I recently published this musing in my Substack newsletter. And coming across a further free kick from the policy world — something that would have negative costs and do a lot of good — I thought I'd publish both. Think of this as continuing the series begun over a decade ago...
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The Sydney Book Review is my kind of book review. It's online and free. Ever since I joined the blogging revolution in 2005 it's seemed crazy to me (not to mention precious) that so many of our literary publications are locked up and sold (usually at a loss) in tiny subscripti...
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Looking at Australian politics right now, one thing stands out: the federal ALP has become a little Shorist. That seems like a good idea. The federal ALP has gone a bit Shorist. I don't know how long it will last, or whether it's even a conscious strategy. But it's definitely...
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Continued from Part Two . [caption id="attachment_35753" align="alignright" width="440"] If we had an epidemic preparedness index, we could have a league ladder of epidemic preparedness. Then all we'd have to do is get to the top of the ladder and we'd be THE MOST PREPARED IN...
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I The university is one of the finest creations of European culture. Alas, as a troublesome fellow once said, all that is solid melts into air. I’m a bit shy of attributing things to a single cause. These things tend to built up over many, many decades. But certainly what migh...
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[caption id="attachment_35644" align="alignleft" width="1163"] For anyone who’s interested I recommend David Cayley’s series of CBC radio documentaries on Illich. (He’s the best broadcaster I’ve come across). The first series of five programs focuses on Illich’s social thought...
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Posted in Philosophy, History, Education, Economics and public policy, Health, Political theory, Innovation, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Democracy, Sortition and citizens’ juries
It's here, the booklet I am sure you have all been waiting for. The one which Gigi Foster and Michael Baker slaved over for 10 months . It is also on Kindle . It is dedicated to all the victims of the Panic, in poor countries and rich countries. They include our children, the...
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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Life, Philosophy, Print media, History, Humour, Education, Literature, Society, Religion, Theatre, IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, Terror, Science, Journalism, Media, Libertarian Musings, Health, Political theory, Law, Dance, Review, Bargains, Travel, WOW! - Amazing, Social, Parenting, Ethics, Medical, Public and Private Goods, Death and taxes, Inequality, Social Policy, Democracy, Employment, Sortition and citizens’ juries, Isegoria, Coronavirus crisis
Societies are evolving and complex, which often makes it hard to see at any moment where things are going. It was thus with the move of Northern European countries towards democracy in the 19 th century, which seems inevitable and clear in hindsight but blurred at the time by...
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Posted in History, Humour, Education, Theatre, IT and Internet, Geeky Musings, Climate Change, Business, Immigration and refugees, bubble, Social, Bullshit, Employment
We lost David Savage this week to a heart attack at the age of 48, leaving a wife Deborah and many colleagues around the world. He was a Queensland boy who got educated in Brisbane and then quickly made it to Associate Professor in behavioural economics, teaching students in N...
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Consider the picture below of two hypothetical Accident and Emergency departments (A&E), one that has no covid-regulations and simply has the available nurses trying to help all comers as fast as possible. In the other one the nurses try to prevent mingling by testing newcomer...
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Dr. Joffe just posted a new article on the many negative effects of lockdowns in Canada and in the world as a whole. He really has put in a fantastic effort to source the evidence on the negative effects of the covid-related policies, digging up and critically evaluating nearl...
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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Life, Education, Society, Economics and public policy, Health, Medical, Death and taxes, Social Policy, Coronavirus crisis
[caption id="attachment_34359" align="alignright" width="460"] Yuan Yuan (YY) Liu. Doing her bit for a better world[/caption] This June I was approached by Yuan Yuan Liu who wanted to discuss funding of scholarships for disadvantaged people with me "as you are the best economi...
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One can tell many stories of how current times resemble some earlier historical period. The conflict between nationalism and internationalism, as personified by the controversies surrounding Brexit and Trump, has been seen as somewhat of a re-run of the conflict between fascis...
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Till 20 year ago, IQ scores in the West increased about 3 points per decade ever since the 1920s, a phenomenon known as the “Flynn effect”. That rise in IQ test scores, which have an average of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, was attributed to improved schooling, improved...
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Posted in Uncategorized, History, Education, IT and Internet, Science, Gender, Media, Social, Parenting, Public and Private Goods, Inequality, Employment
[below the exact text (with different font/highlight) as Gigi Foster's submission to the Victorian parliamentary library in mid-August here . To see her health-related notes, including on topics like non-linearities and Sweden, see here , and to see all documents of that inqui...
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Posted in Politics - national, Education, Economics and public policy, Science, Health, Ethics, Medical, Social Policy, Democracy, Employment, Coronavirus crisis
Suppose you agree with me that containment and elimination strategies pursued regarding Covid-19 do far more harm than good. Suppose you also believe that having an open economy and a vibrant close-contact social life is vital for the long-run health of the country. You want t...
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Posted in Politics - national, Life, Education, Society, Economics and public policy, Science, Media, Health, Death and taxes, Social Policy, Employment, Coronavirus crisis
https://youtu.be/w5WsRmgqe_M Early this year I published an essay in the Griffith Review critiquing what I called the competition delusion. I was passing by more common critiques of competition, which for instance argue that competition isn't necessarily a great idea in numero...
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Cross posted from The Mandarin Premium . Government leaders understanding what they need to do when faced with impending issues is one thing. But here, in the first of a three-part series, Nicholas Gruen gets into the nitty-gritty of coming to terms with the 'how' of what need...
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There have long been scientists who were celebrities in their own time. Galileo, Keppler, Goodall, Linneus, Cousteau, Darwin, Smith, Leeuwenhoek, Da Vinci, Ibn Khaldhun, Curie, and many others in the last 800 years were followed and admired. They in many ways performed their s...
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Posted in Politics - national, Life, Philosophy, Education, Society, Religion, Theatre, Economics and public policy, Science, Geeky Musings, Health, Cultural Critique, Social Policy, Democracy, Coronavirus crisis
Let’s talk about some of the covid policy options facing Australia in the coming months and years. It seems to me we can either grasp the nettle and accept we will get a wave of highly visible covid-19 deaths before life returns to normal, or we can try and defend ourselves ag...
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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Life, History, Education, Economics and public policy, Journalism, Libertarian Musings, Health, Death and taxes, Democracy, Employment, Coronavirus crisis
[in progress: will add more references, links and latest numbers when I get the time] In this note, I want to deal with three related issues: the main lessons on the corona virus from the reported deaths across countries with different policies; the feasibility of different “e...
