People are Stupid

This is an adapted excerpt from my newest book, "What's the Big Idea? 39 Disruptive Proposals. 

We deify rational thinking: We teach it relentlessly in schools. We admire our universities and think tanks. We make fun of stupidity. Yet so much of what we do is downright idiotic.

Investing

Seventy-seven percent of mutual fund investors use actively managed mutual funds rather than index funds, even though decades of data make clear that index investors do better.

Homeland Security

We spend billions every year, including to make every airplane passenger spend a half hour or more in line, taking off their shoes, and having their toothpaste checked to ensure it weighs less than three ounces, when even a retarded terrorist knows we do that and so would simply bomb one of the millions of unsecured targets, for example, a water reservoir in Wyoming or a Bar-Mitzvah in Brooklyn. A more sophisticated terrorist would, in the  lobby of an international airport terminal, reach into a shopping bag, open a vial of highly communicable mutated smallpox virus and saunter across the terminal, infecting enough people headed all over the world to kill billions. A rational government would accept that we can't stop terrorism by policing it no matter how many billions we spend. But we're not rational.

Religion
A Google Search on the term "Surrender to God" yields 900,000 links. Countless people follow the Bible's urging to be passive, to wait for God to provide. For example, 

Philippians 4:19 Be not wise in your own eyes; God shall supply all your need.

Proverbs 3:1: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

1 Corinthians 10:17  God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability,

Matthew 17:20  If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.

What are the odds there is an omniscient, omnipotent deity watching the seven billion people's every move to ensure they all do okay? Forget about whether surrendering to God will result in your landing a good job in this economy. Remember that billions of people, including newborns have died screaming in agony. And what about all those catastrophic earthquakes and epidemics? And if "God will provide," why do billions of people lack basic food, water, shelter, and health care? Could anyone with a mote of rationality "surrender to God?" 

Education as key to closing the achievement gap

We continue to bet billions and billions on education as the tool most likely to close the achievement gap. That, despite more than a half-century and trillions of dollars (also see this) spent trying so many permutations and combinations of teaching style, curriculum, etc. Yet the achievement gap remains as wide as ever. We haven't been able to do better than to tout a non-replicable superstar teacher or pilot program: from Marva Collins (her school is now closed due to lack of enrollment) to Michelle Rhee's DC non-miracle, to bad-data KIPP, to the latest fad, Khan Academy. Go take a Khan Academy lesson and ask yourself if a year of that is likely to close the algebra achievement gap. They're boring. Only highly motivated students will learn algebra that way. Do you really think America's low achievers will learn algebra so much better with Khan lessons as to close the achievement gap?

Yet we continue to prefer to bury our heads in the sand and bet a fortune and our children's future that the next classroom innovation du jour will close the achievement gap. Couldn't the enormous costs of those classroom programs, trainings, etc., be more wisely spent? For example, mightn't it be wise to accept that we aren't close to knowing how to close the achievement gap and so rather than spending more trillions on unlikely-to-work classroom programs, reallocate those dollars to foundational research on figuring out the gap's true roots and only then develop programs based on those roots, and if there's money left,  return it to the taxpayer?  But we are not rational. 

A Solution
 The most important thing schools and colleges should teach is how to think rationally:  how to make decisions based on an probability-based assessments of risk, reward, cost and opportunity cost. But we're too busy teaching the periodic table of elements, the causes of the French and Indian Wars, and how to solve quadratic equations.

Direct Evidence that Intelligence is Half Genetic: New Hope for Closing the Achievement Gap?

Many people believe that intelligence, like most human characteristics, is affected both by genes and environment.

Indeed, studies of fraternal and identical twins, especially those of identical twins raised apart, summarized in the chart above and, for example, THIS, provide strong evidence that intelligence is roughly half genetic. A survey of 661 experts on intelligence found that the large majority believe intelligence has a significant genetic component.

But there hasn't yet been an analysis of actual genomes to prove that...until now.

THIS study of 3,511 people's genomes was published on the prestigious Nature.com last month but remains largely unreported by the media. The abstract reports, "Our results unequivocally confirm that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation."

What are the implications?

