Bush as Truman?

A president who won an election he was supposed to lose, fought a war that was deemed at the time to be a major mistake, launched a world-wide policy of containment against an ideological foe, was reviled by much of the public when he left office, and was considered both very stubborn and not very bright. Sound familiar? Obviously, there are some problems with the historical analogy, but I was persuaded by the argument that Bush, as with Truman, will see his reputation rise (hard to see it fall, huh?) in future years.

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10309

Women & math

Here's another one of those studies that explains that on average, women are as good as men in math and the sciences.

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3191/girls-as-good-as-boys-at-math-study-finds?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Doesn't everyone who has really looked at this question agree with this conclusion? The real issue is not about averages but about performance at the extremes. Why are there so many more men at the very top of the math and science fields when on average women are just as good at these subjects than men?

The potential answers I've heard are three.

1) Men have a greater tendency to perform at the extremes, either very well or very poorly, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that women on average do as well in math as men but that men still predominate when it comes to tenured faculty.

2) There are cultural and social pressures that keep equally talented women from following up on their God-given abilities. This argument often comes in a "rampant discrimination" format, but not always.

3) There's also a biological argument that child-bearing just makes it problematic for as many women as men to become the completely work-obsessed types who often rise to the top of their fields. More positively phrased, some argue that women are more balanced and connected to the real world for the same reason.

As always, there's probably some truth in each argument, but I see precious few studies that try to analyze these more nuanced elements. Instead, we get more of these "biology is destiny" studies about whether men or women have particular genetic gifts. Sigh.

The Wall Street Journal and others seem to have analyzed this data much better than did the New York Times.

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0728hm.html

Gender imbalance and the hook-up culture

I'd wondered whether these two trends were fueling each other. Sure enough, when you have 2 girls for every boy at a school, bad social behavior follows. So what's going to happen in China when you have an entire culture with this sort of gender imbalance? Post-WWI France essentially legalized and encouraged the vastly outnumbered men to have mistresses. I guess that's one answer to channel the potential bad behavior, though I don't think that answer will work in too many other places.

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i46/46a02301.htm?utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

Government Chemistry

From one of my chemistry profs. Not necessarily a laugh a minute bunch, those chemists, but this one struck me as pretty humorous.

Research has led to the discovery of the heaviest element yet known toscience. The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistantneutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving itan atomic mass of 312.These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which aresurrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. SinceGovernmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be detected,because it impedes every action with which it comes into contact.

A minute amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normallytake less than a second to take from four days to four years tocomplete.Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2-6 years; it does notdecay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of theassistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since eachreorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe thatGovernmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. Thishypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an elementthat radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has half as manypeons but twice as many morons.

How the internet has rewired our brains

I had long noticed the same thing this author refers to, my increasing inability (or lack of interest?) in reading long books. In college, I read Shirer's 1200 page "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" for fun. In grad school, I read for two years straight for my dissertation research. Now, reading one book for more than two hours has me falling asleep. What happened?

Apparently, the internet and Google happened. My brain is literally being rewired by the way I read information on a daily basis, mainly via the web. I'm becoming an information gatherer instead of a reflective and thoughtful human being. Of course, Plato warned that writing on papyrus would destroy our intellectual abilities, so this is a very old "luddite" argument, and therefore probably a very bad "luddite" argument, but I am at times worried that, as the title of the article has it, Google is making me stupid.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

How Teachers Learn

When later historians of education write about the transformation of American education from 20th century "industrial production" models to 21st century "learner-centered information age" models, the work of Wendy Kopp and Teach for America are likely to be at the forefront of those narratives. The very bright people who have developed a love for teaching through this program since its inception in 1990 have now started changing the entire educational system in the United States (setting up KIPP, carrying out major experiments in New Orleans and D.C., and starting dozens of charter schools). Here's a review of a major new book on TFA and some of its related efforts.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/309marzm.asp

Stifling innovation?

