A Place at the Table

Before I got distracted by chimps who are arguably smarter than college students (as determined by the single measure of the ability to sequence randomly placed numerals), I was questioning the disconnect between the public concern that young people lack financial literacy, and a public education policy that insists on rhetorical mathematics at the expense of applied mathematics. Consumer Math just doesn’t have the resumé cachet of Trigonometry, and it seems our high schools are more concerned about preparing kids for college than preparing them for life. My question from two weeks ago is back on the table:

Your own 18-year old comes home and asks you to be his co-signer on a note so he can take advantage of a great investment opportunity. He's not really sure why this would be a good investment, but all of his friends are investing so he should, too. He's not really sure how he would repay the note, but he is sure it's going to be worth the required $100,000. What would you say?

Of course the investment we are talking about is a four-year college degree. It takes most young people five years to graduate, so with tuition, fees, books, and living expenses (including health insurance and other miscellany) $100,000 is a very conservative figure. However, my concern is not whether a college degree is overpriced. I am more concerned that it is simply the wrong investment for many of our young people.

The first question that needs to be asked is “Why do you want to go to college?” And the answer is likely to be, “So I can get a good job and make good money.” The crass commercialism of this response is enough to cause the denizens of academia to cringe, and with good reason. The assumption that the purpose of a college degree is economic advancement is a major misunderstanding. While a college degree may act as gatekeeper for entry into some jobs, it does not guarantee a well paying or highly rewarding career upon graduation. (Just look around - there's plenty of evidence. Try the mall.)

The second question probably ought to be “What sort of work is it that you expect college to prepare you to do?” And the answer is often, “I don’t know yet.” Our education system pushes eighth graders into Algebra I, rather than Consumer Math, because all students should be prepared to apply to a four-year university. But there’s a terrible disconnect between structuring a 13-year old’s education around college preparation (an option that less than half of them will eventually chose) and then sending students to college with the mindset that their junior year is soon enough to declare a major. Too many students spend four years in high school with no goals other than “getting into a good school.” The next four or five years are focused on “getting out with a degree.” Plenty of what. Not much why.

Is anyone else old enough to remember the 1967 classic film, The Graduate? Dustin Hoffman portrays Benjamin Braddock, who has recently earned his Ivy League degree. As he floats in the family pool, his father questions and Ben responds:

Ben, what are you doing?
Well, I would say that I'm just drifting. Here in the pool.
Why?
Well, it’s very comfortable just to drift.
Have you thought about graduate school?
No.
Would you mind telling me then what those four years of college were for? What was the point of all that hard work?
You got me.

Back in the 60’s we understood Ben Braddock was a rebel. We didn’t realize he was a prophet. Somewhere along the way, education has morphed into something like a video game where the point seems to simply be getting to the next level. In the end, the reward for playing the game may be elusive, but the investment in time and money is very real. Then the college game is over, and our young people discover they don't really know why they went there or what they went for.

I think college is grand. I loved it as an undergraduate. I loved it as a graduate student. I still take a class every year or so just for the joy of it. But (and it's a big but), who decided that the sole purpose of high school is preparation for application to a four year college? Are there other ways to win? Have we been truly responsible? Have we fairly informed young people about their choices? Or have policymakers and educators imposed a single game plan on young people, their parents and the general public?

Why do we want them to go to college? It's a $100,000 question that all too often begs an answer.

So you ask, "What should they do instead?" Stay tuned.

Posted by Susan Graham at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

It was only a matter of time! First there was Jeopardy! I’m sure I would do as well as Ken Jennings. Then there was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? which has some pretty baby questions and lets contestants ask for help. It’s almost as if we have a devolving frame of mind about our abilities. And for further evidence of that possibility, now there is Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?

I am proud to say that I am smarter than a fifth grader, by the way. I know because I played online three times and won every time and never had to ask a 10-year old for help. However, I’m not sure that knowing that Seattle is more populous than Tacoma, or that all elm trees are not indigenous to the North American continent, or that Salt Lake City, Utah is closer to Phoenix than Pierre, South Dakota makes me all that smart. However, I felt pretty good about being Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.

But now it looks like I’d probably go down in flames if I had to go up against a chimpanzee trained by Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzaw of Kyoto University. The story appears in National Geographic News

One memory test included three five-year-old chimps who were taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers. Participants saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares. The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there. Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.

The people against whom their skills were measured were college students who had been training for six months. All the chimps could beat the humans, but the younger chimps were faster than the older ones.

So what, exactly, does this research mean? Well, it depends on what you want to prove. Here are some possible conclusions that the media might draw:

Chimps are better at math than humans
College students are not as smart as chimpanzees
Schools should model instruction on behavior modification techniques
Planet of the Apes was a visionary look at the future of our civilization

But AP writer Malcolm Ritter reports that Dr. Matsuzaw

Thinks two factors gave his chimps the edge. For one thing, he believes human ancestors gave up much of this skill over evolutionary time to make room in the brain for gaining language abilities. The other factor is the youth of Ayumu and his peers. The memory for images that is needed for the tests resembles a skill found in children, but which dissipates with age.

