Natural Talent Research Articles

Teaching the Next Generation

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Residents' ForumFull AccessTeaching the Next GenerationAngela Harper, M.D.Angela HarperSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:5 Sep 2003https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.38.17.0013For the last seven years, I have lived on an academic calendar rather than a yearly calendar.Something apparently happens on July 1 that automatically provides a greater fund of knowledge and competency to residents and medical students. I have always found it kind of amusing that this “switch” goes on every June 30, and that on July 1 I am somehow elevated to the next level of medical hierarchy.This year has been especially scary, considering that I am in my last year of general psychiatry residency and fewer than 365 days from being an R.D.—Real Doctor, of course.This most recent July 1 really seemed to hit home with me as a time of change, as I have taken a more active role in medical student teaching. I am currently the senior resident on the consultation-liaison psychiatry service. The team includes two third-year medical students, fresh from their M-2 year, ready to soak up clinical knowledge and happy to escape from the rigors of basic science courses.As you would expect, these students are unfamiliar with the hospital, unsure of how to write a note, and scared of being reprimanded for any mistake that they might make out of inexperience. Yet they are also very eager to learn and ask lots of questions.I find myself thinking back to my own third year of medical school and remembering how much I looked up to senior residents and the amount of teaching that they performed on a service. As each year of residency passes, I feel a greater sense of responsibility to make an effort to instill in students an appreciation for our specialty and to attempt to recruit those who have a natural talent for psychiatry.Oftentimes, I think we as residents depend on faculty to provide this service. Perhaps we become frustrated with the extra time that it requires to explain a confusing concept when we are post-call and just want to finish our duties and get home to bed. Maybe the long hours and many demands of residency contribute to some of us becoming cynical and bitter. However, I firmly believe that it is vitally important that we embrace the opportunity to teach as an integral part of our residency training.Outside of serving as a teacher on clinical rotations, other opportunities to teach and mentor students are easily accessible in most programs. At the University of South Carolina, for example, faculty seek out residents and encourage them to serve as small-group leaders to first-year medical students in their “Introduction to Clinical Medicine” course. Residents also serve as tutors to third-year students during their psychiatry clerkship and assist in the Objective Structured Clinical Exams (OSCEs).For the last three years, I have had the good fortune to serve as the resident advisor to the Psychiatry Interest Group. This group plays a huge role in cultivating medical students’ interest in psychiatry and dispelling some of the myths that students may have about our field. It has been enormously rewarding to me as a resident to share my enthusiasm about psychiatry with those who are considering this specialty as a career.As I finish my training, I am aware that the opportunity to teach may not be as available to me in the future, depending on what I choose to do with my career. For many of us, the future means dealing with managed care companies, playing telephone tag, studying for specialty boards, and worrying about paying the bills. Residency may be the last best chance for all of us to contribute to the strength and vitality of our profession as a teacher. I hope that we will all embrace this opportunity and consider it to be a privilege rather than a burden. ▪Dr. Harper is APA’s member-in-training trustee. ISSUES NewArchived

Complex Acts of Knowing: Paradox and Descriptive Self‐Awareness

We are reaching the end of the second generation of knowledge management, with its focus on tacit-explicit knowledge conversion. Triggered by the SECI model of Nonaka, it replaced a first generation focus on timely information provision for decision support and in support of BPR initiatives. Like BPR it has substantially failed to deliver on its promised benefits. The third generation requires the clear separation of context, narrative and content management and challenges the orthodoxy of scientific management. Complex adaptive systems theory is used to create a sense-making model that utilises self-organising capabilities of the informal communities and identifies a natural flow model of knowledge creation, disruption and utilisation. However the argument from nature of many complexity thinkers is rejected given the human capability to create order and predictability through collective and individual acts of freewill. Knowledge is seen paradoxically, as both a thing and a flow requiring diverse management approaches. The Cynefin Centre Membership of the Centre, which focuses on action research in organisational complexity is open to individuals and to organisations. It focuses on high-participation action research projects seeking new insights into the nature of organisations and markets using models derived from sciences that recognise the inherent uncertainties of systems comprised of interacting agents. However, the Centre is not about attempting to apply physical or biological models to organisations wholesale without attention to the uniquely human capacities of free will, awareness and social responsibility. It is about engaging human organisational complexity in its many manifestations, including the ancient collective and emergent patterns of narrative, ritual, negotiation of identity and truth, self-representation and knowledge exchange. The Centre is not about consultants or academics conducting multiple interviews or observations and deriving static hypothesises and models based on their outside "expertise". It is about creating focused dynamic interactions between traditional and unexpected sources of knowledge to enable the emergence of new meaning and insight. The Centre is based on a model of networked intelligence, creating a broad and loosely structured coalition of academics, industrial and governmental organisations to create new insight and understanding for its members into the complexity of managing in a new age of uncertainty. The basis of all Centre programmes is to look at any issue from multiple new perspectives and to facilitate problem solving through multiple interactions among programme participants. Programmes run on a national, international and regional basis and range from investigation of seemingly impossible or intractable problems to pragmatic early entry into new methods and tools such as narrative databases, social network stimulation and asymmetric threat response.

