Education is a Passport

Don't get me wrong— I like Cincinnati, and I think it's a great place to live. But to make my case today, I'm obligated to present some unpleasant facts about our city:

• Crime - Cincinnati is significantly worse than the national average for almost every type of crime. We have more prisoners than we have jail space, so we farm some of them out to another county. We don't trust our local government to spend money effectively, so we vote (repeatedly) against a tax levy to build a new jail.
  
  When police patrol high crime areas, people complain that innocent people are being harassed or harmed by the police. When police don't patrol high crime areas, people complain that the city doesn't care about victims in poor neighborhoods.


• Poverty - Cincinnati has been ranked as the 3rd poorest big city in the United States, with 28% of its residents living in poverty. We have a higher percentage of people living in poverty than Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago. Two-thirds (66%) of the students in Cincinnati Public Schools are classified as "economically-disadvantaged."


• Racial Issues - Cincinnati is a black and white city; African-Americans aren't really a minority group here. The racial breakdown for people living in the city of Cincinnati is approximately 43% African-American and 53% white. In Cincinnati Public Schools, 75% of students are African-American or multi-racial, and 21% are white.
  
  However, Cincinnati neighborhoods are generally segregated by race, and in this instance, separate is clearly not equal: The median incomes for Mt. Adams, Hyde Park, Mt. Lookout are roughly ten times the median incomes for Winton Hill, the West End, and Over-the-Rhine.


• Traffic - OK, so I'll admit that, in the grand scheme of things, traffic is not one of the most significant problems that Cincinnati faces. In fact, it's way down at the bottom of the list, in tiny print. It's easy to get frustrated by traffic, but we really ought to be ten times more frustrated by the tremendous waste of human talent that is embedded in all of the statistics about poverty and crime in Cincinnati.

A few years ago, I happened to overhear a local talk-radio program. The hosts and the callers were bemoaning the problems with Cincinnati. I don't remember if they were talking about poverty, or crime, or racism, or some combination, but I do remember thinking, "Yeah, so you've got a strong opinion and a loud voice, but what are you DOING to make things better?" At that moment, I became 100% convinced of one thing:

An opinion is worthless unless there are actions backing it up.

I believe that you shouldn't complain about a problem unless you're willing to be part of the solution. (Admittedly, I fail to live up to this belief on a regular basis, but nevertheless, there it is.) It's both arrogant and irrelevant for me to take part in intellectual debates about all the things that are wrong with Cincinnati, unless I'm actively trying to do something to make things better.

So what are some potential solutions for crime, poverty, and racism? And how can we participate in those solutions?

• We can expect our government to solve these problems. They'll continue to hire more police officers, build more jails, and lock up more people. They'll pass out more welfare checks, subsidize more housing, and pass more laws and quotas for affirmative action programs. We participate in this solution by paying taxes and complaining about how much money is being wasted. Because this method has worked so well in the past...


• We can hope that non-profit organizations will scrounge up money from somewhere, so that they can pay their employees to solve these problems. Our participation could consist of [grudgingly] allowing our employers to withhold a pittance from each paycheck as part of their corporate United Way goals, or maybe we send a check to a particular agency once a year. The NPO's build lots of roads paved with good intentions, which certainly help lead some people out of poverty. Yet somehow the statistics continue to show that a little bit of ground is lost each year.


• We can try to influence the hearts and minds of adults who have given up on all of their personal dreams, who don't have hopes for their kids, and who don't see any point in trying to improve their neighborhoods and communities. I believe that this approach could work, but personally, I haven't seen very many opportunities to get involved in this way.


• We can step up and get involved with kids and try to change the path of their lives, so that they grow up to help solve problems, instead of following the statistical trends for crime and poverty. We tell them that education is important, and we show them where it can take them.

