Grantcoulson's Blog

    Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

       The following is a rundown on the “New Math” which came about as a reaction to the Soviet Union’s supposed “win” in the Space Race. Man in orbit, but no good automobiles or toilet paper. The New Math tried to teach number theory to grade schoolers and left millions of students with few math skills and an abiding hatred of mathematics.

      The quotes are from: A Math Warrior’s Almanac, by Nakonia (Niki) Hayes and available at nakonia69@saxonmathwarrior.com

       “With Sputnik’s launch in 1957, Russia had beaten the U.S. in the space race. Bruised egos and even panic ensued as government leaders set up four major committees to bring math education into “modern times.” The most famous of these groups was the School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG), a think tank composed mostly of theoretical mathematicians and directed by Yale University mathematician Edward G. Begle. It had about 36 college mathematicians, 15 high school teachers, and one physicist as members.”

    ……

       “He wrote that college professors as theoretical mathematicians “knew little or nothing of what high-school students know, how they think, and how they learn. They
also were uninformed about what topics should be taught at what level.” That was why high school teachers were asked to join the SMSG meetings, but most of them were overshadowed by the college contingent, John said.

        He told how he had talked to several participants in the SMSG, and they stated that it operated like all too many committees: There was little agreement as to what should be done, prima donnas got mad and stalked out of meetings, cliques formed, and on occasion arbitrary decisions were made. While their goal was to bring “math education into modern times, there was a paucity of new ideas, and much time as spent rummaging through existing textbooks. There was no consensus on much of what was discussed; but after meeting for three or four summers, they printed what they had come up with, to be used as a guide by the major book companies.” He summarized their work as “groping in the dark,” which euphemistically represented “catching up with the Russians.”

   The SMSG committee basically got the idea that teaching math could be improved somehow by concentrating on more recently developed concepts in mathematics. John wrote, “They were not definite in their criticism of what was wrong and did not know what should be changed and set no goals for these changes.” He concluded that topics were chosen under the assumption that all the children were being trained to be theoretical mathematicians. “Topics of interest in physics and chemistry were ignored,” he said, “and it was the imbalance that gave the new math a bad name, not the new ideas themselves.”

  The committee also chose to join the negative reaction held by Progressive educators against Edward L. Thorndike, whose book, The Psychology of Arithmetic, in 1924 had dominated much of the thinking in education. He had held that “Learning is essentially the formation of connections or bonds between situations and responses…and that habit [repetition and practice] rules in the realm of thought as truly and as fully as in the realm of action.”

   Prof. Begle’s group would follow, instead, the 1935 response begun by mathematics educators W. A. Brownell and C.B. Chazal who denigrated the emphasis on drill and who advocated a meaning theory. The meaning theory emphasized the inner relationships of the number system as well as social uses of arithmetic. Their theory was incorporated with John Dewey’s Progressive ideology and the “modern math” movement was born—in the 1930’s.

     The major book companies got into the act by hiring “experts” to write books that followed the SMSG recommendations. Although schools were expected to use these new texts, the emphasis on the esoteric and the neglect of fundamentals made them unworkable, John said, “but most people went along with them under the impression that everyone else was pleased.”

      Disbanding in 1977, the SMSG committee left an indelible mark on math education with books that were poorly conceived and abominably executed, according not only to John but too many parents and colleges as students were being graduated from high school severely deficient in math skills. Worse, a generation of students had learned to hate mathematics because they felt they couldn’t learn it. John said, “Math teachers and parents should have raised hell the first time a ninth-grader brought home an the first time a ninth-grader brought home an algebra book that his college-graduate mother and father could not decipher. The idea that children can be taught from books that are unintelligible to adults is absurd. This should be our first check from now on: If we can’t read and understand the book, then the book is unsatisfactory.”

     Further, in the ‘Progressives’ giant leap of teaching abstractions over concrete skills, John said the “new mathers” decided being able to work the problem did not suffice if the student didn’t understand the bigger picture in which the problem might be found. The “doing” (small steps) and “practice” were ridiculed. It was acceptable, in fact, for a student not to be able to work a problem if he understood the concept. A student might understand the concept of paying interest on a loan, for example, but not know how to set up a problem to find that interest. He was amazed by their idea of teaching children “to think and to understand, and from that understanding, then children would be able to do.” Using this approach, he insisted, was analogous to trying to teach the piano by giving lessons in music theory, demonstrating the major and minor chords and fingering techniques and then asking the student to put it all together and play a sonata. “It just can’t be done that way,” he said. “The student must learn to play simple pieces before more difficult pieces are attempted.”“

    Unfortunately, this scenario is played over and over again. The theory dictates everything, children fail to learn, the theory is changed, etc.

