Econ teachers: Have you registered?

November 7, 2007

Have you Texas, New Mexico and Louisiana economics teachers registered for Evening at the Fed?

Evening at the Fed
 Dinner and Discussion for High School Teachers
 Dallas, November 29, 2007
Houston, December 4, 2007
San Antonio, December 11, 2007
El Paso, December 13, 2007

Financial Markets: Innovations and Challenges

The 2007 Evening at the Fed series will feature Jeffery Gunther, assistant vice president and senior economist in the Dallas Fed’s Financial Industry Studies Department. Gunther will speak on factors leading up to the recent financial market turmoil, in particular the role of nontraditional financial instruments. He will address such questions as:

  • Are financial innovations, such as hedge funds, forever changing the financial landscape?
  • What happened in the U.S. sub prime real estate market?
  • What does the consumer need to understand about nontraditional financial instruments?
  • What impact do these new financial instruments have on the US economy?

Join us at a location convenient for you. The fee to attend is $15, which includes dinner and materials. Space is limited and the registration fee must be received by the cut-off date.

This would probably be a good session for government and U.S. history teachers, too.

Registration details after the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Economics, Education, Federal Reserve Bank, Free market economics, Government, History, Personal finance | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah voters spike vampire school vouchers

November 7, 2007

Vouchers are dead in Utah, for the moment.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports “Vouchers go down in flames“:

Voters decisively rejected the will of the Utah Legislature and governor Tuesday, rejecting what would have been the nation’s most comprehensive education voucher program in a referendum blowout.

“Tonight, with the eyes of the nation upon us, Utah has rejected this flawed voucher law,” said state School Board Chairman Kim Burningham. “We believe this sends a clear message. It sends a message that Utahns believe in, and support, public schools.”

More than 60 percent of voters were rejecting vouchers, with about 95 percent of the precincts reporting, according to unofficial results. The referendum failed in every county, including the conservative bastion of Utah County.

In the face of colossal failure, voucher supporters desperately searched for a scapegoat on which to hang it — anything other than the manifold problems of vouchers:

Voucher supporter Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne – who bankrolled the voucher effort – called the referendum a “statewide IQ test” that Utahns failed.

“They don’t care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don’t care enough about their kids to think outside the box,” Byrne said.

Funny, from my conversations with people in Utah, I got the idea they opposed vouchers specifically because the voucher plan would damage schools, and that would in turn hurt the kids.

I suppose it depends on what the definition of “care about kids” is.

Utah, the most conservative state in the nation, has strong teacher organizations, but nothing like a union that leads strikes and is not itself populated with conservative Republicans. Also favorable to vouchers, the Utah legislature is heavily Republican, with voucher supporters in most leadership positions. Millionaire Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr., also pushed for the vouchers, stacking the state’s political powers in favor of vouchers. Such facts cannot get in the way of the desperation to deny them voucher supporters show.

Doug Holmes, a key voucher advocate and contributor, said, “We started hugely in the hole and it’s always been the case. The unions have done this in four different states, where they take the strategy of confusion to the people.”

But Holmes said, “You don’t run away from something because the odds are stacked against you.”

Odds stacked against vouchers? It’s not the voters who are confused, Mr. Holmes.

Voucher supporters blame even their friends and supporters, and offer headline writers the chance to use an avalanche of clichés with a promise that vouchers will rise again, perhaps in the old Confederacy:

Both sides, at one point, embraced the governor, who Byrne blasted Tuesday for his lukewarm backing.

“When he asked for my support [for governor] he told me he is going to be the voucher governor. Not only was it his No. 1 priority, it was what he was going to be all about,” Byrne said. “He did, I think, a very tepid job, and then when the polls came out on the referendum, he was pretty much missing in action.”

Byrne said the referendum defeat may have killed vouchers in Utah, but “There are other freedom oriented groups in other states – African-Americans in South Carolina are interested in it.”

Got that, South Carolina? Vampire vouchers are headed your way. Stock up on garlic, wooden stakes and silver bullets.

Oh, and don’t forget the Oreo cookies. Get lots of milk, too.

3 Comments | Economics, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The whole world should be watching Utah

November 6, 2007

This is election day in much of the U.S. In Utah, voters have a referendum on vouchers to take money from public schools to give to students to attend private schools. This is the first state-wide test of vouchers anywhere.

William Hogarth's election series,

  • The Polling, from William Hogarth’s series, The Election, oil on canvas, 1754; from The Tate Gallery, on loan from Sir John Sloane’s Museum, London.

