NHEG September-October

9-10

- Albert Einstein

Education is not the learning of many facts, but the training of themind to think.

another year of

that if

have time to

please do so.

have a waiting list for

need of

and

courses need to be built, and there are many other ways to help.

NHEG MEDIA PACK

New

Awards.

This

New Heights Educational Group Named Best Children & Adults Literacy Group

(NHEG)

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by

Clark, Founder/Executive Director of

stated,

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THE INTERNET RADIO PROGRAM FROM NEW HEIGHTS EDUCATIONAL GROUP

NHEG

NHEG October Anniversaries

Volunteers Ratings

HOW TO EARN BOX TOPS MAKES IT EASY

NEW HEIGHTS EDUCATIONAL GROUP WINS SILVER AND BRONZE STEVIE® AWARDS IN 2022 STEVIE AWARDS FOR SALES & CUSTOMER SERVICE

Their Mission: Stevie Award winner New Heights Educational Group, Inc. promotes literacy for children and adults by offering a range of educational support services. Such services include assisting families in the selection of schools, organization of educational activities, a nd acquisition of materials. They promote a healthy learning environment and enrichment programs for families of preschool and school-age children, including children with special needs.

Award-winning organization New Heights Educational Group (NHEG) was formed in 2006 by Mrs. Pamela Clark. Mrs. Clark discovered that families needed to cooperate, especially in educating children with learn ing difficulties such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, autism, and neur ological disorders. NHEG has served over 350,000 students via online services and courses. Mrs. Clark leads a team of 92 volunteers who research advancements and provide training to teachers and tutors explor ing different learning styles.

Defiance, Ohio – March 2, 2022 – New Heights Educational Group ( NHEG)was presented with a Silver Stevie® Award in the Best Use of Thought Leadership in Customer Service category and a Bronze Stevie® Award in the Best Use of Thought Leadership in B usiness Development category in the 16th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service.

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service are the world’s top honors for customer service, contact center, business development and sales professionals. The Stevi e Awards organizes eight of the world’s lead ing business awards programs, also including the prestigious American Business Awards® and International Business Awards®.

Winners will be recognized during a virtual awards ceremony on May 11.

More than 2,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry, in 51 nations, were considered in this year’s competition. Winners were determined by the average scores of more than 150 professionals worldwide on eight specialized judging commit tees. Entries were considered in more than 90 categories for customer service and contact center achievements, including Contact Center of the Year, Award for Innovation in Customer Service, and Customer Service Department of the Year; more than 60 categories for sales and business development achievements, ranging from Senior Sales Executive of the Year to Sales Training or Business Development Executive of the Year to Sales Department of the Year; and categories to recognize new products and services, solution pro viders, and organizations’ and individuals’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic. New categories this year honor excellence in thought leadership in customer service and sales.

Judges’ Comments

--Congratulations on an incredible and amazingly profound mission. Well done. --Awesome to see enablement through education, developing support around kids for a better future --Interesting method to meet the requirements and needs of the business --Congratulations on your successful thought leadership focus on family education and those with special needs!

--Excellent initiative taken by the company. The company seems to have benefitted tremendously under Mrs. Pamela Clark’s leadership. Well done on promoting literacy through various educational programs.Worthy of acclaim!

--Supporting your clients every step along the way is the key to building trust. And since people do business with people they know, like, and trust, you can see how essential this is. You can also see how it’s the oppo site of trying to SELL. It’s about guiding them to find the best solution for their problem …based on where they are in their Decision Journey.

STEVIE WINNER PROVIDES LITERACY AND EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT TO ADULTS AND CHILDREN

--True general leadership growth opportunities in an equitable social application. This will impact and assist in true across the board growth in thought leadership

--Overall a good and innovative solution to a time tested problem.

--Congratulations NHEG on your valuable contributions to children’s education during the Covid crisis!

--New Heights Educational Group has a very fulfilling goal, whic h is to provide education to the children with learning difficulties. The increase in the number of course offerings is co mmendable. Their partnerships with various online course providers is a clear indication of their interest in the growth of the children.

Pamela Clark, Executive Director of NHEG, stated, “we are proud of our team of volunteers that work so hard to bring opportunities to families in need. We are honored by thes e awards.”

“The nominations we received for the 2022 competition illustrate that business development, customer service, and sales professionals worldwide, in all sorts of organization s, have continued to innovate, thrive, and meet customer expectations during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Stevi e Awards president Maggie Gallagher Miller.

“The judges have recognized and rewarded their achievements, an d we join them in applauding this year’s win ners for their continued success. We look forward to recognizin g them on May 11.”

Details about the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service and the list of Stevie winners in all categories are available at www.StevieAwards.com/Sales.

About NHEG New Heights Educational Group, Inc., promotes literacy for chil dren and adults by offering a range of educational support services. Such services include the following: assisting families in the selection of schools; organ ization of educational activities; and acquisition of materials . We promote a healthy learning environment and various enrichment programs for families of preschool and school-age children, including children with special needs.

About The Stevie Awards

Stevie Awards are conferred in eight programs: the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, The American Business Awards®, The International Business Awards®, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, and the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service. Stevie Awards competitions receive more than 12,000 entries each year from organizations in more than 70 nations. Honoring organizati ons of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the wor kplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at http://www.StevieAwards.com.

8/3/22

New Heights Educational Group (NHEG) held its 2022 Annual Recognition Day on July 30, 2022. The event recognizes and celebrates volunteer impact and student success. Pame la Clark,Executive Director of NHEG, stated, “Our volunteers and students have an exceptional work ethic and positive behavior that has a direct impact on NHEG and our communities. I am thrilled to honor them on this day.’’

Volunteers of the Year 2022

Javier Cortes - Online Manager of the Year

Marina Klimi - Production Manager of the Year; Social Media Manager of the Year

Frani Wyner - Photographer of the Year Padmapriya (Priya) Kedharnath - Accountant of the Year

Caroline Chen - HR Coordinator of the Year; Student Leader of the Year

Meghna Kilaparthi - Math Tutor of the Year

Sarika Gauba - Content Builder of the Year

Rhone-Ann Huang - Reading Ambassador of the Year

Julia Landy - Graphic Designer of the Year; New Media and Video Editing of the Year

Laura Casanova - Proofreader/Editor of the Year

Nina Le - Tutor of the Year - Live Lessons Victor Rodriguez - Screenplay Writer of the Year Barbara Bullen - Internet Radio Host of the Year

Ramyasree Arva - Google Classroom Course Updater of the Year Vy Dinh - Instructional Video Creator of the Year; Google Classroom Course Creator of the Year

Alexandre Oliveira - Photo Editor of the Year

Students Nominated for NSHSS | National Society of High School Scholars Caroline Chen Allene Yue Stephanie Song Nina Le Rhone-Ann Huang

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2016 JEFFREY A. TUCKER

We look at pictures of newspaper boys from 1905 and say, “Oh how sad that these kids had jobs. We are so much more humane now!”

Let the Kids Work

The Washington Post ran a beautiful photo montage of children at work from 100 years ago. I get it. It’s not supposed to be beautiful. It’s supposed to be horrifying. I’m looking at these kids. They are scruffy, dirty, and tired. No question.

But I also think about their inner lives. They are working in the adult world, surrounded by cool bustling things and new technology. They are on the streets, in the factories, in the mines, with adults and with peers, learning and doing. They are being valued for what they do, which is to say being valued as people. They are earning money.

Whatever else you want to say about this, it’s an exciting life. You can talk about the dangers of coal mining or selling newspapers on the street. But let’s not pretend that danger is something that every young teen wants to avoid. If you doubt it, head over the stadium for the middle school football game in your local community, or have a look at the wrestling or gymnastic team’s antics at the gym.

And I compare it to any scene you can observe today at the local public school, with 30 kids sitting in desks bored out of their minds, creativity and imagination beaten out of their brains, forbidden from earning money and providing value to others, learning no skills, and knowing full well that they are supposed to do this until they are

22 years old if they have the slightest chance of being a success in life: desk after desk, class after class, lecture after lecture, test after test, a confined world without end.

Be Very Afraid

Yes, I know, the Washington Post montage is our periodic reminder of the horrors and brutality of the age of capitalism. Oh, look how exploitative it is! These poor children are being chewed up and swallowed by a powerful capitalist machine that cares nothing for their health and well-being! For all you people who think that government isn’t so wonderful, look at the world you would recreate should kids be allowed to work again! Let’s never go back, they say.

And, yes, I’m happy to grant that most every aspect of life was worse in 1900 than it is today. Most people didn’t have indoor heating. There were no washing machines or air conditioning. Forget refrigerators. Actually, electricity in homes was rare and dangerous. Travel was a luxury of the rich. Cars and air travel were dreams. For that matter, the standard of living today is vastly better than it was in 1930, 1940, 1950, and so on, even up to the latest Snapchat release with an improved clown face you can superimpose on your cat selfie.

The market, not a Progressive armed with government power, does these things. It inspires innovation and disperses them to the masses. Why are we isolating this one aspect of teen work and condemning it as hell on earth? By comparison today, everything except the absence of the income tax was hell on earth.

The Market Gave Kids Choice

And there is a fundamental historical error associated with all these nightmare images of the past. What the photos don’t reveal is that it was the market, not the government that reduced and nearly eliminated full-time grueling child labor. Corey Iacono lists the myth to the contrary as one of the greatest of all time, and cites the professional historian consensus: “Industrialization and economic growth brought risin g incomes, which allowed parents the luxury of keep ing their children out of the workforce.”

