i have the audacity to actually keep posting!!!

has anyone considered that "catching students at cheating" is ritualistic (i.e., Merton's ritualism) behavior? have we not lost sight of what teaching in general and sociology in particular are about? and since when did students become the enemy and/or a population that we need to be on guard of? are students really that different than any other population of people? i learned that lesson quickly when working with felony probationers; really not that much of a difference between them and others.

curious, the derision that students are afforded by many; almost as if there is a distinction between a "good" student and a "bad" student...where in my sociological training did i miss out on the notion that MORE categorization and ranking of peoples is a good thing? i understand the "in defense of elitism" attitude, but i much prefer those that embrace such an ideology to be upfront about it rather than masquerade as caring educators.

"catching students cheating" is not about education, it is about preserving an institutional relationship that is more reflective of the 19th century than the 21st. or at the very least, more reflective of elementary school than college. truly a bizarre notion, really.

i hate it when i can't shut up

the world is tanking and academics are worried about plagiarism...

i haven't been following this thread that closely as i sometimes do as my semester has been ending and student plagiarism was not on my mind. so i don't know if anyone has offered this idea yet, but has anyone considered offering assignments that are difficult to plagiarize? it seems quite clear that threat of punishment, actual punishment, clarifying "how to write a scholarly paper, " etc., are efforts that are not working. why continue to create division between students and faculty by providing opportunities to plagiarize? it is obvious they will continue to do so when presented with an opportunity. why not develop assignments where plagiarism is virtually impossible?

second subversive thought...as someone else noted, this is indicative of the trend starting with Napster...why pay when you don't have to? why exert the effort to recreate what has already been done by someone else? this is not a trend that is going away anytime soon. i think that to the extent that we see ourselves as a bastion of morality, we are not going to connect with students. note that i am not saying that we should encourage plagiarism; rather what i am saying is that if what we are doing is not working, why not try something entirely different?

simple intervention (borrowed from the psychologists; something called spitting in the soup)...at the beginning of the semester, simply ask students how many of them are planning on cheating during the semester? get them to do a show of hands (I have done this and hands were raised). great opportunity to discuss consequences (not just institutional, but real life). similarly, before assigning a paper, ask how many are planning on just cutting and pasting from Wikipedia? tell them that you are not interested in regurgitation (i prefer a term that they can understand, so i just say, "puke") nor are you interested in their ability to utilize a search engine (unless, of course you are...). of course before doing this, you MUST know what it is you are interested in; of course, this latter point begs the question..."what IS the purpose of writing papers?"

is it not odd that we spend a considerable amount of time and effort in ensuring that we maintain this unproductive division between us and students? i got tired of the "gotcha" game when i was in college. i only like to do it now when i have some entitled kid who is damn sure that s/he is going to pass simply because they pout and sputter quite a bit.

it's the schooling, damnit 2

was thinking more about this yesterday (a bad habit of mine...thinking about things) and i know that this will sound heretical (i prefer the term honest), but really what we are trying to do with our students, at least in terms of getting them to think critically, is resocialize them. i find that i have to contend with years of conditioning about world, self (mentioning the distinction between brain and mind -- how many students, let alone professors, eagerly embrace the news that mind does not exist? unsettling, yes, but that is what the empirical data indicate), economics, politics, etc. it's almost as if we say, "okay, you know all that crap you've learned about virtually everything in life? yeah, well most of it is mythology, propaganda, and most importantly, dead wrong...welcome to sociology!!!" seems like a real waste of time to "educate" students about the world for 12 years and then when they hit college tell them what is really up. and those twelve years of "learning" are not comprised of mere content, they represent at least 18 years of social conditioning...and we are supposed to get them to think critically in a semester or two??? something wrong with this picture.

anyway, here comes the heresy...maybe we need to learn some of the strategies that are used in total institutions to resocialize people since this seems to be the business that many of us are in. having worked in an institution of that sort, i know how effective they can be. so...classroom as total institution...interesting idea...?

it's the schooling, damnit!!!