The bad news

This has to be a blow to educators and social policymakers, who, for a half century now, have been betting billions of tax and charity dollars that the achievement gap could be significantly reduced or eliminated by redistributing resources to improve the environments of low-achieving children and adults by more spending on education, job training programs, self-esteem programs, etc. But just as in a long-distance car race, tuning-up a VW Bug that's running miles behind a Porsche doesn't make it likely to catch up, it appears ever less likely that tuning-up low achievers' environment will close the achievement gap to the extent we all hope it will.

Indeed, that study may help explain why, despite massive expenditures on the widest range of such programs, from Head Start (which, in the definitive metaevaluation, alas has been found to have no impact on the achievement gap) to Stop Drop, the achievement gap remains as wide as ever.

Especially in this era of massive federal, state, and local deficits, we might want to ask ourselves how wise is it to continue to reallocate billions of dollars from gifted education to special education, from regular education to compensatory education. Indeed, our core federal education mandate, No Child Left Behind, and other major programs such as Title I, plus much nonprofit funding do that.

The good news

The good news is that the Nature study would seem to point to a new direction and new hope for reducing that achievement gap. In light of that study, the next steps would seem to be to discover the specific genes responsible for intelligence (something China is already doing) to develop a safe and ethical way to replace defective genes and then making available, on a purely voluntary basis, the option to have that gene therapy so prospective parents could help ensure that their kids don't start life with a genetic strike or two against them.

To ensure that option doesn't exacerbate the gap between rich and poor, it should, like most medical services, be fully covered under MediCal (the free health care program for the poor,) and under ObamaCare. In addition, special outreach to low-income communities should be provided, emphasizing both the therapy's availability and its being completely optional.

I would imagine that the therapy would most benefit families of multigenerational low achievement. If my parents were low achievers, I were a low achiever, and now I heard that intelligence was half genetic and there was a free, safe, and effective therapy that would improve my children's chances of having high intelligence and, in turn, be more likely to be successful in school and in career, I'd sign right up.

Here is the study's abstract.

Genome-wide association studies establish that human intelligence is highly heritable and polygenic

G Davies, A Tenesa, A Payton, J Yang, S E Harris, D Liewald, X Ke, S Le Hellard, A Christoforou, M Luciano, K McGhee, L Lopez, A J Gow, J Corley, P Redmond, H C Fox, P Haggarty, L J Whalley, G McNeill, M E Goddard, T Espeseth, A J Lundervold, I Reinvang, A Pickles, V M Steen, W Ollier, D J Porteous, M Horan, J M Starr, N Pendleton, P M Visscher and I J Deary

Abstract

General intelligence is an important human quantitative trait that accounts for much of the variation in diverse cognitive abilities. Individual differences in intelligence are strongly associated with many important life outcomes, including educational and occupational attainments, income, health and lifespan. Data from twin and family studies are consistent with a high heritability of intelligence, but this inference has been controversial. We conducted a genome-wide analysis of 3511 unrelated adults with data on 549 692 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and detailed phenotypes on cognitive traits. We estimate that 40% of the variation in crystallized-type intelligence and 51% of the variation in fluid-type intelligence between individuals is accounted for by linkage disequilibrium between genotyped common SNP markers and unknown causal variants. These estimates provide lower bounds for the narrow-sense heritability of the traits. We partitioned genetic variation on individual chromosomes and found that, on average, longer chromosomes explain more variation. Finally, using just SNP data we predicted ~1% of the variance of crystallized and fluid cognitive phenotypes in an independent sample (P=0.009 and 0.028, respectively). Our results unequivocally confirm that a substantial proportion of individual differences in human intelligence is due to genetic variation, and are consistent with many genes of small effects underlying the additive genetic influences on intelligence.

My Plan for Closing the Achievement Gap (revised)

No domestic issue has drawn more attention or money than attempting to close the socioeconomic and racial achievement gap.

Now, despite a half century and countless innovations from Head Start to Stop Drop, from integration to self-segregated Afrocentric schools, from affirmative action college admission to disparate impact lawsuits on CEO selection, the achievement gap remains as wide as ever.

Even Head Start, which politicians for decades, trumpeted as our best hope, has recently been determined, in the definitive evaluation of 40 years of Head Start conducted by the U.S. Office of Education, to have no enduring positive effects.

