Hillary Clinton and the Millennial Vote

“I poured my heart and soul into Bernie Sanders’s campaign,” a 24-year-old student told me. “Now I really don’t care. Clinton and Trump both repulse me.”

Millennials, between the ages of 18-35 and numbering about 76 million, are a powerful voting bloc. But many are still trying to come to grips with the trauma of a Sanders-less presidential election and are thinking of wasting their vote as a protest of some sort. That would be a colossal mistake, for they can play a critical role in propelling Hillary Clinton to victory over Donald Trump in this most consequential of elections.

Why should millennials vote for Clinton? It comes down to the intersection of their passion with Clinton’s policies in three E’s: Education, Economy and Ecology. They should carefully consider where the two candidates stand on these issues, reject false equivalences, and vote accordingly.

Education: The most contentious issue here is the staggering 1.4 trillion dollar student-loan Americans currently carry, a number growing by about $3K every second. Neither candidate has promised to forgive the trillion-dollar debt but during the primaries, Clinton countered Sanders’s assertion to make college free for everyone by saying that his numbers just didn’t add up. However, Clinton has made college affordability – directly tied to student debt - central to her policy. She would give families making up to $125,000 free tuition at in-state public colleges and universities to help middle and working-class families.

If Clinton’s plan does not thrill millennials, they should be even less thrilled by Trump’s because he has offered no details about lowering college costs and reining in student debt. One can still get an idea of Trump’s educational philosophy from his for-profit real-estate training college that defrauded more than 5,000 consumers out of millions of dollars. Even the former Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney said, “Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.”

Economy: What concerns millennials most is how the candidates will address the needs of over 45 million poverty-stricken Americans.

Clinton will invest in creating well-paying jobs in “infrastructure and manufacturing, technology and innovation, small business and clean energy,” and combine that with affordable housing and greater access to preschool and high-quality child care. She has asserted that by expanding Low Income Housing Tax Credits, her policy will help over 11 million American households currently spending more than half their income on rent.

Clinton has not convincingly articulated where the money will come from and what sacrifices Americans will have to make to turn her policy into reality, other than that the rich will face greater taxation. She must offer more details, for nothing turns off millennials more than vague promises and empty rhetoric.

A major reason for Trump’s rise is that he has tapped into the economic angst of a significant number of white, working-class Americans who feel deprived of a decent life because of, as they see it, the flood of immigrants and the vanishing of traditional jobs. But if Clinton is short on details, Trump is even more so, except where, in contrast to Hillary, he has promised to cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Leading economists have taken apart his argument that ripping up international trade agreements will help struggling American workers become magically prosperous. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, has pointed out how a trade war with China, for instance, will destroy more jobs than it creates.

Ecology: The dictionary defines ecology as ‘relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.’ What threatens to undo this relation and balance is climate change, manifested most starkly in global warming.

Clinton accepts the scientific consensus on global warming and supports the Paris agreement to reduce carbon emissions, just as she supports the Affordable Care Act and has even proposed to extend it to include an additional 10 million Americans. She has promised to put in place industrial practices that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 percent in 2025 and put America on a path to cut emissions more than 80 percent by 2050.

In contrast, Trump has vowed to cancel the Paris pact if elected president, just as he has threatened to repeal the Affordable Care Act that will cause 20 million Americans to lose medical insurance. He has called global warming a hoax. His exact words: “It’s a hoax. I mean, it’s a moneymaking industry, okay? It’s a hoax, a lot of it.” He also said that action to limit carbon emissions ‘is done for the benefit of China.’

So there you have it, millennials. Trump is flamboyant and monopolizes mainstream media because he can titillate, provoke and outrage. Hillary, on the other hand, is perceived as cold, harsh and angry. But don’t be fooled by appearances. Ask yourself, who is better qualified to get the job done? A demagogue who lies and cheats and is clueless about national and international affairs, or someone who is flawed but who began her life as a young attorney at the Children’s Defense Fund and made the welfare of children and families the guiding light of her life, who is patient, intelligent, and has a proven track record as befits a president? Know this too, that if Hillary Clinton doesn’t light your fire, it may mean that your fire is already lit. The question is: who will keep it alive?

