Living wages and cheap goods

I have had this lovely quote for over 15 years on my bulletin board right next to my computer. I read it at least once a week to remind me that my purchasing choices matter. It was printed on the bottom of a warranty for some Kitchen Kraft cookware I purchased many years ago.

Does American Made Really Matter?

Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (made in Japan) for 6 a.m. While his coffee pot (made in China) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (made in Hong Kong). He put on a dress shirt (made in Sri Lanka), designer jeans (made in Singapore) and tennis shoes (made in Korea). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (made in India) he sat down with a calculator (made in Mexico) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (made in Taiwan) to the time on the radio (made in India), he go in his car (made in Germany) and continued his search for a good paying American Job. At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to relax for a while. he put on his sandals (made in Brazil), poured himself a glass of wine (made in France) and turned on his TV (made in Indonesia) and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in
America.

Yes, we can argue that looking for a job in tennis shoes and jeans, no matter how designer, is silly, but the point remains. I think about the fact that while companies such as Walmart say their products are made in America, often that means made in places like the Marshall Islands where workers are paid $2.00/hour as of 2011 which is considered to be a nonliving wage for the Marshall Islands. In our global economy, we've become slaves to the "cheaper is better but _I_ need a living wage" mantra. We can get caught up in the "this is so cheap I have to buy it" without thinking about the idea that nobody they know would accept a job to make it because the pay would be too minuscule.

I've been reading a lot of articles lately about the impact of Alabama's crackdown on illegal immigrants, and I've been paying particular attention to its impact on farmers. Articles like this oneinclude responses by the few Americans willing to work in the fields. I didn't do much work on a farm but I did have a Granny with a very large garden and family members who harvested tomatoes as summer jobs. After a few weeks of this labor, we all redoubled our efforts in school!

We have amazing farmer's markets around here where produce prices are usually similar to the grocery store prices. When I buy from the farmer (or from the coop he chooses), the farmer gets a larger percentage of the money I pay but neither of them is guaranteed minimum wage. When I buy from a grocer, I pay the grocer who pays the packager who pays the marketer who pays the farmer. Most grocers, packagers and marketers have to pay people minimum wage but once again, the farmer isn't. Do people stop to think about how each person in that link gets paid and how little the original farmer must be paid to get the grocery store price the same as the farmer's market price? If the farmer is making that much less, how much less must the workers be making?

I wonder if the Alabama legislature considered the delicate balance between what people are willing to pay in the grocery stores and how much farm workers are paid when they opted to crack down on illegal immigrants. I understand their desire to put Americans back to work, especially in a state with 10% unemployment, but there aren't too many Americans willing to do such back-breaking work for such little pay.
True, farmers could pay their laborers more, but that would have a direct impact on the price we pay in the grocery store.

Working on the farm is difficult, back-breaking work. Yes, there are lots of other  jobs that are also very physically demanding but that steelworker's job has bathroom breaks and lunch breaks which your average farm picker doesn't get. Your average industrial grunt is at work 8-10 hours a day but works 7-9 hours. Your average farm picker is on the job 12-16 hours a day and will work 11-16 of them. Many of them start at first light, eat as they work, and don't quit until it is too dark to see any more.
A farm worker isn't required (in many states) to be paid minimum wage but the dishwasher in your average restaurant is. The waitress in the restaurant isn't paid minimum wage but s/he can make some extra money in tips that usually brings them up to, or exceeds, minimum wage. Few farmers will pay their work crew extra for getting the crops in early or fast; a picker's only reward is making it to the next farm where they can repeat this backbreaking labor all over again. The staff in the grocery store where you buy the raw food is usually governed by union or state laws that mandate at least minimum wage. Ditto with the workers in the companies that handle the packaging and transportation of the foods to the grocery store.

Yes, there are a few unions who handle farm workers but most of their bargaining is around living conditions (no, you can't pack them like sardines; yes, they need to have clean, water and toilets provided; etc.) and around toxins (no, farmers can't apply pesticides while farmers are working in the fields; yes, farmers need to provide protective gear for workers who are applying pesticides; etc.). For the most part, even unions targeting immigrant laborers don't push on the wages too much. They've watched the steel and car industries and know that in this global economy, cheap raw materials are essential for getting products to market.

So how do states like Alabama who have a heavy section of their economy based on farming encourage these out-of-work Americans to do this hard work?

I guess we could take away food stamps and other low-income help from these people who would rather be unemployed than work these menial jobs but I think that might undo the major inroads made in child labor, health and education. It's one thing for an adult to have consequences for their actions but I don't like punishing children for things over which they have no control. As a child of someone who would rather starve than accept help, I can tell you first-hand that when you are hungry, you aren't in a good place to learn or to take advantage of whatever opportunities come your way. Pride in one's self-reliance or self-sufficiency is is a powerful thing. It is a fantastic trait in a worker with a job but take away that job, and these people can get hard to see from sideways on.