I think vouchers will be voted down, but either way, I wish there were more, serious national coverage of the story in Utah. Public education has refused to back down from scurrilous and often false claims against the schools, and parents and educators have fought a gallant, fact-filled campaign against Utah’s voucher proposal. Utah voters are traditionally among the better-educated, better-informed, and better-voting people. Known as a conservative stronghold, Utah will probably vote to put this voucher program in the trash can.

The rest of the nation could benefit from knowing more about the reasons this proposal fails, if it does — or why it succeeds, if lightning strikes the way Richard Eyre prays it will.

Marchers protesting the Vietnam War in 1968 used to chant “The whole world is watching.” If only it were true today.

Vote today!

Whatever your views, go to the polls if there is an election in your town, and vote. Your vote will count, and it angers and frustrates the big money interests who hope you won’t vote, so their campaign contributions and, perhaps, outright bribes, will have more clout. Go vote.

The County Election, George Caleb Bingham, 1851

5 Comments | Education, Education reform, Education spending, Elections, Politics, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: How to succeed in business

November 4, 2007

Several years ago I found a quote attributed to business consulting guru Tom Peters, that ascribed success to hard work — if a lot of other things didn’t get in the way. I lost the quote, and the citation, and have sorely wanted to have it a hundred times since then when I found executives and administrators admonishing people for their failure to soar when the bosses themselves had anchored their employees to the ground.

Ah, the Glories of Google! I have found it again. Turns out it’s not Tom Peters after all; he quotes a passage from novelist Ann Beattie’s novel, Picturing Will.

It’s still worthy of noting; here is an excerpt from a Tom Peters column in 1990 featuring the passage:

“Do everything right, all the time, and the child will prosper. It’s as simple as that, except for fate, luck, heredity, chance, the astrological sign under which the child was born, his order of birth, his first encounter with evil, the girl who jilts him in spite of his excellent qualities, the war that is being fought when he is a young man, the drugs he may try once or too many times, the friends he makes, how he scores on tests, how well he endures kidding about his shortcomings, how ambitious he becomes, how far he falls behind, circumstantial evidence, ironic perspective, danger when it is least expected, difficulty in triumphing over circumstance, people with hidden agendas, and animals with rabies.”

The quote is from Ann Beattie’s latest novel, Picturing Will. It speaks directly to an increasingly important corporate issue — the peril of overestimating our ability to influence outcomes. In short, the way we recruit, organize, plan and act very much depends on how much we feel that we are in control. The problem is ageless, though as the world becomes less predictable the consequences of personal or corporate hubris are increasingly severe.

Systematically review a stack of annual reports. Without fail, a good year is explained as “the fruits of the strategic planning process your management put in place five (three, seven) years ago.” A bad year, however, is invariably the result of “the unanticipated rise in interest rates (unexpected foreign competition, etc.) which upset our planning assumptions.” But our corporate chiefs are hardly alone. A sizable branch of psychology, called attribution theory, examines the way human beings explain events to themselves. In short, we attribute good outcomes to skill and hard work; bad ones to bad luck.

For centuries, Cartesian cause and effect thinking has dominated our science — and management — paradigms. The causeless, effectless, probabilistic world of quantum mechanics that informs today’s scientific thought has still not permeated our psyches — or our approach to making corporate strategy.

Beattie’s novel is listed as an academic selection now, by Random House.  Do you, or does anyone at your school, use this book?

3 Comments | Best practices, Books, Business, Business Ethics, Education success, Literature, Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“Why should I read Shakespeare? Why should I study history?”

November 2, 2007

David McCullough might answer that question this way:

In conclusion I want to share a scene that took place on the last day of the year of 1776, Dec. 31. All the enlistments for the entire army were up. Every soldier, because of the system at the time, was free to go home as of the first day of January 1777. Washington called a large part of the troops out into formation. He appeared in front of these ragged men on his horse, and he urged them to reenlist. He said that if they would sign up for another six months, he’d give them a bonus of 10 dollars. It was an enormous amount then because that’s about what they were being paid for a month—if and when they could get paid. These were men who were desperate for pay of any kind. Their families were starving.