The laws against child labor didn’t achieve national codificatio n until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, by which time machines had largely displaced the labor children had done generations earlier. It was also a useful change in the law from a political point of view. It helped shore up the power of labor unions against cheaper wage competition. An entire demographic had been deleted from the workforce and pushed by compulsion into government holding tanks for a full decade.

It’s not at all obvious to me why this should be something to celebrate.

And let’s be clear about the relationship between child labor and compulsory school. It is direct. It was at the very time that governments at the state and local level were banning labo r for kids that these same kids were subjected to force in making them go to school. You can talk all you want about capitalist exploitation but it makes no sense to overlook a situation surely as problematic: any kid not in his or her sc hool desk was subjected to be kidnapped in the name of enforcing laws against so-called truancy. A system that worked without coercion was displaced by a system that depended fundamentally on coercion.

But Let’s Get Real

All those photos dig deep into the past and conjure up weird dy stopian scenarios, none of which have anything to do with today. If kids were allowed to work and compulsory school attendance was abolished, the jobs of choice would be at Chick-Fil-A and WalMart. And they would be fantastic jobs to o, instilling in young people a work ethic, which is the inner drive to succeed, and an awareness of attitudes that make enterprise work for all. It would give them skills and discipline that build character, and help them become part of a professional network. These attitudes are rather missing from today’s young people ju st entering the workforce. They are forcibly kept out and then we are shocked to discover that the average college graduate today has a hard time getting into his or her groove at the age of 23. It’s because their human right to work and earn has been violated for a good part of their lives, to the point that they have lost interest in and knowledge of what work is like at all.

When I was a kid, you could get around the laws if you knew the right people. Or you could just lie about your age. No more. The laws are heavily enforced, and any employer who hires underage is subjected to terrifying penalties. In theory, you can work from the age of 14, but the hours and tasks are so restricted, and the paperwork so vast, that it is not practical. Same with 15. By 16 you can get a job, but the h ours are still restricted and the type of work you can do is still limited. You are not really free until you are 18 years old, and, by then, there is too much fun to be had by doing something, anything, other than work. Is it any wonder that they turn to music, pop culture, drugs, alcohol, promiscu ity, internet trolling, and so on? Idle hands, as they say.

The Real Industrial Army

A century ago, we invented a system that imagined children as civic soldiers. Kids bolted to chairs with absolutely no skin in the game have abstract “information” pounded into th eir heads by tax-paid instructors who teach from state-approved books.

We push these kids through the system and deny them any chance to realize their human value in gainful employ ment in a community of productivity and real learning. Then we tell them to scrape together $100,000 for yet another degree that will somehow gain them entry into the workforce, bu t all these demoralized and cynical kids end up with is an empty CV and 15 years of debt.

Then we look at pictures of newspaper boys from 1905 and say, “ Oh how sad that these kids had jobs. We are so much more humane now!”

It’s time we stop congratulating ourselves for taking away opportunity from kids. It’s time to let the kids work again.

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) https://fee.org/

MONDAY, JUNE 6, 2022 BY HANNAH COX

The simple truth is, there are fewer people who want to bring kids into the world. Though the reasons are diverse, 44 percent of non-parents between 18 to 49 say it is not to or not at all likely they will procreate.

5 Reasons America’s Birthrate Is Plummeting

Elon Musk recently tweeted, “population collapse is th biggest threat to civilization.”

The tweet included a link to an interview Musk gave where he expanded on the subject. “Assuming there’s a benevolent future with AI, I think the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse,” Musk wrote. “Collapse. I want to emphasize this….Not explosion, collapse.”

Musk has been known to raise this concern in the past too. Last year he told the Wall Street Journal, “I can’t emphasize this enough, there are not enough people.” He also said that low and rapidly declining birth rates are “one of the biggest risks to civilization.”

That the wealthiest and arguably one of the smartest men on earth spends his days fixating on this issue should be a signal to others that things might be more dire than they think.

According to the US Census, “The US population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year since the founding of the nation.” And we’re not alone. According to reporting by the BBC, “Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017 - and their study, published in the Lancet, projects it will fall below 1.7 by 2100.”

Population replacement rates are important for a soci ety to sustain itself. We need people to be born so that there are workers to fill the various needs of the whole. Old men cannot do the labor young men can do, young adults are needed to care for the dying and aging. Fewer people means less economic activity, smaller GDPs, less

innovation, and less competition.

It also means we have less division of labor. As Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “The division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.“ That means people are less able to specialize and lean into their pref erences or areas of expertise in their work.

As a whole, the machine slows and then stagnates when new firewood is not added to the furnace.

But while Elon Musk is absolutely correct about the prob lem and the potential threat it poses to society, he has not addressed (as far as I’ve seen) the underlying issues creating it or discussed how they might be solved.

So, in an effort to address these issues, here are five rea sons people are increasingly choosing not to procreate, along with the free-market responses that could address them.

1. Higher Opportunity Costs for Women

The simple fact is, some people don’t want children. And there are legitimate reasons for that choice.

No matter what Sheryl Sandberg wants you to believe, women cannot have it all. “Leaning in” is a practice that has left most women who attempt it barrelled over in pain.

The reality is, while women tend to work outside the home in most partnerships now, the vast majority of childcare and household work continues to be laid at their feet. This is an ongoing issue that causes many women to choose not to have kids or not to have more kids.

In life, just as in economics, there are trade-offs. Most women realize they will likely not be able to be a successful career woman, a dedicated mother, and a jaw-dropping homemaker all at the same time. There are choices to be made here, and some women are simply deciding that motherhood is the role they can let go.

It’s important to point out that these are choices that used to be harder to make. In generations past, women were shamed for not having kids, ostracized in society, or simply di d not have the access to birth control they needed to determine their own pathway. We’re moving away from that kind of culture, and the advancements in women’s health care have empowered women to set their own course.

2. More Americans (Men and Women) Don’t Want to Have Kids

As a woman who has never wanted children, I’ve thought deeply about this topic. And I believe there are many others who are looking at the same factors I am and reaching the same conclusion. Motherhood is hard, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I personally never wanted to go through the pain of childbirth, nor do I want to give myself the mental and emotional anxiety that comes with taking on this role. But as pointed out above, this wasn’t always a calculation afforded to women.

Furthermore, I love working—always have. And I’ve built a meaningful and impactful career I’d never be willing to give up. While some women choose to work and have kids, that’s not a situation I’d choose for myself. I’d never put my kids in government schools nor would I want them to spend their time with others in daycare. So when faced with the choice of pursuing my work or raising kids, I simply choose the former. It’s where I want to spend my time. I’ve met many others who feel the same way as me.

There are other factors as well. While the world has actually been improving (though you wouldn’t know it based on the media), there are many people (myself included) who look ar ound and still don’t find the world to be one they’d want to bring kids into.

Thanks to birth control and the gains made under feminism, these are choices women now get to make that other gen erations simply were not afforded. As a whole, this is a choice that should be accepted and even celebrated by society.

Are there free market solutions to these factors? Sure. School choice would make it easier for women to homeschool or find other alternatives. Remote work would allow more people to balance child-rearing with their careers. And improvements in our social climate would likely make people more optimistic about procreating.

Still, the simple truth is, there are fewer people who want to bring kids into the world. Though the reasons are diverse, 44 percent of non-parents between 18 to 49 say it is not to or not at all likely they will procreate. And that’s ok. But for those who do want kids, we should strive to create a world where that option is as feasible as possible.

3. New Gender Norms Are … Complicated

While some women and men are simply choosing not to have kids, others wish to and cannot find adequate partners. It’s important to remember that we are still merely a few decades into a new normal: the sexes having equal rights and a fair playing field.

While this is long-overdue progress that should obviously be celebrated, it also means the social fabric of our society is still fraught with landmines. For all of human history, women and men have not been in a situation where they were equal under the law.

That means culturally and biologically women are programmed to look for partners who are stronger and wealthier than they are, because those elements were essential for survival for most of our existence. But in recent decades, women are largely surpassing men economically. They are more likely to obtain degrees, are catching up to men in their earnings, and in 37 percent of US households, women pay the bills.

To this, many will say women should just lower their standards or not be so picky. But it’s not that simple. Again, to do that requires overcoming significant evolutionary impulses on th e part of women. And even when they do overcome these factors, it still isn’t working out. In fact, marriages with female breadwinners are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce. This illustrates that the power dynamic shift created between higher earning women and lower earning men is one our society has not yet learned to live with.

Furthermore, while men say they are fine with dating women who a re smarter than them, psychological studies have revealed otherwise. Men are also biologically inclined to be pr oviders and to be competitive. But for the first time in history, they’re having to compete with women, and outcome wise, they’re often ending up in second place. It turns out they don’t find this so appealing in practice.

The fact that LDS and evangelical families are still having more children backs all of this up. Since gender norms are changing more slowly in these communities, it would seem their relationships are not suffering the same growing pains and therefore the number of children they are having is falling more slowly.

These are societal problems, not ones suited for public policy. And the harsh reality is that it will probably take dec ades for us to sort out this new landscape for romantic relationships and for people to evolve past the male provider/ female nurturer gender stereotypes. But they are challenges worth examining and overcoming, and at an individual level, we can all look for ways to foster romantic relationships that take these factors into consideration.

4. Raising Children Is Getting Super Expensive

Even for people who do want to have kids and manage to find the right partner, there are still a multitude of land mines they must overcome before they can comfortably procreate, and they all trace back to affordability.

