Q: What advice do you have about approaching the job market during the holiday season?
A: It's a myth that hiring slows after Thanksgiving. In fact, it's possible more offers are made during the holiday season. By staying active, you'll have an advantage over all the candidates who think nothing happens in December.
Rich Gee, an executive-career coach in Stamford, Conn., notes that managers want to spend their current-year budgets so they won't lose funds in subsequent years, giving them a strong incentive to find candidates to fill approved openings. Most executives also know their coming-year budgets and may want to get a head start on filling newly requisitioned openings.
Most hiring managers prefer to find candidates through referrals or chance meetings so they won't have to advertise or employ recruiters. Your goal as a job hunter should be to meet as many potential employers as possible at this pre-advertising stage. By meeting or talking with old and new contacts, you may receive important referrals or an inside track on potential opportunities.
Such networking is easier to do during the holidays. Many organizations hold annual holiday events, and attendees are often encouraged to bring guests. Ask friends or relatives to invite you to December gatherings of such groups as the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club or Toastmasters International. Also attend meetings of professional groups in your industry or function, neighborhood gatherings and church open houses where you can mingle. "People will have their guards down and be happy to meet you, so take advantage of that," Mr. Gee says.
After the meetings, call new acquaintances and ask for their advice. Be sure to also ask about their professional or personal needs and offer your expertise so the conversation isn't one-sided.
Hiring managers often like to be close to home and in their offices in December, so research companies where you'd like to work and learn the names of the hiring managers, Mr. Gee suggests. Then Google the names and try to learn something about the people professionally that you can use as an icebreaker.
After that, you can call the people directly, mention what you learned and say you would appreciate a few moments to ask questions about their needs. "If you can wow them with some information or just by being yourself, they may be very interested," Mr. Gee notes.
by Perri Capell
Copyrighted, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
2007年11月29日 星期四
Seven Ways to Boost Your Retirement
How to earn more money after you've retired
Ready to retire but worried that you won't have enough money? Don't play the "woulda, coulda, shoulda" game. Even now it's not too late to increase your income and your financial security.
1. Consider working a little longer. For the average worker, staying on the job for just two more years lowers the amount of savings you need to finance your retirement by about 25%, estimates the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Not only do you get the benefit of the additional income, but you also get a few more years to sock away money and accrue pension and Social Security benefits.
2. Build tax-free retirement income. Contribute to a Roth IRA while you're working. If you're 50 or older next year, you and your spouse can each contribute up to $6,000 to Roth accounts--$5,000 in basic contributions plus a $1,000 catch-up-as long as you meet income requirements (in 2008, your income can't exceed $169,000 if you're married filing jointly or $116,000 if you're single). [link to Roth stories]
3. Downsize. Financial advisers generally recommend that you assume you'll need about 85% of your pre-retirement income after you leave your job. But it pays to do a budget dry run. By paying off your mortgage, or moving to smaller digs or a less expensive area, you may be able to increase your cash flow and get by on much less.
4. Keep 50% of your retirement savings invested in the stock market. That will protect your assets from being eaten away by inflation.
5. Delay taking Social Security. Wait till your normal retirement age to receive Social Security in order to maximize benefits. Once you reach normal retirement age, you can even receive full benefits while you continue working. If your husband's benefits are larger than yours, waiting till full retirement age to claim them will also result in bigger payouts for you as a surviving spouse.
6. Tap your home equity with a reverse mortgage. This relatively new real estate product lets you borrow against your equity and forgo repayment for as long as you stay in the house (for more information, go to http://www.reversemortgage.org/ or search "reverse mortgages" at http://www.hud.gov/).
7. Buy an annuity. If you don't have a pension, you can guarantee a stream of income that you can't outlive by using some of your nest egg to buy an immediate-payout annuity. To see how much income you can buy, go to www.annuityshopper.com.
By Janet Bodnar.
Ready to retire but worried that you won't have enough money? Don't play the "woulda, coulda, shoulda" game. Even now it's not too late to increase your income and your financial security.
1. Consider working a little longer. For the average worker, staying on the job for just two more years lowers the amount of savings you need to finance your retirement by about 25%, estimates the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Not only do you get the benefit of the additional income, but you also get a few more years to sock away money and accrue pension and Social Security benefits.
2. Build tax-free retirement income. Contribute to a Roth IRA while you're working. If you're 50 or older next year, you and your spouse can each contribute up to $6,000 to Roth accounts--$5,000 in basic contributions plus a $1,000 catch-up-as long as you meet income requirements (in 2008, your income can't exceed $169,000 if you're married filing jointly or $116,000 if you're single). [link to Roth stories]
3. Downsize. Financial advisers generally recommend that you assume you'll need about 85% of your pre-retirement income after you leave your job. But it pays to do a budget dry run. By paying off your mortgage, or moving to smaller digs or a less expensive area, you may be able to increase your cash flow and get by on much less.
4. Keep 50% of your retirement savings invested in the stock market. That will protect your assets from being eaten away by inflation.
5. Delay taking Social Security. Wait till your normal retirement age to receive Social Security in order to maximize benefits. Once you reach normal retirement age, you can even receive full benefits while you continue working. If your husband's benefits are larger than yours, waiting till full retirement age to claim them will also result in bigger payouts for you as a surviving spouse.
6. Tap your home equity with a reverse mortgage. This relatively new real estate product lets you borrow against your equity and forgo repayment for as long as you stay in the house (for more information, go to http://www.reversemortgage.org/ or search "reverse mortgages" at http://www.hud.gov/).
7. Buy an annuity. If you don't have a pension, you can guarantee a stream of income that you can't outlive by using some of your nest egg to buy an immediate-payout annuity. To see how much income you can buy, go to www.annuityshopper.com.
By Janet Bodnar.
2007年11月28日 星期三
The Baby Boomer's Guide to Social Security
By Glenn Ruffenach
Social Security Basics
• The most frequently asked question at the Social Security Administration
• The most frequently asked question about Social Security in financial advisers' offices
• Coolest strategies you've never heard of for claiming benefits
• Best calculators and sources of information
• Biggest myth -- and most misused words
• Best source of information on how to fix Social Security
• Most arcane, but important, debating points
• Biggest misunderstanding
• Biggest surprises
• Best day of the year to visit a Social Security office
The toughest questions. The best calculators. The coolest strategies. And a lot more.
Starting in January, the first of an estimated 78 million baby boomers turn 62 years old and become eligible for Social Security.
Time to reach for the aspirin.
Now in its eighth decade, Social Security is arguably more important -- and certainly more complicated -- than ever before. Boomers, for the most part, are on their own when it comes to planning for later life; pensions and related safety nets are disappearing from the workplace. Thus, Social Security checks -- the closest thing to a sure bet in most retirement budgets -- are expected to play an ever-larger role in older Americans' financial security.
The process of getting that check, however, is sure to cause headaches for boomers and bureaucrats alike. The Social Security Administration's 1,300 offices nationwide already see 850,000 visitors each week and field about 68 million telephone calls a year. Would-be retirees, meanwhile, are about to discover that many factors -- taxes, a spouse's earnings history, life spans -- can muddy decisions about how and when to file for benefits.
You can, of course, keep things simple and take the plunge on your 62nd birthday. (About half of workers do.) Even if that's your plan, you owe it to yourself -- and your spouse -- to learn about Social Security and how to get the most out of the system.
"Don't let Social Security just 'happen,' " says Joseph Matthews, a lawyer in San Francisco and author of a guide to the program. "There really are a number of variables that people should consider before they start."
The basics are available from the Social Security Administration. (More about that in a moment.) But to supplement your education, consider the following -- some of the most interesting, obscure, misunderstood and surprising parts of the 72-year-old program:
The most frequently asked question at the Social Security Administration
"How much can I earn and still receive Social Security benefits?" Based on a survey of visits to the agency's Web site, more people -- 315,847 in the first six months of this year -- wanted the answer to that question than any other.
The question refers to the agency's "earnings test" and the apparent penalty for collecting a salary and Social Security at the same time. It works this way: If you are under your "full retirement age" (the age at which you qualify for full benefits) when you first receive Social Security payments, and if you have earned income, $1 in benefits will be deducted for each $2 you earn above the annual limit. In 2008, the limit is $13,560.
In the year you reach your full retirement age, the "penalty" shrinks: $1 in benefits is deducted for each $3 you earn above a higher limit, $36,120 in 2008. Then, starting with the month you reach your full retirement age, the deductions end.
What most people don't realize, says Andrew Biggs, deputy commissioner for Social Security, is that once they reach full retirement age, the agency recalculates their future benefits to compensate for any benefits lost due to the earnings test. For most people, Mr. Biggs adds, "the earnings test isn't a 'tax' so much as a delay in benefits, and so they shouldn't stop working or limit their earnings in order to avoid it."
The most frequently asked question about Social Security in financial advisers' offices
"When should I file for benefits?" Invariably, that's the question planners hear first.
When it comes to the answer, the conventional wisdom is changing. Where many advisers once recommended grabbing benefits at age 62 (at which point your monthly check is reduced permanently by as much as 25%), experts today say extended life spans and the demise of traditional pensions argue for waiting until your full retirement age, or later, to collect a paycheck. (You get your largest possible benefit at 70.)
