Fareed Zakaria has a terrific column in the Washington Post, Why America’s obsession with STEM education is dangerous (STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Zakaria is not a technophobe or a Luddite. He just understands that an overemphasis on science/tech education can rob students of other kinds of learning that both enrich their lives and encourage creativity — the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that leads to innovative ideas and bold entrepreneurship.

Zakaria knows the Asian educational model, which leads to high test scores people like to use against our methods of schooling, first hand.

Americans should be careful before they try to mimic Asian educational systems, which are oriented around memorization and test-taking. I went through that kind of system. It has its strengths, but it’s not conducive to thinking, problem solving or creativity. That’s why most Asian countries, from Singapore to South Korea to India, are trying to add features of a liberal education to their systems. Jack Ma, the founder of China’s Internet behemoth Alibaba, recently hypothesized in a speech that the Chinese are not as innovative as Westerners because China’s educational system, which teaches the basics very well, does not nourish a student’s complete intelligence, allowing her to range freely, experiment and enjoy herself while learning.

Last week I interviewed Nancy Montoya, executive producer/reporter for Media Source America, on the show I cohost on Access Tucson, Education: The Rest of the Story. We talked about Arizona's education cuts at the K-12 and college levels and the efforts of a newly created group, Arizona Stands Up, to inform Arizonans about the importance of education and put pressure on the legislature to increase funding for education in future budgets.

This is the second part of the interview. In Part One, Nancy talks about her extensive broadcasting experience, her production company and her work with others to promote education in the state.

It looks like all the bad press for-profit colleges have earned recently has taken a toll on the University of Phoenix. Its enrollment has been cut in half over the past five years, from 460,000 to 213,000. Between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning its stock dropped from 28.04 to 22.17 and is at 19.62 as I write this. 

The reason is the bad reputation for-profit colleges have picked up recently. Problems have been reported on for years by the less-than-mainstream press but was only reported by the MSM, then acted on by the Obama administration, more recently.

Once a cash cow industry, for-profit education companies have struggled to overcome criticism of the quality of its education and the costs. They're the sore spot in the national debate about value of higher education.

For-profit colleges only enroll roughly 12% of the country's students, but accounted for about half of student loan defaults in 2013, according to federal data.

Those types of stats spurred the Obama administration last March to limit federal aid dolled out to for-profit colleges — a challenge for places like the University of Phoenix.

President Obama announced another initiative in January to make community college free. For-profit universities compete for many of the same students that community colleges take in.

What's ahead: The numbers are telling: Apollo Education Group had revenues close to $5 billion in 2010. This year it will be lucky to take in $2.7 billion.

Finally. It's official. The poor in Arizona get screwed on taxes and the rich make out like bandits. Howie Fischer says so, mainly citing a piece on WalletHub. Fischer is right. WalletHub is right. Arizona is a tax haven for the rich and a tax hell for the poor. That means every Republican legislator who complains about high Arizona taxes—in other words, every Republican legislator (If any of you is an exception, please let me know and I'll apologize publicly)—is a liar. They don't give a damn about high taxes on the poor, because, if you're too poor to contribute to campaigns, who the hell cares what happens to you? They just want lower taxes for people who can afford to pay the piper.

In general, WalletHub is a font of half-baked statistics (I mean, it declared Tucson the fifth best city in "Efficient Spending on Education" because we spend so little on schools). But in this case, they got it right, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which Fischer also cited, got it even more right in its Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States. Skip down to page 33 for the Arizona information. Arizona is "#8 of the Terrible 10" when it comes to tax inequality. By its calculations, the top 1 percent pays 4.6 percent of its income on state and local taxes. The bottom 20 percent pays 12.5 percent. (They exclude elderly taxpayers from the study). Here's the graph breaking it down.

This blog post comes to you in two parts!

Part 1: Let's make desk jobs less boring
I spend a lot of time at my desk every week—At least 40 hours, many of which involve data entry and mindless copy and pasting. To prevent my brain from turning into chocolate pudding (yum, but not ideal for functionality), I'm always looking for things to stay entertained. And by "I'm always looking," I mean I'm officially tired of listening to the Amy Schumer station on Pandora. She's hilarious, but I think it's time we see other people. 

As I read this story Sunday, I kept flipping back to the front page to make sure I was reading the Business section of the NY Times and not The Onion. The story has the tone of deadpan absurdity perfected by The Onion's faux news. Yep, it was the Times. The story is written by Robert Frank, who is the CNBC wealth editor (really, that's his title). He also wrote "Richistan," which exposed the ways of the wealthy, so maybe he had tongue planted firmly in cheek as he wrote this seemingly laudatory story. Or maybe not.

I recommend you stop reading this post, link to the story, A High School Where a Student Might Letter in Polo, and read the whole thing. Honestly, I can't do it justice. But let me give it a try.

William I. Koch, the sports/playboy billionaire brother of the famed David and Charles "Koch Brothers," put up $60 million to open a private high school so his children had a school they could attend near his Palm Beach, Florida, home. (Thoughtful dad. How people are willing to pony up $60 million for their children's educations?) Tuition is a hefty $25,000 a year, though I'm guessing if William was asked about increasing spending for public schools, he'd say money doesn't matter and complain about people who want to "throw money at schools."

Here's a wonderful stat from the story about the growing education spending gap.