Democracy and Development: Are there Lessons from Turkey's Experience Applicable to Ethiopia?

profit from examining the experience of all countries in similar circumstances. Turkey, with a population almost exactly the same size as Ethiopia's, offers especially interesting parallels with Ethiopia because it, too, was never colonized. Like Ethiopia, Turkey is the proud heir of ancient traditions that have produced a keen sense of nationalism. Like Ethiopia, Turkey reached the twentieth century with a heavy burden of history and had to face the challenges of modernization and development in a region torn by political strife. Turkey's successful transformation from a politically and economically backward, stagnant country into one of the most dynamic societies of our time offers an example of the kind of progress Ethiopia can hope for during the twenty-first century. How did Turkey transform itself in little over half a century? Having had the good fortune to be familiar with both countries for more than 40 years, I offer a few observations based on experience and study. Turkey and Ethiopia have many things in common. To reiterate and expand on the summary given above, both have a complicated geography but lack major wealth in minerals and oil. Both have populations of mixed origins with great natural talent. Both have suffered strife and political turmoil. Both endured foreign invasions and still have several unstable and aggressive neighbors. In both countries, modern times brought a strong desire for education and development, first among

On the Importance of Never Making it to Mars

WHEN I was a child, my brother and I spent several weeks each summer visiting our cousin Mickey in Eastern Kentucky. He lived in Baptist Bottom, one of the narrow ribbons of flat land that separate the tightly clustered mountains in that area. One of our favorite adventures was blazing mountain trails. On our trailblazing days, we rolled out of bed early to pack our provisions of bologna, bread, and Kool-Aid. With the brown paper bags in tow, we began our climb. Winding around the steep mountainside, carefully avoiding sticker bushes and copperheads, we made our arduous way to the Elephant Rocks. Once there, we crawled inside an opening in the rocks to the spot where we started a small fire, placed our cast-iron skillet on the flames, and fried our bologna. On these expeditions, we often made plans to defend Baptist Bottom should the Nazis spring a surprise attack across the narrow wooden bridge that connected the Bottom to the rest of the world. Now should understand that the war had been over for many years, and, had it still been raging, it is hard to imagine what military advantage the Nazis might have sought in taking Baptist Bottom. Still, we were prepared. Houses in the Bottom were built on stilts to protect them from the annual floods. On hot summer days, the coolness created by the buffer of the house above us made the floor, as we called it, the perfect place to while away the hours. On one sweltering July day, it was under the floor that Aunt Leona taught me an important lesson. On this particular day, the boys were planning a trip to A year earlier, I might have been the main architect of such a plan. Being three years older, though, I had outgrown such foolishness. I had found a new role, one that built on certain of my natural talents. It was somewhat akin to playing Lucy to their Charlie Brown and Linus. Their Mars plans were quite clearly ridiculous, and I saw it as my responsibility to inform them of this fact. guys are crazy. You can't go to Mars in that thing. It's a bunch of crates. Crates can't hold up for a trip to Mars. I thought the science in that statement would help them see just how silly their plan was. They ignored me and continued planning. I returned to my diary, writing great thoughts about boys and Elvis and the injustice of my genetic link to two such simpletons. As they plotted, a big washtub became a central feature in their rocket design. The washtub, they decided, would hold the canisters of booster fuel (empty milk cartons and lard cans, as I recall) that would propel them through the galaxy. The only problem was that Aunt Leona kept the washtub filled with potted plants. Since they planned to blast off on that very day, the plants would have to go. Okay, I thought. This ought to be good. I knew Aunt Leona was not going to move all those geraniums on that hot day because these two fools wanted to explore space in a bunch of crates and a washtub. I watched with smug amusement as they tugged her into their workshop and enthusiastically explained their plan and her role in it. Aunt Leona and I had always been especially close. I knew I could count on her to straighten them out. Well, boys, she said in her lyrical mountain dialect, you let me know when you're ready, and I'll get those plants out of there right away. What? a voice inside my head screamed. Was I the only person not suffering from some kind of dementia? Assured the washtub would be ready when they needed it, the boys went back to work. A few hours later, Mickey and Tom decided to delay their Mars trip. They thought their time would be better spent planning to take over the world using two helicopters. Although I had been discouraged by Aunt Leona's defection, I couldn't let it pass. Two helicopters! I exclaimed. How can even two think could take over the world with only two helicopters? …

