Should we Encourage Kids to get a High Degree?

It recently came to my attention in an article in the Wall Street Journal that workers with professional degrees, like lawyers, or doctors, were the only group to see their inflation-adjusted earnings increase over the recent economic conditions. Workers in every other educational group, such as Ph.D.s or high school dropouts, earned less in 2007 than they did in the year 2000. So a person with a bachelors degree's wages actually fell. And even more compelling to note, is the fact that it is proving how there is now an even bigger economic gap.
(Source: Census Bureau. Data don't include 2008 earnings.)

In my work for the Joe DiMaggio Committee, one of the charities that I am involved with, education is the primary concern, because we raise money to provide a good education for children of financially challenged families. The Committee's premiere fund raising event is The Joe DiMaggio Award Gala, to benefit Xaverian High School, my alma mater.

Economists are citing multiple reasons for falling wages for people with a bachelor's degree including:

• Blue and white-collar jobs are being sent abroad to places like India.


• Immigrants competing for jobs in the U.S. has increased.


• Job growth during the 2001 to 2007 expansion was weak compared to the late 1990s.


• Rising health-care costs are big part of total compensation today; more than in the past.


• The Census data measure income, which doesn't include the health-care bills paid for by employers


• Inflation-adjusted median salary for people with professional degrees was $89,602 in 2007, up about 3 percent from 2000, when the median salary was $87,158, according to the Census. There were income declines in all other groups including those with college and doctorate degrees.


• Inflation-adjusted median salary for a person with a bachelor's degree fell about 3 percent, adjusted for inflation, to $47,240 last year from 2000. Median master's-degree salaries fell

Census data shows the value of and education. In 2007 the median income for people with a bachelor's degree was about two-thirds more than for those with only a high-school diploma. And people with a master's degree made 20 percent more than those folks who only had a college degree.

--Rocco Basile

Food Expert Talks about Schools and Children's Nutrition

Prue Leith, internationally known food expert and chair of the United Kingdom’s School Food Trust, recently discussed health news, parents and children on http://www.vision.org/. She believes that fighting obesity beginnning in childhood, is worth doing. As she discussed the role of family and relationships in nutrition, Leith emphasizes that children are not eating right, “because their parents were not taught anything about food and a lot of them were not taught to cook.”

“Family meals have gone right out the window,” she said, chiding parents who give their children pocket money instead of making sure they eat a good breakfast. “Forty percent of children buy a chocolate bar and a fizzy drink on their way to school by way of breakfast ...”

Research has proven that most foods are an acquired taste, so once you have given someone like a child nine two ounce portions of broccoli , they will like it. It has also been proven that behavior and concentration are linked to good versus bad diets and nutrition.

Leith talked about the methods of teaching nutrition and which works best in schools, recommending teaching about food and cooking in school, and in cases where it is possible, she believes the kids should grow food or go and visit farms. The reason? Because just as soon as children start getting interested in food, they are more likely to care about what goes into their own bodies.

The country of Finland reduced its obesity rate from 35 percent to two percent in 15 years thanks to radical changes in the school system. The schools created a pleasant atmosphere for eating and also taught children about food, getting them actively involved in working in kitchens, serving as well as cleaning up and.

We live in a "snacking society" with pressures from commericals and ads from food manufacturing companies, so Leith also discussed positive and negative peer pressure with regard to the fight against obesity. Schools, parents, family and relationships with the teachers all play a critical role.

Leith encourages parents, teachers, catering staff and school officials to get involved by setting an example for good nutrition and eating habits.

-- Rocco Basile

Children of the City: Remembering 9-11

It was just like any other Tuesday, but it ended up being Tuesday 9/11: and as the world watched in horror while two hijacked airplanes bought down the Twin Towers in New York, many families and children suffered. Children of the City was one of the first organizations to reach out to children who lost family members and loved ones, who were traumatized by visually seeing the attacks live or were exposed to the barrage of media attention. Its program, Heal New York, was birthed out of an immediate response to 9/11. The charity's program ran from September 2001 through August 2005, and served critical trauma and prevailing mental health issues and social problems, through counseling, and activities with group therapy.

Today, in memory, for four hours heads were bowed at Ground Zero in New York, as the names of all 2,974 victims were read out in memorial to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The memorial included a total of 208 people who took part in the roll call as thousands of relatives of those who died in the attacks gathered in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, overlooking the site of the World Trade Center on the seventh anniversary of its collapse.

Years later, the effects of that day are not forgotten—and Children of the City continues to counsel children and their families, most of whom would otherwise not have received help to cope with this devastating trauma in their lives. The program officially ran from Sepember 2001 through August 2005.

Some parents today even have trouble teaching their children how to deal with such a horrible event in our history. This article posted on the TeacherVision web site, written shortly after the attacks, give some age-specific ideas on how to deal with the subject.

