Forming the Battle Plan for Addressing Teaching Reform in the 21st Century

The notion of education reform is certainly not a new concept, but it certainly seems to accomplish less and less meaningful and appropriate change as the years advance. One of the major reasons various reform movements appear to produce little success is too much focus on specific “pet” methods without critically analyzing their applicability in large-scale environments. Instead of focusing on how to better fire teachers, lauding some trendy non-scalable niche example as the solution and looking to divert money to charter schools that perform no better to worse than their public school competition, reformists should systematically look at the system, identify the flaws and then act to remove those flaws with scale appropriate solutions. So what are important elements to advancing education that reformers tend to get wrong.

An important element that must be addressed in education is facilitating student motivation with career prospects at an early age to ensure appropriate enthusiasm. Unfortunately not all students appreciate and understand the underlying benefits to education, the acquisition of information in general, thus they can reject its importance. If a student does not possess the drive to learn through some form of motivation then any teacher, regardless of overall quality, will struggle to transmit knowledge to that individual. Incorrectly most reformists believe that it is the sole responsibility of teacher to nurture and cultivate any motivation potential in a student. The idea that it is the responsibility of teachers to motivate their students is ridiculous solely, but not limited to, the simple vast diversity in psychological make-up of their students. To focus on numerous different strategies to ensure student motivation is asking for something completely unreasonable and untenable.

Most of the time motivation for learning comes from engaged and caring parents for it is standard psychology that most children want to receive praise from their parents by acting in a manner that will be received positively. Even for those that do not fit this profile, an educationally engaged parent can use his/her position as parent to command the child to “care” somewhat about education via either carrot or stick type motivators. If the parent is not engaged in the value of education the student needs to find motivation elsewhere, either through competition with other students or through their own desires, but not expect such a void to be filled by the teacher. Can it, yes, but it should not be expected. Overall though none of these motivating factors are relevant if not directed towards a meaningful conclusion.

Therefore, the entire process of education must be more cooperative both from the home environment and the school environment in identifying the passions and interests of students and applying those interests to the education process largely through demonstrating how even so-called “mundane” topics like math and various science tie into those passions. With this methodology, education becomes an amplifying positive force for that particular passion rather than a negative detracting and distracting force. In addition not only will this process provide internal motivational fuel for the student (i.e. “I want to be an astronaut”), but it will also provide a road map of sorts to achieving that passion for in the past there have been plenty of educationally motivated students that have fallen short because they were ignorant of the prerequisites and other requirements demanded by their passion.

How this methodology should be achieved will highlight the importance of guidance counselors, which has waned in modern times. Early in a student’s academic career (1st/2nd grade) guidance counselors should be the principal actors in identifying the student’s passions and deduce the best career path for that student to exercise those passions. Every two years there should be some “check-in” period to reassess passion and interests and formulate a new path if needed. This method allows guidance counselors to actually perform their assigned role and no longer burdens teachers with a task outside of their intended role, motivating the student. Now teachers can instead focus on providing an optimized educational environment in which to instruct the students, an actually appropriate expectation, rather than play cheerleader to the individual tastes of their students.

Proper management of student expectations is also important for increasing the effectiveness of education. Course syllabus must be presented early (day 1 or 2) and be transparent in how grades will be produced, what type of class behavior is expected, what students are expected to learn, schedule of events and special projects, etc. Also expectations regarding instruction is essential for despite what some critics would like the public to believe, education cannot be exciting and entertaining all the time, or heck even most of the time. Certainly quality teachers can add certain dynamic elements to lectures to produce a more “inspirational” product, but no one can make teaching something like, a literature review for a research paper to ensure proper background and sourcing, fun. Such a task is one of drudgery that demonstrates the importance of gumption and focus in the educational process.

Tied to the above point, another important element is to psychologically prepare students to embrace the discomfort of learning. Some argue that learning is not fun and education needs to reflect that, but it can be countered that such an environment for a number of students has already been attained; this is a major problem for if students acknowledge learning and education as painful and frustrating then they will be less interested in engaging in the process and will look for shortcuts (i.e. cheating) just as easily as if they think learning should always be fun and exciting.

Instead one must focus on the discomfort of learning in the context that it is frustrating when one does not know something one wants to know, but proper instruction and hard/smart work makes that frustration ephemeral. Basically learning is only “not fun” when no progress is being made. If progress is made (i.e. some knowledge being acquired piece by piece) then learning produces a noticeable sense of accomplishment and pain/frustration is limited and short-term. Therefore, one of the chief strategies in the educational process is to focus on why someone is not making progress and rectify it. This is not to say that education and learning is always effortless, but there is always a purpose to the effort.

One of the more hotly debated elements of education is the structure of how information is transmitted from the teacher to the students. Many modern “educational reformists” lament and criticize the large continuation of traditional education involving a teacher lecturing students on a given topic. These individuals frequently cite the advantages of engaging in teamwork-based activities and focusing on the Socratic Method (SM) of teacher-student engagement in lieu of basic lecturing.

The most significant advantage of the SM is that the interaction between the teacher and the individual through direct question and answer session increases the probability of understanding due to active learning rather than passive learning. During “traditional” lectures students must focus on self-motivation to ensure dynamic learning rather than hoping for learning through osmosis (in a sense). The SM takes some of the motivation burden off of the student through the direct discussion of the topic with the teacher.

Unfortunately most “educational reformist” lack classroom experience and seemingly fail to realize that most public schools have large class sizes (25+ students, usually more) that make the administration of the SM rather difficult without utilization of a scattershot strategy (randomly engaging certain individuals not everyone). A meaningful concern with the SM in large groups is that direct one-one engagement can cause other students to lapse in their attention limiting the effectiveness of the current learning experience. One thing that lectures are not given credit for is that they do provide a meaningful focal point for all students that direct one-one discussion can lack. Also too much interaction can lead to time crunches when it comes to instructing on all of the requisite information.

This misinterpretation of the “universal applicability” of the SM in public institutions largely exists because “reformists” largely focus on viewing the practices of schools with small overall enrollment and class size, typically highly privately funded charter schools, as the bases for determining “what works in the classroom” and what should be applied in public education. This mindset does nothing but continue to make real and appropriate reform more difficult. Overall as noted above the appropriate way to instruct in the modern “educational environment” appears to be the combination of the SM and lecture by periodically and consistently engaging random students in a brief 1-2 question session that captures the individual’s attention, but does not expend enough time to significantly threaten the loss of attention from the rest of the class.

The matter of teamwork is a little more interesting because the advantages of teaching to teams are significant. For example working in a team can provide a less stressful environment for certain individuals, which can eliminate the detriments of working alone, which could negatively impact the educational process. It can help interpersonal relationship development by giving individuals experience with working through problems with others in low stress/stakes environments. Also it provides growth and intellectual development by exposing individuals to additional and different viewpoints and interpretations of the lessons from other team members that may help augment understanding of the information.

However, there are some disadvantages to working in a team. The most pressing issue, that most do not either want to talk about or are not aware of, is that most of these above advantages are born from motivated students that want to learn and want to actively interact with their fellow classmates. Without this motivation, weaker and/or less enthusiastic students can hide behind stronger students letting those individuals do the work for the team and not focus on learning the material themselves. This strategy of “let the smarter kids who care about their grades do the work because they don’t want to fail” has always been a problem in teamwork related elements in primary and secondary education, especially for big large-time period projects.

This behavior is manageable in the scope of small assignments for while homework and in-class work could be performed in groups, quizzes and tests would still be individualized forcing students to limit the practice of the strategy for a vast majority of the grade is still based on their own accumulation and practice of course knowledge. However, for large projects this behavior can be significantly detrimental to the team as well as individuals because it is difficult for the teacher to dissect how important each student’s contribution was to the success or failure of the project.

One means of addressing this problem has been to have students evaluate the performance of their teammates at the conclusion of any big projects, but such a method always draws concern of bias between teammates. An alternative option for big projects may be weekly evaluations of performance on a 1-10 scale over 3-4 different categories with explanation areas for why the numeric score was given. The teacher can keep these evaluations and then use them as a metric to how the dynamic of the team may have changed and a more accurate assessment of how the students felt the workload was divided instead of relying on a single evaluation at the end of the project when emotion and tensions can influence the product as well as spotty memory interfere with accuracy.

Another concern with teaching teams is that weaker voiced/low confidence individuals can have their opinions overshadowed by stronger voiced individuals, which can lead to a reduction in their already wavering confidence. Handling this problem can be tricky because dominating personalities are not necessarily malicious and teachers cannot proctor each group to ensure all opinions are being heard and given a fair evaluation. There are two direct ways to lessening problems stemming from this type of personality clash. First, the teacher can periodically poll the group when asking for an answer inquiring how each student views the problem. Fortunately such a strategy does not appear too time consuming because once per class should be enough for more shy students to have their voices heard. Second, allow the students to form their own teams.

This issue of the origins of team formation creates a third smaller problem. Clearly allowing students to form their own groups can eliminate a large amount of potential interpersonal conflict within the team; however, allowing students to only associate with what is already familiar mitigates a lot of the advantages born from teams through the ability to work with the unfamiliar and understand different types of thought. Overall a middle solution appears most appropriate; before selecting the teams the teacher asks each student to indicate on a piece of paper the 3 classmates he/she would not like to be associated with in a team and then seeks to accommodate as many of these wishes as possible. This strategy limits the amount of interpersonal conflict in a team by eliminating individuals that might have outside conflicts while retaining enough differentiation to ensure value from working in the team. Note it is not the responsibility of the teacher to resolve these conflicts, thus they are best avoided in the classroom.

Overall with regards to teaching to teams: when possible teams should be used basic lectures, including those with a level of interactivity, but tests should be individually based to ensure a strong motivating “carrot” for individual learning. Team interactivity and creation should follow the above suggestions to maximize learning potential and effectiveness.

Another element that is widely touted as the “wave of the future” with regards to education is not only in-class teamwork, but also large team projects where the team engages in a multi-week, even multi-month, task. Clearly the motivation behind this idea is that learning by doing is one of the best way to acquire knowledge, especially to practice critical thinking and creativity; in addition such projects can provide a venue to evaluate the depth of that acquired knowledge by applying theoretical concepts in empirical practice.

