Forum on Public Policy Online
Winter 2007 edition
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Table of Contents
Two cultures
- Toward a Synthesis of Science and Theatre Arts
Kaye DeMetz
- Approaching A Possible Redefinition Of The Arts And Sciences: The Union Of The Two Cultures (With A Special Emphasis On The Discipline Of Music)
Leandro Espinosa
- Of Blind Men and Elephants: Some Thoughts on a Learning-Centered Approach for Bridging the Gulf Between the Arts and Sciences
Scott Louis Karakas
- Philosophers and Technologists: Vicarious and Virtual Knowledge Constructs
Beverly D. McNeese
- Bridging the Two Cultures: The Case of Science and Natural History Filmmaking
Walter C. Metz
- Humanities & Arts to the Rescue of Science
Pangratios Papacosta
- Cultural Synthesis in Research Pedagogy: The Puzzle of George Crabbe’s “The Voluntary Insane”
Sidney L. Sondergard
- The Literary Moderns Revisited
Judith E. Stone
- The Creation of a Subculture: The Decline of the Arts in a Society Dominated by Technology, Science, and Economics
Ronda M. Mains
- A view from the trenches: Arts as an institutional requirement
Virginia Louise Vogel
- The Third Culture—A Conversation About Truth And Reconciliation: An African Americanist’s Reflection On The “Two Cultures” Debate In Post-Modern Society
Josephine R.B. Wright
- The Gap Narrows In Fine Art: Modernism And Women Artists
Alfred Martinez
- Bridging the Abyss
Marianina Olcott
- “The Two Cultures” and the Historical Perspective on Science as a Culture
Francesca Rochberg
- Quantitative Literacy: A Means for Bridging the Chasm of the Two Cultures
Angela Owusu-Ansah, Stephen Chew and Gretchen McDaniel
- The Two Cultures: A Zero-Sum Game?
Michael R. Scheessele
- Bridging “The Two Cultures” through Aesthetic Education: Considering Visual Art, Science, and Imagination
Rikki Asher
- Older Than Snow: The Two Cultures And The Yale Report Of 1828
William Todd Timmons
- Bridging the Two Cultures: Disciplinary Divides and Educational Reward Systems
E. I. Schiferl
- Minding the Gap—Artists as Scientists, Scientists as Artists: Some Solutions to Snow’s Dilemma
Jerry-Louis Jaccard
- Art: A Constituent in Orders of Science
Onoyom Godfrey Ukpong
- The Two Cultures and the Crisis In The Humanities
David Arndt
- From Outside-In to Inside-Out: Rethinking The Two Cultures and the Contribution of C. P. Snow
Charles T. Vehse (Ted)
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Literacy, English Second Language (ESL) and Language Learning
- Towards A Model Of Literacy Learning For Young Augmented Speakers
Chloë Myers
- Lessons from the Round Table: Literacy Professionals Find Common Ground in Oxford
Wendy A. Paterson
- The Impact Of Policy Driven Professional Development On Emergent Literacy Instruction
Kristen R. Pennycuff
- Categorizing Language as Curriculum and Instruction: Implications for Teaching English Language Learners
Rachel Juarez-Torres
- Distinguishing Sources of L2 Development Problems in K-12: Language Deficit, Cognitive Deficit, and Cognitive Distance
Yvonne Stapp
- Time Well Spent: Phonemic awareness training or paired associate learning for children with language impairments?
Nancy Stockall
History
- Frontiers, Empires, and the New World:The Significance of the Frontier in American Foreign Policy
Mark A. Eifler
- Resolving Conflicts of Cultures Through Royce’s “Enlightened Provincialism”
Richard Hall
- Globalization and Media: Do Twentieth-Century Concepts Remain Relevant?
Lyn Gorman
- Movements of Peoples and the Genesis of “Soviet Spaces”
Gary Thurston
- The United States and Coalition Building in the New International Order
William Thomas Allison
- Ancient Paradigms and Modern Expectations: Is the United States acting like a normal state?
Chris Stadler
- The Reagan Administration, The United Nations & Human Rights
Vernon J. Vavrina
- China's Economic Development from 1860 to the Present: The Roles of Sovereignty and the Global Economy
Stephen C. Thomas
- Security and International Relations in the 21st Century: United States’ Continuum of Counterinsurgency: Anti-Communism to Anti-Terrorism
Laurie Ann Sprankle
- “Can We ‘Teach Them to Elect Good Men’? The Application of Military Force in Mexico and Iraq”
Steven Bucklin
- America’s Changing Views of China: Through the Eyes of Janus
Robert G. Willgoos
- Religion, Education and the Role of Government in Old Tibet
Daniel Perdue
Multiculturalism
- Intersections of Identity: Navigating the Complexities
Angela Ferguson
- ‘The Rich and the Poor’: Eradicating Hunger in a “Global” Economy
Jo Ann Wein
- Diversity and Public Policy in Relation to the Special Case of Intercountry Adoption
Karen Miller-Loessi
- Societal Cultural Competence and Cultural Community Well-Being
Annette Woodroffe
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Global Business
- Global Competition and Learning Organizations: Goals and Motivations of Corporate Leaders and Employees who participate in Corporate/University Partnerships
Elana Zolfo and Deborah Mann
Students and Issues in Education
- The Effects of Mediated Learning Strategies on Teacher Practice and on Students at Risk of Academic Failure
Deborah Mann and Janet L. Hinds
- The Impact of Immigration on Bilingualism among Indigenous American Peoples
Janet Goldenstein Ahler
- A Comprehensive System of School Reform Based on Student Results
Mary E. Little
- The Relationship Between Teacher Assessments And NCLB Mathematics Testing
Christopher Mark Herte
- The Three Literacy Gaps and Title III of NCLB
June Hetzel and Ivannia Soto-Hinman
Religion
- The Science-Faith Debate in Higher Education
Mary E. Carrington and Gary L. Lyon
- The Arabic Story: Mirror Of A Culture A Curriculum For The West
Olfat El-Mallakh
- The Modern American “Widow,” the Church and the Formation of Public Policy
Nicholas Perrin
- Overcoming Visible and Not So Visible Barriers to Women’s Leadership in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States
Colleen McNicholas
- Violence and End-Time Theologies: The Search for a Responsible Eschatology
Natalie Kertes Weaver
- The Identification, Assessment, And Amelioration Of Barriers To America’s Acceptance Of Evolutionary Theory
Richard F. Firenze
- Public Financing of Religious Schools: James G. Blaine and Justice Clarence Thomas ‘Bigotry Thesis’
Kern Alexander
- Teaching Geosciences in Mississippi
Christopher Dewey and Rodney W. Beasley
- Evolution is not the Enemy; Intelligent Design is not the Solution
Carlos Frank Amory Pinkham
Child Psychology
- Stability and Continuity in Normal Emotional Development between Infancy and Early Childhood: Longitudinal Research
Marta E. Losonczy-Marshall
- The Relationship between Paternal Involvement and Child Outcomes in Male African American Youth
Josef A. Passley, Joan P. Gerring and Arlene C. Gerson
- Relational Psychopathologies Of Adult Children Of Alcoholics
Sylvia Carol Held
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Nutrition
- Obesity and the Healthcare Professions: Cooperation or Assimilation?
Lonnie M. Lowery and Evelyn Taylor
- Application of the Epidemiological Model: Community-based Interventions for the Management of Obesity in Children and Young Adults
Dinah Saunders and Barbara Harrison
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Blackstone
- From Blackstone’s Common Law Duty of Parents to Educate Their Children to a Constitutional Right of Parents to Control the Education of Their Children
Robert A. Sedler
- How Would Blackstone Teach Today's Law Students With Learning Disabilities?: A Proposal
Suzanne J. Schmitz
- The Legal Mind and Integrity in the Workplace: Principled Prerequisites for Statesmanship in Leadership
Robert J. McCarthy
- Blackstone’s Canvas of Influence Redux: Did He Contribute to the Construction of Ethics in American Education Law?
Russell A. Joki and
Kathy Canfield-Davis
- Failing to Heed Blackstone: A 50 Year Review of Tougher Sentences for Impaired Driving in Canada and How the Judiciary Strives to Avoid their Imposition
Blair Crew and Lawrence Greenspon
Aging
- Journey to Healthy Aging: Impact of Community Based Education Programs on Knowledge and Health Behavior in Older Adults
Sue McLarry
- The Link Between Healthcare, Sexuality, And Successful Aging
Richard Allen Williams
- Caregiving To Aging Parents
Thomas J. Durant, Jr. and Ollie G. Christian
- Aging-in-Place: Present Realities and Future Directions
Anne M. Burgess and Clifford G. Burgess
- Translating Basic Research into Community Practice: The Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging (CITRA)
Elaine Wethington and Karl A. Pillemer
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Counseling
- The Development of Technology-Based Counseling Strategies to Enhance Outreach to Parents and Students
Marie L. Wallace
Women's Issues
- Interconnectedness and Women’s Leadership: Disability Rights Through the Lenses of Emancipatory Spirituality and Liberatory Theology
Carol Zitzer-Comfort
- Black Women Writers as Dynamic Agents of Change: Empowering Women from Africa to America
Lena M. Ampadu
- Piety, Pageantry and Politics on the Northern Great Plains: An American Indian Woman Restages Her People’s Conquest during the Era of Assimilation (1879-1934)
Susan Gardner
- The Impact of a Gender Shift on a Profession: Women in Pharmacy
Stephanie F. Gardner and Cindy D. Stowe
- Contesting Patriarchy: Granddaughters Fight Back
Andrea Catapano
- A Critical Analysis of Gender-Based Workplace Challenges Facing Women: Gender and Compensation
Prudence LaBeach Pollard
- Definitions and Disasters: What Hurricane Katrina Revealed About Women’s Rights
Lynne M. Adrian
- The Academic Climate of Women Faculty in Faith-Based Institutions of Higher Learning
Jackie L. Halstead and Courtney Loy
- The Untold Story: African American Women Administrators’ Alchemy of turning Adversity into Gold
Sydney Howe Barksdale
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Higher Education
- Privatization Of Higher Education In Malaysia
G. Sivalingam
Criminal Justice
- Learning Disabilities and Attention Deficit Disorder: A New Approach for the Criminal Justice System
Judge David S. Admire
- Petit Apartheid in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: An Analysis of Community Organization Data Documenting Work force Abuses of the Undocumented
Anna Ochoa O’Leary
- Use of the Rule of Law to take the measure of HIV/Aids
Gregg W. Bonelli
Diversity
- Walking the Diversity Compliance Tightrope: Maintaining the Balance Between Enforcement and Equity
Bonnie L. Roach
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Contents Winter 2007 Edition
Two cultures
Back to top
Toward a Synthesis of Science and Theatre Arts
Kaye DeMetz
Abstract
The chasm between science the the arts has been hotly debated during the last century. History reveals that science and theatre arts (drama and dance) have shared a successful symbiosis that has benefited society for at least two millennia. This natural partnership continues to have positive effects on our culture by providing aesthetic satisfaction and educational resources and by influencing public policy.
Approaching A Possible Redefinition Of The Arts And Sciences: The Union Of The Two Cultures (With A Special Emphasis On The Discipline Of Music)
Leandro Espinosa
Abstract
Emerging from our scientific-technological societies, scientific and artistic disciplines are creating a new environment, based on a new art and new or renewed sciences. The phenomenon has risen through a widening of horizons, expanding definitions, and throughout the assimilation and recognition of particular factors that have characterized various apparently non-related disciplines. The tendency is of an increase of exchange and unity of perception in what had been hitherto a divided world. The kind of minds that pioneered this novel approach during the twentieth century, are seen as emissaries of the new world forming today. Further, a dramatic change in the perception of the arts by both artists and scientists is on its way, particularly in the field of music. The emerging conceptions bridge the conflicting elements of the traditional two cultures into a unified view through a more inclusive understanding of the action of causal and non-causal factors that activate our culture.
The union, or harmonious relationship between very old traditions and modern approaches to psychophysical phenomena, are briefly seen, as it relates to the pioneering studies in the field of music psychology advanced by the music theorist Wang Guangqi. The synergetic working of causal and non-causal factors is also seen as they interact in the philosophical practice of an Oriental discipline.
Of Blind Men and Elephants: Some Thoughts on a Learning-Centered Approach for Bridging the Gulf Between the Arts and Sciences
Scott Louis Karakas
Abstract
More than forty-five years after the publication of C.P. Snow’s essay on The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, the “gulf of understanding” he described between scholars in the sciences and humanities appears to have grown ever larger, with disciplinary knowledge becoming more specialized and incomprehensible to those outside of the field. Suggestions for bridging the gap have often been perceived as attempts by one side to colonize another’s intellectual territory, further increasing the level of distrust and misunderstanding between scholars of the various disciplines.
Yet from a learner’s point of view, exposure to a variety of discipline-based viewpoints and methodologies can still have great value within a broadly based liberal arts education, provided that there is a degree of coherence in their presentation. Centered on the Buddhist parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant, the author of this paper offers an example of a learning-centered approach to highlighting areas of common intellectual ground, while preserving the strengths found in distinct areas of disciplinary expertise.
