A Dangerous Game: The Dehumanization of Children in Massachusetts Testing and Data Discourse

A great deal has been written about the ills of standardized testing, most of which focuses on their lack of validity and negative impacts on students. One topic that has not been explored in depth is the ways in which the discourse around testing can dehumanize public school students. This paper turns its attention to utterances of the Massachusetts Commissioner of Education, Mitchell Chester, along with the utterances of the superintendents of two large urban districts in Massachusetts. The thesis of this discourse analysis is that the words of these administrators betray an unconscious but troubling ideology of dehumanization. The focus on testing, and, even more importantly, the data these tests produce, leaves little room for the discussion- and therefore the valuing- of student humanity. A scholarly foundation for this type of dehumanization is introduced through the work of Nick Haslam “Dehumanization: An Integrative Review,” which describes a form of dehumanization called “mechanization” which “represents a view of others as object- or automaton-like” (Haslam, 258). The paper uses a discourse-analysis framework Jean-Francois Lyotard describes as “language games” to highlight that every utterance can be conceived of as a move in a game. This is combined with an observation from Fairclough, who writes that every utterance is “invested,” which is to say that no utterance is completely neutral. These are important foundational ideas when critiquing the testing movement in education, the very size of which can make the data its tests produce seem like a sort of neutral, natural truth. The remainder of the argument illustrates exactly how the words of the aforementioned administrators dehumanize the state’s public school children and also presents a situation in the Boston Public Schools that presents a telling juxtaposition of the dehumanizing language of state administrators against the humanistic language of a parent

\u3cem\u3eStranger\u3c/em\u3e Danger: The Inversion of Suburban Stranger-Danger Symbolism in \u3cem\u3eStranger Things\u3c/em\u3e

A dramatic shift took place in the suburban conception of children in America during the early 1980s. The high-profile abductions and murders of a small number of children led to a profound shift in suburban thinking about child safety. Suburban parents embarked on a wild search for methods of safeguarding their children against the largely symbolic threats of stranger danger, but, in the end, many of the reactions to stranger danger only served to disempower children in the suburbs. In this paper, I contend that Matt and Ross Duffer’s Stranger Things enters into a symbolic discourse with the stranger danger movement in ways that reconfigure its symbolism, inverting stranger danger’s power structure and offering a narrative that dramatizes freeing children from the paranoia of stranger danger

Identifying and Quantifying Critical Information Streams for Tactical Combat Decision Modeling

It is often asserted that more information on the battlefield leads to greater situational awareness (SA) which, in turn, translates to enhanced mission performance and outcomes.  However, the volume of available information on the modern networked battlefield is extensive and growing, which induces risk of indecision due to cognitive overload.  The potential overload highlights the need to streamline the flow of information to those critical streams that provide the most value to a tactical leader’s decision process at particular points in time. The purpose of this study is to identify critical information streams required by tactical leaders within the various phases of a dismounted search and attack/react to contact scenario.  Domain Mapping Matrix methodology (DMM) is utilized to quantify the value of various information streams relative to the sub -phases within the scenario using a constructed nominal scale. The significance of the highlighted interactions is validated through the use of statistical analysis, with combat veterans serving as test cases. The findings of this study will facilitate the development of decision models that will eventually enable more accurate and realistic simulation of the leader’s decision processes that increased SA purportedly enhances

The Story Circle as a Practice of Democratic, Critical Inquiry

The authors of this essay have been committed practitioners and teachers of Philosophy for Children in a variety of educational settings, from pre-schools through university doctoral programs and in adult community and religious education programs. The promotion of critical thinking has always been a primary goal of this movement. But communal practices of critical thinking need to include other kinds of democratic conversation that prompt us to see others as full-fledged persons and to be curious about how our being in community with them makes growth and self-correction possible. As we continue to experiment and innovate in new contexts we see ourselves continuing the inquiry around expanding the inclusivity of conversations about basic human concerns. In this essay we describe an inclusive strategy called the story circle, that was first developed as a method of popular education in Denmark and was then adapted as a tool of social change among poor and dis-empowered American citizens in Appalachia. Story circles were later utilized in a philosophical living-learning community and most recently coupled with Lipman and Sharp’s dialogue method of the community of philosophical inquiry (CPI). The authors of this paper have combined story circles with the community of philosophical inquiry in a variety of contexts. In each iteration, telling one’s own story and listening carefully to the stories of others can be equally revelatory actions

Planning for Emerging Threats: Rethinking the Presidential Line of Succession

From the COVID-19 pandemic to the Ukraine war, recent events have highlighted possible threats to the continuity of presidential leadership. The presidential line of succession in the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 has several flaws. Some of the successors it designates might be ill-suited to discharge the powers of the presidency. Others concerns include its constitutionality, inappropriate incentives it might create, and the democratic legitimacy of outcomes it might produce. This report proposes several reforms to the line of succession for pre- and post-inaugural succession contingencies.https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/rule_of_law_clinic/1002/thumbnail.jp

What Can COVID-19 Teach Us about Using AI in Pandemics?

