Category: Education
My new teaching assignment
Holmes The Common Law
Posner Law and Literature
Dissents by Holmes and Frankfurter
PART I: THE LIMITS OF JUSTICE
September 8 Sophocles – Antigone
September 15 Plato Apology
September 22 The Bible – Selections from Exodus, Kings I and II-
Part II: LIBERTY AND LICENSE
September 29 More Utopia
October 6 Shakespeare Measure for Measure
October 13 Milton Areopagitica
Short Paper Due #1 (5 pages)
Part III: TRIALS AND ORDEALS
October 20 Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson
October 27 Melville Billy Budd
November 3 Selection from Dostoievsky The Brothers Karamazov
Kafka, In the Penal Colony from Collected Stories
Part IV: PERFORMANCE AND WITNESS
November 10 Bertolt Brecht The Caucasian Chalk Circle
(Methuen Student Ed.)
Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers
November 17 Rebecca West, A Train of Powder
Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
(selections)
November24 – THANKSGIVING
PART V: LITERATURE AND LEGAL CHANGE
December 1 Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart
The cynic’s conundrum
The cynic’s conundrum is that while a cynic might prefer that others believe an idealistic theory of his cynical mood, his own cynical beliefs should lead him to believe a cynical theory of his own cynical mood. That is, a cynic should believe that complainers tends to be losers, rather than altruists.
Furthermore, the meta-cynical theory, that cynics tend to be losers, seems to better explain the patterns that people don’t like to be around cynics, and don’t want to their children trained in cynicism. If idealism indicates more attractive features, people and institutions would try to present themselves as idealistically as possible.
Of course both the idealistic and the cynical theory of cynicism seem to accept the claim that cynical beliefs tend to contain a lot of truth. And this fact in turn favors the cynical theory of cynicism. Thus while hypocrisy and low motives probably are in fact much more widespread than most people acknowledge, most people are well-advised to pretend that they believe otherwise.
That of course is Robin Hanson, here is the whole (short) essay.
The debate over think tanks
Read these three posts by Virginia Postrel (as this link ages, you may need to scroll down or use Google). This is a difficult topic for me, since I have had dealings with numerous think tanks and think tank-related entities for almost thirty years. I sympathize with much of what Virginia has to say, but here are a few points in the other direction:
1. The existence of think tanks, and related entities, makes being an academic more attractive. I mean the fun and exposure, not the money (think tanks don’t pay so well, relative to consulting). Think tanks can make academics more productive, and can make academics more interested in addressing real world concerns. Such factors have played a considerable role in my life.
2. I am interested in what economists call "rent exhaustion." Why isn’t the entire budget of a think tank taken up by attempts to raise money? Well, the entire budget of a for-profit usually is — or at least should be — taken up by attempts to make money; we call those profits. The true goals of non-profits are more diverse, even when they face budgetary pressures. Even corrupt non-profits do not spend 100 percent of their budget on raising funds. Non-profits of all kinds — including think tanks — introduce a degree of mission freedom that is otherwise not there.
The question depends on what we are comparing think tanks to. The for-profit sector? The NSF? Blogging? Free-lance writing? Direct grants from foundations? They all have their pluses and minuses. The key question is whether the different pieces fit together in a useful way.
3. Some think tanks simply are markers or beacons for the ideologically faithful. I do object to the hypocrisy involved, and to the quality of their policy outputs. That being said, they are providing real services, just as churches do.
4. I view the interaction between blogs (and other decentralized information and opinion sources) and think tanks as a key question for the future. Will blogs "smack down" the rot of lower-quality think tank outputs, thereby leading to intellectual improvements? Or will blogs push think tanks out of serious policy discourse altogether, making them more like churches? Will blogs amplify the influence of some kinds of think tanks, at the expense of others? On these questions, all bets are off.
Note that scholars no longer need think tanks to take their ideas to larger audiences. The think tank sector has yet to absorb the import of this fact. Could Google — and not universities — be the real competitor to policy think tanks?
How to teach driving
Yana has her learner’s permit, so the role of instructor falls upon the blogger in the family. I have the following three tips, all of which assume you are in a safe area, such as an empty parking lot:
1. Ask the driving student to hit the curb, but just barely. This is the only way to learn where the curb is. They are going to find the curb anyway, so let this learning occur under safe circumstances.
