At the March 2009 United Nations (UN) meetings coinciding with the World Water Forum, Canada, Russia, and the United States refused to support a declaration that
would recognize water as a basic human right. The special resolution proposed by Germany and Spain, and endorsed by the President of the UN General Assembly, was
instead rejected in favor of further examination of issues of access to safe drinking water and sanitation [1].
Opposition to this declaration runs counter to considerable evidence that access to clean water, which is essential for health, is under threat. According to
the World Health Organization, 1.2 billion people worldwide do not have access to clean drinking water, and a further 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation services.
These numbers are expected to rise. The UN has estimated that 2.8 billion people in 48 countries will be living in conditions of water stress or scarcity by 2025 [2].
Access to water should be framed as a human right for at least three reasons. [...] [Read PDF]
Credit: Haloween Express
Credit: latimesblogs.latimes.com
Last Updated: 12 January 2010
Social Psychology and Zeitgeist Notes and References
This page presents a series of ideas, notes and references on issues of psychosocial, sociocultural, and socioeconomic interest. We aim to explore
themes that reflect something of the Zeitgeist.
It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.
Maggie Jackson is "an award-winning author and journalist. Her latest book,
Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, details the steep costs of our current epidemic deficits of attention,
while revealing the astonishing scientific discoveries that can help us rekindle our powers of focus in a world of speed and overload."
As one reviewer put it,
the book is "a product of the culture it describes". Jackson's research of the literature is very useful, however, and she is a skilled writer. Cf., Is Google Making Us Stupid?", by Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch (2008).
Selected CBC Ideas and Quirks & Quarks Programs
Source: The Hurried Infant IDEAS, Host: Paul Kennedy CBC Radio One (February 2009)
An excellent two-epidose program on the IDEAS site, The Hurried Infant also
includes related books and online resources.
CBC IDEAS Podcast: The Hurried Infant, Episode 1
[...] Part of what's fuelling the billion dollar baby is brain science. Studies over the decades claim that baby's brain is a vast resource that can be enriched through
stimulation. So a young child can learn colours, count and even read earlier than ever before. The explosive growth of baby learning products has sent parents scrambling to
ensure their baby is as bright as bright can be. So, are the scientific studies behind this social force real or exaggerated? In this series, IDEAS producer Mary O'Connell
explores what some are calling a brave new age of infant determinism. CBC IDEAS Podcast: The Hurried Infant, Episode 2
Today, parents and their young children are being tossed about in the perfect storm: Brain science claims, economic anxiety, and a billion dollar toy industry that's pressuring parents to
expose their young children to early academics. Especially when it comes to reading. In the second hour of The Hurried Infant, IDEAS producer Mary O'Connell sat down to
discuss what some are calling the re-invention of childhood itself with two leading child advocates and researchers, neuroscientist Maryanne Wolfe and psychologist Kathy Hirsh-Pasek.
On the Scientific Basis of Religion
Bob MacDonald, host of Quirks & Quarks, a CBC Radio program that explores the latest in science, technology, medicine and the environment, spoke with two well-known researchers in
a recently aired segment on the science of religion. Here's part of the write-up and the podcast of the segment, followed by related and other links of interest.
Source: Science of Religion Bob MacDonald, Quirks & Quarks, CBC Radio (11 April 2009) Links added.
• Listen to or download the full one-hour program
[...] Religion in many forms is nearly ubiquitous around the world and as far back in history as we can determine. So a small group of scientists has begun to ask important questions,
such as, why do we have religion? What is it about our brains, our psychology and our evolutionary history that drives us to search for signs of the divine? In short, how and why are
humans built to believe? Dr. Justin Barrett, senior researcher at the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at the University of Oxford, is one of several researchers looking for the roots of
religion in important cognitive processes we use as "shortcuts" to perceive and make sense of the world. He thinks that because of these cognitive tools, we're primed to
look for signs of intention in the world, and to think that most events have a some agent, possibly a supernatural one, making them happen. In this conception, religious
thinking is a kind of natural byproduct of normal mental processes. Interestingly, Dr. Barrett, a Christian, thinks that these ideas are easily reconcilable with many
different religious faiths. Dr. David Sloan Wilson approaches the science of religion from another perspective. A self-described Atheist who studies religion, he's also a distinguished professor in the
Departments of Biology and Anthropology at Binghamton University in New York. He's investigating religion as a possible adaptation - in some sense like biological adaptations,
such as the opposable thumb or the eye. He suspects that religion is a way of binding social groups together, which then gives those groups selective advantages over other groups.