i was reflecting on the seeming differences between student learning in soc courses and student learning in the natural sciences (for example). my observation is that successful student learning in soc represents increased awareness about the social world, the relationships between individuals and collectivities (how narrowly or broadly they may be defined), and the impact of systematic categorization and ranking of peoples on those very same people. it would seem that in the other sciences, there is much more emphasis on memorization of material and less emphasis on any specific expectation of an increase in personal awareness about the world (granted, there is increased awareness of how material objects work, their properties, etc.). in other words, the other sciences focus more on content and less on changing thinking.

i suspect that this presumed difference is characterized in sociology by terms such as "increased critical thinking ability" or "evidence of obtaining a sociological imagination;" indeed, these are fit characterizations. what they seem to gloss over, however, are the institutionalized challenges that those of us who teach sociology must face. for instance, it appears to me that much of public schooling (elementary, middle, junior HS and HS) trains one to do fairly well at memorization (natural science approach) and provides little or no training to increase awareness of self in relation to others. as such, when students hit college and they take their first soc course, they might find it intellectually challenging (i certainly hope that they do) as i suspect that most teaching sociologists are not as concerned about students memorizing sociological terms as much as developing that soc imagination/critical thinking. having little or no experience in employing these skills, students are oftentimes confused about "what we want" as professors. of course, what "we want" is for them to think differently; not knowing that it is possible or desirable for them to do this (nor knowing HOW to do this), they may flounder. not necessarily a bad initial outcome, but one that can be stressful.

not wanting this to turn into a monograph, i guess my main point is that it seems to me that we have a much bigger task than perhaps other sciences do in terms of student learning. our goal is to (in some, if not most cases) reverse/change years of reinforced thinking about self and others. yes, we do this through presentation of "facts" and data; but many of our facts and data run counter to what most people are taught (just think of social construction of just about anything, but most especially gender and race, for example). most students will not be "surprised" to learn how a cell functions, but think about how they might respond when (if) they truly grasp how they function, e.g., the notion that we have no permanent self; that who we are, what we think, what we do, etc., are all conditional. suddenly, observations about how an item of intellectual interest functions (like a cell or a human being) becomes very personal. and, as noted, students usually do not associate personal with academics (with the exception of grades, of course).

approaching enlightenment or simple dissociation?

sometimes i can't tell if i am alive or not.

quite odd.

the odder aspect of this is that it feels most liberating, almost natural when this awareness comes over me.

actions or results?

occurred to me this morning that conservatives like to see their leaders take action in line with their stated values, regardless of the consequences of those actions. liberals, on the other hand, seem to be more concerned with the actual outcomes (which makes way more sense to me).

hence, Bush's swagger and action informed "by his gut" is, in the eyes of a conservative, the epitome of a great leader; while those same behaviors are seen as reckless and imperial by liberals due their consequences.

behaviorological liberation

to continue...place all responses (operant and respondent) on extinction to reduce the strength of all discriminative stimuli and S-delta's. Attending is the only behavior that should remain. attending to what is the question, though. at present, it appears to be attending to all possible stimuli without responding; so attending to "nothing and everything." presumably after a time, attending becomes self-reinforcing.

the behaviorological path to liberation

place all responses (respondent and operant) on extinction; retain only awareness.

the man behind the curtain

(sent this to Common Dreams; we'll see if it gets published)

There have been and continue to be many critiques of the mainstream media and rightly so. Most of the critiques have focused on the MSM simply repeating the current administration’s talking points, their lack of challenge to the run-up to the Iraqi war, their lack of journalistic integrity, etc. The following is a critique of a different kind (although related to all of the above). It hopefully will demonstrate how much more complicit and insidious the MSM (and others who employ the same strategies) is in maintaining the status quo as opposed to challenging it.

As we all know, the cost of oil has reached obscene proportions. It seems to reflect the surreality of life over the last 8 years; just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it skyrockets to new heights. Those of us who observe human behavior as a profession are oftentimes amazed at how the general public fails to seem outraged at what is happening. Indeed, they may be privately fuming, but publicly, collectively, they are invisible.

I began thinking about this the other day when reading that oil was now $130 a barrel. The next day, on an internet news site I frequent daily, there was an entire story devoted to saving gas. The day after that, there was an article on different ways that we waste gas while driving. The following day, there was an article on how tires contribute to gas guzzling. All of these stories at first glance seem to be helpful; but herein lays the insidiousness. Indeed, the MSM are attempting to help us save gas, but what they should be doing is asking very hard questions to government and industry leaders about why we need to save gas, why the cost of oil is so perverse, and why no one seems to be doing anything about it. But, they aren’t. Instead, they are being paternalistic and complicit by simply telling us how to save gas.

