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Category Archives: family values

A Short History of America’s Middle Class – Part 3/3

28 Sep

In 1800, most Americans (94%) worked and lived on farms. After the Civil War, many left the farms to work in factories but the pay was low for men and even lower for women and children (a situation similar to what has been happening in China for the last few decades–this evolutionary transition happened in the US first. Now it is repeating itself in other countries.).

If life was so harsh in the cities and factories, these migrants could have stayed on the farms and I’m sure most would have if life had been better on the farm, but it wasn’t. For a migration of this size to take place means those people were desperate. That many people do not walk away from a good thing to be treated as if they were slaves.

Legally, children as young as age three worked in US factories (this is illegal in China today). A high number of children also worked as prostitutes (also illegal in China today). Many children (and adults) worked 16 hour days. That would not change until 1938 with the Federal regulation of child labor in the Fair Labor Standards Act.

For an example of what life was like in the US for children before 1938, the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission paints a vivid picture:

“From the early 1800s, children were an integral part of the textile industry’s work force. In the Manayunk district of Philadelphia, children as young as seven assisted in the spinning and weaving of cotton and woolen goods. By 1828, nearly half of Manayunk’s one-thousand laboring residents were children under the age of fifteen. In nearby Kensington, children labored as bobbin boys and girls from sunrise to sunset earning one dollar per week. Exhausted at the end of the work day, some slept in doorways and alleys near the mills. Philadelphia’s 1820 census found that 40 percent of the eleven-hundred workers employed in some thirty-nine textile firms were children.“

Annie Lowrey of the New York Times on 9-21-2012, reported on a study of Who Makes It Into the Middle Class, and education plays an important role but so does the environment and family a child grows up in.

Lowrey wrote, “Isabel V. Sawhill, Scott Winship and Kerry Searle Grannis tackled the question of why some children make it to the middle class and others do not, studying criteria that tend to be indicative of later economic success and examining how race, gender and family income come into play.”

The study discovered that graduating from high school was not enough.

In fact, a child that graduates with a grade-point average above 2.5 with no criminal conviction and no involvement in a teenage pregnancy had an 81% chance of joining the middle class as an adult. A child that does not meet this criteria only had a 24% chance.

The study found that “Children from disadvantaged families are less likely to be ready for school at age 5, less likely to be competent elementary-school students, less likely to graduate from high school without a criminal record or a child, and so on.”

I find it interesting that the study did not blame public school teachers for this.

Benchmarks for measuring the success of public schools is set by politicians in Washington DC and the capitals of the fifty American states, and teachers have no say in those benchmarks. In addition, public school teachers (all college educated with additional training required before becoming a credentialed teacher) have very little to do with the curriculum they teach or the methods used to measure success or failure of the public schools in the United States.

For example, if the Congress and White House says teachers must jump ten feet and they only jump seven, then they have failed and that is how the media reports it. Nowhere do any of these benchmarks for measuring the success of public schools include parents and the environment a child grows up in. Teachers are told to jump ten feet (with no pole, pogo stick or trampoline to help) with no consideration for the impossible.

The formula for education is simple:

teachers teach + students learn + parents help in every way possible and that equals education.

Teachers cannot replace parents or learn for his or her students. All a teacher can do is teach. If a child goes home and does not study or read, the teacher cannot jump the ten feet that Washington DC demands.  If you still are not convinced, I suggest reading Not Broken.

What is wrong with the US Congress and the White House that they are so blind they cannot see this?

Return to A Short History of America’s Middle Class – Part 2 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 28, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, government, Parenting, politics, Public School, Teaching

 

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A Short History of America’s Middle Class – Part 2/3

27 Sep

Another way to trace the rise of the modern-day-middle class may be through life expectancy (see Part One), education, and the shift in population from rural to urban settings.

In 1870, only 2% of teens (age 16 – 18) graduated from high school, but as the country’s population continued to move from rural to urban settings, that changed. In 1850, average life expectancy was 39.

By 1900, six-point-four percent (6.4%) graduated from high school.

In 1940, before World War II, 50.8% graduated.

By 1970, that number climbed to 77.1%.

It is projected that in 2011-12, three-point-two (3.2) million will graduate from high school.