Podcast: Science of Religion —
2009-04-11, Quirks & Quarks (25:27)
The Evolution of Religion, lecture by Jared Diamond (4 March 2008), author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (2005) and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004)
Michael Shermer, Founder of the Skeptic Society:
Why people believe strange things
TED Talks (15 April 2008; 14:11)
Source: The Brains of Babes IDEAS, Host: Paul Kennedy CBC Radio One (March 2009)
Another outstanding series, The Brains of Babes, by Jill Eisen, was presented on IDEAS in
three parts, broadcast on 4, 11, and 18 March.
CBC IDEAS Podcast: The Brains of Babes, Part One
CBC IDEAS Podcast: The Brains of Babes, Part Two
CBC IDEAS Podcast: The Brains of Babes, Part Three
The centuries-old Jesuit saying, "give me a child until he's 7 and I will show you the man", may be true in more ways than the Jesuits could have imagined. New research into
brain development, human biology and behaviour is showing how early experience can affect our health and well-being for the rest of our lives. As Jill Eisen reports, even
so-called "life-style" illnesses, like heart disease and diabetes, may have their roots in early childhood.
Source: The Cure Within IDEAS, Host: Paul Kennedy CBC Radio One (7 September 2009)
The Cure Within
Alternative medicine and therapies are a huge business. They appeal to people who believe their emotions and their health are intertwined. Such beliefs have a long history.
Harvard professor Anne Harrington walks us through the terrain of mind- body medicine. CBC IDEAS Podcast: The Cure Within
Kids today are active players in a sexually-charged popular culture, fuelled by media and personal technology. But at what cost? Whether it’s posting sexy photos and raunchy
video on the net, bum grabbing in the school hallway or spreading explicit gossip that shatters high school lives, harassment is commonplace, even acceptable. Journalist Lynn
Glazier gives three diverse groups of teens in Toronto an unprecedented opportunity to examine their provocative and high-tech culture more carefully and thoughtfully. For some,
it’s been a life-changing experience. In this program, teens from Central Toronto take us on this journey with candid personal diaries, though computer screens, behind the ipod ear
buds and in their own short films on sexual pressures. Be advised that this program contains mature themes and coarse language.
CBC IDEAS Podcast: It’s A Teen’s World EPISODE 1 - September 30
CBC IDEAS Podcast: It’s A Teen’s World EPISODE 2 - October 7
CBC IDEAS Podcast: It’s A Teen’s World EPISODE 3 - October 14
Teen girls may be the biggest losers when it comes to navigating a popular culture that is high-tech and hyper-sexualized. They are bombarded by media messages telling them they have
to put themselves out there sexually in order to be popular and cool – a generation pushed to flaunt its sexuality without grasping the consequences. It has fostered a climate of sexual
harassment and bullying among youth. In this program, an all female and culturally diverse teen group from East Toronto decode the pitfalls of pursuing popularity at the expense of being
true to themselves. Produced by journalist Lynn Glazier. Be advised that this program contains mature themes and coarse language.
“The internet and other technologies have changed everything,” says Glazier. Never
before in history has our popular culture been so sexually explicit, so instantly accessible
and its degrading messages so unchallenged. Sexual harassment is the number one form
of bullying among teens today and it’s warping them. We just can’t shrug our shoulders
and dismiss it as a normal part of growing up.
[...] It may feel as if we're in the midst of a major vampire moment, but the idea
of vampire as artistic metaphor is as deathless as the creatures themselves. The
figure of the vampire—a human transformed by a bite into something that looks
human but is not, who feeds off the blood of others to survive and has the power
to both kill and bestow eternal life—is one of our most powerful and durable
myths. Vampires appear in most cultures and across centuries, as both male and
female, and with various abilities and weaknesses. In ancient folklore, vampires
symbolized death and disease. Their signature physical traits probably came from
reports by people who saw decomposing corpses, which sometimes bleed from the
nose and mouth and feature teeth and fingernails that look long because the gums
and nail beds have receded. Artists and writers have been reworking the myth
ever since. Depending on whom you ask, vampire stories can be read as symbols of
venereal disease, capitalism, immigration, industrialization, colonialism, AIDS,
homosexuality, mental illness, anti-Semitism, technology or class warfare. "The
vampire myth's power is that we can use it as a metaphor and a language to talk
about the problems of our world," says William Patrick Day, author of "Vampire
Legends in Contemporary American Culture." The question, then, is not why we are
thinking about vampires now, but how we are thinking about them—and
what our vampires say about us.
