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My Daily Read: Joshua Knobe

May 31, 2011, 5:11 pm

By Evan R. Goldstein

The experimental philosopher Joshua Knobe is an assistant professor at Yale University.

Q: What’s the first thing you read in the morning?

A. As the father of a newborn, I don’t usually get to read anything before work, but I’m looking forward to a time when my mornings will be filled with readings of Curious George and Whose Toes Are Those?

Q: What newspapers and magazines do you subscribe to or read regularly? What do you read in print vs. online vs. mobile?

A. We subscribe to The New Yorker and New York Magazine. I never read any of these things online. I still take an almost absurd delight in the moments when I get a chance to sit back in a café with a print edition of The New York Times.

Q: What books have you recently read?  Do they stand out?

A. The last two books I read were Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son and Paul Portner’s Modality—both excellent, though in very different ways. But I have to say that, of all the books I’ve read recently, the one I am most excited about is my wife’s book You Must Go and Win. In my completely impartial and unbiased opinion, I’ve never read anything more funny or true about the world of indie rock.

Q: Has your reading of professional journals changed in the past 10 years? How so?

More and more, I’ve been reading work from outside my own field. These days, I’ve been reading a lot of fairly technical papers in linguistics. It can be pretty tough going, but there’s something incredibly exciting about reading in these fields where everything is new to you and you come across something unexpected in every sentence.

Q: Do you read blogs? If so, what blogs do you like best?

A. I religiously tune in to Experimental Philosophy. There is something completely addictive about watching the back-and-forth between different researchers who are truly trying to get to the bottom of things. The field is so fluid at this point that a single comment on one of those blog posts can sometimes trigger a new experiment that takes things in a genuinely different direction. (I used to be a little bit ashamed of my addiction to that blog, but as you can see, I now admit it openly.)

Q: Do you use Twitter? If so, whom do you follow?

A. I don’t have an account myself, but I’m definitely no Twitter hater. Actually, I think the medium has a lot of potential. Academics can so easily get caught up in these communities of people who all share the same dogma, and we should be grateful for anything that makes it hard to avoid other perspectives. (There is something I love about the thought of graduate students being exposed to cutting-edge research that their advisers would denounce as wrongheaded and irrelevant.)

Q: What are the guilty pleasures in your media diet?

A. In my beloved field of cognitive science, the whole idea of a ‘guilty pleasure’ has been kind of turned upside-down. Researchers explain openly how their latest theories were inspired by reality TV and trashy comedies, but it would be seen as a little embarrassing if someone was caught thinking too much about Proust or Baudelaire. So my guiltiest pleasures involve taking a moment to read some of the most pretentious, pompous works in the history of literature. (I won’t even confess the titles here.)

In addition, I am a fan of indie comics, especially the work of Adrian Tomine.

Sketch by Ted Benson

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  • sanjoaquin

    The irony here is tasty. Many of us who graduated with a real mission to teach found it difficult to get jobs that valued it enough for us to live on as our primary source of income. It’s a bit better now – the community colleges are hiring. A plea for balance….some colleges have a teaching mission, others do not.

  • softshellcrab

    I found this to be a typically cogent and well-reasoned piece by Prof. Vedder. He observes, “My suspicion is that we went too far in reducing teaching loads, that much of the incremental research resulting is of trivial importance. It was done because faculty members preferred research or leisure to teaching, and believed the path to vocational success was through publication, not teaching and counseling young students.” This is a particularly well-put observation on his part. My observation is that teaching loads are too low as it stands now.

  • leah_shopkow

    Teaching loads in and of themselves mean little. What means something is what is being done in the name of “teaching.” I could have a class of four hundred students with graders, parachute in, lecture, do some moderate supervision of my graders and it wouldn’t be a whole lot of work for me. Or I could have a class of four hundred students with no graders, give them all multiple choice spit-back-the-facts tests, also little work for me. Or I could do as I do, work in a large class with a grader or TA, plan tutorials with that person or people, grade some of the student’s work to see how they are doing, change what I do in class to reflect the needs I see in the work, assign weekly writing assignments, have projects requiring inquiry and evaluation. That’s a lot of work for me. So simply to talk about teaching loads as though that represents a unit of work is not helpful. Asking teachers to teach more classes won’t do anything about the quality issue (except force those already concerned with quality to do less than they do).

