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Taking it Global: Online Freedom of Speech versus the 6th Amendment

13 Mar

PBS.kids.org says, “Online bullying often called online harassment is a serious issue, and it’s getting more common.”

In fact, no one on the Internet—especially those that are transparent—is safe from an anonymous online bully, who uses the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution as a shield to abuse the character and/or reputation of individuals that are not anonymous online. For example, authors, who may also be publishers, often find their reputations as authors/publishers damaged by the comments of anonymous online bullies.

I have been doing extensive ongoing research on this issue due to my own run-in with a pack of these anonymous bullies recently (and a few years ago), and I have discovered that this is a problem that permeates Amazon (in addition to other sites such as Goodreads) affecting possibly hundreds and even thousands of people due to the fact that Amazon cannot, at this time, police itself efficiently or adequately to protect transparent people—mostly authors—that have become victims of alleged malicious and obviously premeditated attacks by anonymous people that demonstrate by their own words alleged sociopath-narcissist tendencies.

I have also come to the conclusion that we cannot blame Amazon.com for this toxic environment. Amazon is also a victim due to the “freedom of speech” dilemma. However, the 1st Amendment does not offer total protection from abusers.

1st Amendment Text: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Study these 1st Amendment words carefully. Nowhere does it say in the 1st Amendment that a private sector business and social network like Amazon.com cannot limit freedom of speech on its site. The key words are “Congress shall make no law …”, and Amazon.com does not make the laws.

In addition, The Freedom Forum clearly says that the First Amendment does not say anyone can say anything at any time, and the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an interpretation of speech without limits.

The Supreme Court has ruled regarding libel and slander: “Was the statement false, or put in a context that makes true statements misleading? You do not have a constitutional right to tell lies that damage or defame the reputation of a person or organization.” Source: Freedom Forum.org

The virtual world is a new legal arena and the courts are dealing with hundreds of libel law suits monthly and, true to form, legislation at the state and national level is moving slowly as this hot button issue over “freedom of speech” gives cause for caution. Our elected representatives do not want to be smeared with accusations that they are limiting freedom of speech so they must tread cautiously or lose votes.

However, there is another side to this issue that I haven’t seen expressed yet.  Freedom of Speech is only one of the rights/protections that the US Constitution offers its citizens. What everyone seems to have overlooked is the Confrontation Clause of the 6th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

The Confrontation Clause has its roots in both English common law, protecting the right of cross-examination, and Roman law, which guaranteed persons accused of a crime the right to look their accusers in the eye. In noting the right’s long history, the United States Supreme Court has cited Acts of the Apostles 25:16, which reports the Roman governor Porcius Festus, discussing the proper treatment of his prisoner Paul: “It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man up to die before the accused has met his accusers face-to-face, and has been given a chance to defend himself against the charges.” It has also cited Shakespeare’s Richard II, Blackstone’s treatise, and statutes.

By allowing people to hide behind an anonymous identity on the Internet and allowing them to write negative reviews/comments and even level ad-hominem attacks against easy to identify individuals who are transparent, the 6th Amendment rights of these transparent people have been violated because one cannot look his or her accuser/s face-to-face and eye-to-eye.

After all, how can any author, for example, who is transparent and working under his or her real name, defend against alleged anonymous bullies on Amazon.com (and similar sites such as Goodreads)—that leave negative reviews or even YES votes to support those anonymous, negative reviews/comments—and have a chance to defend his or her damaged reputation by facing his or her critic face-to-face and eye-to-eye?

In this example, knowing the history of your critic might be vital if it is discovered that an anonymous person leaving negative reviews/comments has a hidden history of this sort of behavior on the Internet spreading criticism, lies and ad-hominem insults in addition to using what is known as SockPuppets to gain an unfair advantage thus establishing premeditation—the law says that premeditation is the contemplation of a crime well enough in advance to show deliberate intent to commit the crime; forethought.

In conclusion, because going to court to resolve this hot button issue may be too costly and beyond the average citizen’s ability to pay for justice, this issue may be open to a lawyer or law firm to take pro bono or as a class action suit on a consignment and/or contingency basis. The defendant in this sort of class action case might be a consumer, social networking sites such as Amazon.com—an online community similar to a town, city, state or nation and therefore held responsible to uphold the protections offered by the U.S. Constitution to its Internet citizens.