So I've started this new curricular innovation process, but I'm apparently violating about half of the "rules" for effective innovation in doing so. Hmm . . .

http://www.universitybusiness.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=1086&p=3#0

A star is made

I ran across this article again, and it reminded me of the basic argument by the experts in this field that regarding performance that talent is vastly overrated. Most high level performance is developed over years of targeted training (with specific goals and frequent feedback). I believe the 10,000 hour rule is how it’s typically stated (you must spend 10,000 hours, roughly 5 years of 40 hour weeks, in concentrated practice with those specific goals and feedback in order to reach true mastery).

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/magazine/07wwln_freak.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Personally, I think this argument is a bit overdone. People tend to give this much focus to an area of their life because everyone around them sees such natural talent in them that it’s clear that they should devote this kind of time to becoming really, really good. But for the bulk of humanity, we’re just not that genetically predisposed toward any one particular thing that will prompt us to try to perform at this level.

The basic method for excellent performance, however, still seems to be correct. You find an area that you love and appear to have some natural talent in, then spend lots of time and effort in that area via concentrated practice with specific goals and constant feedback. What might we learn from such an approach to how we operate in our education world?

1) When it comes to our organizational groups, we perhaps need to do a better job in setting those specific goals and developing systems for constant feedback. That is why Rob’s doing the assessment work he is, and we’ve been developing the dashboard system and other information tools that we have.

2) When it comes to faculty development, we might conclude that we need to do more with the 3 year plans that faculty put together as part of the goal-setting aspect of our work. We increasingly have the feedback systems in place, but are people really working through the goal-setting phase? I know that that’s always the most difficult part of the process for me.

3) With our innovation fund proposals, we may need to focus on what it is that JBU has some clear passion and ability to carry out and to try to leverage those strengths into national-level performance instead of trying to be pretty good in all of our various areas.

Just some thoughts as I’m in the middle of working on evaluation and planning documents that are obviously trying to get at how well we’re performing and how we can do even better.

Cool book summary sites

Okay, so don't let your students know about these sites (I'm sure they do already as the internet age successors to Cliff Notes), but I've taken to reading through these book summaries to make sure that a book is worth my money or also for items that I have marginal interest in, but not enough to buy the book.

http://www.bookjive.com/wiki/Main_Page

http://wikisummaries.org/Main_Page

Review of "Stumbling on Happiness"

I'm still on a "social sciences for the masses" kick right now, and my next book is by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert on the subject of happiness (with cover quotes from both Gladwell and Levitt). His basic argument is that we have difficulty even knowing what happiness is, how we perceive it, and, most importantly, how we will perceive it in the future. Our brain fools us in all sorts of ways (a similar theme to "Fooled by Randomness") that might make evolutionary sense but are still problematic for effective decision making. With all of this uncertainty, at best we "stumble" on happiness instead of it being something we can predict.

In all of this stumbling around, what do we know and don't know about what makes us happy? Feeling in control matters. Controlling where we're headed doesn't. That last part is the counterintuitive crux of the book. We are such bad "futurians," Gilbert argues, that our ability to control that future is pretty feeble and mostly futile. Our sense of our own feelings is so distorted by our own experiences (or lack thereof), by all of the ways that we intuitively (and incorrectly) fill in the gaps in our understanding, by our current frame of reference, and so on, that we just aren't rational decision makers most of the time.

As a historian, the part that intrigued me the most was our overriding "presentism" that makes it both very difficult to get inside the minds of people in past eras and utterly impossible to envision a future significantly different from our own present (a point that Taleb makes strongly in his arguments about "Black Swan" events in that we are very poor predictors of randomness). Of course, that's what makes the constant writing and rewriting of history necessary as each generation needs to be reintroduced to a subject on their own terms because they won't understand how it was described by previous generations who were viewing events through their own lenses and talking to people within their own cultural and historical contexts.

As for my own work context, I was intrigued by this idea that people need control to be happy, but they don't actually need to be in control of where they are going. It's sort of like my enjoyment of driving. I like being the driver, but I'm perfectly content for my wife to navigate. I frequently find in my interaction with faculty at JBU a similar dynamic. I expect them to be deeply interested in the details of the various campus-wide initiatives that I am working on. But they typically are not, at least the vast majority are not. As long as my work doesn't impinge significantly on their control of their classroom environment, they really don't care too much about where the organization as a whole is headed.

Here are a few other random reflections on points the author makes.