Philosophers and Technologists: Vicarious and Virtual Knowledge Constructs
Beverly D. McNeese
Abstract
In an age of continual technological advancement, user-friendly software, and consumer demand for the latest upgraded gadget, the ethical and moral discoveries derived from a careful reading of any fictional literature by college students is struggling in the American college classroom. Easy-access information systems, coinciding with the application of some excellent study strategies--such as topic sentence, points of evidence, etc.--have produced students who not only do not enjoy the process and the adventure of reading a story, but disconnect from the possibility of their own vicarious experience by over-utilizing the methodical breakdown of the components; therefore, reducing the “process of story or epic” to one of isolated facts to be memorized in a hurry-up world: individuated components of a scientific formula.
While the upper-echelon of modern science might enjoy the heady intellectual gymnastics of creating merged intelligence, as discussed in Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, the non-reading college students as user-consumers continue to be unable to construct their own knowledge into applicable and meaningful forms of thinking. These forms include the critical thinking skills for ethical and moral thought for which individual immersion into literature allows --the test case of the imagination. The current trend toward utilitarian reading can be reversed through a concentrated and highly structured workshop approach that simultaneously demands personal responses to literature and creative expression by the student, so as to foster an appreciation of the telling of the human story. The arts and sciences, through a well-read population, should work together; otherwise, future moral and ethical decisions will be made upon the premise of expediency and the validity of performance, without the human-defining traits as embodied in the archetypal literatures of past and current cultures.
Bridging the Two Cultures: The Case of Science and Natural History Filmmaking
Walter C. Metz
Abstract
At Montana State University’s Master of Fine Arts program in Science and Natural History Filmmaking, our goal is to re-invent these areas of documentary by admitting students with undergraduate science degrees and teaching them both production and film studies in an intensive three-year curriculum. In the course I teach, “Criticism and Theory: Science Studies for Filmmakers,” I apply critical theory simultaneously to the study of science and film. There are two significant results: 1) teaching filmmakers using the tools of academic film studies can provide a conduit for the re-invention of a moribund practice such as the “blue chip” nature film; and 2) the disciplines of science studies and film theory, because they draw from the same critical theory substrate, have much more in common than has previously been written about in either the film or science studies literature.
Humanities & Arts to the Rescue of Science
Pangratios Papacosta
Abstract
The future of science may depend on how education responds to the growing negativism that students and the public show towards science. What is the value of our current teaching methods, if in helping students achieve higher test scores, they also generate a life long disdain of science? Achieving a positive attitude towards science must become a major objective of all future teaching methods if we are to reverse the current trend. We can accomplish this by bridging the divide of the Two Cultures that C. P. Snow warned us about, using an innovative method that integrates science with relevant elements from the humanities and the arts. An art gallery can be used effectively as an extension of a science classroom. When properly analyzed, a theater or dance performance, a painting, a novel, a poem, or a film, can enrich and reinforce a science concept beyond traditional lab exercises. When elements of history of science are integrated appropriately in the curriculum, they humanize what is otherwise perceived as a dry, mechanical and impersonal discipline. The author will describe the many benefits and limitations, as well as unexpected discoveries that he has made in his experience with this method.
Cultural Synthesis in Research Pedagogy: The Puzzle of George Crabbe’s “The Voluntary Insane”
Sidney L. Sondergard
Abstract
One of the most direct approaches to addressing perceptions of a lack of disciplinary communication in higher education between the humanities/arts and the sciences, both social sciences and natural sciences, may be to encourage educators to construct pedagogies that extend beyond the traditional boundaries of their disciplines and that emphasize synthesis as both a methodology and an objective for students researchers. This essay models such a synthesis by drawing upon disciplines from within all three intellectual “cultures,” as C.P. Snow referred to them, to examine the mystery of an unpublished work by English poet George Crabbe.The Two Cultures:
The Literary Moderns Revisited
Judith E. Stone
Abstract
Leading from C.P.Snow’s comments in his Rede Lecture of 1959, regarding “self-impoverishment” on the part of both scientists and literary intellectuals,this essay begins by examining texts by two of the writers in question: “The Waste Land”, by T.S.Eliot and Women in Love, by D.H.Lawrence. Noting, as Snow does, the pessimistic tone regarding the individual human condition informing these literary works, as well as what Snow terms their Luddite attitude regarding industry,technology, and scientific advance in general, the essay will highlight the authors’ dismissal of the possiblities for concrete, collective economic betterment presented by the natural and physical sciences in the very period, the mid-Twentieth Century, when Eliot, Lawrence, Franz Kafka, and other literary pessimists held center stage in British, European, and American classrooms. The essay will then shift its attention to the Twentieth Century literary titan, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, one of whose massive novels, Cancer Ward, emerges from the writer’s comprehensive familiarity with the medical sciences. The author of The First Circle,The Gulag Archipelago, and Cancer Ward presupposes an educated readership conversant with primary facts and issues in both the humanities and the sciences. Therefore, while neither experimental in style nor blindly optimistic regarding a utopian future through science, the novel suggests another possibility: an ethically aware, active populace, educated in both the arts and the sciences, capable of using its knowledge for both individual well-being in the spiritual sense and collective well-being in the socioeconomic sense. The essay will focus on the dual function of medical science in Cancer Ward, as literary metaphor and as bureaucratic fact in the now defunct soviet Union. The paper will conclude with a retrospective look at the teaching of the modern literary canon in American classrooms of the 1960's and beyond, and a suggestion for revision of that pedagogic approach, which marginalizes scientific elements in those texts.
The Creation of a Subculture: The Decline of the Arts in a Society Dominated by Technology, Science, and Economics
Ronda M. Mains
Abstract
The concept of two cultures recognized by Charles Percy Snow may have implications beyond a lack of understanding and respect between two conflicting worlds of intellectuals. This widening chasm in the United States affects the education of our public school students. Technology and economics, intelligence testing, the No Child Left Behind Act, college entrance requirements, national standardized testing are some of the contributors to an educational value system skewed toward reading, math, and science. If Howard Gardner is correct in his theory of multiple intelligences then the public school education one-size-fits-all system may be detrimental to the success and self-confidence of children whose inherent intelligence is not in linguistics, mathematical reasoning, or science.
This paper examines some of the societal factors put on public school education such as political rhetoric, the disparity in grant funding between sciences and the arts, the pressures of curricula created by college entrance requirements, the role of technology in the economy, and the media’s preferential interest in success in math and science. There are observations of the decline of interest in the arts in society as well as in public schools and comments about the implications of an artistic subculture.
Abstract
Life has become infinitely more complicated, time increasingly precious and society increasingly visual. In higher education we seem to be doing more with less, producing greater amounts of data to support the validity of the work and courses are quantified by the value placed upon by assessment. In this vein, a voice from the trenches calls for a conversation regarding art and its place in the Core Curriculum of our institutions. The definition of “the arts”, culture and its place within the institution of higher education implies attitudes and values which may need to be viewed from different perspective.
The hierarchy within “the arts” established through perceptions, stereotypes, bias, and economics creates an uneven playing field as we are forced to vie for crumbs left within a Core experience. As artists and proponents of the arts, we, ourselves, tend to “take for granted”, if not undervalue the dynamics inherent within our specific disciplines and specializations. We fail our students, institutions and future generations when the linkages between sciences, technology, art and design in today’s world are not clear. We should employ the arts as a foundation for building experiences which will allow us to nurture “life-long learners” who are able to view challenges and situations with a more analytical and creative eye.
The Third Culture—A Conversation About Truth And Reconciliation: An African Americanist’s Reflection On The “Two Cultures” Debate In Post-Modern Society
Josephine R.B. Wright
Abstract
C. P. Snow launched the "Two Cultures" debate in 1959 during the Cold War era. While lamenting a widening gulf in communication between scientists and literary theorists, he championed the supremacy of scientific inquiry over canonical Western European literary traditions of his day. Globalization has forced many academics in the United States to (re)think how they prepare students today for leadership in a world overwhelmingly populated by peoples of non-European ancestry. At stake in this debate is the political contention over culture--specifically, whose culture is more valued than others and whose culture will be privileged in contemporary society. Such a topic should command greater attention within the academy, if we as educators hope to promote better understanding by students of diverse peoples and cultures around the world.
One marker of globalization has been the widespread exportation of African-American music from the United States, a phenomenon documented as early as the antebellum period. Most black American musical traditions before 1960 evolved historically within a defined social-political framework of racial oppression, and any attempt to isolate the music from these realities obfuscates its connection to a collective history that all Americans at some level share. (Re)examination and "interrogation" of accessible historical documents (often selectively suppressed in standard American textbooks) help promote a "Third Culture." Such inquiry lays bare the irony/ contradiction of excluding widely exported repertories of music, arguably the principal representations of what is uniquely “American,” from Western canonical traditions. This paper examines from such historical perspective two of black America’s gifts to the world: the Negro spiritual and the blues.
The Gap Narrows In Fine Art: Modernism And Women Artists
Alfred Martinez
Abstract
The paper expounds on the matrix engaging science and art through the culture of visual fine arts. By sourcing the movement of Modernism at the turn of the century a social attitude is revealed, which focuses on the communication potency between science and art in Western art culture. Modernism’s theme of “self-searching” educated an extended range of artists from Vincent van Gogh to Eva Hesse. Individuals like C.P. Snow and Gyorgy Kepes in the 1950s propelled a challenge to science and the arts to creatively interrelate their disciplines. In the arts artists of various mediums invented art movements and art forms that brought progressive contributions to fine arts media. Modernism in the 1960’s actualized women artists into the new definitions of today’s Post Modernism.
Definitions of new and different fine art styles are found at the onset of the Modernist era. In 1936, Meret Oppenheim becomes one of the first women artists whose unique style of sculpture symbolically embodies the Modernist approach. Eva Hesse, working in the modern abstract art of the 1960s, used industrial materials to describe a delving content. The artist author of this paper describes his own ventures into combining the astronomy process for studying celestial images to create audio and visual paintings. At focus in this writing are the inescapable influences of Modernism and the creative contributions of women artists who have brought science and art language into a new definition of fine art today.
Bridging the Abyss
Marianina Olcott
Abstract
This paper seeks to explain the epistemological bases for the two cultures and to show why this disciplinary divide continues to plague American academic culture. Next, we discuss strategies for bridging the two cultures through general education curricula which promote mutual understanding of the two cultures while educating students in basic skills. Evidence is presented which shows the efficacy of these integrative, interdisciplinary curricula. In conclusion, we briefly mention some collaborative research efforts which indicate the enduring effects that such an education may have.
“The Two Cultures” and the Historical Perspective on Science as a Culture
Francesca Rochberg
Abstract
In the Rede lecture of 1959, C.P.Snow speaks in terms of two cultures, one of science, the other of literary intellectuals. Snow’s discussion presupposes that science represents a culture of its own, independent of and superior to the arts and humanities, and unified within itself. At our present distance from this claim, Snow’s point of view can be seen as a product of the philosophical orientation to science as an embodiment of universal truths about nature as well as cold war pressures on the West to improve educational standards in science. As the terms in which science is discussed have changed in the last nearly half-century, so has our response to the terms of Snow’s “Two Cultures”altered with time. The fields of history and sociology of science have shown the degree to which science is both fully enmeshed in society and conditioned by history, making it more difficult to support the idea of a separate “culture” of science immune from the effects of society and history. That the viability of a culture of science as an independent entity is contested in contemporary academic circles furthermore affects the mode in which students of science and the humanities are inculcated. This paper discusses the historical perspective on science as a culture and considers the impact of changing views about the nature, aims, and methods of science on the teaching of science and its history.
Angela Owusu-Ansah, Stephen Chew and Gretchen McDaniel
Abstract
Quantitative literacy (QL), a relatively new literacy, has the potential to bridge the gap between the literary and scientific cultures. The chasm of the two cultures refers to the gulf and increased polarization between scientists (science) and literary intellectuals or literati (arts). Snow (1959) drew attention to the divide of The Two Cultures and attributed the gap to the inability of scientists and literati to communicate effectively with each other due to deficient knowledge of each others’ discipline. Re-education or less specialization in education, according to Snow would facilitate communication between the cultures and promote citizenship, as QL cultivates the authentic application of scientific and mathematical cultural practices (measurement, interpretation, quantitative expression, assertions, reasoning, estimation, analysis, problem solving, etc.) across the arts, humanities, and culture.
QL highlights the natural inter-relatedness of the two cultures and serves as a potential bridge in the gap. In addition QL across the arts would provide measurable, yet unobtrusive component of the arts; a pedagogical component that requires no formal training; and a language understood by both literati and scientists. The development of QL has emerged as a task for higher education, mainly because of higher education’s emphasis on scholarship and research, model tools in re-education. QL provides an alternative approach to interdisciplinary instruction in higher education and cross curricular projects at the elementary school level. Whereas elementary schools seek to integrate the arts into the sciences, QL draws attention to the sciences and mathematics that inherently exist in the arts. Consequently, QL decreases compartmentalization, enhances meaning in context, and promotes the underpinnings of communication between the two cultures and citizenship.
