Bertrand Russell's Three Passions

Quote of the Day;

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair....

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

via Information Processing

You can’t build a country if you’re not thinking beyond your own lifetime

Mr. Ali is an institution in Pakistan. He has started some of the country’s most successful companies. But perhaps his most important contribution has been his role in creating the Lahore University of Management and Science, or L.U.M.S., begun as a business school but now evolved into the approximate equivalent of Harvard University in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s biggest problem, he believes, is one of leadership. A corrosive system of privilege and patronage has eaten away at merit, degrading the fabric of society and making it more difficult for poor people to rise. The growing tendency to see government positions as chances to profit, together with the explosion in the country’s population, has led to a sharp decline in the services that Pakistan’s government offers its people.

“Nobody is bothered about the masses,” Mr. Ali said...

“You can’t build a country if you’re not thinking beyond your own lifetime,” Mr. Ali said.

Pakistan’s education system has been one of the casualties. Good public education can create opportunity in societies, but in Pakistan it has been underfinanced and ignored, in part because the political class that runs the country does not consume its services. Fewer than 40 percent of children are enrolled in school here, far below the South Asian average of 58 percent. As a result, Pakistan’s literacy rate is a grim 54 percent...

These days the university attracts many offspring of wealthy Pakistanis, who would otherwise have gone to the United States or the United Kingdom for their undergraduate studies.

THAT was the case for Mr. Ali, who was studying at the University of Michigan in 1947, the year Pakistan became a state. He returned to Pakistan in December of that year, ultimately earning his bachelor’s degree from Punjab University in Pakistan, but he kept his ties with the United States. His brother later became Pakistan’s ambassador in Washington, and Mr. Ali’s wedding was held in the embassy there — benefits bestowed by a system he now criticizes. The ceremony was attended by Richard M. Nixon, then the vice president, and was photographed for Life magazine...

“Zia did more damage than any other leader,” Mr. Ali said. “He sowed the seeds of this fundamentalism that has raised its ugly head.”

AS early as 1973, Mr. Ali began thinking that Pakistan needed more graduates with leadership skills. He was studying at Harvard Business School at the time. Pakistan’s growing economy needed managers, and its political class needed creative thinkers. That mission became all the more urgent after the changes brought by General Haq in the 1980s, which were narrowing the worldview of Pakistan’s youth.

Pakistan’s young people, Mr. Ali said, should be “citizens of the world, not narrow-minded or intolerant.”..

One hope is that the university will help inculcate a sense of merit and fairness that has all but disappeared from Pakistani society, crippling its growth.

“Merit and fairness are gone,” he said. “The whole system is getting bogged down.”

Admission to L.U.M.S. is strictly on merit, he said, and Pakistanis who try to use connections to get in are turned away.

-One Pakistani Institution Places His Faith in Another

Related:
LUMS Launches Economic and Social Development Policy Research Center

Memo to the Next President on Education Reform

Lawrence Summers on education reform;

Q: ...As I told you I’m writing an essay for the next president of the United States with recommendations for federal higher education policy. Would you give me three major recommendations you would like to have in the book to be presented to her?

LS: I’ll make you a deal. You tell me for sure who is going to read it and I’ll give you three very good recommendations. First, there needs to be a substantial increase in reform in the availability of financial aid. It’s great that Harvard is able to do the kinds of thing that it is able to do with its $38 billion endowment, but it is really a tragedy that if you look in the United States today, as somebody put it very directly, rich dumb kids are much more likely to go to good universities than poor smart kids. You can just see it in the statistics and it’s wrong and it’s about financial aid and effort. That is the first thing I would say. The second I would say is that, much as my colleagues in higher education don’t like these ideas, it wouldn’t hurt to start thinking about ways of, at least on an informal basis, evaluating what happens in universities and trying to come to judgments about the effectiveness in education and research of different universities. I’m going to give you four. Third, to take one that will be sort of universally popular but difficult, it is nuts that at the beginning of the century, the beginning of the life science century, we are cutting the NIH for the first time in history, and people under 40 basically can’t get grants. It is just crazy, with all the progress that is possible. Last and not unimportant, there are few things that are crazier than the combination of tenure and mandatory retirement. It is sort of beyond belief that you have science departments in great universities where the decisions as to who the next generation is going to be made are being made by people in their 70s. Not only are they occupying larger amounts of laboratory space, filling slots that could be given to other people, they are also the decision makers with veto power as to who the scholars of the next generation are going to be, and it is just crazy. It would make a very substantial contribution to at least the leading institutions of higher education if an exemption were crafted for mandatory retirement. It should say something about how weird this is in a way that the professors who are least likely to retire are in the sciences. Something should be done.

