Scholastic backtracks, saying it will stop separating diverse books for fairs in 2024; NPR, October 25, 2023

Rachel Treisman , NPR; Scholastic backtracks, saying it will stop separating diverse books for fairs in 2024

"In a statement issued Wednesday, Scholastic said it will keep in mind the needs of the children it serves as well as educators facing local content restrictions. 

"It is unsettling that the current divisive landscape in the U.S. is creating an environment that could deny any child access to books, or that teachers could be penalized for creating access to all stories for their students," it wrote.

PEN America, the nonprofit organization that supports free speech, acknowledged Scholastic's dilemma and applauded its decision to pivot. 

"Scholastic recognized that, as difficult a bind as this pernicious legislation created, the right answer was not to become an accessory to censorship," Jonathan Friedman, the director of its Free Expression and Education program, said in a statement. "Scholastic is an essential source of knowledge and a delight for countless children. We are glad to see them champion the freedom to read.""

A Moral Panic: ChatGPT and the Gamification of Education; Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, February 6, 2023

Susan Kennedy, Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University; A Moral Panic: ChatGPT and the Gamification of Education

"Surprisingly, the panic over ChatGPT doesn’t actually seem to be about ChatGPT. It’s not all that impressive, nor is it significantly more effective than the “old ways” of cheating. Instead, the panic seems to be fueled by the expectation that students won’t be able to resist the temptation to use it and that cheating will become rampant. The release of ChatGPT is forcing educators to confront a much deeper issue that has been taking shape for quite some time; students who are becoming increasingly obsessed with grades, GPAs, and completing a degree, and who are willing to go to great, and sometimes unethical, lengths to achieve these things. 

This transformation that is taking place is best explained by the gamification of education. Gamification refers to the process of adding game-like elements, such as points, scores, rankings and badges, to make non-game activities more pleasurable. As philosopher C. Thi Nguyen has argued, part of what makes gamification so appealing is that it trades complexity for simplicity. Our values and goals become much clearer once we have quantified metrics for measuring our progress and success.

In education, gamification takes the form of metrics like exam scores, course grades, GPA, and the completion of a degree. Without these metrics in place, it would be difficult to know when one has made progress towards, or been successful in, their pursuit of the true values of education. After all, the values associated with a good education are diverse and complex, including personal transformation, the cultivation of skills, exposure to diverse worldviews, becoming a more informed citizen, etc. Gamification offers some relief from this complexity by providing unmistakable metrics for success.

The problem with gamification is that, over time, it can transform our values and the very nature of the activity such that we begin to lose sight of what really matters. When students enter college, they may be motivated by a meaningful set of values that can be realized in the context of education. For some students, their grades and GPA are just a useful means to measure their progress towards those goals. But for other students, their values wind up being replaced by these metrics such that “getting an A” or “graduating with a 4.0” becomes the end. 

For the students who get swept up by gamification, ChatGPT is unlikely to strike them as morally wrong or problematic. If a student no longer values education for its own sake, then there would seem to be nothing to lose by using ChatGPT. They won’t see it as cheating themselves out of an education, but merely an easy avenue for a passing grade in a course or completing a college degree. When framed this way, the panic over ChatGPT starts to make a lot more sense. Educators are afraid because they know that, despite their best efforts to adapt their assessments to promote learning outcomes in the face of ChatGPT, these efforts will fall short until they can loosen the grip that gamification has on their students."

Accused of Cheating by an Algorithm, and a Professor She Had Never Met; The New York Times, May 27, 2022

Kashmir Hill, The New York Times; Accused of Cheating by an Algorithm, and a Professor She Had Never Met

An unsettling glimpse at the digitization of education.

"The most serious flaw with these systems may be a human one: educators who overreact when artificially intelligent software raises an alert.

“Schools seem to be treating it as the word of God,” Mr. Quintin said. “If the computer says you’re cheating, you must be cheating.”"