The answer should be obvious: Hillary Clinton will and Donald Trump won’t.

Are College Students Learning Too Little?

“Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” a book by two educators, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, has caused a stir in educational circles. The authors tracked several thousand students as they moved through and graduated from several American colleges and universities. Their chilling conclusion: students don’t learn nearly enough to thrive in a knowledge-based economy. As the authors write, “In a typical semester, 50% of students did not take a single course requiring more than 20 pages of writing, 32% did not have any classes that required reading more than 40 pages per week, and 36% reported studying alone five or fewer hours per week.” America’s educational institutions rarely challenge students intellectually who end up with degrees that have little value. Both the schools and the students are academically adrift in that both have lost the focus on education and on developing such skills as critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing.

What do college students themselves think? Are they just going through the motion in colleges and graduating due to lax standards, or are they, in fact, getting a rigorous education that will serve them well in their professional careers?

Mary feels that “Academically Adrift” may be the most important book on higher education to come out in her lifetime. She has been at a community college for six years now and found that schools have become more like businesses where not education but profit is paramount. She has been misled by counselors and taken courses that did nothing for her. “A generalized list of courses does not work for every student. Community colleges are more concerned with transfer rates and so take the focus off students and their educational needs.” She is not surprised that the authors found that 48% of graduating college students had not improved their critical thinking skills. Mary is rethinking her educational goals after reading the book.

Julio believes that the dismal record of college graduates reflect a sobering fact: colleges have become too boring academically. A large percentage of teachers compound the problem by being “pathetic” at teaching and so turn off students completely.

Joelle concurs. “Most classes have been very easy and do not require much studying to pass. I have even had classes that I barely went to, never had homework, and yet passed!  Teachers don’t know how to teach complex reasoning and rigorous thinking. Even if they do, they do a super job of hiding it from us! The schools are in the money-making business, not education.”

James feels that it’s the teachers who are mostly failing their students. In an English class, for instance, a teacher assigns an essay and grades it without going over any mistake or flaws in reasoning. “They just hand out grades, often inflated, so they can look good. There are exceptions, no doubt. Students have a right to demand exceptional teachers in all subjects.”

Yvonne disagrees with Arum and Roksa. It is true that some students graduate without learning much but the majority of students she knows work really hard because “we know our success in life depend on it.”

Ray agrees with the main points of the authors. Too many colleges are focused on nurturing their athletes at the expense of education. “Colleges will do anything for their star football players but hardly anything for their bright students other than maybe a pat on the back.”

Kevin also agrees with the authors that students are learning very little in colleges today. “I have taken a few classes at a community college and found them to be a complete waste of time. Some classes do not require attendance to pass. They chose the courses because they were transferable. Many of the topics covered are those that I covered during my teenage years. If students do not feel involved or cannot relate to the topics, then they do not bother listening. It is easy for me to use my laptop to browse the internet without having to pay attention during class if all the professor does is stand in front of the class and lectures.” Many of Kevin’s friends remain jobless after four years of college. Most have a huge debt that they are unable to pay off. “I just don’t want to be stuck with a big tuition debt in my ‘20s and having to work years just to pay it off. I am currently reconsidering my educational goals.”

Kimberley is not surprised by the conclusions of Arum and Roksa. During her years at a community college, she has come across more unmotivated students than determined ones. A lot of the conversations in class starts with “I barely did my homework before class” or “I partied with…” instead of “I spent the whole day reading and doing homework.” She knows dozens of students who put in very little effort into their assignments but still slide by with a C. “The results from not trying will bite the students later, which is why the two authors have written about how out of focus education has become.” Kimberley is hopeful that discussions centered on the book will bring about changes in the way colleges educate students.

