Jun 6, 2005
Even A Stopped Clock...
Tom Paxton once said -- with reference to his environmental anthem, Whose Garden Was This? --that the worst possible fate for a protest song was to be relevant decades later.
- John V. Lombardi's article puts the blame for the rise of standardized testing and and increasing state interest in higher education"accountability" on grade inflation. I agree. One of his commenters has been lobbying for the elimination of grades, but notes that grades fit into too many agendas to be eliminated. Again, I agree.
- Non Sequitur: Via IHE's"Around the Web," I found the blog with this list of academic rarities.
- It's been eight months, it seems, since I last noted the campaign of terror and death directed at Iraqi academics and professionals. It continues. As I noted before, the scale seems to diminish somewhat with each passing report, though that might be an artifact, in this case, of the narrow scope of the survey: for example, the numbers do not account for, as noted in the article, sectarian/insurgent attacks on students. I note, though, that one of the effects of the violence has been politicization of the university and open nostalgia for Saddam Hussein's rule:
"The university as a whole should be kept out of political struggles," says Baghdad University professor Nabil Mohammed."It's not a place to put pictures calling for this party or that."
I will note, however, that the article does note significant numerical, institutional, and infrastructure progress towards substantial academic achievements, and the repatriation of talent exiled during Hussein's reign, but I still maintain that our inability to protect professionals while we build is going to result in a more difficult -- possibly impossible -- reconstruction and recovery process. I will defer (i.e. beg on bended knee) to my colleague Hala Fattah for more insight into the education reconstruction process.Professor Mohammed says he was never fond of Baathist apparatchiks either, but the campus was always safe under the old regime."I can't remember dangerous incidents at that time," he says."There were strong rules, and no demonstrations."
- Eight days after the Pearl Harbor Attack, FDR signed legislation creating"Bill of Rights Day" on December 15th, the sesquicentenial of their ratification. PSoTD [via Sideshow wants to make it a national holiday, but I have two quibbles with that. First, it's in mid-December, smack in the middle of most colleges' finals' week, so although I might actually get my birthday off (it's not the 15th, but close) sometimes, I think we have enough holidays on either side of that for now. Second, we have Constitution Day in September. I thought of having a marathon Constitutional history lecture as an observance, but I can't get any help here at UHH; Dr. History and I, though, think a marathon lecture might be a good AHA stunt. We could tag-team world history. Cliopatria alone could handle most of it. For people on the job market, it would bring prominence, and a chance to display your teaching talents! For anyone else, it would just be fun....