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25 Ideas

post #1 of 11
7/8/07 at 1:53pm
Thread Starter 
I love this.

Quote:
One year ago, representatives of progressive college students across America came together at the Roosevelt Policy Expo in DC and at the FDR Home in Hyde Park, NY, to discuss the most pressing issues facing our generation.

After setting ourselves three challenges, we returned back to our college and university campuses and performed a year's worth of public policy research. We held conferences, conducted public fora, got small groups together for public policy brainstorming sessions, wrote papers and theses, and met with extracurricular groups. As the year came to a close, we selected the best 25 ideas that we wanted to bring to the public policy discussion. Here they are:

25 ideas for Solving the Energy Crisis
Ideas range from green buildings to green cars to green taxis to green food, from cap and trade among cities to cap and trade among university departments, from getting fuel out of ethanol to nuclear waste to garbage.

25 ideas for Working Families in America
Ideas range from increasing the EITC and the miniumum wage to social programs like SCHIP and child care; from providing access to flood insurance to paternity leave to affordable credit; from inclusionary zoning to inclusive art museums; from protection in the home to protection abroad.

25 ideas for Socio-Economic Diversity in Higher Education
Ideas range from providing information through high school classes to parent education to driver's license forms; from improving preparation through year-round school to debate programs to new discipline regimens; from tax breaks on Americorps checks to expanding the Hope scholarship.
The whole story, along with their full lists, is here.
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post #2 of 11
7/8/07 at 2:03pm
Are one of the ideas to have websites display insanely small fonts? I feel like I'm playing Dead Rising.
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post #3 of 11
7/8/07 at 3:58pm
In such a broken world, it always bothers me when people who should know better — that is, academics — fixate on things like "improving socio-economic diversity in higher education." Why not improve higher eduction altogether? Or better yet, just improve eduction. To me, the choice of focus here says something: it says the ritual of higher education is more important than real intellectual development — that is, producing more credentialed academics is of greater merit than simply imparting knowledge and intellectual skills. I tend to view this as a scenario where academics are portraying themselves as the solution to the problems they have helped create; as though an epidemic of intellectual poverty requires the enhancement of a system based on narrow specialized expertise, elitism, hoarding knowledge, jargon, scholasticism, stupid cap and gown rituals, and a so-called meritocracy where the "best and brightest" are permitted to learn relatively simple concepts, and for a small fee, receive a special license to dispense knowledge from behind a veil of authority.

Academia has its place; acting as the solution to a looming eduction crisis is not that place.
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post #4 of 11
7/8/07 at 4:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam Warren
To me, the choice of focus here says something: it says the ritual of higher education is more important than real intellectual development — that is, producing more credentialed academics is of greater merit than simply imparting knowledge and intellectual skills. I tend to view this as a scenario where academics are portraying themselves as the solution to the problems they have helped create; as though an epidemic of intellectual poverty requires the enhancement of a system based on narrow specialized expertise, elitism, hoarding knowledge, jargon, scholasticism, stupid cap and gown rituals, and a so-called meritocracy where the "best and brightest" are permitted to learn relatively simple concepts, and for a small fee, receive a special license to dispense knowledge from behind a veil of authority.
Somebody didn't get into the college they wanted.

I kid, but how you got to this conclusion from a plan to increase soci-economic diversity in higher education is quite beyond me.
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post #5 of 11
7/8/07 at 4:52pm
My post is clear. I'm taking issue with the notion that improving socio-economic diversity in higher eduction is truly a "pressing issue."

The merits of this list as a manifesto on the improvement of diversity in higher education are not part of my argument. I'm not sure if you're in college, but if you are, your baffling misread of my post is would be a nice addendum to the argument that more diversity will not fix a broken education system.
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post #6 of 11
7/8/07 at 8:33pm
Adam, there's much I would like to agree with about your post, but I think that attacking pointy-headed intellectuals, rightly or wrongly, isn't really relevant in this context. "Higher Education" simply means "College or University", and it seems clear that their goals are simply to increase the number of non-rich white males who go on to get a degree. The number of minorities who graduate from college or university is indeed disporportionately low, and that's ALL of post-secondary education, not just the ivory tower eggheads. That includes basic skilled trades like doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, and so on. Just look. Their suggestions aren't about adding more pompous subjects and lectures or increasing the importance of academia, they're about making sure people who want to go to college can do so, regardless of skin colour or economic status.
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post #7 of 11
7/8/07 at 9:42pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam Warren
In such a broken world, it always bothers me when people who should know better — that is, academics — fixate on things like "improving socio-economic diversity in higher education." Why not improve higher eduction altogether? Or better yet, just improve eduction. To me, the choice of focus here says something: it says the ritual of higher education is more important than real intellectual development — that is, producing more credentialed academics is of greater merit than simply imparting knowledge and intellectual skills. I tend to view this as a scenario where academics are portraying themselves as the solution to the problems they have helped create; as though an epidemic of intellectual poverty requires the enhancement of a system based on narrow specialized expertise, elitism, hoarding knowledge, jargon, scholasticism, stupid cap and gown rituals, and a so-called meritocracy where the "best and brightest" are permitted to learn relatively simple concepts, and for a small fee, receive a special license to dispense knowledge from behind a veil of authority.
It's confusing because a good chunk of your criticism of academia seems to that it's elitist and reserved for the rich. Which is exactly the kind of thing that increasing socio-economic diversity would help. Independent of the practicality of their plan, you should be on board for the basic idea.
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post #8 of 11
7/9/07 at 5:54am
Thread Starter 
What's easy to overlook is how vast the gulf is between middle and lower middle class kids and kids from private schools. They're different worlds, and the college-bound world is so beyond most regular kids' reach that it's really foul. I get your point, Adam, and see what you mean and think you're right, but it's completely frustrating to see kids without the tools to even contemplate a college education. I volunteer in a public elementary school and the majority of students I talk to outside of the "advanced" class will probably never go to college, not because they don't have brains, but because their level of preparation is so anemic and the financial realities so intimidating.

I do hate the curriculum being set by Federal standards, but somebody's got to throw kids a line so that anyone can have access to the kind of preparation that kids of well-to-do parents take for granted.
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post #9 of 11
7/9/07 at 2:07pm
I think Adam Warren's criticism is that there's much more wrong with the academic elite than merely not being colorful enough. For example, politicians tend to care for their own needs rather than those of their constituents; increasing the ranks of politicians to include more disenfranchised peoples is less likely to improve representation of the constituents than it is to create a more diverse group of politicians serving their own needs.

I'm not certain I agree, but I think that's what he's saying.
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post #10 of 11
7/9/07 at 2:17pm
But, again, they're not talking about diversifying the academic elite. They're talking about allowing more people to go to college who aren't able to. Getting a degree does not make you part of the academic elite.
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post #11 of 11
7/18/07 at 6:35pm
Sounds to me like a bunch of college kids parroted their poli-sci teachers' ideas. Honestly, what 19-yr-old gives a shit about "improving socio-economic diversity in higher education"? When I was 19, my #1 priority was improving feminine diversity in my dorm room.
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