The Two Cultures: A Zero-Sum Game?
Michael R. Scheessele
Abstract
In The two cultures and the scientific revolution, C.P. Snow (1959) described the chasm between pure and applied science, on the one hand, and the arts and humanities, on the other. Snow was concerned that the complete lack of understanding between these “two cultures” would hamper the spread of the scientific/industrial revolution from rich nations to poor. Because of his conviction that this revolution had made lives longer and more comfortable for people of developed nations, he forcefully argued that the two intellectual cultures must be bridged – the sooner the better.
The gap between these two cultures, of course, still exists. Meanwhile, the arts are neglected in primary and secondary schools. Further, the science vocabulary of adults in the U.S. appears to be so poor that a scientific theory is considered suspect simply because it is “just a theory”. Such problems may create increased competition between the two cultures. A probable result would be short-sighted prescriptive measures that are at best worthless and at worst dangerous to the mission of bridging the two cultures. A better approach may be to examine interdisciplinary fields where this gap seems less wide, for clues to a bridge.
Bridging “The Two Cultures” through Aesthetic Education: Considering Visual Art, Science, and Imagination
Rikki Asher
Abstract
Art can be used to enrich the subject of science and science can be used to motivate study in art. This can stimulate new ways to regard the relationship of art and science in classrooms. Theoretical and practical examples will highlight: early and contemporary artists who developed ideas about art forms in nature; the impact an Aesthetics and Science Workshop had on university professors; and a successful science and art secondary education curriculum implemented in an East Harlem school.
Older Than Snow: The Two Cultures And The Yale Report Of 1828
William Todd Timmons
Abstract
C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution represents the most famous reincarnation of a debate concerning the clash of academic cultures in higher education. This essay explores the similarities and differences in the circumstances surrounding Snow’s lecture addressing a widening gap between the scientific and literary cultures of the mid-twentieth century and the reactions to a similar “clash of cultures” in antebellum America. This nineteenth century episode was a debate between the traditional culture of classical education and the nascent culture of practical, professional education. The traditional culture in higher education was vigorously and eloquently defended in a report composed by the faculty at Yale College. Although the time and circumstances were different, the parallels between the arguments heard in 1959 and those put forth in 1828 are remarkably similar.
Bridging the Two Cultures: Disciplinary Divides and Educational Reward Systems
E. I. Schiferl
Abstract
In 1959 C.P. Snow believed that communication and education could span the cultural gap between the sciences and the humanities. In the twenty-first century, language, research models, and academic structures hinder intellectual communication between art history, cognitive neuroscience and perceptual psychology — three disciplines dedicated to researching vision and visualization. Multiple definitions of basic words such as image, perception, and perspective invite confusion and differences in professional tone can lead to misinterpretation about the validity of research. Standards of evidence vary according to assumptions about what is real, such as the use of photographs in brain scan research to study visual responses to physical objects.
However the reward system of universities creates barriers that are harder to surmount than disciplinary differences. American universities promote interdisciplinary research in theory, but in practice faculty evaluation reinforces disciplines by following a vertical path from the department to the administration. Universities prioritize original research delivered in conventional text publications and devalue research, original or synthetic, that aims for an audience beyond fellow academics. Ironically, universities tend to denigrate "educational" publications and the lower the age of the audience, the less value accorded the research. This creates another cultural divide where interdisciplinary concepts long rejected in the face of academic research persist in K-12 education and popular culture. Examples include Betty Edward's Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and Jean Piaget's developmental model of children's art that associates western linear perspective in art with maturity.
Minding the Gap—Artists as Scientists, Scientists as Artists: Some Solutions to Snow’s Dilemma
Jerry-Louis Jaccard
Abstract
It seems to be the curse of our times to think in terms of either-or. C.P. Snow directly addressed this in The Two Cultures (1964, 63–64): “I want to repeat what was intended to be my main message .that neither the scientific system of mental development, nor the traditional, is adequate for our potentialities, for the work we have in front of us, for the world in which we ought to begin to live”.
Snow decries the profound practical, intellectual and creative loss resulting from the polarization of the traditional and scientific cultures. He refers to the gap between these polarities as “a gulf of mutual incomprehension” (1964, 4) needing immediate attention because “[w]hen these two senses have grown apart, then no society is going to be able to think with wisdom” (50–51). Nobel laureate Vaclav Havel explained how such a gap could have occurred (1990, 10-11):
[S]omewhere here there is a basic tension out of which the present global crisis has grown...I'm persuaded that this conflict...is directly related to the spiritual condition of modern civilization. This condition is characterized by loss: the loss of metaphysical certainties, of an experience of the transcendental, of any superpersonal moral authority, and of any kind of higher horizon...
This paper intends to focus on the potential and the possible existing in the middle ground between the polarized extremes. It is a plea for balance born of reason and for the sake of us all.
Art: A Constituent in Orders of Science
Onoyom Godfrey Ukpong
Abstract
Since the last century, there has been at virtually all levels of formal learning an increasingly imbalanced funding of art and science fields of study in the United States. From the look of things, science has been misappropriated to the extent that its ascendancy has eclipsed art. Art has been named science and the effects of this misnomer are far-reaching, yet concerned alike-minded scholars of the present century have not relented in their commitment to confront this problem and propose the balance of policy with reason.
This article reexamines the relationship between art and science by engaging in a philosophical autopsy of specific traditionally designated “scientific productions” to rectify issues in cultural interpretation and judgment. It unquestions the question of purity of science as an unpoliticized academic discipline, and the preferential funding of education in science-related fields of study; i.e., the merits of popular close-ended declaration of what is and what is not science, while unanswering such answers as art being an adjunct-field-of-study to science and the general dismissal of the non-science. Through a series of analyses of selected productions, argument will be marshaled to demonstrate underlying artistic components in the productions against the prevailing dogma that art and science cultures are incoherent, opposing and dissimilar entities.
The Two Cultures and the Crisis In The Humanities
David Arndt
Abstract
The debate over the crisis in the humanities has focused on several disparate problems but failed to illuminate their underlying ground. To understand the crisis we have to understand the genealogy of the university and the origin of the humanities as a distinct set of disciplines. The university has been governed by four distinct models of higher education: the Christian university; the liberal arts college; the research university; and the commercial university. The more recent models have not simply replaced the older models; instead older institutions have been incorporated into more recent institutions and reinterpreted in light of their basic assumptions. “The humanities” first appeared as such within the liberal arts model, and the original aims of humanistic education were grounded in that model’s basic assumptions about the nature of truth, language, and tradition. The humanities were thrown into crisis when the liberal arts college was incorporated into the modern research university, and when the humanistic disciplines were detached from the assumptions that supported their original aims, reinterpreted in light of the assumptions about truth, language, and tradition underlying the research university, and recast in the mold of the modern sciences. To begin to respond to the crisis in the humanities we have to both recover and reinvent the idea of the liberal arts.
From Outside-In to Inside-Out: Rethinking The Two Cultures and the Contribution of C. P. Snow
Charles T. Vehse (Ted)
Abstract
The publication in 1959 of the University of Cambridge Rede Lecture by C. P. Snow, entitled The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, is justly remembered for the considerable stir it caused. Sir Charles’ account of the growing communication barrier between practitioners of the natural sciences and technical fields, on the one hand, and the arts and humanities, on the other, inspired a veritable blizzard of urbane invective on both sides of the Atlantic, indeed throughout the Anglophone world. Yet, for all the heat, little light was shed on the sources of a profound and growing confusion. The following paper argues for a reinterpretation, 1) of the underlying points C. P. Snow wished to emphasize and, therefore, also for a rehabilitation of certain features of his most controversial work and 2) for a revised understanding of the two cultures, so called. The present author proposes to view them as merely two facets of the same coin: scientia or human knowledge. From this perspective on an intellectual realm newly reunited, curiosity is the principle currency and must be recognized, encouraged, and made the bedrock of decision-making throughout all forms, levels, and institutions of education.
Literacy
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Towards A Model Of Literacy Learning For Young Augmented Speakers
Chloë Myers
Abstract
The study investigates strategies and contexts for supporting the literacy development of young, augmented speakers, whose difficulties in literacy learning are not explained by their levels of cognition alone. Indeed, quantitative and qualitative differences exist in their literacy experiences at home and school. In this study, four primary school students with severe speech and physical impairments (SSPI) who used augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) aids were selected to take part in a four-week program, followed by four visits to the students’ schools where effective instructional strategies and contexts for learning were shared with staff. A thematic approach was employed during intervention to cover known areas of communication difficulty among AAC users and to foster skills in conversational control, self-expression and giving and requesting information. Using these themes, opportunities in literacy were designed with the intention of eliciting active involvement in meaningful, productive and expressive tasks. While the students made significant progress when participating in the program, on return to school success was maintained in only two of the students. Characteristics and contexts of the children whose success was maintained are analyzed to help identify components for a model of language and literacy learning and instruction for young, augmented speakers.
Lessons from the Round Table: Literacy Professionals Find Common Ground in Oxford
Wendy A. Paterson
Abstract
In July, 2006, Literacy Professionals from across the United States met at Lady Margaret College in Oxford University to discuss research and practice in the teaching of reading and the expansion of literacy. In a tense national climate, reading researchers refer to contrasting theories of teaching reading as “the reading wars,” but at the Round Table on Reading First, participants found common ground. This article synthesizes the papers, presentations and discussions of the week using a common framework of understanding that provides some guidance for future directions in research and practice in the teaching of literacy. The six common elements discussed in depth are: the importance of child development in students’ academic progress, the role of culture and lived experience in literacy learning, the social construction of language, the role of the teacher in shaping the conditions and contexts of literacy learning, promoting the active engagement of learners, and the qualities of good literacy teachers. The synthesis displays the research base for the assertions made by participants and argues that there is much that literacy professionals and policy makers can build on toward their common goal of improving literacy education for all children.
Abstract
Professional development that increases quality classroom instruction is a concern of school administrators and professional educators. Using survey, observation, and interview methods, four rural schools in the Upper Cumberland area of Tennessee were examined to determine if professional development supported by the Reading Excellence Act promoted, hindered, or had no effect on emergent literacy instruction. Treatment group participants were teachers from two schools within the Tennessee Technological University service area that were recipients of the Reading Excellence Act grants. Control group participants were teachers from two comparable schools within the same geographic location with similar demographics. Analysis of the self-administered surveys indicated that there was a significant positive interaction between teachers receiving REA modules of professional development and familiarity with, frequency of use of, and perceived importance of REA concepts. Observations and interviews corroborated the statistical analysis. The Reading Excellence Act professional development modules have shown promise for increasing the quality of emergent literacy instruction. Preliminary studies such as this investigation suggest that continuation of the professional development component of the grant is warranted. Implications are discussed in relation to future professional development programs.
Categorizing Language as Curriculum and Instruction: Implications for Teaching English Language Learners
Rachel Juarez-Torres
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to analyze what a group teachers say to English Language Learners as part of the curriculum and instruction, and to categorize the comments along the lines of scientific curriculum inquiry. Observations and interviews were the primary methods of data collection for this proposed study. An analysis was made of what the teachers were saying to communicate curricular applications and instructional modifications made in ESL classrooms. The language that this group of teachers used was coded to describe the originality of the types of statements made by the teachers. The study did not attempt to evaluate the teachers’ effectiveness. The study also did not attempt to predict success of the curricular adaptations and instructional modifications. In conclusion, teachers used language to manage time, lessons, and the classroom. As a result of further analysis, as related to curricular adaptations and instructional modifications, the language was found as being of substance (what), educational practice (how), and purpose (why).
Distinguishing Sources of L2 Development Problems in K-12: Language Deficit, Cognitive Deficit, and Cognitive Distance
Yvonne Stapp
Abstract
K-12 students with limited L2 proficiency who do not progress satisfactorily are often referred to special education and/or speech pathology services. Like the teachers who refer such students, the representatives of each service have a specific expertise (e.g., cognition) with little knowledge of the other types of proficiencies (e.g., L1 development) that might be the source of a student’s problem. Misdiagnoses could be greatly reduced by more comprehensive training of school professionals involved with the L2 population: L2 teachers (e.g., ESL), special education teachers, speech pathologists, and psychologists. Such training should focus on three distinctions: the difference between normal L2 development and (1) language deficit; (2) cognitive impairment; and (3) cognitive distance. Here, each of these possible sources of slow L2 development is explained briefly with the intention of providing a clear but minimal set of indicators of each problem so that school professionals can better serve the limited L2 population.
Time Well Spent: Phonemic awareness training or paired associate learning for children with language impairments?
Nancy Stockall
Abstract
This paper addresses several inconsistencies in the phonological deficit theory of dyslexia in relation to children with language impairments. Results from studies in the reading and language literature inform readers of the critical elements of phonemic awareness that predict later reading success. These elements combined with explicit instruction of paired associations of phoneme-grapheme symbols are critical to generating reading curriculum that is efficacious and parsimonious for children with language impairments.