The drums rolled, and he asked those who would stay on to step forward. The drums kept rolling, and nobody stepped forward. Washington turned and rode away from them. Then he stopped, and he turned back and rode up to them again. This is what we know he said:

My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than could be reasonably expected, but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you can probably never do under any other circumstance.3

Again the drums rolled. This time the men began stepping forward. “God Almighty,” wrote Nathanael Greene, “inclined their hearts to listen to the proposal and they engaged anew.”4

Now that is an amazing scene, to say the least, and it’s real. This wasn’t some contrivance of a screenwriter. However, I believe there is something very familiar about what Washington said to those troops. It was as if he was saying, “You are fortunate. You have a chance to serve your country in a way that nobody else is going to be able to, and everybody else is going to be jealous of you, and you will count this the most important decision and the most valuable service of your lives.” Now doesn’t that have a familiar ring? Isn’t it very like the speech of Henry V in Shakespeare’s play Henry V: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . . And gentlemen in England now a-bed / Shall think themselves accursed they were not here”?5 Washington loved the theater; Washington loved Shakespeare. I can’t help but feel that he was greatly influenced.

He was also greatly influenced, as they all were, by the classical ideals of the Romans and the Greeks. The history they read was the history of Greece and Rome. And while Washington and Knox and Greene, not being educated men, didn’t read Greek and Latin as Adams and Jefferson did, they knew the play Cato, and they knew about Cincinnatus. They knew that Cincinnatus had stepped forward to save his country in its hour of peril and then, after the war was over, returned to the farm. Washington, the political general, had never forgotten that Congress was boss. When the war was at last over, Washington, in one of the most important events in our entire history, turned back his command to Congress—a scene portrayed in a magnificent painting by John Trumbull that hangs in the rotunda of our national Capitol. When George III heard that George Washington might do this, he said that “if he does, he will be the greatest man in the world.”

So what does this tell us? That the original decision of the Continental Congress was the wise one. They knew the man, they knew his character, and he lived up to his reputation.

I hope very much that those of you who are studying history here will pursue it avidly, with diligence, with attention. I hope you do this not just because it will make you a better citizen, and it will; not just because you will learn a great deal about human nature and about cause and effect in your own lives, as well as the life of the nation, which you will; but as a source of strength, as an example of how to conduct yourself in difficult times—and we live in very difficult times, very uncertain times. But I hope you also find history to be a source of pleasure. Read history for pleasure as you would read a great novel or poetry or go to see a great play.

And I hope when you read about the American Revolution and the reality of those people that you will never think of them again as just figures in a costume pageant or as gods. They were not perfect; they were imperfect—that’s what’s so miraculous. They rose to the occasion as very few generations ever have.

David McCullough, from a speech delivered at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, on September 27, 2005, “The Glorious Cause of America.”

Do your students know that speech from Henry V? Do your students know the story of Cincinnatus?

Tip of the old scrub brush to Collecting My Thoughts.

Leave a Comment » | 1776, America's founding, Famous quotes, George Washington, History, Literature | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Washoe, pioneer in signing chimpanzees, dead at 42

November 1, 2007

News from Central Washington University in Ellensburg tells of the death of Washoe, the first chimpanzee to learn American Sign Language (ASL), the matriarch of a small clan of signing chimps who pushed the boundaries on our view of the intelligence of animals, especially the other great apes besides humans.

Washoe, undated photo from Central Washington University Washoe was named after Washoe County, Nevada, the home of the University of Nevada – Reno, where she was taken in 1966 after being captured in Africa as an infant.

Washoe, who first learned a bit of American Sign Language in a research project in Nevada, had been living on Central Washington University’s Ellensburg campus since 1980. Her keepers said she had a vocabulary of about 250 words, although critics contended Washoe and some other primates learned to imitate sign language, but did not develop true language skills.

She died Tuesday night, according to Roger and Deborah Fouts, co-founders of The Chimpanzee and Human Communications Institute on the campus. She was born in Africa about 1965.

Between Washoe and her progeny, extended family and students (she taught signing to several others of her species) and the more famous Koko, the gorilla who speaks ASL, our ideas of the learning ability of animals, their achievements dramatically challenged our ideas about the moral sense of animals, and the uniform and universal superiority of humans.

Fouts and the researchers at the University of Nevada raised several chimps who were taught ASL. One of the more interesting, to me, and genuinely thought-provoking stories was of one young chimp who attended church with her human family. She asked questions about church, and eventually asked to be be baptized (the local cleric performed the rite). This is a Rubicon of great import to creationists, and I have yet to find one who isn’t inflamed or enraged by the story one way or another.