    Saxon makes an interesting point about textbooks being incomprehensible. This is supposed to lead to “advanced thinking”, but it only leads to frustration and waste. This is what happens when no one is accountable.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

   Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    Current vaccination programs were developed before penicillin and other antibiotics which could allay the effects of many diseases such as smallpox, the incidence of which was in decline before the smallpox vaccination program began. Vaccination programs have increased markedly over the years and the question is: Is a specific vaccination program necessary based on prevalence and seriousness? Damage done by “side effects” is weighed against the value of immunization of the majority. That the benefits far outdistance the costs is assumptive knowledge, not actual knowledge.

    The second consideration is that few data are available to analyze individual susceptibility to immunological agents. Some people are much more susceptible, obviously, than others because of the dramatic effects of vaccine on some.

    Paradigms, as Thomas Kuhn has pointed out, are slow to shift and never cover all the facts. Rather than being viewed as an unalloyed good, the paradigm of vaccination programs should be looked at empirically and rationally from a cost-benefit point of view and from that of individual susceptibility.

    “Once you offend the system, the system has a way of taking its revenge.” Dr. Andrew Wakefield on the witch hunt (my phrase, not his) unleashed by the pharmaceutical industry on his dissenting views about vaccines.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

       “The night he locked up the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama predicted that generations hence, people would look back on the historic day as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." At the time, his words reeked of hubris. Today, they look positively delusional.”

from Linda Chavez

A Mind-Changing Page
by Thomas Sowell

     “Sometimes you can read a book that will change your mind on some fundamental issue. Rarely, however, is there just one page that can undermine or destroy a widely-held belief. But there is such a page– page 77 of the book "Out of Work" by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway.

      The widespread belief is that government intervention is the key to getting the country out of a serious economic downturn. The example often cited is President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s intervention, after the stock market crash of 1929 was followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s, with its massive and long-lasting unemployment.

      This is more than just a question about history. Right here and right now there is a widespread belief that the unregulated market is what got us into our present economic predicament, and that the government must "do something" to get the economy moving again. FDR’s intervention in the 1930s has often been cited by those who think this way.

     What is on that one page in "Out of Work" that could change people’s minds? Just a simple table, giving unemployment rates for every month during the entire decade of the 1930s.

     Those who think that the stock market crash in October 1929 is what caused the huge unemployment rates of the 1930s will have a hard time reconciling that belief with the data in that table.

Although the big stock market crash occurred in October 1929, unemployment never reached double digits in any of the next 12 months after that crash. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent, two months after the stock market crashed– and then began drifting generally downward over the next six months, falling to 6.3 percent by June 1930.

     This was what happened in the market, before the federal government decided to "do something."

     What the government decided to do in June 1930– against the advice of literally a thousand economists, who took out newspaper ads warning against it– was impose higher tariffs, in order to save American jobs by reducing imported goods.

      This was the first massive federal intervention to rescue the economy, under President Herbert Hoover, who took pride in being the first President of the United States to intervene to try to get the economy out of an economic downturn.

     Within six months after this government intervention, unemployment shot up into double digits– and stayed in double digits in every month throughout the entire remainder of the decade of the 1930s, as the Roosevelt administration expanded federal intervention far beyond what Hoover had started.

     If more government regulation of business is the magic answer that so many seem to think it is, the whole history of the 1930s would have been different. An economic study in 2004 concluded that New Deal policies prolonged the Great Depression. But the same story can be found on one page in "Out of Work."

     While the market produced a peak unemployment rate of 9 percent– briefly– after the stock market crash of 1929, unemployment shot up after massive federal interventions in the economy. It rose above 20 percent in 1932 and stayed above 20 percent for 23 consecutive months, beginning in the Hoover administration and continuing during the Roosevelt administration.

     As Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up." It is all there on that one page.”

…….

    Canada, surprisingly, because we’re linked in many ways to the economy of the U.S., suffered much less from the Great Depression because our federal government did much less to “fix” things.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

     Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    John Stossel on the war on drugs.

      “I’m confused. When I walk around busy midtown Manhattan, I often smell marijuana. Despite the crowds, some people smoke weed in public. Usually the police leave them alone, and yet other times they act like a military force engaged in urban combat. This February, cops stormed a Columbia, Mo., home, killed the family dog and terrorized a 7-year-old boy — for what? A tiny quantity of marijuana.

      Two years ago, in Prince George’s County, Md., cops raided Cheye Calvo’s home (and killed both his dogs–GC) — all because a box of marijuana was randomly shipped to his wife as part of a smuggling operation. Only later did the police learn that Calvo was innocent — and the mayor of that town.

      "When this first happened, I assumed it was just a terrible, terrible mistake," Calvo said. "But the more I looked into it, the more I realized (it was) business as usual that brought the police through our front door. This is just what they do. We just don’t hear about it. The only reason people heard about my story is that I happened to be a clean-cut white mayor."

      Radley Balko of Reason magazine says more than a hundred police SWAT raids are conducted every day. Does the use of illicit drugs really justify the militarization of the police, the violent disregard for our civil liberties and the overpopulation of our prisons? It seems hard to believe.”

