bearing blog

Another higher education bubble: scientific journal pricing?

Derek Lowe at In the Pipeline has been blogging intermittently about the scientific journal publishing model, which sometimes seems insanely archaic now that we live in an age where so much information is practically free.

It's seemed that way to this home-based end user for years. Sure, they have to make a profit on their content somehow, but I've noted before that they seem to be losing out on some income because they don't have a market segmentation mechanism by which persons unaffiliated with an institution can pay a small fee to download single articles for personal use. Currently articles in ACS (American Chemical Society) publications cost $35 each, and those in Elsevier publications cost $31.50. But millions of people attempt to download articles from scientific journals each year, then don't do it when the pay wall pops up: JSTOR reported 150 million attempts per year. You'd think that if they could charge single-digit dollars per article, some of those 150 million potential users would have paid the fee to get their article, and some of them might have come back to buy more.

When you consider how much of the research that appears in these journals is performed at taxpayer expense, with federal grants and often in state-supported institutions, you have to wonder: Why does the individual have to pay quite so much money to the journal publisher to access the results?

But it seems that individual academics and universities, too, are rebelling against the standard journal model. Earlier this year, scholars organized a boycott against the large publisher Elsevier. (Here is a post at Inside Higher Education explaining the reasons.)

Anyway, blogger Lowe points to this post from Jenica Rogers, a librarian at SUNY-Potsdam, explaining why her institution is walking away from ACS -- dropping subscriptions to the ACS online journal packages.

In our discussions, the librarian stakeholders noted our support for this approach, but argued that while their tiers are reasonable and based on arguably sound criteria, the base price underlying those steps is unsustainable and inappropriate. (In the case of SUNY Potsdam, the ACS package would have consumed more than 10% of my total acquisitions budget, just for journals for this one department.) We also learned that their base price and pricing model, when applied to much larger institutions, did not produce the same unsustainable pricing...

Given that there was no apparent ACS-based solution to our budget crunch in the face of what we feel is unsustainable pricing, we went to our Chemistry faculty and discussed all of this with them. ... I laid all the facts out. We described our subscription history in support of their scholarship, teaching, and learning needs, pulled out the costs for ACS content when we first subscribed in the early 2000s and referred back to the discussions we had then... laid out the current cost of ACS publications and the price increases over the past five years, and estimated what our 3-year prices would be. Based on our discussion, I think that some of our faculty were surprised, some seemed resigned, some were horrified, and they were all frustrated by what seemed to be a plate full of bad options. However... I believe that we all agreed that this goes beyond having a tight campus or library budget: this is simply not appropriate pricing for an institution like ours.

One of the things that makes this situation egregious is that ACS is not just an academic society and a publisher, it is an accreditation body for university chemistry programs -- and indeed, they can set journal subscription access as a condition on accreditation.

If enough institutions simply refuse to play the game, the numbers will have to change. Meanwhile, it is one small part of the cost of higher education -- and in this case, it is not an expensive frill like a fancy rec center or a cushy dorm, but an unsustainable price charged by private corporations in order to provide a service that is part of the core mission of a university.

 

Beer for beginners, part VI: Belgian witbier.

(part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V)

I can't decide whether it's apropos or just silly that I am simultaneously working on one series about college and another about beer.

At any rate, I finally finished all the witbier that I bought the last time I was in a nice big beer store, and I'm ready to comment on it.

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Belgian wheat beer, a.k.a. witbier, a.k.a. bière blanche, is similar to German hefeweizen except it is typically less hoppy and a little lighter, and it is brewed with citrus peel and spices such as coriander.  I have had some mass-produced American versions (Blue Moon, which is really a Coors beer, is the most famous), and found them drinkable; Mark generally turned up his nose at the idea of spiced beer.

Garrett Oliver recommends drinking witbier with salads of all sorts, especially those with citrusy vinaigrettes.  This seemed so odd that I was eager to get started, especially back in the heat of August.

I picked up a six-pack of Hoegaarden Original White Ale first.  Hoegaarden is pretty easy to find in the U. S., it seems.  We had the first bottle with a homemade Caesar salad, which worked great, actually.   The beer had a lemony kick to it.  

For some reason, as I put my nose into the glass and inhaled, I was transported back to the scent of beer from my childhood.  I haven't the foggiest idea which of the adults around me, if any, would have been drinking wheat beer or spiced beer when I was a little girl; maybe it was just that its pale crisp scent reminded me of whatever pale yellow beers were around in Southwestern Ohio at the time.  I have no explanation for that one.  I may have to ask my dad.