The MSM always seems ready to give us advice on how to respond to changing social conditions, but rarely, if ever, give advice to those who manipulate the social conditions. They claim objectivity about reporting, but apparently feel no compulsion to be objective in dispensing advice; the selective dispensing of advice, that is. They only give advice to those who they know can do nothing in response; they never give advice to those who can and should do something.

So, why aren’t people in the streets? Why aren’t truckers blocking highways as in Europe? Why aren’t people refusing to go to work at oil companies until the cost of gas comes down to manageable levels? Because we have been, and continue to be duped by the MSM and others into thinking that we are the problem. If only we would slow down on the highway, if only we would fill up our tires more, if only we would shut our vehicles off when waiting for someone, then the bite at the pump wouldn’t be so bad.

By making the problem about us, the real source of the problem is obfuscated; the status quo is maintained, oil prices continue to rise, profits continue to be made…and all is well. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

ya know why fiction is called fiction?

because the good guys always win.

CNN spins and doesn't even know it

checked the CNN website this morning to see how the McClellan book fallout was going. the caption for the article was...

Bush-bashing

if CNN had any stones and/or any real commitment to journalistic integrity, they would have titled the article in accordance with what they were actually reporting on. it is obvious to anyone who pays any attention, that it was not Bush-bashing, it was...

McClellan-bashing.

"he who controls the environment, controls the population" - you read it hear first.

who makes the goddamn rules, anyhow???

much of behavior analysis is concerned with the impact of environmental events on the behavior of individual organisms. for humans in highly industrialized countries, most of the contact we have with the environment is with the social environment. as such, we are under the control of social stimuli.

no argument with any of this.

the question, however is where do the social-environmental stimuli come from? in many cases, these stimuli are intentionally promulgated and diffused within the social environment because of their effect on groups of humans; for both, they serve as SD's and reinforcers. for the group disseminating the stimuli, they are reinforcers for continued dissemination of stimuli as they provide reinforcement in the form of money. for the group making contact with the stimuli, they serves as renforcers because they, themselves are reinforcing -- they are "goods" as Skinner says. these two interlocking contingencies maintain the behavioral repertoires that comprise the system. the outcome of the system is what is problematic (global warming, loss of resources, inequality, etc.).

the issue that is frequently overlooked is the notion of stocking the social environment with stimuli. advertisers and marketers do considerable work to determine which reinforcers are most preferred by the buying public. why? to keep the public buying so that they can continue to profit from the behavior. who stocks the environment with reinforcers? how do they do that?

on another level, when it comes to rule-governed behavior, the question is not only how people follow rules, but who makes the rules? in smaller groups, the rules might be self-generating and stem from contact with both physical and social environments. in highly industrialized societies, the rules stem from these same dynamics, but much of the time are less concerned with species-specific behavioral outcomes like survival, and much more concerned with systemic behavioral outcomes, like continued purchasing of products and services.

putting some things together...

we respond to environmental stimuli based on learning history, principles of classical and operant conditioning. these are principles which apply to all organisms that have a nervous system (although this may turn out to not be necessary). allegedly, humans have the most articulated brain on the planet and much of our brain is a replication of other animals with our cerebral cortex being the most recent development. presumably it was with the development of the cerebral cortex (and other physiological features) that permitted speech to occur. of course, speech is nothing more than sound, so this is where the conditioning principles come in to determine what different sounds "mean" -- in relation to consequences paired with different stimuli or consequences that occur after presentation of certain stimuli.

as it is generally agreed that sensations prefigured (and occur developmentally prior to) speech, one wonders if when encountering certain stimuli, the first reaction/response is due to the principles of learning on a sensational level. this seems to account for how there is some evidence that the brain responds before there is any "conscious" effort to do so. this also seems to account for humans not being aware of "why they feel a certain way" and then finding a "reason" for their feelings. the reason found would be influenced by prior learning history, and principles of classical and operant conditioning; in other words, the reason why one feels a certain way is related to the response-generating stimuli if it has been tacted; if not, it is perhaps intraverbal behavior and nothing more.

