Finally, you are typically not permitted into a university library without a student ID, unless it also contains a bookstore and that bookstore has an agreement with the college which requires them to permit non-students to come in to shop. And if you do get in there, you won't be able to use the computers anyway.
I don't know what the stats are on this, but I've certainly just walked into MANY university libraries. Particularly many public universities in the U.S. seem to have a general policy allowing public access (but also MANY private universities). And while some computer use may be restricted, you'll likely at least be able to access computers with the catalog and probably at least some access to electronic resources.
Sure, there are plenty of places where you'd have to show documentation that you are a scholar or researcher to get inside a university library (or sometimes pay a fee -- mostly at really elite universities or places with a major crime problem), but there are also plenty of places where that is NOT true.
The online reference doesn't have to be Wikipedia. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is excellent, and there's no reason why other fields couldn't do the same thing.
Absolutely -- you've cited one of the best and most reliable academic resources on the internet. Unfortunately, other fields simply haven't done "the same thing" for the most part. So, GP was right: in many (most?) fields, the random stuff you will find on the internet will be 50 years out-of-date, unless you know where to look AND some actual experts have taken the time to make it available.
There were a couple of researchers who thought it would be nice if Wikipedia reflected the state-of-the-art instead of outdated views from half a century ago that dilettantes had put up, but they quickly abandoned Wikipedia after being dissatisfied with its editing climate.
Yes, this is the freaking scary aspect of Wikipedia and access to up-to-date knowledge. Every general encyclopedia is out-of-date, but (1) everybody would assume that general encyclopedias didn't represent the latest scholarship, and (2) there were mechanisms for ensuring that updates would eventually happen in consultation with experts.
Nowadays, people look at Wikipedia, which seems to have exhaustive and VERY up-to-date articles on just about every aspect of popular culture or recent events, so readers begin to assume that it must be relatively exhaustive and up-to-date on most things.
But that's just not true. In Wikipedia all sources are basically equal as long as they stand up to "verifiability" and rather broad criteria. There's no good filter to separate quality information and up-to-date scholarship from all the random noise of popular sources.
Again, I'm not saying that Encyclopedia Britannica or whatever was much better, but it also was expected to be somewhat out of date. And at some point there were at least something vaguely like an expert editorial board to say, "Well, actually, we've received letters from a bunch of experts in this field saying our articles are inaccurate, and current scholarship has gone in a different direction. So let's fix it." In the Wikipedia world, though, who wins is usually the person who fights the longest and know the wikilawyering rules the best.
The danger nowadays is that Wikipedia has become its own feedback loop -- journalists and popular writers often consult it, rather than experts, so there's no mechanism to get the new expert ideas out there, short of experts writing popular books and then getting them cited on Wikipedia. Otherwise, 50-year-old scholarship lives on on Wikipedia, where it is used by journalists and pop writers, and when someone disputes Wikipedia, the wikilawyers bring up dozens of those recent media sources which probably got their crappy info from Wikipedia to begin with.
I've heard the same complaints from fellow academics in fields from anthropology to mathematics. You can keep on thinking you have access to everything you might possibly want, but you simply have no idea how much you are missing.
I would agree. In some technical fields, it's more common to put preprints of a lot of cutting-edge scholarship online, but that's certainly not true of most fields. In those other fields, access to quality journals and expensive academic books is necessary, and most Wikipedia editors don't have access to that kind of stuff -- and often are deliberately hostile to new editors who do (because without access, other editors can't "verify" the claims, and there's always this fear that someone might be doing "original research," when they're actually representing the consensus of journal articles that just doesn't happen to be reflected in common pop material that's easily available).
Adjunct pay for *all* courses in *any* department is just under $700 per credit. Most classes are 3 credits, so for your $2100 per term you are expected to be in the classroom for 3 hours per week and have 2 hours of office hours - either online (via big blue button, our course management system, or some other virtual meeting software), a scheduled time you can be reached by phone, or in a lab or library area. So the average hourly pay rate (assuming no students show up during your office hours - and they typically dont - and you use that time for your grading, etc - is about $25/hr.
Wow -- I certainly would advise students not to go to your school if this is a commonly-shared attitude among instructors.
If I care at all about students, and was doing the bare minimum I'd consider an acceptable "college-level" educational experience, I'd probably spend at least 5-6 hours prep time per week for a 3-hour course (including grading, admin tasks, designing assessments, preparing in-class materials and tech, email and meeting with students, actually working on content for the class and improving it, etc.). And that's for a class I've already taught a couple times; new classes would require significantly more. But then again, I've never worked for $2100/class -- I assume I'd probably do much less because I'd have to earn money elsewhere... and my teaching would undoubtedly suffer.
A more realistic estimate for an actual "great" class for the students would be 10 hours prep per week for a 3-hour class (particularly if enrollment is high, requiring more grading). One could do more, but there's a point of diminishing returns (in my opinion). Your $25/hour has dropped to about $10/hour. And I know PLENTY of dedicated professors who actually care about teaching who spend even more hours, pushing the rate down to minimum wage or lower.
To see the real expectation, I'd look at university teaching loads for actual tenure-track professors at places where there are few research requirements for tenure (i.e., places where it's mostly about teaching). Most of those places have teaching loads of about 4 classes per semester, if they have low research standards for tenure. Assuming a 40-hour work-week, that comes to roughly 10 hours per class, so about 7 hours prep per class, as a general expectation. And many of the higher-calibre schools will only require faculty to teach 3 classes per semester.
(Even in less well-paid fields (like the humanities), professors at decent institutions generally earn $40-50k to start; other fields will often be higher. For 8 classes per year, that's $5-6k per class, and they also get benefits. Clearly, $2100 is not coming anywhere close to what we're paying actual faculty at decent schools to prepare for class, yet many of these same schools will pay adjuncts a similar per-class rate to yours.)
I know a lot of college teachers who do less prep than this, and a lot of adjuncts are forced to do much less than this because they're trying to cobble together 6-8 classes per semester at different universities just to make a decent living.
But that doesn't mean they're actually providing a great (or even a good) education for their students. A precious few are probably able to pull it off, but not most.
The fact of the matter is that there are far too many people who want faculty positions compared to the number of available positions. I quote directly from our university president, "I can get professors anywhere."
That is certainly true, but can he get good teachers anywhere? The current system of adjuncts generally does not reward good teaching -- it rewards those who "play politics" well in departments and can manage to "not rock the boat enough" to get rehired from semester to semester... all while earning next to nothing.
Meanwhile, most tenure-track faculty are rewarded for doing research more than teaching. Unless they are a disaster in the classroom (and in some technical fields, they may have little to no contact with students at all), all that matters is "publish or perish."
And what of the undergraduates who actually need good teachers? There may be loads of people with Ph.D.s scrambling to take any job they can find, but are the hiring practices actually finding qualified people who will do the best job teaching students?
(Full disclosure: I have taught in higher-ed institutions; these are my own observations.)
There is pressure from the administration to buffer grades, [snip] but otherwise the administration couldn't give a rats arse about how popular the professors are with the students. They care most about how much research money the professor is bringing in
True for tenure-track profs; not true for adjuncts. I've known adjuncts who'd give out all A's (or nearly so), assign almost no work, and bring homemade baked goods to class on a regular basis... just to endear themselves enough with the students that they'd get good teaching scores and be rehired to teach another 4 classes next semester for a $20k total salary per year. There are so many things about what I've just said that are completely screwed up.
No one goes into a professorship expecting a 9-5 job, but pointing out professors are spending extra time with their students isn't really making the case the situtation is detrimental for education, either.
No, not detrimental for students' education. But detrimental for adjuncts' lives, when they are trying to cobble together 6 classes to teach at the same time at three different universities so they can earn a whopping $1-3k per class in many cases. Including prep time, grading, etc., there's no way many of these people are even making minimum wage -- but sure, let's just ask them to do a few more hours because they bother to care about their students.
Professors aren't in it for the money. They're the sort of people who just wouldn't fit anywhere else. You don't need to pay them well.
Yeah, it'd be nice though if we'd pay enough to attract decent teachers, though, which we might want to retain on a semi-permanent basis (even if not full "tenured" positions). I'm not saying that "throwing money" at college teaching will automatically improve undergraduate education -- sure it won't. But more money, benefits, and a little job security might actually attract people who have more than the minimum qualifications and aren't just young new Ph.D.s who are just hanging around for a few years until they realize they can't actually "live like this" for the rest of their lives and go out to find a "real job."
(Believe me, as someone who went through a secondary-school certification program to teach high school some years ago, I've seen the kinds of people that you get with the "you don't need to pay them well because they can't do anything else" sentiment. Do we really have such low standards for the people who are supposed to be teaching the next generation? Again -- it's not ALL about the money, but if you want to attract and retain qualified teachers, you need to both actually look for good teachers -- admittedly something colleges do even worse than secondary schools -- and pay them a living wag
Professors in technical areas make large amounts of money, and are guaranteed their salary for life once they've been promoted once (to associate professor).
