The recent outbreak of tragic shootings raises two questions for me: 1) Why our nation's long and intense relationship to violence? 2) What sort of violence draws our attention? Right now, I'll focus on the second.
The intense news coverage of the shootings in the Portland Area mall and the Connecticut school reminded me of the summer of 1996, when I set out to publicize my brand new (and first) book: What Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence against Wives. Though you wouldn't know it from the title, the book focused on Oregon, and it was published by Harvard University Press. So I figured that Oregon newspapers and radio stations would be lining up to interview me. Ha! What a fool I was. It turned out that violence against wives was not news unless some sort of sensational case has just occurred. As the thesis of my book was that violence against wives was a deeply ingrained part of everyday life and culture, my book was not newsworthy. And I got the distinct impression that having a big-name press attached to the book simply underscored its irrelevance.
But finally the day arrived when my umpteenth call to Portland's leading news radio station bore fruit. An estranged husband had just kidnapped at gunpoint their child. This was news. Call back at noon, and my book would get its five minutes of fame. I called back, of course, but I was given about 15 seconds. An airliner had just crashed, killing scores of people, and a bloody airline crash trumped a kidnapping any day.
I relate this story not to suggest that mass killings or airline crashes are not tragic or worthy of our concern, but rather to point out that they are newsworthy precisely because they are rare. If we are interested in understanding--and of course preventing--more typical forms of violence and death, we must of course consider less publicized acts: accidental shootings and fatal automobile crashes, for example.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Friday, January 25, 2013
My Entry in the International Guide to Student Achievement
Routledge just published a thick book entitled The International Guide to Student Achievement, and I'm one of three authors to offer a piece on an a Sub-Saharan African country.
My short article on Ghana gets across some basic factual information. Ghana spends about one third of its budget and 10% of its Gross National Product on education. More than 80% of children of primary-school age are in school, and about one half of those of junior-secondary-school (grades 7-9) are.
Other findings are more depressing. Ghanaian students have not done well, on average, at tests examining their proficiency, and researchers find that most teachers still emphasize rote learning. A study that examined classrooms in Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, and Brazil found that teachers were teaching just 39% of the time set aside for that purpose in Ghana compared to an average of 71% of the time in the other three countries. Teacher absenteeism is particularly acute at public schools, and children who attend public school have been much less likely to do well on the exams which largely determine which high schools or universities they will attend--if any. Ghanaian parents in fact undertake great sacrifices to send their children to private schools. But access to a good education correlates very closely with wealth.
I met many highly dedicated teachers in Ghana, at both private and public schools. But several told me that committing themselves to a teaching career is a bit like taking a vow of poverty. Ghana's economy is growing very quickly. Hopefully higher salaries for teachers will soon follow.
My short article on Ghana gets across some basic factual information. Ghana spends about one third of its budget and 10% of its Gross National Product on education. More than 80% of children of primary-school age are in school, and about one half of those of junior-secondary-school (grades 7-9) are.
Other findings are more depressing. Ghanaian students have not done well, on average, at tests examining their proficiency, and researchers find that most teachers still emphasize rote learning. A study that examined classrooms in Ghana, Tunisia, Morocco, and Brazil found that teachers were teaching just 39% of the time set aside for that purpose in Ghana compared to an average of 71% of the time in the other three countries. Teacher absenteeism is particularly acute at public schools, and children who attend public school have been much less likely to do well on the exams which largely determine which high schools or universities they will attend--if any. Ghanaian parents in fact undertake great sacrifices to send their children to private schools. But access to a good education correlates very closely with wealth.I met many highly dedicated teachers in Ghana, at both private and public schools. But several told me that committing themselves to a teaching career is a bit like taking a vow of poverty. Ghana's economy is growing very quickly. Hopefully higher salaries for teachers will soon follow.
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Professors Will Be Downsized
This is not a good time to be getting a doctoral degree in the humanities or the social sciences, at least if you expect to become a professor.
The California State University system--the largest in the world--is the latest to move toward putting some of its courses online. The cost is just $150 per course for remedial math courses. Preliminary studies indicate that students taking such courses learn more than do students in (the much more expensive) face-to-face classes.
Of course people like me might argue that it is relatively easy to automate a system to teach and grade elementary math, quite another to capture the nuances of historical experience. But how many history instructors could compete against, say, a class on the Civil War that featured lectures from Eric Foner of Columbia University and online discussions and papers graded by earnest and capable teaching assistants located in, say, India at one quarter the cost of a similar course at a state university?