I liked the Hoegaarden a lot.  Here is where I have to admit -- in case you can't tell already -- I actually kind of like pale yellow beer.  No, I'm not a fan of Miller or Bud, but I have been known to suck back a Corona with my enchiladas from time to time.  This beer was light and crisp, so you could drink it cold and have it be refreshing; but the spices were present, along with an obvious citrusy tang.  It really did go with the salad, garlic and parmesan and all.

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The second beer I tried was Ommegang Witte, an American witbier from New York State.  The first time I had it was all by itself, and I noted:  "Very boring and flat."

But the second time I had it, I was eating crackers and herb cheese spread and buttered asparagus tips (it was lunch), and I noted "Pretty good!"

So I have decided that this is a good rule for witbier:   Do not drink a witbier without food unless you know it.

Or, I guess, unless you are thirsty and hot.  It'd probably be good then.

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The third witbier I tried was a large-format bottle of Dogfish Head Namaste.  The bagger at the large foodie supermarket in Ohio where I bought it got all excited about my cart full of beer (witbiers and stouts) and told me I had excellent taste (duh, everything I was buying was on recommendation), and got even MORE excited when one of the beers was the Dogfish Head.  He really talked it up.  Now that I think about it, maybe he was trying to hit on me.  But that's neither here nor there, because I decided that the Dogfish Head was another BORING beer.  That is all that I wrote in my notebook:  BORING, double underlined, like the Ommegang was before I had it with some food.  Only I was having the Dogfish Head with food.  And it was so boring I didn't bother to write down what food it was.

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And the fourth one I tried just the other day:  Epic Brewing Co. Wit Beer out of Salt Lake City.  I had only a single large-format bottle to try, but after we finished it I wished I had more.  This beer pleased both me and Mark, because while it was nicely spiced, it had a more pungent hoppiness than the other Belgians we had been drinking.  That hop bitterness, plus the lemony crispness, was perfect for the evening's dinner.  We were having a light supper of French bread and salad -- a "BLT salad" with, well, lots of bacon and lettuce and tomato, plus red onion and cucumber, tossed in a creamy avocado-lime-basil dressing.

(This recipe is close, except WTF?  Only four slices of bacon?  I used half a pound.)  

Bitter, hop-dominant beers are supposed to be good with rich, fatty food, while the witbier is supposed to be great with all things citrus-vinaigrette, and so this hoppier-than-usual witbier was really quite perfect with a fatty avocado-lime dressing and all that crunchy bacon.  I would happily buy it again, and pour it at a party, and the thing I would serve it with would be a giant bowl of guacamole and some good salty tortilla chips.  I bet it would be good with tabbouli, too.  If there was bacon in it.  And I bet it would be good with something quiche-like, too.

All in all, though, the Hoegaarden will probably be my go-to witbier, because it's easy to find and not terribly expensive (the Epic Wit Beer is a limited edition beer that is produced in rotation).  The style really does work with citrusy salads, and since I love citrusy salads, I think we'll be having Belgian wheat beer again.

Postsecondary education questions: Megan McArdle on "Is College a Lousy Investment?"

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

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Ah, this is timely.

While you wait for my next post (which will be about parents' options for meaningful support past age 18), and possibly another guest post by Mark, take a look at this week's Newsweek article by Megan McArdle entitled, "Is College a Lousy Investment?"  

A lot of ink has been spilled over the terrifying plight of students with $100,000 in loans and a job that will not cover their $900-a-month payment. Usually these stories treat this massive debt as an unfortunate side effect of spiraling college costs. But in another view, the spiraling college costs are themselves an unfortunate side effect of all that debt....

Unsurprisingly those 18-year-olds often don’t look quite so hard at the education they’re getting. In Academically Adrift, their recent study of undergraduate learning, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa find that at least a third of students gain no measurable skills during their four years in college. For the remainder who do, the gains are usually minimal. For many students, college is less about providing an education than a credential—a certificate testifying that they are smart enough to get into college, conformist enough to go, and compliant enough to stay there for four years.

When I was a senior, one of my professors asked wonderingly, “Why is it that you guys spend so much time trying to get as little as possible for your money?” The answer, [economist Bryan] Caplan says, is that they’re mostly there for a credential, not learning. “Why does cheating work?” he points out. If you were really just in college to learn skills, it would be totally counterproductive. “If you don’t learn the material, then you will have less human capital and the market will punish you—there’s no reason for us to do it.” But since they think the credential matters more than the education, they look for ways to get the credential as painlessly as possible.

She has a companion blog post up here:  Are We Paying Too Much for Higher Education?

A sample from the blog post:

It’s not necessarily a problem that we’re spending so much on education--and putting more people through school--if we’re actually adding value to the workforce.  In fact, if education is adding value to workers, then maybe it’s great: we’re upskilling our workforce, preparing them and our country for the 21st century.  That’s basically the thinking behind the president’s goal--now, I believe, part of the Democratic Party platform--of having the highest percentage of college graduates in the world in 2020.

