Monthly Archives: July 2010

Being left off the guest list for the Clinton wedding

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The New York Times talks to some people left off the guest list for the Chelsea Clinton wedding. Those left off the list may want to be at the wedding to wish Chelsea well (and several do say this toward the bottom of the article) but there is another dynamic at work:

After all, Washington is a town that revolves around power and access to power, and Ms. Clinton’s wedding has inadvertently provided the chattering class with an imprecise — and, many say, inaccurate — measure of where they stand in Clintonworld.

This is a reminder that much of the adult world revolves around acquiring and defending one’s social status.

Ending summer vacation

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Time makes an argument for ending the typical American summer vacation from school. Numerous studies indicate that children lose ground during the summer and low-income students lose a lot of ground:

And what starts as a hiccup in a 6-year-old’s education can be a crisis by the time that child reaches high school. A major study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University concluded that while students made similar progress during the school year, regardless of economic status, the better-off kids held steady or continued to advance during the summer — while disadvantaged students fell back. By the end of grammar school, low-income students had fallen nearly three grade levels behind. By ninth grade, roughly two-thirds of the learning gap separating income groups could be blamed on summer learning loss.
The article also mentions the romanticism linked with summer vacation: trips, outdoor activity, freedom. This seems particularly crucial for American teenagerdom when teenagers get a first taste of being away from their parents. Even though I really liked school, I did enjoy summer vacation and all the options that were available to me (which not everyone has).
Would it be too difficult to split the summer vacation into two sections of about a month or a month and a half long? This seems like a reasonable compromise: some time off for everyone, shorter gaps for students to lose knowledge.

Swimming skills and race

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The Chicago Tribune reports on efforts to teach more minority children to swim. The reason is that minority children have fewer swimming abilities (70% of black children and 60% of Hispanic children have limited or no abilities compared to 40% for white children) and the drowning rate for 5 to 14 year olds is three times higher for blacks compared to whites.

California Picture #7

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A view of our hotel pool. I wish…

This is a view from a terrace above the outside pool at Hearst Castle. Quite a mansion and grounds. A fascinating (and opulent? garish? overwrought?) piece of work from what sounds like a very interesting man.

(My wife and I traveled to California for nine days in early July – this is part of a series of pictures from our trip.)

College students and studying

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Boston.com reports on a study by two professors that found college students study less today: 14 hours a week on average today compared to 24 hours a week on average in 1961. Why this is happening is less clear:

But when it comes to “why,” the answers are less clear. The easy culprits — the allure of the Internet (Facebook!), the advent of new technologies (dude, what’s a card catalog?), and the changing demographics of college campuses — don’t appear to be driving the change, Babcock and Marks found. What might be causing it, they suggest, is the growing power of students and professors’ unwillingness to challenge them.

Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: The central bargain of a college education — that students have fairly light classloads because they’re independent enough to be learning outside the classroom — can no longer be taken for granted. And some institutions of higher learning have yet to grapple with, or even accept, the possibility that something dramatic has happened.

Very interesting findings and something that colleges and universities will have to adjust to.

The Atlantic chimes in with 8 reasons that may explain why studying is down.

h/t Arts & Letters Daily

Stress and social hierarchy

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The latest issue of Wired has a fascinating article about stress. In addition to its effect on our physical bodies, the articles examines how stress is produced from being part of a social hierarchy. According to some studies cited in the article, being at the bottom of a social ladder produces harmful stress. This is not just because of the work but because those at the bottom have less control over their work. Those who we might consider to have “high-stress jobs,” such as doctors or lawyers, don’t feel the same negative effects of this stress since they have more control over their daily activities. Those working low-trust jobs, particularly in bureaucratic organizations, have higher death rates than those at the top, even controlling for other factors.

Apparently, the article is not available online but you can read some of the opening here on a Wired blog.

An argument against tenure

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Megan McArdle of The Atlantic makes an argument for getting rid of tenure and concludes, “I find it hard to believe that tenure is crucial to preserving the spirit of free inquiry at our nation’s colleges.”

I’d like to see someone produce a thoughtful rebutal to hear the other side.

h/t Instapundit

Extra airline fees are here to stay

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All those fees recently enacted by airlines are adding up and they are likely here to stay. The Chicago Tribune reports that ancillary revenues reached $13.5 billion in 2009. United Airlines led the way by collecting $1.9 billion.

On our recent trip to California, we paid $25 a piece for two bags on each leg of our American Airlines flight. The fares were reasonable – but adding on the extra $100 for luggage squelched any joy produced by finding a decent deal.

Using Twitter to solve your consumer problems

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Time suggests a means for getting your customer complaints addressed: take your grievance to Twitter. Steven James Snyder writes about an experience he had with Hotmail where a Tweet led to a quick resolution.

California Picture #6

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Seals basking on the rocks in a cove at Point Lobos State Natural Reserve. The park is three miles south of Carmel, California. We arrived at the gate several minutes after the 8 AM opening. At the booth where we had to pay to enter, one ranger said, “You must be tourists if you are here so early.” Both rangers in the booth were originally from Illinois and said they “never looked back” after moving to California.

(My wife and I traveled to California for nine days in early July – this is part of a series of pictures from our trip.)