Cheap, effective online courses offered by prestigious universities are likely to be a great boon for debt-burdened students and a disaster for professors. Professors can minimize the shock by: teaching so well that we cannot be easily replaced; adjusting to the new online reality by incorporating the best aspects of it into our teaching.
The California State University system--the largest in the world--is the latest to move toward putting some of its courses online. The cost is just $150 per course for remedial math courses. Preliminary studies indicate that students taking such courses learn more than do students in (the much more expensive) face-to-face classes.
Of course people like me might argue that it is relatively easy to automate a system to teach and grade elementary math, quite another to capture the nuances of historical experience. But how many history instructors could compete against, say, a class on the Civil War that featured lectures from Eric Foner of Columbia University and online discussions and papers graded by earnest and capable teaching assistants located in, say, India at one quarter the cost of a similar course at a state university?
Cheap, effective online courses offered by prestigious universities are likely to be a great boon for debt-burdened students and a disaster for professors. Professors can minimize the shock by: teaching so well that we cannot be easily replaced; adjusting to the new online reality by incorporating the best aspects of it into our teaching.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Sell Your House
I heard an inspiring story on NPR late Thursday about a fourteen-year-old girl who was telling her mother that their family should do something about global inequality. The somewhat exasperated mother finally said: "What should we do, sell our house and give the money away?" "Great idea," responded the daughter. So they sold their huge home, replaced it with one half as large, and spent a year researching what to do with the money they had saved. They ended up donating several hundred thousand dollars to the Hunger Project (they owned a really big house in one of Atlanta's most exclusive neighborhoods).
Of course not all of us have an extremely expensive house that we can sell off. And, by definition, most Americans are not in the top 1-5% of the nation's wealthy. But the great majority of us could spend much less money on ourselves than we do and still live very, very comfortable lives--and in the process greatly enrich the lives of hundreds if not thousands of others, people born into less fortunate circumstances.
http://www.thepowerofhalf.com/
Of course not all of us have an extremely expensive house that we can sell off. And, by definition, most Americans are not in the top 1-5% of the nation's wealthy. But the great majority of us could spend much less money on ourselves than we do and still live very, very comfortable lives--and in the process greatly enrich the lives of hundreds if not thousands of others, people born into less fortunate circumstances.
http://www.thepowerofhalf.com/
Friday, January 4, 2013
Article in Africa Today
After nearly three years of researching, writing, rewriting, and rewriting some more, my article comparing how Ghanaian intellectuals and its social studies textbooks approach its past has just appeared in Africa Today (volume 59, Winter 2012), which is available online at PSU and other university libraries.
The article examines why Ghanaian textbooks are relatively positive about British colonialism, certainly when compared to historical accounts intended for adults, such as the novels of Ayi Kwei Armah and the film Heritage Africa. My argument is that the textbooks express the government's emphasis on unity (they depict colonialism as bringing Ghana together) and progress (colonialism is praised for bringing Christianity, education, railroads, and other technologies). In sum, "pragmatism trumps romanticism."
I don't think that this emphasis on colonialism's advantages can be simply interpreted or criticized as an example of internalized colonialism, in part because Ghana's "entire education system, not just its textbooks, serves the ends of unity, conformity, orderly progress, and other conservative themes," impulses that were present in Ghana before the British imposed colonialism and that still resonate for many Ghanaians today.
The article examines why Ghanaian textbooks are relatively positive about British colonialism, certainly when compared to historical accounts intended for adults, such as the novels of Ayi Kwei Armah and the film Heritage Africa. My argument is that the textbooks express the government's emphasis on unity (they depict colonialism as bringing Ghana together) and progress (colonialism is praised for bringing Christianity, education, railroads, and other technologies). In sum, "pragmatism trumps romanticism."I don't think that this emphasis on colonialism's advantages can be simply interpreted or criticized as an example of internalized colonialism, in part because Ghana's "entire education system, not just its textbooks, serves the ends of unity, conformity, orderly progress, and other conservative themes," impulses that were present in Ghana before the British imposed colonialism and that still resonate for many Ghanaians today.
Friday, December 28, 2012
3,636 Years of Life or a Vacation Home?