While this is certainly true, the main issue TFA brings up is the rise in ADJUNCT teaching. This does NOT depend on the field. Whether you're stuck teaching a large section of English 101 or Physics 101, if you're not tenure-track, you'll likely being paid really badly. (Average adjunct pay is something like a few thousand dollars per course; even if you can cobble together 4 courses per semester as a lecturer, which is usually not guaranteed, you'd be lucky to get more than $20-30k, probably without any benefits.)
On the other hand, professors in the arts or history departments make less than many staff earn.
It's true that some technical fields pay adjuncts a little better at major universities, but more than $4-5k per course is still relatively rare. Only at a few top schools who have generous adjunct policies will you find any college adjuncts earning more than your local high school teacher, and usually without benefits and without knowing whether they'll be able to keep their job or teaching load from semester to semester.
Note that this is all public record - I'm not exactly giving away secrets.
Depends on the state. A lot of states only release detailed salary information for public institutions above a certain amount (often $30-50k). I know a number of public universities where NO ONE outside the university could possibly know how many adjuncts are working for incredibly low wages, because their salaries are NOT public record.
The issues with the trades is not pay. Take a look at how much a plumber or electrician can make in the Chicago area.
Yeah -- it's important to note these are union wages. Not all skilled trades are heavily unionized, and not all workers work for union shops or businesses.
My father was in one of the top "skilled trades" professions, but he was stuck working at a non-union shop for the last 20 years of his career. He made okay money, but not great given his experience. If he were at a union shop, he'd probably have been paid significantly more than he was, but that would have likely required him to commute a hour or more to and from work everyday once many of the local union jobs dried up, and he wasn't able to do that.
Anyhow -- despite having 40 years experience at the top of a skilled trade, he spent the last 3 years of his career taking classes in all sorts of random other trades (electrician, mechanic, computer tech, etc.). Why? Because his employer decided actual experience in individual skilled trades could be replaced by "multi-skilled workers." The idea (no doubt from a bunch of manager MBAs) was that in the future they would just have a team of "multi-skilled workers" who could just do all the random tasks on machinery and such that they needed. The flexibility would allow them to hire fewer people, since somebody could be an electrician today, a machinist tomorrow, a mechanic the next day, etc.
My father needed to take the classes if he didn't want to fall behind in payscale, so he did. A few weeks of night school in each area, and he's supposed to be able to take over for a trained electrician or mechanic or whatever. But the guys who didn't do it were gradually phased out, as the company outsourced more of its repairs and technical work to other shops.
I assume stories like this aren't unique. Sure, if you're a union member and can get the work in places where you'll get union wages, skilled trades are great. But lots of skilled trades workers don't have such options -- and they are faced with increasing numbers of people who don't want to pay them anything and don't understand what the difference is between somebody who has 25 years experience in a specific trade vs. somebody who took a 6-week class in nightschool.
Hmm, that's an interesting point. So, you don't feel that these graphs are something worth talking about?
Sure, they might be worth talking about. In fact, I already said that in my original post in reply to you: "The number of male graduates is continuously growing -- it's just not growing as fast as the number of female graduates is. Maybe that's a trend to talk about (or not)..."
The problem is we need to actually talk about what's going on, not misinterpret the data. It's profoundly disturbing to me that your original post was just modded up without evidence, since it implies that many people here just assume what you say is true... even though it's not.
If what your original post said was true, that would imply that young men are deliberately choosing not to go to college in ever greater numbers -- and that might imply that our educational system is driving them away or something.
But, when we look at the actual evidence, we see that men are choosing a college education at numbers greater than ever before in history. And so are women. And for some reason, the number of women making that choice is growing faster than men.
Okay -- is that a good or a bad thing? I don't know. If you think the overall trend toward more college is good, it could be good, in the sense that there are still pay disparities for women. Having more women with better credentials might allow them to advance more easily and solve the pay equity problem. On the other hand, if you think that too many people are going to college these days, then the graphs show women are disproportionately "suckered into" large debt and degrees they probably don't need, continuing to promote a broken higher ed system that should be replaced by more trade schools or apprenticeship-type learning. Maybe men are actually making the "smart choice" by not all diving into college. Or maybe that's an argument that BOTH groups are making smart choices: women are going for credentials in increasing numbers because they're trying to make up for disparities which women suffer in the workforce, while men feel like they can make plenty of money without those credentials (and without the debt that comes with them). Maybe everybody wins.
Or not. Maybe it's a bad trend, even though more people of all sexes and races than ever before are going to college. Who knows? We can debate these issues, but let's be sure we're actually debating what's really happening.
Because these two sets of data appear to directly contradict one another. The only disparity I can see is that the NY Times graphs specify a particular age group, why, I don't really know.
Are you serious? Neither is "lying." Okay, I'll try to explain how these are different.
Your link has graphs showing the percentage of males vs. females out of the student population (i.e., where 100%=all students). The percentages of males and females necessarily sum to 100%. If the percentage of females goes up, the percentage of males necessarily goes down. And it necessarily goes down by the exact percentage that the number of females goes.
However, your link has nothing to do with the absolute number of graduates in any given year. Nor does it have anything to do with the percentage of males or females in the general population who graduate college in a given year. Those are separate numbers.
The NYT link shows the percentage of males and females from the general population who have graduated college recently. 100% here = ALL people of that age (whether they went to college or not). There's no necessary relationship between the number of men vs. women here -- both could go up, both could go down, or one could go up while the other goes down. For the most part, both male and female graduates are trending up (and have been pretty much since these statistics began to be collected).
If this is still confusing, let's use some actual numbers. Suppose the number of college grads in a series of years looks like this:
Year - Male grads - Female grads
1st year - 20 - 10
2nd year - 25 - 20
3rd year - 30 - 30
4th year - 35 - 40
Okay, now it's pretty clear that the absolute numbers of both are rising, right?
Also, let's say that the total population of each year equals 100 each of males and females. So the percentage of college grads for BOTH males and females is rising every year as well, right?
But now let's figure out the percentage of total college grads who are male vs. female each year. For example, the first year there are 20 men, and 10 women, for a total of 30. Thus, there are 20/30 = 67% men, and 10/30 = 33% women. Okay? With me so far? Now, let's calculate:
Year - % male grads - % female grads
1st year - 67% - 33%
2nd year - 56% - 44%
3rd year - 50% - 50%
4th year - 47% - 53%
Now, imagine a graph of those numbers. The male numbers are continuously going down, while the female numbers are going up. The number of males as a percentage of graduates is declining, while the number of females is rising.
But as we already know: THE NUMBERS OF BOTH SEXES ARE STILL GOING UP.
The NYT graph is like my first table. The second table is like your link.
Nobody is "lying here." They are two different graphs measuring two different types of trends. Your trend tells me that women make up a greater percentage of graduates. My trend tells me that both men and women are choosing to graduate from college more. Those statements are NOT contradictory -- they can both be true at the same time.
Again, I'll say it: more men THAN EVER BEFORE IN HISTORY are graduating from college now. Same is true of women. It's just that the GROWTH of female graduates is faster than the GROWTH of males.
(What the article doesn't explain is why a science article needs a title involving an unnecessary metaphor and a colon: "Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Oral Tofacitinib Reverses Alopecia Universalis in a Patient with Plaque Psoriasis.")
By filling government with inexperienced people, you end up with no institutional memory of past mistakes, and legislators that rely more than ever on the advice and guidance of lobbyists.
"By filling government with experienced people [incumbents], you end up with no voter memory of past mistakes [because people just keep voting for familiar names, regardless of record], and legislators that rely more than ever on the advice and guidance of lobbyists."
There, FTFY.
Here's the problem with this debate -- the vast majority of the government is filled with more-or-less permanent employees. Underneath almost every executive official or legislator or department head that is elected or appointed every few years are often hundreds or thousands of permanent staff who keep everything running from day-to-day.
So, the idea that if you forced the few elected officials at the very top of the chain to be changed every few years, then you'd end up with "no institutional memory"? That's ridiculous. Most of the people working at any given agency can easily tell the new bosses what worked in the past and what didn't... as they do now every single time an election occurs. (And where do you think most lobbyists come from? Previous staff members who used to work in government....)
Even for minor legislative bodies without a significant permanent underlying bureaucracy to tell them what to do, term limits generally still stagger things enough that you won't ever have a completely new legislature all coming in at once. So, those who have been around will help those who are new, like any job.
Now -- the question is whether we do gain anything by periodically forcing a turnover. I'd say the evidence suggests it won't make a difference either way in most cases. No term limits, and you risk having perpetual underachievers who do just enough not to annoy anyone and keep getting elected just because voters have heard their names. Term limits, and you might force out experienced members who might be good serving for many years or decades.
