Can astrology predict when I will die?

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children has recently been in the news a lot for many reasons.  For one, it was recognized with the "The best of the Booker" books.  A movie version, for which Rushdie contributed the screen-adaptation as well, will hit the US screens next week.

The midnight that is referred to in the title is the midnight that India became independent and marked the country's "tryst with destiny" as its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, put it.  India chose that midnight hour for independence, and for its Constituent Assembly to convene, because of the majority opinion of the Indian astrologers that the morning of the 15th was an inauspicious time.  Thus, the midnight, which then made possible the magical title for Rushdie's book--otherwise he would have had to title it "Morning's Children" and that would never have had that same magical appeal ;)

Astrology is a huge deal in India.  From side-walk squatting palm-readers to horoscope-reading specialists in luxurious settings, there are hundreds of thousands who make a living out of predicting others' futures.  As I noted in this post from three years ago:

a classmate from my engineering days is now a much sought after (which means highly paid as well) astrologer in India.  Yes, astrology!  The guy is proving in his own ways that there is a sucker born every minute :) 

Astrology is highly revered by many in India and rarely is anything out of the ordinary life ever scheduled without consulting with the astrologer.  From matching the horoscopes and determining the wedding date and time, to the time when a business venture might be inaugurated, to when one might want to set off on a long voyage, and, apparently, even when a Caesarean operation should be done so that the child will be delivered at the best of all times and not at the worst of all times!

The latest issue (March/April 2013) issue--not online yet--of the Skeptical Inquirer has an interesting piece on a scientific experiment that was conducted in India to test the accuracy of astrological predictions.  Surprise, surprise--they were no better than results that one would end up with by guessing or tossing a coin!

Jayant Narlikar, who is an astrphysicist, and his science colleagues set up an interesting experiment to test the  astrologers' claim that "they are able to tell intelligence from a person's horoscope."  So, they first collected from different schools names of "teenage children rated by their teachers as mentally bright.  They also collected names from special schools for the mentally handicapped."  A total of 100 bright and 100 mentally-challenged children.  Then they obtained the relevant information from the parents of these children and charted their respective horoscopes.

Narlikar and his associates invited astrologers to participate in the controlled experiment--"each participant would be given forty horoscopes drawn at random from our set of 200 and would have to judge whether their owners were mentally bright or handicapped."  Interested astrological organizations--not individuals--would be given all 200 horoscopes.

Long story short, the participants failed, failed miserably at that.  "None were able to tell bright children from mentally handicapped children better than chance.  Our results contradict the claims of Indian astrologers ... In summary, our results are firmly against Indian astrology being considered a science."

The pairing of astrology and science is especially important because it is one crazy country that even legitimizes offering astrology as an academic degree.  Yes, if you are interested, you can work on that degree  thanks to distance education opportunities like the one offered here!

It is a culture where determining auspicious times and seeking the divine assistance is so pervasive a practice, so much so that a few weeks ago:

Ahead of the launch of the Indo- French satellite 'SARAL' onboard ISRO's workhorse rocket PSLV from Sriharikota, ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan today offered worship at the hill shrine of Lord Venkateswara near Tirupati.

In case that didn't impress you enough, the same news item continues:

Since the last two decades, heads of the space agency have made it a practice to visit the the over 2000 year-old Tirumala hill temple to seek divine blessings before every satellite launch, the sources said.

Shouldn't surprise us in a country whose hour of independence was determined by astrologers!

A much younger me, with a whole lot of hair, amusing myself with Linda Goodman's astrology (1989)

The pleasure when students get educated ...

It is only three weeks into the quarter and, therefore, it is too early to celebrate, yes.  But, dammit, I am excited.  I am excited because it is clear that at least a few students are demonstrating that what we are trying to accomplish over the term's ten weeks is a lot more than merely the course contents and their eventual letter-grades.

The larger and nobler goal of liberal education is that even as we engage students with everything from economic geography to biology to literature, they would begin to use these to figure out for themselves the good life they would want to lead and the good and just society in which they would like to live.  And, thus, contribute to making the world a better place for all of us.

We accomplish that by questioning, especially within ourselves.

Thus, when students' essays include comments that reflect that internal inquiry, I get excited.  I am not referring to any youthful and anarchic dismissive statements, but constructive exercises.  While thinking about the economic transformation over the past couple of centuries, a student writes in an assignment:

Instead of taking advantage of what people before us did, we sit and watch television all day. ... I went home with a different mindset and started appreciating all the time I had to do homework, and when I thought I was getting bored I would just think of other activities to do because I should value the free time I have.

Even if the student has already forgotten this and has gone back to the old ways, isn't it fantastic that the light shone brightly for those couple of days?

Another student notes in the context of the complex web of interdependent economic interactions in the world:

A lot goes into making our world livable, but many don't understand or think about these conveniences.  Everyone should take an economic geography class so they too can understand how even small things are actually a big part of our world.

