Tuesday, November 15, 2016



Private school kids earn more, live in better suburbs and are happier on average, Australian analysis discovers

I am myself a strong supporter of private schools.  I sent my son to one.  But I feel bound to report that the findings below are not as strong as they appear.  Parents of private schoolkids tend to be richer.  And richer people tend to have other important advantages, such as better health and higher IQ.  And such traits have a strong genetic component. So the advantages described below could possibly be entirely due to genetics, not schooling type. 

It is just very hard to separate out the two possible factors responsible for the advantage. From other studies, however, both schooling type and genetics are involved in the better results from private schools

The one undoubted advantage of private schooling is social contacts. Your kid will make friends from other better-off  families, which will almost certainly be advantageous in various ways.  At the risk of being extremely corny, there are many situations where "It's not what you know, it's whom you know".

One aspect of that is that private school graduates tend to meet mainly one-another on occasions where the mating game is afoot.  Your schoolfriend's kid sister can often seem very attractive, for instance. So they intermarry, which in turn preserves health and IQ advantages into subsequent generations.  You will tend to get smarter, healthier and probably more tractable grandkids, which is very pleasing



PRIVATE school kids grow up to earn more, live in better suburbs and be happier than their public school peers, a new national study has found.

Curtin University analysis of more than 17,000 Australian adults shows independent private school male graduates earn 15 per cent more than those from government schools. The research, by Associate Professor Mike Dockery, also shows female graduates earn 19 per cent more compared to those from government schools.

This higher household income “can be largely attributed to the greater educational attainment achieved by those who went to independent schools, with some contribution also associated with having come from a family background of higher socio-economic status,” Associate Professor Dockery said.

“It seems likely that there is a causal relationship in which attending a private school increases the propensity to enter university, which in turn contributes to higher wages,” he said.

Independent school graduates also live in more wealthy, up-market suburbs.  “One way or another, private school graduates sort their way into more prestigious neighbourhoods,” he said.

“This may reflect a number of factors: higher preferences for living in such areas, marrying more affluent partners, or the effect of maintaining geographically close networks with family and peers who disproportionately reside in more prestigious neighbourhoods”.

Catholic private schooling is also beneficial, bringing with it higher average household incomes of around ten per cent, which is mainly due to higher educational attainment.

However, Catholic school graduates have a bonus which is not shared with their independent-school peers: they have higher life satisfaction than those from state schools. “This apparent Catholic school effect on life satisfaction is possibly associated with religiosity,” Associate Professor Dockery said.

The research from the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education found men who went to independent schools did not share this greater life satisfaction compared to those who went to government schools. Women who attended independent schools, on the other hand, were marginally happier.

The Herald Sun reported recently the annual fees of top private schools is more than $30,000 and rising at triple the cost of inflation.

SOURCE






California history teacher suspended for comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler

A Mountain View, Calif., history teacher has been suspended for comparing Republican President-elect Donald Trump to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in a post-election history lesson.

Veteran teacher Frank Navarro, who has taught at Mountain View High School for 40 years, said he was suspended Thursday, after a student’s parent emailed the school to complain about his lecture.

Navarro said the parent accused him of saying, “Donald Trump grabs p---y.”

Navarro, a Holocaust scholar who has three daughters, said he never would have spoken that way. He argued that his lesson was not biased, but fact-based.

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“I had a short lesson paralleling Hitler with Trump when Hitler was running from 1930 to 1933,” Navarro told the Daily News.

“Hitler said he would make Germany great again, and Donald Trump said he would make America great again,” Navarro said.

He also noted that both leaders vowed to deport foreigners.

“I told the principal as I told my students, that these are all factually based and that I am not making anything up,” he said.

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Navarro hasn’t worked since Thursday — his classes have temporarily been taken over by a substitute teacher — but he hopes to return to the classroom next week.

In the meantime, he said he’s received a number of emails from parents who support him.

Nearly 10,000 people signed a change.org petition supporting Navarro as of Sunday afternoon. “It is dangerous and disgusting that the administration has decided to punish him for drawing parallels between two similarly dangerous moments in history,” it reads.

Navarro said his aim in comparing Trump to Hitler was to “make the history relevant and show them that these issues have been around for a long time and are probably not going away.”

The school’s administration will meet on Monday to discuss Navarro’s return to the classroom.

Mountain View/Los Altos High School District Superintendent Jeff Harding said he’d like to restore Navarro to his teaching post.

“We are interested in getting Frank back in the classroom ... we’re just trying to maintain our due diligence,” he told The Mercury News. “We have a heightened environment right now with the election. It’s always a challenge to maintain a line in a classroom.”

Navarro thinks he is owed an apology before he returns. “I am feeling a lot of stress on this and my wife is very unhappy about this too. But we’ll get through this. I think it will work itself out,” he said.

SOURCE 







UCLA Poli Sci Department Calls For Emergency Meeting In Wake Of Trump Victory

The University of California, Los Angeles political science department has called for an emergency meeting Monday in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, according to an email sent to the entire UCLA political science department by the department chair that was obtained by The Daily Caller.

College campuses around America have struggled to cope with Trump’s victory. Expulsions have been demanded for students at Babson College who celebrated Trump’s victory, and anti-Trump protests have occurred on multiple campuses, including UCLA.

“It is clear that the unexpected election of Donald Trump and events that have occurred since have left many in our community and particularly many of our undergraduate students deeply anxious, fearful, and despondent,” UCLA political science department chair Jeff Lewis wrote in an email Sunday. He added that there have been reports about physical and verbal assaults on minorities, immigrants, Muslims, and members of gay community following Trump’s victory.

“Others less directly imperiled are nevertheless expressing deep anxiety about the resulting uncertainty and overall post-election climate of divisiveness, hostility and recrimination — and what all of this may mean more generally about the country and the future. And, of course, others still may feel relatively removed and are simply wondering what is happening. Particularly as political scientists, our students will look to us for guidance, understanding, and reassurance and, although we might ourselves be struggling, we must be ready,” Lewis continued to say.

The UCLA professor is calling for “an emergency meeting of all faculty and graduate students” Monday morning. Lewis wrote, “At this meeting, we will come together to discuss and inventory the fears and circumstances that students are facing and the resources available to help those in crisis. We will also discuss how best to constructively respond to students’ questions and concerns and develop some talking points that might, in some cases, be useful in providing reassurance.”

“If this all sounds a bit vague to you, we confess that it is. There is no playbook for this situation. It will have to be a collaborative effort. We are asking for your help,” the UCLA political science department chair continued.

The email was sent from Lewis and also signed by four other members of the UCLA political science department’s leadership.

Following Trump’s win announced early Wednesday morning, an email was sent to the UCLA student body that included the number for the school’s counseling and psychological services mental health center. And in another email Wednesday, this one sent to members of UCLA Greek Life, a dean let students know about resources to help deal with the election, which included a “safe and supportive space for undocumented students.”

SOURCE 



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