Category: Society

Posted on

rePost :On MTRCB Showtime Osang and Teachers: Marginal Revolution: Heroes are not Replicable

I’ve written about this before but seeing that the MTRCB is still in the process of engaging in a pissing match with ABS-CBN I’m posting about how being a repeater (the “insult” hurled by Rosanna Roces on the teachers) is actually taken in light of evidence with DI (Direct Instruction) is a convoluted form of praise. To be a repeater is a form of acceptance for most teachers. I am unremarkable. I am a cog. I am a replaceable cog. To accept this is in some ways accepting that student’s learning is more important than the sense of validation that people crave from other people. Truly heroic.

In Super Crunchers, Ian Ayres argues that just such a method exists.  Overall, Super Crunchers is a light but entertaining account of how large amounts of data and cheap computing power are improving forecasting and decision making in social science, government and business.  I enjoyed the book.  Chapter 7, however, was a real highlight.
Ayres argues that large experimental studies have shown that the teaching method which works best is Direct Instruction (here and here are two non-academic discussions which summarizes much of the same academic evidence discussed in Ayres).  In Direct Instruction the teacher follows a script, a carefully designed and evaluated script.  As Ayres notes this is key:

DI is scalable.  Its success isn’t contingent on the personality of some uber-teacher….You don’t need to be a genius to be an effective DI teacher.  DI can be implemented in dozens upon dozens of classrooms with just ordinary teachers.  You just need to be able to follow the script.

Contrary to what you might think, the data also show that DI does not impede creativity or self-esteem.  The education establishment, however, hates DI because it is a threat to the power and prestige of teaching, they prefer the model of teacher as hero.  As Ayres says “The education establishment is wedded to its pet theories regardless of what the evidence says.”  As a result they have fought it tooth and nail so that “Direct Instruction, the oldest and most validated program, has captured only a little more than 1 percent of the grade-school market.”
Posted by Alex Tabarrok on September 27, 2007 at 08:20 AM
via Marginal Revolution: Heroes are not Replicable.

Posted on

rePost :: Political ideologies and the 2010 elections | 100ARAW.com

Reading this gives me hope that my dream of a culture for a high level of political discourse for our country becomes a reality within 3 national elections including this one.
Thanks to chuck for posting this on facebook!

Political ideologies and the 2010 electionsApril 5, 2010By BenCyrus G. EllorinThe contest between the top two pre-election survey leaders in the Presidential race has the trappings of the age-old conflict between the progressive/militant National Democrats and the moderate Social Democrats.
via Political ideologies and the 2010 elections | 100ARAW.com.

Posted on

Praise :: Voters to go for candidates who promote contraceptives –surveys | ABS-CBN News Online Beta

Kudos to the Filipinos!!

Voters to go for candidates who promote contraceptives –surveys

by Lilita Balane, Newsbreak | 03/12/2010 7:03 PM
MANILA, Philippines – Most Filipino voters would choose presidential candidates who openly support a national family planning law, according to surveys released on Friday by 2 major polling firms.
The surveys were commissioned by 2 different groups advocating family planning.
In the survey on family planning conducted by Pulse Asia, more than 6 out 10 (or 64%) of respondents said they would vote for candidates who promote the use of contraceptives.
In Congress, the provision for government funding for contraceptives has been the most divisive part of the reproductive health bill, which lawmakers failed to put to vote in almost a decade.
Now, an election year, Pulse Asia’s survey also shows that about 75% of the voters  deem important that family planning be included in a candidate’s program of action.
Only 6% of the respondents in the February 21-25 survey, said that they will not support candidates backing modern family planning; 30% are undecided. The survey interviewed 1,800 respondents, and has ± 2% nationwide margin of error.
via Voters to go for candidates who promote contraceptives –surveys | ABS-CBN News Online Beta.