  • ancient

    As a veteran of 43 years in the University classroom, I ask that you please excuse what you don’t like in some observations. 1. There are far too many non-teaching positions called faculty at most of our institutions, and it has become worse with accrediting groups, assessment groups, distance education groups, research groups, etc. 2. Most research should actually be done by organizations needing the results outside of the campuses, and should be paid for outside of university budgets. Much academic research involves limited samples forwarded by people needing another annotation on their vita, and has very limited use in the real world of an educated person. 3. Real teaching involves face to face encounters with students in and out of the classroom including setting good examples of the using of our fields of specialization. Thoughtfulness is hard to produce in large lecture sessions with a sea of unknown faces. 4. Faculty loads are presently too low in most cases. When I came into collegiate teaching, a twenty hour per quarter load was not at all uncommon (albeit that WAS often a bit much) and I think we often were better teachers because of the pressures of being “ON” everytime we walked into the classroom. I wouldn’t suggest a 20 quarter hour teaching load, but would suggest that some of the younger faculty that I meet see teaching more as a job, and less as a personal mission than was the case. 5. Publication should be limited to a smaller percentage of influence in promotion and tenure decisions. (The changing face of technology in the delivery of information, may force adaptation in this realm all by itself. ) Teaching effectiveness should be uppermost in such decisions at all schools.
    6. Real education should not always be driven by financial pressures. Very small classes with interested students often turn out far better results in terms of their lives after the university.
    7. Student Life department budgets should often be cut long before cutting academic budgets. We have become more of a leisure and entertainment stopover before hitting “real life” by the number of social activities that we put in the way of our students.
    Again, please excuse the hobby horses. I shall soon ride into the sunset of retirement reluctantly because I shall genuinely miss my classroom time with these wonderful kids with so much potential.

  • flaprof

    baloney. Assessment is only demonstrating that you are doing what you claim you are doing in the classroom. Get over it. Assessment of student learning (hello??? this IS university) is a vital part of what EVERY faculty member must do. Otherwise, you are just blowing smoke.
    Web=based courses??? are you even IN the 21st Century? our students want their courses on their Ipads, Iphones,….web-based education is THE way of the future. Students in our residence halls are taking web-based classes…it’s just how/who they are.

    BTW, When you are in your office at 8 am and work every day, every evening (at home or in the classroom) and every weekend, then we can talk about how overworked you are.

    with love.

  • flaprof

    absolutely. And the Delaware Study of Institutional Costs and Productivity takes this approach. The Credit hour model is far more valid, IMHO as a CAO, than the course load model. For example:
    Faculty member 1 teaches three courses with 30 students each (at 3 SCH per student). That’s a total of 90 SCH
    Faculty member 2 teaches two courses with 80 students each (at 3 SCH per student) for a total of 240 SCH.
    Who is working harder??? I submit it’s Faculty Member 2….even though in some evaluation systems, Faculty member 1 would be advantaged because he/she is teaching one more course.

  • rddennison

    My assignment this quarter was 6 courses and, because I am nontenure track, that was within the limit set by our current workload policy. These are master’s and doctoral level courses AND online courses. Our college faculty has developed a new workload policy which is being held by the provost’s office because they cannot provide the number courses with the number of students and the number of faculty that we have (empty positions that they will not release for hire) with a humane workload. The result in teaching mediocrity and faculty members frantically looking for new jobs. This is at an Ohio university.

  • softshellcrab

    Excellent observations in this post, and well put.