A flourishing society would naturally incentivize people to proc reate. But that requires a steady currency, good job market, relatively safe communities, the promise of a good educ ation, and economic factors that make it affordable to have and raise a child.

According to Merrill Lynch, it currently costs $230,000 to rais e a kid to age 18. That’s a jaw-dropping amount, especially when one considers record-breaking inflation, wage stagnation, a nd economic uncertainty created by the reckless printing and spending policies of the US government.

The reasons for these high costs also trace back to the government. Childcare costs have been soaring for decades thanks to extreme government regulations and restrictions on these services. In one survey, 85 percent of parents reported spending 10 percent or more of their household income on child care. Education is another major financial calculation in these decisi ons. There’s no way to sugarcoat it, government schools are atrocious and private schooling or alternative options can be expensive or unfeasible. Many parents are also hesi tant to place their kids in government schools because of gun-f ree zones that make them sitting ducks.

And then there’s college. The price of higher education is astronomical, and that is solely due to government subsidies and loans. But while evidence increasingly shows college is not a good investment for most, many parents still desire to give their kids every opportunity they can and thus factor this in.

Additionally, healthcare costs continue to rise in the country thanks to the government increasingly taking over our system. Insurance prices shot up after Obamacare and there is no end in sight for many. Finally, there are the costs of infertility. A growing number of Americans are having trouble getting pregnant when they want to. Some blame this on problems with our nutrition. Others say it’s because people are having kids later in life. Likely there are multiple reasons. But whatever the cause, fertility assistance is extremely expensive and a cost many cannot afford.

Relatedly, many economists point to the quantity-quality tradeo ff theory which implies that a reduction in fertility would lead to more human capital investment per child. Meaning, people would rather invest their love, finances, and attention into a smaller number of children versus spreading it across a large family.

There are many public policy reforms that would bring these costs down. But for the time-being it is understandable why for some the math is simply not adding up. People want to know they can give their kids a brighter and better future than they themselves had, and for now, that simply isn’t true for a lot of people.

5. Demographic Transition Theory

Finally, many economists point to something called the demographic transition theory to explain the decrease in child birth. In short, because child mortality rates have dropped so precipitously under capitalism people don’t have to have as many kids.

In generations past, as terrible as it was, parents would have a lot of kids with the assumption that several would die. That is no longer the case. People can plan how many children they want to have with a high level of certainty that those kids will live into adulthood.

Furthermore, as societies have become less male-centric, parents don’t have to keep having kids until they have a boy. For inheritance, property, and societal reasons, this used to be a goal for many people, but it is one that is quickly diminishing.

Many of these are issues we as a society can address through free-market solutions. It’s time we have that conversa tion.

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) https://fee.org/

MONDAY, AUGUST

BY JON MILTIMORE

Google’s Plan to Disrupt the College Degree Is Exactly What the Higher Education Market Needs

My wife and I recently hired a financial advisor who is helping us map out our financial future.

He seemed stunned that we didn’t want to take advan tage of the US tax code’s 529 provision, which helps parents save for their children’s education.

“You have three kids,” he said. “Odds are at least one will go to college. It’s a no-brainer.”

We nonetheless demurred. I like shaving my tax liabil ity as much as the next guy, but the truth is both my wife and I have serious doubts about higher education.

Though we both attended college ourselves, options today look less promising than they once did.

College might have been a “no-brainer” at one time for parents and students who could afford it, but that is no longer the case. Soaring costs, grade inflation, diminish ing degree value, the politicization of campuses, and a host of other issues have made the once-clear benefits of college less clear.

Despite all this, a large part of me still wants my kids to go to college because it feels like so few other options are available. That could be changing, however.

Google’s Effort to Disrupt the College Diploma

In July Kent Walker, Google’s Senior Vice President for Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer, announced on Twitter that the company was expanding its education

options.

It was a direct salvo at America’s higher education indus try.

“College degrees are out of reach for many Americans, and you shouldn’t need a college diploma to have economic security,” Walker wrote on Google’s blog. “We need new, accessible job-training solutions—from enhanced vocational programs to online education—to help America recover and rebuild.”

To be sure, it’s hard to imagine anyone taking on Amer ica’s $600 billion higher education industry. Neverthe less, a quick look at Google’s model shows why colleges should be worried.

Google is launching various professional courses that offer training for specific high-paying jobs that are in high demand. Program graduates can earn a “Google Career Certificate” in one of the following positions: Project manager ($93,000); Data analyst ($66,000); UX designer ($75,000).

While Google didn’t say how much it would cost to earn a certificate, if it’s anything close to Google’s IT Support Professional Certificate, the cost is quite low, especially compared to college.

That Google IT support program costs enrollees $49 per month. That means a six-month program would cost about $300—about what many college students cough up on textbooks alone in a semester, Inc points out.

Compare that price tag to that of college, where students on average pay about $30,000 per year when tuition, hous ing, room and board, fees, and other expenses are factored in.

Unlike college, Google won’t just hand you a diploma and send y ou away, however. The company has promised to assist graduates in their job searches, connecting them with em ployers such as Intel, Bank of America, Hulu, Walmart, and Best Buy.

Graduates will also be eligible for one of the hundreds of appr enticeship opportunities the company is offering.

Is College ‘Worth It’?

In economics we use a simple term to talk about something’s wor th: value. We know that value is subjective. But if consumers freely purchase something, it suggests consumers place a value on that good higher than the price.

Judging the value of a degree is tricky, however. It’s not like buying steak at a grocery store. Buyers are mostly shielded from the costs in the short term, and the benefits of the purcha se are extended out over many years.

We know that for many students, college is a wonderful investment that increases their earnings, while for others it will turn out to be a poor investment because they don’t gradua te or they acquire job skills that do not translate into increased earnings. (For example: I was a bartender after I received my undergraduate degree; I didn’t make more money because I had a degree.)

We also know that the prices and value change over time. In the case of higher education, prices have increased sharply in the last 30 years while the value has diminished.

As Arthur C. Brooks pointed out in The Atlantic in July, from 1989-2016 university costs in tuition and fees increased by 98 percent in real dollars (inflation-adjusted), about 11 times that of the median household income.

At the same time, there is compelling evidence that while the price of college is increasing sharply, the value of degrees is diminishing because of a surplus of college diplomas.

For parents like myself, the idea of spending $350,000 to send my three children to university is, to be frank, slightly nauseating. All things being equal, I don’t see the value there. (As I tell my wife, however, this doesn’t mean I won’t send my child to Princeton if he or she is admitted and I belie ve college is the right fit for that particular child.) Over the last couple of years, whenever I’d think about my children’ s futures, I’d find myself growing more and more nerv ous.

If not college, then what? Why are there not better options? There’s a huge need. The beautiful thing about free markets is that needs do not go unmet for very long. In a free system, innovation has a way of filling the gaps to fulfill what consumers want.

Google’s expansion of its accreditation system offers two things young people (and their parents) highly value: 1) job training skills; and 2) prestige.

Do not underestimate the power of the latter. Prestige mattes a lot. In fact, when you look at actual education many college students receive today, prestige is what they’re purchasing, not education.

The value of degrees might have been diminishing for years, but parents and kids could still rationalize the excessive costs because there was a certain amount of status and recognition conferred simply for being in college and then graduating.

Major corporations like Google have more to offer than they real ize. In today’s marketplace, having Google on a resume can offer the same prestige as a university—and arguably far more in terms of job skills.

Once corporations figure out their brand can offer commodities co nsumers want—job-training and validation—it could disrupt the current education model. It’s possible corporations could also bring on a resurgence of the once-popular apprenticeship-style learning that can be traced back to the Code of Hammurabi in Ancient Babylon through to busi ness-training programs of today like Praxis and Google.

At the very least, programs like Google Career Certificates will offer much-needed competition to the university system and additional options to young people looking to take their next step in the world.

Parents of the world, rejoice!

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

A quick look at Google’s model shows why colleges should be worried.

SATURDAY, MAY 28,

BY KERRY MCDONALD

One education entrepreneur is trying to put parents back in charge of their children’s curricu lum, while creating a collaborative, cost-effective space for learning.

With KaiPod, Parents Decide What Their Children Learn

Curriculum battles in public schools across the US have reached a fever pitch in recent years, with parents and politicians fighting about what children should and should not be taught.

The Cato Institute’s Neal McCluskey keeps a running list of these battles, explaining that “rather than build bridges, public schooling often forces people into wrench ing, zero- sum conflict.”

Private education models, along with school choice poli cies that enable parents to exit an assigned district school if they are dissatisfied, help to avoid these public school ing battles. Parents can choose the learning environment for their children that best fits their individual needs and preferences without fighting a political war on the school board floor.

From curriculum to educational philosophy, private education models offer the variety and personalization of learning options that one-size-fits-all, government-run schooling cannot. School choice policies that enable education dollars to follow students directly, rather than going to school districts, allow lower- and middle-income families access to this diversity of options that higher-in come families have long enjoyed.

One education entrepreneur is trying to put parents back in charge of their children’s curriculum, while creating a collaborative, cost-effective space for learning.

Amar Kumar is the founder of KaiPod Learning, a venture capital-backed education startup that brings together the best of online learning with crucial, in-person social experiences and adult mentorship. He joined me on this week’s episode of the LiberatED Podcast.