In this case, a transparent victim online, such as an author or other individual, should have the right to demand knowing who his or her anonymous critic/accuser is that may be smearing his or her good name and/or product. After all, the online environment has created a court of public opinion that if unchecked may damage the reputation and well being of an innocent victim.

Of course, there may be a simple solution to avoid having this issue reach and be defined by the United States Supreme Court: When a transparent person claims his or her 6th Amendment rights when confronted by an alleged online anonymous bully, Amazon.com—for example—automatically provides an online form that the anonymous person may fill out revealing his or her real-life name, location and information leading to his or her online history that could then be verified before publication, or the anonymous person may decide to delete his or her review/comment and remain anonymous. If the anonymous person refuses to cooperate, Amazon may refuse to offer them a forum on its site and remove every review/comment made by that anonymous individual. Eventually, even the SockPuppets an anonymous person may have created might be revealed and vanish under such a policy.

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on March 13, 2013 in government, media, politics

 

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Winning the Genetic Lottery may not be enough

02 Feb

For months, I’ve been searching for studies that show the odds of winning the job/career lottery that leads to a glamorous/famous, wealth growth job.

I didn’t find my answer from a study. I found it from a super model, Cameron Russell.

What Cameron Russell says in this YouTube TED video is the real story of dream jobs. She says, “I am standing on this stage because I am a pretty white woman and in my industry we call that a sexy girl. … The real way I became a model is I won a genetic lottery and I became the recipient of a legacy. Saying you want to be a model when you grow up is akin to saying you want to win the Powerball when you grow up. It’s awesome and it’s out of your control and it’s not a career path.” Source: Shine.Yahoo.com


Pay attention to Cameron’s words. She offers wise advice about reality and life.

Before I go on, I want to say that genetics is not the only factor in many dream jobs/professions. Dedication, hard work and persistence also play a part in fields such as sports, acting, the arts, etc.

But, what Cameron has to say holds truth for all of the dream jobs that so many young people chase often destroying his or her future.

It’s okay to have a dream but dream realistically.  The odds are against anyone becoming a super model like Cameron Russell, an icon in football, baseball, or basketball, for example. This also applies to acting, the music industry and being a published author no matter what path an author takes such as indie, self-published or traditional.

That is why I believe every child, teen and young person must have a backup plan that is realistic but often leads to a boring job—when dreams fail to materialize—that pays more than working for Wal-Mart, the fast-food industry, cleaning pools, cutting crass, washing dishes, tending bar or waiting on tables.

Being a life-long-learner is important to having a backup plan and this message is for parents. It is your job to make sure your child loves to read and sees that learning is important and not boring and a waste of time. The future belongs to life-long learners.

Education is getting a bad rep from the media in the United States and college educations are under attack. Why?

Who stands to benefit from an ignorant, functionally illiterate population struggling to survive on minimum wages working in insecure jobs?

Discover Education’s Accountability Dilemma

_______________________

Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on February 2, 2013 in Public School, Education, Parenting, politics, family values, student behavior, media, self-esteem, self-esteem movement

 

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A film with a clear political agenda against teacher unions

29 Sep

We went to see ‘Won’t Back Down’ with Maggie Gyllenhall and Viola Davis, a film that ignores many facts of a complicated issue that causes students to turn out illiterate and schools to be considered failures.

Soon after the movie started, I complained. “If her (Jamie played by Ms. Gyllenhall) daughter has trouble reading, why doesn’t she turn off the TV and teach her at home as my mother did?”

My wife had to shut me up before someone complained to the management and had me tossed out of the theater. Censured and mute, I still wanted to rant and rave, and I did let loose after we left the theater.

You see, when I was seven (in the early 1950s), my mother was told I was retarded and would never learn to read or write.  Back then, educators did not know about dyslexia. According to those experts, I was doomed to be illiterate for life.

However, I was not destined to turn out the same as my older brother. He died a broken and illiterate man at age 64 in December 1999. By the time I was seven and my brother twenty-one, my mother had learned her lesson because she watched and agonized over my brother’s decline. At age twenty-one, Richard had already spent time in prison. When he died, fifteen of his sixty-four years was spent locked up behind bars after spending too much time drinking in bars.

How did my working mom make a difference in my life?  Answer: at home with primer books a caring teacher had recommended and eventually a coat hanger.  The coat hanger appeared after I refused to cooperate. After all, it was hard work, it was boring, and I hated every moment of it, but my mother would not take NO for an answer. She had already lost one son to the dead-end life of illiteracy and was determined not to lose me to the same fate.

