Posts by Laurie Fendrich
March 9, 2010, 07:36 PM ET
Midterm Exam Rocks Painting
How smart can a rock band be? Super-smart, that's how smart. If you have 2 minutes to spare, turn on your sound, click HERE, and enjoy a delightful rock n' roll romp through Western art history. The Franco-American band, Hold Your Horses, will delight anyone with even the least sense of humor and the littlest bit of knowledge about painting. I played this for my advanced painting class yesterday (a sort of on-the-spot midterm), and I’m here to report that my students passed this little exam with flying colors. My personal favorite is “Las Meninas,” but “The Raft of the Medusa" gives it a run for its money.
Read MoreMarch 7, 2010, 03:17 PM ET
Oscar Night
Tonight, millions will gather round the fireplace (AKA
television) to tremble with excitement over who will win what at
the Academy Awards -- that holy annual event where Hollywood,
performing directly to its loyal fans, congratulates itself for the
previous year’s work. Oscar night's competition, celebration, and
glamour, stirred into a delicious TV brew, invites movie lovers to
watch people they adore from afar -- people who make their living
practicing the art of pretending to be other people -- pretending
to not care all that much whether or not they win one of those
strange-looking little statues.
Since I like, rather than adore, movies, I prefer to read about who
won the next morning, after the tinsel is down. And though I think
acting a fascinating human endeavor, and am as stunned as the next
person at the raw talent some people have in luring the rest
of...
March 6, 2010, 10:16 AM ET
The Disempowered Consumer
After arriving home from school last night, I read a long reader response to my post on why the idea of “consumer empowerment” (now used by everyone in the health-care debate) is wrongheaded. Commentator ledzep, arguing against my unapologetic liberal leanings on the issue of health care, concluded by saying it was not my “most responsibly argued piece” -- as if, like a teenager arriving home a little drunk, I needed chastising. Here’s my response:
ledzep (quoting LF): "Translation: Keep the bountiful profits rolling into the pockets of the private health-insurance companies." And how does the individual mandate do anything different from this? Even more, in fact - the profits will increase. Do you think the insurance companies are afraid of being given a...
Read MoreMarch 5, 2010, 09:03 AM ET
The Empowered Consumer
Last Sunday, David
Brooks said in The New York Times that to solve the
mess that’s called “health care” in America, Republicans believe we
need to “create a genuine market with clear price signals,
empowered consumers and an evolving process.” Now, fellow
“Brainstorm” blogger Diane
Auer Jones chimes in with “We must empower consumers to make
good decisions by providing them with more information about the
options they have. …”
Ah, the “empowered consumer”! -- that unicorn invoked by the
Republicans whenever a societal need that obviously requires some
substantial government participation doesn’t jibe with their mantra
that the market always...
March 1, 2010, 03:00 PM ET
A Tempest in Brooklyn
Having just finished studying Shakespeare’s The
Tempest, the large group of freshmen in our team-taught
“Culture and Expression” course was ready for the real thing. Lucky
for us, then, that BAM (the Brooklyn Academy of Music) is in its
second season of “The Bridge Project”—a three-year series of
co-productions of classical theater by BAM, The Old Vic, and Neal
Street, and that right now they’re offering The Tempest.
Directed by Sam Mendes, the Prospero in this Tempest shows
from the very start of the play that he’s exhausted with art. But
to go into that would be to tell a different story from the one I’m
going to tell here.
Our huge group of freshmen was divided into manageable groups who
would see the play on a succession of evenings. From Hofstra, it’s
a short train ride on the...
February 25, 2010, 05:51 PM ET
Gadget-Dependent Nation
No matter that the United States is the only industrialized nation in the world not to have universal health care. We Americans are different. We’re independent. We don’t need others -- especially our government -- telling us what to do. No less a giant than Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay, “Self-Reliance,” gave us a clarion call (“trust thyself”) reminding us that real men make decisions for themselves.
The 19th-century Emersonian idea of self-reliance, slapped on top of 21st-century realities, yields a very odd result. On the one hand, many Americans -- especially Republicans -- deeply loathe “government nanny-state programs.” They argue that whenever the government interferes in the marketplace, people lose their sense of initiative and their freedoms, costs go up, and whatever was wrong in the first place simply gets...
Read MoreFebruary 20, 2010, 10:00 AM ET
If You Can Fake Sincerity, You Get Tiger
I know fellow Brainstormer Michael Ruse blogged on Tiger's press conference, but I'm going to throw in my two cents as well. I didn’t have time to listen to yesterday’s full Tiger Woods mea culpa, but I heard enough to know that sports commentators wrestling with whether or not he was “sincere” or “convincing” are spinning their wheels on a poorly understood track. Although we all move about this world absolutely sure that we can tell when the people we know or meet are sincere or not, weighing in on sincerity is a risky, risky business. Whether or not Tiger was “sincere” is a particularly worthless enterprise. Although Tiger’s success as a golfer derives from his spectacular talent at hitting a tiny little ball with...
Read MoreFebruary 19, 2010, 06:38 PM ET
More on 4 Days, 40 Papers
There seem to be two complaints in the comments so far about my post from yesterday, “4 Days, 40 Papers.” The first is that I didn’t supply “rubrics,” or some other form of a priori guide as to what constitutes good, fair, and poor papers. The post was about grading, not assigning. In assigning the papers, I was, as I always am, thorough and precise about what should be present in the papers. I both discussed the assignment, in detail, in class, and posted it, in detail, on Blackboard. Moreover, since there are to be several short papers assigned during the semester, and since my marginalia is relatively copious, most students learn very quickly my de facto “rubrics” concerning quality. Finally, an a priori “rubric” will neither solve the problem of subjectivity...
Read MoreFebruary 18, 2010, 10:45 AM ET
4 Days, 40 Papers
Forty papers, each two or three pages long (typewritten,
12-point type and double-spaced, as per my instructions) sit neatly
stacked in two piles on my desk in my home. They stare accusingly
at me, but they’ll not get my attention until I’m finished writing
this post, watering my lone plant, and bundling yesterday’s
newspapers and magazines for tomorrow’s recycling. The papers
arrived yesterday, like little ships docking in the harbor of my
hand -- tenderly steered to me by students with tired-looking
faces.
This semester, I’m teaching in a large lecture course that’s for
first-year students in our Honors College. The course is
team-taught -- 12 of us developed the curriculum, and we each give
a couple of lectures as well as teach two separate discussion
groups of 20 students each. We’re at the moment in the course
where...
February 15, 2010, 03:44 PM ET
Strategic Thinking
If you were intrigued by the headline to a recent letter in The Chronicle, “Improving Teaching Will Require Strategic Thinking” (7 February 2010), you also might want to read, “Improving Strategic Thinking Will Require Teaching.” To deepen your understanding of the issue even more, go to “Teaching Will Require Improving Strategic Requirements.” For additional reading on the topic, try “Teaching Will Improve Strategic Requirements.” And don’t miss, “Requirements Will Improve Thinking Strategies,” either -- or the brilliant analysis found in last month’s “Thinking Strategically Will Teach Improvement.” But for the most comprehensive discussion of the issue, turn to “Will Requires Improving Strategic Thinking.”
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