The forefather of the modern vampire is Bram Stoker's Dracula, a refined
count of Eastern European background who is all the more sinister for his
impeccable manners. Though there is a sexual subtext to Dracula's ravenous
hunger for the book's protagonist, Jonathan Harker, Harker finds the count repellent. By the time the book, which was
published in 1897, was made into a movie starring Bela Lugosi
in 1933, Dracula had become a hetero sex symbol, and sex and bloodsucking have
been intertwined ever since. Obviously, the act of vampirism is an almost
too-overt metaphor for sex, but that's not the only trait that makes vampires
seductive. Starting with Lugosi's Dracula, most 20th- and 21st-century American
vampires are not just dangerous but dashing creatures, former European
aristocrats with an appreciation of the finer things in life. They may turn you
into the undead, but they'll show you a good time. It's no accident that the
hedonistic, decadent Lestat from Anne Rice's "Interview With the Vampire" first
appeared in the self-indulgent 1970s.
Where our current vampires differ from their literary predecessors is in
their morality. Somewhere in the past few decades, vampires found consciences.
On the TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," Angel, a "good" vampire, fights
against soulless, evil vampires, and in the 1993 film version of "Interview With
the Vampire," the character of Louis (Brad Pitt) struggles against his predatory
nature. Only recently, though, have we seen vampires who have enough
self-control to resist the lure of human blood, reflecting, perhaps, the
conservative direction the culture has taken. In "Twilight," Edward restricts
himself to the blood of animals, and on "True Blood," sympathetic vampire Bill
Compton subsists mainly on synthetic blood. These vampires are not so much scary
as noble, fighting against their inherent natures for the sake of love (in both
cases the love object is a human, virgin female). "America has taken the vampire
story and tied it to teen romance," says Ken Gelder, author of "Reading the
Vampire." Rather than being attracted to the darkness of the vampire, the female
leads love their fanged paramours for their essentially decent
personalities—along with their bad-boy allure—and are able to get beyond the
whole lust-for-blood thing. It is not the vampire's passion that is sexy, but
his self-control.
"Twilight," especially, pushes the vampire myth to its extreme. Edward is
more a sensitive teen any father would let escort his daughter to the prom than
a Dracula-like predator. Not only does Edward refrain from biting his love
interest, Bella; he insists she buckle her seat belt. "There is that sense that
because Edward is such a self-restraining vampire, he's not really a vampire,"
says Gelder. In other words, he is exactly the vampire we want right now: sure,
he's strong, he can fly and his skin sparkles in sunlight, but more important,
he's not going to go and do anything stupid with his 401(k).
...In the video released today, "Sexism Sells, But We’re Not Buying It," The Women's Media Center and its partners including
Media Matters and the National Women's Political Caucus document 30 examples of gendered, sexist coverage from the mainstream
media (far from an exhaustive list). From jokes about a woman’s appearance to specific gendered insults, some media professionals
this election season have fallen far short of their responsibility to report and educate... [WMC Press Release, New York, 20 May 2008]
Gender Issues
Below, we look at excerpts from two reports — one just released by the AAUW, identifying factors of
race/ethnicity and family income levels, rather than fundamental gender disparities, with differences in academic achievement
in the 50 states; the other, asserting that males may experience academic disadvantage in result of gender issues
not addressed by current teaching strategies (2007, Canada). Excerpts are presented, with links to the full reports.
...Overall, both girls and boys are performing better on NAEP
assessments since the 1970s, especially in math. The traditional
gender differences persist, however, with boys generally outscoring
girls on math tests by a small margin, and girls outscoring boys on
reading tests by a larger, but still relatively small, margin. Increasing
percentages of both girls and boys are performing at a proficient level
in math. In reading, the percentages of girls and boys who achieve
proficiency have remained about the same.
These generally positive trends, however, mask important variations
by race/ethnicity and family income level. Girls from higher income
families scored higher on average than did lower-income girls
in both math and reading in all three grades and all years evaluated.