Show me this "social contract". I think a big part of the problem here is delusional reasoning based on imaginary things that don't actually exist.
It's a metaphor. Read and learn. Yes, the social contract is an "imaginary" contract. It's based on the idea that for society to exist, we all have to agree to some principles. There's lots of disagreement about what those principles are (i.e., what the "contract" consists of), but there has to be some sort of implicit agreement. Otherwise, it's in my best interest to go murder you and steal your food and clothes and money when no one's looking, because it will benefit me.
Instead, we as a society have decided it's probably better not for everyone to go around randomly killing and stealing from each other, so we pass laws intended to enforce this implicit "contract."
But to claim that is a "contract", requires that the thing be voluntary and agreed to. That generally is not the case.
Again, it's a metaphor. But if you don't like the "contract," move somewhere else that has a different set of laws more in line with what you want. Otherwise, by remaining a member of a society governed by laws, you implicitly agree to abide by them.
I find that most of the people who use the term, "social contract" want me to do things for them, but can't be bothered to come up with reasons aside from vacuous, moralistic bullshit for doing them.
Well, as I said, there's a lot disagreement about what is necessary to create a just society. Reading the GP's comment that you were responding to, it sounds like he/she was invoking something like John Rawls's concept of the veil of ignorance, i.e., the "original position" where this hypothetical "social contract" is "negotiated."
Brief summary: Imagine you're going to play a game against opponents you have never met before. You have the option to make modifications to the rules in advance, if you wish. You have no clue how strong or skilled or whatever your opponents might be -- they could be physically disabled, mentally retarded people, or they could be the strongest, biggest, smartest, fastest people you have ever met in your life.
How do you determine the rules of the game? How do you figure out what would be "fair" play?
Now imagine that you have the same problem, except it will determine how you can live your entire life. That's the "veil of ignorance" -- you don't know before you're born if you're going to come into a society naturally as the brightest, most beautiful, most talented person who has ever lived, or as a person near the bottom of the talent pool, who will always struggle to keep up.
Rawls argued from that "thought experiment" that we'd want to negotiate a fair "social contract" with protections for those who might -- by chance -- come into society with fewer skills or abilities than others. He argued that fairness dictates we should build in certain protections to ensure that we don't exploit them or force them into degrading impoverished positions -- because, from the perspective "behind the veil of ignorance" they could have been US. By accident of birth, maybe we could be born into a different society or at a different time when our skills were just as stupid and crappy as theirs -- and what would we want to protect us from being exploited and run over by the "better" members of that society?
That's why we need a "social contract." The exact terms are up for debate, but most people who have thought about the issue agree that, in fairness to all, we need protections for everyone. And sometimes we need to build in protections for those who need it most.
Why doesn't someone put fifty million into figuring our why fewer young men are graduating from universities than ever before
WHAT are you talking about? Actual numbers of college graduates AND the percentage of college graduates among adults are at all-time highs in the United States, even among males. (See this chart, attached to this article, for example.)
What has changed is that the growth of female college graduates has increased much more rapidly than males, so women are now graduating in greater numbers and compose higher percentages of university students.
But your idea that "fewer young men are graduating from universities than ever before" is completely and utterly bogus. The number of male graduates is continuously growing -- it's just not growing as fast as the number of female graduates is. Maybe that's a trend to talk about (or not), but your implication that men are somehow choosing not to go to college or not to finish it in greater numbers than ever before isn't borne out by the facts.
The current schooling environment is hostile to boys.
I know this has come up a bit in recent years, but mostly it's a claim made about draconian measures to stop boys from playing games involving imaginary guns and shootings... mostly because of ineffective and ridiculous overreactions to recent school shootings.
Maybe this is having an effect, and maybe it results in alienation of some boys. But I fail to see what this has to do with the number of female teachers....
*That* is the reason they aren't good at it, they are not taught how because the teachers are predominantly female and don't know or want to know how to teach boys.
Umm, are you being sarcastic? Female school teachers have greatly outnumbered males at least for the past 150 years in the U.S. or so. (See, for example, the chart on p. 29 here.) We're not even at historical high points for female teachers -- female teachers composed roughly 80-85% of the public school teaching force from 1920 to 1950 or so. These were periods where the vast, vast majority of high school graduates and college students were male.
Now, it's possible that our culture has changed and that female teachers no longer care about educating boys (actively discriminating against them), or that boys no longer respect female teachers (or teachers in general) and therefore aren't learning well from them. Or maybe other aspects of our culture have changed overall.
But the idea that because "teachers are predominantly female" that boys can't learn is simply stupid, as even the most cursory glance at historical trends would tell you.
Okay, perhaps "coloured" wasn't the best example. As you can tell from the spelling I'm not an American, and in the UK it is generally considered to be unacceptable in polite conversation.
It IS unacceptable in "polite conversation" in the U.S. too. But that's not because it's a slur. That's why the NAACP hasn't changed their name -- the word simply became old-fashioned, and as newer terms pushed "colored" out in polite conversation, the term became associated with older more racist periods when it was used more frequently. But that doesn't mean it was ever significantly used (in the U.S.) in a derogatory sense -- it was, at least until the 1950s or so, a commonly taught "polite" term. In an era where people were often still obsessed with precisely how much black heritage you had (whether you were fully "black" or a "mulatto" or a "quadroon" or an "octaroon"), the word "colored" was used by educated folk to signify that you didn't care so much about these stupid racist distinctions.
Basically, the word became "deprecated," and then it became taboo. It wasn't deprecated primarily because it had been offensive.
And for that reason, there are still public scandals every few years where some older American politician or celebrity uses the word "colored," and there's a huge uproar. But the vast majority of time this happens, it was because older folks were taught this as a polite term many years ago, not because they are using it in any sort of derogatory sense.
In any case, you are actually agreeing with me.
Yeah, I get it. Sorry if I was a bit overbearing; I know what you meant. I just get tired of everyone's assumptions about past connotations. The AC you were replying to was the one being the real ass.
Despite the NAACP's initials, referring to someone as "colored" in the US would certainly get you some odd stares, and a likely assumption you're using it pejoratively, precisely for the reasons you suggest, so your example was fine. Likewise "negro" FWIW.
Sort of. But the assumption that a person who uses "colored" is likely using it pejoratively is probably wrong (despite the fact that it's generally regarded by educated folks as "un-PC") -- it's much more likely that older folks who still occasionally use this word are simply ignorant of modern conventions.
Educated Americans shouldn't use "colored" or "negro" today. But that's not because of a history of the words being used as derogatory or as slurs -- they used to be the most polite terminology. (In fact, "negro" is probably the first term that the African-American community actually strongly lobbied for and chose for themselves.)
In any case, the words have come to be associated today with negative characteristics of past periods. You shouldn't use "colored" today because it is seen as offensive today, and it is now offensive because it was used during ugly periods of American history, NOT because it was offensive when it was actually used frequently.
Maybe this seems like a minor distinction, but it's important to recognize because most of the (mostly older) folks who sometimes use the term "colored" in the U.S. actually do NOT mean it in any offensive way at all... it's often what they were taught as the most polite term when they grew up. We can fault them for not keeping up with the times, but we should not assume that they are necessarily using it as a slur. (Same with negro.)
The important thing is the intent of the person using the word. If the person is using it to denigrate someone or a group, it's offensive. If the person is using it out of ignorance or in an unrelated context, it's not offensive.
But "offense" is a feeling. More specifically, it is a feeling that is felt by a person who is offended. How can you possibly decide that offensiveness is determined by the person who isn't feeling the offense?
We can certainly argue that some people get offended too much or inappropriately or whatever. And maybe that's a cultural problem that should be fixed with some people. But that doesn't mean they don't FEEL offended.
I agree with you that many people use words out of ignorance or without intent to offend -- and if they do so, we should be more sympathetic than if they deliberately used words in a hurtful manner. But the only person qualified to decide whether something "offended" him/her is the person who feels offense.
Your logic is equivalent to saying, "I know I punched you in the face, but I did it by accident, so you couldn't possibly be hurt." Or, "I punched you, but I did it lightly and didn't intend to hurt you, so you can't possibly feel pain." Except pain -- as a feeling -- is felt by the party that, well, feels the pain. It's incredibly egotistical to say that someone else can't feel something just because you didn't intend for them to feel it.
The person feeling offended has nothing to do with it other than in the general social context that certain words are known to offend certain groups.
No -- this is not how language works. Words are a means of communication, generally between at least two people. If words are misunderstood by a listener or carry connotations unintended by the speaker, then communication has at least partly failed. The language is not as effective as it could be. Speakers who choose words that offend listeners are not using language as well as they might, if their goal is actually to be intelligible.
Saying a listener to language "has nothing to do with it" is like saying that your sexual partner "has nothing to do" with a sex act. If you're not actually trying to communicate effectively by using language, you're effectively just going around masturbating.
