Is intelligence a single, general factor, or is it more plural and fragmented? Are we actually getting smarter, or are we just getting better at taking tests? This month’s Cato Unbound offers up a cognitive feast of viewspoints. James Flynn, who opts for the plural, fragmented view of IQ, argues that the envirnoment makes a lot of difference in terms of effect on our level of cognitive functioning. Once we grasp that “the brain is much more like our muscles than we had thought, ” we can do more to improve cognitive performance by doing more to exercise the brain. “If only we who teach could make more of our “subjects” fall in love with ideas. Then we would have truly effective interventions.”
The Secret to Raising Smart Kids
What is the secret to raising smart kids? Don’t them that they are. Carol S. Dwek reviews 30 years of research that shows emphasizing effort, not intelligence or talent, is the key to developing high achievers in school and in life. This sees the world populated by two types of learners: those who view intelligence as a fixed trait, and those who think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. If you fall into the latter group, then setbacks stem from a lack of effort, not ability, and can be remedied by more effort.
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Free Rice
Build your vocabulary and help end world hunger. At the heart is a simple vocabulary game and sponsors who advertise on the site; rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program. Nearly 4 billion grain of rice have been donated since October 7, 2007. Just brilliant.
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Cristina Nehring on What’s Wrong With the American Essay
As a literary form, the essay is like a plastic cow – a transparent cow – with organs and bones that do not seem to fit together but in the end lead to a satisfying whole, well, cow. Not really says Cristina Nehring on Whats Wrong With the American Essay: “If we must compare the essay to a beast, let us compare it rather to a wildcat. Let us give it back its tooth and nail, its fangs and claws; let us allow it to take risks, to pretend it has nine lives. Let us enfranchise it to disturb us. It is not Orleans incarcerated cow we need today, but Rilkes panther breaking the bars of his cage.”
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Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance
Anders Albrechtslund looks at the social aspects of surveillance, and suggests it can be seen as empowering and participatory. An interesting alternative to the usual emphasis on potential dangers live privacy invasion and fraud.
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The Transformation of Culture
Ron asks if Anthony is building a new language: “It is my own feeling that the ubiquity of computers and digital technologies means that all cultural phenomena are now available for use by Anthony and his generation and they are producing a new framework of communications within which writing is only a piece and not the whole.”
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Growing Up With Google: What It Means To Education
Diana Oblinger on what it means to be educated in the digital age: “Learners need skills that go far beyond reading, memorisation and communication. Educational institutions have an obligation to help students cultivate those skills that learners have the most difficulty attaining on their own…judgement, synthesis, research, practice and negotiation.”
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Tighten Your Belt, Strengthen Your Mind
The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others. The good news, however, is that practice increases willpower capacity.
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The CTO Challenge: Building Your Personal Learning Network
Miguel Guhlin on the process of building personal learning networks: “..as we externalize our thinking, it becomes less of “I am an expert expounding on what I know” and more of “I am a learner, just like you, sharing what I’m learning so that we can learn together through our common errors and maximize our breakthroughs.”
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What does it mean to be an “expert” in the area of fine wine? The wine world wants its experts; yet those that ascend to such heights demure, apologizing for the hierarchy of authority on the grounds that, well, no one can really say that one wine is superior to another. Barry C. Smith’s review of Questions of Taste places wine-centred questions into a larger framework of questions about taste and perception, subjectivity and objectivity, and the role of knowledge and judgment in perceptual appraisal. In wine, as in other domains of practice, expertise depends on craft as well as knowledge; it is socially sorted and externally validated. Salut.