Psychology: June 2007 Archive Page

What is it for? Why is it there? Did whoever put it up realize that if there were no sign, there would be no need to warn about it? Is this a joke from the developers? Is it a lesson in recursiveness? Is it a philosophical prop? --Bizarre Sign (Lushlush)

Does it mean "Don't forget to knock your head here?" Obviously, it would be much less painful to bang into a light sign hanging from a chain than to bang into that horizontal bar right behind it. So I guess, in a way, they do want people to bang into the sign. It's just like those "low overhead" signs hanging outside garages -- it's better if the top of your vehicle makes that sign wiggle than if your vehicle gets wedged under a support.

(I flipped the image and cropped it to emphasize the effect. Not something one would do as a journalist, but that sort of thing is frequently done in the context of design.)

Doctors backed away on Sunday from a controversial proposal to designate video game addiction as a mental disorder akin to alcoholism, saying psychiatrists should study the issue more. --Experts oppose video game addiction designation (Reuters | C|Net)

At a packed session for academic librarians attending the annual meeting of the American Library Association, in Washington, the topic was how to help students who have learned many of their information gathering and analysis skills from video games apply that knowledge in the library. Speakers said that gaming skills are in many ways representative of a broader cultural divide between today?s college students and the librarians who hope to teach them. --Scott Jaschik --When ''Digital Natives'' Go to the Library (Inside Higher Ed)

I'd love to learn more about how libraries are modding themselves in order to take advantage of the considerable digital literacies that our students bring with them when the arrive on campus.

The secret of American schooling is that it doesn't teach the way children learn, and it isn't supposed to; school was engineered to serve a concealed command economy and a deliberately re-stratified social order. It wasn't made for the benefit of kids and families as those individuals and institutions would define their own needs. School is the first impression children get of organized society; like most first impressions, it is the lasting one. Life according to school is dull and stupid, only consumption promises relief: Coke, Big Macs, fashion jeans, that's where real meaning is found, that is the classroom's lesson, however indirectly delivered.

[...]

The strongest meshes of the school net are invisible. Constant bidding for a stranger's attention creates a chemistry producing the common characteristics of modern schoolchildren: whining, dishonesty, malice, treachery, cruelty. Unceasing competition for official favor in the dramatic fish bowl of a classroom delivers cowardly children, little people sunk in chronic boredom, little people with no apparent purpose for being alive. The full significance of the classroom as a dramatic environment, as primarily a dramatic environment, has never been properly acknowledged or examined. --John Taylor Gatto --An Angry Look at Modern Schooling: An Enclosure Movement for Children (JohnTaylorGatto.com)

I'm blogging this because of Gatto's willingness to say the emperor has no clothes.

I'm not as disillusioned about public schools as Gatto seems to be, but then I've never tried to fight for reforms. We have instead quietly opted out of the factory-style education system, and we have made lifestyle choices that permit us to live modestly on one salary, in a profession that permits me to have a lot more family time during the summer, so that we can invest the time and energy doing the vitally important job of helping to prepare our children for the world.

"I'm scared, cold, sad, hungry, lonely, thirsty!" -- Carolyn Jerz (age 5)

My daughter should be asleep, but instead she is awake in her room, and has just offered her usual list of reasons for why she desperately needs parental attention at 10:40pm.

This creature was also up at 6:30 this morning.

The college-educated humans, all of whom are not allergic to bee-sting venom and possess both cerebral and muscular capacities several orders of magnitude beyond that of the insect, proceeded to retreat in abject fright from its half-millimeter stinger, which, when used, causes a twinge of discomfort followed by mild irritation and kills the bee.

According to entomologists at the University of Texas at Dallas, the Apis mellifera was most likely trying to pollinate a nearby cluster of dandelions and was not, as alleged by 50-year-old attorney Georgia Sakko, who has twice endured the pain of childbirth and successfully battled breast cancer, "out to get us." --Single Bee Sends Gathering Of Humans Into Helpless Panic (The Onion (Satire))

--How children lost the right to roam in four generations (Daily Mail)

Interesting article on how over the years parents are holding onto their children more and more tightly.

See also Henry Jenkins, "Complete Freedom of Movement: Video Games as Gendered Play Spaces."