Academic Performance of High School Students as a Function of Mental Capacity,Cognitive Style,Mobility‐Fixity Dimension,and Creativity

The purpose of this study is to explore how creativity and the cognitive variables (mental capacity, cognitive style & mobility‐fixity dimension) can explain academic performance of high school students. Students at a high school in Maturin (Venezuela) were tested to determine creativity (Torrance Tests), cognitive variables and academic performance. Results based on multiple regression analyses showed that the mobility‐fixity dimension was the most consistent predictor of academic performance, by explaining a significant amount of the variance in Spanish, English, Geography, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science, Mathematics, Physics and the Mean score. Creativity scores explained a significant amount of the variance in Spanish, Geography, Earth Science and the Mean score. It appears that the mobility‐fixity dimension and creativity although related, perhaps represent different aspects of academic performance.     

“A GREATEST MIRACLE”: STANLEY CAVELL,MORAL PERFECTIONISM,AND THE ASCENT INTO THE ORDINARY

What to make of “the ordinary,”“the everyday,” and their common “eventfulness”? What to think of what Veena Das, in her recent book Life and Words, prefaced by Stanley Cavell, has called our need to “descent into the ordinary”? Is there a parallel figure of “ascent,” again, into the same “ordinary,” that we might we want to juxtapose with it and that resembles the motif of “change,” even “conversion,” that Cavell analyzes at some length in The Claim of Reason and throughout his oeuvre as a whole? And what could be our reasons for doing so? This essay will draw on Cavell's reading of Ibsen's work in the volume Cities of Words to spell out what such an “ascent” might mean.     

Ethics and Marginal Cases: the rights of the mentally handicapped

ABSTRACT  Some beings, including children, animals and the mentally handicapped, seem to deserve moral consideration, despite the fact that they are not rational or moral agents. These so-called marginal cases create a problem for theories that heavily stress the role of moral and/or rational agency in ethics: the latter seem unable to account for the former's moral status. This paper discusses the recent and original attempt of Loren Lomasky to solve this problem. It is argued that Lomasky's arguments are self-defeating because they can only succeed by relying on common-sense morality and, thus, by giving up the heavy stress on the role of rational agency in ethics.     

Changes in Family Structure After a Renal Transplant

Two girls (9 and 10 years old) and one male adolescent (19 years old) with chronic renal failure (CRF) were studied along with their families in order to evaluate their family structure before (4–5 weeks) and after (3–5 weeks) a renal transplant from a live donor. After the renal transplant there was a close association between the donor and the recipient that led to the creation of an alliance or the reinforcement of an alliance already present before the transplant. This may favor a family disruption or a better family equilibrium depending upon whether the donor ranked highest in the family hierarchy and was already in a rigid alliance with the patient before the transplant. It is suggested that the study and diagnosis of the family structure before the renal transplant may help to: (a) select the most suitable donor candidate from a biological as well as psychological point of view so as to allow a better possibility of success in the structural functioning of the family after the transplant; (b) predict changes that will appear within the family after the transplant, which in turn may alert the personnel to detect changes in the family structure as early as possible; and (c) offer more rapid therapeutic assistance to bring the family back to a functional level within its social framework.