Cost Benefit Analysis in Education Policy

Can cost-benefit analysis guide education policy in developing countries?

Summary: Cost-benefit analysis in education is an important tool in the economists' arsenal. However, it is essential that research, especially on the social benefits of education, make further progress to make cost-benefit more analysis. There is a need for more research on the effects of policy interventions on outcomes beyond access to a year in school and what they earn as a result, such as on what children actually learn. Such research should focus on ensuring that the interventions are attributable to outcomes. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to go through the discipline of noting the benefits and costs, even if social rates of return cannot be calculated robustly.

Related;
How Large Are Human Capital Externalities? Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Laws

Using Maimonides' Rule To Estimate The Effect Of Class Size On Scholastic Achievement

Causality, Causality, Causality: The View of Education Inputs and Outputs from Economics

Beyond Rate of Return: Reorienting Project Appraisal

US High Schools- Demand and Supply

Projections show that by next year or the year after, the annual number of high school graduates in the United States will peak at about 2.9 million after a 15-year climb. The number is then expected to decline until about 2015. Most universities expect this to translate into fewer applications and less selectivity, with most students probably finding it easier to get into college.

“For the high school graduate, this becomes a buyers’ market,” said Daniel M. Fogel, president of the University of Vermont...

The demographic changes include sharp geographic, social and economic variations. Experts anticipate, for example, a decline in affluent high school graduates, and an increase in poor and working-class ones. In response, colleges and universities are already increasing their recruitment of students in high-growth states and expanding their financial-aid offerings to low-income students with academic potential.

Still, some admissions deans and independent consultants say the struggle to win entry to the most prestigious universities is likely to continue.

-Math Suggests College Frenzy Will Soon Ease

Stupid in America- Not anymore maybe

Each year, nationwide, about $500 billion is spent on K-12 education, and almost all of it comes from taxpayers. By that measure, this gift is a fraction of 1 percent of total expenditures. But in terms of existing philanthropy, yes, $2 billion actually would be a huge deal. No one has exact figures, but the best estimates are that K-12 educational philanthropy in the United States totals nearly $4 billion a year. So if our billionaire decides to spend the entire $2 billion just in fiscal ’08, that would be a big portion of the national total.

-How Many Billionaires Does It Take to Fix a School System?

The Preschool Movement

The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement and Kids-First Politicst
David L. Kirp

The smart education system of Finland

What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

The academic prowess of Finland's students has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years to learn the country's secret, including an official from the U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on, kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons to fit their students. "We don't have oil or other riches. Knowledge is the thing Finnish people have," says Hannele Frantsi, a school principal.

Visitors and teacher trainees can peek at how it's done from a viewing balcony perched over a classroom at the Norssi School in Jyväskylä, a city in central Finland. What they see is a relaxed, back-to-basics approach. The school, which is a model campus, has no sports teams, marching bands or prom.

Assorted

Letter to Our European Friend by P.J. O'Rourke

There are two factors in American politics that may seem strange to Europeans, race and religion. You, of course, don't have any religion. Except every now and then someone who came to Europe lately and is a Muslim blows himself to bits. But I understand that you have EU funding to address these social problems and help Muslims build bombs that release fewer pollutants and less carbon dioxide, reducing the threat of global warming.

After the events of the 20th century, God, quite reasonably, left Europe. But He's still here in the United States. The majority of Americans are Christians, and Christians can be divided into two kinds, the kind who think you should get Jesus and the kind who think Jesus is going to get you. Mike Huckabee is one of the latter. Then there are the Mormons such as Mitt Romney who believe some unusual things — things that no sensible European like Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Benito Mussolini, Karl Marx, Emanuel Swedenborg, or Cherie Blair would ever believe.

The question of race in America is supposed to be a matter of what one looks like. But it is difficult to comprehend how a political interest group that contains both Al Sharpton and Halle Berry could be based on looks. Barack Obama looks like he was raised in Hawaii. He may have just a good tan.

