Binders full of women

Interesting debate...Glad I wasn't asked to moderate. Wow.
But, really, "binders full of women"?  Flexible hours so women can go home and cook dinner?  Where is this guy living?

Still, I wanted to collect these comments before they disappeared....

"Binders full of women cost 77 cents, while binders full of men cost $1."


"All those binders full of women explain why there was no room in the car for the dog."

"I wonder if I am in a binder full of women somewhere...."   "And I thought having a little black book was pretty good. This guy's got binders."

"Why did the phrase resonate? Because it was tone deaf, condescending and out of touch with the actual economic issues that women are so bothered about. The phrase objectified and dehumanized women. It played right into the perception that so many women have feared about a Romney administration – that a president Romney would be sexist and set women back."











http://youtu.be/qqMpANK_S78

A Poverty of Words

Today's newspaper carried an article about language deficiencies in elementary school children in New York City. I had heard these statistics before, but am always amazed by them. The article summarizes research showing, "Children of professionals were, on average, exposed to approximately 1,500 more words hourly than children growing up in poverty. This resulted in a gap of more than 32 million words by the time the children reached the age of 4."   I remember being given the advice as a new mother that the best thing I could do for my kids was to talk to them.  An elementary school teacher in our rural area once told me that she had trouble explaining the term "escalator" to some of her students.  I once had to explain what an "apartment building" was to my own son. 

The import of this really hit me last week when I gave an exam in my college research methods course. I had several students ask me to define the words, "ambivalence," "frail," and "implications."  I'm glad they asked, but it showed me the barriers that students face long after elementary school.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/nyregion/for-poor-schoolchildren-a-poverty-of-words.html?smid=pl-share

Negative capability

Today I was reading a story in the newspaper about a group of women dealing with cancer who meet together for support.  One of the women said of the group, "We strive for the condition of consciousness that the Romantic poet John Keats called 'negative capability,' the psychological state of residing in 'benign uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.'"  I had never heard of the term "negative capability" before, but was intrigued by the notion.  So much of life is uncertain, mysterious, and filled with doubt, yet, we often try to bring some reason and sense to what is happening.  Maybe that is the wrong approach, maybe we need to accept the uncertainty.  If we stop this "irritable reaching" maybe we will be happier. This seems very Buddhist to me. 

Feeling like I didn't have a good handle on all the things "Romanticism" meant, I did a little research (I looked on Wikipedia).  Romanticism was, in part, a reaction to scientific rationalization and included a greater appreciation of the natural world and emotions.  The people of the early 1800s were reacting to the Industrial Revolution and all the social changes associated with that dramatic shift in life. In sociology, we talk about this same period as the time in which scientific ideas were being applied to social problems, creating the field of sociology. Sociologists were moving in the opposite direction of the romantics, I suppose.

I'm thinking a little more of a Romantic perspective might be good in life.