Don’t tell me I’m stupid

“Girls can’t do science.” “Asians are better at math.” Yup, it’s stereotype time. Studies have long shown that people do worse on tests when they’re reminded that they’re not supposed to be smart. It’s called stereotype threat. Just having students mark a box for Male or Female is enough to trigger the effect, meaning that people do badly on tests even when they know the material.

Good news. New research suggests that a few small changes — like moving the “What is your gender?” checkbox to the end of the test, and announcing to students beforehand that the test is gender-neutral — can dramatically improve students’ scores. Read the full post, complete with practical suggestions for teachers.

(Via.)

Shame does not make you healthier

Ten experts in teen sexual and reproductive health have signed a letter beseeching Congress not to fund abstinence-only education. It’s simple and clear, so I advise you to go read it.

Everybody agrees that it’s a bad thing for teenagers to have to deal with unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Some people think that the best way to avoid this is to tell teenagers that they shouldn’t have sex, ever, until they get married. Many of those people also think we should lie to teens about how well condoms protect against disease. Other people think that the best way to avoid this is to give students factual information about how pregnancy and disease occur, and how your chance of getting pregnant or getting a disease can be reduced (not eliminated).

On top of these two sets of core beliefs are a whole bunch of fears and assumptions — about whether talking about sex means we are giving teenagers “permission” to have sex, whether they will have better or worse adult (and/or married) sex lives as a result of this information, how accurate the information they are getting from other people is, and whether they are ever likely to be the victim of unwanted sexual contact. Most of all, this is a profound disagreement about respect: Whether teenagers should be obedient to their elders’ wishes, or whether they should be respected as (semi-)independent human beings.

But here’s the thing: long-term, careful reseach studies are showing that abstinence-only education does not prevent those bad results. In other words, teenagers who are told “Don’t have sex until you get married” aren’t behaving any differently, and often they are taking more dangerous risks because of that ignorance.

We’ve studied it. We’ve been fair. The time has come to say that we shouldn’t spend any more taxpayer money on abstinence-only education.

We should rename it, too. It’s really shame-based education. Because the only thing it’s doing is making young people too ashamed to properly prepare for, or get health treatment after, the beginning of their sexual lives.

Please go read the letter. And then send it to your Congressperson.

Never prouder

This afternoon, President Bollinger gave a speech that can only be called rousing and inspirational. Watch it here: part 1, part 2 (it’s unfortunate that the video doesn’t capture the response of the several thousand students who were watching out on the lawn; needless to say the atmosphere was electric).

Interestingly enough, just two hours later, Prezbo — miraculously — showed up to teach POLS 3285 Freedom of Speech & Press to thunderous applause. It was a good day to be in his class.

Today was a glorious affirmation of of the values my university and nation espouse, and I’ve never been prouder to be a part of both.

A sampling of the pictures I took throughout the day after the jump

Read the rest of this entry »

When incentives collide

Today I am wondering how to change the academic world so that researchers are rewarded for actively telling people about their work. Or, to be grumpy about it, so that they are punished if they do not share their research results more broadly.

I’ve been fortunate enough to work for two people who care very much about adding to the world’s store of knowledge. This means that they say “Yes” when asked to participate in research projects.

Having these folks as models is good for me, because most of my personal experience of researchers is negative, and left to my own devices I would probably be politely unavailable.

As it is, I try to accommodate the requests I get. There aren’t too many, and they’re not very onerous, so I’m not making a big sacrifice.

Recently it was a public health student. We met in a coffee shop, where I gave him a sixty-minute monologue. He scribbled while I worried about whether the noisy backdrop of rock music and coffee machines would interfere with good notetaking.

A few months later I got an invitation to the presentation of his thesis. This was remarkable on two counts: first, he’d apparently finished something, and second, he was bothering to tell his research subjects. I was slightly impressed.

There were seven people at the presentation, along with two unopened boxes of donuts. I sat through 40 PowerPoint slides with a better-than-usual narrative flow. It helped that the researcher was personable, and that the topic is relevant to my work.

Afterwards I asked about his plans for disseminating the results. Had he translated it into another language (this being a major point in both his research and his final recommendations)? Well – sheepish grin – no. Had he made arrangements to speak with the school district, local elected officials, or other policymakers (all governing some aspect that was addressed in his research)? Well, no. He had invited a few here today, but….

Was he going to speak with any community members, through mosques or churches as he himself had recommended? Well…it was better to leave that to community leaders who command more authority and respect.

I figured that was it, but then a man got up and introduced himself as the student’s advisor. He asked the student to leave the room, and then asked the audience to evaluate his work. Apparently our comments were to inform the advisory committee’s grading of his thesis.

Most people said nice, slightly generic things. I began by noting how scrupulous he had been in his interview process. Then I said if it were up to me to grade this project, I wouldn’t give it a grade until an effort had been made to share its results more broadly. I gave a few specific suggestions-masquerading-as-examples.

The student was summoned back and a condensed version of the comments read to him. I was moderately surprised that the general point about dissemination was mentioned.

I walked away feeling somewhat cynical that anything much would happen. It seemed that the advisors had to submit a grade quite quickly (it already being late May) in order for the student to graduate.

Moreover, there was a distinct lack of energy among both student and advisors about the ideas proposed. Visit a church to present your data? Meet with community members in someone’s living room? Approach the school board? Give a background briefing to legislative staff? I might as well have asked him to sew his own graduation robe – he quite clearly saw it as not his task.^[1]

At first I was angry, as much at the sheer wastefulness as on moral grounds. Then I started to think about why this response might be natural given the way the academic system is set up. Read the rest of this entry »

Do schools kill creativity?

I just watched Sir Ken Robinson’s speech from last year’s TED conference. It’s old, but definitely worth a look if you’ve got 19 minutes:

First, I think his diagnosis is mostly right on target. Of course, this isn’t much of a surprise given that I’m highly skeptical of traditional schooling and subscribe to Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, which Sir Robinson seemed to be advocating. In sound-byte form:

We are educating people out of their creative capacities.

One critique: It may sound pedantic, but I think he really should have said that we are schooling — rather than educating — children out of their creative capacities.

Second, his delivery method was fascinating. I can’t remember the last time I saw humor blended so thoroughly and effectively into a speech. His talk is at heart an argument — a somewhat radical one, at that — against schooling as it is currently practiced. And yet he managed to avoid framing the issue in terms of “us” versus “them,” or seriously antagonizing large groups of people. Too often when we feel even slightly attacked, our defense shields go up and we stop listening. By putting everyone at ease through his humor, Sir Robinson doesn’t obstruct his message but instead makes it possible for us to actually hear it.

Lastly, I loved this:

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.

I think I’ll re-read that line every day for at least the next month.