Naturally enough the exhibition contains the Royal Academy’s two great heavyweights J.M.W. Turner and John Constable. The Constable is the magnificent a Boat Passing a Lock
He painted the scene again in The Lock
The centre of both pictures is dominated by the structure of a lock and the figure of the lock keeper who is releasing the turbulent power of the river. in Passing a Lock, the lock itself and the boat are in a state of chaotic energy in contrast to the rest of the picture and in particular to the calm and poised figure of the lock keeper who controls not only the force of the river but indirectly the force of the thunderstorm that sweeps across the background. It’s a combination of neoclassical ideas of man imposing order in nature with the well-kept fields, the church in the village in the background. It’s even got…
Bullying is a moral wrong. It is also a failure in the practice of business ethics when it is tolerated and a gross breach of duty when committed.
Much has been written about bullying recently because of shocking events that often go along with it like violence and suicide.
But this new research (discussed below) takes bullying and show that it is a much more serious evil that had been previously thought. The effects last much longer, decades longer than was believed before.
This makes it a more serious offense and there will be changes in policy and law to reflect this.
As a business person, it would be wise to take a careful look at the company policy on bullying because now when we talk about damages we’re not just talking about the current situations, we’re talking about decades of after effects. That is going to be a lot of money both in terms of punitive damages and payouts for pain and suffering. And if your workplace encourages or tolerates bullying, you should have to pay every penny.
James Pilant
The New Bullying Prevention | Ethics, Equality and Equal Rights
Victims of bullies suffer the psychological consequences all the way until middle age, with higher levels of depression, anxiety and suicide, new research shows.
The immediate ill effects of bullying have been well documented, with experts increasingly seeing it as a form of child abuse. Influential studies from Finland have made the case that people who were bullied as kids continued to suffer as young adults – girls who were bullied grew up to attempt and commit suicide more frequently by the age of 25, for instance, and boys were more likely to develop anxiety disorders.
Now a trio of researchers has taken an even longer view. They examined data on roughly 18,000 people who were born in England, Scotland and Wales during a single week in 1958 and then tracked periodically up through the age of 50 as part of the U.K.’s National Child Development Study.
Back in the 1960s, when the study subjects were 7 and 11 years old, researchers interviewed their parents about bullying. Parents reported whether their children were never, sometimes or frequently bullied by other kids.
Fast-forward to the 2000s. About 78% of the study subjects are still being tracked at age 45, when they are assessed for anxiety and depression by nurses. By the time they’re 50, 61% of them remain in the study, and are asked to fill out a questionnaire that measures psychological distress.
The researchers found that people who were bullied either occasionally or frequently continued to suffer higher levels of psychological distress decades after the bullying occurred. They were more likely than study subjects who were never bullied to be depressed, to assess their general health as poor, and to have worse cognitive functioning. In addition, those who were bullied frequently had a greater risk of anxiety disorders and suicide.
Bullies are getting a lot of press nowadays, but it’s difficult to tell whether bullying behavior is on the rise, or we’re just noticing and talking about it more than we did in the past. In our obsessively politically correct environment, there is an ever-increasing push to avoid confronting or even defending one’s self against a bully, and to opt instead for a more positive developmental response to aggressive behavior. We are also being told that the best way to deal with bullying is to ensure that our children don’t bully others in the first place. Our children’s schools often take a zero-tolerance approach to any physical confrontation, punishing both the victim for defending him or herself and the instigator for initiating the behavior. This is patently unfair to the victim, and does little if anything to stem the aggressive behavior other than forcing the bully to practice his or her aggression somewhere out of the school’s sight and/or jurisdiction.
While eliminating the violence in the first place is admittedly the ideal solution, we have to realistically acknowledge that it is not the whole solution. Sometimes, you simply have to fight back if you hope to get the bullies to leave you alone. Fortunately, by helping our children to understand what drives the bully, we can better prepare them to deal with it in the most effective manner. In short, fighting back needn’t always involve physical violence. By understanding and responding directly to the underlying causes of bullying, the bullied child can emerge from the situation with an increased level of self-confidence, which is kryptonite to the bully’s attempt to be Superman (or Superwoman). …
Tim Haslett is an Australian blogger whose work I find persuasive and enjoyable. Let me let him describe himself: (from his blog)
After 30 years in academia, with a Ph.D. in non-linear dynamics and systems modelling and a Masters degree in English literature, I’m keen to broaden my writing audience. I am interested in becoming part of an informed community of commentary on matters of public interest. For me this will include politics (mainly Australian), films, books and the general cant, hypocrisy and stupidity that seems to infest public life.