   …….

      “Everything can be abused, but that doesn’t mean government can stop it, or should try to stop it. Government goes astray when it tries to protect us from ourselves.

      Many people fear that if drugs were legal, there would be much more use and abuse. That’s possible, but there is little evidence to support that assumption. In the Netherlands, marijuana has been legal for years. Yet the Dutch are actually less likely to smoke than Americans. Thirty-eight percent of American adolescents have smoked pot, while only 20 percent of Dutch teens have. One Dutch official told me that "we’ve succeeded in making pot boring."”

……

      “Economist Ludwig von Mises wrote: "(O)nce the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness … (w)hy not prevent him from reading bad books and bad plays … ? The mischief done by bad ideologies is more pernicious … than that done by narcotic drugs."”

Right on, Ludwig!”

    Look at these data on incarceration. The prison population in the U.S. is climbing steeply while per capita crime rates for property and violent crime is decreasing. A prison is a great creator of government jobs.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies

    Do not think about, write about or deal with  human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.

    This article, from the trenchant pen of George Will, is quoted almost in its entirety.

George F. Will: Waltzing with teacher unions: Guess who pays piper?

     “Jay Gould, a 19th-century railroad tycoon and unrepentant rapscallion, said he was a Democrat when in Democratic districts and a Republican when in Republican districts but that he was always for the Erie Railroad. Gould, emblematic of Gilded Age rapaciousness, was called a robber baron.

      What should we call people whose defining constancy is that they are always for unionized public employees? Call them Democrats.

      This week, when Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess, many Democrats, having gone an eternity — more than a week — without spending billions of their constituents’ money, will try to make up for lost time by sending another $23 billion to states to prevent teachers from being laid off. The alternative to this “desperately” needed bailout, says Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is “catastrophe.”

     Amazing. Just 16 months ago, in the stimulus legislation, Congress shoveled about $100 billion to education, including $48 billion in direct aid to states. According to a University of Washington study, this saved more than 342,000 teaching and school staff positions — about 5.5 percent of all the positions in America’s 15,000 school systems.

……

      Duncan says that without the $23 billion, 100,000 to 300,000 public school teachers and staff will lose their jobs. But Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute says 300,000 would mean a cut of just 4.8 percent of the teachers and staff nationwide; 100,000 would mean cuts of 1.6 percent.

      Although the public education lobby’s cry of “Parsimony!” is not much of an argument, it is persuasive to Democrats comfortable in a relationship of co-dependency with teachers unions. But before Congress is stampeded into spending yet more (borrowed) billions, it should read The Phony Funding Crisis in the journal Education Next by James W. Guthrie, a professor at Southern Methodist University, and Arthur Peng, a research associate. They say:

     “For the past hundred years, with rare and short exceptions and after controlling for inflation, public schools have had both more money and more employees per student in each succeeding year.” Indeed, public schools have been so insulated from economic downturns that “there have been 11 periods during which GDP declined but mean total real per-pupil revenues still increased.”

      Primary and secondary education is given privileged status in most state constitutions, some of which declare it the “paramount duty” of the legislature. Between 2001 and 2007, in 12 states the number of teachers rose while the number of students fell. In another six states, teachers were hired much faster than enrollment increased: In Virginia, enrollment grew 5 percent, the number of teachers grew 21 percent. In Florida, the numbers were 6 percent and 20 percent; in North Carolina, 9 percent and 22 percent.

     In New York state between 2000 and 2009, public schools added 15,000 teachers while enrollment was declining by 121,000 pupils. By 2008, New York’s pupil-teacher ratio (13:1) was eighth-lowest among the states, and its per-pupil spending ($16,000) was the nation’s highest.

      While the private sector has shed 8.5 million jobs — 7.4 percent of workers — during the recession, local governments have lost only 141,000, less than 1 percent. Duncan says the $23 billion is for an “emergency.” But, then, what isn’t an emergency nowadays?

……

     We are witnessing a familiar government dance, the Prosperity-to-Hysteria Two-Step: When revenues grow, governments put in place permanent spending streams; when revenues fall, governments exclaim that any retrenchment, even back to spending levels of a few years ago, is a “catastrophe.”

    The National Education Association, a net subtraction from the national mind, has a television ad featuring children dressed in suits and ties:

Kid 1: Maybe Congress would listen to us …

Kid 2: If I was a Wall Street banker,

Kid 3: Or a car company CEO …

     The largest teachers union gets an F for grammar — the correct subjunctive mood would be, “If I were a Wall Street banker” — but it understands the logic of public life in the bailout era: If anyone gets to the trough, everyone is entitled to get there.”

   According to government workers unions, all government jobs are sacred, necessary for the economic, moral and social well-being of taxpayers. Education jobs have double protection because of the hushed reverence and unexamined assumptions with which education is discussed. Everything supports this point of view except the facts.

Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies