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Education

The Long View: Spelling Reform

This was definitely John's least popular enthusiasm. There is just about no easier way to get a guffaw or a snicker than talk about spelling reform. Nonetheless, John did. He was even on CNN once for this I think. Theodore Roosevelt and the Great Spelling Reform Initiative of

Bryan Caplan on the Signaling Theory of College

Bryan Caplan is a popular blogger and economist at George Mason University. Caplan was recently interviewed on EconTalk about the value of a college education. Short version: a college education doesn't have much intrinsic value. I'm simplifying a bit, but only a bit. Caplan argues that

The STEM Crisis is a Myth

Robert Charette at IEEE Spectrum has a really good piece on the unreality of a shortage of workers with an education in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology [STEM]. Charette looks at all the different ways in which STEM jobs and STEM workers are counted. Different agencies count in different ways.

Has Intelligence Declined in the Modern Era?

Has Intelligence Declined in the Modern Era?

I mentioned this subject a couple of times before. Simple reaction time data from Woodley et al.Bruce Charlton is the first person I know of to discuss the implications of the change in simple reaction time data in the paper by Woodley et al. Charlton claims the data shows

Two Good Articles

Two good articles came out in the last week. Ross Douthat exposes the anti-egalitarian heart of our top universities in the New York Times, and Dalliard defends g at Human Varieties. Nothing Douthat said came as a surprise to me, but I have been following this train of thought for

Don't Call Yourself a Programmer

I'm a frequent visitor to the PhysicsForums career section, I try to give the advice I wish I had received when I was younger. I saw a really interesting post this week, Don't Call Yourself a Programmer. There is a lot of good stuff here. I

Railside Report and Publicly Funded Research

Railside Report and Publicly Funded Research

I read an interesting riposte to a popular but controversial education research report known as the Railside Report, after the pseudonym of one of the schools. [courtesy of the Education Realist] Following on the heels of Aaron Schwartz's suicide after his pillorying by the Justice Department, I thought