But there’s a fly in the ointment, which is that higher education doesn’t only provide education: it also provides a credential.  This is known in economics as the “signalling model”: it’s hard to prove to employers that you’re intelligent, conscientious and persistent, and so you use a diploma to demonstrate it.

If you think signalling is a small component of degrees, then the extra investment in education is probably a good thing (although we might look askance at athletics and other non-curricular amenities, which have clearly been getting nicer and nicer over the years).  If you think that signalling is a large component of the value of a diploma, then the extra spending is worrying: we’re mostly just bidding up the cost of the credential, not investing in greater economic productivity.

There’s no slam-dunk data on how much of higher education is signal value...

(McArdle is one of my favorite econ-bloggers.  She used to be an excellent writer for the intelligent Atlantic Monthly and now, oddly enough, is part of Newsweek.)

Any comments, or is this just more of the same?

 

27:15.

My latest 5k time, from Saturday morning.

Unfortunately, I can't prove it because I showed up as "NO NAME" in the results for some reason, which has me kind of annoyed (and scratching my head, because I was standing behind the woman from Anderson Race Management, watching eagerly over her shoulder, at the moment when she entered my race number into the laptop, and I saw my name, age, and 27:15 on the screen).

I also, of course, saw the Big Red Clock as I approached it and crossed the finish line.

I suppose these things just happen.

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I've run five 5ks now.  The following is for my personal archive:

• May 2, 2009:  28:24
• June 13, 2009 28:27
• August 7, 2010 27:27
• June 11, 2011 27:30
• September 8, 2012 27:15

"Time to shoot for the 26's!" says Mark.  I suppose it's possible...

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Trail running feels very different from flat road running.  There is the constant fear of stepping in a hole and turning an ankle.  There are the hills up and the hills down, the choice between the grassy margin and the sandy middle.  There is less room to jostle for position.  

Saturday's run was mentally difficult because I didn't have a way of pacing myself.  I had forgotten my stopwatch, and there were no mile markers; I'd never run the trail before, had no means of measuring how far I'd gone, and quickly became disoriented as the trail meandered through the park, crossed bridges over leafy ponds and looped through the woods.  After a while I wondered how long I'd been out, and couldn't tell if it had been ten minutes or twenty.

I felt pretty bad, huffing and puffing, and -- as usual -- wanting to stop.  I figured I must be going pretty slowly, because I felt awful.  But what do you know, when I rounded a corner and there was The Clock right there -- 27:04, 27:05, 27:06 -- I realized immediately that I had the causality all wrong, and I felt awful because I had been going pretty fast.  I picked up the pace for ten seconds (evilly, everything after you could see The Clock was up a steep grassy hill) and pounded across the finish line.

And then someone put a water bottle in my hand and I wobbled over to the grassy spot by the EMTs, because I thought I might keel over, and if I did that I wanted to do it right in front of the people who were supposed to take care of me if I did.  

But  I didn't keel over, and after a little while I could breathe normally again, so I wandered back to the refreshments where I discovered that the race sponsors had provided, among the expected bananas and granola bars, packets of wasabi peas.  Joy.

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The race was a fairly small one -- 176 runners competed --  to benefit a lupus charity.  I had signed up for it because it sounded like a pleasant race on a day when I had time to run one, but it was pretty clear that the majority of folks there had a personal connection to the cause; there was a higher-than-usual proportion of runners and walkers with tee shirts that said things like "Team Jessica" and "We're Running for Brenda" and the like.   While I drank my water and munched my wasabi peas, I listened to some of the post-race program.  

A couple of patients living with lupus got up to thank people who had come out to support them that day.  As I listened to their stories, sitting there exhausted on the grass, I thought how it gives some perspective:  here I am all tired out by choice from my run, listening to people who battle chronic fatigue every day.  I'm glad I showed up, and I'm thankful.

Postsecondary education: Darwin weighs in, and I explain the pitfalls I'm trying to avoid.

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

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Check out Darwin's take at DarwinCatholic.  I'll probably have comments later in an update, but I have to go read a bedtime story.

.....LATER.....

Every once in a while, a critic will say of some hawkish Senator, "Well, is he going to send his kids off to war?"

This rhetorical device annoys me, because in this country, no one sends his own kids off to war.  Adults (and sometimes older teens) decide for themselves whether or not to enlist in the U. S. armed forces and to accept the possibility of combat.     "Sending someone off to war" is the purview of the DOD, not of parents.

When we imagine helicopter parents, we are generally not thinking of Black Hawks.

