Missing in the Seattle PI article about school loans is any discussion about a school's reputation or suitability to a career field. For example, American Military University offers an MA in unconventional warfare. There's even a distance option.
Now, when the U.S. Army is figuring out who to parachute behind enemy lines, who gets picked, the guy with the internet MA or the other person who did the year long Q course at the Kennedy School of Special Warfare at Ft. Bragg? (Prereq: succesful completion of jump school, a rather down to earth course.)
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Monday, January 30, 2006
New School Menance
LA Times looks at the high drop out rate in Los Angeles and finds the real cause:
Algebra 'Triggers Dropouts' in L.A.
By Duke Helfand
Because they can't pass algebra, thousands of students are denied diplomas. Many try again and again but still get Fs."
We may smile in sympathy and appreciate the difficulties of one student mentioned in the article who is frustrated by her inability to graph 4x + y= 9 and 2x -3y = -6; however, many high school students in Los Angelese struggle to solve the equation: x - 1 = 36. In fact some repeat algebra several times and never manage to solve the problem.
Actually, in the article they get into root causes of failure in the school, family, and education. Also, another factor is there is an intersection between the to turn L.A. high schools into comprehensive schools aimed at college admittance, with the new emphasis on tracking schools by the their students scores. The result? Students who in earlier years might have remained in school in a vocational program are pushed out and encouraged to try alternative schools (one being a vocational center) or home schooling. The home school option is a dubious selection for students who are failing because they skip class and going home to smoke pot and watch TV or play video games.
Still, the LA Times gingerly touches on the issue that the culture of resistance celebrated in pop culture, and embraced by urban and suburban teens, does not prepare students for success in school, or for anything else in life for that matter except for rage and futility. The LA Times does not, at least in this article or the previous article in the series, discuss the propensity for California teens to embrace film acting and music as viable career options to make millions by age 25. In addition, these students came from schools with bilingual programs. These programs do not exist now, so future students may face even more educational hurdles.
This leads to another unexamined topic: the schools are one of the most important flash points in the culture wars. Biology, English literature, and history are all battlefields where different groups fight it out for supremacy. Strangely enough, all is quiet on the math front. No group claims that mathematics is a product of a dominant colonizing culture. No one claims that there is a better form of mathematics handed down by a deity through sacred writings. Even the New Agers, who for a people that supposedly embrace quiet meditation and contemplation are usually loud and outspoken, have chosen to sit this one out and have never pushed for high school courses in numerology. Could it be that to debate mathematics would involve some form of attempt to study the subject? If so, it would seem that our cultural warriors have found a consensus to leave math alone and fight other battles, ones that do not involve story problems and complex equations with exponents and square roots.
Algebra 'Triggers Dropouts' in L.A.
By Duke Helfand
Because they can't pass algebra, thousands of students are denied diplomas. Many try again and again but still get Fs."
We may smile in sympathy and appreciate the difficulties of one student mentioned in the article who is frustrated by her inability to graph 4x + y= 9 and 2x -3y = -6; however, many high school students in Los Angelese struggle to solve the equation: x - 1 = 36. In fact some repeat algebra several times and never manage to solve the problem.
Actually, in the article they get into root causes of failure in the school, family, and education. Also, another factor is there is an intersection between the to turn L.A. high schools into comprehensive schools aimed at college admittance, with the new emphasis on tracking schools by the their students scores. The result? Students who in earlier years might have remained in school in a vocational program are pushed out and encouraged to try alternative schools (one being a vocational center) or home schooling. The home school option is a dubious selection for students who are failing because they skip class and going home to smoke pot and watch TV or play video games.
Still, the LA Times gingerly touches on the issue that the culture of resistance celebrated in pop culture, and embraced by urban and suburban teens, does not prepare students for success in school, or for anything else in life for that matter except for rage and futility. The LA Times does not, at least in this article or the previous article in the series, discuss the propensity for California teens to embrace film acting and music as viable career options to make millions by age 25. In addition, these students came from schools with bilingual programs. These programs do not exist now, so future students may face even more educational hurdles.
This leads to another unexamined topic: the schools are one of the most important flash points in the culture wars. Biology, English literature, and history are all battlefields where different groups fight it out for supremacy. Strangely enough, all is quiet on the math front. No group claims that mathematics is a product of a dominant colonizing culture. No one claims that there is a better form of mathematics handed down by a deity through sacred writings. Even the New Agers, who for a people that supposedly embrace quiet meditation and contemplation are usually loud and outspoken, have chosen to sit this one out and have never pushed for high school courses in numerology. Could it be that to debate mathematics would involve some form of attempt to study the subject? If so, it would seem that our cultural warriors have found a consensus to leave math alone and fight other battles, ones that do not involve story problems and complex equations with exponents and square roots.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Huge College Loans Eating up Salaries
I am very sympathetic to the plight of recent college graduates who have to scramble to find a job and start re-paying their college loans. Starting a life, finding a career, and dealing with debt is not easy. Believe me, I know this from experience.
With this mind, I started to read a Seattle-PI (Huge college loans eating up salaries ) article that discussed the crushing amounts of student loan debt that many people have to re-pay; however, for the most part, I was beginning to look at people who at their juncture towards middle age had made brave, but highly questionable, if not risky, education and career choices. Unfortunately, the reporter was taking in the information at face value without asking some hard questions. Questions for the couple who spent $350,000 to become practitioners of acupuncture and naturopathy (well, other than the obvious one about their sanity) : Were they aware that entering a field with low thresholds in certification, standards, and accountability meant intense competition? Did they stop to consider that because a school offers a loan does not validate the school? For example, it is possible to pursue an advanced degree in astrology, but is it a wise career move?
Another question for the non-profit person, did she realize that agreeing to a $100,000 debt for a master's in non-profit administration was not the best possible investment in the world for someone in their early 40s? Is it really a good idea to gain more certification in a traditionally low paying field from an expensive private school? Even Ivy League professors believe that there's little advantage in having a degree from their schools as opposed to one from a public university (See the MSN Money article.)
The cost of a college not only includes interest on the loan, but the difference in what the money would have earned if saved. I have whiled away time using financial calculators (http://www.kiplinger.com/personalfinance/tools/) to estimate what my money would have amounted to had I not chosen college and instead decided to try out one of those new fangled Vanguard S&P index funds. The results usually leaves me close to tears, especially when I think how much it would have been worth by retirement. Even forgetting (with great difficulty) about the index fund, a $3,000 sum spread over small, mid, and large cap mutual funds 15 years ago would be over $20,000 today.
The only 20-something the reporter could find had not completed school and was still hoping to finish school to find work in law enforcement. The question in this case is did the person realize that a high school diploma or GED is all that is necessary for an entry level sworn position in the Seattle Police Department?(http://www.cityofseattle.net/police/jobs/sworn/qualifications.htm )
Finally, the hardest question of all: why has the average cost of going to college exceeded the consumer price index by six times? Administrative costs in other parts of the public sector, let alone private businesses, have gone down thanks to to computers and more efficient management. To put this in perspective, in 1984 an IBM XT Personal Computer, running at 4.77 MHz and with a 10 MB drive had $5,000 price sticker (and if IBM sold it, that would've been without a DOS operating system or even a monitor). In 2005 dollars, that represents over $9,000. A mid-range computer, comfortably equipped and way better than anything available in 1984 can now be had for $1,000. If the computer business was similar to colleges, the exact same PC XT would still be available, only now it would cost $54,000. Think I'm overstating this? In 1978, the yearly fee for attending UC Irvine was $670, which adjusted for inflation amounts to $2,151 in 2005 dollars. (More than one student I knew then put their school loans into high end stereo equipment, which if they had kept their amps, pre-amps, and tuners would have held their value. Mcintosh hi-fi in the long run is always worth more than Mcintosh computers.) So how much does it now cost in class fees to be an undergraduate at Irvine? Nearly $7,500 a year for California residents, or over $25,000 for nonresidents!
There is one telling clue, in addition to the pictures of the new buildings, that explains why costs have gone up so much: UC Irvine's web page for prospective students (http://www.uci.edu/prospective.shtml) will lead students to financial aid before it leads them to pricing information. In other words, this is similar to the car salesperson who never explains how much the car is going to actually cost, but instead fixates on the financing options and low monthly payments.
One last question: is a degree in film theory worth $21,000 times 4, at 5% interest for 10 years?
Huge college loans eating up salaries Rich in education, poor on student debt
By CAROL SMITHSEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
John Donald and Teresa Bujacich, both health care professionals, don't consider themselves poor, and they wouldn't meet anyone's objective measure of being poor.
Yet they share many of the same challenges as other working poor in the Seattle area. They watchdog their budget, juggle bill payments and live month-to-month. There is no money to save for retirement. No emergency fund. They've made a lifestyle choice not to buy cell phones and cable TV, but even if they wanted to, they could barely afford them. Mini-mansions have popped up like mushrooms in the area surrounding their practice, but they are raising their baby in a modest one-bedroom condominium in Bothell, a 30-minute drive from their work.
The reason? Student-loan debt.
Between the two, Donald, an acupuncturist, and Bujacich, who is both a naturopath and acupuncturist, have 16 years of higher education and nearly $350,000 in student loans, a massive liability that costs them $1,700 a month in loan payments.
"I'm grateful for the opportunities," said Bujacich. "But going through life with basically two mortgages is daunting. It does limit where we feel we can go, what our options are."
"It's scary, what we've gotten ourselves into," Donald said. "In order to feel like we're meeting our (expenses) ... we need to make $85,000 (a year) between us. But we're not making it."
Donald, 40, and Bujacich, 39, are part of a growing contingent of college graduates who are embarking on careers under sometimes-overwhelming debt loads. Experts say this generation of college students is the most debt-burdened in history.
About 40 percent of students now graduate with what lenders consider "unmanageable" debt loads, meaning their payments eat up more of their salaries than is considered financially sound, said Luke Swarthout, who works on higher education access issues for Washington Public Interest Research Group in Washington, D.C. "And there's nothing to suggest it's getting better," Swarthout said.
Driven by rising education costs and easier access to funds, total student loan debt has ballooned during the past decade, economists said. About two-thirds of students now rely on loans to graduate, compared with less than half a decade ago, according to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
This combination of forces has the potential to create a new class of working poor -- those who have fallen behind before they've had a chance to get ahead. These are secret strugglers. They aren't counted anywhere, and no one is sure how large their ranks are, although anecdotal evidence would suggest they are increasing. They don't necessarily look, act or identify themselves as financially challenged. They are rich in education, but they've leveraged their futures for the privilege.
Based on the center's analysis of government data from 2004, the average amount of government loans used to graduate from a four-year public institution was $15,662, compared with $9,798 (adjusted for inflation) in 1990. For private schools, the average amount borrowed was $22,581, about one-third higher than in 1990.
Federal student loan figures don't take into account the growth in private loans, which are the fastest-growing category, and credit-card debt used to offset growing college expenses. A recent Nellie Mae study estimated about 25 percent of students put some of their education on credit cards.
"One of the most provocative things we found was the share of student costs covered by loans has fallen even as the amount of loans has increased," said Heather Boushey, an economist for the research center.
"To put this in perspective, back in 1981, a student could work full time all summer at a minimum wage job and earn about two-thirds of their annual college costs," she wrote in a recent report. "Today, however, a student earning the minimum wage would have to work full time, (for a) full year to afford one year of education at a four-year public college or university."
The money borrowed for a college degree may mean higher earning potential -- by some estimates a college education can add $1 million to a graduate's lifetime earnings -- but it has unexpected costs as well. Student loan burdens affect people's choices: what kind of job they take, where they live, whether they buy a home or start a family, said Swarthout. "It has serious consequences."
There's a social cost as well if graduates start to veer away from lower-paying but socially critical jobs, such as teaching, social work, legal aid or non-profit work.
"The lawyer with $150,000 in law school debt doesn't take a $40,000-a-year public interest law job," said Sandy Baum, professor of economics at Swarthmore College in New York.
Scraping by
Sandra Mears, 42, is living in the headlock of student loans.
Sandra Mears accumulated $110,000 in student loans while earning her master's degree. She earns about $48,000 as executive director of Puget Sound Alliance for Community Technology. She said the financial burden of her loan payments has her thinking about leaving the non-profit world she loves.
Mears got a late start on a professional degree, earning a master's in non-profit leadership from Seattle University and accumulating $110,000 in loans in the process.
A former Jesuit volunteer, she spent her early adulthood in a series of volunteer or low-paying positions, working with homeless populations, advocating for welfare rights and running a food bank for HIV-positive clients.
Last year, she petitioned the U.S. Department of Education to forgive a portion of her loans -- less than 20 percent -- because her prior work was so focused on service. She lost.
Today, she is executive director of Puget Sound Alliance for Community Technology at a salary of about $48,000 a year. Between the government loans and attorneys' fees, she owes nearly $600 a month. She and her partner live in a $910-a-month, one-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill. There is no dishwasher. No cable. No high-speed Internet hookup.
"I want a dog," she said. "I thought at my age I could get a terrier. But I can't with an apartment."
A retirement fund, too, is a luxury.
She's contemplating moving to the corporate sector, away from the non-profit world she loves, to ease her financial burden.
"I see other people driving new cars, and yeah, I'm human. I'd like to do that, or to be able to take my mother to Alaska," she said. "I'd like to be in a position to help."
Derailed ambitions
While students have taken on increasing levels of debt, they aren't necessarily seeing the payoff in improved economic futures as they had hoped.
"Statistically speaking, the chances of moving up (the) income distribution (curve) is less than it was a decade ago," Boushey said. "Students with debt face real concerns with the shrinking middle marketplace."
Tight job markets and the growth of lower-paying service-sector jobs mean students can no longer assume they will have the cash flow necessary to make steep payments.
Having $24,000 in loans isn't much of a problem if you get a degree in a high-paying profession. But many students with outstanding loans never even finish their studies.
Life intervenes -- divorces, moves, layoffs, false starts.
Clint Cantu, 27, who lives in Kent, went to college in California to play football and earn a degree. An injury sidelined both, and he returned to Washington hoping to work and go to school to pursue a career in law enforcement.
"I got a job with the intention of going to school, but I could not afford to go to school without working, and could not work at a job and survive economically working part time," he said in an e-mail interview. Now he's earning $12.20 an hour working in customer service for a wireless company, living with his parents, and trying to figure out how to repay $12,000 in student loans.
"I never in my worst nightmares thought that, at 27, I would be living (at) my parent's house," he said. "When I begin to repay them (the loans), they will be about $135 a month and I hate to say it, but that will be a major dent in my income based on my current wages."
A Seattle P-I analysis showed that the majority of the more than 147,000 workers living at no more than twice the federal poverty level in King and Snohomish counties had some college education, although fewer had bachelor's degrees.
Boushey is familiar with this situation.
"It's a common story -- (people) go to community college for a couple of years, and one year at a university, then something happens and they never go back," she said.
But the loans stick. Unlike bad consumer loans, which are subject to statutes of limitations that vary by state, student loans are forever.
No escape
That point was dramatized last month when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the government could garnish Social Security payments to pay for old student loans.
James Lockhart, 67, of Seattle was living on $874 a month in disability and eligible for food stamps three years ago, when the government began seizing 15 percent of his check to pay for student loans he'd incurred during the 1980s.
Lockhart, a diabetic who has had double-bypass heart surgery, lives in public housing and is barely getting by, said his attorney, Brian Wolfman, who works with Public Citizen Litigation Group, non-profit consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
"For someone on that level of income -- it was devastating," he said. Lockhart declined through his attorney to be interviewed.
"We don't disagree people ought to pay back their loans ... or that those who don't shouldn't be pursued," Wolfman said. "But you can't go after someone forever."
According to the government's brief in the Lockhart case, delinquent debt owed to the Education Department is in excess of $33 billion.
Default rates have fallen in recent years, however. People have many more options available to them for paying loans back, said a department spokeswoman. The default rate is now at less than 5 percent, far lower than a decade ago, a reflection of extended payment plans as well as more rigorous collection efforts.
Still, some fear that could change as costs continue to spiral, private loan amounts soar and interest rates creep up.
"So far, the debt payment ratio (of loan payments to income) hasn't been higher this decade than during the 1990s, but it's been partly held in check by lower interest rates," Boushey said. "In some sense, we haven't seen the whole burden bearing down yet."
Caution urged
The situations faced by Mears, Donald and Lockhart may be more extreme than most, but some economists believe more people will be squeezed by their payments as costs escalate and people borrow more.
Those who analyze student debt are concerned debt levels will reach a critical point that could deter students from pursuing an education.
Debt analysts suggested one solution would be to provide more opportunities to repay loans by devoting time to service. Medical students, for example, can offset loan costs by agreeing to practice in underserved rural areas.
"In a second, we would go to the most bug-infested place -- the hottest, driest part of the world -- to pay off our student loans," said Donald, who practices in Issaquah. But that option isn't available for alternative practitioners.
Still others favor more part-time education opportunities, expansion of grant aid that doesn't need to be repaid, greater access to income-contingent repayment plans and increased opportunities for loan consolidation at lower interest rates. Currently, loan-holders are precluded from consolidating more than once, leaving them stuck, in some cases, with higher-than-market rates.
Those who now find themselves saddled with debt urged parents, counselors and educators to give prospective borrowers accurate information on what their debt load could mean to them down the road.
"The beginning of that process -- the borrowing -- looks a lot different than the end," Donald said. "It would be better to bring that wisdom (to bear) before the start of the process -- give them some kind of reality check."
With this mind, I started to read a Seattle-PI (Huge college loans eating up salaries ) article that discussed the crushing amounts of student loan debt that many people have to re-pay; however, for the most part, I was beginning to look at people who at their juncture towards middle age had made brave, but highly questionable, if not risky, education and career choices. Unfortunately, the reporter was taking in the information at face value without asking some hard questions. Questions for the couple who spent $350,000 to become practitioners of acupuncture and naturopathy (well, other than the obvious one about their sanity) : Were they aware that entering a field with low thresholds in certification, standards, and accountability meant intense competition? Did they stop to consider that because a school offers a loan does not validate the school? For example, it is possible to pursue an advanced degree in astrology, but is it a wise career move?
Another question for the non-profit person, did she realize that agreeing to a $100,000 debt for a master's in non-profit administration was not the best possible investment in the world for someone in their early 40s? Is it really a good idea to gain more certification in a traditionally low paying field from an expensive private school? Even Ivy League professors believe that there's little advantage in having a degree from their schools as opposed to one from a public university (See the MSN Money article.)
The cost of a college not only includes interest on the loan, but the difference in what the money would have earned if saved. I have whiled away time using financial calculators (http://www.kiplinger.com/personalfinance/tools/) to estimate what my money would have amounted to had I not chosen college and instead decided to try out one of those new fangled Vanguard S&P index funds. The results usually leaves me close to tears, especially when I think how much it would have been worth by retirement. Even forgetting (with great difficulty) about the index fund, a $3,000 sum spread over small, mid, and large cap mutual funds 15 years ago would be over $20,000 today.
The only 20-something the reporter could find had not completed school and was still hoping to finish school to find work in law enforcement. The question in this case is did the person realize that a high school diploma or GED is all that is necessary for an entry level sworn position in the Seattle Police Department?(http://www.cityofseattle.net/police/jobs/sworn/qualifications.htm )
Finally, the hardest question of all: why has the average cost of going to college exceeded the consumer price index by six times? Administrative costs in other parts of the public sector, let alone private businesses, have gone down thanks to to computers and more efficient management. To put this in perspective, in 1984 an IBM XT Personal Computer, running at 4.77 MHz and with a 10 MB drive had $5,000 price sticker (and if IBM sold it, that would've been without a DOS operating system or even a monitor). In 2005 dollars, that represents over $9,000. A mid-range computer, comfortably equipped and way better than anything available in 1984 can now be had for $1,000. If the computer business was similar to colleges, the exact same PC XT would still be available, only now it would cost $54,000. Think I'm overstating this? In 1978, the yearly fee for attending UC Irvine was $670, which adjusted for inflation amounts to $2,151 in 2005 dollars. (More than one student I knew then put their school loans into high end stereo equipment, which if they had kept their amps, pre-amps, and tuners would have held their value. Mcintosh hi-fi in the long run is always worth more than Mcintosh computers.) So how much does it now cost in class fees to be an undergraduate at Irvine? Nearly $7,500 a year for California residents, or over $25,000 for nonresidents!
There is one telling clue, in addition to the pictures of the new buildings, that explains why costs have gone up so much: UC Irvine's web page for prospective students (http://www.uci.edu/prospective.shtml) will lead students to financial aid before it leads them to pricing information. In other words, this is similar to the car salesperson who never explains how much the car is going to actually cost, but instead fixates on the financing options and low monthly payments.
One last question: is a degree in film theory worth $21,000 times 4, at 5% interest for 10 years?
Huge college loans eating up salaries Rich in education, poor on student debt
By CAROL SMITHSEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
John Donald and Teresa Bujacich, both health care professionals, don't consider themselves poor, and they wouldn't meet anyone's objective measure of being poor.
Yet they share many of the same challenges as other working poor in the Seattle area. They watchdog their budget, juggle bill payments and live month-to-month. There is no money to save for retirement. No emergency fund. They've made a lifestyle choice not to buy cell phones and cable TV, but even if they wanted to, they could barely afford them. Mini-mansions have popped up like mushrooms in the area surrounding their practice, but they are raising their baby in a modest one-bedroom condominium in Bothell, a 30-minute drive from their work.
The reason? Student-loan debt.
Between the two, Donald, an acupuncturist, and Bujacich, who is both a naturopath and acupuncturist, have 16 years of higher education and nearly $350,000 in student loans, a massive liability that costs them $1,700 a month in loan payments.
"I'm grateful for the opportunities," said Bujacich. "But going through life with basically two mortgages is daunting. It does limit where we feel we can go, what our options are."
"It's scary, what we've gotten ourselves into," Donald said. "In order to feel like we're meeting our (expenses) ... we need to make $85,000 (a year) between us. But we're not making it."
Donald, 40, and Bujacich, 39, are part of a growing contingent of college graduates who are embarking on careers under sometimes-overwhelming debt loads. Experts say this generation of college students is the most debt-burdened in history.
About 40 percent of students now graduate with what lenders consider "unmanageable" debt loads, meaning their payments eat up more of their salaries than is considered financially sound, said Luke Swarthout, who works on higher education access issues for Washington Public Interest Research Group in Washington, D.C. "And there's nothing to suggest it's getting better," Swarthout said.
Driven by rising education costs and easier access to funds, total student loan debt has ballooned during the past decade, economists said. About two-thirds of students now rely on loans to graduate, compared with less than half a decade ago, according to a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
This combination of forces has the potential to create a new class of working poor -- those who have fallen behind before they've had a chance to get ahead. These are secret strugglers. They aren't counted anywhere, and no one is sure how large their ranks are, although anecdotal evidence would suggest they are increasing. They don't necessarily look, act or identify themselves as financially challenged. They are rich in education, but they've leveraged their futures for the privilege.
Based on the center's analysis of government data from 2004, the average amount of government loans used to graduate from a four-year public institution was $15,662, compared with $9,798 (adjusted for inflation) in 1990. For private schools, the average amount borrowed was $22,581, about one-third higher than in 1990.
Federal student loan figures don't take into account the growth in private loans, which are the fastest-growing category, and credit-card debt used to offset growing college expenses. A recent Nellie Mae study estimated about 25 percent of students put some of their education on credit cards.
"One of the most provocative things we found was the share of student costs covered by loans has fallen even as the amount of loans has increased," said Heather Boushey, an economist for the research center.
"To put this in perspective, back in 1981, a student could work full time all summer at a minimum wage job and earn about two-thirds of their annual college costs," she wrote in a recent report. "Today, however, a student earning the minimum wage would have to work full time, (for a) full year to afford one year of education at a four-year public college or university."
The money borrowed for a college degree may mean higher earning potential -- by some estimates a college education can add $1 million to a graduate's lifetime earnings -- but it has unexpected costs as well. Student loan burdens affect people's choices: what kind of job they take, where they live, whether they buy a home or start a family, said Swarthout. "It has serious consequences."
There's a social cost as well if graduates start to veer away from lower-paying but socially critical jobs, such as teaching, social work, legal aid or non-profit work.
"The lawyer with $150,000 in law school debt doesn't take a $40,000-a-year public interest law job," said Sandy Baum, professor of economics at Swarthmore College in New York.
Scraping by
Sandra Mears, 42, is living in the headlock of student loans.
Sandra Mears accumulated $110,000 in student loans while earning her master's degree. She earns about $48,000 as executive director of Puget Sound Alliance for Community Technology. She said the financial burden of her loan payments has her thinking about leaving the non-profit world she loves.
Mears got a late start on a professional degree, earning a master's in non-profit leadership from Seattle University and accumulating $110,000 in loans in the process.
A former Jesuit volunteer, she spent her early adulthood in a series of volunteer or low-paying positions, working with homeless populations, advocating for welfare rights and running a food bank for HIV-positive clients.
Last year, she petitioned the U.S. Department of Education to forgive a portion of her loans -- less than 20 percent -- because her prior work was so focused on service. She lost.
Today, she is executive director of Puget Sound Alliance for Community Technology at a salary of about $48,000 a year. Between the government loans and attorneys' fees, she owes nearly $600 a month. She and her partner live in a $910-a-month, one-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill. There is no dishwasher. No cable. No high-speed Internet hookup.
"I want a dog," she said. "I thought at my age I could get a terrier. But I can't with an apartment."
A retirement fund, too, is a luxury.
She's contemplating moving to the corporate sector, away from the non-profit world she loves, to ease her financial burden.
"I see other people driving new cars, and yeah, I'm human. I'd like to do that, or to be able to take my mother to Alaska," she said. "I'd like to be in a position to help."
Derailed ambitions
While students have taken on increasing levels of debt, they aren't necessarily seeing the payoff in improved economic futures as they had hoped.
"Statistically speaking, the chances of moving up (the) income distribution (curve) is less than it was a decade ago," Boushey said. "Students with debt face real concerns with the shrinking middle marketplace."
Tight job markets and the growth of lower-paying service-sector jobs mean students can no longer assume they will have the cash flow necessary to make steep payments.
Having $24,000 in loans isn't much of a problem if you get a degree in a high-paying profession. But many students with outstanding loans never even finish their studies.
Life intervenes -- divorces, moves, layoffs, false starts.
Clint Cantu, 27, who lives in Kent, went to college in California to play football and earn a degree. An injury sidelined both, and he returned to Washington hoping to work and go to school to pursue a career in law enforcement.
"I got a job with the intention of going to school, but I could not afford to go to school without working, and could not work at a job and survive economically working part time," he said in an e-mail interview. Now he's earning $12.20 an hour working in customer service for a wireless company, living with his parents, and trying to figure out how to repay $12,000 in student loans.
"I never in my worst nightmares thought that, at 27, I would be living (at) my parent's house," he said. "When I begin to repay them (the loans), they will be about $135 a month and I hate to say it, but that will be a major dent in my income based on my current wages."
A Seattle P-I analysis showed that the majority of the more than 147,000 workers living at no more than twice the federal poverty level in King and Snohomish counties had some college education, although fewer had bachelor's degrees.
Boushey is familiar with this situation.
"It's a common story -- (people) go to community college for a couple of years, and one year at a university, then something happens and they never go back," she said.
But the loans stick. Unlike bad consumer loans, which are subject to statutes of limitations that vary by state, student loans are forever.
No escape
That point was dramatized last month when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the government could garnish Social Security payments to pay for old student loans.
James Lockhart, 67, of Seattle was living on $874 a month in disability and eligible for food stamps three years ago, when the government began seizing 15 percent of his check to pay for student loans he'd incurred during the 1980s.
Lockhart, a diabetic who has had double-bypass heart surgery, lives in public housing and is barely getting by, said his attorney, Brian Wolfman, who works with Public Citizen Litigation Group, non-profit consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.
"For someone on that level of income -- it was devastating," he said. Lockhart declined through his attorney to be interviewed.
"We don't disagree people ought to pay back their loans ... or that those who don't shouldn't be pursued," Wolfman said. "But you can't go after someone forever."
According to the government's brief in the Lockhart case, delinquent debt owed to the Education Department is in excess of $33 billion.
Default rates have fallen in recent years, however. People have many more options available to them for paying loans back, said a department spokeswoman. The default rate is now at less than 5 percent, far lower than a decade ago, a reflection of extended payment plans as well as more rigorous collection efforts.
Still, some fear that could change as costs continue to spiral, private loan amounts soar and interest rates creep up.
"So far, the debt payment ratio (of loan payments to income) hasn't been higher this decade than during the 1990s, but it's been partly held in check by lower interest rates," Boushey said. "In some sense, we haven't seen the whole burden bearing down yet."
Caution urged
The situations faced by Mears, Donald and Lockhart may be more extreme than most, but some economists believe more people will be squeezed by their payments as costs escalate and people borrow more.
Those who analyze student debt are concerned debt levels will reach a critical point that could deter students from pursuing an education.
Debt analysts suggested one solution would be to provide more opportunities to repay loans by devoting time to service. Medical students, for example, can offset loan costs by agreeing to practice in underserved rural areas.
"In a second, we would go to the most bug-infested place -- the hottest, driest part of the world -- to pay off our student loans," said Donald, who practices in Issaquah. But that option isn't available for alternative practitioners.
Still others favor more part-time education opportunities, expansion of grant aid that doesn't need to be repaid, greater access to income-contingent repayment plans and increased opportunities for loan consolidation at lower interest rates. Currently, loan-holders are precluded from consolidating more than once, leaving them stuck, in some cases, with higher-than-market rates.
Those who now find themselves saddled with debt urged parents, counselors and educators to give prospective borrowers accurate information on what their debt load could mean to them down the road.
"The beginning of that process -- the borrowing -- looks a lot different than the end," Donald said. "It would be better to bring that wisdom (to bear) before the start of the process -- give them some kind of reality check."
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Boomer Statistics
The last statistic is especially damning.
From the LA Times 1/24/06,
The Boomer Bust
Boomers vs. Post-Boomers: A Statistical Abstract
Number of Americans in millions born during the "baby boom" between 1946 and 1964: 75.8
Year President Bill Clinton was born: 1946
Year President George W. Bush was born: 1946
Year Cher was born: 1946
Percentage of boomers who feel younger than their age: 63
Mean age they say they feel: 40
Percentage of boomers who expect to make it beyond age 70 without serious health limitations: 79
Percentage of boomers who expect to make it beyond 80 without serious health limitations: 50
Life expectancy of a U.S. resident, in years: 77.6
Percentage of American adults who are overweight or obese: 64.5.
Percentage of boomers who think they have a weight problem: 53
Percentage of boomers who consider themselves to be in very good or excellent health: 58
Percentage of American children who are overweight or obese: 16
Largest single age group for people living with HIV and AIDS in the U.S.: 35 to 54
Largest single age group for new AIDS cases: 35 to 44
Drug overdose deaths among Californians over 40, per hundred thousand, in 1990: 8.6
Drug overdose deaths among Californians over 40, per hundred thousand, in 2003: 17.3
Percentage of those who had used drugs in the past year who were 35 and older in 1979: 11.9
Percentage of those who had used drugs in the past year who were 35 and older in 2004: 34.2
Percentage of felony arrestees in California in 2004 who were 40 and older: 22
Percentage of felony arrestees in California in 2004 who were teenagers: 19.9
Percentage of baby boomers who say it's "not really" their responsibility to let an adult child move back home: 63
Percentage of baby boomers who say it's "not really" their responsibility to save for their children's inheritance: 70
Percentage of baby boomers who anticipate a comfortable retirement: 55
Ranking of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" in Blender magazine's "500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born": 1
Ranking of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" in Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time": 58
Ranking of "The End" by The Doors in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time": 328
Ranking of "The End" by The Doors in Blender's "50 Worst Songs Ever": 26
Number of successive decades in which Cher had a No. 1 hit on a Billboard chart: 5
— Shawn Hubler
Information drawn from government and nongovernment sources, including RoperASW, AARP, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control, American Obesity Assn., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Gallup Poll, 2003 HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the California Criminal Justice Statistics Center, Pew Research Center, and Blender, Rolling Stone, and Billboard magazines
From the LA Times 1/24/06,
The Boomer Bust
Boomers vs. Post-Boomers: A Statistical Abstract
Number of Americans in millions born during the "baby boom" between 1946 and 1964: 75.8
Year President Bill Clinton was born: 1946
Year President George W. Bush was born: 1946
Year Cher was born: 1946
Percentage of boomers who feel younger than their age: 63
Mean age they say they feel: 40
Percentage of boomers who expect to make it beyond age 70 without serious health limitations: 79
Percentage of boomers who expect to make it beyond 80 without serious health limitations: 50
Life expectancy of a U.S. resident, in years: 77.6
Percentage of American adults who are overweight or obese: 64.5.
Percentage of boomers who think they have a weight problem: 53
Percentage of boomers who consider themselves to be in very good or excellent health: 58
Percentage of American children who are overweight or obese: 16
Largest single age group for people living with HIV and AIDS in the U.S.: 35 to 54
Largest single age group for new AIDS cases: 35 to 44
Drug overdose deaths among Californians over 40, per hundred thousand, in 1990: 8.6
Drug overdose deaths among Californians over 40, per hundred thousand, in 2003: 17.3
Percentage of those who had used drugs in the past year who were 35 and older in 1979: 11.9
Percentage of those who had used drugs in the past year who were 35 and older in 2004: 34.2
Percentage of felony arrestees in California in 2004 who were 40 and older: 22
Percentage of felony arrestees in California in 2004 who were teenagers: 19.9
Percentage of baby boomers who say it's "not really" their responsibility to let an adult child move back home: 63
Percentage of baby boomers who say it's "not really" their responsibility to save for their children's inheritance: 70
Percentage of baby boomers who anticipate a comfortable retirement: 55
Ranking of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" in Blender magazine's "500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born": 1
Ranking of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" in Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time": 58
Ranking of "The End" by The Doors in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time": 328
Ranking of "The End" by The Doors in Blender's "50 Worst Songs Ever": 26
Number of successive decades in which Cher had a No. 1 hit on a Billboard chart: 5
— Shawn Hubler
Information drawn from government and nongovernment sources, including RoperASW, AARP, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, the National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers for Disease Control, American Obesity Assn., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Gallup Poll, 2003 HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the California Criminal Justice Statistics Center, Pew Research Center, and Blender, Rolling Stone, and Billboard magazines
Monday, January 23, 2006
Wikipedia Preference
I find myself going to the Wikipedia more and more. At first, the articles were all over the map, and sometimes a hacker would get in and deface an entry; however, the articles are getting better, and it has been a while since I've a defaced entry.
Why has the Wikipedia improved? Traditional media looked down on the Wikipedia because of its collaborative nature., but the Wikipedia's strength is that so many people have contributed to an article.
For example, my whining on the discussion board* for the "Quadratic Equation" entry resulted in an example of a non-second degree equation being taken out from its confusing place in the otherwise sensible introduction and to a more appropriate place later in the article under the heading of "Solving Equations of a Higher Degree."
What do I know about quadratics? About as much as the next math illiterate, yet someone was willing to listen to my question, another person was willing to come up with an edit that showed how use substitution to make a 6th power variable into a quadratic, and finally, the decision was that it was better to move the topic than to bring it up in the intro. Try that with another reference work!
* This was my question:
One of the issues I have with math text books is that at first I am thrilled to be learning this knowledge, and I am happy to be connected with truth, harmony, and the secrets of the universe, but then there's a quick switcheroo, and I am lost and confused, and I feel as if I am on the wrong side of an academic three card monte game. Now I see it, now I don't, and now I'm the chump.
For example, the into paragraphs on the quadratic equation are clear and make perfect sense, then this suddenly appears:
"Higher-degree equations may be quadratic in form, such as:
2x6th power + 3xthird power + 5 = 0
Note that the highest exponent is twice the value of the exponent of the middle term. This equation may be resolved directly or with a simple substitution, using the methods that are available for the quadratic, such as factoring (also called factorising), the quadratic formula, or completing the square."
Bringing in a non-second degree equation is a good idea, but only as an example against the previous and following equations. The note confuses me. Is it my imagination, or has that +5 also made this equation difficult? Also, could I see just exactly how one would solve "This equation..." especially with the quadratic formula?
Why has the Wikipedia improved? Traditional media looked down on the Wikipedia because of its collaborative nature., but the Wikipedia's strength is that so many people have contributed to an article.
For example, my whining on the discussion board* for the "Quadratic Equation" entry resulted in an example of a non-second degree equation being taken out from its confusing place in the otherwise sensible introduction and to a more appropriate place later in the article under the heading of "Solving Equations of a Higher Degree."
What do I know about quadratics? About as much as the next math illiterate, yet someone was willing to listen to my question, another person was willing to come up with an edit that showed how use substitution to make a 6th power variable into a quadratic, and finally, the decision was that it was better to move the topic than to bring it up in the intro. Try that with another reference work!
* This was my question:
One of the issues I have with math text books is that at first I am thrilled to be learning this knowledge, and I am happy to be connected with truth, harmony, and the secrets of the universe, but then there's a quick switcheroo, and I am lost and confused, and I feel as if I am on the wrong side of an academic three card monte game. Now I see it, now I don't, and now I'm the chump.
For example, the into paragraphs on the quadratic equation are clear and make perfect sense, then this suddenly appears:
"Higher-degree equations may be quadratic in form, such as:
2x6th power + 3xthird power + 5 = 0
Note that the highest exponent is twice the value of the exponent of the middle term. This equation may be resolved directly or with a simple substitution, using the methods that are available for the quadratic, such as factoring (also called factorising), the quadratic formula, or completing the square."
Bringing in a non-second degree equation is a good idea, but only as an example against the previous and following equations. The note confuses me. Is it my imagination, or has that +5 also made this equation difficult? Also, could I see just exactly how one would solve "This equation..." especially with the quadratic formula?
Friday, January 20, 2006
Bet the Children Will Look Cute!l
Seattle-PI take on "Underworld EbvolutionComing soon: A review of 'Underworld' sequel: "'Underworld Evolution' finds Kate Beckinsale and Scott Speedman reprising their roles from 2003's 'Underworld,' a modest theatrical hit about a war between vampires and werewolves that did well on DVD. She's a vampire, he's a werewolf and they're in love."
Actually the first one was entertaining and had remarkable action scenes that weren't born inside a computer. Essentially, vampires are effete elitists, and the werewolves while more of a rowdy blue collar bunch, are more useful and nowhere near as self involved (Speedman's character is a physician).
Actually the first one was entertaining and had remarkable action scenes that weren't born inside a computer. Essentially, vampires are effete elitists, and the werewolves while more of a rowdy blue collar bunch, are more useful and nowhere near as self involved (Speedman's character is a physician).
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Study: Most College Students Lack Skills
These findings aren't eactly shocking. I have looked at a University of Toronto study that found that many college students have poor effective reading skills because they have been taught for years to look for emotional context and deeper issues that they could relate to. Setting the time and date on a VCR doesn't resonate as strongly as one of Hardy's characters.
Even though college graduates struggle to understand credit card offers, what's the good news? "Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. "
Seattle PI 01/19/06
Study: most college students lack skills
By BEN FELLERAP EDUCATION WRITER
WASHINGTON -- Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.
Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.
More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.
That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.
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Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills, meaning they could perform moderately challenging tasks. Examples include identifying a location on a map, calculating the cost of ordering office supplies or consulting a reference guide to figure out which foods contain a particular vitamin.
There was brighter news.
Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.
Also, compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents.
"But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group.
"This sends a message that we should be monitoring this as a nation, and we don't do it," Finney said. "States have no idea about the knowledge and skills of their college graduates."
The survey examined college and university students nearing the end of their degree programs. The students did the worst on matters involving math, according to the study.
Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.
Baldi and Finney said the survey should be used as a tool. They hope state leaders, educators and university trustees will examine the rigor of courses required of all students.
The survey showed a strong relationship between analytic coursework and literacy. Students in two-year and four-year schools scored higher when they took classes that challenged them to apply theories to practical problems or weigh competing arguments.
The college survey used the same test as the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the government's examination of English literacy among adults. The results of that study were released in December, showing about one in 20 adults is not literate in English.
On campus, the tests were given in 2003 to a representative sample of 1,827 students at public and private schools. The Pew Charitable Trusts funded the survey.
It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Even though college graduates struggle to understand credit card offers, what's the good news? "Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. "
Seattle PI 01/19/06
Study: most college students lack skills
By BEN FELLERAP EDUCATION WRITER
WASHINGTON -- Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.
Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.
More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.
That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school.
The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips.
"It is kind of disturbing that a lot of folks are graduating with a degree and they're not going to be able to do those things," said Stephane Baldi, the study's director at the American Institutes for Research, a behavioral and social science research organization.
var bnum=new Number(Math.floor(99999999 * Math.random())+1);
document.write('');
var campaignID = "Advertising.com_1005-300"; var maxViews = 3; var maxMinutes = 1440; var classID = "Advertising300"; var capit = 1;
Most students at community colleges and four-year schools showed intermediate skills, meaning they could perform moderately challenging tasks. Examples include identifying a location on a map, calculating the cost of ordering office supplies or consulting a reference guide to figure out which foods contain a particular vitamin.
There was brighter news.
Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.
Also, compared with all adults with similar levels of education, college students had superior skills in searching and using information from texts and documents.
"But do they do well enough for a highly educated population? For a knowledge-based economy? The answer is no," said Joni Finney, vice president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, an independent and nonpartisan group.
"This sends a message that we should be monitoring this as a nation, and we don't do it," Finney said. "States have no idea about the knowledge and skills of their college graduates."
The survey examined college and university students nearing the end of their degree programs. The students did the worst on matters involving math, according to the study.
Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.
Baldi and Finney said the survey should be used as a tool. They hope state leaders, educators and university trustees will examine the rigor of courses required of all students.
The survey showed a strong relationship between analytic coursework and literacy. Students in two-year and four-year schools scored higher when they took classes that challenged them to apply theories to practical problems or weigh competing arguments.
The college survey used the same test as the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the government's examination of English literacy among adults. The results of that study were released in December, showing about one in 20 adults is not literate in English.
On campus, the tests were given in 2003 to a representative sample of 1,827 students at public and private schools. The Pew Charitable Trusts funded the survey.