The number of American presidential candidates varies with the sunspot cycle and the phases of the moon. Being a Republican, I'm backing Hillary Clinton. Because she could lose. The reason is not that she's a woman. The reason is that she's the particular woman who taught the 4th grade class that every man in America wished he were dead in. Hillary Clinton is Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Hillary Clinton is "America's ex-wife."

A man can be a Democrat to the core, going into the voting booth to pull the lever with the donkey label no matter what. Then he sees Hillary's name on the ballot. And it all comes back to him … the first marriage … the time he came home a little late, it wasn't even midnight, and he'd only had four or five beers, and she threw his bowling ball down the storm sewer.

The Republicans will have a hard time coming up with someone who can't beat Hillary Clinton. But I don't put it past them. You may remember Senator Bob Dole in 1996....

But no matter who is elected America's next president — whether Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or even Ron Paul — it is important that Europeans be reassured that ordinary Americans will not change the way they think about Europe. They will continue to think they aren't sure where it is on the map.

Great Literature? Depends Whodunit

Endowments Widen a Higher Education Gap

Others, too, are seizing on the idea of endowments for public universities. Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York recently proposed creating a $4 billion endowment for public universities, to be paid for by selling part of the state’s lottery business.

Virginia Tech, a state institution with a $525 million endowment, is allocating nearly one-third of the money received in its current $1 billion fund-raising campaign to its endowment.

Q & A with Robert Zoellick

Economists Dissect the ‘Yuck’ Factor

A Medical Mystery Unfolds in Minnesota

China’s Inflation Hits American Price Tags

How Democracy Produced a Monster

Rebate Psychology

What banks can learn from this credit crisis

How Lawmaker Rebuilt Hometown on Earmarks

Prepare yourself for the next Policy Debate (it’s Going to be Tougher than Ever Before)

The new $3.1 trillion U.S. budget

Putting Candidates' Religion to the Test

Cellphones Challenge Poll Sampling

Motivated by a Tax, Irish Spurn Plastic Bags

Wikipedia Islam Entry Is Criticized

Great books aren't written, they're rewritten

Britain Seeks Its Essence, and Finds Punch Lines

In India's Huge Marketplace, Advertisers Find Fair Skin Sells

Publishing Central Bank Interest Rate Forecasts

Lessons from Korea

World Bank event- Korea as a Knowledge Economy: Evolutionary Process and Lessons Learned

Five Minds for the Future

An interview with Howard Gardner on his new book;

Use MindManager to Teach Economics

An interesting paper; Effectiveness of concept maps in economics: Evidence from Australia and USA by John Marangos and Sean Alleya

Abstract: This paper evaluates the effectiveness of concept maps as a teaching and learning tool in university level Principles of Microeconomics courses in Australia and USA. Concept mapping was incorporated in the teaching material in both courses at different countries and, at the end of the semester, the students completed a survey regarding the use, effectiveness, and accessibility of concept maps. It was revealed that USA students valued concept maps relatively less than Australian students. We provide two explanations: First, there may be differences in prior training in economic and/or concept mapping between Australian and USA students. Second, there were significant differences in class structure, which caused the link between collaborative study-groups and the construction of concept maps to not be maintained in the case of USA students.

Here's conclusion;

The students studying Principles of Microeconomics in the Department of Economics at Monash University in second semester 2001, responded quite positively to the introduction of concept maps in lectures and tutorials. It appears, though, that only a small percentage of Monash students used concepts maps as a tool for exam preparation, and an even smaller percentage used concept mapping in other subjects. Thus, while Monash students found concept mapping as a tool for understanding concepts in economics, they did not extend the effectiveness of this tool in exam preparation and in other subjects. Strangely enough, the applicability of concept maps to other subjects was questioned by the Monash students studying economics.

The students studying Principles of Microeconomics in the Department of Economics at Colorado State University in spring semester 2004, also responded positively to the introduction of concept maps in lectures and tutorials. However, the CSU students valued the concept maps relatively less, compared with the Monash students. We posited two possible explanations for this, and feel that both are plausible. We are particularly intrigued with the second explanation, which was that the link between collaborative student study-groups and the construction of concept maps was broken for the CSU students because of class size. This would explain the differences for the student perception of the effectiveness of concept maps. More study is needed, using USA students in smaller classes to test this hypothesis.