Is recognition and recall learning or training?
Does increasing speed of response without increasing accuracy of response matter?
Could the cognitive assessments that value recall above all else (so popular among some school reformers) be less than optimum measures of meaningful learning?
Is the loss of visual recall really a “loss” or does it indicate a “gain” in abstract thinking?

All of these are interesting questions and ones that Dr. Matsuzaw would probably be willing to discuss with other serious-minded people. But the truth is that “Chimps Outsmart College Students” is just so much more fun than “Research Indicates Trained Chimps Demonstrate Faster Response to Numerical Sequencing Recall Than Humans”—just like playing Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader is more amusing that seriously considering what is critical for a 10-year old to know. Too bad so much of our public discourse on evaluating learning boils down to entertainment, sound bites and memory games.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects

Posted by Susan Graham at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The headline on a recent Washington Post story reads: "Checkbook Math Increasingly Rare." Daniel Devise reports that these practical math courses, aimed at teaching students "how to balance a checkbook and shop for a home loan," are disappearing in Virginia and Maryland schools. That’s not surprising. Here in Virginia, we no longer teach Consumer Math as a middle or high school course. The goal is for everyone to start Algebra in eighth grade and for everyone to graduate with four years of mathematics.

However, because parents and potential employers consider these skills essential, our General Assembly has mandated that the Virginia Department of Education include Standards of Learning for Economic Education and Financial Literacy in our pantheon of learning priorities. Since there are just so many classes that can be fitted into the seven years of secondary education, Virginia has opted to cover the concepts through correlations to Standards of Learning in Math, Social Sciences, and Career and Technical Education in grades 6-12.

Here are some of the Essential Knowledge and Skills Objectives for Financial Literacy:

• Correlate career choice to education, income, and goal attainment.
• Compute state and federal taxes.
• Construct a spending plan that considers options (including financing higher education and managing a family income).
• Compare financial institutions in terms of personal banking needs.
• Complete a loan application.
• Read and comprehend the terms and conditions of various credit cards, considering credit card laws and regulations.
• Understand the implications of bankruptcy in light of new bankruptcy laws.
• Examine types of contracts ( including three day rescission law on mortgages and certain other purchases).
• Investigate and compare saving and investment options including after tax and tax advantaged personal saving vehicles (401k, 403b, and IRA).

“Wow!” You might be thinking, “This is a lot to expect of high school seniors, but it’s really good stuff to know! In fact, I might want to borrow my high school senior’s textbook to brush up before filing my taxes or refinancing the house to pay for her college education.”

But here's the problem: High school juniors are taking U.S. History and seniors are taking U.S. Government. And if they are taking an Advanced Placement History or Government course, then the curriculum must align with the AP guidelines, and these Financial and Economic essential knowledge and skills, however valuable, are not included in these courses. There might be points at which the concepts intersect, but it would be an add-on, and the teachers of history and government are pressed hard to prepare students for both the Virginia SOL tests and the AP tests. There’s just not much time for extras.

As a result, much of the responsibility for covering Financial Literacy in Virginia lies with seventh grade Civics and Economics and Exploratory Family and Consumer Science teachers . But most 12- and 13-year olds really aren’t ready to start learning how to read their paycheck stub, file their taxes, purchase bank services, apply for loans and credit cards, invest for retirement, or file bankruptcy if something goes wrong and things don’t work out. Middle schoolers need to begin to grasp the big picture of how money impacts life, but the specifics are too far into their future to be relevant.

So where are these concepts most likely to be taught in meaningful ways? In high school Career and Technical Education courses. While learning a trade, students are also learning to manage a business because many of these young people will be independent contractors who will need to manage all aspects of a business. In Marketing and Cooperative Education programs, students are often spending part of their day in the workplace where economic literacy is not an abstract concept, but a reality of their student/employee learning experience. Personal financial management concepts are foundational to Family and Consumer Science (formerly known as Home Economics) because the reality is that every family unit is also a nano-economic system.

But the truth is that a year of Family Management just doesn’t have the cachet of a fourth year of foreign language when it comes to college admissions. So if you're college-bound, you're likely to skirt around any of the practical coursework that one student in the Washington Post story described as "the easiest math class she has taken in high school but also the most useful."

Here’s another rather inconvenient truth. Having the resume to get accepted into a four year college does not guarantee a fast track to economic security. But it does pretty much guarantee an investment of close to $100,000 over four years. It occurs to me that while Calculus may help as young people start into college, “Checkbook Math” maybe more essential if they are going to finish a four year degree.

We’ll stop there for now. But keep this question on the table until next week if you will:

Your own 18-year old comes home and asks you to be his co-signer on a note so he can take advantage of a great investment opportunity. He's not really sure why this would be a good investment, but all of his friends are investing too. He knows he needs and wants to participate. He's not really sure how he would repay the note, but he is sure that it's going to be worth $100,000. What would you say?

It's not a trick question. Education may be priceless, but it's not free....

Posted by Susan Graham at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)