Disqus - Friends of allencraig

Re: The End of Male Supremacy

holl9762 — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 12:46:25 -0000

The real flaw is the assumption that biology will remain static in a feminine-dominated world. You want to see what the female ego is like? Make women incontestably dominant. Female homosocial behavior is as much a survival tactic as an attribute, and once that bond is unnecessary, ego will become as much a problem as it has ever been.

I really thought this was ironic, more worthy of SNL than The Chronicle. Is it not?

Re: The False Promise of 'Practical' Education

holl9762 — Tue, 07 Apr 2015 10:13:56 -0000

As an ardent supporter of the Liberal Arts, how do you not see that a free hand drawing of the world exercises spatial relationships in the mind that are critical to navigating any of life's circumstances. Does someone need to be able to free-hand a world map? Maybe not. Must someone know the spatial relationships between things, as well as comprehend notions like curvature, spheres, ratios, and the inherent usefulness of thinking about us on the earth, the differences between various regions, and how they all relate to each other. These are all transferable skills, so I'm in agreement that we need to focus on the useful skills taught in a Liberal Arts education, but need to abandon such phrases as "only if he's going to be a cartographer." The entire point is that the skills of a cartographer, if taught in the way a Liberal education would dictate, can be and should be transferable to parenting, farming, quantum physics, politics, driving, internet use, and even communicating with strangers. In essence, finding how they all connect to making us better citizens and people, no matter what our vocation. That's the practicality of it, and that needs to be our focus as ardent supporters of the Liberal Arts.

Re: The Attack on Truth

holl9762 — Mon, 08 Jun 2015 09:39:21 -0000

I hope you're so predictive of the anti-humanities types who want to blame this on a simple requirement of evidence and context (as if things could ever be understood in a vacuum).

Re: 2-Year Colleges in Calif. Hope Online-Course Upgrades Will Improve Completion

holl9762 — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 14:18:04 -0000

Why would it matter if administrators were banking on online tuition payers, while ignoring attrition rates, to fund their programs (which, I think, is why you and others would call online education "critical")? Of course administrators like this, it makes them money. Learning, on the other hand, is not as effective online, and there's plenty of research to support it. If you don't know about it, none of us has time to catch you up. But please don't crow about administrative avarice as an indicator of online's greatness, because administrative trend-hopping has nothing to do with learning or long-term student success.

In fact, your argument seems to be that these "academic leaders," nay, "chief academic leaders" are using online curriculum as part of their long-term strategy, therefore online education is good. Ignoring for the short run the ad populum non sequitur of this assertion, I ask: Strategy for what? Certainly, in the face of a growing mountain of research, it is not for learning--at least not until the technology catches up or becomes more affordable (see Janet Napolitano's statement on the UC system's having abandoned online as a centerpiece of their systemic overhaul, moving it into the toolbox for educators, where it belongs). [http://articles.latimes.com...]

If you are in education, you know that administrators are notorious for unwisely leaping into whatever new current that comes by, like wildebeests crossing the Okavango (hungry crocodiles notwithstanding), in an effort to find the panacea that will solve cash-flow, through-put, and efficiency mandates and problems dealt to them by feckless state legislatures and boards of trustees. For-profit institutions only exacerbate this reckless impulse.

Otherwise, you've cited a group whose primary bias will be to favor online education because of the financial benefit, not the educational benefit. This subversion of proper educational priority is hardly a reason to jump into bed with something so riddled with problems. The consortium you cite is selling online ed., and it is banking on online ed., but I'm sure its not learning through online ed., and we should all be wiser customers than you are asking us to be. Otherwise, we get the used car lemon we never wanted

Re: How to Advocate for the Liberal Arts: the State-University Edition

holl9762 — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 14:34:53 -0000

I'm happy this article exists, and grateful it has been written and published.

This is a nit-picky point (and thereby, perhaps, shouldn't be mentioned), but one I'd mark in my own students' papers. As a verb, it is improper to include "for" after advocate (L. "ad" + "vocare", meaning "to call (as in 'to one's aid') to"). One "advocates a position," rather than "advocates for a position," because the sense of advocacy (hence "for") in the prefix is already included in the word. Certainly one can be an advocate for a position, when one is using the word nominally. "For" may only follow "advocate" in that instance, in order to be correct.

Chronicle editors should've caught it. Sorry for bringing it up. Call it a compulsion that is relatively harmless, though not without being irritating, I'm sure.

Good job, Bearmeat, at getting it right. c mcclean copies the article's usage, but can be forgiven as a mathematician for the faux pas :).

And, by the way, I agree with both of them.