In 1800, there were ten permanent colleges and universities in the US. By 1850, that number reached 131.Today, there are 4,495 colleges, universities and junior colleges in the US.

In 1869 – 70, nine-thousand-three-hundred-seventy-one (9,371) college degrees were awarded.

By 1900, that number reached 28,681.

In 1969 – 70, the number of college graduates reached 839,730.

During the 2012–13 school year, colleges and universities are expected to award 937,000 associate’s degrees; 1.8 million bachelor’s degrees; 756,000 master’s degrees; and 174,700 doctor’s degrees. For the educated, the average life expectancy is age 82.

Most college graduates attended the public schools alongside students that dropped out of high school or only earned a high school degree. To learn is a choice influenced by the family and environment a child grows up in—not so-called incompetent teachers.

Continued on September 28, 2012 in A Short History of America’s Middle Class – 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 27, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, literacy, Parenting, politics, Teaching

 

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A Short History of America’s Middle Class – Part 1/3

26 Sep

There are many ways to prove that America’s public education system is not a failure and is an INCREDIBLE success. This time, I will offer the rise of the modern American middle class as an example:

 

Today, the definition of the middle class in America is complex. In 1951, sociologist C. Wright Mills studied and wrote about the formation of a new middle class of white-collar workers—does not refer to Caucasians but to the type of work—described as mostly highly (college) educated, salaried professionals and managers (roughly 15 – 20% of households today). Then there is the lower middle class consisting mostly of semi-professionals, skilled craftsmen and lower-level management (roughly one third of households).

Another way to measure the size of the middle class in the US would be subtract Americans that live in poverty in addition to the top five percent. In 2010, fifteen-point-one percent (15.1%) of all persons in the US lived in poverty. That adds up to 47.4 million people.

Then annual-household earnings of $100,000 or more puts those Americans above the middle class. In 2005, an economic survey revealed that 5% of individuals in the US earned six-figure incomes exceeding $100,000 annually—that is 15.7 million people leaving 250.9 million Americans in the Middle Class.

A simple definitions says, “The middle-class commonly has a comfortable standard of living, and significant economic security.”

For a better idea of how many Americans enjoy significant economic security, we may want to take a glance at the Great Depression.

During the Great Depression (1929 – 1942), the highest unemployment rate reached almost 25% in 1933, then started to improve.  Unemployment at its worst, means more than 75% of working adults in America were still employed (possibly defining significant economic security). It took thirteen years for unemployment to recover to the level of 1929. In 1940, unemployment was 15%. In 1941, unemployment was 10%. By 1942, thanks to World War II putting Americans in the military or back to work manufacturing weapons, unemployment dropped to 5%.

However, life in America was not always the way it is today and working to gain an education, with an emphasis on work, has mostly been the big game changer.

For example, before 1860, America had few cities and they were mostly small.  The vast majority of people lived on farms and small rural towns. In fact, in 1800, ninety-four percent (94%) of Americans lived on farms or in small towns near farms.

Then by 2000, seventy-nine percent (79%) lived in urban population centers (cities and the suburbs of cities).

In 1850, the average age of death in years was 39.

By 1900, that average was age 49.

In 1970s, it was age 70, and life expectancy in 2010 reached age 78.3.

Life expectancy has also been linked to education. Those with more than 12 years of education—more than a high school diploma—can expect to live to age 82; for those with 12 or fewer years of education, life expectancy is age 75.

Continued on September 27, 2012 in A Short History of America’s Middle Class – 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 26, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, government, literacy, Parenting, politics, Public School, Teaching

 

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Are we a Nation Eating and Drinking its Way to Idiocy – Part 2/2

18 Sep

To understand what too much sugar and not enough sleep might mean for a student’s ability to learn, I turned to the ehow.com: “According to a study published in the Food Nutrition Bulletin, children suffering from poor prenatal nutrition also showed reduced cognitive and motor skills, starting at about 6 months of age. The gap was noticeable at 12 months and began to widen as the children aged. This group of children eventually included an increased number of dropouts.”

Then the CDC reports: “Teenagers and young adults consume more sugar drinks than other age groups.