That’s pretty good. I think it is better than my self description. Below is a two paragraph piece from one of his blog posts. I recommend it and I would like you to visit his site and sign on as a follower.
James Pilant
Why privatisation really doesn’t work. | Tim Haslett’s Blog
There was a time when a large proportion of our essential services; water, electricity, transport, telecommunications, postal services, health, education, police force, fire-fighting and to a lesser extent the banking system were provided by the federal or state governments. This was based on the assumption that the state, through taxpayer funding, will take responsibility for the provision of the services for the general population. Providing this level of service required a taxation system that progressively taxed those who earned the most money. It also required that the average taxpayer would pay relatively high levels of taxation. With the steady erosion of the tax base under the Howard/Costello government, the amount of revenue available to provide the services declined. This was combined with adopting policies based on supply-side economics, which encouraged private enterprise at the expense of state funded activity.
These changes were particularly evident in the provision of health services where individuals were able to take out insurance to avoid the impact of expensive surgery and to avoid waiting for places in publicly funded hospitals. Win this insurance was provided through a government, not-four-profit insurance company, namely Medibank Private, it effectively meant that people, normally the better off, could pay an extra tax to fund a specific use of the health system. …
Five Sussex students were today, Wednesday 4th December, suspended by Vice-Chancellor, Michael Farthing as he exercised his “authority to temporarily suspend [their] studies and exclude [them] from the University campus.” The suspensions follow protests against the outsourcing of Sussex services to private companies, the occupation of Bramber House in support of fair pay in higher education and the presence of students at the picket lines on the December 3rd national strike.
The occupation was a legal, peaceful means of protest and one undertaken as a last resort. Approximately one hundred students entered the conference centre on Tuesday 26th November in a calm, non-confrontational manner. The occupation was not disruptive to any academic activity nor were any academic lectures rescheduled or disrupted as a result of its presence. Its purpose was to reclaim a University space now owned by a profit-driven private company and to support striking staff in their endeavours to gain fair and equal pay. Any “disruption”, then, was to the private company and its business ends as opposed to students or University staff. It raises concern that Management prioritise the concerns of a business above the concerns of their students and employees. Further, it is laughable that Management have chosen to accuse students of “intimidating” behaviour given the continued and systematic intimidation and censorship of those involved in legitimate, peaceful protests at the University.
Inexperienced officer, poor crew training and dangerous waters. I’ve seen it in dozens of articles, dozens of accident reports for one sinking or another.
Sometimes you get the impression that humankind doesn’t learn, it just makes the same mistakes over and over again. This looks like another repeat of another set of common mistakes.
The extra tragedy here is that the vessel was full of schoolchildren.
Current information suggests that the ship struck nothing – it made too tight a turn, the load shifted and it developed a list and then sank.
Essentially, the crew killed the ship by putting it past its design limitations.
If you have enough poor judgement, you don’t need a rock, a strong current, a act of God, the stupidity is enough.
We in business ethics have to become inured to this. In this field, the practitioner can become jaded to human stupidity, human unwillingness to change. But we are also in a sense guardians of morality and justice. This devotion to a higher duty should enable us to suffer through the appalling consequences of the seeing same mistake over and over again.
James Pilant
South Korea ferry disaster: third mate ‘steering in tricky waters for first time’ | World news | The Observer
The South Korean ferry that sank off the country’s coast on Wednesday, with the likely loss of more than 300 passengers, was being steered by an inexperienced young officer who was navigating the area, which is notorious for its fast currents, for the first time.
The revelation lends weight to the theory that a series of errors by senior crew members caused the Sewol to list and capsize, prompting a major rescue operation and questions about safety measures as South Korea struggled to with one of the worst maritime disasters in its history.
