The Effort Points

Elementary schoolers in some states across the US found a new components on their score sheet: the effort points. It works this way: the correct answer of a question no longer worth a full grade. Instead, for a 100 points question, you earn 50 points for correctly answering it, and the next 50 points are assigned based on how hard you tried. If you failed to demonstrate that you were struggling, you would get nothing.

For example, if a student turn in his sheet 20 minutes into a 40 minutes test, even if he correctly answered all questions, he will only earn 50 points because he did not make 'efforts'. On the other hand, another student who only answered 5% of the questions, but stayed to the end will receive 50 points of effort points plus 2.5 points, thus a higher grade of 52.5 points. In the end the student who knows 5% of the answers go to a better college than the one who solved 100% of the test.

The 'Effort Points' is yet another attempt to make sure every child educated to equal stupidity, if their parents can not afford private school education.

In addition to wide range policies, some schools and teachers are becoming creative to accomplish their mission of ultimate equal stupidity. One teacher discovered that the reason her student did not score well was because they did not do homework, which is a component in the whole evaluation. Her decision was to stop assigning homework, so no student in her class will lose points on homework. This method was praised as a successful model and encouraged by policy makers and education leaders to other teachers.

The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article, Employers and Public Favor Graduates Who Can Communicate, Survey Finds. It's such a relieve to realize the problem started from the society, when even employers care less about productivity.

And we will win the global competition with countries such as China, India, Korea and Japan, where students are assessed on their scientific and engineering capabilities. Yeah right, as long as we communicate it in the right way, people will believe in it.

China's Communication Cost Gone Wild

A health economy relies on unblocked flowing of entities, tangible (product, raw materials) or intangible (information, knowledge, labor, etc.). On both ends, the cost of communication is rising as a result of its political structure.

The Great FireWall (GFW) and Gold Shield Project not only blocked 80% of meaningful information flow, it also slowed down communications within mainland China as well as suppress innovations from within. These cost was mandated by the government to control people's mind.

The high cost of ground transportation, on the other hand, reflect a lost control of the central government in resource sharing deals with local authorities. The ground transportation cost in China is already twice of the world average and still climbing. In the first half of 2011, cost of ground transportation totaled CNY 3.7 trillion, a 18.5% increase from same period of last year. According to 2010 data, the raw profit of road toll companies is 59.14%, which place it one of the most profitable markets in China.

Although the central government would not like to see a package tolled dozens of times on a stretch of 100 miles public road, it does not have the resolute to argue with local government who set up random toll stations as revenue resource because it relied on local authorities's heavy hand to control unhappy citizens. One example, the central government's mouth piece, CCTV, revealed the express way which connects Beijing and its airport was only approved to toll one way traffic, which both direction had been tolled for years. The local authority continued to toll both ways after the central government vowed to crack down unlawful toll stations.

China's is riding on a bullet train with no brake, as many pointed out, after the Wenzhou train disaster. The sole power so far was the rapidly increased productivity, released from the confinement of tight government control. However, the rising communication cost has become a huge dragging force. The old question is when the train will run out of rail, while the political structure is only slowing down the speed new rail can be laid down.