anath to writing

The Secrets of Sleep

2011-01-17T12:37:00.000+08:00

From birth, we spend a third of our lives asleep. After decades of research, we’re still not sure why.

By D. T. Max

Photograph by Maggie Steber

Cheryl Dinges is a 29-year-old Army sergeant from St. Louis. Her job is to train soldiers in hand-to-hand combat. Specializing in Brazilian jujitsu, Dinges says she is one of the few women in the Army certified at level 2 combat. Level 2 involves a lot of training with two attackers on one, she explains, with the hope of "you being the one guy getting out alive."

Dinges may face an even harder fight in the years ahead. She belongs to a family carrying the gene for fatal familial insomnia. The main symptom of FFI, as the disease is often called, is the inability to sleep. First the ability to nap disappears, then the ability to get a full night's sleep, until the patient cannot sleep at all. The syndrome usually strikes when the sufferer is in his or her 50s, ordinarily lasts about a year, and, as the name indicates, always ends in death. Dinges has declined to be tested for the gene. "I was afraid that if I knew that this was something I had, I would not try as hard in life. I would allow myself to give up."

FFI is an awful disease, made even worse by the fact that we know so little about how it works. After years of study, researchers have figured out that in a patient with FFI, malformed proteins called prions attack the sufferer's thalamus, a structure deep in the brain, and that a damaged thalamus interferes with sleep. But they don't know why this happens, or how to stop it, or ease its brutal symptoms. Before FFI was investigated, most researchers didn't even know the thalamus had anything to do with sleep. FFI is exceedingly rare, known in only 40 families worldwide. But in one respect, it's a lot like the less serious kinds of insomnia plaguing millions of people today: It's pretty much a mystery.

If we don't know why we can't sleep, it's in part because we don't really know why we need to sleep in the first place. We know we miss it if we don't have it. And we know that no matter how much we try to resist it, sleep conquers us in the end. We know that seven to nine hours after giving in to sleep, most of us are ready to get up again, and 15 to 17 hours after that we are tired once more. We have known for 50 years that we divide our slumber between periods of deep-wave sleep and what is called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when the brain is as active as when we're awake, but our voluntary muscles are paralyzed. We know that all mammals and birds sleep. A dolphin sleeps with half its brain awake so it can remain aware of its underwater environment. When mallard ducks sleep in a line, the two outermost birds are able to keep half of their brains alert and one eye open to guard against predators. Fish, reptiles, and insects all experience some kind of repose too.

All this downtime comes at a price. An animal must lie still for a great stretch of time, during which it is easy prey for predators. What can possibly be the payback for such risk? "If sleep doesn't serve an absolutely vital function," the renowned sleep researcher Allan Rechtschaffen once said, "it is the greatest mistake evolution ever made."

The predominant theory of sleep is that the brain demands it. This idea derives in part from common sense—whose head doesn't feel clearer after a good night's sleep? But the trick is to confirm this assumption with real data. How does sleeping help the brain? The answer may depend on what kind of sleep you are talking about. Recently, researchers at Harvard led by Robert Stickgold tested undergraduates on various aptitude tests, allowed them to nap, then tested them again. They found that those who had engaged in REM sleep subsequently performed better in pattern recognition tasks, such as grammar, while those who slept deeply were better at memorization. Other researchers have found that the sleeping brain appears to repeat a pattern of neuron firing that occurred while the subject was recently awake, as if in sleep the brain were trying to commit to long-term memory what it had learned that day.

Such studies suggest that memory consolidation may be one function of sleep. Giulio Tononi, a noted sleep researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, published an interesting twist on this theory a few years ago: His study showed that the sleeping brain seems to weed out redundant or unnecessary synapses or connections. So the purpose of sleep may be to help us remember what's important, by letting us forget what's not.

Sleep is likely to have physiological purposes too: That patients with FFI never live long is likely significant. A lot of interest has focused on what exactly kills them, but we still don't know. Do they literally die from lack of sleep? And if not, to what extent does sleeplessness contribute to the conditions that kill them? Some researchers have found that sleep deprivation impedes wound healing in rats, and others have suggested that sleep helps boost the immune system and control infection. But these studies are not conclusive.

In the most famous attempt to figure out why we sleep, in the 1980s, Rechtschaffen forced rats to stay awake in his University of Chicago lab by placing them on a disk suspended on a spindle over a tank of water. If the rats fell asleep, the disk would turn and throw them in the water; when they fell into the water, they immediately woke up. After about two weeks of this strict enforcement of sleeplessness, all the rats were dead. But when Rechtschaffen performed necropsies on the animals, he could not find anything significantly wrong with them. Their organs were not damaged; they appeared to have died from exhaustion—that is, from not sleeping. A follow-up experiment in 2002, with more sophisticated instruments, again failed to find "an unambiguous cause of death" in the rats.

At Stanford University I visited William Dement, the retired dean of sleep studies, a co-discoverer of REM sleep, and co-founder of the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center. I asked him to tell me what he knew, after 50 years of research, about the reason we sleep. "As far as I know," he answered, "the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy."

Unfortunately, the reverse is not always true; we don't always get sleepy when we need to sleep. Insomnia is at epidemic levels in the developed world. Fifty to 75 million Americans, roughly a fifth of the population, complain about problems sleeping. Fifty-six million prescriptions for sleeping pills were written in 2008, up 54 percent over the previous four years. The revenue for sleep centers is expected to approach four and a half billion dollars by 2011. Yet remarkably little is being done to understand the root causes of insomnia. Most medical school students get no more than four hours of training on sleep disorders; some get none. Family doctors' health questionnaires often don't even ask about sleep.

The social and economic costs from the undertreatment of sleeplessness are huge. The Institute of Medicine, an independent national scientific advisory group, estimates nearly 20 percent of all serious motor vehicle accidents are associated with driver sleepiness. It places the direct medical cost of our collective sleep debt at tens of billions of dollars. The loss in terms of work productivity are even higher. Then there are the softer costs—the damaged or lost relationships, the jobs tired people don't have the energy to apply for, the muting of enjoyment in life's pleasures.

If a medical problem in some less private, less mysterious bodily function were causing such widespread harm, governments would declare war on it. But the National Institutes of Health contributes only about $230 million a year to sleep research—comparable to the amount that the manufacturers of the popular sleeping pills Lunesta and Ambien spent in one season on television advertising in 2008. The military also spends money investigating sleep, but its primary mission is keeping soldiers up and ready to fight, not ensuring they get a good night's rest. As a result the fight against insomnia is largely left to drug companies and commercial sleep centers.

"Sleep has been the Rodney Dangerfield of medicine," says John Winkelman, medical director of the Brigham and Women's Hospital's Sleep Health Center in Brighton, Massachusetts. "It just gets no respect."

One early afternoon last year I paid a visit to the Sleep Medicine Center at Stanford. The clinic, founded in 1970, was the first in the country devoted to the problem of insomnia, and it remains among the most important. The sleep center sees over 10,000 patients a year and does more than 3,000 overnight sleep studies. The 18 bedrooms that patients occupy looked comfortable, the beds soft and cozy. The monitoring equipment was hidden in the furniture.

The main diagnostic tool at the clinic is the polysomnogram, the main element of which is the electroencephalograph (EEG), which captures the electrical output from a sleeping patient's brain. As you fall asleep, your brain slows down, and its electrical signature changes from short jagged waves to longer rolling ones, much the way the movement of the sea smooths out the farther you get from shore. In the brain these gentle undulations are interrupted periodi�cally by a renewal of the sudden agitated mental activ�ity of REM sleep. For unknown reasons, REM is the time during sleep when we do nearly all our dreaming.
As the EEG records this fitful voyage, the polysomnogram technicians also measure body temperature, muscle activity, eye movement, heart rhythms, and breathing. Then they look over the data for signs of abnormal sleep or frequent wake-ups. When a person has narcolepsy, for instance, he or she plunges from wakefulness into REM sleep without any intermediate steps. In fatal familial insomnia, the sufferer can never get past the first stages of sleep; body temperature soars and crashes.

FFI and narcolepsy cannot be diagnosed without EEGs and other monitoring devices. But Clete Kushida, the clinic director, told me he can spot most people's sleep problems right at the intake interview: There are those who cannot keep their eyes open, and those who just speak of their exhaustion but don't actually nod off. The former often have sleep apnea. The latter have what Kushida calls "true insomnia."

In obstructive sleep apnea sufferers, the muscle relaxation that comes with sleep allows the soft tissue of the throat and esophagus to close, shutting off the sleeper's air passage. When the brain realizes it is not getting oxygen, it sends an emergency signal to the body to wake up. The sleeper awakes, takes a breath, the brain is replenished, and sleep returns. A night's sleep for an apnea sufferer turns out to really be a hundred micro-naps. Sleep apnea is the behemoth of the sleep center business. Brigham and Women's John Winkelman says that at his sleep center, two-thirds of those examined are diagnosed with the condition.

Apnea is a serious problem, implicated in increased risk for heart attacks and stroke. But it is only indirectly a sleep disease. True insomniacs—people diagnosed with what some sleep doctors call psychophysiological insomnia—are people who either can't get to sleep or can't stay asleep for no evident reason. They wake up and don't feel rested. They lie down and their brains whir. This group makes up about 25 percent of those seen in sleep clinics, according to Winkelman. The Institute of Medicine estimates that over all, there are 30 million people with this condition in the United States.

While apnea can be treated with a device that forces air down the sleeper's throat to keep the airways open, the treatment of classic insomnia is not so clear-cut. Acupuncture may help—it has long had this role in Asian medicine and is being studied at the University of Pittsburgh sleep center now.

Typically, psychophysiological insomnia is treated with a two-part approach. First come the sleeping pills, most of which work by enhancing the activity of GABA, a neurotransmitter that regulates overall anxiety and alertness in the body. Though safer than they once were, sleeping pills can lead to psychological addiction. Many users complain that their sleeping-pill sleep seems different, and they feel hungover when they wake up. "Sleeping pills are not a natural way to sleep," points out Charles Czeisler, director of the Harvard Work Hours, Health and Safety Group. Pills can make future insomnia worse, too, a drawback called rebound insomnia.

The second step in treating true insomniacs is usually cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). In CBT, a specialized psychologist teaches the insomniac to think about his or her sleep problems as manageable, even solvable—that's the cognitive part—and to practice good "sleep hygiene." Good sleep hygiene mostly amounts to tried-and-true advice: Sleep in a dark room, go to bed only when you are sleepy, don't exercise before bed. Studies have shown that CBT is more effective than sleeping pills at treating long-term insomnia, but many sufferers aren't convinced. "Some people continue in my experience to struggle," says Winkelman. "They're not super-satisfied with their sleep."

Winkelman thinks CBT is better at helping some kinds of insomniacs than others. Insomnia covers a multitude of conditions. Between FFI, which is extremely rare, and apnea, which is very common, there are almost 90 recognized sleep disorders and a host of harder to codify reasons people can't sleep. Some insomniacs suffer from restless legs syndrome (RLS), an intense discomfort in their limbs that prevents falling asleep, or periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD), which produces involuntary kicking during sleep. Narcoleptics often have difficulty both staying asleep and staying awake. Then there are people who can't sleep because of depression, and people who are depressed because they can't sleep. Others have problems sleeping because of dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Some women sleep badly during their periods (women are twice as likely to have insomnia as men) and many during menopause. Older people in general sleep less well than young. Some insomniacs can't sleep because they are on medications that keep them awake. Others are worrying about work or soon having no work; one-third of Americans report they have lost sleep in the recent economic crisis. Of all these non-sleepers, patients with insomnia derived from physical internal causes—probably excesses or scarcities of various neurotransmitters—are likely the ones least able to respond to the treatment.

Yet for most of these conditions, CBT is offered as a potential cure. Perhaps this is because the problem of insomnia was for a long time the purview mainly of psychologists. In their eyes, insomnia is generally caused by something treatable through their tool kit, usually anxiety or depression. By extension, cognitive behavioral therapy asks the sleeper to think about what he or she is doing wrong, not what is wrong with his or her body. Winkelman wishes that the two aspects of sleep—the physical and the mental—were more often considered jointly. "Sleep is extraordinarily complicated," he says. "Why would we think that there couldn't be something in the wiring that goes awry too?"

If we can't sleep, perhaps it's because we've forgotten how. In premodern times people slept differently, going to bed at sunset and rising with the dawn. In winter months, with so long to rest, our ancestors may have broken sleep up into chunks. In developing countries people still often sleep this way. They bed down in groups and get up from time to time during the night. Some sleep outside, where it is cooler and the effect of sunlight on our circadian rhythm is more direct. In 2002, Carol Worthman and Melissa Melby of Emory University published a comparative survey of how people sleep in a variety of cultures. They found that among foraging groups such as the !Kung and Efe, "the boundaries of sleep and waking are very fluid." There is no fixed bedtime, and no one tells anyone else to go to sleep. Sleepers get up when a conversation or musical performance intrudes on their rest and intrigues them. They might join in, then nod off again.

No one in developed nations sleeps this way today, at least not on purpose. We go to bed near a fixed time, sleep alone or with our partner, on soft cushions covered with sheets and blankets. We sleep on average about an hour and a half less a night than we did just a century ago. Some of our epidemic of insomnia or sleeplessness is probably just our refusal to pay attention to our biology. The natural sleep rhythms of teenagers would call for a late morning wake-up—but there they are, starting high school at 8 a.m. The night shift worker sleeping in the morning is fighting ancient rhythms in his or her body that order him or her awake to hunt or forage when the sky is flooded with light. Yet he or she has no choice.

We fight these forces at our peril. In February 2009 a commuter jet en route from Newark to Buffalo crashed, killing all 49 aboard and one on the ground. The copilot, and probably the pilot, had only sporadic amounts of sleep the day leading up to the crash, leading the National Transportation Safety Board to conclude that their performance "was likely impaired because of fatigue." This sort of news enrages Harvard's Charles Czeisler. He notes that going without sleep for 24 hours or getting only five hours of sleep a night for a week is the equivalent of a blood alcohol level of 0.1 percent. Yet modern business ethic celebrates such feats. "We would never say, 'This person is a great worker! He's drunk all the time!' " Czeisler wrote in a 2006 Harvard Business Review article.

Starting in 2004, Czeisler published a series of reports in medical journals based on a study his group had conducted of 2,700 first-year medical residents. These young men and women work shifts that are as long as 30 hours twice a week. Czeisler's research revealed the remarkable public health risk that this sleep debt entailed. "We know that one out of five first-year residents admits to making a fatigue-related mistake that resulted in injury to a patient," he told me in the spring of 2009. "One in 20 admits to making a fatigue-related mistake that resulted in the death of a patient." When Czeisler came out with this information, he expected hospitals to thank him. Instead many "circled the wagons." He despairs of anything being done until U.S. employers get serious about insomnia and sleepiness. "My conviction is that one day people will look back on what will be viewed as a barbarous practice."

Now consider the siesta. The timing of the traditional siesta corresponds to a natural post-lunch dip in our circadian rhythms, and studies have shown that people who catnap are generally more productive and may even enjoy lower risk of death from heart disease. It is the Spanish who have made the siesta famous. Unfortunately, Spaniards no longer live close enough to work to go home and nap. Instead some use the afternoon break to go out for long lunches with friends and colleagues. Having spent two hours at lunch, Spanish workers then cannot finish work until seven or eight. But even then they don't always go home. They go out for drinks or dinner instead. (Go to a Spanish disco at midnight and you're likely to be dancing alone; their prime-time TV shows are just ending.)

Lately the Spanish have begun to take the problem of sleep deprivation seriously. The police now question drivers in serious accidents about how long they slept the night before, and the government has recently mandated shorter hours for its employees to try to get them home earlier.

What has motivated the Spanish to take action against sleepiness is not so much their accident rate—historically among the highest in western Europe—as their flat productivity. The Spanish spend more time at work and their productivity is less than most of their European neighbors. "It's one thing to log hours, another to get something done," Ignacio Buqueras y Bach, a 68-year-old businessman who has spearheaded the attempt to get Spaniards to bed earlier, lectured his countrymen in a Madrid newspaper recently.
"Every once in a while we have to close our eyes," Buqueras told me. "We're not machines."
In 2006 a commission formed by Buqueras to change things became part of the Spanish government. Two years later I had occasion to go to one of the commission's meetings in the annex to the Congreso de los Diputados, the lower house of Spain's legislative branch. An assortment of modern Spanish grandees testified to the problem. They spoke of accidents by tired workers, Spanish women doubly exhausted by long work hours and household duties, and small children deprived of their proper ten to twelve hours of sleep. Members were urged to contact the television networks to see if they would consider moving prime time earlier.

Buqueras kept the meeting moving, exhorting the speakers to adhere to a "telegraphic brevity." But the lights were low and the room warm. In the audience a few participants' heads began to slump to their chests, then pop back up as they resisted, then their eyes closed more fully, their programs lowering to their laps, as they began to pay back their nation's sleep debt.

Online Dating - taken from Economist

2011-01-07T20:53:00.000+08:00

Love at first byte

Online-dating sites have made it easier for people to click with one another. But they still leave something to be desired

FOR the lovelorn, the new year can be an unhappy time, as they cast envious glances in the direction of lovey-dovey couples at the season’s parties. For online-dating agencies, it is a golden opportunity, as people who have spent the holidays ruminating over unsatisfactory or non-existent love lives log on in their thousands, hoping to find romance—ideally before February 14th. “The period between New Year’s Day and Valentine’s Day is our busiest six weeks of the year,” explains Sam Yagan, the boss of OkCupid, a big American dating site.

Once seen as the last resort for a bunch of lonely geeks, online-dating services have gradually shed much of the stigma formerly associated with them. Although they are still popular with tech types—Julian Assange, the mercurial co-founder of WikiLeaks, reportedly once maintained profiles on dating sites under the name “Harry Harrison”—they now attract millions of people from many walks of life. ComScore, a research firm, says Match and Zoosk, two large dating services based in the United States, saw 4.6m and 4.8m unique visitors respectively come to their American sites in November 2010. Meetic, Europe’s biggest dating service, also boasts millions of users.

Blowing cyberkisses has become a popular pastime in emerging markets too. In countries and cultures in which arranged marriages are common, sites such as India’s Shaadi and BharatMatrimony, which boast many millions of clients, are a big hit with young people who want to influence how their marriage partners are chosen. And a number of sizeable digital matchmakers, including Jiayuan and Zhenai, have risen to prominence in China. Deepak Kamra of Canaan Partners, an American venture-capital firm that has backed several dating services, including Zoosk and BharatMatrimony, estimates that the industry’s revenues from membership fees and advertising now amount to $3 billion-4 billion a year.

Searching for that special someone

In addition to broad-based matchmaking sites such as Match and Zoosk, the online-dating world has also spawned thousands of niche ones. Some, such as JDate, which is designed for Jewish lonely hearts, and Ave Maria Singles, which focuses on Catholics, serve specific religious or ethnic niches. Others appeal to rather less conventional interests. Vampire lovers can sink their teeth into the profiles on offer at Vampire Passions, while those obsessed with iPads and iPhones can hunt for their iBeloveds at Cupidtino, a dating site for fans of Apple’s products.

The rise of these and other dating sites has been driven by several trends in society. One of these is that people now move around more often for work, distancing themselves from friends and family members who could play matchmakers. Another is that they are living longer, and hence more likely to look for new love later in life. The spread of fast broadband connectivity in many countries has also encouraged people to dabble in online dating.

Academics who have studied the industry believe that it and other forms of electronic communication such as e-mail and social networks are starting to have a significant effect on the ways in which people find love. In a study presented at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting in August, Michael Rosenfeld of Stanford University and Reuben Thomas of the City College of New York reviewed data from a survey of more than 3,000 Americans with romantic partners. They concluded that among heterosexual couples who met in 2009, the internet had become the third most common way of making initial contact—behind introductions from friends, but almost on a par with encounters in bars and restaurants.

Yet while looking for love online is no longer seen as an act of desperation, the digital-dating industry still generates plenty of controversy. Its critics charge that sites’ claims of matchmaking prowess are often greatly overblown. Mark Thompson, a former executive in the online-dating trade, now an author, believes that television ads showing starry-eyed couples boasting about how they found their perfect match online should carry warnings that such outcomes are hardly typical.

Dating sites have also been accused of failing to take robust enough action to protect vulnerable users from fraudsters and sexual predators. Last year several elderly British women sent money to American soldiers whose profiles they had come across on dating sites, only to discover subsequently that the profiles were bogus. And there have been instances of rapists using dating sites to prey on women.

A megabit on the side

Then there is the fuss over sites such as Illicit Encounters and Ashley Madison, which have sparked an outcry by matching people seeking partners for extramarital affairs. Outraged critics claim such services deliberately promote infidelity to further their commercial ambitions. In America Ashley Madison, which claims to have 8.3m registered members in nine countries, has been decried as “a business built on the back of broken hearts, ruined marriages and damaged families”. In Britain the Sun, a tabloid daily, labelled it a “vile website” when it set up shop in the country last year. Several critics have also accused it of exaggerating its ability to match cheats with one another, chronicling its alleged failings on websites such as ashleymadisonsucks.com.

Few other dating sites have provoked such a public backlash. But some sociologists, such as Millsom Henry-Waring of the University of Melbourne, have given warning that electronic forms of communication in general—and digital-dating services in particular—are gradually changing society’s conception of relationships and marriage for the worse by encouraging people to view partners as commodities that can simply be traded in for better versions at the click of a computer mouse.

Dating executives retort that although the industry is not perfect, many of the criticisms levelled at it are unfair. They acknowledge that some clients, who typically spend anything from a few months to a year before finding a soulmate or throwing in the towel, have frustrating experiences on their sites. But they point out that the web still offers important advantages over more traditional routes of finding a mate.

One is its ability to create large pools of potential partners that would be hard to replicate in the real world. This explains why online dating has proven especially popular with, for example, homosexuals. Another is the sheer convenience of being able to trawl through hundreds of profiles without having to leave the comfort of your home. Meeting someone via the web is also safer, they argue, than trying to pick up a date at random in a bar. Users of dating sites are typically encouraged to report suspicious behaviour and some sites employ sophisticated software designed to flag bogus profiles.

Online matchmakers also claim their record of producing successful unions is better than critics give them credit for. For instance, eHarmony, a prominent online-dating service, touts the results of a survey conducted on its behalf by Harris Interactive, a market-research firm, that concludes it was responsible for an average of 542 people getting married every day in America between the start of 2008 and the end of June 2009. EHarmony claims to have accounted for almost 4.8% of all American marriages in that period.

Such studies, coupled with advertising campaigns playing up the possibility of finding love online, have helped the online-dating industry to prosper. Some sites such as OkCupid and Plentyoffish are free to join and make most of their money from advertising. Others, including eHarmony, which presents users with potential partners using algorithms designed to identify compatibility, charge a subscription. The monthly fee for the American version of eHarmony is between $19.95 and $59.95, depending on the length of a subscription.

Not surprisingly, sites that charge for their services and require people to fill in detailed questionnaires argue that they are more likely to attract those who are serious about finding love. But owners of free sites say that is not necessarily so. OkCupid’s Mr Yagan argues that the size of the fee that most paid sites charge is not big enough to act as an effective filter. And he claims that his own site has a very effective way of demonstrating a person’s seriousness of intent, which involves promoting the profiles of those people who are most active on it.

There has been some speculation that both kinds of business model will be undermined by the rise of free social networks such as Facebook, which make it easy for people to share large amounts of personal information with one another. But Greg Blatt, the former boss of Match and the new chief executive of IAC, a holding company that owns the dating site, says studies conducted by Match show that many people prefer to keep their dating activity separate from socialising with their friends. Zoosk has even cleverly piggybacked on Facebook, enabling its users to import their details from the social network to populate their profiles on Zoosk’s fast-growing service.

Dating sites have also adapted successfully to different cultures. In India agencies such as BharatMatrimony provide remarkably detailed lists of criteria, including religion, caste, income and education, that allow people to make minute refinements to the description of their ideal soulmate. The services also let parents and relatives create profiles on others’ behalf. Once promising partners are identified, they are often vetted by traditional marriage-brokers.

In spite of all this, loveseekers should still approach online dating with a healthy degree of scepticism. For a start, pools of potential partners are often much smaller than the big numbers touted by mainstream sites suggest. David Evans, the editor of Online Dating Insider, an industry blog, cites the example of a hypothetical site with 15m profiles in its database. Perhaps only 4m of these will be “active” at any time, he says—meaning that the profiles’ owners have logged in at least once in the previous three months. Moreover, some services only let people contact paying members, which shrinks the audience still more. And given that most online daters look for partners who live no more than 25-30 miles away, the real pool of potential mates is often tiny.

Ghost stories

To make matters worse, unscrupulous site operators sometimes stuff their databases with fake profiles maintained either by their own staff or by people they have paid. These “ghosts”, in the industry’s jargon, are used to draw in new punters and to help keep existing ones hooked. Last year Jetplace, an Australian company, admitted that it had been running more than 1,300 false profiles on a matchmaking service that it owned. Dating-site bosses maintain that such instances are rare, but detecting them can be tricky.

Even genuine profiles can be misleading: OkTrends, a blog run by OkCupid, reported last year that users routinely fib about things such as their height and wealth in order to boost their chances of being contacted. Yet the prospect of a first face-to-face meeting provides a natural check on people’s propensity to exaggerate. Some researchers have found that daters tend to come clean about any slight misrepresentations they have made before meeting a potential partner.

Dating sites’ claims of matchmaking prowess also need to be treated with caution given that the data on which these are based come from research they have paid for themselves. Prominent sites have also been reluctant to submit their matching algorithms to an independent inspection that would determine their efficacy. Gian Gonzaga of eHarmony, which loves to boast about its patented “Compatibility Matching System”, says the firm won’t take such a step because it would reveal the site’s “secret sauce” to competitors.

Even without such evidence, Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioural economics at Duke University, is convinced that the approach to matchmaking embodied by many dating sites represents a market failure. In a recent book, “The Upside of Irrationality”, he argues that the sites treat human beings as if they are goods that can be fully defined according to a set of standard attributes, in much the same way that, say, a digital camera can be described by the number of megapixels that it has and other characteristics. But this cold, drearily functional approach to assessing compatibility fails to capture the indefinable spark that triggers romance.