Roger Fouts lovingly described Washoe’s life and accomplishments in Next of Kin (including the baptism story). Fouts defends the rights of chimpanzees, His accounts of the life of research chimpanzees trouble anyone with a moral sense. This book troubled me when I first read it almost a decade ago, and I find it still haunts me any time I visit a display of animals, in a zoo, aquarium, or even at a wildlife preserve (I have not been to a circus since I read the book, coincidentally).

Just wait until cetaceans and cephalopods figure out how to use ASL.

Further reading and resources:

Leave a Comment » | Brain development, Brain learning, Education, Learning, Learning styles, Research, Science | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Chemistry: No fun if nothing explodes

November 1, 2007

Our house had two or three of the things around from my three older brothers — you know, the old Gilbert or Chemcraft chemistry sets, complete with potentially dangerous chemicals, test tubes, an alcohol lamp, a couple of beakers and stands, and instructions for how to make cool reactions with warnings about not making things explode.

chemistry glassware with colored water

We all made things explode, of course. That’s the fun stuff. Making jellied alcohol was fun, too — older brother Wes did that at Halloween, as I recall, the better to make a flaming hand (once was enough, thanks). We didn’t worry so much about the poisonous qualities of hydrogen sulfide, as we did worry about how to claim somebody else was suffering from flatulence when we made it. The kits and their metal boxes were in poor repair by the time I got around to them, but other kids in the neighborhood had new ones, and we always had the labs at the junior high and high school, which were stocked with enough dangerous stuff to keep us on the edge of blowing up the school, we thought (probably incorrectly).

One sign of laboratory experience: The acid holes in the Levi jeans. Older son Kenny recently discovered these things still happen in a lab at college. It had never occurred to him to worry about it before — one of his favorite t-shirts, too. (Holes in clothes appear not to be the fashion statement they were for his parents . . .)

12 Angry Men laments the wussification of these old chemistry sets. No danger anymore, he says.

Someone in comments claims you can still get the dangerous stuff.

But someone else claims such kits may be illegal under Homeland Security and DEA rules. Heck, they say even Erlenmeyer flasks are illegal in Texas. They used to be very popular among the secretaries in the biology department because they made such fine vases for the single-stemmed flowers their grad-student admirers could afford. Gotta see what’s up with that.

Technology changes so you can’t get it anymore.

But, kids with solid chemistry experience make more money in the real world — especially chemical engineers. Here’s a Catch-22: Kids can make more money if they have the experience to get the job, but they can’t get the experience until they get the job.

Update, November 1:  The PBS/Wired Science segment on kids doing chemistry, and chemistry sets

4 Comments | Education, History, Learning, Life, Science, Technology, Technology in the classroom | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Florida considering high academic standards: Evolution

October 31, 2007

News reports and a syndicated radio program, “Evolution Minute,” talk about the efforts to upgrade science education in Florida. Florida worries that without high science standards in education, their kids will be left behind.

High standards? That’s right: Evolution’s in, intelligent design is not. High quality education, not high feely education.

1 Comment | Education, Education quality, Evolution, Intelligent Design | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Concise case against Utah voucher proposal

October 31, 2007

This site has about the most nearly complete, concise case against the Utah school voucher proposal I have found. Is there any chance the voters in Utah still need to be swayed to reason on this issue? Send them to this site, after you have them view the real story about Oreos.

2 Comments | Economics, Education, Education reform, Education spending, Politics, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah voucher referendum: Slapping the hand in the cookie jar

October 30, 2007

A Utah school teacher made his own video, in his home it appears, with a non-professional camera and crew — and it eviscerates the points Richard Eyre was trying to make in his slick, professionally-produced, commercial version.

The Truth about Cookies Utah Vouchers:

Tip of the old scrub brush to a reader and commenter named Brack.

Update, November  7, 2007:

Utah voters soundly rejected vouchers in the election November 6.  Here’s my version of the story.

10 Comments | Education, Education quality, Education spending, Politics, School vouchers | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“Cool Tools”: Making searches safe for students

October 29, 2007

A History Teacher, even while on hiatus, shows how you can protect your students and point them in the right direction in their research, all at the same time.

Thanks to Google, of course, and a tip of the old scrub brush to A History Teacher.

Let’s hope he stays safe from the fires.

1 Comment | Classroom technology, Education, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Writing the history texts: What is history?

October 29, 2007

History textbook controversies abound, really. Just a list to pull some sources together:

6 Comments | Accuracy, Bogus history, Books, History, History Revisionism, Politics, Textbook Selection | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Turning a sphere inside out: Video in the classroom

October 28, 2007

How come the science guys get all the really cool videos?