Kendal is convinced that students are learning very little in college because the incentive to try is just not there. Teachers are passing students who do not deserve to pass and so they enter the workforce unprepared. But the problem does not lie only with instructors. It lies with students as well. Many students today have a sense of entitlement and think they are too good to take a bottom-rung position at a company. They want to be CEO’s and make $100,000 a year right out of college.  By allowing mediocre work and giving it an A, teachers reinforce the delusion that you do not have to put in the work to be successful.

Jennifer takes issue with the narrow and limited scope of the authors. They do not take into account, for instance, the teaching methods used by instructors and funding for colleges. The authors are guilty of generalization and in claiming that all colleges are affected by the various factors in the same way. Some colleges lack qualified staff while other colleges are filled with inspiring instructors and motivated students. How can you apply the same rules to both types?

Adam also disagrees with Arum and Roksa. Times have changed. Students these days must absorb and work with more difficult concepts and subjects than students in the past. With so many more students attending colleges, the battle for jobs has also gotten fiercer. Besides, “who cares if students don’t take a class requiring more than 20 pages of writing? If it doesn’t support your major, why do it? As an Art Major, I may not have the best grammar, or the highest level of vocabulary, but if it doesn’t apply to my field of interest, then I really don’t want to become an expert in writing. Sure, general education is important but an entire population should not have to excel in categories such as writing, unless they want to become professional writers. In time, we all lose information and knowledge we don’t use in everyday life. If a student fails at writing, he shouldn’t be a writer!”

Kim also takes issue with the authors. The criterion for learning “a lot” or a “little” is subjective. Students have different goals and should not be measured by the same general standard. But Kim also agrees with the authors in that there are many students who make entertainment their primary goal in college and so end up learning very little. She has seen a quarter of her classmates dropping out when the subject became challenging. For Kim, a lot of it comes down to how motivated students are. If they are, they will succeed. If not, no matter what other factors may work in their favor, they will fail.

For Lauren too, it comes down to the students themselves. “A good student will take a lot from college and a bad student will find a way through it without learning much. There are a million and half ways to pass your classes without doing much of anything, but if students are in college because they really want to be there, then they will want to read their books, do their homework, and show up for classes. The sad part is that because students find an overwhelming number of ways to skate through college, the students who are actually motivated and doing their homework are getting the same grades as the other students. Students cheat in more ways than just copying a friend’s’ paper. It really comes down to a simple fact: College is what you make of it.”

David agrees with the authors. Students may be learning the mechanics and formulas behind things but they don't get enough hands-on experience or understand why they learn the things they do and how these apply to real life. “To me, that is real knowledge, not just going through the motions but actually understanding why a formula is the way it is and how it can be applied to real life applications. A student can be a straight A student and know by memorization everything that has to do with their major. But that doesn't necessarily mean that students will succeed at the job of their choice. Learning about something in a textbook is vastly different from actually experiencing it in real life. I think schools should lessen the tedious busy work and try to engage students. Have them see what it is like to work in the major that they are in or make sure they understand how the information they learn in class applies to the real world.”

Smith disagrees with the authors. He has learned a lot in colleges by avoiding busywork and focusing on what is truly important. The authors talk about writing and rigorous thinking but in reality these activities are nothing more than busy work, just going through the motions. Smith favors quality over quantity. A student may write 20 pages of solid, relevant and well thought-out passages, or 100 pages of drivel. Surely the latter is bad but sometimes that’s what’s lauded. Smith, however, thinks that increasing the cost of education will keep many students out of colleges and that will badly hurt the economy.

As Katia sees it, most students take particular classes to fulfill some sort of graduation requirement. “This is sad because the idea of college is that you take classes that interest you and that stimulate your desire to learn. Most teachers are reacting to this and it is evident in the way they teach. Many teachers teach classes without passion and then hand out the test. Most tests only require students to memorize to pass.  This is not how college courses should be. Students are failing and not doing well because they are not interested in the material.  The burden is on the college to create curriculum that students find relevant and interesting.”