So it would be hubristic of me to assert that I know how to close the achievement gap but, of course, we should keep trying. So if I were to bet my money, these are the interventions I'd bet on:

1. Reduce teen pregnancy. It's well established that children of teenage parents are at greater risk of school and life failure. So junior and senior high schools, especially those with high teen pregnancy rates, should implement data-driven teen-pregnancy prevention programs. The research does not support abstinence-only programs and so political pressures to restrict such programs to abstinence-only should be resisted.

Sex education should include what I call a Choose Your Parent Well component. You can't choose your parents but you certainly can be wise or less wise in choosing the parent of your children. The decision of whom to be the father/mother of your children may be your life's most important. Especially among at-risk teens, there's a tendency to fall in love with a person more on how "cool" he is than how intelligent and motivated he is. But is that the person whose genes you'd like your child to have? Is that the person you want to parent your child?

To ensure that girls have the child with the father they want, when they're ready, birth control, including long-term reversible implantable Jadelle, should be made available free, on demand, at all high schools.

Creators of programming aimed at teens (sitcoms, news, movies, video games, music videos, record labels) should be encouraged to create more content that would compellingly display the Choose Your Parent Well message as well as the non-romantic outcomes of teen pregnancy.

2. Provide parenting education early. To increase the chances that from Day One, parents have the tools to be good parents, full effort should be expended to ensure that high-quality parenting education is highly accessible, especially to pregnant teens in low-income locales. The best parenting education involves interactive video of critical incidents in parenting--for example, what to do if your baby won't stop crying? What to do to ensure your child develops good language skills? Ethics? What if your child won't do her homework? What if you think your child is taking drugs? Is sexually active?

True innovation in delivery systems is required. For example, high school websites and others heavily visited by at-risk teens, for example, mtv.com, should be encouraged to post the aforementioned parenting training course.

To ensure its availability to people without computers, the community center in low-income housing projects should have a computer installed that includes the parenting education program as well as other interactive-video programs, for example, on teen pregnancy prevention and on preventing and curing substance abuse. In hospitals, especially those serving at-risk communities, the TV in each new-mom's patient's room should have a TV offering the aforementioned parenting training.

To receive welfare benefits such as TANF funds, teen or perhaps all parents should be required to successfully complete the online or an in-person parenting education course, much as we require aspiring drivers to complete a driver's education course.

3. Improve teacher training. Absurdly, pre-K to grade 12 teachers are trained primarily by theory-oriented academics who have never taught in a pre-K to grade-12 classroom, let alone been master teachers there. That must change. The primary instructors of teachers in-training should be master K-12 teachers, including those who have produced excellent results in teaching low-achieving students.

Teachers of classes in low-achieving schools may well need to be masters at motivation, using a skill set beyond that which is taught in most teacher education programs. So, for example, the increasingly required multicultural education course should include master-teacher-taught lessons on the art of classroom management, including strategies particularly likely to be effective in working with low-achieving, minimally motivated kids.

Training should not end upon the teacher's obtaining a license to teach. Teachers experiencing the frustrations common in working in low-achieving schools should be able to phone or email a hotline staffed by teachers who have successfully taught in those schools.

4. Flexibly group classes. If I were slow at learning and choosing between a class filled with other slow learners and a class with many hotshots, I'd certainly choose the former. Yet largely because minorities were overrepresented in the slow-learner classes, students, below high school, are usually assigned to classes at random. That causes all students to suffer: It's nearly impossible for a teacher to meet the needs of a class with so wide-ranging needs. We must stop all policies that are created merely to look good racially. Pedagogy must trump politics.

Classes shouldn't be rigidly tracked but what's needed are what I call flex classes. In them, at least for academic subjects, students are grouped by ability and achievement but in which students, especially those of color, are monitored closely to ensure they're not in a too low- (or too high-) level class.

5. Dispel the belief that working hard is "acting white." Berkeley researcher John Ogbu is one of many to report that many black students believe that being studious is "acting white," and therefore unacceptable. "Cool" blacks, both peers and adults, who are studious, must convince students and their parents that studying hard is equally important for students of all races.

6. Encourage an internal locus of control. Of course, what happens to us is not totally under our control. We are greatly affected by the family and community into which we are born. We are affected by the nature of the political and economic system we live under. There is racism. There is reverse racism. There is luck.

Yet successful people believe they can control enough of their life to greatly increase their chances of success. Academics call that internal locus of control. Alas, students from low-income families are more likely to believe that external factors such as luck, God, and their race are key to determining their success.

