Curios of the week #102

Clipping, endnotes and other ephemera

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Apparently, ‘dog’ is a word with a mysterious origin. By rights, it should be ‘hound’, which stretches back through the Old German ‘hund’ and all the way to those mysterious Proto-Indo-Europeans who begat so many modern languages. And yet ‘dog’, along with a few other words like ‘pig’ and ‘bad’, strangely appeared in English in the middle ages with no obvious precedent.

My own dog or hound, Alfie, has staked a claim to a special spot on our sofa where he can usually be found, provided nobody is eating food and nobody is making a fuss of or playing with him. It is a spot where he can catch the morning sun and keep an eye on the garden in case any nefarious birds venture into it.

This week’s Curios include a nasty blog, cognitive overload, a new think tank and much more.

Funding cut of the week

In recent years, we gained another term for dog: doge. Specifically, this relates to internet memes involving a Shiba Inu dog and, later, a cryptocurrency based on the meme. This is the otherwise mystifying reason why, to a certain sensibility that includes Elon Musk, the name of the new U.S. Department Of Government Efficiency—DOGE—is very funny. Perhaps the humour is lost on those subjected to the new department’s axe.

Those facing the axe include the Institute for Educational Sciences and the federal Education Department. The IES has been responsible for a range of education research and according to Greg Toppo in The 74:

“Several sources said Monday’s moves don’t affect what’s widely considered a key IES function: the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)…

On the chopping block: a host of programs including the What Works Clearinghouse, Common Core of Data, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) database of colleges and universities, and many others. The programs provide Americans with wide-ranging data on school quality, effective school interventions and college data on finances, tuition, financial aid, enrollment, completion and graduation rates, among other indicators.”

Education research may also be affected by DOGE cuts to the National Science Foundation.

This is something of a mixed outcome. While there is no doubt that a majority of education research is worthless, at least in practical terms to teachers, and is often just a self-indulgent stroll through the latest fashionable sociological theories, institutions like the What Works Clearinghouse are notable for insisting on rigorous standards of evidence. DOGE may be axing the good and bad alike.

Whatever your stance, there is a human aspect to this (creative?) destruction. As Jennifer Bendery reports in The Huffington Post:

“One person who works at a research company that contracts with the Institute of Education Sciences, the nonpartisan research arm of the Education Department, said their contracts were all canceled Monday night, “effective immediately.” Another grant recipient said their organization’s Supporting Effective Educator Development grant, or SEED grant, was canceled Monday night. SEED grants are used to help educators develop and expand best practices that can serve as models for others.”

Never mind. Let’s make socially awkward jokes about dogs.

Detention of the week

I have never seen The Breakfast Club. I was around in the 1980s when people used to go to the cinema to watch such films, but these were civilised people and I was not one of them. I understand it is a very good, even iconic, example of a Brat Pack, coming-of-age film complete with that weird thing of 20-somethings playing high school students. So I guess I missed out.