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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Life, Education, Society, IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, Science, Libertarian Musings, Health, Social, Cultural Critique, Death and taxes, Social Policy, Democracy, Employment, Coronavirus crisis
There is one hell of a recession coming for Australia. Economic activity has already reduced by 20% and actual unemployment will probably peak near 20% too , and about a million businesses have already applied for some sort of assistance. The population increase of the last 20...
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How much unhappiness is created by the unemployment of millions of people in Western countries (mainly N-Am +Europe) caused by the corona panic? How much unhappiness has been created due to the vast expansion of loneliness and physical inactivity? And in terms of the tradeoff...
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Posted in Uncategorized, Politics - international, History, Education, Science, Health, Social, Death and taxes, Social Policy, Democracy, Employment, Coronavirus crisis
[caption id="attachment_35624" align="aligncenter" width="500"] If you put the golden age of female philosophy into Google Images you get this. It has accordingly been selected as the picture for this post by the Troppo Robot Barry.[/caption] I do think that in normal times a...
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If, as I think, academia has gone from being inefficient but effective to being efficient but ineffective (a proposition I won't defend here), the mechanism for making the switch was going from embodied cognition to abstract Cartesian cognition, or to be more precise from a ri...
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Delivered at Melbourne University, Friday 19th July, 2019 and cross posted at The Mandarin . Welcome to the launch of another book by Australia’s most overachieving economist. A global authority on decision theory, he also publishes in the daily press, in submissions to govern...
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In 1900, the modern nation states of Europe faced many challenges in terms of how they were run, with poverty and disease still prevalent. The largest problems were more or less successfully addressed by 2000. The road involved world wars and civil wars, but the essential reci...
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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Environment, History, Education, Society, Religion, Economics and public policy, Science, Libertarian Musings, Climate Change, Social, Ethics, Social Policy, Democracy
[note to self] Economics, sociology, anthropology, history, psychology, and the other social sciences are currently taught in an unorganised manner. The undergraduate degree in any of these disciplines consists of about 20 separate courses that each differ markedly from the ot...
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The probability of a massive nuclear war the next 10 years between any of the 8 current nuclear powers (US, UK, France, Russia, India, Pakistan, NK, Israel) seems low. The bluster of the leaders is supposed to make the threat look a bit bigger than it is in order to get negoti...
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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Life, Philosophy, Environment, History, Humour, Education, Literature, Society, Religion, IT and Internet, Terror, Science, Geeky Musings, Health, Climate Change, Ask Troppo's Love Gods, Dance, Space, Chess, Social, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Death and taxes, Democracy
Grandparents, Moms, or Dads? Why Children of Teen Mothers Do Worse in Life by Anna Aizer, Paul J. Devereux, Kjell G. Salvanes - #25165 (CH ED HE LS) Abstract: Women who give birth as teens have worse subsequent educational and labor market outcomes than women who have first bi...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWHgoT2LfnE&feature=youtu.be I was a little crestfallen when, after my public lecture on democracy and sortition at King's College London was filmed with a few to producing a video and the contractors informed us that the recording was hopelessl...
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[just a thought] US total fertility rates were bobbing along very placidly around 2.05 live births per woman from 1990 to 2010, when suddenly there was a clear drop to 1.8 in 2010-2017. That drop has even continued to 1.76 births per woman in 2017 . When I asked myself what co...
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In all ways that we measure these things, physical violence has reduced in Western countries in the last 70 years, particularly mainland Western Europe. What about psychological violence though? Psychological violence, ie the inflicting of mental pain, takes many forms. It inc...
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Posted in Life, Philosophy, History, Miscellaneous, Humour, Education, Society, Religion, regulation, Media, Libertarian Musings, Health, Social, Parenting, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Public and Private Goods, Inequality, Personal
Humanity is at a high point. What our ancestors dreamed of is slowly becoming a reality: a world without hunger in which the vast majority of mankind live peaceful and long lives. We are not there yet, but in Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and even in Africa (our cradle), m...
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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Life, Philosophy, History, Education, Literature, Society, Religion, Economics and public policy, Science, Political theory, Information, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Inequality, Social Policy, Democracy
[cross-posted, slightly updated, from Pearls and Limitations] Observations: About 40% of the population of Catalonia and its capital Barcelona was not born there, but largely comes from the rest of Spain. Internal migration is high , with about 0.4% of the population moving fr...
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Posted in Politics - international, Life, History, Education, Society, Theatre, Economics and public policy, Media, Immigration and refugees, Ethics, Inequality, Social Policy, Democracy
A new programming approach for children today (Continued from Parts One and Two .) There is no justification for the Government to fund children’s television and media, if it is not for the clear developmental benefit of children. There are ample other opportunities for childr...
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Let me indulge, purely for entertainment value, in some fan-speculation on what we will see on-screen after the Long Night is over and the final 6 episodes Of Game of Thrones are run in 2019. Let me first talk about the end-game aspects I think the books and the tv-series seem...
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Posted in Uncategorized, Uncategorised, Politics - international, Life, Philosophy, Print media, Environment, History, Miscellaneous, Humour, Education, Literature, Society, Religion, Films and TV, Sport-general, Theatre, Music, IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, Food, Terror, Science, Art and Architecture, regulation, Gender, Journalism, Media, Libertarian Musings, Geeky Musings, Health, Climate Change, Political theory, Metablogging, Law, Dance, Space, Review, Startup, Products, Travel, Immigration and refugees, Information, bubble, WOW! - Amazing, Social, Parenting, Race and indigenous, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Medical, Public and Private Goods, Death and taxes, Inequality, Personal, Social Policy, Democracy, Bullshit, Indigenous, Employment
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="620"] B1 and B2, or as they're known here at Troppo, T1 and T2 "Are you thinking what I'm thinking T2?"[/caption] The contentious issue of obligatory quotas for commercial children’s television is now under review and has polarised the...
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School Lunch Quality and Academic Performance , by Michael L. Anderson, Justin Gallagher, Elizabeth Ramirez Ritchie Improving the nutritional content of public school meals is a topic of intense policy interest. A main motivation is the health of school children, and, in parti...
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By Tony Beatton ; Michael P. Kidd ; Stephen Machin ; Dipa Sarkar This paper reports new evidence on the causal link between education and male youth crime using individual level state-wide administrative data for Queensland, Australia. Enactment of the Earning or Learning educ...
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This paper estimates the large array of long-run benefits of an influential early childhood program targeted to disadvantaged children and their families. It is evaluated by random assignment and follows participants through their mid-30s. The program is a prototype for numero...
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The Effect of Early Education on Social Preferences by Alexander W. Cappelen, John A. List, Anya Samek, Bertil Tungodden We present results from the first study to examine the causal impact of early childhood education on social preferences of children. We compare children who...
