March 20, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
“Where are we on phonics now?” I asked Steve, a quasi-relative (he’s a sort of step in-law) who I rarely see. We were having dinner with family down here in Sarasota (it's spring break). He teaches school and does research on primary education. Lately, he’s been digging through historical materials on one-room schools. It turns out in the nineteenth century too, the teaching of reading was subject to changes in fashion, and some of those fashions were remarkably similar to what we find today under labels like “phonics” and “whole language.”
Which teaching system works best? It depends on the kid, of course. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that kids are not all alike and that some learn better with one system while others do better with another.
Then what’s the problem, I asked.
“Texas,” he said, “California.”
In these states, a central committee decides on the book to be used for each subject in all public schools. Their preferences have a huge impact on publishers, whose fortunes may depend on an “adoption” in these states. (California accounts for more than 10% of the US population, Texas nearly 8%.) So decisions in these large, centralized states affect what is available even in other states. The structure of choosing textbooks shapes the content of the books.
But there’s a cultural component as well. “We have this strange assumption that the way to go about it is to figure out what’s the best, and then make everybody use it,” Steve said.
I wondered out loud if this way of thinking is peculiarly American, this uncomfortable amalgam of individualism and uniformity. We think each person should be free to make his own choices. But we also want everyone to choose the same thing, and we get upset when someone chooses something else. (Visitors to these shores since deTocqueville have remarked on the narrow range of political views in the US compared to those in other countries, which are apparently more tolerant of political diversity.)
So we have all these competitions to determine which book or movie or singer is best. Then, once we know what’s best, that’s the one we all freely and independently choose. Or, in the case of textbook committees, we assume that this is the book that will be best for all our schoolchildren.
They Do Get Fooled Again
March 16, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
The New York Times, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, asked nine “experts” to “reflect on their attitudes” then and say what most “surprised them or that they wish they had considered in the prewar debate.”
These were all war supporters (the American Enterprise Institute is well represented), and basically, the Times was giving them a chance to say why they were wrong and how they got fooled. Did they take the Times’s bait? Of course not. They all still say in one way or another that they were right in 2003.
I was reminded of something else that came around on the Internet today. (Hat tip to Lee Sigelman at The Monkey Cage)
SPOILER ALERT. Watch the video now – it’s only a minute long – because otherwise the next paragraph may spoil it for you.
After you see the scene the second time, you say, “Of course, it was there all the time, and I never saw it.” But these military and foreign policy experts in the Times are still insisting that their first perceptions were correct. There was never any bear, and the people who say there is a bear are wrong. It’s only because of the incompetence of the Bush Administration and the repeated mantras of the left that people even think there is a bear.
It’s dejà- Kuhn all over again. The adherents of a paradigm don’t abandon it for a new one just because it no longer fits with the facts. And the new paradigm succeeds not because it convinces the old guard, but because the old paradigm loses its power to draw new believers. If that’s true in the hard sciences, how much more it must apply in government policy.
That’s why I found it particularly impressive when Barack Obama said, “I don’t just want to end the war. I want to end the mentality that got us into the war.” Of course you don’t do that by trying to convince the Perles and Kagans of the world – these men who spurred us on and who still seem to be praying that they do get fooled again. You just make sure that your advisors have a much different mentality.
(I was going to give this post the title “The Bear That Wasn’t” – a wonderful fable about people enforcing their ideas upon recalcitrant facts. But I didn’t want to give too much away.)
Posted by Jay Livingston
The New York Times, on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, asked nine “experts” to “reflect on their attitudes” then and say what most “surprised them or that they wish they had considered in the prewar debate.”
These were all war supporters (the American Enterprise Institute is well represented), and basically, the Times was giving them a chance to say why they were wrong and how they got fooled. Did they take the Times’s bait? Of course not. They all still say in one way or another that they were right in 2003.
I was reminded of something else that came around on the Internet today. (Hat tip to Lee Sigelman at The Monkey Cage)
SPOILER ALERT. Watch the video now – it’s only a minute long – because otherwise the next paragraph may spoil it for you.
