Jane Goodall Center Migrates From U. of Minnesota to Duke U.

The linked article says the center is now at Minnesota, not USC.

I think you had it right the first time: http://college.usc.edu/anth/html/goodallcenter.html

Hmm. There is indeed a Jane Goodall Research Center at USC, but her papers are kept at Minnesota. As far as I can tell, it is the papers that are going to Duke and not the research center. See http://www.twincities.com/minnesota/ci_17640797. Even the AP article says that Duke will be getting “her vast collection of field data” and not an actual research center. Whoever said the center was moving seems to have been mistaken.

Amen. Analyzing typing patterns as a signature is a practical topic. This could also be applied to logins as a replacement for passwords. 

It’s hard to love a reliance on dwell time (which the story picks out as the most reliable indicator); when I was an undergraduate, I was as likely as not to have a smashed finger (or two) from my (usually successful) attempts to keep my ancient car working.  It would have driven a dwell time algorithm totally bonkers, or, equivalently, would have kept me in a position of trying to explain why the system always thought I was cheating.

Actually those measures are even less reliable. The field of forensic linguistics is still struggling to come up with reliable ways to identify individuals based on linguistic content – when voice isn’t part of it, it’s simply not possible to do this with enough accuracy to actually know who’s cheating and who isn’t. Obviously people should keep working on these issues, but the fact is that there is a lot of similarity on an inter-speaker basis and a lot of difference in intra-speaker variation.

[citation needed] Also, huh?

Our nation’s community colleges are a great asset but they cannot possibly achieve what the President has in mind for them unless we find ways to accelerate structural reform.

Community colleges exist and the (recent) focus by this administration to highlight excellence at public community colleges,  and the Aspen Award, is commendable.  Where were community colleges when employer needs were unmet in the past two decades?  More agile, flexible, and mission-oriented schools (i.e. community-based career colleges) were able to research, develop and deploy career-oriented programs that provide basic skills and technical skills to achieve gainful employment (in a timely manner).  All the things that are wrong with community colleges are the hallmarks of successful career colleges. Any negative press or unethical behavior by individuals at career colleges can be countered by embarrassing, antiquated, or inefficient anecdotes seen at your local public community college.  When President Obama pledged to “give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers.” What I heard is that the challenge for each community is to find a solution that works – most states are strapped for funds and throwing cash at public community colleges won’t guarantee any results.  It is my hope that wise leaders in our community will use and partner with private career colleges to ensure each community builds a career center that engages the best of the best and uses these  education providers who are used to being measured by delivering results and developing partnerships with private industry.

Dr. Weiss:  The assertion that something is ” the defining issue” is necessarily a political judgment.  For every person who believes that “inequality” is the defining issue of our time, one could easily find another who believes it is something else, including a substantial number who believe it is “property rights.”  Likewise, your view that “property rights are surely a subset if equality” is just as surely disputable.  There are many who believe that equality in the absence of secure  property rights is a utopian illusion.

I am not arguing in the article that property rights or other particular aspects of civic participation should be “the defining issue” or that a civics curriculum should be silent on inequality (pace the silly assertion above by Chuck Kleinhans).  I am arguing, to the contrary, that a decent civics curriculum would eschew political advocacy in favor of teaching students the essentials of the subject itself.  This would necessarily include acquainting students with the controversies–but not just one side from one point of view. 

A civics curriculum that is focused unrelentingly on nothing but the left’s political agenda is not really a civics curriculum.  It is just propaganda, and many students, recognizing it as such, will proceed to tune it out.

Peter Wood

… a few observations.

Appendix D of _A Crucible Moment_ suggests a broader range of viewpoints than Peter Wood purports; the actual participants of the national roundtables confirm the suggestion.

The principal charge of the task force, as I understand it, was to explore “civic learning and democratic engagement,” ideas whose exchange vitriolic partisanship persistently hinders. Devising ways to help diverse American populations learn about and communicate civilly with each other and those abroad was a major goal of the task force. Hence, repeat—unlike Wood, I did not count how many—references to diversity, transformation _et cetera_ should not surprise anyone who reads the report. Likewise, in a continually globalizing society, the idea that college or university students should study or prepare only for national citizenship—what Wood refers to as “life in the nation as it now exists”—seems shortsighted.