  • Unemployed_Northeastern

    Selected quotes from The Education of Henry Adams (A Harvard Man):

    p. 54:  “The next logical step was Harvard College.  He was more than glad to go.  For generation after generation, Adamses and Brookses and Boylstons and Gorhams had gone to Harvard College, and although none of them, as far as known, had ever done any good there, or thought himself the better for it, custom, social ties, convenience, and, above all, economy, kept each generation in the track.  Any other education would have required a serious effort, but no one took Harvard College seriously.”
     
    p. 55: “It taught little, and that little ill, but it left the mind open, free from bias, ignorant of facts, but docile.  He knew little, but his mind remained supple, ready to receive knowledge.”
     
    p. 65: “The Harvard graduate was neither American nor European, nor even wholly Yankee; his admirers were few, and his critics many; perhaps his worst weakness was his self-criticism and self-consciousness; but his ambitions, social or intellectual, were not necessarily cheap even though they might be negative.  Afraid of serious risks, and still more afraid of personal ridicule, he seldom made a great failure of life, and nearly always led a life more or less worth living.
    p. 300: “if their new professor had asked what idea was in their minds, they must have replied that nothing at all was in their minds, since their professor had nothing in his, and down to the moment he took his chair and looked his scholars in the face, he had given, as far as he could remember, an hour, more or less, to the Middle Ages.
                    “Not that his ignorance troubled him!  He knew enough to be ignorant.  His course had led him through oceans of ignorance; he had tumbled from one ocean into another till he had learned to swim; but even to him education was a serious thing.”
     
    p. 302: “The number of students whose minds were of an order above the average was, in his experience, barely one in ten; the rest could not be much stimulated by any inducements a teacher could suggest.”
     

  • wattssal

    These are all great! Then there’s the one about “a university being a collection of feudal (or is it ‘futile?’) kingdoms connected by a central heating system.”

  • rbirnbau

    You can see view over 1,600 quotations about higher education – many, but not all, immortal – in the book Speaking of Higher Education: The Academic’s Book of Quotations, co-published by ACE in 2004 and now available from Rowman & Littlefield.  One of my favorites, from, John Masefield, is:  “There are few earthly things more splendid than a university. In these days of broken frontiers and collapsing values, when the dams are down and the floods are making misery, when every future looks somewhat grim and every ancient foothold has become something of a quagmire, wherever a university stands it stands and shines; wherever it exists, the free minds of men, urged on to full and fair inquiry, may still bring wisdom into human affairs.”

  • gauche

    “Of
    course there’s a lot of knowledge in universities:  the freshmen bring a
    little in; the seniors don’t take much away, so knowledge sort of
    accumulates.”  —Abbott Lawrence Lowell

  • jthelin

    This column is intriguing and interesting — but readers who want the real deal should read Bob Birnbaum’s 2004 book.  A little acknowledgement of Birnbaum would have be appropriate and appreciated, I think.

  • dtroop

    Mr. Birnbaum just chimed in above. Frankly I didn’t know of his book, which sounds like a good read. I’ve collected these piecemeal over the past couple of years.

  • fullprof99

    So one Warhol silkscreen isn’t enough for U Texas?  What morons. They will lose in court since they won’t be able to prove O’Neill doesn’t own the piece, and they will look ridiculous in the court of public opinion.

  • socafish

    “Catholic University of America would return to single-sex dormitories to discourage students from hooking up ”

    I find this hilarious. Imagine all the future preists now in a single-sex dorm. I know, I know….

  • oagead1

    You should have mentioned John Banzafs’ greatest accomplishment – through his clinic’s suits he was responsible for outlawing smoking on airplanes

  • willismg

    Not so fast…  No less a source than Richard Feynman (sp?) has stated categorically that light is not a wave.  

  • greatcollegeadvice

    You’re right, Mr. Hoover.  Agents aren’t going away, any more than the independent consultants are going away.  Colleges will have to adapt to business conditions overseas in order to recruit effectively and efficiently.  Not all agents are nefarious, as many seem to suggest.  Thanks for the balanced reporting.

    How is the best way to get in touch with Ballinger and the Commission?

  • gavin_moodie

    @ adeluca

    Typically colleges specify their entry requirements in advance and admit students referred by the agent who meet their requirements.  The applications of the many applicants referred by agents who do not have conventional entry qualifications are assessed by the college’s normal admissions processes, altho usually much faster than normal.  

    I suppose it would still be possible to consider all applications from international students in a batch as is still often done with domestic applicants, but the competition for international students is international and intense so this is not likely to ensure that the college enrols the best qualified applicants.