Posted on

rePost :: Lesbian panic shuts down Mississippi high-school prom – Boing Boing

Lesbian panic shuts down Mississippi high-school prom

Cory Doctorow at 6:51 AM March 11, 2010

Mississippi’s Itawamba County school district has cancelled a prom after Constance McMillen, an 18-year-old student, asked permission to bring her girlfriend as her date. The student planned to wear a tux. The school district’s bureaucratic non-excuse for the cancellation is that it’s “due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events.” The district appears to be tap-dancing around the reason for the cancellation in an effort to avoid openly saying “We are scared of teh ghey,” since that would open them up to legal liability. The ACLU isn’t buying it. They’ve told the school district that they’ve got until Wednesday to change the policy or else.
“A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it’s really retaliation,” McMillen told The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson. Calls to McMillen by The Associated Press late Wednesday went unanswered…
via Lesbian panic shuts down Mississippi high-school prom – Boing Boing.

Posted on

rePost :: Neurosurgical patients get closer to God

If the various churches don’t get their act together we are going to have a century that is defined with tension between religous groups and between theist and non-theist. I ‘ve said this before but I feel that the line is about even that religions of any kind would one day be treated as simple organizations such as corporations and non-profits, and religiosity of any kind would be viewed more as a mental disability like alcoholism , or any form of substance abuse.

Neurosurgical patients get closer to God

Category: Neuroscience • Religion
Posted on: February 27, 2010 3:58 PM, by Mo
REMOVAL of specific parts of the brain can induce increases in a personality trait which predisposes people to spirituality, according to a new clinical study by Italian researchers. The new research, published earlier this month in the journal Neuron, provides evidence that some brain structures are associated with spiritual thinking and feelings, and hints at individual differences that might make some people more prone than others to spirituality.
via ScienceBlogs.com here

Posted on

rePost::Mind your own business | Filipino Voices

You know what their arguments sound like? The arguments of The Best And The Brightest against letting Vietnam fall. Letting Vietnam fall would lead to the fall of most Asian nations to communism. This reeks of the small mindedness and ultimately wrong headed infallibility approach to policy making.

Mind your own business

via Mind your own business | Filipino Voices.

March 2nd, 2010 by Manuel Buencamino

“The ratio of tolerance of our bishops towards the excesses of the Arroyo regime is directly proportional to their intolerance for condoms and contraceptives.” – Philip Gilmore
Health secretary Esperanza Cabral decided to distribute free condoms “to those who cannot afford it” because HIV/AIDS cases are spreading at an alarming rate. That earned her the ire of the Catholic Church.
One bishop denounced her timely intervention as immoral and warned her that, “she already has one foot in hell and many more might suffer the same fate” if she did not stop what she was doing.
“It’s very immoral for someone in a government position to support the distribution of condoms which we know, do not really reduce or stop the spread of HIV-AIDS. It’s scary because it’s the morality of our society, especially of our youth, that is at stake. We only wish that Cabral would change because she already has one foot in hell. People might suffer the same fate,” the bishop said.
Another bishop refused to accept the fact that Cabral’s primary duty as the secretary of health is to safeguard the public’s physical wellbeing, not their spiritual health and salvation. He wanted her fired for reasons that would make sense only if the Philippines were a theocratic state like Iran or an Afghanistan under Taliban rule.
“Secretary Cabral should not continue serving until June because the culture and morality of society will be endangered under her. First, she does not respect the big number of Catholics in the country who oppose the distribution of condoms. Second, is she Catholic? I doubt that she is. Because if you are a Catholic and in the government, you should be living the teachings of the Church. But she is doing the opposite.”

Posted on

rePost::Bronte Capital: In which Paul Krugman proves he is an academic snob who argues from his prejudice rather than the data

People want news that confirms their world view. The few people who wants news to inform their worldviews is in the minority, or if not in the minority they are the silent (read not that media consuming) majority. And as Edmund Burke has said “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”

What sells the news?
Paul Krugman gives his view of what sells the news.  It is a view that fits the vision of the Gray Lady quite well: a clear distinction between news pages and editorial pages, facts supported by data etc.  That is also how I want my news presented.  However the evidence that that sells the news is quite thin.  Whatever Rupert did to the WSJ Journal (that which Felix Salmon and Brad Delong rail against) appears to be working.
More generally opinion dressed up as news, especially when it panders to the prejudice of your readers or viewers works seems to sell really well.  A while back I gave a quarterly series of operating profits (in millions) for Fox Cable Networks – a business dominated by Fox News.  Here they are again: 197, 262, 211,194, 249, 275, 282, 284, 289, 337, 330, 313, 379, 428, 429, 434, 495.
There are few businesses with growth in operating profits without substantial capital expenditure that look anything like that.  Well Fox News gets even better (at least from the perspective of a News Corp shareholder).  The latest number is was $604 million operating profit for the quarter ended 30 December 2009.
via Bronte Capital: In which Paul Krugman proves he is an academic snob who argues from his prejudice rather than the data.