But it's just plain wrong to assume that any time an offensive word is used, that offense is intended.
Of course it is. But if people ARE in fact offended, an effective speaker will realize that other terminology might be better for communication, which is the primary purpose of language. A person who continues on, claiming "Nobody should be offended by my speech, because I don't INTEND to offend anyone" is just a foolish, egomanical idiot.
When someone uses a derogatory word without intent to offend, and someone else is offended by the use of the word, it is a misunderstanding. Not an offense.
Yes, the "misunderstanding" occurs between two people, since effective communication fails to occur. But the "offense" occurs too, since it is an emotion felt by the listener.
But maybe I'm wasting time replying to you, since obviously no one who actually listens to you has any right to feel anything or observe anything about what you've said. You obviously INTENDED your arguments to be valid, so they must be so.
Actually the only question here is what the term "redskins" means in means in historical context.
No, that question is barely relevant. The question is whether the term is regarded as offensive NOW. Historical discussions (some would say unfortunately) are rather irrelevant, because people tend not to care much about history. Your post seems to be an example of this.
Historically it has been a derisory term, and no-one can really deny that native Americans were derided with it while being oppressed in other ways.
Nope -- historically, it originated as a translation of terms that Native Americans (or American Indians, if you prefer) used for themselves.
And, I sincerely doubt that even when the sports team named themselves "Redskins" that they wanted to insult themselves with a derogatory term. They presumably meant it as a term to honor the heritage of a strong people (who, by extension, apparently might win at sports competitions). Mostly, the rather novel "offensiveness" of this term was generated after mid-20th century concern about "color" terms regarding race... educated folks stopped using it, leaving it only the choice term of jerks and bigots. It's kind of like "white flight," except in language.
It's like we generally don't refer to black people as "coloured" any more, because historically it has very negative connotations. Signs with "no coloureds" and the like.
Wrong again! In the mid-1800s, the word "black" became to be seen as an offensive term, since people generally don't actually have black skin. So, "colored" originated as a polite term which more accurately designated the various skin tones of real people. (It lives on in respectable names of black organizations, like the NAACP, "National Association of Colored People" -- it obviously wasn't offensive back then; it was the most proper term to use.)
"Colored" gradually gave way to "Negro" ("United Negro College Fund"), which was taken to be a more scientific description of race. Since all the educated folks stopped using the term "colored" (not for any particularly offensive reason), it was only left for hicks in the South -- hence it came to be associated with segregation and eventually became offensive. (Not because it was deliberately used as a slur, but because it became outdated except in regions populated by folks who couldn't keep up with new terms, and often tended to have worse views on race.) Meanwhile, the 1960s saw a decline of "Negro" and a new interest in rehabilitating what had been an offensive slur for over a century: "Black" became the new preferred term of the anti-establishment "Black Power" groups. With "negro" seeming old-fashioned, and some remaining hatred of the old "black" slur, other folks kept searching for something else -- hence "African American."
And so it goes. In any case, "colored" used to be a respectable term historically. Then it got on the "euphemism treadmill" as educated folk keep fleeing away from previous terms, leaving them only used by uneducated folk, which results in the sentiment that these previously acceptable terms must be offensive.
You can try to play the victim card all you like, but only simple minds are unaware of historical context.
Hilarious. Read some history of these terms, if you want (but obviously haven't). Historical context is precisely an argument AGAINST these sorts of politically-correct arbitrary linguistic arguments. Often the history of these terms is much more benign that you might think.
But none of that really matters -- history is irrelevant in arguments like this. The point is some people find these terms offensive NOW, and if enough people (or enough of the "right people," whomever we think should arbitrate such things) find them offensive, educated folks should change their usage. Language is all arbitrary and a social construct after all -- if its connotations cause enough offense that it ceases to be useful for communication, it needs to change.
Because Oklahoma is not normally considered a pejorative. "Redskin" or "injun" usually are.
But "redskin" was not originally offensive; it was used in similar contexts to the term "Indian" in late 19th and early 20th century. Concern about whether it might be offensive came up in the mid-20th century, when concern about using "color" terminology for skin color began to be seen as problematic, due to associations of words like "white" or "black" or "yellow." Certainly the Boston team who originally were originally named "redskins" were not intending to be pejorative in any way.
Redskin mostly became a slur because "educated" people stopped using it in favor of other terms. It's an example of the euphemism treadmill, where literate folk keep inventing new terms to avoid problematic concepts. In the 19th century, "black" was an offensive term; the word "colored" was created as a better, more accurate word (since the skin color of people generally isn't actually "black"). It was adopted as the term of educated folks (hence the term in the NAACP, National Association of Colored People). "Colored" gradually gave way to "negro" as a more scientific term ("United Negro College Fund"), while colored became offensive by the mid-20th century among educated folk. Then the Black Power movement came along and sought to reappropriate the word "black" and make it positive -- hence, "negro" came to seem old-fashioned or just plain weird, while "black" became the preferred term for many. But, then people got worried about the color terminology again, so "African American" came along.
Similarly, referring to Native Americans/American Indians/whatever as "red people" in the 19th century and early 20th century was not offensive. It largely became pejorative not because the majority of Native Americans rejected it or because people used it as a slur, but because "educated" folk decided they needed to come up with a new term that lacked the reference to color.
SO -- again, the logical question is: if the reference to the color "red" is what made "redskin" offensive, shouldn't we consider other terms or names that make that reference to Native Americans, like Oklahoma?
The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw phrase okla humma, literally meaning red people. Choctaw Chief Allen Wright suggested the name in 1866 during treaty negotiations with the federal government regarding the use of Indian Territory, in which he envisioned an all-Indian state controlled by the United States Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Equivalent to the English word Indian, okla humma was a phrase in the Choctaw language used to describe the Native American race as a whole.
So, the logical question is -- if we are required to change the name of a sports team for referring to the "red skins," shouldn't we also be having a discussion about changing the name of the state Oklahoma?
Where is the same level of enthusiasm about training blue collar men for an "exciting career as a nurse, nurse practitioner, etc.?" Those are high paying, skilled, wildly disproportionately female-dominated positions. They could easily accommodate an influx of men.
Uh, there ARE significant initiatives to try to get men into nursing. The American Assembly for Men in Nursing is an organization specifically dedicated to the cause. They even have a YouTube channel dedicated to stories from male nurses trying to convince men to join up. They have a dedicated initative to increase the number of male nurses by 20% by 2020 (the "20 X 20 Choose Nursing" campaign). And then there are other miscellaneous advertising campaigns, like the "Are you man enough to be a nurse?" posters.
Why no interest? Because if we suddenly gave men the opportunity and incentive (ex aggressive recruiting, preferential college admission, etc. ) to pursue those fields, a lot of women might be pushed out and that'd be "sexist."
Uh, no. The main difficulty in recruiting male nurses has to do with stereotypes of the type of caregiving differences between doctors and nurses. (If you want even more info, here's a whole Powerpoint presentation from the AAMN about the various issues involved in recruiting men.)
LOTS of organizations are actively trying to get more men into the nursing profession. Because of social stereotypes, though, most men aren't interested in trying. This has nothing to do with "sexism" or trying to keep men out of the profession.
There is no freely-available resource anywhere that can match Wikipedia for accuracy and reliability.
Ah, "freely-available" -- changing the rules, now, are we? Before it was "readily available."
Anyhow, sure there is -- if you're willing to restrict stuff to smaller subsets of knowledge. For example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is, hands-down, the BEST encyclopedic resource on topics in philosophy. It's free, and it predates Wikipedia by quite a few years.
It's much more accurate and reliable than equivalent articles on Wikipedia, because it's stable and overseen by experts, and the articles are frequently updated to take into account new scholarship. It obviously required a lot of organization and funding to get going, and that wouldn't have worked for a lot of Wikipedia -- but there's no reason to keep fumbling in the dark when we could establish something more stable. Even if small sections of Wikipedia were "stablized" a bit, that would be a significant improvement.
If you're looking for a free resource that can match Wikipedia in accuracy, reliability, and comprehensiveness, then... well, you're right. But trivially so, because Wikipedia currently has a near-monopoly in terms of effort into building such databases of knowledge.
Sorry to reply again, but one other thing I forgot -- multiple media sources have already made clear that otherwise licensed content from these indy labels (e.g., stuff on the Vevo channels) will still be available on YouTube.
That would make your scenario even weirder. Third-parties get to allow stuff to get played on YouTube, but the actual copyright holders of the content wouldn't get to make that decision for themselves. Theoretically possible, I suppose, but I really can't imagine how all this would stand up as a fair business practice in court.
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Finally, you are typically not permitted into a university library without a student ID, unless it also contains a bookstore and that bookstore has an agreement with the college which requires them to permit non-students to come in to shop. And if you do get in there, you won't be able to use the computers anyway.
