The Implications of Young Adult Unemployment

The Great Depression and the Recession are not so different Aside from the fact that there are few today who have direct memories of the Great Depression of the 1930s, both would appear quite similar, except there are several things which serve to discriminate between the two events:  As a consequence of the Depression, there are a number of Safety Nets, installed by the government, which make some of the catastrophic economic events, occurring then, now impossible. Panic driven collapsing banks, because of the FDIC can no longer occur, with individual accounts each protected up to $250,000. Regulation of stock market trading prevents complete collapse of investment,  While these factors serve to mitigate the effects of the recession, there are a number of workforce related factors which exacerbate it. Among them are: Job opportunities for uneducated and/or unskilled workers are disappearing at an ever increasing rate. No employment Safety Net, comparable to the WPA exists to absorb unskilled workers into meaningful opportunities to acquire skills and financial independence. Public Education has utterly failed to prepare students to either continue their education or immediately enter the workforce following graduation. In fact, Many are not even making it to High School graduation, particularly from the pool of students living in urban areas. The presence of those unable to speak or write in English, as a result of illegal immigration, severely exacerbates the problems faced by educators and employers, alike. The cost of obtaining a college education has risen astronomically in the last decade, while at the same time restrictions on available seats makes admission available to only a tiny few. For those admitted to colleges and universities, these same individuals face years of indebtedness to pay the high cost of their education. The global economy, which, through outsourcing, has eliminated many jobs which would otherwise be available to Americans. Not only are foreign workers far cheaper to employ, they are more productive than their domestic counterparts. The Consequences for the Young Teen and young adult unemployment is at an all-time high. This is unsurprising when the entire workforce continues to face major disruption. Nearing the end of a severe recession, the lack of jobs comes not only from the few positions available. Skills at searching for available jobs are profoundly lacking. Compounding the problem is a

severe lack of prerequisite preparation for performing even the most minimally demanding work. Within this essay is a link to a number of job applications as they appeared in recent weeks in the Resumes section of Craigs List. Aside from the low potential for attracting employers to this section of Craigs List, you will want to look for some commonalities which severely limit the appeal of these applicants. Among them you will note:  Almost none of these young adults are capable of writing a single error free sentence, let alone a complete paragraph. Worse, they appear to be unaware and/or uncaring of errors they make.  Of equal importance is their apparent ignorance of the expected format expected in an application for employment. Applications are directed at marketing ones skills and potential contributions to a specific employer, or to a well-defined segment of an industry. Proof of formal education, work experience, peripheral skills and talents possessed by the applicant are expected. Taken together, all are directed at improving bottom-line performance and/or cost savings of the employer to which the application is directed. The application is formatted in one of a number of styles representing accepted presentation standards.  Employers are largely disinterested or negatively disposed toward information regarding the applicants personal concerns. This, with the exception of those factors which may interfere with job performance. Instead, they seek pertinent information regarding the skills the applicant can bring to a position. Yet, with few exceptions, these applicants focus largely on their personal concerns, instead of their potential value to the employer.  Studies by linguists and psychologists suggest disjunction between employer expectation and candidate submittals is attributable to measurable characteristics in resumes and application letters. Experienced subjectively, these differences rest on such elements as the ratio of  Function words such as articles and prepositions convey no information, while content words (Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs) are the meat, of a sentence. Actual resumes extracted from Craigs List make clear the stark difference between applicants potentially of value to employers, and those not.  Perhaps what most affects the disregard of errors in applications is the lack of recognition that errors are present.. In a now widely accepted study. The DunningKruger Effect asserts that the ignorant repeatedly demonstrate their lack of knowledge (ignorance) of their ignorance.
People who do things badly, Dr. Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually

supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well. One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully selfassured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence. The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it

 Ultimately, these applicants are unprepared as a result of the failure of Public Education to impart necessary knowledges and skills. A view by several writers is that the educational apparatus is committed to purposes quite different than is its constituency expectation for institutional intent.  While purpose and practice are inseparably linked, teacher/administrator incompetence, stupidity, and, criminality are offered as the proximate cause for failure. This results in young adults unprepared to be successful in gaining employment. Can a few accurately represent the many? Undoubtedly, legitimate questions can be raised whether the few samples to be displayed here are representative of the untold number of recent high school graduates, college students, or those who have just recently received undergraduate degrees. The recently completed decennial census provides us with useful understandings of the dimensions of this problem. Readily apparent is the degree to which formal education affects job opportunities. Shown below is the variance in unemployment occurringbetween various levels of educational attainment in the adult population:

Particular sensitivity is shown in periods of recession. Below, compare these levels of unemployment between the years 2006 and 2008. Green demonstrates a period of strong performance, with Red increasing, after the reported end of the recession in late 2009. The y-axis represents the percentage unemployed by category (x-axis).

What becomes readily apparent is the large difference between good times and bad among those with differing degrees of educational attainment. College graduates experienced only modest differences in unemployment rates during the periods examined.However, those without a high school diploma found themselves hugely disadvantaged from their better educated contemporaries.

Black, or Hispanic, first-time job searchers are at even greater disadvantage.. Those in the 15-19 age range have demonstrably suffered to a far greater degree than even adult Blacks or Hispanics. If one is a member of either of these minorities and in the 15-19 age Cohort, unemployment will approximatenearly 50%. Even in the best of times, this age cohort exceeded 15% unemployment. During November, 2009 nearly 25% of them were unable to find work of any kind.

A Multi-Dimensional Problem Equally problematic, as demonstrated in the resumes, is the self-important attitudes of many, in this 15-19 age group. Not only do they lack marketable skills, and essential communication tools, they lack the capacity to divert attention from their personal problems. Deviations from generally accepted content and formatting of application materials will give rise to concern about the applicants ignorance of workplace procedures. The employer will additionally be concerned with the applicantscapability or willingness to conform to normal procedures expected of their employees. After failing to ensure that high school graduates have even rudimentary writing skills, schools neglect to prepare them for successful workplace readiness. Last, but far from least, resume placement on Craigs List of is likely to attract the attention of few employers. With all the resume resources available, Craigs list holds little appeal as a source for qualified applicants. High school and college students have changed in the last 50 years A half-century ago, I was a middle school teacher of English and Social Studies. I can say with some certainty, that the intellectual capabilities of young people are different today than they were during that period. Many reading this will suggest that I am responding to anecdotal memory instead of evidence. Fortunately, the Internet provides a time machine, making it possible to compare writing skills of some long-ago students to their current writing product. I have had the opportunity to reconnect with a number of my former students and employees from many years ago. Generations ago, while employed in companies I founded, teens and young adults worked to design, produce, and market our products. The written communications they produced were markedly different than the incoherent, vapid, babblings of current employment seekers. In the late 1990s Ebonics or Ghetto English became a part of the urban linguistic landscape. It was, for all practical purposes, indecipherable by any who had been raised in a home where Standard English was employed.
Ebonics is a term that was originally intended to refer to the language of all people descended from enslaved Black Africans, particularly in West Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. Over time, and especially since 1996, it has been used more often to refer to African American Vernacular English (distinctively nonstandard Black United States English), asserting the independence of this from (standard) English

Readers of the above materials will find the comments I make markedly devoid of any compassion for these writers. Most hiring managers will agree a majority of all applicants show an astonishing ineptitude for any job which might be open. It is particularly distressing to find this unfitness, since so many applicants indicate college/university enrollment.

