I Couldn't Agree More
From School Monitor, an interview with Jonathan Kosol in today's NYT Magazine:
You also suggest that our current system of locally financed schools be abolished, claiming that it perpetuates inequality by allowing suburbs like Scarsdale and Manhasset to spend twice as much on each student as less affluent cities do.
Schooling should not be left to the whim or wealth of village elders. I believe that we should fund all schools in the U.S. with our national resources. All these kids are being educated to be Americans, not citizens of Minneapolis or San Francisco.
...
Seriously, why would Republicans, who have traditionally opposed big government, encumber schools with the testing requirements attached to No Child Left Behind?
The kind of testing we are doing today is sociopathic in its repetitive and punitive nature. [Emphasis added.] Its driving motive is to highlight failure in inner-city schools as dramatically as possible in order to create a ground swell of support for private vouchers or other privatizing schemes.
From How Bingeing Became the New College Sport, an essay by Barrett Seaman in the August 29, 2005 issue of TIME Magazine:
What would happen if the drinking age was rolled back to 18 or 19? Initially, there would be a surge in binge drinking as young adults savored their newfound freedom. But over time, I predict, U.S. college students would settle into the saner approach to alcohol I saw on the one campus I visited where the legal drinking age is 18: Montreal's McGill University, which enrolls about 2,000 American undergraduates a year. Many, when they first arrive, go overboard, exploiting their ability to drink legally. But by midterms, when McGill's demanding academic standards must be met, the vast majority have put drinking into its practical place among their priorities.
A culture like that is achievable at U.S. colleges if Congress can muster the fortitude to reverse a bad policy. If lawmakers want to reduce drunk driving, they should do what the Norwegians do: throw the book at offenders no matter what their age. Meanwhile, we should let the pregamers come out of their dorm rooms so that they can learn to handle alcohol like the adults we hope and expect them to be.
Two Items on the Environment
I hate it when I have a logjam of things to write about; usually the result is that nothing at all comes out. I'm in the process of trying to clear the jam and let a couple logs through at a time. To whit:
We spent Christmas weekend with my parents, and on Christmas Eve Al and I had a grand plan to put The Beaner to bed early and then dash out to the 8:00 showing of The Good Shepherd while my parents kept an ear out for any cries from the crib. The Beaner cooperated by going down at the unheard-of hour of 7:05pm, but alas, our plan was wrecked when we discovered that moviefone.com was wrong: there was no 8:00 showing of The Good Shepherd at the local mall (the one with a Bible store but no Gap) on Christmas Eve. On our way back from the theater we stopped at the still-open Blockbuster and, after scanning the racks and considering both Scoop (me) and My Super Ex-Girlfriend (Al), finally rented The Al Gore Movie (actual title: An Inconvenient Truth).
SCARIEST DAMN MOVIE I'VE SEEN IN YEARS.
I used to be all concerned about the environment and global warming and such in my 20s, but after protesting and writing letters to leaders and giving money to Greenpeace and all that, nothing seemed to come of it. Everyone seemed confused about whether global warming was even real... even though evidence of it mounted on an almost-daily basis. And, honestly, inertia overtook me. When nothing happened right away (either in the environment or in the fight against global warming), it became an easy issue to ignore. I know I should be using less energy, and what we do use should be from renewable sources—I go around turning off lights after Aura and Al all the time, I pay the extra $7.50 or so a month to get some of our electricity from wind farms, and I prefer to walk or use public transit instead of driving—but I also know I could be doing so much more.
I think that's partly why I didn't want to see this movie: I didn't want to face the fact that I wasn't doing all that I could... and I didn't really want to know how bad things were. They're bad, but the situation is not entirely hopeless. Everyone should see this movie, especially Americans. It's time we woke up and faced what we're doing to our planet—what we're doing to our OWN future, not just our children's—and to learn what we can do to reverse the trend, if not all of the effects. At the very least, we need to be talking about global warming—because as Gore says in the movie, nothing much happens in Congress unless an issue is on the tip of every constituent's tongue. This movie will get you talking, I guarantee.
The other environmental item I wanted to mention was this article in today's New York Times: Farmers and Conservationists Form a Rare Alliance. We need more partnerships like this one, where everyone benefits. We as Americans and citizens of the world need to value a clean and healthy environment—not just give it lip service, but attach an actual monetary value to it. It's a short article, and worth reading all the way through for the details about how the deal is structured and what benefits both the shorebirds and the farmers can expect to reap.
