By Christopher Moore
I have a pure policy piece today. It’s about energy, so I think it is fair game for ilovephysics.com.
Republicans are using rising gas prices to foist an election year gimmick on us, and Democrats are pulling out the “Big Oil” bogeyman to scare us into voting for them. Both camps are full of … methane.
From the Libertarian Party:
A group of Senate Republicans are proposing to give every American taxpayer a $100 rebate check to offset the cost of high gas prices … Republicans are hoping this election-year gimmick will translate into success in November. Giving out a $100 gas rebate check is largely symbolic and will hardly provide any relief to America’s motorists. With the average gasoline price at $2.90 a gallon, many motorists will spend close to a $100 in little over a week.
Senate Democrats think the way out of high gas prices is to accuse the oil companies of price gouging. Democrats are taking this position even though the last price gouging investigation conducted after Hurricane Katrina yielded no evidence of retailers inflating the price of gasoline.
I certainly wouldn’t mind a $100 check in the mail, but obviously $100 doesn’t fix the problem (if you want to call it a problem.) That takes care of about 1 week of average two-car-family driving. And blaming oil companies doesn’t help either. Nor does it make sense. Here’s a few questions who’s answers may shed some light as to why:
How much profit does the average oil company make on an average gallon of gas right now? The answer will surprise you — $0.09.
How much do you pay in taxes on the average gallon of gas? You probably won’t be surprised by this one — $0.50.
So if the oil companies, out of the goodness of their hearts, decided to go non-profit then the cost of an average gallon of gas would drop from $2.92 down to $2.83. You’d save an average of $54 per year. And millions of retirees and pensioners who’s fixed incomes depend on their investments in oil companies would be eating dog food. But we forget that corporations are comprised of individual stockholders when there is an election. Oil company profits don’t look that big anymore, and price gouging doesn’t seem to be the problem.
But what about tax gouging? Drop $0.50 from the price and you’re down to $2.42. You just saved an average of $300 per year. So if gouging is going on, then who’s the biggest gouger? ExxonMobil Corp. reported $10 billion in net income in the third quarter, the largest ever by a U.S. energy company. So a back of the envelope estimate would yield a government profit of about $50 billion over the same period. And the government didn’t have to drill for a single barrel of oil! So how can a politician rail against Big Oil profits when their own votes in congress and state legislatures lead to windfall profits for the federal and state treasuries at the expense of yours and my paycheck.
Oil company executives are no saints. They push for government subsidies citing “National Interest”. They’ve bilked us (via our congressmen) for years. So I have little sympathy when it’s their turn for a spanking. But high gas prices aren’t caused by greedy price gougers. They’re caused by government taxes, regulations, and foreign policy. They’re caused by the fact that a room full of 10 geologists asked the question: “how much oil is left?” will result in 11 different answers.
Anyway, Greens should be excited about high gas prices. Democrats who favor alternative energy solutions should hope for even higher gas costs. About $0.50 more per gallon of gas, and hydrogen will start to be competitive.
UPDATE: It’s hard to believe it took a Democrat to suggest it, but Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., has called for a 60-day suspension of the 18.4 cent federal gasoline tax and the 24-cent a gallon diesel tax. Finally someone proposing something that makes sense. Thank you Sen. Menendez.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The term “Tax Gouging” is growing legs in the blogshpere. Hammer of Truth weights in, see Neil Cavuto rip into Senator Durbin at Flashpoint here, and the Banty Rooster gives their take.
By Christopher Moore
Try this: go to Google and type in “Caveman Science“.
Look which site pops up first in Google’s index! Pretty neat.
Other cool keywords: The obvious “I Love Physics“.
And we almost have wikipedia beat on this one: “superatom“.
By Christopher Moore
An old post got an interesting comment yesterday, which got me thinking: was I well compensated as a high-school teacher?
The commenter, Doinkicarus, has a few things to say about Michigan’s new tougher graduation requirements that I disagree with. He’s against them. I’m trying to change the culture of education, so I like more required math and science. Stricter requirements themselves are not necessarily a bad thing (although I admittedly know nothing about the new requirements.)