Punishment, property and justice: philosophical foundations of the death penalty and welfare controversies

Introduction - why justice is relevant to politics. Part 1 The death penalty and punishment: introduction revenge, pity and empathy - common roots of the death penalty debate emotion defended general deterrence singular deterrence and rehabilitation retribution Nietzsche's critique - the link between deterrence, retribution and revenge from punishment to ethics and political justice philosophical foundations - utilitariansim and deterrence hybrid theory - Rawls's Act utilitarianism philosophical foundations - retributive and Kantian deontology Furman vs. Georgia the link between retributive and distributive justice. Part 2 Welfare and distributive justice: introduction - is there a right to welfare? Locke on property, distributive justice and welfare Rousseau and the fundamental right to welfare Rawls's theory of justice Walzer and the critique of primary goods Rawls, work and the free-rider problem Nozick, Desert and natural talent should there be a constitutional right to welfare? Marx and the radical critique of the right to welfare distributive justice, property and the right to welfare.

BOOK REVIEWS: Writing and Presenting Scientific Papers

Abstract Effective writing and oral presentation skills are essential tools for any scientist. Nothing less than one's employment, grant support, publication record, and scientific impact all depend on these abilities. It is surprisingly rare, however, for graduate training programs to address these issues through formal study. As a consequence, I suspect that many young scientists enter the world of independent research with less than stellar writing skills, and I know from unfortunate experience that many seasoned scholars have yet to fully master the art of the scientific seminar. There is a clear need for instruction in these areas, but how can graduate trainers effectively teach their students these skills when they most likely acquired them only through the horrors of trial and error, or the luck of natural talent? Furthermore, how can an established scientist or a motivated student polish his or her communication skills through independent study? Malmfors, Garnsworthy, and Grossman provide lucid and concise answers to these questions in their very useful, no-nonsense handbook.

Emergent Flesh

This article examines connections between ancient training of the mind and body to delineate a concept of phusiopoiesis, the production of one’s nature. The category of nature (phusis) for the presocratics and sophists operates not as an essential and unchangeable state, but rather as a malleable disposition, one that can be altered through a process of production (poiesis). Such a configuration of phusis in pre-Socratic fragments, Hippocratic treatises, and philosophical discussions of the body, medicine, and training holds implications for ancient training practices, most especially challenging assumptions about the category of natural talent thought to be necessary for success as a rhetor or athlete. This bodily transformation entails at least three dynamics of phusiopoietic training: friendship, masochism, and erotics.