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In part 1, I looked at whether it made sense to have random individuals inserted into parliament, or to let policies be decided by juries full of randomly chosen individuals. Both were argued to be unworkable and likely to lead to more corruption, rather than less: policies th...
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Posted in Politics - national, Life, Philosophy, Print media, History, Miscellaneous, Education, Society, IT and Internet, Economics and public policy, regulation, Journalism, Libertarian Musings, Political theory, Law, Web and Government 2.0, Information, Ethics, Cultural Critique, Social Policy, Democracy
Unintended Consequences of Rewards for Student Attendance: Results from a Field Experiment in Indian Classrooms by Sujata Visaria, Rajeev Dehejia, Melody M. Chao, Anirban Mukhopadhyay - #22528 (CH DEV ED) In an experiment in non-formal schools in Indian slums, a reward scheme...
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Family Descent as a Signal of Managerial Quality: Evidence from Mutual Funds by Oleg Chuprinin, Denis Sosyura - #22517 (LS) We study the relation between mutual fund managers' family backgrounds and their professional performance. Using hand-collected data from individual Cens...
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Available here . by David Figlio, Paola Giuliano, Umut Ozek, Paola Sapienza - #22541 (CH ED LS POL) We use remarkable population-level administrative education and birth records from Florida to study the role of Long-Term Orientation on the educational attainment of immigrant...
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Effects of the Minimum Wage on Infant Health The minimum wage has increased in multiple states over the past three decades. Research has focused on effects on labor supply, but very little is known about how the minimum wage affects health, including children's health. We addr...
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The Effect of Single-Sex Education on Academic Outcomes and Crime: Fresh Evidence from Low-Performing Schools in Trinidad and Tobago by C. Kirabo Jackson Abstract: In 2010, the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago converted 20 low-performing pilot secondary schools fro...
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Academic publishing keeps you on the straight and narrow of everyone else's ideas? Who'da thunk? Bias against Novelty in Science: A Cautionary Tale for Users of Bibliometric Indicators by Jian Wang, Reinhilde Veugelers, Paula Stephan - #22180 (LS PR) Abstract: Research which e...
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The Long-term Consequences of Teacher Discretion in Grading of High-stakes Tests by Rebecca Diamond, Petra Persson This paper analyzes the long-term consequences of teacher discretion in grading of high-stakes tests. Evidence is currently lacking, both on which students receiv...
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This post began as a comment on Paul's last comment on my "Mainstream Radical Centrists: Where are they? " column. Paul boiled down his response to this: If you want to have a serious debate about reforms, go to countries that are hurting and that see the need for it. Like the...
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Abstract : National policies take varied approaches to encouraging university-based innovation. This paper studies a natural experiment: the end of the "professor's privilege" in Norway, where university researchers previously enjoyed full rights to their innovations. Upon the...
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Peter Shergold's report on learning from mistakes is out. It advises on how to avoid the mistakes of the Pink Batts fiasco (He was asked to do this by a government that, pretty obviously, wasn't the slightest bit interested in learning from its or anyone else's mistakes. I exp...
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Childhood Environment and Gender Gaps in Adulthood by Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Frina Lin, Jeremy Majerovitz, Benjamin Scuderi - #21936 (CH ED LS PE) We show that differences in childhood environments play an important role in shaping gender gaps in adulthood by documenti...
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Double for Nothing? Experimental Evidence on the Impact of an Unconditional Teacher Salary Increase on Student Performance in Indonesia by Joppe de Ree, Karthik Muralidharan, Menno Pradhan, Halsey Rogers - #21806 (CH DEV ED LS PE) Abstract: How does a large unconditional incre...
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In an earlier post I argued the case for the 'middleware of democracy' arguing for the inculcation of the (largely social) skills that help constitute collective intelligence. Skills like having some small inkling of how ignorant we all are, listening to those with different o...
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Who knew that Alfred Marshall published an essay entitled "The Social Possibilities of Economic Chivalry" (1907) (pdf)? I didn't until I came upon it the other day. Having now read it, it's thoroughly Marshallian - very much of a piece with his dissenting meliorism which I dis...
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It's cute the way interventions in policy to influence people's behaviour is called "using behavioural insights". You could also call it commonsensically influencing people's behaviour based on the idea that they are not instantly, omnisciently optimising robots. Anyway, there...
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Education Research and Administrative Data by David N. Figlio, Krzysztof Karbownik, Kjell G. Salvanes Thanks to extraordinary and exponential improvements in data storage and computing capacities, it is now possible to collect, manage, and analyze data in magnitudes and in man...
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One vice of academic discourse is the compulsion to cite authorities for the simplest, most commonsensical banalities ( Gruen, 2010 ). Anyway, for my own notes, I record a good example of this in the opening of a paper on vocational education and training. Teaching and innovat...
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Abstract: Sesame Street is one of the largest early childhood interventions ever to take place. It was introduced in 1969 as an educational, early childhood program with the explicit goal of preparing preschool age children for school entry. Millions of children watched a typi...
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The HALE index got a bit of attention this weekend owing to the way in which it highlights the cost of long-term unemployment. It's certainly a graphic illustration of the way in which GDP hides important developments from us. Mostly what people like about the HALE is the way...
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[caption id="attachment_27054" align="aligncenter" width="865"] Source: OECD: Skills for social progress, Click on image to be taken to the publication[/caption]
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Here's yesterday's op ed for the Fin published as Technology education is about more than funding : STEM is all the rage in education – that’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Part culture war against Australian mediocrity, part cargo cult, a principal goal is more...
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[caption id="attachment_26429" align="alignright" width="248"] John Brumby: deregulated the VET sector while Premier.[/caption] Ben Eltham has posted an article in New Matilda about the financial and regulatory travails of Victorian VET private mega-provider Vocation: Christop...
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This paper is pretty interesting. The last generation has seen the triumph of the baby boomers in attracting resources to themselves, at the cost of other generations, most obviously illustrated in throwing off the shackles of university fees (so other generations and the uned...
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Today the people residing in Scotland can decide whether they want to see an independent Scotland or to have Scotland remain in the UK. The betting markets concur with the opinion polls and favour the status quo: the markets give roughly 20% chance that the ‘yes’ vote will win...
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In case anyone's interested, I did an interview on "My Trip" which can be downloaded from this link .
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Human Capital Effects of Anti-Poverty Programs: Evidence from a Randomized Housing Voucher Lottery by Brian Jacob, Max Kapustin, Jens Ludwig - #20164 (CH ED HE PE) Abstract: Whether government transfer programs increase the human capital of low-income children is a question of...
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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="397"] Life is miserable: run, run, run[/caption] I've always been struck by how we debate flexibility in the labour market without paying attention to the other problem in the labour market which is that it's extremely difficult to find...
