noted

Yeah, it's not that constructivist education is relativist (although it is at heart probably anti-foundationalist), it's that it aims to be the most effective way to creating learners who

1. are self-motivated
2. are curious
3. are good critical thinkers
4. care about other people
5. care about democracy

High stakes testing and curricula do lead to more cheating, though. I'm sure many doctors would argue that medical school is designed to make sure that only the absolute best, most competent people can be doctors, but I'm not sure that having this large, influential class of all the people capable of going through (and willing and wishing to go through) the med school meat grinder is what will make medical care in this country better.

There were a couple of studies in the sixties related to med school performance and doctor competency. One showed that students who won more awards and high honors were actually more  likely to be among the least competent doctors when they started practicing; the other showed that med students' high grade point averages had little effect on later competency*. A recent study by White and Fantone shows little negative effects for making med school classes pass/fail (these two have done a fair amount of research with med school reform seemingly in mind). A 1997 study by Davidson and Lewis suggests that while affirmative action students might receive lower NBME scores, they perform just as well in residency programs as non-affirmative action students. Basically, a lot of research shows that people who get high grades and good test scores get more high grades and good test scores, but that those things don't predict as much as many people believe.

I agree with you about wanting competent doctors, or competent anything, and I think it's important to make a distinction between the education of a 14 year old and a 24 year old, the latter of which still might stifle developing critical thinking skills, but which also might necessarily require more accuracy and better scholarship from the student. However, direct instruction methods in a student's formative years are probably not the way to turn this student into a scholar in the first place.


*I cannot for the life of me find abstracts to these two papers, but I know I didn't dream them.

med students are notorious for cheating

These are great, thanks.

I read/skimmed this article by Louis Benezet and followed up by reading various posts about him on mathforum.org. I wish there were more RCTs besides Etta Berman's that test Benezet's ideas. If anyone else here is interested in math education (or just progressive education) and can point me to something besides people arguing on the internet, that'd be cool. I'm not in the mood for a personal crusade right now, so I'm gonna take a break.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSQHRL9LvJg

lofty305 - mechsuit pimpin


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQwIrrFWPCE

" " - i found god

Oh, man, while you guys are on the topic of genetics, did you guys read this article about Christopher Stringer doubting his own Out of Africa theory?


http://www.edge.org/conversation/rethinking-out-of-africa


And I liked this American Scientist review of two books on race. An excerpt:

Although biologists and cultural anthropologists long supposed that human races—genetically distinct populations within the same species—have a true existence in nature, many social scientists and geneticists maintain today that there simply is no valid biological basis for the concept.

The review suggests that for tens of thousands of years races have been going in the opposite direction, that they haven't been developing differences all this time, but rather genetically converging in all but the most superficial characteristics.


As for the recursion thing - one of the commenters in the Pullum article (one of the authors of the Everett reply paper?) emphasizes that "recursion" has a specific jargon-y meaning in linguistics, and that it's often misunderstood because examples usually follow the "Mom's Brother's Best Friend's Favorite dog" pattern of recursion and so imply the term means something less general than it does. Pullum and others say that their definition makes recursion such an obvious feature of language that it's nearly meaningless to point it out, but I think it's an important feature that helps distinguish between, e.g., ape and human language. But I don't wanna look for that stuff about recursion. My arm is tingly and my balls hurt.

Chomsky was right to refer people to the Nevins, Peretsky, Rodrigues paper instead of replying directly himself. He's directly or indirectly involved in so many controversies, those relating to politics, behaviorism, UG, etc., that it must be difficult to focus on his current interests without seeming like he's implicitly wrong because he's not taking the time to reply, or that he's just an elitist asshole. A lot of the conversation at the Chronicle centered around appropriate (and inappropriate) ways of communicating in academics, with both sides blaming the other for striking an uncivil tone.


I agree with you that "Chomsky followers" are such a nebulous bunch that doesn't accurately reflect what individuals really think about very particular tenets of UG and other related linguistic issues. It's clear that Chomsky keeps up with the relevant literature, just as most of the writers of that literature surely keep up with Chomsky, and although this reciprocity surely exists, I don't think it's ever going to be a one-to-one, perfectly matched reciprocity of ideas. Chomsky and his "followers" will disagree, and in spite of this they will continue their slow work "towards" some supposedly greater understanding (this is the Kuhnian in me hedging here). A lot of this is brought up in the comments of the Chronicle article, though.


As for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - I'm not a linguist, but in my layman's opinion, language doesn't influence thought except in the most insignificant ways, and I agree with you that it would be difficult to prove (although not necessarily impossible to falsify?). Just going by the wikipedia article, it seems many whorfians either disagree with all of Whorf's claims or object to more pop notions of what Sapir-Whorf says. As for Sapir - I don't think the original idea that culture influences language was trivial, not at the time. It's the sort of idea that people would suspect, but making a formal effort to try to confirm the hypothesis seems as important as trying to confirm the hypothesis of any other seemingly (but not necessarily) true thing. Everett was saying in the NYer article that he felt cultural influences on language had been neglected in linguistics. This might or might not be true. I don't know. It's probably not true, but with Chomsky being such a superstar, I can see how it would feel true to a lot of linguists. It seems that a lot of linguists doing good work resent that their narrow field doesn't seem like "real" linguistics to some.


I like Pullum, the guy who wrote the Chronicle article. I don't agree with him 100% here, but I think his tone was more ironical and less committal than how you're putting it (re: him believing Everett's work is really in conflict with UG, or feeling that Chomsky should be involved). At least I remember it that way.

Upthread you guys were talking about Everett possibly overturning UG. This link has a lot of additional information on the debate:


http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2012/03/28/poisonous-dispute/


It helps to read most of the comments, too. Besides UG, also at stake is the controversy over Sapir-Whorf, which isn't just an academic dispute - if there were stronger confirmations of Sapir-Whorf, it could potentially give racists a lot of ammunition - they could say, "Well, maybe [minority ][/minority] aren't biologically different, but they think differently, and here's proof." The NYer article implies that Everett isn't a Whorfian when it says, "[He] did not share this enthusiasm [of ][/of]." Everett mentions Sapir several times as an inspiration, and seems to be making a distinction, an important one, I think, between culture appreciably influencing language (more on the Sapir side) and language influencing culture (more on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis side).


I dunno. There's more to it, but if you already read the NYer article and you read Pullum's Chronicle article and most of the comments, you'll get a better, broader idea of what's going on and what is or isn't (as Pullum and others claim) at stake, even if you don't take sides.

The Fountainhead is cool because of


1. King Vidor
2. Gary Cooper
3. Patricia Neal
4. Robert Burks


Though, yes, the story and message are garbage.


The Wire is totally for self-congratulatory whites in their late-twenties and early-thirties. It's a nice affirming pat on the back that says, "Cast your white guilt away!"


I remember watching this one episode where a cop gets shot in his cop car and it's like, ooooh, dramatic, as if that hasn't ever happened in a crime drama, and then the show starts intercutting these two cops who can't take it anymore, they can't take the sexual tension between them and just have to let it drop, and so it's going back and forth between death and grief and sex and death and sex, back and forth, as if this isn't a well-worn method of manipulating viewers.


The casting is as dull as any other tv drama: people are either sort of good-looking and faceless or just faceless; and it has a really similar tone to other one hour dramas, this totally neutered seriousness where people don't act or talk like real people, but it's all done in the name of realism, because real realism looks less meaningful and you can't have that because, you know, didacticism. It's cool that the show tries to address the structural issues behind social problems when people have a tendency to blame bad behavior, but I wanna tell people that if they'd read a book or two they'd save many hours and probably some smug feelings.