Even "foolproof" strategies are no longer looked upon as foolproof. "Let's say your doctor tells you that you have six months to live," says Bruce Schobel, a New York actuary who worked in the Social Security Administration in the 1980s. "So, it's obvious: You take benefits at 62, right?" Maybe not. Because of Social Security rules involving spousal benefits, Mr. Schobel says, "taking a reduced benefit at 62 could serve as a cap on the surviving spouse's payout, reducing that person's future benefits by tens of thousands of dollars."
"So even an apparently simple decision becomes complicated," he says.
Calculators, of course, can help. (We discuss some of the better ones below.) But first, take a few minutes to read a new report: "Rethinking Social Security Claiming in a 401(k) World," written by James Mahaney and Peter Carlson, retirement specialists at Prudential Financial Inc. It's the best discussion we've seen about filing for benefits and possible strategies for doing so. (Note to the give-me-my-money-at-62 crowd: The authors conclude that changes in Social Security in recent years "make the value of delaying the receipt of...benefits greater than in the past.")
The report, published in August, can be found at the Pension Research Council, part of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. (Go to pensionresearchcouncil.org and click on "Working Papers" and 2007. Registration is free.)
Coolest strategies you've never heard of for claiming benefits
One way many couples can maximize Social Security benefits over their lifetimes is for wives to claim benefits at age 62, and for husbands to delay filing until almost 70, says Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. (That's based on a number of factors, including income levels, life spans and survivor benefits.) You can find Dr. Munnell's research in the June issue of the Journal of Financial Planning. (See fpanet.org/journal and click on "Past Issues and Articles.")
Of course, 70 is a long time to wait for Social Security. So, here's a way -- courtesy of Steve Potter, a retired public-affairs specialist at Social Security -- to avoid the wait and still get a sizable benefit at age 70.
The scenario: George, at his full retirement age of 66, expects a benefit of $2,000 a month. His wife, Martha, at her full retirement age of 66, expects a benefit of $1,000 a month.
The strategy: Martha files for a reduced benefit on her own at age 63, or $800 a month. George, at age 66, files for just a spousal benefit, based on Martha's earnings. He would get $500 a month as Martha's spouse. (Yes, Social Security allows George to get half of what Martha was projected to receive at her full retirement age.) Then, at age 70, George applies for benefits based on his earnings history. With the "delayed retirement credit" (the additional dollars one receives for waiting until age 70 to claim Social Security), George's benefit would be 32% higher, or $2,640 a month.
Social Security would stop George's spousal benefit of $500 a month because he's entitled to the $2,640, based on his own earnings, at age 70. Again, for this to work, George must wait until his full retirement age or later to file for a spousal benefit.
The nice part about this strategy is that George -- if he's trying to maximize his and Martha's combined benefits -- doesn't have to wait three or four years beyond his full retirement age for a paycheck; he can start collecting benefits at 66 based on Martha's earnings history -- and jump to a considerably bigger benefit at age 70. As far as the "break-even" point goes -- the age at which the accumulated value of benefits from this strategy will start to exceed the accumulated value from both spouses filing for full benefits at age 66 -- it's 79. Beyond that age, the 63-66 strategy yields a larger total return. (This example assumes George and Martha are the same age.)
Note: Some Social Security representatives we spoke with weren't aware of this strategy. If you try this at your local Social Security office -- and if the staff balks -- ask them to confirm the strategy with Social Security headquarters in Baltimore, which confirmed it for us.
Best calculators and sources of information
Start with the Social Security Administration and its Web site, ssa.gov.
The calculators alone are worth the visit. Three benefits calculators -- "Quick," "Online" and "Detailed" -- estimate payouts using different retirement dates and levels of future earnings. (Click on "Calculate your benefits" on the home page.)
In addition, an "Earnings Limit" calculator illustrates how a salary -- if you file for benefits before full retirement age and are still working -- might affect your monthly check from Uncle Sam. A "Retirement Age" calculator shows how retiring early reduces your monthly payout (as a wage earner or spouse). And a "Break-Even" calculator shows the age at which the accumulated value of higher benefits -- for a person who claims Social Security, say, at age 66 -- will start to exceed the accumulated value of lower benefits for a person who opts for Social Security, say, at age 62.
The site also provides extensive lists of frequently asked questions in 24 categories; offers access to dozens of forms and publications; and, perhaps most important, allows you to perform a number of tasks online -- including filing for benefits (and, thus, avoiding a trip to the Social Security office). In all, a very valuable tool.
Another useful resource is analyzenow.com, a Web site devoted to retirement issues. Started by Henry K. "Bud" Hebeler, a retired aerospace executive and author of two books about retirement planning, analyzenow features a number of helpful articles about Social Security and two calculators that can help users determine the best age to file for benefits.
Two other online resources: The National Committee to Protect Social Security and Medicare, a Washington advocacy group, has a spot on its Web site called "Ask Mary Jane" (www.ncpssm.org/maryjane). There, you can email a question to Mary Jane Yarrington, a congressional caseworker who joined the group in 1986 as a senior policy analyst. (Before you write, check the archives for earlier questions and answers.)
Second, Stanley A. Tomkiel III, a New York lawyer, is the author of the "Social Security Benefits Handbook" -- the contents of which are available free at socialsecuritybenefitshandbook.com.
Finally, if you prefer print, Mr. Matthews, the San Francisco lawyer, is co-author of "Social Security, Medicare and Government Pensions," one of the best general guides to the program.
Biggest myth -- and most misused words
The biggest myth is that Social Security will go "broke" or "bankrupt" in coming decades.
The Social Security Administration, in its annual report to Congress this year, identified three important dates regarding the health of the program. First, starting in 2017, the agency will begin paying out more in benefits than it collects in revenue. Second, in 2027, Social Security will have to tap the principal in its "trust fund" (its savings account, if you will) to meet its monthly obligations. (The trust fund itself is a flash point in debates about the health of the program. Some observers, including President Bush, say the fund, which lends excess revenue to the federal government and receives special-issue bonds in exchange, is simply a box full of IOUs. But it's a safe bet that when Social Security needs to draw on the trust fund, future Congresses and presidents will make sure the Treasury doesn't default on those bonds.)
Finally, in 2041, the trust fund will be exhausted, at which point the agency will be able to pay only about 75% of promised benefits.
It's certainly not a pretty picture. But at no point will Social Security collapse. Uncle Sam, it's safe to assume, will continue to collect taxes in 2041 and beyond. Part of that revenue will go to Social Security, which will continue to write checks. Again, starting in 2041 (as things stand now) beneficiaries will wind up with payouts worth 25% less than current rules call for. And that's grim.
But broke? Bankrupt? No.
Best source of information on how to fix Social Security
Earlier this year, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College published "The Social Security Fix-It Book." The cover of the 52-page booklet describes it as "everything the earnest but over-burdened citizen needs to know. Cheerfully narrated and handsomely presented."
That quirky beginning belies what follows: the single best guide we've seen that explains why Social Security is in the mess it's in -- and the leading proposals for restoring it to health. You can download a copy free at crr.bc.edu. Keep it handy when presidential candidates hold forth on their plans to fix Social Security.
Most arcane, but important, debating points
Speaking of presidential politics, the following issues could well figure in the fine print of any "solutions" involving Social Security. Depending on a candidate's stance on these issues, his or her particular solution could end up sounding very painful -- or just painful. Try dropping these nuggets into the conversation at your next dinner party:
Time Horizons: Some policy makers argue that we should look ahead 75 years when estimating the shortfall in Social Security's finances -- in which case, about $4.7 trillion is needed to close the gap. Others argue for adopting an "infinite horizon" -- in which case about $13.6 trillion is needed. (A trillion here, a trillion there...)
Changing Work Force: Some evidence suggests that older workers are remaining in, or rejoining, the work force in greater numbers. If so, and if the trend continues, it could ease (somewhat) the coming strains on Social Security. But there's no telling what baby boomers actually will do in retirement.
Buying Power: Annual cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security are based on the CPI-W, the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers. But groups including the Senior Citizens League argue that adjustments should be tied to CPI-E, an experimental index for the elderly started in the 1980s. This index tracks expenditures among individuals age 62 and older and better reflects (theoretically) this group's higher spending on health care and other goods and services.
Biggest misunderstanding
The biggest misunderstanding is that your particular tax dollars are being set aside for you at Social Security.
Social Security is not, and never has been, a savings account. " 'Your' money is not in 'your' account," says Dennis Oliver, a retired Social Security Administration manager who now works as a Social Security consultant in Cookeville, Tenn. Rather, Social Security is largely a pay-as-you-go system, in which your tax dollars are used to pay current benefits. (Since the mid-1980s, Social Security has been running annual surpluses that have gone into the trust fund.)
Consider Ida May Fuller, who received the very first monthly Social Security check in January 1940. She was 65 at the time. Ms. Fuller worked for three years under Social Security before retiring, and the taxes on her salary totaled $22.54. By the time she died in 1975 at age 100, she had collected $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.
Biggest surprises
In 1983, Congress raised the age at which people qualify for full Social Security benefits. Once pegged to age 65, the threshold is increasing gradually until it hits 67 for workers born in or after 1960.
The problem: According to a survey earlier this year by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 30% of all workers think -- incorrectly -- that they will be eligible for unreduced benefits at age 65. Worse, 21% think they will be eligible for unreduced benefits before age 65.
Separately, for all the discussion about claiming benefits at age 62 or at full retirement age, the decision isn't an either-or proposition. You can take benefits at any point -- any day, month or year -- after 62. The longer you wait, of course, the smaller the reduction in your benefits.