It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
P.E. Rant
n I've yet to meet anyone who thinks that this country's physical education system has beesuccessful. In thinking about this, I believe the failure starts when a junior high or middle school enrolls children, who are used to running around, playing games, and otherwise are active and having fun. This new school then takes away the children's recess time, does not provide the familiar play and game quipment, and instead tells the children that they are taking a class to learn team sports and because they can't do a lot of push ups and pull ups, which no one has shown to have any health benefits, they get to do a regime of boring calisthenics. Oh yes, it's mandatory to shower with each other.
My junior high physical education class in the late 1960s was usually an impossible struggle and often an exercise in sadistic humiliation. The two coaches were the prototype crew-cut rednecks with whistles around their necks, and they encouraged older and bigger students to slap and taunt smaller and slower kids. Special attention was reserved for those who had the talent, but not the motivation to try out for the school teams. Heaven help the boy who tried to use a doctor's note: one poor asthmatic had to walk and carry a locker drawer full of weights because his parents and doctor had successfully argued that he couldn't run around a sandy track.
In addition, the coaches were hell bent on resisting the hippy invasion of the High Desert in southern California and ruthlessly enforced dress and haircut codes. They kept a pair of dull shears to trim any hair that dared to creep over an ear or touch a shirt collar.
The only time I saw one coach smile was when he used a thick wooden paddle to publicly punish a bent over student. One unfortunate fat student had been accused of stealing a wallet, and this coach grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and repeatedly slammed his head into a wall locker reducing him to a bruised and blubbering heap on the floor. That summer I read "The Last Picture Show" and began to understand what type of psychological problem that coach had.
The other coach could be charming and amusing in a aw-shucks sort of way, but only when he was flirting with the girls who were not suited out because of their menstrual cramps. I think he also had aspirations towards stand up comedy, because when he handed out report cards he usually had a rehearsed comment or joke. "What's the middle initial "A" stand for? Aloysius?" was one of his standard lines. I left him at a loss for words once, but only briefly; he looked at my report card, paused, and finally looked down at me and asked, to the amusement of the class,"How can anyone get a D- in arts and crafts?" My reply, "The same way I got the C- in this class," drew a bigger laugh and 12 laps around a hot, dusty track the following day.
My junior high physical education class in the late 1960s was usually an impossible struggle and often an exercise in sadistic humiliation. The two coaches were the prototype crew-cut rednecks with whistles around their necks, and they encouraged older and bigger students to slap and taunt smaller and slower kids. Special attention was reserved for those who had the talent, but not the motivation to try out for the school teams. Heaven help the boy who tried to use a doctor's note: one poor asthmatic had to walk and carry a locker drawer full of weights because his parents and doctor had successfully argued that he couldn't run around a sandy track.
In addition, the coaches were hell bent on resisting the hippy invasion of the High Desert in southern California and ruthlessly enforced dress and haircut codes. They kept a pair of dull shears to trim any hair that dared to creep over an ear or touch a shirt collar.
The only time I saw one coach smile was when he used a thick wooden paddle to publicly punish a bent over student. One unfortunate fat student had been accused of stealing a wallet, and this coach grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and repeatedly slammed his head into a wall locker reducing him to a bruised and blubbering heap on the floor. That summer I read "The Last Picture Show" and began to understand what type of psychological problem that coach had.
The other coach could be charming and amusing in a aw-shucks sort of way, but only when he was flirting with the girls who were not suited out because of their menstrual cramps. I think he also had aspirations towards stand up comedy, because when he handed out report cards he usually had a rehearsed comment or joke. "What's the middle initial "A" stand for? Aloysius?" was one of his standard lines. I left him at a loss for words once, but only briefly; he looked at my report card, paused, and finally looked down at me and asked, to the amusement of the class,"How can anyone get a D- in arts and crafts?" My reply, "The same way I got the C- in this class," drew a bigger laugh and 12 laps around a hot, dusty track the following day.
Friday, January 13, 2006
Kids with the Indigo Glow
In Berkeley, parents used to explain their kids'constant, loud, behavior by saying that the grandparents had damaged the children by feeding them white bread and sugar. My own theory was that it had something to do with cannabis induced breakdown of the chromosones. There's now a growing belief in some circles (the ones banging on drums) that their wild children don't have ADD or ADHD, instead these kids are indigos, blessed with mystical powers.
Excerpt:
Are They Here to Save the World? - New York Times: "'The purpose of the disruptive ones is to overload the system so the school will be inspired to change,' Ms. Jackson said. 'The kids may seem like they have A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. What that is, is that the stimulus given to them, their inner being is not interested in it. But if you give them something that harmonizes with the broad intention that their inner self has for them, they won't be disruptive.'
She said that schools should treat children more like adults, rather than placing them in 'fear-based, constrictive, no-choice environments, where they explode.'
Ms. Jackson compared people who do not recognize indigos to Muggles, the name used by J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter books to describe ordinary people who have no connection with magic. 'I would say 90 percent of the world is like the Muggles,' she said. 'You don't talk about this stuff with them because it's going to scare them.'"
Entire article below:
NY Times
January 12, 2006
Are They Here to Save the World?
By JOHN LELAND
AT a coffee shop in TriBeCa one morning two weeks ago, David Minh Wong, age 7, was in constant motion. He played with quarters on the table. He dropped them on the floor. He leaned on his mother and walked away.
"Tell him I'm strong," he said to his mother, Yolanda Badillo, 50. She sat in a booth with a neighbor, who was there with her goddaughter.
"I woke up at 2:16 this morning, and it wasn't raining," he said.
"I'm getting bored," he said.
At David's public school, where he is in a program for gifted and talented second graders, a teacher told Ms. Badillo that he is arrogant for a boy his age, and teachers since preschool have described him as bright but sometimes disruptive. But Ms. Badillo, a homeopath and holistic health counselor, has her own assessment. To her David's traits - his intelligence, empathy and impatience - make him an "indigo" child.
"He told me when he was 6 months old that he was going to have trouble in school because they wouldn't know where to fit him," she said, adding that he told her this through his energy, not in words. "Our consciousness is changing, it's expanding, and the indigos are here to show us the way," Ms. Badillo said. "We were much more connected with the creator before, and we're trying to get back to that connection."
If you have not been in an alternative bookstore lately, it is possible that you have missed the news about indigo children. They represent "perhaps the most exciting, albeit odd, change in basic human nature that has ever been observed and documented," Lee Carroll and Jan Tober write in "The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived" (Hay House). The book has sold 250,000 copies since 1999 and has spawned a cottage industry of books about indigo children.
Hay House said it has sold 500,000 books on indigo children. A documentary, "Indigo Evolution," is scheduled to open on about 200 screens - at churches, yoga centers, college campuses and other places - on Jan. 27 (locations at www.spiritualcinemanetwork.com).
Indigo children were first described in the 1970's by a San Diego parapsychologist, Nancy Ann Tappe, who noticed the emergence of children with an indigo aura, a vibrational color she had never seen before. This color, she reasoned, coincided with a new consciousness.
In "The Indigo Children," Mr. Carroll and Ms. Tober define the phenomenon. Indigos, they write, share traits like high I.Q., acute intuition, self-confidence, resistance to authority and disruptive tendencies, which are often diagnosed as attention-deficit disorder, known as A.D.D., or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D.
Offered as a guide for "the parents of unusually bright and active children," the book includes common criticisms of today's child rearing: that children are overmedicated; that schools are not creative environments, especially for bright students; and that children need more time and attention from their parents. But the book seeks answers to mainstream parental concerns in the paranormal.
"To me these children are the answers to the prayers we all have for peace," said Doreen Virtue, a former psychotherapist for adolescents who now writes books and lectures on indigo children. She calls the indigos a leap in human evolution. "They're vigilant about cleaning the earth of social ills and corruption, and increasing integrity," Ms. Virtue said. "Other generations tried, but then they became apathetic. This generation won't, unless we drug them into submission with Ritalin."
To skeptics the concept of indigo children belongs in the realm of wishful thinking and New Age credulity. "All of us would prefer not to have our kids labeled with a psychiatric disorder, but in this case it's a sham diagnosis," said Russell Barkley, a research professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. "There's no science behind it. There are no studies."
Dr. Barkley likened the definition of indigo children to an academic exercise called "Barnum statements," after P. T. Barnum, in which a person is given a list of generic psychological characteristics and becomes convinced that they apply especially to him or her. The traits attributed to indigo children, he said, are so general that they "could describe most of the people most of the time," which means that they don't describe anything.
Parents who attribute their children's inattention or disruptive behavior to vibrational energy, he said, risk delaying proper diagnosis and treatment that might help them.
To indigos and their parents, however, such skepticism is the usual resistance to any new and revolutionary idea. America has always had a soft spot for the supernatural. A November 2005 poll by Harris Interactive found that one American in five believes he or she has been reincarnated; 40 percent believe in ghosts; 68 percent believe in angels. It is not surprising then that indigo literature, which incorporates some of these beliefs along with common anxieties about child psychology, has found a receptive audience.
