Anyone who has spent time in the regular job market and looked for a job has heard the old saw that more than half of the jobs are filled through the “unofficial” job market; someone knows someone else, who puts them in touch with the right person who is hiring for a job, etc, etc, etc. I knew this to be true, but frankly suck at networking so had never had it work for me.

Then came LinkedIn, a site designed to make us all just a bit better at networking. I have what can only be called a schizophrenic presence there, with links to friends in the IT industry, co-workers from my day job, a few academic colleagues and some other random acquaintances that seemed to make sense. I never thought much about it. However over christmas break, it thought about me.

I received an email from a 2nd level contact looking for someone who knew statistics, maybe some finance, and might be interested in a position in financial planning and analysis. I’ve been struggling with the overwhelming mismatch between my day job and my academic interests/goals for some time but have been too high up in my day job to walk away for a graduate assistants salary, especially now that husband has joined the ranks of the underemployed. But I called the guy back to find out more about the position due to a deep dissatisfaction with my day job. I mean, heck; I have an MBA, I know some finance, I know statistics (I teach it)….why not talk to him. I found out he was recruiting for a fairly high level financial modeling position with a higher ed organization, who were fascinated by the combination of my education, technical skills (IT and statistics), and business skills.

Over the past month, all my spare time was spent either interviewing or studying for the interviews. (NOTE: I don’t care HOW senior you are in a field, you always study for your interviews; if nothing else you learn about that organization and refresh your knowledge on the items they are specifically interested in.) And I got it. Negligible salary change, but I will be working in the industry I know and love, doing something marginally different from what my career has been for the last 15 years, and focused on issues I’m passionate about.

The new organization wants me to work initially on a predictive revenue model. But in essence a revenue model for a college is an enrollment model; grant funding is handled separately. Questions that play into this model include:

• Why do students stop taking classes?  What factors are most significant in the decision?
• Are there things in a students record that would allow us to predict which ones will persist and which ones won’t?  Are there interventions that can be made to change the predicted outcome?
• Are there external factors (the economy, for instance) that drive enrollment behaviors, and in what way?
• How do these things vary by major?  By number of credits completed so far?  By level of degree (Associates vs Bachelors vs Masters vs Doctoral)

So now, rather than working on my lit review as I had intended, I am reviewing financial modeling, teaching myself SAS (they use SAS instead of SPSS), and scanning the existing literature on higher education enrollment to make sure I don’t miss any key factors that have been found by researchers so far.

To me, this is time well spent.  It ties loosely into my dissertation (and given my lack of data may result in a sensible change of dissertation direction to something related to persistence), but more importantly puts me in the position that seems so necessary to finishing; being steeped in the environment that you are studying.  Unlike a standard corporation, these folks are excited by my slightly academic take on the problem and my knowledge of current events in the industry.

I expect the next couple of months to see a revision of my organizational strategies, as well as a the promised review of Demystifying Dissertation Writing and my ongoing attempts to improve my teaching skills .  My guess is that the productivity revisions will come first, as the bipolar life I’ve been leading comes to an end and my jobs and academic interests begin to intertwine.  I can’t even begin to express how much I am looking forward to that!

At first, this is a massively tempting idea.  I have certainly spent the summer bringing myself up to speed for a new course I’m teaching by listening to podcasts of classes from Berkeley and MIT, and consider these types of resources invaluable for an adult who wants to fill out their knowledge on a topic or learn something new.  Yet we get a great deal more from college than just topic knowledge. 

I see a few problems with this model that the article fails to address:

•  We produce an awful lot of ill-prepared high school graduates in this country.  Almost 42 percent of  freshmen enrolled in public 2-year colleges and 20 percent of those enrolled in public 4 year colleges were enrolled in at least one developmental course (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2004).  These students will be unable to read and learn from this type of material without a person to go to, and may not be able to complete the work at all without being pushed to complete the developmental coursework.
• Many of these same struggling students are first generation college students who lack the cultural capital to understand the process.  For better or worse, the structure of a traditional school helps ensure that those students find their way through the process.  Even though there are holes in how the system works now, leaving students to find their own way will only make that worse.
• Students get a lot more from college than just topic knowledge.  Even if we treat it as some form of white-collar trade school, students learn teamwork and presentation skills, make contacts within their field, and build valuable social skills in the college process.  I have serious doubts about how well an online school can teach those things.    
• Colleges serve many purposes outside of teaching undergraduates.  Some are extraneous, while others are irreplaceable.  Where will basic research be done?  The kind of stuff for which there isn’t a market yet, but which the engineers and scientists will need to know to build the next generation of technology?  How and where will we train future PhD’s, either to do research or to teach?  Why would someone WANT to go down that path when their work has been devalued.  (Note: I have a real problem with the ancient apprentice / indentured servant model of doctoral education we have now, but I don’t see an improvement here; more like extinction.)
• One of the things that colleges do is force students to think about other perspectives.  This in part comes from the fact that many academics have perspectives that bare little resemblance to those held by the general public, and can be abused the way some push ideology, but is none the less an important part of school.  The same goes for taking subjects that may not appear immediately interesting.  No one would take my statistics class if they weren’t required to, yet many tell me later that it is one of the most broadly useful classes they have taken. 
• The past 50 years has seen credential creep; where you used to be able to support a family with a high school diploma, you now need a bachelor’s degree to get in the door and a master’s to get promoted.  Will this be the antidote, showing that knowledge and credentials are only loosely correlated?  Or will this make it worse by further devaluing degrees until the checker at Walmart needs a degree in Finance to get the job?
• Moreover how do we differentiate the person who listened to the Berkeley podcasts from the person who went to class, wrote the papers and took the tests?  I suppose one could ask if we need to, but few employers are willing to “take your word for it” rather than call your references.  A degree serves a similar function; it is an external stamp that you stuck it out, did the work adequately (although adequate changes from school to school), have at least some knowledge of the topic, can follow rules and can deal with the culture of a bureaucratic organization.

I agree with the article that something needs to change about how we do higher education, but this model seems primarily suited to turn it into a white-collar trade school, focused at the (albeit much larger) undergraduate level and suited principally to self-motivated students with sufficient cultural capital to navigate the process in a meaningful way.  That may be good for some students, but is unlikely to work for all, and genuinely harmful to some.

There are a ton of reasons people start a PhD program:

• They want to be called Dr.
• They are fascinated by a really specific topic
• They want to cure cancer/find extraterrestrial life/fix society/etc.
• They don’t know what else to do after their undergrad program
• They don’t want to get a real job yet
• They want to be a Professor

For me it was this last one, although in hindsight I can admit that I didn’t have a clear idea of what that meant.  What the average undergrad sees of professors is conferences, teaching classes, meeting with students, etc.  That was the part that I wanted.  What the average undergrad DOESN’T see is the research process, the funding issues and the politics.  Here are some things I didn’t realize when I started that I kind of wish I had known beforehand:

• A PhD is a RESEARCH degree.  You are being trained to do and publish research.  Your “major” is really the area which you intend to apply your research skills.  Teaching is secondary.
• There are fewer and fewer full time tenure track positions available.  The humanities are just a disaster in this respect (to the point where respected faculty are advising undergraduates NOT to go to grad school), the social sciences are sinking fast, and even the hard sciences have fewer openings.  Competition for those positions is fierce, and the bar to even be considered is far higher than it has ever been in the past.
• Money is scarce.  Most schools now are placing a lot of emphasis on bringing in grant funding.  So in addition to doing research you must learn how to get the money to do it, and that means choosing your subject not for its intrinsic value or because it fascinates you, but based on what the government, industry or non-profits are willing to fund.
• You don’t get to relax after you graduate.  In fact, it gets worse.  The first six years of your academic career are focused on nothing but getting tenure, and while everyone SAYS they look at teaching reviews in the process what they REALLY care about is research productivity and stature.
• Internal academic politics are as bad or worse than the politics you encounter in any other workplace.
• Much of research time is spent proving things that practitioners will tell you they already knew.  I read about a paper recently titled Interacting with women can impair men’s cognitive functioning.  Duh.  My papers to date have also landed with comparable thuds on the practitioner world, where they tend to look at you like you are an idiot for not having already know whatever it was you just showed in your paper.
  