If your full retirement age is 66, and if you file for benefits at 62, your monthly check will be reduced about 25% from your full benefit; file at 63, the reduction is about 20%; file at 64, the reduction is about 13.3%; file at 65, and the reduction is about 6.7%.
Best day of the year to visit a Social Security office
The Friday after Thanksgiving. Yes, the agency's local offices are open on that day -- and are usually very quiet.
Mr. Ruffenach (encore@wsj.com) is a reporter and editor for The Wall Street Journal in Atlanta and the editor of Encore.
Social Security Basics
• The most frequently asked question at the Social Security Administration
• The most frequently asked question about Social Security in financial advisers' offices
• Coolest strategies you've never heard of for claiming benefits
• Best calculators and sources of information
• Biggest myth -- and most misused words
• Best source of information on how to fix Social Security
• Most arcane, but important, debating points
• Biggest misunderstanding
• Biggest surprises
• Best day of the year to visit a Social Security office
The toughest questions. The best calculators. The coolest strategies. And a lot more.
Starting in January, the first of an estimated 78 million baby boomers turn 62 years old and become eligible for Social Security.
Time to reach for the aspirin.
Now in its eighth decade, Social Security is arguably more important -- and certainly more complicated -- than ever before. Boomers, for the most part, are on their own when it comes to planning for later life; pensions and related safety nets are disappearing from the workplace. Thus, Social Security checks -- the closest thing to a sure bet in most retirement budgets -- are expected to play an ever-larger role in older Americans' financial security.
The process of getting that check, however, is sure to cause headaches for boomers and bureaucrats alike. The Social Security Administration's 1,300 offices nationwide already see 850,000 visitors each week and field about 68 million telephone calls a year. Would-be retirees, meanwhile, are about to discover that many factors -- taxes, a spouse's earnings history, life spans -- can muddy decisions about how and when to file for benefits.
You can, of course, keep things simple and take the plunge on your 62nd birthday. (About half of workers do.) Even if that's your plan, you owe it to yourself -- and your spouse -- to learn about Social Security and how to get the most out of the system.
"Don't let Social Security just 'happen,' " says Joseph Matthews, a lawyer in San Francisco and author of a guide to the program. "There really are a number of variables that people should consider before they start."
The basics are available from the Social Security Administration. (More about that in a moment.) But to supplement your education, consider the following -- some of the most interesting, obscure, misunderstood and surprising parts of the 72-year-old program:
The most frequently asked question at the Social Security Administration
"How much can I earn and still receive Social Security benefits?" Based on a survey of visits to the agency's Web site, more people -- 315,847 in the first six months of this year -- wanted the answer to that question than any other.
The question refers to the agency's "earnings test" and the apparent penalty for collecting a salary and Social Security at the same time. It works this way: If you are under your "full retirement age" (the age at which you qualify for full benefits) when you first receive Social Security payments, and if you have earned income, $1 in benefits will be deducted for each $2 you earn above the annual limit. In 2008, the limit is $13,560.
In the year you reach your full retirement age, the "penalty" shrinks: $1 in benefits is deducted for each $3 you earn above a higher limit, $36,120 in 2008. Then, starting with the month you reach your full retirement age, the deductions end.
What most people don't realize, says Andrew Biggs, deputy commissioner for Social Security, is that once they reach full retirement age, the agency recalculates their future benefits to compensate for any benefits lost due to the earnings test. For most people, Mr. Biggs adds, "the earnings test isn't a 'tax' so much as a delay in benefits, and so they shouldn't stop working or limit their earnings in order to avoid it."
The most frequently asked question about Social Security in financial advisers' offices
"When should I file for benefits?" Invariably, that's the question planners hear first.
When it comes to the answer, the conventional wisdom is changing. Where many advisers once recommended grabbing benefits at age 62 (at which point your monthly check is reduced permanently by as much as 25%), experts today say extended life spans and the demise of traditional pensions argue for waiting until your full retirement age, or later, to collect a paycheck. (You get your largest possible benefit at 70.)
Even "foolproof" strategies are no longer looked upon as foolproof. "Let's say your doctor tells you that you have six months to live," says Bruce Schobel, a New York actuary who worked in the Social Security Administration in the 1980s. "So, it's obvious: You take benefits at 62, right?" Maybe not. Because of Social Security rules involving spousal benefits, Mr. Schobel says, "taking a reduced benefit at 62 could serve as a cap on the surviving spouse's payout, reducing that person's future benefits by tens of thousands of dollars."
"So even an apparently simple decision becomes complicated," he says.
Calculators, of course, can help. (We discuss some of the better ones below.) But first, take a few minutes to read a new report: "Rethinking Social Security Claiming in a 401(k) World," written by James Mahaney and Peter Carlson, retirement specialists at Prudential Financial Inc. It's the best discussion we've seen about filing for benefits and possible strategies for doing so. (Note to the give-me-my-money-at-62 crowd: The authors conclude that changes in Social Security in recent years "make the value of delaying the receipt of...benefits greater than in the past.")
The report, published in August, can be found at the Pension Research Council, part of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. (Go to pensionresearchcouncil.org and click on "Working Papers" and 2007. Registration is free.)
Coolest strategies you've never heard of for claiming benefits
One way many couples can maximize Social Security benefits over their lifetimes is for wives to claim benefits at age 62, and for husbands to delay filing until almost 70, says Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. (That's based on a number of factors, including income levels, life spans and survivor benefits.) You can find Dr. Munnell's research in the June issue of the Journal of Financial Planning. (See fpanet.org/journal and click on "Past Issues and Articles.")
Of course, 70 is a long time to wait for Social Security. So, here's a way -- courtesy of Steve Potter, a retired public-affairs specialist at Social Security -- to avoid the wait and still get a sizable benefit at age 70.
The scenario: George, at his full retirement age of 66, expects a benefit of $2,000 a month. His wife, Martha, at her full retirement age of 66, expects a benefit of $1,000 a month.
The strategy: Martha files for a reduced benefit on her own at age 63, or $800 a month. George, at age 66, files for just a spousal benefit, based on Martha's earnings. He would get $500 a month as Martha's spouse. (Yes, Social Security allows George to get half of what Martha was projected to receive at her full retirement age.) Then, at age 70, George applies for benefits based on his earnings history. With the "delayed retirement credit" (the additional dollars one receives for waiting until age 70 to claim Social Security), George's benefit would be 32% higher, or $2,640 a month.
Social Security would stop George's spousal benefit of $500 a month because he's entitled to the $2,640, based on his own earnings, at age 70. Again, for this to work, George must wait until his full retirement age or later to file for a spousal benefit.
The nice part about this strategy is that George -- if he's trying to maximize his and Martha's combined benefits -- doesn't have to wait three or four years beyond his full retirement age for a paycheck; he can start collecting benefits at 66 based on Martha's earnings history -- and jump to a considerably bigger benefit at age 70. As far as the "break-even" point goes -- the age at which the accumulated value of benefits from this strategy will start to exceed the accumulated value from both spouses filing for full benefits at age 66 -- it's 79. Beyond that age, the 63-66 strategy yields a larger total return. (This example assumes George and Martha are the same age.)
Note: Some Social Security representatives we spoke with weren't aware of this strategy. If you try this at your local Social Security office -- and if the staff balks -- ask them to confirm the strategy with Social Security headquarters in Baltimore, which confirmed it for us.
Best calculators and sources of information
Start with the Social Security Administration and its Web site, ssa.gov.
The calculators alone are worth the visit. Three benefits calculators -- "Quick," "Online" and "Detailed" -- estimate payouts using different retirement dates and levels of future earnings. (Click on "Calculate your benefits" on the home page.)
In addition, an "Earnings Limit" calculator illustrates how a salary -- if you file for benefits before full retirement age and are still working -- might affect your monthly check from Uncle Sam. A "Retirement Age" calculator shows how retiring early reduces your monthly payout (as a wage earner or spouse). And a "Break-Even" calculator shows the age at which the accumulated value of higher benefits -- for a person who claims Social Security, say, at age 66 -- will start to exceed the accumulated value of lower benefits for a person who opts for Social Security, say, at age 62.
The site also provides extensive lists of frequently asked questions in 24 categories; offers access to dozens of forms and publications; and, perhaps most important, allows you to perform a number of tasks online -- including filing for benefits (and, thus, avoiding a trip to the Social Security office). In all, a very valuable tool.
Another useful resource is analyzenow.com, a Web site devoted to retirement issues. Started by Henry K. "Bud" Hebeler, a retired aerospace executive and author of two books about retirement planning, analyzenow features a number of helpful articles about Social Security and two calculators that can help users determine the best age to file for benefits.
Two other online resources: The National Committee to Protect Social Security and Medicare, a Washington advocacy group, has a spot on its Web site called "Ask Mary Jane" (www.ncpssm.org/maryjane). There, you can email a question to Mary Jane Yarrington, a congressional caseworker who joined the group in 1986 as a senior policy analyst. (Before you write, check the archives for earlier questions and answers.)
Second, Stanley A. Tomkiel III, a New York lawyer, is the author of the "Social Security Benefits Handbook" -- the contents of which are available free at socialsecuritybenefitshandbook.com.
Finally, if you prefer print, Mr. Matthews, the San Francisco lawyer, is co-author of "Social Security, Medicare and Government Pensions," one of the best general guides to the program.
Biggest myth -- and most misused words
The biggest myth is that Social Security will go "broke" or "bankrupt" in coming decades.