A better question would be, "Well, is he going to teach his own kids to value the contributions of the U. S. military and to consider it as a potential calling or career?  Is he going to communicate to his kids that the choice to serve in one of the branches of the U. S. military is an honorable one, that to take on the risks of combat is brave and selfless, and that he would be proud to call a sailor, soldier, or officer Son or Daughter?"

But somehow the critics never phrase it that way.

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As Mark and I have been writing our pieces on postsecondary education questions, I find myself imagining an imaginary reader challenging us,

"Well, if college is such a bad deal for America, and if there are as they say too many college students, are Mark and Bearing going to keep their kids out of college?  Are they going to send them to trade schools instead, or send them off to one of the other alternatives Bearing mentioned?"

And of course we can't keep our kids out of college, even if we wanted to, because eventually they'll be adults.  We can't send them to trade schools either. (Although we could offer to pay for one and not the other).

But a better set of questions might be:

Are we going to encourage our children to take a broad view of "post-secondary education" that includes alternatives to college?

Are we going to encourage our children to view all kinds of productive human labor as honorable and their practitioners worthy of respect? 

Are we going to give them a chance to work with their hands during childhood as well as with their minds?

Are we going to encourage our children to consider the costs as well as the benefits of the different educational paths open to them?

Are we going to encourage our children to delay spending money on education until they have a plan for how to establish themselves, and eventually a family, in favorable financial conditions?

Are we going to encourage them to have a backup plan, or an escape hatch, in case their first plan unexpectedly becomes untenable?

Are we going to try to communicate to them that our approval and love is not contingent upon the "status" of their chosen profession?

Are we going to try to raise them to strive for excellence, and not limit "excellence" to mean only academic achievement or prestige?

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As Darwin points out, it's pretty likely that each of our children will have the inclination and the necessary preparation to attend a four-year college right out of high school.  Mark and I both graduated from college, and I hold an advanced degree; we directly supervise their education and are inclined ourselves to make that education a college-preparatory one; we have some funds to support post-secondary education, including college; in short, we come from a "college culture."  

But we want to avoid the pitfall of assuming that four-year college will be the default choice, or even the best choice, for each of our children.  

In his post, Darwin has identified some bad outcomes of this assumption.  

(1)  Many people start college who are not actually able to finish, and these people "end up with debt and lost time, but don't have appreciably higher income and lower unemployment than those with only high school [diplomas]."  

I add to that:   it's not just "lost time" -- lost time in the workforce represents lost wages, lost savings, lost interest on those savings, lost experience that could have been leveraged into higher income now.  It's not just that they failed to gain economic benefits.  They really lost an economic good.

(2) Those who graduate but who were in the bottom quintile of academic ability also end up with debt and lost time (and lost wages, lost savings, lost interest, lost experience....) but are unemployed at rates similar to those with only high school diplomas.   These people also really lost an economic good.  You might well argue that as a group they would have been economically better off if they had dropped out (like the group in point one), also known as "knowing when to quit," because they would have sunk less of their time and money into an endeavor which wasn't paying off.

(3) "Borrowing tens of thousands of dollars is a bad way to avoid making decisions." Darwin is referring to graduate school, not undergrad, but I think the point stands for undergraduate education as well, because many people go to college after high school only because they have to do something while they figure out what they want to do with their lives, and college is the default option.  How many people start their college career with their major "undecided?"  How smart can that be?  Wouldn't it be better to do something that made money instead of  cost money while you are trying to decide what to do when you finally grow up?

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And here are some more pitfalls:

(4) If you assume that four-year college is the best choice, then you won't devote much time to learning about other kinds of careers and training paths.  If you are ignorant of these, you may miss something that would have been a perfect fit for your personality and talents.

(5) Assuming that four-year college is the default choice, especially insisting that it is the only acceptable choice as many families do, communicates that people who choose different paths are less worthy.  Darwin implicitly identifies this when he points out that people make "unspoken assumptions" about those who don't have college degrees.  It's true that we have to teach our children to navigate a world that makes value judgments about people based on their occupations and education level, but we don't have to contribute to it.

(6) Assuming that four-year-college immediately follows high school -- the so-called "traditional student model"  -- is to reject a number of viable paths in which alternative education precedes  or leads into a bachelor's degree from a traditional institution.

For instance, Darwin writes that "urging [kids] to skip the college degree they want and get a certification in some skill like plumbing or welding instead is probably not a good idea."  Well -- who says it has to be "instead?"  A welding certificate could be the means to earn a high hourly wage with which to "work your way through school."  It could be the backup plan so you know you'll always have a skill to fall back on if that English degree doesn't work out. (Most students don't graduate on time anyway -- why not spend one year getting a certificate and four years getting a degree, instead of five years getting a degree?) Or it could be the first half of an associates degree in welding, which itself could lead to a bachelor's degree in welding engineering from a traditional four-year university.