• The typical professor at a a university is expected to spend most of their time on research and little on anything else.  (See below) I’ve heard 70% research, 20% teaching and 10% service at an R1.  Even those working at a liberal arts college teaching 4 classes per semester are expected to get some research done.

A few things have become clear to me of late:

1. I love teaching and that is what I want the focus of my work to be.
2. I am particularly passionate about students at the community college, most of whom work full time and are often single parents or struggling to get by.
3. I picked a bad field for those goals, because frankly there is little call for instructors in education policy anywhere other than at the graduate level of research schools.
4. This is a LOT of work when it won’t get me where I want to go.

As I may have mentioned, this semester I am teaching not just my standard statistics class, but also psychology 101.  There is a LOT of need for people to teach psychology at the community college level, and I actually have quite a few credits in relevant areas (methods and educational psychology).  Therefore I am taking a short detour (6 classes assuming all the transfer stuff works out correctly) to pick up a Masters in Psychology.

Why?  Well, most simply it aligns better with my goals.  It gives me the necessary credentials to get a full time teaching position at a community college in a field that is always needed and of interest to students at that level.  For now I am not officially stopping the PhD program;  I will probably finish my dissertation eventually, if only because I hate to see things unfinished.  But in the meantime I have realigned how my time is spent versus my goals.

So why am I telling you this?  If you are starting to think about graduate school, and especially about PhD program, you should go into that process with your eyes completely open.  As with any other career there are pluses and minuses to this one, and given the level of time, sacrifice and effort involved you need to be sure is for you from the outset.  Talk to faculty at your intended school candidly about job prospects, hiring rates for departmental graduates, and how they spend their time.  Make sure you know what you are getting in to.

Why does this matter?  Because it brings up a very legitimate timing question.  I’ve known from the very beginning that if I wanted an academic career it would involve a substantial pay cut and a move.  It is possible we could get our finances in line between now and Spring 2010, but if the housing market hasn’t recovered, moving will be difficult.  And it doesn’t take my MBA in order to realize that we aren’t at the bottom yet; there’s more economic pain to come.

Additionally, it seems to me that if I graduate and then don’t go on the market for a year or two I am likely to have trouble and a lot of questions.  That isn’t the normal pattern. 

So that leads me to a question?  Do I stay on schedule and try to graduate Spring 2010, or do I coast a bit, take another year (or even two), take advantage of a nice, stable job and allow the economy to recover?  Right now I’m leaning toward the latter….

I had a hugely bad meeting with chair last monday.  I was in tears most of it.  Here’s the jist of the situation:
- we have an accepted conference paper due 3/1
- he has reconceptualized the project at least 3 times since we submitted the proposal last summer, generally with about a 1 sentence explanation to me each time. 
- I’m really close to burnt out and didn’t get anything I should have done completed over christmas
- because of the reconceptualization (or rather the fact that one sentence was insufficient) my first draft of the lit review sucked.  really sucked.
- I’m now working full time which cuts into my work time.  However my first pass at the descriptive statistics also sucked in part because the reconceptualization meant different descriptives were needed.
- my second pass was better (although still not great), however he stopped reading after 4 sentences because I apparently pushed a button I wasn’t aware of.
- last weekend his wife was in the hospital with medical issues
- last monday (after bringing her home for bed rest) he informed me that I shouldn’t even GO to the conference, that my work was utterly unacceptable and that my name shouldn’t be on the paper at all.  For about half an hour.

Now, I’m a grown-up.  I know there have been problems with my work of late as I have adjusted to my new work schedule (not well).  Heck, the friday BEFORE that I had been talking to my husband over dinner about dropping out because of many of the things I said in my last post.  Heck – my day job pays twice what an academic job will and they think I’m brilliant for doing things that frankly I don’t consider that hard.  I could have a nice lucrative career and hobbies. 

And I am well aware that this situation with his wife likely had him more on edge than otherwise might have been the case.  He’s behind on all his projects due to first the flue and then this, and I’m sure blames me for not picking up the slack (not that he told me about either before or even during, but that’s another story). 

