In Brief

Banning the R Word

Imagine a classroom where it is illegal to discuss racism, its history and its impact, or fundamental concepts like ethnic solidarity and racial inequalities. Since January 2011, the state of Arizona has regulated the teaching of ethnic studies in the K-12 curriculum, mandating that teachers discuss ethnicity in relation to individual attributes rather than group conflict.

In addition to outlawing curricula that “advocates ethnic solidarity,” Arizona House Bill 2281 restricts instructional material that promotes “the overthrow of the United States government,” “resentment toward a race or class of people,” or even material “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.”

As a consequence, in January 2012 the Tucson Unified School District removed dozens of books from its classrooms, including scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic’s Critical Race Theory, historian Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and playwright William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

The law may pose problems for the dissemination of sociological work in public school classrooms. Works that explore the social construction of ethnic solidarity, like Tomás Jiménez’s 2010 book Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration and Identity or Eric Fong’s March 2010 American Journal of Sociology article, “Ethnic Solidarity for Economic Survival: Korean Greengrocers in New York City” may be perceived very differently by educational administrators interested in upholding Arizona’s educational reform.

Associated Press/Matt York

While the long-term impact of the law is uncertain, sociologists have long debated the implications of “color-blind” policies that avoid explicitly addressing race. As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, in his 2006 book Racism without Racists argues, such policies reinforce racism in subtle ways—in the case of HB 2281, by removing critiques of white privilege from the classroom.

Sociologist Amy Binder’s 2006 book Contentious Curricula contends that curricular battles such at this one reveal a great deal about social tensions in the United States. In this case, what is driving the Arizona bill are fears of Latino population growth.

Tucson’s school board sent a clear message that they believe Mexican-American Studies is anti-American. But by prohibiting such discussions, we may be perpetuating the very disharmony we seek to circumvent. crystal bedley

Go to Harvard—Free

Ryan Ward

Students now have the opportunity to attend Harvard—without playing the high-stakes admissions game, or even paying a cent.

In May 2012, Harvard and MIT, along with a corporate partner, unveiled non-credit MOOCs (“Massive Open Online Courses”). This joint venture, which will offer free public online courses, is just one of a number of similar recent collaborations between select academic institutions and their corporate affiliates.

Encouraged to venture beyond faculty-assembled resources, students compile, debate, and synthesize knowledge using the MOOC platform, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, SecondLife, YouTube, and Google Groups. Within these networked learning spaces, the knowledge base evolves continuously, promising a more flexible and enriching experience than in traditional closed online courses. Education researcher Lynore DeSilets suggests that MOOCs cater to “free agent learners.” She says this new generation of self-directed learners “leverage emerging communications and collaboration tools to create personal networks of experts” (Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 2011).

The debut of MOOCs follows a trend toward open access scholarship, which proponents say will increase visibility of faculty research and the rankings of their institutions, and result in “greater distribution [and collaboration] of scholarship as well as some return to the public for funding its production,” according to scholar Annette Vee, in the 2011 CCCC-Intellectual Property Annual.

But as critics charge, by offering MOOCs, elite schools draw students away from non-participating competitors, further widening the prestige gap between different rungs of universities. They also contribute to the corporatization of the university, particularly through distance learning initiatives. “These relationships place corporate sponsors in a powerful position to affect research agendas,” warns social sciences researcher Risa Lieberwitz (Public Interest Law Journal, 2002-3). Corporate intermediaries (such as Udacity) are eyeing to profit by playing matchmaker for headhunters vying for learners.

By catering to market-driven demands, and potentially threatening academic freedom, perhaps this “democratization” of education exacts too great a price? joanne chen

Mind Which Gap?

Since the early nineteenth century, social reformers have been concerned with how different groups fare in school. In the early 1960s, researchers began to use the term “achievement gap” to describe the disparity in test scores between white and minority students in elementary school.

But which achievement gap are they talking about today?

A 2011 study by sociologist Sean F. Reardon suggests that while the racial achievement gap has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the income-based achievement gap is now double its size. In many states, proficiency gaps of 25 points or more separate students from low-income families and others.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB), introduced in 2001, tries to close achievement gaps among traditionally disadvantaged groups by creating a system of sanctions for schools failing to make adequate yearly progress on standardized tests. Despite these efforts, in 2009 U.S. students ranked 14th in literacy, 25th in math, and 17th in science in the Programme for International Student Assessment, giving fuel to President Barack Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative and ongoing reforms to NCLB.

