Theodore Brown
-
Re: Re: Do teachers make enough money?
The question here is just what sort of fulcrum one chooses to use to push the idea of higher teacher compensation. There is a tendency to talk about how poorly some teachers are paid, but for the mass of citizens who will vote to approve higher taxes for schools, that may not be the best sort of emphasis. I think one needs to focus over and over again on the costs associated with poor schooling: high dropout rates, low productivity of school graduates, possibly higher costs of social programs that attempt to make up for better schooling in the first place, and so on. The message shou… Read More
April 29, 2008
-
Put the phrase "moral authority" into a Google search, and you will get back something over 670,000 hits. Clearly the expression gets used a lot. But what do people mean when they use it? Many people seem to think that it means the right to weigh in on discussions involving what to do about some tough issue. Other uses suggest that it is a measure of virtue; those who live exemplary lives have moral authority. Or, that one can gain moral authority by having been put through a trial: the John McCain effect. One simple definition is that moral authority is the capacity to convince o… Read More
January 20, 2008
I am a Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, and the Founding Director Emeritus of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. I also served in that institution as Vice-Chancellor for Research, and Dean of the Graduate School, and as interim Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs.
I am a senior coauthor of the text, "Chemistry: The Central Science", now out in its 11th edition, and have authored the books "Making Truth: Metaphor in Science",University of Illinois Press 2003 and "Imperfect Oracle: The Authority and Moral Authority of Science in Society", to be published.
I have served on many boards and panels; e.g., the Government-University-Industry Rountable, the Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory, the Association of Graduate Schools. I presently serve on the Board of Directors of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.