I don't know what the stats are on this, but I've certainly just walked into MANY university libraries. Particularly many public universities in the U.S. seem to have a general policy allowing public access (but also MANY private universities). And while some computer use may be restricted, you'll likely at least be able to access computers with the catalog and probably at least some access to electronic resources.
Sure, there are plenty of places where you'd have to show documentation that you are a scholar or researcher to get inside a university library (or sometimes pay a fee -- mostly at really elite universities or places with a major crime problem), but there are also plenty of places where that is NOT true.
The online reference doesn't have to be Wikipedia. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is excellent, and there's no reason why other fields couldn't do the same thing.
Absolutely -- you've cited one of the best and most reliable academic resources on the internet. Unfortunately, other fields simply haven't done "the same thing" for the most part. So, GP was right: in many (most?) fields, the random stuff you will find on the internet will be 50 years out-of-date, unless you know where to look AND some actual experts have taken the time to make it available.
There were a couple of researchers who thought it would be nice if Wikipedia reflected the state-of-the-art instead of outdated views from half a century ago that dilettantes had put up, but they quickly abandoned Wikipedia after being dissatisfied with its editing climate.
Yes, this is the freaking scary aspect of Wikipedia and access to up-to-date knowledge. Every general encyclopedia is out-of-date, but (1) everybody would assume that general encyclopedias didn't represent the latest scholarship, and (2) there were mechanisms for ensuring that updates would eventually happen in consultation with experts.
Nowadays, people look at Wikipedia, which seems to have exhaustive and VERY up-to-date articles on just about every aspect of popular culture or recent events, so readers begin to assume that it must be relatively exhaustive and up-to-date on most things.
But that's just not true. In Wikipedia all sources are basically equal as long as they stand up to "verifiability" and rather broad criteria. There's no good filter to separate quality information and up-to-date scholarship from all the random noise of popular sources.
Again, I'm not saying that Encyclopedia Britannica or whatever was much better, but it also was expected to be somewhat out of date. And at some point there were at least something vaguely like an expert editorial board to say, "Well, actually, we've received letters from a bunch of experts in this field saying our articles are inaccurate, and current scholarship has gone in a different direction. So let's fix it." In the Wikipedia world, though, who wins is usually the person who fights the longest and know the wikilawyering rules the best.
The danger nowadays is that Wikipedia has become its own feedback loop -- journalists and popular writers often consult it, rather than experts, so there's no mechanism to get the new expert ideas out there, short of experts writing popular books and then getting them cited on Wikipedia. Otherwise, 50-year-old scholarship lives on on Wikipedia, where it is used by journalists and pop writers, and when someone disputes Wikipedia, the wikilawyers bring up dozens of those recent media sources which probably got their crappy info from Wikipedia to begin with.
I've heard the same complaints from fellow academics in fields from anthropology to mathematics. You can keep on thinking you have access to everything you might possibly want, but you simply have no idea how much you are missing.
I would agree. In some technical fields, it's more common to put preprints of a lot of cutting-edge scholarship online, but that's certainly not true of most fields. In those other fields, access to quality journals and expensive academic books is necessary, and most Wikipedia editors don't have access to that kind of stuff -- and often are deliberately hostile to new editors who do (because without access, other editors can't "verify" the claims, and there's always this fear that someone might be doing "original research," when they're actually representing the consensus of journal articles that just doesn't happen to be reflected in common pop material that's easily available).
Adjunct pay for *all* courses in *any* department is just under $700 per credit. Most classes are 3 credits, so for your $2100 per term you are expected to be in the classroom for 3 hours per week and have 2 hours of office hours - either online (via big blue button, our course management system, or some other virtual meeting software), a scheduled time you can be reached by phone, or in a lab or library area. So the average hourly pay rate (assuming no students show up during your office hours - and they typically dont - and you use that time for your grading, etc - is about $25/hr.
Wow -- I certainly would advise students not to go to your school if this is a commonly-shared attitude among instructors.
If I care at all about students, and was doing the bare minimum I'd consider an acceptable "college-level" educational experience, I'd probably spend at least 5-6 hours prep time per week for a 3-hour course (including grading, admin tasks, designing assessments, preparing in-class materials and tech, email and meeting with students, actually working on content for the class and improving it, etc.). And that's for a class I've already taught a couple times; new classes would require significantly more. But then again, I've never worked for $2100/class -- I assume I'd probably do much less because I'd have to earn money elsewhere... and my teaching would undoubtedly suffer.
A more realistic estimate for an actual "great" class for the students would be 10 hours prep per week for a 3-hour class (particularly if enrollment is high, requiring more grading). One could do more, but there's a point of diminishing returns (in my opinion). Your $25/hour has dropped to about $10/hour. And I know PLENTY of dedicated professors who actually care about teaching who spend even more hours, pushing the rate down to minimum wage or lower.
To see the real expectation, I'd look at university teaching loads for actual tenure-track professors at places where there are few research requirements for tenure (i.e., places where it's mostly about teaching). Most of those places have teaching loads of about 4 classes per semester, if they have low research standards for tenure. Assuming a 40-hour work-week, that comes to roughly 10 hours per class, so about 7 hours prep per class, as a general expectation. And many of the higher-calibre schools will only require faculty to teach 3 classes per semester.
(Even in less well-paid fields (like the humanities), professors at decent institutions generally earn $40-50k to start; other fields will often be higher. For 8 classes per year, that's $5-6k per class, and they also get benefits. Clearly, $2100 is not coming anywhere close to what we're paying actual faculty at decent schools to prepare for class, yet many of these same schools will pay adjuncts a similar per-class rate to yours.)
I know a lot of college teachers who do less prep than this, and a lot of adjuncts are forced to do much less than this because they're trying to cobble together 6-8 classes per semester at different universities just to make a decent living.
But that doesn't mean they're actually providing a great (or even a good) education for their students. A precious few are probably able to pull it off, but not most.
The fact of the matter is that there are far too many people who want faculty positions compared to the number of available positions. I quote directly from our university president, "I can get professors anywhere."
That is certainly true, but can he get good teachers anywhere? The current system of adjuncts generally does not reward good teaching -- it rewards those who "play politics" well in departments and can manage to "not rock the boat enough" to get rehired from semester to semester... all while earning next to nothing.
Meanwhile, most tenure-track faculty are rewarded for doing research more than teaching. Unless they are a disaster in the classroom (and in some technical fields, they may have little to no contact with students at all), all that matters is "publish or perish."
And what of the undergraduates who actually need good teachers? There may be loads of people with Ph.D.s scrambling to take any job they can find, but are the hiring practices actually finding qualified people who will do the best job teaching students?
(Full disclosure: I have taught in higher-ed institutions; these are my own observations.)
There is pressure from the administration to buffer grades, [snip] but otherwise the administration couldn't give a rats arse about how popular the professors are with the students. They care most about how much research money the professor is bringing in
True for tenure-track profs; not true for adjuncts. I've known adjuncts who'd give out all A's (or nearly so), assign almost no work, and bring homemade baked goods to class on a regular basis... just to endear themselves enough with the students that they'd get good teaching scores and be rehired to teach another 4 classes next semester for a $20k total salary per year. There are so many things about what I've just said that are completely screwed up.
No one goes into a professorship expecting a 9-5 job, but pointing out professors are spending extra time with their students isn't really making the case the situtation is detrimental for education, either.
No, not detrimental for students' education. But detrimental for adjuncts' lives, when they are trying to cobble together 6 classes to teach at the same time at three different universities so they can earn a whopping $1-3k per class in many cases. Including prep time, grading, etc., there's no way many of these people are even making minimum wage -- but sure, let's just ask them to do a few more hours because they bother to care about their students.
Professors aren't in it for the money. They're the sort of people who just wouldn't fit anywhere else. You don't need to pay them well.
Yeah, it'd be nice though if we'd pay enough to attract decent teachers, though, which we might want to retain on a semi-permanent basis (even if not full "tenured" positions). I'm not saying that "throwing money" at college teaching will automatically improve undergraduate education -- sure it won't. But more money, benefits, and a little job security might actually attract people who have more than the minimum qualifications and aren't just young new Ph.D.s who are just hanging around for a few years until they realize they can't actually "live like this" for the rest of their lives and go out to find a "real job."
(Believe me, as someone who went through a secondary-school certification program to teach high school some years ago, I've seen the kinds of people that you get with the "you don't need to pay them well because they can't do anything else" sentiment. Do we really have such low standards for the people who are supposed to be teaching the next generation? Again -- it's not ALL about the money, but if you want to attract and retain qualified teachers, you need to both actually look for good teachers -- admittedly something colleges do even worse than secondary schools -- and pay them a living wag
Professors in technical areas make large amounts of money, and are guaranteed their salary for life once they've been promoted once (to associate professor).