Most people in the western world are very wealthy by most any measure. That means we have extraordinary opportunities to change other people's lives. If you've ever walked around a poorer country, where the average person is earning a couple of dollars a day, you've probably thought about this, how a fraction of your weekly income could send a child to a good school for a year, or enable an entrepreneur to start a business. Most of us try not to think about this. But an Oxford University ethics professor named Toby Ord has thought about it a great deal.
Ord founded an organization called Giving What We Can. It includes a list of his favorite charities (he favors ones oriented toward health, relatively small investments that allow people to live much longer and more happily). The site also includes a calculator that lets you know about how much good you can do. He advocates that people earning generous salaries donate a large chunk of it--50% rather than just 10% But I plugged in 10% of $80,000 or 25 years. That amount of giving would produce an additional 3,636 years of healthy living, the equilalent of saving dozens of lives. Or you could put that money into a time share or vacation home. Which is what most of us will do.
Ord founded an organization called Giving What We Can. It includes a list of his favorite charities (he favors ones oriented toward health, relatively small investments that allow people to live much longer and more happily). The site also includes a calculator that lets you know about how much good you can do. He advocates that people earning generous salaries donate a large chunk of it--50% rather than just 10% But I plugged in 10% of $80,000 or 25 years. That amount of giving would produce an additional 3,636 years of healthy living, the equilalent of saving dozens of lives. Or you could put that money into a time share or vacation home. Which is what most of us will do.
Friday, December 21, 2012
Violence and Innocent Children
Every mass shooting leaves me sad--but also frustrated. I recall when my first book appeared, a history of violence against wives, nearly twenty years ago, and I was trying with very little success to interest Portland radio stations in it. KBOO did an hour-long interview, but the leading AM station said that they weren't interested until something newsworthy happened. Finally the day came when a husband kidnapped a child rather than simply beating up his wife. This was news. But shortly before the interview was to commence a large passenger plane crashed and killed many people. As an airline crash trumped a child kidnapping every day of the week, my ten minutes of fame was reduced to "can you sum up your book in a single sentence?" I replied, with a touch of sarcasm, that the book argued that violence against wives should be understood as an ongoing process, not peculiar events. I might have added that many more people are killed in automobile accidents than in airplane crashes, but I was out of time.
Of course twenty-seven people--most of them young children--being killed in a single event is tragic. But I'm not convinced that it should become the prime driver of policy and legislation. A few commentators have pointed out the neglected fact that homicides in the U.S. have been in steady decline in recent years. So maybe the nation is not going to hell in a hand basket. School shootings remain extremely rare. Do we want to take money away from teachers so that every school has armed guards? And in talking about the pros and cons of controlling guns or disseminating them more widely, shouldn't we be studying subjects such as the likelihood of accidental shootings, events that are so common as to be unremarkable and therefore not newsworthy?
I also wonder why we don't pay more attention to the deaths of innocent children that are relatively easy to prevent. Few of us realize that our tax dollars are funding drone attacks that have killed scores of innocent children. Thousands of children perish every day across the globe for lack of food and simple medicines. Even right here in the U.S.A. millions of children's lives are endangered by problems such as poverty, malnutrition, obesity, and environmental health hazards that we lack the political will to address.
There is a lot that we can't do--or at least can't easily do. But when it comes to saving innocent children, there is also a lot of "low-hanging fruit."
Of course twenty-seven people--most of them young children--being killed in a single event is tragic. But I'm not convinced that it should become the prime driver of policy and legislation. A few commentators have pointed out the neglected fact that homicides in the U.S. have been in steady decline in recent years. So maybe the nation is not going to hell in a hand basket. School shootings remain extremely rare. Do we want to take money away from teachers so that every school has armed guards? And in talking about the pros and cons of controlling guns or disseminating them more widely, shouldn't we be studying subjects such as the likelihood of accidental shootings, events that are so common as to be unremarkable and therefore not newsworthy?
I also wonder why we don't pay more attention to the deaths of innocent children that are relatively easy to prevent. Few of us realize that our tax dollars are funding drone attacks that have killed scores of innocent children. Thousands of children perish every day across the globe for lack of food and simple medicines. Even right here in the U.S.A. millions of children's lives are endangered by problems such as poverty, malnutrition, obesity, and environmental health hazards that we lack the political will to address.
There is a lot that we can't do--or at least can't easily do. But when it comes to saving innocent children, there is also a lot of "low-hanging fruit."
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