collective obedience

the easiest way to get masses of people to do something different is to identify the institutions that already control them and then revise the content of the institutions. like what Bush Co. has done the last eight years. they knew that Americans were obedient to the government, so all they had to do was to provide the populace with the words most associated with America and the American government (freedom, liberty, God, evil, good, sacrifice, etc.) and then do whatever they wanted under those auspices.

brilliant, really. evil, despicable, criminal, and certainly not planned (or maybe so), but brilliant nevertheless.

this is the fundamental problem that people don't recognize. we see ourselves as humans that have special qualities (like reason, cognition, etc.) and as such, are not susceptible to the same conditioning dynamics that other animals are; but we are wrong. we are first and foremost biological organisms and consequently, are subject to all of the dynamics and properties associated with biological organisms, hence our ability to be molded, manipulated, shaped, etc.

to the extent that we don't recognize how easily we are conditioned, those who benefit from our conditioning remain happy and content. feeding us words like freedom, liberty, choices, etc., keeps us from seeing the unfortunate reality of our condition.

pre

walking into work this morning, i saw a law text in someone's car and immediately started thinking, pre-law, then went to pre-med, then went to...

pre-dead.

that makes sense; another way of saying still alive, yes? sort of Buddhist, perhaps.

idol thoughts

biology allegedly is the study of life; but it's not. it is really the study of things that fit the definition of living. the study of the structure and function of these things. notice how this is not the study of life, but the study of material objects. not a bad thing, but not the same as life. it is easy to see how a complex, multi-cellular organism like humans are alive. what is more of a mystery are those tiny little red spiders that are the size of one of these letters that scurry about.

life, how it is possible that such things, on a such small scale (and even smaller scale), can have structure and function, move about, etc. still remains a mystery in my mind.

redistribution of wealth redux

in the last few years, Bill Gates has turned from software mogul to humanitarian. not a bad thing. sadly ironic, though. he earns billions of dollars, and now he wants to use it to benefit the world. wouldn't a better system be one in which instead of one man earning billions of dollars, his wealth is capped at say, $100 million and the billions that he could have earned are actually used earlier and more comprehensively to help those people he is now interested in helping? is there a difference in quality of living between possession of $30 billion and $100 million? i can't imagine that there is.

one wonders what the world would be like if wealth had a cap of some kind. i am sure at some point wealth becomes self-sustaining. maybe someone should do an analysis of that and then let all of the up and coming billionaires know.

it doesn't all come down to money; it all comes to down to worth and people are not worth as much as money is.

OpenLearn

very nice site for FREE distance education.

slow-cooking the frog

i frequently tell my students that they need to pay attention to the way things are organized instead of just their response(s) to the way things are organized. for instance, most of us have to work longer, take on more than one job, reduce vacations, etc., just to make a decent living. students today understand this, so they are looking for a career in which they can, "make a lot of money." understood. the problem is that they will be sucked into the long days, longer weeks, less time with family and friends, etc., in their pursuit of this career.

my point to them is that doing all of the above is simply a reaction to the way things are organized. another response would be to question the way things are organized and ask, "wait a minute, why do i have to do all of this just so i can have a decent wage?" in other words, instead of adapting to the environmental conditions, why not change the environmental conditions? yes, i know, it is hard, impossible, etc. these are just ways of reducing the anxiety of the awareness that our lives are really not our own; somebody is going to establish the environmental conditions, how about if we have a say in that?

Rove was right

Rove was right when he said that they are not part of the "reality-based" community anymore, that they shape and create history (i don't know of anymore definitive Orwellian statement than that). the problem is that WE have to live in the world that THEY shape, so we ARE in the reality-based community, but it is not one of OUR making.

on the efficacy of propaganda.

well, okay, i actually had more to say

another colleague suggested that torture depended on motives (paraphrasing); my response:

no; this is the current Bush argument -- "all that we do is justified due to national security" -- no different than the arguments used by the powerful for centuries to excuse mass murder, torture, etc (on other and on THEIR OWN populations). Bush, et al are too cowardly to state what they are actually doing -- torturing people; instead, they obfuscate by using the euphemisms (harsh interrogations, rough interrogations, etc.) to maintain the appearance of morality. "The US does NOT torture people" -- we just waterboard them, electrocute them, hang them by their wrists for hours at a time, subject them to extreme temperatures, etc. Since these techniques are not torture (by THEIR definition), we can continue to strut and beat our national chest about how "moral" we are.