After you see the scene the second time, you say, “Of course, it was there all the time, and I never saw it.” But these military and foreign policy experts in the Times are still insisting that their first perceptions were correct. There was never any bear, and the people who say there is a bear are wrong. It’s only because of the incompetence of the Bush Administration and the repeated mantras of the left that people even think there is a bear.
It’s dejà- Kuhn all over again. The adherents of a paradigm don’t abandon it for a new one just because it no longer fits with the facts. And the new paradigm succeeds not because it convinces the old guard, but because the old paradigm loses its power to draw new believers. If that’s true in the hard sciences, how much more it must apply in government policy.
That’s why I found it particularly impressive when Barack Obama said, “I don’t just want to end the war. I want to end the mentality that got us into the war.” Of course you don’t do that by trying to convince the Perles and Kagans of the world – these men who spurred us on and who still seem to be praying that they do get fooled again. You just make sure that your advisors have a much different mentality.
(I was going to give this post the title “The Bear That Wasn’t” – a wonderful fable about people enforcing their ideas upon recalcitrant facts. But I didn’t want to give too much away.)
They've Got Us Outnumbered
March 14, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
They’ve been gaining on us for a long time, but this year they’ve finally overtaken us. In part, it’s because Parkinson’s law* leads to the mitosis of administrative positions. But the other part
is the key term “full-time.” Universities increasingly rely on adjunct faculty – part-timers who get paid piecework to teach one or two courses. In my own department, there have been several semesters when over 40% of our courses were taught by adjuncts.
It’s a great system. The adjuncts are usually good teachers – often better than the full-timers. Teaching is the core of their work, they do a lot of it, and because they teach at so many different schools, they have a diversity of experience that’s an asset in the classroom.
It’s good for the university too. It allows the administration to maintain “flexibility.” And most important, it saves a bundle of money. Hence the preponderance of administrators over faculty.
Still, most of us want to retain the fantasy of colleges and universities as institutions of higher learning, not higher administration (or, as with the superendowed elite schools, institutions of higher financial exploits).
I think I have the solution: adjunct administrators.
Instead of hiring another Vice-president for Administrative Organization or another Dean of Organizational Administration, hire part-timers. Low salary, no benefits, no long-term commitment.
I’m a department chair, and at least half of what I do in that role could be done by an adjunct – signing forms that I don’t read, writing recommendations that say nothing, nodding sympathetically while listening to complaints from students. Administrators higher up the line do these same things. I know because I see the lines for their signatures on the same forms and recommendations.
I’m not saying fire anyone. But the next time an administrator or two retires, give the real half of their work to one person, and hire adjuncts to do the other half. After all, the two most important areas in the university – computer tech support and parking – are already staffed mostly by part-time hourly employees, often students. And they generally do a good job. Well, maybe not the parking.
* “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
“An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.”
“Officials make work for each other.”
The total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rises by 5-7% per year “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.”
Posted by Jay Livingston
Full-time jobs in higher education:
- Faculty - 48.6%
- Administrators - 51.4%
They’ve been gaining on us for a long time, but this year they’ve finally overtaken us. In part, it’s because Parkinson’s law* leads to the mitosis of administrative positions. But the other part
is the key term “full-time.” Universities increasingly rely on adjunct faculty – part-timers who get paid piecework to teach one or two courses. In my own department, there have been several semesters when over 40% of our courses were taught by adjuncts.It’s a great system. The adjuncts are usually good teachers – often better than the full-timers. Teaching is the core of their work, they do a lot of it, and because they teach at so many different schools, they have a diversity of experience that’s an asset in the classroom.
It’s good for the university too. It allows the administration to maintain “flexibility.” And most important, it saves a bundle of money. Hence the preponderance of administrators over faculty.
Still, most of us want to retain the fantasy of colleges and universities as institutions of higher learning, not higher administration (or, as with the superendowed elite schools, institutions of higher financial exploits).