With my mother armed with that coat hanger, I learned to read. Today, my mother probably would have been charged with child abuse, and I would have been sent to a foster home and turned out illiterate. I do not resent my mother. I thank her for making an effort most parents today do not make.

To make a long story short, I learned to love reading books. By the time I graduated from high school, I was reading at college level above most of my classmates. Over the years, I earned an AS degree, BA, MFA and a life teaching credential.

‘Won’t Back Down’ is an anti-teacher union film pretending to care about the education of disadvantaged children.


Richard Roeper’s Reviews agrees with A. O Scott of the New York Times

When my wife and I returned home from the theater, I wanted to see what the New York Times had to say about the film and was not disappointed to see that A. O. Scott had revealed the movie’s biased propaganda.

Scott said “that (the films) pious expression of concern for the children are usually evidence of a political agenda in overdrive … and this one is not shy about showing its ideological hand.”

Scott says, the film “makes the vague claim to have been ‘inspired by true events,’ pits a plucky, passionate band of parents and educators against a venal and intransigent cabal of labor bosses and their greedy, complacent rank-and-file minions.”

The promise the film makes, says Scott is that “Once teachers give up job security and guaranteed benefits, learning disabilities will be cured, pencils will stop breaking and the gray skies of Pittsburgh will glow with sunshine. Who could be against that?”

Scott ends with, “however you take its politics, the film upholds a dreary tradition of simplifying and sentimentalizing matters of serious social concern, and dummying down issues that call for clarity and creative thinking. Our children deserve better.”

I want add to Scott’s last sentence. “Our teachers deserve better too.”

I know what it is like to be dyslexic. I’ve lived with it all my life. I also know what teachers go through, because I taught for thirty years (1975 – 2005) in California’s public schools. My average work week ran 60 to 100 hours. I often arrived at school as early as 6:00 in the morning when the gates were unlocked and sometimes worked as late as 11:00 at night when the alarms were turned on and the gates locked.

In the film, it seems the so-called evil teachers’ union limits the amount of time a teacher may stay after school to help students or meet with parents. The teachers’ union I belonged to never did anything like that. There are more than 14,000 school districts in the US and most have a contract with a teacher union so I cannot say that it isn’t that way in Philadelphia’s schools. It’s just that in my experience, I never heard of it.

In addition, at one point in my teaching career, I was in danger of being fired due to a censorship issue when I was the journalism advisor for the high school newspaper. Without the union, I’m convinced that I would have been fired for defending what my students wrote and published in one issue of the school paper.

Near the end of the film, Jamie, who works two jobs (one in a car dealership and the other as a bartender) to make ends meet, reveals that she is dyslexic and didn’t want her third-grade daughter, who is also dyslexic, to be left behind too.

There is a big difference between actresses playing the roles of a dyslexic mother and daughter and someone that is really dyslexic.  For me, my mother made the difference. The schools did not teach me to read at a time when there were no unions in the California public schools that I attended.

In the film, why didn’t the character Ms. Gyllenhall plays help her daughter improve her reading skills at home? In fact, why are so many parents in America avoiding this responsibility? In Finland, a country with one of the most successful public school districts in the world with a very strong teachers’ union, parents start teaching their children to read at about age 3 at home, four years before starting school at age 7. The teachers in Finland have also been given a lot of responsibility regarding how those schools operate and they do it with parent support.

Instead, when we are in Jamie’s apartment in Pittsburgh, the TV is on and no books are in the child’s hands. When I was a child, my parents always had books around and read every night and that, along with my mother and that stinging coat hanger, made all the difference.

The truth is that NO teacher could have used that coat hanger on me as motivation to learn to read—then or now. In addition, my mother only had one child to teach at home while my teachers had classrooms full of children to teach. When I was still teaching, I often had 175 – 200 students in five, one-hour classes.

As A. O Scott wrote for the New York Times, it is a ‘complicated issue’.

However, I spend a lot of time attempting to explain those issues on this Blog. It’s too bad that studies and surveys reveal the painful truth that 80% of Americans after leaving or graduating from high school never read a book again—even to and/or with their children.

Those same parents will probably never read a Blog post this long, and I am sure of this—they will be very quick to blame teachers for children that grow up with no love of reading.