Unfortunately while the sentiment is understandable a number of supporters of this methodology fail to acknowledge that such projects are very time consuming and expensive from the school’s perspective, thus such an instructional strategy is an almost guaranteed non-starter for most inner city and rural schools. Also initial project design is important to ensure students stay on task and have organized benchmarks to document progress, thus making the introduction of such a program difficult as well because to test the theory one must put it into practice which takes time and resources and redundant projects may not be valuable depending on the subject matter.

Proponents will conclude that such projects have succeeded before citing various group projects involving building robots, devising responses to various natural disasters or culturing different types of cells to determine how they interact with various types of bacteria. While there are certainly a number of success stories regarding this method, the failures are less known because they are not made public, so it is difficult to deduce the effectiveness of such programs. Overall it is reasonable for a high school to explore a single elective class that focuses on the completion of large-scale project and introduce smaller two-three week long projects for some other classes, but any expectation that such a methodology will become the norm is foolhardy until the public school system is funded at a much larger level than current.

The structure of grading is also an interesting issue with regards to the future of education. One of the more prominent discussions over the years has been the amount of homework that should be assigned to students. Before discussing the level or amount of homework it is important to establish the purpose of homework. For the course of this discussion the role of homework will be defined as: a tool to produce a means for a student to genuinely increase the probability of understanding particular concepts in a low stress environment versus proctored on-site examinations. Also for homework to be relevant it must be designed in a way that maximizes its practicality and usefulness. Rarely will reality simply give a person a single equation or thought process that will solve the problem. For example while a common math problem may read: “21 divided by 4 = ???”; this is clearly not how problems are encountered in reality, with 90%+ of the work already done. Instead such a problem should be presented to the students as:

John and Suzie want to bake some apple pies for their school’s bake sale. John has collected 10 apples from the trees around his house and Suzie has collected 11 apples from the trees around her house. If it takes 4 apples to bake 1 pie how many pies can John and Suzie bake and how many apples will they have left over after all the baking is done?

From this structure, which is much more akin to reality, a student should create the equation 21 divided by 4 = ???. So step 1 with regards to the homework aspect of knowledge evaluation is make sure homework problems properly represent real life experience.

Step 2 is to ask how homework should play into the evaluation process. One could inquire about the fairness of homework being a significant portion or even any portion of the grade if its central role is that of a low stress practice tool for understanding the general overarching concepts. What if the student does not need to do the homework to understand the material, the lecture period is enough to achieve understanding? Should that student be, in essence, forced to do the homework when he/she could use that time for other activities, either family-oriented or pleasure based? For example some students may not have a sufficient amount of time to do unnecessary, due to already achieving understanding, homework because of an imperfect family life where brothers/sisters have to take care of younger siblings, go to night work to earn extra money to help support the family, etc.

One point of argument for a high evaluation metric for homework is that it provides another avenue for students who struggle with communicating acquired knowledge in a testing environment. It cannot be argued that a test in a classroom environment inherently provides more pressure than homework assignments in an environment of the student’s choosing. Some students do not have the ability to effectively manage this increased pressure, thus their ability to demonstrate their knowledge suffers accordingly. The principle characteristic of the grade for a course is to conveniently measure how well a student acquired knowledge in a course, not how well a student can manage a high-pressure situation. Therefore, a high evaluation metric allows the grades for a student that “does not test well” to more accurately reflect the knowledge acquired within the course.

Some opponents could argue back that while addressing students that “do not test well” is a positive element for a high evaluation metric, it is more probable that highly evaluated homework conceals poor performance. Students can use homework to bolster overall grades that are detrimentally marred by poor examination results; poor results not due to mishandling stress, but simply due to lack of knowledge. Thus, this evaluation structure misrepresents a student’s knowledge in a particular topic portraying that student as more competent than they otherwise are, a disservice to colleges, future employers and the students themselves. However, this analysis only seems valid if the assigned homework is of substandard quality and/or design. If the homework is properly designed to reflect acquired concepts of the class then using homework grades as a counter measure to examination grades is reasonable.

It must be remembered that the bounds of time do not only impact students. Teachers, especially those with more dynamic topics like history, find themselves having to impart more and more information over the same fixed time period. Unfortunately the total amount of information that needs to be discussed limits the available amount of instruction time for each specific topic. Therefore, without the ability to rigorously cover a particular topic to the point where students have been exposed enough to reasonably understand the topic the probability that the students understand the topic decreases. Homework substitutes for this lack of class time to increase learning and retention probabilities. This supplementary aspect of homework hurts those who argue for no/little homework.

It can be argued that there is a typical perceived knowledge vs. actual knowledge gap for most students. There are a number of instances in school and, life in general, where an individual may think he/she has sufficient knowledge in a given subject, but when actually tested on that topic this individual quickly realizes that he/she does not have as much knowledge as previously thought. Homework provides a means to address this perception/reality gap before it becomes exposed on a test to a greater academic detriment of the student. Overall, is there a strategy that can provide a motivational aspect to do homework while not burdening those who do not need to take advantage of the practice characteristics of homework? The strategy below seems to be one way to address this issue.

• Homework is given out on a weekly basis; Every Monday an assignment is given out which will cover all of the scheduled material that will be discussed in class over that same week; the assignment will be expected to be turned in at the beginning of class on the next Monday (for example homework assigned on Oct. 13 would be turned in on Oct. 20 at the beginning of class); answers for the homework would then be posted or handed-out for the last week’s homework at the end of class on Monday.

• Homework will count for 0% of the grade. The reason is that homework, as previously discussed, is designed to give the student multiple opportunities to practice learning the given material. Taking a grade from material that is supposed to be practice is not very fair. Therefore, because homework does not count for any percentage of the grade the students do not have to do it or turn it in if they do not want to.

• Grades will be determined by 4 tests; 3 section tests worth 25% of the grade and 1 cumulative final worth 25% of the grade. As a partial motivator to do homework, students may retake one of the section tests if they turned in at least 75% of the assigned homework within the corresponding section and demonstrated a legitimate effort to learn from the homework.

Overall while the above suggestion is merely that, a suggestion, it appears that the above discussion has focused on two important principle issues in the ‘homework’ discussion. First, is the issue between homework motivation vs. maintaining the practice characteristic of homework designed to enhance learning. Second, is the issue of opportunity cost in doing homework vs. undertaking other activities. The chief element of this issue boils down to immediacy of the opportunity cost. The time crunch created by homework, which is frequently associated with increased stress, is typically developed through two methods. First, most students, especially as they advance in grade, have to deal with multiple subjects demanding multiple solution methodologies. Second, homework frequently functions through daily turnover. While the individual assignments may not account for much having to sacrifice enough of them due to more important tasks (like the job to help your family) can add up quickly damaging the overall grade when using a high evaluation metric (commonly suggested for motivational purposes).

Unfortunately there does not appear to be a single magic bullet to deal with both issues, but expanding the homework turnover scope could certainly help. As suggested above assigning homework at one particular time to account for the entire week gives the students more flexibility to address the homework. If their time is demanded by a particular activity on a given night, time can be budgeted later in the week to complete homework that would have been missed due to that activity. Another potential advantage to assigning homework in a greater than day-by-day quantity is that it may be easier for students to make connections between building block concepts when doing ‘three days work’ of homework in one sitting instead of doing the work over a three day period with multiple interruptions. Such a system could also encourage more ambitious students to ‘read ahead’ in an attempt to do the homework before the class lesson address the material.

One question that comes to mind for such a system is how does it change the grading burden on teachers? Under a more expanded turnover system with a firm homework hand-in date teachers may have more homework to grade, but by providing a universal answer key after turning it in, the teacher has more flexibility in allotted time to grade the homework and return it to the student. This increased time flexibility is important for grading homework is one of the most daunting and potentially frustrating tasks for a teacher, one that is commonly overlooked by most education reformers when considering teacher workload. Also teachers have lives outside of the educational environment, just like students, and may want to devote certain periods of that time to other tasks.

Another useful change to improve the educational experience would be more cooperation among teachers within a given field of instruction. For example synchronizing the free/prep period for all teachers of the same general subject matter, i.e. all English teachers, would provide opportunities for teachers to converse regarding the instruction of certain subjects within the field. In fact it would be appropriate for teachers to have a weekly meeting during one of these prep periods to maximize problem solving and instruction capacity.

Obviously one of the most critical elements to improve the educational system is to create an environment where the profession of teaching is respected once again. One aspect of this change would require teachers having more power in the classroom to control improper behavior. One means to accomplish this change is to allow teachers to negatively influence a student’s grade when that student provides a disruptive influence to the learning environment. A good pilot program would be that the teacher would have the authority to deduce up to a maximum of 10% from the grade of an individual for misbehavior at certain predetermined intervals.

Some might immediately object to such a system using the argument that behavior should have nothing to do with determining the class grade because the grade should be exclusively contingent on demonstration of acquired knowledge through prescribed evaluation metrics like homework, quizzes and tests. While on its face this objection may seem appropriate and fair, the problem is that it views the behavior in a vacuum. Basically it suggests the premise that negative behavior only produces a detriment towards the practicing individual and if the individual can perform at a certain level on the evaluation metrics without showing respect or paying attention in class then there should be no punishment. However, such logic is clearly incorrect because in the classroom environment a vast majority of negative behavior provides a detrimental element to the overall environment, disrupting the ability of all parties to learn the information. The behavior commonly produces a detriment towards multiple parties even if it is undesired or unwarranted by those parties.

For those who attempt to retain the purist assumption from above, Even despite this reality, it is important to acknowledge that tolerance for such negative behavior is typically not allowed in the professional workplace and if one of the chief elements of education is to prepare an individual for a career on some level, then such behavior should not be allowed in the classroom without consequence either. For example if an individual performs his/her job well, but facilitates such a negative environment that it negatively affects the performance of others to the point where the company as a whole suffers, that individual will typically be either told to change their behavior or he/she will be fired. Legal barriers prevent students from “being fired” both from the classroom and the education system in general, thus the best secondary option is affect grades.