Regarding the speech that President Barack Obama delivered in Kansas 6 December 2011, it is doubtful that the president actually meant “‘the’ [emphasis added] defining issue.” _A_ defining issue probably was his intent. (Incidentally, the entire speech can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/06/remarks-president-economy-osawatomie-kansas; the link which Wood provides takes one to a 9 December 2011 article in _Bloomberg Businessweek_.) President Obama’s actual words, along with others that he has spoken over the years, add weight to the probability. Noting and, moreover, examining specifics is an important part of the scholar’s task, but one should not be superfluous. Would, for example, my noting that the Obama administration does not technically own an education department be a fair examination of Wood’s entire commentary?

“Civics Lessons” ostensibly proposes that expanding civics curricula to include more aspects of American pluralism is a bad undertaking. If curricula should follow a traditional line—which, based on his late 1700s through 1932 reference, I infer to mean before the transformative events of the middle twentieth century—then who and what should be included and excluded in the “new[est] civics” studies? (Recently, several state officials and certain conservative partisans have offered some items.) Likewise, in which manner should what is taught _be_ taught?

College professors who instruct humanities, liberal arts, social science, and related courses do just that: _profess_. That is, they analyze and challenge ideas, and, among other activities, spur analytic and critical thought among students. Hence, from time to time, a professor will make a statement that runs counter to a student’s beliefs. Why, I ask, is this occurrence troublesome? Higher education _should_ facilitate thinking in new manners, forging relationships with diverse groups of people, and so on. What is more, before the late twentieth century, truly dissimilar scholarly points of view about what Wood calls civics could be found in a relatively small number of commonly used textbooks, and were spoken from the mouths of a slightly higher number of college and university professors. No matter how advocatory, limited, skewed, or outright wrong in some instances the textbooks and professors were, their presentations were deemed acceptable to many groups who now complain about liberal political indoctrination, correctness, and so forth.

Let me make plain a few facts. Politically and socially conservative points of view—Wood does not present any genuinely moderate view in the commentary—will never be removed from civics or allied courses. Irrespective of what some persons argue, the academy is not composed largely of social or political liberals. Publishing houses seek profits; therefore, their textbooks have been, are, and undoubtedly will remain in the mainstream. Many professors seek job security, usually in the form tenure, so they do not communicate their most extreme beliefs. Innumerable historians, for example, marginalize or avoid altogether some religious lessons on account of possible repercussions for offending certain students, their guardians, administrators, or other important parties. Such activities are particularly widespread at public colleges and universities.

Sociopolitical conservatives have no reason to worry about being left out of civics lessons, which does not seem to be the primary aim of “Civic Lessons” anyhow. The critique, rather, appears to be a veiled _ad hominem_ attack against President Obama or perhaps Barack Obama himself, whom Wood names five times by the way.

globalization is a term that when analyzed means exploiting and stealing at a larger scale basically (which tends to be there in some way by those who use the term in various ways) and a goal of Fascism and ‘world religion’ in some form; namely, a kind of totalitarianism/extreme socialism in some form.  If you grew up in the Catholic Church of the 1950′s, you experienced and understood all you needed to know about Globalism and leftist and utopia ideologies and global economies …oh how many times the extra nickel I had from my paper route was pressured out of my working class hands by the seemingly liberal bishop  in a second, third or fourth collection for yet another special project for the afflicted in the back of beyond somewhere while my parents were expecting me to earn and have my own lunch money for the week. 

Yes, I understand this new kind of civic education described by Peter Wood all too well as well as my own rebellion against it as my first act of conscience and a refusal to succumb to elite and global oppression.  But refuse some of us did and particularly to the institution of the Catholic church as inherently it could only be a certain way over time and the refusal exacted a very great price as well.  But teaching the catechism and squeezing those nickels out of the hands of kids is alive and well on campuses again unfortunately and few see much of what is occurring as a form of abuse and oppression. My particular blue-collar life converted me to checks and balances constitutional democracy and being able to compete some and have half a chance to earn some things got me to an ivy league school with some aid along with good skills at hustling nickels and investing them in me first and then elsewhere but I knew that there was no way that the playing field could be made level for me and that I simply had to get it done in spite of things and earn my way and be a decent and caring and ethical person and citizen.  I have been around the world several times since which has taught me a few things.