In addition, while disparities by race/ethnicity and family income
level are not increasing, the gaps are not closing at an acceptable rate.
Large differences remain among students by race/ethnicity and family
income level. Gender differences occur within all groups but appear
to be larger and more consistent among white students. Nevertheless,
even among white students, gender differences are small relative to
gaps by race/ethnicity and family income level...(p.33)
...As found in the analysis of the NAEP scores, student performance
on the SAT and ACT exams is strongly related to family income
level, with girls from higher-income families consistently outscoring
girls from lower-income families. While girls are doing better overall
than ever before, many Hispanic and African American girls and
girls from lower-income families are not doing as well as their peers.
Analysis of trends in college entrance exams provides no evidence
of a boys’ crisis. Across the board, scores on both the SAT and ACT
have improved or held steady from 1994 to 2004, with boys retaining
a small edge in math on both exams. Girls are more likely than boys
to take college entrance exams, but the growing number of girls taking
these exams has not come at the expense of boys. More boys and
young men are taking college entrance exams than ever before...(p.50)
...Race/ethnicity and family income level are important factors in
high school and college achievement regardless of gender. The story is
familiar: White children are more likely to graduate from high school
and attend and graduate from college than are their African American
and Hispanic peers. Likewise, children from lower-income
families are less likely than children from higher-income families to
graduate from high school...(p.52)
...One of the statistics most often cited to support assertions that a
boys’ crisis in education exists is the increasing percentage of women
earning college degrees. Women have earned more bachelor’s degrees
than men since 1982... Women earned 57 percent of
bachelor’s degrees, the majority of associate’s and master’s degrees,
and about half of first professional and doctoral degrees (50 and 49
percent, respectively) in 2004–05... The increasing
numbers of women in college have not come at the expense of men.
More men are earning college degrees today in the United States
than at any time in history. During the past 35 years, the college educated
population has greatly expanded: The number of bachelor’s
degrees awarded annually rose 82 percent, from 792,316 in 1969–70
to 1,439,264 in 2004–05 (U.S. Department of Education, National
Center for Education Statistics, 2007b)...p.55
...The achievement gap by family income level is already apparent
when children enter kindergarten (U.S. Department of Education,
National Center for Education Statistics, 2007l). As students progress
through the educational system, these achievement gaps remain
stubbornly in place (Restuccia & Urrutia, 2004). On average, most
children from families with higher incomes—both girls and boys—
test well and go on to colleges and universities, whereas poor children
perform poorly on tests and are more likely to enter the work force
without a college degree (U.S. Department of Education, National
Center for Education Statistics, 2006b). The achievement gap can
also be observed between racial/ethnic groups, with African American
and Hispanic students underperforming compared to their Asian
American and white peers...p.68 [Read the full report] [Read Executive Summary]
Gender differences in the early years
From birth, it would seem that boys generally lead a more tumultuous life than girls. This is true in
the physical, developmental and behavioural aspects of life. Physically, boys are disadvantaged on
several fronts. Out of every 1,000 live births, 5.8 boys die in the first year of life, compared with 4.7
girls (Statistics Canada 2005). From the ages of 1 to 4, boys are considerably more likely to be
hospitalized than girls. Specifically, 7,793 out of 100,000 boys are hospitalized during this period,
compared with only 5,726 out of 100,000 girls (Canadian Institute of Child Health, 2000).
According to the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), Cycle 4
(2000/2001), boys are also far more likely to be categorized as having activity limitations (15%)
than girls (11%). Boys also lag behind girls on the developmental side of things in the early years.
For example, from birth to three years only 12 % of boys are categorized as having advanced motor
and social development, compared with 21% of girls (Canadian Institute of Child Health 2000).
On average, five-year-old boys score 97.2 on a test of copying and symbol use compared with 104.3
for girls (Thomas 2006). Some 78 % of five-year-old boys often display independence in dressing
compared with 87% of girls (Thomas 2006). Finally, boys have more behavioural problems than
girls in the early years. For example, five-year-old boys display less attention (a score of 8.5) than
girls (a score of 9.3), according to Thomas (2006). Some 16 % of 4- to 11-year-old boys display
aggressive behaviour compared with only 9% of girls (Canadian Institute of Child Health 2000).
Similarly, 14% of 4- to 11-year-old boys display hyperactivity compared with only 6% of girls
(Canadian Institute of Child Health 2000).