Correlation, causation, and conclusions The content that you have been reading to this point is almost entirely factual. We have a number of disparate facts, the importance of which is perhaps less than evident. If we think of these facts as dots, then conclusions are the glue, which links them together to provide useful meaning. Each of these facts is, in some way related or correlated. with each of the others. In this case, the facts which are available suggest a nation in serious trouble, the nature of which is seldom addressed in the Mainstream Media. To further explore these facts, we must first detail some of the data earlier presented. As the recession worsened, the number of unemployed in the 15 to 19 age range rapidly deteriorated. Not only was teen unemployment, even in the best of economic circumstances, far worse than any other demographic, but it rapidly degraded as economic circumstances worsened. The large variance in each year demonstrates the sensitivity of this measurement to changes in the economy.

The Boomerangs  Healthy Workplace reports that 9% of all respondents reported having an adult child living at home. This reflects the results of the 2000 U.S. census, which showed that 4 million people (10 % of the of that age cohort) between the ages of 25 and 34 currently live with their parents; this is double the percentage of that age group who lived with their parents 50 years ago.  If we continue with that trend, those who are between the ages of 18 to 34 will now total a little over 55 million. Extending the earlier 10% figure to today, a minimum of 5.5 million or 1.5% of the total population will fail to leave or subsequently return to the homes of their parents. If instead, we use the 2010 unemployment rates

applicable to these age groups, we potentially find 6.7 million returning to the parental home. The disruption to the lives of older adults looking forward their retirement years can be easily understood. Only slightly less apparent is the effect on personal pride and selfimage of those who not only cannot support themselves economically, but additionally must undergo the shame of being subject to the house rules of their parents. Typical employment applications/resumes Click Here to view Sample ResumesThis presentation of resumes uses red to illustrate errors made by youthful job seekers. These are illustrative of the lack of writing communication skills, so essential to obtain employer interest. Readers will note that almost the entirety of each of these samples lack useful information to a potential employer. At the same time, the focus on applicant personal distress drives off any who might otherwise be interested. Among the commonalities linking all of these applications to one another are two things. First, you will notice a word which, in its adjectival or adverbial form is common to 37.5% of the sampled applications. While likely those using the word Desperate, areindeed in that condition, this assertion almost certainly negatively impacts their objective getting a job. The use of that word, coupled with 14 others, can be thought of as kill, words. That is to say, that the presence of one or more of these words decreases (Kills) the probability of interest on the part of any potential employer. None of these applicants has much to offer, but whatever that might be, is overshadowed by the applicants declaration of misery.These 'killer," words are shown, with the degree to which their frequency impacts the credibility of the application. In circumstances where the applicant chooses to dump personal problems upon the employer, these are probably sufficient to remove him from consideration. Over the last decade, a small group of researchers have adopted a goal of attempting to understand how the words people use in their daily interactions reflect who they are and what they are doing. In the analysis which follows, I have taken the work of Cindy Chung and James Pennebaker, two social psychologists, and applied their findings to the preceding resumes. Admittedly, while computers can rapidly and more efficiently count the frequencyof occurrences of words, they are far less successful when attempting to contextualize these occurrences. As an example, the word, mad, has a variety of meanings, depending on the words surrounding it. Clearly, the use of this word in the sentence, I am really mad at him, is quite different than, I am mad for ice cream, and, He has

gone completely mad. Such work still remains in the domain of what human beings alone can do. In an extensive study conducted by the previously referenced authors, the numbers of words used by literate adults in conversation is in the range of 100,000. Yet, a group of approximately only 400 words compose almost half of what we say or write! These words are designated as Function Words, with some of those classified as such, shown below;

These words communicate little. Instead, they are the cement, which makes our speech smooth, uninterrupted, and comfortable for the listener. The heavy lifting of communication is done by Content Words.

In a .pdf authored by Chang and Pennebaker, titled The Psychological Functions of Function Words, we are introduced to the role of the brain in processing these quite separate and distinct elements of speech.
Sex and Age There are sex differences in the use of virtually all function words: pronouns, prepositions, articles, and auxiliary

verbs. In a study of over 10,000 text files, Newman et al. (2003) found that women tend to use first person singular pronouns at a consistently higher rate than do men. Possible reasons for this difference could be that females are generally more self-focused than men, are more prone to depression than men, or that women have traditionally held lower status positions relative to men. Another large sex difference is that males natural speech and writing contain higher rates of article and noun use, which characterizes categorization, or concrete thinking. On the other hand, females use more verbs (especially auxiliary verbs), which highlight females relational orientations. Age differences in function words are also robust. Pennebaker and Stone (2003) found that people use fewer first person singular words and greater first person plural words with age. This, along with the greater use of exclusive words, suggests that as people age they make more distinctions and psychologically distance themselves from their topics. In other words, older people speak with greater cognitive complexity. Interestingly, the analysis of their auxiliary verbs indicates that people use more future tense and less past tense the older they get, suggesting a shift in focus through the aging process.

Ultimately, the essence of a communication comes from the nouns and verbs. While they do the primary work of communication, the adjectives, adverbs, and interjections enrich and enhance the communication of spoken words. Content words and function words are stored and processed in two separate and distinct sections of the brain.

In general, the majority of language functions are housed in the temporal and frontal lobes. Within the left temporal lobe (at least for most people) is Wernickes area. Wernickes area is critical for both understanding and generating most advanced speech including nouns, regular verbs and most adjectives. Brocas area on the other hand is situated in the

left frontal lobe. Damage to Brocas area while Wernickes area is intact results in people speaking in a painfully slow, hesitating way. People with a functioning Broacas area, but with damage to Wernickes -- exhibit a completely different social style. These people often speak warmly and fluidly while maintaining eye contact with the target person. The only problem is that they primarily use function words with no content at all.

In the aggregate, the resumes consisted of some 2,024 words. Fully 49.38% of the words in the aggregate application are words which are Function words. They communicate little or no relevant information to the potential employer.

How much is too much? For resumes and application cover letters, Function Words should be held to a minimum, Content is focused on providing value to the employer. Comparing normative values of Published Content, to that produced in the sample resumes, there is an important difference.