Discover It’s the Parents, Stupid

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on September 29, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, literacy, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, Reading, Teaching

 

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Not Broken! – Part 5/5

05 Sep

You may want to skip this page if you prefer opinions without facts used as support (this is known as hot air or natural gas).  I tend to support my opinions, some say, with too many facts (what I consider to be six cups of coffee).

There are more comparisons we should look at, and the first is comparing literacy in America with its northern and southern neighbors in addition to the top-ten countries with the highest reported high-school graduation rates.

In fact, there is another measurement that may be more meaningful than a country’s reported high school graduation rate. That measurement is functional illiteracy.

The United States and many other countries claim high literacy rates because the definition of literacy says, “The adult literacy rate is the percentage of people age 15 and above who can, with understanding, read and write a short, simple statement on their everyday life.”

However, functional illiteracy means that reading and writing skills are inadequate “to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level.”

Functional illiteracy is contrasted with illiteracy in the strict sense, meaning the inability to read or write simple sentences in any language.

For example, my older brother, (died age 64 in 1999) graduated from high school in the United States in 1953 and was considered literate due to the definition of literacy, because he could write and read at a second grade level.  However, he was functionally illiterate and never read a newspaper, magazine or book in his life. In fact, he could not fill out an employment application.

Now, let’s cast serious doubt on comparing high school graduation rates in America with other countries.

According to the United Nations Human Development Report, the United Kingdom, that reported the highest secondary (high school) graduation rate in the world, has 21.8% of its adult population age 16 – 65 considered functionally illiterate.

Switzerland, in second place for high school graduation rates has a functional illiteracy rate among adults of 15.9%.

Norway, in third place, has a 7.9% functional illiteracy rate among adults.

I could find no information on functional illiteracy in South Korea, fourth place, and Japan, fifth place.

Italy, in sixth place for high school graduation rates, has a functional illiteracy rate of 46% among adults

Seventh place Ireland has a 22.6% functional illiteracy rate.

Eighth place Germany has a functional illiteracy rate is 14.4%

Ninth place Finland’s functional illiteracy rate is 10.4%

Tenth place Denmark’s functional illiteracy rate is 9.6%

America’s functional illiteracy rate was reported as 20% among adults.

However, for a better comparison with a similar culture that has similar values and similar problems, I looked north to Canada and discovered that among adults aged 16 to 65, about 42 per cent scored below Level 3 in prose literacy, which is considered the threshold needed for coping in society. Source: Vivele Canada

In addition, the CBC reported on Canada’s shame, saying that nearly 15 percent of Canadians can’t understand the writing on simple medicine labels such as on an Aspirin bottle and an additional 27% can’t figure out simple information like the warnings on a hazardous materials sheet.

For further proof that comparing high-school graduation rates between countries as a way to judge America’s public education system was and is wrong, in 2009, Canada’s high school graduation rate was reported as 78% but the country has a functionally illiterate adult population ages 16 – 65 of forty-two percent (more than twice that of the United States). Even comparing literacy rates is not a fair comparison between countries, for example, because in Finland most parents teach his or her child/children to read before they start school at age seven showing us that culture has a lot to do with literacy too.

However, in America studies show that 80% of parents never attend a parent-teacher conference.

What about Mexico—just south of the US.  According to Mexico’s 2010 census 93.7% of Mexican males aged 15 and older were literate compared to only 91.1% of females, but what about functional illiteracy?  Mexico comes close to Canada with 43.2% of its adult population aged 16 – 65 functionally illiterate as my brother was.

Compared to America’s closest neighbors, the public-education system in the US is doing a fantastic job. Is there room for improvement? Of course, but the overall evidence shows that America’s public schools do not deserve to be condemned as broken. Instead, the facts say that most of America’s public school teachers are doing the job they were hired to do while it is politicians that are telling them what to teach.

Another factor to consider is High School graduation rates by race/ethnicity in the United States

For the 2007-08 school year, 91.4% of Asian/Pacific Islanders graduated from high school (156,687); 81% of Whites (1,853,476); 64.2% of American Indian/Alaska Native (31.707); 63.5% of Hispanic (443,238), and 61.5% of Blacks (415,111). Source: U.S. Department of Education

Most schools have all five races/ethnicities represented in the same classrooms (the schools I taught in for thirty years did) with the same teachers. However, when the numbers are averaged, critics of public education blame the teachers.

When averaged, the graduation rate in 2008 was 74.9%, which makes the public schools seem to be earning a C while they are earning an A- for the Asian/Pacific Islanders and a B- for Whites.