  • parora01

    Can we please move away from the Cold War era logic of internationalization in higher education! We will continue to lose our way if we don’t think of systematic developmental processes that can result in the reciprocity of learning in international education, rather than its practice as academic tourism.  The increasing numbers of Chinese students in the US, for instance, can be a source of expanded ways of thinking in addition to being a source of much needed tuition dollars.

  • bethryan019

    I believe that understanding what global engagement means to higher ed is a key component to remaining relevant in the modern world.

  • kyushumntsphil

    Let’s be very simple here.  We educate as people, or as corporate appliances.

    If we choose the former, then we no longer allow the silo practices of academic departments in mutual isolation from each other.  We no longer allow the impersonality conceits that reign as expertise.

    If we choose people, then in every department we quote people — quote them from concerns in the same classroom to concerns of apt linkage across campus in other departments.  Quote — by direct quote, or indirect — the arts that may more aptly illuminate in one’s own larger culture, and in cultures farther off.

    Internationalization?  Eight syllables.  That’s some heavy rhetoric.  Can we please get priorities straight, lest all drift further and further into the corporate-speak, corporate silos, and corporate habits that strangle all too much everywhere now?

    P.B., Prop., http://www.EssayingDifferences.com

  • lohtion

    I mean it has always been about perspective has it not? Diverse backgrounds make for a more complete, engaging discussion on subject matters. Dialogue and debate are crucial to the advancement of student learning. Stress perspective. As an international business student, I’ve had great discussions in class. Our teachers have thoughtfully sought out and highlighted our differences in opinion and approach to various issues and problems. It’s all about putting more points on your thought map. Differences, accents, bias, chaos. We need it more in the classroom.

  • http://twitter.com/DanConnell Dan Connell

      No, I don’t think it is. The government has taken away the foundations of higher education in the UK, and no-one really knows what this will mean but the omens aren’t good. A key example being PhD development.
      In the US, a PhD candidate can expect close guidance, pertinent seminars and classes to make them better academicsteachersresearchers, and plenty of career development and advice.
      My UK experience: having to fight for any teaching whatsoever, finally receiving some in the third year of study (this, by the way, constitutes the final year of a UK PhD); being offered no guidance on publication or research strategies; nothing on future careers; and finally, a short chat with one of my supervisors every three or four months (my second supervisor didn’t want anything to do with me). Oh, and some scribbled notes every six months or so.
      This was my experience BEFORE the government withdraws funding. Many PhD students self-fund, and that may be nigh-on impossible at £9,000 a year. The area of most extreme damage, in my opinion, will be to the development and scope of doctorate programs. And hence, the continuation and progress of academia & advanced research in the UK will be seriously stunted. The US, although not without its own problems, is suffering a contracting academe rather than a disintegrating one.

  • bscmath78

    Dan Connell, how does the following match with your UK Ph.D. experiences?

    In the UK, the odds of a UK Science Ph.D. becoming a professor are worse than 200 to 1 according to the 2010 Royal  Society report “The Scientific Century: securing our future prosperity” at:

    http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2010/4294970126.pdf

    Figure 1.6 on page 14 shows 0.45% of Sciences Ph.D.s become professors (in the UK there is no tenure for university professors).  53% of Science Ph.D.s go for NON-science work right off the bat, maybe because they realize they should finally cut their losses.

    The chart with its arrows is somewhat unclear but it appears that the 30% arrow is postdocs,  3.5% is “Permanent Research Staff” (in academia)  and then 0.45% become professors. Note other arrows going to non-academic research. And just a reminder that “permanent” just means no guaranteed end date like a postdoc.  Also, the chart is based on 2005, 2008 and 2009 documents which, of course, are based on earlier, happier times.

    On the same page 14, the Royal Society states in the context of complaining about failures to recruit sufficient science and math school teachers:
     
    “The Royal Society’s own research suggests that without excellent teachers there is little hope of inspiring children to stick with science”

    No connection seems to be made between poor prospects, poor rewards and a search for better non-STEM alternatives.

    The Royal Society report makes no mention of the stats for Cambridge and Oxford Ph.D.s.  The story might well be different for Oxbridge Ph.Ds, which might mean the odds for the rest of Ph.Ds might be worse than 1,000 to 1.