For the statistically minded we find a 2,56% difference between the top 50 words in the test group, and the texts made available for review. In the test group of published (written) text, Function Words occurred in 34.55% of the total, where in our test sample (Sample Resumes), the number was 37.11%. Our confidence that this represents a statistically significant difference at the 5% level is reflected in the paired T-Test shown below:

Machine assessment of applications The larger the employer payroll, the greater is the likelihood that resumes and cover letters will be machine screened, before human intervention occurs. There are a number of factors which can be readily assessed by computer which provide Human Resource personnel, and/or hiring managers with candidates most likely to be successful if hired,  Subtleties such as whether the ratio of  will seldom, if

ever, be considered by the candidate in his preparation of application documents. Yet, when this ratio exceeds this value, readers become increasingly suspicious of the lack of substantive content contained inthese documents.  The Department of Education maintains a downloadable list of all accredited postsecondary institutions in the United States. Verification of degree achievement can be readily obtained with automatic querying of institutions claimed as having issued a degree. Such queries require permission by the candidate, secured for use during the execution of the background check. The current world of Distance Learning and

Online Courses requires a determination, not only of the candidates achievement, but verification of institutional accreditation.  Finding the right person for a particular job is currently a very much heuristic (hit and miss) proposition. A number of Linguistics researchers have posited that much can be obtained by looking for particular markers, in the speech and written communications of persons being evaluated. The work of Pennebaker and Stone was earlier briefly mentioned. A paper published in the Journal of Research in Personality, was directed at a linguistic analysis of four of the 2004 presidential candidates. Previously their work was mentioned in a 2003 study, where they were Principal Investigators. Summarized below are some of their findings:
For example, depressed individuals and those who are low in self-acceptance tend to use more 1st-person singular pronouns (e.g., I, me, my) compared to non-depressed individuals and those higher in self acceptance (Rude, Gortner, & Pennebaker, 2004; Weintraub, 1981). Use of 1st-person singular has also been shown to be related to honesty. In a series of linguistic lie detector studies, when people were being honest they were more likely to use words such as I, me, and my, [make] more references to other people, more exclusion words (e.g., except, without, but), and fewer negative emotion words (Newman, Pennebaker, Berry, & Richards, 2003). Linguistic style can also yield clues to a persons thinking style, such as complexity of thought. For example, the use of insightful (e.g., think, understand, realize) and causal words (e.g., because, cause, effect) has been linked to higher grades among college students (Pennebaker & Francis, 1996) and higher levels of Openness to Experience (Pennebaker & King, 1999). Indeed, analyses of causal words and statements have proved to be powerful predictors of peoples traits and behaviors (Zullow et al., 1988). Word use can also reflect age, sex, and other demographic variables. For example, with increasing age, individuals tend to use more positive emotion words, fewer negative emotion words, more future tense and fewer past tense verbs.

 With many more candidates than jobs available, focused evaluations of candidates writing can greatly improve the likely quality of ultimately selected candidates. This can be achieved by removing many of the failures elicited by gut feel, during an interview. And then there is Education There is one skill, totally essential for the acquisition of any disciplines most rudimentary knowledge. That skill is the ability to read, and integrate complex information with that already known. Formal learning may broadly be divided into two classes Skills and Content. After teaching basic reading skills and arithmetic

operations, much of the remainder of public education is directed at rote learning of content. Talk to any manager of employees, and you will get essentially the same complaint employees lack Critical Thinking Skills. Except for leading edge companies like Google, where only the most talented are hired, many agree that current (especially young) employees Lack initiative. As an example of this, managers complain that their reports come to them far too often for direction regarding assignments. Conversely, some will complain of impulsive decisions resulting in unwanted consequences. Ultimately we have to look at the institution of Public Education to understand how this has happened. This perception of the lack of these skills is often translated as the employee being lacking in, common sense. At times, in demonstrating the lack of self-sufficiency such employees may be perceived as being lazy or disinterested in their work. Classifying desired behavior This problem of defining desired behavior was greatly ameliorated when, In 1956, Benjamin Bloom, with a group of educational psychologists, found a definitional solution. They created a classification system which came to be known as Blooms Taxonomy. That classification system uses action verbs associated to each of the behaviors shown in the table following. BEHAVIOR Remembering: can the student recall or remember the information? Understanding: can the student explain ideas or concepts? DESCRIPTIVE VERBS define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce state classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write. compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test. appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluate assemble, construct, create, design, develop,

Applying: Cann the student use the information in a new way?

Analyzing: Can the student distinguish between the different parts? Evaluating: can the student justify a stand or decision? Synthesizing/Creating: can the student

create a new product or point of view?

formulate, write.

These skills can be represented by a triangle, with Analysis Evaluation and Synthesis skills demonstrated by many fewer individuals, than those shown at the bottom of the figure.

Few would disagree about the importance of the last three elements.Yet, we see K-12 Education eliciting few, if any, of these most important skills. In the Primary grades (K-3) teaching is directed, almost exclusively to Remembering and Understanding.

At these grade and age groups, such a limited focus is justifiable. This, because these students have not reached the point in brain development, where more complex learning and conceptualization can be successfully achieved. Two areas receive the greatest attention. With much of early reading currently taught using the Whole Word Recognition, initial reading skills, focused on vocabulary development, relies heavily on rote memory. Lacking the word attack skills common to the Phonics method, learners are deprived of the ability to incorporate new words into their vocabularies. The ultimate consequence of having a limited vocabulary is a distaste for reading the printed word. In the case of the teaching of basic arithmetic, teachers utilize learning tools such as flash cards to instill addition and subtraction facts along with multiplication tables. When it comes to understanding higher order mathematics such students are almost invariably

at a loss. Thus, 20 years later, needed mathematicians, statisticians, and talented programmers are difficult to find. Those in Upper Elementary grades (Grades 4-6) experience the introduction of limited Application or Problem Solving skills.

These are almost entirely focused on Arithmetic operations, and are at the lowest level of the three kinds of tools for problem solution. Most problemsolving usually entails one of three methods:  Algorithmic: This is another way of saying Rule Application. Using this method, all problems of the same type are solved using one or a series of rules applied to the problem. Example: Convert a mixed number to a fraction with a single numerator and denominator.  Heuristic: When a trial and error approach is applied to a problem, the approach is designated as employing Heuristics. Example: Find the fastest route through a maze.(Few would say that rodents running through a maze do anything more the first time through, then use heuristics.)  Stochastic: This method involves he making of a Best Choice, based on the probability that desired or undesired consequences will occur. It is used in such diverse situations as economic Cost Benefit analyses, Game Theory Applications, and Decision Theory. Example: You have a 65% chance of winning $25.00, and 35%chance losing $21.43or you have aa 65% chance of winning $0.00 and only a35% chance of winning $5.00. Which do you choose?

Note that in repeated trials of both choices, you are likely to average exactly the same winnings of $8.75 whether you select CHOICE 1 or CHOICE 2. Most will choose Choice #2, because, in the worst case they lose nothing. This choice will be made, even while the player has a better chance of making $16.25, then of losing $7.50 Why this choice? Because the majority of people tend to be highly risk averse, or risk avoiding. While CHOICE 1 offers a much better opportunity, the small chance of losing anything scares most away. The reverse is true when applied to the raging hormones, (adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, et al) which inform the behavior of the pubescent teen male. The greater is the risk, the greater the Rush. This is true to a somewhat lesser, but equally alarming degree with teen girls. (Teen pregnancy or STD, anyone?) Implications for the Clasroom There is a whole world of information out there, free for the taking. For many, child or adult, that information is either unseen or unprocessed. Game Theory and Stochastics Very few teachers have the necessary knowledge to teach these more complex skills. It should be noted that the very foundation of public education is premised on there being only one right, answer to every question. The use of heuristic and stochastic methods leads to a variance in acceptable solutions. A foundation upon which school curricula are based is an expectation that students will conform, and thus produce a single correct answer. This is the answer which is most often provided by either textbook or teacher. For this to occur there can be little deviation from acceptable answers. While the problem above appears artificial, we all make many decisions each day. While the magnitude of decisions made by school children infrequently approaches the importance of those made by adults, an understanding of the processes involved throws light on the mystery of the poor choices made by so many. It seems safe to say that few public school teachers have any working familiarity with these tools, let alone, able to teach them in the classroom. A situation, often experienced in real life, and even more frequently portrayed on television is aptly named, the Prisoners Dilemma:
The Classic Prisoners Dilemma (Kid Version)

The following is the scenario given to both players: Last night, your school was vandalized. Classroom furniture was broken, walls were defaced with graffiti, and a lot of other damage was done. You and another individual are blamed by the principal. The principal does not yet have all the information he needs to take action. Both you and the other person are placed in separate offices.