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From the soon to be published "PISA 2012 Results: Creative Problem Solving", OECD
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Yo5cKRmJaf0 I have almost certainly fulminated in various asides against TED talks on this blog, and even one full on cri de coeur against retail profundification . (I promised one on business class profundification but I...
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Pretty interesting paper (pdf). The abstract: We examine how susceptible jobs are to computerisation. To assess this, we begin by implementing a novel methodology to estimate the probability of computerisation for 702 detailed occupations, using a Gaussian process classifier....
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In his introduction to his translation of the Analects of Confucius, Pierre Ryckmans likened that 'literary classic' to a coat hook that has over the centuries acquired so many layers of coats that it can no longer be seen-has become so big that it completely obscures the corr...
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by Prashant Bharadwaj, Leah K. Lakdawala, Nicholas Li - #19602 (CH DEV) Abstract: While bans against child labor are a common policy tool, there is very little empirical evidence validating their effectiveness. In this paper, we examine the consequences of India's landmark leg...
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by David N. Figlio, Morton O. Schapiro, Kevin B. Soter - #19406 (CH ED LS) Abstract: This study makes use of detailed student-level data from eight cohorts of first-year students at Northwestern University to investigate the relative effects of tenure track/tenured versus non-...
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The journal 'Agenda', the policy journal of the College of Business and Economics at The Australian National University just released a piece of mine called ' Universities as Royal Courts'. One can download it free of charge (just click on the link). It continues my long-runni...
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“ they exert every variety of talent on a lower ground…and may be said to live and act in a submind”...... VS Naipaul “The Air Conditioned Bubble" Writing in 1984 about the republican convention of 1984 (the triumphant beginning of Ronald Regans second term), V S Naipaul wrote...
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For 20 years some Australian school systems have been world leaders in giving schools more autonomy, and in trying to increase competition among them. Many countries are following suit, in the hope that policies to increase school competition will improve student performance....
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I'm doing some research for a talk I'm giving in New Zealand to heads of private schools - the invitation for which came from a similar talk I gave to the Australian Heads of Independent Schools Association. I'm sruiking the wonders of education 2.0 about which I've waxed and...
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Institutional Quality, Culture, and Norms of Cooperation : Evidence from a Behavioral Field Experiment, Alessandra Cassar (University of San Francisco), Giovanna d'Adda (University opf Birmingham), Pauline Grosjean (School of Economics, the University of New South Wales). We d...
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I wrote a good while ago about the economics of doing well by doing good on the internet and when I received a curious email from someone with whom I was conducting a correspondence I decided to write the column below. I've just tried to find it on Google, and it seems I didn'...
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Economic Conditions and Child Abuse by Jason M. Lindo, Jessamyn Schaller, Benjamin Hansen - #18994 (CH HE LE LS) Abstract: Although a huge literature spanning several disciplines documents an association between poverty and child abuse, researchers have not found persuasive ev...
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Imagine yourself to be in the mythical Land of Beyond where you need minions to do a dirty job that men with honour would refuse to do. A classic trick in this situation is to pick people despised by the rest of society who are thus dependent on protection and will simply do w...
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Posted in Uncategorized, Life, Philosophy, History, Humour, Education, Society, Economics and public policy, Libertarian Musings, Geeky Musings, Political theory, Business
Economists love tradeoffs. Indeed, their basic model of the world breaks down where such tradeoffs don't occur. Lucky for them since the world really is full of tradeoffs. If you want more carrots, you'll have to do with fewer of something else. Here they're substitutes. But,...
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I've been talking about this kind of stuff for a fair while in presentations and intimated similar things in some longer pieces and a column or two on Adam Smith and Web 2.0, but I've not done a column on Web 2.0 as public goods privately built. But I have now . THERE'S a revo...
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Quite an interesting finding - which also roughly confirms what I would have guessed before I saw the data. The returns to education for opportunity entrepreneurs, necessity entrepreneurs, and paid employees Date: 2012 By: Fossen, Frank M. Büttner, Tobias J. M. URL: http://d.r...
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I couldn’t resist buying a copy of Daniel Kahneman’s best-seller when returning from holidays. Several friends and colleagues told me it was a great book; it got great reviews; and Kahneman’s journal articles are invariably a good read, so I was curious. Its general message is...
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Posted in Life, Philosophy, Education, Literature, Society, Economics and public policy, Science, Geeky Musings, Methodology, Information, Social
Some readers may remember this blog post . Here's an update from today's Age/ SMH column. IN 2010 the energetic and forward-looking (then) secretary of Victoria's Education Department invited me to discuss educational innovation and Web 2.0 with senior departmental managers. W...
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Some of you may know that Kaggle's motto is "We’re making data science a sport.™". Now we're publishing a leaderboard of our top ten performers . And it's quite an eye opener. There's not a professor there. Indeed there's not a person from a top university there. Just ten of t...
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Medieval Universities, Legal Institutions, and the Commercial Revolution by Davide Cantoni, Noam Yuchtman - NBER #17979 We present new data documenting medieval Europe's "Commercial Revolution'' using information on the establishment of markets in Germany. We use these data to...
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Alvy Singer : What's with all these awards? They're always giving out awards. Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf Hitler. Annie Hall It was with great excitement that I read my alumni news for ANU this month . Extraordinary things are happening. KPIs are being broken through all over...
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A highlight of my calendar I have to say - since I inadvertently morphed into Mr Innovation and they started inviting me. Did you have an absolutely fantastic science teacher? Now's the time to get them some recognition. NOMINATION CALL 2012 PRIME MINISTER’S PRIZES FOR SCIENCE...
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The Effects of Home Computers on Educational Outcomes. Evidence from a Field Experiment with Schoolchildren Date: 2011-09 By: Robert Fairlie (Department of Economics, University of California, Santa Cruz) Jonathan Robinson (Department of Economics, University of California, Sa...
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Here are two talks I've given in the last year. One was a couple of weeks ago at a Melbourne Conversation on Big Data . I talk about the serendipity of big data and the relevance for privacy regulation. And tell a story about Kaggle. I recommend the talk before mine by David M...
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Herewith my op ed from the Herald and Age today. What is the good life and are we living it? Assessing and measuring wellbeing has vexed us since ancient times. But a funny thing happened on the modern world’s way to the answer. The metric that economists used to dampen down t...
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Troppodillians may recall a post of mine where I explained an avent I attended that was showcasing kids who'd undertaken exciting IT projects. Here's an extract: I got talking to Ben and Cameron. Ben had taught himself to program and been instrumental in building the app and g...
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Edit - I really want opposing views. Anyone who thinks there is a strong case for a concerted push for more literacy, please give it in comments At the Lowy Interpreter Andrew Carr says "One policy guaranteed to feature in the ' Australia in the Asian Century' White Paper is t...