Helen Fisher, an anthropologist working for Chemistry, a dating site owned by Match, says Mr Ariely’s argument ignores the fact that although there is inevitably some magic to love, decades of scientific studies have shown that people tend to choose mates with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, shared religious beliefs and other things in common. It therefore makes sense to look at these factors, as well as exploring people’s personality types, in order to narrow down potential matches. “We don’t just fall in love with anything that comes along,” she notes.

Ms Fisher has a point. But so does Mr Ariely. Even industry insiders acknowledge their models cannot deal with the notion that people from very different backgrounds sometimes fall for one another. Part of the problem, says Mr Ariely, is that sites have been slow to embrace new ways for people to interact online, such as virtual chatrooms, which would help to foster more serendipitous partnerships.

The industry has also been slow to strengthen security measures to protect those seeking romance from falling into the clutches of frauds, cads and worse. A few agencies, such as True, an American dating service, regularly run background checks on their customers. But they are the exception rather than the rule. As well as weeding out crooks and sex offenders, True also uses official databases to spot married people posing as singles.

Mr Evans thinks many online-dating services are reluctant to undertake thorough background checks because these could put off potential customers. But pressure on them to take action is likely to increase. Last month a new Internet Dating Safety Act came into effect in New York state, which among other things requires dating sites to post safety tips for users on their pages. New Jersey, which passed a similar law a few years ago, requires sites charging membership fees to make clear whether or not they conduct background checks when people sign up.

Portable passion

Safety will become even more of a sensitive question as the online-dating industry embraces what those who work in it see as the next big thing: mobile, location-based dating. Many sites already offer software programmes, or apps, that let users tap into their services via smartphones and other devices. But that is just the beginning of a far bigger revolution in which people will be given technology that allows them to flirt with other members of a dating service in real time.

Already firms such as Skout and Flirtomatic let users send messages to other members in the vicinity, whose exact locations are masked for safety reasons. Looking ahead, executives foresee a day when people no longer need to fill in questionnaires on several dating sites. Instead, their personal information will be held on servers in “data clouds” that will alert them automatically when a potential love interest is nearby.

Some dating services are also exploring novel ways to overcome the concerns raised by people such as Mr Ariely. Rather than proposing matches based solely on the results of questionnaires and personality tests, sites such as ScientificMatch and GenePartner are experimenting with “scientific” matching methods. By making genetic information the cornerstone of their matching techniques, they are betting that they can find true chemistry between potential lovers.

Such experimentation will no doubt fuel the fears of those who worry that cyberdating is commoditising intimacy and undermining marriages. It is certainly plausible that the Wal-Marts of the online-dating world, with their overflowing virtual shelves of potential partners, have created the impression that a new flame can be found (and an existing one discarded or cheated on) in a mouse-click. But again some scepticism is warranted. Rising divorce rates and a growth in casual dating were apparent well before the first online matchmaking sites came into being. And advertising for love is hardly new: there were classified ads and lonely-hearts columns long before the internet appeared.

It is also true that a site such as Ashley Madison facilitates extramarital assignations. But to blame the service for infidelity is to confuse cause and effect. Noel Biderman, the site’s founder, says the idea for his business came to him when he heard people griping that a sizeable percentage of folk on mainstream dating sites were married and masquerading as singles in order to find partners for affairs.

Some sites—notably in India—have been subject to a different criticism: that they entrench tradition rather than undermine it, by making it easier for people to find partners from the same background as themselves. But at the same time services such as Shaadi and BharatMatrimony have also facilitated numerous so-called “love marriages” in which people have found partners without the intervention of parents or official matchmakers. Like love itself, the world of online matchmaking is full of happy surprises
.

A very interesting debate on Economist this week.

2011-01-07T14:45:00.001+08:00

http://www.economist.com/debate/days/view/633

Lessons from a frugal innovator

2010-12-30T14:19:00.000+08:00

The rich world’s bloated health-care systems can learn from India’s entrepreneurs.

ENTER the main cardiac operating-room at Bangalore’s Wockhardt hospital on a typical morning, and you will find a patient on the operating table with a screen hanging between his head and chest. On a recent visit the table was occupied by a middle-aged Indian man whose serene look suggested that he was ready for the operation to come. Asked how he was, he smiled and answered in Kannada that he felt fine. Only when you stand on a stool to look over the screen do you realise that his chest cavity has already been cut open.

As the patient was chatting away, Vivek Jawali and his team had nearly completed his complex heart bypass. Because such “beating heart” surgery causes little pain and does not require general anaesthesia or blood thinners, patients are back on their feet much faster than usual. This approach, pioneered by Wockhardt, an Indian hospital chain, has proved so safe and successful that medical tourists come to Bangalore from all over the world.

This is just one of many innovations in health care that have been devised in India. Its entrepreneurs are channelling the country’s rich technological and medical talent towards frugal approaches that have much to teach the rich world’s bloated health-care systems. Dr Jawali is feted today as a pioneer, but he remembers how Western colleagues ridiculed him for years for advocating his inventive “awake surgery”. He thinks that snub reflects an innate cultural advantage enjoyed by India.

Unlike the hidebound health systems of the rich world, he says, “in our country’s patient-centric health system you must innovate.” This does not mean adopting every fancy new piece of equipment. Over the years he has rejected surgical robots and “keyhole surgery” kit because the costs did not justify the benefits. Instead, he has looked for tools and techniques that spare resources and improve outcomes.

Shivinder Singh, head of Fortis, a rival hospital chain based in New Delhi, says that most of the new, expensive imaging machines are only a little better than older models. Meanwhile, vast markets for poorer patients go unserved. “We got out of this arms race a few years ago,” he says. Fortis now promises only that its scanners are “world class”, not the newest.

Mr Singh is not alone in thinking that many firms in the rich world are looking at innovation the wrong way. Paul Yock, head of the bio-design laboratory at Stanford University, which develops medical devices, argues that medical-technology giants have “looked at need, but been blind to cost.” Amid growing concern about runaway health spending, he thinks the industry can find inspiration in India.

Poverty, geography and poor infrastructure mean that India faces perhaps the world’s heaviest disease burden, ranging from infectious diseases, the traditional scourge of the poor, to diseases of affluence such as diabetes and hypertension. The public sector has been overwhelmed, which is not surprising considering how little India’s government spends on health as a share of national income (see chart). Accordingly, nearly four-fifths of all health services are supplied by private firms and charities—a higher share than in any other big country.

In the past that was more a reflection of the state’s failure than the dynamism of entrepreneurs, but this is changing fast. Technopak Healthcare, a consulting firm, expects spending on health care in India to grow from $40 billion in 2008 to $323 billion in 2023. In part, that is the result of the growing affluence of India’s emerging middle classes. Another cause is the nascent boom in health insurance, now offered both by private firms and, in some cases, by the state. In addition, the government has recently liberalised the industry, easing restrictions on lending and foreign investment in health care, encouraging public-private partnerships and offering tax breaks for health investments in smaller cities and rural areas.

Cheaper and smarter

This has attracted a wave of investment from some of India’s biggest corporate groups, including Ranbaxy (the generic-drugs pioneer behind Fortis) and Reliance (one of India’s biggest conglomerates). The happy collision of need and greed has produced a cauldron of innovation, as Indian entrepreneurs have devised new business models. Some just set out to do things cheaply, but others are more radical, and have helped India leapfrog the rich world.

For years India’s private-health providers, such as Apollo Hospitals, focused on the affluent upper classes, but they are now racing down the pyramid. Vishal Bali, Wockhardt’s boss, plans to take advantage of tax breaks to build hospitals in small and medium-sized cities (which, in India, means those with up to 3m inhabitants). Prathap Reddy, Apollo’s founder, plans to do the same. He thinks he can cut costs in half for patients: a quarter saved through lower overheads, and another quarter by eliminating travel to bigger cities.

Columbia Asia, a privately held American firm with over a dozen hospitals across Asia, is also making a big push into India. Rick Evans, its boss, says his investors left America to escape over-regulation and the political power of the medical lobby. His model involves building no-frills hospitals using standardised designs, connected like spokes to a hub that can handle more complex ailments. His firm offers modestly priced services to those earning $10,000-20,000 a year within wealthy cities, thereby going after customers overlooked by fancier chains. Its small hospital on the fringes of Bangalore lacks a marble foyer and expensive imaging machines—but it does have fully integrated health information-technology (HIT) systems, including electronic health records (EHRs).

New competitors are also emerging. A recent report from Monitor, a consultancy, points to LifeSpring Hospitals, a chain of small maternity hospitals around Hyderabad. This for-profit outfit offers normal deliveries attended by private doctors for just $40 in its general ward, and Caesarean sections for about $140—as little as one-fifth of the price at the big private hospitals. It has cut costs with a basic approach: it has no canteens and outsources laboratory tests and pharmacy services.

It also achieves economies of scale by attracting large numbers of patients using marketing. Monitor estimates that its operating theatres accommodate 22-27 procedures a week, compared with four to six in other private clinics. LifeSpring’s doctors perform four times as many operations a month as their counterparts do elsewhere—and, crucially, get better results as a result of high volumes and specialisation. Cheap and cheerful really can mean better.

But there is more to India’s approach than cutting costs. Its health-care providers also make better use of HIT. According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, fewer than 20% of doctors’ surgeries in America use HIT. In contrast, according to Technopak, nearly 60% of Indian hospitals do so. And instead of grafting technology onto existing, inefficient processes, as often happens in America, Indian providers build their model around it. Apollo’s integrated approach to HIT has enabled the chain to increase efficiency while cutting medical errors and labour. EHRs and drug records zip between hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, and its systems also handle patient registration and billing. Apollo is already selling its expertise to American hospitals.

Eye on the prize

A casual visitor to Madurai, a vibrant medieval-temple town in southern India, would not think it was a hotbed of innovation. And yet that is exactly what you will find at Aravind, the world’s biggest eye-hospital chain, based in the town. There are perhaps 12m blind people in India, with most cases arising from treatable or preventable causes such as cataracts. Rather than rely on government handouts or charity, Aravind’s founders use a tiered pricing structure that charges wealthier patients more (for example, for fancy meals or air-conditioned rooms), letting the firm cross-subsidise free care for the poorest.

Aravind also benefits from its scale. Its staff screen over 2.7m patients a year via clinics in remote areas, referring 285,000 of them for surgery at its hospitals. International experts vouch that the care is good, not least because Aravind’s doctors perform so many more operations than they would in the West that they become expert. Furthermore, the staff are rotated to deal with both paying and non-paying patients so there is no difference in quality. Monitor’s new report argues that Aravind’s model does not just depend on pricing, scale, technology or process, but on a clever combination of all of them.

C.K. Prahalad and other management gurus trumpet examples like Aravind, but do the rich countries accept that they could learn from India? Unsurprisingly, some reject the notion that America’s model is broken. William Tauzin, head of America’s pharmaceutical lobby, warns that regulatory efforts to cut costs could stifle life-saving innovation. Sandra Peterson of Bayer, a German drugs and devices giant, stoutly defends the industry’s record. She argues that overall cost increases mask how medical devices, “like cars or personal computers, give better value for the money over time.” Diabetes monitors and pacemakers have improved dramatically in the past 20 years and have fallen in price—but costs have gone up because they are now being used by more patients.

But those examples are exceptions. Many studies show that America’s spending on health care is soaring, yet its medical outcomes remain mediocre. Mark McClellen of the Brookings Institution, an American think-tank, says that a big problem is the overuse of technology. Whether or not a scan is needed, the system usually pays if a doctor orders it—and the scan might help defend the doctor against a malpractice claim. “The root cause is not greed, but tremendous technological progress imposed upon a fractured health system,” says Thomas Lee of Partners Community HealthCare, a health provider in Boston.

Dr McClellen, a former head of America’s Food and Drug Administration, points out that other innovative industries often sell new products at a loss, and recoup their investments later. In genuinely competitive industries, innovators are rarely rewarded with the “cost plus” reimbursements demanded by medical-device makers for their gold-plated gizmos.

That is why Stanford’s Dr Yock wants to turn innovation upside down. He has extended his bio-design programme to India, in part to instil an understanding of the benefits of frugality in his students. He believes that India’s combination of poverty and outstanding medical and engineering talents will produce a world-class medical-devices industry. Tim Brown, the head of Ideo, a design consultancy, agrees. In the past, he notes, health bosses thought all devices had to be Rolls-Royces or Ferraris. But cost matters, too. Pointing to another recent example of India’s frugal engineering, he says: “In health care, as in life, there is need for both Ferraris and Tata Nanos.”

Medicine goes digital

2010-12-30T14:08:00.000+08:00

The convergence of biology and engineering is turning health care into an information industry. That will be disruptive, says Vijay Vaitheeswaran (interviewed here), but also hugely beneficial to patients.

INNOVATION and medicine go together. The ancient Egyptians are thought to have performed surgery back in 2750BC, and the Romans developed medical tools such as forceps and surgical needles. In modern times medicine has been transformed by waves of discovery that have brought marvels like antibiotics, vaccines and heart stents.

Given its history of innovation, the health-care sector has been surprisingly reluctant to embrace information technology (IT). Whereas every other big industry has computerised with gusto since the 1980s, doctors in most parts of the world still work mainly with pen and paper.

But now, in fits and starts, medicine is at long last catching up. As this special report will explain, it is likely to be transformed by the introduction of electronic health records that can be turned into searchable medical databases, providing a “smart grid” for medicine that will not only improve clinical practice but also help to revive drugs research. Developing countries are already using mobile phones to put a doctor into patients’ pockets. Devices and diagnostics are also going digital, advancing such long-heralded ideas as telemedicine, personal medical devices for the home and smart pills.

The first technological revolution in modern biology started when James Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of DNA half a century ago. That established the fields of molecular and cell biology, the basis of the biotechnology industry. The sequencing of the human genome nearly a decade ago set off a second revolution which has started to illuminate the origins of diseases.

The great convergence

Now the industry is convinced that a third revolution is under way: the convergence of biology and engineering. A recent report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) says that physical sciences have already been transformed by their adoption of information technology, advanced materials, imaging, nanotechnology and sophisticated modelling and simulation. Phillip Sharp, a Nobel prize-winner at that university, believes that those tools are about to be brought to bear on biology too.

Robert Langer, a biochemist at MIT who holds over 500 patents in biotechnology and medical technologies and has started or advised more than 100 new companies, thinks innovation in medical technologies is about to take off. Menno Prins of Philips, a Dutch multinational with a big medical-technology division, explains that, “like chemistry before it, biology is moving from a world of alchemy and ignorance to becoming a predictable, repeatable science.” Ajay Royyuru of IBM, an IT giant, argues that “it’s the transformation of biology into an information science from a discovery science.”

This special report will ask how much of this grand vision is likely to become reality. Some of the industry’s optimism appears to be well-founded. As the rich world gets older and sicker and the poor world gets wealthier and fatter, the market for medical innovations of all kinds is bound to grow. Clever technology can help solve two big problems in health care: overspending in the rich world and under-provisioning in the poor world.

But the chances are that this will take time, and turn out to be more of a reformation than a revolution. The hidebound health-care systems of the rich world may resist new technologies even as poor countries leapfrog ahead. There is already a backlash against genomics, which has been oversold to consumers as a deterministic science. And given soaring health-care costs, insurers and health systems may not want to adopt new technologies unless inventors can show conclusively that they will produce better outcomes and offer value for money.

If these obstacles can be overcome, then the biggest winner will be the patient. In the past medicine has taken a paternalistic stance, with the all-knowing physician dispensing wisdom from on high, but that is becoming increasingly untenable. Digitisation promises to connect doctors not only to everything they need to know about their patients but also to other doctors who have treated similar disorders.

The coming convergence of biology and engineering will be led by information technologies, which in medicine means the digitisation of medical records and the establishment of an intelligent network for sharing those records. That essential reform will enable many other big technological changes to be introduced.

Just as important, it can make that information available to the patients too, empowering them to play a bigger part in managing their own health affairs. This is controversial, and with good reason. Many doctors, and some patients, reckon they lack the knowledge to make informed decisions. But patients actually know a great deal about many diseases, especially chronic ones like diabetes and heart problems with which they often live for many years. The best way to deal with those is for individuals to take more responsibility for their own health and prevent problems before they require costly hospital visits. That means putting electronic health records directly into patients’ hands.

Under the Knife: Stuck in the time-warp

2010-12-30T14:00:00.000+08:00

IT'S pretty common, among critics of the NHS, to describe it as out of date, a relic of the mid-20th century ‘cradle to grave’ welfare state of Bevan and Beveridge. Whether or not this is true of the organisation as a whole (and personally I’m sceptical about it), it does have some plausibility when applied to the technology the Health Service uses. If you want to refer a patient to my department, you have two options: post us a letter, or send us a fax. Need information about a patient who’s had an appointment with us? Letter or fax again. It’s urgent and you don’t have a fax machine handy, because you thought they were obsolete now that we live in a world where scanners and email providers are cheap and plentiful? Um...maybe we could read you the information you need down the phone, and you could write it down?

The main justification given for this is security, but while it’s admittedly true that patients’ medical records are confidential and that email is a long way from ideal for safeguarding sensitive data, I don’t really see how letters or faxes are that much better. Neither is even close to tamper-proof, and in any case just a few months back the NHS introduced a new secure email service, available for use by every Health Service employee, so I don’t understand why referrals can’t be sent through that. I admit I’m not an expert on information security, but is a secure email server really less safe than a letter?

Part of the Luddite character of the NHS may indeed be attributable to concerns about confidentiality, but if you also take into account the fact that the hospital where I work only upgraded from Internet Explorer 6 (which is now 9 years old) earlier this year, and that one of the computers in my department still runs Windows 95, I would respectfully suggest that the NHS’s relationship with technology looks more like one of institutional inertia than of simple apprehensiveness at the security implications of modern methods of communication. Even some of the referral forms we get sent are photocopies of a template that’s at least ten years out of date (they still list the department phone number with the old London area code, which changed in 2000); the clinics which send them to us were presumably faxed a blank form at some point many years ago when they first needed it and simply haven’t bothered to check if we’ve updated our forms at any point since then.

I’m not suggesting it’s all bad though. Much like I said in my post from a few weeks ago, it may not be pretty but most of the time things do work pretty well; it’s just that coming into work every morning can feel a bit like stepping back into the past. But given that on those occasions when the NHS does attempt to drag itself into the modern world things don’t always go exactly to plan, perhaps it’s no bad thing that there are still dusty corners of hospitals where it will forever be the mid-90s. At least we only had to keep the computers and not the hairstyles.

Escape from North Korea

2010-12-29T11:05:00.001+08:00

The article below depicts the plight of 3 North Koreans who flees their homeland in hopes of a better future. At the end of the article, there are links to a movie called "Crossing". It is a movie based on a true story of a defector that fled North Korea. All copyrights belong to the makers.

Escape From North Korea

Defection is daunting. So is starting a new, free life.

By Tom O'Neill

Photograph by Chien-Chi Chang

A frigid November day pressed against the windows of a shabby apartment building in the Chinese city of Yanji, ten miles from the North Korean border. Three stories up, footsteps stopped outside a door. At the sound, two young women hurried to a back room and shrank against a wall. Then came a knock. The women, defectors from North Korea, bowed their heads, expecting the worst. If the Chinese police found them without identity cards, they would be deported in handcuffs and chains. Back in North Korea, they would be sentenced to years of hard labor in a prison camp.

Their former boss, the Korean-Chinese owner of an Internet sex operation, was hunting them as well. For the past year Red and White (aliases I gave them in my notebook in case police stopped me) had been held in a room as virtual prisoners, forced to "talk dirty" and take off their clothes in front of a camera for online clients in South Korea. The night before, Christian missionaries had helped them escape and brought them to this safe house.
The knocking continued. A man called out, "Are you there? Open up." White recognized the voice: It came from one of their rescuers. She rushed to the door and fumbled it open. Standing there was a thin man with an awkward smile, holding up a cooker and a bag of rice. "You must be hungry." Bowing in greeting, the women led him into the kitchen. Soon the room filled with their chatter. The missionary also brought a message: "Be ready to leave soon. The call just came."
Some 50,000 North Koreans, and possibly many more, are hiding in China, most in cities and villages along the remote 900-mile-long border between the two countries. Uncounted others have come for a few months and then slipped back to North Korea with food and money. Yet many stay on, unable or unwilling to return to their cruel homeland. They are left with two desperate choices: Keep hiding—often as prisoners of exploitative employers—or embark on the Asian underground railroad, a perilous journey by foot, vehicle, and train across China and Southeast Asia. Confronted with an obstacle course of checkpoints, informants, and treacherous terrain, numerous defectors have been caught. But aided by a small band of humanitarians and by smugglers charging $3,000 and up, some 15,000 have reached safe haven, most often in South Korea. There, traumatized and barely skilled, they face the most formidable challenge of all: starting over.
The exodus from North Korea began in the mid-1990s as a devastating famine broke out across the country. In the worst hit areas, people were reduced to eating roots, grasses, and tree bark. More than 2.5 million people would perish. At first the Chinese openly aided the desperate border crossers. But following protests from the North Korean government, China cracked down. Police regularly raid neighborhoods and villages to ferret out North Korean runaways, who live in terror of being caught and deported. In North Korea, crossing the border without permission is punishable by three to five years in a prison labor camp, and conspiring with missionaries or others to reach South Korea is considered treason, with offenders starved, tortured, and sometimes publicly executed. Human rights organizations and various foreign leaders, particularly in the United States and the European Union, are urging China to honor its international agreements by treating the North Koreans as refugees, a status they're entitled to because of the punishments they face if deported. But China maintains that the defectors are illegal "economic migrants." In the months leading up to the 2008 Olympics, Chinese authorities intensified their efforts to apprehend defectors, capturing and deporting dozens, perhaps hundreds, a week. Yet they keep coming.

Most sneak across the narrow Tumen River, which forms roughly a third of North Korea's border with China, crossing in summer, when the river is shallow enough to wade, or in winter, when it's possible to walk across the ice. The Chinese side of the Tumen looks strangely benign—it isn't crawling with soldiers or bristling with electrified fences. On the opposite bank, in North Korea, bunkers every few hundred yards look more like abandoned hunting blinds than guard posts. Visiting the Chinese side, I asked my driver why the border isn't better protected. He smiled faintly. "The North Koreans figure they'll catch troublemakers before they ever reach the river, and the Chinese are sure they can find North Koreans anytime they want."
Apart from the guard posts, the view across the river betrays nothing of the North Korean reality beyond: the dozens of prison camps for citizens deemed insufficiently loyal, the malnutrition and hunger that stalk as many as a fourth of the country's 23 million people, the number of people in uniform—at least a million—who bully and spy on the citizenry. Collective farms, most appearing to lack electricity, dot the river plain. A single-lane bridge leads to Namyang, a town of unpainted apartment blocks, its streets empty except for a few military vehicles and bicycles. The only color is a giant mural of a smiling Kim Il Sung, founder of North Korea and father of its present leader, Kim Jong Il, both held up as deities.
For Red, whose family lived within sight of the border, China appeared a seductive paradise. "I could see so many lights from apartment blocks and a power plant. China looked so rich." She had been raised on a collective farm in the province of North Hamgyong, the poorest part of North Korea and the source of most border crossers. "I grew up seeing people getting sick and dying from eating grass," she said. Lately she also noticed that entire housing blocks in a nearby city had been nearly emptied of women. They had all escaped across the border. As recently as 2003 the ratio of men to women fleeing North Korea was roughly equal; now women make up more than three-quarters of the traffic, a gender imbalance unusual in the world's refugee movements. With most men either in the military or working on farms or in factories, women can slip away from homes and jobs more easily, and once in China they more readily find work, though increasingly, like Red and White, they're caught up in the sex industry or are trafficked as brides to Chinese farmers.
Red escaped on a rainy July night. The teenager had been worried that she was a burden to her family and was embarrassed to start a job that required her to read news of the "Dear Leader"—Kim Jong Il—over a town loudspeaker. Her aunt left with her, and after paying guards about $15 to look the other way, they reached the Tumen. With panicked arms, Red paddled across on a raft of roped-together inner tubes. Her aunt didn't make it, forced back by a leaky float. Terrified and alone, Red, then only 15, set out walking. She was soon taken in by a North Korean woman who had been sold as a bride to a Chinese farmer. For the next three years Red worked out of sight as a farmhand and dishwasher. Eventually, after stealing money from an employer and traveling to Yanji, she ended up in the computer sex operation, facing a camera next to White.

White had waded across the river one October night. She had been living in an industrial city in the northern part of North Korea with a sick mother and two younger siblings. She was often hungry, unable to earn enough at her jobs, first in a chopstick factory and then selling fruit on the street. When a man approached her, offering work in China in the computer industry, the 26-year-old White naively agreed, thinking she'd stay in China long enough to buy medicine for her mother. The North Korean broker drove her to a remote spot on the Tumen and told her to look for a car waiting on the other side. Shivering after the crossing, she saw a car and jumped in, no questions asked. She had been tricked. White would spend the next year locked in a room selling sex.
From his office two stories above a food market in Seoul, South Korea, Pastor Chun Ki-won had made the call—the signal for defectors to leave on the underground railroad—many times before. Founder of Durihana (Two Become One) Mission, one of numerous Christian organizations that have sprung up in South Korea to help defectors, Chun has masterminded the escapes of hundreds of North Koreans trapped in China, providing them sanctuary in South Korea, the U.S., and other countries. He belongs to a diverse group of activists, humanitarians, traffickers, and fellow missionaries who operate the Asian underground railroad. Some hope to precipitate the collapse of North Korea; others want to convert North Koreans to Christianity. What binds most of them is the instinct to aid people under severe duress. "Their sufferings in North Korea and China are indescribable," Chun says. "I have no choice but to help them."
Pastor Chun is no stranger to the risks. In 2002 Chinese police, alerted by informants, arrested him near the Mongolian border, on the escape route he pioneered. Nine North Koreans he was guiding were also caught, sent back to North Korea, and never heard of again. The pastor spent eight months in a Chinese prison, after which he was sent home to South Korea and banned from returning to China. Chun's arrest and imprisonment caused a stir in South Korea, exposing the plight of North Korean defectors to a wide audience.
Red and White came to Chun's attention when a love-struck online client of White's figured out that she was a North Korean working against her will and instructed her on how to contact Durihana over the Internet. White's covert emails pleading for help moved Chun to activate his network in China, setting in motion their rescue from the sex business. Fearing that Red and White's enraged boss would soon recapture them, he moved them to the top of his list for the underground railroad.