Another possible argument against this strategy is that the individuals who have the highest probabilities for misbehavior are those who care the least about grades and school in general. Therefore, how will this punishment system act as a meaningful deterrent? Well, if the suggestions from above relating to linking various aspects of education to successful advancement of one’s passion then a vast majority of individuals should care about their grades to the point where behavior can be reasonably managed through such a punishment. Even for those who do not accept the link between their passions and education, to simply produce no consequence to disruptive behavior is irrational. For example it is widely acknowledged that various people will exceed legal speed limits over the course of their driving career, so with this reality in mind should there be no punishment for violating these laws? Certainly not for it makes no sense to eliminate a valid and appropriate punishment for the violation of a valid social norm or law. Understand that grade reduction would only be one tool in the toolbox for teachers to address bad behavior.

Another important issue addressing the improvement of education in modern society is managing the integration of technology into the classroom environment. This point is certainly not unique, however, most individuals who sing the praises of technology as a “revolutionary” force in education are not teachers; instead they are business people, entrepreneurs, educational commentators, etc. and only see the positive elements of technology in education, frequently commenting with annoyance that technology is not more widespread.

Interestingly enough if these commentators did have teaching experience they would quickly realize that technology has already penetrated almost all classrooms in the form of smartphones. Unfortunately these elements are not positive, but a net negative producing significant distractions and emboldening those who which to cheat on quizzes and tests. It is true that technology can provide a significant boon to education, but it can also provide a significant detriment and it is important that all parties acknowledge this reality. So what can be done to neutralize the detrimental aspects that technology can bring to education?

The main aspect of this issue is how to manage technological distractions? The best solution is to put instruction into place where there is no legitimate cause to need to utilize the technology and then ban its use for the duration of class time. Now it stands to reason that technophiles would cry foul to this type of strategy once again citing the importance of technology in the classroom, especially in sparking student interest due to the length of time technology is incorporated into student life outside of the classroom. This objection highlights a problem in the presented arguments from those who support technology in the classroom, the general drive to force the influence of technology into all aspects of the classroom. The simple fact is that most classroom activities do not benefit from the incorporation of individualistic technological action. Yes, teachers can typically instruct more effectively using programs like PowerPoint versus transparent slides or a chalkboard, but students are not significantly benefited by following along with the lecture on their smartphones or laptops.

In essence there needs to be a dividing point when students can use technology and when they cannot and the cannot would occur during the lecture portion of the class. Clearly there are very small and specific exceptions to this principal; for example when lecturing about computer programming it would make sense for students, if applicable, to be at computers applying the elements of the lecture to increase familiarity with the operation of the concepts. However, despite the erroneous beliefs of technophiles, most topics do not lend themselves to this type of interaction, thus the utilization of technology by students during the lecture will result in a reduced probability of comprehension not an increased probability.

What would possible penalties be for student driven technological distractions? This question leads to two schools of thought relative to the expectation of respect for the instructor. Clearly one can argue that a student that does not pay attention in class, after accounting for outside psychological factors, is not showing proper respect to the instructor. However, if this lack of attention does not create a distracting environment for others (for example the student is doodling in a notebook, but not making enough noise to draw attention to this fact), should such behavior matter?

The answer to this question boils down to two issues? What is the obligation of the student to demonstrate respect for the teacher and what is the obligation of the teacher to ensure the student pays attention to the instructed material? The simplest philosophy in this issue is that the student is chastised for the lack of attention and told to correct the behavior and the lecture will not continue until the student complies. The general goal of this practice is to reestablish the authority of the teacher in the classroom setting and ensure the student receives some benefit from the lecture.

A more interesting strategy is if the student is not demonstrating behavior that will actively disrupt class and his/her behavior is on a limited scale (only 1-2 individuals in a class of 30 is not paying attention) then the teacher should not care about the behavior leaving the student to understand the instructed material his/herself. If the individual cannot understand the material then he/she should score poorly on the evaluation metric(s) that cover the particular material, which would be the fault of the student. Again it is not part of the teacher’s job to ensure that all students pay attention. If the individual can understand the material without the assistance of the lecture, why should the student be forced to pay attention to the lecture instead of engaging in a non-class distracting alternative activity?

A more interesting question is what does the teacher do when a number of individuals demonstrate a lack of attention, which could be viewed as a lack of respect to the authority of the teacher? As from above the teacher has two options: 1) stop lecturing until the class ceases their lack of attention; 2) continue to lecture placing the individuals who are not paying attention at a possible disadvantage for later evaluation metrics. A traditional and even modern viewpoint of teaching would instantly dismiss the latter option and criticize the teacher for not being able to keep the attention of the students. Of course almost all with this opinion have never taught a day in their life in an educational environment, thus the significance of their opinion is heavily marginalized. The problem with the first option is that rarely is the lack of attention from a student acute, but typically is habitual, thus correcting the behavior is more difficult than simply telling the student to pay attention. This reality is what makes the second option interesting when combined with the career affinity option discussed earlier.

One could argue that most habitual and “disrespectful” lack of attention behavior can be addressed by applying the above strategy of tying the passions of individuals to the subject matter taught in various classes. Thus once again after accounting for outside factors the chief motivation behind a student not paying attention in class would be the internal perception of redundant knowledge. Basically the student already believes that he/she has grasp of the knowledge presented in the lecture and elects to do something else.

This perception is not a significant problem because either the student is correct and should be spending time in the classroom doing something else while not distracting others, which only arrogant teachers would find fault with (all students should pay attention to me, etc.) or the student is incorrect and this perception and resultant behavior will be corrected after a poor performance on the next evaluation metric.

The above discussion demonstrates that the important concern is not an individual distracting him/herself, but an individual distracting others. It is this point where individually utilized technology becomes the problem. All rational people will agree that there is a significant difference in noise generation between an individual doodling in a notebook or working on math homework for next period versus an individual incessantly tapping on keys/screen or periodically making a sound like a laugh in response to a piece of video. Basically the utilization of technology as the element of distraction dramatically increases the probability that the distraction distracts others who do not want to be distracted from the content of the lecture. Therefore, individual technology must be appropriately managed though similar penalties as discussed above for behavior infractions.

Overall the administration of technology in the classroom is the prerogative of the teacher despite complaints from non-teachers. A problem technophiles have with this strategy is the incorrect belief that only technology can make a modern lecture innovative, dynamic and impactful. A quality teacher can give these characteristics to a lecture with just a piece of chalk and a chalkboard and if these non-teacher commentators had any real experience in education they would have a better understanding of this reality.

One of the improvements that must be made to establish better teachers is changing the means at which training experience is acquired. Overall there is too much single-experience watching/observing versus actual multi-experience hands-on training. For example a number of training programs involve a prospective teacher sitting in and observing the behavior, style and actions of a veteran teacher. However, rarely do these prospective teachers teach in the class while receiving feedback from the veteran teacher, they do little prep-work/grading/discussion and do not interact with other veteran teachers either.

Instead of this old method, new prospective teachers during their “observation” period should act as teaching assistants doing a significant amount of the grading and preparation work for the veteran instructor and teaching for a set period of time (maybe once per week). Then the prospective teacher should move to another teacher in the same subject to experience a potential different viewpoint in how to manage a class and/or teach the subject matter. Of course the logistics associated with such a new design would require work.

Another important change to positively advance teaching is to hold charter schools to actual academic standards or disallow public funding. Some love to make the utopian argument that money does not really matter with regards to improving public education, but such arguments are incorrect and self-serving. It makes no sense that charter schools can receive public funds, but have no accountability to those who provide those funds. Therefore, charter schools must either be removed from public funding or be held accountable to the same standards as public schools.

Similarly the return of respect to the teaching profession can never be achieved as long as organizations like Teach for America are allowed to continue to undermine the profession by introducing unprepared individuals into the profession. Teach for America and similar organizations produce negative propaganda regarding teaching under the motto “its so easy anyone can do it”, but refuse to accept responsibility for the reality that over half of their “qualified” candidates exit the profession after only two years.

Similar to the general propaganda spread by Teach for America and other similar organizations, one must abandon the idea that teaching is an occupation undeserving of respect due to the perceived hours of operation. A common refrain in public discourse is that teaching is not difficult because “teachers get the summers off”. What these false criticisms fail to acknowledge is the total hours worked versus days worked. Good teachers that care about ensuring a proper learning environment work more hours than average over the course of the week and also work over the summer. Overall quality teachers, those who the public claims to want in schools, do not fit this “not real work” profile and are negatively impacted by its continued propagation.

It is appropriate to briefly touch on a couple of indirect methods that could improve the educational experience. First, it makes sense to follow scientific research regarding the way lighting and room color influence performance and behavior. For example it has been reported that “warm” yellowish white light supports a more relaxing environment that promotes play and probably material engagement, standard school lighting (neutral white) supports quiet contemplative activities like reading and “cool” bluish white light supports performance during intellectually intensive events like tests.1 Thus equipping classrooms with LED lights that could be changed between these different types of lighting tiers should provide useful advantages to both teachers and students.

Second, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that early start times in high schools and some middle schools (7:30 and earlier) have negative educational influence on students.2-4 While this issue has received attention in the past and is still receiving some attention here and there, unfortunately it is not as cut-and-dry as simply starting school 30 minutes later for there are significant logistical hurdles to the successful administration of a “later school day” policy.

One of the major problems is how to manage bus transit for a single fleet of buses tends to service one school district or region. The tiered start times for different schools (high school, middle school/junior high, elementary school) is typically necessary for transit efficiency allowing this single fleet to manage all schools. Change the start time for high school and the efficiency of bus service collapses unless start times for middle schools and elementary schools are also changed.

However, changing start times for these schools is not beneficial to younger age students because they are already starting at times later than 8:00 am, and starting even later may even be detrimental because of the much later release times (4:00 pm or later). Not surprisingly the solution of “get more buses” is a non-starter for most school districts are already rather cash strapped to begin with due to tax funding dependencies and charter schools taking money from that pie as well. This transit problem and the resultant potential detriment for younger students is exactly what Montgomery Country in Maryland experienced when they changed school hours in 2015.

