I enjoyed the writing, but overall felt that Malcolm Gladwell missed the mark. But I’ll start with the positives.
First, Malcolm is a great writer. He I enjoyed the writing, but overall felt that Malcolm Gladwell missed the mark. But I’ll start with the positives.
First, Malcolm is a great writer. He voices all of this himself, so you can sense his passion and commitment to the issues. He is a great communicator, I think you’ll come away with what he’s trying to say. Overall, it’s a pleasant experience and I am glad to have listened to it.
My main issues are in terms of the content. My first criticism is that I do not believe he was as evidence-based as he could have been. He tells stories and examples of students, as well as educational institutions, a style which is compelling and relatable; however, he could’ve done more to look at more academic, rigorous evidence here. He hints at the fact that most educational outcomes are the result of non-school factors. For example, the most prestigious schools select the best students, so that the apparently good post-graduate outcomes these schools get are illusory, not caused by educational quality but rather by pre-selection. Malcolm acknowledges this as a possibility but never fully explores it.
He remains convinced that schools, or educational quality in particular, makes a big difference in student’s life outcomes, but he doesn’t explore much what “educational quality” would entail. He seems to think it’s not on-campus luxury food or housing. But is it small class sizes? Higher teacher pay? A certain style of teaching? He never really gets to what happens in the classroom itself.
Second, some of the solutions proposed would prove problematic. His “don’t ask don’t tell” idea behind asking where people got their degree seems problematic to me. What about autodidacts, should they be eligible to say they have some sort of degree? If so, employers will have to come up with another way of quickly evaluating candidates which is not a test, which Malcolm seems to oppose. If not, then what schools count in this system? Could anyone open any law school and have their graduates compete on a level playing field with those from Yale? It’s hard to say what would happen in these situations. It’s possible getting a job could become even less meritocratic and more based on who you know, under Malcolm’s proposal, a consequence I don’t think he intended.
Overall I had a good time listening to it. But content-wise I think I would go elsewhere for ideas of education policy....more
I had no idea the topics inside the human body were going to be as varied as they are in Cells at Work! volume 2 by Akane Shimizu. The first book was I had no idea the topics inside the human body were going to be as varied as they are in Cells at Work! volume 2 by Akane Shimizu. The first book was mostly respiratory related, with allergies and flu and such. In this volume, though, we get food poisoning, heat stress, and a two-part battle against creepy-looking cancer cells.
The various types of white blood cells continue to be personified with different character quirks. The chapter on food poisoning focuses on an eosinophil, a type of white blood cell useful during allergic reactions and parasitic infections. She wears a pink uniform with pigtails, and her struggle is to be taken seriously.
She tries hard to fight the invading germ, but she’s called puny and weak and has to be saved by the brawnier neutrophil (our friend the white blood cell seen on the cover and in the previous book). Even other cells question her abilities, although she’s determined to keep fighting regardless. The white blood cell knows she has other abilities that make her valuable, but it’s not until we see the stomach lining attacked by a parasite that we see her true worth.
It’s a very manga-typical story — keep trying your best and your skills will be demonstrated! — in a bizarre setting with plenty of violence against exaggerated monsters. The parasite, in particular, is drawn as a huge amoeba-snake-thing. Plus, the explanatory captions keep reminding us of the dangers of eating contaminated seafood, so I won’t be going out for sushi any time soon.
Red blood cell returns in the second chapter, as part of a march through the capillaries in an attempt to better regulate the body’s heat. The area is drawn as a scorched desert, with references to global warming, a timely approach. It’s too humid, and the body isn’t cooling as it should, plus there’s an attack (of course) by a bacterium.
There are a few tips on how to protect oneself in the heat scattered throughout, as well as the usual high drama as the invading germ rants about plans for domination and the white blood cell expresses his determination to never give up, regardless of how futile his struggles (although not really). That’s what’s so amusing about this series, how manga conventions are recast in this new, unusual setting.
That’s seen in a chapter which flashes back to the red blood cell’s early life, showing how blood cells are created in bone marrow. In addition to fleshing out the scientific information, there are a ton of cute kids and babies here and the typical “fated meeting” that’s so common in manga background stories.