Re: The Most Beautiful Word of All

holl9762 — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 15:38:37 -0000

"Germane," hands down.

Re: The Prose Stylings of Antonin Scalia

holl9762 — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 13:52:59 -0000

Indeed, one would not want one's assertions to seem pretentious or egotistic, even subtle ones.

Re: U. of Phoenix Looks to Shrink Itself With New Admissions Requirements and Deep Cuts

holl9762 — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 14:00:41 -0000

I share Mark's perspective that providing a starving population with a meal of rocks and capers, though at least "something," hardly qualifies as a laudable accomplishment. Second to that is my regret at having been exposed to the fallacy that because "most, if not all, state universities" are doing it, it must be the right thing. Making money on the backs of people who are least likely to be able to succeed in an online environment, or whose access to education came at four or five times their state school rates (where they'd've had access as well), and who are least likely to be able to pay (i.e. demonstrably most likely to default on loans and thus cause a burden to themselves, the tax-payers, and state and federal governments) is certainly not something to crow about. All the assertions by Johnny Meat essentially could go this way, "they bamboozled the bamboozlable, their bamboozling was adopted by snake-oil salesmen and forced by a constabulary upon the institutions they fund, and, (joy of joys!) someone else is picking up the tab."

Sounds about right.

Re: Shakespeare in the Courtroom

holl9762 — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 16:10:13 -0000

Well, "The empty vessel makes the loudest sound."

Re: A Liberal-Arts College Intervenes to Diversify Its Faculty

holl9762 — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 13:02:44 -0000

I am happy to admit that even an unconscious bias exists in hiring, but I still have not seen a single argument that satisfies one question, and that is, "If we know bias exists, and we do our best to control for it, why would we then not just hire the best qualified candidate?"

Changing the criteria is a chimera, since a chemist needs to be good at chemistry, a political scientist good at politology, etc. Content expertise, classroom capabilities, research acumen, and positive citizenship are terrific criteria. I'm just not sure these should be scrapped for some other definition of a good candidate in order to contrive a diverse faculty of (potentially) the not most qualified candidates--by which I do not mean minority candidates are automatically less qualified, but rather a less-qualified-than-another candidate deserves not to be hired, regardless of any other criteria based on genetic determinations, be that gender-based or ethnic. If the best candidate is a man, hire him! If a woman, hire her! If someone from an underrepresented ethnicity or race, hire him or her, by all means! An externally enforced diversity mandate has the possibility of jeopardizing the excellence that we hope exists on university faculty.

If prejudices are to disappear--I mean really disappear, not just be compensated for (which, by the way, some members of underrepresented groups find insulting)--it isn't the hiring criteria that need to change, but rather that hiring criteria, placed in a reasonable priority, lead with pedagogical, curricular, and scholarly excellence. Any other priority set is just silly in the context of higher education. One disclaimer, though: my experience is that my best colleagues are many of the most excellent scholars, citizens, pedagogues, and curriculum designers. They make the wisest choices and help students the most. It is probably naive of me to think that this could be the case across the board, but I'm going to camp out in my naivete, hoping that a gender and race-blind excellence remains the glorious highest priority atop the hiring criteria, for the sake of knowledge, students, and the general welfare.

Re: Professors Goofing Off in Faculty Meetings? Bingo!

holl9762 — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 11:20:32 -0000

We just have "buzz-word" bingo, and it keeps us sane.

Re: Passions Supplant Reason in Dialogue on Women in Science

holl9762 — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 11:29:41 -0000

It's disheartening that so many are willing to sacrifice objectivity (your nod to the unexpected nature of the findings, to me, indicates something of your good faith) at the altar of such once-correctly-disprized support as anecdote and self-interested assertions. To quote the much-vilified Roger Scruton, "One word is written large on all these ugly things and that word is ME" (from Why Art Matters).

Re: Does Clayton Christensen Have a Credibility Problem?

holl9762 — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 10:39:47 -0000

This effort by Christensen to fit a theory to every single public exchange was a puerile attempt to begin with. Education is not the computer industry, anecdotal evidence (i.e. case studies) is rarely the best evidence, and disruption itself is merely a different label for competition and market forces. Those who were fooled by this Harvard busker defend him and his neither-innovative-nor-disruptive theory. Otherwise their foolishness is discovered. People who understand that fads and their perpetrators are primarily to be resisted (for the public good, if nothing else) are not surprised by any of this, since we've known it was hucksterism since the bad idea surfaced. The only thing he has really disrupted with consistent predictability is the digestive systems of people who identify the scam.