Really? How can the same teacher be so successful with Asian/Pacific Islanders and Whites and not with the other ethnic groups?

This is the advise I told our daughter when she was in grade school: “The only excuse to fail and not learn in school is when students do not pay attention, ask questions, read, do homework, class work, etc.  There is no excuse. Even if the teacher is incompetent, a motivated student will still learn.” And she did.

In addition, the graduation rates increase when the GED is included with traditional high-school degrees. In 2009, the completion rates of 18-through 24-year-olds was: 88.3% white, 87.1% black, and 76.8% Hispanic. Source: U.S. Department of Education

If an Asian or White student is successful with a teacher, why can’t the Hispanic or Black student have the same success with the same teacher?  After all, the teacher is responsible to teach and the student is responsible to learn (or has this been forgotten).  If the teacher wasn’t doing his or her job, then the Asians and Whites should have graduation rates similar to Hispanics and Blacks.

Return to Not Broken! – Part 4 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on September 5, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, literacy, Literature, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, Reading, Teaching

 

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Not Broken! – Part 4/5

04 Sep

In conclusion, when do we see these types of global education comparisons from the media or critics of public education?

Never!

The reason for that NEVER answer is because four US presidents (two democrats and two republicans) along with forty-four US governors and 50 CEOs made a huge mistake starting in the 1980s when they left out vocational training as part of educational reform.

Instead of admitting the mistake, politicians and many Americans continue to use teachers and teacher unions as the scapegoat claiming that public education is broken. If you need proof, today, America has a high unemployment rate at the same time that millions of high-skilled, high-paying blue-collar jobs that do not require a college education but do require skilled vocational training go unfilled.

Recommendation: The US should seriously consider starting vocational programs, similar to Europe, that leads to graduation from its secondary schools—this means two programs that result in high-school graduation: academic and vocational. In my opinion, it is ridiculous to treat every student as if he or she is college material.


Mike Rowe testifies before the US Senate about the need for people that can fill jobs that require skilled trades. He is the host of a TV show called Dirty Jobs about the hard work done by tradesmen and skilled workers.

All we need to do is look at information from the US Census to see the truth.

In the United States by age 24, almost 90% of young adults have a high-school degree or its equivalent, a GED.

However, only 30.44% (72.56 million) of those young adults went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree, and of those that earned a BA degree, 7.94% (18.95 million) earned a Master’s degree and 3% (7.2 million) a Doctorate or professional degree.

In addition, according to the US Census, 76% of the population is age 19 or older. That means 165.7 million (70%) adult Americans did not move from the high school academic program to a college academic program.

Many of these adults may have benefited from a vocational program leading to high-school graduation and a high skilled, high paying blue-collar job, and unemployment in America today would be much lower while the economy would benefit from more Americans working, consuming and paying taxes.

Instead, those that did not go to college were tossed into the world of work, most with only an academic high-school degree, and no guidance or support from the public education system that was designed by Washington D.C.

Continued on September 5, 2012 in Not Broken! – Part 5 or return to Part 3

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on September 4, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, media, politics, Public School, Teaching

 

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Not Broken! – Part 3/5

03 Sep

Because the United States does not offer vocational programs in its public high schools, comparing US graduations rates to that of other countries that offer vocational training toward secondary high school graduation is not a fair and/or equal comparison. If we remove the vocational programs in other countries then we are comparing apples to apples instead of apples to cucumbers, and we end up with a more realistic rating of the top ten countries with the United Kingdom removed from the list.


Skilled Labor Shortage – high unemployment and a labor shortage at the same time

In North America, there is far less of a tradition in the public schools of vocational education of any sort, but in the UK and EU, there are vocational programs. However, there is a difference: “The UK requires much less general education and permits all training to take place on employers’ premises, whereas in other countries attendance at college or apprenticeship centers is the rule.” Source: education.gov.uk

The graduation rates of 17/18 year olds of the top ten countries compared for academics not vocational programs:

1. United States = 75.5%

2. Japan = 72%

3. Ireland = 70%

4. South Korea = 66%

5. Norway = 60%

6. Denmark = 55%

7. Finland = 48%

8. Germany = 39%

9. Italy = 35%

10. Switzerland = 30%

In addition, there are 193 countries represented in the UN, putting the United States high-school academic graduation rate (age 17/18) number one of all the nations that are members of the UN.

In addition, the US has the third-largest population on the Earth, and due to population size, it seems fair to compare the US to other countries with large populations.

