Cruelty to Compassion: the Poetry of Teaching Transformation

Two complementary bodies of literature either claim explicitly or imply that human cruelty is rooted in asymmetrical relationships. The first describes and analyzes various forms of domination and acquiescence, including colonialism, racism, imperialism, sexism, and interpersonal power dynamics, among others. The second attempts to describe what would constitute the antidote, namely symmetrical relationships of mutuality and equality. Both of these literatures counsel abandoning asymmetrical relationships in favor of the symmetrical. To the contrary, this paper argues that it is only in the context of asymmetrical relationships that humans can learn the basics of equality and mutual regard that undergird democracy. More particularly, the moral use of asymmetrical relations would be to help the young acquire, inter alias, the kinds of self-awareness and self-understanding that would enable them to function as responsible parties in symmetrical relations.     

How are overlapping time intervals perceived? Evidence for a weighted sum of segments model

This study investigated the way in which people time two overlapping intervals. Timing models already proposed in the literature predict different effects of the degree of overlap on each estimate, and empirical findings were compared to these predictions. Two unimodal experiments (in which each to-be-timed interval was a visual stimulus) and one bimodal experiment (in which one to-be-timed interval was auditory and the other visual) were conducted. The estimate of the first interval was either unaffected or decreased, and the estimate of the second interval consistently increased as the intervals were more temporally separated. The only model in the literature that could account for such result patterns is a single pacemaker single accumulator structure with an additional recency weighting (see the weighted sum of segments model). That is, participants appear to segment the two overlapping intervals into three non-overlapping and overlapping segments, time these segments separately, and then combine them to estimate each interval. Importantly, a recency weighting, determined by the time that has passed since the end of that segment, is also applied to each segment in the summation process. Further, in the bimodal experiment the order in which the stimuli of different modalities were presented affected the way in which they were timed, a finding that none of the current models can explain. This highlights that a comprehensive model of interval timing must consider not only the modalities of to-be-timed intervals but also the order in which different modalities must be timed.     

THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE BEHAVIOR OF TWO SOCIO‐ECONOMIC GROUPS OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Written language knowledge that lower SES children have acquired from their environment before formal instruction was investigated. Complete data were collected from four and five year old children enrolled in a headstart program. Data concerning each child's knowledge of written language were individually collected through the use of interview techniques as well as informal and standardized assessments including: Book Handling Knowledge (Goodman, 1981), Sand Test (Clay, 1976), Preschool Children's Concept of Reading (Goodman, 1981) and Preschool Children's Concept of Writing (Goodman, 1981).

The results were compared with the results from an earlier study (Robeck & Wiseman, in press) conducted with a middle SES group of children enrolled in a day care center. Demon strated behaviors indicated that the two groups of preschool children were acquiring reading and writing knowledge. The children from the headstart group were learning the same things as the children from the private day care center, however there were differences between the two groups of children in the range and number of behaviors observed. The study suggests that children from not only different socio‐economic groups but children from the same socio‐economic group enter school with wide differences in their written language knowledge.