High-income families now spend, on average, seven times as much each year on education as lower-income families, up from four times as much in the 1970s, according to one study. From 2007 through 2011, while the broader economy was weak, enrollment at private schools with tuition averaging $28,340 jumped 36 percent, according to federal data.

Polo wasn't part of the original curriculum. It began as an attempt to serve the needs of one student who was a competitive polo player. The school started the program so he wouldn't have to miss so much school. Really, isn't that what a good education is all about, meeting the needs of your students?

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson wrote a column which appeared in the Star last week, Fraternity boys and the long shadow of racism. We've seen plenty of coverage of the vile song the Sigma Alpha Epsilon frat boys from University of Oklahoma sang on the bus—racial exclusion and lynching to the tune of "When you're happy and you know it, clap your hands." Robinson takes us into the possible future of these lads and others like them.

Now, I realize that these soft, pampered, privileged, ridiculous frat boys are not likely to attempt actual violence against black people. But they wouldn’t have to. The attitudes their words reveal can, and probably will, show themselves in other ways.

Let’s imagine the video never surfaced. With halfway decent grades, degrees from Oklahoma’s flagship university and the connections that Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s old-boy network could provide, the boys on that bus could be expected to end up in executive positions with the power to hire and fire. What chance would an African American job applicant have of getting fair consideration?

Or imagine that one of the boys ends up in the real estate business. Is he going to treat African American buyers fairly? Or is he going to find ways to perpetuate the unofficial redlining that sustains patterns of racial segregation in neighborhoods across the country?

Maybe one of those boys might have developed an altruistic streak — or failed to find a job in his chosen field — and opted to spend a couple of years in Teach For America. He would have gone into the inner city with the attitude that he was among inferior beings. The students, of course, would have picked up on his disdain and returned it in kind — thus reinforcing his prejudices.

The frat song and racist emails from members of the Ferguson police department are vile, but they don't do great harm in and of themselves. It's the attitude, and the acceptance of the attitude, that it's OK, and probably appropriate, to make fun of minority groups, and that attitude spilling out into people's daily and working lives that's dangerous. Racism is alive and well, and denying it, or focusing on a song or an email and moving on (Just some stupid kids, just a few cops with a warped sense of humor), helps keep the fires burning.

A hundred people, mainly students from Tucson High, PCC and UA, marched from Tucson High, held a rally at UA, then made a circle around the Festival of Books holding signs and chanting slogans, to a warm, receptive audience.

The Department of Justice's Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department has a few passages about the way the police department deals with juveniles, which I'm copying here. The first passage is about an incident on the street that, honestly, makes me shudder (Imagine if they were your kids), and second is about the way the resource officers assigned to two schools performed their duties. These are examples of the "school to prison pipeline" process that turns minor problems into criminal offenses, with immediate negative consequences for the students which can follow them for a lifetime.

The first passage:

In February 2014, officers responded to a group of African-American teenage girls “play fighting” (in the words of the officer) in an intersection after school. When one of the schoolgirls gave the middle finger to a white witness who had called the police, an officer ordered her over to him. One of the girl’s friends accompanied her. Though the friend had the right to be present and observe the situation—indeed, the offense reports include no facts suggesting a safety concern posed by her presence—the officers ordered her to leave and then attempted to arrest her when she refused. Officers used force to arrest the friend as she pulled away. When the first girl grabbed an officer’s shoulder, they used force to arrest her, as well.

Officers charged the two teenagers with a variety of offenses, including: Disorderly Conduct for giving the middle finger and using obscenities; Manner of Walking for being in the street; Failure to Comply for staying to observe; Interference with Officer; Assault on a Law Enforcement Officer; and Endangering the Welfare of a Child (themselves and their schoolmates) by resisting arrest and being involved in disorderly conduct. This incident underscores how officers’ unlawful response to activity protected by the First Amendment can quickly escalate to physical resistance, resulting in additional force, additional charges, and increasing the risk of injury to officers and members of the public alike.

The magazine The Nation was founded 150 years ago "by anti-slavery abolitionists four months after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln." Its birthday celebration is touching down in Tucson for the Festival of Books this weekend. More information about The Nation's writers' events here. 

Sunday at 7 p.m., the Loft will be screening the regional premier of the documentary Hot Type: 150 Years of The Nation, with the filmmaker Barbara Kopple and The Nation's John Nichols in attendance. Before the showing, at 6pm, there will be a reception honoring Kopple with " the Lofty Lifetime Achievement Award in honor of her important and influential contributions to the world of documentary filmmaking." Anyone who buys a ticket to the film can attend, on a first-come, first-admitted basis.

Kopple won two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature, one for her 1990 film, American Dream, and the other for her 1991 film, Harlan County USA. Here's more about her filmography.

Barbara Kopple produced and directed Harlan County USA and American Dream, both winners of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 1991, Harlan County USA was named to the National Film Registry by the Librarian of Congress and designated an American Film Classic. Harlan County USA was recently restored and preserved by the Women’s Preservation Fund and the Academy Film Archive, and was featured as part of the Sundance Collection at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005. The Criterion Collection released a DVD of Harlan County USA in 2006. Other works include Running from Crazy, Fight to Live, A Force of Nature, Gun Fight, The House of Steinbenner, Woodstock: Now and Then, Shut Up and Sing, Wild Man Blues, and Havoc.