Can't find the link to the actual study, though.]]> Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:40:23 -0700 mmc http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030630.html]]> Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:55:22 -0700 ckarlof Also, I admit: I skimmed the article. Too freaking long!]]> Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:49:30 -0700 AJ Do you think the author was going for irony by linking to an IMDB page for the Kubrick movie 2001 and omitting any mention of Arthur C Clarke? I suspect not since he writes at the end "That’s the essence of Kubrick’s dark prophecy: as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence." Perhaps people are generally more familiar with the movie (which was released first, in fact). But it's still pretty depressing that the cowriter and principal author of the novel version aren't paid due in an article bemoaning loss of appreciation for books. ]]> Thu, 02 Oct 2008 13:53:21 -0700 Paul

Is it significant that “lobster,” “fish,” and “chicken” are our culture’s words for both the animal and the meat, whereas most mammals seem to require euphemisms like “beef” and “pork” that help us separate the meat we eat from the living creature the meat once was? Is this evidence that some kind of deep unease about eating higher animals is endemic enough to show up in English usage, but that the unease diminishes as we move out of the mammalian order? (And is “lamb”/“lamb” the counterexample that sinks the whole theory, or are there special, biblico-historical reasons for that equivalence?)

Morality-wise, let’s concede that this cuts both ways. Lobster-eating is at least not abetted by the system of corporate factory farms that produces most beef, pork, and chicken. Because, if nothing else, of the way they’re marketed and packaged for sale, we eat these latter meats without having to consider that they were once conscious, sentient creatures to whom horrible things were done. (N.B. PETA distributes a certain video—the title of which is being omitted as part of the elaborate editorial compromise by which this note appears at all—in which you can see just about everything meat--related you don’t want to see or think about. (N.B.2Not that PETA’s any sort of font of unspun truth. Like many partisans in complex moral disputes, the PETA people are -fanatics, and a lot of their rhetoric seems simplistic and self-righteous. Personally, though, I have to say that I found this unnamed video both credible and deeply upsetting.))

Shorter Atlantic Magazine

Professor X, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower:

My students don’t learn anything in my classes.
It’s their fault. Or maybe society’s, for insisting
that college is for everyone. But definitely not mine.
--]]> Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:54:27 -0700 rsc I got the sense that he's arguing that it's easier to teach science poorly than it is to teach English poorly, because it's easier to ignore student's failures in science. I think this may be so, since I have to believe that grading bad essays is a pretty wrenching experience.

Also, regarding the importance of English, I thought Professor X's essay was, ironically, a little muddled. I think it's very important for people to be coherent writers. On the other hand, having read The Pickwick Papers or being able to do scholarly research seems pretty useless unless you're an academic. I think Prof. X should have dealt separately with these two issues, since he really weakens his own argument by mixing them up. I wonder if there would be so many F grades if he just taught remedial writing for two semesters. Maybe Mrs. L would have improved more if she didn't have to spend time learning the internets and researching a topic like the MacArthur/Truman example.

On the same track, people always argue that college is supposed to "teach you how to think." I learned how to think by arguing with annoying, belligerent academia-types and to a lesser extent by understanding some basic mathematical logic. I think law school is structured to teach people this way, but most other disciplines just seem to assume that reading excerpts from Plato (or Dickens) is enough. Does this actually work?]]> Thu, 14 Aug 2008 00:08:34 -0700 billm

There is a sense that our bank tellers should be college educated, and so should our medical-billing techs, and our child-welfare officers, and our sheriffs and federal marshals. We want the police officer who stops the car with the broken taillight to have a nodding acquaintance with great literature. And when all is said and done, my personal economic interest in booming college enrollments aside, I don’t think that’s such a boneheaded idea. Reading literature at the college level is a route to spacious thinking, to an acquaintance with certain profound ideas, that is of value to anyone. Will having read Invisible Man make a police officer less likely to indulge in racial profiling? Will a familiarity with Steinbeck make him more sympathetic to the plight of the poor, so that he might understand the lives of those who simply cannot get their taillights fixed? Will it benefit the correctional officer to have read The Autobiography of Malcolm X? The health-care worker Arrowsmith? Should the child-welfare officer read Plath’s “Daddy”? Such one-to-one correspondences probably don’t hold. But although I may be biased, being an English instructor and all, I can’t shake the sense that reading literature is informative and broadening and ultimately good for you. If I should fall ill, I suppose I would rather the hospital billing staff had read The Pickwick Papers, particularly the parts set in debtors’ prison.

Of course that's a bit hard to justify. I could think of several other more pertinent things one could learn in college. ]]> Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:17:10 -0700 AJ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:19:50 -0700 ccho