The Cure For The Winter Blues?
Did y'all know that Daylight Saving Time is being extended this year? Instead of starting on the first Sunday in April and ending on the last Sunday in October, it'll now start on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November. In other words, DST will start on March 11 this year instead of April 1, and it'll end on November 4 instead of October 28.
I'm trying to decide if this is a good or a bad thing. As someone who tends toward depression in the winter because of the lack of light—and as someone who's looked forward to Daylight Saving Time for her entire adult life the way I looked forward to Christmas as a kid—it seems like it would be a good thing. I'm so tuned to the way things are now, though, that I wonder if it will be a difficult adjustment.
I always know when DST is ending because I was born on the day the clocks changed in 1968. Thus, the weekend of or just after my birthday is the sad day when we fall back (though as a consolation prize, we gain an extra hour of sleep). I'm sure there will be other reminders in early November, but it won't be the same.
When I was in my early teens I used to have to get up for school ridiculously early (partly because I had long, incredibly thick hair, and it took at least 20 minutes to blow dry it), often before the sun was up. I used to look forward to March, when the days were starting to lengthen but DST had not yet arrived because it meant that the sun rose before I did. I loved the early morning light streaming through my windows. It felt peaceful and wonderful and renewing to wake up in that light. Daylight Saving Time's arrival was often a disappointment, plunging me as it did back into morning darkness.
Now I wake late enough that the sun is up before I am even in winter, so I don't think moving DST will make that much difference to my mornings. I also sit by a window all day while I work, so I maximize the light I get even on short winter days. I've been noticeably less chipper in the past couple months than I was in the preceeding fall or summer, but it's really not that bad. I think the fact that Philadelphia can be sunny even when it's bitterly cold outside (as it is now) helps a lot; I remember being more depressed in winter in San Francisco, where I also sat next to a window during the day, possibly because there were more overcast, rainy days. Ditto Boston, where it's more overcast than here.
Speaking of winter and bitter cold, today is a sharecare day, so I walked the Beaner over to his friend M's house in the stroller this morning. OH MY GOD, IT WAS COLD. We seem to have gone from merely freezing to absolutely brutal, and I was caught with no tights under my jeans. What was I thinking? Here's where, if you're a seasoned parent, you'll be saying out loud, "wait, you're worried about not wearing TIGHTS under your pants? What about your KID, freezing his ass off in the stroller?" And you'd be absolutely right.
I called Al after I left M's house to tell him how the Beaner refused the stroller cover halfway through the walk, even though he'd gone silent minutes into the walk (usually he sings until he gets too cold to do so, so he must have gotten cold fast), and how he'd started to whimper as we turned onto M's street. "Only a little farther, buddy!" I'd said. "Yeah," Al said. "As I was riding up the elevator in my building this morning, I remarked to a colleague how cold it was this morning. The colleague replied, 'yeah, it was so cold I had to drive my kids to school!'" We both paused for a second to smack our foreheads. We could have DRIVEN the Beaner to M's house. Duh. "We should pick him up in the car tonight," said Al. Um, yeah. Sometimes we are so STUPID.
Dance, Dance Revolution Indeed!
It's the dance sensation that's sweeping the nation['s gym classes]: P.E. Classes Turn to Video Game That Works Legs. Rock on!
How About Some REAL Sex Education Now?
From a New York Times article entitled Teenage Birth Rate Rises for First Time Since ’91, in which abstinence-only programs are criticized (rightly, IMHO), comes this hilarious quote:
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, said that blaming abstinence-only programs was “stupid.” Mr. Rector said that most young women who became pregnant were highly educated about contraceptives but wanted to have babies.
I find it hard to believe that these young women were "highly educated" about anything, including contraceptives, but especially about how difficult it is to raise a child. Mr. Rector seems to agree with me when he says, later in the article:
Mr. Rector of the Heritage Foundation said that teenage and unmarried birth rates were driven by the same factors: young women with little education who are devoted to mothering but see no great need to be married.
So these women are highly educated about contraceptives but poorly educated in every other way. I can buy the latter, but as I said, not the former.