I think I have the solution: adjunct administrators.
Instead of hiring another Vice-president for Administrative Organization or another Dean of Organizational Administration, hire part-timers. Low salary, no benefits, no long-term commitment.
I’m a department chair, and at least half of what I do in that role could be done by an adjunct – signing forms that I don’t read, writing recommendations that say nothing, nodding sympathetically while listening to complaints from students. Administrators higher up the line do these same things. I know because I see the lines for their signatures on the same forms and recommendations.
I’m not saying fire anyone. But the next time an administrator or two retires, give the real half of their work to one person, and hire adjuncts to do the other half. After all, the two most important areas in the university – computer tech support and parking – are already staffed mostly by part-time hourly employees, often students. And they generally do a good job. Well, maybe not the parking.
* “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
“An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.”
“Officials make work for each other.”
The total of those employed inside a bureaucracy rises by 5-7% per year “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.”
Not to Mention the Finns
March 13, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston
Sex – is there anything that better exemplifies cultural variation? Maybe food. Americans are famously comfortable with excesses of eating – restaurants advertising “all you can eat” as though gluttony were a virtue, as Steven V. Roberts (Cokie’s husband) once said. European ideas about eating and drinking have a different emphasis. The French, notably, emphasize not quantity but quality, proportion, and aesthetic pleasure.
Our ideas about sexual indulgence, however, are somewhat narrower than those of Europeans. Even New Yorkers overwhelmingly thought that Gov. Spitzer should resign for having patronized prostitutes. (Spitzer’s legal problems may center more on money laundering than on sex, but I doubt that “structuring” was what the public was thinking about in judging the governor.)
Meanwhile in Finland this very same week, the foreign minister admitted to sending hundreds ofcell phone text messages to a topless dancer and her porn actress sister, and he’s not resigning. The other cabinet ministers have rallied to his side. Maybe the Finns will approve of anything so long as it’s done on a Nokia.
And according to the story (in the Daily Mail but it seems to be legit), the prime minister too had his non-marital sex life exposed without any loss of public support. A former lover published what the Mail calls a “steamy kiss-and-tell account of their relationship” just before the general election last year. He was re-elected anyway.
Hat tip to Jonathan Kulick at The Reality-Based Community for the link to this story. The title of this post, for those not familiar with ancient music, is from Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It”:
The Dutch in old Amsterdam do it,
Not to mention the Finns.
Folks in Siam do it;
Think of Siamese twins.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Sex – is there anything that better exemplifies cultural variation? Maybe food. Americans are famously comfortable with excesses of eating – restaurants advertising “all you can eat” as though gluttony were a virtue, as Steven V. Roberts (Cokie’s husband) once said. European ideas about eating and drinking have a different emphasis. The French, notably, emphasize not quantity but quality, proportion, and aesthetic pleasure.
Our ideas about sexual indulgence, however, are somewhat narrower than those of Europeans. Even New Yorkers overwhelmingly thought that Gov. Spitzer should resign for having patronized prostitutes. (Spitzer’s legal problems may center more on money laundering than on sex, but I doubt that “structuring” was what the public was thinking about in judging the governor.)
Meanwhile in Finland this very same week, the foreign minister admitted to sending hundreds ofcell phone text messages to a topless dancer and her porn actress sister, and he’s not resigning. The other cabinet ministers have rallied to his side. Maybe the Finns will approve of anything so long as it’s done on a Nokia.
And according to the story (in the Daily Mail but it seems to be legit), the prime minister too had his non-marital sex life exposed without any loss of public support. A former lover published what the Mail calls a “steamy kiss-and-tell account of their relationship” just before the general election last year. He was re-elected anyway.
Hat tip to Jonathan Kulick at The Reality-Based Community for the link to this story. The title of this post, for those not familiar with ancient music, is from Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It”:
The Dutch in old Amsterdam do it,
Not to mention the Finns.
Folks in Siam do it;
Think of Siamese twins.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)