Recently in Education Category

Teacher crush creativity because the qualities that make a person creative also make them hard to handle in a classroom.

One of the most consistent findings in educational studies of creativity has been that teachers dislike personality traits associated with creativity. Research has indicated that teachers prefer traits that seem to run counter to creativity, such as conformity and unquestioning acceptance of authority (e.g., Bachtold, 1974; Cropley, 1992; Dettmer, 1981; Getzels & Jackson, 1962; Torrance, 1963). The reason for teachers' preferences is quite clear creative people tend to have traits that some have referred to as obnoxious (Torrance, 1963). Torrance (1963) described creative people as not having the time to be courteous, as refusing to take no for an answer, and as being negativistic and critical of others. Other characteristics, although not deserving the label obnoxious, nonetheless may not be those most highly valued in the classroom.

From Creativity: Asset or Burden in the Classroom?, a good review paper. What the paper shows is that the characteristics that teachers use to describe their favorite student correlate negatively with the characteristics associated with creativity. In addition, although teachers say that they like creative students, teachers also say creative students are "sincere, responsible, good-natured and reliable." In other words, the teachers don't know what creative students are actually like. (FYI, the research design would have been stronger if the researchers had actually tested the students for creativity.) As a result, schooling has a negative effect on creativity.

Like Alex Tabarrok, I don't really blame teachers... it's hard to control a class full of children. The thing I take away as a parent is that I need to make sure not to enforce the rules so strictly that I stunt my daughter's growth even when she's not at school.

Ok, so you're not quite three years old yet, but I'm doing research on where you should go to pre-school and how to get you into the gifted program. I went to school for a bazillion years. School is good... right? Well, learning stuff is good. School is one way to do that, but not the only way. As your father, I insist that you learn things that will make you productive and happy. That might include going to college, but it doesn't have to. I think that going to college will be the default option for you, but if you can convince me that you've got another plan for learning, growing, and being productive then I will gladly support it.

As inspiration, see the following two blog posts.

• 10 more reasons why parents should not send their kids to college
• 8 alternatives to college

(HT: FlowingData and Greg Mankiw.)

Using discriminatory bake sales to advocate against affirmative action isn't a new tactic... I remember similar events when I was at UCLA.

Exit question: why do leftists gladly accept affirmative action in education but bristle at lower prices for baked goods?

More here.

Is the United States falling behind China and India in the creation of new engineers? That's conventional wisdom, but...

The logic behind this argument is flawed in many ways. First let's tackle the myth of the Rising East's mastermind engineers. China and India's engineering graduation numbers have been used for the past decade to justify arguments that the United States is in trouble. My research team at Duke University dispelled common myths about China's and India's engineering-education advantages in December 2005. The graduation statistics most commonly touted then were: China graduates 600,000 per year, India, 350,000, and the U.S., 70,000. We found that, in 2004, when comparing apples with apples, the U.S. had graduated more engineers (roughly 140,000) than India had (roughly 120,000).

What's more, China's tally of 350,000 was suspect because China's definition of "engineering" was not consistent with that of U.S. educators. Some "engineers" were auto mechanics or technicians, for example. We didn't dispute that China was and is dramatically increasing its output of what it calls engineers. This year, China will graduate more than 1 million (and India, close to 500,000). But the skills of these engineers are so poor that comparisons don't make sense. We predicted that Chinese engineers would face unemployment. Indeed, media reports have confirmed that the majority of Chinese engineers don't take engineering jobs but become bureaucrats or factory workers.

This situation reminds me of the common trope that US pre-university students trail their international peers. What usually isn't pointed out is that most countries don't have universal education systems that are required to admit (and test) every child. The result of this disparity is that America's student population includes a representative sample of all American youths, while tests results from other countries only include children who are smart/wealthy enough to attend school. It's no surprise that these top foreign youths outperform the median American student.

(HT: RD.)

The Teachers Assistants' Association at University of Wisconsin at Madison has voted to disband.

Under the new state law, pushed by Governor Scott Walker, public employee unions like the one that represents Wisconsin T.A.s must be "certified" with a vote of members each year. Typically, once unions win a vote to represent a bargaining unit, they do not need to return for elections year after year -- if ever. Further, under the new law, the unions can negotiate only for limited wage increases; they can't negotiate over benefits, working conditions or other issues.

Union leaders said that they couldn't function well if they had to effectively be in a perpetual organizing drive for the annual union votes, and also if they had to pay annual fees to be certified. "Our membership was keenly aware of the sort of resources and energy it would take in order to hold on," said Adrienne Pagac, co-president of the union and a doctoral student in sociology at Madison.

Why shouldn't unions periodically require a vote from their members to continue representation?

Seeking certification year after year, she said, "would have meant diverting resources and neglecting all of the other things we do for members - representing them at the work site, being advocates for them, engaging our community." Pagac added that "being a union member is not just about sitting across the table from management and hammering out a contract. It's about democracy in the workplace."

Democracy in the workplace... that never needs to be voted on again?

