Category: Education

Prison or Education?

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Education, PoliticalLeave a comment

wire fence“Public safety is the priority, and we’ll take care of it,” the governor of California said. “The money is there.”

The governor of California proposes spending $315 million on a prison fix, responding to a federal court order to significantly reduce California’s prison population by sending thousands of inmates to private prisons and vacant county jail cells, hoping to avoid what he said would be a mass release of dangerous felons.

The cost of this program could reach $700 million over two years, with much of the money likely to come from a $1.1 billion reserve fund in the state budget.

The reserve fund must be what the governor means when he says “the money is there.”

I believe that a society’s values are exposed by what that society spends its resources on. After literally raiding public education programs of all levels to benefit the reserve fund, among other things, we are now about to spend this money we took away from our children – on prisoners.

Is that where the values of the people of California really are? Or is this an aberration of our government, committing despicable acts in the name of the people?

Have our politicians not listened to our educators when they told them that every dollar spent on education comes back as seven dollars in savings from social programs, like prisons, later?

When will our government realize that education is the long-term solution to a horrific problem, and that locking people up is a Band-Aid on a bullet hole – a colossal waste of money?

Government by the people? I think not.

Governor Brown, you don’t have my vote on this.

Lack of Engineers in the U.S.

On By Norbert HauptIn EducationLeave a comment

According to James Dyson in Time Magazine of August 19, 2013:

The U.S. creates about 90,000 engineers a year. China is churning out 3.6 million. In Singapore, 40% of all graduates are engineers.

This does not bode well for a future leadership position of the United States. We need to teach our children well. My statement does not mean that there is anything wrong with degrees in the humanities and arts. It simply means we need more engineers.

Typical School Day in China

On By Norbert HauptIn China, Commentaries, EducationLeave a comment

Last weekend we had a 15-year-old Chinese foreign exchange student with us. During a hike, we had lots of time to chat. He lives with his parents in Shanghai. His school day starts at 6:00am every day and ends at 6:00pm. After he comes home at night and has dinner with this family, he sits down and does homework. Yes, 12 hours of school, five days a week, plus homework, and then he goes in for additional lectures on the weekends. I do not know if this is customary for all schools – but it was for his.

Where do we think the “rise of China” comes from? Cheap labor, large population, abuse of workers in sweat shops?

Perhaps.

But think again.

Battle of the Salads

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product, Cool People, Crack-Ups, EducationLeave a comment

Zachary Maxwell is a 4th-grade kid who snuck a camera into a his school’s lunchroom for 6 months and made a movie out of it. Here is an outtake that shows what most of our children don’t tell us. After just a few minutes I know I don’t ever want to have to eat school lunches – yet, we make our helpless kids eat them every day.

World Education Rankings

On By Norbert HauptIn EducationLeave a comment

Education Ranking

Here is an excellent article with graphics showing how various countries ranked in education, broken down into the categories of reading, math and science.

More People at Our Table

On By Norbert HauptIn Economy, Education, Energy, Need to Know, SustainabilityLeave a comment

The world population is growing by 80 million people a year. That’s about 219,000 a day.

How much is 219,000?

That’s about three full average football stadiums full of people.

That’s how many people we add daily to the world’s population.

Every one of these people come to the table to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. They need transportation, clothing, education, healthcare, shelter, security and iPhones.

219,000 More. Every. Day.

Labeling of Genetically Modified Organisms

On By Norbert HauptIn Bad Product, Education, Political, SustainabilityLeave a comment

In the 1950ies and beyond, we used asbestos as a common building material. Not until years later did we realize we were also killing ourselves with it.

Today, (G)enetically (M)odified (O)rganisms (GMOs) are food products that are modified for a variety of purposes. Monsanto is the conglomerate that brought the world Roundup, DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange, marketed aspartame, and created bovine growth hormone  (rBGH). GMOs have invaded soy, corn, sugar beets, cotton, and alfalfa.

Rats fed a lifetime diet of Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn or exposed to the company’s popular Roundup herbicide, in amounts considered “safe” in drinking water and crops in the U.S., developed tumors and suffered severe kidney and liver damage, according a study released this week.

We are eating products that include GMOs and we don’t know it. Just like we didn’t know we were breathing asbestos dust in our walls and ducts when it was making us sick.

Now California Proposition 37 should create labeling of such products. Why do you think Monsanto, Dow and DuPont and major food processors like Pepsi and CocaCola have already put up $25 million to defeat GMO labeling in California?

Because they know that if we know what we’re ingesting, we have a choice to boycott their dangerous products.

They want to keep us stupid.

Wrapped into the cloak of “bigger government is evil” they are telling us that it will make food more expensive and complex.

And exactly how is that MY problem?

They are employing a common scare tactic. Socialism. Big government. Regulation. All bad words.

Why in the world would a rational human being not want to disclose a simple truth:

I want to know what is in my food before I buy it. VERY SIMPLE DEMAND. And since I can’t enforce it myself, I want my government to do it for us. That’s what I have it for.

My Tax Rate vs. Romney’s

On By Norbert HauptIn Education, Political4 Comments

My federal tax rate is in the 28% range.

That’s more than twice that of Romney, who sounded proud when he proclaimed that his was never lower than 13%. I am baffled how Romney can think this is good.

The last time I paid less than 13% taxes was when I was in college and made $3,500 a year digging ditches, painting houses and patching roofs on the side. I think I got a $75 refund that year.

