I can’t believe it’s our penultimate class already—this semester has flown by.
This week’s focus is one that has received a great deal of attention in recent years — and not all of it terribly well-informed or constructive. It’s inequalities in education. Most of us believe we know a great deal about education because we’ve been through it. My goal this week is to get you to rethink your assumptions, and go deeper.
The questions I’ll be addressing are: Why are higher wages correlated with more education? What are the positions in the major debate over how to fix our public schools? What reforms are necessary in early education and K-12 education to address inequality? Should it be a national goal that every child has access to higher education? How should higher education be organized to reduce inequality?
Click here for the Class 13 slides.
Looking for another session? Click the link for: Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, Class 4, Class 5, Class 6, Class 7, Class 8, Class 9, Class 10, Class 11, Class 12, Class 14.
Recommended reading (just click on the link):
Public education must be funded as a public good. I've listened to and read highly educated adult women and men stating the most ignorant assertions, showing their educations taught them nothing they retained about world history, U.S. history, civics, economics, law, ecology, forecasting, budgeting, planning. . .we are in so much trouble. We think about citizening as something we don't have to do. I've had a retired cop tell me "the man has too much power." Dirk, I told him, You Are the Man! "No," he said, "you're the man, you work for the state, I'm retired." Oi frickin vei. I've had redneck dudes resent out loud that they can't do as well as I because I have a master's degree. So what do you want to do about it, Dude? Get more education? You say you can't?
With regard to student loan debt, I feel Thai e solution would be to offer low interest loans which can be partially forgiven if the graduates go into fields where there are serious shortages. Medicine is one field I can think of where we seem have a shortage. It takes months to get appointments in our area and many doctors who feel overwhelmed are cutting down their caseloads by going into concierge practices. My husband had a National Defense Act loan to go into teaching when the shortage of teachers became critical. He stayed in education until he retired.