Jessica disagrees with the authors. “Most of the courses I have taken have absolutely no need to require over 20 pages of writing. She also feels that a country’s financial system plays a huge role in the quality of education provided to students these days, something the authors did not take into consideration. “Being a part of the student government, I have witnessed first-hand the effects of budget cuts and decreased state funding for education. With colleges being forced to cut faculty, decreasing the number of classes while increasing class sizes, quality education becomes almost impossible quality education.”

Tomas agrees partially with authors. There is an overall decline in learning in colleges. Students are not motivated and seem distracted by outside influences. The use of technology allows students to gain a quick fix and distracts them critical thinking skills. “The stats show that there is a declining four-year college attendance, due to higher expenses and lower academic requirements. From my experience of attending a community college, I have noticed that when the semester starts, the classes are full, with no room to spare.  By the end of the semester, about half the class has dropped out. This is not due to the professors but to students’ laziness and lack of motivation to stick it out and do the material. Students are being challenged but they flee from the challenges. What students don’t realize is that the future is going to only get tougher in competing for jobs, which will go to the ones who have persisted and did the necessary work to succeed.”

Steve Jobs, Technology and Education

The late Steve Jobs of Apple was not smart in the conventional sense. Instead, as his biographer Walter Isaacson tells us in the bestseller “Steve Jobs,” he was a genius. “His imaginative leaps were instinctive, unexpected, and at times magical.”

One of the toughest problems America faces today is in education. Assessing the impact of technology in raising the quality of K-14 education has become a particularly thorny issue, considering that the future of the nation, and billions of dollars, are at stake

It is instructive to consider Jobs’ view on this. Unique among his peers, he positioned himself at the intersection of science and humanities and showed time and again that his gut feeling – intuition – was right in the products he envisioned and helped create.

Jobs didn’t think of technology as the silver bullet of education. As Isaacson points out, he was “somewhat dismissive of the idea that technology could transform education.” The ability to focus, think through problems and solve them requires patience, perseverance and hard work, qualities that technology is unlikely to foster.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates, on the other hand, and with whom Jobs had a contentious professional relationship, has more faith in the power of technology to transform education. His foundation has spent billions of dollars equipping classrooms across the country with state-of-the-art technology. As Gates sees it, it is a crucial innovation to use interactive technology to deliver high-quality materials for teachers and students. He feels that software can be used to tailor lessons for individual students so that they do not waste time on the things they already know and focus on areas they do not. “That's the kind of innovation that can lead to a brighter future for everyone,” says Gates.

Well, we have had over a decade of technology in classrooms – laptops, big interactive screens, software – in school districts from California and Arizona to New York and Maine. Analysis of the vast amount of data collected shows that, so far at least, Jobs’ view is holding out. Despite the extensive presence of technology in the school curricula, test scores remain stubbornly stagnant in reading, math and science.

In contrast, consider the successful Waldorf School in Los Altos, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. The school, attended by children of local high-tech executives, operates on the principle that computers and schools don’t mix. Computers, according to the school, constrain creative thinking, reduce human interaction and play havoc with attention spans. Students and their parents couldn’t be more in sync with the Waldorf objectives.

This, of course, does not mean that technology will disappear from the nation’s classrooms. If anything, there will be even more technology in the future. The Waldorf is probably an exception. What it does mean, however, is that we haven’t yet found the best way to use technology to take education to a higher level.

There was one area in education where Jobs had strong feelings. He wanted to blow away the harmful and monopolistic textbook business through digital learning materials. As Isaacson writes, the “textbook industry was $8 billion a year, ripe for digital destruction. That was the next business he wanted to transform. His method was iPad. He wanted to hire great textbook writers to create digital versions, and make them a feature of the iPad.” Jobs’ clearly saw that “the
process by which states certify textbooks is corrupt. But if we can make textbooks free, and they come with this iPad, then they don’t have to be certified.” What was left unsaid was that the relief it would provide to students – mental, financial, physical – would be incalculable.