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In campaigning for the State election John Brumby racked his brains wondering what he could promise for the state education system and, at some cost, came up with . . . school camps. Can't say I thought it was the most important thing that could be done with a few additional m...
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Here is a guest post by Avi Waksberg. NG Should we pay teachers performance bonuses for teachers based on standardised testing of their pupils? The teachers I’ve spoken to about this have invariably argued that it encourages them to 'teach to the test' whilst neglecting hard t...
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Well the ABC God bless its cotton socks can't quite bring itself to mount videos that can be embedded elsewhere - or I can't see a way to do it, but they did a great story on Kaggle tonight - so I thought I'd post it here. Just click here and all will be revealed. Update: some...
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I have written a few posts about education. But I'd not seen this presentation by Conrad Wolfram - brother of someone who may be one of the intellectual giants of our time - Stephen. (Since Stephen is a good deal older - born in 1959 with Conrad born in 1970 - perhaps one migh...
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I love finding links between equity and efficiency - there are lots around. Here's another . . . . (it seems). Early Non-marital Childbearing and the "Culture of Despair" by Melissa Schettini Kearney, Phillip B. Levine This paper borrows from the tradition of other social scie...
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Interesting graph from the OECD which came with this email to subscribers - I think it's to journalists, and I'm on it because I've sought various reports to write columns on. I haven't read the referenced material, but it's light and predigested so no doubt some enterprising...
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From the General Achievement Test for the Victorian Certificate of Education sat today. The image of the Australian outback on the next page was painted by Russell Drysdale. Pamela Bell described the painting in the following terms. Man reading a Paper is one of the most surre...
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In a very recent post I commented on the absence of the one signal in the public market for expertise that might really improve the market for expertise - from the perspective of the public and private interest in efficiency - and that was some surveillance of the extent to wh...
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I recall my disappointment at the ALP's taking the craze for early childhood intervention in the 2007 election and turning it into a generalised promise for earlier and more kindergarten. Just think of how they could have spent that money on targeted intervention for at risk k...
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I've written a few times on measures of wellbeing on Troppo. For instance here and here . (In fact, reviewing it, I can't find both of my articles for New Matilda on the Australia Institute's GPI, so here they both are (pdf).) As ever Troppo was hip before the world caught up,...
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Certainly Korea has. The US, not so much! As usual, Canada does very well - they do well on lots of measures of good public policy. [caption id="attachment_15822" align="alignleft" width="609" caption="Source: OECD"] [/caption]
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I wanted to comment on Nicholas Gruen's recent post titled the future of tertiary education , but I didn't have time and there was too much I wanted to say. Hence this post. I agree with most of Nicholas's points (some with qualifications) but there's much more that needs sayi...
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If Julia Gillard is known for one policy direction, it is her advocacy of making educational opportunities available to all. Her passion for this idea is clearly genuine, and has survived her move from Minister of Education to Prime Minister. It is also personal. She enjoyed h...
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I'm preparing to do a bit of whithering on tertiary education next week at a strategy retreat or some such for a university - and wanted to ask Troppodillians for any sources they think I should consult. I want to bang my drum about the ways in which education at all levels (w...
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Well blow me down! In early 2009 I was invited to Beijing to participate in a 'dialogue' on 'the knowledge society' which was being run between various academic institutions in Australia and Peking University. The 'dialogue' was quite formal and diplomatic - I recognised the g...
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Having just watched Q&A on the republic (looking for my daughter who'd got herself into the audience!), I was intrigued by the post I've replicated below. I am the most luke warm republican around and have almost certainly put Chris Dillow's first argument below somewhere on T...
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Nicholas Gruen's post about Einstellung (a person's predisposition to solve a given problem in a specific manner even though there are "better" or more appropriate methods of solving it) has given me an idea. I would like to devise a couple of seminars for undergraduate Law st...
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It always struck me how inefficient universities were with most efforts going into lectures which were inherently a broadcast medium - so much so you could go and get the tapes of the lectures. Meanwhile, tutes were usually a bit of an afterthought and a place where grad stude...
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One of the things I have against academics is that they are supposed to be smart. They are smart. Yet get enough of them together and you get this - from Robin Hanson . Words fail me. Once upon a time some researchers gave people diseases without their consent or knowledge. Ot...
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Saul Eslake asked a bunch of people for comments on the recent Grattan Institute study of productivity and I sent him back a long email which I reproduce with some editing here. Nothing very surprising for people who are regular visitors here, but perhaps worth posting in case...
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Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from New York City Public Schools by Roland G. Fryer - #16850 (ED LS) Abstract: Financial incentives for teachers to increase student performance is an increasingly popular education policy around the world. This paper descr...
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From the NBER Reporter . One example of compensation data enabling much broader research is my research on "Superstar CEOs" with Tate. 3 The title refers to the fact that, in terms of compensation, but also in terms of status and press coverage, managers in the United States f...
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The rough beast is slouching towards Bethlehem again. In the latest issue of Quadrant Rob Nugent warns that young people are losing their connection with history and culture. Literary reading is in decline and postmodernism is to blame. According to Nugent, our intellectual el...
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From McKinsey's . It would be similar here presumably.
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Prompted by University of Queensland's Graeme Turner , Mark Bahnisch has a pair of posts over at Larvatus Prodeo asking rhetorically whether the Humanities at Australian universities are dying. As Turner puts it: ONCE, the humanities were fundamental to the idea of the univers...
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http://vimeo.com/15978330
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This post is what I would have written as a comment on Nicholas’s post Listen2Learners: 1 but it got a bit big. So is this post. The following lines of his post sparked my attention I impressed upon Peter the extent to which the online world of web 2.0 is one in which people a...
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https://youtu.be/tUiUVfqFOhw A couple of months ago I caught up for lunch with Peter Dawkins whom I've known since my time at the BCA - which is to say since 1997 when he was running the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. He's now head of the Dept of...
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Saturday 11 to Wed 15, 10 am to 5 in the Great Hall . My treasures: all in practically "as new" condition. Peter Medawar, Pluto's Republic (not a missprint). $3. Review . The editor of the Age Monthly Review would not let me write that the cover photo depicted Medwar demonstra...
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A guest post by Conrad Perry: It looks like the new Julia being the real Julia campaign has kicked off with a bit of good old fashioned teacher bashing. This reminds me of one of the things that seems really ingrained in many people’s minds, and an assumption which a lot of th...
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This is a quick post, I'd like to make it longer but won't have the time. It's worked up from a comment on a post by Kate Lundy which articulates why e-literacy of various kinds should be part of the national curriculum. Couldn't agree more. But a couple of things occur to me....
