Wendy sent me a link to a column in the Chronicle, which mocked Black Studies departments. I should have written about it yesterday, because now it has taken off across the blogosphere. Arg!! I like to be first!
OK. Here are all the relevent links.
On April 30, Naomi Schafer Riley wrote "The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies Departments? Just Read the Dissertations."
Commentary followed from Balloon Juice and Crooked Timber.
Here's Riley's response.
Apt. 11d 
tl;dr
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The problem I have with Riley’s piece is actually similar to the problem I’ve been having with the threads here about colleges: the idea that some topics are just not “worthy” of academic study. I just don’t think that way. I think that some topics can be amazing in the hands of careful, thoughtful writers/researchers. But Riley just jumps to the conclusion that a diss on black midwifery is worthless. As someone on the CT thread said, a diss on black midwifery could be fascinating and useful. Me, I’ve always been convinced that the conjure women of late 19th century African American lit were midwives/alternative medicine practitioners and what they did *seemed* like “magic”/conjure, and so they developed into a kind of archetype of the literature. We can learn a lot about our world by studying seemingly unimportant subjects. The real question is the people who are learning. Are they doing something with this knowledge? Are they applying it effectively? For our undergrad students, are they using the knowledge to solve problems creatively?
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Riley’s piece is just another hamfisted attempt at generating some controversy and hits. A different version of the “mommy wars of the week” article. You can’t tell me that she REALLY believes this…
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I agree all those dissertations looked pretty interesting to me (and the attack doesn’t really deserve discussion). I was someone who was maybe interpreted to be dissing an “anthro of online communities” major. I would have a problem with that as an undergrad degree but it’s incredibly specific. If her degree were in “anthropology” and her BA thesis on online communities, that’s fine. With a dissertation, the whole point is to focus and study in-depth a particular phenomenon, so it’s kind of ridiculous to dismiss a dissertation for focusing in-depth on something (not to mention these all seem like not super narrow and fairly weighty topics). I mean, midwifery! housing discrimination! There are people who write dissertations on the sexual organs of a species of dung beetle, but they don’t get attacked. (I might feel some trepidation about a kid with a black studies (or women’s studies, or queer studies) undergrad degree by itself (as opposed to a double major with history/sociology etc.,) not because I think it wouldn’t be rigorous or worthy of study, but because I’d be worried about how it would be perceived out on the job market.)
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oops, major typo: not “but it’s incredibly specific” but “BECAUSE it’s incredibly specific” in the first part.
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I did look it up, and there is no major in anthropology of online communities, so I think you’re right, B.I. She was probably an anthro major and wrote a thesis on online communities.
Our former babysitter was a women’s studies major and now works as a counselor at a women’s health clinic.
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“Our former babysitter was a women’s studies major and now works as a counselor at a women’s health clinic.”
That sounds pretty iffy on the part of the clinic, unless she had a bunch of course work in either medicine or counseling, or ideally both.
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I think the point is that you can play “Ha ha, silly titles!” with any major. (Currently in the Rutgers Sociology Department — “Hyphenators and Hypen-Haters: Social Identities and the Practice of Hypenating.”)
Of course, the substance of the post is completely stupid and just wrong, but lots of people say stupid and wrong stuff all of the time. What makes this so bad and obviously racist is the decision to look at only Black Studies departments, and not look at Sociology or — Heaven Forbid — majors that Conservatives like. (Economics dissertation: “Essays in Labor Economics: Alcohol Consumption and Socioeconomic Outcomes.” Gee, guys. Any guesses? Har har.)
Of course, it is not surprising that a racist doesn’t have very good reasoning skills in other areas either.
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“”Essays in Labor Economics: Alcohol Consumption and Socioeconomic Outcomes.” Gee, guys. Any guesses? Har har.”
Did you see that recent stuff on how alcohol consumption is related to creative problem solving?
“According to Medical Daily, scientists found that men who either drank two pints of beer or two glasses of wine before solving brain teasers got more questions right and were quicker in delivering those correct answers compared to men who answered the questions sober. (An example of a teaser: What’s associated with the words blue, cottage and Swiss?)