1) We are not very sensitive the absolute magnitude of an event but on its difference from preceding events. It's the old argument that people who are poor who don't start revolutions, it's people who had something and now are losing that something who decide to fight for major change. From this argument, I've long concluded that you can make major overhauls of a system as long as you do your best not to have people lose out in any significant way in the short term. It's that immediate and concrete difference from someone's current circumstance that gets noticed, not the huge reordering of the organization.

2) Our psychological immune systems keep us happy by constantly adjusting the rose colored lenses so that they're just rosy enough to keep us positive and moving forward, but not so rosy that we become out of touch with reality. But we do all of this adjusting in ways that we are completely oblivious to. We think we'd rather be rejected by a "jury," but in fact, we'd rather be rejected by a single "judge," so then we can blame that one person for his or her bad decision and feel better about ourselves (I'm not sure if this means that our decisions for grants and merit pay should be made by groups or just me--guess it depends on whether we want people to be "happy" and hate me or be unhappy and hate themselves).

3) We regret inaction more than bad actions. "Don't just stand around, DO something," even if it's a bad something. The appearance of action is very important to people. The results themselves? Not so much. This explains a lot to me about modern politics.

4) We have an easier time handling really bad experiences than only somewhat bad ones. Intensity matters in our psychological immune systems. We therefore fear too much passing along really bad news, and we don't worry enough about passing along the routine bad news.

5) The more inescapable a decision, the better we handle it. We think we want lots of choice, but too much choice also means more options for regret. Once a decision has been made, in other words, making it "stick" is crucial. Once it's inevitable, people have an easier time adjusting, just the opposite of what everyone thinks will be the case.

6) Unexplained events and "anonymous" comments are a much bigger deal in our minds than anything for which we can create a rational story line around. Knowing the explanation allows us to file away the information and deal with it better. Cliffhangers hold our attention. In other words, don't pay too much attention to anonymous comments on evaluations or surveys because they will plague your mind.

7) The best predictor of whether we'll be happy with a decision is to see how others who are currently going through that decision feel and think. We are all much more alike than we typically believe (our desire for uniqueness is overwhelming), so knowing what others feel about something is much better than relying on our our own imaginations about what we may think about something. In other words, rely on those Netflix and Amazon ratings and don't rely on your gut reaction to those ads for that new movie or book.


5)

Mandela's Lessons in Leadership

I'm not a fan of these overly generalized leadership lists (which typically amount to "be perfect"), but I did appreciate getting to know and understand Mandela a bit better from this story.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1821467,00.html

Picking the right teachers?

Interesting article that basically says we really don't know in advance what will make someone effective in the classroom. An education degree, a master's degree in education, National Board Certification, etc., all appear to have little or no predictive value. As with undergraduate admissions applications, the best predictor appears to be previous track record. If a student had a high GPA in high school, they're likely to have a high GPA in college. If a teacher helped increase test scores in the past, they are likely to help increase test scores in the future. Whether high GPAs and test scores really matter is another question entirely.

Since we're so bad at predicting good teaching, this article's conclusion is that those schools that do well do it mostly by giving a set time line for determining who has performed well, offering lots of support and supervision during that timeline, and then making a real "up or out" decision at that point (after two years, in this case). Hmmm . . . sounds somewhat like we've ended up with our 3-year contract system where most up or out decisions are made after year two.

http://www.slate.com/id/2195147

Review of "Fooled by Randomness"

Taleb's follow up, "The Black Swan," has gotten more press and is probably the better book, but they cover the same ground, and I picked up the first book on a lark and on sale. The basic idea is that we live in a much more random universe than we imagine (lots of "black swan" events that are unpredictable and overwhelming, such as 9/11), and it's becoming more and more random all of the time. But for all sorts of reasons, however, we're psychologically and culturally "fooled" by this randomness. We want to tell understandable narratives even when there isn't such a thing.

I found the basic argument compelling, though the author's snarky tone was off-putting at times. As a former historian, I always had difficulty with the 20-20 hindsight carping that makes up much of historical narrative as well as political commentary. As an avid sci-fi fan and game player, the idea that a particular "big" event (such as the start of WWI) could just as easily be explained as the random coincidence of lots of bad choices in this particular timeline out of the infinite number of other timelines that could have occurred. In short, WWI was an "accident," not something that could have predicted with any degree of certainty. Sure, after the fact, we can see why this or that problem might have caused the war to break out, but that overlooks all of the other possible sequences of events that could have occurred based on the same set of problems. See Niall Ferguson's review of "The Black Swan" for a similar argument (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/04/22/do2201.xml).