  • bscmath78

    Dan Connell, your description of a UK Ph.D. sounds like what they have been doing in the UK since WW II, if not earlier. My impression was that the UK Oxbridge system traditionally did the undergraduate degree in 3 years. From that 3 year degree you were now expected to do research. There were no prelims/quals exams like the US because you were already supposed to know all that, so no need for classes or seminars to prepare you for that. You were supposed to be finished in 3 years, but you could apply for an extension if you needed a 4th year.

    You had passed the Tripos at Cambridge, so now you did your research with no time “wasted” on other stuff. Since your research was supposed to be original and yours, and you were supposed to be self-sufficient. That’s the impression I get from reading about UK scientists (this may be why Robert Oppenheimer attempted to murder his supervisor with a poisoned apple).

    Oxbridge undergrads not going into research, in the olden days, typically became high Civil Servants, joined the family firm, waited to inherit the family title or otherwise joined the British ruling class. Though, the scholarship girl Margaret Thatcher took an undergraduate Chemistry degree at Oxford before becoming an industrial research chemist. Apparently, she developed a technique to increase the amount of air that could whipped into ice cream. The Wikipedia entry says 4 years, so maybe they took longer at Oxford what with their individualized tutorial system than at Cambridge.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048960/Margaret-Thatcher-invented-soft-scoop-ice-cream-.html

    I wonder if this due to the UK not having vast amounts of funding for STEM Ph.D. students that allows the US to use them (and postdocs) as cheap labor teaching undergraduates and working in labs, but not to provide that many tenured positions.

    Does any of this match your observations?

  • bscmath78

    Dan Connell, do you think it odd that the article makes no mention of the 2010 Royal  Society report “The Scientific Century: securing our future prosperity” which on the surface would seem directly related to the author’s concerns?

    I noticed you didn’t mention it either, is that because no one paid any attention?
    Well, except for some publications with a vested interest. ;-)

    http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=410690
    http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=410732
    http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/41938

    Though the poor prospects of postdocs in the Royal Society study got some notice:

    “UK postdocs appear to have even more reason for pessimism: according to the Royal Society’s 2010 report The Scientific Century: Securing our Future Prosperity, 30 per cent of science PhD graduates go on to postdoctoral positions, but only about 12 per cent of those attain permanent research jobs.”

    Along with interesting reader comments:
    http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=416341

    Another article notes:
    “. . . in the UK, only 30 per cent will go on to postdoctoral posts and just 12 per cent will get permanent jobs, according to the Royal Society. Educating so many people so expensively for so few possible positions is not only depressing for the people involved, it is also an incredibly inefficient use of taxpayer cash.”

    Along with interesting reader comments:
    http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=416358

    I didn’t notice mention of the UK Ph.D. issues that you mentioned, instead people seem to focus on too many Ph.D.s, too many postdocs and too few permanent positions for them. So is it possible that what you observed in the UK is exactly what UK students expect in a UK Ph.D.?

  • bscmath78

    Dan Connell, in response to a previous mention of the Royal Society report’s report of poor prospects for a Sciences Ph.D., ellenhunt wrote in part:

    “Curious, don’t you think, how many STEM PhDs the UK hires from outside the UK?  This is curious indeed given the supposed oversupply.

    What I have heard through the grapevine in the UK is that the quality of the vast majority of those obtaining STEM PhDs there is outlandishly awful. I have been told that this is due to a university system which makes it virtually impossible for a professor to fail or otherwise get rid of a grad student. Consequently, professors move trouble out the door the only way that they can. To do otherwise is just too much trouble and could likely result in being fired.

    I have heard stories of PhDs in science unable to handle exponents and similar deficits that should get them a failing grade as a freshman undergrad.”

    http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/just-dont-go-the-sequel/30693#comment-353978906

    I replied at: http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/just-dont-go-the-sequel/30693#comment-354019805

    What do you think of ellenhunt’s comments?

  • bscmath78

    The UK historian of science David Edgerton has written a series of books that suggest that government science and technology “investment” has repeatedly been a massive waste of money in Britain.
     