I had sex education in fifth grade. Real sex education. I don't think I ever participated in one of the classes where you had to carry a sack of flour around everywhere or keep an egg healthy and whole for a week, but I remember watching others do it, and just watching was educational. It was the kind of assignment everyone talked about, not just those doing it.
We need to educate kids about STDs, pregnancy, and the impact on their lives of having a child young. Telling them to say "no" is not enough. I'm not sure what Mr. Rector wants to tell them will do the trick either, frankly.
“We should be telling them that for the well-being of any child, it’s critically important that you be over the age of 20 and that you be married,” he said. “That message is not given at all.”
Gas Prices Are Up, and I Can't Say I'm Sad
I might be the only person in the U.S. who's happy that gas prices are nearing $4 a gallon. Yes, I wince when I have to fill up my own gas tank, and I have sympathy for those who drive for a living, but I still can't help smiling whenever the news reports that people are walking, using public transit, and bicycling more, or that sales of small cars are up among those who must drive.
This country is probably too vast for most of us to stop driving completely, and I like a good road trip as much as the next person, but in my humble opinion, we as Americans drive WAY too much—especially in places where alternatives are readily available. There's no reason for gridlock in most cities, for example, where public transportation, walking, and biking are all options.
Many would argue that the alternatives take too long, that driving is faster and more convenient, but I'd say that as more people get on the road, that's less and less the case. Sitting in traffic is a painful, polluting waste of time... and when you get where you're going, parking is often either expensive or difficult to find (and sometimes both). Walking or taking the subway may take longer, but often the time is more productive. A colleague gave me an interesting stat: the most productive members of my team all have one thing in common: namely, a lengthy commute by train. Whether they work, sleep, or read a book on the train, they arrive at work focused and ready to go, and they get more done.
Likewise, walking or biking to work can double as your daily exercise. No need to carve out workout time; you've burned calories and commuted at the same time. And don't underestimate the value of having extra time to yourself to let your mind wander. Whether you want to think through a problem, make a call, or sketch out an idea, it's a heck of a lot safer to do any of these things while walking or riding the subway than while driving. (I wouldn't recommend using a cellphone or whipping out your Moleskine while riding a bike, however. :-)
Aside from finding commute alternatives, I'm also happy that gas prices are rising because perhaps now we'll finally have the political will to raise the CAFE standards. When we started looking for a new(er) car last year, I was dismayed to find that setting a minimum MPG of 28 cut our options significantly. I shouldn't have had to say, "OK, 24 then," but I did. Sad. Higher fossil fuel costs also make alternative energies more competitive on cost, which means they have a better chance of taking hold—and that there'll be an incentive to develop more alternatives—which could ultimately lower the cost of these technologies for everyone.
I'd note that I'm not a fan of using food crops for fuel, but that topic would require a separate post. :-)
Skimpole on Responsibility
After a brief interlude in contemporary non-fiction (I highly recommend The Post-American World
As they were to remain with us that day, and had taken their places to return by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of speaking to Mr. Skimpole. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way; and I delicately said, that there was a responsibility in encouraging Richard.
"Responsibility, my dear Miss Summerson?" he repeated, catching at the word with the pleasantest smile, "I am the last man in the world for such a thing. I never was responsible in my life —I can't be."
"I am afraid everybody is obliged to be," said I, timidly enough: he being so much older and more clever than I.
"No, really?" said Mr. Skimpole, receiving this new light with a most agreeable jocularity of surprise. "But every man's not obliged to be solvent ? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Summerson," he took a handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, "there's so much money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of counting. Call it four and ninepence — call it four pound nine. They tell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as much as good-natured people will let me owe. If they don't stop, why should I? There you have Harold Skimpole in little. If that's responsibility, I am responsible."
The perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again, and looked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been mentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me feel as if he really had nothing to do with it.
The Health Fund
I just wanted to say a few words about the health plan I used to have at Adobe, and you can take those words for what they're worth. I'm saying my piece here because I never hear anyone talk about this sort of thing, and I think it's relevant to the debate.