 

UPDATE FROM THE COMMENTS:  " I just wish I had felt like there were other options for a nice upper middle class girl."

 

Post secondary education questions: Alternatives to college.

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

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This might be a good time to switch gears and consider what a young person, high school diploma in hand, might do other than enroll immediately in a four-year university.

I'm going to start a list. Help me finish it in the comments.

Alternatives to College (or at least to "college right away")

Learn a trade. This can be done through local unions (in my area, for example, the St. Paul electricians' union has a five-year on-the-job apprenticeship program) or postsecondary trade schools and institutes. Some programs take less than a year, while others culminate in associates degrees, still others can lead into specific bachelors programs, and others are multiyear apprenticeship-journeyman-master sequences. Acquiring a valuable skill could boost your hourly wages enough to let you work your way through traditional college afterward.

Start a business. It takes initiative and research, and sometimes several failures precede success, but it's open to anyone.

Join a national or community service initiative, either public or private. On the public side, for instance, Americorps is still around; private organizations such as religious denominations may have service programs too; and there may be something in your community.

Join the military. Technical or professional training is often paid for by the government, and there's job security and benefits; the level and length of commitment varies.

Work hard and save money for a while. Instead of going straight to university, spend a year or two in the workforce, wherever a job can be found. Acquire an appreciation for the value of money and time; learn about an industry or business from the bottom up; see your own community through the eyes of a responsible adult.

Self-education. If you happen to have a source of funds, consider whether part of it could be put towards supporting yourself while you pursue a non-traditional means of broadening your horizons -- travel? Community-based language learning? Self-guided study? Fine arts? Some kind of internship?

Local government and politics. Run for office, or work in the office of a local official, or throw your lot in with a candidate, or with an organized political group or party.

Take a health year.  Break an addiction -- or just some bad habits.  Run a marathon -- or just get off the couch.  Set a year-end goal, plus some medium- and short-term ones, and arrange your life to support them.  Invest in a longer and better-quality life.

 

Any more ideas?

A little middle-aged motivation for you.

The NYT "Well Blog" describes a study that's good news for those of us who are committed to staying fit in middle age -- or who have time to practice better habits between now and then.

[W]e are spending more years living with chronic disease and ill health — not the outcome that most of us would hope for from a prolonged life span.

But a notable new study published last week in Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that a little advance planning could change that prospect. Being or becoming fit in middle age, the study found, even if you haven’t previously bothered with exercise, appears to reshape the landscape of aging.

Here's the deal, as best as I can figure it out:  Waaaay back in 1970, a group of more than 18,000 healthy, chronic-disease-free middle-aged men and women (average age:  49) had visited  a clinic for a treadmill test to determine their aerobic fitness.  

According to the blog, the data was still around in recent years, when researchers used it to divide the group into five "fitness categories" based on the results of that long-ago treadmill test.  (Most of them fell in the "least-fit" category.)  

Then, in a first-of-its-kind data comparison, the researchers checked the same individuals’ Medicare claim records (with permission) from 1999 through 2009, by which time most of the participants were in their 70s or 80s.

What they found was that those adults who had been the least fit at the time of their middle-age checkup also were the most likely to have developed any of eight serious or chronic conditions early in the aging process. These include heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and colon or lung cancer.

The adults who’d been the most fit in their 40s and 50s often developed many of the same conditions, but notably their maladies appeared significantly later in life than for the less fit. Typically, the most aerobically fit people lived with chronic illnesses in the final five years of their lives, instead of the final 10, 15 or even 20 years.

This is pretty good news, especially if you're

• (a) already a fit middle-aged person, 
• (b) not yet middle-aged, or
• (c) just beginning middle age and thinking about developing good habits.

Moving from the least-fit to the second-least-fit category appears to have the strongest effect.  If that's so, then going from total couch potato to not-quite-completely-a-couch-potato might make a big difference in how many years you spend as an infirm adult.

The aerobic fitness level at that middle-aged checkup did not affect lifespan nearly as strongly as it affected quality of life.   It "compressed" the years of infirmity.  To put it bluntly, this suggests that a public health effort which managed to encourage activity in the middle age years could well pay off in long-term health care costs.

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Of course, this might not demonstrate a causal relationship.  Even though all these adults were healthy and free of chronic disease in 1970, maybe the least-fit ones were unfit because of some underlying, deep condition that also caused them to develop chronic disease sooner than the fitter ones.  Maybe a choice to become fitter wouldn't have changed that.

But then again, maybe it would have.  Maybe individuals who decided to become fitter would have paid more attention to the signals their body sent them, and would have detected problems earlier.  Maybe a habit of exercise would have given them confidence to change other habits.  Maybe getting out of the house more would have improved their mental health.  We really don't know.  