BTW, such opportunities to examine life won't be possible in a typical "test" scenario, especially when students have to merely bubble in their responses, right?  All the way from the K-12 system and into the undergraduate studies, our fascination with testing is simply killing learning.

I worry that students who have been brought up in a standardized testing environment will find it even more difficult to become thinkers and creative people.  I am quite convinced that I am beginning to see that already in my classes.

The gap in what students are expected to know between high school and college is often thought to be vast. A newly released survey quantifies just how wide it is.
Eighty-nine percent of high-school instructors described the students who had completed their courses as "well" or "very well" prepared for first-year, college-level work in their discipline. But only about one-quarter of college faculty members said the same thing about their incoming students. The gap was similar when the survey was last conducted, in 2009.

Even as I worry about all those, a few students like these easily convince me that the future will be in safe hands.  A future that, in a democratic society, will depend on citizens thinking about many, many important issues:

“When we ask about the relationship of a liberal education to citizenship, we are asking a question with a long history in the Western philosophical tradition. We are drawing on Socrates’ concept of ‘the examined life,’ on Aristotle’s notions of reflective citizenship, and above all on Greek and Roman Stoic notions of an education that is ‘liberal’ in that it liberates the mind from bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world.” –Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, 1998

We don't need fancy buildings with climbing walls to achieve these goals, right?

At the college where I did my undergrad
No liberal education there!

Can colleges that are failing produce successful students?

A presenter at one of the sessions that I attended at the conference spoke about the difficulty in capturing how students might be picking up valuable soft skills via their part-time work, and how much we need to understand that.

I agree with her--I have interacted with a number of students whose communication and leadership skills are exemplary, but these were not via classroom instruction.  It was then an added bonus to have such students in the classroom because of those skills they brought to the discussion-based learning that I prefer.

A hand shot up from the back of the room.  "Don't you have student clubs and organizations at your university?"

It didn't require that metaphorical doctorate in rocket science to understand what was going on--the presenter was from the UK and the audience member was from the US.  Very different contexts.

"We do" the presenter replied.  "But they are mostly student-run anyway and we won't be able to capture that ..."

The response from the audience member was all too revealing a statement on the higher education issues in the US.  She said "at [I am withholding the university name she said] where I work we have plenty of people who work on those student life issues."

Yes, the very "student life" bureaucracy that has driven up the cost of higher education is the one she referred to as a plus point for the US.  I chose not to engage her on a discussion about it--no fun constantly being the nagging one with a minority viewpoint!

It is atrocious how much we drive up the cost of education by hiring people in order to provide services all under the pretext of serving the customer--the student, that is.

If asked to explain the wildfire growth of their administrations, college officials would say, “It’s what the customer wants.” That huge “student life bureaucracy,” Johnson observes, was supposed to “enhance the typical student’s campus experience, since these students are incapable of navigating the modern college experience themselves.”   

If that sounds odd given the context—the context being college education, not new cars, clothing, or foodstuffs—you’re right: it is odd. “[T]he vision behind the student life bureaucracy sees the student as a consumer rather than a learner, someone who needs to be accommodated lest he take his finances elsewhere by transferring.” That’s the theory behind it. 

Yet, the faculty member in the audience was promoting the "virtues" of a student life apparatus at her university, when I think that we ought to go the European way--if students want to play soccer, or go hiking, or whatever, they should do that on their dime, er, Euro.

Yes, dear reader, even my university employs full-time staff to coordinate downtime activities for students.  And we think we don't have enough of them!  We are worried that without these, students will drop out of the university or, worse, they will transfer to other universities.

This NY Times piece on "colleges struggling to stay afloat" refers to a report from Bain that I have cited in this blog before:

One-third of all colleges and universities in the United States face financial statements significantly weaker than before the recession and, according to an analysis released last July, are on an unsustainable fiscal path. Another quarter find themselves at serious risk of joining them.
“Expenses are growing at such a pace that colleges don’t have the cash or the revenue to cover them for much longer,” says Jeff Denneen, head of the higher education practice at Bain & Company, the global consulting firm that, along with the private-equity firm Sterling Partners, performed the analysis. “A growing number of colleges are in real financial trouble.”

At public institutions like the one where I work, we don't want to rise up to this financial challenge by looking hard at how we do what we do.  Instead, we press for more money from the government and even use students as lobbyists for this noble cause--in the name of helping students.  That won't work because there isn't enough money in the coffers.  So, we will raise tuition and fees instead.  After all, we need rock climbing walls!

Perhaps the continued financial struggles indicate that there are just too many colleges for the marketplace — or at least too many that, with their climbing walls, lazy rivers and five-star dormitories, look too much alike in the battle for prestige, and have lost sense of their mission. A thinning of the ranks might be long overdue.
Just because we believe that colleges are a public trust and shouldn’t fail doesn’t mean they won’t.

We are already failing--in how much we are not educating students when that ought to be our core and only business.  The financial failure is only a result of veering way off.