Small Consolations Open Thread (Russia Edition)

by 7:10 pm. It has 24 Comments.

At least Betsy deVos hasn’t been responsible for any Amway-branded outbreaks of dysentery in America’s charter schools… that we know of. Yet:

… Yaroslav was one of 127 children aged 3 to 7 who were diagnosed with dysentery after eating food at seven state-run day care centers and kindergartens in Moscow in mid-December.

While reports of dysentery are not new in Russia, they mostly have struck provincial areas far from the capital and in much smaller outbreaks. Even more unusual is that the catering firm blamed by opposition activists for the outbreak at six of the seven Moscow sites is owned by businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.

Prigozhin, who has won $2 billion in contracts for supplying food to Moscow schools since 2009, built an empire on catering and maintenance contracts for the army and has been nicknamed “Putin’s chef” for serving Kremlin functions. He also has been reported to run a private military company known as Wagner that sends Russian contractors to Syria and other countries.

The magnate was among the Russians indicted last year by a U.S. grand jury in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, alleging he funded the internet trolls involved in interfering with the U.S. presidential election in 2016. The U.S. also imposed sanctions on Prigozhin and two of his companies, Concord Catering and Concord Management and Consulting. Prigozhin has denied any involvement, and Putin said last year that while he knew the businessman, he “doesn’t count him” among his friends.[*]

Prigozhin’s company has denied it is to blame for the dysentery outbreak. The cases have caused an outcry, thanks to a lawyer who has turned a spotlight on the caterers and has mounted a campaign to help the parents whose children fell ill…

The Federal Consumer Oversight Agency confirmed 127 cases of dysentery. At public hearings in March, the capital’s chief sanitary official, Yelena Andreyeva, denied early reports that blamed it on cottage cheese supplied by a company from southern Russia. Health and education officials would not say whether the outbreak would make them reconsider signing new contracts with Concord.

Six companies that are either directly owned by Prigozhin or affiliated with him have controlled almost all school and kindergarten catering in Moscow since 2011, providing prepared meals that can be reheated at school kitchens, according to public filings and the Spark-Interfax database…

Or, y’know, we could treat this as a warning of what happens when the Dear Leader’s cronies are allowed to turn government agencies into for-profit opportunities. Even if “science is a Democrat thing“.

[*] Seems like Prigozhin may have to be sacrificed for the good of the Russian-American Oligarchs Friendship Pact, but I’m no for-pol expert…





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TechBro’s Do Education

by 8:44 am. It has 58 Comments.

And they do it poorly:

The seed of rebellion was planted in classrooms. It grew in kitchens and living rooms, in conversations between students and their parents.

It culminated when Collin Winter, 14, an eighth grader in McPherson, Kan., joined a classroom walkout in January. In the nearby town of Wellington, high schoolers staged a sit-in. Their parents organized in living rooms, at churches and in the back of machine repair shops. They showed up en masse to school board meetings. In neighborhoods with no political yard signs, homemade signs with dark red slash marks suddenly popped up.

Silicon Valley had come to small-town Kansas schools — and it was not going well.

“I want to just take my Chromebook back and tell them I’m not doing it anymore,” said Kallee Forslund, 16, a 10th grader in Wellington.

Eight months earlier, public schools near Wichita had rolled out a web-based platform and curriculum from Summit Learning. The Silicon Valley-based program promotes an educational approach called “personalized learning,” which uses online tools to customize education. The platform that Summit provides was developed by Facebook engineers. It is funded by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, a pediatrician.

It’s almost like teachers have something to offer students beyond just wikipedia searches and that hundreds of years of pedagogical research actually has been important. If there is a group of people who work harder with less respect yet contribute more that is unappreciated than public school teachers, I have no idea who it is. Not to mention, they put up with your annoying fucking kids every day, something you breeders can’t even stand.

This is not about education, btw. It’s about money. It’s always about fucking money with these guys. Oh, and ALEC is involved, because of course they are.





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Title inflation and male privilege

by 6:49 am. It has 195 Comments.

This tweet below is a fairly common experience:

I have seen this behavior a lot. Right now, most of the work groups I’m on have a female Ph.D or MD as the primary investigator and team lead. It is not uncommon for them to be referred to as Ms. Doe while all the guys are referred to as Dr. Smith.

I get a massive amount of title inflation. My highest degree of training is a master’s degree and then an ungodly amount of on the job training and exploration. At this point in my life, going back for a doctorate does not make a ton of sense at this time. A doctorate might be something I do once the kids are in college but the current opportunity cost is higher than the benefit.

I talk with the press a lot. I talk with policy analysts frequently. I am a resource for Duke students, staff and faculty to talk about the arcane and obscure aspects of the Affordable Care Act (Silver Loading and Medical Loss Ratios for the win!) and more broadly insurance questions. I get a reasonable number of cold requests depending on the news, policy and semester cycles. /

If I am getting a cold e-mail from someone who is trying to set up a conversation about something I know something about, there is an even chance the greeting is Mr. Anderson. Most of the inaccuracies are for Dr. Anderson or Professor Anderson.

I get a massive amount of title inflation for something that I have not earned. I get that because I’m a white guy who writes with big words and arcane subjects. I benefit from this credential inflation. I always correct as Mr. Anderson whenever I’m referred to as Doctor or Professor as I have not earned those titles, but I don’t know how to change this situation so the table is not as inordinately tilted my way.





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GOP Horrorshow Open Thread: Cartoonishly Evil, If Only This Was A Cartoon

by 3:18 am. It has 38 Comments.

She’s not running one step ahead of The Hague, like her brother Erik Prince, but don’t underestimate Betsy deVos’s capacity for raw power-thuggery.





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Status Admissions Open Thread: Easter Island Educational Institutions

by 10:19 pm. It has 58 Comments.

Opening up post-secondary education to aspiring youth of modest means (as with the land-grant college system) was one of the factors that enabled America’s prosperity boom in the late 1800s… which lead, tragically, to the first Gilded Age. The current retrofitting of our most prestigious educational institutions into ‘daycare centers for adolescents maturing enough to take their nepotism slot at daddy’s business’ is the equivalent of cutting down every tree on the islands to build giant totem figures. It’s good for the elite minority who improve their all-important social status, but not for the survival of society as a whole.

One must have a college degree to get a decent job today; and the value of a degree from one of the top colleges can be measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of one’s career. Getting the most ‘prestigious’ degree possible becomes a Red Queen’s Race…


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