The crew appeared underprepared to deal with a serious incident at sea amid reports that the vessel’s owner, Chonghaejin, had not given them guidance in how to execute a swift evacuation. There were not enough life jackets to go around, and footage of the aftermath showed that only two of more than 40 lifeboats had been deployed.
The parents of hundreds of children missing aboard the sunken ferry, meanwhile, are confronting the grim reality that attempts to bring their sons and daughters out alive have failed. A mixture of grief and anger has gripped South Korea since the ship capsized and sank, with the probable loss of around 300 mostly teenage passengers.
The palpable anguish of the relatives of dead and missing passengers – many of them high school pupils on a trip to the resort island of Jeju – is matched only by contempt for the crew and the chaotic response by the authorities.
South Koreans awoke on Saturday to the news that the ship’s embattled captain, Lee Joon-seok, had been arrested, along with the third mate, 25-year-old Park Han-kyul, who was steering the vessel at the time of the accident, and helmsman Cho Joon-ki, 55.
My heart is pained by the news of the Korean ferry boat sinking. For those who do not know, a ferry boat with more than 450 passengers capsized and sank. Most of the passengers were high school students, and even to this moment almost 300 of them are trapped in the sunken ship.
My numbers are not exact, and the little amount of information I have is from Korean media sites and news clips. Apparently the ferry quickly capsized and the passengers were told over the speaker system to stay put. After sending out this “stay calm” message, most of the workers on the ferry including the captain promptly ditched the boat. The ship has several lifeboats, but only one was actually put to use, leaving the passengers unaware of their dangerous situation and stranded on a sinking boat.
I am extremely saddened and angered at the Korean media, who are currently pestering the survivors (there was a clip revealed of a reporter interrogating a six year old girl about her parents, and he continued to tactlessly ask her questions after she told him she was rescued alone – I mean, she lost her parents, just give her a break!) as well as the parents of the students. There is another clip going viral in the Korean Facebook community of several heartbroken and worried parents sobbing and begging/swearing at the cameras to stop filming and give them peace, but the spotlight chasing news cameras kept on filming their cries. Such brutality makes me feel sick.
I was looking for songs used to illustrate business ethics themes. For instance, Billy Joel’s song, Allentown, and Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. are good business ethics songs. But my first search pulled up a course offering for “Music Business Leadership and Ethics.” I am delighted. The more specialized a field becomes the more likely its reach is increasing. And few fields need more reach like business ethics.
Below is a piece of the online syllabus. Maybe you will have an opportunity to create or participate in this kind of innovative teaching. If so, Good Luck!!
James Pilant
Music Business Leadership and Ethics Course – Berklee Online
The course begins with an examination of notable leaders, leadership approaches, and industry scenarios important to anyone in the music field. Students will explore ethics from a wide variety of industries to gain an understanding about why ethical choices are important in sustaining ones career. The music industry is, of course, no stranger to controversy or ethical inquiry. This course work will illuminate current issues such as:
the treatment of artists
intellectual property rights
revenue sharing
digital media and distribution
Students will apply specific decision-making approaches and ethical frameworks toward group activities that mirror the real world. They will explore some controversial issues that have existed for decades and emerging issues that are reshaping the modern music business. Students will be fine-tuning their career plans as they progress through the lessons and they will learn to anticipate decision-making, and ethics challenges. Students will create a blueprint for sound decision-making, effective leadership, organizational planning, and ethical awareness that they can immediately apply toward advancing their careers.
This course gives vital insight in to the overall role of leadership and ethics in the music business, other industries, and in ones daily life. By the end of this course, students will be able to:
gain insight in to how leadership and decision-making considerations can help create a career plan
examine their plan in the context of the history and evolution and history of the music industry
translate and extrapolate leadership and decision-making strategies from other industries and decision-making scenarios
create a career roadmap with a focus on the achievement of specific goals
identify ethics considerations and leadership opportunities in the music industry that pertain to their career paths
It seems self-evident that music plays more than just an aesthetic role in contemporary society. Its social, political, emancipatory, and economical functions have been the subject of much research. Given this, it is surprising that discussions of ethics have often been neglected in relation to music. The ways in which music engages with ethics are more relevant than ever, and require sustained attention.