History
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Frontiers, Empires, and the New World:The Significance of the Frontier in American Foreign Policy
Mark A. Eifler
Abstract
The late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century frontier profoundly shaped American cultural values and political institutions, and continues to influence the way most Americans look at the world. Studies of how Americans dealt with their western frontier may hold important clues as to how American policy makers and the American public are likely to act in foreign affairs in the coming century.
Resolving Conflicts of Cultures Through Royce’s “Enlightened Provincialism”
Richard Hall
Abstract
Recently a Muslim cleric was expelled from the United Kingdom for preaching jihad. Last year a Dutch film-maker was murdered for making a documentary perceived as insulting to Islam. This past November, youths who felt themselves disenfranchised by the larger culture rioted in French cities. Earlier, member states of the European Union failed to ratify a Constitution. Underlying these cases is the deeper issue of how to resolve conflicts of loyalties. Thus, European Muslims have, ideally, a dual allegiance: a religious allegiance to Islam, which gives them their identity, and a political allegiance to the nation states which provide their livelihoods. And Europeans are, ideally, doubly loyal, to the nations of their birth but no less to the pan-European union to which they necessarily belong. How, then, might these conflicts be resolved without weakening the very loyalties engendering them? I believe that Josiah Royce provides a compelling answer in his philosophy of loyalty. Through his principle of “enlightened provincialism” he demonstrates how loyalties to sub-cultures, and loyalty to the larger culture to which they belong, need not be antagonistic but may and should be mutually reinforcing if their chief objects are not particular causes but the principle of loyalty itself.
Globalization and Media: Do Twentieth-Century Concepts Remain Relevant?
Lyn Gorman
Abstract
‘Historical understanding of the emergence of modern media provides a basis for envisaging alternatives in a commercialized, globalized era’: on the eve of ‘September 11’ a colleague and I concluded a book on media and society in the twentieth century with these words. This paper asks, five years on and particularly in the context of recent literature on the media and twenty-first-century terrorism, if the concepts we had in mind remain relevant. Further into the post-Cold War era, with ‘the war on terror[ism]’ emphasizing Western-Islamic difference, with continuing rapid changes in media and communication (spread of Internet use, new forms of media and of convergence), the paper considers various claims in the light of the history of media in the twentieth century:
- that ‘history is accelerated’ because of changing media and communication technologies;
- that in the ‘war against terrorism’ media have been conscripted to patriotic, nationalist causes, in the process abandoning traditional journalistic values;
- that there is a ‘symbiotic’ relationship between media and terrorism;
- that a cluster of developments – the decline in public service broadcasting, concentration of media ownership, the dominance of global media corporations and of commercial imperatives – has had considerable impact on the extent to which the public are well informed, especially on international affairs;
- that the role of media in war has changed because of technological developments;
- that the advent of non-Western global media has significantly altered the international ‘mediascape’.
A major aim is to suggest how the history of mass media over the past 100 years might inform our interpretation of contemporary trends such as globalization as we consider history as a guide to the new international order and ‘the competition of nations’.
Movements of Peoples and the Genesis of “Soviet Spaces”
Gary Thurston
Abstract
The Soviet Union was mysterious for so long in part because it was closed to most outsiders. In retrospect, Soviet Power is remarkable because of the way it organized and commanded its sequestered space. This paper tries to explain how the USSR came to be a “heterotopia”--unlike spaces with which we are familiar. Russia’s historical record shows administrative centralization alternating regularly with decentralization over hundreds of years. And although the pattern remained operative in the Soviet period, it remains possible to speak of a distinctly Soviet space-- which included an extended space of incarceration, a characteristic domestic space, a space of planned cities, and a vast space of environmental ruin.
How to integrate numerous diverse ethnic groups had been an ongoing concern for the empire- building Great Russians since the sixteenth century. When a successor regime emerged after the collapse of the Russian Empire, it drew on its radical convictions about the transformability of human nature and learned from the Habsburg Empire’s disintegration as it reassembled and reorganized as much as it could of the original empire’s space. But the extraordinary displacement of people under conditions of mobilization in the First World War and the practices developed to manage legions of displaced persons would shape the Bolsheviks’ sense of the possible. It was less Marxist ideology, than the legacy of late Imperial population movements that gave rise to peculiarly Soviet spaces. Moreover, the experiences of 1914-1918 modified German thinking about the possibility of massively reorganizing space in a way that would prove influential in world politics twenty years later. In various ways the otherness of Soviet space has outlived the Soviet political system.
William Thomas Allison
Abstract
In the new international order of the post-Cold War, post-9/11 world, the United States, now the hyperpower of the world, has embarked upon a unilateralist policy in defense of its national security interests. Such an approach is flawed in the new international order, as American military might and diplomatic arrogance threatens to sideline multilateral frameworks and marginalize well-established alliance systems. The United States must rethink its approach to world affairs, reevaluate its use of hard power, and consider utilizing soft power strategies in order to maintain its national security.
Ancient Paradigms and Modern Expectations: Is the United States acting like a normal state?
Chris Stadler
Abstract
Not since the Roman Empire has any nation had as much economic, cultural and military power as the United States does today. In light of the session’s concern to appreciate the relevance of history to understanding current international affairs, this paper will discuss the regularly noticed but under conceptualized behavioral pattern of the American presidency that strongly influences the shaping of U.S. foreign policy. The goal is to provide a corrective emphasis on the controversies surrounding the response of George W. Bush to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the resulting “Bush Doctrine.” A response often described as a “neoimperial vision in which the United States arrogates to itself the global role of setting standards, determining threats, using force and meting out justice” in the world community.
Specifically under consideration is the issue of presidential language and the shaping of national sentiment. Indeed, as scholars have repeatedly noted, speeches are also action and the interchange between culture and language is where the issue of constructed meaning – the attribution of motives – must reflectively be considered. I argue that such rhetorical symbolism not only goes to the core of presidential leadership during times of crisis, but also is an area that can lead presidents to make avoidable, sometimes serious mistakes. By employing a “Biblical leadership” paradigm (e.g., American exceptionalism) in which American political culture is steeped, the paper will elucidate the historical consistencies that guide U.S. grand strategy and the restructuring of the today’s unipolar world.
I dread our own power and our own ambition; I dread our being too much dreaded. It is ridiculous to say that we are not men, and that, as men we shall never wish to aggrandize ourselves. (Edmund Burke).
Abstract
The literature is dominated by a paradigm suggesting that the administration of Ronald Reagan was very poor with respect to the advocacy and promotion of international human rights. The “turnaround thesis” contends that only at the end of the Reagan era, after hardliners had left, were those truly concerned with human rights free to exercise a considerable effect on U.S. foreign policy.
The contention of this article is that rigid acceptance of the conventional view of Reagan’s human rights policy conceals more than it reveals. From the beginning the Reagan team was responsible for substantial contributions in the field of human rights. This will be demonstrated by concentrating on the role played by Dr. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Member of the Presidential Cabinet (1981-5). Kirkpatrick made many important human rights speeches for the administration and offered the most articulate rationale for Reagan’s approach. She has been widely criticized by politicians, scholars and human rights activists. However, this paper will offer evidence that many criticisms are unfounded.
In 2003 Dr. Kirkpatrick led the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Her approach to human rights, therefore, deserves special attention.
China's Economic Development from 1860 to the Present: The Roles of Sovereignty and the Global Economy
Stephen C. Thomas
Abstract:
Radically different consequences flowed from China's interaction with the global economy during two periods, from 1860 to 1949, and from 1949 to the present. From 1860 to 1949, China's economy stagnated. From 1949 to the present, China's economy grew annually from 4 to 10 percent. 'These different rates resulted from a combination of the levels of Chinese sovereignty and the nature of the global economic environment during each period. From 1860 until 1949, foreign military-imposed unequal treaties reduced China's sovereignty levels and the international economic environment was characterized by predatory trade practices of the European imperialist powers. Together, these two factors reduced the opportunities for China to economically develop through interaction with the global environment from 1860 to 1949, and lead to Chinese economic stagnation.
After 1949, Chinese communists regained full national sovereignty and used this control to take over ownership of China's domestic economy from both foreign and Chinese investors. The global economic environment also became less militarily interventionist (imperialist) and more conducive to non-Western economic development. These two new factors combined to lead to successful Chinese economic development from 1949 to 1978, and even faster economic development from 1978 to the present.
In sum, low Chinese sovereignty levels before 1949, combined with predatory global economic practices, meant that China was less able to gain potential economic benefits from interacting with the global economic environment. China's economy therefore stagnated from 1860 to 1949. Conversely, higher sovereignty levels gained by China after 1949, combined with a less imperialist global environment, permitted post-1949 China to make major economic development gains from interaction with the global economic environment from 1949 to 1978, and even larger gains after 1978.
Security and International Relations in the 21st Century: United States’ Continuum of Counterinsurgency: Anti-Communism to Anti-Terrorism
Laurie Ann Sprankle
Abstract
This article describes the perspective, context and meaning of the global war on terrorism though an examination of prior counterinsurgency efforts by the United States. To do so, this manuscript surveys the foundations of such efforts, deeply rooted in the traditions of United States foreign policy. To gain a perspective of the impact of contemporary policy, a brief survey of prior efforts is completed in order to better understand the continuity of United States foreign policy. Accordingly, this paper examines efforts to foster internal stability using civil police in concert with military operations as part of an overall counterinsurgency strategy dating to the administration of John F. Kennedy. In short, contemporary counterinsurgency efforts reflect the use of traditional methodology including technical assistance, humanitarian aid and the training of indigenous security forces.
“Can We ‘Teach Them to Elect Good Men’? The Application of Military Force in Mexico and Iraq”
Steven Bucklin
Abstract
The use of force has frequently accompanied U.S. efforts to export democracy and accomplish cultural change. Parallels drawn from a comparison of the American intervention in Mexico during the Woodrow Wilson administration to today's American intervention in Iraq reveal similarities between Wilson and President George W. Bush’s world-views and their views of presidential power. In both cases, military forces were sent to accomplish tasks with inadequate equipment, insufficient and inadequately trained personnel, and incomplete analyses of the short and long-term consequences of the U.S. intervention.
The conclusion is directed to the question of whether democracies can afford wars of discretion and whether military force is sufficient to accomplish cultural change. The demilitarization of U.S. foreign policy is essential to preserve U.S. influence in the 21st century. Congress must abide by its Constitutional responsibility to declare wars, rather than unconstitutionally delegate its authority to the Executive Branch, or run the risks of no exit strategy or clearly defined criteria for victory in future efforts to export democracy through the application of limited military force.
America’s Changing Views of China: Through the Eyes of Janus
Robert G. Willgoos
Abstract
The history of United States’ relations with China began within five years of the founding of the United States. From our first contacts in 1784, until today, our image and thus our relations with China have followed a dualistic pattern. This pattern is like the two faces of the Roman god Janus. One face is seen as benevolent, the other face is seen as malevolent. This paper will discuss the history of these two faces so that we can understand how United States-Chinese relations have gotten to this point in history and what might be the future of those relations.
Religion, Education and the Role of Government in Old Tibet
Daniel Perdue
Abstract
In speaking of “old Tibet” I mean to refer to Tibet prior to the Tibetan diaspora of 1959 or most certainly to the Tibet that was prior to the invasion by the Communist Chinese in the late 1940's and early 1950's. In old Tibet, to a great extent, all education was religious education. Tibetans say of themselves that prior to the arrival of Buddhism in their country, beginning perhaps as early as the 600's of the Common Era, the Tibetan people were barbarians. Mostly nomadic herders, the Tibetans did not have a written language. Then, when the Tibetans began to adopt Buddhism from India, they created a script modeled on the Sanskrit alphabet. Subsequently, over a period of about three hundred years before Buddhism was wiped out in India by the Muslim Mughals from Persia, the Tibetan government and wealthy Tibetans undertook to translate the Buddhist literature of India, both the word of the Buddha and the commentarial tradition, that the Indians had amassed in more than a millennium since the time of the Buddha. Thus, from the beginning of Buddhism in Tibet and for well over a millennium since, the Tibetan government has been keenly involved in both religion and education. So we see in the case of old Tibet a real bonding of religion, education, and the role of government. The power and money of Tibet were put into the monasteries, and the monasteries were the main providers of education.
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Multiculturalism
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Abstract
Much of the multicultural literature is dominated by theoretical concepts and research related to racial identity. This line of research and scholarly discussion has provided a significant contribution to the understanding of racial factors relative to the development of the self (identity development, self-esteem, self-concept). Multicultural identity theories have emerged in the literature and have contributed to an understanding of the relationship between sociocultural factors and the psychological health of diverse populations. Identity models have helped us better understand an individual's psychological affiliation and connection to particular racial and/or cultural groups. They have also helped us examine the ways in which social identities are connected with social oppressions that take several manifestations (e.g., racism, heterosexism, sexism). However, intersections of social identity have largely been ignored in multicultural literature. This paper discusses the confluence of psychosocial and societal factors that may affect the manner in which an individual integrates multiple social identities. Intersections of social identity may include membership in a majority group (e.g., male), and membership in a marginalized, oppressed group (e.g., African American) or they may include memberships in two or more marginalized social groups (e.g., Asian American woman). For these individuals, psychological development involves a complex negotiation between two divergent worlds, often presenting a host of psychological tensions for the individual. The manner in which individuals navigate their multiple and layered identities reflect their experiences and perceptions of sociocultural factors that occur in their daily lives.