This could have substantial consequences for the development of new teaching methodologies in economics. As shown in the literature, recent advances in teaching methodology revolve primarily around deep learning, active learning, and collaborative study. A major concern for the implementation of new teaching methodologies is the size of classes, as large classes do not allow a large degree of freedom. However, in an environment of strict budget constraint for higher education in Australia and the USA, the reduction of class size is not foreseeable in the near future. This is very likely to create obstacles in the implementation of new teaching methodologies that are not “cost efficient”, but have a high in return for student learning and performance.

I have met professors who have never heard of Aplia at US Ivy league universities, yet using textbooks on their system. Students need to be provided with all the avenues to study as different students have different intelligences in which they're strong.

My advice on concept mapping, use Mind Manager, the best such product in the market right now.

Related;
Operation Overload

Direct Instruction- Does it Work?

The Direct Approach

Direct Instruction (DI) is a relatively radical idea about how to teach elementary school kids (mostly). (There’s a short and glib Youtube video on DI here.) As you can see from that Youtube clip, Direct Instruction is also pretty straightforward. You work in groups of 5-10 kids (if possible) and constantly ask the kids questions as part of tightly scripted lessons. DI is not fancy or particularly clever, which is precisely why it’s such a radical idea. It’s just simple, rapid-fire question-and-answer. This goes against other educational ideals that pause more and use less interactive approaches. DI is more like high-energy coaching than teaching, with a close eye on anyone that’s falling behind. It’s so tightly scripted you might even think it sounds a little bit robotic. Nevertheless, that’s the basic idea. It was developed by an educational outsider named Siegfried Engelmann (who goes by Zig, a convention I will follow) to teach his 3rd grade fraternal twin sons.

Quickie Degrees for Corrupt Policians- Russia edition

But apparently the Duma's reputation for submissiveness obscures a little-known fact about its deputies: 218 boast advanced degrees. In fact, the Duma could very well be setting a record as the world's most academically distinguished legislative body: Almost half of its 450 members hold doctorates. By comparison, only one in six members of Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, can claim the same distinction.

Moscow's PhD-toting parliamentarians include chauvinistic blusterer and Duma Vice-Chairman Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who wrote a doctoral thesis titled "The Past, Present and Future of the Russian Nation." Another is Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, whose dissertation arrives at the conclusion -- surprising for a communist -- that Russia has "exhausted its reserve of revolutionary upheavals." Could this be academic self-criticism?

A so-called candidate dissertation, which is similar to a master's thesis, also graces the resume of the new prime minister, Viktor Subkov. The former Soviet Communist Party official and long-standing confidant of President Vladimir Putin wrote his thesis on the "Refinement of Tax Mechanisms in the Mineral and Natural Resource Complex, Using the Leningrad Region as an Example."...

What else, they ask, could explain Vladimir Yakovlev's PhD? A recently dismissed minister for regional development in the cabinet, Yakovlev, wrote his dissertation while serving as the governor of St. Petersburg in 2001. While the governor allowed the city to fall into decline, he managed to attain academic distinction with a study on the "Scientific Basis of Effective Management of a Megalopolis."

Even Ramzan Kadyrov, who Putin recently appointed president of Chechnya, can count academic honors on his resume. The fact that his relationship with Russian grammar might be described as uneasy at best hasn't stopped the former Chechen separatist from earning his credentials as an economist with a polished thesis on the "Optimal Management of Contractual Relationships in the Construction Industry."...

Trained as an engineer, Gryzlov, a close of associate of President Putin, acquired a doctorate in political science while serving as Russia's interior minister. In his dissertation, entitled "Political Parties and Russian Transformation," Gryzlov, a man not exactly known for his intellect, revealed a surprisingly profound knowledge of the latest in American professional literature on the subject.

President Putin submitted his dissertation at the Mining Institute of St. Petersburg in 1997. The 218-page work, titled "Strategic Planning of the Renewal of the Minerals-Raw Materials Base of the Region in Conditions of the Formation of Market Relations," offers a detailed description of the quality of Russian gravel pits. But the work, which Putin and his doctoral advisor insist is authentic, also reveals his political ambitions.