The Social Security Administration, in its annual report to Congress this year, identified three important dates regarding the health of the program. First, starting in 2017, the agency will begin paying out more in benefits than it collects in revenue. Second, in 2027, Social Security will have to tap the principal in its "trust fund" (its savings account, if you will) to meet its monthly obligations. (The trust fund itself is a flash point in debates about the health of the program. Some observers, including President Bush, say the fund, which lends excess revenue to the federal government and receives special-issue bonds in exchange, is simply a box full of IOUs. But it's a safe bet that when Social Security needs to draw on the trust fund, future Congresses and presidents will make sure the Treasury doesn't default on those bonds.)
Finally, in 2041, the trust fund will be exhausted, at which point the agency will be able to pay only about 75% of promised benefits.
It's certainly not a pretty picture. But at no point will Social Security collapse. Uncle Sam, it's safe to assume, will continue to collect taxes in 2041 and beyond. Part of that revenue will go to Social Security, which will continue to write checks. Again, starting in 2041 (as things stand now) beneficiaries will wind up with payouts worth 25% less than current rules call for. And that's grim.
But broke? Bankrupt? No.
Best source of information on how to fix Social Security
Earlier this year, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College published "The Social Security Fix-It Book." The cover of the 52-page booklet describes it as "everything the earnest but over-burdened citizen needs to know. Cheerfully narrated and handsomely presented."
That quirky beginning belies what follows: the single best guide we've seen that explains why Social Security is in the mess it's in -- and the leading proposals for restoring it to health. You can download a copy free at crr.bc.edu. Keep it handy when presidential candidates hold forth on their plans to fix Social Security.
Most arcane, but important, debating points
Speaking of presidential politics, the following issues could well figure in the fine print of any "solutions" involving Social Security. Depending on a candidate's stance on these issues, his or her particular solution could end up sounding very painful -- or just painful. Try dropping these nuggets into the conversation at your next dinner party:
Time Horizons: Some policy makers argue that we should look ahead 75 years when estimating the shortfall in Social Security's finances -- in which case, about $4.7 trillion is needed to close the gap. Others argue for adopting an "infinite horizon" -- in which case about $13.6 trillion is needed. (A trillion here, a trillion there...)
Changing Work Force: Some evidence suggests that older workers are remaining in, or rejoining, the work force in greater numbers. If so, and if the trend continues, it could ease (somewhat) the coming strains on Social Security. But there's no telling what baby boomers actually will do in retirement.
Buying Power: Annual cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security are based on the CPI-W, the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers. But groups including the Senior Citizens League argue that adjustments should be tied to CPI-E, an experimental index for the elderly started in the 1980s. This index tracks expenditures among individuals age 62 and older and better reflects (theoretically) this group's higher spending on health care and other goods and services.
Biggest misunderstanding
The biggest misunderstanding is that your particular tax dollars are being set aside for you at Social Security.
Social Security is not, and never has been, a savings account. " 'Your' money is not in 'your' account," says Dennis Oliver, a retired Social Security Administration manager who now works as a Social Security consultant in Cookeville, Tenn. Rather, Social Security is largely a pay-as-you-go system, in which your tax dollars are used to pay current benefits. (Since the mid-1980s, Social Security has been running annual surpluses that have gone into the trust fund.)
Consider Ida May Fuller, who received the very first monthly Social Security check in January 1940. She was 65 at the time. Ms. Fuller worked for three years under Social Security before retiring, and the taxes on her salary totaled $22.54. By the time she died in 1975 at age 100, she had collected $22,888.92 in Social Security benefits.
Biggest surprises
In 1983, Congress raised the age at which people qualify for full Social Security benefits. Once pegged to age 65, the threshold is increasing gradually until it hits 67 for workers born in or after 1960.
The problem: According to a survey earlier this year by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 30% of all workers think -- incorrectly -- that they will be eligible for unreduced benefits at age 65. Worse, 21% think they will be eligible for unreduced benefits before age 65.
Separately, for all the discussion about claiming benefits at age 62 or at full retirement age, the decision isn't an either-or proposition. You can take benefits at any point -- any day, month or year -- after 62. The longer you wait, of course, the smaller the reduction in your benefits.
If your full retirement age is 66, and if you file for benefits at 62, your monthly check will be reduced about 25% from your full benefit; file at 63, the reduction is about 20%; file at 64, the reduction is about 13.3%; file at 65, and the reduction is about 6.7%.
Best day of the year to visit a Social Security office
The Friday after Thanksgiving. Yes, the agency's local offices are open on that day -- and are usually very quiet.
Mr. Ruffenach (encore@wsj.com) is a reporter and editor for The Wall Street Journal in Atlanta and the editor of Encore.
Let's Get Reading In Class
By David Pendery
I would like to make a small contribution to a recent discussion in the Taipei Times, about reading in English during English language classes in Taiwan. All of the contributers seem to agree on the importance of reading for Taiwanese students and I could not agree more.
I have been teaching in Taiwan for seven years, including at several local colleges, although currently most of my students are working adults at beginner or intermediate level. I have had success in my classes using a variety of teaching methods, but I have found that reading in the classroom gives students a special feeling of worth and accomplishment. Assigned readings to take home are no doubt helpful, but I am referring here to in-class reading, done out loud, one by one (occasionally we will read along together).
Good readings immerse students in perfectly composed English and I can feel their enjoyment as they feel themselves enunciating the language -- not only the student reading out loud, but also others following along silently and even some reading along in low voices (seeing a whole class pleasurably intent on a reading, their lips moving in unison, is a real treat).
I sometimes read passages out loud to allow students to listen to a native speaker reading a work of literature (or other types of writing). They always like to listen.
Overall, in addition to the enjoyment of hearing themselves voice good English syntax, this activity is excellent for pronunciation work and is also a good quick study in new vocabulary.
Beneath the surface, it immerses students in correct grammar and sentence structure and overall composition skills.
I used to bring very brief readings into class, but recently have been using longer works, usually abridged novels. Usually these learner books have relatively short chapters that can easily be read in class and so a group can progress through a book in an orderly way over the course of several weeks or so.
I have found that students genuinely enjoy these longer, more full-bodied works of literature. After reading, teachers can decide how to further incorporate the readings into the class, whether through discussions, sentence, grammar and vocabulary practice, role plays or presentations and reports about the reading and its main themes.
"Read," I tell my students -- it is the high road to language learning. Many teachers and language experts have said this before and I follow their advice, along with my students. We have been happy to walk this path together.
I would like to make a small contribution to a recent discussion in the Taipei Times, about reading in English during English language classes in Taiwan. All of the contributers seem to agree on the importance of reading for Taiwanese students and I could not agree more.
I have been teaching in Taiwan for seven years, including at several local colleges, although currently most of my students are working adults at beginner or intermediate level. I have had success in my classes using a variety of teaching methods, but I have found that reading in the classroom gives students a special feeling of worth and accomplishment. Assigned readings to take home are no doubt helpful, but I am referring here to in-class reading, done out loud, one by one (occasionally we will read along together).
Good readings immerse students in perfectly composed English and I can feel their enjoyment as they feel themselves enunciating the language -- not only the student reading out loud, but also others following along silently and even some reading along in low voices (seeing a whole class pleasurably intent on a reading, their lips moving in unison, is a real treat).
I sometimes read passages out loud to allow students to listen to a native speaker reading a work of literature (or other types of writing). They always like to listen.
Overall, in addition to the enjoyment of hearing themselves voice good English syntax, this activity is excellent for pronunciation work and is also a good quick study in new vocabulary.
Beneath the surface, it immerses students in correct grammar and sentence structure and overall composition skills.
I used to bring very brief readings into class, but recently have been using longer works, usually abridged novels. Usually these learner books have relatively short chapters that can easily be read in class and so a group can progress through a book in an orderly way over the course of several weeks or so.
I have found that students genuinely enjoy these longer, more full-bodied works of literature. After reading, teachers can decide how to further incorporate the readings into the class, whether through discussions, sentence, grammar and vocabulary practice, role plays or presentations and reports about the reading and its main themes.
"Read," I tell my students -- it is the high road to language learning. Many teachers and language experts have said this before and I follow their advice, along with my students. We have been happy to walk this path together.
Orphan Seeds Find Homes in Europe's Backyard Gardens
By Elisabeth Rosentha, NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Gino Boscherini's neat two-story house -- the one with the lawn furniture and old men playing cards out front -- does not look like a repository for precious genetic material.
And with his missing teeth, worn sweater and weathered face, Boscherini, 84, seems an unlikely hero in the quest to preserve biodiversity in the face of climate change.
But his backyard garden contains unusual variants of several plants: a bean grown only here in the hills overlooking Lake Trasimeno, a special tomato that can be stored for months, a type of pulpy squash that is good for pig feed. Such variants, called landraces, possess unique traits encoded in their genes.
Scientists may need to borrow these traits -- the ability to thrive in hotter weather or to resist a particular pest, for example -- to safeguard the global food supply in response to a changing climate. As farms have become more commercialized in recent decades and have moved toward growing one or two high-yield crops, the number of varieties globally is quickly diminishing, erasing plant genes at the very moment in history when they may be most needed.
That has left Europe's backyard gardeners and small farmers, like Boscherini, as the de facto guardians of disappearing fruits, grains and vegetables. Time is working against them.