Now, the geniuses who have wallowed in this intellectual hog-muck, and who have ruined some institutions--and nearly the entire Wisconsin system--may finally have to face reality and see that students are not human capital, nor is education a commodity, and that public and private virtue as well as transferable skills in critical thinking and problem solving don't happen when your degree is in an unproctored certificate program in toothpaste lid on-screwing.

Sheesh! Now I know how my parents felt when they asked me why I wouldn't listen to them and avoid the trouble I was in.

Re: A Symposium Cautions Against Conflating Education With Job Training

holl9762 — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 10:46:05 -0000

Yes, "really." And, of course Ms. Collins did not mean to restrict any group or gender in the ridiculous ways you choose to infer. What she means is that excellent societies benefit from excellence in education and the organic birth of public virtue from a broad acquaintance with great ideas in philosophy, art, and science.

You are wrong about the goal of a liberal arts education. It is all about a free and democratic society, and that is demonstrably the case, whatever anecdotal evidence you choose to accept as counter evidence. While society and education may have functioned in the way you describe in some and even many cases (due to social issues that are addressed and often solved by the ideals you seem so eager to cast aside) to simply and irrationally throw the whole thing away because of a knee-jerk problem you seem to have with the term "antiquity" is risible.

Additionally, since when was 19th century America antiquity? That was good for another chuckle, too.

Re: The Digital Apocalypse Is Now

holl9762 — Mon, 21 Sep 2015 11:24:42 -0000

Only for those people who both failed to read the books, but merely carried around dust-covers with shallow, unimpressive summaries of the books.

And, yes, you are getting less from the works you read on your kindle, and the data you send is often less substantive than more traditionally-generated stuff. If that makes you a zombie, then the answer is, "yes" to your first, second, and third questions. The answer is "no" to your fourth, because only the transmission form changed, not the content.

http://www.theguardian.com/...

http://blogs.edweek.org/edw...

Re: Who Speaks at Meetings? Find Out with GenderTimer

holl9762 — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 11:43:38 -0000

Maybe this is why men feel confident that ideas should be heard, "If the book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning,
refute it. But for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose." --Thomas
Jefferson to N. G. Dufief, 1814. ME 14:127. We rely on people to censor their ideas by passing them through a critical self-assessment, but in the absence of this, it seems ultimately reasonable to hear an idea and then have it accepted or refuted (or even improved) by public discussion. I worry that your comment "In addition to the low-level–but
frustrating/unhelpful/soul-destroying–constant grind of interruptions,
there’s the weird confidence of a lot of men that their views need to be
aired, no matter what" evinces not only a sense that ideas should not be heard, but also that you disgorge this sentiment with so little irony, that I wonder if you feel the same weird confidence.

The confidence, at its best, is in the group's ability to sift through good and bad and to synthesize the best from the pile of offerings. Blessed be the woman that adds to it, and blessed the meeting that allows everyone to speak without interruption. Gender issues can easily be discussed without resorting to such blanket statements about men (or women).

Re: An Unevolved View of Gender Evolution

holl9762 — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 11:46:11 -0000

Agreed! Might that preclude your dig at the rural Midwest :)?

Re: An Unevolved View of Gender Evolution

holl9762 — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 12:09:27 -0000

I'm saddened by the blanket condemnation of lit-crits, even if some have deserved your opprobrium. I doubt that comparing literary theorists to Donald Trump is exactly accurate, but I should think that any scientist would welcome a chance to cross swords civilly with someone over empirical data, the interpretation of data, the collecting of data, the ideas underpinning the original question, or subsequent assertions based on the data. I happen to agree with your initial two paragraphs, but I would disagree with your much less scientific assertions in the following two.

I used to naively think good ideas would win out, because they were good (defined here as correct and practicable). Now that I know they will not (I guess Common Core would be an example of this--a mere re-hash of the failed "new math" experiments of the sixties and seventies), I think it is more important than ever to allow people like the lit-crits that have irritated you to have their say and then disprove them, as I think Konner has done.

More to the point, Ruti is not a lit-crit, but a psych-theory-crit. John Gray is, in fact, an English teacher, inasmuch as he both teaches and is English, but neither are teachers of English, and inasmuch as I don't personally know any lit-crits or teachers of English that I would deem an embarrassment to any academic enterprise (though they are out there, I assume), I hope these two can stand somewhat apart from your generalization about an entire academic discipline.

Finally, one wonders why you chose to channel e.e. cummings in your post--hardly scientific, and curiously literary.