Moving poor people's locus of control inward is no easy task. Many political leaders, educators, and TV pundits gain popularity by telling their audiences that their failings are largely beyond their control: the capitalist system, the legacy of slavery, institutional racism, etc.

While those may be partially responsible, our mind molders--parents, schools, colleges, church, and media--would be wise to encourage all of us to base our self-esteem, our sense of self-efficacy, on what we ourselves do. The accomplishments of famous people should not be a particular source of pride. Our own efforts, accomplishments, ethics, and kindness should be the primary bases for assessing our self-worth.

7. Chronically disruptive students must be placed in special classes. If a student, despite the teacher's best efforts with help from the principal, continues to disrupt classmates' opportunity to learn, that child must be moved to a special class taught by someone with special skills in working with such kids. Even if that child does no better in that special class, s/he won't be depriving the other 29 students of their right to an education.

8. Begin career exploration in grade 6. Finding an exciting yet realistic career can be motivating to many students. And it reduces the problem of many high school and college graduates having no idea what career they want to pursue.

9. Give students a choice: college-prep or career-prep curriculum. Increasingly, in the name of high standards, high schoolers, even those who read on a sixth grade level and who have far more ability in working with their hands, are being forced to take a college-prep curriculum.

Imagine that you, like millions of parents, have a child who is entering high school but is reading on just a sixth-grade level. Would you want him forced to take a curriculum that required him to derive geometric theorems, balance chemical equations, and write essays on the intricacies of Shakespeare? He'll almost certainly do terribly. Not surprisingly, mandating a one-size-fits-all curriculum causes many to drop out of high school.

Worse, the child won't have had an opportunity to build the basic survival skills reading, writing, critical thinking and math he'll desperate need and doesn't yet have. He could better learn those in a direct-to-career path, for example a health-care or entrepreneurship academy within the high school. But as with ability-grouped classes, for fear of appearing racist, direct-to-career high school paths have largely been eliminated. Indeed one of President Obama's top domestic priorities is "Some college for all."

Today, many colleges are open-admission even to the grossly underprepared. Alas, if a student is one of the 200,000 per year entering so-called 4-year colleges from the bottom 40% of their high school class, their chances of graduating are only 24%, even if given 8 1/2 years! And if they do defy the odds and graduate, it will likely be with a low grade-point average in an easy major such as sociology from a minimally selective college. That will impress few employers at a time when the U.S. has the highest percentage of college graduates in its history at the same time as employers are eliminating as many professional-level positions as possible, through automation, offshoring, or converting jobs to part-time and temp positions. Such graduates are likely to join the ranks of the countless people with a bachelor's degree unable to find better employment than they could have found with just a high school diploma. Meanwhile they have incurred large student debt, boredom, and ongoing assault to self-esteem from being forced to study academic material for which they were unprepared.

I'd rather see the aforementioned child improve his reading, writing, thinking, and mathematical reasoning in high school courses that would prepare him to be an entrepreneur, robotics tech, helicopter pilot, or chef.

A high-quality, not dumping-ground, direct-to-career option should be instituted in high schools, especially those schools serving many students whose academic achievement is below grade-level.

It's ironic that the leaders who most claim to celebrate diversity are the most likely to insist on no diversity in the high school curriculum: they want everyone to take a college-preparatory curriculum to "keep students' options open." Ironically, one-size-fits-all education eliminates excellent options.

10. Require a course in life skills. Before requiring at-risk kids, indeed all kids, to learn quadratic equations, the halide series of chemical elements, and the use of the doppelganger, students should be required to pass a course in life skills: for example, budgeting, interpersonal communication, and the aforementioned sex education and parenting education. To not do so is to be guilty of the very elitism that many educators and politicians decry.

11. Institute a debate (forensics) program in all high schools, including those with low achievement scores. Some evidence and a lot of common sense suggests that a debate program could yield significant benefit.

12. Require colleges to provide full disclosure to prospective students. In their attempt to woo students, especially students of color, colleges and high school counselors, as in the Tuskegee Experiments, often hide the information students need to use to decide whether to enroll:

• The projected four- and five-year full cost of attendance, including cash financial aid, broken down by family income and assets.
• Freshman-to-senior average growth in critical thinking, writing, and quantitative reasoning, broken down by high school record.
• The results of the college's most recent student satisfaction survey
• Four-, five-, and six-year graduation rates, broken down by high school record.
• The accreditation team's most recent report on the college.
• The percentage of graduates professionally employed, including average salary, disaggregated by high school record and by major.

