Freakonomics Page #9

Because, the way it is with her she's always "When I was in school, ... "

... we have homework everyday."

And I'm trying to get her to understand it's 21st century.

That was then and it is now.

Teachers are now more lenient, and no offence, care less ...

Ok, so what do we have?

I think the results are great this month,

where you see the control at 28,

then all the treatment at 36-38

So, that seems great to me, you know ...

When you go from 28-37,

-Right -I mean you're talking about ...

... close to a 30% increase right?

So, seems like we are taking all the D kids to C

-and we're not doing anything for the E kids -Right

The question is the kids moved from D to C this year,

are they gonna have a better life?

-Right -I don't think we've the answer to that, overtime we'll find out ...

But I've definitely been surprised by how important ...

... how well the parents groups are doing that ...

... parents still make a difference in 9th grades it looks like.

Mom, I took a quiz on this book

the Maken TerryBerry book, I took a quiz on that

Did you read the book?

I read the book

Did you?

I read the book, I read the book, I read the book but I ...

-Did you READ the book? -Yes!

Cuz we have to search and read to find the answers

we have to read the book to find the answers

So, stop

Did you read the book or you just skim over the book?

... to find the answer to the question that you were looking for?

Because, there's a difference

We read it as a class, but when we took the test ...

he gives out the page and we have to look for the answers.

Did you read the book without the class?

Did you read the book from cover to cover?

-Not from cover to cover -So, you didn't read the book

-We have ... -You didn't read the book!

-We didn't ... -You didn't read the book

You didn't read the book from cover to cover,

outside of class, with no help, no instructions from your teacher

along with your classmate, you didn't read the book

that's why you failed the test.

Look, I made a tattoo gun out of toothbrush

and I was giving myself a tattoo in class

-You have a tattoo? -I'm giving it to myself

I only did like a little bit

I got to do it a lot better

I can't let them see cuz I'll get into trouble, but ...

I made it out of toothbrush, and then just turn it on

I made it out of guitar string

I don't think I'll take money for giving up my social life

I wanna be the class clown

I'm doing better cuz I went up 6% to ... almost a D

He always likes to be the class clown,

always likes get the laughing; impressing everybody around him

That could be his incentive

But you'd think that ...

to impress everybody around you, your grade will be with that too.

He's got something in the mail that showed the list of all his grades

E,E,E,E,E ...

and I said, oh he's enjoying 9th grade he's doing it again, so ...

Now what I need to do, is ...

... whenever he asks me for money now, he's not gonna get it.

End of story.

Yea. when the skateboard running out of wheels or getting bad ...

Well then, just grinding them down, or hit the books or soemthing

Urail, what does it mean to say a genotype is homozygous

-When all the "aline" are the same -When all of the Alios are the same

This is my last chance to win $500

I'm at the line, I'm splitting ... splitting a hair.

My brain's been going up and down. There's always something that'd distract me.

You know what I mean?!

What's distracting me was ... trying to be cool ...

... trying to keep up with the Johnsons basically.

ITE103

Congratulations, you made the standard achivement for the last month.

So, here's your report card and the bracelet.

Here's the front and here's the back.

Congratulations

Great grades.

If I fail, I'm done, I'm dropping out.

Army, marines, coast guard, go to Iraq or something like that. I've no clue.

-Urail King -Yes!

Take us home, Jekins

What are the final results are like?

Our program is getting 35-50% more students to pass 9th grade.

We sure expect a lot higher rates than that.

We hope for a lot higher rates than that.

If we give them $50k ... to pass the 9th grade ...

what share do you think would pass?

Would we move 10% of the kids? 20% of the kids?

All of them?

I don't know

I think we need to, attack the problem at a ... much younger age ...

the dollar will be better spent during the earlier years

So what are we going to do next year?

What about preschool, did they find a preschool yet?

Yea, we've got a few perschools lined up and they seem excited.

So, we're talking about preschoolers ...

are we talking about taking parenting out of the hands of parents?

Or teaching the parents how to parent? Or both?

It's a little bit of both.

That could be fun.

The way I see it, learning is like a virus.

a virus that most adolesents don't want to catch ...

... until later on in life.

Next year, I'm gonna be a sophomore.

I'm gonna tell you, I'm doing great and I'm getting As and Bs.

Next year when I'm gonna be a sophomore.

If not As and Bs then straight Bs ... or Bs and Cs.

Hey, that's difficult, that's not as easy as it looks.

I can promise you milk and cookies, but if ...

... the oven is broken then you just gonna get milk.

ITE104

Our incentives, unlike everyone else's, are to be honest ...

If we build our reputation on, we're honest about this issue, and other issues ....

... then people will believe us about everything.

The worst thing we could do, the only way we can ruin our reputation ...

... is by starting to take sides and fights.

This peculiar beast, which actually has the right incentives, you just seek the truth.

And not have an agenda.

So, I don't think, anything we've ever written or thought is gonna save ...

any lives really, or ... make people better or smarter anyway. But ...

... we kind of give people permission to challenge conventional wisdom sometimes ...

And ask a different kind of questions entirely ...

and a lot of times the sort of questions you ask his children,

and ah, people kind of chuckle at you.

But once in a while, they turn out to be rather good.

The problem is, as you get older, you ask them as adults in a meeting or friends,

they'll laugh at you hard and you stop entirely.

And we just kind of keep doing it.

We kind of say, what if this thing everybody think is so really isn't.

What if that didn't cause this, what if this cause it?

I think that's just need to be a lot more permission for people to think like that

Total bs, was't it?

-=End of movie=-

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