1. China = 1.347 billion (According to data from China’s Ministry of Education, China has a 99% (160 million) attendance rate for primary school. However, about 63% finished Senior Middle School and 45% complete Vocational School of 15 – 18 yr olds)

2. India = 1.21 billion (49% of females participate in secondary schools compared to 59% of males)

3. United States = 314.2 million (75.5% completed secondary education by 18 yrs of age. However, by gender, more than 90% of girls complete high school or its equivalent, while only 85% of boys do. In the US, high school focuses primarily on the social and academic and does not offer a vocational program toward graduation.

4. Indonesia = 237.6 million (29% complete general education programs and 17% complete vocational training)

5. Brazil = 192.4 million (65% complete general education programs and 9% complete vocational training)

6. Pakistan = 180.5 million (20% of females participate in the secondary schools compared to 35% of males)

7. Nigeria = 166.6 million (43% of females participate in secondary schools compared to 45% of males)

8. Bangladesh = 152.5 million (43% of females participate in secondary schools compared to 40% of males)

9. Russia = 143.1 million (53% complete general education programs and 41% complete vocational training)

10. Japan = 112.3 million (72% complete general education programs and 23% complete vocational training)

Primary Source: unicef.org

Continued on September 4, 2012 in Not Broken! – Part 4 or return to Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on September 3, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, media, politics, Public School, Teaching

 

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Not Broken! – Part 2/5

02 Sep

I’ll start with 1900 when the total number of high-school graduates in the US numbered 16,000 of 815,000 seventeen-year olds.

In 1920, 311,000 graduated from high school or 16.8% of the total which was 1,855,000

In 1940, 1,221,000 or 50,8% of 2,403,000 graduated.

In 1960, 1,858,000 or 69.5% of 2,672,000 graduated.

In 1980, 3,043,000 or 71.4% of 4,262,000 graduated.

Source: nces.ed.gov

After 1970, high school graduation rates for 17/18 year olds level off and fluctuated but not by much.

In fact, in 2009, 75.5% of high school students that started ninth grade as freshman graduated from high school at age 17/18.

Furthermore, in 2009, eighty-nine-point-eight (89.8%) percent of 18 through 24-year-olds not enrolled in high school had earned a high school degree or earned a high-school diploma or a GED after leaving high school.

A GED is a 7 hour test on five-subject areas. Every few years a number of graduating high-school students is selected to take the GED. In order to be awarded a GED, a candidate must do better on the test than 60% of the graduating high-school seniors who took the test.

Take another look at the two numbers that represent graduation from US secondary schools before we compare public education in the United States to other countries:

A. 75.5% (age 17/18)

B. 89.9% (ages 18 – 24)

In 2008, the media reported that the US high school graduation rate was lower than ten countries but this was misleading as you will discover: Source: This list comes from a CNN Blog called Global Public Square. However, I have added more information from other reputable sources.

Note: the first number is the reported total graduation rate but it is often misleading once the facts are known. In addition, remember this: the US public schools do not offer vocational programs that lead to a secondary-school diploma (high school). In the US, programs that lead to graduation from high school are mostly academic—not vocational.


The need for Vocational Education Funding in the public schools

Top Ten List as it was reported in the media:

1. The United Kingdom (92%—In the UK, compulsory education for all children goes from their fifth birthday to the year they turn 16. In addition, one-half of British universities have lost confidence in A grades that are awarded by secondary schools and require many applicants to sit for a competitive entrance examination, and one out of five English adults [20%] are functionally illiterate telling us that graduation rates in the UK mean little to nothing in a comparison of this type—yet the United Kingdom boasts the highest secondary-school graduation rate without any mention of vocational programs)

2. Switzerland (90%, but only 30% completed the general academic program while 71% completed a vocational program toward secondary school graduation—there must be some overlap where students that complete the academic path complete a vocational program too)

3. Norway (78% below age 25 and 92% above age 25, but only 60% completed the academic program, while 38% completed a vocational program toward secondary school graduation)

4. South Korea (89%, but only 66% completed the academic program, while 23% completed a vocational program)

5. Japan (95%, but only 72% completed the academic program, while 23% completed a vocational program toward secondary graduation)

6. Italy (80%, but only 35% completed the academic program, while 59% completed a vocational program)

7. Ireland (90% before age 25 and 91% after age 25, but only 70% completed the academic program, while 62% completed a vocational program with some students completing both)