bullshit.

the very least that they could do is be honest about the fact that they intentionally harm people because they can and because they like to. as noted previously, torture doesn't work and they know this. why do they continue to do it then? because they are sadists, because they are vengeful, because no one has the power nor the will to stop them. it is the naked abuse of power, pure and simple.

how can we condemn torture in all instances? easy, it serves no purpose other than the ones i just listed, so why do it?

again, i am clear on my humanistic orientation and am committed to same. situational/relativistic morality is scary and dangerous, as evidenced by all that is happening today.

IMO, if there is anything frightening about this thread, it is that the use of torture is even being debated.

i conclude...

actually, what i have been trying to argue (apparently unsuccessfully) is that there are certain behaviors that result in pain regardless of whether there is an audience, regardless of how the behavior is defined. the things that the U.S. has been doing result in pain; the people who have been doing them KNOW this, that is why they are doing them. it doesn't matter what they are called, they will always result in pain.

worrying about what to call the behavior obfuscates the impact to the victim; this is what is astonishing to me, that people are actually concerned about what to call hanging someone from their arms for hours at a time. what the !#$%??? does it matter what we call it? isn't it outrageous and abhorrent in and of itself, regardless of how it is defined?

while in graduate school, i took a family violence course. the prof told us about a survey she had conducted several years before about sexual assault. one of the questions was, "have you ever been raped?" there was little response. the question was changed to "have you ever had sex against your will?" the response was greater. the wording issue doesn't change the fact that the behavior occurred. it does demonstrate how definitions can be used by the powerful to control and harm the less powerful...

exasperating!!!

my challenge stands...those who are in favor of torture should undergo it; if it only exists by definition, then what's the problem? no one is afraid of a little pain, are they?

in other words, it if is not defined as torture, it's not torture, right? that's the argument, yes? that hypothesis should be easy to test...get those who advocate for its contextual properties as the ONLY ontological reality to stand in the middle of ten people outside in freezing temperatures and then allow the onlookers to slap them, strip them naked, insult their religion, poor water over their heads, force them into stress positions, for at least an hour. at the end of the hour, the onlookers declare that what just occurred wasn't torture, it was just good fun.

voila! no torture occurred.

RE: the Spartans...of course it wasn't considered brutal or immoral by the Spartans -- it was THOSE WHO LIVED THAT DEFINED IT AS ANYTHING BUT THAT!!! Those who possibly could have called it immoral or brutal were dead! The "collateral damage" casualties can't challenge the definition of collateral damage as the cause of their death because they are dead! Forced sterilization was not considered immoral, slavery was not considered immoral, honor killings are not considered immoral, gassing Jews was not considered immoral -- do i need to go on?

wow, this has been a most revealing exchange. i honestly never thought i would hear an argument for might makes right on a sociology list.

mutter, mutter...

if you want more evidence of the complicity of our "trusted servants" in DC in the authorization of torture, watch this segment from ABC News.

the absolute stupidity of these yahoos even debating the use of torture is characteristic of the administration's entire approach -- defiant ignorance. from what i have read, it is quite well established that torture doesn't work. the Nuremberg interrogators didn't use it. they simply sat down with the accused, gave them cigarettes, talked with them and managed, through the use of non-"enhanced interrogation" techniques, to get these guys to disclose all kinds of atrocities.

my speculation as to why the "principals" authorized the use of torture has more to do with revenge, sadism, and power than any serious attempts to get information. the waterboarding incident (discussed in the above video) involving Zabaydah (sp) is inaccurate; he had already disclosed the information to the FBI, PRIOR to being waterboarded. the CIA learned little, if anything of value by waterboarding (which, BTW, we condemned when used by the Japanese) yet they claimed that he only disclosed this info AFTER he had been waterboarded; not true.

but hey, why let the facts get in the way of behavior influenced by a sadistic ideology?