‘The Rich and the Poor’: Eradicating Hunger in a “Global” Economy
Jo Ann Wein
Abstract
This paper seeks to bring the Snow-Leavis controversy up-to-date, that is, to apply it to our contemporary world.
The arguments of two contemporary authors, Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time. New York: Penguin Books, 2005, and David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, are played off against one another to illuminate the present situation. Jeffrey Sachs is a Harvard economist who is currently an advisor to Kofi Annan at the United Nations in New York. His book was on the New York Times bestseller list for many weeks when it was first published. David Harvey is an academic who was a professor at Oxford University and the Johns Hopkins University and is currently Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. His book is directed at the specialist rather than at the general public, but it written in a very accessible manner.
In addition, references to popular culture, information from the internet, news reports from “the media” of television and The New York Times, are inserted throughout the paper to aid in exposing the situation of poverty in non-industrialized nations and in nations in the process of industrialization. An examination of such sources is a means for the Humanities to encourage students to think critically about the codes and signs that are embedded in the information with which the population is bombarded constantly. What emerges is a mosaic of sources that often contradict and sometimes support one another’s assertions. Most importantly, Sachs and Harvey demonstrate that the Snow-Leavis controversy, ‘The Rich and the Poor,’ is still very much with us: How can the Sciences and the Humanities work together in wealthy nations to help underdeveloped nations to eliminate poverty?
Diversity and Public Policy in Relation to the Special Case of Intercountry Adoption
Karen Miller-Loessi
Abstract
Today over 40,000 children annually move among more than 100 countries through the mechanism of intercountry adoption. This paper examines this phenomenon with respect to how it impacts diversity and public policy. First, it creates unique forms of diversity in host nations. Second, it is a morally ambiguous process that has been rife with abuse. The paper discusses existing and needed public policies from the international to the local level, with the objective that intercountry adoption should be in the best interest of children to the maximum extent possible.
Societal Cultural Competence and Cultural Community Well-Being
Annette Woodroffe
Abstract
This paper introduces the concept Societal Cultural Competence (SCC) from the perspective that cultural competence is experienced or displayed on a day-to-day basis when people from different ethnic/racial backgrounds as well as cultural groups freely exercise a workable mode of behavior when cross cultural situations occur during social interaction. Societal cultural competence (SCC) encompasses both ethnic/racial and cultural diversity and has deep implications for community well-being in 21st. century global societies. Essentially, it makes an argument for SCC through clarity on what it is and why it is important.
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Global Business
Global Competition and Learning Organizations: Goals and Motivations of Corporate Leaders and Employees who participate in Corporate/University Partnerships
Elana Zolfo and Deborah Mann
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine executive and employee attitudes regarding benefits and difficulties accruing to employees and their corporations who participate in on-site MBA programs for 11 corporate partners. Because so many corporations embrace partnerships with colleges to advance the knowledge base of their employees, it seems reasonable to examine how corporate executives, chief learning officers and liaison officers to college programs and employee participants in an MBA program view the outcomes, benefits and difficulties that the partnership brings.
Two major questions guided this study: To what extent do corporate leaders and the employees participating in the On-Site MBA programs have similar goals and motivations? Are the expectations of the company executives aligned with those of the employees/students?
Executive responses were geared towards long-term goals. They responded that when employees are better educated, they become more valuable to the corporation. The executives did not focus their descriptions of an education on the MBA degree as much as the quality of thinking and teamwork such an education on the corporate site would develop among employees.
Graduates of the program expected to gain knowledge and use the MBA to attain higher positions. They also felt the company would benefit from and they would benefit from the additional knowledge and skills and networks they acquired. Current students stated that their expectations and goals were to gain skills, knowledge and promotions. Unlike the executives and graduates, their expectations reflected short- term goals.
Students and Issues in Education
The Effects of Mediated Learning Strategies on Teacher Practice and on Students at Risk of Academic Failure
Deborah Mann and Janet L. Hinds
Abstract
The purpose of this case study was to determine the effects of Reuven Feuerstein’s ten Mediated Learning Strategies on both teacher practice and on students that were at risk of academic failure. Changes in both teacher practice and student learning were analyzed to determine changes during the use of the ten Mediated Learning Strategies: Meaning, Intentionality and Reciprocity, Transcendence, Competence, Challenge, Control of Behavior/Self Regulation, Sharing, Individuation, Goal Planning and Self Change.
There was evidence from the transcribed interviews and teacher journal entries to indicate that these students as well as their more advantaged peers did indeed benefit from the Mediated Learning Strategies employed by their teachers. Mediation in regards to this study is a three step interactive teacher and student process by which there is an identification of a stimulus, followed by an assignment of meaning and the application of a teaching strategy that affects student learning (Payne 1998). Evidence from this study indicated that students who needed enhanced support as to content meaning, were better able to learn after receiving instruction via the mediated learning strategies. Noted also in this study were opportunities for all students, no matter the level of academic prowess, to complete the same types of instructional tasks.
This study was limited to one elementary school within a school district that is located on the South Shore of Long Island, New York. The schools within the district are all located in a low wealth, high tax area, where the overall reported free and reduced lunch rate is forty-eight percent. This school’s population was approximately 1,300 students, and the ethnic characteristics of the students were predominantly Caucasian.
The Impact of Immigration on Bilingualism among Indigenous American Peoples
Janet Goldenstein Ahler
Abstract
Early federal government policies for American indigenous people alternated between extermination and assimilation. Imposing the colonists’ and immigrants’ language on indigenous people was important for achieving the latter. In the 1970-90’s, federally funded grants for bilingual education for indigenous schools were offered to accommodate Native American pressures to reverse the tragic results of those former policies. The stated bilingual goals were to teach them Standard English and to revitalize indigenous languages. Many of these Native American students speak “Indian English” (W. Leap, 1993), a dialect resulting from sociolinguistic interference (see theory, D. Hymes, 1971). Few know any of their Native language. The “Indian English” dialect is ignored, even denigrated as a substandard communication form in these programs. This paper’s purpose is to trace the evolution of bilingual education programs and their impact on Native American bilingualism and language revitalization for selected communities in the Northern Plains. Thirty years of evaluating these programs with ethnographic methods have resulted in these conclusions: 1) the local English dialect must be recognized as viable for Standard English to be acquired, 2) indigenous language revitalization requires infinitely more effort than what was provided, and 3) the government’s covert goal remained assimilationist, not truly bilingual.
A Comprehensive System of School Reform Based on Student Results
Mary E. Little
Abstract
School reform is achieved through the collaboration and coordination among educators with the mutual goal of improved learning for all students. Given the complexity within and among educational systems, the need to develop and implement a common framework of school reform based upon mutually agreed-upon goals, standards, outcomes, and competencies must be developed (Hargreaves & Fink, 2000; Senge, 1990). Coordination and continued communication among each of the educational partners (students, teachers, administrators, policy analysts, researchers, community members, and parents) provide valuable input for continuous improvement within this tri-level system of school reform based upon student results (Fullan, 2005). The resulting networks among educators responsible for policy, professional development, local educational programming, and classroom implementation improve student outcomes.
This manuscript describes a comprehensive systems approach to tri-level (Fullan, 2005) school reform to improve learning for all students through the use of disaggregated data, researched instructional practices, instructional coaching, and continuous progress monitoring. Several major topics will be addressed, including an inclusive continuum of curriculum and instruction, a standards-based process of professional development, and continuous monitoring of student results through multiple methods, including classroom action research.
The Relationship Between Teacher Assessments And NCLB Mathematics Testing
Christopher Mark Herte
Abstract
This study examined the relationship between teacher assessments and grade eight New Jersey NCLB mathematics testing. It also examined how curricular changes affected student achievement for one New Jersey junior high school on the NCLB mathematics test.
The research considered teacher assessments and the New Jersey grade eight NCLB mathematics test for the 2003 and 2005 administrations. End of marking period grades and the midterm exam grades, expressed as percents, for one of the two lowest tracked math courses were collected and analyzed with the 2003 and 2005 NCLB test scores (n > 200 each year). There is a need to determine how curricular changes affect in the relationship between teacher assessments and NCLB test scores.
There was little relationship between teacher assessments and the components of the 2003 NCLB math test. Two years later, after the curricular changes, the relationship between teacher assessment and NCLB testing increased and the percent of students who demonstrated proficiency on the NCLB test increased. The increases in NCLB testing were statistically significant.
This paper reviewed the methodology used, the findings of the study, and how the results may impact similar school districts. Suggestions for further research and action are presented.
The Three Literacy Gaps and Title III of NCLB
June Hetzel and Ivannia Soto-Hinman
Abstract
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) attempts to ensure educational equity for all K-12 students. However, for the conceptual goals of NCLBto become reality, pre-service teacher training models must be modified to include a deeper understanding of individual differences and how these play out in classroom dynamics. The “Three Literacy Gaps” that hinder student learning must be understood by novice teachers: (1) the gap between the student and the text, including readability issues, background knowledge, experience, interest, motivation, language transfer, and tolerance for challenge; (2) the gap between the teacher and the student, including cultural and socioeconomic differences, language variables, perceptions, and expectations; and (3) the gap between the student and his peers, including cultural dynamics, family background, expectations, language, book access, learning rates, and literacy levels.
In particular, Title III of NCLB provides accountability for the progress of English Language Learners. However, without a deep understanding of the “Three Literacy Gaps” and appropriate bridgebuilding strategies that help—rather than hinder— learning, novice teachers and seasoned alike, will continue to orchestrate classroom environments that widen, rather than close achievement gaps on high-stakes assessments. The “Three Literacy Gaps” model infuses literature from reading, second language acquisition, learning theory, and multicultural dynamics.
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Religion
Abstract
A voluntary survey regarding beliefs on evolution, and creation and ethics was developed and administered on-line from June through July 2006 to over 100 students, faculty, and staff at a mid-sized public university in the Midwestern United States. The survey consisted of 33 questions to measure participant agreement with core principles of evolutionary theory, 5 questions designed to place participant views along a creationism-evolution continuum, 21 questions to measure respondent beliefs on ethics, and a concluding question asking for comments. A KR-20 value of 0.896 for the first 33 questions indicated high reliability of the evolution portion of the survey, but the KR-20 of 0.510 for the last 21 questions indicated lower reliability for the ethics portion. The hypothesis tested in this study was that teleological ethical views would correlate positively with evolutionist views. An evolution score and a teleological ethics score were calculated from each participant’s responses to the first 33 questions and the last 21 questions, respectively. To generate evolution scores, a response to each of the 33 evolution questions was assigned a “1” if the response indicated agreement with evolution and a “0” if the response indicated agreement with creationism. The evolution score for each participant was the sum of the scores across all 33 questions. Likewise, to generate the teleological ethics scores, a response to each of the 21 ethics questions was assigned a “1” if the response indicated agreement with teleological ethics and a “0” if the response indicated agreement with deontological ethics. The teleological ethics score for each participant was the sum of the scores across the 21 ethics questions. The mean evolution score (n = 123 participants) of 26.10, responses to the 5 creationism-evolution continuum questions, and comments solicited at the end of the survey indicated that participant views were more evolutionist than creationist, but participants held a diversity of views, and seemed unsure of some evidence supporting evolutionary theory, and of the nature of scientific theory itself. The mean teleological score (n = 123 participants) of 10.08 indicated that participants were almost equally split between deontological and teleological ethics views. A weak positive correlation between evolutionary views and teleological ethics views (r = 0.258, p < 0.05) supported the hypothesis of this study. At the same time, however, answers to some ethics questions seemed contradictory, reflecting unclear questions, respondent uncertainty with the topic, the inherent difficulty of ethics itself, or a combination of these factors. A question arising from these results is whether ethical values might shift as participants learn more about evolution and the nature of science.
The Arabic Story: Mirror Of A Culture A Curriculum For The West
Olfat El-Mallakh
Abstract
For so long the Americans did not see the need to learn a foreign language. They did not perceive this dire need.
Speaking a language is not about making a noise of different sounds. It is about culture, mannerism, history, literature, customs, religion (s), mentality, and wisdom that translate into a language.
Today, the West is forced to learn Arabic and understand the complexities of the Middle East, as a matter of survival. Arabic is one of the most difficult languages. Because when a person says something, it is not necessarily exactly what they mean. In other words Arabic is a very rich language and hence is far from literal. In the West our speech is more direct and our language is more specific.
The following manuscript is the foundation for a pre-Arabic language course to facilitate learning of the Arabic language.