A cynic might suggest that Jobs’ real goal was to make the iPad ubiquitous in the nation’s classrooms, like other Apple products. But they would be missing the point. Jobs understood that creating new textbooks by world-class authors offered the best chance to free the nation’s students from the unethical and destructive practices of textbook publishers. In spite of earnest recommendations by well-meaning educators, the textbook industry continues to become even more powerful and monopolistic. The digital versions of their bloated and confusing textbooks are offered mostly as options, adding to the already sky-high cost of education. Jobs had the right vision. Recall how he converted music exceutives to his point of view and what he did for music with the iPod. So, for textbooks, if the iPad was his preferred medium of delivery, in all fairness, could anyone object to that?

One wonders if Apple has leaders as bold, brash and intuitive as Jobs was, leaders who can “think different” and launch projects to turn America’s moribund school system around. If not, high-tech companies specializing in so-called “educational technology” will clean up on the billions of educational dollars available through federal grants and private foundations without making any difference whatsoever, even as thousands of teachers are laid off and school budgets shrink to disastrous levels

Students Missing From Education Reform

Education has attained the status of weather: Everyone talks about it but no one does anything about it.

Well, not exactly. President Obama made education a centerpiece of his campaign. He talked about the central role of education in his life to get to where he was. He promised to follow up on his educational vision if he became the president.

In an address to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce today, the president fleshed out his vision. He called for more charter schools ("laboratories of innovations"), merit-based pay for teachers while holding them more accountable, emphasis on early education, tougher curriculum standards, and renewing commitment to learning from cradle to adulthood. “It is time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career,” said Obama. “We have accepted failure for too long. America’s entire education system must once more be the envy of the world.”

The president had done his homework on teachers. He is determined to push the same methods used in Finland and Singapore, two countries with the finest public education systems in the world today, to treat “teachers like the professionals they are .... New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones. Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools.”

The president made a compelling case for raising the quality of education in America. Where it fell short was in his lack of emphasis on the responsibility of the students themselves. “It is time to expect more from our students,” the president declared. We have known that for years, but how? We talk about teachers, teachers' unions, administrators, parents, communities and school districts but leave out the most important element in the ecology of education: students.

Teachers and schools can never take over the job of educating a child completely. And they are not meant to! It may take a village to raise a child, an awfully nice-sounding idea, but it is a partial remedy at best. The critical question to ask is, why do so many of our kids suffer from lack of motivation? It’s a phenomenon that cuts across race, gender, income and social standings. You can blame lack of parental guidance, high-tech distractions, a noxious culture, whatever, but ultimately the mystery remains. If you are the parent of a school student whose only aim in life seems to be entertainment and hanging out with friends, how do you instill in him or her discipline, motivation, hunger for knowledge?

All across America, parents and teachers who dutifully offer everything asked of them to educate their wards are asking: “What are we doing that’s not right?” Who will tell them that they are doing the best they can, that it is most often the kids who have to shape up, who have to shun the path of ignorance and get on the road to knowledge?

I hope President Obama focuses exclusively on students next time he talks about education. He is an inspiration to kids. His life story evokes wonder. He can be more persuasive on our children than perhaps any parent or teacher at this particular juncture of history. He can use his talent, eloquence and his own story to energize and motivate them to acquire knowledge. If he can pull off this feat, there is a chance that our educational system will once again become the envy of the world.

Reviving Science in Muslim Countries

I have been an admirer of Dr. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy’s writings on bringing about a scientific renaissance among modern-day Muslims. His 1991 book, Islam and Science – Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, was an eye-opener for me. The Quran is a book of moral guidance and not a book of science, he wrote. In one clear sentence, he exposed the inadequacy of Muslims who would do away with the scientific method and install revelation (as they understood it) as the source of scientific progress and discovery. His subsequent writings on the topic only deepened my admiration.