1. Non-Hispanic black children and adolescents consume more sugar drinks in relation to their overall diet than their Mexican-American counterparts. The high school dropout rate for blacks in 2010 was 8%. The percentages of black adults lacking basic literacy was 24%.

2. Mexican-American adults consume more than non-Hispanic white adults. The high school dropout rate for Hispanics/Latinos was 15.1%.  The percentages of adults lacking basic literacy was 44%.

3. For non-Hispanic Whites the high school dropout rate was 5.1%, and the percentage of adults lacking basic literacy was 7%.

4. Low-income persons consume more sugar drinks in relation to their overall diet than those with higher income.

5. The worse years of sugar consumption were ages 12 to 19.

6. Among boys aged 2–19, 70% consume sugar drinks on any given day

Conclusion: If we compare literacy levels and dropout rates to sugar consumption, we find a link. Yet, who is blamed for illiteracy and the dropout rate?

ANSWER: The public schools, teachers and the teacher unions.  The parents are seldom if ever blamed and the sugar industry keeps denying the science.

It is obvious that until most children eat a healthy diet and sleep at last nine hours a night, how can any honest, moral person accuse the schools and teachers of failing at their job?

Until America solves this problem so its children eat and drink healthy foods and fluids (think water), teachers cannot be held accountable for children learning. Of course, diet is not the only factor but it is a crucial factor. Sleep plays a factor. Watching too much TV is another link. In addition, being raised by a parent that does not or cannot read also has a big impact.

Meanwhile, too many parents, the media and politicians keep making schools and teachers the scapegoats by preaching the wrong conclusions.

Feeding children and teens processed sugar is child abuse and should be a crime punishable by life in prison with no parole.

Source of dropout rates: National Center for Education Statistics

Source of literacy rates: Education Nation.com

Discover how to Avoid the Mainstream Parent Trap or return A Nation Eating and Drinking its Way to Idiocy – 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 18, 2012 in American Public Schools, child abuse, Education, family values, Parenting, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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Are we a Nation Eating and Drinking its Way to Idiocy – Part 1/2

17 Sep

Did you know that eating white bread is similar to drinking a soda, or eating a sugar rich candy bar or consuming a piece of pie or cake? White bread, along with potatoes, corn, carrots, white flour, cane sugar, and white rice, is a STARCH, which effectively converts into (more) sugar upon digestion.

And too much sugar damages the brain while not enough sleep slows brain development. According to the National Sleep Foundation, “Sleep is food for the brain. During sleep, important body functions and brain activity occur. Skipping sleep can be harmful — even deadly … Not getting enough sleep limits your ability to learn, concentrate and solve problems. You may even forget important information like names, numbers, your homework …” (There’s more.  I suggest you click on the link to find out.)

It isn’t as if I did not know all this. Like Sherlock Holmes, I deduced what was causing “accelerated cognitive decline” in my students long before The New Junk Food Danger—Dementia? was published September 13, 2012.

In fact, long ago, I was convinced that “Americans are literally eating a ‘diabetes diet’ that’s very toxic to the brain and other vital organs,” says Dr. Joel Zonszein, medical director of the diabetes clinic at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. “And the one of the most terrible complications—brain damage—is occurring in younger and younger patients.”

I left the classroom as a teacher in August 2005 (after thirty years in education).  For about 20 of those years, I asked my students what they ate and learned that most kids do not eat breakfast and often drank a Coke or Pepsi before reaching class in addition to a bag of greasy French fries or a slice of cheese pizza before eating anything healthy if they ate anything healthy at all.

In a class with thirty-four students (on average), maybe two or three ate breakfast, but they were not eating a healthy breakfast.  The cereal was usually coated in sugar and drenched in milk and milk that is not organic is high in the wrong kind of fats that studies show turn the brain rancid (literally rots the brain).

The high school where I taught installed soda machines a few years before I left. One early morning I ran into the soda distributor and asked him how many cases he delivered to the school each week.  His answer was two-thousand cases—enough so each student could drink three a day, and the campus snack bar sold 64 ounce servings of Coke for about one dollar. After lunch, too many students walked in my classroom with glassy eyes and dull looks.

Feeding children and teens processed sugar is child abuse and should be a crime.