The final story ramps up the monsters as cancer cells are drawn as a kind of zombie, but with random limbs exaggerated in ropy, bulbous fashion. Various additional body defenders appear, with the NK cell in particular reminding me of a Lara Croft type. Unlike the guy cells in their full-body uniforms, she’s running around in tank top and shorts, although she’s tough and fierce.
The crowds of cancer cells are packed and ready to move, symbolising metastasis, when cancer spreads throughout the body. These particular ones keep complaining about why they have to die, just because they were born different. It’s a troubling concept that has no real resolution, other than for the immune cells to do their job and wipe them out to keep the body healthy. His last threat, to return if you “keep on being careless with your health!”, is a good reminder to take away from the series.
Are good intentions and bad ideas setting up a generation for failure? This is the proposition in the subtitle of a provocative critique of western soAre good intentions and bad ideas setting up a generation for failure? This is the proposition in the subtitle of a provocative critique of western society built from analysis of the breakdown of diversity and polarisation within the United States which is creeping our way. The authors note trends alongside this polarisation: increased adolescent depression, overprotective regimes in universities, pursuit of justice that makes the best an enemy of the good, obsessive use of phones and tablets, widespread play deprivation and more fearful parenting.
‘Paranoid parenting… convinces children that the world is full of danger; evil lurks in the shadows, on the streets, and in public parks and restrooms. Kids raised in this way are emotionally prepared to embrace the Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people - a worldview that makes them fear and suspect strangers. We teach children to monitor themselves for the degree to which they “feel unsafe” and then talk about how unsafe they feel. They may come to believe that feeling “unsafe” (the feeling of being uncomfortable or anxious) is a reliable sign that they are unsafe (the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings). Finally, feeling these emotions is unpleasant; therefore, children may conclude, the feelings are dangerous in and of themselves - stress will harm them if it doesn’t kill them (the Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker)’.
In ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’ free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff allies social psychologist Jonathan Haidt to challenge these three ‘untruths of fragility, emotional reasoning and ‘us versus them’’ as contradictory to both ancient wisdom and modern psychology besides being harmful to individuals and communities who subscribe to them. A presenting problem is the use of social media by the passionate to rubbish people and not just ideas with loss of the time tested wisdom of giving people the benefit of the doubt. A deception that the world is made up of ‘Us versus Them’ is promoted by the same media as people live in ‘self-confirmatory bubbles, where their worst fears about the evils of the other side can be confirmed and amplified by extremists and cyber trolls intent on sowing discord and division’. Coupled to this deception is promotion of a safety culture in which people’s need to feel comfortable is put on the same level as their need to be protected from physical danger. The consequences for the rising generation is a certain naivety as they grow up protected from life experience they need to develop resilient living.
The authors cite critically a quotation from an essay in EverydayFeminism.com: ‘In the end, what does the intent of our action really matter if our actions have the impact of furthering the marginalisation or oppression of those around us? Such an understanding makes bigots of all of us who upset others with our views however pure our intentions’. Paradoxically distinguishing hurtful talk from harmful talk, a distinction widely accepted in ancient wisdom traditions, serves to help address the roots of conflict. This is why universities have been up to now loth to protect their students from ideas some of them find offensive bearing in mind the purpose of education as bringing people out of their comfort zones to make them think.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is commended for rebuking a ‘pathological dualism that sees humanity itself as radically ... divided into the unimpeachably good and the irredeemably bad. You are either one or the other.’ Western society is being crippled by disrespect shown in debates lacking humility in which people rubbish one another, blind to the truth that, whatever opinions they hold, all human beings possess both fragility and beauty. The authors mention unfavourably the oratory of Donald Trump and some of the things being said in the Brexit debate.
What strategies can bring the world out of such error? The authors look particularly to religion as a source of transformative vision quoting Martin Luther-King: ‘Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend… Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.’ It's ironic that the vision that impelled King is getting increasingly obscured by those offended by religion’s immemorial place in the public square. This is a challenging, inspiring and timely book....more
This true story begins with Malala’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, the son of an imam (a preacher of Islam), who was instilled from boyhood with a deep This true story begins with Malala’s father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, the son of an imam (a preacher of Islam), who was instilled from boyhood with a deep love of learning, an unwavering sense of justice and a commitment to speak out in defense of both. Like Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, Ziauddin was convinced that aside from the sword and the pen, there is an even greater power — that of women — and so, when his firstborn turned out to be a bright, inquisitive daughter, he raised her with all the attention he lavished on his sons.