Red Grange and the Rise of Modern Football

Before the Super Bowl, before Monday Night Football, even before the NFL, there was Red Grange. Catapulted into the public eye in 1924 by scoring four touchdowns in twelve minutes for the University of Illinois, the Galloping Ghost went on to trailblazing career as professional player, Hollywood football idol, and broadcaster. He ranked with Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey in the 1920s as the most heralded figures in America's golden age of sport, and when Sports Illustrated did special issue in 1991 on the greatest moments in sports, Grange was selected for the cover. Grange's star rose in tandem with that of the sport itself. His spectacular performance as college player coincided with football's evolution into rallying point of university life, undergirded by post-World War I money, cars, roads, stadiums, and mass media. With natural talent and down-home image that helped legitimize professional football, Grange became one of the first athlete-heroes and the first major sports figure to serve as play-by-play broadcast commentator. John Carroll depicts the career of this softspoken pioneer who helped lift pro football above its reputation as a dirty little business run by rogues and bargain-basement entrepreneurs. A reluctant celebrity and folk hero, Red Grange stood throughout his life as symbol of older, rural American values: an unpretentious self-made individual making mark in society increasingly controlled by machines, vast corporations, and stifling bureaucracies. His story is an essential element in understanding football's central place in American culture.

Self-concepts, Usefulness and Behavioural Intentions in the Social Context of Schooling

This study examined contributions to adolescents' intentions for senior courses of study Variations were explored by gender, content domain and social context. Participants were adolescent girls and boys (n = 930) in co-educational and single-sex schools. Results generally supported an expectancy-value model of academic choice. Adolescents' intentions for further study were based on perceptions, rather than actual performance in Mathematics and English. At a personal level, there were cross-influences between domains about usefulness. At a social level, perceptions of natural talent added to explanations of intentions in the gendered context of schooling. The findings add to our understanding of the actual, personal and social basis of self-categorisations that contribute to educational choices.

Self-concepts, Usefulness and Behavioural Intentions in the Social Context of Schooling

This study examined contributions to adolescents' intentions for senior courses of study Variations were explored by gender, content domain and social context. Participants were adolescent girls and boys (n = 930) in co-educational and single-sex schools. Results generally supported an expectancy-value model of academic choice. Adolescents' intentions for further study were based on perceptions, rather than actual performance in Mathematics and English. At a personal level, there were cross-influences between domains about usefulness. At a social level, perceptions of natural talent added to explanations of intentions in the gendered context of schooling. The findings add to our understanding of the actual, personal and social basis of self-categorisations that contribute to educational choices.

Arkansas Listings in the National Register of Historic Places

The Commercial Building Designs of Charles L. Thompson CHARLES L. THOMPSON is one of the most celebrated architects in our state's history. He was born in Illinois in 1868. By the time Thompson turned fourteen, both his parents had died, and young Thompson went with his siblings to live with relatives in Indiana. He had to quit school at an early age to help support his family. He found a job assisting an architect who quickly recognized the young man's natural talents and set him to work doing architectural drawings. Although he received no formal education in architecture or design, Thompson was an avid reader and taught himself how to be a draftsman. In 1886, Thompson presented himself for interviews with architectural firms in several states, including at the Benjamin Bartlett firm of Little Rock. One can only imagine Bartlett's reaction at having seventeen-yearold Thompson show up on his doorstep and announce that he was ready to go to work as an architect. But Bartlett gave the youngster an opportunity to prove himself at the drafting table. Bartlett, it turned out, needed a new architect. His former chief designer, Max Orlopp, had recently left to open his own office (Orlopp would come to be known for having designed numerous buildings in Arkansas and Texas, including the Hornibrook House in Little Rock). Thompson's subsequent career spanned many decades, and he would be affiliated with several partners. When Bartlett moved to Mississippi in 1890, Thompson bought Bartlett's interest in the firm. In 1938, after fiftytwo years as a professional architect, Thompson announced he was retiring in order to devote more time to other interests. He died in 1959 at the age of ninety-one. Thompson was an extremely prolific designer, and many examples of his work still exist. Due to Thompson's stature as an architect, most of these surviving designs are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. His work included not only many private residences, churches, and public buildings but also commercial structures. A building intended for commerce uses its styling to convey a message to those who see it. The corporate headquarters for a multinational company may want to make a statement about the firm's size and importance to the economy by occupying a huge, expansive structure with thrilling decorations. A financial institution, on the other hand, might prefer to emphasize its conservative nature with design elements borrowed from the classical world. Historic bank buildings frequently resemble Greek and Roman temples, underscoring their devotion to longevity and continuity and hinting at prudence in long-range financial planning for customers. The Farmers State Bank at Conway in Faulkner County, designed in 1918, is a good example of this reliance on classical design to make a statement about the institution (this and other Thompson-designed properties discussed in this article were listed on the National Register on December 22, 1982). The facade of this building features four monumental columns as part of an overall design that pays homage to the ancient world. These columns, however, are engaged, meaning they are attached to the wall, which is not authentically classical but less expensive. The effect is to convey a sense of stability to design, precisely what a bank would want its clients to associate with the business. Another large, imposing, Thompson-designed building is the First National Bank of Morrilton in Conway County. This is the tallest building in town, rising five stories. …