Kumar, who worked in online product development at Pearson before starting KaiPod, participated in the selec tive Y Combinator startup accelerator program in Silicon Valley last year while launching his flagship KaiPod learn ing center just outside of Boston.

At KaiPod, parents choose whatever online curriculum they want for their child. The curriculum possibilities are endless, from faith-based options to the Ron Paul Curric ulum, Sora Schools to the Socratic Experience, parents can choose a curriculum philosophy and approach that respects their values and and honors their expectations.

If parents want help, KaiPod can offer suggestions, includ ing recommending tuition-free, public virtual schooling options available in some states.

Small, multi-age groups of students then meet together each week in a convenient, commercial location, parttime or full-time depending on a family’s preferences, to work through their individualized curriculum while learning in a social setting with others. An adult educator facilitates the pod, offering guidance and support as well as hosting various interactive group enrichment activities.

“Real, high-quality, online learning paired with these groups of pods could be one of the best solutions out there,” Kumar told me during our podcast conversation.

KaiPod’s Boston-area location costs $220/week for a full-time, 5-day option or $95/week for two days a week, plus the cost of whatever online curriculum the family chooses, making i t one of the most affordable private education options available in the area.

Still, the cost is prohibitive for many families and Kumar is expanding into school choice-friendly states, such as Arizona, where an abundance of high-quality virtual charter sch ools, and the wide availability of education savings accounts, make the KaiPod model much more accessible to more families.

KaiPod Learning is a pioneering educational model that blends online learning with in-person education in a way that maximizes family autonomy and parental preferences. Parents dec ide what their children learn and monitor their pro gress, while their children learn together with peers and adult mentors.

FEE founder Leonard Read wrote that “education is a peaceful, c reative, productive pursuit” in the absence of gov ernment force. “Remove the police force — govern ment as boss — and education is restored to the free, competitive market,” he added.

It is in a fully free, competitive market of education that parents can peacefully choose from a variety and abundance of learning options that best reflect their needs and preference s. In such a world, curriculum battles and school board brawls would be a thing of the past.

Listen to the weekly LiberatED Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Stitcher, and sign up for Kerry’s weekly LiberatED email newsletter to stay up-to-date on educational news and trends from a free-market perspective.

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) https://fee.org/

WEDNESDAY, MAY

BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER

It matters because many young Americans put off remunerative work until after they finish school.

Five Huge Differences between Work and School

13 Reasons Why is a grueling emotional drama of how high school student Hannah Baker ends up taking her own life. The social scene at her school inflicts worsen ing wounds and ever-deepening pain. The school itself becomes associated with the torment of her heart and soul, as her peers drive her ever further into the pit of despair.

Life is not all grim. Her home is a respite. There are also three commercial settings that play an ameliorating role. Her father’s drug store is a happy place. A coffee shop is where she tries to form genuine friendships. But I’m particularly intrigued by the few scenes that show her working at a commercial movie theater. Dressed in a crisp uniform, she serves up popcorn to patrons. These scenes are few but they are universally safe, affirming, and happy.

The contrast raises the question: what are the differences between work and school? It matters because many young Americans put off remunerative work until after they finish school. They enter real life outside of school unprepared for what they are going to face, and carry with them many of the bad habits and even pathologies they picked up during 16 years of schooling.

Here are five key differences between work and school.

1. Obedience vs. Production

In school there are enforced rules that are supposed to be obeyed by everyone, and there is very little room for adjusting them in light of differences between individuals. Compliance is an end in itself. So long as you adhere to the rules, and especially if you are getting good grades –which you can do if you say on tests precisely what you

are supposed to say, and learn what you are supposed to learn – you are a success. There is nothing going on beyond this. You are not paid to attend, and, after 12th grade, you are expected to pay to attend.

In the workplace, by contrast, the ideal is productivity, which ultimately means creating value for others. There are rules but they are subject to a non-arbitrary test: are we achieving the goal of production itself? You are paid because someone thinks you can be a valuable contrib utor to that goal. A portion of the company revenue accrues to you, which also implies some return obligation. The rules are adaptive, constantly changing according to circumstances. They seek to reward good outcomes according to the individual, the team, or the purpose.

2. Force vs. Choice

In school, no matter how bad the social environment gets, how grim the hurt feelings, however much suffering you face, you have to keep coming back day after day, year after year. The same people, the same problems. This is just taken for granted. It is your fate. You surrender to the idea that there is no escape. And why do they believe this? Because it is true: there is no escape. Compulsory attendance laws – passed some 100 years ago – created within the American schooling model an underlying struc ture rooted in legal violence, because these laws are ulti mately enforced by the violence of the state. If you think about it, that was the original sin of American schooling.

KaiPod’s Boston-area location costs $220/week for a full-time, 5-day option or $95/week for two days a week, plus the cost of whatever online curriculum the family chooses, making it one of the most affordable private education options available in the area.

Still, the cost is prohibitive for many families and Kumar is expanding into school choice-friendly states, such as Arizona, where an abundance of high-quality virtual charter sch ools, and the wide availability of education savings accounts, make the KaiPod model much more accessible to more families.

KaiPod Learning is a pioneering educational model that blends online learning with in-person education in a way that maximizes family autonomy and parental preferences. Parents dec ide what their children learn and monitor their pro gress, while their children learn together with peers and adult mentors.

FEE founder Leonard Read wrote that “education is a peaceful, c reative, productive pursuit” in the absence of gov ernment force. “Remove the police force — govern ment as boss — and education is restored to the free, competitive market,” he added.

It is in a fully free, competitive market of education that parents can peacefully choose from a variety and abundance of learning options that best reflect their needs and preference s. In such a world, curriculum battles and school board brawls would be a thing of the past.

Listen to the weekly LiberatED Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Stitcher, and sign up for Kerry’s weekly LiberatED email newsletter to stay up-to-date on educational news and trends from a free-market perspective.

On the other hand, in the workplace, for all the problems and interventions and even bad bosses and lame cowork ers, you are always free to quit and find another job. You enjoy the right of exit. You are a paid volunteer. That right alone takes the sting out and incentivizes cooperative behavior . There are no truancy laws. You can shop around. You can even choose not to work at all. It means that everyone ther e is there by choice and has that job because someone wants to pay them to do it. There is no substructure of violence. There is choice at the heart of the workplace. That alone changes the dynamic and the social environment.

3. Age-Based Tribe vs. the Individual

From preschool through final graduation, you are generally told to stay with your age-based tribe. This is your peer group. You have no responsibilities to anyone younger. You are not directly and consistently influenced by people who are more mature. It’s just you and your age-based friends ruled by external authority structures. You move together. You age together. You will always be in that exact situation, with little to no prospects for mobility. You are in an arti ficial environment that doesn’t exist in any other setting in li fe, and certainly not in the workplace. Then you graduate and your social networks turn to dust.

The workplace includes people of varying ages, and it is completely normal for excellence to be rewarded with growing salaries and responsibilities. Your peers are far more diverse than they ever were in school and that leads to different expectations and opportunities. You can be lame or ambitious, l azy or aspirational, unproductive or super valuable. Your future depends on the choices you make, and you are constantly interacting with a wider demographic of people from whom you can learn and who you can influence. It is a much more fluid and natural social situation. What you do makes a difference in the quality of your life and your place in the hierarchy.

4. Known Information vs. Discovery

In school, most everything you are tasked to learn is already known. There are textbooks, manuals, experts, commit tees. You are part of a system that changes only slowly and according to the priorities of politics and bureaucracies. It’s fine to be curious but only about what other people want you to know. There is only one reward for learning: a higher grade. And what you learn has already been mastered better by others who are assigned to be your authorities. Your job is to become the best-possible parrot. This is what it mean s to be an excellent student. Deviating from that course makes you a problem student.

At work – again, under the ideal – creativity and discovery are valued and rewarded. People who look only for rules to follow only rise so far. To disrupt the routine, to think of an d try the unknown, is what every profit-seeking industry demands. It is not always easy and the tendency toward inertia is always present. But every business must learn to adapt to change and to reward those who are willing to step up and take risks to discover something new.

5. Cruelty vs. Civility

So long as you are getting the grades and adhering to the rules, there is no downside to misbehaving toward oth ers in a school setting. Despite the appearance of order, structures of authority, and endless rules, students end up constructing their own underworlds, and those worlds have radically misaligned incentives that the adults cannot manage, resulting in unchecked pathology: the kind of pathologies that always develop among groups of incarcerated human beings.

It’s not about what teachers do to the students; it’s what students do to each other. This follows the tendency in any incarceration: fellow inmates are generally more threatening than guards and wardens. Cruelty becomes habitual, though often hidden and quiet, something whispered about between good friends.

You choose your tribe. In prison, it’s never safe to be without a gang. You denounce former friends and choose new ones. You join others in making fun of the person in the out-gr oup or rewarding those in the in-group. You have no obligations to be courteous, decent, or kind, and you are neither punished nor rewarded for your treatment of your peers except by peers themselves. You have no concern for the larger consequences of your actions. This cultivates a certain pettiness and leads students to believe that savvy social navigation, even at the expense of others, is their main task. This is what they get good at, and dehumanizing othe rs is not only not punished, it is often rewarded.

In a professional workplace, in contrast, all employees learn t o separate workflow conflicts from personal conflicts. People who personalize gripes (through gossip, backstabbing, or passive-aggressive performances) do not earn the trust and respect of others, and thus do not succeed, do not rise, do not last. The shortest-term employees are those who play politics as if it were middle school. Those who rise above personality to focus on productivity earn the respect of others and rise in the company. And there are certain conventions: for instance, you never, under any circumstances, use your position or title to wage personal battles that have nothing to do with work. You can get away with this for a while, but it doesn’t last.