“When it comes to creative tasks, Jennifer Wiley, the study’s lead author, believes that “being too focused can blind you to novel possibilities, and a broader, more flexible state of attention is needed for creative solutions to emerge.” Alcohol reduces one’s ability to concentrate on something in particular, and distraction can lead to innovation. It makes sense. Writers have long known that a couple of drinks can help get the creative juices flowing and make us more bold in our decisions.”
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/stickaforkinit/2012/04/alcohol_problem_solving.php
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People do this with grants as well and by no means does the dissertation on the “sexual organs of a species of dung beetle” get a pass by this kind of complaining. Seems like premise fundamental ignores the whole point of a dissertation.
Oh, I see, I just looked her up. She’s not an academic. I made the assumption because the Chronicle usually has articles by academics. I’m presuming that she didn’t write a dissertation while majoring in “English and Government” and so we can’t make fun of it.
I have an issue with newly developed majors. I see why black/women/under-represented majors developed in the first place (because the standard majors ignored the contributions/scholarship that could be done on those subjects). I’d like to hope that we’ll go beyond that some day, but wouldn’t make a strong case that we already have. My concern about “Newly developed” goes beyond the ones developed to deal with under-represented political groups to all the “inter-curricular” majors though, at least until they get old.
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Ragtime – Riley is married to a black man.
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This reminds me of those old “golden fleece’ awards that that old fart congressman used to give every year. He would selectively go through lists of NIH grants, NEA grants, etc. and find stuff that sounded silly. On the other hand, I went to Wellesley and I’ve been amused recently at the response they’re getting to some of their facebook postings. Recently they profiled an American studies professor who taught a course on hip-hop lyrics, and all these parents (including me) responded, wanting to know exactly how that will help their kids get a job, now that tuition is approaching 60,000 a year. The answer, of course, is that it won’t — and clearly the professor was indulging himself by teaching that course. (Though I suppose you could make a case for anything — maybe if my kid was applying to Teach for America, having taken a course on hiphop lyrics might give her a boost on the application, since it might improve her ability to communicate with kids in the inner city? Just a thought . . ) I’m trying to convince my kid to major in petroleum engineering and move to North Dakota after college to start fracking though, so I might be little a little bit more Type A than the rest of you . ..
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Your kid could move to Pennsylvania and go fracking, if you want him/her in a state with less wheat.
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It’s not surprising, because, I am that kind of person, deep in my heart, but I have always thought that scholarship, good writing, good teaching can transcend any particular topic. I remember this when my significant other read all the John McPhee books (journalistic disseratations on topics ranging from the orange to Alaska), followed by the “glacier” book.
Of course the hip hop instructor might be taking the cheap route, what we call the “mushroom” book and trying to trick the reader by picking a topic that sounds interesting but does nothing with it. (called the mushroom book in our house because of a specific book that was purchased for the topic but wasn’t worth reading.)
I yelled at my daughter yesterday for dismissing sociology and have encouraged the interest in extracurricular “special projects” which are basically kids’ version of dissertations.
I think this attitude will serve her fine, but, as I’ve admitted before, she will have lots of backstopping.
Also, my son said, when we visited the Smithsonian, that he wanted to be a geologist, but, not, ind you the kind who helps people find where to dig for oil.
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OK, maybe you guys can help me out here (and I’m not being facetious or sarcastic, for a change :). My son has been obsessed with Mythbusters lately, and I was talking with his psychologist about that and we were contemplating how school-based science classes basically kill any interest in science among the same people who are fascinated by shows like Mythbusters. Now, I am all for project-based learning/inquiry-based learning etc., but there does seem to be a mismatch between how science is taught vs. how it appeals to people. Maybe the problem is that science is long hard work that involves a lot of observation and analysis and moments of realization (and, in Mythbusters, explode-y things). But it made me a little depressed how kids get interested in science because of shows like Mythubusters, but then they study science in school and it doesn’t live up to the promise.
Is there a way around it? Should we stop talking/thinking about Mythbusters as being about science and instead see it as maybe constructed storytelling about science? Is there a way to get kids interested in the hard work of science and not just the explode-y things?
Am I missing something because I am a humanities geek?