8. Germany (84%, but only 39% completed the academic program, while 45% completed a vocational program)

9. Finland (84% before age 25 and 95% after age 25, but only 48% complete the academic program, while 94% completed a vocational program with some students completing both)

10. Denmark (75% before age 25 and 85% after age 25, but only 55% complete the general academic program, while 47% complete a vocational program). Source: oecd.org

Continued on September 3, 2012 in Not Broken! – Part 3 or return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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Posted by on September 2, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, media, politics, Public School

 

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Not Broken! – Part 1/5

01 Sep

Regardless of the opinions of others or what the US media says, the facts clearly prove US public schools are not broken and most public school teachers are succeeding at the job they were hired to do, which is teaching American children each state’s mandated academic curriculum to prepare for college with more success than any country on Earth.

If anything is missing, it is vocational training (more on this later) as it exists in many other countries—something missing in American public education.

However, that is not the fault of the teachers or the teacher unions. That is the fault of politicians due to the political nature of public education in the United States and standards-based education reform.

In fact, education reform in the United States since the 1980s has been largely driven by the setting of academic standards for what students should know and be able to do.

Standards-based education reform in the US started with the publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983. Then in 1989, an education summit involving all fifty state governors and President George H. W. Bush (Republican) resulted in the adoption of national education goals for the year 2000.

For this reason, every public school teacher in America should boycott the classroom as the next school year starts in August/September of 2012, demand respect and the truth about the achievements in public education in the United States before returning to the classroom to teach.

It is time for Americans to stop using public school teachers as scapegoats to cover up the truth that if there is any failure, it belongs to Presidents George H. W. Bush, Clinton, G. W. Bush; Obama, and the 1996 National Educational Summit where 44 governors and 50 corporate CEO’s set the academic priorities of public education.


millions of jobs unfilled due to the lack of vocational training in the US public schools

Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler’s inner circle in the Nazi Party, once said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will come to believe it.”

The big lie I’m talking about is what I keep reading and hearing about the US public schools being broken and that teachers and the teacher unions are at fault.

You see, it all depends on how the facts are presented and what is left out.

The critics of public education have a loud voice and use language that shows the glass half empty instead of 90% full, which is more accurate. Once all the facts of high-school graduation rates or its alternatives are known, the perception changes dramatically.

To learn the truth, one must start more than a century in the past and chart the progress.

Continued on September 2, 2012 in Not Broken! – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

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Posted by on September 1, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, media, politics, Public School

 

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After vs. before

21 Aug

Reblogged from The Observer:

Click to visit the original post

Finland, as I've written previously, completely revamped its education system. It did so for both obvious and more subtle reasons. First, its international test scores sucked. Second, Finnish leaders were anxious to create a more vibrant, competitive private sector, one it hoped would be spurred by increased educational performance. They succeeded, spectacularly so (source: Wikipedia).

But you won't hear much about the Finnish reform movement.

Read more… 1,011 more words

Yes, Finland is a great example of how to educate children and there is a wide gap between Finland and America's cultures. However, in the US, every public school teacher should walk out and demand respect and the truth about the achievements in Education in this country before returning to the classroom. Joseph Goebbels, one of Hitler's inner circle in the Nazi Party, once said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will come to believe it." You see, it all depends on how the facts are presented. The critics of public education have a loud voice and use language that shows the glass half empty instead of about 90% full, which is more accurate. Once all the facts about high-school graduation rates, the perception changes dramatically. To achieve this, one must start more than a century back and chart the progress . I'll start with 1900 when the total number of high school graduates in the US numbered 16,000 of 815,000 seventeen-year olds. In 1920, 311,000 graduated from high school or 16.8% of the total which was 1,855,000 In 1940, 1,221,000 or 50,8% of 2,403,000 graduated. In 1960, 1,858,000 or 69.5% of 2,672,00 graduated. In 1980, 3,043,000 or 71.4% of 4,262,00 graduated. Source: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf After 1970, high school graduation rates level off and fluctuated but stayed pretty close. in 2009, 75.5% of high school students that started as freshman graduated. In addition, In 2009, some 89.8 percent of 18- through 24-year-olds not enrolled in high school had received a high school diploma or alternative credential. How does this compare with other countries? In 2008, the U.S. high school graduation rate was lower than the rates of ten countries: The United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Finland and Denmark. Source: http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/11/03/how-u-s-graduation-rates-compare-with-the-rest-of-the-world/ However, there are 193 countries represented in the UN, putting the United States High School graduation rate in the top 5.69% of all the nations that are members of the UN. That means 94.31% of the Earth's countries have lower high school graduation rates. When do we see these types of comparison from the American media or critics of public education in the US? Never The next question is, "What is the political and economic agenda of these critics and a media that seems controlled by the critics?"
 