No one really has a clue as to how a global economy actually works as can be seen from current conditions nor how a global society would actually work. 

Nowhere have I seen the need for checks and balances as in this area and the foci of this administration and after 60 years of watching I am convinced like Tip O’Neil that localism and not globalism is the answer both social and economically. 

Globalism and the new civics are prime examples of what use to be called the Antinomian heresy; doctrines of the elect like ignoring the basics never work for long.  Unfortunately I came to these conclusions in the 1960′s when I was on the front lines and just had too many experiences that kept knocking off of my hobby horse like Paul on the way to Damascus. 

Both America and the world is critically different today than then and from the 1860 to 1900 period that produced these antiquated views and solutions  that did not even work in a world long gone.  It is painful watching these tattered ideologies constantly recycled like a Wilson speech and revivals are most often like bell bottom jeans and Nehru jackets to those who once worse them (an real embarrassment). 

But it bothers me much, much more to see the current crew of elite Bishops demanding that K-16 students learn that catechism or else and squeezing those nickels out of their hands.  Doesn’t work, needs to stop, is creating a rolling and rising problem and particularly if you know how to look at a lot of recent data, and some checks and balances are sorely needed.  My 70 years has taught me that localism (first) and not globalism is the answer as well as a lot of old fashion American democracy and virtues.

 I have been saying this for 15 years to deaf ears along with sustainable jobs that people can actually do rather than the few (thus bringing manufacturing home and even giving per hour pay subsidies for job Americans allegedly don’t want to do or undesirable jobs that are important for people to do;namely, subsidize individuals not groups or special interest groups), limiting profits as they were in the 1950′s (which will just correct so much excess, greed, exploitation,  unethical behavior, and other problem but keep incentive and one of the prime reasons to work and improve), stop trying to over-regulate people’s and your neighbor’s life as Pat Monyhan so convincing wrote about, checks and balances to inhibit problems and major wrongs and a more efficient and less costly court system and professional liscencing system as well (nurse practitioners and paralegals are A-OK), a tolerance of practical inefficiencies and a human perspective that make everyday life livable for the average person (i.e. the Edison light bulb, water that is 95% pure) versus pie-in-the-sky-zealot alternatives that are also highly flawed (the mercury bulb which will be the next lead paint disaster for centuries to come) which can be achieved much simplier and at little cost (get all of these ridiculous building in urban areas to shut their damn lights out at night and to stop lightening themselves up like peacocks which would make up for the ‘inefficiencies” of the Edison light bulb and save some kids and others from lead poisoning …. but this is what you get when the “Church” is in charge).

It really is time for some real push back.  Thanks Pete.

YES, we DO.Maybe not Shakespeare or Sartre, but we do want as workers, as citizens and thus voters and taxpayers, people who can think clearly and logically, write and speak clearly and logically, and understand others who write and speak to them clearly and logically. We want workers and citizens who can accurately calculate a bill and make payments and figure out their taxes. We want workers and citizens who have at least a basic understanding of how government operates, how society functions, and are aware of the wider world that is full of a diversity of views that often differ from one’s own. We want everyone to have a basic knowledge of history, both of our country and of the world. Strictly limiting CCs only to job training implies we just want wage slaves.

I agree. As a community college academic advisor, I see students with all types of goals, ranging from getting the piece of paper they need to advance/keep their jobs to a math and science loaded general studies AS degree as the first step toward becoming a doctor-and some students who just know they want to do something with their lives and this is where their friends got started. Having a core belief system that supports achievement is a top goal, whatever achievement looks like for that particular student. It’s also so important in my view that we have adequate resources for general education. Even if we can’t keep a student past the first semester or two, making sure they are competent in writing and basic math enriches their lives beyond what they usually had before. The longer we can keep them in school, the more organic the understanding becomes for students that learning for its own sake is of value. We can’t be ‘everything’ to everyone, but I believe (perhaps too optimistically, but that’s fine by me) that we can be ‘something’ to everyone.