At the end of 13 Reasons Why, there is a highly symbolic moment in which Hannah walks into the movie theater, turns in her uniform, and walks out the door. This scene shows what it means to give up on something at which you are suc ceeding because you cannot handle the failures that exist outsi de that space. She was brutally victimized by the other half of life, the part that exists outside the civilized, court eous, and adult environment of the workplace. Her work provided her solace, but it was not enough to overcome the impossible odds against her in school.

The story of Hannah is an extreme case with a terrible ending. But the case is neither purely fictional nor entirely iso lated, and it serves as a stand-in for the emotional sufferings of millions. All the anti-bullying campaigns in the world will not fix the problem. Behavioral controls and counselling wi ll not either. The core problem has to be addressed: schooling as we know it is an institution built by force, funded by force, and populated through force, thus insulating students from regular incentives toward civilized life and leav ing them unprotected from unchecked exploitation and abuse.

Welcome to America: How One Education Entrepreneur Is Transforming Refugee EducationEducation. How Do They Do It?

Like so many entrepreneurs, Luma Mufleh saw a problem and created a solution. In 2004, when she began coaching a soccer team of young refugee boys in the suburbs of Atlanta, she soon discovered that the local public schools they attended were failing them. They would be passed along to the next grade level without any literacy skills and with no ability to master the academic content being presented. They were also struggling socially.

“Students were bullied and made fun of because of their names or because of the fact that they don’t know any thing. It was just really hard to watch,” she told me during this week’s episode of the LiberatED Podcast. An immigrant herself who grew up in Jordan and is the daughter and granddaughter of Syrian refugees, Mufleh decided to take action by creating the first American school designed specifically for the distinct needs of refu gee and immigrant children. In 2007, she launched Fugees Academy as a tuition-free private school with six refugee students and a teacher in a church basement in Clark ston, Georgia. The first Fugees grew quickly, became an accredited private school, and now operates as a Georgia charter school.

In 2018, Mufleh expanded Fugees Academy by opening a second location in Columbus, Ohio. There, refugee and immigrant students attend tuition-free through the

state’s educational voucher program. “We wouldn’t exist without school choice,” says Mufleh, explaining during our conversation that school choice policies should be simpli fied to make them more accessible to more students.

In Mufleh’s powerful new book, Learning America: One Woman’s Fight for Educational Justice for Refugee Chil dren, she details her personal story of coming to the United States, serendipitously connecting with refugee children, and embracing the can-do American entrepre neurial spirit. She writes:

“There was never a grand plan. There wasn’t a moment when I thought to myself—This is what I do now; I lead a school for refugees. I saw kids being deprived of an education, families struggling despite their coveted American addresses, and I did what I could to make their lives better. No school I found was considering the specialized needs of my community. It was easier and more effective just to do it myself. I had grown up in such a suffocating, restrictive culture. In America, the freedom I had to fix the problem I saw in front of me was an irresistible privilege.”

Mufleh has advice for other prospective education entre preneurs who may be contemplating getting started. “Do it,” she urges in this week’s podcast. “There are problems. We can’t just take time to overthink, overthink, overthink. Sometimes the simplest solution is right in front of you.”

SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 2022 BY KERRY MCDONALD

An immigrant herself, Luma Mufleh decided to take action by creating the first American school designed specifically for the distinct needs of refugee and immigrant children.

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) https://fee.org/

BY KERRY MCDONALD

More young people are recognizing that the conveyor belt to college, and the debt they as sume along the way, may not be the best option.

College Enrollment Drops As Students Seek Alternatives

The past two years have been marked by major education disruption at the K-12 level, as more families questioned the schooling status quo during prolonged school clo sures and remote learning. They left district schools in droves, choosing instead to become independent home schoolers, join learning pods and microschools, or find high-quality virtual learning platforms.

Public school enrollment plummeted during the 2021/2021 academic year, and continued its decline this academic year in many areas, despite the fact that schools reopened for full-time, in-person learning.

Higher education is seeing a similar trend. College enroll ment dropped in the 2020/2021 school year as many colleges and universities turned to remote learning, and it has also not rebounded.

In fact, The New York Times recently reported that the college enrollment decline may indeed be worsening this year. According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, undergraduate enrollment this spring is down 662,000 students compared to last year, or a drop of 4.7 percent. Graduate school enrollment also declined this year compared to last year.

“Prospective college students may be weighing the rela tive value of jobs that require or expect a college degree against equally attractive opportunities that do not,” wrote the Times.

These students are smart. They are recognizing that the conveyor belt to college, and the debt they assume along the way, may not be the best option. They are weighing the benefits of a college degree against the costs, both financial costs and opportunity costs, and determining that perhaps another pathway to adulthood might make more sense.

On this week’s episode of the LiberatED Podcast, I inter viewed Cameron Sorsby, CEO of Praxis, about alternatives to college. Praxis is an apprenticeship boot camp program that helps young people to develop skills and experience that make them valuable to prospective employers.

Over the past couple of years, Sorsby has been seeing increased interest in Praxis, along with a growing cul tural acceptance of alternatives to college. “As soon as it became more socially acceptable to pursue other options outside of the typical higher ed track, you see more peo ple flocking to it,” said Sorsby.

More individuals and families are questioning the conven tional K-12 and college pathway, and are exploring other options. Their demand for both schooling and college alternatives will continue to dramatically reshape educa tion for years to come.

Listen to the weekly LiberatED Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Stitcher, and sign up for Kerry’s weekly Liber atED email newsletter to stay up-to-date on educational news and trends from a free-market perspective.

https://fee.org/

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 BY JON MILTIMORE

The New York Times Reported ‘the Mainstreaming of Marxism in US Colleges’ 30 Years Ago. Today, We See the Results

In August 1989, Poland’s parliament did the unthinkable. The Soviet satellite state elected an anti-communist as its new prime minister.

The world waited with bated breath to see what would happen next. And then it happened: nothing.

When no Soviet tanks deployed to Poland to crush the rebels, political movements in other nations—first Hun gary, followed by East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania—soon followed in what became known as the Revolutions of 1989.

The collapse of Communism had begun. ‘Marx’s Ideological Heirs’

On October 25, 1989, a mere two months after Poland’s pivotal election, the New York Times published an article, headlined “The Mainstreaming of Marxism in US Col leges,” describing a strange and seemingly paradoxical phenomenon. Even as the world’s great experiment in Marxism was collapsing for all to see, Marxist ideas were taking root and becoming mainstream in the halls of American universities.

their own transformation from brash, beleaguered out siders to assimilated academic insiders,” wrote Felicity Barringer.

There were notable differences, however. The stark, unmistakable contrast between the grinding poverty of the Communist nations and the prosperity of Western economies had obliterated socialism’s claim to economic superiority.

As a result, orthodox Marxism, with its emphasis on eco nomics, was no longer in vogue. Traditional Marxism was “retreating” and had become “unfashionable,” the Times reported.

‘’There are a lot of people who don’t want to call them selves Marxist,” Eugene D. Genovese, an eminent Marxist academic, told the Times. (Genovese, who died in 2012, later abandoned socialism and embraced traditional con servatism after rediscovering Catholicism.)

Marxism wasn’t truly retreating, however. It was simply adapting to survive.

“As Karl Marx’s ideological heirs in Communist nations struggle to transform his political legacy, his intellectual heirs on American campuses have virtually completed

Watching the upheaval in Poland and other Eastern bloc nations had convinced even Marxists that capitalism would not “give way to socialism” anytime soon. But this would cause an evolution of Marxist ideas, not an aban donment of them.

The lesson of 1989 is that today’s culture and ideas are tomorrow’s politics and policies.

‘’Marx has become relativized,” Loren Graham, a historian at th e Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the Times.

Graham was just one of a dozen of the scholars the Times spoke to, a mix of economists, legal scholars, historians, sociologists, and literary critics. Most of them seemed to reach the same conclusion as Graham.

Marxism was not dying, it was mutating.

‘’Marxism and feminism, Marxism and deconstruction, Marxism and race - this is where the exciting debates are,’’ Jona than M. Wiener, a professor of history at the University of California at Irvine, told the paper.

Marxism was still thriving, Barringer concluded, but not in the social sciences, “where there is a possibility of practical application,” but in abstract fields such as literary criticism.

A Strategic Shift

Marxism was not defeated. The Marxists had just staked out new turf.

And it was a highly strategic move. “Practical application” of Marxism had proven disastrous. Communism had been tried as a governing philosophy and had failed catastrophically, leading to mass starvation, impoverishment, persecu tion, and murder. But, in the ivory tower of the American university system, professors could inculcate Marxist ideas in the minds of their students without risk of being refuted by reality. Yet, it wasn’t happening in university economics departments, because Marxism’s credentials in that discipline were too tarnished by its “practical” track record. Instead, Marxism was thriving in English departments and other more abstract disciplines.

In these studies, economics was downplayed, and other key aspects of the Marxist worldview came to the fore. The Marxist class war doctrine was still emphasized. But instead of capital versus labor, it was the patriarchy versus women, the racially privileged versus the marginalized, etc. St udents were taught to see every social relation through the lens of oppression and conflict.