If you identify the other individual as having done the damage, while claiming your innocence, before he does the same thing (You Defect, from the other person) while he remains says nothing to blame you, (he Cooperates, with you), then you get no punishment and the he is expelled and police charges are filed against him. If he Defects (Rats you out, while you protect him, he goes free, you are expelled with the police charging just you with the crime. If both of you blame (Defect) blame the other, each of you is suspended, and then required to make restitution (pay for all the damages, but no charges are filed with the police.. Finally, both of you can Cooperate, with each claiming not only his innocence, but, no knowledge of what the other person was doing. (I wasnt there, so how do I know what the other guy did?). In that case, both of you receive a short suspension, but the principal can do nothing more. Each of you must choose to either betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should you act?

His Choices
Both Cooperate (Stay silent) Both Get In School Suspension Your Choices He Defects (Rats you out), You Cooperate You are expelled, prosecuted He goes Free You Rat him Out (Defect), He Stays silent (Cooperates) You go Free, He is Expelled

Both Defect Both must share in payment of restitution and are suspended, but not expelled

Since this is played as a game for points, these results can be translated into a point schedule: Use the colors as the result for each player in each situation. His Choices Both Cooperate (Stay silent) 5,5 You Rat him Out (Defect), He Stays silent (Cooperates) 10,-10

Your Choices

He Defects (Rats you out), You Cooperate -10, 10

Both Defect 0,0

The key to making this decision is in an estimation made by each of what the other player is most likely to do, if each takes the safest course that of defecting. They will reason that if the other player is foolish enough to cooperate, then there is a big win for the defecting player. Thus, the safest course for both players is to defect. Conversely, Risk Takers will assume that both players are rational, and will wish to maximize their point gains. If the Risk Taker is right, both will cooperate. Typically, the game is played with more than one round or trial. Both players know what the other has done during the first trial, so each will have some greater basis to predict what the other will do in subsequent trials. Rational players will match the tactics of the of the other players previous trial. This strategy of matching is referred to as, Tit for Tat, and is generally conceded to be the safest for all concerned. When both players receive the same score, they are said to be in Equilibrium, that state named for its discoverer, John Nash, thus designated as the Nash Equilibrium. (As a side note, Nash is the subject of the Hollywood movie A Beautiful Mind. The film is loosely based on the biography of the same name, focusing on Nash's mathematical genius and struggle with paranoid schizophrenia.)
When irrationality Rules the modified Chicken Game

When Prisoners Dilemma (PD) is played with many players, all behaving rationally, it quickly settles into a boring Tit-for-Tat response,(Each player does what the other player did in the previous round) ending up with both players typically cooperating. This becomes an all too predictable (and boring) process. The Chicken Game, modified by this author provides much more opportunity for irrationality, especially when one of the players is a computer. The Scenario As you can see in this photo, the road which allows for one car heading in each direction narrows to a bridge, accommodating only one car on the bridge. Each player has the objective of driving across the bridge before the other does the same thing.

Scoring Each player, of course has two, choices. The first is to drive (Defect) hoping to cross the bridge without incurring a collision, A Successful Drive yields 20 points to the player. A collision gives each player -5 points. Three collisions and the game is over, regardless of the trial when the 3rd collision takes place. Players are thus extracted, both having a score of -15 points, and the game for them is over. The second choice available to each player is to Swerve (Cooperate). Here the score is variable, counting down from 10 seconds to the last second when a swerve is possible. Beginning with 10 seconds the score increases by 2 for each second closer to 0 the player elects to swerve. Thus at 10 seconds, the score is 0, at 9, 2, at 8, 4, etc. However, just as in real life, the closer one gets to the bridge the more chance there is that car and/or driver will be injured and/or the card damage by losing control, colliding with the metal fence, or rolling into the gully crossed by the bridge. The chance of this happening is in direct proportion to the time remaining. Thus at 10 seconds there is 0% chance of injury, while at 1 second there is a 90% chance of injury. If injury occurs, the driver gets 0 points, but this can happen many times without the driver losing points already earned, or being removed from the game.

Since the Risk Averse player is likely to make very few tries at driving across the bridge, he is given a number of times after which he must drive through. This is counted from the last trial a drive was attempted, regardless of whether both players collided. Many of these permutations, of course, require a computer and accompanying software. Decision time for each player is recorded, and at the end of each round, the play made by both players is displayed. To make driving simple, forward drive continues until the Space Bar is pressed, at which point the player has swerved. There are two obvious challenges to each player in mastering this game. First, each player must assess the intent of the other player, based on tactics undertaken in previous rounds of play. At the same time, each player must insure that he stays within the metrics which are personally applicable to him.
The Role of Technology

Many who have read the materials above may reach the conclusion that complex computer technology is essential to game play. Not so. While access to a computer for each player, projection of results, and a programmer to implement sophisticated countdown software are all highly desirable, that is best-case, seldom seen technology availability. Many classrooms or even informal gatherings of friends will have none of this. Instead, an understanding of the intent of the game and the mechanics of play make any level. (including nothing but pen and paper) of technology no barrier to play of the game. If scoring is to be manually done, the two players sit facing the class, with a divider between them. The Game Manager (Usually the teacher) uses a stop watch to orally count down the time remaining. Players indicate a swerve by raising the arm furthest from the opposing player. The Scorer (a student) uses at least one computer to generate a random number to determine whether the Swerve resulted in an injury or not. With not even a single computer available, all swerves have a 50% chance of injury, determined by a coin toss.

All of which is connected to education, how? Success in this game is entirely based on risk taking, rational betting on the odds, and reading the intent of the other player. In many ways the challenge of these games is not unlike that experienced by players of Texas Hold em. The Game Manager (teacher or someone chosen by the players to referee) tunes, game play to the Instructional Objectives. Here are some possible variants to the knowledge available to players:  Players play complete strangers, so all have they to go on are the previous plays in the game to make predictions about what the opposing player will do in the current round of play.;  Players are furnished game patterns from a number of previous game plays of the opposing player;  If played by members of the same class, players are told who they are playing against. They may also receive ratings by other class members regarding the degree of risk taking predicted to be engaged in by both players;  In another variant of the game, players are able to see each other, potentially reading tells, (facial expression, body language) before a Drive or Swerve, etc. (anyone who is a Texas Hold Emplayer instantly knows the importance of this!) The above games by no means exhaust the variety of single player, two player and multiple player games available. There is the detection and use of patterns of player behavior. Yet, what the student learns at school counters and is in direct opposition to this process. There are no bets, no gambles. Since all information either comes from, or is approved by the teacher the, Probability of correctness of any teacher instigatedanswer is (p) =1.0. All is Black or White, with no Greys. Answers are either Right or Wrong. There is little or no tolerance for, let alone learning from, mistakes. Schools are busy hiding in plain sight The Little Red Schoolhouse, is not there for what you thought it was! For all those who believe that schools have as their primary invention the teaching of intellectual skills and important content, some would suggest that there is nothing further from the truth

The great satirist, H. L. Mencken, wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not:
to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States... and that is its aim everywhere else.

