Learning Nothing Research Articles

Ebon Fisher's AlulA Dimension

Fisher collectively named his creations and the world they inhabit the AlulA Dimension, after the spurious, bastard feathers on a bird's wing. As an undergraduate art major at CarnegieMellon University, he decided to abandon traditional art (we had learned nothing about life, and too much about Alexander Calder'), deciding that the school's science and technology programs were where the action was. As he put it, [The science students] were so intense and brilliant and engaged-they seemed to be on the pulse of the soul of the world, and I thought, 'Isn't art supposed to reflect the soul of the world? And why are these scientists so much more poetic and full of rapture?' This sentiment, idealistic yet utterly practical in a day-to-day sense, is echoed throughout Fisher's work and conversation: that art has lost touch with

Experiences of the first pelvic examination in a random samples of Danish teenagers.

To describe Danish teenagers' experiences and preferences concerning the first pelvic examination. Cross-sectional postal questionnaire study. A total of 1500 women, aged 17 years, were selected at random among all Danish women of that age. The response rate was 76%, and 551 had experienced their first examination. Thirty-two percent gave a negative general evaluation of the examination, and 13% found the examination very painful. The negative evaluation was strongly associated with the experience of pain, embarrassment, perceived impossibility of interrupting the examination, not knowing what the doctor was doing, learning nothing during the examination, indications other than oral contraception, and feeling of insufficient knowledge when arriving for the first examination. It is recommended that teenagers are given more information and realistic expectations prior to the first pelvic examination.

Discussion of An Independent Auditor's Ex Post Criteria for the Disclosure of Information

Penno and Watts demonstrate that an individual can sometimes be better off learning nothing than by learning only something (as opposed to everything) about the current economic environment. That is, ignorance can be preferable to partial information. Realizing this, in such cases a more informed party (here an auditor) would serve the first individual (here an investor) best by concealing information. The paper's model includes a manager, an outside investor, and an auditor. First, with some probability, both the manager and the auditor observe the same two signals (y and al) about the firm's future prospects. Otherwise, they observe nothing. Next, if the manager is informed (i.e., if he observes y and al), he chooses to disclose or not disclose y to the investor. If y is disclosed, the disclosure must be honest. The other signal (al) cannot be credibly disclosed. If the manager is informed but elects not to disclose, the auditor can force disclosure by the manager. The paper analyzes two cases, a conservatism or write-down case in which disclosures can only be bad news, i.e., y c 0, and a more general case in which disclosures can be either bad news, y c 0, or good news, y > 0. The discussion here focuses on the former case.

Learning nothing of management

Learning nothing of management

Learning nothing of management

Learning nothing of management

Have You Ever Tried Contracting for Grades?

ABOUT midway through my third year of teaching sophomore English, it occurred to me that my students didn't seem to be learning anything. The more I thought about it and observed them, the more convinced I became that they were in fact learning nothing, except how to take tests; that is, how to memorize certain facts which they felt I felt were necessary to keep in mind long enough to write down on an exam, and then promptly forget. My attempted solution to the problem was this: to substitute independent projects for a unit exam, and to determine grades by a contractual agreement drawn up ahead of time, signed by the student and myself, which stipulated in detail specifically what work the student intended to com-

Secondary School Composition: Problems and Practices

An experience I had during adolescence-a difficult period under the best of circumstances-influenced my decision to devote my professional life to teaching and to teacher training, and to select this topic for discussion. An English teacher asked the class on a Friday afternoon to return the following Monday with a 300 word composition on fire prevention. Our final grade in English was to depend on it. I had never heard the word prevention-I was not a native English speaker, although bor in the United States-and I had never before been asked by any teacher to write a composition. In all fairness to her, she assumedas do so many teachers of language learners today-that some teacher before her-somewhere, sometime, somehow-had taught me what a composition was and how to write one. I do remember learning how to make French stitches in the sewing period and how to add columns of figures with great accuracy, but I had learned nothing about composition writing. My mental anguish that weekend over forty years ago was such that I have never forgotten it. How could I have been spared the anguish then? How could we prevent similar occurrences in thousands of

Compulsory Greek at Oxford and Cambridge

THE statute enabling students of mathematics and natural science to proceed to a degree at Oxford, without previously passing in Greek, has been rejected in the larger house by 200 votes to 164. At an earlier stage the proposal was adopted in the smaller assembly by the narrow majority of two votes. The discussion accordecf to the statute was brief, for the voters had probably made up their minds; but it revealed the fact that, while the familiar arguments as to culture and the humanities held sway with those who have “learned nothing and forgotten nothing,” some condemned the proposal, at least ostensibly, because it was too narrow. It would shut up school boys with a bent for mathematics or science to a “premature specialism,” if they alone had to be segregated, years before the university stage, from their happier fellows on the “classical side.”