2. Make them drive while you are making funny noises, "acting retarded," and screaming "Billy Bob has a crush on Yana." At some point their friends will hand out the same treatment — make sure they are psychologically prepared.
3. Tell them to put the car in "Park" before it has come to a complete stop. The same reasoning applies as above.
Why don’t most people teach these lessons (or do you all?)? You want to feel safe and lower your stress during the lesson, rather than prepping the future driver for real world circumstances. (So how should we teach prospective central bankers?) Comments are open, in case you have other tips for how to teach driving…
Yana’s vocabulary lesson
Pundit: "I know that word, from Instapundit!"
The tragedy of Jonathan Kozol
Jonathan Kozol has spent a good deal of his life writing eloquently and passionately about children and the sad state of education in America. The depths of his passion and caring are to be admired and applauded. The tragedy is that his eloquence has often been put to ill use attacking the one reform that would really help – private schools and school choice. Kozol’s good intentions, therefore, earn him no free pass from me.
In a recent interview he said:
[Private schools] starve the public school system of the presence of well-educated,
politically effective parents to fight for equity for all kids.
Kozol’s argument can be summed up thusly:
Letting people escape over the Berlin Wall starves the East German system of the presence of well-educated,
politically effective people to fight for the equity of all East Germans.
Barricading parents into the poor schools their government offers them is like barricading people into communist East Germany. People, even well-educated, politically effective people, should not be used as tools to further some social engineering scheme.
But is the argument even true? Kozol, draws on Hirschman’s great book Exit, Voice and Loyalty, but like many who read that book he shows no sign of understanding any of its subtleties.
Yes, exit and voice can be substitutes and reducing exit may increase voice. But more often than not, voice and exits are complements. When you complain of delay where is your voice more likely to be heard; at a restaurant or at the department of motor vehicles?
It’s the threat of exit that makes people listen.
Moreover, shutting down exit does not guarantee that voice will arise. The people whose children are stuck in the worst-performing schools have neither voice nor exit – they are like the people of New Orleans who did not have the means to escape nor the political power to compel help from others.
Finally, we go to the data. Kozol’s argument implies that places with more exit should have worse public schools. But in fact a large body of research shows that the opposite is true. Places with more choice – whether that choice comes from private schools, charter schools, or even choice among public schools – have better schools. Exit and the threat of exit makes educators listen.
But will Kozol listen? Sadly, I think not because his fundamental opposition to vouchers is not economic but aesthetic. He says:
Vouchers elevate the lowest instincts of humanity over the most beautiful instincts.
Need I quote Adam Smith in response?
Teaching with blogs
I am requiring my Ph.d. macro class to read some blogs, and yes there will be a test. They are to read Brad DeLong, Brad Setser, Macroblog, Nouriel Roubini, and some of Econbrowser, all to be found on the blogroll to the left. I am a proponent of debate as a means of educating; we are programmed to remember interpersonal exchanges better than written or spoken drones.
Mirror, mirror on the wall…
I find it odd, too, that so many academics profess to be egalitarians, yet academia as a whole has produced one of the most radically inegalitarian societies to be seen since Louis XVI fled Versailles. Many academics of my acquaintance profess to be aghast at the "status seeking" in which their neighbours engage–and yet I have never met anyone as obsessed with collecting professional merit badges as an academic. Nor have I experienced any other organisational culture, even in hyper-competitive consulting or investment banking, in which professional success is so readily confused with personal worth.
Read more here.
Why don’t American teenagers have better test scores?
On those international tests they take, nothing is at stake. They do much better when something is on the line, here is the story. There is nothing at stake in Japan as well, so this suggests that American kids are the consummate period-by-period optimizers.
By the way, I am in New Zealand now, don’t be thrown by Alex’s mention of Australia.
You know you are a nerd when…
you look at an amazing vista of mountain peaks, crags, and valleys and you say to yourself "Wow, that looks just like fractal geometry!"
English words with different meanings in Singlish
Here is a list. My favorite?
- choose – browse – "Choose, choose, choose, but never buy, is it?"
Here is a fuller description of Singlish. I’ve had some people speak Singlish for me, and I didn’t understand a word of it, nor would I have realized it had any relation to English-as-I-know-it.