I think this is really good news for my readers out there, most of whom are women in their childbearing years, and who don't see much concrete motivation to work on fitness habits.  You've got time, folks. 

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I would be interested in knowing more details about the age range and about how the individuals were divided into fitness quintiles, but don't have quick and easy access to the journal.  

(HINT HINT HINT, those of you with access to Arch. Intern. Med.   I believe this is the link.)

 

Post secondary education questions: the religious education.

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

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This post is the third in a set that includes "The provider's education" and "The humanist's education."

I want to emphasize again, as I did in the other posts, that I am aware that the three "educations" don't separate neatly, that they are overlaid upon one another and every element supports every other (and in some ways contains every other). It is really a sort of trinity, and carving it up into three separate purposes necessarily obscures the whole.

That doesn't stop me from trying, because I think it will help. Here is a carefully chosen subset of the elements of the necessary content of education that relates most directly to religious and spiritual development and the reception of the sacraments.

Elements of moral, religious and spiritual development that THE FAMILY is expected to inculcate and teach

That true happiness is found in God alone, the source of every good.

The family teaches that the material and instinctual dimensions are subordinate to interior and spiritual ones.

The family must teach children a sense of true love, understood as sincere solicitude and disinterested service.

The family must introduce children to personal dialogue with God.

The family must teach children to know God, to worship, and to love their neighbor.

The family must teach children the Gospel.

The family should educate children so that, if they marry, they can by means of that education establish their family in moral conditions which tend to promote or facilitate the establishment of that family.

The family is called to give children a sex education that is built on the premise that love is self-giving.

The family must educate the child for chastity.

The family must teach children to know and respect the moral norms of human sexuality.

The family builds the proximate preparation for the sacraments of Christian marriage upon the foundation laid in the remote preparation for marriage.

The family will teach, in that proximate preparation, that marriage is an interpersonal relationship of a man and woman that has to be continually developed.

The family will encourage, in that proximate preparation, the study of the nature of conjugal sexuality.

The family, in proximate preparation, will prepare young people for the family apostolate, for collaboration with other families, and membership in groups set up for the human and Christian benefit of the family.

The family must begin the formation of the child's conscience, awakening the child to the knowledge and practice of the interior law.

Elements of religious and spiritual development that THE INDIVIDUAL is enjoined to seek for himself

Each person must form his conscience to enjoin him to do good and avoid evil.

Each person must form his conscience to bear witness to the authority of truth in reference to God.

Each person must form his conscience to welcome the commandments.

An individual becomes capable of respecting and fostering the nuptial meaning of the body by building on the virtue of chastity.

An individual grows responsibly in human sexuality by building on the moral norms that are taught by the parents.

An individual learns control and right use of his inclinations by building on the moral norms that are taught by the parents.

A layperson is encouraged to receive a sufficient formation in theology.

 

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To these I should add that, on the cusp of entering into marriage, the individual is responsible for obtaining the educational content of immediate preparation for marriage.

Recall that we have been restricting the discussion mostly to the case of young people who will likely be called to marriage and family life, so preparation for holy orders need not here be considered. In the Roman rite, the formation in the sacraments of baptism, Eucharist, penance and confirmation generally take place under the parents' auspices, unless for some reason confirmation was delayed. (It isn't unheard of for Catholic parents to agree to let a young person decide for himself when -- if ever -- to be confirmed. Let's not debate right now whether that is a good idea, and simply point out that it could happen that a young adult might put off confirmation until later.). But the immediate sacramental preparation for marriage is educational in nature and is the responsibility of the engaged couple.

It seems pretty clear that a complete foundation in moral and religious training -- as distinct from "theology," which is an academic subject -- is the responsibility entirely of the parents. Latent competency in practically every aspect of the Christian life, married or single, ought to be developed before the child is emancipated.

In this day and age, it seems to me, parents need to anticipate future challenges and aggressively head then off by equipping their children with the tools to find answers to those challenges. This may mean stepping outside comfort zones and being more frank than parents of earlier generations would have had to be.

Here is an example that is highly specific to Catholicism. Parents can expect young adults to encounter aggressive promotion of contraception as a necessary and good part of a healthy marriage. Unfortunately, we can expect them to encounter the viewpoint that contraception is healthy and necessary even from organizations that are directly connected to the Catholic church. Many of us have heard stories from people who claim they were given permission to use contraception in the confessional itself.

Because parents can expect young people to encounter this view, parents have (I would argue) a serious responsibility to equip their adolescents with clear information about trustworthy sources of Catholic teaching, to provide enough medical and biological information about licit means of family planning to counteract common falsehoods about its efficacy and difficulty, and to discuss family planning as a specific area in which to live the truth that love is self-giving.

