Academics
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Category archives for Academics
Why every teacher needs some basic science literacy
Posted by PZ Myers on January 24, 2012 Even in pre-school. Think what fury there would be if this teacher couldn’t spell, or had poor grammar, or couldn’t read Goodnight Moon fluently. But not knowing how a fundamental property of the universe works? Pffft. Not important. (Also on FtB)
Looking for a postdoc?
Posted by PZ Myers on January 19, 2012 Here’s an opportunity: you could work with Reed Cartwright at Arizona State University!
Santorum did not have a good idea
Posted by PZ Myers on January 12, 2012 Now and again, some well-meaning but clueless person gets it into their head that teaching creationism in the schools is a good idea — that the clash of ideas is a good pedagogical technique. There are cases where that would be true, but doing it in the public school classroom and hashing over a bad,…
That student from hell
Posted by PZ Myers on January 9, 2012 We’ve all had them, but none quite so annoying as the one that afflicted Dr Caitlin Zaloom of the NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Dr Zaloom gave a simple enough project to her students, to go down to the Occupy Wall Street protestors in Zucotti Park and write an ethnographic analysis. It seems…
I’m done, almost!
Posted by PZ Myers on December 8, 2011 Oh, man. I just finished my last lecture for this semester — this was a rough term, and I feel like I just barely dragged myself over the finish line. The big strain came from the fact that I revamped everything: I completely changed the content of my neurobiology course, with a new textbook, a…
Strangely, my salary has not been following the same trajectory
Posted by PZ Myers on December 6, 2011 Minnesota tuition rates have also been skyrocketing. My salary has been creeping upward at single digit percentage rates — low single digits, and we also had a freeze for a few years — and also, we haven’t been hiring swarms of new faculty, but only replacing retiring faculty (which, by the way, immediately reduces salary…
What’s going on at CUNY?
Posted by PZ Myers on November 14, 2011 I hate to see a great university system get thumped upside the head by chowder-brained legislators, but that’s what’s going on in New York. The chancellor of CUNY is pushing for a major revamp of the curriculum, system-wide. This ignores the unique culture at each institution and tries to turn them into cookie-cutter degree factories,…
The Fox Effect
Posted by PZ Myers on September 23, 2011 What a curious phenomenon: this is a video of the notorious Fox Effect, in which an actor pretended to be an expert and babbled fluff and nonsense at an audience of psychiatrists, and they sat and swallowed it and came away with an impression that the speaker was competent. I knew the content was going…
William Crenshaw and Erskine College
Posted by PZ Myers on September 8, 2011 I think I like this guy. Science is the litmus test on the validity of the educational enterprise. If a school teaches real science, it’s a pretty safe bet that all other departments are sound. If it teaches bogus science, everything else is suspect…. I want a real college, not one that rejects facts, knowledge,…
A goal to strive for
Posted by PZ Myers on September 1, 2011 The American education system is a mess — thanks to the right wing cranks, we keep trying to apply free market principles to a process to which they don’t apply. Watching America deal with education is a lot like watching the old USSR trying to cope with competitive economies — that there’s a place for…