9、Classical music and social control

　　Twilight of the yobs

　　Jan 6th 2005 From The Economist print edition

　　How classical music helps keep order

　　THE question of how to control yobbish behaviour troubles many. One increasingly popular solution is classical music, which is apparently painful to teenage ears. Co-op, a chain of grocery stores, is experimenting with playing classical music outside its shops, to stop youths from hanging around and intimidating customers. It seems to work well. Staff have a remote control and “can turn the music on if there's a situation developing and they need to disperse people”, says Steve Broughton of Co-op.

　　The most extensive use of aural policing so far, though, has been in underground stations. Six stops on the Tyneside Metro currently pump out Haydn and Mozart to deter vandals and loiterers, and the scheme has been so successful that it has spawned imitators. After a pilot at Elm Park station on the London Underground, classical music now fills 30 other stations on the network. The most effective deterrents, according to a spokesman for Transport for London, are anything sung by Pavarotti or written by Mozart.

　　When selecting a record to drive people away, the key factor, according to Adrian North, a psychologist at Leicester University who researches links between music and behaviour, is its unfamiliarity. When the targets are unused to strings and woodwind, Mozart will be sufficient. But for the more musically literate vandal, an atonal barrage probably works better. Mr North tried tormenting Leicester's students with what he describes as “computer-game music” in the union bar. It cleared the place.

　　If, however, the aim is not to disperse people but to calm them down, anything unfamiliar or challenging is probably best avoided. At the Royal Bolton Hospital, staff have begun playing classical music in the accident and emergency (A&E) ward, as well as in the eye ward and the main reception area. Janet Hackin, a matron in the A&E ward, says that patients do appear calmer, “rather than running around anxious and bleeding all over the place”. But classical music might not have much effect on the consequences of more liberal licensing laws. “If they're stone drunk and past it then it doesn't have much effect,” confirms Ms Hackin.

　　10、Sex and academia

　　Birdbrained

　　Jan 20th 2005 From The Economist print edition

　　Are women naturally bad scientists?

　　IN HIS three-and-a-half years in the job, the president of Harvard University, Larry Summers, seems to have upset a large number of people. First, he said students were getting too many “A” grades because of grade inflation (which was correct). Then he took on Cornel West, a black professor, over his dodgy extra-curricular activities (again, Mr Summers had a point). Now he has suggested that one of the reasons women achieve less in science and maths is that they have less innate ability.

　　Mr Summers's comments were off the record; but he has since confirmed that he did draw attention to the possibility that innate differences, rather than social factors (such as education and treatment in the workplace) might have a role to play. This has drawn howls of complaint from the usual quarters. But, scientifically speaking, is he correct?

　　There is certainly evidence to suggest that the average male and female brains may be different, with men better able to “systemise” about the world and women better at “empathising”. So are we wired differently from birth?

　　Some clues come from a theory that autism is a developmental disorder that produces an “extreme male brain”. Autism is up to four times more common in boys, and is thought to be caused by high levels of testosterone in the womb. Those who have it tend to be better at puzzles and pattern-related tasks than at verbal communication. Maybe males, with more testosterone in the womb, are simply better at non-verbal skills? A medical description of autism practically reads like a scientific job description. Clumsy and overwhelmed by the physical world, autistic minds are often far more comfortable with the virtual realms of maths, symbols and code.

　　However, even if geeks are naturally male, says Susan Ganter, executive director of the Association for Women in Science in Washington, DC (and a mathematician by training), it would not warrant Mr Summers's comments. Nobody knows to what extent such variations are actually important. They may well be a minor factor, while there are plenty of others that undoubtedly affect female success in science. One of these is that it is very difficult to return to science after a career break to have a child—something Mr Summers also talked about in his speech.

　　Worse, from a scientific viewpoint, Mr Summers may have compounded the problem by mentioning it. A slew of scientific research shows that if people are told they will fail, they will do so.

　　11、No, but maybe yes

　　Feb 10th 2005 | NEW YORK From The Economist print edition

　　The city's mayor goes deliberately ambivalent

　　LAST year San Francisco's Mayor Gavin Newsom began handing out marriage licences to any gay couple who wanted one, only to find himself in a mess when California's courts ruled that the licences had no legal validity. Now New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg has taken the opposite line. The Republican mayor is appealing against a lower court's decision allowing the city clerk to issue marriage licences to homosexuals (this contradicted two recent court decisions elsewhere in the state) while at the same time promising to push for a change in New York's laws.