Re: Nobody Should Have to Pay to Go to College

holl9762 — Wed, 16 Dec 2015 10:18:20 -0000

All true, but what if we didn't look at it as a service, but as a privilege, or as a goal, as the eventual aim, the pinnacle of Parnassus and end of the arduous journey to knowledge and wisdom, well paid for by toil, sacrifice, and self-mastery? The problem with the product/service language is that is contributes to an unhealthy vision of deliverables and fascist bottom-lining that forces education unto a mold where it is only viable if it is market viable, rather than being viable socially because of the lofty goals of public and private virtue and restraint--which, while these qualities often do not make money, they really solidify the social compact that these authors seem so ready to scrap for something new, but not improved, and which definitely will not promote the general welfare.

Re: In a Fake Online Class With Students Paid to Cheat, Could Professors Catch the Culprits?

holl9762 — Thu, 24 Dec 2015 11:21:31 -0000

Boy, no one saw this coming. You take a largely second or third rate educational medium enthusiastically endorsed by bureaucrats and which only serves as a delivery system (through no fault of the well-intended people who design and teach the courses, but the delivery medium is disastrously flawed for the purpose of actual education), you fail to proctor the assessments, you simply ignore human nature, and now we all have to wait while research confirms what common sense knew years ago.

Nice one, academia.

Re: In a Fake Online Class With Students Paid to Cheat, Could Professors Catch the Culprits?

holl9762 — Thu, 24 Dec 2015 11:25:08 -0000

At that point, why not just embrace this revolutionary idea: have the students come together in one room, where they can be taught, where they can interact with the prepared instructor, and where they can do all of the things that have helped us avoid cheating and catch cheaters over the years.

My snark isn't aimed at you, because I'm sympathetic to what you are saying, but the UC system discovered this four years ago--that online education is a tool, not the tool, and that to do it right actually costs more per student than face-to-face education.

Sadly, many regent boards, wise legislatures, and educationally-minded administrators see it as a cash generator and stop worrying about learning or quality. It's immoral to sucker students into believing that they can get a college education this way.

Re: In a Fake Online Class With Students Paid to Cheat, Could Professors Catch the Culprits?

holl9762 — Thu, 24 Dec 2015 11:30:45 -0000

Leaving behind the red herring you flap out there for us all to smell, I think you'll find, first, that cheating exists at a much lower rate among academics than students. Your implicit insistence that somehow a few idiots are indicative of all academics is risible and really makes me wonder, if you are an instructor, how that goes with your students--who you should be teaching to avoid glaring and, in this case, insulting logical fallacies.

The real issue, and the one you should have pointed out, is that human nature runs contrary to this blindly optimistic model of a mass of super-honest people out there who, left to their own devices, will NOT allow self-interest to govern their decisions, especially if they think they can indemnify themselves against consequence through anonymity.

Once again, research confirms what common sense has always known. Next,these geniuses are going to tell us that, contrary to administrative assertions, student evaluations actually are tied to the grade a student is getting in a class. Who knew?!

Re: In a Fake Online Class With Students Paid to Cheat, Could Professors Catch the Culprits?

holl9762 — Thu, 24 Dec 2015 11:33:17 -0000

No, you are not old school or iconoclastic. You are a smart person who knows enough about human nature and what is genuinely good to recognize that the problems here are insuperable in the online environment. While I admire your restraint and self-deprecation, I hope you don't really believe it.

While some subjects are online-able, many (most) are not--certainly the important ones are not. Letting a profit motive creep into education has dang near ruined it, and your resistance to that is neither old school or iconoclasm. It's morally right and intellectually sound. Congratulations!

Re: In a Fake Online Class With Students Paid to Cheat, Could Professors Catch the Culprits?

holl9762 — Thu, 24 Dec 2015 11:38:06 -0000

Then you are being willfully ignorant of research, human nature, and the nature of the online demographic. The actual mountain of research showing that good students thrive in any environment also shows that the demographic often touted as the one online education will save (under-privileged, economically disadvantaged, traditional under-performers, or people who think they'll do great taking classes in their pajamas) lacks the skill set, discipline, or whatever to, first, succeed in college, and second, do it without being tempted to take an easy out if they can.

Re: In a Fake Online Class With Students Paid to Cheat, Could Professors Catch the Culprits?

holl9762 — Thu, 24 Dec 2015 11:43:08 -0000

Indeed, but we have demonstrably effective measures to thwart or catch them. This is ridiculous that it must be explained. We meet these students day after day. We know these students over the course of a term. We can tell when a dunce writes something genius that there is something going on. Can you make the same claim in your virtual classroom? If you can, then why not just have a traditional brick and mortar course (or, as I like to call them, "actual college classes") that eliminates many, if not all, of the galactic problems with online education and settles for not creating problems, but dealing effectively with the ones that we've been dealing with since the 12th century?