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anonymous

Can Chimps Talk: Can Konzi Go to College - 0 views

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    "MR. HOFFMAN: Konzi is a Benobo, a pygmy chimpanzee. He and his sister, Pambinisha, are the subjects of Doctor Sue Savage Rumbaugh's work. That work is questioning the widely accepted view that only humans are capable of language. For 20 years, she's been studying whether Benobos can learn language, working first with their mother, Matata, back in 1975. SUE SAVAGE-RUMBAUGH, Georgia State University: We were trying to do some very simple things like hold up an apple and teach Matata to hit the symbol for apple, and then we would give her an apple. She learned that. What we wanted then to be able to do was to have her use the symbol for apple whenever she was talking about an apple, whether she was intending to eat it or not, to know in a sense that the symbol represented apple, not just the fact that she was going to get apple. This, she couldn't learn, but fortunately, she had a youngster named Konzi, who was around and was playing while I was trying to teach her, and Konzi did learn, even though we weren't trying to teach him. What we found with Konzi was that simply by watching what we did with his mother, he was able to make this correlation so that he knew that the symbol apple represented apple, whether he got to eat one, whether his mother got to eat one, whether we were saying, no, Konzi, don't eat an apple, it still meant apple. "
anonymous

Language in Apes: How Much Do They Know and How Much Should We Teach Them - 0 views

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    Humans have often asserted a fundamental difference between themselves and other animals. One of these assertions which has had many proponents into the twentieth century is that humans differ from animals in their use of language. In the past thirty years this assertion has been the subject of much debate as scientists have researched language use by apes. (I use the term "ape" to refer to "great ape" in this essay, as many of my sources do. There have apparently been no language experiments with gibbons or siamangs.) Extraordinary claims have been made by some researchers about the linguistic capabilities of their subjects, mostly chimpanzees. These claims have been refuted and counter-refuted many times, and the literature on the subject is extensive. In this essay I will examine the question of how much, if at all, primates are able to communicate using language. I will then examine the ethical issues surrounding the teaching of language to apes. What is language? First, what is language, and how does it differ from other forms of communication? There does not exist a universally accepted definition of language, or criteria for its use; this is one of the reasons for the disagreement among scientists about whether apes can use language. Language consists of various aspects which people believe are more or less important, for example, grammar, symbol usage, the ability to represent real-world situations, and the ability to articulate something new (Wallman 1992: 6). Duane Rumbaugh describes language as "an infinitely open system of communication" (Rumbaugh 1977b: xx). Some people say that anything an ape can do is not language; of course, if these are the same people who say that language defines us as humans, and an ape can learn sign language, then they are saying that deaf people who use sign language are not human (Patterson & Linden 1981: 119-120). One famous view of language is Charles Hockett's seven key properties: duality, productivity, arbitrariness,
anonymous

Mark Twain on Plagiarism and Originality: "All Ideas Are Second-Hand" | Brain Pickings - 0 views

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    ""The kernel, the soul - let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances - is plagiarism." The combinatorial nature of creativity is something I think about a great deal, so this 1903 letter Mark Twain wrote to his friend Helen Keller, found in Mark Twain's Letters, Vol. 2 of 2, makes me nod with the manic indefatigability of a dashboard bobble-head dog. In this excerpt, Twain addresses some plagiarism charges that had been made against Keller some 11 years prior, when her short story "The Frost King" was found to be strikingly similar to Margaret Canby's "Frost Fairies." Heller was acquitted after an investigation, but the incident stuck with Twain and prompted him to pen the following passionate words more than a decade later, which articulate just about everything I believe to be true of combinatorial creativity and the myth of originality: Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that 'plagiarism' farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul - let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances - is plagiarism. For substantially all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources, and daily use by the garnerer with a pride and satisfaction born of the superstition that he originated them; whereas there is not a rag of originality about them anywhere except the little discoloration they get from his mental and moral calibre and his temperament, and which is revealed in characteristics of phrasing. When a great orator makes a great speech you are listening to ten centuries and ten thousand men - but we call it his speech, and really some exceedingly small portion of it is his. But not enough to signify. It is merely a Waterloo. It is Wellington's battle, in some de
anonymous