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Salman Khan's Khan Academy is an amazing labour of love, if you haven't come across it. Over a thousand video tutorials, each around ten minutes long, on subjects ranging from calculus and statistics, through biology, to modern history. But this is what's really mindboggling:...
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Last year I asked what broader social purpose is served by schools competing for position on NAPLAN league tables . I emphasised both the meaninglessnesss of the information (reiterated recently by David Hardie in Crikey ) and the lack of any aggregate benefit from inducing fa...
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3. Home Computer Use and the Development of Human Capital by Ofer Malamud, Cristian Pop-Eleches - #15814 (ED HE CH) This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of home computers on child and adolescent outcomes. We collected survey data from househ...
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Serving it up to the hyperconnected generation I read The Dumbest Generation over Christmas, though it came out in 2008. It's a very satisfying polemic, as well as thoroughly researched -- to the extent that I'm competent to judge -- and its author Mark Bauerlein is a cut abov...
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This is a survey of the treatment of selected themes in the famous textbook from the first edition in 1948 to the last in 1995. The sales figures: Edition, Year, Author(s,) Sales 1, 1948, Samuelson, 121,453 2, 1951, Samuelson, 137,256 3, 1955, Samuelson, 191,706 4, 1958, Samue...
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Balmain is not just the city of basket weavers it is also a place to find thinking drinkers and binge thinkers. Put this in your list of favorites. Shaken and Stirred , the brainchild of Parnell McGuinness and Leonie Phillips, is a space for the free exchange of opinions witho...
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I appreciate that this has been posted before and nobody has to read it again, it is just for the benefit of new people and those who like to be reminded of the achievements of this remarkable man. Barzun's work represents a major and pioneering contribution to cultural studie...
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From the State Government that brings car racing to our most idyllic park, turns nature reserves over to shooters, refuses to cap political donations, reneges on public transport promises faster than it makes them, and philanders while its health system burns, it's nice to see...
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Julia Gillard has announced that the new national website for schools will include average NAPLAN scores. Principals hate the idea, as do some education academics . The Minister has responded to the criticisms by being uncharacteristically evasive . She invokes 'transparency',...
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Mark Blaug (1937- ) was born in the Netherlands, raised in the US and became a naturalised Briton in 1982. He made far reaching contributions to a range of topics in economic thought. In addition to work on the economics of art and the economics of education, he is best known...
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I attended a graduation last week, and submitted to my usual ritual of explaining, to everyone who asked, why I sat in the stalls in mufti rather than on the dais in academic regalia. Some of my colleagues inform me that they hate graduations, either because they are bored by...
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It's quite tricky to teach undergraduate law students about the Whitlam Dismissal. You have to cover it because it's the only example of exercise of vice-regal reserve powers of dismissal of an elected government since federation (at least at federal level; there's also Sir Ph...
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Tim Blair reports on Yvonne Ridley the British journalist who converted to Islam after being kidnapped by the Taliban who has won a case for unfair dismissal against the Islam News Channel. Earlier in the year she won nearly £14,000 in damages after winning a four-year unfair...
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Qinghua Pei is being investigated by ICAC for allegedly trying to bribe a Year 5 teacher to write a favourable report on his son, and improve the boy's prospects of getting into a selective high school. What is the appropriate reaction to this? Here are a few to choose from: 1...
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Jacques Barzun is arguably the leading commentator on education and cultural studies in the 20th century but he has a low profile since his kind of deep but ideologically disinterested scholarship went out of fashion. Born in 1907, he turns 101 in November. His reputation achi...
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The Australian Skeptics Prize for Critical Thinking has been won this year by Peter Ellerton, a Queensland teacher who established a network promoting critical thinking in schools. The prize is worth $10,000. For a decade up to 2006 it was awarded as a part of the Australian M...
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There have been a bunch of things I've wanted to post about, but have simply not had the time. I still don't have the time, but I with a bit of enthusiasm and not much time, I thought I'd mention some good things. The first is that I listened to this podcast of Dan Pink talkin...
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And exciting presentation of fascinating data. Hat tip to a Troppodillian whose email I have now lost but who emailed me a week or so ago suggesting I watch this and write it up on Troppo. Apologies, this isn't much of a write up, but I'm afraid I'm flat out. And I didn't thin...
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About a year ago Joshua Gans showed me some draft chapters for a book on parenting at which he'd been working away. To use an expression from the AFL, Joshua has a high 'work rate' and he writes blog posts in the morning over breakfast - and perhaps at some other times. Anyway...
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There are two kids' games that are very gendered not so much in their gendered content as we understand the genders, but in their appeal to boys and girls. The first I observed in my daughter when she was in early primary school. It's routines that involve the mutual clapping...
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As I've said before, I'm a big admirer of Herbert Gintis - at least as part of the duo of Gintis and Bowles who wrote the marvellous essay " Is equality passe " and has a string of books and great articles to his name. His project is to develop the implications of what Gintis...
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I was listening to a podcast of a BBC interview with Ian "Supercrunchers" Ayres. Supercrunchers is a book which illustrates all the ways in which the 'new econometrics' or 'social stats' is revolutionising - well lets not get carried away - improving the judgement of all sorts...
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I have about three draft posts, all unfinished on a particular theme which I have touched on once before here . The general theme is the growing viability of doing well by doing good. One of the posts was called Googlenomics and referred to the massive amount of <jargon>consum...
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Ructions in Boganville: the first Camden protest, back in November A keen follower of events in Camden, I didn't overlook the news that the Camden/Macarthur Residents' Group, led by that great community bridge builder Emil Sremchevich, has announced plans to hold more protests...
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For better or worse, here are my answers to the two compulsory questions for those wishing to make it to the summit. No surprises for regular Troppo readers - I've learned the art of repetition. But they could have had any number of other ideas. A few ideas promised for Troppo...
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I can't really blame Australian Young Labor for attempting to clamp its collective lips on the public tit in the wake of the Rudd government's accession to power. I don't even violently object to their proposal that students be allowed to add the cost of textbooks to their HEC...
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Courtesy of Clive Crook , here's a fascinating chart on skills development across OECD countries. The graph shows the proportion of the labour force with at least a college degree, by age group, for OECD countries. The bigger the span of the vertical lines, the more younger ge...
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I've just been asked by the Department of PM&C to nominate someone to go to the 202o Summit. Who should I nominate - and why? This post will be moderated strictly. Suggestions should be serious and I hope you'll provide good reasons. Of course there will be people who want to...
