The perceived value of the work declines when a woman does it
When women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines — for the very same jobs that more men were doing before.
In a discouraging article in the New York Times, I read that the pay gap, often explained by the fact that women are in more of the lower-paying professions, such as teaching, admin work, and social work, is actually better explained by the fact that when women do work, that work is automatically devalued, though the same work was done by men. The study from Cornell University provided evidence that employers believe that work done by women has less impact, doesn’t contribute to the bottom line, and is less important than work done by men.
I also learned from this article that of the 30 highest-paying jobs, including chief executive, architect and computer engineer, 26 are male-dominated.
Comments Sections: A Clarification
Nick Bilton: One of the realizations I’ve had about startups is that they take on the DNA of their founding fathers or mothers. Caterina Fake told me when they started Flickr that they wanted it to be a pleasant experience and a happy platform. So with the first few thousand photographs that were up there, all the employees at Flickr wrote all these really nice notes. Even if it wasn’t the most beautiful photo, they’d say, This is the most beautiful photo I’ve ever seen. I love the framing. It created, from the beginning, this very happy place.
There are many true things in Nick’s statement in an article about Twitter in Fast Company. We very consciously created the comments section of Flickr, we did want Flickr to be a happy place, and for a long time it was. We wanted people to behave in a civilized way, and they did. We did not want to comments to devolve into glib pronouncements, snarky putdowns and ad hominem attacks as they so often do. We wanted real connection, appreciation and human flourishing.
However, we never exhorted people to say something was beautiful that was not beautiful, and Flickr, and I, and the team were all deeply committed to the idea that you honor the wholeness of people, and that your comments be thoughtful. The team was encouraged to participate in all the conversations, because it is the founding team that determines how the software will behave, who set the tone, define the limits of what is tolerated on the service, which I wrote about in Wired.
The idea was the opposite of blanketing the comments sections with compliments, superlatives or “Likes”. We tried to think about the photos we were looking at. Say something thoughtful. And that was what we were with great effort building into Flickr’s comments sections, which can easily become transactional, liking, and hearting,”Great!””Beautiful”,”Love it”! and on to more liking and hearting. Thinking about things takes time. It’s a slower internet. It’s a better internet.
Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Processes
I have been thinking about thinking, and found this useful taxonomy by Benjamin Bloom, who in 1956 devised a taxonomy to discriminate between levels of cognitive thinking. The article notes that although the original intention of the taxonomy was to facilitate communication between educators and psychologists in the area of test construction, research and curriculum development, it has been found to be useful in distinguishing areas of study and classroom activities based on the taxonomy.
Bloom’s Taxonomy consists of six levels:
Knowledge
Recall or recognition of specific information
Comprehension
Understanding of information given
Application
Using methods, concepts, principles and theories in new situations
Analysis
Breaking information down into its constituent elements
Synthesis
Putting together constituent elements or parts to form a whole requiring original, creative thinking.
Evaluation
Judging the value of ideas, materials, and methods by developing and applying standards and criteria
There’s a path from the lower-to-higher level thinking, knowledge to evaluation which can be led by teachers through the use questioning, discussion and tasks.
The article also notes that while students need to be exposed to experiences at all levels of the Taxonomy, opportunities to work at more advanced levels are vital for gifted students. Often their advanced knowledge and comprehension skills enable them to progress more rapidly to higher levels of thinking, such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
n+1 article: Yarmouk Miniatures
Last night I read an article, Yarmouk Miniatures, appearing in Issue 23 of n+1 magazine, which made the situation in Syria vivid for me in a way that the none of the news and articles I’ve read ever did. I visited Syria long ago, and spent a lot of time in particular in Aleppo, now all but destroyed. The people were kinder than any I had met in my travels, anywhere and it was a magical country, living under, even then, a harsh regime.
The article, written by English writer Matthew McNaught, tells the story of how he got to know many Syrians in Yarmouk when he was living there and learning Arabic. He tells of the teacher, Mazen, his parties, and the social circle surrounding him, and especially of the books Mazen had him read. One of these was Historical Miniatures by Sa’dallah Wannous, a playwright, who wrote political theatre. Mazen told McNaught that the miniatures of the title referred to detailed paintings celebrating legendary warriors and great battles and were meant to validate imperial rule and their domination of other peoples. Mazen explained:
Wannous…wanted to play with this convention. He chose a setting straight out of these victors’ narratives but passed over the buff men lopping off heads, the battles, the imperial pomp and ceremony. Instead, he portrayed the people usually left outside the frame of history. The quiet silk weaver and his wife. The refugee girl who cuts her hair and disguises herself as a boy to escape exploitation. The trader finding ways to discreetly profit from war. The religious leaders, united in their pious public rhetoric, each picking out his own private compromise among convictions, self-interest, and fear.