Retired Educator, John Taylor Gatto, in 2001, delivered a scathing attack on Public Education, with his article, titled, Against Education. He begins by positing a Prussian influence on educational goal setting, noting:
The odd fact of a Prussian provenance for our schools pops up again and again once you know to look for it. William James alluded to it many times at the turn of the century. Orestes Brownson, the hero of Christopher Lasch's 1991 book, The True and Only Heaven, was publicly denouncing the Prussianization of American schools back in the 1840s. Horace Mann's Seventh Annual Report to the Massachusetts State Board of Education in 1843 is essentially a paean to the land of Frederick the Great and a call for its schooling to be brought here. That Prussian culture loomed large in America is hardly surprising, given our early association with that utopian state. A Prussian served as Washington's aide during the Revolutionary War, and so many German- speaking people had settled here by 1795 that Congress considered publishing a German-language edition of the federal laws. But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens - all in order to render the populace manageable.

Having established this view, he refers to Alexander Inglis 1918 book, Principles of Secondary Education, in which "one saw this revolution through the eyes of a revolutionary."Inglis posits six purposes for U.S. Education, which taken together, suggest that the world of 1984 had its birth long before Orwell even considered its writing:
1) The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are to establish fixed habits of reaction to authority. This, of course, precludes critical judgment completely. [Emphasis Author] It also pretty much destroys the idea that useful or interesting material should be taught, because you can't test for reflexive obedience until you know whether you can make kids learn, and do, foolish and boring things.

2) The integrating function. This might well be called "the conformity function," because its intention is to make children as alike as possible. People who conform are predictable, and this is of great use to those who wish to harness and manipulate a large labor force. 3) The diagnostic and directive function. School is meant to determine each student's proper social role. This is done by logging evidence mathematically and anecdotally on cumulative records. As in "your permanent record." Yes, you do have one. 4) The differentiating function. Once their social role has been "diagnosed," children are to be sorted by role and trained only so far as their destination in the social machine merits - and not one step further. So much for making kids their personal best. 5) The selective function. This refers not to human choice at all but to Darwin's theory of natural selection as applied to what he called "the favored races." In short, the idea is to help things along by consciously attempting to improve the breeding stock. Schools are meant to tag the unfit - with poor grades, remedial placement, and other punishments - clearly enough that their peers will accept them as inferior and effectively bar them from the reproductive sweepstakes. That's what all those little humiliations from first grade onward were intended to do: wash the dirt down the drain. 6) The propaedeutic function. The societal system implied by these rules will require an elite group of caretakers. To that end, a small fraction of the kids will quietly be taught how to manage this continuing project, how to watch over and control a population deliberately dumbed down and declawed in order that government might proceed unchallenged and corporations might never want for obedient labor.

It will come as little surprises that those who choose preparation for teaching as their intended college major are less than the brightest of the Freshman classes, as indicated in this study of the estimated IQ by Intended Major of college Freshmen.
Assuming the mean IQ of SAT test-takers included in a report by the College Board to be 103*, the estimated average IQ of students by intended college major follow. The estimates exclude writing results, which were added in 2005 and constitute what is generally considered the least objectively reliable part of the test**. The critical reading and mathematics (previously known as the quantitative section) portions are equally weighted: Nothing too terribly surprising, Education is at the bottom of the degree fields not typically offered at vocational schools. The kids who want to study religion through a lens of mythology are a little smarter than the kids who want to be practitioners of it. All but the smartest kids tend to shy away from degrees requiring high level math courses, and while still in high school the sharpest of the sharp plan on double majoring.

No Brains, Zero Tolerance Listed Below are a number of incidents enumerated in a site named, Losing my Tolerance for "Zero Tolerance." We begin with these incredible bits of administrative stupidity:
Candy, Little Boy? A Colorado Springs, Colo., school district says it did the right thing when it suspended 6-year-old Seamus Morris under the school's zero-tolerance drug policy. The drug? Lemon drops. Taylor Elementary School administrators called an ambulance after a teacher saw the boy give another student some candy.

Wonder what happened to American inventiveness, and innovation? It might be partially explained when we see this opportunity for motivation inspired by the actions taken by an Arizona school:
Rocket Scientist: David Silverstein, 13, was inspired to build a model rocket after seeing the movie "October Sky", a biography of NASA rocket scientist Homer Hickam. The boy took his rocket, made out of a potato chip canister and fueled with three match heads, to his Glendale, Ariz., school, where it was found in a search of his locker. School officials classified the toy as a "weapon" and suspended him for the rest of the year based on its "zero-tolerance" weapons policy. The police were also called, and the case is being referred to juvenile authorities

From the site, Weird Universe, comes this story, How to Destroy the Lives of Children, referencing teacher, administrator, and police overreaction to an incident of Sexting, between a 13 year old girl and a 12 year old boy:
Two Indiana middle schoolers have been charged with two felonies each for child pornography. What horrible thing did they do to deserve such serious charges? Both the 12 year old 6th grade boy and the 13 year old 7th grade girl sent naked pictures of their genitalia to each other.

"Common Sense," uncommon at this school.

On Monday, a teacher at Junior High School 190 in Queens caught 12year-old Alexa Gonzalez doodling on her desk with a lime green magic marker. Instead of just erasing it, the school called police and the girl was walked out in handcuffs. A day later, Principal Evelyn Mastroianni of Public School 52 on Staten Island nearly suspended 9-year-old Patrick Timoney for playing with an action figure who had a 2-inch gun.

Topping off our exploration of blind stupidity, is this final gem: Teacher puts student in detention for using Linux Showing what is easily one of the greatest over-reactions in recent memory, middle school teacher Karen X (not her real surname), placed the 'offending' student into detention and confiscated his CD's, then fired of this letter to Ken Starks at HeliOS Solutions.

"...observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort. The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a conference with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization. Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful. These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting Linux on these machines is holding our kids back. This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older version of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them..."