Another meaningful logistic hurdle involves the administration of after-school extra-curricular activities and how they could disrupt home life due to students arriving home at 5:30 or 6:00 pm, especially during the late fall and winter months when daylight becomes limited. Also there may be increased costs for the school for heating and cooling, especially cooling for those districts in high temperature regions for starting later in the day means hotter average school hour temperatures. This issue is tough because the costs could be prohibitive for some districts and meaningless for others. Of course one significant problem is that studies involving the incorporation of later school hours only seem to focus on health and/or possible changes in academic achievement and do not address obstacles to applying later school hours, which is rather ridiculous.

In the end one of the most pressing problems in education is misrepresentation of the overall goal of education. Some reformers seem to think that the most important role for education is to foster a level of knowledge that allows an individual to gain employment in some particular field. While such a role is important, it is not so important that it should displace other important elements to education like:

1) Produce citizens that can make rational decisions, which will allow them to make positive contributions to society.
2) Produce citizens that can effectively form solutions to both qualitative and quantitative problems.
3) Produce citizens that can use both spoken and written word to effectively communicate their ideas and feelings to other individuals as well as understand and analyze the validity of the ideas and feelings of others.
4) Produce citizens that do not tolerate individuals that attempt to manipulate or deceive society for their own ends or do not tolerate those that practice and/or preach ignorance or idiocy for the sole purpose of satisfying their own personal beliefs and ends.

Overall blind devotion to test scores and technology will not help achieve these goals and without the ability to produce these types of individuals society becomes vulnerable to manipulators and opportunists that would produce net harms. It is the responsibility of education to produce a society that is not only productive, but also able to protect it from these unscrupulous individuals, thus it is the responsibility of society to ensure an educational environment that accomplishes these goals. Current reformers are not offering solutions that will produce such accomplishment, thus something must change.

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Citation –

1. Suk, H, and Choi, K. “Dynamic lighting system for the learning environment: performance of elementary students.” Optics Express. 2016. 24(10):A907-A916.

2. Eaton, D, et Al. “Prevalence of insufficient, borderline, and optimal hours of sleep among high school students–United States, 2007.” Journal of Adolescent Health. 2010. 46(4):399-401.

3. Wahlstrom, K, et Al. “Examining the impact of later high school start times on the health and academic performance of high school students: A multi-site study.” 2014.

4. Au, R, et Al. “School start times for adolescents.” Pediatrics. 2014. 134(3):642-649.

Why is Society Ignoring the Easiest Path to a Low Carbon Energy Infrastructure by Rejecting Nuclear Power

For decades certain parties have dreamed of the reality of “renewable” energy generation with the sun and/or wind providing the lion’s share, if not all, of the energy for a given society. Unfortunately decades removed from those initial dreams, society is little closer to that reality. Solar and wind proponents would argue that such a statement is foolhardy for the total percentage of energy generation from these sources rises ever higher year after year. However, these same proponents fail to acknowledge, or even realize, that neither solar or wind have had to face any real test supporting their viability as the chief energy generator. Can one say that an individual is really closer to passing a test when his percent correct has increased from 1% to 6%?

The lack of sufficient penetration has tabled effective identification of what type of integration methodologies will be required to evade consistent brown outs due to the intermittency of these technologies. However, it is known that battery technology for storage is still in its infancy, especially on a mass scale, and little discussion is given towards the significant shortfall in numerous rare earths to ensure solar and wind economic viability relative to the scale demanded; for solar economic viability is questionable even with these rare earths. Also there is a lack of general understanding regarding the required levels of redundancy to create the storage reserve. Despite these real unanswered questions where theory is stacked against solar and wind supporters, groups like ARPA-E continue to search for the “next energy breakthrough” commonly to support the expansion of wind and solar while seemingly ignoring the fastest and most stable route to a no/low carbon emission energy future… nuclear power.

No one can dispute the stability, low to no carbon emission and base-load power generation ability of nuclear power. The failures associated with the widespread adoption of fission based nuclear technologies, including the development of breeder reactors, have not be the result of technical flaws, roadblocks produced by the laws of physics, safety profiles or even overall capital and operational costs, but instead has been the result of a direct campaign against nuclear power based only upon paranoia, overreaction, fear and opposing economic interests.

Some may argue against nuclear power by citing certain projects that experienced large delays in construction and cost overruns. This criticism has valid and invalid points. The problem with simply citing a construction delay or cost overrun is that almost no construction project in the history of humanity be it a complex structure like a nuclear power plant or wind farm or a more simplistic structure like a corner grocery store have come in on-time and on-budget. The entire predictive process for the construction is consistently fraught with optimistic estimations and assumptions in effort to win the “bid” for the project either through associated agencies like subcontractors or to win approval for the project as a whole. Therefore, time and cost overruns should be treated as the norm, not the exception for any construction project.

However, optimistic estimations cannot explain all of the cost overruns. Another reason nuclear power appears more expensive than it actually should be is the lack of uniformity/standardization in design. For example when considering breeder reactors several different reactor prototypes have been proposed and even had initial construction periods. Anyone with any design experience knows that the most expensive type of product is the first working prototype (i.e. version 1.0). Due to the lack of coordination and cooperation between nations, instead of six or seven countries working together on one universal reactor design, economic competition has created an environment with numerous high level generation II to generation III breeder reactor version 1.0s, which has further increased costs.

Another rationality for cost increases with regards to nuclear power, especially breeder reactors, is simple short-sighted analysis regarding long-term cost benefit analysis. Basically breeder reactors remain more expensive (i.e. not directly cost-competitive) with more standard thermal reactors because research and development into breeders was quasi-sabotaged for decades by cheap uranium prices and corresponding economic incentives. So instead of acknowledging a time in the future when uranium may not be cheap due to potential shortages or more expensive extraction methods or simply understanding that nuclear power needed to evolve to be more effective in general and preparing for this reality with proper planning, both private corporations and government elected to take advantage of short-term gains that have now created long-term losses.

Basically capital costs associated with breeder reactors have been heavily influenced by the lack of standardization and the lack of a devotion to the continuous evolution of their design and construction. Any economist will sing the praises of assembly line and scale economics at dramatically reducing costs. Nuclear, especially breeders, has not been able to engage in these types of processes because of this “start-stop” mentality due to uranium prices, lack of long-term thinking, which is still plaguing the energy environment with so much short-term focus on solar and wind, and lack of cooperation among companies and governments.

Another issue that has been blown out of proportion is the danger of reprocessed material being siphoned off and/or stolen for the production of nuclear weapons. One of the original reprocessing methodologies, PUREX, certainly warranted concern because it is able to produce concentrations of pure plutonium after completion; however, PUREX is certainly not the only reprocessing method. There are a number of other methods most of which make plutonium isolation and extraction nearly impossible, thus making weaponizing the reprocessed material nearly impossible. Also appropriate safety measures can easily be applied to eliminate the potential seizure of any “weaponized” material. If terrorists acquire nuclear weapons it would be from some secret lab in Iran or from North Korea over a modern nuclear breeder reactor.

The final issue is the most depressing one when it comes to nuclear opposition, the overreaction to a meltdown. Overall there have only been two legitimate meltdowns in history, Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi. The events on Three Mile Island actually demonstrated what is supposed to happen when safety procedures are properly applied. The “demonization” of nuclear power at the hands of Chernobyl is especially ridiculous when considering both the technology at the time and the circumstances of the meltdown. If similar consideration was given to the airline industry then modern aviation would shutdown because a Wright Brothers’ era plane happened to crash. Of course that would never happen, which demonstrates the serious bias towards nuclear power possessed by certain entities.

Concerning Fukushima Daiichi, a power plant from the 50s built in one of the worst regions of the county it could have been relative to safety, it still required a once in a 1000-year natural disaster event to produce any negative outcome, which was in large part thanks to a lack of basic contingency safety protocols; yet these failures were heavily unjustifiably propagandized as inherent to nuclear technology instead of what they actually were: simple economic laziness/greed.

If nuclear power is the answer to addressing global warming what does that make of the other contenders? Clearly anything that produces significant quantities of CO2 or other greenhouse gases is out due to global warming issues, thus coal, oil and natural gas are non-starters. The idea of natural gas as a “bridge” from coal to a low-CO2 emission source may have been an option two or three decades ago, but is certainly not a cost-effective transition option now, despite the money the U.S. is wasting, relying on natural gas is a fool’s errand.

Geothermal is an option that would have been interesting to study regarding the enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) methodology as a realistic competitor to nuclear, but with the pertinent issue involving the potential progression of tectonic activity (periodic 2-3 Richter scale earthquakes under initial EGS tests, with time would this magnitude increases?) there does not appear to be adequate time to return to the start so to speak if earthquake magnitude progression was indeed a feature of EGS. Pipe dreams like tidal power and microwave/satellite solar are either boondoggles or do not have nearly enough momentum and potential to even be considered viable responses. Fusion, either of the hot or cold variety, seems no significantly closer now than two/three decades ago. Thus, the only valid competitors for nuclear appear to be terrestrial solar and wind power.

The biggest problem with both wind and solar is the intermittency associated with their energy generation. Try as they might to mitigate its importance, wind and solar proponents cannot in good conscious ignore the additional costs, maintenance, storage and redundancies required to compensate for this deficiency, which raise the costs associated with both solar and wind to levels that far exceed nuclear power. Without the need for storage and redundancy capacity to fill that storage then solar and wind are cheaper, which is the story solar and wind proponents sell the public; however, without storage and fill redundancy, it is logical to suggest that solar and wind will do nothing but produce rolling brownouts to blackouts as the principal energy provider. Unfortunately the current penetration structure of wind and solar does not provide any test cases to demonstrate these realities.

Another problem associated with wind and solar is that measuring their production via nameplate capacity commonly results in optimistic to unrealistic analysis. For example a wind farm reporting a nameplate capacity at 200 MW means that it produces 200 MW when functioning at optimal capacity. Unfortunately to actually achieve this maximum generation result, the wind needs to be blowing within the optimum speed range over the entire farm simultaneously, which is a meaningful statistical achievement; can it happen… yes; does it happen frequently, not even close. Furthermore the statistical probability of this occurring over multiple wind farms is even more unlikely. Basically the greater nameplate capacity built into this type of system, either within a single farm or throughout multiple farms, will result in an overall reduction in the expected maximum capacity that can be feasibly attained relative to the actual nameplate capacity.