The stories of those people that I met in the streets of Syria all those years ago are the people we care about, not the “people” who are abstracted away in the nightly news. The article was illuminating, and if you subscribe to n+1, in itself a great magazine, you can get access to all the digital versions. Here is one of the stories McNaught relates from Historical Miniatures, The Silk Weaver:
A small house within the city walls. A young couple, Marwan and Khadija, are arguing. They have heard the news of the approaching armies and are discussing the choice that lies ahead of them. Khadija wants to stay. “I’d rather be with our own people and meet our fate together than beg on some foreign street. We’ll lose everything if we go. The house, your workshop and loom.” But for Marwan, the uncertainty of flight is preferable to the certainty of violence and destruction if they stay. He has heard of the savagery in Aleppo. He is a silk weaver, not a soldier, and the prospect of taking up arms against Tamerlane’s armies seems absurd and suicidal. The argument goes back and forth until Khadija takes Marwan by the hand. ‘‘I’m tired of all this argument and hesitation,” she says. “Since dawn we’ve been torturing ourselves. If you’ve made your decision, let’s just leave. The bags are already packed. Go and pray. I’ll get dressed.”
Marwan holds on to Khadija, whispering words of adoration, pleading with her to come back to the bedroom: “Just let me taste your sweet honey before we leave.” Khadija wriggles out of his embrace: “Not now, Marwan!” She starts dragging bags to the front door. “Look, are we leaving or not?” Moments later, there is a knock at the door. It is Khadija’s brother Ahmed. He tells them that the city gates have been locked. All travel is forbidden. The palace guard has been ordered to fortify the citadel and arm all men of military age. They have missed their last chance to leave.
More reading:
Syria Speaks, an anthology of recent writing from Syria, including the work of Ali Ferzat, Samar Yazbek, Khaled Khalifa and Robin Yassin-Kassab.
Teachers dislike creative children
Do teachers dislike creative children in spite of their assertions to the contrary? 96% of teachers say that daily classroom time should be dedicated to creative thinking. And yet they seem biased against the very children whose thinking is most creative. At school, creative children are punished rather than rewarded, and the system seems designed to extinguish creativity. In spite of all the lip service.
The characteristics that teachers value in the classroom are those associated with the lowest levels of creativity. Teachers want students to be responsible, reliable, dependable, clear-thinking, tolerant, understanding, peaceable, good-natured, moderate, steady, practical and logical. Creativity is not moderate or logical. It is associated with characteristics such as determined, independent and individualistic, people who make up the rules as she goes along, divergent rather than conformist ways of thinking. You can read some of the research in this article.
For good reason Ken Robinson’s talk, Do Schools Kill Creativity? is the most viewed talk on the TED web site. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original,” he says, and rightness and wrongness, as anyone who has ever received a graded paper can attest, is the very backbone of education.
The gulf between rhetoric and reality isn’t really that surprising. It’s nearly impossible for a teacher, outnumbered by his charges, to help the rebels and mavericks flourish in an environment requiring more supervision than vision. The system is set up for teachers to prefer the obedient.
Eileen Myles, an interview and a poem
It was with great satisfaction, and not without amusement that I read several recent interviews with and profiles of Eileen Myles, a poet who has always been much beloved, but who has only recently become the kind of poet profiled by the New York Times. I am always happy to see poets given big profiles in the mainstream press; right after this, I found another profile in The New Yorker. In this brief interview, from the Talk column in the Sunday Magazine, there was so much to love:
Poetry always, always, always is a key piece of democracy. It’s like the un-Trump: The poet is the charismatic loser. You’re the fool in Shakespeare; you’re the loose cannon. As things get worse, poetry gets better, because it becomes more necessary.
Which is not unlike what Ursula LeGuin said recently in the speech she gave upon receiving an award from the National Book Awards. Myles’ hyperbole is funny:
I think it would be a great time for men, basically, to go on vacation. There isn’t enough work for everybody. Certainly in the arts, in all genres, I think that men should step away. I think men should stop writing books. I think men should stop making movies or television. Say, for 50 to 100 years.