But he went from “this isn’t good” to “you shouldn’t even go and I can’t believe I trusted you” with no steps in between.  And then he pounded on the theme for half an hour.  So yes, I cried.  And I asked myself why I was doing this. 

So far the only answer I have is pride; I am not a quitter and I succeed at what I attempt.  Further, I know I can do this and do it well.

However I admit that right now I’m questioning whether I ENJOY it enough to keep going.  Whether the stress is worth it.  Whether the time is worth it.  Or whether I wouldn’t be better off just having a job that doesn’t excite me but other things that do. 

I don’t know.

In the meantime, I have commitments to uphold.  I’m putting in about 2 hours a night on this paper.  (I seem to lose the ability to write anything clear after that.)  Once this paper is in I have to prepare for the seminar I applied and was accepted to; I’ll be presenting on the “idea” I submitted for a dissertation.  I suppose if that goes well I can just plow through and do that.

I do know that this is the last paper we write together.  Chair is great, but I need to stand or fail on my own (most likely fail) and I need to learn to do this research independently.  Ask for suggestions?  Fine.  Co-author?  Probably not good for either of us after this experience. 

I also need to keep thinking on what I am really interested in.  I can probably crank a dissertation out of that idea, but I have another mentoring session I’m attending in an area that I’m passionate about but is less “marketable”.  I need to figure out if I care. 

Finally I need to decide if, assuming I do finish, I actually want the career of an academic.  I used to think so, but it turns out that the academic lifestyle I want isn’t what I would get if I continue down the path I am on.  The type of research I would be doing isn’t what I can imagine myself being happy doing for another 25 years.  So if not that, then what?  And is it worth continuing just to say I finished? 

I’ve been thinking about all of these questions lately as I’ve been questioning my pursuit of the PhD. 

I went back for a PhD in part because the idea of going to the same cube in the same bland office building working with the same dumb tasks for the next 30 years scares the crap out of me.  I hate the 50 weeks at 40-50 hours per week lifestyle.  I wanted more freedom and opportunity and variety in my work.  When I looked at careers the one that seemed to give me that while still challenging me was an academic career.

I choose education because, frankly, the business school wouldn’t let me in if I was planning to work outside of their pittance of an assistantship.  But even THOSE choices were made with the knowledge that what I would love to study (history) has a pitifully low job placement rate. 

Now I am wondering if I made the right choice. 

I am still terrified about spending another 30 years going to a cube somewhere, but I am realizing that fighting the uphill tenure battle in a field that is interesting but not all-consuming, about a dissertation topic at which I am skilled but not passionate, may not be right either.

Can I complete it?  Of course.  I’m smart and stubborn and confident in my own abilities.  I can complete the program, get my degree, and get a job.  I can do the right things to get the level of distinction necessary to teach at a decent school. 

But I am starting to wonder if the 19 year old me was wiser.  I used to say that I would never get a PhD because I was too much of a generalist.  What this really meant was that I like to know more than most people about a whole bunch of things.  But I’ve never had the urge to know everything about one thing.

Now I’m wondering if that isn’t somehow what I will have to do; learn everything about one thing to the exclusion of all the OTHER things I’m interested in, at least for a while.  It’s  unclear to me if that while ends before or after tenure, but I’m getting the sense that it is after.

I love solving problems.  I love looking at a situation and understanding it better; finding the links that others don’t find and highlighting them, or breaking the ones they do find.  But frankly those problems can be in almost ANY field.  And that’s what is killing me now….

I don’t know.  I’m down right now.  This could be because I am not adjusting to the full time day job PLUS school responsibilities well.  My first class of the semester isn’t even until tomorrow and I’m already dreading the entire semester.  I know that I still don’t FEEL like much of an academic because I’m so scattered; I can’t put any kind of energy toward my research because I’m beat at the end of the day.  I’m not getting to the gym for fear of getting home at 7pm and still needing to make dinner, try to do some work, whatever. 

But I still wonder if I made the wrong choice. 