In short it is unrealistic for a large wind producer to ever reach 100% nameplate at any given time and the more capacity that exists the lower percentage of the maximum that can actually be reached. For example (note these numbers are for explanation purposes not empirically derived, but accurately demonstrate the trend) a wind system with 3000 MW of nameplate will be able to achieve an average maximum generation of 2500 MW (83%) whereas a wind system with 4000 MW of nameplate will be able to achieve an average maximum generation of 3100 MW (77.5%). Of course these are only maximum values that are attained for a few seconds to minutes at a time; actual average wind capacity values for days to months range from 25-35% and have remained within this range for decades and show little sign of changing, despite certain levels of hype, hence the need for storage and redundancy to fill that shortage.

Another concern with both wind and solar generation is that their production potential changes significantly during winter months. The loss of solar during the winter is of no surprise to anyone that actually pays attention to general climate patterns; however, wind is trickier because while the overall average “amount” of wind does not seem to have any significant level of variance between seasons, its daily levels typically vary more during the winter than other months. Basically during winter months there is a higher probability that wind values depart from the mean both in magnitude and direction (i.e. positively or negatively). These larger departures place greater pressure on plant operators to smooth power curves and properly incorporate the energy produced from wind into the mix with other energy mediums. Remove those other more stable energy mediums and integration becomes even more difficult.

A number of solar and wind proponents have put forth the idea that smart grids will act as a panacea of sorts for the issues associated with integration addressing load balancing, peak curtailment and demand response among other potential problems. However, the scale of application associated with smart grids has been much lower than expected over the last decade despite attempts to invest billions of dollars in the process. Part of this significant delay is that some communities are rebelling against the installation of smart meters, central elements to the smart grid, even when costs of maintenance and installation are deferred to the utility company. While most of the reasons for the rejection of smart meters are thought to be questionable, it does not appear that smart meter detractors will be easily convinced off of their current position.

For example a portion of this resistance is the concern about the safety of potential electromagnetic and/or radiation that could emanate from the smart meter. Unfortunately smart meters may have entered that cell phone zone when it comes to radiation in that even if they are safe it may be impossible to convince some people of that fact and you can easily have an environment of “dueling” experts. Also unlike cell phones, smart meters do not have that “necessary for existence in society” reputation that cell phones seem to have.

Another problem for smart meters is a resistance by utility companies themselves to install them unless someone else is paying the bill due to a lack of standards through how the devices are connected to grid and communicate with each other. Basically no utility company wants to commit to a given format/design because that format may not be the one that “wins”, thus that preemptive commitment will result in significant financial losses. The situation is similar to the problem with the expansion of electric cars. Currently the existing infrastructure to support electric cars is basically non-existent outside of certain areas in California because those responsible for building it are waiting for electric car sales to increase to the point that justify building it, but without an infrastructure few individuals have interest in buying an electric car in part due to the worry that the infrastructure will never be built to support the purchase. One side has to take the leap, but neither side is willing to do so.

Even if smart meter installation was as widespread as hoped, smart grid proponents have acknowledged the problems associated with securing the flow of information and energy within the system. Currently there are valid concerns regarding how prone the system is to being hacked, which raises questions regarding the long-term security and safety of a smart grid. This is not to say that smart meters, and in large part a smart grid, do not have a role to play or cannot be safe, but the issues associated with their adoption and safety place a burden on their speedy application and mass testing that significantly damages the viability of a dominant wind and solar energy infrastructure.

Another issue with wind power that is not commonly considered is whether or not the general price of wind power is close to its minimum in that with a vast majority of the high-value wind collection land masses already being utilized, newer wind turbines will have less naturally efficient areas to generate power. Realistically this issue should not produce an environment were traditional wind power will significantly start increasing in price, but instead it would counteract any cost savings from any further technological advancement in wind turbines. The real question regarding future costs associated with wind power is storage level and medium.

Further problems for solar/wind supporters is even some of the “champion countries” of renewables are not seeing the carbon emission reduction numbers theory and general behavior would suggest. While in isolation Denmark’s wind generation numbers look impressive, they are not consistent, to the point where Denmark relies heavily on energy transfers to and from neighboring countries. Basically if these transfers did not exist Denmark would be in a state of constant brownout due to wind intermittency.

Currently this transfer process is stable because of the more consistent generation mediums possessed by other European countries, most notably natural gas and Swedish and Norwegian hydropower. At the current time and in the foreseeable future the ease of transfer to reduce volatility in Denmark’s energy markets would become incredibly difficult, if not impossible, if Europe adopted similar wind percentage generation profiles. Basically while wind proponents like to cite Denmark as the poster child for “what wind can do for you” its close proximity to Swedish and Norwegian hydropower provides a very unique environment that is not technically or economic replicable for other countries.

Also despite investing heavily in wind and solar power over the last decade Germany has not meaningfully reduced the level of coal and natural gas derived energy production. In fact for Germany CO2 emissions in the energy sector, the most critically relevant area for judging the impact of renewables, have increased relative to the past year (2012 vs. 2011, etc.) in 3 (2012, 2013 and 2015) of the last 4 years for when information is available. The reduction of CO2 emissions in 2014 relative to 2013 is also somewhat marred for it is highly probable that these reductions occurred because of lower energy consumption during the winter due to much warmer than average temperatures over that winter. So while the share of renewable sources of energy in Germany continue to expand, the CO2 emissions from its represented sector are not dropping, which speaks poorly towards the ability of renewables like solar and wind to quickly drop energy derived CO2 emissions, which is exactly what needs to occur to combat global warming.

Note that the issue concerning winter temperatures is also a big deal in Germany because of the lack of available renewables during that time period; solar is almost non-existent in Germany during the winter netting a typical average capacity of 10-11% and wind generation is rather erratic.

Some could argue that this result has been heavily influenced by the decision to suspend operation of the German nuclear power plant fleet with the intent of its future decommission. While this decision certainly has resulted in greater coal and natural gas use, the problem is that there was little reduction of energy derived carbon emissions even before the decision to suspend nuclear power use in Germany instead most of the overall reduction stemmed from the measurement point being 1990 right after the integration of heavily industrialized East Germany into West Germany producing an artificially high point of reference.

Finally one of the troubling aspects of the solar and wind proponent argument is a questionable interpretation of time. They properly acknowledge that ceasing carbon emissions must occur quickly, yet do not acknowledge that creating the type of solar/wind energy infrastructure to actually accomplish this reality will take a long time. Part of this apparent contradiction is that supporters are emboldened by the solar and especially wind percentage growth rates over the last decade as justification for the superiority of wind and solar despite these growth rates not representing meaningful penetrations into global energy markets. Basically wind and solar are still at best small supplemental energy producing elements.

Furthermore another problem, as mentioned before, is a number of proponents believe that once society “actually” commits to a solar/wind energy infrastructure future, the problems and issues associated with this system will magically disappear with Master Plan #1 succeeding without qualm or fail. It is akin to attempting to build a railroad track ahead of a speeding train… everything must go perfectly for it to work and anyone who thinks that any of the current infrastructure plans pushed by solar and wind proponents is anywhere remotely viable is, quite frankly, a fool.

At the present time the best idea to combat global warming is for the entire global community to agree on a single design for a nuclear fission breeder reactor and then allocate resources to begin the specialization required for manufacturing the required components and training the necessary construction and operational personnel. The simple fact is that too many questions and inefficiencies exist in any feasible plan to defeat global warming via the utilization of mass solar and wind energy generation; so much so that foregoing nuclear in favor of solar and wind is a recipe for disaster. Overall global cooperation through the initiation of a real and new nuclear renaissance is the most effective, economical and direct way to combat global warming while maintaining a consistent and reliable energy infrastructure in the developed world as well as allowing energy impoverished nations the ability to advance their energy consumption profiles without endangering the environment.

A new tool to help fight against mental illness?

The history of addressing mental illness has been a tumultuous one in the United States. In the past behaving against the norm commonly landed an individual in jail or an asylum, both which existed on the periphery of society, a location that potentially reduced the ability to produce effective treatment. The location was typically not the only element that reduced the viability of effective treatment as a number of asylums were poorly funded and staffed by a number of individuals who appeared to quickly tire of continuous interaction with “non-normal” individuals reducing their vigor for proper treatment both physically and mentally.

In more modern times a “so-called” enlightenment regarding mental illness was born from deinstitutionalization. The “noble” or liberalized story of deinstitutionalization involves the belief that the development of both Medicare and Medicaid as well as various psychotropic medications allows mentally ill patients to function “normally” and live among the community reducing the stigma of having a mental illness, thereby increasing their ability to assimilate and manage their condition(s). However, the more dirtied history of deinstitutionalization is that after the Supreme Court ruling in Souder v. Brennan prohibited mental hospitals from exchanging patient labor for room and board, forcing these institutions to pay for patient labor at minimum wage levels, there was little opposition to implementing the principles of the Community Mental Health Act of 1963 regardless of execution viability. Unfortunately despite the public’s apparent “zest” to integrate mental patients into society, the networked infrastructure that was to support these patients never materialized in a vast majority of places.

Sadly this early failure in the 60s and 70s has yet to be significantly rectified for while the proportion of individuals in public mental hospitals has dropped from 0.338% (558,000/165 million) in 1955 to 0.016% (50,000/313 million) in 2010,1 the Department of Justice estimated in 2006 that at least 24% of inmates in state prisons and 14% of inmates in federal prisons have mental illness and an additional 15% of state inmates and 24% of local/city inmates meet criteria for psychotic disorders.2,3 It stands to reason based on how mental illness is currently treated that this number has only increased into 2014. In addition at least 50% of a number of ex-cons with significant mental illness are rearrested typically through violations of their parole (these individuals have come to be known as “frequent fliers”).1 Incarceration has its own societal stigmas, imagine how difficult successful community treatment could be with both a criminal record and a mental illness.

