Monday, August 31, 2015

School Buses

My cousin took up the challenge posed by Te@chthought last year and has been blogging daily since, creating a very readable diary of her work with the students. Inspired by her example, it's time I started writing more on my craft as a teacher, which started today.

I spent quite a bit of time this summer explaining to friends a switch I made, from teaching history to teaching economics. People who grew up with me, or who knew me in college, have a bit of a hard time with that switch, given the kind of history lover that I am. Therefore, I often find myself explaining what makes teaching economics compelling. Those conversations gave shape to the lesson I did today. During a shortened block, I spent a great deal of time tasking students with explaining this riddle:

If seat belts are so safe, and if we regularly buckle up when driving or riding, why don't we equip school buses with seat belts? 

Though the riddle might seem silly, I offered it as a good metaphor for much of the thinking we'll do in AP Macroeconomics this year. If one can understand how adding seat belts might actually make buses less safe, or make them marginally safer but lead to an increase in behaviors that are unsafe, it's really just a logical jump to, say, the "crowding out effect" or the counter-intuitive logic behind why a strong dollar actually hurts U.S. consumers. The riddle worked in prompting the students to think economically.

By the way, you can read what the National Traffic Highway and Safety Administration has to say on the topic here or here

The discussion, and a recent Economist article, prompt a more thoughtful consideration of some choices we're faced with today in public education. Running buses can be an expensive proposition. Though it's a safer, more cost-effective, and more environmentally-friendly means of getting a population to school, that transportation represents a significant cost to school and, therefore, to taxpayers. Consequentially, school districts around the country are cutting the service, often by expanding the radius outside of which one must live to qualify for bus service.

As schools look to save pennies, nickels, and dimes on bus transportation they risk undermining the mission of a public school and undoing something American schools have done right. We were one of the world's first democratic republics to consecrate public schooling as a mission of the state. We worked throughout the twentieth century to expand that mission, making the school year last longer, normalizing the completion of high school, providing lunches (and then breakfasts) to students, and, of course, seeing to it that transportation to/from school would be in the schools' rather than the parents' hands. These expansions of the missions come back to one central premise of American public education: all are welcome and deserving of it.

We now look at ways to lower the price tag of this mission, which means curtailing the mission. And that means looking at ways that we risk reversing strengths that made our system stand out from those of our peer nations.

There's more to this school bus riddle than what meets the eye, which is why it's one of the better riddles I have begun a year with in Macroeconomics.

Monday, August 24, 2015

Time to Consider Some Things Seriously

Since World War II, the average expansion has lasted 52 months (the average recession 10). We're currently in an expansion that began in July 2009. That was 73 months ago. Today, the stock market sunk, largely as a reaction to the fall we've seen Asian markets taking.

A recession is coming.

So, why consider some things seriously?

In recessions, Americans look to fire the president. We did so in 1992. We did so again in 2008, though we couldn't fire George W. Bush. We did the next best thing: fire his party.

We cannot fire President Obama in 2016. But we can fire his heir.

So, can Republicans please rally around someone other than Donald Trump? Please.


On the bright side, maybe borrowing money to finish the basement renovation isn't such a bad idea. My hunch is the Fed will leave interest rates right where they are.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

__________ Creep

I'm struggling at the right word to put before Creep in this post. No, this isn't about creepy behavior, but about the way in which information and historical insight can creep. In the historical community "classification creep" refers to the system by which one-time classified files are made public, usually 25 years after the documents were deemed classified. As documents become public, the historical analysis on a given topic can change in light of the new evidence. This in part explains the cyclical nature by which a president's legacy seems to get reevaluated.

Mike Sielski wrote a column in today's Inquirer that got the part of my brain still tuned to History 300 (Methods) from college humming. Philadelphia sports fans tend to glorify Chuck Bednarik, one of the NFL's last two-way players and, even more rare, one of the Eagles' championship players. The most famous image from Concrete Charlie's career is the one atop this post, of Bednarik celebrating a fumble securing the Eagles' victory over the Giants in their 1960 season. Or, was he gloating over the player he had just injured, Frank Gifford?

Today, Sielski publishes a column in which he points to evidence (other photos taken of that sequence of events by a Sports Illustrated photographer) that Bednarik probably was exulting over an injury. That's an interpretation that is blasphemous in many Philadelphia fan circles. Why publish such a provocative opinion today?

Because the two most important figures, Bednarik and Gifford, are now dead. Bednarik took with him to his grave the story that he was simply triumphing that the game was finished. Gifford never challenged that claim. Bednarik's motives to write the history in a hue favorable to him are pretty clear. As for Gifford, how could he remember what happened that moment? Further, how could he, as an all-star and Hall of Famer in America's great gladiatorial sport, ever sound like he was crying over a physical hit.

Now that Gifford is dead, there isn't a need to politely nod one's head and let a gentleman preserve his dignity.

The photographer died in 2002: we've lost any chance to get him to reconcile the record.

So what do we call the historical creep that allows us to speak candidly about emotion-charged moments like this? I'm unsure of that. I love, though, how that event from 1960, an event which cannot happen again, can get richer and deeper as time goes on. There is no way we will know every detail with absolute certainty for important events. History remains compelling because it offers the chance to reexamine and reanalyze and, in so doing, add more past than there was in the first place.

So, I haven't posted in a while . . .

News often inspires me to post here. News hasn't given me much that's inspirational as of late. Okay, I'm in a summertime mood anyway and therefore thinking more about being a dad (you can read more here). But even if it weren't for the summertime mood, I think my general reaction to just about anything in the news can be captured in this illustration from The Little Old Man Who Could Not Read.

I love coffee. But when I want to eat, coffee just isn't enough. 

Hillary's e-mails. Don Trump. Philadelphia's inadequate preparations for the Pope's visit. The Kathleen Kane saga (wait, take that back, that's kind of fun). Chip Kelly. Chase Utley. Tom Brady. Interest rates. Chinese currency manipulation. Any of these events is just enough to make me look like the book's hungry title character or say, as only the little old man would say, "Fiddlesticks and Fishfur!"

Sunday, August 9, 2015

An Odyssey of Friends

Today concludes a two-week stretch of vacation and travel. Though Sherry took two weeks away from work, our main vacation lasted only one week. Okay, one week plus a pair of weekends. The second week was a vacation of sorts, but with home as our base of operations. 

One of the interesting quirks of this two-week stretch was that it afforded me the chance to touch base again with a half dozen friends, friends I came to know at different stages of life. In Portland I met with Rob, who was a partner in crime after I became comfortable in my career. His friendship was invaluable during challenging professional times. On the way home, we saw Karen, one of the most genuine people I came to know at Gettysburg, the sort of interesting person that college attracts. When we got home, I had the chance to touch base with Ken and Jess, friends who have helped me figuring out this whole dad/teacher thing. We took a day off at the shore with Juanita, a friend we came to know as we lived here in Lansdale. She actually invites us down to the shore each year to spend some time at the beach with her family. And in Alexandria, I had the chance to dine with Jeff, a friend since I was younger than my son is now. 

Me with my best friend, while dining out with friends. 
Oh, and let's not forget that I got to see brothers- and sisters-in-law who feel more like friends than what the term in-laws suggests during these weeks. 

I sometimes chuckle at the episodes through which I frame my life: in roughly four-year periods that go back to the early eighties. In each of those episodes I was fortunate to be in the company of really good people, and I've had the ability to keep in touch with many of them.