    In “Science, technology, and the British industrial ‘decline’, 1870-1970″, he argues there was no decline, but instead lots of continuing investment, he notes:

    “These are important conclusions: Britain would have been richer had its government not
    subsidised civil aerospace and its nuclear programme. Grave as these losses were, they were almost certainly small by comparison to the losses incurred in defence R&D and procurement programmes.” 

    http://books.google.ca/books?id=dIpPPshxj0sC&pg=PA46&dq=%22Britain+would+have+been+richer+had+its+government+not%22&hl=en&ei=VabGTo7rAqTf0QHz95wb&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Britain%20would%20have%20been%20richer%20had%20its%20government%20not%22&f=false

    Most recently, in his 2011 “Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War” we learn how by almost every science and technology measurement, Britain far out classed Germany, let alone Japan, during the lead up to war and the first part of the war.  It has been relatively well known that in May 1940 Rommel was outnumbered and outgunned by all measures, facing British and French tanks with armor that his tank shells bounced off of.  Yet, the British were repeatedly defeated by the Nazi and the Japanese.  The British did sink the Bismarck, but it took much of the British fleet to do so. Edgerton’s book provides much detailed explanation of the British technological and numerical advantage.

    So you might ask, how did Rommel do it?  One tactic was to improvise by firing his 88 mm anti-aircraft guns at the Allied tanks.  It cut through their armor like butter even when fired out of the range of enemy tanks.  The better known answer was the superior strategy, of Von Manstein and Guderian (using some concepts of Fuller, a Brit), of massing most of the force of the Blitzkrieg at one point in the line, a point in the line that the Allies felt was impenetrable, the Ardennes.

    “By nearly every standard the British army was much better equipped than the German army from the beginning to the end of the war.”

    http://books.google.ca/books?id=e6Vjp8qmYNIC&pg=PA219&dq=%22By+nearly+every+standard+the+British+Army%22&hl=en&ei=s67GTsLtLsHq0gGAy_38Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22By%20nearly%20every%20standard%20the%20British%20Army%22&f=false

  • bscmath78

    The author writes, “A similar muddle over investment versus debt . . .” in the context of paying off credit card bills.  Let see, paying off credit cards with an average UK APR of 18.8% (Feb 2010)
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/feb/16/credit-card-interest-high
    sounds like something good for consumers, but bad for the profits of credit card companies.  It’s probably bad for all the importers of foreign consumer products. An 18.8% tax free return seems like a lot better return than I can get from a non-Ponzi investment these days.

    There is a confused idea of “investment” when someone wants to produce something that is in massive oversupply, especially since if there was any shortage among Brits, it would be easily solved by the vast army of Eurozone college-educated unemployed young people, an army that looks like it will gain lots of recruits.  And let’s see, all those holding Greek sovereign debt get a 50% haircut, if they are lucky. PIIGS sovereign debt what an investment that was. Too bad MF Global went bankrupt they might have some to sell you.

    It is fascinating when the media say 7% for sovereign debt is “unsustainable”, but this article thinks it is good for consumers to keep paying credit card interest through the nose.

    Face it, the most likely reason to herd them into school is to reduce the increase in the official unemployment rate, keep them off the dole and keep them off the streets.

  • bscmath78

    As a side note, typically people who run credit card balances are the ones who live “paycheck to paycheck” so it is likely that only those who have chosen to live above their means due to high self-esteem are likely to be in a position to cut back and reduce their balances.  But given their high self-esteem they are unlikely to respond to such appeals. 

    And looking at Greece and the rest, some may think that going out with a bang and going bankrupt is the way to go.  Especially if you owe a fortune.

    “He was once the richest man in Ireland. Now he’s bankrupt and owes £2.5bn”
    Read more at : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2060323/Sean-Quinn-Irelands-richest-man-declared-bankrupt.html#ixzz1e5aewVqr

    As the article state, “Bankruptcy laws in the UK, which apply in Belfast, are more lenient than those in the Republic of Ireland, where it can take 12 years to run a business again after being declared legally bankrupt. In the UK it is just one year.”
    What a deal!