To Which Stark makes a partial response:

I suppose I should, before anything else, thank you. You have given me the opportunity to show others just what a battle we face in what we do. "We" being those who advocate, support and use Free Open Source Software and Linux in particular. First off, if there was even the slightest chance that I was doing something illegal, it would not have been done. To think that I would involve my kids in my "illegal" activities is an insult far beyond outrage. You should be ashamed of yourself for putting into print such nonsense. And please...investigate to your heart's content. You are about to have your eyes opened, that is if you actually investigate anything at all. Linux is a free as-in-cost and free as-in-license operating system. It was designed specifically for those purposes. Linux is used to free people from Microsoft. The fact that you seem to believe that Microsoft is the end all and be-all is actually funny in a sad sort of way. Then again, being a good NEA member, you would spout the Union line. Microsoft has pumped tens of millions of dollars into your union. Of course you are going to "recommend" Microsoft Windows". To do otherwise would probably get you reprimanded at the least and fired at the worst. You are only doing what you've been instructed to do. You've been trained well.

The shame of it is, you are trapped with millions of other teachers in obeying the NEA and preaching the goodness of Windows and Microsoft. A superior, free and absolutely entertaining method of operating your computer is within reach and you are unable to grasp it. The most disturbing part of this resides in the fact that the AISD purchases millions of dollars of Microsoft Software in a year's time when that money could be better spent on educating our children. A dedicated School Teacher would recognize that fact and lobby for the change to Free Open Source Software and let the money formally spent on MS bindware be used on our kids. A teacher who cared about her students would do that. That is sad past my ability to express it to you. Don't shackle your students in your prison Karen. Now. You give that boy his disks back. Aaron is a brilliant kid and he's learned more using Linux than he ever did using Windows. Those disks and their distribution are perfectly legal and even if he was "disruptive", you cannot keep his property. I have placed a call to the AISD Superintendent and cc'd him a complete copy of your email. It looks like we will get to meet in his office when School starts again after the holiday. I am anxious to meet a person who is this uninformed and still holds a position of authority and learnedness over our children. Ken Starks HeliOS Solutions

The Predatory Teacher Every profession has its share of both incompetent and corrupt practitioners. In this 2007 story, L.A.'s Public Health Crisis, the closing of Martin Luther King Hospital, resulting from excessive mortality rates, a total disregard for its patients, and removal of accreditation is detailed. The news of its closing perhaps pales, when compared with the probable effect of teacher incompetence and criminality on those who are its victims. Using this search: (Teacher OR Coach) + (Sex OR Molest OR Porn OR Drugs OR suspended)

Teacher- oach Arrests 2005-09

3000 2500 2000

ount 1500 1000 500 0 1 2 3 4 5

It yielded these numbers of news stories for the years referenced. Shown below is a random list of teachers being investigated accused, convicted or sentenced for criminal acts involving either students at their schools, or in the general population. It should be noted that this list was pulled in mid-July, 2011, with schools closed for summer vacation. The daily take from the above search yields five to 10 teachers each day! LI teacher pleads not guilty to abusing 14 kids Former Magoffin County School Teacher Pleads Guilty To Gun And Drug Charge Coach enticed teens to do sex acts Ex-coach guilty of harassment after thousands of texts, calls to teen Defense grills alleged victim in coach sex case Not guilty plea from coach accused of molesting boy Ex-El Capitan Swim Coach Guilty of Molesting Teenage Student to be Sentenced When Teachers Cheat Cheating by students comes as no surprise when the same behavior is engaged in by their teachers. In the last several years. Heating, as a tool for increasing school funding has become commonplace, as illustrated by this 2006 story from New Jersey. By no means are limited either to place or time, here are some additional stories which illustrate the magnitude of the problem: A 2004 report of teacher cheating while responding to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requirements, related to school funding was issued. It showed that, schools have seized on test score manipulation to get a piece of the promised funding instead of reporting pupil achievement
In April, [2004] eighth-graders at Sunset Ridge School in Northfield, Ill., a wealthy suburb north of Chicago, reported a

ear

troubling incident to school officials: Someone had changed answers on the math portion of the end-of-the-year state achievement test they had just taken. An inquiry found altered multiple-choice answers on 90% of the tests the school's 80 eighth-graders had been given under the federal No Child Left Behind law. But it wasn't kids using crib sheets or stealing into classrooms to tamper with tests. Instead, suspicion fell on an eighth-grade teacher who denied cheating but promptly resigned, school officials say. (His name hasn't been released, so he couldn't be reached for comment.) Now the Illinois Board of Education is investigating. And administrators there and elsewhere are worried that even among wealthy, top-performing schools like Sunset Ridge, teachers who are under pressure to show stellar results on state standardized tests may be cutting corners. "Teachers and administrators, like rabbis and priests, must be held to the highest standards because we are role models for kids," says Sunset Ridge principal Howard Bultinck.

A 2007 report of California school initiated cheating seeks an explanation (rationalization?) for this increasingly ubiquitous activity:
Teachers have helped students cheat on California's high-stakes achievement tests -- or blundered badly enough to compromise their validity -- in at least 123 public schools since 2004, a Chronicle review of documents shows. Schools admitted outright cheating in about two-thirds of the cases. And while the number reporting problems represents a small fraction of the state's 9,468 public schools, some experts think the practice of cooking the test results is more widespread -- Teachers in East Palo Alto, Los Angeles and Alhambra (Los Angeles County) let students consult world maps or helpful reference sheets as they took their state exams. -- In Modesto, a teacher let his eighth-graders use calculators on the 2006 math test. -- Teachers in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, San Jose and elsewhere simply helped students answer the questions. These are among the known examples of cheating. But California's method of checking for cheaters makes it impossible to know how common the practice is. Each year, California scans millions of tests in search of unusually high numbers of erased answers changed from wrong to right. The tests were the California Standards Test and the California Achievement Test Sixth Edition, given annually to students in grades two through 11. Between 2004 and 2006, the scans found suspicious erasures in 459 classrooms at 162 schools.

The refrain, It cant happen here, perhapsmakes some feel immune to the problem. But no one is. A New York Times article reveals an entire urban school system which has built its reputation as a sterling example of educational reform. The scandal affecting the city of Atlanta, GA goes back to 1999, when a new prize winning superintendent took control. For several years suspicions ere aroused but only now, do we get full confirmation of the magnitude of the systematic cheating requiring at least 12,000 students to take remedial classes, while involving more than 200 teachers and/or administrators. The incompetent Teacher Many years ago a Supreme Court justice reacting to a case involving alleged obscenity, said something like, I cant define it, but I will know it when I see it. Making the assessment of teacher competency is much like that statement. Anyone observing a classroom can immediately determine whether students are engaged, giving their attention to the instructional activity, and demonstrating interest in the content being taught. Conversely, the classroom filled with bored, inattentive, and disrupting students gives clear indication that the teacher is failing in her instructional responsibilities. In a list of a Estimated IQ by Intended Major, Education ranked 28 in a total of 28 college majors. With a imputed IQ of 99.3, those who have chosen teaching as a profession are near the bottom of students who will assume leadership roles in coming years. Another more intensive examination of this problem demonstrates the degree to which there exists a major difference between teaching and other professions.

While high school teachers are significantly ahead of their elementary school counterparts, whether we look at Maximums, Minimums or Medians, the difference between these and other professions are startlingly apparent. This graph was adapted from Figure 12 of Hauser, Robert M. 2002. "Meritocracy, cognitive ability, and the sources of occupational success." CDE Working Paper 98-07 (rev). Center for Demography and Ecology, The University of WisconsinMadison, Madison, Wisconsin. The figure is labeled "Wisconsin Men's HenmonNelson IQ Distributions for 1992-94 Occupation Groups with 30 Cases or More" and is found at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/98-07.pdf.

