Tag: Learning

trying to open the box

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, thoughts on life and its philosophy

 

Looking at how academic institutions deal with applications by students – and with lecturers who support their endeavour – when it comes to applications there seems to be little hope: one meets ignorance, lack of respect and unqualified ways of handling procedures – I referred to this issue earlier.. I suppose part of the problem is also that we usually accept such misbehavior and move on, allowing ‘them’ to move on their way. Hopeless …

“HOPE is what makes us strong. It is why we are here. It is what we fight with when all else is lost.”
– Pandora’s last words

With this attitude I wrote the letter/mail to some completely ignorant universities: if asking for a reference that supports students to follow their path of curiosity, has any meaning, there are some institutions that themselves delve in complete lack of meaning.

 

Dear colleague, I am writing to you after overcoming some hesitation and also after reflecting if there is any point in it.

Still, for the sake of students and due to my commitment to academia and academic standards I feel obliged to follow up on the way your university is dealing with applications. If there is any claim on hour side to be an academic institution of reputable rank and with an international standing, at least revisiting the following is highly advisable – to say the least.
Lecturers today are encouraged to move, and some actually manage to be engaged by different universities and research institutes – for my part I can humbly state that I had been in the lucky situation of being involved in teaching and research in different countries, linked to various institutions, amongst them those with high international standing. However, this also means that e-mail addresses change. Apparently, so I had been informed, your institution requires students to submit contact details of lectures whom they nominate for their recommendation, valid at the time of teaching. In other words, I had been teaching students who asked me for a reference after I left the respective university – and still the students are asked to provide contact details from an outdated position. In this light, what is really outdated is the requirement you set. It shows that your institution does not reflect standards of todays academia, and instead follows somewhat ‘provincial’, ‘parochial’ ideas. – I may add, that historically at least in Europe, the mobility of academics had been the norm, the settled, academic the exception – settled in terms of space usually also meant settled in thinking, lacking openness to exchange and innovation.
Now, moving on to the next point: In several cases it is [was] possible for me to keep the e-mail address from an earlier position. One option to deal with this is to check different mail accounts. Sometimes it is possible to forward mails; and another option is to set an automatic reply, informing and asking the sender to use a different e-mail-address. I had to chose with one of the accounts the latter option. So, the request for a reference, sent by our university to the one ‘official’ mail address, was answered by such automatic reply, providing an alternative address. Although the mail from your institution was not sent by a completely automated system and replies had been received, the responsible department or person did not consider to react in an appropriate way. On the contrary, later a reminder was sent to the same, inactive, address. This behaviour from your institution shows in my opinion cum gram salis the same attitude as that mentioned previously. It is highly disrespectful, ignoring the serious interests of students and showing no collegiality to academics. It is even topped by the fact that I once set a mail to the relevant department of your institution, using the ‘dormant address’. The rely I received gave apt evidence of the fact that the mail I sent was not properly read.
I may then add: the standardised ‘questionnaires’, used to ask to assess students, are substandard. In general I think it is questionable to use multiple choice questions and similar for such assessment – it is about young personalities and not machines or fat-stock. Still, if such approach is used, the design requires a bit more reflection. If a student of mine, would submit such questionnaire which I had been asked to complete, as part of exams, that student would end, on a generous day, with a very low grade.
Again, the way your institution is currently handling – at least – this part of the application process is simply appalling and lacks any respect towards students and those lecturers who are in a position to support their curiosity about learning. This part of their learning experience provided by you is apt to undermine such curiosity, and teach that studies you offer may not deliver what they promise.
Sincerely disappointed
Peter Herrmann

 

Prof. Dr. Peter Herrmann
Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy/
Max-Planck-Institut für Sozialrecht und Sozialpolitik
[section social law]
– Research Fellow –
….
skype: …
QQ: …
__________
University of Eastern Finland (UEF)
Department of Social Sciences
PL 1627
70211 Kuopio
FINLAND
—-Corvinus University
Institute of World Economy
Faculty of Social Sciences and International Relations
Fővám tér 8
1093 Budapest
HUNGARY
_________
Active Member of the European Academy of Science and Arts

mind snatchers

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, thoughts on life and its philosophy

Back home now, taking up teaching again – and with this the “major challenge” we face – nolens volens

E.P. Thompson wrote in an article in 1970:

Collectively, all of us – all we liberal academics – were struck with a paralysis of will as the system not only grew round us, but built us into its own body-walls. Once inside there it looked as if we were running our bit of the show: but the show itself was being directed towards other ends.