After absorbing Marxist ideas (even when those ideas weren’t ca lled “Marxist”), generations of university graduates carried those ideas into other important American institutions: the arts, media, government, public schools, even eventually into human resources departments and corporate boardrooms. (This is known as “the long march through the institutions,” a phrase coined by Communist student activis t Rudi Dutschke, whose ideas were influenced by early twentieth-century Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci.)

Indeed, it was recently revealed that federal agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars on programs training employees to acknowledge their “white privilege.” These trainin g programs are also found in countless schools and corporations, and people who have questioned the appropriateness of these programs have found themselves sum marily fired.

A huge part of today’s culture is a consequence of this movemen t. Widespread “wokeness,” all-pervasive identity politics, victimism, cancel culture, rioters self-righteously destroying people’s livelihoods and menacing passersby: all largely stem from Marxist presumptions (especially Marxism’s di storted fixations on oppression and conflict) that have been incubating in the universities, especially since the late 80s.

As it turned out, what was happening in American universities i n 1989 was just as pivotal as what was happening in European parliaments.

Especially in an election year, it can be easy to fixate on the political fray. But the lesson of 1989 is that today’s culture and ideas are tomorrow’s politics and policies.

That is why the fate of freedom rests on education.

To advance the cause of freedom for today and tomorrow, please support the Foundation for Economic Education.

Correction: This article originally stated that Gramsci coined the phrase “the long march through the institutions.”

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) https://fee.org/

Student Debt Forgiveness Is Already Happening Because of the Payment “Freeze”

In March of 2020, Donald Trump paused federal student loan payments and “froze” interest accumulation in an effort to help borrowers through the difficulty of pan demic shutdowns.

moved on from being temporary relief, and it can now be better classified as “student loan forgiveness”.

Whose Interest?

Why would a pause on payments and interest accumula tion fall under the category of student loan forgiveness?

The Oval Office has changed occupants, pandemic shut downs have ended, but the payment and interest freeze has been extended several times. As Friedman quipped, “there’s nothing so permanent as a temporary govern ment program.”

When Brad Polumbo and I wrote about temporary pan demic programs (including the student-loan payment freeze) becoming permanent in September, I noticed some criticism in the line of “the programs are still here because the pandemic is still here.” Well, for what it’s worth, Fauci now says we’re out of the pandemic phase. Of course, some may simply disagree with Fauci. To some, we may never be.

In any case, the student loan payment freeze has cer tainly outlasted the government shutdown. And, although there are many problems in the economy right now, it wouldn’t be hard to point to worse economies in the past when student loan payments were still being collected.

So I think it’s safe to say that the payment freeze has

Well, every day this program continues, borrowers are exempted from paying interest they agreed to pay. Or, put differently, the federal government is taking the hit for the monthly interest payment in terms of lost cash inflows.

Ultimately, this means taxpayers are the generous ones picking up the tab. Why? Well, when the federal govern ment chooses not to charge interest it is owed, the reve nue of the government is lower than it would be.

All government spending must ultimately be financed with government revenue. So when the government spends money or borrows money, it must ultimately come from the taxes it collects (for the sake of simplicity we’ll ignore revenue via seigniorage).

So if the government decides to spend the same amount it budgeted to spend before freezing interest, and it receives less money from interest due to the freeze, it must take more money from present or future taxpayers.

FRIDAY, JULY 1, 2022 BY JON MILTIMORE

Student loan forgiveness is already here. And it’s already helping the rich at the expense of the poor.

Alternatively, even if the government decided to spend less mon ey to offset the lack of interest received (an other worldly scenario), taxpayers would still be worse off because th ey’d be paying the same taxes for less government services provided.

In either case, taxpayers are left holding the bag. Student loan holders who don’t have to make payments or deal with interest accumulation are better off. Interest is forgiven on th e public’s dime.

How Much Have We Forgiven?

If you’re not a finance person, this might seem minor. How much could this really be costing? Well, in the first few months, it was probably not that much. But the thing about interest is, it compounds.

To estimate the total revenue the federal government has forgon e with this freeze, let’s do a simple back-of-the-enve lope estimate.

Student loan interest compounds daily, but the rate on the loans is represented in annual terms. In other words, a 4% interest rate on your federal student loans means your balance will be 4% larger at the end of the year if you didn’t pay anything toward the initial loan amount itself.

For simplicity’s sake, imagine you had a loan of $100, and a 4% interest rate in annual terms. At the end of the year, you’d owe 100*1.04=$104. Next year the 4% interest would accumulate on the balance of $104 so your new balance would be $104*1.04=$108.16.

In reality, this understates the growth of the loan balance because of factors dealing with how annual interest rates are expressed compared to how interest compounds, but this simp lification will do for a conservative estimate. So to find the total amount of interest forgone, we need the bal ance of federal loans and the average interest rate (weighted by loan amount).

Average interest rate data are difficult to come by. Educationald ata.org claims the average rate for Federal Student Loans is 4.12%. But this number is just an average of interest rates since 2013, not a weighted average. It also uses only undergraduate loans which have lower interest rates. If you extend that back to 2007, you get an unweighted average of 4.66%.

I also did some quick calculations using Federal Reserve Data on outstanding student loans to determine the weight of different years. This gave me a weighted average of 4.69%. La stly, If I use only the last 10 years, I get a weighted average of 4.03%.

Since most federal student loans are paid off in 10 years, let’s stick with the lower 4.03%, which will provide a more conservative estimate anyways. (My guess is this is much lower than reality, but it provides some guidance.)

We have an interest rate, but what about an amount? Well, outstanding Federal Student Loan debt is $1.61 trillion. Finally, as a last simplifying assumption, I’ll be calculating the forgiveness over two years. It’s been 2 years and 3 months, but not including the last 3 months of forgiven interest provides a more conservative estimate.

So, compounding 4.03% interest on $1.61 trillion twice leaves a total balance of $1.74 trillion. This means a total of over $130 billion dollars in interest has been forgiven. Since there are 43 million borrowers, this comes out to an aver age of around $3,078 of interest forgiveness per borrower.

In other words, we’re already 30% of the way to Biden’s $10,000 forgiveness dream

Forgiving Who?

As a recent FEE article summarized, student loan forgiveness te nds to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the poor and middle class. Economists call this sort of policy regressiv e (not to be confused with the “going backward” meaning of the term).

It’s clear why. Those with large student loan balances tend to be people pursuing higher-paying careers with an expen sive education. Being a doctor or a lawyer is lucrative but becoming one is expensive. And top liberal arts schools charge higher tuition than state schools.

The student loan payment freeze is in some ways even more regre ssive. Remember, the $3,078 of forgiveness was an average. That means some borrowers are benefiting more than that and some are benefiting less. Unlike a flat $10,000 forgiveness, which at least forgives all borrowers equally, the interest freeze is most beneficial for those with large loan balances.

Bankrate claims the average lawyer graduates with $165,000 in student loan debt. At the interest rate of 4.03% this translates to over $13,000 in forgiven interest. In fact, anyone with student debt more than $125,000 has already received more than the $10,000 in forgiveness Biden has promised.

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2021 BY JON MILTIMORE

Should the Government Get To Decide What You Do after High School?

f you’re in high school, you probably get asked a lot about what you plan to do after you graduate. Maybe the answer is obvious for you. Perhaps you’re planning on going to college or trade school, or you want to get a job right away. Or maybe you don’t know quite yet. Maybe you’re still exploring your options and trying to figure out what kind of career you really want to pursue.

No matter what you end up choosing, the first steps you take after high school can be kind of a big deal. After all, this is your entry into the real world. The options before you are vast. For the first time in your life, you get to choose your own future.

But what if you couldn’t choose? What if the government decided for you what your post-graduation plans would be, at least for a year or two? Would you be happy about that? Would you appreciate being told how and where to take your first steps as an adult?

I know I wouldn’t be. After slaving through 12 years of compulsory schooling, the prospect of spending even more of my life doing what someone else tells me to do would be, to put it mildly, disconcerting.

Sadly, this is exactly the kind of thing that some people are trying to make a reality.

A recent article in Foreign Policy, for example, argues that America needs a mandatory public service program.

Authored by David Carden, a long-time friend of President

Obama and former US diplomat, the piece suggests that this is the best way to address political polarization, and that it would also give young people valuable skills and experience.

“A program of mandatory national service, if designed effectively, would bring together young Americans from across the country and all socioeconomic groups,” Carden writes, “to work on public interest projects and accom plish common goals for the good of the country.”

Carden suggests a number of projects that could be part of the program, such as “tutoring and mentoring... improving environmental conservation...building public housing...and helping in the construction, rehabilitation, and maintenance of public parks and facilities.” In return, participants would be given substantial benefits, such as government-covered tuition and living expenses for col lege or trade school. Service would be for a fixed period of one or two years, and Americans would need to complete the requirements at some point between the ages of 18 and 24.

Addressing the Polarization Problem

In theory, one of the main benefits of this program would be less divisiveness and a greater respect for others.

Americans from vastly different backgrounds and loca tions could come together in common causes, building comradery and being exposed to new ideas and people.

It would be for your own good, of course.

In many ways, these arguments parallel those that are used in support of public schools, which are also designed to foster interaction between people from different backgrounds.

There’s just one problem. As anyone who has attended a public s chool can tell you, these institutions can be some of the most divisive places in the country. Why is this the case? Well, one plausible explanation is that it has to do with the very fact that people with different values are forced to pa rticipate in the same system.