Wanted - Baby Sitters With Foreign Language Skills - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • “Once you are trilingual,” she said, “your brain can break down new languages that make it so much easier to learn your fourth, fifth and sixth languages.”
  • In fact, research shows that learning a second language makes it easier to learn additional languages. In recent years, a number of neuroscientists and psychologists have tried to untangle the impact of bilingualism on brain development. “It doesn’t make kids smarter,” said Ellen Bialystok, a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto and the author of “Bilingualism in Development: Language, Literacy and Cognition.” “There are documented cognitive developments,” she said, “but whatever smarter means, it isn’t true.”
  • Ms. Bialystok’s research shows that bilingual children tend to have smaller vocabularies in English than their monolingual counterparts, and that the limited vocabulary tends to be words used at home (spatula and squash) rather than words used at school (astronaut, rectangle). The measurement of vocabulary is always in one language: a bilingual child’s collective vocabulary from both languages will probably be larger.
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  • “Bilingualism carries a cost, and the cost is rapid access to words,” Ms. Bialystok said. In other words, children have to work harder to access the right word in the right language, which can slow them down — by milliseconds, but slower nonetheless.
  • At the same time, bilingual children do better at complex tasks like isolating information presented in confusing ways. In one test researchers frequently use, words like “red” and “green” flash across a screen, but the words actually appear in purple and yellow. Bilingual children are faster at identifying what color the word is written in, a fact researchers attribute to a more developed prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain responsible for executive decision-making, like which language to use with certain people). Ms. D’Souza said that both of her sons lagged their peers by almost a year in verbal development. Her pediatrician recommended speech therapy, and one son’s preschool teacher expressed concern that he did not know the alphabet. But when both started speaking, at around 3 years old, they were able to move fluidly among three languages. She said that her older son tested in the 99th percentile for the city’s gifted and talented program. “The flexibility of their thinking helps them in nonlinguistic abilities like science and math,” she said, speaking of her children. “But at the same time the normal things — the alphabet — they have trouble with that.”
  • George P. Davison, head of school at Grace Church School, a competitive downtown school, said that bilingualism tended to suppress verbal and reading comprehension test scores by 20 to 30 percent for children younger than 12. “If anything, it can have a negative effect on admissions,” he said.
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    Parenting sites indicate many New York City parents want caregivers to teach their children a language.
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    Some interesting questions as to whether parents can "know" it's a good thing or a bad thing to have their children learn a second language. There are clearly cognitive and social costs and benefits that must be weighed.
anonymous

BBC News - Teaching philosophy with Spider-Man - 0 views

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    "For years, fans of the Batman comics have puzzled over a mystery at the heart of the series: why doesn't Batman just kill his arch-nemesis, the murderous Joker? The two have engaged in a prolonged game of cat-and-mouse. The Joker commits a crime, Batman catches him, the Joker is locked up, and then invariably escapes. Wouldn't all this be much simpler if Batman just killed the Joker? What's stopping him? Enter philosopher Immanuel Kant and the deontological theory of ethics Now, philosophy professors are finding superheroes and comic books to be exceptionally useful tools in helping students think about the complex moral and ethical debates that have occupied philosophers for centuries."
anonymous

In Monkey Babble, Seeking Key to Human Language Development - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    "Do apes and monkeys have a secret language that has not yet been decrypted? And if so, will it resolve the mystery of how the human faculty for language evolved? Biologists have approached the issue in two ways, by trying to teach human language to chimpanzees and other species, and by listening to animals in the wild."
anonymous

A Point of View - BBC4 - In Our Time - 0 views

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    "David Cannadine reflects on the teaching of history in schools and the moves at home and abroad to reform the curriculum and re-write the textbooks."
anonymous

Virginia 4th-grade textbook criticized over claims on black Confederate soldiers - 0 views