Andrew McGettigan, also quoting this, comes in his review article in Radical Philosophy (186 – July/August 2014) to the conclusion that the really important thing about the book Warwick University Ltd. is the investigative journalism. The importance of such investigative journalism cannot be denied.
And I am right now again made aware of it: there had been the change, now the business school teaching economics with reference to the CORE-programme – I commented earlier on it, saying that there would be some progress at least. During the last days I learned that even this is a questionable assessment, reading in mails:
… we have to bear in mind when looking at the CORE information, that we are teaching economics to u/g students in a Business School and so interprete the information accordingly, although I do however understand that students might be interested these other areas. …
And
… As you state, the e-book is substantial and so we are clearly not covering all aspects in detail but the relevant staff are deciding which aspects of each unit to focus on. You can reasonably assume that we have discussed all of the “Key Points” listed at the end of each unit. …
 Looking then at other documents, I see exactly those walls, replicated and known …, and not touched.
With all the complains, however, we should never forget that there may be a mechanism here name “distraction by attraction”: Being carried away by the presentation of “simple facts”, scandalisation, and also the play with abstract ideas and models lets us easily forget the actual core of any academic work:
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
This surely goes beyond (and deeper than) descriptions and statistical meticulousness and the learning of formulas. Indeed, academics should refrain from moving on the stages, “cutting things into pieces”, describing facts like playing roles. But mind:

That’s enough words for the moment,
Now let me see some action!

While you’re handing out the compliments,
You should also make things happen.
Why talk so much of inspiration?
Delay won’t make it flow, you see.

taking up the “major challenge” we face – nolens volens. And the worse answer is:ignoring it, turning head and mind to business as usual, business in capital letters…

On the world, how we destroy it and how god made us doing it

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, thoughts on life and its philosophy

An interesting and entertaining version of presenting (up to 1.13.46) the destructive power set free by continue do do what Albert Einstein problematised, namely that

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem—in my opinion—to characterize our age.

(Einstein, Albert, 2914: The Common Language of Science”, a broadcast for Science, Conference, London, 28 September 1941; here for the transscript).

And shows that god is result of this limitation of thinking …, and after creating and following god, we simply limit any progress of thinking further – or: we reduce ourselves on being no much more than a puddle. – Perfection of self-abasement … – I referred to this also in an earlier contribution.

academic bloomers

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, projects, works, works, projects, publications

Something is going wrong in academia – is it a matter of the publishing sector or the awarding system? A sentence in Bruno F. Frey’s article on ‘Publishing as prostitution? – Choosing between one’s own ideas and academic success‘ (Public Choice 116: 205–223, 2003) does not provide the answer, though it importantly poses the question.

A well-known example is Akerlof’s “Market for Lemons”, which was rejected by the American Economic Review and the Review of Economic Studies as being “trivial”, and by the Journal of Political Economy for being “too general” before it was accepted by the Quarterly Journal of Economics, which was instrumental in him winning the Nobel Prize.

Will we be able to contribute to the debate during the next days in Shanghai, addressing conference on

Responsible leadership, global citizenship and the role of education – what might the last 10 years tell us about the next 10 years?

organised at theThe Sino-British College, USST, 上海理工大学中英国际学院 ?

Working from rather different perspectives and interests on the contribution, titled “‘Chinese Higher Education in an International Sitting: Progress and Challenges’” (together with Fan Hong/Rzepka, Remi) was already a challenge. The gain for me, against the odds: becoming even more aware of the difficulties to “put students first”.

If I will still be able total up on the new plan: writing an textbook for economics from and for the lifeworld perspective of which the fundamental is that another world is indeed, possible if it trust in the honesty “grand narrative of small people” as main bulwark against strives and lies of old and new princes, West and East.

see also https://youtu.be/6FJxTwHuotI

Disenchantment …

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

or enchantment …?
In sociology we know latest since Max Weber about the disenchantment of the world. And still we cannot completely grasp it … – You may remember an entry some time ago, when I wrote about a chat with a friend, looking at The Other Dimension.