• I picked the field that would let me work, not the one I was passionate about. 
• I picked what I study because that is what Adviser studies; it’s a current area (although maturing and not cutting edge) for which we have data (for this state). 
• I’m afraid to leave that area because I would have to start over in terms of knowledge about the current literature and the big players, likely with only minimal help because no one at my school really does what I want to do.
• When the time comes (6 months) I will walk away from a 6 figure job with a profitable company for work that is more interesting in some ways but every bit as stressful and will pay half as much.

Is this a mistake?

• Adviser (tenured, big name, well known, mostly admired although occasionally hated, closing in on retirement REALLY quickly) who was assigned to me.
• Mentor (up-and-comer with excellent connections but only in his 3rd year, top-notch academic family tree) who I have worked with extremely closely for the last 3 years.

Mentor had technically not been allowed to have PhD students up until now.  (He worked with EDD students but you have to specifically “apply” to the PhD faculty, something he had been avoiding because he needed to publish to ensure that he gets tenure.)  He was approved last friday for the PhD faculty.  (Obviously Adviser has been on it all along.)

I have a great deal of respect for Adviser, but no real relationship.  I ‘TAed’ a class with him (this was a total joke – he had 2 TAs for a class of 3) and took 1 class from him.  We share co-authorship on a paper that Mentor and I wrote building on work Adviser had done.  (He put in his 2-cents and gets 3rd author…)  That is the extent of our relationship.  I haven’t seen him face to face since last April.  I never hear from him unless I call about something specific, and when we do talk we don’t communicate well.

And therein lies the crux of my decision.  I know full well that there is something to be gained by having a bigger name, tenured prof as my chair.  But I believe there is far MORE to gain by having a prof with whom I have a strong working relationship and excellent communication.  Mentor and I have that, built over multiple papers, presentations and conversations. 

So today I officially asked (he applied to the PhD faculty for me, so this wasn’t a surprise) for Mentor to become my Chair/Adviser as well.  He agreed.  We are currently brainstorming how to not burn the bridge with Adviser on the way out. 

It’s a big relief to me.  It might be a bit challenging (since we will be learning the process together) but in the end I think that the relationship is more important than almost anything else in choosing a chair. 

Mentor has been promoted to Chair officially (ok, except for the paperwork, but still….)

Now comes the strategizing around picking the other 2 required members.  At the moment I have 4 candidates (in no special order).

• Big name one – Great guy, smart, lots of fun, very close to retirement, called the state superintendent of schools a liar on the news, well respected in academic circles, nearing retirement however and not big on deadlines
• Big name two – he and a partner invented an entire new research method, massively respected, dry sense of humor, also nearing retirement but around more than BN1, I don’t feel that I know him quite as well but we have connected in the past
• Super-up-and-comer – a year ahead of adviser but really playing the game well, lousy social skills (we really haven’t clicked) but she does work in my area and Chair thinks we’ll get on well once we get to know one another better
• Newbie – new to the college and I haven’t actually met her yet, but Chair speaks highly.  Outside of my immediate area, so I need to find out more about why he thinks she would be a good fit.  Not finding a whole lot of information about her so far…

Pick 2…So far I’m leaning toward the middle 2 but would like to meet Newbie and feel out BN2 for how he feels about deadlines, since I’m not interested in someone who is to lose about them….

• I fell off the exercise and diet wagon, leading to
• I gained back about half of the weight I had lost in 2006
• I didn’t do as well as I wanted in my multilevel modeling class, which is an issue since that is the technique I will be using for my dissertation
• My job situation took a turn for the worst
• I got nowhere near as much reading done this summer as I needed to get done

I’m sure there was more.