In a recent book, education researchers Thomas B. Timar and Julie Maxwell-Jolly offer strategies for alleviating achievement gaps: improving school and teacher quality, adopting evidence-based instructional strategies, and partnering with families and communities (Narrowing the Achievement Gap: Perspectives and Strategies for Challenging Times, 2012). But as patterns of inequality change, what the achievement gap actually measures is bound to be a subject of debate, as is the question of whether test scores are the most meaningful educational outcome social scientists can measure. alicia raia

Science Skeptics

In the summer of 1925, John T. Scopes appeared before the Tennessee Court, challenging the ban on teaching evolution in public schools, and bringing the issue to the national stage. Today, nearly 90 years later, evolution is now a standard part of the science curriculum. But the issues raised in the Scopes “monkey trial” are far from extinct: critics continue to challenge evolution’s hold in the classroom.

Most of the challengers argue that evolution is a scientific theory, not a fact. To insure students are receiving a well-rounded education, they say, we should teach creationism, or intelligent design, alongside evolution. A number of heated debates in school districts across the country have resulted.

While these debates are largely confined to small towns in Alabama, Kansas, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Texas, to name a few hot spots, we shouldn’t write them off as the handiwork of a few small-town religious conservatives, according to a recent study by sociologist Gordon Gauchat.

In a recent article in the American Sociological Review, “Politicization of Science in the Public Sphere,” Gauchat finds that certain groups are becoming less trusting of science. In particular, he found that self-identified conservatives have become increasingly distrustful since the 1970s.

But the reasons for this shift remain unclear. The growing overlap between political and religious conservatives may explain part of the trend: both groups have lost faith in science over the last few decades. We’ve also seen the rise of a “conservative cultural identity,” according to Gauchat, that sees itself at odds with science. Conservatives are skeptical not only of evolution, but also things like the big bang theory or global warming. But Gauchat is careful to note that distrust in science isn’t the product of educational deficits; across the board, conservatives and liberals have comparable levels of education.

In other words, since this debate isn’t simply about evolution, we shouldn’t expect it to disappear any time soon.

As if to make this point, near New Brunswick, New Jersey, hardly a bastion of religious conservatism, a new billboard just appeared on the turnpike. “In the beginning, God created…” it proclaims, picturing a silhouette of a monkey transforming into a man, with a large “X” struck through it. jessica streeter

Jessica Streeter

Pay-to-Play Journals

Many college professors now regularly receive emails soliciting submissions to new journals, with names such as The Journal of Civil and Legal Sciences or the American Journal of Industrial and Business Management. Some of these new journals are actually “predatory” in nature: their central purpose is to generate revenue rather than disseminate knowledge, according to a March 2012 article by Michael Stratford in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The Chronicle tells the story of a graduate student at Louisiana State University who submitted an article to the innocuous-sounding Journal of Mass Communication and Journalism and who, weeks later, received an invoice for $1800, billing him for publishing the accepted manuscript. The journal is part of a group of 200 journals published by the OMICS Publishing Group that, in addition to charging for publication, has been accused of unethical practices such as listing editorial board members without their consent, and refusing to remove editors who resign from the board.

Librarian Jeffrey Beall, who works at the University of Colorado at Denver, keeps track of these and other “predatory” journals on his Scholarly Open Access site (http://scholarlyoa.com/). The OMICS Publishing Group made it onto Beall’s list, as did Bentham Open, which gained notoriety in 2009 by accepting a computer-generated nonsensical article submitted by a Cornell graduate student in communication sciences. While most of the predatory publishing outlets on Beall’s list are based outside of North America, some thrive in the United States. One lucrative example is the Clute Institute, founded by an accounting professor in Colorado in 1985, which now includes 15 journals, encompassing business, health, and education fields. Clute charges authors $60 to submit a paper for a standard six-week review and $150 for an expedited two-week review. Upon acceptance, the charge for publishing (online) ranges from $250 for a 1 to 5-page paper, to $850 for a 16 to 20-page paper. In 2011, Clute published over 700 articles.

The too-familiar pressures of employment, tenure, university ranking, and accreditation combine to tempt many academics to pursue publication in these outlets. The journals promote a rapid turnaround time: a recent email from the International Research Journal of Applied Finance promised a one-week review for case studies, which it promised to publish “immediately” if accepted for publication—for a mere $200.

As the trend toward quantifying “success” through ranking and accreditation gains steam, deans and department chairs are at times even willing to pay the fees associated with these exploitative publications—a development that is particular worrying for cash-strapped state universities. theresa hammond