13. Head Start Genes. Our intelligence and impulse control are, like most characteristics, likely affected by both our genes and our environment. Yet the government and biotech companies have--for fear of political repercussions--been reluctant to fund research that would identify which gene clusters are responsible for those characteristics. Government should encourage such research so prospective parents could have the option of having their eggs and sperm tested to ensure their baby will be born with genes for good intelligence and impulse control so s/he doesn't start out life with a strike or two against them. We already do this on a crude basis: In in-vitro fertilization, the physician chooses only eggs and sperm that appear normal and robust. If all of a prospective mother's and father's genes are for low intelligence or impulse control, the parents should have the option of having the defective genes in their egg and sperm replaced with normal ones, what I call Head Start genes.

To ensure that the poor has access to this procedure, it would, like other medical procedures, be covered under MediCal and other health programs for the poor. In addition, as with, for example, AIDS education, special outreach would be made in low-income communities to ensure that its residents are aware of the Head Start genes option.

Because low-income people areat the short end of the achievement gap, they would likely benefit far more from Head Start genes than would high achievers.

14. Try bold pilot studies. In addition to implementing the previous ideas, there's need to pilot test new ideas. Examples:

• For those unable to hold a private-sector job, government should create jobs. A job may be, in addition to a source of income, the most potent teacher, healer, and crime and drug abuse preventer.
• Pair high school kids with retired small business owners. Have them start a simple business
• Pair at-risk kids with nursing home residents or hard-to-adopt animal-shelter dogs and cats who otherwise would be euthanized. I've seen hard-bitten teens grow loving when involved with a non-threatening person or animal.
• Have kids plant vegetable and fruit gardens, cook and eat what they've grown and sell the rest. They'd learn science, cooking, nutrition, and how to run a business. In addition, they might join me in awe of the miracle of growth.
• Create peer mentor pairs: for example, at-risk sixth graders with at-risk first graders. There's no better way to learn than to teach.
• Provide free genetic counseling to at-risk prospective parents. That may help them make more fully informed and thus wiser choices.
  

My hope is that this more thorough (may I say brave) exploration of how to address the achievement gap might encourage a more full-dimensioned discussion than the nation has heretofore had. I believe that without such a discussion, we'll still be wringing our hands about the achievement gap a century from now.

Reinventions: Bolder Approaches to the Big Issues

Reinventions

Bolder approaches to job creation, health care, education, religion, our election system, our economic system, psychotherapy, the gender wars, climate change, the gene pool, the meaning of life, and 30 other pillars of society.

a book proposal

by Marty Nemko

Many Americans believe the U.S. is in permanent decline. A just-released New York Times/CBS News poll finds that 39 percent of respondents believe “the current economic downturn is part of a long-term permanent decline.” That on the top of a June, 2011 CNN poll that found that 48 percent of Americans believe another Great Depression is very or somewhat likely.

And Americans aren't confident that the proposed solutions will help much. A just-released Time poll finds that 62 percent of Americans think the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction. Perhaps that's not surprising in light of the failure of the most recent round of remedies: Despite massive corporate bailouts, government stimulus spending, and two rounds of quantitative easing (QE1 and QE2) the un- and underemployment rate is higher than before. And education, the supposed magic pill, has turned out to be less than magical. For decades now, the U.S. has ranked #1 or 2 in per-capita education spending yet continues to lag in the most recent international comparison, tied for 23rd with Poland, while Shanghai, China, which entered the comparisons this year for the first time and spends far less than the U.S. per capita on education, ranked #1.

Such solutions are inadequate in part, ironically, because of our democratic process. Policies are adopted only after a diverse array of experts, the public, legislators, and political leaders have all embraced it. While that ensures broad buy-in, it tends to create tepid recommendations--that on which nearly everyone can agree, often a lowest common denominator.

There is need for bolder solutions. Unfettered by having to obtain consensus, in the proposed Work, I propose a bolder solution for each of 40 keys to the thriving society. Perhaps like many authors, my goal is no less than to trigger a national conversation that examines--forgive the cliche--out-of-the-box approaches to stemming what appears to be America's permanent decline, especially versus China and India.