Annette Piper, a mother of two in Memphis, said that she had planned to go to medical school until she realized she was an indigo, able to tell what was wrong with people by touching them. Like a lot of others who describe themselves as indigos, she was also sensitive to chemicals and fluorescent lights. Instead of going to medical school, she became an intuitive healer, directing the energy fields around people, and opened a New Age store called Spiritual Freedom.
Her daughter Alexandra, 10, is also an indigo, she said. They play games to cultivate their telepathic powers, but at school Alexandra struggles, Ms. Piper said. "She has trouble finishing work in school and wants to argue with the teacher if she thinks she's right," Ms. Piper said. "I don't think she's found out what her gifts are. From the influence in school and friends she lays off these abilities. She's a little afraid of them."
Problems in school are common for indigos, said Alex Perkel, who runs the ReBirth Esoteric Science Center in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, a bilingual (Russian-English) center dedicated to "the knowledge of ancient esoteric schools and Eastern science," according to its Web site (www.esotericinfo.com).
Last year the center organized a class for indigo children but canceled it when families dropped out for economic reasons.
"A lot of people don't understand the children because the children are very smart," Mr. Perkel said. "They have knowledge like our teachers. They don't want to go to school, No. 1, because they don't need the knowledge they can get from school. So parents bring them to psychologists, and psychologists start giving them pills to take out their will and memory. We developed a special program to help them understand that they came to this planet to change the consciousness because they have guides from a higher world."
Stephen Hinshaw, a professor and the chairman of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, acknowledged that "there is a legitimate concern that we are overmedicalizing normal childhood, particularly with A.D.H.D." But, he said, research shows that even gifted children with attention-deficit problems do better with more structure in the classroom, not less.
"If you conduct a very open classroom, kids with A.D.H.D. may fit in better, because everyone's running around, but there's no evidence that it helps children with A.D.H.D. learn. On the other hand if you have a more traditional classroom, with consistent tasks and expectations and rewards, kids with A.D.H.D. may have a harder time fitting in at first, but in the long run there's evidence that it helps their learning."
Julia Tuchman, a partner in Neshama Healing in Manhattan, who works with a lot of indigo children and adults, said it was important for their families not to turn away from traditional psychology and medicine.
"I'm very holistically oriented, but many people who come here I send to doctors," she said. "I'm not against medication at all. I just think it's overused." When parents take children to her for treatment - she practices electromagnetic field balancing, a touch-free massage that purports to tune a person's electromagnetic field - she said that just telling the children that they have special gifts is often a healing gesture.
"Can you imagine a child going up to his parents and saying, 'I'm talking to an angel,' or 'I'm talking to someone who's deceased'?" Ms. Tuchman asked. "A lot of them have no one to talk to." She, like others who see indigos, sees them as a reason for hope.
Even disruptive behavior has a purpose, said Marjorie Jackson, a tai chi and yoga teacher in Altadena, Calif., who said that her son, Andrew, is an indigo. Andrew, now 25, was not disruptive as a child, she said, but in her practice she sees indigos who are.
"The purpose of the disruptive ones is to overload the system so the school will be inspired to change," Ms. Jackson said. "The kids may seem like they have A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. What that is, is that the stimulus given to them, their inner being is not interested in it. But if you give them something that harmonizes with the broad intention that their inner self has for them, they won't be disruptive."
She said that schools should treat children more like adults, rather than placing them in "fear-based, constrictive, no-choice environments, where they explode."
Ms. Jackson compared people who do not recognize indigos to Muggles, the name used by J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter books to describe ordinary people who have no connection with magic. "I would say 90 percent of the world is like the Muggles," she said. "You don't talk about this stuff with them because it's going to scare them."
In the TriBeCa coffee shop, David Minh Wong continued to play with his coins and talk to his mother. Ms. Badillo and her neighbor Sandra McCoy said they have family members who don't believe in the indigo idea. Ms. McCoy sat with her goddaughter, Jasmine Washington, 14. In contrast to David, Jasmine listened serenely, waiting for questions.
Yet Jasmine too is an indigo child, Ms. McCoy said: "I always knew there was something different about her. Then when I saw something about indigos on television, I knew what it was." Like many other indigos Jasmine is home-schooled.
For Jasmine, who often sensed she was different from other children, especially in the public schools, the designation of indigo is a comfort.
"The kids now are very different, so it's good that there's a name for it, and people pay attention to what's different about them," Jasmine said. Like the women at the table she said that indigos have a special purpose: "To help the world come together again. If something bad happens, I always think I can fix it. Since we have these abilities, we can help the world."
Excerpt:
Are They Here to Save the World? - New York Times: "'The purpose of the disruptive ones is to overload the system so the school will be inspired to change,' Ms. Jackson said. 'The kids may seem like they have A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. What that is, is that the stimulus given to them, their inner being is not interested in it. But if you give them something that harmonizes with the broad intention that their inner self has for them, they won't be disruptive.'
She said that schools should treat children more like adults, rather than placing them in 'fear-based, constrictive, no-choice environments, where they explode.'
Ms. Jackson compared people who do not recognize indigos to Muggles, the name used by J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter books to describe ordinary people who have no connection with magic. 'I would say 90 percent of the world is like the Muggles,' she said. 'You don't talk about this stuff with them because it's going to scare them.'"
Entire article below:
NY Times
January 12, 2006
Are They Here to Save the World?
By JOHN LELAND
AT a coffee shop in TriBeCa one morning two weeks ago, David Minh Wong, age 7, was in constant motion. He played with quarters on the table. He dropped them on the floor. He leaned on his mother and walked away.
"Tell him I'm strong," he said to his mother, Yolanda Badillo, 50. She sat in a booth with a neighbor, who was there with her goddaughter.
"I woke up at 2:16 this morning, and it wasn't raining," he said.
"I'm getting bored," he said.
At David's public school, where he is in a program for gifted and talented second graders, a teacher told Ms. Badillo that he is arrogant for a boy his age, and teachers since preschool have described him as bright but sometimes disruptive. But Ms. Badillo, a homeopath and holistic health counselor, has her own assessment. To her David's traits - his intelligence, empathy and impatience - make him an "indigo" child.
"He told me when he was 6 months old that he was going to have trouble in school because they wouldn't know where to fit him," she said, adding that he told her this through his energy, not in words. "Our consciousness is changing, it's expanding, and the indigos are here to show us the way," Ms. Badillo said. "We were much more connected with the creator before, and we're trying to get back to that connection."
If you have not been in an alternative bookstore lately, it is possible that you have missed the news about indigo children. They represent "perhaps the most exciting, albeit odd, change in basic human nature that has ever been observed and documented," Lee Carroll and Jan Tober write in "The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived" (Hay House). The book has sold 250,000 copies since 1999 and has spawned a cottage industry of books about indigo children.
Hay House said it has sold 500,000 books on indigo children. A documentary, "Indigo Evolution," is scheduled to open on about 200 screens - at churches, yoga centers, college campuses and other places - on Jan. 27 (locations at www.spiritualcinemanetwork.com).
Indigo children were first described in the 1970's by a San Diego parapsychologist, Nancy Ann Tappe, who noticed the emergence of children with an indigo aura, a vibrational color she had never seen before. This color, she reasoned, coincided with a new consciousness.
In "The Indigo Children," Mr. Carroll and Ms. Tober define the phenomenon. Indigos, they write, share traits like high I.Q., acute intuition, self-confidence, resistance to authority and disruptive tendencies, which are often diagnosed as attention-deficit disorder, known as A.D.D., or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D.
Offered as a guide for "the parents of unusually bright and active children," the book includes common criticisms of today's child rearing: that children are overmedicated; that schools are not creative environments, especially for bright students; and that children need more time and attention from their parents. But the book seeks answers to mainstream parental concerns in the paranormal.
"To me these children are the answers to the prayers we all have for peace," said Doreen Virtue, a former psychotherapist for adolescents who now writes books and lectures on indigo children. She calls the indigos a leap in human evolution. "They're vigilant about cleaning the earth of social ills and corruption, and increasing integrity," Ms. Virtue said. "Other generations tried, but then they became apathetic. This generation won't, unless we drug them into submission with Ritalin."
To skeptics the concept of indigo children belongs in the realm of wishful thinking and New Age credulity. "All of us would prefer not to have our kids labeled with a psychiatric disorder, but in this case it's a sham diagnosis," said Russell Barkley, a research professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. "There's no science behind it. There are no studies."
