Undergraduate Education and the Prestige Economy

This article from Policymic discusses the relationship between the recent ruling on internships in a federal court and the "prestige economy." The article highlights a set of tweets that summarize the issue written by Sarah Kendzior, a popular writer at al-Jazeera English.

One tweet in particular "Tell young people they have no skills" highlights an issue that I deal with frequently among undergraduate students. Kendzior suggests that students are taught that they have no skills and that they need fancy unpaid internships as evidence that they have skills. I remember feeling this way, and it is one of the reasons that I chose to do a PhD instead of joining the Peace Corps. It felt like I did not have tangible skills to offer and that doing a PhD would be developing a set of research skills that would be marketable.

The students I work with frequently have a similar mindset. They suggest to me they have no skills when really what they have is NO TANGIBLE EVIDENCE OF THEIR SKILLS. There is a significant difference between not having skills and not being able to prove  to someone that you have skills. Of course, grades and research papers are evidence of skills, but if students would just take one step beyond doing the bare minimum, they would have much more to market.

Faculty and mentors need to encourage students to have TANGIBLE EVIDENCE OF THEIR SKILLS . There are a host of undergraduate journals, newspapers, and lower level policy journals that would accept contributions from undergraduate students. Many students are waiting for someone to confirm legitimacy on them.  This is why I take every possible opportunity to say to my top students "you should publish this" and to help them find outlets to do so. At the end of the day, however, students need to take more initiative and get things out there. Over the next year I'll be compiling a list of places for students to publish their work. Let me know any that I'm missing. 

Today in the Times... NY state educ reforms

Today in the NYT: New York State finds brilliant solution to problems in America's educational system!!​

​More tests. especially for art, gym and kindergarten.

I was really worried those kindergarteners weren't progressing quickly enough so this is great news.​

Today in the Times... teaching math vs. reading

In raising scores, 1 2 3 is easier than a b c

​When I first started mentioning articles that interested in me in the NYT, I did not anticipate it becoming a daily phenomenon. But lately the newspaper has been doing a lot of interesting reporting on educational politics and pedagogy, and that is one way I'm hoping to use this blog: to collect interesting articles on education. Hence the frequent NYT posts.

Today's piece is not surprising, but the situation it highlights is surely an interesting topic for conversation, debate, and certainly research. The article discusses how it is easier to catch students up in math than in reading.​

Part of that is certainly because reading teachers aren't teaching reading anymore, are they? They're teaching reading and critical thinking and rhetoric and grammar and five paragraph themes. At a fundamental level, math teachers teach students a certain kind of logic, while reading teachers are expected to teach students how to think.

And this is where education collides with politics. All subjects are not equally politicized and for good reason. How students think will influence future political contexts. Authoritarian regimes have an interest in having skilled mathematicians and engineers. But are critical, engaged, informed citizens a goal of authoritarian regimes? I don't think so. Sometimes I don't think they are goal of democratic regimes either!

The other issue, highlighted by the article, is that math proficiency is much less influenced by your home environment than reading. As Geoffrey Borman, a UW professor and one of the interviewees in the article said, “Your mother or father doesn’t come up and tuck you in at night and read you equations.”​ Your ability to use language is influenced by your exposure to it, and school is simply not enough. Your language will reflect those you hang out with and what you read. Your math skills are much more determined by your teacher at school.

My first instinct about this is that much more time should be spend in school on language-related skills than math skills but that is obviously not enough of a solution. My second thought is, boy was that Dorothy Sayers on to something with her article "The Lost Tools of Learning."​

I'll just leave it at that for today and perhaps write on Sayers tomorrow!​