  • bscmath78

    “Pupils were subjected once again to a more rote/mechanical means of teaching which drilled them in the techniques of test-taking”

    “This meant that grants could be allocated to schools taught largely by untrained teachers because they would be cheaper than trained teachers and therefore might seem a better business proposition for the managers.”

    “‘If it is not cheap, it shall be efficient; if it is not efficient it shall be cheap.’” – Robert Lowe

    This was the promise of the Revised Code of 1862 (“payment by results”) as stated to the British House of Commons. It was a system that resulted in the elimination of all subjects that weren’t subject to testing and the elimination of anything above the standard of the testing, the lowest common denominator.  With no escape for the clever, since fast advancement would reduce the income of the school. 

    http://books.google.ca/books?id=2FiCvLK4ox0C&pg=PR20&dq=%22drilled+them+in+the+techniques+of+test-taking%22&hl=en&ei=f8rGTq-WMuXm0QGPtvj4Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22drilled%20them%20in%20the%20techniques%20of%20test-taking%22&f=false

    This was just one part of a long British tradition of expending much time and effort (and sometimes money) on counter-productive educational activities. Rote memorization having a long and hallowed tradition in UK education, exams and perceptions of merit. Helping to produce that lack of imagination that sent junior officers kicking soccer-balls towards the German machine guns, leading thousands to their deaths, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

  • bscmath78

    The following is attributed (disputed) to two German officers during WW I:

    Field Marshall Erich Ludendorff: The English soldiers fight like lions.
    General Max Hoffmann: True. But don’t we know that they are lions led by donkeys.”

    Another version is, “The English Generals are wanting in strategy. We should have no chance if they possessed as much science as their officers and men had of courage and bravery. They are lions led by donkeys.”

    http://www.archive.org/stream/englishwifeinber00bluoft#page/211/mode/1up

  • http://whytheology.wordpress.com/ Trey Medley

    @chronicle-15bf71a93d53f3fa044dd3b5f99a7a58:disqus , quit spamming the comment section. Please try to keep comments and replies to a respectable minimum, putting in so many comments merely discourages conversation

  • maxbini

    I think it may be worthwhile to add a consideration of what happened in Australia back in 1988 when the Government there decided to move from a completely Government funded higher education system and introduced student fees.
    Although Australia had free university education before this, it was not well respected and few took the opportunity – the preference seems to have been for either employment or unemployment benefits.  The introduction of student fees was done with a system that allowed the majority of students to pay the debt in future years out of tax increases (this was then called The Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) but is now called FeeHelp).  Surprisingly, this lead to a large take-up of university places, which has been maintained ever since.
    Also the fees charged for courses have exponentially risen over the years but this has not lessened the demand for places.
    It would not surprise me if politicians in Britain have not looked at the Australian situation and not tried to take similar advantage of the moving of the funding burden.  This also fits in with the current British Governments “small Government, big community” push.
    The shame is (to my knowledge) that few seem to have looked closely at the detrimental impacts of such moves – falling standards, loss of academic freedom, a focus upon full-fee paying students (whether International students or the wealthy being able to by-pass merit standards and purchase a place in a course), generalist staff outnumbering academics, untenured staff outnumbering tenured staff, etc…
    Whilst academics may grieve such losses, a politician will more likely glory in the cost savings.

  • pgteach

    Higher education is an expensive undertaking for which we hope our effort, time, and money invested will yield positive outcome. If Britain is selecting to boycott support for higher education because they have too many students and too many university graduates, the may find they have too little offer to a globally competitive market. Unemployment is not going to be fixed or solved by reducing the number of university graduates, but by creating jobs, resourcing internally rather than outsourcing externally, and providing tax incentive for businesses and employers to name a few ideas. Let us hope that Great Britain sees the light and realize an educated nation is a competitive one, or they may not lose the “Great” and be the “Less” Britian.

  • lenard

    Just as in the US, a college education is a large investment and it seems as though that investment will not be paid off. Just like the article states, it must be difficult for prospective students and parents to follow the economic logic for investing in an education. It is the same case as in the US and along with this comes the topic of motivation towards education. If getting an education is so expensive, what can motivate students to get an education in the US or abroad?

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