Deinstitutionalization has also failed to live up to the idealistic diverse and “normal” environment pictured by its supporters in the associated residential “communities”. To most these “communities” have become a de facto urban asylum that again cares little for the recovery or treatment of the patients reducing the probability of any return to genuine normalcy. Some hold out hope that the focus of the Affordable Care Act on result-based outcomes will be an effective panacea to the squalor conditions of a number of these mental illness communities, but whether or not that reality will emerge is difficult to predict due to numerous unknowns and at the moment seems more unlikely than likely.

These environmental factors notwithstanding, one aspect of treatment that is not typically discussed is the idea of an individual focal add-on treatment where an individual that suffers from mental illness attempts to “commandeer” their brain in effort to regain control. Basically one wonders if too much emphasis has been placed on pharmaceutical, talk therapy and, now in modern times, assertive community treatment resulting in the omission of more personal options? Such abandonment is perplexing because these potential methods have almost no side effects and very little financial cost. With this intention to add an extra tool to the toolbox it must be mentioned that general result-based analysis of treatments for mental illness is almost non-existent. Despite advancements in the ability to treat mental illness almost no one actually studies which of these treatments work, both on an absolute (does treatment A work) and relative (does treatment A work better than treatment B) level.4,5 Therefore, these methods would have to be studied and compared against and in cooperation with existing methods.

One example of an individually driven treatment would be an attempt to control the multiple network firing of schizophrenia by engaging in a task requiring overpowering focus to reduce the firing of the other more spontaneous neuronal elements. For example when a schizophrenic begins to hear voices he/she would begin to play a game of chess, start a logic puzzle, a sudoku puzzle, i.e. a task that requires significant focus in order to be successful. One of the keys to this strategy is to identify a simple task/game that requires focus, but also makes an individual content (not necessarily happy). The necessity of contentment is to ensure a lack of frustration thus affording the ability to maintain focus.

Contentment is an element that seems to be pushed to the side when discussing mental illness, with focus instead placed on happiness and unhappiness. Contentment is important because it is less vulnerable to the negative impacts of more extreme emotional states, which can rapidly cascade into opposing elements (i.e. happiness can quickly become unhappiness and visa-versa), but is still emotionally positive enough to spark focus and enjoyment.

Another option could be producing an overpowering focus through visualization. By focusing on a single place of reference an individual would create a positive non-violent altered reality that could control spontaneously produced changes in mood or sensory information. The complexity of elements assigned to enriching and maintaining the visualization could mute the action potentials associated with the spontaneous firings that create symptoms of mental illness.

Another technique, one more recognizable by many for its ability to assist in mental control, is meditation. In recent years meditation has become an interesting subject of contemplation regarding its potential to manage the negative symptoms of mental disease. For the purpose of this brief discussion meditation is regarded as a physiological state invoking physical and mental relaxation with a reduced metabolic activity.6

The state of meditation is achieved through the reduction of thought processes to a single focused internal dialogue in the mind eliminating mental clutter and spontaneous thoughts. Unsurprisingly the elimination of this mental clutter enhances pure awareness and clarity on the single internal dialogue, usually calm central breathing tethered by the single focal word. Theoretically a meditative state could block the occurrence of negative symptoms from mental illness. This possibility is supported by the reported long-term effects seen in meditation practitioners such as: enhanced concentration attention skills, improved self-control and self-monitoring, increased ability to inhibit irrelevant external and internal stimuli, increased positive mood, emotional stability and improved resilience of stress.7 One issue with meditation is that most of the research has been conducted in small groups with few meaningful controls; therefore, outside of very long term practitioners it is difficult to determine when the advantages of consistent meditation will take hold.

However, meditation does have its share of more serious potential concerns as there is past evidence that during meditation an individual with a mental illness can have an increased probability of exacerbating short-term (non-permanent) psychosis.8 This increased risk for temporary psychosis could be drawn from the increased anxiousness that is common among individuals with mental illness, which makes meditation in general more difficult, but could also make it more beneficial in the long run. Another concern is that individuals with mental illnesses have motivational issues or even defects, which may make inspiring the discipline for routine focal tasks like meditation more difficult.

Note that these above personal add-on strategies differ from cognitive behavioral therapy because they do not seek to change the long-term thinking paradigms held by a particular individual. Instead these techniques are theoretically thought to act as an acute deterrent to be applied upon the onset of a significant negative aspect of a given mental illness.

On a side note numerous individuals think that education is an important aspect to limiting, or even eliminating, stigmas associated with mental illness, which is a reasonable and accurate assessment. However, no one really seems to suggest a means of applying a mandatory aspect to this education element, which would significantly increase its effectiveness. For example one effective means to addressing public education of mental illness would be for all high school students to take a psychology class that would be required for graduation that covers various mental illnesses in depth. Through this class all high school students would learn rudimentary means to identify symptoms of mental illness, manage it, and how to effectively interact with those who have a mental illness limiting uncomfortable and/or inappropriate moments.

Overall many have professed a concern that mental illness will increase in the future due to increases in population and proportion of occurrence.9 This increase is buffered by the concern that most traditional talk therapy treatment will remain centralized in high population affluent areas of the country. Unfortunately there is no evidence that this unequal distribution of certain psychological services will change, thus placing additional pressure on community environmental therapy and pharmaceuticals. To alleviate this pressure new techniques need to be developed. Understand that these techniques are acute immediate response deterrents and are not meant to replace other therapies; it is to say that one should not say that Johnny no longer needs his anti-psychotics because he plays chess. The above strategies appear to be theoretically viable and worthy of further study to determine whether or not they are empirically viable. If so these individual acute strategies could be important elements in reducing the more severe negative attributes associated with mental illness.


Citations –

1. Edmondson, B. “Crazy enough to care.” The American Scholar. Spring 2012. 46-55.

2. Clayton, A, et Al. “The citizenship project part II: impact of a citizenship intervention on clinical and community outcomes for persons with mental illness and criminal justice involvement.” Am. J. Community Psychol. DOI 10.1007/s10464-012-9549.

3. Department of Justice. Mental health problems of prison and jail inmates. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report. (2006). NCJ 213600.

4. Morgan, R, et Al. “Treating offenders with mental illness: a research synthesis.” Law Hum Behav. 2012. 36(1): 37–50.

5. Rice, M, and Harris, G. “The treatment of mentally disordered offenders.” Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. 1997. 3:126–183.

6. Young, J, and Taylor, E. “Meditation as a voluntary hypometabolic state of biological estivation.” News in Physiological Sciences. 2001. 13:149–153.

7. Rubia, K. “The neurobiology of meditation and its clinical effectiveness in psychiatric disorders.” Biological Psychology. 2009. 82:1-11.

8. Walsh, R, and Roche, L. “Precipitation of acute psychotic episodes by intensive meditation in individuals with a history of schizophrenia.” Am J Psychiatry. 1979. 136:1085–6.

9. Mathers, C. and Loncar, D. “Updated projections of global mortality and burden of disease, 2002–2030 data sources, methods and results.” Evidence and Information for Policy. 2005.

Youth Suffrage: Is it time?

One of the chief theoretical advantages of a democracy is the idea of “one person one vote”, a characteristic that limits the total power that can be accrued by a select oligarchy. However, there is always the lingering question of what parameters should be applied when creating requirement criteria for voting. Throughout U.S. history these parameters have become less and less restrictive including age. Based on the important issues in present society the question of whether or not the voting age should be adjusted again becomes even more prevalent. Note that when the term “voting age” is used it references the minimum age that a state and the federal government cannot deny an individual the ability to vote.

The most common argument for lowering the voting age harkens back to a perceived central theme of the Revolutionary War, “no taxation without representation.” A number of 15-17 year olds have jobs that require them to pay income taxes as well as other smaller taxes like payroll taxes, yet do not provide them with an ability to participate directly in the political process. Therefore, some argue that it is historically prudent that these individuals are given the capacity to vote. Unfortunately this mindset is not as clear-cut as its proponents would like to believe.

First, with the current state of modern technology individuals as young as ten can create marketable content on the Internet or fashion and/or custom jewelry pieces. So under the above premise should such ten year olds be given the right to vote as well? Second, the idea of “no taxation without representation” is not as noble as one might think. The idea was largely peddled as a “call to arms” so that the colonial public would accept the Revolutionary War, which on its face provided much more benefit to the merchant and upper class sectors of the colonies versus simple common land owners, especially since most of the dying would be done by the colonial public. Third, the idea of “no taxation without representation” is used literally by proponents, thus the literal application would imply that only individuals with jobs that pay a large enough wage should be allowed to vote, this is certainly not in the spirit of democracy. Fourth, the idea of representation itself is flawed because without a reasonable probability to produce an informed mindset, that representation produces a detriment to society.

An example of this important fourth reason is as followed: suppose Apartment Complex A is having a vote among its 50 residents on whether or not to establish a new more restrictive noise ordinance. 10 residents are opposed to this new ordinance because they commonly have parties that involve loud music and do not want these “rituals” interrupted. 20 residents are in favor of this new ordinance because they are frequently bothered by the noise that emanates from these parties. The final 20 residents have no strong opinions on this vote and are not aware of the grievances of 20 pro ordinance residents because they are far enough away from the 10 con ordinance residents that they do not experience the loud music. Under these conditions these final 20 residents should not vote because of their lack of interest and information; however, more than likely if they vote they will vote against the ordinance due to reasons of either simplicity or avoiding future restrictions on themselves. Therefore, these 20 “neutral and uninformed” voters will ineffectively swing the results of the vote because they do not understand how the outcome of the vote affects all residents in Apartment Complex A.

Some proponents of youth suffrage would argue that age does not define maturity and/or information acquisition, which is true. However, age does create greater chances for opportunity and experiences that can increase the probability of intelligence and maturity. Probability is what matters in the case of the blind voter. Clearly not all adults are sufficiently informed of the depth of their votes, but there is a higher expected probability that these individuals have the ability to inform themselves. For example based solely on life experience an 18-year old individual has a higher probability of having the tools to understand the significance of his/her vote over a 16-year old individual.

Proponents typically put forth various other less meaningful rationalities like 16-year olds can drive, drop out of high school, be charged as an adult in certain crimes, encourage greater interest in politics, etc., but none of these reasons have sufficient ability to challenge the uninformed voter argument. So does that mean that the idea of youth suffrage is logically dead? Not really for proponents have missed the very idea behind the initial age change in suffrage (age 21 to age 18), a reasoning that now applies now to even younger individuals.