All wasn’t bad, and it worked itself out in many ways, but for now I need to focus forward, on 2008.  Making resolutions seems overwhelming since I have so much to do between now and July when I stop working and focus on my dissertation, but here are some goals:

• Exercise 4 or 5 days per week, either at home or at the gym.  More Bike time would be good.
• Improve my eating, although I don’t think I can go back to the strict calorie counting I was doing until July.  (I eat to deal with stress, and my schedule for the next few months will be highly stressful.  I can try to improve over that timeframe but I don’t want to set myself up for failure by committing to the strict counting I’ve done in the past.)
• Live frugally; like a grad student; that means no shopping trips, no big gifts, etc.  We need to pay off those credit cards and get a chunk of money in the bank before I stop working, and that means living frugally.
• Comps completed by August 2008
• ABD by the end of 2008 so that, if we can’t find money to pay me for a post doc here I can at least go into spring job interviews with a straight face and say I’ll be done before starting a job in fall 2009.
• Get something published under just my own name.
• Keep up with work for all 3 classes; the graded one, the ungraded one on funding on which my future somewhat depends, and the ungraded one that I will be teaching as an adjunct starting next summer.
• Find more adjunct slots for next summer/fall so that I can take my time on everything else

What that all means is that I have to FOCUS.  Watch less TV, goof off less (not that I do much of that now), get up earlier (ugg) and struggle through the next 6 months. 

I can do this.  I WILL do this.  And it will be worth it.

• I was accepted for the fellowship I applied for back in October!  This seminar in March will help me put together my dissertation proposal.
• I have registered for those two classes, although I haven’t dropped the research hours yet. 
• I accepted the full time job, and my husband has accepted that I will not work for as long as necessary after that.  He’s genuinely supportive and enthusiastic about the planA
• I talked to Adviser and we are tentatively planning my comps for either May, right after finals, or August as soon as he gets back into town. 
• We got a little christmas tree last night – potted so that we can plant it in the back yard after the holiday.  We also got me a little rosemary bush; we’ll see if I can manage not to kill this one. (I’m 2 for 2 so far…)
• I had a good  meeting yesterday with our contact at the dept. of ed about data; we may actually get some at some point….
• Mentor and I met yesterday about our paper for March and while my 1st bit of writing is better than past bits he gave me some good ideas for how to brainstorm structure and conceptualization that I need to bring to it.  I have the facts; now I need the linkages….
• Adviser gave me a couple of excellent comments on my history of ed proposal; one was about being very specific in a certain distinction I am making and the other (more critical) was about not inferring 21st century motivations onto 19th century events.  (The troublesome motivation was a concern for self-concept.  He correctly noted that there really was no such notion in 1844 NYC.  Having said that, my goal is to look at the newspapers of the time and see if the idea was there even if it wasn’t called anything so concise.)  Both will improve it when I submit the proposal (revised) to the larger conference.

So, I am feeling better.  I have a plan, which will be MASSIVE amounts of work for 6 months but is interesting and at the very least time-banded.  It scares me a little.  But I feel better having a plan, no matter how hard a plan it actually is.

Now, christmas shopping…I have tonight and that’s about it without my husband…. He needs a few more things for under the tree and in his stocking…..

Academics; tell me about your prelims/comps.  What was the format?  Were you given a reading list?  Tell me about the experience!

I have an essentially libertarian set of values.  I believe in individual
liberty, tolerance and that you can do whatever you want as long as you don’t
interfere with me doing whatever I want.  I’m not religious (frankly I
think its all superstition) but if it helps you get through the day then I’m
happy for you.  I’m happy with the way the framers set up this country and
cringe every time the Bush administration chips away at the Bill of
Rights.  I think my core beliefs are best expressed actually in the
contrast of the establishment clause (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….) and
the free exercise clause (…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof). 
Worship how you want, just don’t try to make other people worship that way with
you.  I’m good with that.

Where I’ve been stumbling over this whole thing is in the concept of religion
as a form of diversity.  Our multicultural society has taken to heart the
idea that all forms of diversity must be respected, and I think a strong case
can be made for religion as a form of diversity.  (Some might make the
case that diversity only applies to things about which an individual has no
choice; gender, ethnicity, etc.  However a child has no choice in the
religion of their family when they are growing up, so I’m not sure that
matters.)  We go so far as to teach tolerance in public schools, which has
caused some parents (often fundamentalist Christians, but not always) to object
on the grounds that the value of tolerance of certain groups (most often
homosexuals) is not consistent with the teachings of their church and the
parent’s teachings at home.  Some groups have accused the public schools
of trying to indoctrinate all children into a secular religion.