In the thesis, Putin argued for greater state control of the raw materials economy and outlined a plan for restructuring the Russian economy. By comparing text passages Clifford Gaddy, an American economist specializing in Russia, was able to prove that entire paragraphs in Putin's thesis were simply paraphrased from a US study....

Depending on the quality and the field, the price of one of these quickie degrees can run anywhere from €3,000-35,000 ($4,452-51,937). On his first day in his new post in the parliament, Boris Vinogradov discovered just how intensive the trade in academic degrees is at the Duma. A young man walked into his office and promptly offered to mail him a dissertation -- needless to say, for cash. Vinogradov, already a professor, thanked the man and sent him on his way

-The Russian Parliament's Intellectual Giants

Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future?

A review of A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future By Daniel H. Pink

The two forces he labels “Asia” and “Automation” have changed the U.S. job market forever, pushing domestic labor into more creative practices. Another one, “Abundance,” adds a consumer factor to the evolution. In the last 30 years, Pink says, wealth has spread and deepened. Life is good, and “the information economy has produced a standard of living that would have been unfathomable in our grandparents’ youth.” With material needs met, people want more than functionality from their goods. They want pleasing aesthetics, and they elevate “less rational sensibilities—beauty, spirituality, emotion.” It’s a Big Idea, this epochal transition from Information Age to Conceptual Age, and the analysis of it could lead into demographic, financial, and geopolitical fields. In A Whole New Mind, Pink tracks it down to a smaller but still central terrain, the individual mind. For the transformations in jobs and goods, he claims, have a complement in the physiology of the brain, and in the styles of cognition that go with it. The Information Age solicits the powers of the left hemisphere, the aptitudes of analysis and numeracy and information management. The Conceptual Age solicits the powers of the right hemisphere, aptitudes of imagination, invention, and empathy. The left side, L-thinking, deals in pieces and series, while R-thinking makes pictures and discerns patterns. L-thinking breaks things down into parts. R-thinking assembles them into wholes. L-thinking conceives things by how they work, R-thinking by how they give pleasure and are meaningful. L-thinking fits a data-oriented economy, R-thinking an idea-oriented one.

That we have entered the latter condition Pink treats as plain. The example of Target stores proves the ascendancy, as it hires world-class designers to provide sleek toilet brushes and cool wastebaskets for budget-conscious consumers. But a problem lingers, he says: Information Age habits and assumptions remain in force. Information Age skills have served so well and yielded so much well-being that people don’t realize the conversion in process.

Pink’s book is an announcement of the turn, and an advice manual. The paradigm shift he takes care of in 60 pages, then devotes six chapters to ways of developing “a whole new mind.” Each chapter covers a new “sense” in a nomenclature that will thrill arts educators: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, Meaning. Design adds beauty to function, Story adds drama to argument, Meaning adds, well, meaning to material plenty, etc. Pink supplies concrete tips for joining the movement: “Keep a Design Notebook,” he counsels, and “When you see a great design, make a note of it.” To cultivate empathy, eavesdrop on conversations and try to feel the others’ feelings. To deepen the sense of play, join online communities for gamers, or dissect a joke. Take an acting class, read Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames, and learn to draw on the right side of the brain.

The relevance of Education

School and work : Does the Eastern Caribbean education system adequately prepare youth for the global economy

Abstract: As the global economy rapidly changes and new technologies are introduced, more highly skilled workers are required. In the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), firms struggle to fill skilled positions due to a lack of qualified candidates, while the number of unemployed low skilled workers is growing. This report is organized into six chapters. After this brief introduction, the second chapter makes the argument for why skills matter to the OECS countries. The subsequent three chapters emphasize how education (school) is intrinsically linked to the labor market, both in providing initial preparation and training and in updating workers' skills throughout adulthood (lifelong learning). Thus, the third chapter discusses how adequately the schools in the OECS prepare youth for the labor market. The fourth chapter focuses on the transition from the education system to the labor market. The fifth chapter analyzes the opportunities for workers to continue learning while in the labor force. The final chapter summarizes the main policy recommendations for improving education and training in the OECS. Three transversal themes run through the report: (i) deepening sub-regional collaboration; (ii) increasing involvement of the private sector in education and training; and (iii) enhancing collaboration across different levels of the education and training systems.