Posted on

rePost::To the young writers of Cavite – HINDSIGHT By F Sionil Jose | The Philippine Star >> Lifestyle Features >> Arts and Culture

Read the whole thing!

This past is littered with the detritus of contradictions, some of them very sad because they expose a dangerous fault in our character. Our loyalties circumscribed by ethnicity, family and ego obstruct the making of a nation. And this is what we still are this very day — Caviteños, Warays, Ilokanos — we are yet to be a nation. Our institutions of nationhood in themselves are hollow as evidenced in the corruption in the highest precincts of power, in our continuing poverty, not only the physical kind but the most damning of all — which is the poverty of the spirit.
In that tumultuous event in Tejeros, General Artemio Ricarte turned his back on his former leader. If Bonifacio was betrayed at Tejeros, Aguinaldo himself was, in turn, betrayed later on in Palanan when the Macabebe collaborators tricked him into his capture by the Americans.
This is all water under the bridge; now we must realize how our leaders today have betrayed us, too; they used the slogans of nationalism, the enduring ties of kinship, of patronage to assume power and colonize us.
Aside from these painful contradictions, our past also informs us how empty our country is of the hoary civilizations of Asia, the great temples, the classical arts and particularly literature, which our part of the world has in abundance.
Must we then, particularly those of us who write, feel inferior to our neighbors with their ancient cultural achievements, their great pre-colonial art?
via To the young writers of Cavite – HINDSIGHT By F Sionil Jose | The Philippine Star >> Lifestyle Features >> Arts and Culture.

Posted on

rePost::A first in RP: 23,000 inmates to vote in May polls – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

This is great. How can the presumption of innocence be maintained when the government is party to the prevention of these people from doing something that is both their duty and right.

SAYS COMELEC
A first in RP: 23,000 inmates to vote in May polls
By Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 12:06:00 03/01/2010
Filed Under: Prison, Elections, Human Rights
MANILA, Philippines—The Commission on Elections (Comelec) said that over 23,000 inmates nationwide will vote for the first time in the May 10 automated elections—with some to vote in special polling places inside detention facilities.
Elections Commissioner Rene Sarmiento, who also chairs the committee for detainee registration and voting, told INQUIRER.net that the poll body resolved that detainees—who reside and have registered as voters in the district or municipality where the detention facilities are located—could vote in the country’s first attempt in automating the elections.
At least 23,657 detainees or 43 percent of the total 54,866 detainees eligible to vote in 414 facilities of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) have registered with the poll body between July and October 15, Sarmiento said.
“Under the law, a person can vote in the elections if he has resided in the municipality where he intends to vote six months prior to the elections and at least a year in the country. Detainees who are not convicted of any crime or punished by the Revised Penal Code, penal laws, or regulations are still presumed innocent of their accusations and retain their right of suffrage,” said Sarmiento.
via A first in RP: 23,000 inmates to vote in May polls – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.

Posted on

rePost::Paying for school on $2 a day

Why on earth would a poor family just getting by on the meager wages they earned fishing or pulling rickshaws choose to pay between $1.50 and $7 a month to send their children to private schools if they didn’t have to? In some isolated villages, the closest public school was still too far away, or impossible to get to during the rainy or cold seasons. For other families, the hidden costs of “free” education outweighed the very low cost of schools in their communities (in Kenya, for example, one parent described high up-front costs for a building maintenance fund and two complete school uniforms required by the public schools in her area).
Most reasons that the parents gave for their choice had to do with what the World Bank calls the “short route” to accountability (as opposed to the “long route” which works through the political process). Because school owners’ profits and reputations in the community depend directly on whether parents are happy with their children’s schooling, they paid attention to parents’ complaints. Because teachers in private schools can be fired, they were less likely to be late, idle or absent.
via Paying for school on $2 a day.