As the two women waited anxiously for the signal to leave, a few miles away another North Korean I'll call Black was praying that his turn would come soon. A Korean-Chinese missionary arranged for me to meet Black in a private room at a restaurant in Yanji. He entered wearing a dark nylon jacket, too thin for the piercing winds outside. His face looked careworn. Over a bowl of steaming beef marrow soup, he smiled warily, reluctant to talk until I assured him that, to protect his family in North Korea, I wouldn't disclose his name or any details of his life there.
Black said he'd escaped across the frozen Tumen River two years earlier. He was a college graduate, a rarity among defectors, and during his days as a security guard in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, he'd grown disillusioned with the corruption and bribery that he said pervaded the "workers' paradise." For years he'd planned his escape, saving the several hundred dollars needed to hire a broker in North Korea to arrange passage for him and his girlfriend to China. First they'd be driven to the Tumen River. But when it came time to leave, Black was afraid they'd be too conspicuous in a car and insisted that they instead walk through the mountains to the crossing point, a seven-hour ordeal that permanently damaged the nerves in his toes.
"Crossing the Tumen was easy compared to what happened next," Black said. Like White, Black had been tricked by his broker, sold to a Korean-Chinese gangster to carry drugs and money back and forth across the Tumen. "I refused to help," said Black, who was otherwise vague about how he survived those early days in China. His darkest time followed the sale of his girlfriend to an aging addict, after which Black lost contact with her. Eventually Black heeded the advice whispered among defectors: "Head for a cross." Thirty or more churches around Yanji offer temporary refuge to North Koreans, along with food and clothing. Their pastors stay out of trouble as long as they don't openly proselytize or draw attention to their support for the defectors.
As soon as Black found shelter at a church, he took Bible lessons and became a star convert, attracting Pastor Chun's notice. Chun prefers that the North Koreans he helps adopt Christianity, but he accepts that a defector's professed belief may be skin-deep, a means of survival. "Many are not real Christians," he told me. "For them it isn't that different from believing in Kim Il Sung to believing in God. They change in head, not heart."
Black's faith seemed intense, and as he talked, the missionary beamed. He said that the turning point in Black's education had come when they were in an Internet cafe�. "I asked him to type in 'Kim Jong Il personal life' on the browser, and when stories came up of affairs and illegitimate children, I watched the light come on in his face as he realized he had been fed lies all his life."

At one point during the meal Black pulled a small wooden cross from under his shirt and held it as if it were a warm, breathing thing. "My dream," he said, "is to attend a seminary in South Korea and then to return to my home village to preach the Gospel." When I mentioned that if he were caught in North Korea carrying a Bible, he could be shot, Black said, "I am following God's plan."
The moment came. Pastor Chun received the go-ahead from his operatives for the escape to begin—a 2,000-mile train trip from Beijing to Yunnan Province, followed by an arduous trek on foot over mountains into Laos, cutting through jungle to the Mekong River. Crossing it puts the refugees in Thailand, where North Koreans can apply for asylum. Red and White would leave first, and Black a few days later with another group.
Accompanied by a Chinese guide, Red and White were driven overnight to Beijing and dropped off near a railway station in front of a Kentucky Fried Chicken. The plan called for them to board a train to Kunming, Yunnan's capital, their rendezvous point with three other North Koreans. I would catch the same train. Chun's relayed instructions to the defectors were succinct: Stay quiet, pretend to sleep or hide in a restroom if police come to check IDs, and pray to God. If arrested, don't reveal the names of those who helped you.
Once on the train Red and White climbed to the top bunks in a sleeper car and huddled under blankets. Occasionally they sneaked looks out the windows, watching vistas of frozen fields and cities veiled in coal smoke give way to green fields and thick fruit orchards. At one stop, White dashed outside to buy a bag of mandarin oranges. Several times during the 40-hour journey, police and railroad agents came down the corridors to check tickets and identifications, but Red and White lay inert in their beds, and the officials ignored them.
Reaching Kunming, they joined the crowd milling about in the station's cavernous waiting room. Soon they spotted the other defectors. The leader was a 30-year-old former taxi driver, who carried a cell phone and fake documents and spoke passable Chinese. An 18-year-old woman wearing a stylish beret had, like Red and White, been a sex industry worker. The third defector was a 57-year-old mother, determined to join a daughter who had already made it to South Korea.

Amid the crush of people on the sidewalk, they waited for a guide Chun had hired to lead them to Thailand. Martial anthems blared from loudspeakers, and soldiers regularly marched past. The minutes crawled. The exhausted group huddled near a pillar, wide-eyed at the commotion around them. Sensing that if the five North Koreans stood outside much longer, an official would come up to question them, I invited them to wait in my hotel room.
For the next few hours the North Koreans sat on a long sofa, avidly watching movies on the TV. "He's so handsome," one cooed about Tom Cruise, whom she'd never heard of. They savored Cokes from the minibar and shared the fruit. "I can't even imagine what will happen next," White said, switching the channel. "I just want to get to South Korea; it seems so civilized and wealthy." She would fit in, at least on the surface. She had changed into tight jeans (illegal in North Korea), high black boots, and a frilly blouse, topped off with a heart-shaped pendant around her neck. Red switched into flashier clothes too, but she appeared lost, wrapping her arms around herself as if to squeeze out fearful thoughts. She startled when asked about her plans. "Maybe learn English, take computer classes," she said hastily. No one was thinking that far ahead.
Finally the guide called. The five grabbed their packs and hurried out. Seconds later there was a knock on the door. It was White. Laughing, she handed back the TV remote.
In his loose plaid shirt and khaki pants, Pastor Chun could have been any tourist watching the morning light glaze the brown surface of the Mekong River. Behind him a Thai town woke with a buzz of motorcycle traffic and the call of vendors selling coconuts and fish. Across the river, in Laos, a few figures stirred near stilt houses poking up out of the dense weave of forest. Chun had flown into Bangkok from Seoul the night before and had come to the Mekong shore to meet White, Red, and the other defectors. But his charges were marooned in China, and all he could do now was look across the broad river and pray.

After picking them up at the Kunming hotel, Chun's guide had driven the group over mountain roads to a safe house near the Laos frontier. And there they sat, days later, fidgeting. The guide had learned that Laos had tightened border patrols in advance of a national holiday, and he decided it was too dicey to proceed. Like their Chinese counterparts, Laotian police and military are ordered to seize escaping North Koreans and deport them. While the group waited, Black caught up with them, jittery from his clandestine train trip across China. "I almost got caught," he told them. "When police came to check documents, I pretended I was drunk, ready to pass out, and they left me alone."
News of the delay worried Chun. "They've reached the riskiest part of the journey, having to cross the Chinese border on foot and then traveling through Laos," he said as we stood by the Mekong. "They probably have a 50 percent chance of making it to here."
Chun's calling as a Good Samaritan came at age 40, when the former hotel manager surprised friends and family by joining a seminary. His activism was kindled in 1995 when, as a missionary in the Yanji region, he met his first North Koreans in hiding. "These people had lost all their rights," he said. "The most important thing I could do was revive their humanity." Given the risks, Chun has an impressive record: He has orchestrated the escapes of more than 700 North Koreans, with only a handful of failures. "The North Korean government wants me dead," he said.
But the pastor, now in his 50s and beginning to gray, is no storybook saint. His missionary contacts in China sometimes chafe at what they consider his bossy, reckless decisions; his top guide is a former drug smuggler; and Chun is not above resenting what he sees as ingratitude. "Do you know that of all the people I've helped rescue, only 30 or so have ever called to thank me," he said. But, he added, "they're not bad people. They just can't understand that someone would help them without a reward."

After nearly three weeks at the safe house, the defectors received orders to move. Shouldering packs, they entered the backcountry led by the erstwhile drug runner. The overnight hike took them into the Golden Triangle, the lawless opium-growing territory where the borders of China, Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand meet. For 16 hours they slogged in the dark through tangled forest and leech-infested streams, terrain their guide knew by heart. Climbing to nearly 4,000 feet, they stumbled out of China into Laos. "We were wet and dirty," Red said. "The ground was steep, and I kept falling. I cried most of the time."
The next afternoon the group reached a house owned by a friend of the guide. Late the next night they were driven to a spot near the Mekong, and from there they hiked to the river, lined with lookout towers. For Red, the combination of darkness, the river's strong current, and the nearby presence of Laotian soldiers made the five-minute crossing to Thailand in a small motor launch more unnerving than even the train trip across China. "I was suddenly scared of being caught; after all we'd been through, there was no guarantee we'd make it."
A Durihana pickup truck found them on the Thai side. It took them to a bus station, and ten hours later the group reached a Durihana shelter in Bangkok. There they ate their best meal in weeks and used cell phones to call friends in China to tell them they were safe. "Our prayers have been answered," Black cried out. The next morning a missionary drove the defectors to the South Korean diplomatic mission, where they requested asylum.
And then they entered a new limbo. After their names were added to a long waiting list, they were bused to an immigration detention center, where they would be warehoused for months, until South Korean officials processed their paperwork.
Defectors entered the packed detention center as fast as they were released to South Korea—30 to 40 a week while the trio was there. In the women's section of the detention center, 450 people were crammed inside a space built for half that many. "There was no room to sit or sleep. Only two toilets worked, and the air was horrible," White said. When people left, they sold their precious space, getting $400 for roughly two square feet. People who couldn't afford to pay ended up standing against a wall during the day and sleeping at night inside the toilet stalls. With help from Durihana, White and Red each bought three square feet. The men's side was also squalid, but less crowded. (Since then conditions have improved, as the South Korean government has sped up its admissions process, thinning out the crowd.)

After nearly 80 days of confinement in Thailand, Red, White, and Black were told to gather their meager belongings for the last leg of their journey. A plane was waiting.
Nothing prepares North Koreans for the impact of Seoul. For Red, the moment of arrival was overwhelming. "I kept touching my face, thinking, Is this real, is this a dream?" she said, recalling the sensation of watching buildings and streets bloom beneath her as she landed at Incheon International Airport. Then came the bus ride along the Han River past downtown Seoul, the embodiment of the South's hypercompetitive, prosperous, fast-paced life, a world more complex and foreign than any the refugees had encountered. What little the defectors know of the South is distorted by North Korean propaganda—the South is enemy territory, the land of murdering capitalists—or by images from soap operas and movies smuggled into the North, or by fantasies that success will come fast and easy in the southern paradise. A North Korean who had been living in Seoul for two years summed up the culture shock: "The difference between North and South is like jumping ahead a century."
After being debriefed to make sure they're not spies, defectors are sent to Hanawon, a high-security facility south of Seoul, where for two months they receive mandatory instruction in South Korean culture and practical matters such as taking the subway and opening a bank account. They're granted South Korean citizenship, paid a settlement bonus of roughly $5,000, with small monthly installments to follow, and provided a housing allowance and employment incentives.
In the mid-1990s the few dozen defectors arriving each year were greeted with adulation and hefty rewards; most were elite members of the military or Communist Party from Pyongyang who brought valuable intelligence. With rare exceptions, today's defectors, averaging more than 2,000 a year since 2006, are farm laborers, factory workers, and low-level soldiers and clerks from impoverished regions. What they bring mostly are problems. Compared with the average South Korean, they are markedly less educated and skilled. Having experienced years of malnutrition and the pain of seeing family members die of starvation, many suffer from serious physical and mental illnesses. Because of these handicaps, says Andrei Lankov, a North Korean expert at Kookmin University in Seoul, the defector population is in danger of "becoming a permanent underclass." Their life in the South is immeasurably richer and freer, but they crave a sense of belonging. "Most South Koreans are indifferent to their plight," Lankov said. "And to not have your suffering recognized is an almost unbearable form of violence."

Red answered at the first knock, throwing open the door of her 12th-floor apartment in Incheon, near the airport. Eight months had passed since I'd seen her hurry from a hotel room in China, a scared, dark-eyed teenager on the run. Her face was rounder now, her arms fleshier, thanks to regular meals. She'd streaked her hair red and was dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt. Proudly, she showed me her home of seven weeks, a spotless two-room apartment, bare except for a mattress on the bedroom floor and a desk crowned with a personal computer. A sheet of paper taped to a wall showed pink Chinese characters for happiness.
"Kimchi!" she squealed, using the Korean equivalent of "Say cheese!" as she shot pictures and video with her new camera. Deft as any South Korean youth, she downloaded the images and zapped them to my wife in the U.S.
Red showered bars of chocolate on my lap and ordered me to eat. I suspected that I was a rare guest. "Do you have many friends?" I asked. She shook her head vehemently. "How can I make friends if I can't make sense of the society outside?" She confessed that she rarely left the apartment, self-conscious about her accent and not understanding the language South Koreans use, with its liberal sprinkling of English words. Red also didn't feel confident about her job prospects. Language courses and classes in hairstyling cost too much for her monthly $400 government check, and with only a high school education, she was probably limited to low-wage jobs. She had already quit a job at a gas station and now was thinking about working in a cafeteria. "At job interviews," she said, "I'm afraid to say I'm North Korean, because of all the disadvantages that come with it."
We ate fish and rice at a nearby restaurant, where Red snapped more pictures, giggled, sent messages to fellow defectors on her cell phone, and practiced saying "computer" in English. "Life is tough here, but I'm glad I came," she said, before returning to her sanctuary. "I still dream of being a success. I want to make my parents in North Korea proud of me."
White was sharing a hospital room with five other women in the provincial city of Cheonan, near the Hanawon resettlement facility. At Hanawon doctors had diagnosed her with thyroid cancer, and they immediately operated. If she had remained in North Korea, or even in China, she almost certainly would have died. Now she had a chance of healing.

She rose unsteadily from her hospital bed to greet me, a shy smile on her face. A scar from the surgery extended around to the base of her throat. The intense young woman I remembered, with the deep laugh and showy clothes, now teetered in baggy pajamas, her voice a hoarse whisper. "I called Pastor Chun to thank him," she said. "Durihana is helping pay for my treatment. Sometimes Pastor Chun comes here, and we pray together." White, Chun had told me, is a committed Christian—"the real thing, a good, pure spirit."
White had already visited the apartment she hoped to move into. "First I will buy a computer and a refrigerator," she said, "and I will cook North Korean dishes." She caught me staring. I couldn't help it. She had spent a year locked in a room in China, followed by three months in a crowded detention center in Thailand, and now three months in a hospital room, during which time she had learned of her mother's death and her brother's imprisonment. How could she look so beatific? She walked outside with me to the taxi stand to say goodbye, and when I looked back from the car, White was still standing there, smiling at the spacious sky.
Black moved into an apartment in downtown Seoul, not far from the Han River. Traffic noises and the hum of cicadas drifted through his windows. On a wall hung the wooden cross he'd held so tightly in China, and a Bible lay open on the floor amid other books. He hadn't bought any furniture yet. "Everything is more difficult and complicated than I was prepared for," the 40-year-old said. His dream of attending seminary was dashed when he learned that scholarships were restricted to those under 35. For now he was a day laborer at a construction site. "I need to make money fast to bring my brother and sister out of North Korea," he said.
Whenever he heard himself complaining to me, Black apologized. "I am so relieved to be here. When I read about street demonstrations in Seoul, I get so happy. If I did that in North Korea, I would be sent to prison."
We hailed a taxi to take us across town to a student neighborhood filled with cheap, noisy restaurants. Horns shouted, and signs and pedestrians swept past in a blur. Eight months earlier, in a missionary's van in China, Black's shoulders had been hunched, his eyes alert to danger, his hand clutching his cross. Now amid the glorious tumult of his new home, Black closed his eyes and dozed off. He was safe, and he was free.

Movie: Crossing
video 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EplDYDOd6_c
Video 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaOOR-V7PKM&feature=related
VIdeo 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgvjoFvqlA0&feature=related
Video 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2703l-39pc&feature=related
Video 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqDQ3xjUO9U&feature=related
Video 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NXMw7Vct-s&feature=related
Video 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmjAmUWh8g4&feature=related
Video 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsaSv6t7GTY&feature=related
Video 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29aqiwsLjQE&feature=related
Video 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xk3psW7jvc&feature=related

Gender Gaps in Math and Science Education

2009-11-24T21:32:00.000+08:00

Heather Davis

James Madison University

Abstract

An argument is made for direct and tangible interventions to treat the symptoms of gender gaps in math and science education (as opposed to widespread and theoretical changes to science as a whole). Symptoms addressed include belief in stereotypes, lack of science self-confidence, and dissatisfaction with the way science education is presented. Treatments are discussed in the form of studies that have successfully or unsuccessfully addressed these issues. The goal is to use the results of such studies to develop effective interventions that will hopefully narrow the gender gaps with time.

Introduction

In much of the feminist literature concerning science education of girls, authors acknowledge that gender differences persist but these authors seem to be divided into two general camps. The first camp’s focus is getting girls more involved with and comfortable in the existing science community because, “attitudes developed in the early years [are] vital” (Whitelegg, 1992). This camp focuses on interventions such as role modeling, mentoring, out-of-class science experiences, and other endeavors designed to increase science self-efficacy and success.

The second camp says that this is not the proper solution because it still considers masculine levels of achievement as the benchmark for success and portrays women as passive and insecure acceptors of roles (Phipps, 2007). Instead, this camp insists that the entire structure, language, and epistemologies of science need to be evaluated and changed. Few actual interventions are proposed as a means of implementing this solution.

Discussion

To better understand these two camps one might consider an analogy. Much like the treatment of a person with a cold, the treatment of the problems apparent in the science education of girls can be treated in two ways.

When treating a cold, a doctor might try to find the cure for the common cold by obliterating the cold. Alhough this would be the more preferable, immediate, and complete method of treatment, this method has lacked success, evident by the lack of such a cure. This method would be analogous to the second camp of feminists who hope to drastically change the entire scientific culture to be more inclusive to women. Although this overall cure to the problems that women in science face would be preferable, it is also highly unlikely.

The other method of treatment for a cold would be to treat each symptom of the persons who are sick so that they can be more comfortable until their body naturally eliminates the problem. This method would be analogous to that of the first camp, which intends to make efforts that gradually close the gender gap by treating each of the symptoms of the problem. Although this solution is gradual and imperfect, it is more achievable because it uses small improvements that allow girls to cope with and overcome inequalities until they no longer exist. This is a much more feasible goal than hoping to find some broad and hypothetical cure for the common gender gap.

Because a gradual treatment of symptoms approach seems to be a more practical solution to the problem of gender gaps in education, it is necessary to understand what, precisely, these symptoms are. Although symptoms of the gender gap vary widely from individual to individual, an investigation of recent literature can establish what problems the patient is facing. With this knowledge, a method of treatment could be developed for elimination of each symptom.

One way to begin the process of treating these symptoms of the gender gap is to look at other countries that are not plagued by such symptoms. Countries such as New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Albania, and Thailand have overcome the gender gap in math achievement (Langen, Bosker, & Dekkers, 2006). One step, then, would be to look deeply into the science education practices of other countries and try to implement any successful strategies found. Another way to begin the process of treating the symptoms of the gender gap would be to look at symptoms and develop a plan of treatment by looking at recent literature to find out which types of treatment have succeeded and failed in the past. This article will focus on three specific symptoms: belief in stereotypes, lack of science self-confidence, and dissatisfaction with the presentation of science.

Gender stereotypes are presented to citizens of modern society in a variety of situations each day and vary from the obvious to the very subtle. As one of the most prominent symptoms related to the gender gaps in science and math belief, stereotypes should be investigated. The “ditzy, can’t do anything right sitcom mom” is an obvious stereotype that is easily recognizable. However, the fact that cleaning products and minivans are marketed towards women is more subtle. No matter how obvious or subtle the presentation of gender stereotypes, there is potential for such stereotypes to significantly affect the development of ideas of gender. These stereotypes can be presented and reinforced by parents or classmates but are difficult to erase once established. Stereotypes can additionally have negative impacts on girls’ education when an administration reduces academic requirement in response to stereotypes.

Stereotypes are engrained so early; parents may try to minimize the effects of stereotypes by employing their own treatments. For example, a recent study found that although mothers talk to female babies more, sex differences exist in the type of talk presented to female babies in relation to that presented to male babies. Mothers were shown to engage in more science learning and literacy related talk with male babies than female babies (Tenenbaum, Snow, Roach, & Kurland, 2005). These early experiences of science talk may affect the developmental course of babies depending on the gendered experiences they were exposed to by their parents early in life. Parents may begin to break down stereotypes by being conscious of and adjusting the amount of science talk they give their female babies as a means of developing an early interest in science. Other studies have implicated early interest in science as a key factor in pursuing a science, math, or technology related career (Packard and Nguyen, 2003). In this way, parent interventions are a first step toward increasing girls’ confidence and satisfaction with science by preventing belief in stereotypes.

Stereotypes are also compounded by the expectations of parents later in life. For parents, stereotypes are so engrained that they may consciously or unconsciously hold different expectations for their children depending on gender. The influence of mothers’ support was not found to be significant in a study concerning factors affecting pursuit of a technology-related career. However, the support of the father was found to be a key factor in this choice (Adya & Kaiser, 2005).

Level of parent education also related to the expectations of girls in science. A 2006 study showed that parental education level was a predictor of science grades and activities of girls. The authors speculated that this might be due to “differential expectations” of more educated parents who expect boys to take science courses but allow girls more freedom to choose whether or not to take science courses (Simpkins, Davis-Kean, & Eccles, 2006).

Parents are not the only individuals that sway girls’ beliefs in stereotypes. As girls get older, beliefs of their classmates are held in greater esteem than those of parents. During adolescence, gender stereotypes also become more pronounced socially. Girls not only have to deal with their own fears of science but also fears of rejection by peers if they do pursue science. This fear of social retaliation is related to belief in the stereotype of poor performance of girls in math and science. A study by Kessels (2005) reported that a sample of 8 th and 9 th grade children perceived students who liked physics as more masculine whereas students who liked music were perceived as more feminine. Boys were also reported to dislike students who went against sanctioned prototypes (e.g., girls who liked physics). The study also found that girls who liked physics felt unpopular with the boys. In a time when girls are dealing with the trials of puberty and social changes of moving to high school, such social repercussions could be significant in a girl’s decision to pursue science classes.

Although parents and classmates can both influence girls’ beliefs in stereotypes, once stereotypes have been established they are difficult to erase. A recent study showed that girls who were more likely to endorse the stereotype of girls being bad at math and science also evaluated themselves more negatively than girls who did not endorse the stereotype. In the same study, researchers found that girls who held the stereotype were more resistant to change either negativ self-evaluations or desires to pursue a science career (Selimbegovic & Chatard, 2007). Believing in stereotypes is clearly a counterproductive characteristic when it comes to increasing girls’ success in science because it makes them more resistant to change.

Unfortunately, stereotypes can have negative effects on the quality of girls’ education when administrators decide to lower science requirements in response to low performance. Often, school systems present students with two paths of science requirements, and if a student has had previous negative experience with science (as girls often do) they will choose the path with the lowest science requirements. Because girls are often subjected to stereotypes and other negative experiences they might be inclined to choose the path of least resistance. Studies show, however, that girls are becoming even with boys in the number of science classes taken, possibly due to college aspirations (Simpkins et al., 2006). Although it may seem counterintuitive, raising the standards that girls are expected to meet might actually lessen their beliefs in stereotypes if they see themselves succeeding.

A second symptom of the gender gap problems in science education is that girls lack science self-confidence, which translates to a loss of interest in science after junior high. One might think that this lack of confidence would come from lower achievement in the fields in question. This, however, is not the case as studies have shown that boys consistently produce higher ratings of science self-efficacy and self-concept even when their achievement scores are lower than or comparable to those of the girls. This low science self-confidence may, as girls grow older, translate into lack of interest in the sciences, which leads girls to drop out of science classes as soon as they are allowed.

One study demonstrated the tendency of girls to underestimate their abilities, signifying low self-confidence in relation to a science lab activity. Both boys’ and girls’ confidence levels increased as a result of a science lab activity. The respective levels of absolute level of confidence, however, were significantly lower for girls than for boys, both before and after the lab activity (Klahr, Triona, & Willaims, 2006). The most interesting part of this study was that while the girls and boys did not differ significantly in the amount of effort shown in the lab, the girls did not gain the same amount of confidence from a relatively similar amount of effort. This demonstrated that surmounting the initial lower confidence level of girls in relation to boys is not a matter of trying to increase the effort put forth by girls, rather that the solution must come by increasing the overall initial confidence level.

A second study investigating the unreasonably low science self-confidence of girls, even when their achievement scores were higher, produced particularly startling results. Although the girls in the sample for this study had higher science grades, they still only maintained equal self-confidence with the boys. Despite their higher grades, girls reported higher levels of science-related anxiety and physiological stress but lower levels of mastery experiences (Britner & Pajares, 2006). This is disturbing because it shows that even when they are performing at the same or higher levels than their male peers, girls are still less confident in their abilities. This suggests some underlying problem with the perception of the subject as a whole.

Often, these low levels of science self-confidence seem to translate, as girls get older, to a lack of interest in the sciences altogether. Not only do girls begin to shy away from science but they also begin to drop out of science classes as they progress through school (Stake, 2006). In addition, they also tend to lose interest in science outside of the classroom. A recent study focusing on submissions of questions to a science website showed that although girls contributed many of the questions in the sample, the number of questions asked by girls decreased significantly when they entered high school (Tsabari, Sethi, Bry, & Yarden, 2006). This demonstrated that not only does their fear of doing badly affect girls’ choice of classes but also decreases their overall interest in science, even outside of the classroom.

A final main symptom expressed by recent literature is girls’ dissatisfaction with science and the way it is presented to them. One reason cited for this dissatisfaction is a lack of relation of science topics to the real world. Often girls are also at a disadvantage on standardized tests of science that do not put equal emphasis on the science topics at which they excel. Solutions to this dissatisfaction with the way science is presented may lie in alternative forms of education.