There it was about emotions, the exceptional and the part of life we cannot and do not even want to explain. There is again another dimension, the enchantment and fascination we overlook so often for which we do not have the time. The enchantment by something that seems to be just routine, perhaps even left to the autopilot, and as it is part of daily life we forget to approach it – sure, not least a metaphor, but there is indeed some fascination in so many things that may seem so very ordinary, from approaching a another country by plane to the landing, looking into the eyes of friends. Don’t we do it nearly every day, and don’t we easily forget about it ?

Quoting again from the mentioned Other Dimension:

To take it from Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

There is surely some Madness of Sincerity of which I learned again – finally

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.”

And isn’t the ease with which we are forgetting this also one of the major wrongdoings when we as teaches stand in class, not fully respecting the performance of the students, also by not teaching them that failing in the courses does not mean “to  be a failure”? And moreover, to teach indeed fascinating innovations, making easily forgetting the foundations that are needed tallow them to evolve? In a recent lecture, part of the teaching BA-students at BCC, I tried to do exactly the opposite.

Independent thinking ….

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, thoughts on life and its philosophy, works, works, projects, publications

… and the small steps the academic world undermines it …

Two weeks teaching are over, today with the long Sunday sessions … – it is good to see the students (well, some of them) again being around, eager to learn, interested in understanding the world and gain independent thinking. Sure, independent thinking does by no means deny the meaning of work that had been done – putting all us of on the shoulders of giants and as well on those of the forgotten labouring masses of the academic world on which the monuments of giants are erected. Al this talk about giants and the acknowledgment of the pedestals on which they stand is not just about referencing but it is of fundamental importance to learn about the work that had been done, climbing on the shoulders of giants. And this is not least a matter of methodologies, theories and methods. Only this way we are able to work according to fundamentally important principles: Asad Zaman presents them in the following way:

The first of this is to consider the central role of institutions as mediators of change. … A second principle is “methodological communitarianism,” according to which only collective action creates social change … . A third principle is the strong interaction between the social, economic and political spheres which requires simultaneous consideration of all three … . A fourth principle is the reflexive relationship between theories and history. Changing historical circumstances generate theories designed to understand this change. In turn, theories affect history, since responses to change are mediated by theories. Finally, … social change is initiated by external factors, but understanding the process of change requires considering responses to these external stimuli by various groups.[1]

But what is then about independence? Just before taking up teaching again, I submitted an article to a journal – and the style guidelines deserve in the context of learning independent thinking some special attention:

The use of personal pronouns (‘I’ and ‘we’) is to be generally avoided in the text, as are phrases such as ‘This paper will analyze …’, since the paper itself is an inanimate object and incapable of cognition.

The age old and lasting Werturteilsstreit (value judgment dispute) in new veils. This dispute was at its height before WW I, in the early 1960 and it has its clandestine renaissance now — Doesn’t the quoted formulation suggest that any academic should leave personality, opinion, values etc, at the wardrobe when entering the ivory tower? – Sure, another reading is possible: academics of all disciplines, leave the tower and act in a responsible way wherever responsibility is asked for. Not least on the streets and squares – when crossing them and blocking them …

Coming back too teaching, the challenge remains: how to prepare academics to find the door of the ivory tower, making them thoroughly aware that getting in does not suggest one has to stay inside.

It is indeed still true what had been said in thesis 11:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

Part of my tiny contribution to the interpretation and change can be found here in the lecture recordings, which will be frequently updated throughout the term.

====

[1] Zambian, Asad, 2016: The Methodology of Polanyi’s Great Transformation; in: Economic Thought 5.1: 44-63; here: 46; I may add that I talked about methodological socialism in the book “Opening Views against the Closure of the World” which had been published earlier this year.