But I care more right now about what he points out later in his article:
I submit that you need to increase the incentives for math & science teachers, or rather, allow the market to work it out properly. But as sure as I sit here, the teachers’ union will not hear that argument. The teachers union unfairly restricts the pay of math & science teachers, who can earn far more, in a more rewarding environment in the private sector. The teachers’ union is the one to blame for these distorted incentives, where a woodshop teacher is paid on par with a chemistry teacher.
Teachers unions do restrict pay of math and science teachers in some states. Some of Virginia’s (right-to-work state, thank God!) counties have”workarounds” such as offering extended contracts and bumps in “experience levels”. But are math and science teachers generally getting shafted when it comes to pay?
Doinkicarus again:
According to Salary.com, the median income for an entry level “scientist” in the Detroit area is about $87,900. “Chemist” indicates a median income of about $48,000, and an entry level “Physicist” can expect somewhere in the neighborhood of $53,000 annually. Now the median high-school teacher also earns about $54,000 annually. But that’s the average median, not the median for “entry level teachers.”
Now I won’t pretend to know about the cost of living in Detriot, so I’ll use Richmond, VA numbers and compare them to my entry-level salary in the Henrico County school system.
Salary.com has the median entry level “Physicist I” earning about $48,000 per year. In Richmond, the median high school teacher salary is about $49,000. Now as Doink points out, that’s not entry level.
My very first contract with Henrico was for $38,500 per year. I had a Masters degree, so it was higher than average. But the average starting salary for a teacher is somewhere around $34,000 per year. Now off the bat you might think a $14,000 difference is pretty big. But what isn’t included in these salary reports is how much time during the year are you working.
The typical high-school teacher has a 9 month contract. The typical physicist has a 12 month contract. That means the starting physicist gets paid roughly $4,000 per month of work and the new teacher gets paid about $3,800 per month. If the teacher works during the summer then s/he’d make just about as much as the physicist!
It’s not the pay that’s the problem. It’s the hurdles teacher’s unions place in the way of math and science teachers. It’s an entire culture of education geared towards humanities. It’s the fact that education classes put scientifically minded people to sleep.
By Christopher Moore
A Florida physics teacher has been nominated to represent his state for the 2005 Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. Luther Davis will attend a ceremony on May 1st-6th in Washington, DC. The winner will be chosen among the 50 states and will be announced by the President.
From the Orlando Sentinel:
“I am humbled, but proud of what I have been able to accomplish,” said Davis.
Davis, 32, who has taught at the school for seven years, wows his students with his classroom demonstrations that illuminate physics principles.
In one demonstration, he lies on a bed of nails, holds a cement block against his chest and has a high school football player smash the block with a sledgehammer. Now, let’s talk about the mysteries of applying force to surfaces, he tells his stunned class.
Now that’s my kind of teaching! When I taught high-school, I used to do this demonstration every year for every physics class in the school. But I was never quite brave enough to allow a student to wield the sledgehammer. 
Congratulations Mr. Davis.
By Christopher Moore
This is the first in a semi-monthly series of posts highlighting the achievements of high-school physics students across the country. If you know of or are a high-school student who has received a college scholarship because of your achievement in physics, then let me know.
After scoring a 5 on both the Mechanics and E&M Advanced Placement exams, Benjamin Greenberg of Lawrence, KS was offered a $2,000 scholarship sponsored by Siemens. From the Lawrence Journal-World:
Greenberg earned the scholarship because of “exceptional performance” on the College Board’s Advance Placement tests he took about a year ago. Two tests were in physics, and one was in calculus. He received scores of 5 on all the tests — the score needed to be considered for the scholarships.
Only two students in each state — one male and one female — receive the $2,000 scholarships. The female winner in Kansas was Wendy Zhang, a student at Shawnee Mission South High School in Johnson County.
Congratulations to Benjamin and Wendy. The world needs more good physicists.