I am not wealthy. Romney is rumored to be worth half a billion dollars.

Do I think “the wealthy” should pay more taxes?

 

Teaching Profession: U.S. vs. Germany

On By Norbert HauptIn Education2 Comments

Here is a telling, innocuous Facebook message I lifted today from a German friend.

German Respect for Teachers

I have redacted the names of the people who like this and the poster of the comment. This is hugely telling:

On the top, the article is about the supposed glamour business of acting, titled Fame and Glamour? It goes on to state “In your dreams. Most actors work for puny wages and have unsteady lives. Interviews with young stars and experienced actors reveal what it is really like…”

But that is not the point.

A poster, at the bottom, made the comment that matters to us here. It says:

Well, it’s not medicine, law or teaching.

Teaching!

He lists teaching in the same breath as medicine and law when he makes a statement about the most glamorous and financially rewarding careers, as compared to acting.

An entire society, geared toward the value and importance of teaching.

Slashing Early Education

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Education, Political, Uncategorized1 Comment

Since 2008, California’s Child Care and Development system has endured multiple years of devastating cuts, a loss of over $883 million dollars and the elimination of over 107,262 child care slots.

Research has proven that for every $1 spent on child care, $3 goes back into the local economy. This says that California has lost $2.6 billion in the last five years in local economy spending, due to childcare cuts alone.

In California, we are now in the final days of the decision-making process. The state is considering eliminating another 29,000 child care slots on top of the 107,262 already lost over the last five years.

After decades of empirical evidence and observance, we know that the key to employment success of the poorest people in our society is stable access to quality child care. Eliminating this possibility puts all those working parents back onto welfare. They need to stay home to watch their children. Some of the child care providers losing this business will be shutting down, creating more unemployment.

California will still be spending the welfare money. Only it will be spent to support the poor while parents sit at home watching children watch TV. Before, it was spent on quality education at child care providers.

Moralizing that the parents should not have had the children in the first place does not solve the problem; it simply points out the obvious downward spiral. The less educated a society is, the less able it is to take care of itself. Not educating the children of our poor grooms them for the welfare rolls and, worse, prisons, later.

California’s and America’s way out of debt and unemployment starts with education.

Letting Mark Zuckerberg keep more of his money does not create a single additional job for California’s working poor. I believe his tax rate should be just as high as mine.

What Can You Do?

  • Call the Governor and voice your opinion!
  • Call your State Assemblyman and Senator!
  • VOTE – research shows that the poorest of the poor in our society, who are drastically and dramatically affected by our political decisions, do not vote. Here I go again: Education!

 

Romney Says Class Size Doesn’t Matter

On By Norbert HauptIn Education, Political, Uncategorized1 Comment

Mitt Romney stated that class size does not matter.

Has Romney ever set foot in a classroom besides dropping off his own children when they were little? It boggles my mind how out of touch a politician can be with the realities of real people’s lives. It reminds me of George H.W. Bush being amazed about a supermarket laser scanner. Do these guys know how to pump gas?

Stating that class size does not matter just drove away the two or three educators that were still hanging on in ideological desperation to the Republican candidate. It’s over now. Not a teacher in the country will vote for Romney.

California Proposed Budget 2012-2013

On By Norbert HauptIn Education, PoliticalLeave a comment

In a previous post I railed about the California budget, and how we were valuing prison systems over education. In the meantime, the governor has released the May Revise of the 2012-13 Budget. The general fund expenditures are $92.6 billion. Here are how the allocations are broken down into the major components:

Proposed California Budget – General Fund – 2012-2013

This shows that K-12 and higher education takes up more than 50% of the entire budget, versus 9.4% for corrections. This illustrates that the legislature does not have much choice and leverage when it is faced with a projected $16 billion shortfall this year. It can’t raise taxes in the current political environment, so it has to cut something. If it cuts proportionally, every sector in this chart faces deep cuts, and eduction is more than half of it.

This makes one thing clear. We may have a spending problem, but we also have a revenue problem. Collecting more taxes in California seems inevitable if we want to get out of this mess.

Facebook and the California Budget

On By Norbert HauptIn Education, PoliticalLeave a comment

Earlier this week I sat attended the Spring Institute of the Child Development Policy Institute and heard about the devastating effect the current California budget and the governor’s proposals are likely to have on education in California and early education in particular.

The day after was the Facebook IPO. With the company valued at around $100 billion, an unprecedented amount, the IPO created a lot of personal wealth for many Californians. That means they may be paying a lot of taxes. Back of the envelope calculations indicated that California might get a windfall of $2 billion over the current and coming fiscal years. The previous big listing of this type was Goggle in 2004, which led to about $7 billion in tax revenue over the subsequent three years.

I have a hard time understanding how a state that has such positive financial events can’t make its budget work. There is nothing like this happening in the other 49 states. There just aren’t any $100 billion IPOs in Texas or Florida. And yet, we can’t seem to make our state work.

Perhaps it is this kind of occasional windfall in California that makes our budget system and state politics so dysfunctional. The state relies much more on personal capital gains taxes than any other state. Revenues therefore are unpredictable, can’t be scheduled and are dependent on factors completely outside the government’s control. Not a good way to run your shop, is it?

Perhaps we need to wait for the next Google or Facebook to invest again in education? A sad prospect.