Most of them are very old, and as they die their plants are dying with them. Most of their children and grandchildren have little interest in maintaining the crops, holdovers from Europe's more agrarian past.
"Central Italy has 500 landraces, mostly maintained by aged farmers and gardeners, and that is a big problem since there is a chance these crops will be lost within a generation," said Valeria Negri, a plant scientist at the University of Perugia.
Negri takes in orphaned seeds and raises them behind her home, the way a pet lover might take in stray dogs or cats.
About 10 years ago, Negri and her students went door to door in nearby Tuscany asking households what crops each grew. When they returned several years later to request sample seeds, one third of the plants were no longer being cultivated.
The attrition of crop types has alarmed scientists, who are trying to catalog the variants as well as their special traits, and figuring out how to preserve them.
Three-quarters of the biodiversity in crops has been lost in the last century, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. In Mexico, only 20 percent of the corn types that existed in the 1930s exist today. In the US, 95 percent of cabbage varieties and 94 percent of pea types are gone.
While a few private and local government programs are evolving to conserve these special crops, they are scattershot and the main actors remain the "farmers or the families" themselves, Negri said.
Here in rural Italy, the drama of ebbing biodiversity is playing out in nearly every family, as children move to the cities and farmers who remain turn to easier-to-use store-bought seeds rather than processing their own.
Boscherini's son Carlo, 57, a railroad worker, was taught as a child to propagate and care for the family crop lines, which had been handed down like heirlooms from generation to generation. Since his retirement, he has been helping his father pick seeds, preserving them for storage and replanting them in spring. But the younger generation of Boscherinis will not continue the tradition.
"It's important to teach them, but they're not interested," said Carlo, looking pointedly at his son, Fabio, 26, who works in an architect's office.
Fabio smiled and vigorously shook his head, as if to say: "No way! I've heard all this before."
Preserving a wide range of plant variants is crucial, experts say, because they provide plant scientists and farmers with a bank of genes that can be bred into mainstream crops as growing conditions and societal needs change. For example, scientists at Cornell University recently borrowed genes from an unusual South American potato to breed a spud that resists the late-blight fungus, which caused the Irish famine.
In Italy, Negri and her team have determined that backyard crop variants often contain a very different gene pool than their commercial relatives. If they disappeared, tastes and colors would be lost forever from Italy's tables: an apple with a lemony flavor, for example, or a healthful black celery.
But, perhaps more important, many unusual landraces also harbor special talents, and special genes, that might ensure crop survival in a harsher climate: tomatoes that can ripen off the vine, or onions that store well.
Scientists are encouraging farmers to keep planting their traditional crops. The UN and many scientific groups are working to expand seed banks as well.
The UN International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, signed in 2004, created a new global network tasked with collecting the seeds of unusual plants and cataloging their traits. Scientists and plant breeders can trade these seeds, said Shakeel Bhatti, executive secretary of the treaty organization, and it has received nearly 4,000 new samples.
But here in Italy many unusual plants are at risk of disappearing before they are even counted.
Before World War II, 50 percent of Italians worked in agriculture, compared with only 5 percent today.
"I'm the last of a line, an antique," said Guerrino Sciurpa, 72, in jeans and checked shirt, speaking from a small shed whose shelves were lined with seeds on his property in the village of Sanguineto.
On a recent afternoon, he was drying seeds from red peppers, a process that will take several days to complete.
"My children love eating good food, but they won't do this," Sciurpa said. "They drive up here and take away: beans, parsley, pears and melons."
Gino Boscherini's neat two-story house -- the one with the lawn furniture and old men playing cards out front -- does not look like a repository for precious genetic material.
And with his missing teeth, worn sweater and weathered face, Boscherini, 84, seems an unlikely hero in the quest to preserve biodiversity in the face of climate change.
But his backyard garden contains unusual variants of several plants: a bean grown only here in the hills overlooking Lake Trasimeno, a special tomato that can be stored for months, a type of pulpy squash that is good for pig feed. Such variants, called landraces, possess unique traits encoded in their genes.
Scientists may need to borrow these traits -- the ability to thrive in hotter weather or to resist a particular pest, for example -- to safeguard the global food supply in response to a changing climate. As farms have become more commercialized in recent decades and have moved toward growing one or two high-yield crops, the number of varieties globally is quickly diminishing, erasing plant genes at the very moment in history when they may be most needed.
That has left Europe's backyard gardeners and small farmers, like Boscherini, as the de facto guardians of disappearing fruits, grains and vegetables. Time is working against them.
Most of them are very old, and as they die their plants are dying with them. Most of their children and grandchildren have little interest in maintaining the crops, holdovers from Europe's more agrarian past.
"Central Italy has 500 landraces, mostly maintained by aged farmers and gardeners, and that is a big problem since there is a chance these crops will be lost within a generation," said Valeria Negri, a plant scientist at the University of Perugia.
Negri takes in orphaned seeds and raises them behind her home, the way a pet lover might take in stray dogs or cats.
About 10 years ago, Negri and her students went door to door in nearby Tuscany asking households what crops each grew. When they returned several years later to request sample seeds, one third of the plants were no longer being cultivated.
The attrition of crop types has alarmed scientists, who are trying to catalog the variants as well as their special traits, and figuring out how to preserve them.
Three-quarters of the biodiversity in crops has been lost in the last century, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. In Mexico, only 20 percent of the corn types that existed in the 1930s exist today. In the US, 95 percent of cabbage varieties and 94 percent of pea types are gone.
While a few private and local government programs are evolving to conserve these special crops, they are scattershot and the main actors remain the "farmers or the families" themselves, Negri said.
Here in rural Italy, the drama of ebbing biodiversity is playing out in nearly every family, as children move to the cities and farmers who remain turn to easier-to-use store-bought seeds rather than processing their own.
Boscherini's son Carlo, 57, a railroad worker, was taught as a child to propagate and care for the family crop lines, which had been handed down like heirlooms from generation to generation. Since his retirement, he has been helping his father pick seeds, preserving them for storage and replanting them in spring. But the younger generation of Boscherinis will not continue the tradition.
"It's important to teach them, but they're not interested," said Carlo, looking pointedly at his son, Fabio, 26, who works in an architect's office.
Fabio smiled and vigorously shook his head, as if to say: "No way! I've heard all this before."
Preserving a wide range of plant variants is crucial, experts say, because they provide plant scientists and farmers with a bank of genes that can be bred into mainstream crops as growing conditions and societal needs change. For example, scientists at Cornell University recently borrowed genes from an unusual South American potato to breed a spud that resists the late-blight fungus, which caused the Irish famine.
In Italy, Negri and her team have determined that backyard crop variants often contain a very different gene pool than their commercial relatives. If they disappeared, tastes and colors would be lost forever from Italy's tables: an apple with a lemony flavor, for example, or a healthful black celery.
But, perhaps more important, many unusual landraces also harbor special talents, and special genes, that might ensure crop survival in a harsher climate: tomatoes that can ripen off the vine, or onions that store well.
Scientists are encouraging farmers to keep planting their traditional crops. The UN and many scientific groups are working to expand seed banks as well.
The UN International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, signed in 2004, created a new global network tasked with collecting the seeds of unusual plants and cataloging their traits. Scientists and plant breeders can trade these seeds, said Shakeel Bhatti, executive secretary of the treaty organization, and it has received nearly 4,000 new samples.
But here in Italy many unusual plants are at risk of disappearing before they are even counted.
Before World War II, 50 percent of Italians worked in agriculture, compared with only 5 percent today.
"I'm the last of a line, an antique," said Guerrino Sciurpa, 72, in jeans and checked shirt, speaking from a small shed whose shelves were lined with seeds on his property in the village of Sanguineto.
On a recent afternoon, he was drying seeds from red peppers, a process that will take several days to complete.
"My children love eating good food, but they won't do this," Sciurpa said. "They drive up here and take away: beans, parsley, pears and melons."
2007年11月27日 星期二
Universities in the US Confront the Challenge of Giant Classrooms
by Justin Pope of AP, BOULDER, COLORADO
The Cristol Chemistry Building at the University of Colorado is a hive of activity on weekday mornings. Every hour, hundreds of laptop-toting students file in and out of its theater-style lecture halls, where classes are scheduled back to back.
In all, there are 33 courses at Colorado with 400 students or more. Three have more than 1,200. Most are broken into sections, but even those may have hundreds of students. One chemistry course is so big that the only place on campus where everyone can take the final exam at once is the Coors Event Center, Colorado's basketball arena.
Such arrangements are here to stay on US campuses.
There are already 18 million American college students, and that number is expected to increase by 2 million over the next eight years, as the value of a college degree continues to climb.
To get everyone through their coursework, monstrous class sizes are unavoidable.
That does not have to be a bad thing. At their best, giant classes can be effective and inspiring -- a way to get the best teachers in front of the most students.
But according to Carl Wieman, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize as a physicist at Colorado, such successes are rare.
Students often tune out and are turned off. Charismatic lecturers get good reviews but, the data show, are no more effective than others at making the most important concepts stick.
Most remarkably, when it comes to teaching not just "facts" but conveying to students the scientific approach to problem-solving, research shows that students end up thinking less like professionals after completing these classes than when they started.
"In a very real way, you're doing damage with these courses," Wieman, now a leading voice for reform, said in a recent interview.
Why are so many big classes broken?
One reason is faculty and departments closely guard their absolute power over teaching, and there is no central body in the US or even on campus to direct reform.