Working with kids just seems like the most obvious choice for me. At the very least, it's a solution that I can easily participate in— I can personally effect change by getting involved in a kid's life, and I can encourage other people to do the same. Even if we don't see 100% improvement, we will certainly see some progress in every kid, and that's just got to be better than doing nothing at all. And it's easy to get involved in these sorts of programs. Here are three examples I can recommend:

• Whiz Kids Tutoring


• Cincinnati Youth Collaborative


• Big Brothers Big Sisters

So if you agree with my conclusion, please don't use "But I don't know how to get involved" as an excuse. Contact one of these agencies and they'll quickly get you hooked up with a kid. I promise, it's easier than you think.

---

This is a long post, and I've been working on it for about a month now. An article on thug culture got me thinking about what I wanted to say, and then I stumbled across some quotes from Bill Cosby's speech on the 50th anniversary of Brown V. Board of Education:

I mean, this is the future, and all of these people who lined up and done, they’ve got to be wondering what the hell happened. Brown V. Board of Education. These people who marched and were hit in the face with rocks and punched in the face to get an education, and we got these knuckleheads walking around who don’t want to learn English.

I know that you all know it. I just want to get you as angry as you ought to be.

When you walk around the neighborhood and you see this stuff, that stuff’s not funny. These people are not funny anymore. And that‘s not my Brother. And that’s not my Sister. They’re faking, and they’re dragging me way down because the state, the city, and all these people have to pick up the tab on them, because they don’t want to accept that they have to study to get an education...

...I’m telling you Christians, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you hit the streets? Why can’t you clean it out yourselves? It’s our time now, ladies and gentlemen. It is our time. And I’ve got good news for you. It’s not about money. It’s about you doing something that we ordinarily do— Get in somebody else’s business. It’s time for you to not accept the language that these people are speaking, which will take them nowhere. What the hell good is Brown V. Board of Education if nobody wants it?

In addition to giving several speeches along these lines, Bill Cosby has written a book with his friend Alvin F. Poussaint, who is a Psychiatry Professor at Harvard Medical School. The book is called Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors. I picked it up at the library last week, and I think it's very good. Not funny, but definitely honest and challenging.

The book contains a quote from former Cincinnati mayor Dwight Tillery:

The high school graduation rate in Cincinnati for black males is 25 percent, compared to 43 percent for white males.

Those numbers shocked me, so I did a little bit of research and found out that there's been some significant progress for Cincinnati Public Schools in the past 7-8 years. According to the latest data, the overall four-year* graduation rate has increased from 51% in 2000 to 79% in 2007.

[*NOTE: Four-year graduation rates don't reflect kids who drop out before 9th grade. Tillery's statistics are specific to males, and they may or may not include boys who never made it to high school.]

While a 20% drop-out rate leaves plenty of room for improvement, Cincinnati Public Schools (and the Gates Foundation) deserve credit for the overall progress that they've made in a relatively short period of time. They also managed to eliminate the gap in graduation rates between blacks and whites, which is a huge accomplishment.

---

Bill Cosby's book also includes this quote from Malcolm X:

Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.

I think that's a great metaphor. What happens if you arrive somewhere new and different without a passport? Customs agents will turn you around and send you back where you came from.

Many of the kids in the Cincinnati Public School system know all about poverty, violence, and drugs, but they don't know anything about the world that exists outside their neighborhoods. They may sense that there is a gateway out there, but they also know that there are guards who are waiting to turn them away at the door. They need a passport to get through.

What we can do for kids is show them views of the big world that's out there waiting for them: interesting jobs and careers, opportunities to travel, healthy communities, stable families, comfortable homes, and financial security. And then we show them how to get a passport that will open doors for them: learn how to study, stay in school, work hard, develop technical skills or earn a degree, start a career.

I believe that education is a passport into a world of opportunity, and I believe that every kid needs someone who can show them how to get that passport.

Told You So...

I said it before, and I'll say it again: Suing the American Red Cross for using the Red Cross trademark is a stupid move.

Ordinary People

Another fantastic example of "lead by example" comes from this column in Newsweek, by Rabbi Marc Gellman:

All over this country ordinary people are simply deciding that they don't have to be rich to do good. These low-key philanthropists, some moved by their faith, others moved by an equally powerful secular compassion, are changing the moral landscape of America in ways that the movers and shakers and talking heads who fill the airwaves cannot yet comprehend.