The union faces challenges as it adjusts to the limits imposed by the state law. Under the old contract, union dues were automatically deducted from the paychecks of the 2,700-2,800 graduate teaching assistants at Madison. Now the Teaching Assistants' Association must seek dues from members by itself.

So, in summary:

Old system: automatic mandatory due collection from paychecks, no voting.

New system: voluntary dues, voting required.

The new system seems more democratic to me!

There's talk of eliminating interest-subsidized student loans and, of course, the education industry is going crazy. You've gotta love this logic:

ubsidized loans, which are awarded based on financial need, make up just under half of all Stafford loans, which are the federal government's largest pool of student loans. Students who borrow the maximum amount of subsidized loans, $23,000, and take six years to graduate would owe $5,000 more by graduation and $9,000 after a 20-year repayment period, said Pauline Abernathy, vice president of the Institute for College Access and Success.

"We certainly hope this will not be considered," Abernathy said. "It merely is shifting the debt from the federal government to the next generation of Americans."

Um... who do you think is going to be paying the "government" debt, if not the next generation of Americans? What this plan would do is shift the debt burden away from taxpayers and onto the people who actually benefit most from the education: the students. Why to educators hate the idea? Because they won't be able to charge as much for their product if their customers are not subsidized by taxpayers.

Zombie has a disheartening look at how ideological brainwashing has ruined public education. Like him, I'm not against the concept of public education, but I'm becoming convinced that the current implementation is so broken that the slate needs to be wiped clean.

But as I walked around the rally in San Francisco, and later scanned the pictures taken by Ringo at the L.A. rally, I found myself thinking uncharitable thoughts about the protesting teachers: I hope your funding gets cut even more! Your demands are futile because the state is bankrupt anyway and there’s no more money to give; but even if the economy were to eventually recover, I would still want to see funding for public education slashed to a minimum.

Horrors! I was taken aback by my own thoughts. How could I be so cruel? What evil right-wing influence was making me think this way?

And then I looked around me and realized: It isn’t the right-wingers who are making me think these awful thoughts: It’s the teachers themselves at this very rally who have forced me into it!

Lots of discouraging pictures at the link.

Shooting at Missouri University of Science and Technology:

Emergency news and updates

May 12 - 9:10 am

Suspect has left campus.

Those on campus continue to secure buildings and stay indoors. If you are not on campus avoid campus.

May 12 - 8:55 am

Shooter on campus in McNutt.

Please stay indoors.

No more information yet.

(HT: Robin Hanson, Megan McArdle.)

Wouldn't it be ridiculous if supermarkets were run like public schools?

Teachers unions and their political allies argue that market forces can't supply quality education. According to them, only our existing system—politicized and monopolistic—will do the trick. Yet Americans would find that approach ludicrous if applied to other vital goods or services.

Suppose that groceries were supplied in the same way as K-12 education. Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. Nearly half of those tax revenues would then be spent by government officials to build and operate supermarkets. Each family would be assigned to a particular supermarket according to its home address. And each family would get its weekly allotment of groceries—"for free"—from its neighborhood public supermarket.

Private supermarkets would never work! The poor would starve!

(HT: Greg Mankiw.)

(HT: RB.)

I can't even count how many times I've been told, in all seriousness, that there are more liberals than conservatives in academia because liberals are simply smarter. I pity anyone who tried to use that reasoning to explain why there are more male than female engineers. Megan McArdle points out that the simple "explanation" that continually comes from academics is a serious blind spot.

In blog years, this is an age-old argument. I find it particularly intriguing because it completely reverses the standard argument about discrimination. Conservatives are usually reluctant to agree that women and minorities are still often victims of structural or personal bias--despite numerical underrepresentation and some fairly compelling studies showing that hiring is not race or gender blind. Yet when it comes to conservatives in academia, they suddenly sound like sociologists, discussing hostile work environment, the role of affinity networks in excluding out groups, unconscious bias, and the compelling evidence from statistical underrepresentation.

Meanwhile, liberals, who are usually quick to assume that underrepresentation represents some form of discrimination--structural or personal--suddenly become, as Haidt notes, fierce critics of the notion that numerical representation means anything. Moreover, they start generating explanations for the disparity that sound suspiciously like some old reactionary explaining that blacks don't really want to go into management because they're much happier without all the responsibility. Conservatives are too stupid to become academics; they aren't open new ideas; they're too aggressive and hierarchical; they don't care about ideas, just money. In other words, it's not our fault that they're not worthy.

Academics should also consider that the under-representation of conservatives among them creates a significant image problem that leads to dismissal and mistrust of the academy by the general population.

I've been using a hacked-together standing desk for several months at work now, and I love it.

Sitting kills.

(HT: LM.)

Ok, so I'm a sucker for these animated movies. If you hate them, just move along.

(HT: ???.)

This is a brilliant program. I have personally witnessed the profound effect that babies can have on even the hardest hearts.

