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Modern Medicine

The Consumer Society

The Work Ethic

The Rule of Law and Representative Government.

these killer apps were essentially monopolized by Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia

the great divergence

They also grew more powerful

20th century, just a dozen Western empires—-including the United States—controlled 58 percent of the world’s land surface and population, and a staggering 74 percent of the global economy.

tendency of Western societies to delete their own killer apps.

But there is a second, more insidious cause of the “great reconvergence,” which I do deplore—and that is the

Ask yourself: who’s got the work ethic now? The average South Korean works about 39 percent more hours per week than the average American. The school year in South Korea is 220 days long, compared with 180 days here. And you don’t have to spend too long at any major U.S. university to know which students really drive themselves: the Asians and Asian-Americans

Yet life expectancy in the U.S. has risen from 70 to 78 in the past 50 years, compared with leaps from 68 to 83 in Japan and from 43 to 73 in China.

On no fewer than 15 of 16 different issues relating to property rights and governance, the United States fares worse than Hong Kong. Indeed, the U.S. makes the global top 20 in only one area: investor protection

The future belongs not to them but to today’s teenagers

The latest data on “mathematical literacy” reveal that the gap between the world leaders—the students of Shanghai and Singapore—and their American counterparts is now as big as the gap between U.S. kids and teenagers in Albania and Tunisia.

Yet statistics from the World Intellectual Property Organization show that already more patents originate in Japan than in the U.S., that South Korea overtook Germany to take third place in 2005, and that China is poised to overtake Germany too

the United States’ average competitiveness score has fallen from 5.82 to 5.43, one of the steepest declines among developed economies. China’s score, meanwhile, has leapt up from 4.29 to 4.90.

Perhaps more disturbing is the decline of meaningful competition at home, as the social mobility of the postwar era has given way to an extraordinary social polarization. You don’t have to be an Occupy Wall Street leftist to believe that the American super-rich elite—the 1 percent that collects 20 percent of the income—has become dangerously divorced from the rest of society, especially from the underclass at the bottom of the income distribution.

Far more than in Europe, most Americans remain instinctively loyal to the killer applications of Western ascendancy, from competition all the way through to the work ethic. They know the country has the right software. They just can’t understand why it’s running so damn slowly.

What we need to do is to delete the viruses that have crept into our system: the anticompetitive quasi monopolies that blight everything from banking to public education; the politically correct pseudosciences and soft subjects that deflect good students away from hard science; the lobbyists who subvert the rule of law for the sake of the special interests they represent—to say nothing of our crazily dysfunctional system of health care, our overleveraged personal finances, and our newfound unemployment ethic

And finally we need to reboot our whole system.

If what we are risking is not decline but downright collapse, then the time frame may be even tighter than one election cycle

Western Civilization's Killer Apps

COMPETITION

THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

THE RULE OF LAW

MODERN MEDICINE

THE CONSUMER SOCIETY

THE WORK ETHIC

The scores of fourth- and eighth-graders on reading tests have climbed steadily since the 1990s, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. But those of 12th-graders have fallen. Just 37 percent of high-school seniors graduate with “proficiency” in reading, meaning they can read a text for both its literal and its inferential meanings.

While those with bachelor’s and graduate degrees maintained the highest levels of literacy overall, those groups also experienced the steepest declines. Just 31 percent of college graduates were considered proficient readers in 2003, by that test’s definition, down from 40 percent in 1992.

“We quickly realized that unless you actually assign a grade for the out-of-class component, students just won’t do it,”

“Harvard students are really not that different in terms of how they behave. They’re bright, they’re academically more gifted,” she says. But they’re also “incredibly good at figuring out how to do exactly what they need to do to get the grade. They’re incredibly strategic. And I think that’s really true of students everywhere.”

turns the classroom into a social-learning environment

“We have young people who are coming away from high school with a very sort of test-driven training — I won’t call it education — training in reading.”

Teaching students how to read in college feels “remedial” to many professors

Faculty members are trained in their disciplines. “They don’t want to be reading teachers. I don’t think it’s a lack of motivation,” says Columbia’s Doris Perin. “They don’t feel they have the training.” Nor do they want to “infantilize” students by teaching basic comprehension skills, she says.