Looking back: 教授给学生开设Workshop

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, Peter's Log, works, works, projects, publications

为了让学生学习更多的经济学知识及研究方法，提高学生自主学习能力，我院Peter Herrmann教授针对2014级金融学、会计学两个专业特别开设Workshop。经过面试并遴选40名学生后，Peter Herrmann教授围绕经济学开展一系列专题讨论，包括“大学与市场 (University and Markets)”，“金砖五国与薄荷四国 (From BRICS to MINT)”，“知识产权的维度 (Dimensions of Intellectual Property Rights – Economics and Property)”等。在专题讨论中，Peter Herrmann教授引出话题，学生对各个话题进行深入讨论、发表见解，最后Peter Herrmann教授对主题进行总结，并提出一些问题留给学生课后思考。这种教学模式鼓励学生进行独立思考、自主研究。学生们纷纷表示受益匪浅。更令学生欣喜的是，Peter Herrmann教授给他们颁发了有他和学院教学副院长签名的结业证书。

(from: http://www.bangor.edu.cn/xydt/201606/t20160622_50616.html)

班戈学院Peter Herrmann教授接受湖南日报记者专访

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, general, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log

(for the original see here – credit for the photos: 熊雨晴; Weibo:@大象在拍照; scroll down for the English version)

日前，我院德国籍经济学教授、欧洲基金会顾问彼得·赫尔曼（Peter Herrmann）先生接受了湖南日报记者柏润的专访。访谈全文如下：

记者：

Herrmann教授，你好，您在班戈学院工作的第一年已接近尾声，能和我们的读者谈谈您这一年的感受吗？

Peter:

当然，能在班戈学院工作是我的荣幸。可以说这一年是风平浪静的一年。虽然班戈学院是一所新成立的中外合作办学机构，但是学院各项工作都开展的很顺利。这种合作办学方式对中英两校来说不仅是新的办学模式，更是两校从未跨入过的一个新领域。这一片崭新的土地上原本是很容易困难丛生的，然而所有参与其中的人都以出色的工作、极大的耐心和充分的相互理解克服了重重困难。班戈学院的成功都根植于所有教职员工和学生的付出中。

 

记者:

您是说学生吗? 但是我听说您和您的同事偶尔也会对学生颇有抱怨？是这样吗？

Peter:

当然，我们也会有抱怨。抱怨可以说是教师天性中的一小部分。但是说实话，我们的学生面对的是巨大的挑战，他们要面对全新的课题。开始学术学习就像学习一门新的语言，需要完全转变过去的思维方式。而且，班戈学院的学生接受的是全英文教学，上课和作业都是使用英文，所以你也可以认为他们在进行学术学习的同时也在学习语言。能够面对这样挑战的孩子是值得我们尊重的。

记者:

原本您和班戈学院只签了一年的合同，现在您又决定再续签一年，是这样吗？是什么使您改变主意留下来呢？

Peter:

原因有很多。我一生在不同的机构工作过：既曾在多所大学教书，也有幸受邀在科研机构工作，最近一次是在杭州担任外国高级专家。我曾经有过一些非常难得的机会，能够进入现有条件相当不错的机构工作，我本是不想放弃的。我在国际化环境中工作了30多年，这是我人生的主要组成部分。但是，在班戈学院工作是更加令我兴奋的挑战，能够为两所高校的合作办学贡献力量是一种全新的经历。并且，我的教育范围是非常广泛的，从经济学、社会学到哲学、政治学，还包括一些法律。我的工作范围也涵盖了教学，研究和政治。在班戈学院，我有一个夙愿，希望能够从一个更加广泛的角度进行经济学教学，不仅仅局限于各种方程式，而是使经济学成为人们的实际生活当中能够运用的规则。从而帮助每一个人理解经济学，运用经济学，而不是只有小部分人能使用它。

还有一个原因就是班戈学院的人都非常友善，这是班戈学院“卓越”的一个重要体现。“卓越”这个词现在非常流行，真正的卓越不仅仅是我们能够共同做出一些成绩。有人说我们学者是站在巨人的肩膀上 。但是人们容易忘记，那些“巨人们”在很大程度上也要依靠我们这些“小矮人”——行政人员，教师还有学生。我们需要充分尊重参与学院工作的所有人员，才能保证学院长足的发展。任何一方过于强势都可能造成危机。换句话说，我们要更加重视中英两校的相互学习。

记者:

感谢您参加这次访问。

*****

      Peter Herrmann教授正在专心研读

采访英文原稿如下：

Interviewer:

Peter, the first year of your work at BCC is now coming more or less to an end.

Can you tell our readers a little bit about your impressions?

