Random picture - libraries

Source: 8 Incredible Libraries That Will Actually Make You Want To Study 

Go to the link for the full, un-cropped and additional pictures...

Random charts - sexual harassment

 

 

 

Source: An Empirical Study of Prevalence and Perceptions of Sexual Harassment, Stalking, Dating/Domestic Abuse and Violence, and Unwanted Sexual Contact (96-pg PDF)

Randomchart - education levels

Source: The most and least educated U.S. religious groups

 

"... Attainment of a four-year college degree in the United States, often regarded as a key asset for economic success, varies by race and gender. But the share of people completing a college education also differs by religion, with members of some faith groups much more educated, on average, than others. By far, Hindus and Unitarian Universalists have among the largest share of those with a college degree – 77% and 67% respectively. Roughly six-in-ten Jews (59%) have college degrees, as do similar shares in both the Anglican church (59%) and the Episcopal Church (56%)..."

Random chart - student debt & wealth

Source: Young Adults, Student Debt and Economic Well-Being

Random chart - teacher pay

Source: How much teachers get paid — state by state

And now subtraction...

The September 13th, 2014 blog entry 'Eh?' discussed multiplication and the 'skip counting' of the "Common Core." '6 Steps to Subtract 2 Numbers: Common Core Homework in 1 Photo' takes a look at subtraction by 'counting up.'One wonders what the method is when subtracting a larger number from a smaller one!

Eh?

Apparently there is some controversy around new teaching standards, methodology, etc., collectively known as the 'common core.' OK, so this blogger knows nothing about it, other than snippets of radio discussions on the topic that he has heard, such as that it emphasizes that kids should learn "... to think more critically, to understand math rather than merely memorize formulas..." and so on...

OK, sounds rather unexceptional... What does seem weird however, is some of the reporting on "new techniques" for teaching math:

• On one broadcast I heard about 'skip counting.' Kids in a 3rd grade class were solving word problems, and it went like this:

Samantha: "There are five classes in third grade. Each class has nine students. How many students are in third grade?"
Narrator: "You can figure this out by multiplying nine times five which is easy if you know your times tables, but not all of these third graders know their times tables yet. But they have other ways to solve this problem. Samantha uses skip counting"
Samantha: "Nine, eighteen, twenty seven, thirty six, forty five."

The teacher then asks for another way, "... any other strategy?"  One kid suggests using a number line "You could count nine five times on a number line..."

Hmm, granted this may not be the best exposition of what skip counting is, however in this case (to this blogger) the 'skip counting' looks exactly like multiplying nine times five using a times table (!) just leaving out 'nine times one is..., nine times two is...', and so on...

• On another NPR broadcast I heard about addition, apparently now being done from left to right when adding two numbers together... (note: other than stating that was how it was being done they didn't go into specifics).

• On YouTube you find any number of videos slamming common core mathematics, and making fun of problem "clusters," "lattice method," and so on...

OK... Once again this blogger doesn't really know much about the subject, so silliness like this might well have been part of the pre-common core teaching of math. It is clear however that people feel very strongly about this; that all concerned are clearly talking past one another; and that the situation hasn't been helped in the least by the politicians who have jumped into the discussion (usually dragging in other issues and biases).

Hopefully we can at least all agree, using either common core techniques or the old-fashioned method, that 2 3/4 plus 1 3/4 gives us 4 1/2. Apparently this is not clear to someone with a Ph.D in Mathematics Education. Ouch!

Random chart - college advantage

Click to enlarge

Source: The College Advantage: Weathering The Economic Storm (16-pg PDF)

It's conclusion? "The Great Recession that began in December 2007.... A large majority of jobs lost in the recession and in the recovery had been held by workers with a high school diploma or less. The only real gains made during the still struggling recovery are in jobs filled by workers with at least some postsecondary education. The gradual shift to more-educated workers has been going on for decades, but the recession gave it a mighty push..."

Kudos?