The book Music and Ethics (Ashgate 2012, co-author Dr. Nanette Nielsen), being the result of my research on the relation between music and ethics, begins from the idea that music is not only a vehicle to transport ethical ideas, ideas that can also be articulated verbally or discursively; rather, the book demonstrates that music ‘in itself’ can, in a unique and purely musical way, contribute to theoretical discussions about ethics as well as concrete moral behaviour.
Music can teach us to listen carefully and without prejudice. It can also teach us to cooperate and interact with others outside preconceived goals and benefits. It can offer insights into expressions of selfhood, as a key player in the construction of subjectivity. However, on the other hand, music also plays an important role in the disciplining and controlling of human beings. In that sense, music has ‘unethical’ sides as well.
Here is a case of a newspaper printing a more complex form of a corporate news release. This news release was designed and marketed to the public as a product of the newspaper when in fact it was sophisticated advertising.
If we analyze this in terms of stakeholder analysis, the shareholders are doing very well. More profits – more dividends.
Of course, another set of stakeholders would be the customers. These unfortunates were and probably are under the misapprehension that they were reading the work of journalists.
With a little work, the newspaper could convert itself totally into an advertisement and avoid all journalism.
James Pilant
The Denver Post’s ‘Energy And Environment’ Section Is Produced By The Oil And Gas Industry | ThinkProgress
The Post’s advertising section may have ruffled a few feathers in Colorado, but the paper is hardly the first news organization to have stories, or even entire sections, sponsored by outside advertisers. Congressional news organization Roll Call has two sponsored sections — a Boeing-sponsored defense section and, similar to the Denver Post, an energy section sponsored by BP.
The Atlantic’s sponsored content caused a stir last year, when the website posted a sponsored story about the church of Scientology. The story was later taken down after readers and other news outlets took notice, and the Atlantic issued an apology for posting the sponsored content. The New York Times, Time, BuzzFeed and TPM have also ventured into sponsored content.
And while one of the major concerns of news organizations and advocacy groups is whether or not readers will recognize sponsored content as advertising, Kelly McBride, senior faculty member for ethics at the Poynter Institute, told ThinkProgress that not much is known yet about how readers respond to sponsored content.
“Clearly news organizations have got to find new sources of revenue, and I think sponsored content is a stream of revenue many news organizations are turning towards,” she said. “We don’t know much about how consumers perceive sponsored content — we haven’t seen many good studies yet.”
Brace yourself for the wave of complaints that will surely come: As previously announced, Facebook began to add sponsored stories to users’ news feeds Tuesday.
The sponsored stories contain an indication next to the time stamp that the post is “featured,” and users need not worry about random ad content infiltrating their news feeds, as the only sponsored stories they will see are from pages they have already liked.
Content from pages users’ friends have liked and interacted with may appear, as well, but advertisers cannot alter the messages included with that content.
Sister blog Inside Facebook reported that Facebook will initially limit sponsored stories in the news feed to one per day, and they will not appear when the social network is accessed on mobile devices.
TechCrunch took issue with the language being used by Facebook, saying that “featured” doesn’t denote that the content is paid advertising, and that posts labeled with that word could be mistaken for popular content.
Inside Facebook also reported that Facebook teamed up with sandwich chain Which Wich to test the offering of coupons to users who have liked the Which Wich page. As of late Tuesday, more than 4,300 of the chain’s 104,000-plus Facebook fans had claimed a coupon for a free 22-ounce soft drink with the purchase of a sandwich. We wonder if coupons will be an option for featured stories at some point in the future.
Is it wise to criminalize women who use drugs during pregnancy? You might think that would discourage women from going to doctors while pregnant if they are using drugs. While the state does have a “safe harbor” law (explained in the text below), a woman can still be charged in the event of a still birth.
More worrying is the idea of criminalizing conduct during pregnancy. What about smoking or drinking? or not eating right? or not following the doctor’s instructions? Once states start enacting laws along these lines, where is the bright line drawn that will stop further criminalization?
Criminalizing anything is an important decision. It would make for a better judgment on the matter if data, studies for instance, was sought before such laws were passed. This one was a rush job. That is seldom a good idea. The passage of a little time after a controversy makes for a better decision.