The Modern American “Widow,” the Church and the Formation of Public Policy
Nicholas Perrin
Abstract
Recent years have witnessed a proliferation in the number of U. S. households declaring personal bankruptcy. Studies show that the vast majority of these bankruptcies stem not from excessive or wasteful spending, but financial crises brought on first and foremost by uninsured medical costs. Not surprisingly, the incidence rate of bankruptcy on account of medical catastrophe is proportionately highest amongst single and divorced mothers. Whilst escalating medical costs and relaxing standards in the consumer credit industry are creating a pincer effect on U.S. consumers in general, there is good evidence that it is single women (and thereby potentially all women) who are especially made to feel the brunt of this economic trend.
Drawing on a biblical theology of “widows and orphans,” this paper discusses the ethical responsibility of the church to ameliorate the economic stresses that typically plague the single mother, and outlines a practical, ecumenical strategy by which this can be done: viz., by establishing a surrogate, cooperative insurance pool. Given the church’s role as a shaping force in American cultural life and given how the vision outlined in this paper is already showing signs of emerging on a grassroots level, it is suggested that policymakers consider how, short of direct government support, they might encourage the realization of such a strategy.
Overcoming Visible and Not So Visible Barriers to Women’s Leadership in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States
Colleen McNicholas
Abstract
In the 21st century, Catholic women and the Roman Catholic Church are finding themselves meeting at a crossroad that is fraught with ambiguity. It is a challenging crossroad full of both potential and frustration. The women gathering at this crossroad are questioning the Church structures into which they were baptized. These questions focus on the fundamental issues of leadership, ordination, decision-making, gender and language. Women view these issues as visible, and not so visible, barriers to their full participation as leaders in the life of their Church. Currently, Catholic women are speaking out, talking back and answering questions that they have not yet been asked because they believe that their voices are missing from the discourse on these and other significant issues which affect them.
This paper will discuss two of the major barriers, both visible and invisible, which are preventing Catholic women from assuming leadership roles within today’s Catholic Church. The final section of the paper will focus on new models of ecclesial leadership currently being implemented through the efforts of Catholic women. A quiet revolution is underway within the Church. The revolution is flourishing despite current barriers.
Violence and End-Time Theologies: The Search for a Responsible Eschatology
Natalie Kertes Weaver
Abstract
This paper explores the apocalyptic dimension of eschatology within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In its consideration of the intersection between religion and terrorism, the author finds that under certain conditions of stress eschatological hope frequently yields to apocalyptic fatalism. In particular, those who perceive themselves to be marginalized from significant participation in public life often turn to violent religious ideologies to make sense of their grievances, both real and imagined. When religions provide an apocalyptic lens to interpret social dislocation, the result is despair of the present world and presumption about the manner in which future events will unfold. The religious, apocalyptic lens provides the justification, sanctification, and mandate to resist perceived social ills through the allowance of violent acts on the grounds that violence is permissible in holy war. The context of the alleged holy war allows for violent acts that would otherwise be construed as immoral or unjust. Hence, an outlet is created by the religion for the socially marginalized to find meaning and importance as soldiers engaged in an ultimate struggle of good against evil.
Having established the motivations for violence at the margins of religion, this paper further explores the manner in which the apocalyptic imagination is present in the central belief structures of the Abrahamic faiths. Paying particular attention to the apocalypticism underlying key Christian doctrines, the author suggests that a responsible treatment of violence and religion must look beyond marginalized extremists and take seriously the violent themes that lie at the heart of faith traditions. To this end, the author concludes with a suggestion of several pre-theological precepts that might usefully be employed in responsible and non-violent interfaith dialogue.
The Identification, Assessment, And Amelioration Of Barriers To America’s Acceptance Of Evolutionary Theory
Richard F. Firenze
Abstract
The scientific community is in near universal agreement as to the importance of an understanding of evolutionary principles as the unifying theme for the appropriation of the origin, history, and diversity of life on our planet. Yet despite this agreement evidence from myriad sources indicate that most Americans reject this grand-unifying theory of the life sciences. Although the reasons for this rejection are both numerous and complex they are undoubtedly related to American pedagogical failures and the persistence of alternative views based on faith. It appears misconceptions of evolutionary theory can be divided into two major categories: 1) epistemological misconceptions--those dealing with the nature of scientific inquiry; and 2) content misconceptions--those dealing with the process and mechanisms of evolution itself. An understanding of the Conceptual Change Model, indicating that in order for misconceptions to be abandoned they must first be deemed unsatisfactory to the learner, while new conceptions must be intelligible, plausible, and fruitful, may be useful in our efforts to promote a better acceptance of evolutionary theory. We must further recognize that “concepts” and “beliefs” have both force and scope and that science and religion are worldviews steeped in the viscous broth of these two elements.
Abstract
United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas writing for a plurality of the Court in Mitchell v. Helms in 2000 advanced the idea that state constitutional prohibitions against public funding of religious schools were manifestations of anti-Catholic bigotry in the late 19th century. Thomas’ reading of history and law led him to believe that James G. Blaine a political leader in the United States of that era who advanced a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have prohibited states from funding Catholic schools was himself imbued with anti-Catholic bigotry and that his proposed amendment was a well-spring of religious intolerance that today prevents public funding of Catholic schools. This article attempts to look further into the issue to determine whether Thomas’ understanding is accurate and whether it comports with the reality of conditions of the era and whether Blaine in fact had such motivations as ascribed to him by Justice Thomas. The article concludes that Thomas’ view is overly simplistic and is based on an insular perception of Protestant versus Catholic intolerance in the United States and leaves out of consideration the fact that the real and larger issue of the era in the western world was the struggle between secularism and sectarianism, modernity and tradition, science and superstition, and individual liberty and clerical control. Importantly, the article concludes that Thomas’s narrow thesis ignores international dimensions of conflicts of the era that pitted the impulse of nationalism and republican government against control of ecclesiastics regardless of whether they were Catholic or Protestant. Such conflicts’ prevailed especially over control of education, throughout Europe, as well as the United States, and were even more intense in countries that where the people were predominately Catholic, such as Italy and France, than in the United States and where the majority of the citizenry adhered to Protestantism. Thus, this paper concludes that the motivation of Blaine and others who sought to prevent religious control of education by denial of public funding to clerical institutions was part of a trend in the western world to advance nationalism and to reduce internal divisiveness, religious, ethnic or racial, to build unity - e pluribus unum.
Teaching Geosciences in Mississippi
Christopher Dewey and Rodney W. Beasley
Abstract
Historically, two paths have developed in an individual and communal search for understanding and meaning: The study of science and the search for a higher spirituality. Although they should not necessarily be mutually exclusive, the history of science is littered with the collision of these two pathways, for rarely have they met without acrimonious debate.
Discussion of the dichotomies between intelligent design and natural process evolution is both timely and critical in the light of: 1. Declining student competencies in scientific literacy in the United States, and 2. A burgeoning global population facing environmental, energy and natural resource crises.
In 2007, the Mississippi Science Framework revision will increase the grade school science requirement to six semesters by adding two semesters of geosciences. Statewide, more than 12,000 seventh, eighth and ninth graders will be affected each year. As profound as this curriculum change might be, educators and administrators alike are wary of tackling the issues of science and faith that will arise in the classroom.
Scientific investigation is a journey into the mysteries of the universe and a quest for higher truths. Science repeatedly demonstrates that yesterday’s certainty is tomorrow’s doubt. Regardless of personal belief systems, in an open and tolerant environment, science can be used as a tool for penetrating deeper philosophical questions thereby allowing students to find their own answers. Our recommendation is to offer rock solid science, encourage open discussion and enhance student achievement in the sciences. Such is the path of discovery and wonder.
Evolution is not the Enemy; Intelligent Design is not the Solution
Carlos Frank Amory Pinkham
Abstract
There is a need to intelligently bridge the gap between religious fundamentalists and the scientific community. The bridge is the existence of nine phenomena that suggest that the universe is more than just a random accident; that in actuality it was designed by a creator, God. The phenomena are consequences of the necessary preciseness and accuracy required of numerous fundamental constants, forces, and masses for the universe to support the evolution of intelligent life. The phenomena are: 1) Many “requisite singularities" are required for the evolution of life. 2) Conditions in the universe act like “poised pendulums” and 3) like “compelling attractors” that ensure that the requisite singularities will occur. 4) Furthermore, conditions in the universe ensure that each requisite singularity will occur in an “ample sample.” 5) Each requisite singularity is an “optimal solution” to design considerations. 6) Thus the requisite singularity will be found by evolution with “statistical certainty.” 7) Once found, each requisite singularity results in “narrowing options” for future evolution. 8) This gives rise to an “essential sequencing" of requisite singularities. Finally, 9) the above often results in an “intricate simplicity" of requisite singularities.
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Child Psychology
Stability and Continuity in Normal Emotional Development between Infancy and Early Childhood: Longitudinal Research
Marta E. Losonczy-Marshall
Abstract
In a longitudinal study, twenty subjects were introduced to twelve stimuli as infants (seven to thirteen months old) and twelve similar stimuli when they were preschoolers in early childhood (three through five years old). Video recordings were made of their emotional expressions and analyzed according to Parameters of Emotional Expression (PEEX) measuring latency, intensity, and duration of emotional expression. Overall latency measures suggest moderate levels of stability but no continuity. Overall duration measures suggest a lack of both stability and continuity. More research is needed to understand these varied results. Interestingly, intensity measures, while lacking stability, appear to be modulating between infancy and early childhood. Those with higher levels of intensity are moving toward lower levels of intensity and vice versa. These results are consistent with Thomas and Chess’ “Goodness of Fit” model. Establishing normative data is useful in not only defining normal development but also in understanding deviations from normal development. This information, when coupled with future research, may help provide guidance to primary caregivers, professionals, and social policy makers.
The Relationship between Paternal Involvement and Child Outcomes in Male African American Youth
Josef A. Passley, Joan P. Gerring and Arlene C. Gerson
Abstract
Studies have shown that children living in homes without fathers are likely to be subject to more deleterious effects than those in intact families. Few studies, however, have evaluated the specific impact of father absence in prepubescent African American boys in single parent, female-headed homes. This study examined the effects of paternal absence on boys aged 9-12. The results were that, on average, young males who did not reside with a paternal figure evidenced more depression and conduct problems than their counterparts from homes with a male paternal figure. The findings here suggest that efforts are needed to ameliorate the negative effects of the lack of an adult male presence in the home.
Relational Psychopathologies Of Adult Children Of Alcoholics
Sylvia Carol Held
Abstract
Reports of clinical observations have suggested that Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACAs) frequently experience difficulties with intimacy in adult relationships. Problems with relatedness are assumed to originate in the family of origin as a result of inconsistent, neglectful and/or abusive parenting attributable to parental alcoholism. The purpose of this study is four-fold:
- define how the parenting characteristics of alcoholics differed from parenting style by persons who were not addicted to substances;
- to identify factors which would lead to early identification of attachment problems based on parenting styles;
- Once identified, these factors would pave the way for the development of techniques for use in the healing of attachment disorders; and 4) is there a relationship between the attachment patterns established during childhood and those continuing throughout the lifespan of the individual.
Method: Four instruments were used to solicit information on twenty variables concerned with attachment and bonding: the Children of Alcoholics Screening Test (CAST), the Parental Bonding Instrument, the Interpersonal Dependency Scale, and a personal history and questionnaire.
Three childhood attachment and adult bonding patterns were investigated: the secure, the insecure anxious, and the insecure ambivalent, using Hazan and Shaver (1987) attachment style prototypes and characteristics found within each pattern. In this study, responses from adult children of alcoholics were compared with those from non-alcoholic families of origin (non-ACAs).
Results: The end-product of the statistical analysis using Reduction of Wilks’ Lambda was an equation consisting of a set of nine variables. When employed, these variables were found to successfully discriminate between the ACA and non-ACAs 85.19% of the time. ACAs most often identified with the insecure patterns whereas the non-ACAs most often identified with the secure pattern.
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Nutrition
Obesity and the Healthcare Professions: Cooperation or Assimilation?
Lonnie M. Lowery and Evelyn Taylor
Abstract
Obesity is an epidemic in developed countries. Its ramifications range from cardiovascular disease to cancer to musculo-skeletal disorders. The causes of obesity are not solely biological, as the brief time frame toward the current epidemic has been insufficient to allow for adequate alterations in the gene pool. It has been estimated that variation in body fat is approximately 25% genetic (Bouchard 1998), with 45% of the remaining variance explained by lifestyle factors. Additionally, in the United States, an ageing population of “baby boomers” will compound the need for chronic disease prevention and treatment. No single health discipline/profession can solve the growing obesity-chronic disease problem. Thus, there is a need for “intellectual civility” (Boone 2002) among the individuals and the governing bodies of central paramedical professions such as nutrition, exercise physiology and physical therapy. Unfortunately, overlapping scopes of practice can lead to legal contests and an expanding number of certifications that could leave the increasingly at-risk overweight public with inferior care when evidence-based interventions and standardized referral are needed. This presentation will address examples of scope-of-practice competition (attempts at “assimilation”), and collaboration and submit referral guidelines for discussion.
