‘We Have a Lousy Product’
Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun takes stock of what’s working, and what’s not, with regard to online university courses:
As Thrun was being praised by Friedman, and pretty much everyone else, for having attracted a stunning number of students–1.6 million to date–he was obsessing over a data point that was rarely mentioned in the breathless accounts about the power of new forms of free online education: the shockingly low number of students who actually finish the classes, which is fewer than 10%. Not all of those people received a passing grade, either, meaning that for every 100 pupils who enrolled in a free course, something like five actually learned the topic. If this was an education revolution, it was a disturbingly uneven one.
“We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don’t educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product,” Thrun tells me. “It was a painful moment.” Turns out he doesn’t even like the term MOOC.
The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side: Our Longreads Member Pick
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A Parent’s Dilemma: Should You Let Your Kid Play Football?
Hruby talks to families and those involved with youth sports to find out what’s changed—and what hasn’t changed—since the revelations around concussions and CTE:
Earlier that season, Parker had leveled another boy. He earned a personal foul. Monet remembered the moment, how proud she felt as her son skipped back to the sideline.
Mommy! Mommy! I made a kid eat dirt!
“I sat back and said, ‘Wow,’” she says. “What if I’m the parent of that other kid?”
Writing, Depression and Learning How to Handle Attention: A Conversation with Allie Brosh
An interview with the blogger behind Hyperbole and a Half (and a new book of the same name) on narcissism, the Internet, and coping with depression:
I haven’t always had depression. I talked to a few of my friends who knew me when I was in high school, and it was sort of this tragic/hilarious thing to explain to them. They were like, “But you were so happy,” and I’d be like, “That person’s dead, I’m sorry.”
Locked in the Cabinet
Inside the lonely life of an Obama Cabinet member:
“We are completely marginalized … until the shit hits the fan,” says one former Cabinet deputy secretary, summing up the view of many officials I interviewed. “If your question is: Did the president rely a lot on his Cabinet as a group of advisers? No, he didn’t,” says former Obama Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
Little wonder, then, that Obama has called the group together only rarely, for what by most accounts are not much more than ritualistic team-building exercises: According to CBS News White House reporter Mark Knoller, the Cabinet met 19 times in Obama’s first term and four times in the first 10 months of his second term. That’s once every three months or so—about as long as you can drive around before you’re supposed to change your oil.
Inside the World of Competitive Laughing
The writer goes to the Canadian competitive laughing championship, and examines the benefits of laughing:
“We’re trying to demonstrate that laughter is a sport,” Nerenberg tells the crowd. “Why would we do that? Well, punching people in the face is a sport, poking people with sticks is a sport … so why not have a sport about the pursuit of human joy?”
“‘Laugher’ is not a proper English word because the idea of being an active laugher was inconceivable until this point. We want to put laugher in the dictionary.” The crowd, which fills the lower half of the room and is already feeling loose from a warm-up laugh led by Kataria, erupts after this. They continue to cheer, and the 10 contestants walk onto the stage to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.” The ceremonial first laugh is led by a 103-year-old Toronto resident. He exits the stage with one line: “Let’s get ready to jubilate.”
Creationists’ Last Stand at the State Board of Education
A history of the Texas textbook wars, and questions of whether those seeking to influence changes to textbooks can hold onto their power:
But highly placed stakeholders — ranging from those in publishing to sitting board members — believe the culture warriors are losing the ability to run roughshod over state education. After years of alienating the Legislature, the state board has seen its influence weakened. A changing textbook marketplace has eroded Texas’ clout, and technology is sweeping into the classroom, bringing with it the next generation of learning materials. The statewide reach of the culture warriors is ending.
The biggest test will take place when the state board considers a new high-school biology text next week. Another will follow in the ensuing months, as it takes up a new social studies text. How the state board and publishers respond to Bohlin’s critiques, to his evolutionary “gaps,” will determine whether the innuendo of God lingers in classroom discussions about evolution. It will determine whether the political ideology of an elected board shapes, by omission and addition, the history of America Texas students will learn for years hence.
Why Did the Schaibles Let Their Children Die?
Herbert and Catherine Schaible are devout members of the First Century Gospel Church, which strictly believes in divine healing—meaning no doctors or medicine are allowed. Two of their children died after they became ill, and the couple is now facing third-degree murder charges. The writer attempts to understand the couple’s actions by visiting their church, and talking to other members of the community:
One hot night in Lawndale, Dave and his brother Richard—the next brother of nine Schaible siblings—sit at Dave’s dining room table and talk about how the burden is on us, to make sure God is listening to our prayers.
“God will show you where you’re out of line,” Dave says. “You’ve got to be willing to correct that. If our heart is right with God, He will show us a hidden resentment toward somebody, or hatred, or anything. But He’s also a jealous God, and when you put something between us and Him—it says in the Bible, ‘There should be no other gods in your life.’”
I remark that it seems an incredibly demanding command to live by.
A Former Basketball Star’s New Life in Europe: Our College Pick
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick.
What Is the Value of Stolen Art?
Ed Caesar explores the black market for art, following a 2012 heist at the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam, perpetrated by a group of Romanian “knuckleheads”:
Making money from stolen paintings — particularly famous ones — is not a straightforward matter, and those who try to do so fall broadly into two categories. The first, most common type is the naïf, who steals a painting but has laid few plans beyond the theft itself. He soon discovers that the painting’s notoriety has rendered it toxic, and he can’t sell it. The work of art becomes burdensome and worthless — to him at least. A more sophisticated criminal, on the other hand, recognizes that a pilfered masterpiece is a unique commodity and that in order to profit from it, he needs to think more like a derivatives trader than a pickpocket.
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