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Posted by on August 21, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, media, NCLB, politics

 

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Student College Loans – Evil or Not? Part 5/5

18 Aug

Harvard University was the first to set up student loans in 1840 but these loans didn’t become mainstream until the 1960s? Source: Free from Broke.com

Did you know that in 1986, President Reagan eliminated student loan interest as a tax deduction. For 10 years, student loans were not deductible until President Clinton once again allowed the interest to be deductible in 1997 (Forbes).  However, Clinton only allowed the student loan interest to be deductible for the first five years the loan was in repayment; in 2001, the law was changed to allow the interest to be deductible for the life of the loan.

Then in 2007, President G. W. Bush, reduced the student-loan interest rate from 6.8% to 3.4%.

A few more facts to put the student, college-loan debate in perspective and what the media isn’t telling us:

The US has the 2nd highest number of higher education students in the world—4.75% of the total population. The U.S. Department of Education shows 4,861 colleges and universities with 18,248,128 students in 2007.

However, the median cumulative debt among graduating Bachelor’s degree recipients at 4-year undergraduate schools was $19,999 in 2007-08 and 65.6% of 4-year grads with BA degrees took out student loans, which means 34.4% did not.

Of the 9 million that borrowed, one-tenth (900 thousand) borrowed $44,668 or more, which means 90% (more than eight million students) borrowed less.

Graduate and professional students borrowed more, with the additional cumulative debt of a graduate degree typically ranging from $30,000 to $120,000.

How many borrowed the most?

More than 80% of students that are majoring in graduate degrees in medicine borrowed an average of $127,272, while 61.6% of those that graduated with only a BA degree borrowed an average of $23,494. Source: FinAid.org

If you recall, my $7,000 student loan in 1973 had the same buying power as $36,178.96 in 2012, and I paid it off in a decade by eventually working two jobs for three years.

That brings me back to the media. Why has the media been creepy-crawling all over how horrible college student debt is today when the facts say, “On average, most college graduates earn back enough to pay off their student expenses within a decade or so. Two studies by Baum found that graduates with a bachelor’s and no further schooling—or as the earnings literature calls it a bit too on point, a “terminal bachelor’s”—are on average able to repay their college tuition and loans, living expenses, and lost income from skipping four years of work by the time they turn 33. Private-college graduates spend more on their degrees, Baum says, but as they also have slightly higher earning power than their public-college counterparts, they still on the average earn back their college costs before age 40.”. Source: Village Voice

How about those medical students graduating as doctors with all that debt? Do you think they will earn enough to pay off his or her student loans?

Although the following site is moaning and groaning along with the national media, take a look at how much an MD earns after she starts practicing medicine: “The mean annual salary of a MD specialist is $175,011 in the US, and $272,000 for surgeons.” Source: MD Salaries.com

I’m really feeling sorry for these poor, suffering MDs. Maybe we should all chip in and help them pay off those student loans so they will have more money to spend on bigger houses and fancier cars.

In addition, I found this revealing: less than half a percent (0.05%) of those who graduate from college have student loans above $200,000—that means 99.5% do not. This may sound callous, but I do not feel sorry for these people. I paid off my student loans and so can they.

In conclusion, there is one more comparison that must be made. In 1980, the average credit-card debt in America was $670 per household, but today that number is up to $7,800 (per household)—an increase of  more than 1,160 percent. If we factor in inflation, that $670 would be $1,875.90 today—not almost $8,000.

In 1980, credit card debt was less than 4% of household annual median income. That number is16% today. In fact, in 1980 through 1994, the US saving rate averaged 8%, but in 1976, the personal saving rate was 12%.

However, in October 2011, that saving rate was at 3.6%.

Where do you think America’s so called debt-ridden college students learned to borrow to get what they want? If the nation lets young Americans (or their parents and/or grandparents) off the hook for that student-loan debt, these people will never learn.

Return to Student College Loans – Evil or Not? Part 4 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga.

To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”

 
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Posted by on August 18, 2012 in Education, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics

 

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