Application of the Epidemiological Model: Community-based Interventions for the Management of Obesity in Children and Young Adults
Dinah Saunders and Barbara Harrison
Abstract
Healthy People 2010 identifies that one of the ten leading health indicators representative of the relative state of health of Americans is overweight and obesity (www.healthypeople.gov). The Institute for Medicine (IOM, 2005) has identified obesity in children and young adults as having reached epidemic proportions in the United States. This problem is noted nationally throughout the United States and is evidenced on individual state (i.e. Virginia), regional (i.e. the Hampton Roads area of Virginia) and local levels (i.e. Norfolk and Virginia Beach). The epidemic proportions of the obesity in children and young adults require interventions beyond that of the traditional one-to-one intervention format. A community focused intervention strategy must be employed to target aggregate level health promotion. This community-based format supports approaches aimed at intervention at points in the natural history of obesity in the prepathogenic stages; this primary prevention can be planned and implemented with focus on modification of agent, host or environmental factors that are significant in the presence of obesity in children and young adults in a particular community. Obesity prevention strategies such as nutritional intervention following an epidemiologic model can be implemented on the local and regional levels to address the health problems related to obesity. Integration of the epidemiologic model within community-based programs provides the format for focusing on the obesity epidemic. Selected exemplars will be presented to illustrate these approaches.
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Blackstone
From Blackstone’s Common Law Duty of Parents to Educate Their Children to a Constitutional Right of Parents to Control the Education of Their Children
Robert A. Sedler
Abstract
Blackstone’s Commentaries stated that the common law imposed a duty on parents to provide for the maintenance, protection, and education of their children, and of these, the duty to provide an education was “of far the greatest importance.”
Early on American courts cited Blackstone for the proposition of the common Iaw duty of parents educate their children. As the nineteenth century progressed, public and private schools were formed in most American states, and a number of states enacted compulsory education laws.
American states also sometimes also enacted laws that interfered with the freedom of parents to direct the education of their children. In 1919, in the wake of the anti-German hysteria of World War I, Nebraska passed a law that prohibited the teaching of German in the Lutheran sectarian schools. In 1922, Oregon passed a law prohibiting parents from enrolling their children in private and sectarian schools. The Supreme Court held that both of these laws were unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause, because they interfered with the liberty of parents to control the education of their children.
In the United States, Blackstone’s common law duty of parents to provide an education for their children had evolved into a constitutional right of parents to control the education of their children.
How Would Blackstone Teach Today's Law Students With Learning Disabilities?: A Proposal
Suzanne J. Schmitz
Abstract
Although Sir William Blackstone would not have known if he had been lecturing to students with learning disabilities, today's law professors are. Law schools are legally required to accommodate students with learning disabilities unless the requested accommodation would alter the fundamental nature of the program. Courts give great deference to academic institutions in their determinations of what would alter the fundamental nature of the program; however, courts do expect law schools to deliberate and consider alternatives to the program requirements and to reach a rationally justifiable conclusion that the available alternative will either result in lower academic standards or require substantial alteration of the program.
Law faculty who clearly articulate the goals and objectives of each of their courses will be better prepared to meet this legal test. Moreover, they will be better prepared to accommodate requests of students. Those who are deliberate about their goals are able to consider alternative means of helping students learn the material and alternative means of assessing student performance. In this way, these faculty members will avoid law suits. Law schools should institute institutional incentives to encourage faculty members to do just that. Law school administrators must educate faculty members and others about the legal requirements and types of disabilities to be accommodation. Further, they might adopts such incentives as financial rewards and released time for faculty who are interested in more clearly defining their educational goals and methods.
The Legal Mind and Integrity in the Workplace: Principled Prerequisites for Statesmanship in Leadership
Robert J. McCarthy
Abstract
How a business does what it does (process) is as important as the product made or the services delivered. Executives recently have tended to focus exclusively on profits and neglect principles, to the overall detriment of society and the environment. The letter of the law and contracts, as well as the spirit of agreements, must be co-mingled if progress is to be made in addressing today’s major issues.
McCarthy synthesizes the work of Blackstone, Carter, Heifetz and Howard in developing a foundation for integrity in the workplace, grounded in principles rather than people and power. Urging a focus on core issues rather than peripheral distracters, he suggests ways to bridge the gap between espoused values and daily behaviors.
Blackstone’s Canvas of Influence Redux: Did He Contribute to the Construction of Ethics in American Education Law?
Russell A. Joki and
Kathy Canfield-Davis
Abstract
How a business does what it does (process) is as important as the product made or the services delivered. Executives recently have tended to focus exclusively on profits and neglect principles, to the overall detriment of society and the environment. The letter of the law and contracts, as well as the spirit of agreements, must be co-mingled if progress is to be made in addressing today’s major issues.
McCarthy synthesizes the work of Blackstone, Carter, Heifetz and Howard in developing a foundation for integrity in the workplace, grounded in principles rather than people and power. Urging a focus on core issues rather than peripheral distracters, he suggests ways to bridge the gap between espoused values and daily behaviors.
Failing to Heed Blackstone: A 50 Year Review of Tougher Sentences for Impaired Driving in Canada and How the Judiciary Strives to Avoid their Imposition
Blair Crew and Lawrence Greenspon
Abstract
More than 200 years ago, Sir William Blackstone recognized that:
We may observe that punishments of unreasonable severity, especially when indiscriminately inflicted, have less effect in preventing crimes, and amending the manners of a people, than such as are more merciful in general, yet properly intermixed with due distinctions of severity.
Despite this, over the last 50 years, the sentences and consequences of a conviction for impaired driving imposed under the Canadian Criminal Code or under provincial Highway Traffic Acts have become more severe and more punitive. Politicians have been unable to resist the political attractiveness of being perceived as “getting tough on crime” through the simplistic and unquestioned assumption that the increased use of mandatory minimum sentences will serve as a deterrent to impaired driving.
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Aging
Journey to Healthy Aging: Impact of Community Based Education Programs on Knowledge and Health Behavior in Older Adults
Sue McLarry
Abstract
The objective of this study was to determine if community based health education programs increased knowledge and health behavior in older adults. The study was a pretest-posttest design with a convenience sample of 111 independent community dwelling older adults. Participants received two disease prevention education presentations: type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer. Knowledge was assessed as the difference in pretest and posttest scores on the Diabetic Prevention Knowledge Test (DPKT) and the Colorectal Cancer Knowledge Questionnaire (CCKQ). Health behavior change was assessed as the difference between pre and posttest scores on the Health Promoting Lifestyle Profile II Physical Activity and Nutrition subscales and completion of the fasting blood glucose (FBG) and fecal occult blood test (FOBT). There was a significant difference in paired pretest-posttest scores on the DPKT (t = -7.678, p= .000) and CCKQ (t = -6.115, p = .000). While the mean posttest score on the Physical Activity subscale was significantly higher (t = -4.094, p = .000), the Nutrition subscale mean posttest score was not significantly different (t = -1.166, p = .246). A greater proportion of participants completed the FBG (84%) than the FOBT (50%). For this profile of independent older adults, community based health education resulted in greater knowledge and limited behavior change.
Abstract
The general topic is Successful Aging, an issue that has intrigued, puzzled, and challenged some of the best minds on planet Earth for millennia. I feel humbled to be among so many of the world’s experts today to present my views which are based upon research largely carried on by others; nonetheless, I will try to incorporate my research, which most recently has been in the area of human sexuality and the connection between erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular disease, into the general body of data that I will present on the triumvirate of healthcare, sexuality, and successful aging, and I will attempt to show some interrelationship of these subjects. That is a daunting task to accomplish in a limited time frame, but I will give it my best effort. I will conclude with some recommendations about how the information I am providing should be viewed.
Abstract
It is a well-established fact that the United States is an aging society. Increasing longevity and life expectancy has increased the number of elderly persons with chronic health conditions who are in need of special social services and caregiving by family members. Due to the fact that the aging population has grown significantly, the need for adult children to care for their parents has increased dramatically (Atchley and Barusch, 2004, p. 221). Currently, many of the large cohort of baby boomers (persons born between 1946 and 1964), who will become a part of the elderly population of the future, are caregivers for their aging parents. The baby boomers of today are likely to spend more years caring for a parent than for children (Federal Trade Commission, 1998). These social changes and population trends have created the need to gain a better understanding of the patterns of caregiving by adult children to their aging parents and how adult children can assist their parents in managing and planning for the consequences of aging.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the patterns of caregiving by adult children to their aging parents. The specific objectives are: (1) to describe the demographic realities that create the need for caregiving; (2) to present two alternative theoretical perspectives on caregiving to the elderly; (3) to enhance understanding of how family relationships influence patterns of caregiving to aging parents; (4) to discuss the importance of planning for caregiving by adult children with their aging parents; and (5) to apply relevant case material to illustrate several major points presented throughout the discussion.
Abstract
Elderly populations are growing globally, due in large part to increasing longevity (United Nations 2002). With the number of moderately or severely disabled older persons in the United States predicted to increase by as much as 350% in the next 40 years (Administration on Aging n.d.), the increased need for assistance will be dramatic. A number of technologies available to the general public are not available to the elderly because of non-intuitive interfaces. Because living arrangements of the elderly are linked to income, health status, and availability of caregivers (Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics 2004), the need for assistive technologies to facilitate aging-in-place becomes more prominent for researchers and legislators.
This paper will establish the need for assistance to the elderly in aging-in-place and describe available technology for assisting elderly persons’ functioning in their own homes. The paper will go on to discuss identified gaps in areas of need for the elderly which new research may help to fill. Finally, implications of aging-in-place for policy makers will be discussed.
Translating Basic Research into Community Practice: The Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging (CITRA)
Elaine Wethington and Karl A. Pillemer
Abstract
The mission of Cornell University’s Edward R. Roybal Center, the Cornell Institute for Translational Research on Aging (CITRA) is to develop new ways to translate the findings of basic social science research into programs and policies that benefit vulnerable older persons and contribute to improved health outcomes. The overarching goal is the creation of a “research-ready” group of service agencies serving older people in New York City that can be linked to medical and behavioral investigators who seek engagement with service agencies for applied and intervention studies. The CITRA “model” consists of seven overlapping steps: (1) creation of a research-ready network of service agencies; (2) a community-based needs assessment to establish a research agenda for the program; (3) development of a pool of investigators who are available and willing to collaborate with service agencies; (4) development of a model pilot study program to connect investigators to community agencies; (5) investigator development; (6) seminars, events, and research-practice consensus workshops to facilitate researcher-community partner interaction; and (7) engaging researchers and practitioners on critical issues related to aging to invigorate and sustain the partnership.
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Counseling
The Development of Technology-Based Counseling Strategies to Enhance Outreach to Parents and Students
Marie L. Wallace
Abstract
This paper presents a program for counseling students enrolled in an online charter school located in Las Vegas, Nevada. The author presents a review of the process to establish an online school in Nevada and a unique model for delivery of services that combines face-to-face instruction and online education. The author describes the development of a counseling program that includes strategies for encouraging college attendance. Students and parents are given an orientation to online education, online test-taking strategies, and online resources for admission to college. A sample of a web page for counseling and guidance is provided. In addition, this paper summarizes an intervention and research study conducted by the author while serving as Director of Counseling and Director of Testing.
This paper describes a counselor-led intervention to improve mathematics proficiency, help parents and students access learning and test-taking strategies available online, and help parents and students transition to a distance-learning school. The author explores the connection between failure on the test and failure to attend college. The counseling program was developed to expose parents and students to resources that promote college attendance. This action research study was designed to improve achievement in mathematics and prepare students for the mathematics proficiency test.
The scores on the Nevada Proficiency Test in Mathematics were used to measure improvement. As a result of the implementation of test-taking strategies, there was an improvement in the number of senior students passing the test. Before the implementation of the strategies, the percentage of students passing the test ranged from 0% in February 2003 to 7% in April 2003. The Clark County School District has an average passing rate of 20%. After the implementation of the strategies, 30% of the students tested passed the test (November 2003). The results of the parent survey were positive with a majority of parents participating in the orientation and stating that the orientation provided excellent information.
Women's Issues
Interconnectedness and Women’s Leadership: Disability Rights Through the Lenses of Emancipatory Spirituality and Liberatory Theology
Carol Zitzer-Comfort
Abstract
While “women’s leadership” may seem, at first glance, to be incongruous to the subject of disability rights through the lenses of emancipatory spirituality, chaos theory and wisdom traditions, just the opposite is true. Chaos theory, with an emphasis on the interconnectedness of all people and living beings, sheds new light on emancipatory ideologies for all individuals, particularly women who have disabilities. Native sciences and other wisdom traditions also present themes of “interdependence and respect [for all living beings]”… (Cajete 2000, 13). Women with disabilities have long been denied “equality of respect.” From segregation in schools to discriminatory policies from employers, the women with disabilities among us have systematically faced exclusion from most of our institutions. Drawing on the works of Nancy Eiesland, Michael Lerner, Nancy Mairs and Greg Cajete, as well as my own experiences raising a daughter with a disability, I explore notions of disability rights and models of leadership that embrace the inclusion of individuals with disabilities into all facets of our society.