How do you take Americans who are fed a rich history of worker's rights and convince them that working at any job is better than not working? That's a pretty huge cultural shift. There are lots of Americans who already have this ethic and, of course, all of them were immigrants at one point or another. How do we regrow this ethic among a group of people who have been told by their parents "I've worked this hard so that you can have a more successful life than I have"? By saying this in the first place, the parents are saying that working hard at hard labor jobs is not "successful" so the kids aspire to jobs where they don't have to work as hard or the hours aren't quite so long. If the kids do end up in a job that requires long hours or back-breaking work, they feel like failures who have let their parents down.

With the new immigrants, they are so happy to have a job that they'll take just about any job. They'll take just about any discrimination or abuse just to keep that job. Yes, illegal immigrants bear more of this than legal immigrants, but with laws like Arizona's and Alabama's on the books, immigrants both legal and illegal will look for better, friendlier places to live and work which leaves farmers and other people dependent upon cheap labor up the proverbial creek.

I wish the legislatures had ask the farmers how many Americans were asking to be farm laborers before they instituted this. Certainly farmers had a running list of immigrant laborers who were applying for jobs so if Americans were interested, they should have been applying, too. The same goes for  hotel maid jobs and other menial jobs that immigrants tend to do. If Americans are interested in working them, they should be applying for them just like the immigrants do. When I talk to people hiring for these low-level jobs, they talk about the same immigrants coming day after day to see if today they might be lucky. The Americans tend to apply once or twice then give up. Do we need to teach perseverance, too? I don't think the Americans are lazy or unmotivated, but they have a very different set of expectations and skill sets that aren't a good fit for these sorts of low-level, menial jobs. I'm sure the immigrants would like to earn minimum wage, too, but they take whatever job they can get whereas the Americans tend to think that something better will come along.

This isn't an easy problem to solve, and there aren't likely to be any easy solutions that can be easily legislated. Like many problems, compromise is essential. Given the far-reaching implications of these types of legislations, this is way more difficult than rocket-science. At least with rocket-science, you have a whole slew of mathematical equations which form relationships between the many things you are balancing. With illegal immigration, there are no clear cut relationships one can determine.

Challenges of Teaching

Some of you may know that I am an all-but-thesis teacher. I've been volunteering in schools since '98 and have been privileged to work with a lot of teachers and students through the years. Today I want to talk about what I see as the challenges facing schools, teachers and parents as we all work together to educate the kids.

First off, I live in a predominantly upper-class area with a high tax rate going to the local school district so if there was a district poised for success, this should be one of them. There is not an excess of poverty, English as Second Language (ESL) kids, or kids who have serious behavior problems. If we can't figure out how to educate kids when the kids mostly don't  have to worry about their safety, food or shelter, how do we expect to figure it out when a large percentage of the kids can't take those basic (Maslov) needs for granted?

Here's what I've seen in my 10+ years of volunteering. Note that as a volunteer, I haven't had to endure the bureaucracy that the teachers do but I have heard a lot about it.