I envision a slim volume: Each of the 40 reinventions will be presented in just enough detail to explain the concept, its benefits, and to counter likely objections.

Content

These blog posts provide a sense of my writing style and the content I'll present in the book:

A Blueprint for Permanently Creating U.S. Jobs: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/04/blueprint-for-permanently-solving-us.html

Elections Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/02/reinvented-election-system.html.

The College Report Card: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/11/college-report-card-key-to-higher-ed.html

Religion Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2008/08/spiritual-atheism.html

Do What You Love and Starve? http://www.martynemko.com/articles/do-what-you-love-and-starve_id1380

Education Reinvented: http://www.martynemko.com/articles/blueprint-for-reinventing-education_id1595

Higher Education Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/06/reinventions-undergraduate-education.html

Simplism: A new alternative to capitalism and socialism: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/06/simplism-new-alternative-to-capitalism.html

Are We So Sure Democracy is the Best Policy? http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/02/are-we-so-sure-democracy-is-best-way.html

Health care: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/11/nemkocare-how-id-do-health-care-reform.html

New Israel: A solution to the Palestinian-Israeli problem: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-israel-solution-to-palestinian.html

The Un-MBA: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/04/while-i-am-critical-of-many-aspects-of.html

Family is Overrated: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2008/09/family-is-overrated.html

Taxation Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-id-reinvent-taxation.html

My Plan for Closing the Achievement Gap: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-plan-to-close-achievement-gap.html

The One-Week Job Search: http://www.martynemko.com/articles/one-week-job-search_id1374

A Better Way to Gain Willpower: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/02/top-10-ways-to-gain-willpower.html

General Education Reinvented: http://www.martynemko.com/articles/generaledorg-reinvented-online-general-education-program_id1597

Career Counseling Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/07/career-counseling-reinvented.html

Climate Change: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=nemko+%22Climate+change%22

In Defense of Men: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/06/beginning-of-men.html

The Meaning of Life Reinvented: http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2011/05/toward-life-well-led-meter.html

My Top Ten Ways to Improve the World:

http://martynemko.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-top-ten-ways-to-improve-world.html

Other Reinventions to be included in the book:

Parenting

Housing

A proposal for safer, less expensive nuclear energy.

The case for and plan for transforming our product-based to a service-based economy.

A better alternative to mass transit: the shared-ownership auto-piloted hydrogen/solar-powered sky car.

Next-generation desalinization as the solution to our water problems.

Social networking reinvented--toward building real connection.

Genetically enhancing human potential...ethically.

Ending the gender wars ...to both sexes' advantage

Psychotherapy reinvented

5 to 10 more, to be determined.

Author credentials

Marty Nemko holds a Ph.D. specializing in the evaluation of innovative programs from the University of California, Berkeley and subsequently taught in Berkeley's graduate school. He has been a consultant to Consumer Reports, 15 college presidents, and dozens of top for- and nonprofit executives. His previous five books have sold 250,000 copies.

Author platform

He's in his 24th year as host of a weekly hour-long show on KALW-FM (NPR-San Francisco.) He has been a repeat guest on such major shows as Talk of the Nation and The Today Show. He's written for and been quoted in publications ranging from Time to the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times. His blog and site attract a half million visitors a year. Toastmasters International names one non-member its Northern California Speaker of the Year. Marty Nemko was a recent winner.

Marketing plan

With Nemko's ability as a speaker (see above) a media tour and live speaking tour, for example, on college campuses would seem to be cost-effective. The tour might be made additionally effective by the discussions of the Reinventions be debates with local public intellectuals, for example, the president of the colleges at which I'd be speaking.

Nemko will make a YouTube video of each Reinvention, and roll them out (in video and text versions) one per week on appropriate places on the Internet, noting that it is an excerpt from the book, Reinventions. For example, the proposal for reinventing undergraduate education will be posted as a letter to the editor on leading websites for higher educators and for students. Of course, each Reinvention video and its transcript will be submitted to major media outlets: with particular follow-up with producers of shows on which Nemko has previously appeared: Talk of the Nation, The Today Show, 20-20, CNN, etc. Each video will also be sent to major print, TV, and online outlets. Plus, each Reinvention will be posted on Nemko's Facebook, Twitter, Quora, blog, and website, which attracts a half million visitors a year, as well presented one per week on his National Public Radio-San Francisco show.