By Christopher Moore
Michigan is warning its teacher colleges that they better produce better teachers or else. The Detroit News has the story:
State officials want to crack down on state colleges to ensure they are preparing future teachers to meet the state and nation’s rising education standards.
Michael Flanagan, the state superintendent of public instruction, now plans by June to have a way to rate low-performing colleges and is developing a process to more thoroughly evaluate how well they prepare new teachers. State officials say the plans ultimately could mean taking away universities’ authority to certify teachers if, for example, they have too many graduates teaching in failing schools and too few passing certification exams.
This sure sounds like a good plan to me. If an education school continues to pump out bad educators, then they should be penalized.
But the state doesn’t go far enough. If the teachers these schools are producing are sub-par, then fire them!
Here are some interesting quotes from the article:
A 2005 report from the president of Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York found that nine out of 10 principals nationally felt that teacher graduates weren’t prepared, with many saying college courses lacked rigor and were outdated. About 80 percent said education schools were out of touch with K-12 schools.
I’ve attended education classes. They certainly do lack rigor. What’s more interesting is that an education professor will spend countless hours in the front of the classroom with an overhead projector explaining how you need to incorporate various methods into your teaching. Now this may not be the norm — my experience is limited — but from the anecdotal data I have collected (stories from about 1 dozen new science teachers), education classes in general are easy and incredibly boring. Are education classes important for aspiring secondary school teachers? Yes. Should they be better? Of course.
In Macomb County alone, officials estimate they’ll need at least 70 new math teachers over the next couple of years as more students are required to take advanced math.
This is actually a good sign. Requiring more students to take advanced math may be a sign that the culture of education is changing. Now if they would just take a look outside of the education schools to find these math teachers …
And here is an interesting problem:
Rachel Roth-Haverland, a high school junior from Royal Oak, said she’s felt the frustration of having a teacher who knew the subject well, but just couldn’t explain it to all students.
She dropped out of Royal Oak’s Kimball High School in January, in part because she became overwhelmed in her precalculus class. She said her math teacher tried to explain the concepts, even staying late after school, but just couldn’t connect with her.
“I felt like he was trying to explain Latin,” Roth-Haverland said. “It really lowered my self-esteem.”
I feel for Rachel. I also feel for her math teacher. Sometimes you can work hard and not succeed. I have never been very good with foreign languages. I would study for hours and I still managed to get a high C in Spanish and German. I’ve had students that worked incredibly hard in my physics classes, and just barely pulled Cs. I’m never going to be a translator, and those students of mine are never going to be physicists. And that’s ok. But we’re all better for having learned what we did manage to learn.
I think school districts should hire more high-school teachers with degrees in their subjects, and not worry as much about education degrees. But I certainly don’t think doing so would be a panacea.
Is it possible to be a good teacher without an education degree? Yes. But just because one has a degree in physics doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be a good physics teacher. Evidence of this can be found on just about every college campus. This is one of the reasons why teacher tenure below the college level is a pretty stupid idea. Whether someone has a degree in the subject they are teaching or not, they can still be bad teachers. So what’s the solution?
Fire them.
By Christopher Moore
Edward Morely advocated the end of “Physics for Poets” yesterday at insidehighered.com. Or did he? Although I believe he is not advocating the end to physics classes for non-majors, I think he does take issue with the conventional wisdom of how such classes should be taught.
Conventional wisdom … has it that there are three basic elements that go into making up a good non-majors science course. First, the class should cover a relatively narrow range of topics…
Second, the topic chosen as the focus of the course should be something relatively modern…
The third element is perhaps the most important: the course should involve the minimum possible amount of math.
I definitely agree with Morely that this is the prevailing attitude among college (and high school) administrations and fellow faculty. These basic elements are not completely misguided, but polling non-science educators about what works in and should be done in science classes will always lead to something stupid!
Why do we require science classes for non-science majors? Morely states:
Science for non-majors offers an important chance to reach out to students outside the sciences, and try to give them some appreciation for scientific inquiry. This is critically important, as we live in a time where science itself is under political assault from both the left and right.