Ziauddin’s greatest ambition, which he achieved as a relatively young teacher, was to establish a school where children could be raised with a keen sense of their human potential. As a Pashtun, he came from a tribe that had migrated from Kabul and settled on the lush but war-weary frontier that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan; as a Yousafzai, he was the proud inheritor of a rich legacy that could be traced to the Timurid court of the 16th century. But he was also a poor man with high ambitions and not a cent to his name.
Malala was born in 1997, as her father was struggling to found his school against a sea of troubles: a deeply corrupt government official to whom he refused to pay bribes; a mufti who lived across the way and objected to the education of girls, a practice he denounced as haram, or offensive to Islam; and the vicissitudes of a fierce jihad, visited upon them from time to time in Taliban raids that evolved from harsh rhetoric to outright killings. By the time Malala was 10 and the top student in her father’s surprisingly flourishing school, radical Talibs had penetrated the valley all the way to the capital of Islamabad and were beheading Pakistani police, holding their severed heads high on the roadsides.
“Moniba and I had been reading the Twilight books,” Malala recounts, and “it seemed to us that the Taliban arrived in the night just like vampires. They appeared in groups, armed with knives and Kalashnikovs. . . . These were strange-looking men with long straggly hair and beards and camouflage vests over their shalwar kamiz, which they wore with the trousers well above the ankle. They had jogging shoes or cheap plastic sandals on their feet, and sometimes stockings over their heads with holes for their eyes, and they blew their noses dirtily into the ends of their turbans.”
That was when the school bombings began and Maulana Fazlullah, a young extremist who had once operated the pulleys at a river crossing, became known as the Radio Mullah, a direct arm of the Taliban, installing a systematic rule of terror over the Swat Valley. Fazlullah announced the closing of girls’ schools; he lauded the killing of a female dancer; his goons killed a teacher for refusing to pull his trousers above the ankle the way the Taliban members wore theirs. “Nowhere in Islam is this required,” the teacher had cried out in his defense.
“They hanged him,” Malala relates dryly, “and then they shot his father.”
But for all the terror around them, Malala and her family were hardly cowed into submission. Ziauddin continued to rail at his country’s Talibanization in government offices, to the army, to anyone who would listen, gaining a name throughout Swat for his rectitude and courage. And although Malala learned to go to school with her books hidden under her shawl, she continued to study and excel, eventually giving public speeches on behalf of education that her father would help write. By 12, even as she pored over “Anna Karenina” and the novels of Jane Austen, she was writing a BBC blog about her experiences under the pen name Gul Makai.
When, in 2009, the family was forced to abandon the increasingly violent border area in “the biggest exodus in Pashtun history,” the Yousafzais made their way to Peshawar, where Malala did radio interviews, met Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, turned 13 and continued to speak out for girls’ education. Passing through Abbottabad as they made their escape, the family could not have imagined that Osama bin Laden himself had found refuge there. Finally winding their way home, they discovered that their beloved school — in a metaphor for their own defiance — had become a holdout against the Taliban for the Pakistani army.
We know how this story ends, with a 15-year-old child taking a bullet for a whole generation. It is difficult to imagine a chronicle of a war more moving, apart from perhaps the diary of Anne Frank. With the essential difference that we lost that girl, and by some miracle, we still have this one. Disfigured beyond recognition by her assailant’s gun, Malala was rushed to Peshawar, then Rawalpindi and finally to Birmingham, England, where doctors reconstructed her damaged skull and knit back the shattered face. But her smile would never be quite the same.
Resolute, Malala has never hidden that face — not when the Taliban insisted on it, and not when she emerged from her battle for survival to stand before the members of the United Nations in July and deliver her message yet again, a little louder.
“There is good news coming from the U.K.,” the head of military operations in Swat had told Malala’s desperate parents as they awaited word of their child’s condition. “We are very happy our daughter has survived.”
“Our,” Malala points out, because she had become the daughter of a nation.
But she is ours, too, because she stands for the universal possibility of a little girl....more
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