　　This has brought predictable snorts from his opponents. The city council's Democratic speaker (and would-be mayor), Gifford Miller, has joined the crowd calling the mayor a coward. Another Democrat, Fernando Ferrer, Mr Bloomberg's most serious rival in the next election, calls him “opportunistic”. And a fellow Republican, Thomas Ognibene, who would also like the mayor's job, has called him “spineless”.

　　Legal recognition of a marriage has many practical consequences in America. There are, according to one gay-rights group, 1,100 federal benefits directly tied to marriage, to say nothing of hundreds more provided by states and private employers, as well as rights connected with inheritance and insurance coverage. All this adds to the homosexuals' argument for recognition of their marriages.

　　If the case now goes directly to the state's highest court, there will either be a full judicial endorsement of gay marriage, which Mr Bloomberg would endorse, or (more likely) the opposite. At present the state's law, as the plaintiffs acknowledge, is quite clear in not permitting same-sex marriage. However, in ruling in favour of five couples who last summer demanded marriage licences from the city clerk's office, the lower court said the law was unconstitutional on two grounds: failure to provide equal protection (by treating people differently because of their sexual orientation); and failure to provide due process (by failing to allow people the right of privacy to arrange their marriage free of unjustified government interference).

　　These arguments touch on difficult areas of law, and so far have arisen primarily in abortion and sodomy cases; the results have left neither side really happy. The Bloomberg approach, if successful, might ultimately encourage an endorsement of gay marriage to come about through the legislature, by a change of law backed by political will and public opinion. That will not be easy to achieve. Only a third of the people in New York state, on the evidence of current opinion polls, are in favour of gay marriage.

　　12、Exams

　　A-levels reprieved

　　Feb 24th 2005 From The Economist print edition

　　Big changes are coming to exams, but not the ones that teachers wanted

　　CRITICS of vocational education are snobs, obsessed with academic qualifications. That was the official line—but now reality is dawning. Ruth Kelly, the education secretary, this week described vocational qualifications as “second-class and second-rate”.

　　Sad, but true: if you are clever at school, you do lots of GCSE exams at 16, a bunch of A-levels at 18, and go to a good university. If you are not, you end up with rather few GCSEs, and instead do a confusing mix of qualifications with off-putting names like NVQ, GNVQ, AVCE, GSVQ, or BTECH; 3,500 variants are possible (nobody keeps a full count). If you get into a university, it is unlikely to be Oxford.

　　The current system of educating 14-19-year-olds is not just insanely complicated. It also pleases almost nobody. Employers complain that around a third of school leavers lack even the most basic numeracy and literacy. About a quarter of the least able pupils drop out at 16. The most able find it too easy to get A-grades at A-level, meaning that admission to sought-after university courses becomes a lottery.

　　Last year, in an official report, Sir Mike Tomlinson, a former chief schools inspector, proposed ingenious changes. The system should be more demanding, yet also more flexible, and more broadly based. The central proposal was to replace the existing exams with all-encompassing diplomas. That pleased the egalitarian-minded, who liked the idea of having the same kind of exams for both hairdressing and physics. But many—including the prime minister—regard even flawed A-levels and GCSEs as better than none.

　　So this week Ms Kelly binned Sir Mike's central recommendation, saying that A-levels and GCSEs would stay. The educational establishment is furious. But three big changes are coming.

　　The first is to make basic maths and English compulsory. The current benchmark for 16-year-olds, reached by 53% of pupils, is five passes at C or above at GCSE. But a fifth of those skip maths, English or both. Under the proposed scheme, five GCSEs will be relabelled a diploma—but gaining passes in new “functional” maths and English will be mandatory. Those failing to reach this at 16 will keep trying, rather than leaving. From next year, school-performance league tables will be based on the new benchmark.

　　The second idea is to give disaffected pupils something to do outside school. From the age of 14, they will be offered placements with employers for two days a week. That sounds fine—although finding employers keen to take schools' least-favourite pupils, and willing to overcome the legal and insurance problems of having minors on the premises, will be hard. The third change will be to allow clever pupils to take exams early, or even skip some of them altogether, and start more advanced courses while at school. That should help identify the brightest. It too sounds a fine idea, but even top private schools, with lots of money and good teachers, find it tricky to timetable lots of variation within one age-group's lessons. Teaching a subject at the same level to bright 13-year-olds alongside struggling 17-year-olds, for example, is not a recipe for classroom harmony.