Peter Wood has an essay on the effects of our culture on science education.
Category Archives: Education
Fraud Detection
The (modern) difference between science and the humanities.
Rewiring Our Brains?
Is the Internet changing the way we think?
Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going–so far as I can tell–but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
It’s anecdotal, but I’ve noticed the same thing. I used to read many more books (and magazines, such as The Economist) than I do now. Almost all of my reading occurs on line, and I am much less able to focus than I used to be. But it’s not clear whether this is an effect of aging, or new habits. More the latter, I suspect.
Why This Is Such A Depressing Election
“Messrs. Obama and McCain both reveal a disturbing animus toward free markets and success.”
Indeed.
From The Basement Of The Ivory Tower
Here’s a depressing piece on people who shouldn’t be in college but, due to various societal pressures, are.
Why I Like Reading Blogs
I hadn’t thought about it before until I saw this post by Kate Woodbury, but it’s because blog posts contain a lot of the words “I” and “me.”
Since “no first-person” inevitably results in bad writing (an overabundance of passive voice; the use of “one” or “student” instead of “I”), I always tell my students, “You may use first-person in my class. In other classes, check with the instructor.”
I never thought much about WHY teachers were telling students this. I vaguely remember someone telling me not to use first-person, and I vaguely remember ignoring that someone; other than that, it didn’t seem like an important issue.
However, I recently discovered at least one reason teachers ban first-person: prevented from using first-person, students will set aside me-centered thinking and use credible evidence; that is, rather than saying, “I think this, thus it is true,” students will write, “According to expert X . . .”
I don’t buy this argument; in fact, I think banning first-person usage ends up doing more damage than good. If the problem is the lack of expert/credible sources in students’ writing, not using first-person doesn’t solve the problem; it just covers it up. After all, a first-person’s account could be more credible than an “expert’s” account. I’d much rather read a student’s personal/eyewitness account of 9/11 than a thousand third-person conspiracy theories.
The key is in the first sentence. Being forced to write in third person often results in stilted, boring prose. Unfortunately, the modern journalistic ethos, probably hammered into them in J-School, is that “objective” news stories must be written third person. This is why good bloggers (even taking away the bias) write far better and more readable pieces, than most conventional journalists. They don’t have to do it with one “I” tied behind their back.
[Via her post on liberal fascism and Calvinism]
Irony At Epcot
A travelogue by Lileks:
The plot was hugely ironical: Timon and Roomba or whatever the warthog is named were building a resort in the jungle, and damning a stream to create a water feature. Simba showed up to demonstrate the error of their ways. The hilarity of any manifestation of the Disneyverse criticizing an artificial lake to build a resort goes without saying. And it did go without saying, of course. Simba said that Timon and Roomba or whatever were acting like another creature that did not behave in tune with nature, and that creature was . . . man.
BOO HISS, I guess. Jaysus, I tire of this. Big evil stupid man had done many stupid evil bad things, like pile abandoned cars in the river, dump chemicals into blue streams, and build factories that vomited great dark clouds into the sky. Like the People’s State Lead Paint and Licensed Mickey Merchandise Factory in Shanghai Province, perhaps? Simba gave us a lecture about materialism and how it hurt the earth – cue the shot of trees actually being chopped down, and I’m surprised the sap didn’t spurt like blood in a Peckinpah movie – and other horrors, like forests on fire because . . . well, because it was National Toss Glowing Coals Out the Car Window Month, I guess. I swear the footage all came from the mid-70s; it was grainy and cracked and the cars were all late-60s models. Because I’m pretty sure we’re not dumping cars into the rivers as a matter of course any more. You’re welcome to try to leave your car on the riverbank and see how that turns out for you.
At the end Timon and Phoomba decided to open a green resort, and everything’s hakuna Montana.
Follow the link for the rest of the story.
The Difference Between Harvard And A Hedge Fund
Not much, apparently.
It really does make it hard to justify their tuition. They should be giving out, and paying for a lot more scholarships.
Encouraging Words
In his Senate testimony, Frederick Tarantino, head of USRA, made the following interesting recommendation:
I also want to bring to the subcommittee’s attention an exciting new way in which university-led experiments with hands-on training could be boosted by NASA involvement. Within the next few years, suborbital commercial vehicles being developed by such companies as Virgin Galactic, XCOR Aerospace, Armadillo Aerospace, and Blue Origin, will provide a unique way to engage scientists and researchers. NASA has already taken the first step by issuing a request for information to help in the formulation of a Suborbital Scientist Participant Pilot Program.
By providing the opportunity for researchers and even undergraduate students to fly into space along with their experiments, not only can new experiments be conducted, but the opportunity can inspire students to engage in the math, science, and engineering. The participatory approach of the personal spaceflight industry means each suborbital launch can be experienced by thousands of people, with young people able to tune in and watch live video from space as their professors and fellow students conduct experiments in real time and experience weightlessness and the life-changing view of the earth from space. The hands-on experience will create a new generation of Principal Investigators who will be prepared to lead the flagship science and human exploration missions, later in their careers.
These new vehicles will provide low-cost access to the space environment for scientific experiments and research. The market rate for these services has already been set by the space tourist market at $100,000-$200,000 per seat, a much lower cost than existing sounding rockets.
We believe the commercial potential here could be energized by the participation of our space agency. USRA requests the subcommittee authorize NASA to follow through on the request for information by establishing the Suborbital Scientist Participant Pilot Program and issuing a NASA Research Announcement soliciting investigations. This will create a university research payloads market for these emerging commercial operations, provide a new way for university researchers to conduct experiments with student involvement and hands-on-training, and bring the involvement of NASA, and its imprimatur, to an exciting new U.S. industry.
Let’s hope that the staffers were paying attention.
Campus Idiocy
There were some shots fired at Florida Atlantic University (two or three miles from my house) at a party last night. In what’s obviously a ridiculous and gross overreaction to the Virginia Tech massacre, classes have been cancelled, the entire campus has been locked down, and twenty-five hundred students are now essentially prisoners in their dorms.
How long will this go on? Who knows? It could be days before they find the perp (no one was killed, and one person was wounded, and it’s not even clear that the wound was from the gun), and they may never do so.
Florida is a shall-issue state, but I suspect that the school (like most) foolishly bans guns on campus (which obviously worked so well last night). Unfortunately, despite the fact that all the students are adults, and there’s no reason to think that the shooter has any intention to shoot people on campus, they are being treated like children, deprived of the means to defend themselves, and locked away in their rooms. It’s a continuation of the infantilization of society, and the growth of the nanny state. Obviously, the authorities are worried about being accused of not being sufficiently solicitous of the safety of the students, but apparently they don’t believe that their liberty has any value. They need to understand that they have to have some balance. If I were one of those students, I’d bring suit for false imprisonment.
[Update an hour or so later]
I just heard that the police are “searching Boca Raton” for the gunman. So they’re not restricting their search to campus? I’m only three miles or so from campus. Why haven’t they come down my street and locked us in our houses? He could be anywhere. Why restrict it to campus?