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    "A textbook distributed to Virginia fourth-graders says that thousands of African Americans fought for the South during the Civil War -- a claim rejected by most historians but often made by groups seeking to play down slavery's role as a cause of the conflict. The passage appears in "Our Virginia: Past and Present," which was distributed in the state's public elementary schools for the first time last month. The author, Joy Masoff, who is not a trained historian but has written several books, said she found the information about black Confederate soldiers primarily through Internet research, which turned up work by members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Scholars are nearly unanimous in calling these accounts of black Confederate soldiers a misrepresentation of history. Virginia education officials, after being told by The Washington Post of the issues related to the textbook, said that the vetting of the book was flawed and that they will contact school districts across the state to caution them against teaching the passage. "Just because a book is approved doesn't mean the Department of Education endorses every sentence," said spokesman Charles Pyle. He also called the book's assertion about black Confederate soldiers "outside mainstream Civil War scholarship." "
anonymous

Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    "Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning. Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks - and less able to sustain attention. "Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing," said Michael Rich, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston. And the effects could linger: "The worry is we're raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently." But even as some parents and educators express unease about students' digital diets, they are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills. Across the country, schools are equipping themselves with computers, Internet access and mobile devices so they can teach on the students' technological territory. "
anonymous

Hindu Group Stirs Debate in Fight for Soul of Yoga - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    "Yoga is practiced by about 15 million people in the United States, for reasons almost as numerous - from the physical benefits mapped in brain scans to the less tangible rewards that New Age journals call spiritual centering. Religion, for the most part, has nothing to do with it. But a group of Indian-Americans has ignited a surprisingly fierce debate in the gentle world of yoga by mounting a campaign to acquaint Westerners with the faith that it says underlies every single yoga style followed in gyms, ashrams and spas: Hinduism. The campaign, labeled "Take Back Yoga," does not ask yoga devotees to become Hindu, or instructors to teach more about Hinduism. The small but increasingly influential group behind it, the Hindu American Foundation, suggests only that people become more aware of yoga's debt to the faith's ancient traditions. That suggestion, modest though it may seem, has drawn a flurry of strong reactions from figures far apart on the religious spectrum. Dr. Deepak Chopra, the New Age writer, has dismissed the campaign as a jumble of faulty history and Hindu nationalism. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has said he agrees that yoga is Hindu - and cited that as evidence that the practice imperiled the souls of Christians who engage in it. The question at the core of the debate - who owns yoga? - has become an enduring topic of chatter in yoga Web forums, Hindu American newspapers and journals catering to the many consumers of what is now a multibillion-dollar yoga industry. "
anonymous

For Math Students, Self-Esteem Might Not Equal High Scores - washingtonpost.com - 0 views

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    "It is difficult to get through a day in an American school without hearing maxims such as these: "To succeed, you must believe in yourself," and "To teach, you must relate the subject to the lives of students." But the Brookings Institution is reporting today that countries such as the United States that embrace self-esteem, joy and real-world relevance in learning mathematics are lagging behind others that don't promote all that self-regard. Consider Korea and Japan. According to the Washington think tank's annual Brown Center report on education, 6 percent of Korean eighth-graders surveyed expressed confidence in their math skills, compared with 39 percent of U.S. eighth-graders. But a respected international math assessment showed Koreans scoring far ahead of their peers in the United States, raising questions about the importance of self-esteem. In Japan, the report found, 14 percent of math teachers surveyed said they aim to connect lessons to students' lives, compared with 66 percent of U.S. math teachers. Yet the U.S. scores in eighth-grade math trail those of the Japanese, raising similar questions about the importance of practical relevance. "
anonymous

For Law School Graduates, Debts if Not Job Offers - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    "IF there is ever a class in how to remain calm while trapped beneath $250,000 in loans, Michael Wallerstein ought to teach it. Here he is, sitting one afternoon at a restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a tall, sandy-haired, 27-year-old radiating a kind of surfer-dude serenity. His secret, if that's the right word, is to pretty much ignore all the calls and letters that he receives every day from the dozen or so creditors now hounding him for cash. "And I don't open the e-mail alerts with my credit score," he adds. "I can't look at my credit score any more." Mr. Wallerstein, who can't afford to pay down interest and thus watches the outstanding loan balance grow, is in roughly the same financial hell as people who bought more home than they could afford during the real estate boom. But creditors can't foreclose on him because he didn't spend the money on a house. "
anonymous