That is just one example.

Parents should not count on a religious college to inculcate values that they have failed to pass on. It seems plausible that parent and offspring together could come to the conclusion that a particular private religious school could offer necessary support to a particular young person's development, and that the extra cost would be well spent. But it doesn't seem plausible to conclude that a private religious school is objectively necessary.

Very little of the religious and spiritual formation delineated here is dependent on formal enrollment in an institution of higher education. Mostly, it seems, the individual is called to maintain and build upon the foundation laid in childhood and adolescence: to continue forming his conscience, to distinguish good from evil in ever thornier dilemmas, to deepen his resolve through constant practice of right living.

Remember that the young person not enrolled in a private religious school still has access to a parish (and that needn't be the one his parents and younger siblings attend); he still has access to voluntary religious associations and clubs; he still has access to religious publications; he still has access to the sacraments; he still has access to private prayer. If he is enrolled in a public college or lives near one, there are likely student religious organizations available. Many of the same advantages of studying at a private religious college can be found in these other environments.

Postsecondary education questions: The humanist's education.

_{(This post is part of the series on postsecondary education.)}

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This post is a counterpart to one from a couple of days ago entitled "The provider's education." In that post, I listed elements from the necessary content of education that I judged to be directly and practically relevant to the act of providing for oneself and for one's family.

But of course, providing for a family is only part of the human vocation. It is also our vocation to acquire a correct philosophy of persons and of truth. We are enjoined to "attain to reality itself as knowable," to acquire wisdom that "gently attracts...to a quest and love for what is true and good," to "humanize he discoveries made by man," to "assimilate the wisdom of the nations," to "contemplate and appreciate the divine plan."

So education (whether parents inculcate it or whether the individual seeks it on his own initiative) must not consist merely of training in tasks. Skills and knowledge that serve truth and goodness have value for their own sake, or rather because they serve truth and goodness, and not just for their economic value. Necessary education has a humanist element, not just a provider element.

(Let me pause here to acknowledge again that being a provider is part of being humanist, and being humanist is part of being a provider. The two do not separate neatly, if only because one thing that providers necessarily provide is others' education, including the humanist and cultural content; and if the provider does not receive that humanist and cultural content, the provider cannot provide it.)

So here is a carefully chosen subset of the items from my list that I deem most relevant to developing a perspective centered on human values. At the end of the list I will discuss conclusions.

Note: I deliberately left catechetics out of this list. I am putting it into a third category which I will cover separately.

Elements of humanities education that THE FAMILY is expected to inculcate and teach, or to delegate to trusted others

The family teaches that the material and instinctual dimensions are subordinate to interior and spiritual ones.

The family must teach developing adolescents proper forms of human culture.

The family must train children to discover that they have a rich and complex psychology.

The family must train children to discover that they are endowed with a particular personality with its own strengths and weaknesses.

The family installs esteem for all authentic human values in interpersonal and social relationships.

The family must nurse an understanding of the whole human person in which the values of intellect, will, conscience, and fraternity are preeminent.

The family must take great care about civic and political formation of youth so that all citizens can play their part in the life of the political community.

The family must train the children to express calm and objective judgments which will guide them in the choice or rejection of media that is available.

The family must begin the formation of the child's conscience, awakening the child to the knowledge and practice of the interior law.

Elements of the humanities that THE INDIVIDUAL is expected to develop in himself

Each person must cultivate the skills of interiority: reflection, self-examination, introspection.

Each person must form his conscience to judge particular choices, approving good and denouncing evil.

An individual forms his character based on the esteem for authentic values instilled by his parents.

An individual learns control and right use of one's inclinations based on the esteem for authentic human values instilled by the parents.

Each man has the duty to retain an understanding of the whole human person in which the values of intellect, will, conscience, and fraternity are preeminent.

A Christian is encouraged to strive to understand the ways of thinking and judging of other men of their time.

A layperson is encouraged to receive a sufficient formation in theology.

A Christian must recognize the legitimacy of different opinions with regard to temporal solutions.

A person must respect citizens who, even as a group, defend their points of view by honest methods.

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College education is not the only way to provide this kind of education, but university-level courses in the humanities are certainly one way that some of these skills and philosophies could be acquired and developed.

"Striving to understand the ways of thinking and judging of [people other than Christians]" is a particular strength of universities of our age, for example.

On the other hand, it might be difficult to obtain a "sufficient formation in theology" solely through university courses at U. S. public universities -- though not impossible -- and even at many private religious universities.

Furthermore, when selecting a university course of study, one would do well to be cautious about ways that the individuals charged with teaching, instructor selection, and curriculum development might actively work against these humanist purposes.

