OLDaily

Our Staggering Class Divide Starts With Childrearing (Joan Williams)
Larry Cuban, Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice, 2017/12/21

There is a truth in this article and an even deeper lie. The truth is that upper class children are educated differently than lower class children. "The ideology of natural growth prevalent among the poor and the working class contrasts with the 'concerted cultivation' of the professional elite.... Concerted cultivation is the rehearsal for a life of work devotion: the time pressure, the intense competition, the exhaustion with it all, the ethic of putting work before family." The suggestion nhere is that if we taught poor people to increase their drive, they would be successful to. But Larry Cuban calls this out as a lie (I think). In fact, the other big difference between upper class and lower class children is that the upper class children are rich. They can afford to be independent. They don't have to be respectful. 

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A Robot Goes to College
Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 2017/12/21

Not only did the robot pass the course, it identified 31 forms of love. That's pretty interesting, but I thinlk it's weird that a course in the Philosophy of Love included " a class debate about the use of nonlethal versus lethal weapons (an extension of a discussion about love and conflict) with students from an ethics course at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point." Maybe it's just me, but it feels like everything is being militarized. "At the end of the course, Bina48 received a certificate of participation signed by the provost, and is due to be enrolled as a guest student in Barry’s Robot Ethics class next semester." Maybe that course will include a unit on tank warfare.

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Patterns in Contemporary Canadian Picture Books: Radical Change in Action
Beverley Brenna, Shuwen Sun, Yina Liu, in education, 2017/12/21

I was disappointed to find that there were no pictures in this article about picture books, just a few tables. This article doesn't ask whether picture books are still “the staple of children’s literature” - that's just a given - but instead enquires into 'how exactly they are changing in contemporary iterations," and in particular, whether there is "evidence of Radical Change" (capitalized because there's a Reference). According to the authors, "findings such as a broadening of audience-age, with particular picture-book titles for older readers only, and invitations for multidimensional travel out of the texts at hand, are hugely provocative, adding to the implications originally suggested by Dresang’s notion of new perspectives and changing boundaries." 

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The New Media Consortium: its sudden death and what comes next
Bryan Alexander, 2017/12/21

"The New Media Consortium (NMC) regrets to announce that because of apparent errors and omissions by its former Controller and Chief Financial Officer, the organization finds itself insolvent. Consequently, NMC must cease operations immediately.” Bryan Alexander writes., "The first and most important thing to bear in mind here is the human tragedy suffered by the NMC staff (Archive.org link; the official site’s page has been down for a few days)... There’s a crisis here, one requiring immediate, practical responses.  We can also look ahead a bit and get creative... I think that’s a splendid way – maybe the best way – to honor the legacy of the New Media Consortium: to build upon the smoldering ruins something new, creative and amazing." Coverage from EdSurge, Inside Higher Ed, Campus Technology. Note that the NMC website is back up and accessible today.

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Open Access and its Discontents: A British View from Outside the Sciences
Richard Fisher, Open and Shut?, 2017/12/21

In this post Richard Fisher argues that "polemical articles by Open Access enthusiasts claiming to know ‘what researchers want’ (when in reality what they mean is ‘what I and my immediate peer groups would find most helpful’) can be profoundly off-putting to those outside the circle of advocacy." There's a presumption of "universal acceptance of the principles behind Open Access" which leads him to "wonder which planet these agencies are inhabiting." Some examples: in STEM, research is used to create other products and services, which ultimately pay for the research, but in non-STEM fields the research output is the product. Moreover, "the presumption that ‘the law’ is, fundamentally, that law which applies to the state of California" is clearly mistaken." Even the "‘taxpayer pays’ arguments for Open Access" is weak, he argues, especially in research-exporting jurisdictions like the UK "where at least 80% of the consumers of British-originated research will not have contributed direct tax revenues towards its creation." There are some interesting points here. 

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