Using cartoons to promote reform
From my inventive colleagues at the World Bank: using cartoons to promote economic reform. Follow the stories of people such as Bosnian entrepreneur Max as they struggle through red tape (my favorite example: an ‘atomic shelter fee’).
Comics can be so effective in spreading information because they use drama and
humor to educate without being overly didactic or preachy. Unlike brochures,
they have a long shelf-life. People rarely throw out comics – they either save
them or give them to a friend.
Comics are also cheap to produce and can be placed as advertisements in newspapers. The disadvantages? They’re very hard to edit by committee, which may explain why the big institutions have been slow to pick them up. That said, you can order your Federal Reserve comics here.
Caption headlines from The Straits Times
"Is Hitler Cool? Not if you know of the atrocities the Nazi leader (above [reference to photo]) committed during World War II."
That is p.2 from the 26 July edition.
Why are we organizing our kids so much?
The data confirm what I have long suspected:
Childhood’s outdoor pastimes are declining fast and the rate has accelerated in the past decade, especially the past five years, according to the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) annual survey of physical activity.
Since 1995, the portion of children ages 7 to 11 who swim, fish or play touch football has declined by about a third. Canoeing and water skiing are down by similar amounts.
The relationship between kids and their bikes is especially telling. In 1995, 68% of children ages 7 to 11 rode a bike at least six times a year. Last year, only 47% did. The sales of children’s bikes fell from 12.4 million in 2000 to 9.8 million in 2004, a 21% decline, according to Bicycle Industry and Retailer News,an industry magazine…
Children today tend to get outdoor exercise by appointment.
Soccer participation has been unchanged in the past decade – about 28% of kids age 7 to 11 play the sport. Soccer leagues and soccer camps are in full bloom this summer, although non-organized soccer games are uncommon.
Organized outdoor activities have kept kids moving. They are declining but much more slowly that unstructured outdoor play.
Little League participation has fallen to 2.1 million children, down 14% from its peak in 1997. But overall baseball playing – pick-up games, catch, pickle – has declined nearly twice as fast, the NSGA surveys show.
Here is the full story. Now how about some hypotheses?
1. Escalation of a signaling game. You have to get those kids ready for college now.
2. Reference frames are relative, and an initial slight increase in parental paranoia has fed upon itself and has been bumping up safety and control standards for many years.
3. Suburban sprawl is a tax on spontaneity. And as more kids get trapped into planned networks, it becomes harder to go it alone.
4. Parents have always wanted to exercise such control; only now has the ongoing growth of civil society provided the requisite institutions.
Any other nominations?
Bounty Hunting, the sad part
The sky was dark as I drove to Baltimore to try my hand at bounty hunting; it was 5:15 am. Fugitives from the law tend not be early-rising types so bounty hunters search homes in the morning and the streets at night.
Dennis, who has been in the business 21 years and has volunteered to show me the ropes, hands me a photo. Our first fugitive is a surprise. Taken a few years ago in better times, the photo is of an attractive young woman perhaps at her prom. She has long, blond hair and bright eyes. She is smiling.
We drive to the house where a tip places her recently. It’s a middle class home in a nice suburb. Children’s toys are strewn about the garden. I’m accompanied by Dennis and two of his co-workers, a former police officer and a former sherrif’s deputy. One of them takes the back while Dennis knocks. A women still in her nightclothes answers. She does not seem surprised to have four men knocking at her door in the early morning. She volunteers that we can search the house. We enter and get the whole story.
"Chrissy" is her niece. She was at the house two days ago and may return. Chrissy has had her life ruined by drugs. Or, perhaps she has ruined her life with drugs – sometimes it’s hard to tell. She is now a heroin addict whose boyfriend regularly beats her. The aunt is momentarily shocked when we show her the photo. No, she doesn’t look like that anymore – her hair is brown, her face is covered with scabs and usually bruised, she weighs maybe 85 pounds. "Be gentle with her," the Aunt says even though "she will probably fight."
The Aunt gives us another location – Chrissy is living out of her car with her mother. We are about to leave when the Aunt thanks us for being quiet, there’s a child in the house who was scared when the police last came. The child is Chrissy’s son.