Sadly in modern society very few individuals focus on the welfare of the future when crafting public policy and legislation, choosing instead to focus on the present. Unfortunately this focus results in the application of numerous strategies that damage the future in order to provide greater benefit for the present. These policies that damage the future inherently damage the future health (at all levels) of the nation’s youth. However, youth are not given the appropriate mechanisms to defend themselves against this threat because they cannot participate in the political process. The idea that a significant portion of voting influence occurs through the intent of parents to protect and grow the future for their children, i.e. make a better life, does not appear to be valid due to the lack of policy addressing income inequality and global warming, the two most important issues for the future; neither of these issues have been tackled with the necessary urgency that their solutions require.

This betrayal of the future can be demonstrated through the following example. Suppose Person A is given the opportunity to select one of two options:

Option 1 – Receive 5 dollars now and receive another 5 dollars 2 years from now;

Option 2 – Receive 15 dollars now and lose 5 dollars 2 years from now;

While the net outcome for both choices is +10 dollars, the future is supported by only one of those choices. Some would argue that due to economy of scale the second option is actually better for the future because the present has more ability to solve existing problems with 15 dollars than 5 dollars. This statement is true, but only in theory. Unfortunately the present is not using the sacrifices they are demanding of the future to create a better future.

For example the prospect of global warming has been a serious problem for over two decades, yet industrial society, outside of a global recession, has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere over those two decades by a significant amount and the money made from that pollution is not being redirected into a new energy infrastructure and other strategies for the reduce global warming damage for the future.

Overall this lack of power is the real reason to ask whether or not the age of suffrage should be extended to individuals younger than the age of 18. Originally the age of 21 was decided as the voting age by the Founding Fathers because of the importance of the age in English culture at the time (21 was the age of legal drinking, voting and knighthood). This limit was significantly challenged by the logic associated with the Vietnam War where individuals between the age of 18-20 could be drafted, sent to war and die without the ability to influence the political process (lack of power). To rectify this hypocrisy the voting age was lowered to 18.

However, while the lack of power issue is a more viable rationality for youth suffrage over more inaccurate and simplistic arguments like “no taxation without representation”, the problem of the uninformed voter still looms. This concern can be addressed by tying a simple test to voting registration for 14 to 17 year olds. The test would focus on simple and basic, yet important concepts to demonstrate that these individuals are capable of effectively participating in the democratic process. A vast majority of 18 year olds have taken some form of civics and/or government class as a requirement to graduate high school, thus this test would be designed to encapsulate the basics of the knowledge acquired from that study.

For example this type of voting test could be conducted at a federal or state government building. The test would be comprised of three sections: 1) identify the three branches of the federal government and briefly describe their roles in government; 2) identify the holders of the major positions of governmental power in the applicant’s state (i.e. governor, two federal senators, which political party controls the legislature, mayor of the city of residence, etc.); 3) identify how one would acquire information about a particular political topic to improve his/her understanding of the issue;

Section 1 is required to ensure that the applicant understands the basic structure and function of government otherwise the importance of voting is lost. Section 2 is required to ensure that the applicant has a basic understanding of the political environment of his/her own state and understands the hierarchical structure of local and state government. Section 3 is required to ensure that these younger individuals have the ability to rid themselves of ignorance in order to limit the probability that they are simply voting as extensions of their parents or friends. Basically this test should ensure that applicants have an understanding of process, an awareness of reality, and an ability to acquire relevant information for the future.

While the problem of rationality has been solved above, a secondary problem of application still exists. This problem can be seen by reviewing the history behind the 26th Amendment. On June 22, 1970 an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed that required changing the legal voting age from 21 to 18 in all federal, state and local elections. Soon after both Oregon and Texas challenged the change to this age change leading to the case Oregon v. Mitchell (1970). The Supreme Court declared that it was unconstitutional to force states to register 18-year olds for state and local elections, while retaining the federal election age limit change. Without state involvement it was deemed too expensive to create and maintain separate voter rolls (one federal and one state), thus the 26th Amendment was crafted to eliminate this problem associated with the previous legislative action.

Overall it is unclear whether or not the same constitutional problem may exist for extending youth suffrage, but it stands to reason that it does. Also while the 26th Amendment was passed very quickly it is reasonable to assume that certain states will not be as forthcoming with an amendment that lowers the minimum voting age to 14 or even 16. The reasoning behind opposition to youth suffrage may not be valid due to the securities provided by the required voting examination to substitute for the experience of age, but that does not eliminate the possibility that states will still oppose such a change. Therefore, the reasoning for lowing the voting age may be sufficient (allow teenagers to protect their future because enough adults certainly are not taking the proper steps to do so), the drive by states to allow such a change may not be sufficient. Unfortunately as it currently stands the application of youth suffrage may simply suffer from a lack of motivational drive for its establishment versus a lack of logic.

Is Curing Cancer the Appropriate Step? (Preparing for a World without Cancer)

Since 1971 when then President Nixon declared war on cancer society have awaited the breakthrough that would render the elimination of cancer as a societal and psychological boogie man. Interestingly the pursuit of this accomplishment has developed a certain type of viewpoint of how the future would operate after success with few individuals discussing how the world will change in both a positive and negative way. As counter-intuitive as it may seem would identifying a completely effective cancer treatment leave the world worse off than not identifying one at all?

At first thought almost everyone would find the above question preposterous citing both qualitative and quantitative rationalities for its ridiculousness. For example the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 estimated the annual costs of cancer to society were 201.5 billion (77.4 billion in direct medical costs and 124 billion in indirect mortality costs);1 those costs increased further in 2010 to $290 billion (154 billion in direct medical costs and 146 billion in indirect mortality costs).2 In 2007 cancer was responsible for approximately 13% of all human deaths globally (7.9 million)3 and in 2008 cancer killed another 7.6 million4 with overall occurrence rates increasing due to general increases in global life expectancies, changes in diets and lifestyles in the developing world, and changes to the environment. In addition there is the emotional damage that cancer afflicts against individuals who do not even have the condition (friends and family) that is not calculated in the mortality costs, regardless of whether or not the afflicted dies, raising economical and societal damage further.

Initially one may assume that the enormity of these numbers should dispel any individual arguing that a cure for cancer would be a bad thing, but the problem is that those numbers are only viewed through a positive lens not through a realistic lens. For example modeling economic costs associated with any condition or disease is currently simplistic and heavily dependent on certain assumptions. There are three common methods for estimating costs associated with various health conditions: Cost-of-illness (COI), Value of Lost Output (VLO) and value of statistical life (VSL).2

COI is the most common analysis method to calculate economic impact of an illness and assigned costs based on the sum of direct and indirect medical costs associated with the illness. Direct medical costs are sub-categorized as: diagnosis, drugs, hospital stays, surgeries, etc. Indirect mortality costs are sub-categorized as: transportation, income losses, pain and suffering reduced productivity, education, etc.5 Note that productivity losses (associated with indirect mortality costs) are typically modeled through the human capital approach, which calculates the potential production by an individual based on average wages adjusted for household productivity.5

The human capital approach is not the only method for calculating productivity, some analysis also use the friction cost method instead. Friction cost estimates the indirect costs of an illness relative to the amount of time it takes the employer/society to substitute the production lost from the individual who has taken ill.6 Basically costs are estimated by multiplying the number of days required for recovery by income and including an elasticity element for annual labor time versus labor productivity.6 Normally there is some form of time boundary (typically some number of days) associated with friction cost pertaining to the average expected recovery time for the illness. If recovery exceeds this boundary condition the excess costs are not counted towards the estimated production costs/losses. For example suppose person x contracts disease y that has an average recovery time of 30 days. If person x is not available to work for 17 days the productivity losses from all 17 days are counted. However, if person x takes 43 days only the first 30 are counted. This condition frequently results in lower estimated costs for a given disease because it typically does not encapsulate the more severe and costly cases of the disease.

COI also has two analysis “viewpoints”: prevalence or incidence. Prevalence estimates costs over a specific time period normally averaged to an annual cost, but does not focus on costs over the duration of the illness.5 Incidence estimates costs over the expected lifetime of an illness. Savings born from prevention strategies are derived from incidence-based analysis because of their timeline estimates over cross-sectional costs.5 While incidence estimates provide more information, they also require more assumptions and information, which can increase the probability for more inaccuracy in the results.

VLO estimates costs based on the impact on GDP with regards to lost capital, production, efficiency and other factors that affect commerce.2 VSL is categorized by two difference analysis methods: the human capital method and the mortality risk method.7,8 The human capital method calculates the present value of future income forgone due to death (similar to the method for COI). However, this method does not include intangible psychological elements on the family and friends of the deceased and ignores the non-working members of society who do not significantly act as human capital in the labor market.8 The mortality risk method calculates what costs members of society are willing to incur to change mortality risks from given illnesses. For example the World Bank classifies VSL as how people’s preferences affect the measurement of change (increase or decrease) in human well-being relative to the change in mortality risk based on the amount of money they would pay.9 Basically how much money would a person pay to reduce the chance of dying from disease A from 40% to 30%?

The reason these three methods exist is that they all examine economic costs relative to illness from different perspectives [public versus private (COI) or individual versus social (VOL) or some aspects of both (VSL) over different time periods]. However, because of these different analysis perspectives, along with complications due to co-morbidities, it is difficult to compare these methods directly.

Regardless of method calculating the possible savings from indirect costs is tricky. First of all productivity losses are more than likely overestimated because unlike past instances the current labor market functions on a shortage of jobs, not a shortage of labor. Of course some may argue against this point citing some of the higher paying jobs that have been vacant for years, but these jobs are highly specific demanding high education and experience levels, which are not available to a vast majority of the population, thus these jobs are radical outliers. Most modern vacant jobs are lower paying, but have high levels of competition including many individuals who are overqualified. Thus, most of the production from labor that is lost to cancer is more easily replaced now than in the past making the savings from curing cancer less than expected.