NCAC Launches Book Challenge Crisis Hotline and Censorship Database | News Bites; School Library Journal, February 10, 2022

SLJ Staff , School Library Journal ; NCAC Launches Book Challenge Crisis Hotline and Censorship Database | News Bites

"In response to the rising number of book challenges and attempted book bans in K-12 libraries and classrooms, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has launched a Book Challenge Crisis Hotline and a Youth Censorship Database and Map.

The hotline allows educators to report an incident to an NCAC staff member, ask questions, and get the answers needed to help defend the right to read. The virtual meetings are confidential, and no information is shared without permission.

In addition to the hotline, the NCAC has launched a searchable database and map intended to create a better understanding of the attempts to censor intellectual freedom and access in K-12 schools and libraries. The information can be filtered by the type of censorship—be it a book challenge, attempt to remove artwork or a display, or hinder the freedom of expression in appearance, at an event, in a yearbook, or on social meeting—as well as the year, age level of those impacted, and who filed the complaint.

To report attempted censorship without using the hotline, educators can fill out a form online."

The Sandy Hook Father Who Refused to Let Alex Jones Win; The New York Times, February 10, 2022

Kara Swisher, The New York Times; The Sandy Hook Father Who Refused to Let Alex Jones Win

Conspiracy theories have loomed over the school shooting in which his son, Noah, died. Leonard Pozner reflects on how the truth can triumph online.

"I’m Kara Swisher, and you’re listening to “Sway.” Today I want to talk about how the information age has become the misinformation age. From Covid deniers to QAnon enthusiasts and big lie believers, it sometimes feels like we live in a post-truth world. In fact, it feels like we already live there all the time now.

My guest today is no stranger to that. Leonard Pozner is the father of Noah, who, in 2012, at only age six, was murdered at the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. Noah was one of 20 children and six educators who lost their lives in that massacre. And while much of America mourned the tragedy, some did not. Rumors abounded online, calling Sandy Hook a hoax. Amongst the chief conspiracists, conservative talk show host and founder of Infowars, Alex Jones."

Book Ban Efforts Spread Across the U.S.; The New York Times, January 30, 2022

Elizabeth A. Harris andAlexandra Alter, The New York Times; Book Ban Efforts Spread Across the U.S.

Challenges to books about sexual and racial identity are nothing new in American schools, but the tactics and politicization are.

"“It’s a pretty startling phenomenon here in the United States to see book bans back in style, to see efforts to press criminal charges against school librarians,” said Suzanne Nossel, the chief executive of the free-speech organization PEN America, even if efforts to press charges have so far failed.

Such challenges have long been a staple of school board meetings, but it isn’t just their frequency that has changed, according to educators, librarians and free-speech advocates — it is also the tactics behind them and the venues where they play out. Conservative groups in particular, fueled by social media, are now pushing the challenges into statehouses, law enforcement and political races...

So far, efforts to bring criminal charges against librarians and educators have largely faltered, as law enforcement officials in Florida, Wyoming and elsewhere have found no basis for criminal investigations. And courts have generally taken the position that libraries should not remove books from circulation.

Nonetheless, librarians say that just the threat of having to defend against charges is enough to get many educators to censor themselves by not stocking the books to begin with. Even just the public spectacle of an accusation can be enough.

“It will certainly have a chilling effect,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association’s office for intellectual freedom."

Artificial intelligence is getting better at writing, and universities should worry about plagiarism; The Conversation, November 4, 2021

Michael Mindzak and Sarah Elaine Eaton , The Conversation; Artificial intelligence is getting better at writing, and universities should worry about plagiarism

"The dramatic rise of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has spotlit concerns about the role of technology in exam surveillance — and also in student cheating. 

Some universities have reported more cheating during the pandemic, and such concerns are unfolding in a climate where technologies that allow for the automation of writing continue to improve.

Over the past two years, the ability of artificial intelligence to generate writing has leapt forward significantly, particularly with the development of what’s known as the language generator GPT-3. With this, companies such as Google, Microsoft and NVIDIA can now produce “human-like” text.

AI-generated writing has raised the stakes of how universities and schools will gauge what constitutes academic misconduct, such as plagiarism. As scholars with an interest in academic integrity and the intersections of work, society and educators’ labour, we believe that educators and parents should be, at the very least, paying close attention to these significant developments."

