Your wallet V.S your education: A battle without rewards?

When concerning college, many scholars have debated whether or not college is worth the expenses that it presents. In Dale Steven’s The Case against College, Stevens argues that by attending college, you are forced to pay for education that will not necessarily help you in the end. He continues to say that the way classrooms are run in a university further destroys the inner creativity that primary and secondary school attempted to destroy. He discusses in his passage that the best way to achieve a successful education in the world, one that will undoubtedly prove helpful to you in the future is to seek out mentors and scholars in the world outside of the university environment and use the knowledge learned from those people to base your education on. In the passage, Stevens states that in the case of bankruptcy, which can be a consequence of not being able to pay the bills of attending a university, “The bank can take away your house, but not your degree”. By saying this Stevens is suggesting that a degree is in effect a worthless possession in today’s society and that attaining one doesn’t necessarily guarantee you a positive future, in fact it might push you in the opposite direction. In short, Dale Stevens believes that college is not worth the price of admission and that one should seek out the lessons of the outside world if he or she wants to be truly successful.

In my opinion, Dale Stevens is wrong about college being unnecessary and not worth the money put into it. In today’s society, college seems to be the only way of obtaining a job that will provide a standard of living above the mediocre and low class. With the rising demand for jobs coupled with the rising prices of living, many desirable companies are only putting out job offers for those who have obtained an acceptable degree in their field. The only way to obtain this degree is to attend a university and study the field, even though one must risk investing thousands of dollars into a cause that might have no pay out. In most cases, if one pursues the degree of a field that has a high job percentage at the time, that particular student will see success and not drop into bankruptcy as Stevens described.   

I read an article on why college is important published by collegeview.com, and one of the first lines of text it produced stated that “High school graduates today are unable to obtain the number of high paying jobs that were once available”. This means that without the college education, the opportunities for students fresh out of high school are significantly more limited than those of college graduates. Furthermore, it is showing a trend that as time goes on, the opportunities for high school students will continue to diminish until they are essentially unavailable completely. The article continues to explain that there are numerous ways to support the expenses of a college education. It discusses how there are state and federal grants and loans that can help “cushion” the blow of a tuition bill. It also discusses how many companies now days are providing money to students who are pursuing the degree’s needed to work for them. This is essentially providing a win win situation for someone who is looking to go into a particular field in that even if the person doesn’t stay with that company forever, he or she still has a solid college foundation at little to no cost to them. And when one company does something like that for a potential employee in the field, there are bound to be many other companies willing to do the same thing. This is an example of why the benefits outweigh the risks and that in some occasions those risks will be eliminated by the very company providing the potential benefits.

Professional Degree		$109,600
Doctoral Degree		$89,400
Master's Degree		$62,300
Bachelor's Degree		$52,200
Associate's Degree		$38,200
Some College		$36,800
High School Graduate		$30,400
Some High School		$23,400
Average Annual Earnings—Different Levels of Education. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Surveys, March 1998, 1999, and 2000.

The graph above shows the differences in salaries between high school students and college students. It shows that professional degrees have the potential to make 10 times more than those who only attend high school. This is an incentive to attend post-secondary school because you would be able to achieve a significantly better standard of living with 10 times the amount of annual income. When considering what Stevens said about bankruptcy, the more money you earn yearly out of college, the easier it would be to pay off your student expenses. You would most likely still be able to live a relatively decent life while paying off the bills and then it would skyrocket once the bills were completely paid off.

Many potential college students ask themselves why they should try to attend school when the only schools they can most likely get in to are low end state and private colleges and more likely, community colleges. I stumbled upon an article on the effect of community colleges on the average individual. The article stated that researches found that students who obtained an associate’s degree fared better than their high school counterparts and those who didn’t complete the required courses did no better financially and when concerning wages than those who only attended high school. This shows that even attending a community college and getting a basic degree was still significantly better than not getting a degree at all.