I loved my plan. I'm sure there were problems with it—it probably had injunctions against pre-existing conditions and other gotchas that Obama and Congress are rightly trying to get rid of—but that I never ran up against. Here's the gist:
It was a health fund. I (or rather, my employer, who subsidized it to the point that it was either no-cost or very low-cost to me) paid money into this fund, and up to a set limit (which was something like $1K for me when I just covered myself, and $2K for my whole family the next year), all my bills were paid out of the fund at 100%. There were no co-pays. I went to the doctor, it was covered, done.
But here's the even better part (though the 100% coverage/no copay part was pretty damn good): I got to see the bills. The insurance company would send me statements showing what the doctor had charged, what they had negotiated to pay, and thus what had come out of my fund. I knew how much a visit to the allergist cost, how much a breathing test cost, etc. I could see for myself how much money was left in the fund, and *how* I'd spent what I'd spent so far. Because of this, I had a vested interest in questioning the reason for any tests that were ordered, how often I *really* needed to be seen, and whether that expensive drug was really effective. I loved having this kind of visibility into the cost of my care, and the incentive to try to lower that cost.
I also had an incentive to get routine preventative care in order to keep myself healthy, because using some funds to stay healthy meant there were funds left over at the end of the year that would roll over to the next year. So, for example, I had something like $440 left over from 2007, so for 2008 I would have had $1440 for myself or $2440 for my family (or maybe it was $3440, with $3K being the family baseline; I can't remember exactly). The cool thing about this was that it helped us save up for a bad health year. If we were going along great for a few years and then Al broke a leg or I got pregnant or the Beaner needed surgery, we'd have a pile of health fund money built up to help us cover costs before we had any out-of-pocket expenses.
If I exhausted my fund in any year, there was an out-of-pocket maximum of something, maybe $500 or $1000, and then the 80/20 coverage kicked in. So I was never out in the cold, never worse off than a relatively high-deductible plan, and often better off. I felt like the incentives were the right ones—staying healthy and saving money—and yet there was a safety net if I managed to fail at this mission.
I realize such a plan wouldn't be the best choice for everyone, but it seems like it should be a choice for more people. While I don't regret leaving Adobe for an opportunity to expand my skills and experience at a startup, I do regret leaving that health plan behind. I miss that health plan almost as much as I miss my former colleagues.
Save the Free Library
To be honest, I've sort of been ignoring the budget impasse that's been plaguing our Pennsylvania state government. I've been through several of these before in other states (and I remember well a couple federal ones), and everything always turns out OK in the end. There's partisan bickering, a few services that don't affect me shut down temporarily, and every public television and radio station in the state starts freaking out. It's annoying, but the effects are usually limited, and eventually a budget passes.
This time, apparently, it's worse than all that. This budget bickering has gone on so long that services that DO affect me are starting to shut down. I wasn't *too* worried when the PBS station to which I gave a substantial portion of a windfall I received earlier this year called last night to ask for more money; as mentioned above, public tv and radio are usually the first ones to cry out in pain. (Sometimes they cry so often it's hard to tell whether the pain is real.)
This morning, however, I discovered this: All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009
At first glance, it might sound like the usual public television "they're going to take away Big Bird!" hyperbole. Our nanny thought it was a joke. It's not. Yes, the closure won't take place until October 2, and yes, it will only happen if the legislators in Harrisburg continue to fail to pass a state budget, but the effects will be felt sooner than that—and given how long the budget negotiations have already dragged on, the threat of Philadelphia's Free Public Library closing is absolutely real.
If you live in Pennsylvania, please contact your state senator and state representative and ask them to act with all possible speed to pass a state budget. Here's the letter I sent to my senator, Larry Farnese, and (with slight modifications) my representative, Babette Josephs.
PLEASE PLEASE do whatever you can to get a state budget passed ASAP. My four-and-a-half year-old son is an early reader and an avid consumer of Free Library books and services. His twice-weekly visits to the library have fostered his independence and confidence in addition to his reading skills. We want him out and about and interacting with the community, not just sitting in his room at home. We can afford to buy him books if the library closes, but honestly, we'd rather pay more taxes to keep the libraries open than use that same money to buy books for our child's exclusive use. Libraries do so much more for our community than an endless supply of books could do for a single child.
Please be a voice for our kid, our libraries, and our district. Please act in the spirit of cooperation and compromise, and encourage your fellow Senators and House colleagues to do the same.
Sincerely,
Lori Hylan-Cho