Educators Urge Parents And High Schools To Make Ethics The Heart Of College Applications; WBUR, On Point, March 18, 2019

WBUR, On Point;

Educators Urge Parents And High Schools To Make Ethics The Heart Of College Applications

 

"A new report is calling on parents and high schools to put ethical character at the center of college admissions.

The report, though long planned, comes out as the country is still reeling from revelations that wealthy parents bribed standardized test administrators, college coaches and at least one former college trustee to admit students who might not otherwise have been qualified...

The authors make several recommendations to parents:

1. Keep the focus on your teen. "It's critical for parents to disentangle their own wishes from their teen's wishes," the authors write.
2. Follow your ethical GPS. The authors advise parents not to let their own voice intrude in college essays, and to not look the other way when hired tutors are over-involved in applications.
3. Use the admissions process as an opportunity for ethical education.
4. Be authentic. The authors recommend not sending conflicting messages to their children about what kind of college they should try to get into.
5. Help your teen contribute to others in meaningful ways. "Service trips to distant countries or launching a new service project are ... not what matters to admissions deans," the authors say. They recommend parents focus on their children's authentic interests instead.
6. Advocate for elevating ethical character and reducing achievement-related distress.
7. Model and encourage gratitude."

How to Teach High-School Students to Spot Fake News; Slate, 12/21/16

Chris Berdik, Slate; How to Teach High-School Students to Spot Fake News:

"The exercise was part of “Civic Online Reasoning,” a series of news-literacy lessons being developed by Stanford University researchers and piloted by teachers at a few dozen schools. The Stanford initiative launched in 2015, joining a handful of recent efforts to help students contend with misinformation and fake news online—a problem as old as dial-up modems but now supercharged by social media and partisan news bubbles. The backers of these efforts warn that despite young people’s reputation as “digital natives,” they are woefully unprepared to sort online fact from fiction, and the danger isn’t just to scholarship but to citizenship...

Kahne plans to study news-literacy efforts to discover what specific strategies get young people to value facts, whether they bolster their existing beliefs or contradict them. For now, one popular suggestion by news-literacy educators is to tap teenagers’ instinctive aversion to people telling them what to think.

“One of the messages we’ve tried to stress more and more lately with the rise of fake news is this: Do you want to be fooled?” said Jonathan Anzalone, assistant director of the Center for News Literacy. “Wouldn’t you rather make up your own mind?”"

New Era for Disability Rights; Inside Higher Ed, 11/7/16

Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed; New Era for Disability Rights:

"Disability studies scholars and legal experts say lawsuits like Dudley’s against Miami represent a shift in activism, where high-profile cases help raise awareness about the challenges facing students in an increasingly digital world. More than two decades after the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 was signed into law, advocacy groups are pushing to clarify how it and other laws that prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities apply to technology that at the time seemed like science fiction but now has become reality. At the same time, those and other groups are pushing for new legislation, keeping one eye on the upcoming process to rewrite the Higher Education Act...

Jonathan S. Fansmith, who works in government relations for ACE [American Council on Education], said in an interview that the associations are looking for a middle ground with regulations that ensure core university functions -- registering for classes, paying tuition and so on -- are accessible to anyone but don’t stifle university research output.

“We want to do the right thing here,” Fansmith said. “We want to do it the right way. We want to have cognizance of a process that’s thoughtful, deliberate and can actually be achieved so you don’t get schools that say, ‘Look, this is going to be so costly, so burdensome.’”"

Teaching business ethics; University World News, 9/23/16

Margaret Andrews, University World News; Teaching business ethics:

"I’m not sure that some of these are universal values, but, nonetheless, both sources point to ambiguity and that ethics is not always dealing with ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, but may sometimes be a choice of a lesser of evils, a nuanced decision dealing with trade-offs or viewed as situational. Hence some of the problems we have in teaching ethics – and getting people, ourselves included, acting in an ethical manner...

So how can we improve our students’ ethical decision making? Good question. EthicalSystems.org, a not-for-profit organisation housed at New York University, collects and shares research on ethics that hopes to demonstrate that “in the long run, good ethics is good business”.