Furthermore one might want to consider that attending a community college is significantly less expensive than attending a state school or private school yet a community college still provides a solid degree in many cases that will help support the average to above average lifestyle. In an article I read on Collegeboard.com, studies showed that the average of a community 2 year college was just under 3000 dollars a year where as the cost of a four year public school was near 9000 dollars a year. This shows that there are colleges that are significantly cheaper than those that will have a higher chance of putting you in bankruptcy but they still have the resources and lessons needed to support a career in many fulfilling fields. This is combatant to the notion that Stevens brought that the money put into college is not worth it because there are many colleges that offer colleges at prices that are next to nothing in comparison to others. One must weigh out the risks of paying out such a small bill to the benefits of getting a college education.

In response to the growing unemployment rates and homeless population and also the decline in U.S economy, the government is sponsoring many organizations that are providing aid to students in need of it while they are pursuing education. The Federal Pell grant is an example of a United States sponsored grant that is completely devoted to helping students pay for undergraduate education, and in some cases, even post undergraduate education. This grant uses a formula that calculates the amount the student needs based on a wide variety of figures. Things like family income, size of the students family, students status of part time or full time, and many other numbers are pulled together to decide an amount that the government will pay to the students so they can more easily achieve their educational goals. The government would then send out a letter that awards the student up to 5500 dollars towards the needs of their education. And when considering the costs of community education, that’s almost two years of college paid for on the spot. This is huge for students who are debating if it is worth it financially to attend because it will eliminate half of what is needed for a four year degree therefore making the other half’s expenses significantly more manageable. The government doesn’t just stop at the Pell grant. The Federal Supplemental Opportunity Grant gives money to students who’s predicted parental and family support financially through college will be significantly lower than standard or rather what is needed to be effective financially. This grant offers up to 4000 dollars a year towards the payment of student bills. Here’s the most important part, it does not need repayment. This means that whatever the government decides to give you in response to your application is yours without the need to figure out how to repay it, which greatly reduces the financial and mental stress of a college graduate figuring out what they need to repay and how they need to repay it. That’s up to another half of a student’s community college education paid for leaving little to none left for the student to worry about paying off after obtaining the degree.

Dale Stevens argues that even with the aid of the government and the benefits of obtaining a degree, it is still not worth the cost of attendance and the risk of further losing your creativity in the process. In my opinion, I agree that with Stevens that the potential debt gained by obtaining a large number of post-secondary schools can be very expansive. In an article I read in the New York Times, it was recorded that the average debt of college seniors graduating from a university has risen 25 percent over the last four years. It now stands at approximately 23,000 dollars which can be a daunting task to pay off. I feel however that the government provides enough provisions in order to diminish and consolidate the debt to a manageable level. College can be expensive, but it is doable. Stevens argues that after obtaining the degree of choice, the outlook for jobs is extremely low making the degree itself seemingly worthless. I agree with his statement in that I see that there has been a downturn in the outlook of jobs for the American college graduate in recent years. However, recently I read an article on USnews.com that stated that the outlook of job is improving, even if it is only ever so slightly. The article states that there has been a 4% increase in the amount of students hired out of the class of 2011 when compared to those of the previous year. This shows that even though the job outlook is not as promising as it should be, it is still improving which makes it that much more worth attending college every year. I agree that the low job market could deter the average high school student from attending college as opposed seeking out a job with instant financial gratifications and little to no financial need, but I still feel that students should try to attend college because of the potential earnings and quality of life improvements that are possible. In my opinion, Dale Stevens is right that the benefits might not outweigh the risks of college in some majors, but in others such as the medical field which has a consistently growing job market, the college education needed to obtain a job in the field is most defiantly worth it. In short, Dale Stevens argues that college is an unnecessary evil and that many students should go out into the real world and attempt to find lessons from real world scholars without the huge financial burden. I agree that in some instances the costs outweigh the benefits of college due to certain majors having slim job markets, yet I still feel that students have the resources to battle those expenses and that the rewards of obtaining a college degree far outweigh the costs in particular majors that have big job markets. Furthermore, I feel that there are enough companies out in the job market attempting to obtain skilled workers by paying for their college expenses to help convince the average college student that they will have support in paying for college and more importantly, will have a job lined up for them once completing it.  

