Posts by linger
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Cracker: Send in the Clowns, in reply to Steve Barnes,
National:
The party of tax cuts.
The party of public service cuts.
The party of privately cut deals.
National: we put the N in cuts. -
Cracker: Send in the Clowns, in reply to Islander,
’Nother big -7.1 – earthquake off Honshu-
According to USGS it’s now been downgraded to 6.6.
But the more worrying thing is, that quake and a few other aftershocks immediately following it were just about right underneath Fukushima No. 1 plant, knocking out power to the pumps for 45 minutes and forcing the repair workers to evacuate for a while.Not for the first time, I’m led to the paradox that, while we’re not in immediate danger, we do still have to continue to be bloody lucky during the next year or so while Tepco has to rely on inefficient, leaky, jury-rigged, external cooling systems, in order to stay out of immediate danger.
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On the other hand this, available to listen to until 13/04/11, is relevant.
(It has a little weather reference at the end, Sacha. :-)Seriously: listen, and form your own conclusions.
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Hard News: Perverse Entertainment, in reply to ,
Nah, sorry, why would we do that in this thread?
Maybe you should try over on this one instead. -
You can teach people analytic thinking and reasoning skills without exposing them to subject matter that is trivial, or that they can effortlessly aquire on their own.
Actually, no, or at least you shouldn’t if you’re interested in improving the efficiency of attaining educational outcomes.
What we know about teaching language to adults is that usable language skills are not “effortlessly acquired”, but require some external guidance for maximal efficiency; and that the outcome is consistently improved by using subject material that engages the learner’s interest. (And that will be different material for different learners.) Similarly for courses teaching critical thinking, or communication skills. -
Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to HORansome,
As I’ve already suggested, in some cases the value may only be obvious retrospectively.
Danyl’s point may be that such a system is not inherently ineffective, but it is inefficient (in that students won’t know in advance whether a particular course will lead them to the mental-training benefits eventually realised by some graduates).
But, as you note, selective funding of courses according to subject matter is not a way to improve efficiency in attaining an education (rather than merely a degree).
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If you prefer –
If you don’t pay attention to including a range of contributors with different life experiences, including teh wimmenz, you quickly get a worse environment.
(I.e., a community biassed towards people who don’t care whether they’re included. Sound familiar?)
so: no need to appeal to any generalisations about inherent qualities.
possibly also no need for me to make this point explicit. -
almost everyone in our society who is intelligent and intellectually curious can go to university
I note that this can be true only if the utilitarian argument against public funding is not applied.
“intellectually curious” implies that courses can and will be chosen on the grounds of interest rather than immediately obvious practical benefit to society.most of the people who [see value in Arts courses, and therefore find your view “provocative"] seem to be people with degrees in such courses
(i) Probably the value of doing (some) Arts subjects – i.e., the analytical training that Megan C. & others have referred to – only becomes apparent by the course’s end (or in some cases, even well after the end of one’s formal education), and isn’t the main reason for students to initially choose such courses. Which makes it very hard to apply the utilitarian argument to those courses as an outsider, without having done them.
(ii) Can you really not see how doing that would wind Arts graduates up?
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Southerly: A Tsunami False Alarm at 2.00…, in reply to Tamsin6,
Yeah, it was the second biggest aftershock so far.
Looking at the map, it was uncomfortably close to Sendai; OTOH that means the focus was shallower, which should mean there is less chance of a big tsunami in Tohoku this time. (There’s been a tsunami warning issued for Tohoku, but not for Kanto.) -
brilliant people, rather like rich people [...] think everyone can do it, just they way they did.
-- see:
Kruger, J. & Dunning, D. (1999) "Unskilled and Unaware Of It" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77: 1121-1134.
(whose findings support exactly that conclusion, alongside their main conclusion that less brilliant people are ipso facto unable to recognise that about themselves).