The Lives They Lived - 2010 - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com - 1 views

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    "HERE IS A mathematician's nightmare I heard in the 1980s when that irritating, unconforming, self-regarding provocateur Benoît Mandelbrot was suddenly famous - fractals, fractals everywhere. The mathematician dreamed that Mandelbrot died, and God spoke: "You know, there really was something to that Mandelbrot." Sure enough. Mandelbrot created nothing less than a new geometry, to stand side by side with Euclid's - a geometry to mirror not the ideal forms of thought but the real complexity of nature. He was a mathematician who was never welcomed into the fraternity ("Fortress Mathematics," he said, where "the highest ambition is to wall off the windows and preserve only one door"), and he pretended that was fine with him. When Yale first hired him to teach, it was in engineering and applied science; for most of his career he was supported at I.B.M.'s Westchester research lab. He called himself a "nomad by choice." He considered himself an experienced refugee: born to a Jewish family in Warsaw in 1924, he immigrated to Paris ahead of the Nazis, then fled farther and farther into the French countryside."
anonymous

Bart D. Ehrman: Who Wrote The Bible and Why It Matters - 1 views

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    "Apart from the most rabid fundamentalists among us, nearly everyone admits that the Bible might contain errors -- a faulty creation story here, a historical mistake there, a contradiction or two in some other place. But is it possible that the problem is worse than that -- that the Bible actually contains lies? Most people wouldn't put it that way, since the Bible is, after all, sacred Scripture for millions on our planet. But good Christian scholars of the Bible, including the top Protestant and Catholic scholars of America, will tell you that the Bible is full of lies, even if they refuse to use the term. And here is the truth: Many of the books of the New Testament were written by people who lied about their identity, claiming to be a famous apostle -- Peter, Paul or James -- knowing full well they were someone else. In modern parlance, that is a lie, and a book written by someone who lies about his identity is a forgery. Most modern scholars of the Bible shy away from these terms, and for understandable reasons, some having to do with their clientele. Teaching in Christian seminaries, or to largely Christian undergraduate populations, who wants to denigrate the cherished texts of Scripture by calling them forgeries built on lies? And so scholars use a different term for this phenomenon and call such books "pseudepigrapha." You will find this antiseptic term throughout the writings of modern scholars of the Bible. It's the term used in university classes on the New Testament, and in seminary courses, and in Ph.D. seminars. What the people who use the term do not tell you is that it literally means "writing that is inscribed with a lie.""
anonymous

Teaching the Civil War, 150 years later - The Washington Post - 0 views

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    "And this is how the Civil War comes to life for a roomful of fourth-graders in Northern Virginia, 150 years after the nation's deadliest armed conflict began. Agner's reenactment of the landmark naval Battle of Hampton Roads - a tactile lesson the vet­eran teacher dreamed up this year - drew her Fairfax County class into a chapter of American history that has long provoked education debate. The war's sesquicentennial, starting Tuesday with the anniversary of the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, provides a "teachable moment" for schools everywhere. But how and when students learn about slavery and secession, blue and gray, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, Bull Run (or Manassas) and Appomattox varies enormously from state to state, school to school and even teacher to teacher. This year, Virginia learned anew the sensitivity of Civil War education when the state Board of Education withdrew approval of a fourth-grade textbook - "Our Virginia: Past and Present" - that asserted thousands of African Americans fought for the South. Most historians reject that claim. Last year, the Texas State Board of Education voted to require eighth-graders to study the inaugural address of Confederate President Jefferson Davis alongside President Abraham Lincoln's first and second inaugurals and his Gettysburg Address. That was one of many controversial revisions to Texas standards. Jeremy A. Stern, a historian who reviewed state academic standards this year for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said differences in the timing and scope of Civil War education across the United States are dramatic. Often, he said, the war is not taught systematically until middle school. "
anonymous