Many reforms also take money. If there were enough money, big classes wouldn't exist in the first place.
But state and federal policymakers are clamoring for more accountability and better graduation rates, and if faculty don't step up, bureaucrats might. Big classes are the obvious place to focus. The National Center for Academic Transformation, or NCAT, estimates that the 25 most common college courses -- in subjects like economics, English, psychology and the sciences -- account for 35 percent of four-year college enrollment nationally. That means a lot of people are taking a relative handful of courses.
Colorado, with a long tradition on innovative science teaching, is one of a number of campuses making significant changes in how at least some large introductory courses are taught and organized. Others include Maryland, MIT, Virginia Tech, Clemson and the University of Alabama.
The reforms go beyond simply reducing class sizes or encouraging lecturers to speak with more animation, though that's an element. Details vary, but one theme is a shift from a passive model of absorbing a lecturer's words to a more active one where lecturers guide and measure, but students learn the material more independently.
It's not necessarily popular with students, but the cognitive research says it is the way to make learning stick.
"In a traditional course the faculty are doing all the work and the students are watching," said Carol Twigg, president and CEO of NCAT, which is working with hundreds of universities to improve giant courses. "In a redesigned course, students are doing the work and faculty are stepping in as needed."
Wieman is at the vanguard of the reform movement, but it's really his second career. In his first he was a researcher with a rare distinction: He produced a new state of matter. Most people know the three most common states of matter -- solid, liquid and gas. But cooling rubidium nearly to absolute zero, Wieman and Colorado colleague Eric Cornell formulated the first Bose-Einstein condensate, a state in which several thousand atoms align perfectly and behave as a single "super atom."
After his Nobel, Wieman could easily have focused on lab work or training a cadre of elite graduate students.
But Wieman uses his clout to secure invitations to talk to his fellow scientists -- about teaching. He has become one of several physicists to take up the cause, along with Eric Mazur at Harvard, Edward Redish at Maryland and Robert Beichner at North Carolina State.
Wieman wears tennis shoes and walks everywhere like he's in a hurry. He is.
"I have ridiculous, grandiose visions," he said, speaking in his temporary office overlooking Colorado's football stadium. "I want to change how everybody learns science. I won't get into how this will save mankind, but it may."
The problem, he said, is that scientists stop acting like scientists when it comes to their own teaching.
In their own research, scientists hypothesize, measure -- then use data to figure out what works. But for teaching, "they're immediately willing to make generalizations about the thousands of students who've been through their class based on the two that talked to them last week," Wieman said.
There's no magic bullet, but measurement is the key.
"We're in this new era of engaging in this as a scholarly enterprise," said Noah Finkelstein, a young Colorado physics professor who has worked with Wieman to revamp a class he teaches. "Most faculty haven't been taught education is a scholarly enterprise. Most faculty have been taught education is an art, not a science."
One of the tools of the new science is "clickers," handheld voting devices now used on at least 700 campuses nationwide, according to manufacturer eInstruction. They let teachers pose mid-lecture multiple choice questions and instantly evaluate if students are grasping the material.
During a recent morning lecture in Colorado's General Chemistry 1131, Professor Robert Parson spoke for a few minutes, then posed a multiple-choice question to the class of about 250. The question, like others he used, was designed by a team of science-learning experts with trick choices that signal if students are falling for common misconceptions. The results of the "vote" popped up on an overhead screen. Then, before revealing the answer, Parson had students break into small groups to discuss the answer and vote again. The group did well, and he moved on. If it had performed poorly, he would have reviewed the material.
Perhaps the biggest challenge in college teaching is bridging the gap between an often brilliant expert and students new to the subject. Clickers help remind teachers how a novice sees their material.
"You realize how many people don't know something you forgot you didn't know 20 years ago," said Barbara Demmig-Adams, one of four Colorado professors who teaches a general biology course with 1,300 students and who introduced clickers this year.
Other campuses are trying different ideas, but a common thread is making big classes more of a two-way street.
At Virginia Tech, for instance, most introductory math courses now take place in a giant room called the "math emporium," in a converted department store just off campus. Students rarely if ever meet together. Instead, they come in any time, 24 hours a day, to work through problems on the 500 computer work stations. When they have a question, they flip over a red plastic cup beside their desk, and helpers -- upperclassmen, graduate students or professional staff -- come by.
Despite a roomful of computer hardware, the emporium is a much less expensive way to teach -- for one course about US$24 per student, compared with about US$77.
Teaching assistants in Parson's chemistry course and at the math emporium say they're growing increasingly confident in these kinds of methods. But some students are still sour on them.
"I can't do it very well with someone teaching me," said Ian Millington, a Virginia Tech sophomore who failed a calculus class but got a B when he took the same course last summer at a local community college. "So how am I going to teach it to myself?"
His mother, Jennifer Millington, says the family loves everything about Virginia Tech -- except how it teaches math.
"If they're going to keep raising the rates, I shouldn't have to be going to a community college to pay for my kid to take calculus," she said. "I know it's a huge school and there are so many students, but if you get so large that you're neglecting the masses [then] kids are falling through the cracks."
Mike Williams, who oversees the emporium, concedes student reaction is mixed. "It turns out many resent they have to do more work," he said. "They want to sit in a class like they're watching the boob tube."
But he says the popular option isn't always the best way to teach. And it's good for students to take on more responsibility for their learning.
Big lectures have their place, but it's too easy for students to hide, said Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Technology can help if teachers carefully study what works, as Wieman does. Otherwise, the latest gadgets will only further alienate students, as has happened with teachers who rely too much on tools like Microsoft PowerPoint.
Shulman invited Wieman to give his foundation's centennial lecture last year.
"It's not unusual for Nobel laureates to shift the direction of their work into a more socially and educationally focused kind of direction," Shulman said. "What's remarkably different about Carl is that he doesn't just say, `I'm a Nobel Laureate, listen up,' and then ask people to take teaching more seriously. He approaches it as a scholar."
Frustrated with administrative turnover and funding, Wieman moved his base to the University of British Columbia this year while continuing some of his work at Colorado. He says he was determined to continue his work at a large public university -- the kind of place where future teachers are trained.
If Harvard were to revolutionize introductory science teaching, "people would look at it and say, `They've got more money than God, that doesn't have any application to us,'" Wieman says. But if places like Colorado and UBC can show measurable improvement, "it's going to be a whole lot harder for people to argue they shouldn't be doing it."
The Cristol Chemistry Building at the University of Colorado is a hive of activity on weekday mornings. Every hour, hundreds of laptop-toting students file in and out of its theater-style lecture halls, where classes are scheduled back to back.
In all, there are 33 courses at Colorado with 400 students or more. Three have more than 1,200. Most are broken into sections, but even those may have hundreds of students. One chemistry course is so big that the only place on campus where everyone can take the final exam at once is the Coors Event Center, Colorado's basketball arena.
Such arrangements are here to stay on US campuses.
There are already 18 million American college students, and that number is expected to increase by 2 million over the next eight years, as the value of a college degree continues to climb.
To get everyone through their coursework, monstrous class sizes are unavoidable.
That does not have to be a bad thing. At their best, giant classes can be effective and inspiring -- a way to get the best teachers in front of the most students.
But according to Carl Wieman, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize as a physicist at Colorado, such successes are rare.
Students often tune out and are turned off. Charismatic lecturers get good reviews but, the data show, are no more effective than others at making the most important concepts stick.
Most remarkably, when it comes to teaching not just "facts" but conveying to students the scientific approach to problem-solving, research shows that students end up thinking less like professionals after completing these classes than when they started.
"In a very real way, you're doing damage with these courses," Wieman, now a leading voice for reform, said in a recent interview.
Why are so many big classes broken?
One reason is faculty and departments closely guard their absolute power over teaching, and there is no central body in the US or even on campus to direct reform.
Many reforms also take money. If there were enough money, big classes wouldn't exist in the first place.
But state and federal policymakers are clamoring for more accountability and better graduation rates, and if faculty don't step up, bureaucrats might. Big classes are the obvious place to focus. The National Center for Academic Transformation, or NCAT, estimates that the 25 most common college courses -- in subjects like economics, English, psychology and the sciences -- account for 35 percent of four-year college enrollment nationally. That means a lot of people are taking a relative handful of courses.
Colorado, with a long tradition on innovative science teaching, is one of a number of campuses making significant changes in how at least some large introductory courses are taught and organized. Others include Maryland, MIT, Virginia Tech, Clemson and the University of Alabama.
The reforms go beyond simply reducing class sizes or encouraging lecturers to speak with more animation, though that's an element. Details vary, but one theme is a shift from a passive model of absorbing a lecturer's words to a more active one where lecturers guide and measure, but students learn the material more independently.
It's not necessarily popular with students, but the cognitive research says it is the way to make learning stick.
"In a traditional course the faculty are doing all the work and the students are watching," said Carol Twigg, president and CEO of NCAT, which is working with hundreds of universities to improve giant courses. "In a redesigned course, students are doing the work and faculty are stepping in as needed."
Wieman is at the vanguard of the reform movement, but it's really his second career. In his first he was a researcher with a rare distinction: He produced a new state of matter. Most people know the three most common states of matter -- solid, liquid and gas. But cooling rubidium nearly to absolute zero, Wieman and Colorado colleague Eric Cornell formulated the first Bose-Einstein condensate, a state in which several thousand atoms align perfectly and behave as a single "super atom."
After his Nobel, Wieman could easily have focused on lab work or training a cadre of elite graduate students.