Girls’ dissatisfaction with the way in which science is presented was also shown in a 2002 study in which girls expressed their thoughts on this subject to teachers. The study showed that girls want connections to science but have a hard time relating what they do in science classes to the world around them. According to Buck (2002), teachers interpreted girls’ requests by trying to help them understand the applications of science education. Solutions included use of current events, more projects and games, and relation of topics to daily lives. This, together with the previously mentioned studies, suggested that girls are drawn to natural and biological sciences because they can be related to the real world. Therefore, the solution to decrease the levels of dissatisfaction of girls in other areas of science may be to make an effort to relate concepts of other sciences to real life.

Girls have been shown to have very specific interests within the field of science (such as biology), yet these are the subjects that students are tested on least often (Kahle, 2004). This trend of girls’ interests pointing toward natural and biological sciences was also supported by the previously discussed study addressing questions to a science website (Tsabari et al., 2006); girls ask more questions relating to the natural sciences. The results of such studies make it questionable whether girls are actually performing worse on standardized science tests because they have lower ability levels or if gender differences only reflect a bias in question selection toward the hard sciences.

Because girls are dissatisfied with the way science is presented, alternative educational methods might be helpful in changing this perspective. For example, some studies have suggested a monoeducational system (rather than coeducational) as a treatment that may benefit girls as well as boys due to different learning styles and interests (Haussler & Hoffmann, 2002), thereby increasing satisfaction with the way science is presented to students. Others have tried supplemental programs, all-girl programs on weekends or after school with the goal of increasing satisfaction with the way science is presented to girls. A 2006 study implemented such a program and found that it increased students’ confidence and ability but not interest in a science career (Reid & Roberts, ). Still others have suggested an online learning environment to stimulate scientific discovery regardless of gender (Tsabari et al., 2006). All three of these treatments target the dissatisfaction of girls with the way science is presented and may have additional benefits of reducing girls’ beliefs in stereotypes because their education is tailored to their strengths.

Summary

The education of girls in science is a very important topic as it relates to future equality of the next generation of women. Therefore, it is understandable why feminist critics of science are so interested in correcting the flaws of the system. It is evident that direct and tangible changes need to be made. Although there are serious problems with the structure, language, and epistemologies of science, a complete overhaul of science is nearly impossible to implement. The more feasible approach is to discover the most prevalent symptoms of the problem of the gender gap in science education (e.g., belief in stereotypes, lack of science self-confidence, dissatisfaction with the way science is presented) and address these with treatments. Perhaps, with enough widespread treatments the gender gap will become negligible or a mere memory.

Technology and Learning (ACOT project by Apple) - Case study

2009-11-12T10:50:00.002+08:00

The link below gives an insight on the role that ACOT played in intergrating technology into classroom learning.

http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/tiol.html

Just an opinion by another blogger on the use of technology on learning

2009-11-11T15:19:00.000+08:00

Improving learning: Use technology to improve 'test' scores

Of the ten things I once believed (beliefs I now consider misleading or false), #2 is 'If you want to improve what people learn in a demonstrable way, use technology to improve test scores.' For decades, skeptics about the value of each new technology have challenged its proponents to show that the use of that technology causes gains in test scores. Accepting the terms of that question, the proponents of distance learning have boasted that their students score just as well on tests as students in comparable courses on campus: 'no significant difference'. And I remember feeling great when seeing Kulik's meta-analysis of research on computer-aided learning showing that, typically, students using computers learned about 1/3 faster than students who did not use computers. At first, no one questioned the terms of the question itself: Does technology X (e.g., facilities on a campus) cause better learning than technology Y (e.g. some distance learning infrastructure)? Do you see the fallacy? Well, consider this version of that same question about the learning impact of a more familiar technology: paper, "Let's measure educational achievement by two sets of courses. One set of courses will use paper. The other group of courses will have no paper. Will the paper-aided learners score higher on exams, on the average, than the paperless learners? How much higher?" Silly questions. Although paper has valuable uses for learning, sheets of paper don't cause anyone to learn. (Try taping a sheet of paper on your head, and see how much you learn if you wear it there all day.) 'Tell us whether the paper is used for textbooks,' you might insist. Even then, you'd probably hesitate about predicting gains in test scores; you'd want to know how good the textbook was, and whether students actually read it or not. And you'd also have a right to ask how the paperless group was studying. Well, paper is a technology. A textbook, campus, a computer, and the Web are all technologies, too. None of them 'cause' learning. Technology is just a tool. Its value for learning lies in what teachers and students do, thanks to their use of that technology: their teaching/learning activities. How much learning results from making a technology available? That depends on the activity and on the circumstances. I used to talk about two ways that teaching/learning activities could be enhanced by using the right technology:

"Help a popular teaching/learning activity occur better, more frequently, or with less effort (.g., using PowerPoint to improve the legibility of a faculty member's notes on the board)" and/or

Make a hitherto little-used activity so much easier or richer that the instructor or student changes the course activities themselves. For example, in the 1980s, distant learners rarely communicated with each other. Today, thanks to email, discussion boards, and chat rooms, discussion among distant learners is common, and research suggests that such discussion improves learning outcomes.

Which activities are most likely to improve outcomes? In 1986 Chickering and Gamson answered that question by describing 'seven principles of good practice.' A decade later, Chickering and I wrote a widely-read article in 1996 summarizing how each of those seven principles could be implemented with technology. In recent years, I've greatly expanded those seven sets of suggestions. (Notice that all this still accepts the basic terms of the original question: 'When trying to demonstrably improve the value of what students learn, the goal should be to improve performance on traditional tests of learning outcomes. That's the only practical, politically feasible way to show that computer use can improve what students learn.' Well, what do you think of my old belief?

Have you seen any such gains in test scores resulting from the use of digital technologies such as computers, clickers, portfolios or the web itself? evidence of a lack of such gains? or even lower test scores when digital technologies are used in certain ways in courses?

In your program, has any such evidence ever played a role in budgeting for technology or planning teaching improvement?

Are there other ways in which technology use has improved what students learn in your program? If so, suppose someone challenged you to provide evidence that the student learning had improved and you couldn't cite improvements in test scores. What evidence would you gather instead?

China to Invest $175 Billion in Environmental Protection Over Five Years

2009-11-10T16:24:00.000+08:00

China has announced plans to invest $175 billion (1.4 trillion yuan) in environmental protection between 2006 and 2010, according to official news sources in China.

The money—equal to more than 1.5 percent of China’s annual gross domestic product (GDP)—will be used to control water pollution, improve air quality in China’s cities, increase solid waste disposal and reduce soil erosion in rural areas, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

China has created an economic miracle fueled by rapid industrial growth and international trade—two decades of nearly double-digit economic growth—but at an environmental cost so high that it has led to internal riots, international protests, and the arrest of Chinese environmentalists. Air pollution has fouled China’s air, chemical spills have poisoned rivers that supply drinking water to millions of people, raw sewage has given rise to near-epidemics of waterborne diseases, and soil contamination ruins millions of tons of grain each year.

Technorati Profile

The new investments are intended to repair some of the environmental damage already done, and to help prevent future problems.

China plans to build sewage-treatment plants in 10 river valleys to dispose of waste water from urban areas, reduce the amount of sulphur dioxide and dust in 113 major Chinese cities, and set up 31 dangerous-waste disposal centers to treat domestic garbage. China also plans to build facilities to ensure nuclear safety and to prevent nuclear radiation, according to the NDRC.

These investments are expected to pay economic as well as environmental dividends. According to official estimates, China’s environmental protection industry will generate yearly revenues of $110 billion (880 billion yuan) by the end of 2010, with an estimated annual growth rate of 15 percent thereafter.

Examples of How Industries does Strike a Balance with the Environment

2009-11-10T15:50:00.000+08:00

Business park seeks industry/ecology balance

By Dai Yan (China Daily)

A rare blend of commerce and conservation, the Qingdao Tonghe Ecological Industrial Park is set to blur the boundaries between economic imperatives and environmental responsibility. Located in the eastern province of Shandong, the park seeks to combine apparently contradictory concerns.

On one hand it is looking to develop an integrated transport system and a number of conventional commercial concerns, whilst on the other it is committed to the pursuing a far greener agenda - including several ecological projects, an environmental protection industry, eco-tourism and a range of energy-efficient accommodation.

Wang Fujun, director of the Tonghe Park's Management Committee, which oversees the park, cheerfully acknowledges these apparent contradictions: "This eco-industrial park is a mixture of eco-industry and eco-nature. It has been designed to promote the co-importance of industry, commerce and the need to live a sustainable lifestyle."

Currently covering an area of 4.26 sq km, with a planned expansion to 20 sq km, the development of an integrated transport system is at the very heart of the project. This initiative will see the strengths of the areas existing road network - including the Qingdao-Yinchuan highway, the Gaomi-Pingdu highway, and the Pingdu-Dongyin road link - seamlessly integrated with the facilities of the planned Pingdu-Beijing rail link.

Business and botany: Chinese and Korean delegates meet to mark the success of Qingdao's "green" industrial development.

Upon its completion, this program will boost the area's speed of access to China's major international sea and air terminals, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Shandong. It will also greatly reduce the transit time to a number of vital domestic markets, notably the cities of Qingdao, Yantai, Jinan and Dongying.

This improved infrastructure will be one of the key prerequisites for developing the parks' industrial and commercial base. It is hoped that the fiscal input of the park's business community will have a huge economic knock-on effect to the well-being of the adjacent city of Qingdao. When completed, the park will form a vital link in the development of a commercial belt along the nearby Zehe River.

The park's proximity to the river and other areas of natural beauty has prompted the park's management to take a strict ecologically-aware overview of its development. This has seen the adoption of a number of green policies, including tough guidelines on recycling and sustainable development. These initiatives have been designed to permit the harmonious co-existence of the area's natural ecosystem alongside its emerging commercial landscape.

One of the benefits of maintaining an environmental balance in the park is the scope it leaves open for building the area's leisure and tourism industry. By fully utilizing the appeal of the natural environment through promoting lesser-known aspects of the landscape in the park, its management hopes to firmly establish the area on the local tourist trail.

The area currently features 1,000 acres of woodland, a golf course and a series of "eco-villas", environmentally-friendly short-stay apartments. It is hoped to boost its tourist appeal through a raft of new initiatives, including an eco-hotel, an aerobics leisure centre and a sightseeing bridge straddling the Zehe.

For those looking for longer-term accommodation in the area, a series of environmentally-friendly residential areas are also a firm part of the proposition. These will offer comfortable living conditions for a substantial number of businessmen and office workers, complete with all the requisite services and with the added bonus of a beautiful setting.

The park will be constructed in line with sound environmental guidelines, highlighting the importance of recycling and maintaining an ecological/industrial balance.

This will see it adopt an emerging focus on a number of cutting-edge industries, including energy-saving, environmental protection, new energy sources, innovative materials, computing and information technologies, automotive electronics, finished automobile production, investment casting, biotechnology development, as well as marine and fine chemical production.

These industries, together with the automotive spare parts industry and a series of eco-tourism initiatives, will form a close industrial chain. In light of this, any project seeking approval for development in the park needs to meet a strict range of criteria, particularly with regards to environmental protection.

The park's planners have specified the development of an effective intelligent traffic management system, connecting all the highways, railways and airports. A green belt zone will also be included on each side of the main roads running through the park, in a bid to maintain an afforestation rate in excess of 40 percent.

At present, this park is seeking to attract investments from home and abroad. Many investors from a number of different countries and regions, including Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, Russia, America and India, have already completed inspection tours of its facilities. So far, more than 50 businesses have signed up for premises in the park, including companies in the electronics, environmental protection, engineering, software and chemical industries.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2009-08/26/content_8616032.htm

Examples of How Industries does Strike a Balance with the Environment

2009-11-10T15:48:00.000+08:00

Bohai Bay gets green light for 'blue' economy

The environmentally-friendly Changdao islands are a true paradise for birds as well as a haven for many other wildlife and marine species. Yuan Keting

The authorities of Changdao, an island county set at the juncture of Bohai Bay and the Yellow Sea, have announced a major commitment to establishing a "blue marine economy" in the area.

The move follows the development of a similar initiative to build a larger "blue" economic zone in Shandong, the county's home province. President Hu Jintao gave his blessing to the project during his inspection tour of the area in April.

Jiang Qingchun, Party secretary of the county committee, said: "We will spare no efforts to play a leading role in establishing a blue economic zone around the Shandong Peninsula. We will devise our own development blueprint and transform Changdao into an environmentally-friendly and highly civilized county."

During 2008 the county won a string of honors, establishing it among China's first tranche of sophisticated, contemporary regions with sustainable economies and a developed tourism base.

Jiang said: "Changdao's advantages all stem from the sea. Capitalizing on maritime resources and accelerating the speed of developing an eco-fishing program, together with a number of environmentally friendly industries and an eco-tourism base are our best options for sustained growth."

The authorities' ambitious goals include the construction of a national eco-fishing model area with 1 million mu (66,666.7 hectares) of underwater forests and fish farms of more than 1 million mu (66,666.7 hectares) in size and the formation of a national ocean energy base intended to generate 1 million kilowatts in wind power. They also plan to develop an internationally known holiday resort projected to attract 1 million high-end tourists annually.

Eco-aquaculture farm

Sun Yubin, director of the county's Oceanic and Fishery Bureau (OFB), said developing aquaculture farms will put Changdao on a sustainable growth track and create a highly-efficient modern fishing industry.

The man-made underwater 'seaweed' is expected to provide a superior environment for ocean organisms and thus create conditions for multi-layered cultivation methods. This will see kelp kept in the upper layer, fish and shellfish in the middle layer and valuable seafood items, including abalone and sea cucumber, nurtured on the deepest level.

Statistics from OFB show Changdao's submarine forest and ecological fish farms currently extend to 400,000 mu (26,667 hectares) and 600,000 mu (40,000 hectares). Seafood output value enjoyed a 29 percent year-on-year increase during 2008.

Another 600,000 mu (40,000 hectares) of undersea forests and 400,000 mu (26,667 hectare) of eco-fish farms are expected to be built within the next five years. The fishing base will then cater for such ocean species as abalone, sea cucumber, sea urchin, scallop and kelp.

Li Naisheng, deputy director of the Department of Science and Technology of Shandong province and a director of the National Oceanographic Center in Qingdao (NOCQ) said: " Changdao's large-scale eco-aquaculture is now at an internationally advanced level and will set an example for other coastal areas looking at developing an aquatic industry."

Green corridor

As the islands' undersea forests are expanding, onshore forests are also on the increase on the 32 islands of Changdao, which, scattered from the north to the south, form a green corridor on the sea.

With forest coverage of 58 percent, the county boasts 48,000 mu (3,200 hectares) of forests, more than 700 sq m in per capita forested area.

To preserve the quality of the environment, the authorities have now invested 120 million yuan in building sewage and refuse disposal facilities. Currently, 30 percent of the county's potentially renewable resources are actually recycled.

After an on-site inspection tour, more than 10 experts from a number of research institutes, including the NOCQ, concluded that Changdao has achieved zero emissions for sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide.

Its environmental protection facilities can now absorb the 170,000-tons of carbon dioxide emitted annually by local industrial sector, as well as some 350,000-tons carbon dioxide produced by other sectors.

To ensure that Changdao is on the way towards achieving eco-friendly industrial development, the county government has also planned for various specialist areas, including a precious marine resource conservation zone, a fishing zone, an eco-tourism zone, a dedicated bird preservation zone and a series of forest parks. Within these specialist areas, the authorities will conduct strict screening procedures before approving any new investment projects. They will also require existing industrial facilities in these areas to reduce pollution. Already a number of particularly heavy polluters in these areas have been shut down or relocated.

New energy base

Jiang said: "Though small in land area, Changdao has huge potential for wind power development thanks to its vast seawater area and its advantageous position directly in the wind path of the Bohai Bay."

Endorsing Jiang's assertion, Fan Xianen, deputy director of the county's Economic and Trade Bureau said 82 wind power generators have already been installed on four of Changdao's islands -South Changshan, North Changshan, Xiaoheishan and Tuoji, with a combined generating capacity of 62,300 kw a year, accounting for 54 percent of the province's current total capacity of electricity derived from wind power generators.

The 82 generators are projected to produce 13,000 kwh of electricity this year, generating 100 million yuan in sales revenues.

Changdao has around 2,400 sq km of sea areas that can be used to generate wind power, creating ideal conditions for building an ocean-based wind power plant.

The development of a 1 million kw ocean wind power plant has been backed by several industry experts and is now listed on the province's middle and long-term development plans for the renewable energy sector.

Four large utility companies - Sanrong Group, Datang Corporation, Huaneng Group and Guodian Corporation- have now all signed contracts with local authorities to jointly develop the 1.1 billion yuan project.

The first commercial ocean wind project, with an intended 48,000 kw power capacity is scheduled to begin construction in the second half of the year. It is expected to come on-line in 2010. The power plant is then projected to generate 2.8 billion kWh in electricity and 3 billion yuan in annual sales.

Essay Topics for next week

2009-11-05T18:34:00.000+08:00

Group 1: Can the needs of industry and the environment ever be balanced?
Group 2: In what ways can the use of modern technology improve learning?
Group 3: Access the alternatives to prison in dealing with offenders
Group 4: Is history the study of progress
Group 5: 'Science will always appeal more to males.' Discuss
Group 6: Does everyone have the right to be a parent?

This is 2003 GP past year questions.

Guidelines to help your thoughts in coming up with ideas for the essay:
Group 1: This question refers to the accomplishment of a balance between industry and the environment. Good answers will focus on the realistic views with green issues contained within mutual working, appreciate green policies, eco-friendly campaigns, eco-tourism and contamination laws. Also focus on pressure from shareholders, taxed and pressure groups.

Group 2: Define technology and learning, highlight the range of devices in aiding understanding. The main examples included computer technology, TV, video, camcorders, satellite images, infra-red photography, tape recorders, video conferencing, interactive white-boards, LCD projectors, CD Roms. Suggest that technology promoted learning through interest, enquiry, fun and challenge. Illustrate your examples by including usage of technology in school, the workplace and society at large. Caution: Do not focus your essay too much on the advantages of the Internet and the wonders of computers.

Group 3: Illustrate on probation, tagging, community service, fines and capital punishment. Focus on the appreciatoin of the gravity of the crime with a sense of realism about the crime being related to the punishment. Include morals, impact on society, cost, mental state, empahty, law and order, background and social influences.

Group 4: The answer requires the definition of history to set it in context. You have to balance your answers with the benefits that history has been able to deliver against the perils and incidents along the way.

Group 5: DO NOT STEREOTYPE on traditional socialisation and lack of educational opportunity for females. Focus on the historical/religious context, thus explaining this imbalance, and also producing evidence that the picture was changing, albeit slowly.

Group 6: This essay requires a definition, in terms of the role played in producing and raising children, either through natural biological parenting or the range of other alternatives. Consider morals and ethics with illustrations including same sex couples, couples with genetic deficiencies, institutionalized couples, couples with disabilities and the issue of age - young and old.

China's policy to Preserve Minority Languages

2009-11-05T16:11:00.000+08:00

TO CITE THIS ARTICLE PLEASE INCLUDE ALL OF THE FOLLOWING DETAILS:

Xiulan ,Zuo (2007) China’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age. Transnational

Curriculum Inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci

China’s policy towards minority languages in a

globalising age

Zuo Xiulan

Dalian Maritime University, China

Introduction: is globalisation a threat to the future of minority languages?

One of the main linguistic issues facing the world in the 21st century is the extinction of a

substantial proportion of the world’s languages. The technological, social, cultural, and,

economic trends of globalisation seem to contribute towards the endangerment of languages.

The age of globalisation refers to the current times of growing interdependence and

interconnectedness of the modern world. People around the globe are more connected to each

other than ever before through increased international communication and travel. Information

and money flow more quickly than ever across countries. Goods and services produced in one

part of the world are increasingly available in all parts of the world. This phenomenon has

been titled ‘globalisation.’

The ‘free market’ ideology of globalisation appears to demand cultural and linguistic

homogenisation leading to the extinction of minority languages around the world. Some six

thousand languages are spoken today throughout the world. This number was probably higher

in the not so distant past because many languages have become extinct due to various reasons,

including globalisation. The process of extinction is still going on all over the world. The

threat to linguistic resources is now recognized as a worldwide crisis. Hale (1998) and

Woodbury (1998) believe that only 600 out of the 6000 plus present languages are fully

secure. Krauss (1992) believed that a language with fewer than 10,000 speakers is probably at

risk. This is a crude generalisation, but it may nonetheless be useful as a first approximation.

Nearly 60 percent of world languages are already endangered. The Percentage of languages

with fewer than 10,000 speakers was higher in North (78%) and South America (77%), and

Australia/Pacific (99.5%) compared with for example, in Asia (53%) (Nettle & Romaine,

2000).

Language loss is a natural phenomenon in the development of society and language.

Nationalism is one of the main reasons why small groups come to be conceived as minorities.

Nationalism and nation building often favour linguistic assimilation to make sure that every

member of a community is able to use the dominant language. This results in transferring

prestige to, and asserting the superiority of the dominant language. In extreme cases,

linguistic minorities are given little or no rights. All nation-states, despite their political

ideology have persecuted minorities in the past, and many continue to do so today through the

policies designed to assimilate indigenous people into the dominant culture.

Moreover, the world languages do not all have the same function, the same vigour or the

same prospect. According to Romaine (2002, p.1) ‘Fewer than 4 per cent of the world’s

languages have any kind of official status in the countries where they are spoken… most

languages are unwritten, not recognised officially, restricted to local community and home

functions and spoken by very small groups of people…’ The future of a vast majority of

languages is in doubt, and more and more efforts are being made to document, describe or

even preserve them. Languages, like some animals, can be regarded as endangered species.

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Globalisation is accelerating extinction of minority languages around the globe.

‘Competition between languages in a globalising world is considerably more fluid and

languages are more susceptible to change now than in a less technologically advanced world’

(Maurais & Morris, 2003, p. 5). Thus, the number of languages will disappear much more

quickly than before. The arrival of new types of media: Internet, radio and television satellites

forces language adoption of technical norms for facilitating the transfer of computerized data.

Standardisation of new technologies could have consequences for the destiny of many world

languages. New information technologies make most minority languages excluded de facto

from the World Wide Web. They ‘are first and foremost handicapped, because they do not

represent sufficiently profitable markets for the software giants’ (Thomas, 2002, p. 2, cited in

Maurais, 2003).

Global economic influences are prompting the young to leave isolated villages for the

urban area in search of better lives. Thus the native languages and cultures will be abandoned

for the sake of social mobility.􀀁The age of globalisation confers privilege upon those

prestigious language speakers. It inevitably elevates the widespread languages over others.

Nowadays, the more and more tightly integrated world generally favours the spread of

English. English is a strong language, accepted, and used as the medium of international

communication. English is being accused of threatening the existence of other languages. But

this is not unique to English. The French authorities are still being accused of suppressing

minority languages within their borders, and so are Spain, Norway, and several other states

(Jóansson, 1996).

The future of the world’s major languages is at stake in the age of globalisation, including

the 100 or so tongues officially recognized by governments or sub-national regions, such as

the constitutional languages of India and the languages of the Russian nationalities. Most of

the thousands of sometimes struggling minority languages are in danger of extinction. In this

context, how do multicultural countries respond to the issue of endangerment of minority

languages? In this paper, I attempt to present an overview on China’s policies aimed at

preserving minority languages. The paper is divided into three sections. Following this

introduction, in section one, I have provided details on how loss of minority languages is an

issue in the age of globalisation. In section two, I have given an overview on China’s attempts

towards protecting endangered minority languages. In section three, I have provided few

recommendations for the Chinese government to further protect the minority languages from

extinction and these are followed by conclusions to this paper.

International attention to endangered languages

The sheer scale and speed of language shift and loss have led to a heightened interest in the

fate of the minority languages of the world in the last two decades. Linguists started making

language loss as the focus of major international meetings. For example, in the conferences on

maintenance and loss of minority languages, held in Netherlands, in 1992, the conference on

language endangerment held at Dartmouth College in the United States in 1995, and the

conference on language rights in Hong Kong in 1996, international attention was drawn into

the issue of extinction of world languages.

Ever since its creation in 1945, UNESCO has recognized the importance of cultural

diversity. One of its missions has been to encourage mutual knowledge and understanding

between people using every means of mass communication. In 1993, UNESCO set up the

‘Endangered Language Project’, a programme to record the world’s disappearing languages

before their last speakers died. At the Stockholm Inter-governmental Conference on Cultural

Policies for Development in 1998, cultural diversity was perceived both as a basic building

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block of the ‘emerging global civic culture’ that required global ethics and values, and as a

major source of social energy for individual nations.

The Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity 2001, places diversity at the heart of the

development process understood not only in terms of economic growth, but also as a means of

achieving a more satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual existence (Article

3). This Declaration also firmly links cultural diversity to a respect for universality,

indivisibility, and the interdependence of human rights and fundamental freedoms (Article 4).

Cultural rights are identified as the right to freedom of expression and the dissemination of

one’s work in the language of one’s choice, the right to good education and training, and the

right to participate in the cultural life of one’s choice and to conduct one’s own cultural

practices with respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others (Article 5).

UNESCO’s Thirty-Second General Conference in October 2003, decided that the matter

of the protection of the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expression should be the

subject of an international convention, and invited the Director-General to submit a

preliminary draft of such a document to its next session in 2005.

In October 2003, UNESCO’s General Conference adopted two standard-setting measures

that emphasise the potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to

contribute to the promotion of freedom of expression, linguistic, and cultural diversity,

education, and access to information, particularly information in the public domain. The

Recommendation adopted by this conference promotes multilingualism. It recognizes that

language is the foundation of communication between people and is also part of their cultural

heritage. For many, language has far-reaching emotive and cultural associations and values

rooted in their literacy, historical, philosophical, and educational heritages. The harmonious

development of the information society is therefore, only possible if the availability of

multilingual and multicultural information is encouraged (UNESCO Publications for the

World Summit on the Information Society, 2003).

Need for protecting world/minority languages

There are several arguments advanced for protecting minority languages around the world.

They can be summed up as follows:

First, language is a valuable resource. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language

is the carrier of the knowledge and experiences accumulated by a nation, or a group

throughout history. It conveys the core values of the community and builds ambition and

spurns invention essential to strengthening the aspirations of people. Language structures

provide a means of perceiving the world of which the speakers are unaware. The loss of a

language is the permanent, irrevocable loss of a certain vision of the world, comparable to the

loss of an animal or a plant. Traditional knowledge may indeed linger even after a native

language is lost, but the richness and diversity of that knowledge cannot survive even one

generation of language loss (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000). When a language disappears, there is

likely to be a serious loss of inherited knowledge and cultural legacy to the nation and to the

world as well.

