An article sent to me by Ben Creo onthe returns to education is quite fascinating. It is a good summary on the economic benefits of education. The article does mention, but briefly pass over, social values. Education goes beyond just being able to make new friends, but the more education one has the more healthy they are likely to be, the longer they are to live, the more healthy their children are to be, etc. There are economic benefits beyond simply whether the marginal value of the education calculated in present value is worth more than the cost individually, although it often is. Living longer and healthier increasing society’s wellbeing, for instance, as well as civic engagement and other benefits. The article to me presents the classic problem in the economics of education, which is the presumption that future earning and GDP are the only valuable measures of success. Society though should value on education on many levels and a simplification of the need for it to mere economics should worry anyone.

Hello, TwoDems readers! Thanks, Zac and Gary for having me–it’s an honor. Without further ado, then, here’s some political philosophy.

Can anyone explain to me why:

Someone can believe that government should be miniscule, should stay away from our property and our money, but should espouse a particular religion or should keep porn off the streets? These seem mutually exclusive to me.

In the same vein, President Bush avers that ‘freedom is on the march’–that we will spread human rights and equality and freedom around the glove, and that this is our destiny. And then he argues that we can torture anyone we want at Guantanamo because Constitutional rights only apply inside US borders. What gives?

As Gary mentioned earlier we are going to start having some guest bloggers in addition to he and I. I’m happy to introduce Jon Margolick, a senior at Brown concentrating in Public Policy. He intends to blog on a wide range of cultural and political issues, in particular more philosophical matters related to law and sociology.

The bulk of the NYTimes Magazine this week is taken up by The 5th Annual Year in Ideas. I have pulled out the most pertinent for TwoDems:

Branding Nations

Cartoon Empathy

Conservative Blogs are More Effective

Fair Employment Mark, The

Laptop That Will Save the World, The

Totally Religious, Absolutely Democratic Constitution, The

We are going to try and be back again. I’m going to most likely blog a lot in the coming days on observations from the last month I have not been making. I have an interesting CJR article to share, and the Yale Law Review had a great article on Brown v. Board I’d love to share.

Firstly, one of my favorite moments in a given week is when the NY Times magazine comes out on Saturday evenings. This week the opening
essay is a piece by Jim Holt on Science. I think it is difficult for those of us who love science to often think about this one. But as he points out:

As for the great ruck of ordinary Americans, they are merely uninterested in, or perhaps bored by, science. Only one in five has bothered to take a physics course. Three out of four haven’t heard that the universe is expanding. Nearly half, according to a recent survey, seem to believe that God created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years. Less than 10 percent of adult Americans, it is estimated, are in possession of basic scientific literacy.

The National Defense Education Act of 1958 (and what it got reauthorized as) had scientific education of America as a huge component. But some how it seems clear that never happened. We were able to create the best collections of minds in the world (something we may soon find to be not true) but I gather that we never actually did educated most Americans on the basics of science. I personally am an education nut and imagine a world were we force many Americans to take what is currently the college prep curriculum, so that everyone can have some grounding in the history of literature, this country, and the sciences. Education really will be the difference between our success and failure in the coming decades. Science and god are perhaps difficult to rectify, but it will be more difficult to rectify the decline of the American Empire in twenty years because the godless Chinese realized that engineering and science was the path toward global dominance.

Science isn’t easy, but we don’t need Americans to be scientists. We need teachers, texts, tests and standards that encourage just a few more people to be scientists and engineers. We need those same things to just make people science literate. As Larry Summers once said:

Science: you know, we live in a culture … that if you didn’t know the name of five plays by Shakespeare, you would be embarrassed to admit it. But if you didn’t know the difference between a gene and a chromosome, that’s a technical subject. Your doctor knows, so it’s OK. I don’t think that’s going to work for the next 50 years. I don’t think it’s going to work. I think science is too important to leave to scientists.

Beyond that you should just read the essay.

Sorry again everyone, but unfortunatley school and other obligations seem to get the best of Zac and myself every now and again. Finals begin this week for me, only two that I’m really worried about. Blogging will re-commence and hopefully stay up, we’re going to be asking some friends to help us out with the blog as well, I realized a one man job was far too much, and a two man job isn’t necessarily better.

In other news, I’m proud to report that the American Democracy Institute the organization I have been interning for held the first leadership Summit on December 3rd in Chicago. I was able to attend on a panel discussion regarding using technology to get involved. I encourage you to check out the new blog VOX and become part of our conversation.

As far as this blog goes, we’ll start posting again, so start getting ready to comment and tell us why we’re so hopelessly wrong on some topic.