An American Poem
I was born in Boston in1949. I never wantedthis fact to be known, infact I’ve spent the betterhalf of my adult lifetrying to sweep my earlyyears under the carpetand have a life thatwas clearly just mineand independent ofthe historic fate ofmy family. Can youimagine what it waslike to be one of them,to be built like them,to talk like themto have the benefitsof being born into sucha wealthy and powerfulAmerican family. I wentto the best schools,had all kinds of tutorsand trainers, traveledwidely, met the famous,the controversial, andthe not-so-admirableand I knew froma very early age thatif there were ever anypossibility of escapingthe collective fate of this famousBoston family I wouldtake that route andI have. I hoppedon an Amtrak to NewYork in the early‘70s and I guessyou could saymy hidden yearsbegan. I thoughtWell I’ll be a poet.What could be morefoolish and obscure.I became a lesbian.Every woman in myfamily looks likea dyke but it’s reallystepping off the flagwhen you become one.While holding this ignominiouspose I have seen andI have learned andI am beginning to thinkthere is no escapinghistory. A woman Iam currently havingan affair with saidyou know you looklike a Kennedy. I feltthe blood rising in mycheeks. People havealways laughed atmy Boston accentconfusing “large” for“lodge,” “party”for “potty.” Butwhen this unsuspectingwoman invoked forthe first time myfamily nameI knew the jigwas up. Yes, I am,I am a Kennedy.My attempts to remainobscure have not servedme well. Starting asa humble poet Iquickly climbed to thetop of my professionassuming a position ofleadership and honor.It is right that awoman should callme out now. Yes,I am a Kennedy.And I awaityour orders.You are the New Americans.The homeless are wanderingthe streets of our nation’sgreatest city. Homelessmen with AIDS are amongthem. Is that right?That there are no homesfor the homeless, thatthere is no free medicalhelp for these men. And women.That they get the message—as they are dying—that this is not their home?And how are yourteeth today? Canyou afford to fix them?How high is your rent?If art is the highestand most honest formof communication ofour times and the youngartist is no longer ableto move here to speakto her time…Yes, I could,but that was 15 years agoand remember—as I mustI am a Kennedy.Shouldn’t we all be Kennedys?This nation’s greatest cityis home of the business-man and home of therich artist. People withbeautiful teeth who are noton the streets. What shallwe do about this dilemma?Listen, I have been educated.I have learned about WesternCivilization. Do you knowwhat the message of WesternCivilization is? I am alone.Am I alone tonight?I don’t think so. Am Ithe only one with bleeding gumstonight. Am I the onlyhomosexual in this roomtonight. Am I the onlyone whose friends havedied, are dying now.And my art can’tbe supported until it isgigantic, bigger thaneveryone else’s, confirmingthe audience’s feeling that they arealone. That they aloneare good, deservedto buy the ticketsto see this Art.Are working,are healthy, shouldsurvive, and arenormal. Are younormal tonight? Everyonehere, are we all normal.It is not normal forme to be a Kennedy.But I am no longerashamed, no longeralone. I am notalone tonight becausewe are all Kennedys.And I am your President.
Doubt in Buddhism
“Doubt is the fifth of the five hindrances to insight in meditation teaching, writes Sharon Salzburg, in a post about doubting.” The other hindrances, grasping, aversion, sleepiness, and restlessness are easier to see than doubt, she says, as it “often disguises itself to us as something skillful, like a brilliant thought.” Brilliant thoughts are often the crafty method used to avoid difficult things such as acceptance or understanding.
Salzburg’s post provides these other thoughts: “Don’t believe anything. See for yourself what’s true,” from Buddha, which, like much great wisdom, come across as obvious, a platitude, but is not. And I was also struck by what Salzburg’s guru said in response to some students going off and trying out other gurus, “The dharma (the truth, the nature of things, the way or the path to freedom) doesn’t suffer from comparison.”
Ellen Cantor at the Wattis
There are only a few days left to see the Ellen Cantor show at the Wattis, curated by Jamie Stevens and Fatima Hellberg.
Jamie Stevens writes, in an introduction to the show:
A prolific artist who lived between New York and London, Cantor combined ready–made materials with diaristic notes and drawings to probe her perceptions and experiences of personal desire and institutional violence.
In her drawings, paintings, collages, and videos, Cantor lifted characters and sequences from iconic films, reorienting the ideological transmissions of the source material. Fictional figures from Disney cartoons, cult horror films, New Wave cinema, and family movies provide a visual foil to Cantor’s intimate disclosures. Magnetized by the doeful naivety of characters such as Snow White and Bambi, Cantor would, in her drawings, extend their narrative horizons to include vivid sexual encounters and crisis–ridden relationships.
For the final eight years of her life, Cantor was working on the feature–length film Pinochet Porn. Originally a suite of drawings named Circus Lives from Hell (2005), Pinochet Porn is an episodic narrative about five children growing up under the regime of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Featuring a cast of close friends and collaborators, and shot in New York and London, Pinochet Porn stages a libidinal critique of the systematic and sadistic destruction of self–expression and experience.
The Wattis is one of the best things about the San Francisco art scene–Anthony Huberman moved out here from P.S.1. in New York just over a year ago, and was joined by Jamie Stevens, formerly of the Serpentine Gallery in London, who are doing great work bringing artists to San Francisco who’ve yet to have big solo shows in the U.S. or West Coast. I am looking forward to the upcoming Wang Bing show as well.
Caterina.net 