Second, language is an essential element of a person’s identity that should be respected.

Language spoken by somebody and his or her identity as a speaker of that language are

inseparable. Languages are dependent on the users; they cannot be seen separately. They are

robust markers of group membership. You are what you speak. Sir James Henare, a Maori

leader, expressed such sentiments about the Maori language by saying that ‘The language is

the life force of our Maori culture and mana [‘power’]. If the language dies, as some predict,

what do we have left to us? Then, I ask our own people who are we?’(Nettle & Romaine,

2000, pp. 22-23).

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Third, languages constitute an irreplaceable resource for understanding the work of the

human brain. Languages provide us with information about the way the human brain

processes thoughts.􀀁Thus, preserving the thousands of human languages that currently exist

may help scholars to understand how language works. Linguists need to study as many

different languages as possible if they are to perfect their theories of language structure, and

to train future generations of students in linguistic analysis. ‘If every linguistic system finds a

slightly different way for individuals to conceptualise, reason, communicate, be expressive

and so on, then the loss of one way takes away a building block that might allow us to

understand the process more clearly’ (Wright, 2004, p.228). One consequence of declining

use of a language is a loss in its complexity and richness of expression.

Fourth, linguistic and cultural diversity embodies Linguistic Human Rights (LHR). The

overwhelming majority of endangered languages are an indictment of the history of injustice

towards minorities and their languages (Skunabb-Kangas, 2000). Owing to deficient

education programs and urbanisation unequal distribution of access to literacy and language

study for minority languages ends with unfair competition in the globalised ‘linguistic

market’. Minority languages and cultures are stigmatised as being traditional, backward,

narrow, and inferior. They are marginalised, deprived of resources for their development and

use. Freedom to name your people is one of the essential human rights. Cultural, linguistic,

and other human rights should act as a strong corrective to the market economy. LHR are

situated both on an individual and collective level, supporting free identification with the

mother tongue and allowing a group to exist and to reproduce its language and culture. They

are ‘necessary rights’ to maintain linguistic and cultural diversity. Human rights are

guarantees of linguistic and cultural diversity. The defence of cultural diversity is an ethical

imperative, inseparable from respect for human dignity. It implies a commitment to human

rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular the rights of persons belonging to minorities

and those of indigenous peoples. Multilingualism is a cultural and personal fortune, and in

many countries it is necessary for the protection of human rights. Skunabb-Kangas (2000)

states that maintenance programmes will become natural human rights only when the state

and educational authorities stop being a problem by looking at minorities as if they were the

problem. Linguistic diversity is essential to freedom of thought and the survival of modern

people. Linguistic Human Rights support the existence of minority languages and they should

be used prevent further loss of linguistic and cultural diversity in the world.

China’s attempts to protect minority languages: multinational and

multilingual China

The People's Republic of China is a united multi-ethnic country. So far, 56 ethnic groups have

been identified and recognized by the central government. The population of various ethnic

groups differs greatly. While the Han ethnic group has the largest population, the other 55

ethnic groups with relatively small population are customarily referred to as ‘ethnic

minorities.’ According to the fifth national census, conducted in 2000, the population of all

the 55 ethnic minority groups totalled 104.49 million, accounting for 8.41 percent of the total

population of China. People of all ethnic groups in China have made important contributions

to the creation of a unified multi-ethnic country and the creation of the time-honoured

Chinese civilisation, as well as Chinese historical progress (Facts and Figures: Regional

Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in China, 2005).

Modern Standard Chinese is the most widely spoken of all Chinese languages or dialects.

It is the language of Hui and Man ethnic groups, in addition to the Han majority, which

belongs to an independent branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The speakers inhabit a

huge area of the mainland, running diagonally from the extreme southwest to Manchuria in

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the north and along the entire east coast north of Shanghai. Although Chinese speakers write

the same language, there are some specific dialects mainly including Mandarin, Wu, Min,

Yue (commonly known as Cantonese), and Hakka (Kejia). The Beijing-based standard dialect

is known as Modern Standard Chinese or Mandarin. This dialect is the standard for the

national language, which is officially called Putonghua in China, Guoyu in Taiwan, and

Huayu in Singapore. To increase linguistic and cultural homogeneity, the government is

making an effort to standardize and spread the national language.

The other 53 ethnic groups speak over eighty languages (such as Tibetan, Uighur, Kazakh,

Mongolian, Korean, Zhuang, Yi, Miao, Buyei, Dong, Hani, Bai, Dai, Li and Yao), spoken by

around 6% of the population, and 30 of them have written forms. Most of them belong to the

four different language families including Altaic, Sino-Tibetan, South-Asian and

Indo-European language families. ‘Among them, more than 20 languages are used by less

than 1,000 people and on the verge of extinction, said Sun, president of the Chinese

Association on Minority Languages. The situation is no better with languages of larger ethnic

minorities’ (Researchers Work to Save Endangered Languages, 2001). The Manchurian

ethnic group with a population of several million has only about a dozen elderly native

language speakers in the Fuyu County of northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. The same

is true with many other languages. In the small regions where an ethnic minority concentrates,

their own language is retained mostly among the elderly people. The younger generation has

shifted to Putonghua.

During the last 20 years, in search of a better life more and more young people leave their

hometowns for the urban areas and gradually shift their language. Whaley (2002, cited in

Wright, 2004) documented the language shift among the Oroqen, a group living on the

northwest frontier of China. The Oroqen tried to save their language when they became

conscious that their language was not being transmitted to the next generation. However, their

initiatives did not turn out to be successful, because the language has no unitary standard

written form. Also, substantial populations of Zhuang – Dong – (Thai-) language speakers

were assimilated into the Ye’ (Cantonese) over several millennia, and in the last millennium

many members of minorities in the southwest, including quite a few Yi, have amalgamated

themselves into the Chinese population who speak south-western Mandarin (Bradley, 2001).

China’s policies towards endangered minority languages

As a multiethnic and multilingual country, how is China preserving the many cultures and

languages in its society? What are the government’s policies towards minority people and

minority languages? The initiatives of the government to protect minority people and salvage

their languages are evident in China’s many policies, and are presented below in the

following sections. All the following texts are based on details sanctioned by the state

government of the People’s Republic of China.

Political policy towards minorities: equality of all ethnic groups and local autonomous

governments

China has been a multi-cultural and multi-disciplined society for a few thousand years. All

minorities in China today have the same rights as the Han Chinese. Since minorities reside in

the remote areas that are usually poor, the Chinese government has a preference policy to

provide training for the minorities to progress, govern, and manage themselves. The essential

principle in China’s policies towards minorities is that people of all ethnic groups are equal.

This is guaranteed in Act 4 of the constitution of the People’s Republic of China. It prescribes

that ‘people of all ethnic groups are equal in the People’ Republic of China. The government

will guarantee the rights and interests of all minorities, and develop a good relationship

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between all ethnic groups. People are equal and should be united and help each other. Any

oppression of minorities or prejudice against them will be prohibited in order to avoid the

damage of national unity and division of the state’ (Selected Rules and Policies Towards

Minorities in the People’s Republic of China, 1996, p.28).

The basic political policy is the establishment of local autonomous governments in ethnic

regions. Regional autonomy for ethnic minorities in China means that, under the unified

leadership of the state, regional autonomy is practiced in areas where people of ethnic

minorities live in compact communities. In these areas, organs of self-government are

established for the exercise of autonomy. The implementation of this policy is critical to

enhancing the relationship of equality, unity, and mutual assistance among different ethnic

groups, to upholding national unification, and to accelerating the development of places

where regional autonomy is practiced and promoting their progress. These areas are

recognized in the PRC's constitution and are given a number of rights not accorded to other

administrative divisions. This means that under the leadership of the central government,

there is a special autonomous administration in charge of the affairs in

minority-intensely-populated regions. Autonomous regions, prefectures, counties, and

banners are covered under Section 6 of Chapter 3 (Articles 111-122) of the Constitution of the

People's Republic of China, and with more detail under the Law of the People's Republic of

China on Regional National Autonomy. The constitution states that the head of government of

each autonomous area must be of the ethnic group as specified by the autonomous area

(Tibetan, Uyghur, etc). The constitution also guarantees a range of rights including

independence of finance, independence of economic planning, independence of arts, science

and culture, organization of local police, and use of local language. In addition, some

important concessions are made to the non-Han, such as the non-imposition of the one-child

family. From 1947 to the end of 1998, 155 ethnic autonomous areas have been established in

China, including 5 autonomous regions, 30 autonomous prefectures, 120 autonomous

counties, and 1256 autonomous villages. They encompass 75% of the total minority

population and inhabit 64% of the total area of China (Wu, 1997).

Language policy towards minorities: the right of all ethnic groups to use and develop

their native languages and writing systems

China’s minority-language policy is based upon its minority-political policy. People of all

ethnic groups have the right to use and develop their native language and writing systems.

The right was first written into the provisional constitution of the PRC passed in 1949,

elaborated upon in the first constitution passed in 1954, simplified in the constitutional

revision of 1975, and fully elaborated in the constitutional revisions of 1978, 1982 and 1999

(Huang, 1992, cited in Zhou, 2000). Legally, the right to use one’s native language is

especially guaranteed in ethnic autonomous areas. Act ten of the Laws of Autonomous

Governing of Minority Regions prescribes that ‘authorities of autonomous minority should

guarantee that all ethnic groups are free to use and develop their native languages’ (Selected

Rules and Policies Towards Minorities in the People’s Republic of China, 1996, p. 40).

Regulation 20 of Urban Minority Working Regulations passed in 1993 is that ‘urban

governments should guarantee that minorities have the right to use their native languages’

(Selected Rules and Policies Towards Minorities in the People’s Republic of China, 1996, p.

81).

Efforts to create and improve writing systems for minority languages

Soon after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the work of creating writing

systems and improving imperfect writing systems of minority languages began in order to

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reduce the mass illiteracy of minority communities. In 1951, the Editorial Board of

Contemporary Chinese Nationality Work was established to undertake this task. In the

following years, research was conducted on a few minority languages, and few

recommendations were suggested.

The policy, Tentative Language Planning towards Minority Languages, was passed during

the first national conference on minority languages in December 1955. It was determined that

during 1956 and 1957, a general survey of minority languages would be conducted, the plan

for creating and improving minority languages would be formulated in the following three

years and for those unstudied minorities, the work would be finished by the end of 1960

(Jiang, 1994, p. 377, cited in Zhou, 2003).

Surveys were conducted on up to 40 minority languages by the end of 1958. In the late

1950s, fourteen writing systems, using Latin scripts were created for the minority languages

spoken by the ten minorities. They are Zhuang, Buyei, Yi, Miao, Hani, Lisu, Naxi, Dong, Wa

and Li. Among these fourteen writing systems, four are for Miao, and two for Hani. In real

communication, the Li preferred Mandarin instead of the newly created writing system, the

Hani used one and abandoned another, and the Yi did not like the new writing system created

for them, but preferred the improved and standardized traditional one instead. Thus, to date,

eight minorities are using eleven new writing systems created for them. In the beginning of

the 1980s, plans were designed for language writing systems of Tu, Jingpo, Bai, Dulong,

Qiang and Tujia. Since the last biennium (2002/2003), with the assistance of the UNESCO

Beijing Office, the Chinese Academy of Social Science has been making a special effort to

preserve and revitalize endangered languages of selected ethnic minority groups in China.

Research has already been completed for the six minority languages Uygur, Anong, She,

Manchu, Lakkia and Tujia. In 2005, research has focused on two more languages, Hezhen and

Ersu (Safeguarding and Revitalizing of Ethnic Minority Groups in China, 2005).

Protection and fostering of traditional minority cultures

The following information is quoted from Regional Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in China

(Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2005, section 5.4)

From the 1950s to the 1980s, the central authorities organized over 3,000 experts and

scholars to compile and publish five series of books on ethnic minorities, totalling 403

volumes and over 90 million Chinese characters. The series are: The Ethnic Minorities in

China, A Series of Books on the Brief History of the Ethnic Minorities in China, A Series

of Books on the Brief Record of the Languages of the Ethnic Minorities in China, A

Series of Books on the Survey of Autonomous Areas of Ethnic Minorities in China, and A

Collection of Research Materials on the Societies and Histories of the Ethnic Minorities in

China. Over 500,000 copies have been distributed. Today, each of the 55 ethnic minorities

in China has its own brief written history.

The 55 ethnic minorities in China, except for the Chinese-speaking Hui and Manchu,

each have their own language. The Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Korean and Yi languages

have coded character sets and national standards for fonts and keyboard. Software in the

Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur and Korean languages can be run in the Windows system, and

laser photo-typesetting in these languages has been realized. Applied software in

languages of ethnic minorities are emerging one after another, and some achievements

have been made in research into the OCR (optic character recognition) of languages of

ethnic minorities and machine-aided translation.

The state has set up special institutions to collect, assort, translate, and study in an

organized and programmed manner the three major heroic epics of China's ethnic

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minorities, i.e., Gesar(an oral Tibetan epic), Jangar (a Mongolian epic) and Manas (an

epic of the Kirgiz people). In the past decade, the state has appropriated over 30 million

yuan for the collation and publishing of 160 volumes of the BuddhistTripitakain the

Tibetan language. It has also earmarked a large amount of funds for the renovation of the

Drepung, Sera and Ganden monasteries in Tibet, the Kumbum Monastery in Qinghai, and

the Kizil Thousand-Buddha Caves in Xinjiang, and many other key national cultural

relics. From 1989 to 1994, the state invested 55 million yuan and 1,000 kg of gold in the

first-stage renovation of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous

Region, and in 2001, 330 million yuan for the second-stage renovation

Policies in favour of the use of minority languages (1) political selection

It was prescribed in Act 19 of Organization Laws of the State Peoples’ Representatives of the

PRC passed in 1982, which ‘interpreters should be provided for minority representatives in

the congress of the state peoples’ representatives’. This was repeated in rule 30 in Rules of

Procedure of the Congress of the State Peoples’ Representatives.

The use of minority languages was guaranteed in rule 22 of the Selection Laws of the

Congress of the State Peoples’ Representatives and Various Local Peoples’ Representatives.

It was written that in autonomous regions, prefectures, and counties ‘promulgated selection

documents, name lists, selector cards, name lists of representative candidates, representative

certificates and seals of the selection committee should be written in both the local popular

minority language and modern standard Chinese’ (Zhou, 2003, p. 264).

Ever since the first congress of the state peoples’ representatives in 1954 there have been

simultaneous interpreters for minority representatives. Interpreters of minority languages are

provided in all kinds of important political congresses and activities in the national and local

governments. There are minority language versions for all important documents, laws and

administrative rules issued by the Central Communist Party, the State Congresses, and various

local committees of the Communist Party and governments with areas containing

multinational populations.

Policies in favour of the use of minority languages (2) administrative management

Minority languages are the working languages of ethnic autonomous governments. This is

guaranteed by laws and working regulations (Selected Rules and Policies Towards Minorities

in the People’s Republic of China,1996). It is stated in Act twenty-one of Laws of

Autonomous Governing of Minority Regions that minority languages should be adopted to

conduct regional autonomous government business. It was guaranteed in the 1993 Working

Regulations of Minority Village Administration that local minority languages should be the

working languages in autonomous minority villages.

Minority languages coexist with modern standard Chinese in the seals of ethnic

autonomous authorities and organizations, identity cards of minorities, and the names of

businesses in ethnic autonomous areas. RMB Notes are written in Mongolia, Tibetan, Uighur,

and Zhuang, in addition to Chinese (Zhou, 2003).

Policies in favour of the use of minority languages (3) lawsuits and arbitration

It was prescribed in Act of 134 of the 1982 constitution that ‘people of all ethnic groups are

entitled to file suit in their own native language. People’s courts and people’s procuratorates

should provide translators for the defendants who do not know Mandarin. In areas which are

heavily populated by minorities, cases should be tried in the local popular language and all

documents concerned with lawsuits including indictments, court verdicts, notices should be

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written in one or several local popular languages’ (Selected Rules and Policies Towards

Minorities in the People’s Republic of China, 1996, p. 31).

It was prescribed in regulation 5 of Regulations of Economic Contracts Arbitration of the

PRC that ‘in intensely minorities or multi-ethnics populated areas the processes of mediation,

arbitration and the awards of them should be in one or several local popular languages.

Interpreters should be provided for the agents’ (Selected Rules and Policies Towards

Minorities in the People’s Republic of China, 1996, p. 346).

Policies in favour of the use of minority languages (4) education

Bilingual education in minority communities is guaranteed in laws and regulations. For

example, Act thirty-seven of the 1984 Law of Autonomous Governing of Minority Regions

states that ‘in schools where minority students are in the majority, text books should be in

minority languages and courses should be taught in minority languages when conditions are

permitted. Chinese courses should be offered in the late years of elementary schools or middle

schools in order to spread modern standard Chinese throughout China’ (Zhou, 2003, p. 266).

It was restated in the 1986 Compulsory Education Laws of the People’ Republic of China,

1988 Regulations for the Work of Eradicating Illiteracy, as well as the 1989 Management

Regulations for Kindergarten as Issued by the State Council. Also it was re-emphasized in the

Notice about Contemporary Language and Scripts as Issued by the State Language

Commission Approved by the State Council in 1992.

In some minority schools, all courses are conducted in minority languages such as

Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Kazak and Koran, and Chinese is offered only as one of the

courses. In some other minority communities, Chinese is the language of instruction. Minority

languages such as Miao and Jingpo are offered as a subject, or as an auxiliary language of

instruction.

Policies in favour of the use of minority languages (5) publications and translation

Government funds are offered to minority language journals or magazines according to the

1984 Notice of Journals and Publications by the State Council. Special privileges are offered

to minority language authors and translators according to 1990 Provisional Regulations of

Publication Payment and 1990 Copyright Laws of the People’s Republic of China. There is

no limit for minority language books to publish and the stripe code is free. This was officially

guaranteed in 1996.

By the end of 1998, there were thirty-six minority language publishing houses. There are

five in Beijing including the Ethnic Press and the China Mongolian Press. With the

assistance of the state and efforts of the ethnic autonomous areas, by 2003, 4,787 titles of

books in ethnic minority languages had been published, totalling 50.34 million copies.

There were also 205 magazines and 88 newspapers in such languages, totalling 7.81

million copies and 131.30 million copies, respectively. The ethnic autonomous areas had

set up 513 art performance troupes, 566 libraries and 163 museums (Information Office of

the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2005, section 5.4).

Moreover, the Centre of China Minority Language Translation was established in 1978 in

Beijing. Works of the state officials and government documents are translated into

Mongolian, Tibetan, Uygur, Kazak, Korean, Yi and Zhuang and Speeches in national

conferences are simultaneously interpreted.

Policies in favour of the use of minority languages (6) the mass media

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Ever since May 22, 1950, sixteen minority languages have been used as the programs

languages of CCTV for those minority-intensely- populated regions or areas where people

cannot understand programs in Chinese. Some of these minority languages are Tibetan,

Mongolia, Korean, Uighur, Kazak, Zhuang, and Yi. Now more than twenty minority

languages are used on China’s national radio broadcasting, over thirty on local radio

broadcasting, and 3,410 movies in minority languages. There are 10,430 translated movies

and TV programs in minority languages (Zhou, 2003).

In 2003, the ethnic autonomous areas had 122 radio broadcasting organizations with 73

radio stations and 523 radio transmitting stations, broadcasting in 15 ethnic minority

languages; 111 TV broadcasting organizations with 94 TV stations and 830 TV

transmitting stations, broadcasting in 11 ethnic minority languages. There were also

254,900 satellite radio and TV receiving and relaying systems (Information Office of the

State Council of the People’s Republic of China, 2005, section 5.4).

Policies in favour of the use of minority languages (7) minority language organisations

The Committee of Minority Language Research and Instruction was established in 1951. It is

in charge of research, coinage and the improvement of state minority languages. Changes

were made to the management of minority languages in 1998. Since then the State Ethnic

Committee is in charge of minority languages concerning translation and publications of

minority languages; the educational department is in charge of the standardization of minority

languages and the research and application of minority language information. Ever since

1977, with the permission of the State Congresses, Mongolian associations have been set up

in eight autonomous areas and Korean associations in the three north-eastern provinces, and

there are also Yi and Tibetan associations in other provinces.

China has about 300 minority language translation organizations with part-time and full

time staff of more than 100,000. According to Xinhuanet on July 4th 2005, China will build a

new training and proficiency authentification system to standardize minority language

translation, said Dainzhub Angbon, director of the China Translation Association’s minority

language translation commission. The official said that the China Translation Association has

already granted certificates to 70 senior translators and the Tibet Autonomous Region,

Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have already

made rules and regulations concerning minority languages (Vorontsov, 2005).

As a multiethnic and multilingual country, China has been assisting people of different

ethnic groups to live in harmony and respect each other’s cultures so that every one can enjoy

their human and language rights. The information presented in this section indicated that both

in theory and in practice, Chinese policies are supportive of multilingualism and that they are

aimed at protecting minority languages in China.

Where to from here?

China has been attempting to salvage and maintain the endangered minority languages by

investing money, time, and, people into the development of successful minority education

policies, and constantly reaffirming its superiority in this regard in media and policy

discourses. Language policies in China are becoming more inclusive of minority language

use. Further, to the initiatives presented in this paper, it is vital for Chinese Government to

continue to:

• train more qualified minority language teachers and compile suitable material

resources (texts and materials in minority languages);

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• promote bilingual education/programmes in many Chinese schools;

• revitalize local and indigenous knowledge transmission; and

• encourage minority people to make more handicrafts to stimulate economy.

The impacts of economic and social trends worldwide, improved transportation and the global

reach of telecommunications tend to continue to pose a threat to many minority languages.

The number of endangered languages is still on the increase in China. In this context, it is

imperative that research is being done on the effectiveness of the Chinese language policies in

preserving minority languages and in promoting linguistic diversity in China.

Conclusion

The philosophy of the Chinese central government is that people of all ethnic groups are

equal, and there should be no prejudice or discrimination against minorities and their

languages. Dictated by this political principle, several language policies are formulated in

China, favouring the existence of minority languages. The details presented in this paper

appear to indicate the significance of policy initiatives in preserving minority languages and

their cultures. However, there is little empirical evidence to indicate their effectiveness in

preserving minority languages or cultures. Given that minority languages are in danger of

extinction in the globalised age, it is important that the degree of success of these policies

throughout China needs to be established by undertaking research on this topic.

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Author

Zuo Xiulan is a professor of sociolinguistics in School of Foreign Languages of Dalian

Maritime University in China. Her main interests are language policy and language planning;

lexical borrowing; linguistic purism; endangered languages. Email: graceteacher@163.com;

Jenny141904@sohu.com

Minority Languages

2009-11-05T12:26:00.002+08:00

Reasons why minority languages are disappearing.

1. Language loss is a natural phenomenon in the development of society and language. Nationalism is one of the main reasons why small groups come to be conceived as minorities.

- Nationalism and nation building often favour linguistic assimilation to make sure that everymember of a community is able to use the dominant language.

- This results in transferring prestige to, and asserting the superiority of the dominant language.

2. Moreover, the world languages do not all have the same function, the same vigour or the same prospect.

- Fewer than 4 per cent of the world’slanguages have any kind of official status in the countries where they are spoken - mostlanguages are unwritten, not recognised officially, restricted to local community and homefunctions and spoken by very small groups of people.

3. GLobalisation is accelerating extinction of minority languages around the globe.

- The arrival of new types of media: Internet, radio and television satellitesforces language adoption of technical norms for facilitating the transfer of computerized data.

4. Global economic influences are prompting the young to leave isolated villages for the urban area in search of better lives.

- Thus the native languages and cultures will be abandoned for the sake of social mobility.

Need for protecting minority languages

1. First, language is a valuable resource - When a language disappears, there islikely to be a serious loss of inherited knowledge and cultural legacy to the nation and to theworld as well.

2. language is an essential element of a person’s identity that should be respected - Language spoken by somebody and his or her identity as a speaker of that language are inseparable

eg. Sir James Henare, a Maori leader, expressed such sentiments about the Maori language by saying that ‘The language isthe life force of our Maori culture and mana [‘power’]. If the language dies, as some predict, what do we have left to us? Then, I ask our own people who are we?’

3. languages constitute an irreplaceable resource for understanding the work of the human brain.

- Languages provide us with information about the way the human brain processes thoughts. Thus, preserving the thousands of human languages that currently exist may help scholars to understand how language works.

4. linguistic and cultural diversity embodies Linguistic Human Rights (LHR).

- Minority languages and cultures are stigmatised as being traditional, backward, narrow, and inferior. They are marginalised, deprived of resources for their development and use. Freedom to name your people is one of the essential human rights. Cultural, linguistic, and other human rights should act as a strong corrective to the market economy.

Millions worldwide would like to switch countries: study

2009-11-04T14:54:00.002+08:00

Tue Nov 3, 2:00 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Some 700 million people worldwide, or more than all the adults of North and South America combined, think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and want to permanently move to another country, a poll showed Tuesday.

Residents of sub-Saharan African countries were the most likely to want to move abroad permanently, the polls conducted in 135 countries between 2007 and this year by Gallup showed.

On average, 38 percent of the adult population in sub-Saharan Africa, or around 165 million people, said they would up stakes and head for another country if they had the chance.

The most popular destination was the United States, where nearly a quarter of the 700 million -- around 165 million people -- said they would like to settle.

In joint second were Britain, Canada and France, each being named as the preferred destination of around 45 million people.

Thirty-five million said they would go to Spain, 30 million to Saudi Arabia, and 25 million each to Australia or Germany.

The least likely to want to emigrate were Asians -- only one in 10 Asian adults said they would move to another country.

Nearly 260,000 people aged 15 years and older were surveyed, either by phone or face-to-face, for the poll, which has a margin of error of around five percent.

1 World, 1 Malaysia ... different planet – Art Harun

2009-11-03T17:02:00.000+08:00

NOV 3 – Imagine you are an alien being from some planet far, far away in the globular star clusters M80, 23,000 light years away from Earth.