While this is certainly true, the main issue TFA brings up is the rise in ADJUNCT teaching. This does NOT depend on the field. Whether you're stuck teaching a large section of English 101 or Physics 101, if you're not tenure-track, you'll likely being paid really badly. (Average adjunct pay is something like a few thousand dollars per course; even if you can cobble together 4 courses per semester as a lecturer, which is usually not guaranteed, you'd be lucky to get more than $20-30k, probably without any benefits.)
On the other hand, professors in the arts or history departments make less than many staff earn.
It's true that some technical fields pay adjuncts a little better at major universities, but more than $4-5k per course is still relatively rare. Only at a few top schools who have generous adjunct policies will you find any college adjuncts earning more than your local high school teacher, and usually without benefits and without knowing whether they'll be able to keep their job or teaching load from semester to semester.
Note that this is all public record - I'm not exactly giving away secrets.
Depends on the state. A lot of states only release detailed salary information for public institutions above a certain amount (often $30-50k). I know a number of public universities where NO ONE outside the university could possibly know how many adjuncts are working for incredibly low wages, because their salaries are NOT public record.
The issues with the trades is not pay. Take a look at how much a plumber or electrician can make in the Chicago area.
Yeah -- it's important to note these are union wages. Not all skilled trades are heavily unionized, and not all workers work for union shops or businesses.
My father was in one of the top "skilled trades" professions, but he was stuck working at a non-union shop for the last 20 years of his career. He made okay money, but not great given his experience. If he were at a union shop, he'd probably have been paid significantly more than he was, but that would have likely required him to commute a hour or more to and from work everyday once many of the local union jobs dried up, and he wasn't able to do that.
Anyhow -- despite having 40 years experience at the top of a skilled trade, he spent the last 3 years of his career taking classes in all sorts of random other trades (electrician, mechanic, computer tech, etc.). Why? Because his employer decided actual experience in individual skilled trades could be replaced by "multi-skilled workers." The idea (no doubt from a bunch of manager MBAs) was that in the future they would just have a team of "multi-skilled workers" who could just do all the random tasks on machinery and such that they needed. The flexibility would allow them to hire fewer people, since somebody could be an electrician today, a machinist tomorrow, a mechanic the next day, etc.
My father needed to take the classes if he didn't want to fall behind in payscale, so he did. A few weeks of night school in each area, and he's supposed to be able to take over for a trained electrician or mechanic or whatever. But the guys who didn't do it were gradually phased out, as the company outsourced more of its repairs and technical work to other shops.
I assume stories like this aren't unique. Sure, if you're a union member and can get the work in places where you'll get union wages, skilled trades are great. But lots of skilled trades workers don't have such options -- and they are faced with increasing numbers of people who don't want to pay them anything and don't understand what the difference is between somebody who has 25 years experience in a specific trade vs. somebody who took a 6-week class in nightschool.
Hmm, that's an interesting point. So, you don't feel that these graphs are something worth talking about?
Sure, they might be worth talking about. In fact, I already said that in my original post in reply to you: "The number of male graduates is continuously growing -- it's just not growing as fast as the number of female graduates is. Maybe that's a trend to talk about (or not)..."
The problem is we need to actually talk about what's going on, not misinterpret the data. It's profoundly disturbing to me that your original post was just modded up without evidence, since it implies that many people here just assume what you say is true... even though it's not.
If what your original post said was true, that would imply that young men are deliberately choosing not to go to college in ever greater numbers -- and that might imply that our educational system is driving them away or something.
But, when we look at the actual evidence, we see that men are choosing a college education at numbers greater than ever before in history. And so are women. And for some reason, the number of women making that choice is growing faster than men.
Okay -- is that a good or a bad thing? I don't know. If you think the overall trend toward more college is good, it could be good, in the sense that there are still pay disparities for women. Having more women with better credentials might allow them to advance more easily and solve the pay equity problem. On the other hand, if you think that too many people are going to college these days, then the graphs show women are disproportionately "suckered into" large debt and degrees they probably don't need, continuing to promote a broken higher ed system that should be replaced by more trade schools or apprenticeship-type learning. Maybe men are actually making the "smart choice" by not all diving into college. Or maybe that's an argument that BOTH groups are making smart choices: women are going for credentials in increasing numbers because they're trying to make up for disparities which women suffer in the workforce, while men feel like they can make plenty of money without those credentials (and without the debt that comes with them). Maybe everybody wins.
Or not. Maybe it's a bad trend, even though more people of all sexes and races than ever before are going to college. Who knows? We can debate these issues, but let's be sure we're actually debating what's really happening.
Because these two sets of data appear to directly contradict one another. The only disparity I can see is that the NY Times graphs specify a particular age group, why, I don't really know.
Are you serious? Neither is "lying." Okay, I'll try to explain how these are different.
Your link has graphs showing the percentage of males vs. females out of the student population (i.e., where 100%=all students). The percentages of males and females necessarily sum to 100%. If the percentage of females goes up, the percentage of males necessarily goes down. And it necessarily goes down by the exact percentage that the number of females goes .
However, your link has nothing to do with the absolute number of graduates in any given year. Nor does it have anything to do with the percentage of males or females in the general population who graduate college in a given year. Those are separate numbers.
The NYT link shows the percentage of males and females from the general population who have graduated college recently. 100% here = ALL people of that age (whether they went to college or not). There's no necessary relationship between the number of men vs. women here -- both could go up, both could go down, or one could go up while the other goes down. For the most part, both male and female graduates are trending up (and have been pretty much since these statistics began to be collected).
If this is still confusing, let's use some actual numbers. Suppose the number of college grads in a series of years looks like this:
Year - Male grads - Female grads
1st year - 20 - 10
2nd year - 25 - 20
3rd year - 30 - 30
4th year - 35 - 40
Okay, now it's pretty clear that the absolute numbers of both are rising, right?
Also, let's say that the total population of each year equals 100 each of males and females. So the percentage of college grads for BOTH males and females is rising every year as well, right?
But now let's figure out the percentage of total college grads who are male vs. female each year. For example, the first year there are 20 men, and 10 women, for a total of 30. Thus, there are 20/30 = 67% men, and 10/30 = 33% women. Okay? With me so far? Now, let's calculate:
Year - % male grads - % female grads
1st year - 67% - 33%
2nd year - 56% - 44%
3rd year - 50% - 50%
4th year - 47% - 53%
Now, imagine a graph of those numbers. The male numbers are continuously going down, while the female numbers are going up. The number of males as a percentage of graduates is declining, while the number of females is rising.
But as we already know: THE NUMBERS OF BOTH SEXES ARE STILL GOING UP.
The NYT graph is like my first table. The second table is like your link.
Nobody is "lying here." They are two different graphs measuring two different types of trends. Your trend tells me that women make up a greater percentage of graduates. My trend tells me that both men and women are choosing to graduate from college more. Those statements are NOT contradictory -- they can both be true at the same time.
Again, I'll say it: more men THAN EVER BEFORE IN HISTORY are graduating from college now. Same is true of women. It's just that the GROWTH of female graduates is faster than the GROWTH of males.
Make sense?
Here.
(What the article doesn't explain is why a science article needs a title involving an unnecessary metaphor and a colon: "Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Oral Tofacitinib Reverses Alopecia Universalis in a Patient with Plaque Psoriasis.")
By filling government with inexperienced people, you end up with no institutional memory of past mistakes, and legislators that rely more than ever on the advice and guidance of lobbyists.
"By filling government with experienced people [incumbents], you end up with no voter memory of past mistakes [because people just keep voting for familiar names, regardless of record], and legislators that rely more than ever on the advice and guidance of lobbyists."
There, FTFY.
Here's the problem with this debate -- the vast majority of the government is filled with more-or-less permanent employees. Underneath almost every executive official or legislator or department head that is elected or appointed every few years are often hundreds or thousands of permanent staff who keep everything running from day-to-day.
So, the idea that if you forced the few elected officials at the very top of the chain to be changed every few years, then you'd end up with "no institutional memory"? That's ridiculous. Most of the people working at any given agency can easily tell the new bosses what worked in the past and what didn't... as they do now every single time an election occurs. (And where do you think most lobbyists come from? Previous staff members who used to work in government....)
Even for minor legislative bodies without a significant permanent underlying bureaucracy to tell them what to do, term limits generally still stagger things enough that you won't ever have a completely new legislature all coming in at once. So, those who have been around will help those who are new, like any job.
Now -- the question is whether we do gain anything by periodically forcing a turnover. I'd say the evidence suggests it won't make a difference either way in most cases. No term limits, and you risk having perpetual underachievers who do just enough not to annoy anyone and keep getting elected just because voters have heard their names. Term limits, and you might force out experienced members who might be good serving for many years or decades.
All in all, it's a crapshoot.
Show me this "social contract". I think a big part of the problem here is delusional reasoning based on imaginary things that don't actually exist.