• Parents proudly stating that they "can't do math" when they are the parents of 1st and 2nd graders. Imagine the outrage if these parents stated that they couldn't read! Talk about challenging a teacher to get kids excited about math when their parents are giving up without even trying to understand the assignment. I do understand that many parents are not comfortable helping their kids with algebra or calculus, but please. for all our sakes, set a positive example and show your kids how to get help rather than throwing  up your hands and giving up. If you as a parent are really struggling to do the math of your elementary school child, please talk to the teacher and let them help you. Education isn't just for kids :-)
• Students who do homework during recess because they have so much to do after school that they can't get it all done. I am not one to believe that school work should be the only thing any child does, but a little balance is necessary. Sometimes, a little sacrifice is necessary. In the case of some kids, they sacrifice their recess time when they really need to stretch their bodies and refresh their brains. In the case of other kids, they sacrifice the practice that comes from doing the homework because they  have "no time". I'm not sure I believe that there is "no time" to do homework, but I do believe that sometimes we don't think about the choices we force our kids to make. Certainly my kids got adept at doing homework in the car as we drove to drama or karate or out to dinner. I did set a reasonable limit on how much time each night I would let my kids do homework but it was predicated on honest effort on their part. I never counted time they whined or fidgeted but I did count time they were actively trying to do the homework. Sometimes they had too much to do and we wrote a note to the teacher to that effect. When I worked with the high level kids, they almost always had all or some of the homework done. When I worked with the lower level kids, they often didn't even have their names on their papers nor had they even looked over the homework to see if they understood it or not.
• Practice makes permanent, not perfect. Kids do  need to do homework to practice skills. If a 1st grade child reads 100 words a day outside of school, they'll have read 36,500 extra words by the end of the year. For a struggling reader, this adds up quickly to help them be successful but they fall farther and farther behind the average reader who is reading 300 words a day. As the  years go by, the divide gets bigger and bigger so the kids who are behind grade level readers in 2nd grade end up being a whole grade level below by mid-4th grade. Believe me, I'm happy to have them read at all but imagine how many more words they'd read in a day if they helped grocery shop to find items or if they worked their way through finding out what the toy in a box of cereal is or learning how to read a map. The more words they read at a younger age, the less catching up they have to do later. Whether it's math or reading or spelling or whatever, spend a small amount of extra time thinking about the skill areas that aren't as strong and figure out ways to make them feel successful rather than failures.
• Anyone who thinks class size is irrelevant has never had to chaperone a birthday party alone. People work better where they feel valued regardless of how old they are. It's hard to feel valued when there are so many students that they can't stretch at their desks without accidently hitting someone. It's hard to have a great relationship with a teacher when you have to wait 10 minutes to get every question answered. It's hard to feel valued when you work 7 hours in the classroom, then another 6 hours planning and grading before the next day only to go home and find out the school district has to cut funds again. Would you assign a really creative assignment that encourages the kids to think if you knew you were going to have to grade all 30 (or 60 in junior high or 90 in HS) of them over the weekend? Teachers want to be good teachers but many teachers have to go into survival mode in order to make it through the day. For your sanity, you give the kids boring, cookie-cutter assignments because they can be graded more efficiently. Bringing class sizes down small enough for teachers to form relationships with the kids that are close enough that the teacher can augment assignments to take advantage of the class she has this year rather than the classes he's had for the last 10 years.
• People learn more through play than through rote. Which uses higher thinking skills: memorizing 6x8=48 or working out the problem because you know that 6x8 is really 6 groups of 8 so if 5x8 is 40 you need one more group of 8 to make 48. Memorizing is faster but it demonstrates much less mathematical understanding than figuring out the answer. It can be a real challenge to get kids to memorize flash cards of multiplication or words or whatever but if you turn it into a game, kids tend to play longer and remember better because it is connected to them. Want to teach your kids the multiplication facts? Play multiplication war. Want to help your kid learn to spell? Have them write the words on one side of a flash card with consonants in one color and vowels in another. On the other side, draw blank lines using the right colors for the letters and draw a weird picture. Have them try spelling the words backwards or just the vowels or just the consonants. It's challenging even for the adults which makes it even more fun for the kids. There are lots of ways to make the homework fun or enjoyable but it does take effort.
• I've never met a kid who didn't want to learn but I have met kids who didn't want to work. When I can show a child why they are being asked to do this work and when I treat them like respectful and responsible individuals, they always respond, even the kid who is constantly in the Principal's office. When I can get a child to relax about whether they got a problem right or wrong but instead focused on whether they understand why they are doing what they are doing, I get a child who starts to pull his/her learning from me rather than me trying to push it into the child. I have had to teach kids how to handle frustration (which helps the problem child tremendously elsewhere) and I have had to teach kids confidence which I find much harder to do.
• Math is a foreign language. We forget that when we teach kids but if you think about math that way, particularly in the junior high school setting, it explains an awful lot. In elementary school, kids are learning English but that's not too bad because most of them have spoken it their whole life. Those students in bilingual education are often learning the second language. This is great long-term, but it tends to slow down the acquisition in the short term. When we teach them arithmetic (+,-,* and division), we teach them a huge vocabulary of words they don't tend to use outside of math class. When kids go to junior high, many of them get into their first real math class, usually some variant of algebra which uses a completely new set of vocabulary terms and way of using and manipulating numbers. In essence, we're teaching them a foreign language at a time when their adolescent brains are scrambled from hormones and reorg and often they are learning another language like French or Spanish. Is it any wonder why so many kids get to algebra and throw on the breaks? When kids hit calculus, they learn a third and (mostly) final language. There is some similarity to the languages of arithmetic and algebra but many terms are used in completely different ways and the ways of manipulating equations is very different. Learning these languages is a fantastic thing but it needs to be realized how challenging we are making their lives.
• Arithmetic and math are not the same thing. Many kids believe they are lousy in math because their arithmetic skills are subpar. In many cases, these kids have excellent math skills and intuition, but they can't do the addition correctly to show their knowledge. I just don't understand why we punish these kids so strongly for not being fantastic at arithmetic when there are calculators that can check their work. Yes, they should do the problem for the practice, but rather than force them to use the "traditional" methods of solving arithmetic problems, can't we brainstorm different methods that help the child be more successful?  There is an awful lot more math in the world than arithmetic. Using a calculator should be no more shameful than using spellcheck. We should all be good at arithmetic and spelling but at least give us credit for knowing we should check our work.

Ok, enough of my thoughts. What do you think? What do you see in your schools aside from the too-little-money problems?