Anne Dalke's blog

Thanks to all for all our rich discussion, so far (see, below, our discussions from week 1 and week 2, about the surprises of our first visit together, and the need to be "certified" in life). Let's try, this week, writing even more directly about our own experiences. What is something in your life right now that you are passionate about learning or doing -- in or out of school? (If you'd like, find something on Google Image that represents your area of passion, and include the URL to that picture in your post.) In this way we can get to know each other better and also begin to think about how our passions connect with our educations. Enjoy!

Also Bruce Wightman, "A Better Rational for Science Literacy" (same issue as below):
all students ... should become scientifically literate. And if they become better, more employable citizens in a more competitively viable America, all the better. But first and foremost, they should become scientifically literate because, to borrow Darwin's phrase, "there is grandeur in this view of life" .... the sciences force us to confront the smallness and irrelevance of human beings; they serve as an antidote to self-obsession. Physics teaches us that time and matter are not absolutes; biology, that astonishing complexity can arise from a long, natural, stepwise process. The scope and existential implications of these ideas are immense.

In light of our recent conversations about "brain organization," I highly recommend a piece by Stephen Asma, "Gauging Gender," just published in today's Chronicle Review, which reports

* that humanities scholars are "slowly getting over biophobia"

* that biology has become dialectical: While humanists weren't looking, biology (genetics, embryology, evolution, neuroscience, etc.) left behind many of its deterministic pretensions and embraced the indeterministic developmental logic of epigenetics—the complex interface of nurture and nature. Biology now recognizes the immense domain of external triggers and influences (from intrauterine environment to social structures) that shape phenotypic expression of genetic possibilities.

* and recommends that we all read Evelyn Fox Keller's 2010 book, The Mirage of a Space Between Nature and Nurture, "which emphasizes the plastic relationship between genes and environment, and tries to counteract our tendency to privilege one cause over another by emphasizing 'developmental pathways' .... Which traits are malleable, and to what degree? The answers will come from a prudent marriage of biocultural analysis, because developmental pathways don't recognize academic divisions."

/exchange/courses/esem/f11/photos/silentboard1

Given the conversations we had this week (and the papers you are now busily writing!) about "domestic" and "intellectual" spaces @ Bryn Mawr (how separate are they, and should they be?) I was interested in this article, in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, about how students push their facebook use further into course work.

As inspiration for your postings, this weekend, about space on campus, I thought you might enjoy
(I might invite here) a comparative analysis of my office and Jody's, thinking about....
size
location (in the center of campus? peripheral?)
public or private (how open? how closed?)
what else???

couldn't resist posting nicholas kristof's op-ed, "occupy the classroom"....
w/ the notation that one of the most interesting signs, @
occupy philadelphia last week,  was one reading "occupy your mind."
meditate on that one...

Given the guided introduction to scientific literacy Kaye provided us on Tuesday evening , hopefully not only the Mawtyrs in the room and on the screen will be interested in giving a close-reading to the recent Science magazine article on The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Education. Particularly interesting in this regard is Jane McAuliffe's response to the report: that women's colleges "buck the trend" of women avoiding science.....

I was lucky enough to be invited by my daughter, who's been involved for the past week in  "Occupy Philadelphia," to attend a Meeting for Worship @ the base camp, hosted by Philadelphia Central Monthly Meeting this past Sunday morning. I have been a Quaker for 25 years, and most of my worshipping has been done in musty-smelling meetinghouses. This service was remarkable, in my experience, for being 1) in the open air 2) in the center of Philadelphia, with tourists and visitors mulling around --sometimes walking among-- the worshippers.  A worship space w/ no walls! It was also remarkable because we began in the dark and, an hour later, @ noon, were all sitting in the light.

It was perhaps most remarkable, though, because @ the rise of Meeting we used the "people's microphone," an innovation that arose when the first group to "Occupy Wall Street" was unable to get permission to use a sound system. It works like this: one person speaks--a brief, concentrated phrase (one of the nice benefits here is the distillation that happens), something like "I am Anne Dalke"--and it is repeated by 70 voices strong, all shouting, "I am Anne Dalke." Then I say, "I have been a Quaker for 25 years," and they all shout, "I have been a Quaker for 25 years."