You had just arrived on Earth after travelling in a space craft called Pro-Ton, made by your premier national space craft manufacturer.

You have travelled 23,000 light years to be here. You are tired, hungry and maybe sleepy.

But you are excited at the same time. You have read so much about this blue planet filled with strange gasses, minerals, matters and of course, strange and wild creatures of various forms. You can’t wait to meet them. Interact with them. Probably even mate with some of them.

As fate would have it, you had landed somewhere in what your inter-stellar google map calls Kuala Lumpur.

While landing, you had caused a bit of a landslide along the KL-Rawang road causing the road to be closed. You had also caused cracks to reappear all over the MRR2, prompting the former Minister of Works to shout at his wife “it’s an act of God!!!!” out of sheer habit, forgetting that he is no more a Minister.

But you are not worried. You and your craft are invisible, of course.

You had come here prepared. You have studied the Earth and its entire history from Day One, right from the day the Big Bang caused some dust, gases and various matters to form Earth to the day Alexander the Great arrived in India and wished he had never been there, and to the day Hitler was locked in a dungeon by an angry Jewish midget and the key thrown away. You have seen it all.

You have seen the Mayans drawing up their calendar up to 2012 before they committed mass suicide for no apparent reason leaving later generation to think that the Earth will come to an end in 2012.

You have also known about Nostradamus, a guy who loved puzzles and riddles and whose entire goal in life was to ensure that the whole Earth population would be puzzled and riddled till Armageddon.

And of course, you know all about Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Abraham, Isa, Mohammad, Mandela, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Mahathir Mohammad, Clinton, Obama, Osama and others (in random order, not association or affinity).

As I had said, you came prepared. Also preset in your indefinite memory bank is humongous amount of data and information about all cultures, values and religions on Earth. Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, Shintoism and hundreds more. You know them all.

After drinking about 88 gallons of toxic waste and pig poo from some rivers around KL for breakfast, you decide to catch up with some reading before you set out to explore Earth.

You plug one end of your version of a USB cable into your head and the other end into your 1 iEverythingPod. Your mind then skims through the vast data and information available about the latest and most current happenings on Earth.

You would instantly learn about the call for 1 Malaysia, of course. Your two mouths actually smile.

Then you would learn about Umno delegates voting for change. You then cross-refer the word “change” to one Barrack Obama, the President of a place where Hollywood and one Scarlett Johansen are. Ahh ... similar, you note.

Then you learn about Zaid Ibrahim taking leave. About one Zul Noordin defending his faith while in bed. About a creature known as MACC – quickly cross-referred to McDonald – planning to prosecute 35 government officers for abusing their office erasers and paper clips.

About a bomb exploding in Kabul killing – cross referred to Holocaust, World War 2, Bosnian conflict, war crimes, exhibition at PWTC, Dr Mahathir, Idi Amin, stop – and another in Baghdad.

You shake your three heads in disbelief.

Then you are transported to the fact that Nasa had just successfully launched and tested the Ares I-X prototype rocket, which was designed to replace the aging space shuttle. And you think, ahhhh..I have travelled 23000 light years and these morons are still testing space shuttle. Lame!

Later, you become aware of the fact that the African Union had just backed a plan to create a special hybrid court for trying those accused of committing atrocities in Sudan’s restive Darfur province. Hmmm ... Sudan ... Darfur you think. Cross-refer, mass killing, 300,000 people (mostly Muslims) killed, 2.5 million people displaced ... genocide ... further cross-refer, World War 2, Holocaust, Hitler, Karadzic, Idi Amin ... you get the drift.

Then you learn of the swine flu. Of the race to come out with a vaccine. Of how China and the USA manage to create one. In the nick of time. Then you discover there were more than 70 deaths in Malaysia because of this flu.

The 1 iEverythingPod then cross-refer to 3rd world; Philippines; Botswana; Ethiopia. Oh no, you have landed in a third world country, you think. Mission almost a failure!

You also learn that the Nobel prize has been awarded to that guy whose name is Obama, from that country where the women have silicon in their body. Cross-refer, Pamela Anderson. Monstrous, you say quietly.

Jenson Button wins the F1. Ooops ...what is this? You explore. Auto racing. You learn. Abu Dhabi. Nice day and night race. You see at one time during the race, there was the sun and the moon at the same time!

Cross-refer, Sepang F1 race, race stopped before it finished as it was getting dark. Cross-refer Singapore night F1 race. Party. Beyonce. Cross-refer, Black Eyed Peas, no Muslims allowed, then Muslims allowed, check identity card, Beyonce cancels her concert, Pemuda PAS Selangor protests, Michael Learns To Rock, protests again, Hassan Ali, Zul Noordin, mullahs on Ecstacy.

You explore deeper. Japan leads in hybrid cars. New water in Singapore. Financial world revamping. Melting ice caps. Globalisation. Peace treaties. Middle East unrest. Modern day slavery in Dubai. Fulham whacks Liverpool 3-1.

You then come back to news in Malaysia, the place where you had landed. The Prisons department is awaiting order to cane Kartika. Cross refer, beer, alcohol, Kartika, cane, Islam.

Then you learn about the call for award to be given to those who marry single mothers. Cross-refer, Islam. Later, you are fed with a scheme where RM10,000 is paid to each man who would marry an orang asli woman in order to keep her as a Muslim. Cross-refer, Islam.

You check your memory bank on all the information and data about that religion called Islam. Just to make sure you are reading those news accurately. Hmmm ... strange, you think.

Then you are transported to an offer for honeymoon for married couple having marital problems. Then to divorce-hit Terengganu wants to spice up sex life of newly-weds. Cross-refer, Islam.

Finally, you learn about one Dr Asri, a former Islamic Mufti of a state in Malaysia, being arrested for lecturing about Islam without a license. Cross-refer, Islam, breach of fundamental liberties, freedom of speech.

By this time you are sure all the data and information you had been implanted with about Islam is wrong and inaccurate. You profusely push the communicator button. Call your planet.

“No,” they say, “the information are correct.”

“But,” you say, “I am getting quite different reports here.”

“Where are you?” your home ask you.

“I am in a place called Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,” you answer.

“Oh, that place”, exclaims your home.

“Listen up, okay, access your memory bank, and click ‘ignore’ once,” directs your home. – art-harun.blogspot.com

Principles and Paradoxes

2009-11-03T16:34:00.000+08:00

Principles and paradoxes

Reflecting on the Law

By SHAD SALEEM FARUQI

Malaysia can be proud that it has gone through 12 general elections. But there are many areas which can be improved for greater democracy.

ALLOWING the people to elect their representatives in Parliament is a sterling achievement of democracy and a firm pillar of good governance. Having said that, it must be noted that democracy is full of fables and foibles that we must be open about.

With a by-election in Bagan Pinang around the corner, it is opportune to examine the principles and paradoxes of our 54-year-old electoral system.

Electoral system: We have a simple plurality, first past the post or winner-take-all system which we emulated from the UK.

The candidate with the largest vote wins the electoral district. This is so even if, in a three- or four-cornered contest, he does not obtain more than 50% of the votes polled.

In the UK in nearly one-half, and in Malaysia in nearly one-third, of the constituencies, the simple plurality system grants victory to candidates who do not secure absolute majorities. Their legal victory cannot hide the problem of legitimacy.

No proportionality: At the natio-nal level this simple plurality system leads to a startling lack of proportionality between votes polled and seats won.

In the UK, in the 70s, the victorious Labour Party won a meagre 37% of the popular vote but 52% of the parliamentary seats.

In Malaysia, in 2004, Barisan Nasional won 63.9% of the popular vote but 90.4% of the Dewan Rakyat seats. In 2008, Barisan captured a bare 50.6% of the overall votes but a comfortable 63.06% of the parliamentary seats.
The alternative proportional representation system is more democratic and just. It requires constituencies to be territorially large, and to have 10 to 15 seats.

Each voter has only one vote and seats are awarded to political parties in proportion to their actual votes.

The great weakness of the proportional representation system is that it encourages a mushrooming of many political parties and prevents any one party from securing an absolute majority in the legislature.

This results in a weak government and difficulty in legislating laws. In most democracies, therefore, justice gives way to expediency.

One vote, one value: If the ideal of equality before the law in Article 8 of the Constitution is to be followed, then every citizen’s vote must carry equal weight.

This means that all constituencies must be approximately equal in population size.

Unfortunately, if this ideal was to be strictly followed, then all constituencies in rural areas, in hilly terrains as in Pahang, and in territorially large but thinly populated states as in Sabah and Sarawak, will have very few MPs.

The Constitution in 1957 therefore allowed rural constituencies to be one half of urban electoral districts.

In 1974, due to a constitutional amendment, rural constituencies could be “less than one half” of urban districts. The result is that there are massive disparities between the population size of voting districts.

Size of electorate: Due to a complex series of factors, nearly 74% of our population do not participate in elections. We need to address issues that keep this proportion so high.

First, unlike a vast majority of the nations where the voting age is 18, we allow citizens to vote only at age 21. Nearly 52% of the population is below 21.

Second, we do not have an automatic registration system. Several million people equaling 13% of the population do not register. Those that do, get to vote only when election arrives, by which time they are well past 21.

Third, voting is not compulsory. Nine percent of the citizens do not bother to cast their vote.

The way forward is to lower the voting age to 18. Registration should be automatic at the address stated on the MyKad.

If a voter wishes to change his voting place, the burden should be on him to fill the necessary forms manually or electronically.

Voting could be made compulsory and electronic voting should be considered with necessary safeguards against fraud.

A contentious issue is the system of postal voting for those like diplomats and members of the armed forces, who are unable to go to voting booths to express their electoral wishes.

In Bagan Pinang, 4,604 out of 13,664 voters are postal voters. Clearly their preference will decisively turn the tide in favour of one or the other candidate.

Election campaign: The rules relating to media coverage of political contestants are clearly weighed in favour of those who own or control the media.

There is a need for giving equal access to all political parties, to permit and facilitate public debates and to give voters a genuine choice between competing candidates.

With the rise of alternative means of communication and the impact of bloggers and the international media, ruling parties must come to terms with the need for more even-handed treatment of political opponents.

Police control over processions and assemblies needs to take note of rising sentiments for greater political space.

It must be remembered that underdogs are often anointed by a halo of sympathy because of the popular perception of unfair treatment.

Election expenses: Putting limits on the expenses of candidates between nomination date and election date does not prevent the hopefuls from splurging money in the period before nomination.

Putting caps on individual expenses without restricting party expenses does little to prevent electoral battles from degenerating into struggles between cheque books.

We need rules to require all political parties to disclose their sources of revenue and to make annual returns which should be accessible to the public.

Public corporations, statutory bodies and quangos should be banned from making political donations either directly or indirectly.

Malaysia has cause to be proud that it has successfully conducted 12 general elections since independence. Political pluralism is allowed.

There is no election violence. Opposition parties contest and win many seats and are at present in control of the four state legislatures, and nearly 38% of the seats at the Dewan Rakyat.

However, the march of time requires many adjustments of, and reforms to, the electoral system so that elections are perceived as fair as well as free.

> Prof Datuk Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi is Emeritus Professor of Law at UiTM and Visiting Professor at USM.

Chance for recovery

2009-11-03T15:23:00.000+08:00

The consensus is that the MCA can ill-afford another bout of savage internal strife that a fresh election would spark.

YOU wouldn’t be blamed for losing track of who’s who and which MCA faction is demanding what.

The scenario in the MCA has changed so dramatically and is still changing – all in such a short time – that even party members have difficulties following the upheavals.

The MCA can ill-afford such devastating power plays, especially with the next general election pending. There is little time to re-invent and re-energise. The next poll is shaping into a do-or-die battle for Barisan Nasional, the MCA included. As a cynical public and an exasperated MCA rank and file watch, top MCA leaders are sizing up the 42-member MCA central committee to fit their own personal power schemes.

In just a year, the MCA has had an election, a year-old battle between the president and his deputy, an EGM whose results are at best indeterminate, a coup-d’etat that failed and lately a demand for another EGM by 16 members of the central committee.

Pressure is also mounting on all CC members to resign en masse to force another election, the second in a year.

The outcome of another election is anybody’s guess but the consensus is that the MCA cannot afford nor survive another bout of savage internal strife that an election would spark.

In the general gloom, grassroots members see a sliver of hope in the greater unity plan worked out by the two main protagonists in the original power struggle – president Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat and his former deputy Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek.

The greater unity plan is deceptively simple in that it allows all factions to bury the hatchet and work together to save the MCA from more debilitating strife.

“For it to work all factions have to pull back and make sacrifices and put the MCA above their personal interest,” a former MCA leader said.

Ironically the unity plan has come under heavy criticism, especially from those supporting deputy president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai who either want an EGM to decide on fresh elections or a mass resignation of CC members to force an automatic election.

In so doing, they seem to have rejected the greater unity plan which grassroots members see as a viable option to end the strife and give the MCA a chance to recover.

It is also ironic that Dr Chua, the very man who fought Ong for over a year and sparked off the rash of infighting, is now strongly supporting the greater unity plan.

Dr Chua is calling for a year-long truce involving all factions, his own included, to give the MCA a chance to recover.
For Dr Chua to urge all factions to bury the hatchet is significant as it can potentially stabilise the party and end the infighting.

Dr Chua said the greater unity plan would allow the three main factions a chance to hold top posts and therefore the decision to dissolve the CC for a fresh party election should be postponed.

“Real unity can be achieved at the federal and state levels if no elected party official is marginalised.

“Another EGM and elections would be a waste of time,” he added.

Another EGM or fresh election will only worsen the situation and set the MCA on a path of no return.

Because of the endless strife, the MCA is fast losing traction in the Chinese community which is watching with worry the upheavals and the impact on their interests.
A truce, even a temporary one, will go far to help the MCA recover lost ground and regain public trust.

Writings by Shawn Olson - artist

2009-10-30T13:13:00.000+08:00

The Value of Art

By Shawn Olson

Posted on January 31st, 2005

After a distinctly self-contemplative night, I began to wonder what it is that attracts people to art. Certainly I consider myself an artist of sorts… but what is it that makes me an artist? Why do I practice art? Why does anyone immerse themselves in abstract activities that, for the most part, do not add to financial security or other measurable values?

We know that art has been around before written language. Ancient carvings and cave-wall paintings attest to an early drive to participate in artistic endeavors. I would say that our skills as artists have improved since the first cave paintings… but I think there must be the same seed of creativity that connects long forgotten ancestors and modern artists.

I think that the most obvious similarity is that dedicated artists tend to create art that reflects important aspects of their lives. When it comes to ancient man, what could have been more important than food and reproduction? Ancient art is ripe with images of hunting and pregnant women.

As human society evolved into more stable communities, the art changed. Over time the focus on survival was supplanted with self-emulation. In ancient Egypt, for example, the art turned to worshipping the value of great kings and all-powerful gods. The same happened in most cultures.

I doubt that common slaves of Egypt felt that preserving kingly honor for eternity was a motivating factor; slaves probably would have produced an entirely different art than what we find in tombs had they the resources to create art. What is telling is that the art that survived from ancient times reflects directly the values of the people producing and preserving it: in terms of Egypt… it was of the Pharaohs.

European Medieval art reflects a mixture of pagan and Christian ideals. We can deduce that local kings whose roots were largely pagan mixed with the influence of Rome. The artistic work commissioned throughout this time is a constant reminder of those influences.

Take this on up to our own time. An important note to take is that as the traditional religious values of historic importance in the west have been challenged in intellectual circles, the focus of art has strayed. Prehistoric art was focused on life and death… ancient art turned to the afterlife and mysticism; modern art has no focus. I am confident that mass media and the internet have a large role in the change… perhaps we are still too early in the new era to be able to define the motivating factor behind the art that will last; but I feel that the reality is that art has no focus in our age because it is not the secluded craft of the gifted and appointed.

Can we assume that we are different than ancient artists? I doubt we are different. The likely disparity is that very few humans, throughout the last ten thousand years, could afford to practice any artistic endeavors—those who weren’t lucky enough to be drafted into the artist class had no time or money to be creative when they were in from the field. Modern humans have much more luxury than ancient people… meaning they have the freedom to participate in artistic endeavors even if their art brings in little or no financial compensation.

So what is the value of art? Honestly, I really don’t think that art has an enduring value. A piece of art is divine to one man and ridiculous to the next. Revered artists of the past may not have produced anything more amazing than countless others, but through happenstance become icons.

I feel that art is important, but its value is intangible. The more remote the art, the higher its value to our intellectual heritage… but still… it was simply created by simple men portraying their own simple values—or the values of their masters and employers. As a benchmark of our progress and set of values, art is important. But I turn my back on the high-brow notion that artists have a deeper insight on this world from the rest of humanity.

Art comes from our apparently innate desire to express ourselves; some of us, at least, feel the urge to be creative. I would wager that some of the art dug up from times past has less cultural significance than some archeologists say; there is a percentage of art created by any artist that has no deep inspiration beyond a desire to make something beautiful, novel or strange. Other art is simply a form of mimicking.

What is the objective value of a piece of art? I don’t know… and I doubt you know either. All I know is that art is an important part of our lives… and I’m happy that I enjoy it. Moreover, I am glad I appreciate the act of conjuring artistic creations. There is no broad value to any specific piece of artwork in this world, in my opinion… all art has local and temporal value—though some are fortunate to outlive others. But pieces that evoke wonder and appreciation and awe are definitely of utmost emotional value to anyone with an open mind or heart.

Artists come a dime-a-dozen

By Shawn Olson

Posted on October 20th, 2002.

Artists come a dime a dozen. I’m not saying that in a rude way, since I consider myself to be somewhat of an artist. I’m just saying it’s not as easy to be a financially successful artist. A few get lucky, but the fact is that there is more involved in the marketing of art than pure artistic skill. If you take any group of artists, some famous and some not, you will often see no difference in the quality of their work. Yet some can sell their paintings for thousands of dollars and others can only give their work away.

Maybe the stuffy art critics can see the qualitative difference between all art, but I’d say their standards are fifty percent arbitrary and forty percent standardized mental mind-cloning. Critics say that in order to appreciate art we have to see the meaning behind the art. Well, I’m sure they’re right ten percent of the time. But most artists don’t paint some mystical story into all of their paintings. In fact, I’d go so far to say that only a small percentage of art was created with a spiritual purpose. Most art, including the so-called classics, were probably created with the most common artistic spark: pure creative joy.

Maybe the art critics, like English teachers, were taught that you have to look for meaning in a piece because they lack any personal artistic traits. An artist, like a creative writer, almost always does his work for the sheer joy of doing it. A painter paints because he just wants to paint a good picture, just as a writer writes to tell a good story. Seldom is a painting created with the idea that the art has something beyond itself. The artist wants to impress people with images, but an image is only a collection of colors and shapes with potential meaning. Most meaning is supplied by the viewer.

Take the Mona Lisa. Why is it a classic? What, artistically speaking, makes it so enduring? Is there something metaphysically intrinsic about it? Is it any more a piece of art than any other portrait that any number of other artists could have done? Or is it a classic simply because of the name of the artist who created the piece?

Artistic greatness is something of a fad. Critics like to deride various artists as “illustrators”, as if there is something debased about their work. An illustrator is not, according to critics, a fine artist. But where do you draw the line between illustration and fine art? One artist recently made the point that it would be interesting to know how many classic artists spent their time illustrating books and cards. She made the statement that many so-called illustrations would be pieces of so-called fine art were they only painted on canvas instead of poster board.

Critics like to make all kinds of qualifiers to what makes fine art fine. You can’t use an airbrush or computer graphic program to be a fine artist. I guess this is because it is essential to know that a brush smeared across canvass to make a scene rather than a misty spray of paint.

Perhaps I’m just not cultured enough. I’m sure that’s what a critic would say. But you know, I really don’t care about what a critic would say. I know that some pieces of art make me feel curious or intrigued, others bore me. I can’t see why anyone needs a critic to say which paintings are beautiful and which ones have spirit. My advice is to never ask a critic to take you on a tour in an art museum.

Creative Arts

By Shawn Olson

Posted on August 1st, 2005

After an essay on the value of art I received some emails from readers who felt intrigued by my stance that art has no objective value; some, however, mistook my words as a denial of any value in art. Such is far from the truth are the cornerstone of my life… and for me to say that art has no value would be an admission that my life is without value. Cosmically speaking, my life may be insignificant—but you won’t ever find that sentiment supported in my actions and personal beliefs!

Any form of creative art is immensely valuable in an emotional, sentimental and cultural way. Art enhances our ability to communicate ideas and feelings in ways that words fail—how and why this is I am not capable of explaining. But there is definitely something very powerful in a well wrought painting, musical score, photograph, movie or poem; an image of an anguished child wrapped in a blanket of dirty rags and ailing with empty eyes may touch us in a way that the words “The kids are hungry” cannot.

There is something more poignant about sensations (images, sounds, smells, feelings) than abstractions. The artist who learns the lesson of “Show, Don’t Tell” has taken one step into the realm of wise master.

While no individual piece of art is, in my opinion, eternally and objectively more valuable than the next, there is something called “great art” that sets apart from juvenile art. I cannot define the criteria—but I can tell you when I see or hear it! Of course, the problem is that my definition of great art may not equate to yours or the next critic’s opinion.

Art serves as a powerful motivator, more for the artist than the critic and reviewer—and probably more for the artist than the fan. An artist is something of an obsessed fanatic forever on a quest to create the most compelling and moving piece of art. An artist grows through his art; each new piece extends the limit of who he is and who he will always be. Artists seek longevity and even immortality through their art! With each new piece of art finished, an artist has refined the definition of who he is—for now anyone who sees or hears his results will know something of the creator and his vision and hopes and fears.

Being creative is, in itself, a valuable talent and trait. Creativity is a gift of humanity that is only minimally known outside our species. It is the very reason of our success in all areas of life—even beyond art. Creativity is the trait of humans that allows us to take what we have and make something new and novel. Business, child-rearing, science and technology all rely on varying levels and kinds of creativity for success. Art is just another form of creativity—sort of an unleashed and unpredictable oracle built into our genes.

I believe that the main value of art is in its process rather than results—that the act of creating new things expands us and teaches us new ways to reach goals. Being creative is the true value of being artistic. This individual process of growing through creative arts helps us produce varying new vistas on humanity that can further help the next generation grow in its own world of creative art. In such a view, the individual growth each artist achieves increases the whole culture, because it helps fill the world with gifted environments that encourage young artists to seek their own artistic journeys.

What is Art

2009-10-30T13:10:00.000+08:00

ART has not always been what we think it is today. An object regarded as Art today may not have been perceived as such when it was first made, nor was the person who made it necessarily regarded as an artist. Both the notion of "art" and the idea of the "artist" are relatively modern terms.

Many of the objects we identify as art today -- Greek painted pottery, medieval manuscript illuminations, and so on -- were made in times and places when people had no concept of "art" as we understand the term. These objects may have been appreciated in various ways and often admired, but not as "art" in the current sense.

ART lacks a satisfactory definition. It is easier to describe it as the way something is done -- "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others" (Britannica Online) -- rather than what it is.

The idea of an object being a "work of art" emerges, together with the concept of the Artist, in the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy.

During the Renaissance, the word Art emerges as a collective term encompassing Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, a grouping given currency by the Italian artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari in the 16th century. Subsequently, this grouping was expanded to include Music and Poetry which became known in the 18th century as the 'Fine Arts'. These five Arts have formed an irreducible nucleus from which have been generally excluded the 'decorative arts' and 'crafts', such as as pottery, weaving, metalworking, and furniture making, all of which have utility as an end.

But how did Art become distinguished from the decorative arts and crafts? How and why is an artist different from a craftsperson?

In the Ancient World and Middle Ages the word we would translate as 'art' today was applied to any activity governed by rules. Painting and sculpture were included among a number of human activities, such as shoemaking and weaving, which today we would call crafts.

Read more on Art & Artists in the Ancient World and Middle Ages...

During the Renaissance, there emerged a more exalted perception of art, and a concomitant rise in the social status of the artist. The painter and the sculptor were now seen to be subject to inspiration and their activities equated with those of the poet and the musician.

Read more on Art & Artists in the Renaissance....

In the latter half of the 16th century the first academies of art were founded, first in Italy, then in France, and later elsewhere. Academies took on the task of educating the artist through a course of instruction that included such subjects as geometry and anatomy. Out of the academies emerged the term "Fine Arts" which held to a very narrow definition of what constituted art.

Read more on Art & Artists in the Academies...

The institutionalizing of art in the academies eventually provoked a reaction to its strictures and definitions in the 19th century at which time new claims were made about the nature of painting and sculpture. By the middle of the century, "modernist" approaches were introduced which adopted new subject matter and new painterly values. In large measure, the modern artists rejected, or contradicted, the standards and principles of the academies and the Renaissance tradition. By the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, artists began to formulate the notion of truth to one's materials, recognizing that paint is pigment and the canvas a two-dimensional surface. At this time the call also went up for "Art for Art's Sake."

Read more on Art & Artists and Modernism...

In the early 20th century all traditional notions of the identity of the artist and of art were thrown into disarray by Marcel Duchamp and his Dada associates. In ironic mockery of the Renaissance tradition which had placed the artist in an exalted authoritative position, Duchamp, as an artist, declared that anything the artist produces is art. For the duration of the 20th century, this position has complicated and undermined how art is perceived but at the same time it has fostered a broader, more inclusive assessment of art.

Read more on Art & Artists Today...

Art & Artists in the Ancient World and Middle Ages

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

The term for ART in Greek (tekhne) and Latin (ars) does not specifically denote the 'fine arts' in the modern sense, but was applied to all kinds of human activities.

Art was characterized by Aristotle as a kind of activity based on knowledge and governed by rules. An individual became a painter or a sculptor, or a shoemaker, by learning the rules of the trade.

The Greeks applied rules as a means of bringing order to the perceived chaos of nature and the world around them. They consciously sought order, clarity, balance, and harmony in their works. Rules provided a measure of control, and through control a form of comprehension. To maintain order it is necessary to apply rules, and the tradition that supports them. This is the nature of the "classical" which is perforce traditional and conservative.

In this situation, painters and sculptors differed merely in their competence or capability in applying the rules of their trade. They were admired for how well they mastered the rules, for their technique and skills.