It's a metaphor. Read and learn. Yes, the social contract is an "imaginary" contract. It's based on the idea that for society to exist, we all have to agree to some principles. There's lots of disagreement about what those principles are (i.e., what the "contract" consists of), but there has to be some sort of implicit agreement. Otherwise, it's in my best interest to go murder you and steal your food and clothes and money when no one's looking, because it will benefit me.
Instead, we as a society have decided it's probably better not for everyone to go around randomly killing and stealing from each other, so we pass laws intended to enforce this implicit "contract."
But to claim that is a "contract", requires that the thing be voluntary and agreed to. That generally is not the case.
Again, it's a metaphor. But if you don't like the "contract," move somewhere else that has a different set of laws more in line with what you want. Otherwise, by remaining a member of a society governed by laws, you implicitly agree to abide by them.
I find that most of the people who use the term, "social contract" want me to do things for them, but can't be bothered to come up with reasons aside from vacuous, moralistic bullshit for doing them.
Well, as I said, there's a lot disagreement about what is necessary to create a just society. Reading the GP's comment that you were responding to, it sounds like he/she was invoking something like John Rawls's concept of the veil of ignorance, i.e., the "original position" where this hypothetical "social contract" is "negotiated."
Brief summary: Imagine you're going to play a game against opponents you have never met before. You have the option to make modifications to the rules in advance, if you wish. You have no clue how strong or skilled or whatever your opponents might be -- they could be physically disabled, mentally retarded people, or they could be the strongest, biggest, smartest, fastest people you have ever met in your life.
How do you determine the rules of the game? How do you figure out what would be "fair" play?
Now imagine that you have the same problem, except it will determine how you can live your entire life. That's the "veil of ignorance" -- you don't know before you're born if you're going to come into a society naturally as the brightest, most beautiful, most talented person who has ever lived, or as a person near the bottom of the talent pool, who will always struggle to keep up.
Rawls argued from that "thought experiment" that we'd want to negotiate a fair "social contract" with protections for those who might -- by chance -- come into society with fewer skills or abilities than others. He argued that fairness dictates we should build in certain protections to ensure that we don't exploit them or force them into degrading impoverished positions -- because, from the perspective "behind the veil of ignorance" they could have been US. By accident of birth, maybe we could be born into a different society or at a different time when our skills were just as stupid and crappy as theirs -- and what would we want to protect us from being exploited and run over by the "better" members of that society?
That's why we need a "social contract." The exact terms are up for debate, but most people who have thought about the issue agree that, in fairness to all, we need protections for everyone. And sometimes we need to build in protections for those who need it most.
Why doesn't someone put fifty million into figuring our why fewer young men are graduating from universities than ever before
WHAT are you talking about? Actual numbers of college graduates AND the percentage of college graduates among adults are at all-time highs in the United States, even among males. (See this chart, attached to this article, for example.)
What has changed is that the growth of female college graduates has increased much more rapidly than males, so women are now graduating in greater numbers and compose higher percentages of university students.
But your idea that "fewer young men are graduating from universities than ever before" is completely and utterly bogus. The number of male graduates is continuously growing -- it's just not growing as fast as the number of female graduates is. Maybe that's a trend to talk about (or not), but your implication that men are somehow choosing not to go to college or not to finish it in greater numbers than ever before isn't borne out by the facts.
The current schooling environment is hostile to boys.
I know this has come up a bit in recent years, but mostly it's a claim made about draconian measures to stop boys from playing games involving imaginary guns and shootings... mostly because of ineffective and ridiculous overreactions to recent school shootings.
Maybe this is having an effect, and maybe it results in alienation of some boys. But I fail to see what this has to do with the number of female teachers....
*That* is the reason they aren't good at it, they are not taught how because the teachers are predominantly female and don't know or want to know how to teach boys.
Umm, are you being sarcastic? Female school teachers have greatly outnumbered males at least for the past 150 years in the U.S. or so. (See, for example, the chart on p. 29 here.) We're not even at historical high points for female teachers -- female teachers composed roughly 80-85% of the public school teaching force from 1920 to 1950 or so. These were periods where the vast, vast majority of high school graduates and college students were male.
Now, it's possible that our culture has changed and that female teachers no longer care about educating boys (actively discriminating against them), or that boys no longer respect female teachers (or teachers in general) and therefore aren't learning well from them. Or maybe other aspects of our culture have changed overall.
But the idea that because "teachers are predominantly female" that boys can't learn is simply stupid, as even the most cursory glance at historical trends would tell you.
Okay, perhaps "coloured" wasn't the best example. As you can tell from the spelling I'm not an American, and in the UK it is generally considered to be unacceptable in polite conversation.
It IS unacceptable in "polite conversation" in the U.S. too. But that's not because it's a slur. That's why the NAACP hasn't changed their name -- the word simply became old-fashioned, and as newer terms pushed "colored" out in polite conversation, the term became associated with older more racist periods when it was used more frequently. But that doesn't mean it was ever significantly used (in the U.S.) in a derogatory sense -- it was, at least until the 1950s or so, a commonly taught "polite" term. In an era where people were often still obsessed with precisely how much black heritage you had (whether you were fully "black" or a "mulatto" or a "quadroon" or an "octaroon"), the word "colored" was used by educated folk to signify that you didn't care so much about these stupid racist distinctions.
Basically, the word became "deprecated," and then it became taboo. It wasn't deprecated primarily because it had been offensive.
And for that reason, there are still public scandals every few years where some older American politician or celebrity uses the word "colored," and there's a huge uproar. But the vast majority of time this happens, it was because older folks were taught this as a polite term many years ago, not because they are using it in any sort of derogatory sense.
In any case, you are actually agreeing with me.
Yeah, I get it. Sorry if I was a bit overbearing; I know what you meant. I just get tired of everyone's assumptions about past connotations. The AC you were replying to was the one being the real ass.
Despite the NAACP's initials, referring to someone as "colored" in the US would certainly get you some odd stares, and a likely assumption you're using it pejoratively, precisely for the reasons you suggest, so your example was fine. Likewise "negro" FWIW.
Sort of. But the assumption that a person who uses "colored" is likely using it pejoratively is probably wrong (despite the fact that it's generally regarded by educated folks as "un-PC") -- it's much more likely that older folks who still occasionally use this word are simply ignorant of modern conventions.
Educated Americans shouldn't use "colored" or "negro" today. But that's not because of a history of the words being used as derogatory or as slurs -- they used to be the most polite terminology. (In fact, "negro" is probably the first term that the African-American community actually strongly lobbied for and chose for themselves.)
In any case, the words have come to be associated today with negative characteristics of past periods. You shouldn't use "colored" today because it is seen as offensive today, and it is now offensive because it was used during ugly periods of American history, NOT because it was offensive when it was actually used frequently.
Maybe this seems like a minor distinction, but it's important to recognize because most of the (mostly older) folks who sometimes use the term "colored" in the U.S. actually do NOT mean it in any offensive way at all... it's often what they were taught as the most polite term when they grew up. We can fault them for not keeping up with the times, but we should not assume that they are necessarily using it as a slur. (Same with negro.)
(Oops -- Obviously NAACP = "National Association for the Advancement of Colored People")
Similarly, "redskins" started life intending to be a pejorative term
Nope. It "started life" as a translation of a term Native Americans used for themselves, without any pejorative meaning.
Of course, that doesn't mean it hasn't become offensive in some contexts since then. But it's not where it came from.
The important thing is the intent of the person using the word. If the person is using it to denigrate someone or a group, it's offensive. If the person is using it out of ignorance or in an unrelated context, it's not offensive.
But "offense" is a feeling. More specifically, it is a feeling that is felt by a person who is offended. How can you possibly decide that offensiveness is determined by the person who isn't feeling the offense?
We can certainly argue that some people get offended too much or inappropriately or whatever. And maybe that's a cultural problem that should be fixed with some people. But that doesn't mean they don't FEEL offended.
I agree with you that many people use words out of ignorance or without intent to offend -- and if they do so, we should be more sympathetic than if they deliberately used words in a hurtful manner. But the only person qualified to decide whether something "offended" him/her is the person who feels offense.
Your logic is equivalent to saying, "I know I punched you in the face, but I did it by accident, so you couldn't possibly be hurt." Or, "I punched you, but I did it lightly and didn't intend to hurt you, so you can't possibly feel pain." Except pain -- as a feeling -- is felt by the party that, well, feels the pain. It's incredibly egotistical to say that someone else can't feel something just because you didn't intend for them to feel it.
The person feeling offended has nothing to do with it other than in the general social context that certain words are known to offend certain groups.
No -- this is not how language works. Words are a means of communication, generally between at least two people. If words are misunderstood by a listener or carry connotations unintended by the speaker, then communication has at least partly failed. The language is not as effective as it could be. Speakers who choose words that offend listeners are not using language as well as they might, if their goal is actually to be intelligible.