Creativity in Public Education

When concerning the issue of education, many points of view and opinions seem to arise about whether public schooling harvests the minds and creativity young ones or if it actually kills it. Sir Ken Robinson debates that education, and moreover, the educators themselves, are training the young minds of tomorrow to follow the flow of the system and, in his words, “Creating college English professors. Robinson seems to believe that the educators crush those who step out from the norm and scold them, labeling them with attention deficit disorders and mood problems. He describes a story of a mother who took her child to the doctor because she wasn’t paying attention in class. The child couldn’t sit still and was sent home with notes on many occasions. The doctor examined the child in a room filled with the sounds of music and witnessed her beginning to dance. The doctor didn’t diagnose her with a disease or a disorder; he said she was simply “a dancer”. By telling this story, Robinson further exemplifies his theory of crippling creativity in public education.  He believes that there needs to be major reform in order to let that creativity help the student, not hurt it.

I agree with most of Robinson’s opinions. In today’s education, Educators are instilling rigid foundations into the minds of young ones that essentially force them into line with everyone else who has ever came out of that education system. This stops children from expressing themselves and scares any who do into submission to the system. I especially agree with the story Robinson told of the little girl who liked to dance. It seems to be the norm of public educators to dismiss possibilities of creative outlook for more degenerative “clinical” diagnoses. This allows them to effortlessly provide a solution to the differences the child is exhibiting, even if the solution in itself is an antisolution.

When reading the article "Leaving Creativity Behind", a method of test preparation is discussed that was created to adhere to the regulations instilled by the no child left behind plan. The article describes a “drill kill” method of studying for the state standardized examinations. It is a method of hard studying and solid constant instate of test information in order to master the concepts that will be tested. This is a prime example of how the education system is destroying the creative minds of its pupils. By focusing so hard on studying for these exams, students put forth all the energy on mastering the skills, and almost none on harvesting their creative ideas. This is incredibly destructive for the whimsical mind because if a student is trained to focus only on what is deemed important by their instructors, like for example, the essay question on an English section of an exam, they will never feel the need to branch off on their own and pursue their own ideas and concepts not necessarily given to them. This could become permanent depending on how often this particular method of education is introduced to the student.

One may ask what is so important about being creative and why an education system should favor education over the steady intake of solid factual concrete information. What comes into my mind is that with the growing advances in the medical, technological, and historical fields, is it the uncreative factual driven students that are responsible for these breakthroughs, or is it the creative minds that were scolded for stepping outside of the box that provide the major jumps in these fields. This leads into a bigger problem that is beginning to affect our nation. The very essence of creativity and methods behind it are changing. This change is a negative one that will eventually halt the major inventions and shrink their significance. When reading the article “Technology and the American Creativity Crisis” it was revealed that for the first time in years, technology has showed a general decline in creativity. By measuring the CQ or Creativity Quotient scores of individuals, a prediction can be made about whether or not that person is going to pursue a creative career such as an inventor or author or if the person is going to do something significantly less creative such as a factory worker or a banker. The reading goes on to explain that the average scores of Americans taking the test have declined over recent years. It also brings up a very telling point. It states that when comparing CQ scores to IQ scores, the results of CQ for “creative students” were over three times higher than the IQ scores of the same person. This point is extremely significant to this argument because IQ scores are generally boosted by those who study hard and focus primarily on the facts in school rather than the arts and innovative thinking. Obviously schools tailor students to have those higher IQ scores and to think almost entirely inside the box so if the equation that as IQ goes up as CQ goes down is indeed true, then when an educator has a student focus entirely on following the standards of education given to them by the superiors at the district, state, and federal level, then the CQ is most definitely suffering. It would be interesting to see how the students of these schools feel about the loss of creativity.

I saw a video on YouTube of a 7^th grade child discussing how he thinks Legos should be allowed in school to promote creativity. If this idea were to be brought to the attention of a leader in education, they would most likely shun it as a waste of time due to it being a toy. The boy continues the video by showing ships he designed and built himself based off the popular science fiction film series “Star Wars”. This is shows huge creativity but more importantly, critical thinking because the boy had to be able to have a high level of sophisticated foresight to see the final product without any diagrams or pictures. He also had to have mature observation skills that allowed him to pull the general trends and shapes from an already built piece and use that information to create his own. Those two concepts of creative thinking are incredibly useful in today’s world yet they are inadvertently shut down by the system that is creating the citizens of the future. The question is, should we put forth the effort to fix this.