Refuge Upon the Sea: Captivity and Liberty in The Florida Pirate

Refuge Upon the Sea:Captivity and Liberty in The Florida Pirate Daniel Williams (bio) In the final scene of The Florida Pirate, the escaped slave Manuel languished in a Charleston prison, awaiting execution for piracy. When his one remaining friend in either race visited him shortly before his death, he exclaimed: "Ah, is it you, sir? . . . you are the person I most wished to see. How kind it is in you to visit a poor negro! for I am no more now. I am glad to be treated as a rational creature by at least one white man."1 Here, in a jail cell a few hours before his death, Manuel lamented that he was nothing more than "a poor negro." Like the walls around him, the racist conventions that reduced him to being nothing more than an irrational creature awaiting ignoble execution held him captive. A prisoner of both criminal and linguistic codes, he was forced to become what his captors perceived him to be. Yet at his death Manuel also alluded to his having been something greater in life. While declaring his readiness to die, he stated: "I had a weary life of it. I was chased from the land, and took refuge upon the sea; but notwithstanding that, I could not escape the blood-hounds of the Southern States of America." Manuel's "refuge upon the sea" was a pirate ship. After suffering extreme abuse and even mutilation on land, he escaped into piracy, where—according to his narrative—he discovered an alternative social order that allowed him to exist as a free, rational creature. Once able to determine his own fate, he displayed his natural talents, ultimately becoming the captain of a pirate ship. Ironically, his downfall resulted not from southern bloodhounds but from his own rationality. As a rational creature, as a man of reason over passion, he refused to allow his crew to murder the survivors of their last pirate attack, but his compassion directly resulted in his destruction when three of the survivors led an American warship back to his ship's location. Thus, in the movement from slavery to piracy the narrative tracks Manuel's journey of self-realization from subjugation to liberation. Yet the pirate's rational self-governance made him ill suited for either extreme [End Page 71] and inexorably led him back to the ultimate negation of self in the ritual of execution. For English and American readers during the 1820s, the story offered a sensational tale of violence, love, and revenge while featuring two of the period's most dramatic subjects, slavery and piracy. Beneath its textual surface, however, the narrative carried turbulent currents concerning the limits of rationality and the near limitless capacity for human cruelty, mitigated only by momentary acts of charity. Strangely, by juxtaposing their cruel excesses, the narrative linked slavery and piracy. Although representing opposite polarities of human liberty, the two displayed similar levels of ruthless brutality and vicious self-interest. Manuel's fictional tale, The Florida Pirate, was first presented to Anglo-American readers in the August 1821 issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. The story was engaging enough that within a year Sylvester T. Goss, a New Hampshire printer in Haverhill, advertised his own edition of the story as the Life and Adventures of Manuel, the Florida Pirate. The following year W. Borradaile, a New York printer, thought the story was marketable enough to invest his own time and energy in producing three separate editions, all of which were printed in 1823 under the title The Florida Pirate, or An Account of the a Cruise in the Schooner Esparanza. Five years later another New York printer, S. King, still considered the story a marketable commodity and produced two separate editions in 1828. Six years later, in 1834, two Pittsburgh printers, Felt and Cook, published the final American edition of The Florida Pirate. Thus, in a little more than a decade, and at a time when few texts were reprinted in multiple editions, Manuel's story of slavery and piracy was printed a total of nine times on both sides of the Atlantic. Such relative frequency of publication clearly indicates that several American...