Which was why, in an otherwise incisive article in Physics Today, I was disappointed by a solution he proposed for Muslim renaissance in science. Dr. Hoodbhoy recommends behavioral changes among Muslims to excel in a ruthlessly global marketplace dominated by science and technology. Such changes would allow Muslims to develop intense “social work habits” that “are not easily reconcilable with religious demands made on a fully observant Muslim’s time, energy, and mental concentrations. The faithful must participate in five daily congregational prayers, endure a month of fasting that taxes the body, recite daily from the Quran, and more. Although such duties orient believers admirably well toward success in the life hereafter, they make worldly success less likely. A more balanced approach will be needed.”

Is Dr. Hoodbhoy suggesting that daily prayers, recitation of the Quran and month-long Ramadan fasting are hindrances to a Muslim’s attaining scientific excellence, since they disrupt sustained concentration? Although he does not spell out the details of “a more balanced approach,” the implication is clear: Do away with these religious demands, or, at the very least, reduce their frequency.

I am surprised by the obvious errors Dr. Hoodbhoy has made in his argument. While it is commendable for Muslims to offer the five daily prayers in congregations, it is not a must. The prayers (with the exception of the Friday noon prayer) can be offered in private, taking no more than a few minutes and very little space. In fact, that is how most observant Muslims meet the requirements of their faith during workdays in their professional lives. If, for some reason, they cannot offer the daily prayers on time, they can make them up later.

His use of the word “endure” for the month of fasting is also perplexing. Most Muslims do not “endure” fasting but look forward to it as a time of physical cleansing and heightened spirituality.

The major flaw in Dr. Hoodbhoy’s suggestion is that religious practices prevent observant Muslims from focusing and maintaining the continuity of their thoughts, particularly in science. In fact, the opposite is true. Properly practiced (a challenge for many Muslims for whom religious observances have become rituals without meaning), prayers and fasting instill discipline, a prerequisite for concentration. His mentor, Nobel physicist Abdus Salam, was an obvious example. Salam was one of the great theoretical physicists of the twentieth century but he was also a devout Muslim, punctilious about the demands of his faith. In numerous essays and articles, Salam explained how his faith inspired his science and vice-versa. While most Muslim scientists of our times can hardly match Salam’s achievement, the science of many of them is also informed by the awe and wonder inspired by their faith.

So why are Muslim nations so far behind in science compared to the West? Why does the observation of Turkish-American physicist Taner Edis that “if all Muslim scientists working in basic science vanished from the face of the earth, the rest of the scientific community would barely notice” ring so true? Why is creationist literature unleashed by a Turkish clergy named Harun Yahya sweeping the Muslim world?

One reason is the lack of separation of mosque and state, and consequently, separation of mosque and science, in many Muslim countries. Science thrives on unfettered inquiry. If the clergy can impose religious limits on free inquiry and threaten dire consequences if the limits are transgressed, science can never advance.

Another related reason is the lack of quality education. Take the case of Dr. Hoodbhoy’s own country, Pakistan. As William Dalrymple observed (The 'poor neighbor, The Guardian UK, August 14, 2007) on the occasion of Pakistan’s 60th independence anniversary, only 1.8% of Pakistan's GDP is spent on government schools. 15% of these government schools are without a proper building; 52% without a boundary wall; 71% without electricity. Many of the barely functioning schools cram children of all grades into a single room, often sitting on the floor because of lack of desks. While 65% of India’s population is literate and rising, the figure for Pakistan is 49% and falling. Out of a population of 162 million, 83 million adults of 15 years and above are illiterate. It is worse for women: 65% of all female adults are illiterate. The absence of quality government schooling has compelled the poorest Pakistanis to place their vulnerable children in the madrasa system. Madrasas offer free education but can turn their young wards into ideologues under the tutelage of fiery preachers, as the recent red mosque showdown in Islamabad demonstrated.

When one adds to this grim status quo the general lack of accountability and respect for law by the leaders of many Muslim countries, it is easy to see why engaging in genuine scientific research can become hazardous to one’s health.

Yet there is hope. Even diehard conservative Muslims are becoming aware of the central role of science in defining the destiny of modern nations. Slowly but surely, they are beginning to see that science does not undermine religion but enriches it. The wind of change is blowing and it can be stopped or reversed.