Continued on September 15, 2012 in A Nation Eating and Drinking its Way to Idiocy – 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 17, 2012 in American Public Schools, child abuse, Education, family values, literacy, Parenting, Public School, Reading, Teaching

 

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Literate and College Bound – Choose Wisely

13 Sep

There is a lot of good information on the Internet about future, good paying jobs. For example, “The Best Paying Jobs of the Future: Knowing which jobs will be in high demand and pay the most is a good place to start.”

The jobs listed were: Biomedical Engineers, Diagnostic Medical Sonographers, Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists, Physical Therapists, Dental Hygienists, Audiologists, Medical Scientists (Except Epidemiologists), Veterinarians, Occupational Therapists, and Optometrists.

Of course, this means the young person must be a lifelong learner and literate and that means about twenty-four percent of adult Americans may be locked out of these jobs, because they were poor students, for whatever reason (usually due to environment, lifestyle and parents–not teachers), and are doomed to face a higher risk of unemployment and/or low pay.

Whose fault was that?

A. teachers that are responsible to teach

B. students are responsible to learn by doing the class
and homework and reading daily seven days a week

C. Parents are responsible to make sure his or her student reads daily at home,
studies and does the homework.

For example, when I was still teaching (1975 – 2005), I assigned a half hour of reading (or longer) a night, because if young people do not read outside of school, the odds of achieving an adequate level of literacy are small. For that daily half hour, my students could read anything they wanted: books, magazines, newspapers, but the students had to keep a log and summarize how much time they read and what it was about.  About five percent of my students bothered to do this.

Some never brought the textbook, paper or a pencil and/or pen to class—these students often felt that just showing up and warming a seat was enough to earn a passing grade so he or she could graduate. I don’t know how they thought the teachers were going to get those skills and knowledge in their brains—maybe with a toilet plunger placed over the nose, eyes and mouth?

However, an old friend of mine believes college is a waste of time and feels that if an adult cannot read, it was a teacher’s fault. I do not agree. Instead, I believe it is all about the choices young people make such as avoiding reading and studying while in school as a child and teen. No matter how great a teacher is, he or she cannot force students to learn.

The equation is simple: teachers teach + students learn + parents support both = education and literacy.

This is a bit off topic, but I attended a meeting once where we learned that sixty-percent of college freshman (all high school graduates) did not read and write at the level needed to start college and had to take remedial English/writing classes (this university had five levels of what is known as bone-head English) before being allowed to take real college classes. This may explain why half of students that start college drop out before earning a degree.  It gets frustrating when you cannot understand what you are reading and professors keep writing FAIL grades on essays/papers.

Over the last few years, this old friend and I have argued about this topic often via e-mail. For proof that I am right about making choices, I refer you to these two articles from Kiplinger (click on the links for details).

WORST College Majors for Your Career: Anthropology, Fine Arts, Film and Photography, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Graphic Design, Studio Arts, Liberal Arts, Drama and Theater Arts, Sociology, and English (my BA was in journalism but I ended up teaching English and reading for thirty years).

BEST College Majors for Your Career: Medical Assisting Services, Managing Information Systems, Construction Services, Medical Technologies, Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Treatment Therapy Professions, Transportation Sciences and Technology, Nursing, and Pharmacy and Pharmacology.


Why doesn’t anyone ever tell us how many people fail when chasing frivolous dead-end dreams?

In conclusion, if you learned how to be a life-long learner and you are literate because you did the reading and work your teachers assigned K – 12, then you may be in college or a college graduate with a BA in one of those WORST college majors. If so, you may remember that your parents, friends and some teachers/school counselors encouraged you to follow your dreams and do what you wanted to do—this usually means having fun and chasing after a dream. When chasing dreams, a few succeed but many do not.

If your dreams did not materialize, are you still having fun? I want to know.

Discover The results of parenting gone wrong

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

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Posted by on September 13, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, literacy, Parenting, student behavior

 

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The Cultural Legacy of the British Empire on Literacy – Part 2/2

11 Sep

The Importance of Literacy

A Literacy at Work study, published by the Northeast Institute in 2001, found that business losses attributed to basic skill deficiencies run into billions of dollars a year due to low productivity, errors, and accidents attributed to functional illiteracy. Source: Functional Lieracy.Wiki.org

In Conclusion:  I taught in California’s public schools (1975 – 2005) and was teaching English and reading when the educational system was changed dramatically from the top down (ignoring the protests of classroom teachers at every step—teachers were not part of the decision making process) starting in Washington D.C. in 1983 with the publication of A Nation at Risk. The next step was the 1989 education summit that involved all fifty state governors and President George H.  W. Bush followed more than a decade later with the adoption of national education goals in the year 2000 under his son, President G. W. Bush.