For example, think about religious institutions. In the past, there was no separation of church and state, so people were regularly forced to practice religions they didn’t agree with. As a result, religion became incredibly divisive, caus ing lots of war and persecution.

But today, though religious disagreements still exist, they aren’t nearly as antagonistic as they used to be, largely because people who disagree can go their separate ways. With schools, on the other hand, people are still forced to follow the values of the state, so it’s no wonder that fights ov er what those values should be are ubiquitous (the recent conflicts over masks and critical race theory are just the lates t examples of this phenomenon).

A mandatory public service program would almost certainly breed similar divisions, except instead of fighting over sex-ed and school uniforms, people would fight about which proje cts should be prioritiezed and what expectations should be set for the participants. So really, this is a recipe for discord and antagonism, not a cure.

“It’s For Your Own Good”

A second argument for the program is that it would help young people with their personal and professional develop ment. This may sound unobjectionable on the surface, but note t he tone with which this is presented.

“The work opportunities should be designed to help inform and facilitate participants’ career goals as much as pos sible,” Carden writes. “This would allow participants to develo p real-life skills in their areas of interest. The objective would be balancing this with the need to push participants outs ide of their comfort zones: That might look like, for instance, letting a participant choose their area of focus but not their geographic location or vice versa.”

This is nothing short of paternalism. He says he’s interested in helping young people, but what he means by that is forcing them to do what he believes is in their best interest.

If you take issue with this approach, you’re not alone. There’s something singularly sinister about coercing people to do things “for their own good.” Indeed, C.S. Lewis saw this pat ernalistic disposition as one of the gravest dangers to liberty.

“Of all tyrannies,” he wrote, “a tyranny sincerely exercised fo r the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own co nscience.”

But is a program like this really tyranny? Carden dismisses the objection.

“Some would argue Americans should have the right to decide what’s in their own self-interest without government interference—and thus should not be required to participate,” h e writes. “But this line of thinking, of prioritizing the rights of citizenship over its obligations, is one of the main reasons the program is needed in the first place.”

In other words, if standing up for your rights is more important to you than humbly submitting to your government, you clearly need to be re-educated in a mandatory government program.

Right...

Carden’s comments aside, it’s important to recognize the extent to which this kind of program would violate civil lib erties. If this were truly mandatory, it would essentially constitute forced labor, which is really a form of involuntary servitude. Indeed, if a private entity did this, we’d rightly call it slavery.

With that said, this line of reasoning raises an interesting question. If you should get to choose what you do after you turn 18, why not before? After all, school is also a kind of forced labor, and it’s poorly suited for many students. So what if we let people choose their own course even earlier in l ife, allowing them to pursue jobs, apprenticeships, or education as they see fit? What if we didn’t presume to know wha t’s best for others, but instead we allowed them to explore what’s best for themselves?

It almost makes you wonder whether school should be compulsory at all.

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

Arizona’s New School Choice Bill Moves Us Closer to Milton Friedman’s Vision

“Our goal is to have a system in which every family in the U.S. will be able to choose for itself the school to which its children go,” the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman stated in 2003. “We are far from that ultimate result. If we had that, a system of free choice, we would also have a system of competition, innovation, which would change the character of education.”

Last week, Arizona lawmakers moved us much closer to that ultimate result. Legislators in that state, which already had some of the most robust school choice poli cies in the US, passed the country’s first universal educa tion savings account bill, extending education choice to all K-12 students.

The education savings accounts, or Empowerment Schol arship Accounts as they are known in Arizona, had previ ously been available to certain Arizona students who met specific criteria, including special needs students and chil dren in active-duty military families. This new bill, which the Governor Doug Ducey is expected to sign, extends education choice to all school-age children throughout Arizona.

more.

“Arizona is now the gold standard for school choice,” Corey DeAngelis, senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, told me this week. “Every other state should follow Arizona’s lead and fund students instead of sys tems. Education funding is meant for educating children, not for protecting a particular institution. School choice is the only way to truly secure parental rights in education.”

Several states have introduced or expanded school choice policies over the past couple of years, enabling taxpayer funding of education to go directly to students rather than bureaucratic school systems. In this week’s LiberatED podcast episode, I spoke with one education entrepreneur, Michelle McCartney, whose homeschool resource center is an approved vendor for New Hamp shire’s Education Freedom Accounts, an education savings account program for income-eligible students that was implemented last year.

Every family will now have access to 90 percent of the state-allocated per pupil education dollars, or about $7,000 per student, to use toward approved education-re lated resources, including private school tuition, tutors, curriculum materials, online learning programs, and

While McCartney sees a fully private, free market in education as the ideal circumstance, she recognizes that education choice policies are an important first step toward expanding education options for more families, and reducing government involvement in the education sector.

“If it was up to me we wouldn’t pay any money to the government and school would be entirely privatized,” said McCartney. “That’s how I believe it should be, but it’s not.

THURSDAY, JUNE 30, 2022 BY KERRY MCDONALD

The education disruption over the past two years has re-energized parents and taxpayers alike.

So I think we can all sit here and have discussions about what would be the ideal circumstance, but I think sometimes we’ve got to roll with what we have, and if we can get any of that money back to the families I think that’s an impor tant first step.”

Indeed, Milton Friedman also saw school choice policies such as vouchers as a first step in education reform, not a final one. Friedman popularized the idea of school choice polici es, specifically universal school vouchers, in his 1955 paper, “The Role of Government in Education,” and elaborated on his views over the following decades up until his death in 2006 at the age of 94.

Friedman and his economist wife Rose wrote in their influential book, Free To Choose: “We regard the voucher plan as a partial solution because it affects neither the financing of sc hooling nor the compulsory attendance laws. We favor going much farther.”

While Arizona’s new legislation now makes it the forerunner in education choice policies across the country, West Virginia is close behind and begins to address compulsory attendance. Lawmakers there recently passed legislation that loosens state compulsory school attendance laws for participants in learning pods and microschools, two emerg ing, decentralized K-12 learning models that are gaining popula rity across the country. West Virginia also passed an education savings account program last year, known as the Hope Scholarship, that extends education choice to nearly all K-12 students.

The education disruption over the past two years has re-energiz ed parents and taxpayers alike. They are demand ing more options beyond an assigned district school, embracing innovative learning models, and loosening the gov ernment grip on education. As Friedman envisioned, a choice-based system of education weakens the government monopoly on schooling and sparks innovation and competition to ultimately “change the character of education.”

We are seeing that change occur right before our eyes.

Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) https://fee.org/

Daniel Beasley,Esq.LLM

June 02, 2022

Darren Jones, Esq.

June 08, 2022

DISTRICTS IGNORE STATE POLICY, DENY SPECIAL NEEDS SERVICES TO HOMESCHOOLER

https://hslda.org/post/districts-ignore-state-policy-deny-special-needs-services-to-homeschooler?utm_ source=hslda&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6-2-2022&utm_id=WU

VETERANS AFFAIRS DENIES BENEFITS TO ELIGIBLE HOMESCHOOL PARENTS

https://hslda.org/post/veterans-affairs-denies-benefits-to-eligible-homeschool-parents?utm_source=hslda&utm_ medium=email&utm_campaign=6-8-2022&utm_id=WU

Thomas J. Schmidt, Esq.

June 29, 2022

Thomas J. Schmidt, Esq.

July 13, 2022

OFFICIALS THREATEN HOMESCHOOL FAMILIES WHO LEFT NEW YORK

https://hslda.org/post/officials-threaten-homeschool-families-who-left-new-york?utm_source=hslda&utm_medi um=email&utm_campaign=6-29-2022&utm_id=WU

DISTRICT INVENTS DEADLINE FOR ANNUAL EVALUATION, THREATENS TO TERMINATE PROGRAM

https://hslda.org/post/district-invents-deadline-for-annual-evaluation-threatens-to-terminate-pro gram?utm_source=WU&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7-13-2022&utm_id=HSLDA

National News Reports in Education

telecompetitor

By Carl Weinschenk

June 10, 2022

FCC ANNOUNCES $262M IN EMERGENCY CONNECTIVITY FUND SUPPORT

https://www.telecompetitor.com/fcc-announces-262m-in-emergency-connectivity-fund-support/

https://hslda.org/post/hslda-president-mike-smith-announces-his-retirement?utm_source=hslda&utm_

CHICAGO STYLE DEEP DISH PIZZA RECIPE

Ingredients

Dough:

• 3 1/4 cups (16 1/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

• 1/2 cup (2 3/4 ounces) yellow cornmeal

• 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt

• 2 teaspoons sugar

• 2 1/4 teaspoons instant or rapid-rise yeast

• 1 1/4 cups water (10 ounces), room temperature

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus 4 tablespoons, softened

• 1 teaspoon plus 4 tablespoons olive oil

Sauce:

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

• 1/4 cup grated onion, from 1 medium onion (see note)

• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

• Table salt

• 2 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through garlic press (about 2 teaspoons)

Directions

FOR THE DOUGH:

1. Mix flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar, and yeast in bowl of stand mixer fitted with dough hook on low speed until incorporated, about 1 minute.

2. Add water and melted butter and mix on low speed until fully combined, 1 to 2 minutes, scraping sides and bottom of bowl occasionally.

3. Increase speed to medium and knead until dough is glossy and smooth and pulls away from sides of bowl, 4 to 5 min utes. (Dough will only pull away from sides while mixer is on. When mixer is off, dough will fall back to sides.)

4. Using fingers, coat large bowl with 1 teaspoon olive oil, rub bing excess oil from fingers onto blade of rubber spatula.