My goal is to be this kind of ordinary.





...small things with great love...

Geese and Swans

Maeve Binchy is one of my favorite authors. Her books aren't deep or philosophical or challenging. They're human and uncontrived, so they feel true and real. Reading her books makes me feel like I'm sitting down for a cup of tea with my mom and one of her friends, and they're telling the life stories of people that they've known for years. (Except that all of the people in her books live in Ireland.) So if you're looking for an enjoyable book to read, I would suggest The Cooper Beech, and if you like it, move on to The Evening Class, Scarlet Feather, Quentins, and Tara Road.

Here's what she has to say about her childhood:

And even though I was fat and hopeless at games, which are very unacceptable things for a schoolgirl, I was happy and confident. That was quite simply because I had a mother and a father at home who thought I was wonderful. They thought all their geese were swans. It was a gift greater than beauty or riches, the feeling that you were as fine as anyone else.

"They thought all their geese were swans."

How great is that?

Fauxnancial Vocabulary

I know I said that I was going to stop talking about personal finance and the economy, but this article was just too good not to share. Here are new vocabulary words for our new economy:

• Narcicession - An economic phenomenon characterized by consumers who believe that basic economic principles apply to other people, in other countries, and other eras, but not to them.


• Denialation - A period following a narcicession, when consumers fail to understand why their net worth and standard of living are falling.


• Fauxnancier - An investing genius who knows way more about making money than you or I do, except he doesn't, actually.


• Can'titative analyst - A mathematical whiz who can't explain where several billion dollars suddenly disappeared to.


• Masters of the Puniverse - Investment bankers who used to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and now must get by on a few million.


• Magicware - Sophisticated software that analyzes complex investment vehicles and makes risk disappear.


• Auditarium - Soundproof room at banks where auditors are quarantined.


• Benopoly - An economy in which only the Federal Reserve holds risky securities.


• Econogloss - Presidential pronouncements that paint the economy as stable. Must be reapplied frequently.


• Mortgage breaker - A lending institution that peddles mortgages designed to self-destruct.


• Homeblower - A consumer who thinks that financing a house with a mortgage requiring 60 percent of his monthly take-home pay will work out, somehow.

More Lanes, More Parking

They're planning to add a 3rd exit lane to the Fields Ertel exit.

The solution is not more lanes. The solution is optimizing traffic lights.

Cincinnati tends to use traffic lights like airlocks. Light A turns red, and traffic backs up all the way to Light B and beyond. Light B turns red, and Light A turns green, releasing the traffic in the airlock. It stays green for awhile even though the airlock is empty. When Light B turns green, and the traffic behind it starts moving, Light A turns red again.

Examples of airlocks can be found all around Fields Ertel and Mason Montgomery area. The whole area is just one gigantic, grid-locked parking lot. There's simply nowhere for cars coming off of I-71 to go when they reach the end of the exit ramp. Adding more parking on the exit ramp isn't going to solve the problem.

The interchange of Reed Hartman and I-275 is another perfect example of an airlock system. When I lived up on Fields Ertel, I used to take Reed Hartman to get to work everyday. And every morning, I would wait through 8-10 light cycles to cross over I-275. (I had plenty of time to count them, as I sat there for 20 minutes drinking my coffee.) They attempted to "fix" that interchange by doubling the number of lanes, at a cost that would probably boggle my mind if I knew what it was. Reed Hartman now has EIGHT lanes, but traffic still doesn't flow across I-275-- There are just twice as many cars parked in the airlock now.

Traffic planners in this city seem convinced that the purpose of traffic lights is to stop traffic, but really, the purpose should be to optimize the flow of traffic. When I was working on my thesis up in Cleveland, I had to drive across town to Metro Hospital every day. I could drive on Carnegie Avenue all the way from I-90 to Cedar Hill (a distance of over 3 miles through a densely urban area) at nearly 50 mph without stopping for a single light. The lights had been optimized to move traffic out of downtown as quickly as possible during the 4:30 - 6pm rush hour, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that it's simply amazing to see what happens when lights are used to keep traffic flowing.