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Ok, mythbuster and science. What it gets right is the concept of the scientific method. They are trying to answer questions, and they test questions using it. “the process of discovery grids beautifully onto the narrative arc.” (Adam Savage). What it lacks is the rigor and open-ended questions and mechanisms. They often have n’s that are far too small, though in their favor, they often look for the exceptionality proof: i.e. can you do something, and look for questions that can be answered that way. They often ask questions in ways that devolve into engineering and not science (i.e. can we build a duct tape raft; will a solar still produce enough water to be a viable option for drinking water). In addition, the questions are often very constrained: not can anyone build a duct tape raft, but can Jamie & Adam build one, for example, or can we build with duct tape, and not some other kind of tape. These questions use scientific concepts but don’t answer the deeper questions about the mechanisms themselves.
And, it’s a reality show, and so, the hard work, the time, the resources, the discomfort all get hidden (when they did the cut tape island episode they stayed in the Turtle Bay Resort). But, the concept of inquiry and project learning is definitely a version of the myth busters. Done well, it teaches the underlying scientific method. As with all watching, though, watching something being done and doing it yourself is a different thing. Watching might inspire doing, but it might also set up unrealistic expectations. I think some shows are better than other on myth busters, for inspiring (I don’t like the explodey ones — my favorites were the glass breaking, the bull in a china shop, the underwater shooting, and the car falling off a bridge).
And, it depends on how the science is taught. Our 4th-5th grade kids have a truly awesome inquiry-based-project based science teacher (who is also a very good entertainer of that aged kids). My daughter, who is not a sciency kid, has been inspired about science by the teacher (who does do “mythbusters”, but without the explosions and with more open ended creativity and more hard work). So, our school-based science experience is the opposite of what you & your psychologist expect Mind you, this teacher is the kind who inspires documentaries, so I’m not generalizing. This teacher may be the kind who is irreplaceable.
Also, I do always wonder how much of the experience sticks and becomes long term attitudes and learning. One thing that is clear is she is teachign concepts and ways of thinking, not content material. I don’t know how well these kids would do on a science test (which they don’t have to take, except her tests). What they’re learning is how to think about problems (and that’s not tested either). I hear, anecdotally, that it works, that adults who were trained by this teacher, and aren’t scientists, say that they look at problems differently because of the concepts she taught them about how to explore an undefined problem. It’s difficult to measure, though.
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“Now, I am all for project-based learning/inquiry-based learning etc., but there does seem to be a mismatch between how science is taught vs. how it appeals to people. Maybe the problem is that science is long hard work that involves a lot of observation and analysis and moments of realization (and, in Mythbusters, explode-y things).”
Very likely. Think archaeology–it doesn’t involve a lot of opening up undisturbed Egyptian pharaohs’ tombs full of gold or swinging Indiana Jones-like through booby-trapped temples. If you go out to a dig and work, it’s boring for a normal person. Only a total OCD freak (NTTAWWT) could happily spend years of their life sifting through ancient garbage dumps. Compared to archaeology, Milton is a thrill a minute.
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Oh, my goodness. All three Raggirls LOOOOOVE Mythbusters. Youngest Raggirl (age 5) once spent HOURS inter-leaving pages from 2 phone books to re-create the Myth that you can’t pull them apart. (You can, but you need to tie them to two tanks going in opposite directions. I believe two compact cars may not be enough.)
There are definitely ways to put more experimentation into science class. Our school has a good program with a science lab, and they do an experiment at least once every other week when science is being taught. The problem is that for elementary school, it is only half the year. They alternate science units every other month with social studies type things.
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Insurance and liability grounds resulted in dumping most of the good chemicals from the high school science lab. My high school teacher told us that when he came into the storeroom he found some very old jars. One had over a pound of sodium and the other a smaller amount (but still enough to have blown away a wall) of potassium. He still made plenty of things explode*, but there was nothing lethal around.
*He’s retired now, but from FB I saw how he put a hole in his house playing with a trebuchet he made.
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OK, I had to look up the phonebook one. Kudos to Raggirl for wanting to actually test it out. And, yes, that’s part of what makes a scientist, someone who is actually willing to spend hours (at age 5!) interweaving phonebook pages in order to test a hypothesis (It’s not all, but it’s part). At some point, you have to care enough about the answer to put in the work (and, presumably, not hate the work so much that no answer feels like it’s worth it).
I’ll point out that it seems a real stretch to call this myth busted because Sherman tanks could pull the phonebooks apart!
