We must begin to hold all physicians accountable, regardless of specialization, to certain quantifiable measures of health, namely cholesterol levels, blood pressure, weight, and BMI. All patients assigned to a physician must meet specific annual minimum standards of health. Bad doctors will be those who do not meet their patients’ annual minimums, and they may be subject to certain penalties if the health scores of their patients do not improve in a reasonable amount of time.

The analogy doesn’t always hold up, and some readers will probably think that certain points would be just as good an idea in medicine as they are in education. But the core points are pretty solid:

I can predict some of the responses that physicians might make: “We can’t control what our patients do or eat outside of our offices to maintain minimum levels of health. Also, these variables — BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure — are limited and don’t adequately measure a healthy person. And one other thing, you can’t expect us to be evaluated based on all patients equally, regardless of family history, poverty, and other complications.”

No. Kidding.

Of course, the difference is that in this country, medical care is mostly private and education is mostly public. We have all these high expectations for Return on Investment when our taxes contribute to something, even though of course most of us pay far more for health care than we do for education. And the government has more room to stretch its regulatory muscle over a public service like education than when it’s “interfering in private companies.”

I still think we need public health care desperately; tying health care to full-time employment is insane and amounts to giving every poor or working-class person in this country the finger. And, for the same reasons, we need good public education. But this analogy does help me see part of the conservative argument against public health care: what if we screw it up the same way we’ve screwed up public education? (…How about we try to fix both now please?)

For me, the crux is in this passage:

[I]n Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master’s degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal’s responsibility to notice and deal with it.

And this one (emphasis mine):

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.

In the Finnish view, as [Pasi] Sahlberg [director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility] describes it, this means that schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Treat teachers and principals like professionals. Give them training and autonomy. And then do the best you can to give students a level playing field in the school, despite the mess they may come from at home. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

As a private school teacher, I feel I need to address the “Finland has no private schools” issue, which the article really emphasizes. Private schools are a symptom of the fact that the American public school system is appalling. Eventually I think we need to do away with them, yes — if everyone’s part of the same system, there’s far more political will to keep that system functioning well. (…See that disclaimer up there about how my opinions are not necessarily my employer’s?)

But I do not think that outlawing private schools tomorrow would make a damn bit of difference. Everyone is not part of the same system, even in the public school world. It’s no longer an option to send your kid to an expensive private school? Fine, buy an expensive house in a good school district instead! There are districts that might as well be private schools, for the educational resources they have and what it costs to attend, and there are districts that might as well be in the developing world. Until educational expenditure is no longer tied to local taxes, we are screwed.

(I have a million questions about the rest of the Finnish system. Is there a national curriculum, or are teachers entirely autonomous? Are there teachers’ unions? How do urban schools differ from rural schools? The article briefly addresses heterogeneity in Finland vs. the U.S. as measured by immigrant populations, but what about poverty? What about absentee fathers, drug addiction, teen pregnancy, and all the rest of the crap that puts “at-risk” kids here at an almost insurmountable disadvantage before they get anywhere near a classroom? How does Finland handle special education? Kids are doing well by educational measurements; how about jobs? Has educational equality improved economic equality? I really want to read Sahlberg’s book now.)

Ensure all school libraries are properly staffed, open, and available for children every day.

Any school receiving Federal funds should be required to have a credentialed School Librarian on staff full time with a library that contains a minimum of 18 books per student…. Study after study has shown that well-stocked, well-funded, well-organized school libraries staffed by a “highly qualified” School Librarian, or other similarly qualified credentialed individual, improve student reading scores, test scores, and literacy rates. All children have the right to read and to have access to materials that will help them grow as learners and as people.

(Emphasis mine)

Here is an excellent article in School Library Journal about one of those studies: Something to Shout About: New research shows that more librarians means higher reading scores.

Oh, there’s so much going on here. I can’t address all of it right now, but here’s a start:

[F]our-year college is perhaps not for everyone. Rather, for a growing proportion of students, the report contends, internships, apprenticeships, and vocational training would be far more beneficial.” And then later, “[F]inancial columnist Michelle Singletary writes, ‘I’ll be honest. I think if college students and their parents have a harder time getting loans, that’s a good thing. Perhaps now more people will stop and consider the long-term implications of taking on so much of this so-called good debt.”

