The Intelligence of White Foreign Born Criminals

Children's understanding of cognition increases greatly between early childhood and adolescence. This increase provides a developmental bridge between young children's understanding of mental states to adolescents' and adults' epistemological reflection. The author presents a framework for describing developmental changes in children's understanding of cognitive activities. He distinguishes 4 aspects of children's understanding of cognition: (a) knowledge of mental states, (b) knowledge of occurrence of particular activities, (c) knowledge of organization of cognitive activities, and (d) epistemological thought. He discusses phenomenological awareness of cognitive activities and social experience as influences on children's concepts of cognition.     

Ethics of Immigration: The Issue of Convicted Criminals

In this paper, I explore and probe Joseph Carens’ remarks, in his recent book The Ethics of Immigration, on the immigration status of foreign convicted criminals who have served their sentence, and who wish either to immigrate into our country or who are already here. Carens rejects deportation when it is not called for by considerations of national security, and agrees that considerations of public order can justify barring convicted foreign criminals from entering the country. I broadly agree with his arguments against deportation: my remarks in this respect are clarificatory and exploratory as much as anything else. But (I argue) both his argument for open borders and his scepticism with respect to radical cosmopolitanism are in tension with his claim that past criminal convictions can act as a bar to entry.     

Malevolent Creativity in Criminals

The article by Cropley, Kaufman, and Cropley (this issue) showing that creativity can be malevolent is very helpful, giving a better understanding of creativity. In this article, I present 9 examples of malevolent creativity in criminals. These examples should help us better understand both creativity and criminals. We should never again assume that creativity is only positive.     

The Foundations of Literacy

Learning to read and write in English requires children to master the alphabetic principle, the idea that the letters in printed words represent the sounds in spoken words in a more or less regular manner. Children need at least two skills in order to grasp the alphabetic principle. The first is phonological awareness, or a sensitivity to the sound structure of spoken words. The second is knowledge about letters, including knowledge of letter names and knowledge of letter sounds. Recent research sheds light on these foundational skills, documenting the linguistic factors that affect children's performance and how children put their phonological skills and knowledge of letters to use in learning to read and spell.