Another question is how the overall economy will be affected by the redirection of indirect cancer costs. For example current indirect cancer costs are high scale with a narrow focus (i.e. large amounts of money applied to a small section of the economy). If cancer is cured the indirect costs will be diverted more than likely at a smaller scale due to greater sector spread. Will this change in fund distribution result in a net gain or net loss for the economy? The loss of large-scale funds in the cancer treatment industry will result in job loss and contraction in this industry. The concern is that will the redirection of the funds be too scattered to significantly promote job growth in other fields, thus resulting in a negative economic impact? One counter-argument is that the new survivors will spend their money bolstering economic activity. While possible the real validity of this counter-argument is contingent on what happens to the assets owned by these individuals in probate and raises the question of whether government or private control of funds provides better stimulation to the economy.

Another concern is the increasing intracountry global inequality gap. While globalization has decreased the inequality gap between developed and developing countries, it has increased the inequality gap between rich and poor individuals within both developed and developing countries. Assuming that the general death total associated with cancer remains similar over the next 10 years as cited from 2007 figures above, then if a cure for cancer is discovered in 2015 over the next nine years 71.1 million people who should have died will live (and that does not include any offspring these individuals may have).

Note that the above estimate is probably on the low side because the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that by 2030 at least 13.1 million worldwide will die from cancer.4 Based on the existing inequality level most of these survivors will not have vast amounts of wealth (this assumption makes sense because 70% of all cancer deaths in 2008 occurred in low- and middle-income countries),4 but instead will compete with other individuals for a pool of resources that is at best static and worst declining. This competition could place a greater strain on a vast majority of parties including those who developed cancer, but did not die, lowering the quality of life of a greater number of individuals.

Some may argue that while the savings born from indirect costs may be inaccurate and possibly non-existent, the savings from direct costs are certainly real and substantial. Direct cost savings are real, but more than likely will not be useful to society. The reason for this judgment is the commerce arrow that governs cancer treatment. When individual x develops cancer and receives treatment (note that second part) most of the time he/she has health insurance where after paying a deductible the insurance company will pay for a vast majority of the costs associated with the cancer treatment (80-100%, depending on the specifics of the plan). This payment will typically go to a hospital (most doctors do not own their own treatment centers, etc.). The hospital uses some of those funds to purchase elements of the treatment from various companies. Overall most of the costs associated with cancer treatment are born by the insurance companies, whether or not those costs are passed on to consumers is unclear, but is definitely a possibility.

If a cancer cure is developed, the direct costs of treating cancer will significantly drop reducing the amount of money that insurance companies pay to hospitals. Therefore, insurance companies will gain most of the savings from a cancer cure. However, the benefit to society from a standpoint of direct costs depends on what the insurance company does with these saved funds. There are ten common actions that a company can take with their earned profits:

1) Keep it on their balance sheet to pay for future expenses (i.e. suppose next year is not profitable);
2) Pay off existing debt;
3) Invest in new equipment or other modernization upgrades to increase production and/or lower costs;
4) Issue a dividend or increase the dividend to stockholders;
5) Hire more employees;
6) Increase wages and/or pay bonuses to various employees;
7) Buyback stock;
8) Invest in other companies either as a passive investment or a takeover;
9) Provide some benefit for the consumer (in the case of insurance this would most likely be reducing premiums);
10) Donate the money to a charitable cause;

There is little reason to suspect that insurance companies would pledge profit neutrality where insurance premiums would be lowered to correspond to the savings garnered by the cancer cure versus current cancer treatment. Whether legitimate or not the failure to lower premiums would be justified through arguing the prevalence of other chronic conditions like high blood pressure, obesity and high cholesterol. Anything else that could be done with the saved money that would benefit society directly or even indirectly like donating the money to charity, increasing stock dividends or hiring more employees seems even more far-fetched than lowering premiums.

With the most likely use of the saved funds going into the coffers of the insurance company to be used for CEO bonuses and other frivolous actions to bolster the already wealthy (modern reality dictates that this will happen) the newly saved direct cancer costs will not be reinvested into society at any real magnitude. Any rational person realizes that with decades of empirical evidence against it, supply side economics (a.k.a. trickle down) does not work thus increasing CEO bonuses is rather irrelevant to societal economic benefit. In addition other economic changes would lead various hospitals to lose millions of dollars (it stands to reason that they charge more for cancer treatments over the elements used in those treatments) and the medical companies that provide current cancer treatments will more than likely lose money as well because longer-term treatments yield more revenue than shorter-term treatments (which is what a cancer cure is assumed to be). Whether or not these losses will result in further expanded economic damage to society through things like a cutback in the existing workforce is unclear.

It is also important to address the fate of money devoted to researching a cancer cure. A vast majority of the money that funds cancer research comes from the government through the National Institute of Health (NIH), somewhere in the neighborhood of at least 5.6 billion.10 Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that this money could be directed elsewhere from the NIH general fund to other worthy grant applicants. However, whether or not this will occur is unknown because of possible future cutbacks in NIH funds. For example some members of Congress may simply decide to eliminate a large amount of past cancer funding from the NIH in an inaccurate and foolish attempt to “cut government pork/waste”. While it is difficult for a legislator to cut funds for cancer research from a public relations standpoint, the public would not be so resistant to a cut in cancer funds that would have been redirected to say Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or something else.

The money derived from charitable organizations like the National Cancer Society is less likely to be recovered. Clearly the development of a cancer cure would heavily limit the continued functionality of such organizations. Most people who donate to cancer charities do so because of a personal connection to cancer, either they had it or know someone who has/had it. Therefore, it is unlikely that these individuals will donate to other charities if such a personal connection does not exist, they do not have a “charity donation quota” that needs to be met each year. Overall it stands to reason that most of the government funds for future cancer research will be directed to other medical research (unless Congress gets involved) and most of the private funds that would have gone to cancer research will not go towards other medical research. Some of these private funds could be invested in the economy yielding positive results, but the extent of benefit for such investment is unclear.

Part of the economic analysis associated with the possible societal influence of a cure for cancer is based on the assumptions that the cure would be widely available and will treat most, if not all, of the major forms of cancer. Initially it could be argued that the widely available assumption is not appropriate. However, the reasoning behind including this assumption is as followed. In the developed world it stands to reason that major insurance companies would cover the cost of the cure. This reasoning makes sense on two fronts: first, it is highly probable that a cure for cancer will cost less than the existing standard cancer treatment, thus it makes direct business sense for insurance companies that cover existing cancer treatments to shift coverage plans to cover the cancer cure.

Second, from a public perception standpoint any insurance company not providing coverage for a cancer cure would more than likely be basically ostracized from the marketplace with consumers avoiding that company in favor of one that does provide cancer cure coverage (recall that the assumption for this discussion is a cancer cure not a cancer vaccine thus people will still develop cancer). For the developing world it seems likely that various NGOs and charities will cover a majority of cancer cases with significant cost parameters.

So the general summary of change to society with the development of a cancer cure like treatment is as followed:

- Approximately 7.6 - 7.9 million people per year no longer die (assuming that the cure is available to all and that estimate may be on the lower end if cancer rates and deaths increase in the future which they are expected to);
- A vast majority of the direct costs associated with cancer treatment becomes increased profit for various insurance companies that will not result in an increased benefit to society;
- The growth/loss transfer to the general economy associated with indirect costs is unclear due to the simplistic level of modeling associated with cost replacement in the models themselves;
- The increased population will increase strain on existing resources, especially in developing countries, which have the majority of cancer deaths, as well as increase competition between individuals more than likely decreasing the quality of life of a larger number of individuals;
- There may be a contraction in employment at hospitals and other medical service companies, especially in high healthcare cost countries like the United States;
- Redirection of government grants and other monetary awards, both public and private, from cancer research to another medical condition/treatment should occur for government funds (again depending on how Congress acts), but not for private funds;

Understand that this blog post is not suggesting that the medical research community stop pursuing better cancer treatments, including one that may result in a cure, but instead is raising the important discussion point regarding how society may change in response to a cure. These changes are important to consider because of the momentous influence cancer as a physical disease and a psychological condition has on modern society. Cancer is in a rather unique position as a disease because while technically increasing age increases probability of development, no other disease permeates human health along all age groups at such a level of scale. Most other major diseases only afflict the elderly population. Therefore, eliminating this influence of cancer will cause significant change that must be accounted for and properly addressed to maximize the efficiency of curing cancer.

Overall it is troubling that no one really discusses these potential changes. Perhaps society is functioning under the belief that a cure to cancer is still decades away so addressing potential problems stemming from a cure is not necessary or that there will be no problems stemming from a cure. Neither of these explanations makes sense because there will be problems and even if a cure is delayed by decades developing a thought methodology to analyze how society could change is beneficial. Therefore, there are no excuses for the lack of attention being paid to possible negative societal changes that could be brought on by the development of a cure for cancer. As a starting point the most pressing issue for study is how the increased population will increase competition and possibly negatively influence society as a whole more so than if cancer is not cured.

Citations –

1. American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts & Figures 2012. Atlanta: American Cancer Society; 2012, page 1.

2. Bloom, D, et Al. “The Global Economic Burden of Non-communicable Diseases.” Harvard School of Public Health. World Economic Forum. 2011.

3. Wikipedia Entry – Cancer. 2013.

4. World Health Organization Fact Sheet N-297. Cancer. January 2013. In conjunction with Globocan 2008, IARC, 2010. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/index.html

5. Corso, P, Soyemi, A, Lane, R. “Part II: Economic Impact Analysis. Cost of Illness.” Center for Disease Control and Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention.

6. Hutubessy, R, et Al. “Indirect costs of back pain in the Netherlands: a comparison of human capital method with the friction cost method.” Pain. 1999. 80:201-207.

7. Johansson, P. O. (2001). Is there a meaningful definition of the value of a statistical life? J Health Econ. 20(1):131-139.

8. Viscusi, W, and Aldy, J. “The Value of a Statistical Life: A Critical Review of Market Estimates Throughout the World.” Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. 2003. 27(1):5-76.

9. World Bank. “The Effects of Pollution on Health: The Economic Toll, in Pollution Prevention and Abatement Handbook, World Bank, Washington, DC. 1998.

10. National Institute of Health. Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition and Disease Categories (RCDC) between 2009 and 2014. April 2013. http://report.nih.gov/categorical_spending.aspx