Tie reading to a grade: Quizzes and assigned journals, which can determine about 20 percent of the final grade, can double or even triple reading compliance — but rote formats that seem to exist for their own sake can encourage skimming or feel punitive.“Do away with the obvious justifications for not doing the reading,” says Naomi Baron, at American U. “If you summarize everything that’s in the reading, why should students do it?”Ask students to make arguments, compare, and contrast — higher- order skills than factual recall.Using different media is fine, but maintain rigor. “You can do critical reading of anything that has essentially an academic argument in it,” says David Jolliffe, at the U. of Arkansas. Video and audio, in fact, may sometimes be better than textbooks — what he calls “predigested food.”Explicitly tie out-of-class reading to in-class instruction, going over points of confusion and connecting lessons and texts to each other.Teach reading skills. “Hundreds” of strategies exist, all of which make “explicit the processes that proficient readers use without thinking about it,” says Doris Perin, at Columbia.

“A lot of faculty members, myself included, are saying, If they’re not doing the reading, we can get unhappy, we can get angry,” she says. “Or we can do something about it.”

It's one thing to be closed to students' arguments or to insist on conformity with a prof's views.  It is another altogether when students do not know how to argue their own points, especially points that are not political.  At some point, isn't it the case that the prof does know even a little bit more about their subjects than their students?

Several studies (post 1998) seem to indicate that the capacity to understand and engage in logical argumentation has diminished (at least in the 'Western' world). These studies seem to have encouraged the state education boards (committees) of several states to entertain making a "critical thinking" or "Introductory logic" course part of the required core.

I have found Susan Wolcott's teaching materials, which are informed by research by K.S. Kitchener and P. M. King, to be the most helpful in addressing student accusations of bias.  I had long been puzzled by why my colleagues in philosophy are so often accused of bias when, in my own observation of their teaching, they take care to keep their own views of a philosophical topic hidden from students.  Indeed, they spend a great deal of time playing devil's advocate and championing the philosophical position that is getting the least airtime in class discussion, readily switching sides if another perspective begins to be neglected.  Wolcott's developmental analysis, which explains how students arrive at college as "confused fact finders" and often get stuck in learning critical thinking skills at the "biased jumper" stage, helps me to understand how students attribute bias to professors when the students lack skills to maneuver around arguments.  The most helpful part of Wolcott's analysis is her suggestion that, if one gives students an assignment that is more than one level above their current abilities in critical thinking, they will completely ignore the assignment task.  This failing is particularly visible when students are asked to compare strengths/weaknesses in two arguments but instead write essays in which they juxtrapose two arguments and ignore the task of forging comparisons.  In Wolcott's workbooks (available by request on her website), she describes assignments that are specifically designed to help students build a scaffolding for critical thinking so that, over four years, they can actually leave the "biased jumper" stage and move on to more advanced levels of critical thinking.  One need not be a slavish adherent to the developmental theory behind Wolcott's work to find her practical suggestions extremely helpful in the classroom.   Her chart on stages of critical thinking is the first link below; her website is the second link.   http://www.wolcottlynch.com/Do... http://www.wolcottlynch.com/Ed...

The classroom and campus are not divorced from the polarized language in the greater society wherein people are entrenched in their own views and arguments become heated, hateful, and accusatory.  The focus of this study on political bias is not helpful under the circumstances.  The greater argument is that students need to be taught how to argue effectively, with facts, logic and reasoning not just in the classroom but beyond.

What happened to the 'Sage on the Stage' as the 'provacatuer-in-chief'?  Some of my best classroom experiences came from faculty that prompted critical thinking and discussion by speaking from all sides of an issue.  They were sufficiently informed to deflate weak arguments from students with probing questions.  They also defended an issue from every side with factual information.  In the best instances, I truly did not know the personal position of a faculty member.  It was more important to them to fully and fairly cover an issue than it was to espouse a personal preference.  That spoke volumes to me about the love of learning, critical examination of strongly held personal beliefs, and assertive but fair-minded discourse.  Do those faculty still exist?

The study suggests that those faculty do exist and in fact are numerous, but that students' ever-diminishing skills in critical thinking and argumentation lead them to misunderstand the questioning, challenging Socratic dialogue and "devil's advocate" work of the professor as simple bias. 

When I was teaching controversial subjects the advice from the Administration was, "Teach the debate."  Its pretty hard to "teach the debate" without actually having some of those debates.  When students "checked out" during those debates I always wondered if they were the ones who were going to report on their teaching evaluations that, "the professor was biased."  Of course when the student intellectually "checks out," i.e., remains quiet, only says what they think I want to hear, etc., they are not doing A work in the class.  This reinforces their view that "the professor is biased."