While it may be difficult to quantify reasons for seeking work in other professions, the attrition rate is greater than many other kinds of work, and suggestive of the stress which accompanies this job. Another explanation is that such work is merely a way station while the incumbent completes his education, lessening the economic demands of achieving an advanced degree. Approximately 50% teachers beginning their inservice positions, leave to do something totally unrelated to teaching within the first five years followinginitial hire. As a measure of the degree to which incompetence is a part of what must be dealt with on a day to day basis by school administrators this investigation of the New York Rubber Rooms,", where some 700 teachers sit day after day, costing the city some sixty five million dollars for the 700 suspended teachers who do nothing but receive their pay. Those who come to the teaching profession have the same kind of problem baggage as do workers in any other profession. Nonetheless, young children and teens often use teachers and coaches as role models. Thus, teachers and other professionals interactingwith them,if notheld to higher behavioral standards than other professions, can do enormous damage. Rigidity of teacher beliefs oftenreadily adopted by their students People tend to think of perception as a passive process. We see, hear, smell, taste or feel stimuli that impinge upon our senses. We think that if we are at all objective, we record what is actually there. Yet perception is demonstrably an active rather than a passive process; it constructs rather than records reality. Perception implies understanding as well as awareness. It is a process of inference in which the individual constructs his own version of reality on the basis of information he receives through his senses, Many experiments have been conducted to show the extraordinary extent to which the information obtained by an observer depends upon the observers own assumptions and preconceptions. Yet, little or no classroom attention is directed at the sharpening of these missing skills. Consider the information shown in the Figure below:

Did you perceive the information correctly? If so, you have exceptional powers of observation, were lucky, or have seen the figure before. This simple experiment demonstrates one of the most fundamental principles concerning perception:

We tend to perceive what we expect to perceive. A corollary of this principle is that it takes more information, and more unambiguous information, to recognize an unexpected phenomenon than an expected one. Expectations have many diverse sources, including past experience, education and cultural and organizational norms. Perception is also influenced by the context in which it occurs. Different circumstances elicit different sets of expectations. People are more attuned to hearing footsteps behind them when walking in an alley at night than along a city street in daytime, and the meaning attributed to the sound of footsteps will vary under these differing circumstances tuned to perceive indicators of potential conflict. Patterns of expectations tell us, subconsciously, what to look for, what is important, and how to interpret what is seen. These patterns form a mind-set that causes us to think in certain ways. A mind-set is akin to a screen or lens through which we see and interpret the world. There is a tendency to think of a mind-set as something bad, to be avoided. According to this line of argument, one should have an open mind and be influenced only by the facts rather than by preconceived notions! That is an unreachable ideal. There is no such thing as the facts of the case. There is only a very selective subset of the overall mass of data to which one has been subjected that one takes as facts and judges to be relevant to the question at issue. Mind-sets tend to be quick to form but resistant to change. This principle is illustrated by showing part of a longer series of progressively modified drawings that change almost imperceptibly from a woman into a man.

The center drawing, when viewed alone, has equal chances of being perceived as a man or a woman. When test subjects are shown the entire series of drawings, their perception of this intermediate drawing is biased according to which end of the series they started from. Test subjects who start by viewing a series, changing from the right to left beginning with a certain male face to one that is uncertain, will classify the boxed drawing as representing a male face.

Conversely, test subjects who start at the woman end of the series are biased in favor of continuing to see a woman.

Clinging to beliefs It is not only visually that we stick to beliefs we first form. Increasingly, evidence appears to point to a phenomenon psychologists call the Confirmation Bias. All this means is that belief comes before fact, and once established, we seek facts that confirm our beliefs, and reject those which do not. Reported in The Boston Globe an article titled, How facts Backfire, clearly contradicts Thomas Jefferson, who, in 1789 said, Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. Its this: Facts dont necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger. This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters the people making decisions about how the country runs arent blank slates. They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.

The general idea is that its absolutely threatening to admit youre wrong, says political scientist Brendan Nyman, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon known as backfire is a natural defense mechanism Once an observer has formed an imagethat is, once he or she has developed a mindset or expectation concerning the phenomenon being observedthis conditions future perceptions of that phenomenon. In this next drawing some viewers see one image, while others see something quite different. What do you see?

For some, they are certain that they see an old woman, while others see a young girl. Are you able to switch between them? Many find it very difficult to switch between what they first saw, and the other view. This phenomenon is very much like the unwillingness that many have to give up beliefs they originally acquired. This resistance to changing beliefs is often maintained in the face of compelling evidence of the falsity of the belief. As but one example of this, a series of articles in Scientific American point to the continuing battle to eliminate Creationism or, Intelligent Design, from American classrooms. One telling number asserts that only 28% of High School Biology teachers provide a rigorous presentation of Darwinian Evolution

At the other extreme, 13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.
That

leaves what the authors call the cautious 60 percent, who avoid controversy by endorsing neither evolution nor its unscientific alternatives. In various ways, they compromise.
The

survey, published in the Jan. 28 issue of Science, found that some avoid intellectual commitment by explaining that they teach evolution only because state examinations require it, and that students do not need to believe in it. Others treat evolution as if it applied only on a molecular level, avoiding any discussion of the evolution of species. And a large number claim that students are free to choose evolution or creationism based on their own beliefs.

Beliefs anchored in concrete The propensity to cling to beliefs, once acquired is referred to as Confirmation Bias. An understanding of this bias makes clear why a change in a belief, once firmly developed, is often impossible to achieve. An in-depth article in the Skeptics Dictionary serves to illuminate and make explicit this all too prevalent phenomenon.
Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs. For example, if you believe that during a full moon there is an increase in admissions to the emergency room where you work, you will take notice of admissions during a full moon, but be inattentive to the moon when admissions occur during other nights of the month. A tendency to do this over time unjustifiably strengthens your belief in the relationship between the full moon and accidents and other lunar effects. The same goes for the unproven relationship between naturally blonde women and breast reconstruction surgery. This tendency to give more attention and weight to data that support our beliefs than we do to contrary data is especially pernicious when our beliefs are little more than prejudices. If our beliefs are firmly established on solid evidence and valid confirmatory experiments, the tendency to give more attention and weight to data that fit with our beliefs should not lead us astray as a rule. Of course, if we become blinded to evidence truly refuting a favored hypothesis, we have crossed the line from reasonableness to closed-mindedness. Numerous studies have demonstrated that people generally give an excessive amount of value to confirmatory information, that is, to positive or supportive data. The "most likely reason for the excessive influence of confirmatory information is that it is easier to deal with cognitively" (Gilovich 1993). It is much easier to see how a piece of data supports a position than it is to see how it

might count against the position. Consider a typical ESP experiment or a seemingly clairvoyant dream: Successes are often unambiguous or data are easily massaged to count as successes, while negative instances require intellectual effort to even see them as negative or to consider them as significant. The tendency to give more attention and weight to the positive and the confirmatory has been shown to influence memory. When digging into our memories for data relevant to a position, we are more likely to recall data that confirms the position.