Let me give you an example of why this is all a stumbling block for me.  Most
researchers believe that Native American students will learn best if they are
in a culturally consistent environment.  As such a number of promising
public schools are teaching the language and culture of the tribe to the
students in those schools with the goal of proving that the achievement for
those students is higher than it would be for students educated
elsewhere.  In discussion, however, it became clear that language and
culture include spirituality in this context.  They celebrate the
holidays, participate in rituals and ceremonies and otherwise are indoctrinated
into that set of spiritual beliefs.

So, why is that OK but a white parent who wants their child taught in a manner
consistent with their form of fundamentalist Christianity that believes
homosexuality should not to be tolerated cannot be accommodated within the
public school system?  Would it matter if it were a black parent who
wanted their child taught in a way that conformed to southern Baptist
teachings?  What about an Asian family who wants their child taught in a
non-violent spiritual tradition and thus not exposed to dodge ball in gym
class? 

I don’t want to take something away from the Native American students. 
If, in fact, it is proven that those students do better academically in that
environment (and particularly if it has a large effect size), though, I would
expect other religions to make the claim that teaching their
“culture” and spiritual traditions would improve their children’s
education as well.  And I’m not sure they would be wrong about that.

I believe that teaching your child that the Bible is the literal word of God
and that Jesus is coming back to damn the sinners and raise up those who
believe in this specific version of a religion borders on child abuse.  It
is illogical, irrational, and bad for society as a whole.  While many
forms of religion are open and accepting the ones that would jump on this
opportunity are the ones that are intolerant and actively hostile to other
beliefs.  That is bad for society as a whole.

But if I value personal liberty, tolerance, and the core of the constitution,
don’t I need to tolerate those beliefs?  Don’t I need to support that call
from parents for the right to educate their children in a way that is
culturally consistent with what the child is getting at home?  Particularly
if it improves that child’s academic performance and therefore many of their
life chances?   Regardless of what culturally consistent may mean?

Frankly, I’m still struggling with this and have been for months.  I have
determined that it comes down to the order in which I place my values;

• If I value individual liberty
  or tolerance above all else, then I have to tolerate these beliefs no
  matter how harmful or foolish I consider them.  The condition under
  which I could reject those ideas forces me to see myself as smarter than
  all those other people AND possessing the right to tell them what to
  do.  I may do the former but I have never done the latter.
• If I value the constitution
  above all else (specifically how separation of church and state has been
  understood by constitutional scholars) then I have to reject interventions
  that could improve student performance because they involve teaching
  prohibited subjects and implicitly establishing a religion within that
  particular school.  OR I have to fight for a way to change
  the common interpretation and allow public schooling that is
  “culturally consistent” for each individual subgroup as long as
  no specific subgroup is denied its chance.
• If I value parents rights
  above all else, than they should be able to educate their children however
  they choose and that should include in a way consistent with whatever
  whack-job religion the parents follow.
• If I value the child’s rights
  above all else, than I must support whatever can help them learn
  more.  If that is proven to be this “culturally consistent”
  education, then I have to work to make it possible.  However is
  academic achievement truly the child’s overriding interest when they are
  getting straight As in a biology class that teaches that dinosaurs lived
  alongside humans and that the earth popped into being in a week about 6000
  years ago?
• If I value society above any
  individual, however, can I really support allowing parents to educate
  their child in a way that goes against society’s best interest?  Intolerance
  to other subgroups and members of society is never in society’s best
  interest….

In my head I find myself still valuing individual liberty
first; that people have the right to be as stupid and foolish as they want to
be.  But I really am struggling with how that applies to children. 
Children are formed by their family and acquaintances.  The child picks up
their belief systems and may never get away from it. 

So who should decide what is best for them?  Their parents?  The
state? Society at large?  And what do we do when the society is SO large
that it can’t agree on whether the sun will come up tomorrow, let alone what
values are best? 

Or should we sacrifice some potential achievement to ensure that children are
at least exposed to discordant ideas?  Even if that could mean keeping a
disadvantaged group down?