IMO, they should all be charged with crimes against humanity; i guess we will know if there really is a God, when/if anyone out of this administration gets indicted for the same.

and the debate continued...

you're kidding, right? this needs a definition? it is not patently obvious? like pornography, do we not know it when we see it? the downside to context is it presumes that at some point in time/location some behavior is going to be acceptable by a group of observers. when it comes to:

hitting, "simulated" drowning, electrocution, slapping, sonic assault, microsecond burning by microwave transmission, exposure to extreme heat and cold, etc., no definition is going to change the impact of these behaviors, regardless of what any observer says, thinks or defines what is happening. i think it is pretty clear that virtually all biological organisms with a nervous system would experience any/all of the above as painful.

if you (or others) would like empirical evidence of the impact of these behaviors on human beings, read this.

calling the death of people due to the impact of a bomb "collateral damage" does nothing to alter the absolute outcome of the bomb on the people -- they remain dead.

and the debate started

a colleague suggested that torture depends on the audience...i, of course disagreed.

no, it does not. intentional infliction of pain on another human being is beyond definition, it is NOT in the eye of the beholder. it is the debate about the definition of what constitutes torture that muddies the water, blurs the lines, etc. this is why the debate is morally bankrupt.

not unlike the Wizard of Oz..."pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" -- stuffing a man's head in a bucket of water and striking him in the stomach so he will involuntarily inhale is not torture, it is just:

rough interrogation
harsh interrogation
aggressive interrogation
coercive interrogation

bullshit, it is freaking torture and all of the media yahoos (and anyone else who equivocates on the issue) that fail to call it such are complicit in its practice.

history will indeed by the judge and i pray that it judges us harshly. we deserve it since we have allowed this to happen; ignorance is no defense at all in this case because we are absolutely clear on what is and has been happening. hopefully history will un-equivocally condemn what has happened in the last seven years.

then it started getting weird...

i DON'T say this in my class, but it seems to me that the simplest way to resolve this issue of whether or not any method constitutes tortures is to have those unsure of its effects undergo it. if all that the U.S. is doing is NOT torture, why has (to my knowledge) only one non-military person actually undergone water-boarding? one yahoo said that you swallow more water when swimming; of course HE did not volunteer to be waterboarded. just like Rummy thought that standing as an interrogation practice should not be limited to just 4 hours a day because he stands 8 - 9 hours a day. fine, Rummy, you spend a few months at Gitmo, in the role of enemy combatant and see why standing for ONLY 4 hours in those conditions is just a bit discomforting.

as you know you and i fundamentally disagree on these issues -- it has always been clear to me what hunger, suffering, pain, thirst, torture are -- i don't really care what anyone else thinks they are, not do i really need to discuss how each is defined. i am clear about my humanist orientation. i do not suffer from the morally bankrupt, privileged, academic position of worrying about definitions or social constructions. this latter point is the main reason why i left the AACS -- 20 years after the establishment of the CSA and members are STILL trying to define WHAT clinical, applied sociology/sociological practice is.

the luxury of the privileged...fiddling with definitions while world burns...

i posted some other, relevant info

i heard Doug Feith on NPR this morning, attempting to wiggle his way out of any responsibility for Iraq. Really embarrassing that this man had ANY position of authority in our government; but again, not surprising. no one seems willing to hold any of these people accountable which is just maddening, IMO. Bush keeps talking about his legacy as if it is going to be positive. first, it would be nice to have a Prez that is more concerned about the devastation he has wrought and trying to rectify it than basking in the glow of his "legacy fantasy" and second, it would be nice to have a Congress that is not bowed by DC pressure to not impeach. but, alas, we do live in America after all, where despite all of the propaganda, dreams really don't come true.

(rant over)

The UCS is documenting all of the "interference" in science by this administration; it is a sad list of events:

The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science

It all seemed so simple...

it all started when i submitted a link to a video clip on the issue of torture to a sociology list as an example of how power plays a role in defining deviant behavior; it went somewhere i never would have imagined. the initial post:

as you might suspect, whenever i introduce the concept of deviance in my classes, i talk about not only how deviance is defined, but WHO gets to do the defining.

this week's topic in my Intro class is deviance, and i happened upon this link to a preview of a 60 Minutes story to be aired this coming Sunday. i thought it was a perfect for a discussion of deviance, defining, deviance and labeling.

"Docke says the police report was sent to the Americans. And Kurnaz claims his interrogations at Kandahar turned to torture. He told 60 Minutes that American troops held his head underwater. They used to beat me when my head is underwater. They beat me into my stomach and everything," he says. "