The ethics of outside funding

Auburn University’s Robert Lawson has an exasperated post on another “muckraking journalist attack” on the economics department at Florida State University and the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

That prompts me to post a short publication of mine entitled “The Ethics of Outside Funding”. A few years ago there was controversy in the academic world about the BB&T Charitable Foundation’s sponsoring programs on the moral foundations of capitalism. I participated in a conference panel that debated the issue pro and con; after an interesting set of papers and the ensuing discussion, the general sense of the session was that the controversy was a non-problem. My talk was later published in the conference’s proceedings.

Are babies born to dance?

“Babies Are Born to Dance, New Research Shows” is the headline of a recent report in Science Daily: “Researchers have discovered that infants respond to the rhythm and tempo of music and find it more engaging than speech.”

Data like this connect with key issues about mind-body integration. Music seems to be central to every major human capacity — emotion, thought, memory, and physical movement.

* Music and emotion: Music seemingly automatically generates emotional responses.
* Music and thought: We often grope for thoughts and images to capture what music means, and music combined with lyrics intensifies the experience of both.
* Music and memory: We learn and love the ABC song as kids, and the song makes it easy for us to learn and memorize 26 symbols in the proper order. Or: If you were asked to memorize the list of ingredients in the McDonald’s Big Mac, it might be a chore. But put the list to music and it’s easy and fun to memorize, and we remember it with nostalgic pleasure years later. (Or maybe that’s just me.)
* Music and kinetics: Music naturally makes us want to move over bodies — from finger-tapping to head-bobbing to all-out dancing.

All of that has implications for education: If music is so central, so powerful, and so much fun, can we better use music across the curriculum to teach children?

The connection between music and movement reminds me of John Locke’s Some Thoughts concerning Education and the striking fact that he mentions dancing first when outlining his curricular choices. (Here is my discussion of John Locke on education.)

Homework, race, and success in life

This chart, based on a Bureau of Labor Statistics time-use survey of teenagers, presents data for four racial/cultural groupings: Asian, non-Hispanic white, Hispanic, and black.

If the data are accurate, how far does the chart go towards explaining differentials across the races in grades, graduation rates, employment rates, and income levels?

Also interesting is the difference between immigrants and native-born Americans, which fits nicely with my anecdotal evidence.

So: Do your homework, kid! And then do some more!

Source for the chart: Tino Sanandaji’s Super-Economy web log.

Hayek and Rand on values — APEE 2011 conference

For this year’s conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, I am organizing and chairing a session on two giants of the twentieth century — Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand — with four scholars comparing their views on values and political economy.

Topic: Hayek and Rand on Values

Chair: Stephen Hicks, Ph.D., Rockford College, Illinois

Panelists:

Emily Chamlee-Wright, Ph.D. Elbert Neese Professor of Economics, Beloit College, Wisconsin
Title: “Cultivating the Economic Imagination with Atlas Shrugged”
Abstract: In this paper I describe my use of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in an undergraduate comparative economic systems course. I argue that the novel is the ideal vehicle for cultivating what I call the “economic imagination,” by which I mean the ability to see the systematic outcomes that emerge under different political economic rules of the game. Further, I argue that the novel is particularly well-suited to animate discussions of essential comparative systems topics, including Marxism, the various phenomena associated with the soviet-type economy, and fascism. Finally, drawing upon student writing, I argue that though Rand’s view of reason and epistemology are often at odds with Austrian economics, these tensions are productive in conveying Austrian insights regarding the extended order.

Steve Horwitz, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University, New York
“Hayek, Rand, and the Ethics of the Micro- and Macro-worlds
Abstract: Hayek and Rand both supported capitalism, but their ethical systems were different. This paper explores the differences and how they apply to the institution of the family. It concludes that Rand’s ethical system matches very well with what Hayek sees as necessary in the “Great Society” of the macro-cosmos, but that our understanding of the institution of the family seems better suited to a more altruistic ethical code. The challenge for a Hayekian ethics that pays attention to institutional contexts is how to ensure that the complex process of making those distinctions is learned as children pass into adulthood.