But Wieman uses his clout to secure invitations to talk to his fellow scientists -- about teaching. He has become one of several physicists to take up the cause, along with Eric Mazur at Harvard, Edward Redish at Maryland and Robert Beichner at North Carolina State.
Wieman wears tennis shoes and walks everywhere like he's in a hurry. He is.
"I have ridiculous, grandiose visions," he said, speaking in his temporary office overlooking Colorado's football stadium. "I want to change how everybody learns science. I won't get into how this will save mankind, but it may."
The problem, he said, is that scientists stop acting like scientists when it comes to their own teaching.
In their own research, scientists hypothesize, measure -- then use data to figure out what works. But for teaching, "they're immediately willing to make generalizations about the thousands of students who've been through their class based on the two that talked to them last week," Wieman said.
There's no magic bullet, but measurement is the key.
"We're in this new era of engaging in this as a scholarly enterprise," said Noah Finkelstein, a young Colorado physics professor who has worked with Wieman to revamp a class he teaches. "Most faculty haven't been taught education is a scholarly enterprise. Most faculty have been taught education is an art, not a science."
One of the tools of the new science is "clickers," handheld voting devices now used on at least 700 campuses nationwide, according to manufacturer eInstruction. They let teachers pose mid-lecture multiple choice questions and instantly evaluate if students are grasping the material.
During a recent morning lecture in Colorado's General Chemistry 1131, Professor Robert Parson spoke for a few minutes, then posed a multiple-choice question to the class of about 250. The question, like others he used, was designed by a team of science-learning experts with trick choices that signal if students are falling for common misconceptions. The results of the "vote" popped up on an overhead screen. Then, before revealing the answer, Parson had students break into small groups to discuss the answer and vote again. The group did well, and he moved on. If it had performed poorly, he would have reviewed the material.
Perhaps the biggest challenge in college teaching is bridging the gap between an often brilliant expert and students new to the subject. Clickers help remind teachers how a novice sees their material.
"You realize how many people don't know something you forgot you didn't know 20 years ago," said Barbara Demmig-Adams, one of four Colorado professors who teaches a general biology course with 1,300 students and who introduced clickers this year.
Other campuses are trying different ideas, but a common thread is making big classes more of a two-way street.
At Virginia Tech, for instance, most introductory math courses now take place in a giant room called the "math emporium," in a converted department store just off campus. Students rarely if ever meet together. Instead, they come in any time, 24 hours a day, to work through problems on the 500 computer work stations. When they have a question, they flip over a red plastic cup beside their desk, and helpers -- upperclassmen, graduate students or professional staff -- come by.
Despite a roomful of computer hardware, the emporium is a much less expensive way to teach -- for one course about US$24 per student, compared with about US$77.
Teaching assistants in Parson's chemistry course and at the math emporium say they're growing increasingly confident in these kinds of methods. But some students are still sour on them.
"I can't do it very well with someone teaching me," said Ian Millington, a Virginia Tech sophomore who failed a calculus class but got a B when he took the same course last summer at a local community college. "So how am I going to teach it to myself?"
His mother, Jennifer Millington, says the family loves everything about Virginia Tech -- except how it teaches math.
"If they're going to keep raising the rates, I shouldn't have to be going to a community college to pay for my kid to take calculus," she said. "I know it's a huge school and there are so many students, but if you get so large that you're neglecting the masses [then] kids are falling through the cracks."
Mike Williams, who oversees the emporium, concedes student reaction is mixed. "It turns out many resent they have to do more work," he said. "They want to sit in a class like they're watching the boob tube."
But he says the popular option isn't always the best way to teach. And it's good for students to take on more responsibility for their learning.
Big lectures have their place, but it's too easy for students to hide, said Lee Shulman, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Technology can help if teachers carefully study what works, as Wieman does. Otherwise, the latest gadgets will only further alienate students, as has happened with teachers who rely too much on tools like Microsoft PowerPoint.
Shulman invited Wieman to give his foundation's centennial lecture last year.
"It's not unusual for Nobel laureates to shift the direction of their work into a more socially and educationally focused kind of direction," Shulman said. "What's remarkably different about Carl is that he doesn't just say, `I'm a Nobel Laureate, listen up,' and then ask people to take teaching more seriously. He approaches it as a scholar."
Frustrated with administrative turnover and funding, Wieman moved his base to the University of British Columbia this year while continuing some of his work at Colorado. He says he was determined to continue his work at a large public university -- the kind of place where future teachers are trained.
If Harvard were to revolutionize introductory science teaching, "people would look at it and say, `They've got more money than God, that doesn't have any application to us,'" Wieman says. But if places like Colorado and UBC can show measurable improvement, "it's going to be a whole lot harder for people to argue they shouldn't be doing it."
Undercover Restorers Repair Clock
"CULTURAL GUERRILLAS": The members of an underground movement worked in a secret workshop in the Pantheon for more than a year without any official noticing.
It is one of Paris' most celebrated monuments, a neoclassical masterpiece that has cast its shadow across the city for more than two centuries.
But it is unlikely that the Pantheon, or any other building in France's capital, will have played host to a more bizarre sequence of events than those revealed in a court last week.
Four members of an underground "cultural guerrilla" movement known as the Untergunther, whose purpose is to restore France's cultural heritage, were cleared last Friday of breaking into the 18th-century monument.
For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Pantheon's unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid "illegal restorers" set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building's famous dome.
Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.
"When we had finished the repairs, we had a big debate on whether we should let the Pantheon's officials know or not," said Lazar Klausmann, a spokesperson for the Untergunther. "We decided to tell them in the end so that they would know to wind the clock up so it would still work."
"The Pantheon's administrator thought it was a hoax at first, but when we showed him the clock, and then took him up to our workshop, he had to take a deep breath and sit down," Klausmann said.
The Center of National Monuments, embarrassed by the way the group entered the building so easily, did not take to the news kindly, taking legal action and replacing the administrator.
Getting into the building was the easiest part, Klausmann said. The squad allowed themselves to be locked into the Pantheon one night, and then identified a side entrance near some stairs leading up to their future hiding place.
"Opening a lock is the easiest thing for a clockmaker," Klausmann said.
From then on, they sneaked in day or night under the unsuspecting noses of the Pantheon's officials.
"I've been working here for years," said a ticket officer at the Pantheon who wished to remain anonymous. "I know every corner of the building. And I never noticed anything."
The hardest part of the scheme was carrying up the planks used to make chairs and tables to furnish the Untergunther's cosy workshop, which has sweeping views over Paris. The group managed to connect the hideaway to the electricity grid and install a computer connected to the net.
Klausmann and his crew are connoisseurs of the Parisian underworld. Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays in monuments at night, and organized rock concerts in quarries. The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.
But the UX, the name of Untergunther's parent organization, is a finely tuned organization. It has around 150 members and is divided into separate groups, which specialize in different activities ranging from getting into buildings after dark to setting up cultural events. Untergunther is the restoration cell of the network.
Members know Paris intimately. Many of them were students in the Latin Quarter in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was popular to have secret parties in the French capital's network of tunnels.
The Untergunther are already busy working on another restoration mission Paris. The location is top secret, of course.
THE GUARDIAN, PARIS
It is one of Paris' most celebrated monuments, a neoclassical masterpiece that has cast its shadow across the city for more than two centuries.
But it is unlikely that the Pantheon, or any other building in France's capital, will have played host to a more bizarre sequence of events than those revealed in a court last week.
Four members of an underground "cultural guerrilla" movement known as the Untergunther, whose purpose is to restore France's cultural heritage, were cleared last Friday of breaking into the 18th-century monument.
For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Pantheon's unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid "illegal restorers" set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building's famous dome.
Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.
"When we had finished the repairs, we had a big debate on whether we should let the Pantheon's officials know or not," said Lazar Klausmann, a spokesperson for the Untergunther. "We decided to tell them in the end so that they would know to wind the clock up so it would still work."
"The Pantheon's administrator thought it was a hoax at first, but when we showed him the clock, and then took him up to our workshop, he had to take a deep breath and sit down," Klausmann said.
The Center of National Monuments, embarrassed by the way the group entered the building so easily, did not take to the news kindly, taking legal action and replacing the administrator.
Getting into the building was the easiest part, Klausmann said. The squad allowed themselves to be locked into the Pantheon one night, and then identified a side entrance near some stairs leading up to their future hiding place.
"Opening a lock is the easiest thing for a clockmaker," Klausmann said.
From then on, they sneaked in day or night under the unsuspecting noses of the Pantheon's officials.
"I've been working here for years," said a ticket officer at the Pantheon who wished to remain anonymous. "I know every corner of the building. And I never noticed anything."
The hardest part of the scheme was carrying up the planks used to make chairs and tables to furnish the Untergunther's cosy workshop, which has sweeping views over Paris. The group managed to connect the hideaway to the electricity grid and install a computer connected to the net.
Klausmann and his crew are connoisseurs of the Parisian underworld. Since the 1990s they have restored crypts, staged readings and plays in monuments at night, and organized rock concerts in quarries. The network was unknown to the authorities until 2004, when the police discovered an underground cinema, complete with bar and restaurant, under the Seine. They have tried to track them down ever since.
But the UX, the name of Untergunther's parent organization, is a finely tuned organization. It has around 150 members and is divided into separate groups, which specialize in different activities ranging from getting into buildings after dark to setting up cultural events. Untergunther is the restoration cell of the network.