Dr. Barkley likened the definition of indigo children to an academic exercise called "Barnum statements," after P. T. Barnum, in which a person is given a list of generic psychological characteristics and becomes convinced that they apply especially to him or her. The traits attributed to indigo children, he said, are so general that they "could describe most of the people most of the time," which means that they don't describe anything.
Parents who attribute their children's inattention or disruptive behavior to vibrational energy, he said, risk delaying proper diagnosis and treatment that might help them.
To indigos and their parents, however, such skepticism is the usual resistance to any new and revolutionary idea. America has always had a soft spot for the supernatural. A November 2005 poll by Harris Interactive found that one American in five believes he or she has been reincarnated; 40 percent believe in ghosts; 68 percent believe in angels. It is not surprising then that indigo literature, which incorporates some of these beliefs along with common anxieties about child psychology, has found a receptive audience.
Annette Piper, a mother of two in Memphis, said that she had planned to go to medical school until she realized she was an indigo, able to tell what was wrong with people by touching them. Like a lot of others who describe themselves as indigos, she was also sensitive to chemicals and fluorescent lights. Instead of going to medical school, she became an intuitive healer, directing the energy fields around people, and opened a New Age store called Spiritual Freedom.
Her daughter Alexandra, 10, is also an indigo, she said. They play games to cultivate their telepathic powers, but at school Alexandra struggles, Ms. Piper said. "She has trouble finishing work in school and wants to argue with the teacher if she thinks she's right," Ms. Piper said. "I don't think she's found out what her gifts are. From the influence in school and friends she lays off these abilities. She's a little afraid of them."
Problems in school are common for indigos, said Alex Perkel, who runs the ReBirth Esoteric Science Center in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, a bilingual (Russian-English) center dedicated to "the knowledge of ancient esoteric schools and Eastern science," according to its Web site (www.esotericinfo.com).
Last year the center organized a class for indigo children but canceled it when families dropped out for economic reasons.
"A lot of people don't understand the children because the children are very smart," Mr. Perkel said. "They have knowledge like our teachers. They don't want to go to school, No. 1, because they don't need the knowledge they can get from school. So parents bring them to psychologists, and psychologists start giving them pills to take out their will and memory. We developed a special program to help them understand that they came to this planet to change the consciousness because they have guides from a higher world."
Stephen Hinshaw, a professor and the chairman of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, acknowledged that "there is a legitimate concern that we are overmedicalizing normal childhood, particularly with A.D.H.D." But, he said, research shows that even gifted children with attention-deficit problems do better with more structure in the classroom, not less.
"If you conduct a very open classroom, kids with A.D.H.D. may fit in better, because everyone's running around, but there's no evidence that it helps children with A.D.H.D. learn. On the other hand if you have a more traditional classroom, with consistent tasks and expectations and rewards, kids with A.D.H.D. may have a harder time fitting in at first, but in the long run there's evidence that it helps their learning."
Julia Tuchman, a partner in Neshama Healing in Manhattan, who works with a lot of indigo children and adults, said it was important for their families not to turn away from traditional psychology and medicine.
"I'm very holistically oriented, but many people who come here I send to doctors," she said. "I'm not against medication at all. I just think it's overused." When parents take children to her for treatment - she practices electromagnetic field balancing, a touch-free massage that purports to tune a person's electromagnetic field - she said that just telling the children that they have special gifts is often a healing gesture.
"Can you imagine a child going up to his parents and saying, 'I'm talking to an angel,' or 'I'm talking to someone who's deceased'?" Ms. Tuchman asked. "A lot of them have no one to talk to." She, like others who see indigos, sees them as a reason for hope.
Even disruptive behavior has a purpose, said Marjorie Jackson, a tai chi and yoga teacher in Altadena, Calif., who said that her son, Andrew, is an indigo. Andrew, now 25, was not disruptive as a child, she said, but in her practice she sees indigos who are.
"The purpose of the disruptive ones is to overload the system so the school will be inspired to change," Ms. Jackson said. "The kids may seem like they have A.D.D. or A.D.H.D. What that is, is that the stimulus given to them, their inner being is not interested in it. But if you give them something that harmonizes with the broad intention that their inner self has for them, they won't be disruptive."
She said that schools should treat children more like adults, rather than placing them in "fear-based, constrictive, no-choice environments, where they explode."
Ms. Jackson compared people who do not recognize indigos to Muggles, the name used by J. K. Rowling in the Harry Potter books to describe ordinary people who have no connection with magic. "I would say 90 percent of the world is like the Muggles," she said. "You don't talk about this stuff with them because it's going to scare them."
In the TriBeCa coffee shop, David Minh Wong continued to play with his coins and talk to his mother. Ms. Badillo and her neighbor Sandra McCoy said they have family members who don't believe in the indigo idea. Ms. McCoy sat with her goddaughter, Jasmine Washington, 14. In contrast to David, Jasmine listened serenely, waiting for questions.
Yet Jasmine too is an indigo child, Ms. McCoy said: "I always knew there was something different about her. Then when I saw something about indigos on television, I knew what it was." Like many other indigos Jasmine is home-schooled.
For Jasmine, who often sensed she was different from other children, especially in the public schools, the designation of indigo is a comfort.
"The kids now are very different, so it's good that there's a name for it, and people pay attention to what's different about them," Jasmine said. Like the women at the table she said that indigos have a special purpose: "To help the world come together again. If something bad happens, I always think I can fix it. Since we have these abilities, we can help the world."
Pam Anderson's Bust Statement
Pamela Anderson takes on Colonel Sanders - Jan. 13, 2006: "In a statement issued by PETA, Anderson said, 'The bust of Colonel Sanders stands as a monument to cruelty and has no place in the Kentucky state capitol.'"
Lucky for Pam there isn't an advocacy group for silicone, otherwise there would be protests and petitions against her bust.
Lucky for Pam there isn't an advocacy group for silicone, otherwise there would be protests and petitions against her bust.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
How to Improve Your Memory!
Harvard scientists torture fruits flies:Faculty of Arts & Sciences: Long-Term Memory Controlled by Molecular Pathway at Synapses: "By manipulating the RISC pathway, Kunes and colleagues were able to alter flies' memory, changing their response to stimuli in subsequent behavioral tests. Using a classi-cal learning test that simultaneously exposes the insects to an odor and an electric shock, the researchers found that long-term memory could be greatly increased by adjusting the activity of the RISC pathway in the fruit flies. "
Perhaps this can be adapted for humans? For example, by using stun guns on beginners and spraying them Lysol, I'm sure their foot work proficiency would remain constant from class.
Perhaps this can be adapted for humans? For example, by using stun guns on beginners and spraying them Lysol, I'm sure their foot work proficiency would remain constant from class.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Wrestling and Figure Skating Merge
U.S. Figure Skating Smack Down: USATODAY.com - News & Information Homepage: "Drama set to swirl on, off ice Plot lines expected to heat up this week in St. Louis for U.S. Figure Skating Championships."
Friday, January 06, 2006
University Class on Wine Drinking
UC Irvine's contribution to higher studies:
Corporate Wine: "In today's competitive and image-conscious corporate marketplace, it often takes more than just traditional business skills to close the deal. More and more business is being conducted over meals and in social settings, and wine education is becoming an increasingly important skill. "
This goes a long way in explaining why the upper ranks of American businesses are populated by so many ineffectual self aggrandizing blowhards. In the Bay Area, I learned quickly it was best to meet with advertising agencies in the morning, because after lunch their employees tended to be blurry and slurry, and the next day they could never remember what we talked about. Thouroughly pretentious, they would've glady swilled down Gallo Hearty Burgundy, provided it had an impressive label and price to match.
Corporate Wine: "In today's competitive and image-conscious corporate marketplace, it often takes more than just traditional business skills to close the deal. More and more business is being conducted over meals and in social settings, and wine education is becoming an increasingly important skill. "
This goes a long way in explaining why the upper ranks of American businesses are populated by so many ineffectual self aggrandizing blowhards. In the Bay Area, I learned quickly it was best to meet with advertising agencies in the morning, because after lunch their employees tended to be blurry and slurry, and the next day they could never remember what we talked about. Thouroughly pretentious, they would've glady swilled down Gallo Hearty Burgundy, provided it had an impressive label and price to match.
Thursday, January 05, 2006
"Power and the Idealists"
Good review on Paul Berman's work on the European political elite: The Stranger - Books - Feature - Three Radicals: "Three Radicals Inside Europe's Leftist Elite"
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Moving On
Afer so many years we grew apart. Sure there was the familiarity and comfort level and all the fun. Yes, there was someone else, fresh, and who made me laugh like you used to all those years ago. So finally we had to go our seperate ways. I will miss you, Howard Stern, but I will be happy listening to Adam Corolla in the mornings.
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