Timed to occur during the weeks preceding the 2012 presidential election, Nemko will disseminate as above, a special video; My Nine Worries and Their Solutions: The Stump Speech I'd Give if I Were Running for President: http://www.martynemko.com/articles/my-nine-worries-stump-speech-id-give-if-i-were-running-for-president_id1603

He will conduct press conferences on a few of the most newsworthy reinventions:

A bolder plan to create jobs

A bolder plan for reinventing health care

A bolder plan for reinventing education.

A series of contests would be held in which the public is challenged to come up with a better reinvention of, for example, education. Prizes could simply be books from the publisher's catalog. Worst case, the contests would be publicized only on Nemko's radio show, blog, etc, but an attempt would be made to get a major media outlet (e.g., Economist.com, USNews.com, where Nemko is Contributing Editor, etc, to co-sponsor the contests and host them on their site.

A Case for Genetic Enhancement of Cognitive Ability

On my NPR-San Francisco radio show today, I interviewed Ruud Ter Meulen, co-editor of Enhancing Human Capacities (Wiley, May 2011)

That interview has triggered these thoughts:

How much of the difference between America's successful and its underclass is genetic and how much is environmental? Over the last 3/4 of a century, we've put all our chips, literally trillions of dollars of cost and opportunity cost, on trying to improve the underclass's environment. Yet the achievement level of the underclass has remained intractable.

As we contemplate what to do for the next 3/4 century, would we be wiser to double-down on that bet or might we reasonably conclude that we've been fighting a giant opponent with one arm tied behind our back and that we'd be wise to untie that arm.

Speaking non-metaphorically, as I've asked in previous writings, is it time to resist our visceral repulsion against funding the research that would lead to prospective parents to be able to elect to genetically enhance their child's cognitive and emotional abilities? Indeed, such gene therapy would likely benefit the underclass more than it would the successful because the underclass has more room to grow.

As long as parents were not coerced into using such gene therapy and as long as the procedure was covered under MediCal so as to not to exacerbate the gap between society's haves and have nots, I cannot see a rational argument against allowing the necessary research, including the risks and rewards of intervening in the germline as well as the ethical issues, so we might eventually be able to fight this most tough opponent with both arms.

Beyond merely benefiting the underclass, making available to prospective parents the option to genetically enhance their children's cognitive ability and emotional well-being/efficacy makes likely that we'll sooner cure our horrific diseases, have wiser electorates, not to mention the ultimate iPhone.

Dear readers, your thoughts?

Education: America's Most Overrated Product

For two decades, I've written books and articles and given speeches documenting that education is overrated. Education generates surprisingly small benefits relative to its costs, time, and opportunity costs.

I've been particularly critical of higher education and of education as a tool for lifting people out of poverty. I've felt like a lone voice.

But suddenly there's been a spate of research and articles in prestigious publications that have come to the same conclusion.

I've occasionally blogged about education here but more often, I've simply tweeted about it, usually providing a link to one of those recent articles. Here are the tweets I've written on education since March 1.

The first group of tweets is on K-12 education. The second is on college & graduate school.

On K-12 Education

U.S. is #2 in per capita spending on education http://j.mp/eb0OeY, yet ranks #23 in achievement: http://j.mp/gXWkcT

The Atlantic: The Failure of American Schools: http://t.co/pTo3ciL

Promising educ. programs are Page 1 news & on 60 Min, but page B17 when they turn out to be far less (e.g., KIPP, or Michelle Rhee's bogus "miracle" in DC.)

Education cries out for reinvention: replace the mammoth arcana with immersive, simulation-rich opps to build thinking, writing, etc.

A smarter, simpler way to start a school: http://bit.ly/eg4Kxf

What I said to a school of profoundly gifted teens. (Yes, there's relevance in it for everyone): http://bit.ly/eUNUJ1

On Higher Education

One summary of the case against college: http://bit.ly/keoUiQ

Title of a current commentary in Marketwatch: "College is a Scam: "http://j.mp/m9f27z

Chronicle of Higher Ed: A devastating warning to weak students choosing college over other options: http://j.mp/lTZmjg

The unmasking of higher ed accelerates. This time it's New York magazine: A "degree is essentially worthless." http://shar.es/H7c5F