“It is impossible to separate two interlocked phone books due to the massive amount of friction between the 800 pages of each book.
busted
The MythBusters tried to pull the two phone books apart with human power, which was unsuccessful. A pair of cars also failed at pulling the phone books apart. Finally, the MythBusters resorted to using an M551 Sheridan light tank and an M113 armored personnel carrier, which were able to pull the phone books apart. While the myth was busted, the MythBusters pointed out that it took 8,000 pounds of force to pull the phone books apart, meaning that you could literally hang two full size cars from it.”
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OK, the comment thread on the phonebooks is fascinating. I love:
“anonamyous says:
I did this as my science project for school but I only said that people can’t pull the books apart. I also tested other books like chapter and magazines. I will not tell you my results but if you want to you can try to make a sequal and see if other types of reading material can be torn apart. Have fun and thanks for the idea of my science project.
November 29, 2008 at 2:54 PM #
Cheryl says:
For your science fair project, how did you explain WHY they couldn’t be pulled apart? What was the relationship between friction and surface area?
January 16, 2011 at 1:15 PM #
and, this one
“Kurtis Collier says:
I demonstrated this to my friend in ninth grade with textbooks. Now ironically enough, I must write an essay on the subject, which brought me here. P.S. I have to write the essay for punishment, but it’s okay I LOVE THE SHOW!!!”
(Ooh, and I didn’t even notice that the question follows the statement by 2+ years).
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Oh, and since my geekitude is making me verbose, the short answer for Wendy is that yes, I think Mythbusters inspires scientific thinking and that science is about scientific thinking (though everyone has to tolerate hard work). I also can’t speak to science education in other schools (though I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s bad) but it’s fabulous in our 4-5 and OK in K-3, in terms of inspiring scientific thinking.
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Oops, I fear that we are violating Laura’s guideline about comments being kind of about the posts, but I think we’re being mostly good, right?
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Gah, I’m the one who topic-jacked. Sorry! Thanks for your comments!
Ragtime, my son wanted to try the phonebook thing, but we didn’t have any phonebooks!
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Yeah. We only had one phone book(from 2008, I think. It said “Special 18 Month Edition!” on it, as if being published less than annually made it better.) Youngest Raggirl is in half-day kindergarten, and there are sometimes child care issues. One morning, when Grandma was covering, we told her to bring her phone book with her — for science! The two of them spent the whole morning, from 7:30 until afternoon kindergarten started, doing the phone book thing. When I got home, I found that grandma had to leave her phone book here because she didn’t have the time to separate them!
Regarding the rigors of science on Mythbusters, I think Zombie Feynman gets it right:
http://xkcd.com/397/
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No worries about topic jacking this blog, when I’m working on something else. I used to be able to blog while teaching, but I can’t do it when it when I on deadline for an article. I’m done now.
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I’m with Riley, really, looking at the topics on the dissertations I expect they are tendentious crap. I’m not sure what – suppose she HAD read them, and said they are tendentious crap, pointless navel-gazing. Would that have excused her, with the folks who are saying she cannot attack because she hadn’t read?
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Ok, I am genuinely curious. What is crap about the history of midwifery, US housing policy, or the history of a particular group within a major political party? Would a dissertation on “the evolution of Evangelicals in the Republican party since 1980” be crap? How about on non-black midwifery? Is that crap? US housing policy and the rise of suburbia in general? If so, what sorts of scholarship isn’t crap? I mean break it down for me: is the problem with black people, or with sociology & history?
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“I’m not sure what – suppose she HAD read them, and said they are tendentious crap, pointless navel-gazing.”
Well, if she engaged in real scholarship and pointed out *how* they were “tendentious crap, pointless navel-gazing, it might have been worth reading. But her whole point was that she was unwilling to engage at that level at all. That refusal is antithetical to the whole point of higher education and dissertations.
Like B.I., I also don’t get (at all) why looking at those titles would cause someone to react with dismay. They seem like perfectly sensible dissertation topics to me. Frankly, each title seems more sensible than the fields I’m less interested in. Even with those, though, I’d only say they’re uninteresting to me and wouldn’t suggest they’d be uninteresting to everyone. If I wanted to make a point about the scholarship not being worthwhile, I’d define my terms about worth (for example, shouldn’t be tax-payer supported, or shouldn’t have significant resources at the university, or my kids shouldn’t major in it, or I wouldn’t major in it). Then, I’d try to define why the work wasn’t of value for that purpose.
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