In order to answer this question, we must look at what would happen if we didn’t stop the downsizing of the global creativity. Critical and creative thinking has created almost every advancement in society today. Even something as simple as running water had to have been thought up and created by someone who had the mindset of “maybe we could do it better this way”. We are constantly looking for the answers to questions pertaining to the overall health and quality of our life. Examples such as how to cure cancer, how can we find a solid and stable renewable recourse for fuel, what is out in space and how can we get it. If we continue to think on the same tract as what has already been established, then we can never answer those questions because we are not allowing ourselves to explore other possibilities. This is where the problem of limiting creativity comes into play. If we continue to step on the creative outlooks of today’s children, or to what most of us forget, tomorrow’s adults, then we annihilate the critical thinker population of tomorrow that would otherwise be responsible for solving today’s issues. This will hurt our efforts in all types of growth because we are refusing to allow ourselves to go in a different direction to further advance once we reach the end of the particular road of invention and breakthroughs of thought we are currently on. This can only lead to the shrinking of our thoughtful society which can lead to huge consequences, especially in our relationship with other nations who do allow the thinkers of tomorrow to prosper. The big question now is now that we know there is a problem and know that it needs to be fixed, how to do we go about doing so.

It seems as though some of the remaining creative minds of today have attempted to solve the problem. I stumbled upon a website called the “No right brain left behind challenge”. The site is centered on a challenge that is calling industries to find creative ideas to solving the “creativity crisis” in today’s schools. The ideas are judged by a panel of creative thinkers that are significant in today’s society and the top 3 ideas are advertised and implemented in the following year before the next week of contests begins. By providing the incentive for big businesses to focus on the issue, we are beginning to take a step forward in the right direction. If we were to set apart more time in coming up with ideas for the creativity crisis in America, we would most likely come up with a suitable solution to the issue and would hopefully be able to implement it permanently, fixing the problem. The problem is that most of society doesn’t feel the need to look into fixing the system that in their minds isn’t broken. This brings back something I mentioned earlier. We as a nation are constantly forgetting that the students and children and learners of today are going to be the leaders and thinkers and builders of tomorrow. By implementing these limits on the creative mind of a young student and getting rid of the possibility for such creativity, we are in fact hindering ourselves and the world we live in. We forget the world is not run by the one tract minded individuals who have no room in their thoughts for the creativity. The world is run and supported by those who agree to think outside the box and ask themselves “why?”. We seem to limit the asking of “why” in our education by providing answers like “because I said so”. If we continue to stomp on the students desire to go beyond the solid line, we are killing the creativity inside them.

The American school system is indeed killing the creativity of its students. Respected intellectuals such as Ken Robinson and major businesses and industries agree. Most importantly, the students of these schools know they should be able to be creative but can’t because of the impending punishment and disapproval of their teachers and educational leaders. If we continue to allow this to happen, we are only setting up disastrous consequences for our nation in the future.

the art of essentialism

Today  I was tasked with reading a particularly difficult piece written by Bell Hooks on the topic of experience and essiantialism in the classroom. This writing focused on two perspectives. That of Bell hooks, and that of Dianna Fuss, on the issue of Essiantalism. Now from hearing both sides of the table, it seems to me that I am able to get a solid understanding of Essiantalism. In this context, Essiantialism seems to be the need for someone to be heard, to have voice, to be "essential" to a discussion or, on a much broader scale, a society. Now this piece argued back and forth on whether the essiantialism of "marginalized groups" such  as young black students, was more detrimental to those around it than it was beneficial. Hooks had a contradictory view of Fuss that the voices of those marginalized groups were indeed necessary and more over, justified. Fuss discussed how some of the members of said groups can have what seemed to be described as a warped sense of reality. In other words, it seemed that they thought because they were in the same group of people in some topics of race, discrimination, sexism, their ideas were indeed needed to be heard when in reality, at least in the mind of Fuss, they were not. This was an example of "experience" in that those marginalized groups thought because they shared with those of adversity, they were entitled to share. Fuss disagrees with that. Hooks countered that argument with providing the example of how that happens every day with unmarginalized groups such as the "white majority". She sites how those students feel that they are entitled have their ideas heard and thrive of the sense of superiority. Because of this, Hooks concluded that all students should have the right to demonstrate their piece of essiantalism.

