statement isn't particularly relevant to democracy. Unless of course, he's constructing an analogy where some of his fellow citizens are dogs or children.
In a Nanny State, all citizens are children. The logic of social democracy is that in a modern world people are "too stupid" to take care of themselves and need state experts to do it for them... yet we expect the people deemed "too stupid" to essentially exercise ultimate authority on the experts.
If people are smart enough to centrally plan the lives of everyone through democracy, then chances are they are smart enough to run their own lives without government help. If people are too stupid to run their own lives, then how do we expect them to make national policies that control everyone and everything?
Posted by: Rex Rhino at May 6, 2008 5:11:05 PM
Rex Rhino
Not sure what your trying to say in your post. I don't think that the job of government is to "centraly plan the lives of everyone through democracy" or that "people are too stupid to take care of themselves" Certainly there are people in America that fall into that category, but since we are a developed nation we take care of those people rather than what you might find in developing countries like in the news today "the Philippines" being numberr one of 124 developing nations in number of children dying from easlily preventable diseases. In the country that you describe this would be common in America as well.
Basic organization skills teach us that we must take care of basic needs first, and government is the way that we do that in developed nations like America. To think that each person could take care of their own needs for food, safety, shelter, and security would bring us back to the days of the wild west! Is this what you would propose?
Please give us a little more detail and bring your comments down to a level of reality, rather than abstract thought.
Thanks,
Bill
Posted by: Bill at May 6, 2008 5:28:27 PM
Rex Rhino,
you may be forgetting that in democracies, people opt for governments that do quite a bit of planning/regulating for them. I would like to see less of it, but people seem to like it.
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at May 6, 2008 6:00:22 PM
Lemmus,
"Assuming a state-run system as a given, a simple solution to the "teachers can chose where they want to teach" thing would be differential payment (e.g., teaching in the inner city earns you twice as much as teaching in the nice suburb). No coercion involved."
And why, as a suburban parent who cares more about his kids than those of the schmucks stuck in the inner-city districts, would I want to do that? Looks like an almost unalloyed loss from my POV.
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at May 6, 2008 6:14:02 PM
Bernard,
it is an unalloyed loss for you, I think (unless undereducation would lead to riots affecting your neighbourhood or some such thing). I don't have any children, but if I did, boy, my view would be f*** fairness, and the best for my children!
I was just trying to point out how Bill's goal could be achieved.
Posted by: LemmusLemmus at May 6, 2008 6:26:51 PM
what should a child know by the end of 1st grade; 3rd grade; 5th grade etc.
Indeed what should a child know by the end of 1st grade; 3rd grade; 5th grade etc.
I nominate me, and I think that we should drill children on the basic, simple principles of physics, chemistry, economics, probability, accounting, law, engine repair, reading, writing and arithmetic. Taught in such a basic way that anyone can learn; just the basics but drilled deep. The gifted few could learn the heavy math that goes with chemistry and physics (levelers, Thermodynamics=1. there is no free lunch, 2=you cannot even break even) and things like tax accounting, math beyond basic algebra (one rule you do the same thing to both sides of the equation) and the math we get with chemistry and physics, but we can all benefit from the simple basic principles.
But no one will let me do this because people mostly want to use schools to show that their children are better than others, and you gotta make it rigerous to do that.
Posted by: Floccina at May 6, 2008 6:32:16 PM
"Basic organization skills teach us that we must take care of basic needs first, and government is the way that we do that in developed nations like America. To think that each person could take care of their own needs for food, safety, shelter, and security would bring us back to the days of the wild west! Is this what you would propose?"
Taking care of those basic needs for all people is communism not what we have today. Taking care of them for nobody is anarchy (anarcho-capitalism). What we have is in-between the two.
Metaphors only get us so far, but your description of how schools should be run sounds a lot more like socialism than libertarianism.
Most people here probably think we should depend on the market more not less: move more toward the libertarian solution than the socialist one.
Posted by: liberty at May 6, 2008 7:04:02 PM
Floccina: YOu have my vote. Your plan makes sense and I truly believe that more kids would be employed after highschool if such a drastic change were made in circula. So many children graduate and transition into being unemployed because they have no skills or grasp of basic knowledge in the areas that you speak of. There is a shortage of skilled labor and the pay is good for these kinds of jobs. We are not doing a good job of preparing our children to take care of themselves after they graduate and become adults. This is a bigger problem for poor children because so often they lack the support from home to continue an education, and they end up working for minimum wage, becoming criminals, or living off their families low incomes to survive.
Liberty: "but your description of how schools should be run sounds a lot more like socialism than libertarianism."
What I provided above is what is taught to teachers as the way to develop their curicula. The problem I have noticed after working in the system for a short time at three different schoos, is that this process is not always stressed and teachers are basically left on their own to develop their own lesson plans. At two schools I worked at, it took me two days just to find where the state curicula guides were kept. Many teachers develop their lesson plans and follow the text they are given, and pay little attention to whether the acutal state guidelines (bits of knowledge required) have been taught by the end of the year. So an "A" student may well have earned an "A" based on what he or she was given the opportunity to learn, but if the specific curricula mandated by the state were not followed closley they may not perform as well on the standardized tests. This is why I support NCLB. If the process is used in the manner it was designed, it will work.
This same process is used in our military to effectively train men and women to perform their jobs. A standardized curricula and up to date technical data are combined in a logical progression plan, for each specialty, plus a general curricula that teaches them basic information about each branch of service.
If we used this same approach to public education, we might see excellent results. If you want to this socialism or put some "label" on it that stirs your negative emotions, then do that. What I want is more kids who learn what they need to learn to be successful in life. In America we move around more than other countries. Shouldn't what what we teach (core subjects) to a 3rd grade student in IOWA be the same as what we teach to a similar student in California, or Florida?