Thousands of cars sit idling at lights all over Cincinnati right now. Starting and stopping burns much more fuel than keeping cars moving. Think of how much gasoline usage and auto emissions could be reduced if traffic planners just eliminated airlocks and optimized lights to keep traffic flowing.

Education Prognostication

I believe that home-schooling will continue to gain momentum in the next five to ten years. My prediction is that home-schooling families will form co-operative groups where one parent teaches Math and Science, another parent teaches English and Social Studies, and yet another parent teaches Art and Music, for example.

And we'll look at them and wonder why it costs $13,000 for each child in public schools, when families can do it for less than $500 per year.

Financial Literacy

OK, one more rant on personal finance and then I'll stop. Maybe.

Newsweek published an article called Clues for the Clueless about trying to improve financial literacy in America. The article opens with this question:

It is, or at least it should be, a simple question. You have $200 in an investment that's earning 10% a year. Assuming you let the money grow, how much would you have at the end of two years?

Here's how American adults answered that question:

• 18% said $242.


• 34% said $240.


• 48% had no clue.

Extrapolating from those results:

• Fewer than 1 in 5 adults grasp the basic principles of compound interest. In terms of financial "literacy" we can assume that this group can at least read street signs and newspaper articles.


• 1 in 3 understand how to calculate simple interest, but they don't understand that there's a difference between simple and compound interest. This group has learned the alphabet, and maybe they can work their way through Dr. Seuss books.


• Roughly half of all American adults don't understand simple OR compound interest. They don't understand sales tax, let alone credit cards and mortgages. Financially, they're completely illiterate.

And we wonder why our country is having economic problems? Who would ever suspect that big companies might try to take advantage of an ignorant group of consumers like this? Big companies always act in the best interests of their customers. Because that's their job, right?

Oh, wait, I forgot... The primary responsibility of big companies is actually to return huge profits to their investors. And investors really don't care what happens to customers, as long as people keep buying what the company is selling. It reminds me of the line from Casablanca: "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" "Here are your winnings, sir." "Oh, thank you very much."

The problem with the system is that regulators assumed that banks would want to protect themselves and act in their own long-term self-interest. But corporations generally set up employee metrics that reward short-term behaviors, and people generally figure out ways to achieve their metrics. (i.e. People do what you pay them to do. That's the double-edged sword of metrics.) In this case, individuals within the banks recognized that they could best advance their careers by creating complicated, high-risk mortgages and bundling them as securities, and they also realized that they would be promoted and out-of-sight by the time the long-term effects came back home to roost.

SIDEBAR: Speaking of "creative" financing... We have an acquaintance who has recently gotten into the consumer finance industry. He mostly works with people who are on the verge of bankruptcy due to credit card debt and/or "unconventional" mortgages. Recently, he was telling us about a potential client who had a less-than-interest-only mortgage. Here's how it worked:

The guy bought a house for $280,000 with essentially no down-payment. He pays the bank something like $2,000 per month, which is actually less than the interest being accrued on the loan. At the end of 30 years, he has to make a "balloon payment" to the bank of $320,000.

Does it make any sense to deliberately create a situation where someone is perpetually upside-down on a 30-year mortgage? (Yes, the house will probably be worth much more than $320,000 at the end of 30 years, but he's still going to be in serious trouble if he tries to sell the house after only 5 years.) How is it even a mortgage? It looks suspiciously like a love child begotten when Luxury Rental Property went out slumming and had a one-night stand with Payday Loans.

So anyway, back to the Newsweek article...

