Blogs

QUARTER ONE

1. Often times, teachers do not get their jobs because they are necessarily qualified for the job. In this video blog, Daniel Drezner and Megan Mcardle debate the fact that teachers do not recieve tenure or get hired due to their qualities of teaching. Mcardle debates the fact that no one is really investing effort in teaching teachers how to be effective teachers. Drezner then debates back that often times in colleges, tenure is based on your teaching abilities. The two continue to debate the fact that sometimes, teachers are only hired because of the school that they went to for college. This means that even if you went to a very good teaching college, you are more likely to get hired if you went to a well known school, such as Harvard, even though Harvard professors may not teach their future teachers how to effectivly get their points across. Also, Drezner and Mcardle discuss the effect of having a professor in college that does not speak English as their first language. Mcardle describes her college experience with a TA who, due to his poor speach, led to a lot of students in her class doing poorly. She continues to say how this proves that universities do not really care about making sure they have efficient teachers. Drezner starts to agree more with Mcardle here, but then continues to say how universities are still working very hard to make sure they have efficient teachers, by having things be effected by the way you perform as a teacher. For example, you might not get a raise in sallary if you can not teach effectively to students. I agree a lot with Mcardle, because I've definetly had teachers that are not qualified to teach. To me, the administration committee at schools should pay more attention to who they hire to teach their students, and make sure that they are qualified.

2. This next video blog was very interesting to me. This was debating the issue if schools can help solve the issue of childhood obesity. The two women, Dana Goldstein and Katherine Mangu-Ward are talking about how school lunches could possibly help students avoid being obese. Goldstein begins to say that sometimes students do not have healthy meals at home because they are not healthy. She argues that if the schools were able to provide these meals to the students, they would be a lot healthier. She feels this would allow the schools to have a more important role in communities. She also agrees that if schools spend more times with the students, this would lead to a big impact of having the students feel cared for all of the time. Parents would not need to worry about having their children be cared for. Ward goes on the other side, saying that sometimes, the schools are actually the cause of students becoming obese. She thinks that a lot of times, the schools are more concerned about adult choices than what would be best for the students. In my opinion, I agree with Goldstein. I think that schools should be a large part of the students lives, and a parent should always feel that they can rely on the school to help out their children when they, as parents, can not do that for them. However, I think it is important for students to eat a meal, such as dinner, at home so that the family can get closer together.

3. Mark Leon Goldberg and William Drayton blog about the advantages and disadvantage to having recess in schools. Drayton says that recess helps children break out of their shells and bond together. He says it is important for students to understand "empathy." He thinks that is key because if you don't master that as a child, you will not be as good of an adult as you could be. Drayton thinks if you don't have ethics, you will hurt people and you will hurt schools, and that people are not going to like you. Drayton believes that children practice empathy most often during group play during recess. However, some schools are cutting recess out of their curriculum. Drayton believes that students need this recess to join together and learn these basic sills. I agree with Drayton on this matter. I think group play is very important for students. Without this interaction, they will lack the basic social skills they will need to survive in the real world when they grow up.

4. Mark Kleiman and Virginia Postrel were able to blog about the idea that if the school day times was changed, crime would be cut. Postrel feels this way because she think that the school day right now is done too early and leaves too much free time at the end of the day for crime. Kleiman, on the other hand, says that right now, the way schools are happening is the most convinent for parents and teachers in general. In my opinion, I think changing the time of the school day would not really be able to stop crime. Even if students got out of school at 6 PM, which is completely unrealistics, they still have the rest of their free time to do whatever they want. I think instead of changing the times of the school days, schools should try to offer more activities for students to do with their free time. I believe that is the only way that this crime issue could even remotely be solved.

QUARTER TWO

1. Matthew Yglesias and Daniel Drezner are here to debate the issue about how teachers should get paid. Drezner is saying that there was the idea that students would be given 1,000 dollars to distribute to all of the teachers in their school, and they could basically decide what teacher's salaries will make during the school year. Drezner believes that this idea would be crazy. Even though he feels this way, he thought it was interesting that Adam Smith believed almost the same thing, over 100 years ago. Yglesias talks about merit pay for teachers in elementary schools, and how it seems to be working in the elementary schools, however, he feels it would be problematic in a college. It seems that if this was the way professors were paid, the teachers would not actually be teaching the classes, and would instead be focusing more on being the students' "friend." Personally, I don't think this would be a good idea for high school or colleges. I don't think it is a student's place to give the teacher's grade. I would never want a teacher to act fake to me, just because they were afraid I wouldn't give them a good salary.

2. David Halperin and Katherine Mangu-Ward debate the idea of who should go to college. Halperin says that in our economy, if people do not go to college, they are not going to be able to have a job in which you will be able to make a living. He says just because everyone can not attend every school due to prices, everyone should go to some sort of program in which they can learn the skills in which they will need to have a job that will allow them to make a living. Mangu-Ward rebuttles back, saying that you do not need to go to a school to get the skills that you will need to have a job where you can make a living. She says that the main reason people go to schools is because of pressures from the rest of the community around you. She believes that you can learn skills, such as cutting hair, on your own, and that you do not need to go to college just to get a job where you can make a good living. I agree with Halperin, becuase I feel in order to have a steady job in which you do not need to fear not being able to provide for yourself or your family, you need to go to college. I also agree that society plays a large role in this idea, because often times people feel you are not "well educated" if you did not attend a college, and I personally would not want to be looked down upon just because I did not go to college.

QUARTER 3

1. Glenn Loury and Brink Lindsey talk about the issue which is titled "Is America Running Out of Smart People?" This title was very catchy to me, because although we laugh at the funny thought, it is sort of a true statement. Lindsey is arguing the fact that graduation rates have fallen greatly over time. Is it fair to really say that just because graduation rates have declined, that means that we, as Americans, are not smart? I do not think that if I chose not to graduate school, for whatever reason, that would mean that I was not smart. This is why I agree more with Loury. He was getting very into this discussion, showing that he was upset with Lindsey's idea that immigrants are to blame for this situation. I very much agree with Loury. I think that America is still a very intelligent country, and there is no reason to say that we are "running out of smart people."