Edward Hudgins, Ph.D., Director of Advocacy, The Atlas Society, Washington, D.C.
Title: “Is a Moral Foundation Necessary for Spontaneous Order?”
Abstract: F. A. Hayek argued that social order and institutions—markets, money, law—arise spontaneously out of the actions of individuals seeking their own interests but not through specific planning by individuals. Further, because it is impossible in markets for any individual to know what mix of goods and services will best satisfy consumer demands, attempts at central government planning will result in adverse unintended consequences.
But it can be argued that such a system will only operate to protect individual liberty and limit government if enough individuals, reinforced by the culture, accept and live by certain moral principles and the Objectivism provides such a foundation.

William Kline, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Department of Liberal and Integrative Studies, University of Illinois, Springfield
Title: “Individualism and Interdependence”
Abstract: When do we need other people? Both Hayek and Rand agree on the importance of the division of labor. People need other people to produce what they cannot or will not do themselves. Hayek and Rand also broadly agree on the importance of property rights that make the division of labor, and the market in general, possible. Yet, theses authors deeply disagree on the degree of interdependence necessary for establishing valid property claims. This paper explores Hayek’s use of a Humean conception of property that emphasizes tradition and cannot exist independently of others and contrasts it with Rand’s use of a Lockean/Cartesian approach that argues for the existence of objective, nonconventional property rights. This paper argues that the two authors can be reconciled by distinguishing between what Hume identifies as the need for property rights versus the actual rules that protect them.

The session is scheduled for Monday, April 10 at the bright and cheery 8:10 a.m. time slot.

New flyer for my Philosophy of Education course on video

Here is the new flyer [pdf] for my Philosophy of Education course. The flyer was designed by Christopher Vaughan and has embedded links that take you directly to each of the fifteen video lectures in the series.

The links take you to the videos at my site, but the entire course is also available for free at YouTube and via the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship.

(And, best of all for online viewers, you do not have to take the final exam.)

For more information about the course and my posts on education, please visit my Philosophy of Eduction page.

Don’t know much about history — an anecdote

We all know that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to … well … uhhh … something or other.

But I digress.

Last weekend we went to a school-sponsored Santa Shop. The idea of the Santa Shop is that while the parents eat cookies and sip punch and listen to carols, volunteers help the kids do their Christmas shopping and wrapping so that the parents and siblings won’t know what they’re getting until the big day.

As we dropped our son off, we noticed that a large number of the volunteers seemed to be high-school aged, and shortly after that I ran into a former student who is now a history teacher at a well-regarded high school in the area. During the ensuing conversation, I remarked on the many high-school volunteers helping out, and the history teacher told me that most were students from his class.

It turns out, he explained, that he thought many of his students seemed stressed about their end-of-term history essays. So he decided to give them an option: Either (a) do the paper or (b) volunteer for a day at the Santa Shop.

Hmmm …. I found myself thinking: Equivalent academic credit for writing a history essay and helping kids buy and wrap gifts. (Insert sarcastic remark here.)

Which naturally raises the question of how much such teaching explains the dismal results from surveys of students’ historical knowledge such as this, this, and this.

And I can’t help but wonder, as I work my way through grading a stack of essays and exams this week, whether part of the teacher’s calculation was to avoid having to read and evaluate those papers. Mutual accommodation reached by teacher and students, and the downward spiral continues.

Rant finished, let me now get back to grading that essay on Aristotle, the great German philosopher.

Kindle version of my “Free Speech & Postmodernism” essay

… is now available at Amazon.

Here is my theme: “The liberal case for free speech won out in the modern world, but it has been under strong attack in the past generation. The attacks have come not only from traditional conservatives but increasingly from the postmodern left. In this essay, Stephen Hicks presents and dissects the philosophical arguments made by the postmoderns for speech restrictions and responds with a vigorous and updated liberal case for free speech.”

The essay can also be read in Korean translation [pdf], in German translation [pdf], and as a 26-page monograph edition at Amazon.

An earlier version of the essay was published as “Free Speech and Postmodernism: Why Group Warfare Has Replaced Academic Debate” in Navigator magazine in 2002.

University of Guelph bragging rights

I have fond memories of my undergraduate institution, the University of Guelph in Canada. It’s a beautiful campus, I got a wide-ranging liberal arts education, and the Philosophy Department was intellectually diverse and (mostly) competent. (Another alumni, John Kenneth Galbraith, was apparently not so impressed with his time there.)

Check out pages 48-52 of this Toronto Globe and Mail report with its annual ranking for Canadian universities. In the “medium-size university” category, Guelph gets consistently top and near-top rankings along all dimensions. The tradition continues …