I found this from Mollishka at a geocentric view, and I crib it entirely from there:

Ever wanted to see what it looks like when a sphere gets turned inside out, or simply know what is meant when people talk about turning closed surfaces (like a sphere) inside out? Hat tip to Scott Aaronson for this video:

As it turns out, I actually recognize several of the intermediate steps (for a few of the algorithms they show) as neat-o sculptures that often show up near math departments.

a geocentric view has several other features I found interesting.  It’s written by a graduate student in astronomy — go noodle around.

1 Comment | Point of personal privilege, Science, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Video and film | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

NBC video — free from HotChalk, through December

October 27, 2007

Teacher magazine reports that NBC News made available to teachers more than 5,000 chunks of news video and still photos from their news archives, for use in the classroom.

The service requires a free subscription to HotChalk through December. After that, a school subscription to HotChalk is necessary, starting in 2008.

Great resources, but I predict few teachers will have the connections to put these to work in the classroom. Comments are open, of course, for you to share your experience. Please comment on how useful you find these images, and how you use them.

Woman on cell phone, NBC News photo Historic photo of woman on early cellular telephone, NBC News photo, from HotChalk.

Leave a Comment » | Education, Geography - Economic, Globalization, History images, History video sources, Images, Video and film | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

History text accuracy: Okinawa mass suicides

October 25, 2007

Controversy surrounds history textbooks all over the world. Texans may be a bit more sensitive to the issues while the Texas Education Agency is revising curricula, but others are even more sensitive – such as Turkey, where controversy over the Armenian Genocide threatens to derail Turkey’s 40-year project to join the European Union; Japan, where citizens and other nations protest failures to mention harms done to people by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II; and even Europe in general, where controversy surrounds efforts to find a unifying, Europe-wide culture.

History is important in our relations with other nations. With increasing globalization, it becomes ever more important that all citizens have basic understanding of their local history, their national history, and world history, if only to avoid the social faux pas in socializing with people from other nations.

The issue is hot in Japan right now. Okinawa, a formerly independent kingdom annexed by Japan in the 19th century (did you know that?), hosted the biggest protest demonstration the island prefecture has ever seen, earlier this month – a protest over the changing of a few words in Japanese school history texts, removing the responsibility for mass suicides on Okinawa from the Japanese Imperial Army.

A story in the New York Times describes the anguish felt by Okinawans:

Brainwashed by Japanese Imperial Army soldiers into believing that victorious American troops would rape all the local women and run over the men with their tanks, Mr. Kinjo and others in his village here in Okinawa thought that suicide was their only choice. A week before American troops landed and initiated the Battle of Okinawa in March 1945, Japanese soldiers stationed in his village gave the men two hand grenades each, with instructions to hurl one at the Americans and then to kill themselves with the other.

Most of the grenades failed to explode. After watching a former district chief break off a tree branch and use it to kill his wife and children, Mr. Kinjo and his older brother followed suit.

”My older brother and I struck to death the mother who had given birth to us,” Mr. Kinjo said in an interview at the Naha Central Church, where he is the senior minister. ”I was wailing of course. We also struck to death our younger brother and sister.”

Mr. Kinjo agreed to tell his story again because the Japanese government is now denying, in new high school textbooks, that Okinawans had been coerced by Imperial troops into committing mass suicide.

The proposed changes to the school textbooks — the deletion of a subject, the change to the passive voice — amounted to just a couple of words among hundreds of pages. But the seemingly minor grammatical alterations have led to swelling anger in the Okinawa islands in Japan, cresting recently in the biggest protest here in at least 35 years and stunning the Japanese government.

How should texts deal with such issues?

China and Korea also protested the rewrite. Hot button issues involve the Japanese invasion and taking of Nanking in 1937, generally known to western historians as “the rape of Nanking;” Japanese treatment of Prisoners of War (POWs), including the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, what amounted to slave labor using POWs in Japan, and Korean women impressed into service as prostitutes to the Japanese Army, at what are euphemistically called “comfort stations.”

Texas history standards writers may benefit from taking a look at some of these other controversies, in other places. These lessons can apply to Texas and U.S. history, where Anglo and European colonist treatment of aboriginal natives is certainly an issue, but also to subjects such as biology and the treatment of evolution, health and the treatment of preventing sexually-transmitted diseases, and environmental science, and the treatment of pollution and climate change issues.

3 Comments | History, History Revisionism, Teaching, Textbook Selection, Textbooks, World War II | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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