I had the ability to set my own schedule most of the time. I could be with my kids when I needed to be, and still get the work done.

the minute I found myself in a job that is typical for the vast majority of working women (and men), working long hours on someone else’s schedule, I could no longer be both the parent and the professional I wanted to be

having it all, at least for me, depended almost entirely on what type of job I had.

having it all was not possible in many types of jobs, including high government office—at least not for very long.

“Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work.”

Yet the decision to step down from a position of power—to value family over professional advancement, even for a time—is directly at odds with the prevailing social pressures on career professionals in the United States.

“leaving to spend time with your family” is a euphemism for being fired.

Think about what this “standard Washington excuse” implies: it is so unthinkable that an official would actually step down to spend time with his or her family that this must be a cover for something else.

it cannot change unless top women speak out.

Both were very clear that they did not want that life, but could not figure out how to combine professional success and satisfaction with a real commitment to family.

many of us are also reinforcing a falsehood: that “having it all” is, more than anything, a function of personal determination.

there has been very little honest discussion among women of our age about the real barriers and flaws that still exist in the system despite the opportunities we inherited.

But we have choices about the type and tempo of the work we do. We are the women who could be leading, and who should be equally represented in the leadership ranks.

women are less happy today than their predecessors were in 1972, both in absolute terms and relative to men.

The best hope for improving the lot of all women, and for closing what Wolfers and Stevenson call a “new gender gap”—measured by well-being rather than wages—is to close the leadership gap:

Only when women wield power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women. That will be a society that works for everyone.

We must clear them out of the way to make room for a more honest and productive discussion about real solutions to the problems faced by professional women.

These women cannot possibly be the standard against which even very talented professional women should measure themselves. Such a standard sets up most women for a sense of failure

A simple measure is how many women in top positions have children compared with their male colleagues.

Every male Supreme Court justice has a family. Two of the three female justices are single with no children.

women hold fewer than 30 percent of the senior foreign-policy positions in each of these institutions.

“You know what would help the vast majority of women with work/family balance? MAKE SCHOOL SCHEDULES MATCH WORK SCHEDULES.” The present system, she noted, is based on a society that no longer exists—one in which farming was a major occupation and stay-at-home moms were the norm. Yet the system hasn’t changed.

“Inflexible schedules, unrelenting travel, and constant pressure to be in the office are common features of these jobs.”

I would hope to see commencement speeches that finger America’s social and business policies, rather than women’s level of ambition, in explaining the dearth of women at the top. But changing these policies requires much more than speeches. It means fighting the mundane battles—every day, every year—in individual workplaces, in legislatures, and in the media.

assumes that most women will feel as comfortable as men do about being away from their children, as long as their partner is home with them. In my experience, that is simply not the case.

I do not believe fathers love their children any less than mothers do, but men do seem more likely to choose their job at a cost to their family, while women seem more likely to choose their family at a cost to their job.

To many men, however, the choice to spend more time with their children, instead of working long hours on issues that affect many lives, seems selfish.

It is not clear to me that this ethical framework makes sense for society. Why should we want leaders who fall short on personal responsibilities?

Regardless, it is clear which set of choices society values more today. Workers who put their careers first are typically rewarded; workers who choose their families are overlooked, disbelieved, or accused of unprofessionalism.

having a supportive mate may well be a necessary condition if women are to have it all, but it is not sufficient

Ultimately, it is society that must change, coming to value choices to put family ahead of work just as much as those to put work ahead of family. If we really valued those choices, we would value the people who make them; if we valued the people who make them, we would do everything possible to hire and retain them; if we did everything possible to allow them to combine work and family equally over time, then the choices would get a lot easier.

Given the way our work culture is oriented today, I recommend establishing yourself in your career first but still trying to have kids before you are 35—or else freeze your eggs, whether you are married or not.

But the truth is, neither sequence is optimal, and both involve trade-offs that men do not have to make.

You should be able to have a family if you want one—however and whenever your life circumstances allow—and still have the career you desire.

If more women could strike this balance, more women would reach leadership positions. And if more women were in leadership positions, they could make it easier for more women to stay in the workforce. The rest of this essay details how.

I have to admit that my assumption that I would stay late made me much less efficient over the course of the day than I might have been, and certainly less so than some of my colleagues, who managed to get the same amount of work done and go home at a decent hour.

