Pie Fight

What we know how to do, and what we don't

Following up on the NYT article I posted on a day or two ago, Yglesias quotes Jal Mehta, who says:

"We still know more about creating more good schools than we do about creating good school systems."

I would add that what we also don't know much about is creating good parents. We know what good parents do, but we don't know how to inculcate good parenting. That's true in terms of parenting that improves a child's educational outcomes, and is probably true for a whole load of other metrics as well - eg parenting that reduces a child's tendency to engage in criminal activity.

Group glee

Via LanguageLog:

[A]s we poked around on Google Scholar, we stumbled over Lawrence W. Sherman, "An Ecological Study of Glee in Small Groups of Preschool Children", Child Development, 46(1) 53-61 1975.

Parenting styles and education

Elizabeth looks at a NYT Magazine cover article on parenting styles on low-income eduational outcomes.

(Tough doesn't entirely dismiss the role of poverty, but concludes that parenting matters more: "True, every poor child would benefit from having more books in his home and more nutritious food to eat (and money certainly makes it easier to carry out a program of concerted cultivation). But the real advantages that middle-class children gain come from more elusive processes: the language that their parents use, the attitudes toward life that they convey.")

She also links to a discussion of this at TPM, where there is a link to an earlier NYT article making a somewhat different argument.

No time for discussion now, but it looks straight up my alley.

And here's what Ezra says. Nothing special, really, but I'll link to it anyway.

Yglesias's discussions is more interesting. And here, Jon Chait makes the obvious (but still well made) point that while KIPP might work, and the right might cite this as evidence that ending the rich-poor education gap is just a matter of will, the reality is that it takes a whole helluva a lot of money. The education system used to depend on bright women being excluded from most other employment sectors. Now that they're not, the only way to make up the employment quality gap is with that most magic of all elixirs, money. As Chait wryly notes, we're not going to recitfy such a dire imbalance by depending on the kindness of strangers.

Freezing eggs

Interesting article on freezing eggs. I like the idea of delaying childbearing until 55 or so, following an early retirement. Might be a bit exhausting, but on the other hand, it lets you coordinate the biggest time/energy drains (children and work) in a more orderly fashion.

Rafa's right, so Stevie G is too

Football fans know nothing. Me included. Now that Sisoko is injured, me and everyone else can't believe that Gerrard isn't in the middle. And I haven't been able to turn on 606 this season without hearing some halfwit Liverpool fan bloviating on how Steve G needs to be in teh centre, 'cause that's where he's the best for his team. Is that true? THere's a pretty straightforward way of determining it, and that's by looking at Liverpool's record with SG on teh right and in teh centre. Guess what? Since Rafa's been at Liverpool, when Stevie's started in central midfield, the Reds have won 56% of their games. With him on the right, they've won... 74%. And I'm pretty sure his goals per game average is higher from the right than as a central midfielder.

Instinct suggests it should be Plan A, that the spine of the team is where Liverpool’s best footballer can have maximum impact, that Gerrard’s rare command of all the game’s disciplines — tackling, passing, running, heading, shooting — means he should be deployed in the area where versatility is at a premium. The stats say something different. Benitez, the scientist, will go with evidence over instinct every time. A breakdown of their significant games over the past two seasons shows that Liverpool won a far greater proportion when Gerrard was on the right. His personal contribution, in goal terms at least, does not depend on his position particularly.

[...]

When Benitez first played Gerrard on the right (see panel) Liverpool switched from crisis to a record-breaking run of victories and clean sheets.

(Re the champion's league final in Istanbul, by the way, Stevie spent the first half in a central midfield partnership with Alonso. Only when Didi Harmann replaced Gerrard in this position did the team begin their incredible comeback. Why does no Liverpool fan remember that?)

(Unfortunately, the panel referred to in the quote above isn't available online. Too bad, as it held all the relevant stats.)

Cute butts and housework

Via RebelDad:

I'm late to the party -- Dadspoint and Feministing have already noted it -- but I wanted to draw your attention to a piece in the NYTimes Magazine on Sunday. It's a thought-provoking piece, largely on the new (historically speaking) trend of men and women marrying those with similar earning power, and the consequences thereof. But in the last paragraph, the author, Annie Murphy Paul, lets loose with one of the more wonderful passages I've seen in a while:

Of course, men and women don't choose each other on the basis of education and income alone. Putting love aside, as men's and women's roles continue to shift, other standards for selecting a partner may come to the fore. Indeed, the sociologist Julie Press recently offered what she called "a gynocentric theory of assortative mating," moving the focus from what men now desire in a marriage partner to the evolving preferences of women. What would-be wives may be seeking now, she proposed in The Journal of Marriage and Family, is "cute butts and housework" -- that is, a man with an appealing physique and a willingness to wash dishes. Could this be a feminist slogan for our time?

Fighting a puma with a rubber band

More interesting results in teh annals of addressing the symptoms of poverty rather than poverty itself: a new sex ed programme has failed to reduce teen pregnancy rates. The kids preferred the programme to the old way of teaching sex ed, and that's good, but the conception rate did not drop. The administrators blame this on the fact that teen pregnancy is the product of a complex set of poverty-driven factors. Kids may learn more about sex and how to prevent pregnancies, but if getting pregnant is still seen as at least as good an option as not, then nothing's going to change.

Technocratic parenting

Govt will be sending "supernannies" into 77 areas suffering from high levels of youth antisocial behaviour.

What we're seeing here, I think, is the re-rise of the technocrats and the culture of the expert, but in the home rather than in the public sphere. There's the idea of children as projects and parenting as a technological, industrial process. Perhaps this is something to explore in my diss.

Children as a private joy and public good

Good, long, statistically well-informed article on work-life conflict and fertility issues. And from the Observer, no less.

Echidne's guide to statistics

Talk about a public service: echidne's posted a six-part primer on statistics. Maybe I'll end up learning something from my quant analysis course after all.