Gender differences in the elementary school years
The relative challenges that boys face early in life may be exacerbated during the elementary school
years for at least two reasons. First, 83% of elementary school teachers are women (2001 Census).
This means that girls are far more likely to be taught by a same-sex teacher than boys during the
first several years of school. A recent U.S. study using the National Education Longitudinal Survey
found that both boys and girls benefited from a same-sex teacher (Dee 2005). The size of the effect
was quite large. For example, it is estimated that just one year with a male English teacher would
eliminate nearly one third of the gender gap in reading performance among 13-year-olds and would
do so by improving the performance of boys and simultaneously harming that of girls. Similarly, a
year with a female teacher would help girls partially catch up to boys in science and mathematics.
Specifically, it would close the gender gap in science achievement among 13-year-olds by one half
and entirely eliminate the smaller achievement gap in mathematics.
Second, independent of the teacher’s gender, the natural assets of girls may be better suited for
mainstream teaching strategies. In contrast, the natural assets of boys may be treated as problems in
the school system. According to Julien and Ertl (2000), 10- to 11-year-old boys are less likely to
work neatly and carefully (61%) than girls (82%), are more likely to get into many fights (35%)
than girls (13%), are more likely to be restless, unable to sit still or display hyperactivity (49%) than
girls (23%), and are less likely to show sympathy when someone else has made a mistake (32%)
than girls (49%).
Gender differences in parental influences
Throughout the difficult early and elementary school years boys may be further harmed by the
absence or lack of involvement of a same-sex parent. This is because of two reasons. First,
following family dissolution, the mother is more likely than the father to take care of the children.
According to the 2001 Census, 14.3% of boys lived with a lone mother, while only 2.9% of boys
lived with a lone father. Furthermore, among two-parent families, the parent most knowledgeable of
girls is the mother in 78.7% of cases. By contrast, the father is the parent most knowledgeable of
boys 24.3% of the time (YITS, Cohort A).
Gender differences at age 15
By age 15, boys and girls have very different characteristics...
We will now describe these differences in detail, using the main data source employed in this study
(YITS, Cohort A). These differences will, in fact, serve to explain observed differences in university
participation rates in the core of the paper.
On the academic stage, boys trail behind girls on several fronts. For example, boys have weaker
performances on standardized reading tests... Only 20.4% of boys score in the top 25%
of the reading distribution. By contrast, 30.1% of girls score in the top 25%. Analogously, 30.3% of
boys score in the bottom 25%, while only 19.5% of girls do so. There is an equally large gender
divide in terms of overall school marks... While only 31.9% of boys report marks of at
least 80%, almost half of girls fall in the same category (46.3%). At the opposite end of the
spectrum, 8.4% of boys report overall marks below 60%, compared with only 2.5% of girls. Boys
and girls are also quite different in terms of the amount of time they spend on homework... While
8.5% of boys spend no time on homework, only 2.5% of girls make the same claim. By
contrast, only 30.3% of boys spend at least 4 hours per week on homework, compared with 41.2%
of girls. Almost 1 in 10 boys (9.9%) repeat a grade in school, compared with 6.5% of girls...
Boys and girls are also different in terms of their parental influences. Beginning with parental
presence..., boys are less likely than girls to be in lone-parent families or in two-parent
families where only one parent is biological. However, boys are more likely to be in two-parent
families where neither parent is biological. In terms of direct parental influence, ...the parent
most knowledgeable of girls is far more often a parent of the same sex (79.8%) than
in the case of boys (23.5%). In terms of socio-economic background, there is no clear advantage
based on parental education... or parental income... However, ...parents of 15-year-old girls are
more likely to expect their 15-year-olds to complete a university degree (69.6%) than parents
of 15-year-old boys (60.4%).
One’s peers may also influence future plans. On that front, boys are once again at a disadvantage...
Boys are less likely to report that all of their friends plan on pursuing further
education following high school (26.0%) than girls (36.1%). At the other end of the spectrum, boys
are more likely to report that few or none of their friends plan on pursuing further education
following high school (24.4%) than girls (15.8%). Finally, the direct economic benefits of
completing a university degree are weaker for boys than for girls... Specifically, the
ratio of mean annual earnings of university graduates to the mean annual earnings of high-school
graduates is smaller for males (2.55) than for females (2.81)... [Read the full report]
