One basic flaw is the claim that the skills students use when playing video games are commensurate with those evident in reading. We don’t have good measures of cognitive equivalence across tasks, so there just isn’t convincing support for the idea that understanding the conflict in a video war is equal to understanding the conflicts in novel like, The Scarlet Letter.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
From Twista to Twain? Tim Shanahan weighs in
UIC professor Timothy Shanahan doubts here in his blog that while it's important to pay attention to literacy trends in kids, like IMing, reading teachers should keep their eyes on the prize. He challenges those who would argue that teachers should be investing much validity in the forms of literacy that come easily to kids. He writes:
Book Review: Galbraith "The Predator State"
Benjamin Friedman's review of James K. Galbraith's book is in the Nov. 6 issue of The New York Review of Books.
After you read this book review summary, consider David Gelernter's NYT magazine article "Capitalism to the Rescue" from Oct. 3, 2008. The article suggests that venture capital will cause spur green change better, and more efficiently, than government.
Is Bush conservative? He sucessfully proposed large tax cuts; he has provided "faith-based" social programs; he has opposed abortion and same-sex marriage. On the other hand, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit is unprecedented (Christopher DeMuth says it adds $20 trillion in unfunded liabilities) and without provisions for funding. NCLB mandates, with exactness, when states must test kids, what "failing is," and what a school board should do when a school "fails." Most recently, Bush has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, approved $85 billion rescue of AIG, asked Congress to approve $700 billion bailout.
The same criticism can be made about Republicans in general. Galbraith argues that Bush and Republicans "have ceased being genuine conservatives because the conservative policy agenda has ceased to be helpful... or relevant, to today's issues." Among these old ideas: free trade, a balanced federal budget, and keeping inflation in check by limiting the increase in the supply of money. The question is what should replace traditional Reagon-era conservativism.
Liberals have bought into the rhetoric of the free market and accept "regulation only where it can be shown that markets fail." Liberals "praise the 'free market' simply because they fear that, otherwise, they will be exposed as heretics, accused of being socialists." They should reject this fundamentalism. Conservatives have abadoned old traditions and replaced them with greed (the predator state of the title).
Galbraith puts forth a different worldview, based on the belief that free markets generally do not achieve favorable outcomes, for individuals or business, that elementary economics and conservative politicians claim. They do not allocate scarce resources efficiently or distribute goods and services to those who value them the most. Liberals must acknowledge the failure of markets to deliver wha'ts promised. Sometimes buyers and sellers can affect prices, they cooperate among themselves to their benefit; large actors determine not just whether they will buy or sell, but whether it will be produced at all; that selers can use advertizing to influence buyer's behavior; that the government intervenes in favor of individual buyers (AIG).
"predation" "the systemic abuse of public institutions for private profit or, equivalently, the systemic undermining of public protections for the benefit of private clients" is at the center of today's system. Income inequality is widening. The majority of American families earn less today than at the beginning of the decade. Pay for CEOs has exploded. A very large proportion of tax cuts goes to families at the top of the income scale. The government rushes to bail out big firms, and to protect their creditors (and executive pensions), but declines to help ordinary citizens. . The government awards rich contracts to companies owned or run by politcal supporters and former colleagues. Currenlty, financiers control businesses, but done care if they're productive, honestly run, whether they deliver benefits to customers, workers, communities, or anyone other than whoever controls them. Democrats are in the bag, too, particularly its support of the technolgoy sector of the financial markets. There is a "new class" of people who don't fear big government, because it supports them.
What's the solution? the government is involved in bigger economic initiatives: how much to invest, the directions to be taken by new technology, the question of how much urgency for environmental issues, the role of educaiton, and of scientific knowledge, and culture. Also a much wider use of regulation, of standards for wages and prices, markets, of carbon emissions, health care, utilities.
But, asks the author, how do we know that the same "predators" wouldn't influence these things? Also, pointing to the failure of markets is not the same as showing that nay specific planning would be superior.
After you read this book review summary, consider David Gelernter's NYT magazine article "Capitalism to the Rescue" from Oct. 3, 2008. The article suggests that venture capital will cause spur green change better, and more efficiently, than government.
Is Bush conservative? He sucessfully proposed large tax cuts; he has provided "faith-based" social programs; he has opposed abortion and same-sex marriage. On the other hand, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit is unprecedented (Christopher DeMuth says it adds $20 trillion in unfunded liabilities) and without provisions for funding. NCLB mandates, with exactness, when states must test kids, what "failing is," and what a school board should do when a school "fails." Most recently, Bush has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, approved $85 billion rescue of AIG, asked Congress to approve $700 billion bailout.
The same criticism can be made about Republicans in general. Galbraith argues that Bush and Republicans "have ceased being genuine conservatives because the conservative policy agenda has ceased to be helpful... or relevant, to today's issues." Among these old ideas: free trade, a balanced federal budget, and keeping inflation in check by limiting the increase in the supply of money. The question is what should replace traditional Reagon-era conservativism.
Liberals have bought into the rhetoric of the free market and accept "regulation only where it can be shown that markets fail." Liberals "praise the 'free market' simply because they fear that, otherwise, they will be exposed as heretics, accused of being socialists." They should reject this fundamentalism. Conservatives have abadoned old traditions and replaced them with greed (the predator state of the title).
Galbraith puts forth a different worldview, based on the belief that free markets generally do not achieve favorable outcomes, for individuals or business, that elementary economics and conservative politicians claim. They do not allocate scarce resources efficiently or distribute goods and services to those who value them the most. Liberals must acknowledge the failure of markets to deliver wha'ts promised. Sometimes buyers and sellers can affect prices, they cooperate among themselves to their benefit; large actors determine not just whether they will buy or sell, but whether it will be produced at all; that selers can use advertizing to influence buyer's behavior; that the government intervenes in favor of individual buyers (AIG).
"predation" "the systemic abuse of public institutions for private profit or, equivalently, the systemic undermining of public protections for the benefit of private clients" is at the center of today's system. Income inequality is widening. The majority of American families earn less today than at the beginning of the decade. Pay for CEOs has exploded. A very large proportion of tax cuts goes to families at the top of the income scale. The government rushes to bail out big firms, and to protect their creditors (and executive pensions), but declines to help ordinary citizens. . The government awards rich contracts to companies owned or run by politcal supporters and former colleagues. Currenlty, financiers control businesses, but done care if they're productive, honestly run, whether they deliver benefits to customers, workers, communities, or anyone other than whoever controls them. Democrats are in the bag, too, particularly its support of the technolgoy sector of the financial markets. There is a "new class" of people who don't fear big government, because it supports them.
What's the solution? the government is involved in bigger economic initiatives: how much to invest, the directions to be taken by new technology, the question of how much urgency for environmental issues, the role of educaiton, and of scientific knowledge, and culture. Also a much wider use of regulation, of standards for wages and prices, markets, of carbon emissions, health care, utilities.
But, asks the author, how do we know that the same "predators" wouldn't influence these things? Also, pointing to the failure of markets is not the same as showing that nay specific planning would be superior.
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