Neither the painter nor the sculptor, however, could be "inspired" or work according instinct or follow intuition. In Ancient Greece, painting and sculpture were distinguished from Poetry and Music, which were the products of divine inspiration and stood outside the rules governing mundane activity. Poetry and Music were both highly respected in the Ancient World. It is indicative of their relative status that Poetry and Music are assigned Muses, but not painting and sculpture.

The Greek word for a painter of a sculptor was banausos, meaning literally a mechanic. The term reflects the low social standing of the painter and sculptor in ancient society, which was based on the ancient contempt for manual work. This ancient Greek prejudice against those who work with their hands and who serve utilitarian interests still informs to some degree the distinction between the Fine Arts and the crafts.

The system of the so-called liberal arts was organized in the late antique period, after the time of Plato and Aristotle. Its early development is unclear, but a Martianus Capella seems to have been the first to list the seven liberal arts that later gained recognition: Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music. Of the Fine Arts, only Music is included.

Although attempts were made at one time or another to include painting and architecture among the liberal arts (by Pliny, Galen, Vitruvius, and Varro), the visual arts were generally ignored. Seneca explicitly denies a place for painting among the liberal arts.

The Greeks and the Romans recognized no system for the "fine arts", and regarded placed the visual arts among the manual crafts.

________________________________________

The early Middle Ages inherited from late antiquity the view of art as a "teachable" activity. It was during this time that the term artista was coined but which indicated not an "artist" in the modern sense, but either a craftsman or a student of the liberal arts.

Throughout the Middle Ages, painters and sculptors were afforded little status and remained largely anonymous. As in antiquity, delight was taken in their work, but it was admired in terms of workmanship, or for the use of colour or precious materials (gold, gems). Painters and sculptors were judged on their skill and technique.

The Middle Ages also inherited from antiquity the scheme of the seven liberal arts which served not only for a comprehensive classification of humanknowledge, but also for the curriculum of monastic schools down to the 12th century. The liberal arts were by then divided into the Trivium (Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic) and the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music).

By the 12th and 13th centuries, the liberal arts had become an inadequate system for classifying knowledge, and with the rise of the universities other subject areas were established such as philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence, and theology.

At this time was formulated the seven mechanical arts (corresponding to the seven liberal arts): lanificium, armatura, navigatio, agricultura, venatio, medicina, and theatrica.

However, even within this scheme, painting and sculpture are listed in the company of several other crafts as subdivisions of armatura, and thus continued to occupy a subordinate position even among the mechanical arts.

The visual arts were confined to the artisans' guilds. Because they ground their colours, and had the same patron saint (St. Luke), painters belonged to the guild of apothecaries and physicians. Sculptors joined the goldsmiths' guild, while architects were associated with masons and carpenters.

ART & ARTISTS: the Renaissance and the Rise of the Artist

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

FIRST PART of a TWO-PART ESSAY on ART & ARTISTS in the RENAISSANCE

The period of the Renaissance (14th and 16th centuries) brought with it many important changes in the social and cultural position of the artist. Over the course of the period there is a steady rise in the status of the painter, sculptor, and architect and a growing sympathy expressed for the visual arts.

Painters and sculptors made a concerted effort to extricate themselves from their medieval heritage and to distinguish themselves from mere craftsmen.

At the beginning of the Renaissance, painters and sculptors were still regarded as members of the artisan class, and occupied a low rung on the social ladder. A shift begins to occur in the 14th century when painting, sculpture, and architecture began to form a group separate from the mechanical arts. In the 15th century, the training of a painter was expected to include knowledge of mathematical perspective, optics, geometry, and anatomy.

A major development in the Renaissance is the new emphasis on the realistic description of figures and objects in painting and sculpture. The call to "imitate nature" involved an almost scientific examination of optical phenomena. In order to make figures and objects appear three-dimensional, forms were "modeled" employing the optical principles of light and shade. These correctly rendered three-dimensional figures and objects were placed in a three-dimensional illusionistic space created through the newly developed device of linear perspective.

The knowledge and use of scientific methods placed painting and sculpture on a new basis that was intellectual, theoretical, literary, and scientific. Painters and sculptors could now claim that their profession required intellectual ability and knowledge. This permitted the claim that they were superior to mere craftsmen, and that painting and sculpture should be recognized as liberal arts.

Painters and sculptors also argued that they stood equal to poets; poetry and rhetoric, of course, were accepted as liberal arts. Part of the basis for this claim was the notion that painting and poetry were "sister arts", a concept the Renaissance developed from Horace's dictum Ut pictura poesis ("as a painting, so a poem"), and Simonides' description of painting as muta poesis ("silent poetry") and poetry as pictura loquens ("painting that speaks").

It is through this association with the poets that the concept of the "artist" as we know it begins to emerge.

During the Renaissance the revival of Plato and Platonism helped spread the notion of the divine inspiration of the poet, which Plato compared with that of the religious prophet. According to Plato, poets and musicians, prophets, were divinely inspired (a term originally meaning to breathe or blow into, and now understood as meaning to be filled with supernatural power or energy) and infused with enthusiasm ("en-theism" meaning possessed by a god, supernatural inspiration, prophetic or poetic frenzy).

In effect, the gods inspired, or spoke through, poets and musicians in same way god also spoke through prophets: to prophesy is to utter with divine inspiration.

The ancients believed that poets and prophets were inspired by a tutelary deity or attendant spirit, which the Romans called genius, that communicated to the world through chosen individuals. In the Renaissance, the source of inspiration became identified not with some pagan god or antique muse but with God himself.

It was at this time that artists such as Michelangelo began to be described by their contemporaries as "divine". At the same time there emerged the important of the artist as creator, a word formerly reserved for God alone.

This link with the divine immeasurable enhanced the status of the artist.

In the 16th century the new image emerges of the artist as genius, giving to eccentric behaviour, or even slightly mad. The artist also appears as an intellectual given to abnormal modes of thought, and regarded as an inspired and special individual.

At the same time, the artist's work was regarded as unique and imbued with the artist's divinely-inspired creativitiy; in certain cases, an artist's work became the object the object of special pilgrimage and reverence. This attitude has perhaps grown over the centuries.

ART & ARTISTS and the Academies

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

The first Academy of Art was founded in Florence in Italy in 1562 by Giorgio Vasari who called it the Accademia del Disegno. There students learnt the "arti del disegno", a term coined by Vasari, and included lectures on anatomy and geometry.

Another academy, the Accademia di San Luca (named after the patron saint of painters, St. Luke), was founded a decade or so later in Rome. More so than the Florentine Accademia del Disegno, the Academia di San Luca served an educational function and was more concerned with art theory.

The Academia di San Luca later served as the model for the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture founded in France in 1648. The French Academy very probably adopted the term "arti del disegno" which it translated into "beaux arts", from which is derived the English term "Fine Arts."

In 1683, the painter Charles LeBrun (1619-1690) was appointed director of the French Academy. Students attended lectures on anatomy, geometry, and perspective, and gradually advanced from making drawings of drawings, to drawings of casts, to drawings of live models (a curriculum which continued into the 19th century).

Classes were held according to a strict schedule, with life-classes in the morning between 6:00 and 8:00 in the summer, and 3:00 and 5:00 in the winter. Perspective classes were held on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Works of art were examined according to established categories which were analysed in order: invention, proportion, colour, expression, and composition. This process was systematized in the early 18th century in Roger de Piles' Balance des Peintres, published in 1708, in which famous painters were "graded" from 0 to 80 according to how well they faired in composition, design (drawing), colour, and expression.

The French Academy judged drawing to be superior to colour; colour was understood as merely a supplement to drawing. Moreover, drawing was deemed to appeal to the mind, unlike colour which appealed to the inferior senses.

Prizes were offered, of which the most prestigious was the "Prix-de-Rome" which permitted the winner to go to Rome, where a branch of the French Academy had been established in 1666. The purpose of the sojourn was to study antique art first hand.

From the outset, the French Academy saw its task as the education of artists in the practice of an idealising art in the classical (or classicizing) tradition. The goal of the artist was achieve perfection -- "le beau idéal" -- which was learned over time by the study of the antique and of artists in that style, especially Raphael, and later Nicolas Poussin.

The pursuit of perfection in art was underpinned by Plato's concept of Forms (Ideas). Already in 15th-century Florence the notion had emerged that classical artists had achieved perfection in their art by painting or sculpting not the imperfect world perceived through the senses, but Plato's immutable, eternal forms conceived in the mind. In the Renaissance and subsequently in academies in later periods, classical art was identified as the model that artists should study and attempt to emulate if they wished to perfect their art.

In the academies, especially the French Academy in the 17th century, antique, or classical art, was established as the standard for all future achievement. The academies attempted to define classicism as the norm in art. Classicism as a style, and ideology, thereby became closely associated with the Academy, and the Academy with the State.

The most influential academies were subject to if not directly supported by the State. Academic, or classicizing, art came to be linked thereby with the power-structure and the power-relations of society. Academic art carries with it a barely concealed structure of values. Associated with classicism are modes of feeling, valuing, perceiving and believing which have some kind of relation to the maintenance and reproduction of social power. The values of classicism are those which the prevailing power-structure wishes to maintain in society.

ART & ARTISTS: Renaissance art and "grazia"

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

SECOND and last PART of a TWO-PART ESSAY on ART & ARTISTS in the RENAISSANCE

If Renaissance artists were now seen to be divinely inspired in their creativity, it may be asked what form this divine inspiration took in the actual work of art.

In his book the Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, first published in Florence in 1550 [see BIBLIOGRAPHY], Giorgio Vasari divided the Renaissance into three periods. The artists of the first period, corresponding roughly with the period from the mid-13th century to the end of the 14th century, he described as "i primi lumi" ("the first lights", glimmering out of the darkness of the Middle Ages). The artists of the second period, corresponding to the 15th century (the Early Renaissance), he regarded as admirable, but as yet imperfect in their art. The artists of the third period, which Vasari describes as the "età moderna" ("the modern period"), beginning with Leonardo da Vinci, and corresponding to the sixteenth century (the High Renaissance and Early Mannerism) down to the time Vasari was writing, is praised as the time when perfection in art was attained.

Among the special qualities of the third period was something Vasari calls grazia, which may be interpreted as "grace" but incorporates both the idea of gracefulness (as a form beauty), and the idea of divine grace. For Vasari, grazia seems to have been more or less a synonym for a kind of perfect divine beauty.

But what is grazia? The task of defining and identifying it in a painting is difficult. It may be thought of that which gives a painting a certain "air", as something added to beauty but not directly visible. It is a mysterious quality the presence of which makes a painting a great work of art. In the 16th century, grazia came to be associated with the God-sent inspiration.

A painting or a piece of sculpture came to be seen not as merely the product or creation of a painter or sculptor, but as containing within it some divine inspiration, a spiritual essence emanating from God. The term grazia was used to define this something extra, this special quality of divinely-inspired genius, in a work of art. Indeed, it was the presence of grazia which produced that indefinable perfection in a work of art.

Grazia, however, defied analysis; it was never clear exactly what it was; it was just there in a great work of art. In fact, it came to be referred to in Italy as "un non so che" ("an I-don't-know-what"), which the French in the 17th century translated into the phrase "je-ne-sais-quoi." A painting may be described as having as certain "je-ne-sais-quoi", that something special, which made it a great.

Thus, during the sixteenth century, the products of painters and sculptors came to be seen as possessing something beyond their immediate and merely visible appearance. A work of art was believed to contain an extra indefinable spiritual essence -- which is arguably what we today have come regard as one of the essential ingredients in our understanding of what constitutes "art".

This quality in art came to be described in different terms later on in history, but it nonetheless remains today an element thought to be essential in a work of art. It is still regarded as that which in a work of art defines its intrinsic worth -- its inward essential nature -- as ART.

Of course, this perception of Art also influenced the status of the artist who now acquired an almost holy aura of superiority. In the 16th century the artist emerges as an educated and cultivated individual whose genius was recognized and revered.

The perceived link with the divine sparked a developing interest in the personality of the artist. What sort of person was an artist? What was the temperament of a person who could be inspired in this way?

Both a clue to and an explanation for the artist's nature lay in Aristotle who asked "why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholics...?"

The Renaissance Neoplatonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino took Aristotle's link between melancholy and genius and reconciled it, in typical Renaissance fashion, with Plato's association of genius and creative inspiration. Melancholy (the result of too much black bile, one of the four humours of the body, according to Hippocrates' physiological theory) was recognized as the temperament of the creative genius. The artist in the Renaissance thus came to be seen as prone to melancholia, and if they didn't already, exhibited temperamental qualities such as sensitivity, moodiness, eccentric or solitary behaviour. The planet associated with the melancholic temperament was Saturn, and saturnine artists were thought to be "born under Saturn." At the same time, a melancholic temperament predisposed an artistic individual to divine inspiration and creative genius.

In the 16th century, there is a new tolerance of and repsect for the artist as a moody, creative genius. There begins to emerge also at this time the notion of individual expression (of the artist) which is to form the basis for the Romantic image of the artist in later centuries.

ART & ARTISTS: the Roots of Modernism

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

FIRST PART of a FIVE-PART ESSAY on MODERNISM

Until recently, the word "modern" used to refer generically to the contemporaneous; all art is modern at the time it is made. In his Book of the Art ("The Book of the Art") in 1437, Cennino Cennini explains that Giotto made painting "modern" [see BIBLIOGRAPHY]. Giorgio Vasari writing in 16th-century Italy refers to the art of his own period as "modern." [see BIBLIOGRAPHY]

As an art historical term, modernrefers to a period dating from roughly the 1860s through the 1970s and is used to describe the style and the ideology of art produced during that era. It is this more specific use of modern that is intended when people speak of modern art. The term modernismis also used to refer to the art of the modern period. More specifically, modernismcan be thought of as referring to the philosophy of modern art.

In her book of the same title, Suzi Gablik asks "Has Modernism Failed?" [see BIBLIOGRAPHY] Does she mean "failed" simply in the sense of coming to an end? Or does she mean that Modernism failed to accomplish something? The presupposition of the latter is that modernism had goals, which it failed to achieve. What were these goals?

For reasons that will become clear later, the question of modernism has been couched largely in formal terms. Art historians speak of modern art as concerned primarily with essential qualities of colour and flatness and as exhibiting over time a reduction of interest in subject matter. It is generally agreed that Edouard Manet is the first modernist painter, and that modernism in art originated in the 1860s. Paintings such as his Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe are seen to have ushered in the era of modernism

But the question can be posed: Why did Manet paint Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe? The standard answer is: Because he was interested in exploring new subject matter, new painterly values and spatial relationships.

But, there is another more interesting question beyond this: Why was Manet exploring new subject matter, new painterly values and spatial relationships? He produced a modernist painting, but why did he produce such a work?

When Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe was exhibited at the Salon des Refusés in 1863 a lot of people were scandalized. When he exhibited his painting of Olympia a few years later, the public were even more upset. Why was Manet painting pictures that he knew many people would find shocking?

It is in trying to answer questions like these that forces us to adopt a much broader perspective on the question of modernism. It is within this larger context that we can discover the underpinnings of the philosophy of modernism and identify it aims and goals. It will also reveal another dimension to the perception of art and the identity of the artist in the modern world.

The roots of modernism lie much deeper in history than the middle of the 19th century. For historians (but not art historians) the modern period actually begins with the Renaissance. A discussion of modernism might easily begin in the Renaissance period when we first encounter secular humanism, the notion that man (not God) is the measure of all things, a worldly civic consciousness, and "utopian" visions of a more perfect society, beginning with Sir Thomas More's Utopia in 1516.

In retrospect we can recognize in Renaissance humanism that modernist expression of confidence that humankind can learn to understand, and then master, nature and natural forces, that we can grasp the nature of the universe, and even shape our individual destinies and the future of the world.

The modernist thinking which emerged in the Renaissance began to take shape as a larger pattern of thought in the 18th century. Mention may be made first of the so-called "Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns," a dispute that dominated European intellectual life throughout the century. The crux was the issue of whether Moderns (i.e. those living in 18th century) were now morally and artistically superior to the Ancients (i.e. the Greeks and Romans). The argument introduces an important dichotomy that is to remain fundamental to the modernist question. In it may be recognized the division between conservative forces, who tended to support the argument for the Ancients, and the more progressive forces who sided with the Moderns.

The 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment, saw the intellectual maturation of the humanist belief in reason as the supreme guiding principle in the affairs of mankind. Through reason the mind achieved enlightenment, and for the enlightened mind, freed from the restraints of superstition and ignorance, a whole new exciting world opened up.

The Enlightenment was an intellectual movement for which the most immediate stimulus was the so-called Scientific Revolution of the 17th and early 18th centuries when men like Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton, through the application of reason to the study of Nature (i.e. our world and the heavens) had made spectacular scientific discoveries in which were revealed various scientific truths.

These truths more often than not flew in the face of conventional beliefs, especially those held by the Church. For example, contrary to what the Church had maintained for centuries, the "truth" was that the Earth revolved around the sun. The idea that "truth" could be discovered through the application of reason was tremendously exciting.

The open-minded 18th-century thinker believed that virtually everything could be submitted to reason: tradition, customs, history, even art. But, more than this, it was felt that the "truth" revealed thereby could be applied in the political and social spheres to "correct" problems and "improve" the political and social condition of humankind. This kind of thinking quickly gave rise to the exciting possibility of creating a new and better society.

The "truth" discovered through reason would free people from the shackles of corrupt institutions such as the Church and the monarchy whose misguided traditional thinking and old ideas had kept people subjugated in ignorance and superstition. The belief was that "the truth shall set you free." The concept of freedom became central to the vision of a new society. Through truth and freedom, the world would be made into a better place.

Progressive 18th-century thinkers believed that the lot of humankind would be greatly improved through the process enlightenment, from being shown the truth. With reason and truth in hand, the individual would no longer be at the mercy of religious and secular authorities which had constructed their own truths and manipulated them to their own self-serving ends. At the root of this thinking is the belief in the perfectibility of humankind.

The vision that began to take shape in the 18th century was of a new world, a better world. In 1763, Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed a new society for the individual in his Inquiry into the Nature of the Social Contract. Rousseau declared the right of liberty and equality for all men.

Such declarations were found not only in books. In the 18th century, two major attempts were made to put these ideas into practice. Such ideas, of course, were not popular with conservative and traditional elements, and their resistance had to be overcome in both cases through bloody revolution.

The first great experiment in creating a new and better society was undertaken in what was literally the new world and the new ideals were first expressed in the Declaration of Independence of the newly founded United States. It is Enlightenment thinking that informs such phrases as "we hold these truths to be self-evident" and which underpins the notion "that all men are created equal." Its wordly character is clearly reflected in its stated concern for man's happiness and welfare in this lifetime, a new notion that runs counter to the Christian focus on the afterlife.

Fundamental, too, is the notion of freedom, liberty; it was declared one of man's inalienable rights. In 1789, the French also attempted through bloody revolution to create a new society, with the revolutionaries rallying to the cry of equality, fraternity, and liberty.

The French Revolution, however, failed to bring about a radically new society in France. Mention may be made here of a third major attempt to create a new society along fundamentally Enlightenment lines that took place at the beginning of the 20th century. The Russian Revolution, perhaps the most idealistic and utopian of all, has also failed.

It is in the ideals of the Enlightenment that the roots of Modernism, and the new role of art and the artist, are to be found. Simply put, the overarching goal of Modernism, of modern art, has been the creation of a better society.

What were the means by which this goal was to be reached? If the desire of the 18th century was to produce a better society, how was this to be brought about? How does one go about perfecting humankind and creating a new world?

As we have seen, it was the 18th-century belief that only the enlightened mind can find truth; both enlightenment and truth were discovered through the application of reason to knowledge, a process that also created new knowledge. The individual acquired knowledge and at the same time the means to discover truth in it through proper education and instruction. Cleansed of the corruptions of religious and political ideology by open-minded reason, education brings us the truth, or shows us how to reach the truth. Education enlightens us and makes us better people. Educated enlightened people will form the foundations of the new society, a society which they will create through their own efforts.

Until recently, this concept of the role of education has remained fundamental to western modernist thinking. Enlightened thinkers, and here might be mentioned for example, Thomas Jefferson, constantly pursued knowledge, sifting out the truth by subjecting all they learned to reasoned analysis. Jefferson, of course, not only consciously cultivated his own enlightenment, but also actively promoted education for others, founding in Charlottesville an academical village that later became the University of Virginia. He believed that the search for truth should be conducted without prejudice, and, mindful of the Enlightenment suspicion of the Church, deliberately did not include a chapel in his plans on the campus. The Church and its narrow-minded influences, he felt, should be kept separate not only from the State, but also from education.

Jefferson, like many other Enlightenment thinkers, saw a clear role for art and architecture. Art and architecture could serve in this process of enlightenment education by providing examples of those qualities and virtues that it was felt the enlightened mind should be guided by.

In the latter half of the 18th century, the model for the ideals of the new society was the world of ancient Rome and Greece. The Athens of Pericles and Rome of the Republican period offered fine examples of emerging democratic principles in government, and of heroism and virtuous action, self-sacrifice and civic dedication in the behaviour of their citizens.

It was believed, in fact, certainly according to the "ancients" in that quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns mentioned earlier, that the ancient world had achieved a kind of perfection, an ideal that came close to the Enlightenment understanding of truth. Johann Winckelmann was convinced that Greek art was the most perfect and directed contemporary artists to examples such as the Apollo Belvedere.

It is under these circumstances that Jacques-Louis David came to paint the classicizing and didactic historical painting Oath of the Horatii exhibited at the Salon in 1785. This was a noble and edifying work treating a grand and moralizing subject.

David himself saw the role of art in building a new society in no uncertain terms. Speaking as a member of the Revolutionary Committee on Public Instruction a few years later he explains that the Committee:

considered the arts in all respects by which they should help spread the progress of the human spirit, to propagate and transmit to posterity the striking example of the sublime efforts of an immense people, guided by reason and philosophy, restoring to earth the reign of liberty, equality, and law.

He states categorically that "the arts should contribute forcefully to public instruction."

With respect to the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, David can be associated with the supporters of the Ancients. He envisioned a new society based on conservative ideals. In contrast, there were others, we can call them Moderns, whose vision of a new world order was more progressive.

The Moderns envisioned a world conceived anew, not one that merely imitated ancient models. The problem for the Moderns, however, was that their new world was something of an unknown quantity. The nature of truth was problematical from the outset, and their dilemma over the nature of humans who possessed not only a rational mind open to reason but also an emotional life (love, for example, which is demonstrably beyond all reason) which had to be taken into account.

It was also felt that reason stifled imagination, and without imagination no progress would be made. Reason alone was inhuman, but imagination without reason also "produces monsters" (see Francisco de Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters). It was agreed, though, that freedom was central and was to be pursued through the very exercise of freedom in the contemporary world.

After the Revolution of 1789, the Ancients came to be identified with old order, the ancien régime, while the Moderns became identified with a new movement we call Romanticism. In the wake of the 1789 revolution, these two movements, each with their own vision of the future, were soon politicized.

The Ancients, on the one hand, were caste as politically conservative and associated with classicizing, academic art. On the other hand, the Moderns were seen as progressive in a left-wing, revolutionary sense and associated with anti-academic Romanticism. The nature of this division is best seen in the rivalry of Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

In the Salon of 1824, in which Ingres exhibited his Vow of Louis XIII, and Delacroix his Massacre of Scios Ingres' work, painted in a style the critics called "le beau" (the beautiful), was identified with classical academic theory and the right-wing conservative forces of the ancien régime. In contrast, Delacroix, whose style was labeled "le laid" (the ugly), clearly exhibited more liberal attitudes in his choice of subject matter and was associated with anarchy, materialism, and contemporary or modern life.

For conservatives, Ingres represented order, traditional values, and the good old days of the ancien régime. Political progressives saw Delacroix as the representative of intellectuals, of revolution, of anarchy; his supporters said he had overthrown tyranny and established the principle of liberty in art.

It is from Delacroix that the line of progressive modernism extends directly to Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet. In the conservative view, Delacroix's Romanticism, Courbet's Realism, and Manet's Naturalism were all manifestations of the cult of ugliness that opposed the Academic ideal of the beautiful. Delacroix, Courbet, and Manet, were each in turn accused by conservatives of carrying on subversive work that was intended to undermine the State.

This may sound strange to us today. Orthodox art historians and critics have tended to treat modern art as contentless and politically neutral. The process of neutralizing and depoliticizing art was taken in hand by the State, with the support of conservative forces and compliance of formalist critics and art historians, beginning as early 1855.

Delacroix, whose support of the revolution of 1830 is made clear in his painting Liberty Leading the People, 28 July 1830, for example, came to be spoken of as a colorist. The socialist statements forcefully made by Gustave Courbet in his The Stonebreakers, for example, and the sharp political commentary of Manet in his The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian, 1868, for example, are glossed over in discussions of the formal qualities of each work; their painterly technique and the flattened treatment of pictorial space.

In this way, the prevailing conservative ethos of society maintained control over the impulses of progressive modernism.

ART & ARTISTS: Art for Art's Sake

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

SECOND PART of a FIVE-PART ESSAY on MODERNISM

The 20th-century has focused its artistic attention on progressive modernism, to the extent that conservative modernism has been neglected and, indeed, derided as an art form.

The so-called academic painters of the 19th century believed themselves to be doing their part to improve the world in presenting images that contain or reflect good conservative moral values, examples of virtuous behaviour, of inspiring Christian sentiment, and of the sort of righteous conduct and noble sacrifice that would serve as an appropriate model toward which we should all aspire to emulate.

The new world order reflected in academic modernism was seen by the progressives as merely supportive of the status quo and offered a future that was little more than a perpetuation of the present.

The conservatives wished to maintain existing institutions and preferred gradual development over radical change. The progressives, on the other hand, were critical of institutions, both political and religious, as restrictive of individual liberty. Progressives placed their faith in the goodness of mankind, a goodness which they believed, starting with Rouseau in the 18th century, had become corrupted by such things as the growth of cities.

Others would argue that man had been turned into vicious, competitive animal by capitalism, the corrosive inhumanity of which was plain to see in the blighted landscape of the industrial revolution.

Rousseau had glorified Nature, and a number of modernists idealised the country life. Thomas Jefferson lived in the country close to nature and desired that the United States be entirely a farming economy; he characterized cities as "ulcers on the body politic."