 

Peter:

Of course, it is actually a pleasure for me. In some way it had been a quiet

year – things went smoothly although the BCC as cooperation between a

Chinese and European university is new: a new experience for the two

participating universities but also in general some new terrain. So, this was

enough new ground for possible problems. However, all, who participated had

been doing a wonderful work and proved by their patience and mutual

understanding that the real value of such project is grounded in people. And

having said“all, who participated” means not least the students.

Interviewer:

The students? But I heard you and your colleagues occasionally complaining a

little bit about the students. Was that a wrong impression?

 

Peter:

Of course we are complaining – it is a little bit part of the nature of teachers:

complaining. But let us be honest: the students face a tremendous challenge.

They enter a subject that is entirely new to them. Academic studying is a world

of entirely different thinking than we are used to – you may say they learn a new

language. And in the case of BCC, the students have to do this by using a

foreign language – all the work is undertaken in English. So you may say that

they are learning two languages at the same time. Taking up this challenge

deserves huge respect.

Interviewer:

Let me come to another point. Originally you signed a contract for one year –

and now you decided to stay for another year. Is that right? And if so, why did

you change your mind and stay on?

 

Peter:

There are different reasons – and in some way it is actually very much linked to

the first point. Throughout my life, I worked in different institutions: teaching at

different universities, having been lucky that I had been invited to join research

programmes – the latest was actually the position of Foreign Senior Expert in

Hangzhou. There had been many outstanding opportunities – and they had

been outstanding because I could join into excellent existing settings. I surly do

not want to miss that. However, here in Changsha the exciting challenge is to

be part of developing something that is more or less new: this joint venture

between the two universities. And as I worked for at least 30 years in

international settings, this seems to be a kind of master plan of my life. It is not

just working internationally, but it is also about contributing to shaping this

process. Of course, it is a small project if we look at the overall development of

international education. And my role in it is small tiny – just one of the many

teachers. Still, there are the different points to it. Working in a new project

means having the opportunity to develop something new. Also: my education is

very broad, beginning from economics and sociology, going to philosophy and

political science and including some law; my professional background

consists of teaching, researching and politics. From there I have a little bit the

ambition to mark the beginning of the teaching economics as something that

has to take a broad perspective, being more than areligion of equations. It has

to be a discipline for people’s real life. As such it can help us to

understand things and to make them work for everybody,not a minority. And not

least: people here are nice – and this is surely part of “excellence” – a term that

is so fashionable today. Real excellence is not least the ambition that we can

develop together something that has a small impact. There is a saying that we

as academics are standing of the shoulders as dwarfs: the administrators, the

teachers and not least the students. And we have to make sure that it moves

further by giving full respect to all sides that are involved. Any dominance from

one side would be dangerous. It also means that the process of mutual

learning need to be emphasised more.

 

Interviewer:

Thank you for the time.

 

Teaching ….

da Peter Herrmann's Blog, posted in academic life - living in academia, joys - what we usually take for it, Peter's Log, thoughts on life and its philosophy

… back in the Middle Kingdom since a week, enjoying teaching learning to “walk economics”. Special fun the workshops – teaching without income (no extra pay), and learning without points (a course, the students take without points etc.).

Sometimes it is really like looking into the eyes of small children who see something amazing for the first time in their life (like a “summer child”, seeing the first snow) – so much more satisfying than looking at the faces of “adult colleagues” who only see what they supposedly know, struggling with maintaining that knowledge, and the jobs in which it is founded. – It is so nice to be witness, and it is so nice to accept again being student, opening the eyes like a small child and exploring together what I seem to know and of which I detect so much that is new.

I would not say renaissance, and increasingly hesitate to celebrate The Renaissance. There is still at least the one fact that needs to be considered: much of what had been ‘detected’ and ‘invented’, was known a long time before and just forgotten. Look for the work of Archimedes – and all those things that had been forgotten. No, the world was not flat in the earlier years – only some people made human kind believe it is flat. And so we find them today again, suggesting in ‘A Brief History of the Twenty-Firts Century’ that ‘The World is Flat’. Namesakes by accident? The one Friedman believes everybody can access everything; the other Friedman emphasing already earlier the Power of the Market.

May be journalistic masterpieces, surely not more than Sunday’s prayers, eye washing, pleading now from all sides for a moral economy, instead of clearly analysing the economy and demanding rights.

My be  I can move the rights part on tomorrow when going to Juzizhou island for a meeting.