Or as I like to say: Physics is a liberal arts education for a technological society. Anyway, asking why non-science majors have to take science is like asking why non-english majors have to take a literature class, or why non-art majors have to take some sort of fine arts class. Neither required English nor required art is under attack. If you want a college degree you have to have a basic command of the English language. Makes sense to me.
But why do we keep dumbing down math and physics classes? Let’s look at the points above.
Although it is completey appropriate for one to have an understanding of both verbs and adjectives, requiring a non-science student to conceptually grasp both force and electric potential may be asking too much. I’m not quite sure how one would go about constructing a physics class with a “narrow range of topics.”
But if you could create such a class, how good could it possibly be if we’re confined to teach only “relatively modern” topics. Once again I’m at a loss. How do I teach someone about, say, Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) without broaching the concepts of force and electrical potential … or just about any other basic concept of physics … or chemistry. And while we’re on the subject, how am I supposed to teach students how a television works without refering to an electron gun?
And if we’re to impart an appreciation of scientific inquiry, then how am I to do so without at least acknowledging the tools that make such possible.
So do we trash “Physics for Poets”?
Morely doesn’t have much of a solution, and neither do I. A general disdain for math and science is ingrained in our culture. The only way we can reverse that is by changing the culture of education from elementary school on. “Physics for Poets” has to become just as stupid a concept as “Poetry for Physicists” is now.
The main reason math and science gets back-of-the-bus treatment in secondary school is that elementary teachers are largely psychology majors, middle school teachers are mostly english and history majors, and high-school teachers are teaching science subjects they never even took in college. And these folks were able to get their degrees without the need to be competent at basic algebra.
I’m gearing up for a cultural revolution. Who’s with me?
By Christopher Moore
President Clinton’s former chief of staff and current president of the University of North Carolina, Erskine Bowles, wants his school to pump out more physics teachers. Here’s why from his own mouth:
At a time when the world is clamoring for science and engineering talent, about two-thirds of the students in U.S. high schools studying chemistry and physics are taught by teachers who are not certified in the field and didn’t major in the subject. Think about this: In the past four years, our 15 schools of education turned out a grand total of three physics teachers. Three!
Three physics teachers from 15 different schools in four years is pretty pathetic. My school, Virginia Commonwealth University, has spat out eight that I know of in the last four year. And that’s one school. But an important point to be made is that of those eight, only two went through the School of Education. The rest just received physics degrees and used Virgina’s Alternate Route to Licensure to get jobs.
I don’t think it odd that 15 Schools of Education couldn’t manage to produce more than three physics teachers. The reason is people who like physics hate Schools of Education. See here and here.
Away, how is Bowles going to “fix” his university system? Here he is again:
Here’s what your university is going to do. For starters we are going to operate more efficiently and effectively in order to redirect every single dollar we possibly can to the classroom. With our own house in order, we’re going to focus our efforts in areas that can give North Carolina the best chance to compete.
The first facet of this prism is improving K-12. Nothing is more important. I promise the people of North Carolina that your university will do everything it possibly can to support and strengthen our public schools so they can deliver that sound basic education our Constitution demands.
Our state has a crying need for more teachers, better teachers, science and math teachers, stronger curriculum and better trained principals. The university cannot solve this problem alone, but we’re going to do our part. We are going to lead, and we will recruit more teachers, train our teachers better and we will mentor those teachers.
I quote all of that so that you can see that our good politician friend used three paragraphs of words to offer NOT ONE concrete solution. … full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Look up that quote and figure out what comes before the “…” and you’ll see what I think of Mr. Bowles’ and his tale.
Maybe North Carolina needs an alternate route to licensure like Virginia. Maybe North Carolina should started hiring people with physics degrees to teach physics and stop worrying so much about what education degrees they have. Maybe they should take a good, hard look at the education culture and find out why people who enjoy studying physics don’t see eye-to-eye with English teachers and school administrators. Maybe then North Carolina will have physicists teaching physics and staying around longer than a few years.
Hopefully Erskine Bowles has some real solutions hidden in his coat pocket. And hopefully he has more success with them than his ideas had against Senators Dole and Burr.
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