The COVID-19 pandemic put significant strain on societies and their resources, with the healthcare system and workers being particularly affected. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers the unique possibility of improving the response to a pandemic as it emerges and evolves. Here, we utilize the WHO framework of a pandemic evolution to analyze the various AI applications. Specifically, we analyzed AI from the perspective of all five domains of the WHO pandemic response. To effectively review the current scattered literature, we organized a sample of relevant literature from various professional and popular resources. The article concludes with a consideration of AI\u27s weaknesses as key factors affecting AI in future pandemic preparedness and response

Association of Left Ventricular Hypertrophy With Incident Hypertension: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis

Increased left ventricular (LV) mass and changes in LV geometry may precede hypertension onset. The authors examined the associations of LV mass and geometry, assessed by cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, with hypertension incidence in 2,567 normotensive participants enrolled in 2000–2002 in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, an ethnically diverse, population-based, US study. Over a median follow-up of 4.8 years, 745 (29%) participants developed hypertension. In a fully adjusted model including baseline blood pressure, the relative risks of incident hypertension from the lowest to highest LV mass quartile were 1.00 (referent), 1.13 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.89, 1.43), 1.28 (95% CI: 1.00, 1.63), and 1.78 (95% CI: 1.38, 2.30) (P < 0.001 for linear trend). Higher levels of LV concentric geometry, defined by higher LV mass to end-diastolic volume quartiles, were associated with higher risk of incident hypertension in a fully adjusted model (P = 0.044 for linear trend). In a final model containing both quartiles of LV mass and LV mass/volume along with all covariates including baseline blood pressure, higher LV mass quartiles were associated with incident hypertension (P < 0.001 for linear trend), whereas higher LV mass/volume quartiles were not (P = 0.643 for linear trend). In this multiethnic cohort, alterations in LV mass preceded hypertension onset among normotensive individuals

Antiarrhythmic and electrophysiologic actions of clofilium in experimental canine models

Clofilium was studied in three experimental models. In non-ischemic and chronically infarcted canine hearts, clofilium (0.5-2 mg/kg) produced a dose-dependent increase in electrical ventricular fibrillation threshold (VFT), but prolonged the effective refractory period (ERP) of normal myocardium in only the non-ischemic heart. When chronically infarcted hearts were subjected to programmed electrical stimulation, 1 mg/kg of clofilium inhibited the re-induction of either ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation in 5 of 6 animals and slowed the rate of the induced tachycardia in the sixth. Clofilium, however, failed to alter ventricular refractory periods of normal myocardium at either twice diastolic threshold current (176 +/- 5 ms control vs. 187 +/- 9 ms post-clofilium, P &gt; 0.05) or at 10 mA (134 +/- 6 ms control vs. 137 +/- 13 ms post-clofilium, P &gt; 0.05). In addition, chronic administration of clofilium (2 mg/kg, i.v., followed by 1 mg/kg every 12 h) was ineffective in decreasing mortality in a canine model of sudden coronary death. Of 10 saline-treated conscious animals subjected to an electrically-induced intimal lesion of the left circumflex coronary artery in the presence of a previous ischemic insult, all 10 died suddenly of ventricular fibrillation within 173 +/- 45 min after current application. Under similar conditions, 7 clofilium-treated animals died suddenly within 249 +/- 88 min (P &gt; 0.05) after current application while 3 animals survived (P &gt; 0.10). Clofilium did, however, elevate the effective refractory period in these animals (150 +/- 3 ms saline-treated vs. 195 +/- 7 ms clofilium-reated). It is concluded from our data that there is little relationship between clofilium's electrophysiologic actions in normal myocardium and antiarrhythmic effects. Furthermore, simple prolongation of refractorines in normal non-ischemic myocardium may be insufficient for the prevention of ventricular fibrillation which develops in response to a transient ischemic event superimposed on a chronically injured myocardium.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/25537/1/0000078.pd