On the other hand, applying Taleb's insights to the business world that I live in (higher education) is a bit more difficult for me to do than it is to apply it to how I understand history. Perhaps Taleb's thinking reinforces my long-standing argument that we need to be more willing to innovate in higher education and to provide resources for such projects. That's been my big push in terms of budgeting at JBU, but the concern has always been that in practice, we find it so difficult to say "no" once we've started a project, that "innovation" at an institution like ours will more likely mean "funding pet projects" that will have no real long-term positive consequences. And it that's true, why shouldn't we just give out more money to "everyone" instead of giving out that money to just a few to do something they have particular passion for.

I do take the point, and one of Taleb's key arguments is that you have to have the discipline and intelligence to include "stop-losses," markers when you will indeed pull the plug on a "position." That's really hard for us to do in higher education, especially because that "position" is usually a real live person who you will now have to fire. If you can discipline yourself to determine where that stop-loss is and then be willing to make the hard call when you hit that stop-loss, however, I think Taleb's argument is absolutely correct for our organization. Now if I can just get everyone else to agree and to actually do what it takes to make this strategy work.

As an addendum, Taleb argues that people tend to agree with him in theory but find it very difficult to do in practice. That's been very true in my case. Taleb says that "competition" types (very much me) are too concerned about win-loss records and "optimizers" (again me) spend too much energy trying to find that best solution. Both tendencies cause people to risk too much the huge defeat that will wipe them out completely in their pursuit of playing perfectly and winning each game.

Sure enough, in my game playing, my work, my personal life, etc., I find myself making exactly this mistake over and over again. To take just yesterday's example of playing a game called St. Petersburg, which I've played hundreds of times, I knew what the "right" first round play was for the most efficient eventual score, but I wasn't playing the computer, I was playing real people who don't always act rationally or even know what the most efficient solution might be. So I risked on turn one getting knocked out completely in order to have the best chance of winning a standard game. Sure enough, when the standard game didn't occur, I came in last, and by a wide margin from the first place finisher. If I had protected myself against the disastrous outcome, I might have only come in second or third in this four player game, but I would have at least had a shot and still been in the game. In other words, I made the "black swan" error not even a week after having read a book that convinced me that I should be avoiding "black swan" errors in my life. Yep, it sure is hard to internalize these things.

Review of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War"

Here's another book I'm ashamed to say that I never got around to reading, despite my background in military history. And from that military history perspective, I found much of the advice interesting and worthwhile, especially all of the permutations of when to fight and how.

But "The Art of War" has gotten more press in recent decades as a business book, which is the category it's listed under on the dust jacket of my copy. From this perspective, however, I found little to recommend it. Perhaps the "capitalist warrior" model made more sense in the 80s when this book was so popular (the great line from "Wall Street" in which Gordon Gekko say "greed is good"), but in the "flat earth" internet age of instant information, this "us vs. them" with the use of "spies" and iron discipline being the main means to success seems misguided if not downright inappropriate for much of our contemporary business context.

On the other hand, the most famous line from the book, about knowing both yourself and your enemy, is one of those universal truths that seems obvious in hindsight but was probably novel and inspiration when this work was first put together over a couple thousand years ago.

Bottom line, an obvious classic, especially for military matters, but I personally didn't find as much to use in my leadership role as I did from reading "The Prince."

Return to Action

After six months of implementing some of the ideas I generated during my sabbatical (a curricular innovation fund, revisions of our evaluation and salary systems, reorganization of our Graduate and Professional Studies programs, and the launching of our Strengthsquest initiative), I'm returning to limited blog duty, in part because I've finally had time to do a bit more reading. My posts will likely be less frequent and less comprehensive, but this is a good place for me to keep track of some of the ideas I continue to have about higher education in particular. In other words, this is mostly a "personal journal" blog, but if any readers have things they would like to add to the conversation, please do.