Some teachers wish to present evil as good, and good as evil; if they are skilled presenters, they endanger the appropriate development of conscience, which is a lifelong development. Some teachers disparage certain opinions as illegitimate, when the difference of opinion belongs to the realm of legitimate disagreement. Without getting into what constitutes an "authentic human value," let's postulate that some teachers may promote inauthentic or inhuman values. Without getting into what constitutes "proper forms of human culture," let's postulate that some teachers may teach improper forms. Some teachers will promote disrespect for certain citizens. Some teachers may promote a poor and simple view of human psychology. Some teachers may disparage intellect, or deny free will and conscience, or mock fraternity.

It is not necessarily bad to be exposed to the reality that many people have a rotten understanding of human values. It is good to consider incorrect points of view in order to learn to engage with them.

But it is no small matter to put oneself voluntarily under the authority of such people.

And it is no small risk to do so before developing a firm foundation in the skills of recognizing good for good and evil for evil.

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There is also the matter of retaining perspective in one's whole course of study. Simply because there are fewer humanities courses in a practical course of study such as business, engineering, or the hard sciences, there are less opportunities to encounter teachers who promote improper culture, disparage intellect, and so forth. The teachers are too busy teaching practical skills to say very much at all about values, culture, and ethics, either good or bad.

But that does not mean that such a practical education can be completely empty of human values. Professionals need to learn the ethics of their profession, and integrate those ethics into their esteem for human values. They need to remain centered in the notion of their work as a means of service of the common good, and for that they need a proper understanding of what is good. They need to retain a perspective which values human beings as persons and not as objects to be used.

When selecting a practical course of study, then, one should prefer a course that includes ethical practice among the required classes and that allows for elective courses that support and develop authentic human values.

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Finally, let's observe that this humanist education does not require a university-level education at all. Most of these values can be inculcated by parents in the family setting, or in a classically liberal high school program. An adult can develop them in himself in conversation with other people, perhaps through civic organizations or voluntary associations; by identifying mentors in his profession who can assist him in authentic development; and through judicious choice of cultural experiences and personal reading.

 

Minglingken.

The first essay at this link is an introduction to general chemistry, written entirely of English words derived from Germanic roots.  There are no Latinate roots, and no Latinate prefixes or suffixes either. 

I have a great love of both chemistry and of language, and the essay delighted me.  In particular, I loved all the creative neologisms created to substitute for words such as "atom," "chemistry," and even "periodic table:"

For most of its being, mankind did not know what things are made of, but could only guess. With the growth of worldken, we began to learn, and today we have a beholding of stuff and work that watching bears out, both in the workstead and in daily life.

The underlying kinds of stuff are the *firststuffs*, which link together in sundry ways to give rise to the rest. Formerly we knew of ninety-two firststuffs, from waterstuff, the lightest and barest, to ymirstuff, the heaviest. Now we have made more, such as aegirstuff and helstuff.

The firststuffs have their being as motes called *unclefts*. These are mightly small; one seedweight of waterstuff holds a tale of them like unto two followed by twenty-two naughts. Most unclefts link together to make what are called *bulkbits*. Thus, the waterstuff bulkbit bestands of two waterstuff unclefts, the sourstuff bulkbit of two sourstuff unclefts, and so on. (Some kinds, such as sunstuff, keep alone; others, such as iron, cling together in ices when in the fast standing; and there are yet more yokeways.) 

  ...Coming back to the uncleft itself, the heavier it is, the more neitherbits as well as firstbits in its kernel. Indeed, soon the tale of neitherbits is the greater. Unclefts with the same tale of firstbits but unlike tales of neitherbits are called *samesteads*.

...Most samesteads of every firststuff are unabiding. Their kernels break up, each at its own speed. This speed is written as the *half-life*, which is how long it takes half of any deal of the samestead thus to shift itself. The doing is known as *lightrotting*. It may happen fast or slowly, and in any of sundry ways, offhanging on the makeup of the kernel. A kernel may spit out two firstbits with two neitherbits, that is, a sunstuff kernel, thus leaping two steads back in the roundaround board and four weights back in heaviness. It may give off a bernstonebit from a neitherbit, which thereby becomes a firstbit and thrusts the uncleft one stead up in the board while keeping the same weight. It may give off a *forwardbit*, which is a mote with the same weight as a bernstonebit but a forward lading, and thereby spring one stead down in the board while keeping the same weight. Often, too, a mote is given off with neither lading nor heaviness, called the *weeneitherbit*. In much lightrotting, a mote of light with most short wavelength comes out as well.

The article was written by Poul Anderson.  Enjoy.   Two other essays (involving English words of Greek origin) follow.