Before these changes, most of the public schools identified students that were falling behind in literacy (mostly because the parents of these students were not part of the education process of learning to read and write) and were then moved into learning tracks and different classes with goals designed to deal with the challenge of parents not reading at home.

In the early 1990s, when the English/Reading department at the high school where I taught was told that tracking was going to be abolished and all students, no matter his or her reading abilities, would be placed in grade level classes working out of grade level textbooks (this meant students reading at second or third grade would be reading out of textbooks written at ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth grade), the English and reading teachers protested and managed to hold off these changes for about three years before the politicians (elected school boards and the adminstrators hired to work for the school board to run the district) forced the end of tracking.

About the same time, a program called The Whole Language Approach to Reading and Writing was implemented and again the teachers protested but were forced to comply or else.

The foundation of this program was reading for fun outside of the schools with parent support (you may already have guessed how this worked out).  Student and parents were told that children had to read a minimum of thirty minutes or more a day outside of school hours, seven days a week besides doing the school work and homework assigned by teachers. A decade later, it proved to be a total failure and was cancelled. California, where I taught, had ranked near the top in literacy when this program was launched. A decade later, California was almost dead last compared to all other states.


Parents make the difference – mine did, and I learned to enjoy reading at home.

The average functional illiteracy rate as reported by the UNDP of the six dominate English speaking countries that were once part of the British Empire and have Caucasian majorities with roots mostly to the United Kingdom was 19%.

Adjusted for errors and/or under reporting, the average percentage changes to 30.7%, more than 10% higher than the United States.  It doesn’t matter which average we use in this comparison of cultures that are fundametally the same.  The Untied States is one percent above the average reported by the UNDP but 10.7%  lower than the corrected average.

The US is either ranked fourth in literacy according to the UNDP or first after we adjust for errors and/or under reporting.

Does that sound as if the public education system in America is broken?

Return toThe Cultural Legacy of the British Empire on Literacy – 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 11, 2012 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, literacy, Parenting, Reading

 

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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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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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Student College Loans – Evil or Not? Part 2/5

15 Aug

Today, student loans are the largest source of financial aid for college. Since the mid-1970s, when student borrowing started to grow, loans have increased from about one-fifth to nearly two-fifths of all available student aid—from 20% to 40%, a hundred percent increase.

A half century after the initial GI Bill, three decades since the establishment of federally guaranteed student loans, and more than two decades following the creation of a national basic grant program, both the central commitment to federal support for higher education and the mechanisms of such support are under attack.

There are choices to make. One choice is to serve the United States and earn the financial aid of the GI Bill.

Fifty-one percent (6.2 million) of World War II veterans used the GI Bill to attend college.

Forty-three percent (114,000)  of Korean War Veterans and Seventy-two percent (1.9 million) of Vietnam Veterans.

For college students that do not want to join the US Military, what is fueling this media/Blog assault on colleges and student loans?

“In the 1970s, family income levels increased faster than tuition; growth in student aid outstripped both tuition increases and growth in the number of eligible students; and grant aid was more common than borrowing.

“All these trend lines, however, turned against college affordability in the 1980s and 1990s. Family income has generally remained flat (when inflation is factored in) and has been far outpaced by tuition increases, which at both public and private four-year institutions have averaged at least twice the rate of inflation since 1980. Tuitions have risen annually by more than 8 percent over this period, while annual growth in the Consumer Price Index has averaged about 4 percent. Public sector prices have increased most sharply in the 1990s, rising at 3 times the rate of inflation as the economy and revenues in most states have declined.” Source: Federal Student Aid Policy: A History and an Assessment

Continued August 16, 2012 in Student College Loans – Evil or Not? Part 3 or return to Part 1

______________

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 15, 2012 in Education, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics

 

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