So for whom would internships and vocational training be more beneficial? People who can’t afford college. The truly brilliant would often still be able to get scholarships, but the merely above-average without money would likely go the vocational route, whereas the wealthy with the same intellectual caliber would go to college. I haven’t seen anyone explain how to get high-level white-collar careers to result from vocational tracks (with the possible exception of computer programming, which at least ten years ago was a new enough field to make a career without a degree; not sure about now). That’s pretty elitist. The solution can’t just be to tell people “avoid debt”; we have to give people without financial means a fair shot at any career they’re capable of. That is the American Dream.

[A] new book by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, Higher Education?: How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids, makes the case that students at elite colleges are being left to fend for themselves while their impressively credentialed professors take constant sabbaticals and leave the actual teaching to inexperienced assistants.

Yes! Let’s blame those fat-cat teachers some more. Those “impressively credentialed professors” are impressively credentialed because they spend their time on what higher education values: research and publishing. Research and teaching are different jobs with different skill sets, but “elite colleges” tend to make one the condition of the other. Don’t hate the players, hate the game.

I was expected to coax critically reasoned research papers from students who possessed no life of the mind at all: young and not-so-young men and women who didn’t read and thought not a whit about ideas.

This is a problem. But it goes back to the elitism issue — do these kids simply lack some sort of “intellectual gene,” or is it more that they haven’t been raised to exercise those parts of their brains? Is it possible that — gasp! — an education system based on high-stakes testing and one-size-fits-all standards might not encourage intellectual rigor and curiosity? Is it possible that kids whose parents work long hours to make ends meet, who come from dangerous home environments, who attended poorly funded schools, might be less well prepared for college than those who avoided those challenges?

It’s not higher ed’s responsibility to take unprepared kids and turn them into academics. But we’re all part of one education system, and we need to be working together. If the goal is to “leave no child behind,” we need to have a national conversation about what that means. We can’t have secondary schools just shooting for basic reading and math proficiency, university academics who want to turn out more professors, university business offices that want to enroll as many students as possible, and a President who talks about “winning the future” but doesn’t seem to get that that involves something more systemic than sending scientists in to inspire students at the occasional assembly. And we absolutely can’t go back to the days when higher education was a “solipsistic” “four years of intellectual crunches and sets and reps” for the wealthy elite.

It only took me a month, but I finally made good on this: $50 is on its way to Water for People. (That’s $10 x 3 or 4 days, plus a little extra.)

Will you join me?

To hear a lot of people tell it, we are having a little apocalypse of our own in eastern Mass. this week. A water pipe broke, such that the water coming out of our taps is the emergency back-up water (from lake reservoirs), and we should boil it before drinking.

1. Boiling water is not actually that big a deal. Put a big pot on while you’re puttering around the house doing other things, let it cool off overnight, stick it in the fridge if you want it cold, scoop it out for drinking and tooth-brushing. Done and done.

2. If you ever went swimming in ponds as a kid and swallowed some water and didn’t die, or if you ever went camping and washed your dishes in the lake… this is like that. Chill.

3. I have heard so many “people on the street” (or in this case the grocery store) interviewed about how they “don’t trust the government” that boiling the water will make it safe. So they’re buying huge cases of individual bottles of water, of course. Because it makes total sense to trust the water-bottling corporation more than the government or, you know, basic science.

3a. Sidenote: The only reason we trust corporations at all is the government and whatever semblance of regulatory law we have left.

4. Events like this are important, to lift the curtain of modern civilization and show us the machinery. Our water comes from somewhere; a complex system has to function properly for it to show up in our taps. Sometimes this system breaks, and it’s good to know how to handle that. It makes us more robust as individuals and as a society.

So I get frustrated when I see people “handling” it by freaking out and buying all the bottled water in the store — depending more on the grid, not less. This is a missed opportunity, folks! (Not to mention a little scary for someone like me who believes that the grid will probably get less and less dependable over my lifetime. I’d like to believe my neighbors will cope sanely with that.)