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Posted in Politics - national, Politics - international, Life, Philosophy, Environment, History, Education, Society, Religion, Economics and public policy, Science, Gender, Journalism, Health, Climate Change, Political theory, Law
PPE, the combined undergraduate course of philosophy, politics and economics became popular in Oxford in the early part of the twentieth century. It acquired the name "Modern Greats" by analogy with "Greats" or classics which was ancient history, philosophy and languages which...
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Every 2 weeks at QUT, we set up an economic policy discussion evening. We pick a topic for debate, have someone knowledgeable introduce it, and then let 2 students argue for or against particular policy reform proposals. We go out of our way to make the policy proposals realis...
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About fifteen, perhaps twenty years ago I was talking to a good friend who is an academic in maths education. He was saying that Casio was interested in getting input into the educational potential of their graphical calculators. I thought there was a real opportunity here. On...
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The teachers were becoming concerned. Week by week, the kids at the Hilltop Children's Center were building a city out of LEGO . And as the city emerged, so too did the children's assumptions about private property and power -- assumptions that mirrored those of a class-based...
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Performance pay for teachers is in the news at the moment, what with federal Education Minister Julie Bishop in Darwin today for a meeting with her State and Territory counterparts. Apparently she intends blustering and bullying the States about performance pay, despite an unp...
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At last, a topic I can pontificate about off the top of my head. The case against PowerPoint, starting with yesterday's piece in the SMH by Anna Patty , and followed up by Dr Faustus (courtesy of today's Missing Link), is a textbook example of reasonable arguments leading to u...
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Andrew Leigh has a post on an ANU award for great teachers . This is a Good Thing. While I'm in full cry about the forth arm of government - the 'suasional' arm of government - I wondered why the ALP didn't give out awards like that. Couldn't do them much harm. Could do them s...
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According to a story in today's Herald, plagiarism is rife at universities . Harriet Alexander reports that It is difficult to establish a total number of plagiarism cases across all universities because collection methods vary. But a conservative estimate is 3336 cases betwee...
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Here's a review of mine of Fred Argy's excellent and neglected paper for the Australia Institute (pdf). Introduction What could offer more powerful advocacy against some iniquity than to show how it hurts us all not just its victims? This style of argument has been the stock i...
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I've just finished reading a book entitled " Grooming, gossip and the evolution of language " (Amazon link - but no pages to view) by Robin Dunbar a 1996 book written in a highly entertaining style for a lay audience. In my ignorance of the field, I found the book highly ente...
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Fred's last post prompted several commenters to mention subsidies for private schools. It's worth taking a closer look at this issue in isolation. As Harry Clarke reminded us some time ago in a related discussion, subsidising private education is efficient if it reduces the bu...
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I just ran across this abstract in the Journal of Public Economics . I reproduce it here for what it is worth. I mean that literally, as it is not me pushing a barrow. I don't have a considered view and have done very little reading on this. Anyway, here's the abstract. In 198...
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Political debate Australia is starting to remind me of the balls that used to be held at uni halls of residence when I was a student. Rather than some kind of broad discourse we move from one topic to another with the media paying obeisance to an agenda set by the Government w...
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An enterprising Paul Williams from the New South Wales Department of Education and Training sent me a study the Department had commissioned on the economic value of TAFE in NSW. Easily flattered on Club Troppo's behalf - I've not been courted as a media outlet before - I thoug...
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I don't often violently disagree with Nicholas Gruen. But in a recent Troppo post he argues that disadvantaged groups like America's black population are held back by their culture not just by a lack of opportunity. As evidence of this Nicholas points to a recent NBER paper by...
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David Gruen (distantly related by fraternity) 1 sent me the following abstract from a recent NBER working paper. In it some econometrics is done on a phenomenon that (I believe) was first discussed seriously in American sociology in the mid to late 50s (you'd expect economics...
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Taking up a passing comment by Gummo Trotsky on the apparent failure of liberal education, it is tempting to compose a small essay or meditation to explore some points of entry to this rather large issue. Talk of failure (or of deferred success) raises the question, when do we...
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Following a debunking post on Che Guevara , John Quiggin made an interesting comment. "The orthodox history I was taught at school consisted largely of glorification of people who were pretty much identical to Che in all essentials (Alexander the Great, Richard the Lionheart,...
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High academic salaries and low teaching loads are pricing working class kids out of university says David Horowitz . In a talk at Ohio's Bowling Green State University Horowitz told academics that if they really as concerned about the working class as they pretended to be they...
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I'm not inclined to participate further on the debate on non-heterosexualities and school education, partly because I think it's rapidly running its course , and partly because at the moment I can better focus my writing energies on my thesis. So after this post, I'll disappea...
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Rob Corr has put up a very measured post summarising the debate which started with the incident of the student teacher having her prac terminated because she answered children's questions about her same-sex partner over at Kick & Scream . Rob's post is tellingly titled 'Discre...
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You'd get the impression from parts of the recent comments threads around this joint lately that Western civilisation is about to collapse if the shaky heteronormativity in schools isn't immediately reinforced. As a number of us have pointed out, though, there are real people...
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Mark's posting on what he sees as a 'rightwing PC' intolerance of sexuality in schools has led me to present these few thoughts to Troppo Armadillians, based on my own observations and experiences in schools. I'm not interested in debating the rights and wrongs of the toleranc...
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I previously argued that talk of values - usually found associated with education debates - can be code for imposing conservative social values on everyone , and that one value that rarely gets mentioned is the fundamental liberal value of toleration. As the right wing culture...
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Or, the Civil in Civility It's odd that we hear so much about the Judaeo-Christian tradition (usually in the context of values) these days from the Culture Warriors who believe that our values are going to ruin all around us . It's as if, like the artist Frederick Goodall , th...
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There seems to be some presupposition in the debates over the culture wars that once upon a time, there was an orderly, well educated and prosperous Australian society with no social cleavages and where everyone knew the 3 Rs and knew their place. It's the hidden premise, if y...
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Here's a guest post by Kevin Donnelly (who as many readers will recall, is an educationalist who has written extensively on curriculum issues, especially regarding the teaching English in high schools). Also see the various posts about education policy in the Troppo archives ,...
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Or, The Art of the Academic Jobsearch I spent part of my morning finalising my application for a Research Fellowship in Griffith Uni's Socio-legal Research Centre . All the advice that's been around for years in HR is that cvs and selection criteria responses should be succinc...
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I was on campus on Monday to borrow some books for my PhD. It's the first time in nine years that I'm not gearing up for the teaching semester, so I'm feeling fairly relaxed at the moment. I'm evidently so out of touch that I didn't realise til I got there that it was O Week....
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...is the title of an article by Sigmund Freud, who along with Marx and Nietzsche, has been seen as an originator of the "hermeneutics of suspicion" and thus a spiritual parent of postmodernism. In the wake of the Troppo theory wars, John Quiggin has reminded us that one of hi...