James Pilant
Tennessee legislature passes bill to criminalize pregnancy: Women who have stillbirths after using illegal drugs may be charged.
Prosecutors have become quite fond of stretching the reach of child abuse and even murder laws to punish pregnant women for failing to deliver live or healthy babies, usually because those women used drugs during pregnancy. (Though not always.) Often the fact that the laws being used to prosecute are clearly not meant to address what women do to their own bodies while pregnant causes the cases to collapse. For instance, a recent Mississippi case I wrote about involving a mother charged with murder after her baby was stillborn was tossed out by a judge who ruled that the law wasn’t meant to apply to situations such as hers.
Well, the Tennessee legislature decided to fix this problem by passing a bill through both houses that would give prosecutors broad rights to press abuse charges against women who use illegal drugs during pregnancy and then give birth to unhealthy or stillborn babies. According to RH Reality Check, if the governor of Tennessee signs the bill, it will be the first law like it in the country. The law is a reaction to the passage of the Safe Harbor Act last year, an actually good bill that allows pregnant women with drug problems to seek treatment with the knowledge that Child Protective Services will not take their babies away because of it. (The women do have to stick to the program to keep that assurance.) But law enforcement insisted on retaining the right to throw a woman in jail—even if she has stuck with the treatment program—if the baby is born with problems and they decide that it must have been the drugs that did it.
To paraphrase George Dubya: misogynists never stop thinking of ways to harm women, and neither does America. The latest joyous news from the motherland (a term I use advisedly) is that troubled women are being prosecuted for murder after suffering miscarriages or still-births. This is more than insane. It’s baffling. Despite the pro-life palaver America doesn’t generally give a damn about post-natal child welfare………
……..Rennie Gibbs was just 16 when her baby was stillborn. The state is trying her as an adult, for murder, alleging that the still-birth was caused by cocaine use. For some mush-headed moralists this is enough (“What kind of terrible human being takes drugs while pregnant?” etc.) Before galloping off on their high-horse, however, they should consider the fact that all sorts of things cause miscarriage and still-birth. As the Gibbs brief notes: People wrongly believe that women have a high degree of control over their pregnancy outcomes. The longstanding and constant medical reality, however, is that as many as 20-30 percent of all pregnancies will end in miscarriage or stillbirth.
Not just crackhead pregnancies, teen pregnancies, women-of-colour pregnancies, or unwed pregnancies – all pregnancies. Including those of law-abiding suburban wives who drive SUVs and take their vitamins. The difference is the latter are more likely to get flowers than be slapped with a murder charge. The Gibbs brief spells it out: “Low income women… [are] particularly vulnerable to punishment” (italics mine).
” MATSUMOTO, Japan (AP) — The 12-year-old girl didn’t want to leave her younger brother, and her grandparents didn’t want her to go away. But a family living near the “no-go zone” surrounding Japan’s destroyed nuclear plant has other things to consider.
Yukie Hashimoto and her husband sent their daughter 300 kilometers (200 miles) away to the picturesque ski town of Matsumoto, where the mayor offered to take in and educate young people living in the shadow of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.
Research has not shown the children to be in clear danger from exposure to low-dose radiation, but mistrust of the authorities remains high. The Hashimoto family, and the parents of seven other children, accepted the offer.
“I didn’t really believe things are as safe as the government is telling us,” said Hashimoto, who lives in Koriyama, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of the 20-kilometer no-go zone…
My son did high stakes testing in high school. He described it as a hideous experience often being taken from his classes and placed in the gym as one in rows of students preparing for the tests. The school would move desks into the gym so they would have a huge open area for the supervision of test preparation. They spent days preparing for tests each year.
It seems that the high school experience I had so many years ago has deteriorated into a facility where the wonderful things about school: art, science, literature, inspired teaching as well as opportunities to interact with your fellows, have diminished in favor of standardized tests. Many of my students in the college courses I teach appear as if to do well on tests was the main thing they learned in school. The broad range of skills and the confidence one gets from being educated seems to be diminished among them.