Financial pros have fretted for decades over our ignorance about money. It's not that Americans' financial knowledge has declined, but that the need for it has increased. Until 30 years ago, people shopped mostly with cash, relied on company pensions for retirement and bought houses using fixed-rate mortgages. Today's world of credit cards, 401(k)s and exotic mortgages require more-sophisticated consumers, but there are few mechanisms to aid this transformation. Some high schools offer courses that teach students how to balance a checkbook or follow the stock market, but only 18 states require personal-finance instruction, and some principals resist adding the topic to schedules already crowded with really useful classes, like trigonometry.

I'm an engineer, so yeah, I actually do think that trigonometry is useful. I also think that American high schools need to be pushing more math, not just making substitutions, if we hope to compete with the rest of the developing world. But in the grand scheme of things, I do believe that a class in personal finance is more important than trigonometry or pre-calculus for the vast majority of high school students, especially for students who hate math and don't plan on pursuing any sort of higher education. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, "If you don't understand math, people will cheat you and take advantage of you. And you won't even know that they're doing it. You'll just know that you're always broke, and you always will be."

Here's the next frustrating bit from the article...

Class and culture also play a role in financial-phobia. When Laureen Hudson, a 39-year-old technical editor, ponders why so many of her friends are clueless about money, she recalls how her crowd of left-leaning humanities and science majors held particular disdain for business students, who always had their noses in The Wall Street Journal. "It's considered noble to ignore money, and it's considered grubby or lesser to concern yourself with finance," she says.

I believe there's a special place in hell for people who choose willful ignorance. (In this case, it's called bankruptcy court.)

I've finished my rant, so I'm going to conclude with this brilliant gestalt from indexed:

As the saying goes, "A picture is worth 1,000 words." Or, in this case, a graph...

Happy, Happy Day!

My all-time-favorite restaurant is finally opening a location in Cincinnati!!!

When I lived in Cleveland, I got hooked on the food from a little Lebanese/Mediterranean restaurant called Aladdin's Eatery, and I have missed it terribly ever since I moved to Cincinnati. For the past 10 years I have been whining about how much I miss Aladdin's. Anytime we are anywhere near Cleveland, I try to arrange a detour so that we can eat there, but that only happens every couple of years, and it just isn't enough.

So today, my husband and I were on our way up to Jungle Jim's, when I happened to spot the Aladdin's logo on a new shop front along Union Center Boulevard! It made my day! Heck, it made my year!

Now, if they would just open an Arabica coffee house, my life in Cincinnati would be complete!

Fake Plastic Fish

I just stumbled across a blog called Fake Plastic Fish - "They're cute, and if we don't solve our plastic problem, they could be the only kind we have left." It caught my attention because my sister also writes a blog about issues related to our oceans.

What I find interesting is that this woman is not trying to change the entire world, she's just trying an experiment to see if she can eliminate plastic waste from her own life. Her blog is well-written, honest, and open-minded. If she took a tone of "Everyone should be doing this" then I would probably be turned off by the whole concept. But instead, she writes from the perspective of "Here's what I'm trying to do, and how I'm going about doing it." And I find myself inspired and challenged by her lead-by-example attitude.

I'm really intrigued by her list of changes and sacrifices that she's made to reduce plastic waste. It made me think deeply about how very, very difficult her quest actually is. In fact, most of the plastic sources she mentions are in products that I would never think about: return mail envelopes, frozen vegetable boxes, feminine hygiene products, etc. (Not to mention that virtually every product comes wrapped in some sort of plastic film.)

This concept hits especially hard because a bunch of news stories came out on Monday, disclosing that traces of pharmaceutical drugs and hormones are present in most cities' tap water, regardless of the source-- reservoirs, rivers, aquafers, and even well water.

A friend of mine from ski patrol works for the EPA, and last year he told me that virtually all of our food and water sources are contaminated with traces of hormones and plastic compounds. He said that most of their efforts at the EPA are focussed on trying to figure out which chemicals are actually harmful, and at what concentrations, because there's simply no way to eliminate them from our food. Most of the chemicals are very stable, so they don't break down over time, and they can't be filtered out of our water supplies. Disturbing and depressing.