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Overlooked in the vigorous debate over postmodernism that has consumed Troppo over the past week or so is the distinction between postmodernity and postmodernism, which is one strongly established in sociology (often associated with the work of Zygmunt Bauman .) Bauman argues...
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This will be my last entry in the Troppo literature wars, which I suspect are running out of steam with the same positions being reiterated. However, I wouldn't be doing my job as a sociologist if I didn't point out that the way that we read literary works and assess their val...
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OK, so I've criticised pretty strongly the current hopeless approach to the teaching of English in schools, most particularly in NSW, which is the one that I know about. It's been fantastic to have this chance to express these things, and to debate it with you all, and it's al...
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A propos of my post yesterday, on English in school, I'd like to present to you the assignment my son brought home yesterday afternoon from school, an assignment which exemplifies everything I've been talking about. he was, by the way, in a state of wild revolt about it. It's...
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The usual stoush over education guarantees the usual old left wing/right wing divide, arguments about po-mo, deconstruction, etc. I'd like to bring the matter back to a more realistic level--the level of schools themselves. I have contact with schools all over Australia, on a...
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A staple of state oppositions' rhetoric is to accuse the incumbent government of holding too many enquiries and not taking decisions. I wonder why nobody's been saying that about Brendan Nelson. Last year, we got the enquiry into phonics, graced with the presence of Miranda De...
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Or, RWDB Political Correctness Run Wild Observa asked on Ken's comment thread below with respect to Associate Professor Wayne Sawyer, whose ill-chosen comments about school English and voting for the Coalition have provoked vigorous debate (at least here at Troppo ) and sundry...
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I know Mark Bahnisch has already focused on the RWDBs who've been ranting in the opinion columns of The Australian ( here and here ) about the teaching of English in secondary schools. But I reckon it's worth another post from me as well. This topic is beginning to look very m...
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The phrase of course is courtesy of a previous column by Andrew Bolt lamenting the politicisation of education . In a week when education has had a few headlines - with Dr Nelson's proposal for a National Leaving Certificate exam being almost universally dismissed as impractic...
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Miranda Devine heads her column this week "More Like a Leaking Nuclear Reactor than an Arts Faculty" . The target of her ire is Sydney University's Arts Faculty. I made the point a few days ago in passing that Sydney Uni has seen more than its fair share of disputatious academ...
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The Guardian today has two news items which may not be unconnected - a profile of Lynton Crosby , former John Howard strategist and now strategist to Michael Howard, the UK Tory leader, and a call from the Tories' Education shadow for British students to learn "basic facts" ab...
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The Oxford tortured faith research is not, it seems, the only bright research idea to come from the land of the free: A US plan to develop a bad breath bomb and a chemical weapon to make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each other has been revealed in newly declassified...
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I'm more and more convinced the world morphed into postmodern weirdness when I wasn't looking. Or there's been some sort of Gwyneth Paltrow like time distortion parallel universe thing happening. This just in : People are to be tortured in laboratories at Oxford University in...
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The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, Francisco de Goya, 1746-1828 One of the nice things about blogging is the feeling of camaraderie and collegiality that you get. One of the not so nice things about writing a thesis is that you feel almost necessarily isolated. So I was ab...
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Lately, we've heard an enormous amount about elites, (aka latte sippers) . A project for the future might be a post to put to rest this tenacious fallacy forever (I live in hope generally...). Often these dreaded elites are associated with universities. As the news breaks that...
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P. J. Harvey sings live... I'd been planning to write on the truly appalling line of questioning NSW Bar Association President and barrister for Tara Anglican School for Girls, Ian Harrison SC, launched during a recent court case where an 18 year old woman alleged that she had...
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Brendan Nelson has announced the composition of his literacy enquiry. The establishment of this review was a response to the heated (and over-politicised) debate over the relative merits of whole language and phonics as methods of teaching children to read. A surprise inclusio...
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Tim Dunlop is complaining about the prevalance of creationist ideas , and notes that it is not just a US problem: Speaking completely anecdotally, I have a cousin who is a geologist and who was doing surveys in NSW a few years back. He said he had to speak to a lot of property...
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In his SMH column today, Ross Gittins reports on some interesting new research which shows that while Independent Schools do better in getting students into Uni, these same students are out-performed in first year by students from Government and Catholic schools. Gittins also...
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Knowing the academic bent of Troppo readers, I thought I would advise that Google has a new offering - Google Scholar . The aim is: Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts a...
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One aspect of Labor's education policy where I emphatically agree with Graham Young is in the area of values. Labor's policy document says (page 11): A Federal Labor Government will provide $150 million over five years to teach Australian values and improve discipline in schoo...
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Graham Young over on Ambit Gambit has a post about Labor's education policy release that trots out the usual kneejerk conservative slur against Labor: Latham's policy is based on "envy". But unlike most such defences of existing privilege , Graham actually argues his case. Upd...
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I can't help comparing the university where I work with St. Edward's hospital, the apocryphal institution in Yes Minister which won an award as Britain's most hygienic hospital because it had no patients to get the place dirty. I've just come back to my office with an armful o...
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This story a couple of days ago caught my attention: AUSTRALIA is two years behind comparable developed countries in broadband services despite an accelerated uptake that doubled subscribers in the past year. The advent of less expensive entry-level products drove demand, says...
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The Charles Darwin Symposium Series is one of several initiatives suggested by highly-paid consultants to resuscitate the somewhat tattered reputation of the Northern Territory's only university, which Paddy McGuinness famously dismissed as " a so-called university which has n...
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A report in today's Oz about the treatment meted out to 12 year old intellectually disabled (and autistic) child Neil Simons by his WA school: A PERTH grandmother is waging a fierce battle with the state Education Department after discovering her 12-year-old intellectually dis...
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I've just posted the following announcement on the websites for the undergraduate units I'm teaching this semester at CDU: Tomorrow's classes are still on, notwithstanding the strike. I certainly support strongly the principle of academic independence, and strongly oppose gove...
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Niall Cook blogs an amusing (and surprisingly honest for a leftie) appraisal of the Public Service: The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed down from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to immedia...
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Ian Firns, the courageous (possibly in a Sir Humphrey Appleby sense) contract academic at the centre of the Newcastle University plagiarism cover-up scandal, contributes some fascinating observations to the comment box of my previous post . One of them is to express a degree o...
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I've been puzzled by the failure of any bloggers or mainstream op-ed pundits even to mention last week's Nine Network Sunday program which revealed apparent serious erosion of fundamental academic standards at University of Newcastle. It appears that widespread plagiarism by f...
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