The Art of Scenarios and Strategic Planning: Tools and Pitfalls

The term strategy has been misused and even abused. Worse, the word scenario is often confused with strategy to the point that clarification is needed if we are to understand one another. As a prolongation of the work done by the Rand Corporation in the 1960s, strategic planning, management and prospective approaches have been developed to help organizations master change. Over the past 25 years, we have contributed by creating or further developing various methodologies and procedures such as the Mactor and MICMAC methods for use in scenario building. These tools are doubly powerful in that they stimulate the imagination, reduce collective biases, and promote appropriation. One of the main functions of the strategic futures exercise is to eliminate two errors that we usually describe as the “hammer's risk” and the “nail's dream.” In other words, we forget what a hammer's function is when staring at a nail (the nail's dream) or we know how to use a hammer and imagine that every problem is like a nail (the hammer's risk). In our case, we strive to give simple tools that may be appropriated. However, these simple tools are inspired by intellectual rigor that enables one to ask the right questions. Of course, these tools do not come with a guarantee. The natural talent, common sense, and intuition of the futurist also count!

Doniphan's Epic March: The First Missouri Volunteers in the Mexican War (review)

BOOK REVIEWS1 63 brief summaries of hundreds of court-martials, Lowry concludes that "much of Lincoln's clemency consisted of endorsing the recommendations of the several levels of reviewers as the case moved upwards toward the Presidential office" (258). Although Lincoln most often agreed with his chief legal adviser and his generals, he did not have to do so, and Lowry finds that "the legend of his compassion is not legend at all, but truth" (263). Despite the Lowrys' impressive research, this volume fails to take full advantage of this wealth of material. Several decisions hamper it. First, the study is based on a review of only roughly half of the court-martial records. Second, it excludes over 250 decisions by Lincoln because they are included in Roy P. Basler's Collected Works ofAbraham Lincoln. These unfortunate choices yield an incomplete record, even of Lincoln's decisions. Furthermore, the presentation of the material weakens its conclusions. The volume is organized around a curious mixture of the rank of the offender, the nature of the offense, and the geographical location of the offense. While the large proportion of officers as defendants in court-martials (20 percent) and their success in avoiding death penalties (100 percent) are remarkable, they were often charged with the same offenses that enlisted men were. Lowry also fails to offer a comparative perspective. While one would not expect the same type of detailed research, even anecdotal evidence of the attitudes of Jefferson Davis, James K. Polk, or leaders of other nations at war during the mid-nineteenth century toward military offenders would provide a valuable context in which to evaluate Lincoln's compassion. Students of the Civil War and ofAbraham Lincoln owe the Lowrys a debt for their assiduous research in the court-martial records and will look forward to their complete index of the material. Don 't Shoot That Boy! provides an initial foray into that material and illuminates a fascinating area for future study. Daniel W. Stowell The Lincoln Legal Papers Doniphan 's Epic March: The First Missouri Volunteers in the Mexican War. By Joseph C. Dawson HI. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999. Pp. xii, 325. $35.00.) Alexander Doniphan, a successful lawyer in Liberty, Missouri, was among the first in his state to volunteer for military service in 1846. Elected colonel of the First Missouri Mounted Volunteers, he ranked second in command to Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny on the expedition ordered to secure New Mexico and California. Recognizing Doniphan's legal skills, Kearny left the Missourian to supervise the military government in New Mexico while he continued on to California. When reinforcements arrived to occupy Santa Fe, Doniphan's regiment resumed the march southward towards Chihuahua. Demonstrating a natural l64CIVIL WAR HISTORY talent for miUtary command, he held the regiment together on a grueling winter march deep into enemy territory, far from any chance of support. At the battles of Brazito and Sacramento, he met and defeated Mexican forces much larger than his own, thereby diverting troops from Santa Anna's army and contributing toTaylor's victoryatBuenaVistain February 1847.Afteroneofthe longestmarches in military history, he and his men returned to a hero's welcome at home. Dawson's engaging narrative is military history in the broadest sense. While he presents a lucid account ofthe campaign and its battles, he also explores the motivation of Doniphan and his men, their interaction with Mexican civilians, and the response ofpress and public at home to their exploits. Because he relies primarily on diaries and memoirs by the men of Doniphan's regiment, the book is both a study ofDoniphan's leadership and ofways in which his men, through their attitudes and behavior, their discipline or lack of discipline at crucial moments , shaped the outcome ofthe campaign. Dawson presents a fine case study of American war-making at mid-century. It fills a gap in Mexican War literature , and is also ofvalue to those interested in the background of the Civil War. Though Doniphan himself would take no active part in that war, he set precedents for it. Doniphan and his men were among the first American soldiers to march deep into hostile territory, assume the role...

