June 23, 2008
What sort of objectivity in the classroom?
Not the kind that treats all arguments, and therefore all conclusions, as equally plausible.
April 17, 2008
You-can't-make-this-stuff-up dep't
The Pope supports academic freedom, as long as professors are careful not to reach the wrong conclusions.
August 06, 2007
Writing
Two of your genial hosts have been having a self-referential episode that readers might enjoy, if only as a Gallagher and Shean routine. I sent out to some colleagues my approximately annual update of a longish memo for students about writing, and Mark suggested I post it. OK, here it is, with some free samples: Clearly and its treacherous kin...
June 01, 2007
Serve fewer courses to nourish more; let the diners in the kitchen and give them aprons.
Bob Frank exhibits the factor most highly correlated with student evaluations of teaching, which is manifest enthusiasm for his subject matter. Like many of us, especially those of us who teach and preach more technical content, he's perplexed by the failure of so many students (and, I bet, cocktail party interlocutors) to see how great this stuff is or to...
March 12, 2007
Andy Sabl on torture, teaching, and civil courage
Does "paralysis by analysis" have a moral analogue?
March 01, 2007
Grade inflation update
Is it dishonest to award "honors" to 80% of a graduating class? Harvard does.
February 28, 2007
When grade inflation matters
How the competition to get into good professional schools got to be like archery.
December 26, 2006
December 22, 2006
Principles of Policy Analysis: Final Exam
I've just returned from a semester as the Schelling Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland's public policy school. While there, I taught a course in the principles of policy analysis to some of the second-year students. They were a lively, serious, and curious group of people, and serious about figuring out how to enact the public good. But none...
November 23, 2006
The art of the policy memo
A policy memo, even one assigned as a classroom exercise, is not an exam. Using the technical vocabulary of policy analysis and the social sciences is generally a bad idea.
October 05, 2006
September 21, 2006
Books for a Budding Journalist
My sense is that the main purpose of giving books to journalists is to improve their perceptual skills--to allow them to see patterns that might be hard to detect in the rush of daily reporting. Some of Mark's suggestions fit into that description, like Schelling and Olson. Let me suggest ten other books or articles that I've found have the...
September 20, 2006
Readings for budding journalists
Name ten books and ten shorter documents you'd like students of American political journalism to read.
June 08, 2006
Grading
Among the elements of standard pedagogy that could use the most work, in my view is grading. Conventionally, this is done on specific exercises like an exam with a red pen, something I have never seen an adult to do another's work, and by subtracting points from a preset total (usually 100). The latter violates the most fundamental principles of...
Grading on the curve
It has lots of virtues, but one major vice: it creates a disincentive for cooperation.
April 29, 2006
Didactic teaching v. dogmatism
Didactic teaching needn't be dogmatic, and interactive teaching doesn't always encourage critical thinking or independence of mind.
April 28, 2006
Plagiarism
Mark makes an interesting point about the messages we send (it's OK if you don't do your own work) when we intend to send another (education is so important, we really want you to get good grades and get into a good college etc.). I had a rather bizarre take on this, extending his insight to the classroom itself: When...
January 24, 2006
"Dartmouth Review" vs. "Federalist Society" Conservatives Continued
Todd Zywicki at the Volokh Conspiracy responds here to my posting about "Dartmouth Review" vs. "Federalist Society" conservatives. He isn't as sure as I am that these are genuinely contradictory approaches, but seems to think that conservatives need a combination of the FS's "conciliatory" approach and the DR-types confrontational, publicity-attracting stunts. He also, interestingly, suggests another approach, which I'll call...
January 21, 2006
DR vs. Federalist Society Conservatives
The almost impossibly dumb "Bruin Alumni Association" naming of the "Dirty Thirty" UCLA profs (accusing them of bring tools of trendy academic leftism) brings into sharp relief one of the more interesting divisions in modern conservatism, between what we can call the "Dartmouth Review" and the "Federalist Society" conservatives. To be a DR conservative, one does not have to actually...
January 20, 2006
Shameless Self-Promotion
Tomorrow night, I’ll be on Fox News’ “Heartland with John Kasich,” at 5 pm and 8 pm (both times PST). You might very well ask, why in the world is Fox interested in me? Over the last few days, the media has decided that its resources are best focused on a right-wing UCLA group called the “Bruin Alumni Association,” which...
I am Spartacus!
I was omitted from the "Bruin Alumni Association" list of radical leftist professors at UCLA, while Jonathan Zasloff made the team. How I plan to get even.
November 28, 2005
Science and Faith
Today's S.F Chronicle, reporting on new research about insect aerodynamics from Cal Tech and UNLV, unintentionally raises an issue that goes to the heart of American science and technical education woes, and perhaps larger discontents. Most people would think that when someone announces a belief that contradicts the patent evidence of everyday life, he is operating in the regime of...
November 17, 2005
Sentence Outlines (updated)
This post officially opens a thread on pedagogy, especially higher education pedagogy. Mark and I exchanged emails about the level of interest in this ("...are you kidding? how many readers are profs and teachers, and of them, how many care anything about technique? Very truly yours, M"). If and when we can discern whether it gets any readership, I will...