5. Using oiled spatula, transfer dough to bowl, turning once to oil top; cover tightly with plastic wrap. Let rise at room temperature until nearly doubled in volume, 45 to 60 minutes.

FOR THE SAUCE:

6. While dough rises, heat butter in medium saucepan over medium heat until melted.

7. Add onion, oregano, and 1/2 teaspoon salt; cook, stirring occasionally, until liquid has evaporated and onion is golden brown, about 5 minutes.

8. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

9. Stir in tomatoes and sugar, increase heat to high, and bring to simmer.

10. Lower heat to medium-low and simmer until reduced to 2 1/2 cups, 25 to 30 minutes.

11. Off heat, stir in basil and oil, then season with salt and pepper.

12. TO LAMINATE THE DOUGH:

13. Adjust oven rack to lower position and heat oven to 425

• 1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes

• 1/4 teaspoon sugar

• 2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh basil leaves

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

• Ground black pepper

• Toppings:

• 1 pound mozzarella cheese, shredded (about 4 cups) (rec ommended, whole mozarella. Don’t use pre-shredded, as it doesn’t melt well.)

• 1/2 ounce grated Parmesan cheese (about 1/4 cup)

degrees.

14. Using rubber spatula, turn dough out onto dry work sur face and roll into 15- by 12-inch rec-tangle.

15. Using offset spatula, spread softened butter over surface of dough, leaving 1/2-inch border along edges.

16. Starting at short end, roll dough into tight cylinder. With seam side down, flatten cylinder into 18- by 4-inch rectan gle.

17. Cut rectangle in half crosswise.

18. Working with 1 half, fold into thirds like business letter; pinch seams together to form ball. Repeat with remaining half.

19. Return balls to oiled bowl, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and let rise in refrigerator until nearly doubled in volume, 40 to 50 minutes.

20. Coat two 9-inch round cake pans with 2 tablespoons olive oil each.

21. Transfer 1 dough ball to dry work surface and roll out into 13-inch disk about 1/4 inch thick.

22. Transfer dough to pan by rolling dough loosely around rolling pin and unrolling into pan.

23. Lightly press dough into pan, working into corners and 1 inch up sides. If dough resists stretching, let it relax 5 minutes before trying again. Repeat with remaining dough ball.

24. For each pizza, sprinkle 2 cups mozzarella evenly over surface of dough.

25. Spread 1 1/4 cups tomato sauce over cheese and sprinkle 2 tablespoons Parmesan over sauce.

26. Bake until crust is golden brown, 20 to 30 minutes. Remove pizza from oven and let rest 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

CUBAN-STYLE STEAKS IN GARLIC-LIME MARINADE RECIPE

Ingredients

• For the marinade:

• 6 cloves garlic

• 1 1/4 tsp salt

• 3/4 tsp ground cumin

• 3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

• 1/2 cup sour orange juice or lime juice (I mixed 1/3 cup of lime juice and 1/6 cup of orange juice to simu late the sour orange juice)

• 2 Tbsp olive oil

• For the steaks

• 4 (6-8 ounce) beef steaks, cut 1/2 inch thick (bottom round, top round, sirloin, etc.)

• 2 large onions cut into 1/2 inch slices (optional)

• 2 Tbsp olive oil

Directions

1. Preheat grill to high

2. Prepare the adobo (marinade) by combining the garlic, salt, cumin, and pepper in a mortar and grind slowly with a pestle gradually working in the lime juice and olive oil unti l you have a smooth paste. Or, to save time, put all these ingredients in a blender and process to a smooth paste. Brush some of the adobo on the steaks 10 minutes in advance of placing on the grill. This is not necessary, but will impart additional flavor to the steaks.

3. When grill is ready, oil grill grate. Brush onions with oil and place on the hot grate. Grill for 4 minutes on each side, seasoning with salt and pepper.

4. Once the onions are on the grill, brush the steaks with the adobo and place on the grill alongside the onions. Grill for 3 minutes per side for medium rare, basting with the adobo.

5. Transfer the steaks to a platter or individual plates and brush one final time with the remaining adobo using all of

MRS. HARVEY’S WHITE FRUITCAKE RECIPE

Ingredients

• 4 cups shelled pecans (approx. 1 lb.)

• 8 ounces candied cherries (original recipe had 1 lb. but

I took the liberty to reduce the ratio to half that of candied pineapple; I just liked it better - sorry, Mrs. Harvey!)

• 1 pound candied pineapple

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, divided

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/2 pound butter

• 1 cup sugar

• 5 large eggs

• 1/2 to 2 ounces vanilla extract (1 to 4 tablespoons is quite a range for flavorings, but it is all personal preference. I used 2 tablespoons each of vanilla and lemon and it was just fine.)

• 1/2 to 2 ounces lemon extract (see note above)

Directions

1. There are endless possibilities for pans or tins to bake fruitcake. You can use one 10-inch tube pan or large fruit cake tin for the whole recipe; 2 or 3 medium loaf pans; 6 or 7 mini loaf pans 5 1/2 x 3 1/2, or 18 to 24 petite loaf pans 4” x 2 1/2, depending on desired fill amount.

2. Whichever you choose, it is best to line them with parchment pa per, clean brown paper bag paper cut to size, foil, or for smaller loaf sizes, commercial paper liners. I don’t find the need to grease them or spray. The liner helps them release from pan without tearing, and protects fruits and nuts.

3. Chop nuts and fruit into medium-size pieces (see photo for appr oximate size). Dredge with 1/4 cup of the flour (see photo); set aside.

4. Beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in eg gs, vanilla and lemon extracts.

5. Stir together remaining 1 1/2 cups flour and baking powder in me dium bowl; fold into butter-egg mixture. Using strong wooden spoon, blend in fruit and nuts (batter will be st iff.)

6. Push batter into prepared pan(s).

Place in cold oven and turn the oven to 250 degrees.

When done, the fruit cake will be golden and firm on top with no wetness, and golden brown on sides and bottom (see photos).

9. Remove from oven; cool in pans on cake rack. Remove wrappers or liners if desired and re-wrap in plastic wrap or foil. (Batter has a lot of butter so liners might be greasy.)

Approximate baking time:

FOR 10-INCH TUBE PANS OR LARGE FRUIT CAKE TIN: Bake 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Check cake 1 hour before earliest done time and again 30 minutes before to make sure it doesn†€ t over bake.

FOR MEDIUM LOAF PAN SIZES: 1 3/4 to 2 hours; check one half hour before earliest time to make sure it doesn†€ t over bake.

MINI LOAF PANS: About 1 to 1 1/4 hours total; check after 50 minutes.

PETITE LOAF PANS: About 45 - 50 minutes total; check after 35 minutes.

Yield: 4 1/2 pounds of fruitcake, or 24 servings (3-ounce gener ous slice size.)

Ingredients

• 4 pork chops, 1 inch thick

• 1 tsp sweet paprika

• 1/4 or more cayenne pepper

• 1/4 tsp dried thyme

• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

• 2 - 3 T canola oil

• 1 - 2 T all-purpose (or gluten-free) flour

• 2 C pork or beef stock

• 1/8 tsp Worcestershire sauce

• 1 bay leaf

• salt & fresh black pepper to taste

• chopped parsley and minced garlic for garnish

• Hot rice

Directions

1. Combine the dry ingredients - the thyme, cayenne, red pepper , salt and black pepper, paprika with the whisk and shake

2. Sprinkle evenly over the chops

Saute the chops over med-high heat in a little oil until done

Remove the chops to a plate

Sprinkle the flour into the saute pan and whisk until you have a roux, adding oil and flour to get that paste consistancy

Add the stock to the roux, the worcestershire sauce and the bay leaf

Slide the chops into the pool and simmer for about 5 minutes

Serve on rice, garnished with the parsley and garlic

[NOTE: For those who want to present a more ‘upscale’ plating, you can deglaze the pan with 3/4 C of cream sherry, and let that reduce a bit just prior to making th e roux. I also remove the finished chops to a warming station, then thicken the sauce with 1 Tbs of cornstarch and 1/4 C of water. When thickened, I remove from the heat and stir in 2Tbs of sweet butter. Then I plate up.]

PUMPKIN MUFFINS RECIPE (GLUTEN FREE)

Ingredients

• 1 cup brown rice flour

• 1 cup white rice flour

• 1 ½ †€ 2 Tbsp gluten free baking powder

• ½ tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp xanthan

• ½ tsp fine Celtic sea salt

• ¼ tsp nutmeg

• ¼ tsp cinnamon

• ½ cup agave nectar

• 1 cup sultanas/raisins

• 1 organic egg

• ¼ cup cold pressed canola oil

• ½ cup to a cup of plain mashed pumpkin

• ½ cup organic almond milk or soy milk

Directions

1. Sift flours, baking powder, baking soda, xanthan, salt and spice s in a bowl and stir together mixing evenly.

2. Break an egg into the mixer and gradually add in the oil, milk, and then the pumpkin, until mixed through.

3. Add in the dry ingredients and mix until a thick batter forms.

4. Fold in the raisins and spoon into well greased muffin pots.

5. Bake in a moderate oven †€ about 170C/325 F for approximately 20 minutes.

6. Serve warm, with butter and honey, eat cold as a snack, or enjo y with a warm bowl of soup or zesty salad.

7. These muffins will keep in the fridge for a few days, or freeze r eally well in an airtight sealed bags for school lunches or work snacks.