Lessons on close reading... from a spider

Today I read an excerpt from Patricia Kain's explanation on how to "close read". Patricia provided, in her writing, a story about an explorer's discovery of a spider. The explorer discovered the spider on its own web and tapped it with his pencil. The web began to react (acting as a puppet of the spider) and provided the explorer with an observation. Now, the reason that Patricia included this story is because she wanted to teach us how to use the steps of close reading, "annotating", "looking for patterns" and "asking questions", steps one, two, and three respectively, to dissect piece of writing in order to significantly improve our understanding. Her definition of close reading is defined in those three steps. Collectively, Kain defines close reading as the ability to dissect, analyze, and come to conclusions about the piece of written text in question. While stumbling around the vast universe that is google, I came about a slightly different interpretation of what close reading is. While reading through the passage on http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/s/a/sam50/closeread.htm, I received a slightly more forward opinion of what close reading is. "Dr. McClennen" (as quoted from the text) defines close reading as simply to interpret what you are reading. Patricia Kain, however, defines close reading as a collaboration of steps, not just one single solitary idea. It is interesting how different people have different ways of explaining this concept.

Waldo's Great Great Grandson

After finishing reading Emerson's "The American Scholar" I was filled with the opinions of a man who's eyes were so prevalent in the eighteen hundred's. When one (myself) is filled with so many thoughts of a completely different time period, those thoughts are automatically conflicted with the values I was brought up with in the twenty first century, two hundred years after Emerson's evaluation of the American scholar. So any one, in order to get the full effect of a reading like this, must ask themselves what such a great mind of the past would say in his time's distant future, or rather, our own present.

If presented with the society of 2011, Emerson would still hold core values he presented in his 19th century address. However, Emerson would most likely take into account the extreme advances in technology that are directly related to today's "American Scholar".

One resource that would please and displease Emerson is the ability to find almost any piece of wanted information on the world wide web. Emerson would preach about how valuable that ability would be for the student who knows how to use it properly. On the other hand, he would criticize how today's technology has hindered the American mind of those who use it improperly. For example, studies have shown that the ability to seek any information wanted in an instant has eliminated one's ability to use basic research skills needed when the Internet was not available. This is only a phenomenon that effects certain individuals; those who don't seek out to use other resources as well. This would trouble Emerson because of the fact that with this great tool comes a great responsibility, one who the average person fails to uphold.

Difficulties in decoding Emerson's message..

In the first half of "The American Scholar" by Ralph Waldo Emerson, there was a tremendous amount of sophistication and English codec that to many, including myself, are misunderstood. It seems a select secret mind, a rare one at that, can reveal the true meaning of Emerson's mind numbing text. A particular passage struck out to me as especially difficult.

The passage read:
"I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; always we are invited to work; only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes of action"

Like myself, I'm sure all of you reading this are shaking your heads and massaging your temples. To me a few phrases stand out to be important to the understanding of this particular piece of written text. When looking at the phrase "there is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade" it seems to imply that multiple types of work are equally important to society. Further into that sentence when examining the phrase "for learned as well as unlearned hands." it seems to add the workers themselves to the important factors of this described society.

The most trying sentence of this passage is the final one. "only be this limitation observed, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgements and modes of action". In my opinion, this final part swings the entire mood of the passage. It seems to be seen that Emerson believes that finding multiple methods of work and workers to complete them is indeed important, but once a man begins his work, he should not be persuaded to go elsewhere by outside influences, at least, from what I understand, until the work is done.

So taking both major elements into mind, it seems that the overall message of this passage is this; One must seek out to do needed and productive tasks, but once a task is started, one must finish it no matter what forces may push back.

Emerson seems to have a multitude of coded messages in his historic pieces, no one can understand his writing, or any writing for that matter, to the fullest extent, unless they wrote it themselves. This is because writing isn't a science, writing is a point of view.