On average, children and adolescents spend more time with their teachers (and athletic coaches) than they do with any other adults, including parents. Even in homes where both parents are present to give attention to the children, direct contact time is sharply limited. While families may have meals together, and assemble for planned activities, the children soon go off to private space to do schoolwork, or spend time with their friends. Consequently, especially in the elementary grades, statements made by teachers are largely accepted as being factually grounded. Few children have either the inclination or the capability to disagree or reject statements made by their teachers. Thus, the many opinions and conclusions stated by teachers are on most invariably accepted as being fact. These conclusions, opinions, or deliberate attempts to affect beliefs all are reinforced with repetition Thus, mythology associated with American history, the Constitution, and patriotism is propagated from one generation to the next. For many, these concretized assertions become anchor points for the worldview which is ultimately accepted by most American adults. Unfortunately there is wide divergence between these assertions and reality. From the point when children are first exposed to formal education they are confronted with a barrier to rational thought, deterring them questioning information presented as irrefutable truth. In a review of Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past, we get an opportunity to see how Public Education shapes the readiness of its students to unquestionably accept the heroism, benevolent intent, and unquestioned character of our past and current political leaders. Here are some illustrative comments made by reviewer, Kam Williams: Think about how quickly the killing of NFL star-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman by friendly fire was spun into a valiant death while leading a counterattack against Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan. Or how rescued POW Jessica Lynch, praised as a hero for shooting numerous Iraqis till she ran out of bullets when her company was ambushed during the early days of the Iraq War, later confessed that she had never used her weapon that day.

similarly, the so-called patriots who declared their independence in 1776 have benefited from a bounty of equally-outrageous tall tales, many of which are carefully exposed for the outright lies that they are in Founding Myths by Ray Raphael For instance, he sets the record straight about Paul Reveres fabled midnight ride, explaining it away as essentially a fabrication dreamed up 85 years after the fact by the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. According to Professor Raphael, Longfellow conjured up events that never happened, including that claptrap about warning The British are coming! The British are coming! or signaling One, if by land, two, if by sea. Apparently, British soldiers were already stationed all over the colonies, and Revere was arrested by loyalists soon after arriving in Lexington on the night in question. The fanciful legend of Molly Pitcher is another doozy, having mysteriously surfaced some 70 years after Battle of Monmouth, during which she is said to have carried water to soldiers until turning her attention to manning a cannon after her husband had been felled by enemy fire. Now we know that no such person ever existed, yet in 1876, in conjunction with the countrys centennial celebration, a headstone with that name was placed, with much pomp and circumstance, on the unmarked grave of a vulgar and profane hard-driving, cursing, old woman with bristles in her nose who had died a horrible death from the effects of syphilitic disease. Others knocked down off their pedestals, here, are Sam Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Patrick Henry. Raphael also indicts typical school textbooks for either ignoring the black perspective during the Revolutionary Period entirely or misrepresenting African-Americans as having been content with their lot in the face of research which reveals that even more slaves fled from the South during the American Revolution than the Civil War. Then of course, there are the two presidents, who, as a result of being assassinated, live on in American history in our list of greatest American heroes. They are etched in the memory of every citizen. Given the contributions they made to the progress of our country, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy will forever live on, as heroic figures in American history. Yet, with every new edition of high school history textbooks, the characters of both are sanitized with their human frailties and weaknesses stripped away, leaving them as cartoonlike superheroes. Although there are 951,000 Web pages devoted to speculation regarding Lincoln's sexual orientation, it seems safe to say that no such reference is likely to be found in any high school history textbook. Nor will references be made to Kennedy's association with organized crime figures, his frequent dalliances with women to whom he was not married, and his determined efforts to hide the many illnesses from which he suffered. Here are some other common myths, found in United States Myths - and their realities: "The US separates church and state,""Justice will triumph,""We have self-

government,""You cannot be forced to incriminate yourself,""Americans have free speech,""Americans have free radio and TV,""No man is above the law." An OpEdNews writer laid it right on the line, when he wrote, Breaking The Real "Last Taboo" - The Things No One Dares To Say. Many of the statements found here could well result in physical violence, should they be uttered in places where there is a collection of those who believe in the religious dogma represented in them. We have no better illustration of the emotional investment that people have in the sanctification of religious leaders and dogma. At his 1962 Yale Commencement address, President John F. Kennedy told those present:
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth - persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Belief in myth allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

Important to our understanding of how myths shape our the way we view the world is the concept of bounded rationality. It is based on the fact that rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make decisions. Another way to look at bounded rationality is that, because decision-makers lack the ability and resources to arrive at the optimal solution, they instead apply their rationality only after having greatly simplified the choices available. Thus the decision-maker is a satisficer, one seeking a satisfactory solution rather than the optimal one. The summer of 2009 brought us illustration of just how irrational and emotional commitment to wrongheaded beliefs can interfere with reasoned discussion of issues. Assertions that Obama was never born in the United States, or that he is a Muslim committed to, and the agenda of Muslims everywhere were frequently propounded by right-wing talk radio hosts, as well as on blogs with similar positions. So too was the lunacy advanced, that the health-care reform legislation included a systematic process of ridding the country of the elderly or the disabled. All fly in the face of refutation by confirmed factual data. Yet that the disruptions in town hall meetings elicited by such statements were prevalent throughout the country, provides proof of the irrationality of at least a segment of the population. By the time the adolescent graduates from high school, the divergence between myth and reality becomes painfully evident. Yet, young adults have few, if any, tools to reconcile this difference. This translates into the ineffective attempts made, which were demonstrated in the application letters earlier presented.

Some Closing Thoughts Here are some myths to which the writers of the sample resumes apparently subscribe  Success will eventually come to those who put effort into their work;  Demonstrating Team Skills, i.e., being a good team member, is an essential element to getting a job.  Employers are altruistic, and can be expected to lend a helping hand, to deserving job applicants.  It is important, if not essential for an employer to know about an applicants personal situation. Burdened with these and many other such myths, lacking the ability to communicate, and having few, if any skills to offer, the young job applicant faces difficult odds when attempting to secure meaningful work. Notonly is he not competitive with those of his contemporaries who actually have having skills, training, and experience, he is competing with the older worker, laid off from work, with competing for work previously only in the domain of the young worker. Dont expect it to get better any time, soon! With the economy showing little sign of strong recovery, with a continued crisis in housing, health care costs, and government worker layoffs, the plight of the young worker is very low on the priority listing of those who might be in a position to begin to attack the problem. The rising costs of Higher Education,with no guarantee of a job after graduation, increasingly makes this an unappealing option. With the failure of public education, it is not even reasonable to expect that a large number of high school graduates are actually prepared to make use of a college education, even if they meet admission standards. Many of them do not. It seems safe to say, after examining those sample resumes, that college students are no better prepared to construct written communications that are high school students. It seems to me that an attack on the problems of unemployment regardless of who has been impacted is going to take that sameintense commitment that John F. Kennedy made in his assurance to the American people that we would make a moon landing within a decade. Until, we, as a nation, our lawmakers, and the corporate world, make such a commitment our economic problems will remain unresolved.