The False Digital Imperative | Teaching Writing in a Digital Age - 0 views

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    One of the concerns that I am left with as the influx of digital media pervades composition classrooms is a concern that Nicolas Carr writes about in his widely read Atlantic Magazine article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? Digital media supplies information, but it also shapes the process of thought. He openly talks about his experience with feeling like his intellect has dwindled as the internet makes information so accessible that we are not burdened, and thus enlightened, by the search of answers any longer:
anonymous

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com - 1 views

    • anonymous
       
      This is such a comment complaint of teachers, namely that students act, from year to year, as if they don't remember every even being introduced to something that the current year teacher thinks is review. Many grade level teachers begin the year thinking their predecessors in the previous year didn't do a good job preparing their students.
  • These findings extend well beyond math, even to aesthetic intuitive learning.
  • The finding undermines the common assumption that intensive immersion is the best way to really master a particular genre, or type of creative work, said Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College and the lead author of the study. “What seems to be happening in this case is that the brain is picking up deeper patterns when seeing assortments of paintings; it’s picking up what’s similar and what’s different about them,” often subconsciously.
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  • But at the very least, the cognitive techniques give parents and students, young and old, something many did not have before: a study plan based on evidence, not schoolyard folk wisdom, or empty theorizing.
  • “With many students, it’s not like they can’t remember the material” when they move to a more advanced class, said Henry L. Roediger III, a psychologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “It’s like they’ve never seen it before.”
  • That’s one reason cognitive scientists see testing itself — or practice tests and quizzes — as a powerful tool of learning, rather than merely assessment. The process of retrieving an idea is not like pulling a book from a shelf; it seems to fundamentally alter the way the information is subsequently stored, making it far more accessible in the future.
  • Dr. Roediger uses the analogy of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in physics, which holds that the act of measuring a property of a particle (position, for example) reduces the accuracy with which you can know another property (momentum, for example): “Testing not only measures knowledge but changes it,” he says — and, happily, in the direction of more certainty, not less.
  • “Testing has such bad connotation; people think of standardized testing or teaching to the test,” Dr. Roediger said. “Maybe we need to call it something else, but this is one of the most powerful learning tools we have.”
  • Motivation matters. So do impressing friends, making the hockey team and finding the nerve to text the cute student in social studies.
  • The more mental sweat it takes to dig it out, the more securely it will be subsequently anchored.
  • “In lab experiments, you’re able to control for all factors except the one you’re studying,” said Dr. Willingham. “Not true in the classroom, in real life. All of these things are interacting at the same time.”
    • anonymous
       
      Perfect explanation of why the so-called "soft" sciences (Psych, Econ, Sociology, etc) are actually quite hard while the "hard" sciences (Physics in particular) are actually compartively easy!
anonymous

Mind - Research Upends Traditional Thinking on Study Habits - NYTimes.com - 1 views

    • anonymous
       
      Wow!!!! If true, this is fascinating!!! Your brain is linking the Marshall Plan or Endocrine Systems to the shades of light in your bedroom or the smell of your couch.
    • Max Cheng
       
      It is interesting how you came across this article and liked it. My orchestra teacher Ms. Pipkin also showed the orchestra about this article and I liked it a lot and decided to do it for my blogging assignment. Ivan coincidentally also has the same article. I believe that this article is very TOK in form because it discusses the flaws of study habits, something we perceive as always right. Many believe that studying in a quiet place for a long time and focusing on subject by subject are the keys to success and getting the most out of each study period. However, through cognitive science studies, it is interesting how many scientists argue that a person should be in a room where the outside world can be sen (to have some distraction but not too much) and that a person should expose him or herself with many areas during one study sitting. So the whole argument boils down to "what is the right way to study?" and whether or not studying really helps. -max
  • “What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” said Dr. Bjork, the senior author of the two-room experiment.
  • Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance. Student traits and teaching styles surely interact; so do personalities and at-home rules. The trouble is, no one can predict how.
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  • they directly contradict much of the common wisdom about good study habits, and they have not caught on.
  • “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”
  • “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.
  • “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,”
  • psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms — one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard — did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.
  • The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.
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