OK, so MIT (among other schools) has moved to make its academic courses available on-line for those who wish to access the materials. For this they have received much praise

An example: "... Such was the birth of MIT OpenCourseWare, the Web-based publication of virtually all course content from the graduate and undergraduate subjects taught at MIT. The site now welcomes an average one million visitors per month with the tagline: "Unlocking knowledge, empowering minds. Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT. No registration required." It's a system that means Kunle Adejumo, an engineering student at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria, can supplement and complement the materials and experience he's getting at his own school, which has limited resources and computer access..."

OK, so visit the Sloan School of Management section of the web site and what do you get? A total of 23 undergraduate and 150 graduate courses. Pretty cool, but only one of the undergraduate courses is from 2010, and the remainder are older (even going back as far as 1998!). Of the graduate courses only 12 are more recent, if you define that as from 2009/2010... the rest are older...

Admirable in theory, somewhat less so in practice!

Online Course Materials MIT
MIT Sloan School of Management
Unlocking Knowledge
Dear Joint Commission: Give Everything Away For Free

Random charts

Source: OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 Results:

Random chart

Source: Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College? "... 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..."

Education emancipates?

Source: Social structures in a typical Indian village

The article 'The Dalits of India: education and development' discusses the importance of the role of education in "... diminishing the social effects of the caste system, which still remain entrenched in Indian society..." It looks at the historical context, explains "... why education is such an important topic in development studies...", and looks at what has been tried.

Its conclusion? "There have been many attempts over the past one hundred and fifty years to help increase the quality of life for the Dalits of India... Minor increases in incentives for Dalits to pursue primary education have been beneficial, but not sufficient in equalizing the enrolment gap between the Dalits and members of upper castes. In order for significant progress to be made in increasing the primary enrolment rates of Dalit children, development organizations must continue to explore varying levels of incentives and pursue national social equality in India..."

My conclusion: much more needs to be done... much, much more, to eradicate the evils of caste.

Previous entries related to caste:

Misc update (caste) - Aug 29, 2009
Updates - #3 - Aug 25th, 2008
Frame of Reference - June 27th 2008
Caste - May 26th 2008

Note: From the picture source link, read the accompanying text:

"... The prime part of the village was occupied by the Naidu community, a caste of landowners. The next area comprised residences of washer-folk and other castes who served the Naidu community. The regions where the people even lower down in the caste hierarchy resided were further down the village road. The ``untouchables'' lived separated from the main village by about half a kilometer. This was the cleanest and best-maintained part of the village even though the people here lived in conditions of great economic hardship.

On the economic front, the landowners controlled the economy of the village. Land ownership was confined to the upper castes, while the lower castes eked their living by selling their labour. Payment to the lower castes was rarely in cash, and was instead given in the form of foodstuffs, paid once a year.

There were numerous social restrictions on the lower castes: lower caste people were not permitted to enter the upper caste areas freely, on the pain of physical punishment. Lower caste men were required to step off the road if an upper caste person was using it.

Lower caste children were allowed into the nearby school (not shown in the figure), but had to sit on the floor at the sides of the class room; the benches were for the use of upper-caste children. Girl children who reached puberty were not permitted to continue schooling, irrespective of their community of birth.

There was one bore well in the village that supplied drinking water, which the lower castes were forbidden to use. The untouchables had their own (open) well.."

Random charts...

Some charts showing how U.S. families pay for the college educations of their children. Much additional detail at "How America Pays for College" (by Sallie Mae and Gallup)

Random chart...

Chart showing a relationship between college enrollment and family income... Among high-school students with average math scores the enrollment is much higher as family income increases.... Source: College Attainment and Family Income

Civic literacy

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) "... was founded in 1953 to further in successive generations of American college youth a better understanding of the economic, political, and ethical values that sustain a free and humane society ... In 2003, ISI launched a new initiative, the American Civic Literacy Program, designed to study and strengthen the teaching of America's history and institutions at the college level. During the fall of 2005, ISI contracted with the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy (UConnDPP) to conduct an annual national survey in order to learn to what extent colleges and universities are teaching America's history and institutions to undergraduate students ..."

Results of the 2008 survey were not good - on the 33-question quiz, all respondents averaged 49% correct overall (an F)! A college education only moved the average up to 57% (still an F). Age, parental status, education, age, gender, income all did not make an appreciable difference to the results...

(Ed. note: this blogger's score - a few errors. In his defense he didn't grow up in the U.S.)