Standards and Their Stories

Author: Martha Lampland
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801474613
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 268

Book Description
Standardization is one of the defining aspects of modern life, its presence so pervasive that it is usually taken for granted. However cumbersome, onerous, or simply puzzling certain standards may be, their fundamental purpose in streamlining procedures, regulating behaviors, and predicting results is rarely questioned. Indeed, the invisibility of infrastructure and the imperative of standardizing processes signify their absolute necessity. Increasingly, however, social scientists are beginning to examine the origins and effects of the standards that underpin the technology and practices of everyday life.Standards and Their Stories explores how we interact with the network of standards that shape our lives in ways both obvious and invisible. The main chapters analyze standardization in biomedical research, government bureaucracies, the insurance industry, labor markets, and computer technology, providing detailed accounts of the invention of "standard humans" for medical testing and life insurance actuarial tables, the imposition of chronological age as a biographical determinant, the accepted means of determining labor productivity, the creation of international standards for the preservation and access of metadata, and the global consequences of "ASCII imperialism" and the use of English as the lingua franca of the Internet.Accompanying these in-depth critiques are a series of examples that depict an almost infinite variety of standards, from the controversies surrounding the European Union's supposed regulation of banana curvature to the minimum health requirements for immigrants at Ellis Island, conflicting (and ever-increasing) food portion sizes, and the impact of standardized punishment metrics like "Three Strikes" laws. The volume begins with a pioneering essay from Susan Leigh Star and Martha Lampland on the nature of standards in everyday life that brings together strands from the several fields represented in the book. In an appendix, the editors provide a guide for teaching courses in this emerging interdisciplinary field, which they term "infrastructure studies," making Standards and Their Stories ideal for scholars, students, and those curious about why coffins are becoming wider, for instance, or why the Financial Accounting Standards Board refused to classify September 11 as an "extraordinary" event.

Open Standards and the Digital Age

Author: Andrew L. Russell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107039193
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Book Description
This book answers how openness became the defining principle of the information age, examining the history of information networks.

The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to Popular Standards

Author: Max Morath
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101203110
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Book Description
Every major singer from Frank Sinatra to Christina Aguilera. Every major composer from Irving Berlin to Stephen Sondheim. Every major song from a century of favorites. Every major musician and lyricist. Every major styling from blues, jazz, and country to folk, big band, and rock and roll The most recorded songs of all time. A guide to understanding the "standard" lingo. The evolution of popular music from Tin Pan Alley to contemporary musical theater, and more.

One Size Fits Few

Author: Susan Ohanian
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Books
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Book Description
Susan Ohanian recounts her quest to make sense of the Standards educational movement.

Common Core

Author: Nicholas Tampio
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421424649
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 215

Book Description
How the Common Core standardizes our kids’ education—and how it threatens our democracy. The Common Core State Standards Initiative is one of the most controversial pieces of education policy to emerge in decades. Detailing what and when K–12 students should be taught, it has led to expensive reforms and displaced other valuable ways to educate children. In this nuanced and provocative book, Nicholas Tampio argues that, though national standards can raise the education bar for some students, the democratic costs outweigh the benefits. To make his case, Tampio describes the history, philosophy, content, and controversy surrounding the Common Core standards for English language arts and math. He also explains and critiques the Next Generation Science Standards, the Advanced Placement US History curriculum framework, and the National Sexuality Education Standards. Though each set of standards has admirable elements, Tampio asserts that democracies should disperse education authority rather than entrust one political or pedagogical faction to decide the country’s entire philosophy of education. Ultimately, this lively and accessible book presents a compelling case that the greater threat to democratic education comes from centralized government control rather than from local education authorities.

History on Trial

Author: Gary B. Nash
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679767509
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Book Description
An incisive overview of the current debate over the teaching of history in American schools examines the setting of controversial standards for history education, the integration of multiculturalism and minorities into the curriculum, and ways to make history more relevant to students. Reprint.

Making Standards Work

Author: Douglas B. Reeves
Publisher: Lead + Learn Press
ISBN: 9780970945501
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Book Description
Rationale and step-by-step instructions for creating classroom assessments that accurately measure what students know and are able to do.

AC/DC

Author: Tom McNichol
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118047028
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
AC/DC tells the little-known story of how Thomas Edison wrongly bet in the fierce war between supporters of alternating current and direct current. The savagery of this electrical battle can hardly be imagined today. The showdown between AC and DC began as a rather straightforward conflict between technical standards, a battle of competing methods to deliver essentially the same product, electricity. But the skirmish soon metastasized into something bigger and darker. In the AC/DC battle, the worst aspects of human nature somehow got caught up in the wires; a silent, deadly flow of arrogance, vanity, and cruelty. Following the path of least resistance, the war of currents soon settled around that most primal of human emotions: fear. AC/DC serves as an object lesson in bad business strategy and poor decision making. Edison's inability to see his mistake was a key factor in his loss of control over the ?operating system? for his future inventions?not to mention the company he founded, General Electric.

Sorting Things Out

Author: Geoffrey C. Bowker
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262522950
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Book Description
A revealing and surprising look at how classification systems can shape both worldviews and social interactions. What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification—the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

The Story-Killers

Author: Terrence O. Moore
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781493623372
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
"a stopcommoncore must-read." Michelle Malkin ". . . I could hardly put this book down until I finished reading it. . . . [T]his is not a dry read. It is a shocking read." Joy Pullmann, Heartland Institute "It wasn't until I started reading Dr. Moore's writings that I fully comprehended the significance of just what America was about to lose." Heather Crossin, Hoosiers Against Common Core What is the Common Core? How will the Common Core English Standards affect the teaching of great stories in our schools? Will there be any great stories left in the minds of our children when the Common Core has controlled the curriculum and testing of both public and private schools for a few years? What are the real purposes behind the educational coup that has taken place with very little public debate and even less understanding? In this book, school reformer and professor Dr. Terrence Moore carefully examines both the claims made by the architects of the Common Core and the hidden agenda behind the so-called reforms that have been adopted by over forty states in the nation, with very few people understanding what is really going on. Moore not only challenges the illiberal aims of this educational regime, but actually analyzes lessons recommended in the Common Core English Standards and in the new textbooks bearing the Common Core logo. Such a thorough review exposes the absurdity, superficiality, and political bias that can only serve to dumb down the nation's schools. Worse, the means that the Common Core uses is a deliberate undermining of the great stories of our tradition, the stories that in former times trained the minds and ennobled the souls of young people. Those stories are now under attack, and the minds and souls of the nation's children are in peril.