The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They are Changing the World

INSIGHTVolume 3, Issue 1 p. 58-58 Book Review The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They are Changing the World Ginny Lentz, Ginny Lentz virginia.lentz@otis.com Search for more papers by this author Ginny Lentz, Ginny Lentz virginia.lentz@otis.com Search for more papers by this author First published: 23 June 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/inst.20003158AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume3, Issue1April 2000Pages 58-58 RelatedInformation

The first sex: the natural talents of women and how they are changing the world

The first sex: the natural talents of women and how they are changing the world

The Gendered Nature of Competence: Specific and General Aspects of Self-Knowledge in Social Contexts1

A sense of academic competence combines at least 2 forms of gender stereotyping: an illusory glow about performance on specific tasks. and traditional gender stereotyping about general perceptions of natural talent. Flexible categorization in terms of generality and content suggests a multifaceted model of aspects of self-knowledge about Mathematics and English (ASK-ME). This paper demonstrates the flexibility of the ASK-ME model for adolescents (N= 1,360) in 2 social contexts (coed and single-gender schools). The forms of gender stereotyping combine so that where traditional gender stereotyping was reduced at single-gender schools, an illusory glow had more influence. One outcome was that boys in single-gender settings expressed enhanced perceptions of performance in mathematics and language. Results highlight the importance of generality and content in understanding the gendered nature of academic self-concepts in social contexts. Implications are for differential influences on the plans and choices adolescents make about work and study.

A postcolonial reading of mural art in South Africa

Introduction Most residents of South Africa's larger cities will, when prompted, immediately recall having noticed one or more wall paintings, or murals, somewhere in town. Fifteen years ago, it can be ascertained, the response to such a question would have been very different--mostly due to circumstances associated with South Africa's political situation under an oppressive apartheid regime. While there were a few murals in South African cities and townships during the 1970s and 80s (1), urban mural art has only recently emerged as a highly visible phenomenon and tremendously flourished ever since. This paper will focus mostly on so-called `community murals' (a term to be elaborated upon below) as opposed to muralised advertisement, graffiti, and commissioned wall decorations, often executed by a single artist, as well as all forms of traditional African rural homestead paintings (2). Community mural art is mostly a post-apartheid phenomenon, its emergence closely connected with political change and liberalisation in South Africa. Despite this close correlation with political processes, mural art appears to be strikingly unpolitical and uncritical in content. Murals are often perceived to be unchallenging, boringly re-iterating what we already know. They have a long tradition of being associated With advertisement or graffiti, justifying the fact that they are not taken seriously as art. (3) This paper will suggest that there is more to murals than meets the eye. It aims to challenge some of the common stereotypes and assumptions associated with urban community murals and question the customary (and often dismissive) ways of reading their contents. This attempt to reposition mural art is based on the premise that the reception and perceived meaning of murals may be a very different one to different communities (4) and that the current perception of mural art within academia rests solely on one societal group's reading and frames of reference. Postcolonial theory will provide the theoretical framework to first expose the subversive character of community murals as a form of visual arts practice located in opposition to `fine art', and then illustrate with reference to a few examples how a critical dimension manifests itself in the imagery of mural art in South Africa. `Community art' versus `fine art' Despite the current rapproachement of `high art' and `low art' realms in artistic practices and strategies of display, South Africa is still largely polarised between `fine art' on one end of the scale, and various forms of `low art', including craft, commercial art and what has been labelled `community art' on the other. `Fine art' usually implies academic training according to European (or more generally Western) models, although this may be substituted by more informal training if the artist is invested with great natural talent in accordance with the concept of `genius'. `Fine art' entails, knowledge and mastery of a specific norm of artistic ability, which is closely associated with Western aesthetic standards and artistic practices. `Fine art' in South Africa clearly follows international trends as evidenced, for example, by the recent 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Trade Routes--both in terms of art production and modes of display. After the end of South Africa's pariah status under apartheid and in particular the cultural boycott, South African artists clearly enjoy taking part in and meeting the challenges of a wide international competition in a global art world. `Community art' on the other hand, of which mural art plays an important part, is a collaborative art form that may involve the participation of non-trained artists, who do not necessarily adhere to `fine art' aesthetic standards and artistic techniques. Most importantly, community mural art often places more emphasis on the artistic process than on the final product, the painting itself. As opposed to such public art works as conventional monuments or sculptures, which could be called `fine art in public places', `community art' is highly site specific and presumes an active engagement of the local community in one form or another. …