Imagine two US Air Force aircraft mechanics trained to repair complex systems on a modern War plane meeting up in Germany and assigned to work together on one jet. One was trained in California, the other in Florida. But when they meet, they find that they did not learn the same skills and neither one could do the job. This situaton would never happen in the USAF because each technician is taught from the same curricula, uses the same Tech data, and taught in the same sequence no matter where they assigned. The curricula is developed from the bottom up and then standardized and centrally managed to insure standardization and uniformity.
If this process was used in K-5 (elementary schools) for the core subjects I believe that public education would work quite well. What do you think?
Posted by: bill at May 7, 2008 10:50:47 AM
Lemmus,
"I was just trying to point out how Bill's goal could be achieved."
Fair enough. I suppose my response would be that the loss would be concentrated in groups (i.e. suburban parents) that tend to have more of an impact on policy than average, via a number of different mechanisms. This implies, to me, that it isn't really achievable in the world-as-it-is.
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at May 7, 2008 11:46:36 AM
Interesting. So, if democracy is not a good way to decide how each of us dresses and eats, what things are best decided by democratic government. I can't think of anything.
Posted by: Paul R. Dorasil at May 7, 2008 2:24:58 PM
"If this process was used in K-5 (elementary schools) for the core subjects I believe that public education would work quite well. What do you think?"
It sounds very authoritarian to me. I actually went to a hippie elementary school where we drew pictures, made sculpture, danced, learned very different subjects depending on the teacher (one specialized in history, one in English, etc), and had mixed grades in each class (2-3-4 was one class, 4-5 were a couple, it depended on your teacher). We called our teacher by the first name and loved them. I still have very fond memories.
We also learned well; I had an eighth grade math level by grade 5, according to the standardized test (wonder what happened to that! I suck at math now!)
So, no, I don't agree with you, sorry.
Posted by: liberty at May 7, 2008 3:01:26 PM
Liberty said: It sounds very authoritarian to me. I actually went to a hippie elementary school where we drew pictures, made sculpture, danced, learned very different subjects depending on the teacher (one specialized in history, one in English, etc), and had mixed grades in each class (2-3-4 was one class, 4-5 were a couple, it depended on your teacher). We called our teacher by the first name and loved them. I still have very fond memories.
We also learned well; I had an eighth grade math level by grade 5, according to the standardized test (wonder what happened to that! I suck at math now!)
So, no, I don't agree with you, sorry.
Not sure what time frame you went to school, how could you have had an 8th grad math level in the 5th grade and "suck" at math now? Something does not seem right. My grandson was creative and very artistic starting at age 3 and still is at 18, was asked to paint a wall murrell for his graduating class on a wall of the school. This had nothing to do with his teachers, it had to do with his inate creativeness and superior memory skills when he was a child (he could look at a cartoon, and then recreate that cartoon on paper afterwards at 4 years old, this is a function of memory).
So you relate standardization with authoritarism? what do you think is the answer to our education problems then, on a grand scale i.e. when compared with other developed countries we are way low in math, and science. In Holland, kids learn Dutch, German, and english, and when they reach high school they general take an elective of "French"...Can you blame all our problems on minorities when Afro-Americans for example only make up 12 percent of the population of the United States? What are you thoughts
Posted by: bill at May 7, 2008 4:05:40 PM
I certainly don't blame anything on minorities. My school was also well stocked with minority kids. I "suck" at math now in the sense that I find higher calculus less intuitive than algebra and things like that. Maybe I just compared with other programmers and economists. Whatever, that was a side note.
Anyway, I am no artist either! The art was just part of the program. Several kids in the class had very high scores on the standardized tests, and our averages were generally very high. A good part of this was, of course, parental involvement.
I don't like the very standardized route that you propose because I think it misses the problem. You might improve things that way, somewhat, but I think the core issues are more about giving kids a good learning environment - making them feel involved. That was really what set my school apart.
We had some good advantages-- while many parents were not involved at all, enough were that it helped all the kids. We had teachers that were very involved. We did not have small class sizes (40+), but we had multiple teachers in each, because we had TAs when needed, sometimes parents or other volunteers, and because we had mixed classes so that the older kids helped the younger kids.
But I think the real strength was that the kids felt really involved in the learning; and the teachers knew the kids - they cared and put out the special effort when it was required.
All the standardization in the world won't get you that.
Posted by: liberty at May 7, 2008 4:41:58 PM
liberty....
Thanks for describing the class environment. It sounds wonderful. I have always been an advocate for having more than one teacher in a classroom. Where does the one teacher to a class concept come from? It would make sense to have two teachers to help manage students especially when schools are over crowded with some teachers having to manage 25 or more students on their own. Inclusion of special education kids makes it much worse, and the inclusion teacher concept is not working like it should. Main streaming of special students has some positive aspects for the child, but it is at the expense of the rest of the students and adds more stress to a teacher that is already stress just dealing with class management for the regular students.
I like the work center concept and the hands on approach in the class room, and your school sounds like some I have read about in teacher magazine and other mags in the past. I notice in our state that the number of teachers is high, however there are as many in supervisory positions as there are in the classroom which I think is wrong. Teachers need only minimum managment and they should be in the classroom teaching students, not behind a desk and taking 2 hours lunch breaks, while the real teachers barely get a break.
I have not done any research to see how schools are set up in other countries that have more success than the USA, but through my travels I have noticed that children in Europe, Australia, and even in some countries of Asia seem to be well educated.
Thanks for your comments.
Bill
Posted by: Bill at May 8, 2008 11:36:05 AM
