Japanese Universities Kill the Liberal Arts, Choose Slow Death

The Japanese Ministry of Education wants their universities to close down their humanities and social science departments.  Seventeen have already said they will comply.

Japan has a low birth rate and a very poor record of absorbing immigrants.  Now they want to scale back the education that is the major source of broad understanding and innovation.

What they seem to be missing is that today’s “practical” fields are based on ideas invented yesterday in the liberal arts fields.

Japan was once in the “passing lane”, set to overtake the U.S. and European economies and creative leaders.  For the past generation, though, Japanese society has become increasingly sclerotic, literally and figuratively.

Choosing against the future of educational breadth is, I believe, a choice for slow death of their culture.

Small Town Development is a Quicker Path to Meaningful Work

One of the things that makes people happy is having meaningful work.  Developing a town is meaningful work.  Developing a small town gets you involved in meaningful work in which your personal impact is immediately apparent.

This weekend I got to travel with the Brown Fellows, Centre’s top scholarship group, to Paducah, KY.  We met with local do-gooders and busybodies (my kind of people).  They helped turn their historic, but derelict, Lower Town into a magnet for artists, especially quilters.  Little Paducah, KY, population 25,000, was designated a UNESCO Creative City.

Most interesting to me was how just a few dedicated people could make a difference.  One local woman, who had worked in big cities and foreign countries, said that one of the things that drew her back to her hometown was the chance to make a visible difference quickly.

Colbert Might Bring Serious Discussion of Faith to Network Television

I was disappointed when Stephen Colbert succeeded David Letterman on the "Late Night" show.  I thought the conceit of "The Colbert Report" - that he was an obtuse conservative blowhard - was a brilliant idea for a political satire show.  I thought it was a real loss to political snark when the Report ended, because I don't see how anyone could take up that idea again.

However, this first week of "Late Night with" with Colbert at the helm had a moment that gives promise of something really good:  a serious discussion with Vice-President Biden about his religious faith, and how it shapes his actions.  The network late-night hosts have, to my knowledge, never tried to touch this subject in a sustained or serious manner.

I hope that Colbert's new gig may bring something beneficial to the national discussion.

Child Mortality Has Been Cut in Half in the Past 25 Years

Some of the very best news in the world-is-getting-better watch is about our continuing success in reducing child mortality.

In the last quarter century, we have cut child mortality in half.

Moreover, the fastest gains come in the worst places, where sanitation practices which are common in developed countries make immediate improvements when brought to developing countries.  We can expect more good news like this in the next twenty five years.

The Most Likely Explanation for Similar Cultural Practices is Cultural Diffusion

I think the most likely explanation for similar cultural practices is cultural diffusion.

Multiple origins of cultural ideas are possible, of course.  I would yield to every well-documented case.

Still, after years of being impressed with similar practices in many places, I have been drawn to the ultimate lumper idea: cultural diffusion is the most likely explanation of similar cultural practices.

[RE: Lumper - There are two kinds of people: lumpers, and splitters.  I am a lumper.  I am interested in connections among people and cultures.]

Perhaps Political Scientists Just Don't Like Kids

The American Political Science Association has bannedchildren from the exhibit hall at their annual meeting.  They cite “liability”.

This is clearly nonsense, as the other academic associations, including the American Sociological Association, do not ban children from their exhibit halls.  These conferences are held in the same hotels as the APSA meets in.

In the late ‘80s, Mrs. Gruntled and I lived in Washington, DC.  For fun, we would put the kids in the stroller and walk up to the Washington Hilton to crash academic association meetings.  We particularly liked to go to the exhibit hall, to see the nifty new books.

We learned that different associations reacted differently to children.  Sociologists would smile.  Anthropologists were come over (often with their kids) to talk babies. 

And the political scientists?  They turned their backs, pretending they had not seen children.

The Hopeful Aspect of Intense Asian-American College Competition

The intense competition among Asian-American students in college admissions is now creating  an Asian disadvantage at the top colleges and universities.  The disadvantage, though, is not simply because they are Asians, but because they actually do lead similar lives. As one of the prep academy advisors told the students (and their parents) “Everyone is in orchestra and plays piano, everyone plays tennis. Everyone wants to be a doctor, and write about immigrating to America.”

These kids lead similar lives because their immigrant parents shaped their children’s lives to match what elite colleges want.  This is hopeful because if the elite colleges actually reward different kinds of experiences for these ambitious families, the parents will change what they encourage their children to do. Diversity of experience and character is, after all, the kind of diversity that colleges should be seeking. 

Wendell Berry is Right: Total Opposition to Obama is a Revival of Racist Politics.

Wendell Berry,  Kentucky's Leading intellectual, had a fine editorial today in the state's leading paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, about the revival of racism as a political strategy.

"A good many people hoped and even believed that Barack Obama’s election to the presidency signified the end of racism in the United States. It seems arguable to me that the result has been virtually the opposite: Obama’s election has brought about a revival of racism.

Like nothing since the Southern Strategy, it has solidified the racist vote as a political quantity recognizable to politicians and apparently large enough in some places to decide an election."

Our Taste Shows More in the Categories We Value Than in the Goods We Choose

I have begun a research project looking at the coherence of our tastes.

Today we beta tested the interview with two couples I know well.

As the conversation developed, the main subject of our concerns was more about how our values shaped our lives.  Our tastes appeared not in particular objects, but more in which categories of objects or practices we thought represented important choices or tradeoffs of values, and which were more utilitarian.

I think we will still be able to pursue our ultimate, Bourdieuian, objective in exploring the relationship between class fraction and taste.  I think people in different places in the class and status structure will value different categories of goods and practices differently.  Which specific goods they choose, though, will probably turn out to be of secondary importance.

There Are More Trees in the U.S. Now Than There Were 100 Years Ago

Because we burn less wood, and because we manage forests that we do use better, there are more forests, and more trees, than there were a century ago.

This is very good news for a variety of reasons, not least for fighting global warming.

Our better forest management is also a good example of public/private partnerships.  Governments created useful standards for how best to manage forests.  Many private landowners planted trees on previously cleared land, or just let it revert to nature.

Much of this macro-level improvement is the result of many micro-level decisions. There are as many good unintended consequences as bad ones.

Positive Sociology - The Last Two Points

These are points six and seven of my seven-point Positive Sociology Manifesto

The previous points are here: Other points are here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Positive Sociology teaches a sense of proportion about the groupings in society.  A sense of proportion - of whether my bubble is common on unusual, whether my sense of the sacred is widely shared or only in a small group - is essential, because ...

Positive Sociology appreciates that competition for the social sacred is not a war, but the workings of a never-ending ecological process.