BOOKS

Reviews: Bourdieu, Pierre. La domination masculineReviews: Brown, Annette N. (ed.). When is transition over? Kalamazoo, MI, W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 1999Reviews: Hopkins, Michael. The planetary bargain: Corporate social responsibility comes of ageReviews: Humphries, Jane; Rubery, Jill (eds.). The economics of equal opportunities.Recent books: Bales, Kevin. Disposable people: New slavery in the global economyRecent books: Ferber, Marianne A. (ed.). Women in the labor market.Recent books: Fisher, Helen. The first sex: The natural talents of women and how they are changing the worldRecent books: Gruppo di Studio e Ricerca PERSONA E LAVORO, coordinated by Piera Fabris. Còdice di diritto internazionale e comunitario del lavoro corredato di note esplicative e riferimenti normativiRecent books: Hales, Dianne. Just like a woman: How gender science is redefining what makes us femaleRecent books: Majnoni d'Intignano, Béatrice. Egalité entre femmes et hommes: Aspects économiques. Paris, La Documentation française, 1999. Report to the Conseil d'Analyse economique du Premier Ministre. With comments by Michel Aglietta and Gilbert Cette and further contributions from Michel Glaude, Annie Fouquet, Annie Gauvin and Marie‐Thérèse LetablierRecent books: Tiger, Lionel. The decline of malesRecent books: Tinker, Irene; Summerfield, Gale (eds.) Women's rights to house and land: China, Laos, VietnamNew ILO publications: Adjustment, employment and missing institutions in Africa: The experience in eastern and southern Africa. Edited by Willem van der Geest and Rolph van der HoevenNew ILO publications: Credit unions and the poverty challenge: Extending outreach, enhancing sustainability. Edited by Bernd BalkenholNew ILO publications: Employment and labour market policies in transition economies. By Alena NesporovaNew ILO publications: Freedom of association: An annotated bibliography.New ILO publications: Key Indicators of the Labour Market 1999. Geneva, 1999. Tables, boxes, figures, maps, appendices. Book: 140 Swiss francs, ISBN 92–2–110833–3; CD‐ROM plus a brochure KILM country profilesNew ILO publications: Modelling in health care finance: A compendium of quantitative techniques for health care financing. By Michael Cichon, William Newbrander, Hiroshi Yamabana, Axel Weber, Charles Normand, David Dror and Alexander PrekerNew ILO publications: The roles of evaluation for vocational education and training: Plain talk on the field of dreams. By W. Norton Grubb and Paul Rya

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Christopher Wills, Children of Prometheus: The Accelerating Pace of Human Evolution Helen Fisher, The First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World Lionel Tiger, The Decline of Males Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order Tom Kirkwood, Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging Margo J. Anderson And Stephen E. Fienberg, Who Counts? The Politics of Census‐Taking in Contemporary America Alain Desrosières, The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning. Translation by Camille Naish of La politique des grands nombres: histoire de la raison statistique. Henk A. de Gans, Population Forecasting 1895–1945: The Transition to Modernity Massimo Livi‐Bacci and Gustavo De Santis (eds.), Population and Poverty in the Developing World William A. Jackson, The Political Economy of Population Ageing Dorothy J. Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market