Saying a listener to language "has nothing to do with it" is like saying that your sexual partner "has nothing to do" with a sex act. If you're not actually trying to communicate effectively by using language, you're effectively just going around masturbating.
But it's just plain wrong to assume that any time an offensive word is used, that offense is intended.
Of course it is. But if people ARE in fact offended, an effective speaker will realize that other terminology might be better for communication, which is the primary purpose of language. A person who continues on, claiming "Nobody should be offended by my speech, because I don't INTEND to offend anyone" is just a foolish, egomanical idiot.
When someone uses a derogatory word without intent to offend, and someone else is offended by the use of the word, it is a misunderstanding. Not an offense.
Yes, the "misunderstanding" occurs between two people, since effective communication fails to occur. But the "offense" occurs too, since it is an emotion felt by the listener.
But maybe I'm wasting time replying to you, since obviously no one who actually listens to you has any right to feel anything or observe anything about what you've said. You obviously INTENDED your arguments to be valid, so they must be so.
Actually the only question here is what the term "redskins" means in means in historical context.
No, that question is barely relevant. The question is whether the term is regarded as offensive NOW. Historical discussions (some would say unfortunately) are rather irrelevant, because people tend not to care much about history. Your post seems to be an example of this.
Historically it has been a derisory term, and no-one can really deny that native Americans were derided with it while being oppressed in other ways.
Nope -- historically, it originated as a translation of terms that Native Americans (or American Indians, if you prefer) used for themselves.
And, I sincerely doubt that even when the sports team named themselves "Redskins" that they wanted to insult themselves with a derogatory term. They presumably meant it as a term to honor the heritage of a strong people (who, by extension, apparently might win at sports competitions). Mostly, the rather novel "offensiveness" of this term was generated after mid-20th century concern about "color" terms regarding race... educated folks stopped using it, leaving it only the choice term of jerks and bigots. It's kind of like "white flight," except in language.
It's like we generally don't refer to black people as "coloured" any more, because historically it has very negative connotations. Signs with "no coloureds" and the like.
Wrong again! In the mid-1800s, the word "black" became to be seen as an offensive term, since people generally don't actually have black skin. So, "colored" originated as a polite term which more accurately designated the various skin tones of real people. (It lives on in respectable names of black organizations, like the NAACP, "National Association of Colored People" -- it obviously wasn't offensive back then; it was the most proper term to use.)
"Colored" gradually gave way to "Negro" ("United Negro College Fund"), which was taken to be a more scientific description of race. Since all the educated folks stopped using the term "colored" (not for any particularly offensive reason), it was only left for hicks in the South -- hence it came to be associated with segregation and eventually became offensive. (Not because it was deliberately used as a slur, but because it became outdated except in regions populated by folks who couldn't keep up with new terms, and often tended to have worse views on race.) Meanwhile, the 1960s saw a decline of "Negro" and a new interest in rehabilitating what had been an offensive slur for over a century: "Black" became the new preferred term of the anti-establishment "Black Power" groups. With "negro" seeming old-fashioned, and some remaining hatred of the old "black" slur, other folks kept searching for something else -- hence "African American."
And so it goes. In any case, "colored" used to be a respectable term historically. Then it got on the "euphemism treadmill" as educated folk keep fleeing away from previous terms, leaving them only used by uneducated folk, which results in the sentiment that these previously acceptable terms must be offensive.
You can try to play the victim card all you like, but only simple minds are unaware of historical context.
Hilarious. Read some history of these terms, if you want (but obviously haven't). Historical context is precisely an argument AGAINST these sorts of politically-correct arbitrary linguistic arguments. Often the history of these terms is much more benign that you might think.
But none of that really matters -- history is irrelevant in arguments like this. The point is some people find these terms offensive NOW, and if enough people (or enough of the "right people," whomever we think should arbitrate such things) find them offensive, educated folks should change their usage. Language is all arbitrary and a social construct after all -- if its connotations cause enough offense that it ceases to be useful for communication, it needs to change.
Because Oklahoma is not normally considered a pejorative. "Redskin" or "injun" usually are.
But "redskin" was not originally offensive; it was used in similar contexts to the term "Indian" in late 19th and early 20th century. Concern about whether it might be offensive came up in the mid-20th century, when concern about using "color" terminology for skin color began to be seen as problematic, due to associations of words like "white" or "black" or "yellow." Certainly the Boston team who originally were originally named "redskins" were not intending to be pejorative in any way.
Redskin mostly became a slur because "educated" people stopped using it in favor of other terms. It's an example of the euphemism treadmill, where literate folk keep inventing new terms to avoid problematic concepts. In the 19th century, "black" was an offensive term; the word "colored" was created as a better, more accurate word (since the skin color of people generally isn't actually "black"). It was adopted as the term of educated folks (hence the term in the NAACP, National Association of Colored People). "Colored" gradually gave way to "negro" as a more scientific term ("United Negro College Fund"), while colored became offensive by the mid-20th century among educated folk. Then the Black Power movement came along and sought to reappropriate the word "black" and make it positive -- hence, "negro" came to seem old-fashioned or just plain weird, while "black" became the preferred term for many. But, then people got worried about the color terminology again, so "African American" came along.
Similarly, referring to Native Americans/American Indians/whatever as "red people" in the 19th century and early 20th century was not offensive. It largely became pejorative not because the majority of Native Americans rejected it or because people used it as a slur, but because "educated" folk decided they needed to come up with a new term that lacked the reference to color.
SO -- again, the logical question is: if the reference to the color "red" is what made "redskin" offensive, shouldn't we consider other terms or names that make that reference to Native Americans, like Oklahoma?
Actually it was a term indians used to refer to themselves; you can easily find writing from various indian leaders who used the term.
Indeed. In fact, the name of the state Oklahoma means "red people" and was suggested by a Native American leader:
The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw phrase okla humma, literally meaning red people. Choctaw Chief Allen Wright suggested the name in 1866 during treaty negotiations with the federal government regarding the use of Indian Territory, in which he envisioned an all-Indian state controlled by the United States Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Equivalent to the English word Indian, okla humma was a phrase in the Choctaw language used to describe the Native American race as a whole.
So, the logical question is -- if we are required to change the name of a sports team for referring to the "red skins," shouldn't we also be having a discussion about changing the name of the state Oklahoma?
Where is the same level of enthusiasm about training blue collar men for an "exciting career as a nurse, nurse practitioner, etc.?" Those are high paying, skilled, wildly disproportionately female-dominated positions. They could easily accommodate an influx of men.
Uh, there ARE significant initiatives to try to get men into nursing. The American Assembly for Men in Nursing is an organization specifically dedicated to the cause. They even have a YouTube channel dedicated to stories from male nurses trying to convince men to join up. They have a dedicated initative to increase the number of male nurses by 20% by 2020 (the "20 X 20 Choose Nursing" campaign). And then there are other miscellaneous advertising campaigns, like the "Are you man enough to be a nurse?" posters.
Why no interest? Because if we suddenly gave men the opportunity and incentive (ex aggressive recruiting, preferential college admission, etc. ) to pursue those fields, a lot of women might be pushed out and that'd be "sexist."
Uh, no. The main difficulty in recruiting male nurses has to do with stereotypes of the type of caregiving differences between doctors and nurses. (If you want even more info, here's a whole Powerpoint presentation from the AAMN about the various issues involved in recruiting men.)
LOTS of organizations are actively trying to get more men into the nursing profession. Because of social stereotypes, though, most men aren't interested in trying. This has nothing to do with "sexism" or trying to keep men out of the profession.
There is no freely-available resource anywhere that can match Wikipedia for accuracy and reliability.
Ah, "freely-available" -- changing the rules, now, are we? Before it was "readily available."
Anyhow, sure there is -- if you're willing to restrict stuff to smaller subsets of knowledge. For example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is, hands-down, the BEST encyclopedic resource on topics in philosophy. It's free, and it predates Wikipedia by quite a few years.
It's much more accurate and reliable than equivalent articles on Wikipedia, because it's stable and overseen by experts, and the articles are frequently updated to take into account new scholarship. It obviously required a lot of organization and funding to get going, and that wouldn't have worked for a lot of Wikipedia -- but there's no reason to keep fumbling in the dark when we could establish something more stable. Even if small sections of Wikipedia were "stablized" a bit, that would be a significant improvement.
If you're looking for a free resource that can match Wikipedia in accuracy, reliability, and comprehensiveness, then... well, you're right. But trivially so, because Wikipedia currently has a near-monopoly in terms of effort into building such databases of knowledge.
That would make your scenario even weirder. Third-parties get to allow stuff to get played on YouTube, but the actual copyright holders of the content wouldn't get to make that decision for themselves. Theoretically possible, I suppose, but I really can't imagine how all this would stand up as a fair business practice in court.