Black Women Writers as Dynamic Agents of Change: Empowering Women from Africa to America
Lena M. Ampadu
Abstract
Black women have a long history and tradition of activism that can be traced to pre-colonial Africa. Women of African descent who are writers have challenged the status quo in the cultural, political, and spiritual realms of their communities by using their craft to present women who defy traditional roles and resist strictures of oppression. Using a cross-cultural analysis, I will establish how the Senegalese writer, Mariama Ba (So Long a Letter); the African American writer, Alice Walker, (The Color Purple) and the Zimbabwean writer, J. Nozipo Maraire, (A Letter to My Daughter), all give voice to women who had long been silenced and devalued—women who, according to Zora Neale Hurston, have the status of a mule.
A principal question guides the paper’s examination of activism and leadership: How can we use these rich, dynamic literary portraits and knowledge of Black women to model qualities necessary for activism and leadership to empower women to foster social change in contemporary African and African American communities, as well as in other communities ?
Piety, Pageantry and Politics on the Northern Great Plains: An American Indian Woman Restages Her People’s Conquest during the Era of Assimilation (1879-1934)
Susan Gardner
Abstract
A study of the early career of Dakota Sioux scholar Ella Cara Deloria (1889-1971). Better known male figures in her family, forced to relinquish their traditional leadership roles, strategically extended these by converting to Christianity during the nineteenth century US federal policies of allotment of lands and assimilation. Deloria’s first opportunities for professional leadership took place under the auspices of the YWCA and the Episcopalian diocese of South Dakota. This paper argues that, despite paternalistic surveillance, and by surreptitiously adapting contemporary American community historical pageantry to their own agenda, Ella Deloria and the Dakota actors she directed encoded resistance to the church’s “official story” of their conversion and salvation.
Abstract
The face of pharmacy is changing as more women make up the ranks of the pharmacy profession. Women have been graduating from colleges and schools of pharmacy at a higher rate than men for over 20 years and men are retiring at a faster rate than women. These two trends combined have resulted in a practicing profession comprised of a greater percentage of women. Workforce shortages have been reported for nine years and are forecasted to continue for the next five to ten years. The impact of the gender shift offers threats and opportunities for a healthcare profession at the forefront of patient access. Threats resulting from this gender shift have been proposed resulting in decreased pharmacy ownership, diminished political advocacy, and decreased academic leadership.
However, with this gender shift the potential for transformational changes in the profession are in full view. The evolution of the practice to one that is more based in the provision of cognitive services through the delivery of direct patient care may offer advantages to new practitioners. Some data indicate that women have a greater interest in the direct patient care aspects of their practice over that of their male counterparts. In addition, as more women enter the practice and advance into leadership roles the traditional views of girls and young women will change. Finally, policy changes are more likely to occur to facilitate and support women in the profession. Rethinking traditional models and infusing change through innovative policies can propel the impact of this gender shift down a positive path resulting in increased job satisfaction and advancement of the profession.
Contesting Patriarchy: Granddaughters Fight Back
Andrea Catapano
Abstract
This paper argues that colonial policies discriminating against Native women, as well as defining and circumscribing Native rights and identity, continue to cast a long shadow over the cultural and socio-economic landscape on First Nations Reserves in Canada. The study historicizes the emergence of these discriminatory practices on the Six Nations Reserve, entailing the transformation of Native social organization from a matriarchy to a reification of patriarchy, subordinating Six Nations women and denying them their human rights, if they chose to marry non-Natives. Banished from their homes and families, constrained from participating in Six Nations culture, women continue to suffer under this yoke of oppression that has been naturalized through the hegemony of internal colonialism and meted out according to Canadian statutory law, codified in the Indian Act. The narrative describes several signal cases that posed legal challenges to discrimination, the intervention of the United Nations to protect Native women’s cultural autonomy, as well as the internal Canadian political struggle over reform, women’s rights and the movement for Native self-government. As Native women continue to struggle against the patriarchal mentality and colonization of consciousness evidenced by their leaders, First Nations communities are attempting to determine their own codes of citizenship, define their own cultural identities and design new indigenous institutions to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century, to ensure the continuation of our Native cultures.
Abstract
This paper explores workplace challenges that women face and recommends strategies to address them through 1) research, and 2) policy at organizational and governmental levels. Discrimination against women manifests itself in various forms, including: job segregation; wage gap; sexual harassment; denial of career development opportunities, including mentoring; poor performance evaluations; and lack of promotion opportunities. This paper focuses on women in business and reviews the literature on gender disparities in employment, compensation, and promotion. Theoretically, women dominated industries should have improved pay equity, lesser gender discrimination and contain a relatively higher number of executive women than male dominated industries. The paper follows up on findings of the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission and seeks to further understand the continuing impact of gender on compensation. Compensation data from the American Dietetic Association, a female dominated healthcare organization, is analyzed to determine if women dominated industries (WDI) have improved pay equity. If women are to achieve salary equity and experience career satisfaction, if corporations are to benefit fully from the capabilities of qualified managers, certain workplace attitudes and behaviors must change or the workplace must be protected from expressions of partiality and gender/sex bias. The paper makes recommendations to business, researchers and policy makers.
Definitions and Disasters: What Hurricane Katrina Revealed About Women’s Rights
Lynne M. Adrian
Abstract
The decisions made in the 1930s following the passage of women’s suffrage reflected definitions of equality that had been accepted by both women’s rights activists and labor progressives. These decisions constructed rights to government support in old age, unemployment, illness, or support of dependents by tying them to employment rather than citizenship. This construction both reflected the gender assumptions in a social model of a “family wage” for a male breadwinner with dependent wife and children and worked to exclude African-Americans. As a consequence, any sense of “dependency” or government support has been demonized by equating it with an unwillingness to work. As the American economy has transformed into an information and service economy these views have been further reinforced, since many of the service jobs are in sectors that are traditionally constructed as “women’s work.”
The impact of these policies can be seen in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. There the economy was largely service and tourist oriented, the city overwhelmingly African-American, and the income levels considerably below the national average, and often below the poverty line, even for those working full-time. The interactions of assumptions about gender, race, dependency and the conscious under funding of government are evident in the federal response and reflect conditions that continue to hinder the development of women’s rights in the United States.
The Academic Climate of Women Faculty in Faith-Based Institutions of Higher Learning
Jackie L. Halstead and Courtney Loy
Abstract
The unequal status of women professors, compared to their male counterparts, is not staggering news. While women constitute approximately sixty percent of the undergraduate population and earn more than half the doctorates in the United States, women professors continue to number fewer than men. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) claims that although sex discrimination is becoming less blatant, these and other statistics clearly reveal patterns of discrimination.
A segment of the institutions of higher learning, faith-based institutions, demonstrate these same patterns of inequity. Although the women who are employed by these schools initially believe they will find themselves in a less biased environment, it is soon apparent that the dynamics are similar to other colleges and universities and at times magnified.
A qualitative study was undertaken to examine these dynamics. Focus groups were facilitated at five faith-based institutions of higher learning and findings were compared to the climates of other academic institutions. These findings will be articulated along with recommendations for the creation of a climate conducive to the recruitment and retention of women faculty.
The Untold Story: African American Women Administrators’ Alchemy of turning Adversity into Gold
Sydney Howe Barksdale
Abstract
As we approach the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the globalization and privatization of the academy is destabilizing the patterns of university professional work developed over the past hundred years (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). To grasp the extent of changes taking place and to understand the forces of change on women in the academy, it is important to focus on women administrators in this equation. African American women administrators in particular, and women of all historically underrepresented racial groups in general, must deal with the unique challenges of singular discrimination in terms of race and gender and then the intersectionality of the issues of racism and sexism in terms of feelings of isolation, perceptions of lack of trust and support, and tokenism and struggles over power and influence (Collins, 1991; Edwards, 1997; Edwards & Camblin 1998; Moses, 1989; Mosley, 1980; Sandler, 1986; Sandler & Hall, 1991; Shavlik and Touchton, 1986). The purpose of this study was to collect qualitative information, beyond basic preparation and readiness for a senior level administrative position, that related to support, success and other career enhancing achievement factors. These factors are connected to family and community support systems, informal and formal professional networks, and the ability to navigate and negotiate effectively within professional and higher education environments.
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Higher Education
Abstract
The study will trace the external factors influencing the liberalization, deregulation and privatization of higher education in Malaysia from 1970 to the present and to analyze the effects of liberalization, deregulation and privatization on the modes of privatization and the internal restructuring of institutions of higher learning to increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve quality. In the 1970s, higher education was a small sector and was monopolized by the public sector and there was considerable public resistance to the establishment of private universities. The received knowledge was that returns to primary schooling were higher than returns to higher education and hence the shift of the public budget away from higher education to primary education. The impetus for the privatization of higher education came after the 1985-1986 economic crisis, which placed limits on the expansion of the public provision of higher education. The privatization of higher education was to facilitate educational reform to produce quality graduates that could transform Malaysia from an agrarian economy to an industrialized and knowledge based economy by 2020 for the primary purpose of enhancing the competitiveness of the Malaysian economy. The 1996 Private Higher Educational Institutions Act, 1996 and 1997 East Asian economic crisis further opened the country to elite foreign universities to increase the supply of quality graduates to increase Malaysia’s competitiveness. The liberalization of education therefore facilitated the process of globalization and Malaysia’s deeper integration with the world economy as a regional center of academic excellence and as an exporter of educational services. At the same time the received wisdom was that increases in graduate education did not necessarily result in graduate unemployment and graduate unemployment did not reduce the social demand for higher education. The effect of the reforms in institutions of higher learning are improved corporate governance, new programs and more autonomy in finance.
Criminal Justice
Learning Disabilities and Attention Deficit Disorder: A New Approach for the Criminal Justice System
Judge David S. Admire
Abstract
As a judge, I was continually confronted with offenders whose behavior was unexpected and surprising. This was observed not only during their criminal activity but during their travel through the criminal process. This behavior did not appear to be intentional, but rather an inappropriate response to the circumstances that existed at the time. Furthermore, this behavior reminded me of the behavior of my two children who had been diagnosed with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit disorder (ADD). This collision of my personal and professional lives began a journey into the fascinating and complex world of neurobiology and its impact on the criminal justice system.
In this paper, I will discuss these disorders, their impact on the criminal justice system, their resulting costs to society and why new measures must be taken to address these issues appropriately.
Petit Apartheid in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: An Analysis of Community Organization Data Documenting Work force Abuses of the Undocumented
Anna Ochoa O’Leary
Abstract
In this paper, the data gathered in 2004 and 2005 by the Coalición de Derechos Humanos (Derechos), a Tucson Arizona community-based human rights organization is summarized and analyzed within the framework of “Petit Apartheid.” The organization provides a much-needed service by assisting members of the Mexican-origin community, many of which are undocumented workers, file grievances against their employers. This is an important first step in making visible the routine unfair treatment of a virtually invisible workforce. The framework for analysis is useful because it centers on microaggressions: the “everyday instances of harm” that law enforcement agents inflict on members of racialized groups. I argue that the routine harsh and harmful treatment to which undocumented workers are systematically subjected is similarly a product of social attitudes that methodologically deprive them of employment stability and social progress and is therefore apartheid-like. Narratives from the Derechos archives flesh out the social spaces conducive to microaggression, and at a broader level, make visible the contradictions between employment practices and immigration law. Although too often in ignored in state and national immigration debates, the voices emerging from these narratives illustrate how differences and inequality are informally enforced by way of employer-employee exchanges.
Use of the Rule of Law to take the measure of HIV/Aids
Gregg W. Bonelli
Abstract
The author describes his role in the case of the State of Illinois vs. Timothy Lunsford, the first case to attack the constitutionality of discriminatory HIV criminal statutes appealed to the Illinois and United States Supreme Courts. Legal pleadings are provided in the appendix while the preceding narrative focuses on the problems inherit in a legal system based upon precedent and influenced by political forces and popular elections.
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Diversity
Walking the Diversity Compliance Tightrope: Maintaining the Balance Between Enforcement and Equity
Bonnie L. Roach
Abstract
Many federal laws, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, have enabled women and minorities access to the workplace. These same laws have mandated that employers prevent discrimination against women and minorities, yet when employers utilize various strategies for eliminating discrimination in the workplace, they have found themselves faced with litigation for their efforts. For example, human resource managers have been struggling with finding ways to prevent and eliminate sexual harassment and one solution has been to require their employees to sign no-fraternization agreements. Unfortunately, rather than solving the problem, the employer has compounded the problem since it is quite common for employers to punish female violators of the policy while no action is taken against male violators. This paper will examine some unique diversity compliance issues and problems that have arisen in the workplace and how human resource managers should respond to these situations. Particular issues, such as sexual harassment in e-mail, religious “witnessing”, and transgender issues will be highlighted.
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