As an educator I know the limitations of testing. Some of my students do well on some kinds of tests like multiple choice. Some do badly. Switch to true-false and some students who did badly do well. It is well known that stress knocks down test scores. So does illness and other factors. One story you hear over and over from other faculty at the college level is the student who takes down everything said in class scoring lower than students who don’t take any notes at all. There are powerful differences in test taking abilities and learning styles.
Testing is a blunt instrument. It has limited accuracy. As a college instructor, there are always students in my classes who do badly on tests that I believe are capable learners who I trust will take away more from the class that those who scored well.
After using tests for years and having taken countless tests myself, I am horrified at what these clumsy assessment tools are being used for. If my son were still in high school, I would opt out. I would not put up with this nonsense. I am familiar with the corporate compulsion to collect data and to crunch numbers. As a business teacher, I believe firmly that this is a corporate fetish. Many numbers are useless and mean nothing. Sometimes it is difficult to discern which numbers are significant when compared to other measures. If you want to see number crunching taken to the level of madness, read David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest. Many things done in Vietnam were designed to produce good numbers. And they did, the numbers show that we the war easily. Is that what you remember about the war? Did that war go well for we Americans?
When cooperation with the system means pain for our children, the generation of numbers used to justify the destruction of our schools and increased influence by testing corporations and anti-public education zealots, it is time to say, “Enough.” Opt out, don’t feed the beast.
James Pilant
Test Season Reveals America’s Biggest Failures | Crooks and Liars
It’s testing season in America, and regardless of how the students do, it’s clear who is already flunking the exams.
Last week in New York, new standardized tests began rolling out across the state, and tens of thousands of families said “no dice.”
According to local news sources, over 33,000 students skipped the tests – a figure “that will probably rise.”
At one Brooklyn school, so many parents opted their students out of the tests the teachers were told they were no longer needed to proctor the exams. At another Brooklyn school, 80 percent of the students opted out. Elsewhere in Long Island, 41 school districts in Nassau and Suffolk reported thousands of students refusing to take the test, and an additional district reported hundreds more.
Reflecting how the testing rebellion may affect upcoming elections, the Republican opponent to New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, Rob Astorino, announced his intention to opt his children out of state tests.
What is happening in New York is indicative of a groundswell of popular dissent – what Peter Rothberg, a journalist for The Nation and a New York City parent, called a “nationwide movement” – against the over-use and abuse of standardized testing in public schools.
We are teachers of public education in the City of New York. We are writing to distance ourselves from a set of policies that have come to be known as market-based education reform. We recognize that there has been a persistent and troubling gulf between the vision of individuals in policymaking and the work of educators, but we see you as someone who has known both positions and might therefore be understanding of our position. We find ourselves at a point in the progress of education reform in which clear acts of conscience will be necessary to preserve the integrity of public education. We can no longer implement policies that seek to transform the broad promises of public education into a narrow obsession with the ranking and sorting of children. We will not distort curriculum in order to encourage students to comply with bubble test thinking. We can no longer, in good conscience, push aside months of instruction to compete in a city-wide ritual of meaningless and academically bankrupt test preparation. We have seen clearly how these reforms undermine teachers’ love for their profession and undermine students’ intrinsic love of learning.
As an act of conscience, we are declining the role of test administrators for the 2014 New York State Common Core Tests. We are acting in solidarity with countless public school teachers who have paved their own paths of resistance and spoken truthfully about the decay of their profession under market-based reforms. These acts of conscience have been necessary because we are accountable to the children we teach and our pedagogy, both of which are dishonored daily by current policies.
A new study
by researchers at MIT, Harvard, and Brown cast doubt on the value of
pursuing higher scores
on standardized tests as an end in themselves.
Since this has been the highest goal of federal policy since 2002, when No Child Left Behind was signed into law, the study raises questions about the billions spent on testing, test preparation, evaluating teachers and schools by test scores, firing teachers and principals because of test scores, and closing schools based on test scores.
Are test scores the Golden Fleece? No.
Yet with the release of every NAEP test or every international test, the media go into a frenzy, and Arne Duncan leads a national day of high anxiety and breast beating about our nation’s imminent peril because test scores did not rise as much as they should.
The new study raises the question of how much those standardized test scores mean.
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