The research is really interesting and spans a wide variety of topics, including accounting, cheating and honesty, contextual influences, corporate culture, corporate governance, corruption, decision-making, leadership and teaching ethics, among others. The site also offers activities and cases on how to teach ethics, as well as a host of resources in this area.

How does your school teach ethics? What works and what is just wishful thinking? How might we approach the problem differently? How might we better instil ethics in students – and the broader business community?"

Campuses Cautiously Train Freshmen Against Subtle Insults; New York Times, 9/6/16

Stephanie Saul, New York Times; Campuses Cautiously Train Freshmen Against Subtle Insults:

"The exchange was included in Ms. Marlowe’s presentation to recently arriving first-year students focusing on subtle “microaggressions,” part of a new campus vocabulary that also includes “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings.”

Microaggressions, Ms. Marlowe said, are comments, snubs or insults that communicate derogatory or negative messages that might not be intended to cause harm but are targeted at people based on their membership in a marginalized group."

Students' Broken Moral Compasses; Atlantic, 7/25/16

Paul Barnwell, Atlantic; Students' Broken Moral Compasses:

"At a recent convening of 15 teacher-leaders from around the country at the Center for Teaching Quality in Carrboro, North Carolina, I spoke to some colleagues about the balance between teaching academic content and striving to develop students’ moral identities. Leticia Skae-Jackson, an English teacher in Nashville, Tennessee, and Nick Tutolo, a math teacher in Pittsburgh, both commented that many teachers are overwhelmed by the pressure and time demands in covering academic standards. Focusing on character and ethics, they said, is seen as an additional demand.

Nonetheless, Tutolo engages his math students at the beginning of the school year by focusing on questions of what it means to be a conscientious person and citizen while also considering how his class could address community needs. His seventh-grade class focused on the issue of food deserts in Pittsburgh and began a campaign to build hydroponic window farms. While learning about ratios and scaling—skills outlined in the Common Core math standards—students began working to design and distribute the contraptions to residents in need, a project that will continue this fall as Tutolo “loops” up to teach eighth grade."

Young fogies: Modern illiberalism is led by students; Washington Post, 11/30/15

Catherine Rampell, Washington Post; Young fogies: Modern illiberalism is led by students:

"These are real subjects of student complaints, as reported by professors in a new survey released by the National Coalition Against Censorship.

About 800 members of the Modern Language Association and the College Art Association, two large scholarship organizations, participated in an opt-in online poll in the spring. While this wasn’t a scientific survey, it nonetheless was the first major attempt to look beyond isolated anecdotes and better gauge the scope and usage of trigger warnings, among other efforts to bowdlerize academic discourse.

The takeaway? Trigger warning mandates remain rare, but plenty of educators (and presumably students) already feel their chilling effects on speech...

Fewer than 1 percent of survey respondents said their institutions had adopted policies on trigger warnings, but 7.5 percent said students at their institutions had initiated efforts to require them. Twice as many — 15 percent — reported that students in their own classes had requested trigger warnings. Likewise, 12 percent said their students had complained when they hadn’t been warned about distressing content.

A majority of educators (58 percent) said they’ve voluntarily provided some sort of warnings about course content, though the warnings may have been broadly worded and they didn’t necessarily allow students to opt out of course materials."

Keeping an Eye on Online Test-Takers; New York Times, 3/2/13

Anne Eisenberg, New York Times; Keeping an Eye on Online Test-Takers: "The issue of online cheating concerns many educators, particularly as more students take MOOCs for college credit, and not just for personal enrichment. Already, five classes from Coursera, a major MOOC provider, offer the possibility of credit, and many more are expected...The developing technology for remote proctoring may end up being as good — or even better — than the live proctoring at bricks-and-mortar universities, said Douglas H. Fisher, a computer science and computer engineering professor at Vanderbilt University who was co-chairman of a recent workshop that included MOOC-related topics. “Having a camera watch you, and software keep track of your mouse clicks, that does smack of Big Brother,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem any worse than an instructor at the front constantly looking at you, and it may even be more efficient.”"