NYT: 36% of students' thinking/writing scores rise 1 point or less on 100-point scale from 4 yrs of college! .http://j.mp/mK8Gpn

Yet another ridiculing of higher education's poor value, this time from the world's best bond valuer: Bill Gross: http://bit.ly/jyKNw4

L.A. Times Op-Ed: Colleges have abandoned responsibility for shaping students' academic development: http://j.mp/iPMY6s

Title of a CNN op-ed today: "College is a Waste of Time." http://j.mp/iAMfIb

Despite a libertarian bias & some hype, a compelling video indictment of higher ed's lack of value: http://inflation.us/videos.html

The six most important things you must UNLEARN from your college education: http://j.mp/l3lwno

Pew: % of college presidents that think U.S. higher ed is best in the world: 9%. % that think it will be so 10 yrs hence: 7%.

Pew: 58% of college prezes say public HS students less prepared than a decade ago. Duh--MOST colleges now admit nearly all.

Thomas Sowell: Today's college/graduate educ makes people LESS employable & creates ideologues, NOT clear thinkers: http://j.mp/iJjn8K

College cost has gone wild while its ROI declines yet the media nor govt says, "Cut your bloat!" when colleges scream for yet more tax dollars. Why?!

Law grads face huge debt: $69K public $106 private PER YEAR! x 3 years!!. Then "extensive, grueling" job search..http://j.mp/j8vxdd

USA Today: Gross oversupply of science PhDs: Only 13% get tenure-track U jobs, and there are few corp jobs: http://j.mp/gDrsFR

WSJ: Yet more on why getting an MBA may be ill-advised: http://on.wsj.com/dHJ78Z

Unlike what the colleges try to manipulate us into believing, here's how average folks CAN find good jobs: http://t.co/CnBp8iU

Don't like your college financial aid "award?" Appeal.

Black 4-year grad rate @ Cal State U's is just 6%!! Should we provide yet more support or redirect weak apps to 2-yr coll, OTJ trng, etc?.

The Economist joins chorus: Higher Ed is a Bubble: the degree, the education, even the vaunted research: http://j.mp/erVzli

CNN: A record high 85%(!) of college grads are feeling forced, jobless, to move back in with their parents. http://j.mp/c24P3v

15 well-paying careers requiring just a two-year degree: http://j.mp/eAsJxg

The College Report Card: A great tool for deciding which college to choose: http://bit.ly/fdQwZi

PayPal founder Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble... and It’s Higher Education. tcrn.ch/fRdMz7

Forbes/#CCAP: Govt upping finan aid moves $ from taxpayer to colleges, NOT to students--colleges simply up tuition: http://j.mp/mGmBqy

Forbes/#CCAP: Your tuition pays for things other than your educ: e.g., professors' arcane research. http://j.mp/i76uOb

WSJ: Great piece by Dilbert's Scott Adams: Most students need to learn how to run a business http://on.wsj.com/eoaLdT

I just wrote what I think is my best article on how to become successfully self-employed: an un-MBA: http://bit.ly/h63l3a

To dramatically improve higher ed, require all colleges to post my College Report Card on itself; http://bit.ly/fGBX8k

Harvard study: BA nor MA ups teacher effectiveness. Per my recent tweets, it's ever clearer that educ is overrated. http://bit.ly/gGAdSE

I'm watching professor Rufus Fears on Churchill http://cs.pn/hP5hG7 You can cherry-pick world's best instructors on YouTube, TED, CSpan.org.

Washington Post: it may be wise to skip higher ed: wapo.st/9S9Yti. Higher ed cries out for reinvention.

And the exposing of higher ed continues. This time it's in The Atlantic: http://bit.ly/hxetEC

Finally: U.S. senator demands law schools to stop lying about their employment stats; abovethelaw.com/2011/03/watch-…

Major authoritative new study says that students learn little or nothing at college. http://yhoo.it/grcHNn

My lecture at U.C. Berkeley: America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education: wp.me/pQChF-P4

Yet another piece on why college is overrated http://su.pr/8B2Ni7

Finally, HERE is an article of mine, America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education, which first appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education and was republished in a number of other places. I like to think it encouraged the current examination of higher education, which had been America's most underexamined icon.

I want to thank readers of this blog, for example, Peter Christensen and Mark Drevno for sending me a number of the cited articles. I apologize for not recalling the other contributors' names.