Still, armed with e-mail, instant messaging, phones, and videoconferencing technology, we should be able to move to a culture where the office is a base of operations more than the required locus of work.

Being able to work from home—in the evening after children are put to bed, or during their sick days or snow days, and at least some of the time on weekends—can be the key, for mothers, to carrying your full load versus letting a team down at crucial moments.

Changes in default office rules should not advantage parents over other workers; indeed, done right, they can improve relations among co-workers by raising their awareness of each other’s circumstances and instilling a sense of fairness.

The policy was shaped by the belief that giving women “special treatment” can “backfire if the broader norms shaping the behavior of all employees do not change.”

Our assumptions are just that: things we believe that are not necessarily so. Yet what we assume has an enormous impact on our perceptions and responses. Fortunately, changing our assumptions is up to us.

One of the best ways to move social norms in this direction is to choose and celebrate different role models.

If we didn’t start to learn how to integrate our personal, social, and professional lives, we were about five years away from morphing into the angry woman on the other side of a mahogany desk who questions her staff’s work ethic after standard 12-hour workdays, before heading home to eat moo shoo pork in her lonely apartment.

Women have contributed to the fetish of the one-dimensional life, albeit by necessity. The pioneer generation of feminists walled off their personal lives from their professional personas to ensure that they could never be discriminated against for a lack of commitment to their work.

It seems odd to me to list degrees, awards, positions, and interests and not include the dimension of my life that is most important to me—and takes an enormous amount of my time.

when my entire purpose is to make family references routine and normal in professional life.

This does not mean that you should insist that your colleagues spend time cooing over pictures of your baby or listening to the prodigious accomplishments of your kindergartner. It does mean that if you are late coming in one week, because it is your turn to drive the kids to school, that you be honest about what you are doing.

Seeking out a more balanced life is not a women’s issue; balance would be better for us all.

Indeed, the most frequent reaction I get in putting forth these ideas is that when the choice is whether to hire a man who will work whenever and wherever needed, or a woman who needs more flexibility, choosing the man will add more value to the company.

In 2011, a study on flexibility in the workplace by Ellen Galinsky, Kelly Sakai, and Tyler Wigton of the Families and Work Institute showed that increased flexibility correlates positively with job engagement, job satisfaction, employee retention, and employee health.

Other scholars have concluded that good family policies attract better talent, which in turn raises productivity, but that the policies themselves have no impact on productivity.

What is evident, however, is that many firms that recruit and train well-educated professional women are aware that when a woman leaves because of bad work-family balance, they are losing the money and time they invested in her.

The answer—already being deployed in different corners of the industry—is a combination of alternative fee structures, virtual firms, women-owned firms, and the outsourcing of discrete legal jobs to other jurisdictions.

Women, and Generation X and Y lawyers more generally, are pushing for these changes on the supply side; clients determined to reduce legal fees and increase flexible service are pulling on the demand side. Slowly, change is happening.

In trying to address these issues, some firms are finding out that women’s ways of working may just be better ways of working, for employees and clients alike.

“We believe that connecting play and imagination may be the single most important step in unleashing the new culture of learning.”

“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recovered at will.” Google apparently has taken note.

the more often people with different perspectives come together, the more likely creative ideas are to emerge. Giving workers the ability to integrate their non-work lives with their work—whether they spend that time mothering or marathoning—will open the door to a much wider range of influences and ideas.

Men have, of course, become much more involved parents over the past couple of decades, and that, too, suggests broad support for big changes in the way we balance work and family.

women would do well to frame work-family balance in terms of the broader social and economic issues that affect both women and men.

These women are extraordinary role models.

Yet I also want a world in which, in Lisa Jackson’s words, “to be a strong woman, you don’t have to give up on the things that define you as a woman.”

“Empowering yourself,” Jackson said in her speech at Princeton, “doesn’t have to mean rejecting motherhood, or eliminating the nurturing or feminine aspects of who you are.”

But now is the time to revisit the assumption that women must rush to adapt to the “man’s world” that our mothers and mentors warned us about.

If women are ever to achieve real equality as leaders, then we have to stop accepting male behavior and male choices as the default and the ideal.

We must insist on changing social policies and bending career tracks to accommodate our choices, too. We have the power to do it if we decide to, and we have many men standing beside us.

But when we do, we will stop talking about whether women can have it all.