Here’s how it works: Roots arranges monthly class visits by a mother and her baby (who must be between two and four months old at the beginning of the school year). Each month, for nine months, a trained instructor guides a classroom using a standard curriculum that involves three 40-minute visits – a pre-visit, a baby visit, and a post-visit. The program runs from kindergarten to seventh grade. During the baby visits, the children sit around the baby and mother (sometimes it’s a father) on a green blanket (which represents new life and nature) and they try to understand the baby’s feelings. The instructor helps by labeling them. “It’s a launch pad for them to understand their own feelings and the feelings of others,” explains Gordon. “It carries over to the rest of class.”

I have visited several public schools in low-income neighborhoods in Toronto to observe Roots of Empathy’s work. What I find most fascinating is how the baby actually changes the children’s behavior. Teachers have confirmed my impressions: tough kids smile, disruptive kids focus, shy kids open up. In a seventh grade class, I found 12-year-olds unabashedly singing nursery rhymes.

The baby seems to act like a heart-softening magnet. No one fully understands why. Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, an applied developmental psychologist who is a professor at the University of British Columbia, has evaluated Roots of Empathy in four studies. “Do kids become more empathic and understanding? Do they become less aggressive and kinder to each other? The answer is yes and yes,” she explained. “The question is why.”

I've long been an advocate for disrupting the single-age cohorts that dominate our primary and secondary education systems, public and private. It's unnatural to put our kids into "Lord of the Flies" groupings where everyone is the same age. The social dynamics in such a group are aberrant and completely unlike the dynamics the children will experience in almost any setting as adults. Children should learn to have natural interactions with unrelated people of all ages, from babies to seniors. (Churches often provide such an environment, which I believe is extremely valuable.)

I briefly considered becoming a patent attorney, and was interested to the degree that I sought out patent attorneys to ask them about their jobs. The most memorable quote was: "Do you like going to the DMV and filling out forms? That's very similar to what I do for 100 hours a week."

(HT: RB and Above the Law.)

I feel like America has been ignoring the obvious for along time, but perhaps understanding is dawning: millions of people wasted time and money on useless college degrees.

Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants. All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.

... The relentless claims of the Obama administration and others that having more college graduates is necessary for continued economic leadership is incompatible with this view. Putting issues of student abilities aside, the growing disconnect between labor market realities and the propaganda of higher-education apologists is causing more and more people to graduate and take menial jobs or no job at all. This is even true at the doctoral and professional level—there are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or professional degrees.

Please note that this analysis of time and money wasted on college does not include people who were convinced to go to college, spent a few years and tens of thousands of dollars, and then quit without a degree. "Going to college" is such a sympathetic cause -- and an idealized stepping stone towards the American Dream -- that's it's difficult as a society to be realistic about the limits of education.

It's important to remember that college education is a business with extremely powerful vested interests. Whenever the government spends more public money on secondary education, the vast majority of that extra money is captured by the education system in the form of increased tuition and fees. Students hardly benefit at all.

Here's a brilliant illustration of how a slight misreading of statistical data can lead you to an incredibly erroneous result.

The chart at left, for example, shows by size the percentage of schools in North Carolina which were ever ranked in the top 25 of schools for performance. Notice that nearly 30% of the smallest decile (10%) of schools were in the top 25 at some point during 1997-2000 but only 1.2% of the schools in the largest decile ever made the top 25.

Seeing this data many people concluded that small schools were better and so they began to push to build smaller schools and break up larger schools. Can you see the problem?

The problem is that because small school don't have a lot of students, scores are much more variable. If for random reasons a few geniuses happen to enroll one year in a small school scores jump up and if a few extra dullards enroll the next year scores fall.

Thus, for purely random reasons we would expect small schools to be among the best performing schools in any givenyear. Of course we would also expect small schools to be among the worst performing schools in any given year! And in fact, once we look at all the data this is exactly what we see. The figure below shows changes in fourth grade math scores against school size. Note that small schools have more variable scores but there is no evidence at all that scores on average decrease with school size.

States like North Carolina which reward schools for big performance gains without correcting for size end up rewarding small schools for random reasons. Worst yet, the focus on small schools may actually be counter-productive because large schools do have important advantages such as being able to offer more advanced classes and better facilities.

Smaller schools have more variance in their performance because a few outlying students can significantly affect a small school's aggregate score. If your measure is "the percentage of schools in North Carolina which were ever ranked in the top 25 of schools for performance" you're going to catch all those small schools when their scores randomly stumble to the top due to outlying students.

In general, the meaning of a measurement changes significantly when you start looking at things that "ever" or "never" happen instead of what is happening in a given snapshot.

(HT: Megan McArdle.)

This shouldn't be news, nor should for-profit colleges be singled out for derision: lots of people waste borrowed money on useless degrees.

After graduating from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Carrianne Howard hoped to find a job in the video game industry.

She did -- kind of. For $12 an hour, she worked as a recruiter for video game companies. And then her position was eliminated. So now, she's working as a stripper.

According to Bloomberg, Howard spent $70,000 on her degree from the for-profit Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, the parent company of which is owned in part by Goldman Sachs. She told Bloomberg that upon a pre-enrollment visit to the school, a campus tour guide "made it sound like [she] was going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Heck, at UCLA they had a whole department dedicated to studying women, but it sounds like Howard it going to eat their lunch.

(HT: RD.)