Children who experience trauma have typical reactions that hinder them from completing one stage of development, says Erickson's Developmental Stages. 9/11 created feelings of helplessness, fear, and general regression for very young kids. Children between the ages of 6-11 were unable to focus on their school work resulting in many being held back to repeat the grade.

The good news is that more than 600 children and youth were served to through Heal New York. Counseling sessions have been provided in the homes monthly, and coupled with the counseling, there have been many group therapeutic activities, including art and play therapy, sports, and journaling.

Children of the City expanded its Heal New York counseling program to a broader populace of children due to the large amount of pre-existing trauma and prevailing mental health issues. This detection, followed by adequate counseling and instruction for both parents and children, ensure that destructive behavioral patterns are not perpetuated from generation to generation.

Learn more about the charities that I support for education of our youth at http://www.roccobasile.org/.

The Status of Educational Reform

Have you ever wondered why all of the sudden there are more computers in K-12 classrooms across the U.S? For over ten years now, reformers have attempted to revolutionize the way schools operate, and this includes how students learn. There have been a number of top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top changes in areas including administration, curriculum and even outreach. The result of many of these reforms, is that technology is now playing a bigger role in education.

When you look back, education reform appeared in 1983 when a report called A Nation at Risk was published, outlining the poor state of affairs within the K-12 environment. It highlighted low basic comprehension rates to high dropout rates, and was what made administrators and policy makers pay attention to the fact that educational reform was needed.

After that, one of the changes was in the area of standardization of testing among students. A number of states began to legislate merit pay programs for educators, so by 1986, there were 46 states that offered merit pay plans, an increase from 28 states in 1983. Teachers were evaluated on their educating ability and knowledge of their subjects in order to determine not only raises but also their bonuses.

Today research now suggests that the initial focus on standardization did little to affect student learning and comprehension, and that the studies suggested that changes in professionalism and administration did not indicate an effective education strategy implementation - with teaching guidelines becoming more complex but less coherent. What was missing? One of the core issues was teacher empowerment.

Which brings me to the question, which I have covered on my own website, http://www.roccobasile.org/, what motivates kids to learn from their teachers? During this reform movement, educators were interested in a number of new education theories offering insights into the way students learn. One of the theories includes something called "constructivism," where students learn by doing rather than observing.

One of the biggest complaints about the American education system has been its top-down approach with the states governing schools. Today, schools and teachers are asserting more control over education management decisions. Non-profit charter schools and for-profit education management programs are offering students public school learning environments that break away from the traditional state-run system.

Children of the City, for example, has been wildly successful with its after school and summertime programs. By personally connecting with each child and youth in their environment, the non-profit fosters strong relationships to teach, inform and counsel on various life issues and skills through programs such as its Create Success, where parents have seen dramatic increases in student’s reading and math levels, healthy study habits, communications, and improved peer relationships.

All in all, parents today now have more choices. They can actually choose to take their students out of poorly run schools and place them into parochial schools for example, or as with an increasing number of families, parents and their offspring can get out of the classroom and do homeschooling instead.

Are we Pushing Kids too Hard in School?

In many states, schools are back in session after the summer break. We’ve been seeing the new trends for earlier educational trends for kids, such as academic tutoring programs for three year olds, and middle school students taking algebra courses. Educating our kids is starting earlier and earlier.

These trends are being driven by parental anxiety about the fact that many schools that have failed to challenge our children, boost achievement for disadvantaged students, as well as tougher college entrance exams. Are we pushing our kids to move ahead too quickly? Or is America losing its ground in education of our youth globally?

Futurist James Canton believes this might be the case. In his book"The Extreme Future" he said, "Quality public education, in crisis today, will either propel or crash the future aspirations of the American workforce."

The deputy superintendent of the Pittsburgh Public Schools, Lynn Spampinato, believes that schools are simply trying to adjust to the realities of the 21st century.

"We don't want education to be the way it was in 1920," she said. "There's more for children to learn today, more exposure to all kinds of information at younger ages. Education doesn't set the values and the pace of society, but it's our job is to prepare students for the world they're going to live in."

One example is a trend toward introducing concepts of math and science in middle school. This used to be called an acceleration class, but now the expectation in the state standards is that all students need to be learning it. The reason for this change is a survey called the "Trends in International Math and Science Studies" done in 1995. The results showed American students were ahead in fourth-grade math but dropped to the bottom in 12th.

Educators seem to agree that the younger the child, the more controversial it becomes to push down academic curricula. Most agree that young children learn best in rich play environments that stimulate the senses in age-appropriate ways. I have been collecting research like this on my website http://www.roccobasile.org/ for about a year now, and one of the programs that I am very heavily involved with which backs this up are the youth programs at Children of the City, a non-profit that reaches at-risk inner-city children and youth with hope, guidance and resources to positively affect their lives and communities.

Children of the City programs include FutureSafe, a collaborative monthly event that is attended by an average of 500 children. It is designed to deter children from drug abuse, delinquency, gangs and even teen pregnancy. It is often a first step for children when it comes to engaging in structured afterschool activities. Click here to learn more.