I’ve always loved Charity: Water’s ad, in which New York residents (including Jennifer Connelly) have to walk miles for unclean water. It makes its point beautifully, and is especially relevant now. Please watch, and think, and maybe give.

Marcus and his too-smart-for-their-own-good punk friends are in the wrong place at a very wrong time — the destruction of the San Francisco Bay Bridge by terrorists. They get picked up by Homeland Security, taken to a secret detention facility, and abused. This experience focuses Marcus’s teen rebellion and, upon his release, he resolves to use his 133t haxx0r skillz to bring down the authoritarian new world order.

Yup, I read it, finally. (Props to Alison again for hooking me up with my galley fix.) Because I’m a contrary pain in the ass, I wanted to dislike it just because of how many times I’d been told I should loooooove it. But the truth is that I couldn’t put it down. If you are the sort of person who burned with a fire to Change the World in high school, or if you have an “If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention” bumper sticker, or if you just love intense political thrillers, you will probably love this book, too.

Doctorow does a spectacular job of imbuing the book with the creeping sense of dread that the loss of our civil rights should elicit. It’s the whole boiling-a-frog thing: the point of this book is to remind us that the temperature is being raised, and we should jump out. At the same time, it’s a damn good growing-up story populated with 3-dimension friends, parents, and new girlfriend.

This is a hacker-y, techie story, and I’d also like to hand out an extra-credit gold star for making the technology both intelligible, and a logical outgrowth of the story. (*cough*writers of TV science fiction*cough*)

It’s not perfect, for sure. While most of the good guys are real people rather than ACLU pamphlets, there aren’t any three-dimensional characters on the other side. An interviewer for The Onion AV Club asked Doctorow about this, and he said, “The other side of the equation is people who are desperately scared. I don’t mean the authoritarians who are taking advantage, but the people of good will, whom I respect, are people who are terrified.” So having Evil Villainous Authoritarians was intentional, I guess, but I still prefer my villains shaded in grey.

Slightly spoilery commentary

An even bigger issue for me was that Marcus makes some (realistically; he’s only 17, after all) bad decisions, but they aren’t coded as bad enough in the book. When your argument is based on “But I’m not a terrorist,” it helps if you don’t, you know… act like a terrorist. The Flash Mob-esque stunt at the end of the book was especially stupid, dangerous, and damn close to inciting to riot, and I didn’t feel like Marcus did enough thinking later about what was wrong with that choice.

Read-alikes: Crusader by Edward Bloor, for another teenager making tough choices to change her world; An Abundance of Katherines by John Green and Seek by Paul Fleischman, for more smart young men with smart girlfriends figuring out how to be adults; Double Helix by Nancy Werlin for both.

I care about politics, though. A whole lot. So I feel I need to say a little something here, now that we have OMG a Democratic nominee for reals.

I feel I need to disclaim: I am not one of those Obama fangirls. It strikes me as a hilariously disproportionate response to the sudden realization that Presidents don’t have to be old white dudes.

But you know what? I am totally a fangirl for my fantasy United States. You know, the one that leads the world in the use of renewable energy? The one that makes sure all its people have healthy food (from sustainable family farms) and good healthcare? The one that doesn’t fucking torture people?

I know that President Obama (should those two words get to go together) is not a panacea. He’s going to screw up, and he’s probably going to break my heart.

But I think somewhere in the midst of all that, he’s also going to do great things. And so I’m letting myself, for now, enjoy a little

squeeeee!

(Image courtesy Bankruptcy Litigation Blog, and a Google Image search for “Obama Reading.” Trust the internet, and it shall provide!)

EPA was born in 1970 – a time when rivers caught fire and cities were hidden under dense clouds of smoke. We’ve made remarkable progress since then in protecting human health and safeguarding the natural environment.

Remember 40 years ago, when life was like a science fiction movie? Isn’t it great how much better things are now? Goooooo, EPA!

(I’d find depressingly ironic news links for the above, but you all know the drill anyway and I’m already cranky enough today. Go read Grist or something.)

(Enough hyperbole for you? I really do mean it, though. I would happily lend it to you, except I gave my copy to my library. So you’ll need to check it out or buy it yourself. Do so.)