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SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Pearls Before Swine
Non-Ontario readers will probably find it hard to believe that the province has been twice condemned by the United Nations for its disciminatory practice of providing free schools to its Catholic citizens but to those of no other faith. The province's premier, who is Catholic, has so far ignored the United Nations condemnation. One way to end this discrimination would be to extend public money to families of other faiths, but this idea was shot down in flames during the last provincial election. So far, only one other possiblity has been put forward - namely, to stop funding Catholic schools and force everyone to attend non-secular schools. But this seems kind of crazy, given that the Catholic schools are on average far superior to the public schools. Why in the world would we want to keep the Trabant and throw away the BMW? School for Thought has a modest proposal. If we are going to have only one school system, then for goodness' sake, let's eliminate the public one, not the Catholic one.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Baby Einsteins
The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik is a new book reporting on recent research that reveals that babies learn more, create more, and care more than we could ever have imagined. The following excerpt shows that very young babies already understand probability. In order to understand the experiment, you need to know that babies rapidly become habituated to old things and turn away from them, and so when babies look at something for longer, it indicates that they find something novel about it.
"In a particularly dramatic recent study, Fei Xu at the University of British Columbia showed that even nine-month-olds understand some important statistical ideas. She showed babies a transparent box full of mixed-up red and white Ping-Pong balls. Sometimes the balls were mostly white with a few red ones mixed in, sometimes they were mostly red with a few whitte ones. Then she covered the sides of the box to hide the balls. The experimenter took five balls out of the now opaque box in succession, either four red ones and one white one or vice versa. If you think about it, it should be surprising, though of course possible, that you just happen to pull mostly red balls out of a mostly white box. It could happen but it's not very likely, and certainly much less likely than pulling out mostly white balls.
"Very young babies seemed to reason about probabilities in the same way. They looked longer at the experimenter when she pulled out mostly red balls from a mostly white box than when she pulled out mostly white balls from a mostly white box, or mostly red balls from a mostly red box."
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Rubber Rooms
This article in this week's The New Yorker reveals what happens to New York City teachers accused of misconduct or incompetence. Because of a union contract clause that requires they receive full salaries and benefits until their charges have been heard by an arbitrator (a process that typically takes years), these teachers end up together in a sort of a detention room (dubbed the Rubber Room) for seven hours a day, five days a week, playing board games and reading newspapers. The cost to city taxpayers probably approaches one hundred million dollars a year. In Canada, there are no rubber rooms (that we know of), but accused teachers are typically "re-assigned to administrative duties" at board headquarters until the charges have been resolved. It would probably take a forensic audit to discover how productive these administrative duties actually are.
SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT
Choice for Me, But Not for Thee
Malkin Dare has an editorial in today's National Post.
It is reprinted at the Libertas Post as well.