The Emerging Scholars Blog

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? Anything special with some time off or is there too much going on with the holiday?

As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them.  In addition, if you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1.  What did the Oxford University Press select as its 2009 “word of the year”? — Part of the The Higher-Ed News Quiz (Chronicle of Higher Education, December 13, 2009).  What’s your best guess?  We’ll confirm the answer when it’s posted and have some thoughts on the “word of the year.” …  Please, no cheating ;-)

2.  Pittsburgh Sets Vote on Adding Tax on Tuition (Ian Urbina, NY Times, December 15, 2009):  “The tax would be the first of its kind in the nation, and other cities are watching closely as they try to find ways to close their own budget gaps.” — Exemplifies the changing relationship and rhetoric between town & gown during an economically difficult time.  Note: Council puts tuition tax proposal on hold (Rich Lord, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, December 17, 2009).

3. Need another reason to pursue an academic vocation? If you’re a linguist, you might just be called upon to invent a new language. Paul Frommer of USC did just that for James Cameron’s new movie Avatar, joining J. R. R. Tolkien and Marc Orkand (inventor of Klingon) as an inspiration to budding linguists everywhere.

4. From ProfHacker.com: an End of the Semester Checklist, a very practical list to keep your courses, files, and CV in shape.

Books

Tom’s started digging into Education for Human Flourishing:  A Christian Perspective (Paul D. Spears
and Steven R. Loomis, InterVarsity Press, 2009).  If the title catches your interest, then check out the Preface, Precis of Book and Chapters, and keep your eye out for quotes from the book in the coming year.

From Tom

Adam Smith: What’s Next for Google Book Search? (Chronicle of Higher Education, 06/12/09):  Do you use Google Books to take a preview and/or search materials?  Is your institution partnering with Google Book Search?  Does Smith address your concerns regarding access, fair use, and privacy?  What are your thoughts on orphan works?  How do you define orphan works?

Google has scanned millions of books and made snippets available online through its ambitious Book Search program. The project has taken heat from authors and publishers, but Adam Smith, Google’s director of product management, says it’s a good thing for academe. (Audio interview, 9:36)

[Mike notes: there are at least two groups not happy with Google's digital books program: the Department of Justice and Amazon.com.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.]

China’s College Entry Test Is an Obsession (NY Times, 06/13/09):  Who is familiar with China’s gao kao, i.e., high test?  Would a boost of similar seriousness about education be helpful in the United States or would it increase competitive commercialization of higher education?  How does one encourage the pursuit and wise application of knowledge through vocation in the wider society?

The Chinese test is in some ways like the American SAT, except that it lasts more than twice as long. The nine-hour test is offered just once a year and is the sole determinant for admission to virtually all Chinese colleges and universities. About three in five students make the cut.

Families pull out all the stops to optimize their children’s scores.

From Mike

Mentoring: Call for Papers – The University of New Mexico Mentoring Institute is seeking proposals about effective mentoring for their Second Mentoring Conference. I went last year and was favorably impressed. While the institute and conference are hosted by a public university, there were a number of Christian academics involved last year (from both secular and Christian universities), and issues related to religious faith were openly discussed. For example, several of the mentoring presentations addressed spiritual components of mentoring, two of the plenary speakers (Brad Johnson and Lewis Schlosser) spoke briefly about their different religious views in the context of their mentor-mentee and collegial relationship, and several speakers spoke to questions about how to relate to a mentor or protege with very different religious, political, or personal beliefs from your own. Deadline for submissions is July 31.

Languages on Life Support – From the Chronicle, a survey of the state of dying languages in the world today, and the efforts (or lack thereof) of academic linguists to preserve them.

Of the estimated 6,000 to 7,000 languages in the world — about one-half of the number used 10,000 years ago — at least one-half will almost certainly be dead by midcentury, while another 40 percent will most likely become too diminished to survive much beyond 2100. The causes are largely agreed upon: colonization and other demographic shifts, government neglect or outright suppression of regional and indigenous languages, the influence of mass media.

The article explores the question of whether Noam Chomsky’s theory of a “universal grammar” eliminates the urgency to record details of specific languages.  Chomsky himself says no, but others aren’t so sure.  Personally, I was struck by the complete absence of any mention whatsoever of groups like Wycliffe Bible Translators or SIL, which are doing serious work around the world preserving languages.   (For more on linguistics, see my previous post about Dan Everett.)

A while back, one of our blog readers sent me a link to this fascinating New Yorker article, “The Interpreter” by John Colapinto, which combines academic controversy, the interplay between theory and practice, and the (dis)integration of faith, life, and learning. It tells the story of Dan Everett, professor of linguistics at Illinois State University, a former evangelical Christian and Bible translator with SIL who, as he advanced in his academic career, lost his faith in Christ. Read the rest of this entry »