Members know Paris intimately. Many of them were students in the Latin Quarter in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was popular to have secret parties in the French capital's network of tunnels.
The Untergunther are already busy working on another restoration mission Paris. The location is top secret, of course.
THE GUARDIAN, PARIS
On the Trans-Atlantic Muslim Divide
By Marcia Pally
Perhaps against expectations, it is Europe and not the US where local Muslims are most dissatisfied with their lot. The biggest reason may be Europe's vaunting of assimilation.
Compared with the tension that exists in Muslim communities across Europe, Muslims in the US are a more contented lot.
A recent Pew Forum study found that Europe's Muslims were"markedly less well off than the general population, frustrated with economic opportunities and socially isolated," while most US Muslims say that "their communities are excellent or good places" to live; 71 percent say they can succeed in the US if they work. Both income and college graduation levels match the national norms, and 63 percent of US Muslims report no conflict between religious devotion and living in modern society.
Although 53 percent of US Muslims think that life is more difficult since the terrorist attacks of 2001, most think that this is the fault of the government, not their neighbors. Indeed, 73 percent said they had never experienced discrimination while living in the US.
Moreover, 85 percent said suicide bombing is rarely or never justified, and only 1 percent said violence to defend Islam was "often" permissible. In Europe, significantly higher percentages of Muslims believe that suicide bombings are "often" or "sometimes" justified.
"What emerges," according to Amaney Jamal, an adviser to Pew, "is the great success of the Muslim American population in its socioeconomic assimilation." Yet "assimilation" is not what succeeds. "Assimilation" means dissolving into the mainstream, but Muslim-Americans do not do this, remaining devoutly Muslim in a country that is overwhelmingly Christian.
Muslims in the US do not so much assimilate as participate in economic, political, educational and social life. This might reflect a self-selection process: Only the most educated Muslims immigrate to the US, as poor social services allow only the best-prepared to survive. Yet even middle-class Muslims in Britain become alienated, and unlike the Muslim poor in Europe, poor Muslims in the US don't express alienation or sympathy with al-Qaeda.
It can be argued that only those poor who are eager for the harsh but open possibilities of life in the US emigrate there. Yet this doesn't explain why these poorer immigrants remain religious; wanting to succeed US-style, they should want to be quick to "assimilate."
Why do US Muslims do well while remaining devout and distinctive-looking? Why can they participate without assimilating?
Two factors seem significant: first, relatively porous economic, political and educational arenas that allow immigrants entry to these key areas of life in the US. Despite the discrimination and poverty that immigrants often suffer initially, barriers to economic and political participation are relatively low.
The second factor is a pluralistic public sphere, an arena not without religion but with many religions, which are visible and active in civil life as the basis for institutions, publications and symbols that influence values and conduct. The US is not a secular society; it is a religiously pluralistic one with secular legal and political structures.
Indeed, the secular institutions of the US were designed to support pluralism. They allow people of many creeds to work in them -- a workplace of multiple faiths. The prohibition against a state religion together with freedom of conscience preserves the plurality of religion in civil life.
This design was crafted not only from enlightened principle but from necessity: the US needed to persuade people to cross the ocean and endure the hardships of the frontier and, later, industrialization. Freedom to practice one's religion was an advertisement for America.
The benefit of that accidental generosity was the American deal: Immigrants have to participate in the economic and political fracas of the nation, but without much of a social service safety "net." On the other hand, they can get in.
And they can keep not only their private faith but practice it publicly. Tolerance for other people's religion is the price paid for tolerance of one's own. Prejudice has tended to fall as participation increases. It has been in no one's interest to disturb this live-and-let-live pragmatism for very long.
One result of the deal is the paradoxical sounding "familiarity with difference." Because immigrants participate in economic and political arenas, Americans are used to different sorts of people and so distinguish those differences that might damage the country from those that will not. Americans, indeed, are familiar with difference, or at least they tend not to panic. Even after 2001, there were only a few anti-Muslim incidents.
Europe, however, demands greater assimilation and offers a less porous economy and politics. This means less participation and thus less familiarity with difference on the host country's side. On the immigrants' side, there is more resentment against the host, more lassitude about the economy and politics, possible violence or an insistence on maintaining symbolic differences -- ironically, in a society less able to accept them precisely because of its discomfort with difference.
This is Europe's headscarf debate in a nutshell. It speaks to none of the barriers to participation or to immigrant responses to them, but demands symbolic assimilation.
But such demands are a dead end. To get out of it, greater entry into the economy and politics is needed, but also less demand for quick-fix assimilation. All the religions that descend from Abraham have internal mechanisms for change that allow them to reckon with new circumstances in ways that the confessional community can respect. Both fundamentalism and the demands of assimilation pre-empt these mechanisms.
They should be allowed to work. But Europe demands assimilation before participation in an economy that immigrants can't get into anyway. This, sadly, is a road to the ghetto.
Marcia Pally teaches at New York University.
Perhaps against expectations, it is Europe and not the US where local Muslims are most dissatisfied with their lot. The biggest reason may be Europe's vaunting of assimilation.
Compared with the tension that exists in Muslim communities across Europe, Muslims in the US are a more contented lot.
A recent Pew Forum study found that Europe's Muslims were"markedly less well off than the general population, frustrated with economic opportunities and socially isolated," while most US Muslims say that "their communities are excellent or good places" to live; 71 percent say they can succeed in the US if they work. Both income and college graduation levels match the national norms, and 63 percent of US Muslims report no conflict between religious devotion and living in modern society.
Although 53 percent of US Muslims think that life is more difficult since the terrorist attacks of 2001, most think that this is the fault of the government, not their neighbors. Indeed, 73 percent said they had never experienced discrimination while living in the US.
Moreover, 85 percent said suicide bombing is rarely or never justified, and only 1 percent said violence to defend Islam was "often" permissible. In Europe, significantly higher percentages of Muslims believe that suicide bombings are "often" or "sometimes" justified.
"What emerges," according to Amaney Jamal, an adviser to Pew, "is the great success of the Muslim American population in its socioeconomic assimilation." Yet "assimilation" is not what succeeds. "Assimilation" means dissolving into the mainstream, but Muslim-Americans do not do this, remaining devoutly Muslim in a country that is overwhelmingly Christian.
Muslims in the US do not so much assimilate as participate in economic, political, educational and social life. This might reflect a self-selection process: Only the most educated Muslims immigrate to the US, as poor social services allow only the best-prepared to survive. Yet even middle-class Muslims in Britain become alienated, and unlike the Muslim poor in Europe, poor Muslims in the US don't express alienation or sympathy with al-Qaeda.
It can be argued that only those poor who are eager for the harsh but open possibilities of life in the US emigrate there. Yet this doesn't explain why these poorer immigrants remain religious; wanting to succeed US-style, they should want to be quick to "assimilate."
Why do US Muslims do well while remaining devout and distinctive-looking? Why can they participate without assimilating?
Two factors seem significant: first, relatively porous economic, political and educational arenas that allow immigrants entry to these key areas of life in the US. Despite the discrimination and poverty that immigrants often suffer initially, barriers to economic and political participation are relatively low.
The second factor is a pluralistic public sphere, an arena not without religion but with many religions, which are visible and active in civil life as the basis for institutions, publications and symbols that influence values and conduct. The US is not a secular society; it is a religiously pluralistic one with secular legal and political structures.
Indeed, the secular institutions of the US were designed to support pluralism. They allow people of many creeds to work in them -- a workplace of multiple faiths. The prohibition against a state religion together with freedom of conscience preserves the plurality of religion in civil life.
This design was crafted not only from enlightened principle but from necessity: the US needed to persuade people to cross the ocean and endure the hardships of the frontier and, later, industrialization. Freedom to practice one's religion was an advertisement for America.
The benefit of that accidental generosity was the American deal: Immigrants have to participate in the economic and political fracas of the nation, but without much of a social service safety "net." On the other hand, they can get in.
And they can keep not only their private faith but practice it publicly. Tolerance for other people's religion is the price paid for tolerance of one's own. Prejudice has tended to fall as participation increases. It has been in no one's interest to disturb this live-and-let-live pragmatism for very long.
One result of the deal is the paradoxical sounding "familiarity with difference." Because immigrants participate in economic and political arenas, Americans are used to different sorts of people and so distinguish those differences that might damage the country from those that will not. Americans, indeed, are familiar with difference, or at least they tend not to panic. Even after 2001, there were only a few anti-Muslim incidents.
Europe, however, demands greater assimilation and offers a less porous economy and politics. This means less participation and thus less familiarity with difference on the host country's side. On the immigrants' side, there is more resentment against the host, more lassitude about the economy and politics, possible violence or an insistence on maintaining symbolic differences -- ironically, in a society less able to accept them precisely because of its discomfort with difference.
This is Europe's headscarf debate in a nutshell. It speaks to none of the barriers to participation or to immigrant responses to them, but demands symbolic assimilation.
But such demands are a dead end. To get out of it, greater entry into the economy and politics is needed, but also less demand for quick-fix assimilation. All the religions that descend from Abraham have internal mechanisms for change that allow them to reckon with new circumstances in ways that the confessional community can respect. Both fundamentalism and the demands of assimilation pre-empt these mechanisms.
They should be allowed to work. But Europe demands assimilation before participation in an economy that immigrants can't get into anyway. This, sadly, is a road to the ghetto.
Marcia Pally teaches at New York University.
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