In contrast to conservative modernism, which remained fettered to old ideas and which tended to support the status quo, progressive modernism adopted an antagonistic position towards society and its established institutions. In one way or another it challenged all authority in the name of freedom and, intentionally or not, affronted conservative bourgeois values.

Generally speaking, progressive modernism tended to concern itself with political and social issues, addressing aspects of contemporary society, especially in its poorer ranks, that an increasingly complacent middle class, once they had achieved a satisfactory level of comfort for themselves, preferred to ignore.

Through their art, in pictures that showed directly or indirectly the plight of the peasants, the exploitation of the poor, prostitution, and so on, the progessives repeatedly drew attention to the political and social ills of contemporary society, conditions they felt needed to be addressed and corrected.

Fundamentally, the intention was to educate the public, to keep alive in the face of conservative forces the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality through which the world would be made a better place.

The position taken by progressive modernism came to be referred to as the avant-garde (a military term meaning "advance-guard"). In contrast to the conservative modernists who looked to the past and tradition, the avant-garde artist consciously rejected tradition.

Rather than existing as the most recent manifestation of a tradition stretching back into the past, the avant-garde artist saw him- or herself as standing at the head of a new tradition stretching, hopefully, into the future. The progressive modernist looked to the future while the conservative modernist looked to the past.

The rejection of the past became imperative for the progressives with the advent of the First World War which signalled for them the catastrophic failure of tradition. The senseless, mechanized carnage of the "Great War" starkly showed that modernism's faith in scientific and technological progress as the path to a better world was patently wrong. For the Dadaists, World War One also signalled the failure of all modernist art. It could be claimed that Dada in fact marks the emergence of a post-modernist cast of mind.

Today, we would characterize progressive modernism, the avant-garde, as left-leaning and liberal in its support of freedom of expression and demands of equality. Since the 18th century, the modernist belief in the freedom of expression has manifested itself in art through claims to freedom of choice in subject matter and to freedom of choice in style (i.e. in the choice of brushstroke and colour). It was in the exercise of these rights that the artist constantly drew attention to the goals of progressive modernism.

As the 19th century progressed, the exercise of artistic freedom became fundamental to progressive modernism. Artists began to seek freedom not just from the rules of academic art, but from the demands of the public. Soon it was claimed that art should be produced not for the public's sake, but for art's sake.

Art for Art's Sake is basically a call for release from the tyranny of meaning and purpose. From a progressive modernist's point of view, it was a further exercise of freedom. It was also a ploy, another deliberate affront to bourgeois sensibility which demanded art with meaning or that had some purpose such as to instruct, or delight, or to moralize, and generally to reflect in some way their own purposeful and purpose-filled world. A progressive modernist painter like James Abbott McNeill Whistler, for example, blithely stated that his art satisfied none of those things.

In his 1891 essay "The Soul of Man Under Socialism", Oscar Wilde wrote:

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.

Art for Art's Sake, however, was a ploy that backfired. The same bourgeois whose tastes and ideas and prescriptions Whistler was confronting through his art, quickly turned the call of "Art for Art's Sake" into a tool to further neutralize the content and noxious effects of progressive modernist art.

In the late 19th century, we find art beginning to be discussed by critics and art historians largely in formal terms which effectively removed the question of meaning and purpose from consideration. From now on, art was to be discussed in terms of style -- colour, line, shape, space, composition -- conveniently ignoring or playing down whatever social, political, or progressive statements the artist had hoped to make in his or her work.

This approach became pervasive to the extent that artists, too, certainly the weaker ones, and even some of the strong ones as they got older or more comfortable, lost sight of their modernist purpose and became willy-nilly absorbed into this formalist way of thinking about art.

In defense of this attitude, it was argued that as the function of art is to preserve and enhance the values and sensibilities of civilized human beings, it should attempt to remain aloof from the malignant influences of an increasingly crass and dehumanizing technological culture.

Eventually there emerged the notion that modernist art is practised entirely within a closed formalist sphere, necessarily separated from, so as not to be contaminated by, the real world.

The formalist critic Clement Greenburg, in an article first published in 1965 entitled "Modernist Painting," saw Modernism as having achieved a self-referential autonomy. The work of art came to be seen as an isolated phenomenon, floating in some rarefied, ideal "Platonic" zone, governed not by human impulse so much as by the mysterious internal laws of stylistic development. Painting and sculpture stood separate from the materialistic world and the mundane affairs of ordinary people.

The underlying assumptions at work here first of all posit that the visual artist, by virtue of special gifts, is able to express the finer things of humanity through a "purely visual" understanding and mode of expression. This "purely visual" characteristic of art makes it an autonomous sphere of activity, completely separate from the everyday world of social and political life.

The autonomous nature of visual art means that questions asked of it may only be properly put, and answered, in its own terms. The history of modernism is constructed only in reference to itself, it is (or was until recently) entirely self-referential. According to this approach, the importance of a painting rests largely on the degree to which (1) it derives from, or sums up, or challenges, earlier stylistic developments, and (2) the extent to which it lays the stylistic foundations for the next step, artist, or period.

Impressionism gains much of its art historical significance through its place within a scheme of stylistic development that has its roots in the preceding Realism of Courbet and Manet, and by its also providing the main impetus for the successive styles of Post-Impressionism.

Traditional art historians and critics are fond of extending this sort of approach beyond the modernist period to other artists and periods to enhance the illusion of a history of art composed along one great thread of stylistic interconnection. The system allowed one to connect the preferred art of the present to an authentic art of the past by means of a retrospectively perceived logic of development. By this means a supposedly disinterested judgment could be justified in terms of a supposedly inexorable historical tendency.

In the hands of the conservative establishment, formalism became a very effective instrument of control over unruly and disruptive art. Many of the art movements spawned in the first half of the 20th century could be seen as various attempts to break the formalist grip on progressive modernism.

The system, though, articulated by the more academic art historians and critics, operating hand-in-hand with the art market which was only interested in money and not meaning, effectively absorbed all attempts at subversion and revolt into a neutral, palatable, only occasionally mildly offensive history of art of the kind you encounter in art history textbooks.

Unfortunately for the history of art, in the process of neutralizing progressive modernism, art history also had to neutralize all other art from earlier periods and from elsewhere in the world. The same reductionist, schematic approach was employed across the board creating a history of art largely devoid of any real meaning original to the artwork. It was generally agreed that aesthetic quality would have priority in deciding the function of art instead of its social or political relevance. It was also agreed that painting and sculpture should remain central to the concept of high art and the "Fine Arts."

Formalism, though, could also be turned to the advantage of the progressives who were able to use it in defense of modernism, abstraction in particular, which has been especially open to criticism. Formalism also neatly dovetailed in the early 20th century with another goal of progressive modernism, universalism.

For art to be an effective instrument of social betterment, it needed to be understood by as many people as possible. But it was not a matter of simply articulating images, it was the "true" art behind the image that was deemed important. Art can be many things and one example may look quite different from the next. But something called "art" is common to all. Whatever this art thing was, it was universal; like the scientific "truth" of the Enlightenment. All art obviously possessed it.

Some artists went in search of "art". From an Enlightenment point of view, this was a search for the "truth" or essence of art, and was carried out using a sort of pictorial reasoning. The first step was to strip away distracting elements such as recognizable objects which tended to conceal or hide the art thing; an example would be Wassily Kandinsky.

A more radical approach was then to reduce the non-recognizable to the most basic elements, line and colour; this was the approach of Piet Mondrian.

However, it is frequently overlooked that for the artists who undertook this search, there was more at stake that the discovery of the "truth" of art.

For some, abstraction was a path to another goal. Both Mondrian and Kandinsky were keenly interested in the spiritual and believed that art should serve as a guide to, or an inspiration for, or perhaps help to rekindle in, the spectator the spiritual dimension which they and others felt was being lost in the increasingly materialist contemporary world.

Abstraction involved a sort of stripping away of the material world and had the potential of revealing, or describing, or merely alluding to the world of the spirit.

ART & ARTISTS: Modernism and Politics

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

THIRD PART of a FIVE-PART ESSAY on MODERNISM

In the period between World War One and World War Two, progressive modernism continued to pursue its goals, but now often in association with other forces.

Progressive artists actively supported political revolution. Pablo Picasso, for example, joined the communist party in 1944, as did many other artists. The Russian Revolution seemed at the time, and for a long time after, to be the answer to the progressive modernist's dream. Marxist communism was the boldest attempt to create a better society, adopting not a political democracy like the United States, but an economic democracy wherein all were economically equal.

The ideas of Karl Marx infused the Surrealist movement which saw itself as promoting, in the words of Salvador Dali, "a revolution in consciousness." Communism offered the vision of universal freedom predicated on freedom of ideas, and progressive modernist artists in the imaginative freedom of their works exemplified or encouraged this freedom.

Under Josef Stalin, however, this freedom was sharply curtailed. Modernism persisted, however, but in a state-manipulated controlled form. This same form, generally called social Realism, also flourished at the other end of the political spectrum in Hitler's Nazi Germany.

We might describe the art of later Communism and Fascism as a revival of the goals and values of conservative modernism.

World War One left progressive modernism dazed and confused; World War Two was a blow that only in later decades do we see as having been mortal. World War Two effectively destroyed the spirit of modernism. After Auschwitz, Theodor Adorno asks if any art has a right to exist. The Nazi holocaust reduced the modernist dream to ashes. The Germans, after all, were a civilized people who had actively participated in the modernist enterprise from the beginning.

The basic Enlightenment assumption that art improves people warranted serious re-examination. It was claimed (and is still claimed in some circles) that from the study of art comes a moral education all by itself. Further exposure to and learning about art only served to improve the student further. But, does art improve people?

Artists, art historians, curators, critics, to mention a few are in contact with art everyday; are they noticeably different, better, than anyone else who hasn't studied art?

As we have seen, the Enlightenment pictured the human race as engaged in an effort towards universal moral and intellectual self-realization. It was believed that reason allowed access to truth, and knowledge of the truth would better mankind. These tenets were fundamental to the notion of Modernism, the goal of which was the creation of a new world order.

ART & ARTISTS: Modernism and Postmodernism

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

FOURTH PART of a FIVE-PART ESSAY on MODERNISM

In the latter half of the 20th century there has been mounting evidence of the failure of the Modernist enterprise. Progressive modernism is riddled with doubt about the continued viability of the notion of progress, while conservative modernism in the United States has fallen prey in the political realm to the influences of the Church, in the form of the so-called religious right, which in recent years especially has seriously undermined the very constitutional foundations of the whole American enterprise.

Since Suzi Gablik wrote her book, the communist experiment undertaken in the former Soviet Union has collapsed. Fundamentalism in nearly all of the world's major organized religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism) has risen sharply in recent years in direct opposition to modernism. American Christian fundamentalists still agree with Martin Luther who recognized that "Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it struggles against the divine word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."

A growing number of people believe the modernist enterprise has failed. In the search for reasons to explain this failure, questions have necessarily been raised about the whole Western humanist tradition.

It has become apparent to many that the worldview fostered through Modernism (and by the Western humanist tradition) is flawed, corrupt, and oppressive. Both recent events (i.e. since the World War Two), and the perception of those events, has given rise to the notion that Modernism has played itself out and is now floundering and directionless.

If Modernism is at an end, we are now facing a new period. The name given this new period is Postmodernism.

The term postmodernism is used in a confusing variety of ways. For some it means anti-modern; for others it means the revision of modernist premises.

The seemingly anti-modern stance involves a basic rejection of the tenets of Modernism; that is to say, a rejection of the doctrine of the supremacy of reason, the notion of truth, the belief in the perfectability of man, and the idea that we could create a better, if not perfect, society. This view has been termed deconstructive postmodernism.

An alternative understanding, which seeks to revise the premises of Modernism, has been termed constructive postmodernism.

Deconstructive postmodernism seeks to overcome the modern worldview, and the assumptions that sustain it, through what appears to be an anti-worldview. It "deconstructs" the ideas and values of Modernism to reveal what composes them and shows that such modernist ideas as "equality" and "liberty" are not "natural" to humankind or "true" to human nature but are ideals, intellectual constructions.

This process of taking apart or "unpacking" the modernist worldview reveals its constituent parts and lays bare fundamental assumptions. Questions are then frequently raised about who was responsible for these constructions, and their motives. Who does modernism serve?

From the history outlined is this essay, it should be clear that modernist culture is Western in its orientation, capitalist in its determining economic tendency, bourgeois in its class character, white in its racial complexion, and masculine in its dominant gender.

Deconstructive postmodernism is seen perhaps as anti-modern in that it seems to destroy or eliminate the ingredients that are believed necessary for a worldview, such as God, self, purpose, meaning, a real world, and truth. (This point of view, though, that we need a worldview comprised of notions of God, self, purpose, etc, is itself a modernist one.)

Deconstructive postmodern thought is seen by some as nihilistic, (i.e. the view that all values are baseless, that nothing is knowable or can be communicated, and that life itself is meaningless).

Constructive postmodernism does not reject Modernism, but seeks to revise its premises and traditional concepts. Like deconstructive postmodernism, it attempts to erase all boundaries, to undermine legitimacy, and to dislodge the logic of the modernist state. Constructive postmodernism claims to offer a new unity of scientific, ethical, aesthetic, and religious intuitions. It rejects not science as such, but only that scientific approach in which only the data of the modern natural sciences are allowed to contribute to the construction of our worldview.

Constructive postmodernism desires a return to premodern notions of divinely wrought reality, of cosmic meaning, and an enchanted nature. It also wishes to include an acceptance of nonsensory perception.

Constructive postmodernism seeks to recover truths and values from various forms of premodern thought and practice. Constructive postmodernism wants to replace modernism and modernity, which it sees as threatening the very survival of life on the planet.

Aspects of constructive postmodernism will appear similar to what is also called "New Age" thinking. The possibility that mankind is standing on the threshold of a new age informs much postmodernist thought.

The postmodern is deliberately elusive as a concept, avoiding as much as possible the modernist desire to classify and thereby delimit, bound, and confine. Postmodernism partakes of uncertainty, insecurity, doubt, and accepts ambiguity. Whereas Modernism seeks closure in form and is concerned with conclusions, postmodernism is open, unbounded, and concerned with process and "becoming."

The post-modern artist is "reflexive" in that he/she is self-aware and consciously involved in a process of thinking about him/herself and society in a deconstructive manner, "demasking" pretensions, becoming aware of his/her cultural self in history, and accelerating the process of self-consciousness.

This sort of sensitivity to cultural, ethnic, and human conditions and experiences has been ridiculed by conservatives in recent years as "political correctness."

What about art? It could be argued that several forms of art have been "post-modern" since the First World War. If the mass slaughter of the Great War, achieved through the advances made in science and technology, was the result of the modernist commitment to "progress," then one might begin question the value of the modernist enterprise.

Nonetheless, between the wars, progressive modernism managed to sustain a vision of a better future. It continued to see tradition and the past as stifling the expression of freedom. The Surrealists before the war still clung to the modernist belief that their art could influence human destiny, that they could change the world.

After the Second World War, however, such optimism in the future was difficult to sustain. And to make things worse, with the advent of the Cold War and the constant threat of nuclear destruction, any sort of future looked doubtful.

Having rejected the past many years ago, and now with the future no longer the goal of artistic effort, many artists turned with visible distress to the present and focused their attention on contemporary popular culture.

Popular culture, however, was undergoing a tumultuous upheaval during the sixties: the Civil Rights movement, opposition to the Vietnam war, the emergence of a widespread women's movement, and the transformation of hitherto largely passive and conservative students into the cutting-edge of opposition.

Pop artist could still appear progressive under these circumstances, contributing a critique of bourgeois ideals and the American dream (for example, Hamilton).

What was happening in effect, though, was that modernist art itself was under attack as a bourgeois ideal; a sort of nihilistic neo-Dada which I would identify as Postmodern.

ART & ARTISTS: Modernism and the End of Art

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

FIFTH and last PART of a FIVE-PART ESSAY on MODERNISM

The comment made by the military officer in Vietnam that his platoon had to destroy a Vietnamese village in order to save it (i.e. from Communism), seems to have been applied to art; it became necessary to destroy art, or at least the modernist understanding of it, in order to save it. With it the whole modernist enterprise began to collapse.

In June 1970, the French writer Jean Clay observed: "It is clear that we are witnessing the death throes of the cultural system maintained by the bourgeoisie in its galleries and its museums."

In recent years, progressive modernism has seemed bent not on defining a future but in destroying the values of the present, especially as they pertained to art. It has remained largely hostile to prevailing authority-systems, though this position is no longer at all clear. In the late 60s and early 70s, conceptual art emerged as another affront to established to established values (Carl Andre, for example).

Hostility to it was intense, beyond any question of mere aesthetics. Victor Burgin states that conceptualism was a revolt against modernism. This may not seem apparent, because, true to form, orthodox art history has managed to assimilate it into the seamless tapestry of "art history" while stifling its radicalism.

However, conceptualism deliberately was an art which no aesthetic formalism could hope to embrace. It was an attempt to place art beyond all limitations and definitions, to break the stranglehold of bourgeois formalist art history and criticism. Attention was turned towards "making" and the manipulation of materials. The process of making was given importance, with the result, the final object, became secondary, often temporary (Christo, for example).

Conceptualism became an umbrella term (in an attempt to define and contain) under which were lumped a whole range of difficult-to-classify art such as Performance and Earth Art.

Conceptual artists deliberately produced work that was difficult if not impossible to classify according to the old system. Some deliberately produced work that could not be placed in a museum or gallery (Smithson, for example).

Art in the latter half of the 20th century has deliberately placed itself beyond the limits of control. Today, art historians and critics -- we might call them the art police -- throw up their hands in dismay in the face of contemporary art. They have reached their limit - they can no longer absorb contemporary art into the system, patterns of order can no longer be applied. The critical apparatus of control has broken down; traditional art theory and traditional art history have failed along with modernism.

ART & ARTISTS Today

Professor Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe

Todaythe questions What is Art? and What is an Artist? today are not easily answered.

According to William Rubin, director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, "there is no single definition of art." The art historian Robert Rosenblum believes that "the idea of defining art is so remote [today]" that he doesn't think "anyone would dare to do it."

Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, states that there is "no consensus about anything today," and the art historian Thomas McEvilley agrees that today "more or less anything can be designated as art."

Arthur Danto, professor of philosophy at Columbia University and art critic of The Nation, believes that today "you can't say something's art or not art anymore. That's all finished." In his book, After the End of Art [see BIBLIOGRAPHY], Danto argues that after Andy Warhol exhibited simulacra of shipping cartons for Brillo boxes in 1964, anything could be art. Warhol made it no longer possible to distinguish something that is art from something that is not.

What has finished, however, is not artistic production, but a certain way of talking about art. Artists, whoever they are, continue to produce, but we, non-artists, are no longer able to say whether it is art or not. But at the same time, we are no longer comfortable with dismissing it as art because it fails to fit what we think art should be (whatever that is).

We struggle with this because we have been taught that art is important and we're unwilling to face up to the recently revealed insight that art in fact has no "essence." When all is said and done, "art" remains significant to human beings and the idea that now anything can be art, and that no form of art is truer than any other, strikes us as unacceptable.

Determining the Value of Art

2009-10-30T13:08:00.002+08:00

The value of a work of art is a peculiar beast, a schizophrenic chameleon. It is witnessed in a myriad of perplexing personas, corporeal and otherwise. Non-the-less, affixing a monetary claim to an art work is a necessary evil in a pragmatic sense and its worth is influenced remarkably by the hat you are wearing. To understand this matter more, one must realize that these values are transient within societies and cultures. Consequently, they must be adjusted over time and in accordance with one’s rules and role as an evaluator or art patron.

So, you say: “What in da tar nation eez you talkin’ ‘bout dude?"

Let me try to explain. The title of this discussion, “determining the value of art", leaves an open ended definition of “value". As a former gallery owner, practicing artist, and as a professional art educator responsible for e-value-ating art daily, I know that there are two distinct classifications of value; tangible, or corporeal, something to which a price tag can be attached. The other, obviously, being ethereal that cannot carry a monetary fixation, but non-the-less, has definite “value" from a variety of standpoints. Within both of these there are also distinctions.

To initiate a dialogue on “value" in reference for money, let’s assume you’re an artist and want to sell a painting. How do you affix a sales price? This should be helpful to those wanting to know how initial prices of a painting are determined.

To start with, you have to consider legitimate expenses: outlay of materials, approximate rate of utilities while producing the work, expenses for research and photography, travel, fees for models, studio space rental, copyright use, framing, storage, etc. These are all things you can document with a paper trail and receipts. Next, you have to consider a wage for your time in production. How much is your time worth and dependent on your skill? Should you reasonably expect to get more if you have a master’s degree in painting, or are a beginner? (It may be interesting to note that most artists in the U.S. do not even make minimum wage on the sales of their work.) Which brings up another issue, how do you recoup your expenses for classes and education or training in art? If you have limited edition signed and numbered reproductions of a painting made, how much should the price of the painting be raised?

These are just some considerations. Some artists simplify this by using a formula, like $6 per square inch plus the cost of framing.

So, you have a price in mind and want to be represented by a gallery. You go to a few galleries and find out their commissions vary from 30 to 50 percent of the sales price. After evaluating gallery requirements and expectations you decide that in order to get the price you had in mind, for example $850, now must become $1,140 with a 40% gallery take included. Other issues involved are not limited to whether or not the gallery can expect to sell it at that price in its market and the galleries’ insurance liabilities and limitations.

Here are some other questions regarding artist’s pricing. Suppose you have some paintings in galleries and try to liquidate some others yourself. From an ethical standpoint, can you sell a similar work for $850 (knowing it would sell easier at that price), or should you charge the same as the gallery, $1,140? Can a similar painting sell for more in a different location of the country? Watercolors typically sell for less than oils of comparable size, therefore, how do you adjust prices? What do you charge in adjustment for a vignette of the same dimensions as a full composition piece? Additionally, suppose you have participated in some juried exhibitions and some of your works have won awards. Do you now raise the prices of these, and if so, how much (I’ve known some who double the price.)?

The artist also sees value in their art as a possible source of residual income. This comes in two forms. One is through royalty payments with the paid use of their copyrighted and licensed materials. The second and more obscure to most, is through percentages of repeated sales of the same art work. This is accomplished in a contract purchase where the artist or their estate is guaranteed a certain amount of the purchase each time the work is bought by a different patron. Both of these require the use of a good attorney that specializes in art sales contracts.

Since I mentioned insurance before, let’s look at value from under that hat. Dollar amounts may reflect differently from the insurer and the insured. What you think a piece is worth may need to be documented with a certified appraiser’s estimate and even appraisers amounts will vary. Another method is to verify a “track record" of sales amounts. An owner of an art purchase will need to show a receipt. Since values of art vary over the years, one should get updated estimates that reflect inflation. On the other hand, an insurer of a gallery may just take a gallery owner’s document on total amounts of consignment contracts.

Suppose you own art and want to donate it to a non-profit organization. Now the federal government has stepped in. If you want to claim an amount for tax purposes you have to verify a claim with a receipt. Unless you are the artist, then it’s a whole other ball game. Uncle Sam now says you can only claim the actual value of the tangible materials that make up the piece. Your time and other expenses are null and void. So, your piece basically becomes worthless, which brings us to the next three berets of value I can relate to under the voice of experience, 1) estate of the deceased, 2) bankruptcy , and 3) loan value.

In the event of settling an estate, unless one has receipts to verify worth, you can expect to get, or list, garage sale prices (GSP). Here you also have the option of using a professional appraiser to assign a value. In the unfortunate case of a bankruptcy, you can expect to keep art listed as “wall coverings" also valued at “garage sale prices", to sell it at the GSP level, or at minimum, much lower values than your track record of sales. Banks have their own capricious policies in terms of the value of art as collateral. Some won’t accept it, some require a certified appraised estimate, which will be in a range from “X" dollars to “X" dollars and as you can rightly guess, the lower amount will be used. Furthermore, you can expect the bank to allow no more than 75% of that number as collateral value. Some will have their own value of several art pieces (note the plural here) by stating that they will accept the art for a $500 loan, this is, in effect, actually a signature loan and the art has no collateral value.

Take the stance of an investor now. Several years ago “Money" magazine published their best long term investments for 15 and 30 year periods. Ranked at numbers 2 and 3 over these periods was original, contemporary art. If you are looking at long term strategies, then a serious glance at art values is important. As an investor, unless you purchase art at auction, you can generally negotiate a purchase price with a gallery or an artist. This demonstrates there can be a difference between perceived and real value for a work. If you buy art just because you like it, it may not be a monetary investment. Prior to investing in art, you need to consider all of the topics mentioned above in deciding what to look for as “value" in buying art. Two things here that also affect the value of art is the notoriety of artist in combination with market supply and demand.

With all this said, the ultimate monetary value of any art work is only the highest amount at any given time that someone is willing to pay.

Up to now we have taken a cursory look at art in terms of tangible market values. Here are a few non-monetary assessments of art work worth: cultural significance, educational and instructional relevance, historical documentation and study, therapeutic value (which can also be seen as an investment), and aesthetic attachment. Each one of these deserves their own treatise at another time.

The “value of art" to each person is a rough diamond. Increasing its worth will depend on the skill of the cutter to weld a working philosophical construct of value with practical applications to be employed as a tool to expose its many exquisite faces. Undoubtedly, theoretical physicists will prove a string theory for the universe before there is any global “value of art" recognized throughout all societies and cultures.

Guidelines: Politicians do not control events; they merely react to them. Do you agree?

2009-10-30T13:06:00.000+08:00

This topic can be written based on this guidelines:

1. How views might differ depending on whether one lives in a republican/monarchical/democratic/authoritarian/totalitarian etc.
2. State what a politician's role actually is.
3. Whether people expect politicians to control events
4. What is that actually does control events if it is not politicians (e.g economic factors)
5. Historical examples of politicians reacting to/controlling events

Guidelines: Advertisements always promise far more than they deliver. Discuss

2009-10-28T15:14:00.000+08:00

Advertisements always promise far more than they deliver. Discuss

1. examples of (unrealisable) promises that advertisements might make
2. examples of accurate and apporporiate advertising
3. advertising where the underlying function is branding/giving information (as opposed to selling products)
4. whether the situation has changed/is chaging; regulations on advertising.
5. effects of advertising on different age/socio-economic sectors.
6. extent to which this might be a problem in society.