Oxford University Press's Blog, page 33

The musician’s journey: preparing our students as entrepreneurs

The musician’s journey: preparing our students as entrepreneurs

Today, our college and university music students are facing a rapidly changing global marketplace. There are new technologies, career options, virtual education, and so forth. As educators, we continue to focus on the highest standards of pedagogy. However, we need to also expand our curricula to include the necessary preparatory training in skills that will transcend a dizzying rate of change. We are preparing our music students in some cases for jobs that may not yet exist! At the very least, our students are unlikely to simply inherit our careers. Rather, their careers are in their hands. And with entrepreneurship training they have the greatest advantage in developing thriving careers in today’s marketplace.

As we prepare our students for an entrepreneurial world, we must do so within the context of musical and intellectual rigor as well. Tradition and excellence meet innovation and imagination. The good news is that artists can indeed create thriving careers. If you need evidence, I direct you to two landmark research projects, both published in 2011. These groundbreaking studies came from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) out of Indiana University, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

The SNAAP study constitutes to date the largest dataset gathered about the lives and careers of arts graduates, including 13,851 alumni from 154 different arts programs. They found that arts grads were putting together diverse career options with strong indications of personal satisfaction, and that most of the thriving artists tended to be highly entrepreneurial with similar levels of employment as other college graduates. The NEA’s study, “Artist Employment Projections Through 2018,” found that the projected growth rate for artists by 2018 was at 11%, with the overall labor force growing by 10%. Clearly, the notion of the starving artist is far from accurate.

While it may seem daunting, there are several innovative strategies that can incorporate entrepreneurship training within an undergraduate music degree program, requiring few if any additional budgetary resources or additional faculty time. The applied-lesson studio is the ideal setting for this since it is already home to academic advising, senior capstone projects, internships, professional networking, audition preparation, and the crafting of applications for postgraduate employment or advanced study.

A model for developing effective entrepreneurial training can be found in what I call “curricular cells.” For over twenty years, I have used this idea effectively with college students. These self-contained curricular cells function as units of instruction, as opposed to having one course for “music entrepreneurship,” or even a bona fide degree in this area. They are: Entrepreneurial Advising, Experiential Learning, and Entrepreneurship Instruction. These cells are sewn into the fiber of the applied-lesson studio. Depending upon the individual needs of the student, they can be swiftly adapted and developed to suit any emerging music entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurial Advising can begin at the end of the sophomore year. By then, students are usually ready to consider a deeper exploration regarding career preparation and to consider more profound questions such as: What is my personal vision as a musician? Why am I drawn to study music? What are my nascent career goals? What is needed to realize those dreams? At this juncture, one of my standard questions to my students is, “What would your perfect life look like ten years from now?” This prompts a host of responses that go far beyond what’s received in response to the more frequently asked question, “What will you major in at the university?”

At the heart of all thriving entrepreneurs is the understanding that first one must have a vision of what they wish to accomplish. This is followed by a concrete plan to achieve that vision. Successful teachers know this and can impart that wisdom to their students. Moreover, the music industry contains a diverse array of professional paths.

The second curricular cell I utilize is Experiential Learning. Students need hands-on marketplace experiences before they leave the protective cloister of our studios. I require my students to consider their senior capstone project as early as their sophomore year. By the junior year, students design their project and create a doable plan with the necessary timelines, all within the degree requirements of the major they have chosen. These professional projects may encompass performance, internship/thesis, job shadowing, a foray into music publishing, recording, journalism, financial development and fundraising, artist management, music technology, arts administration, and so forth. Through these professional projects, students also benefit from networking in an area they wish to explore, perhaps leading to a job. Furthermore, they acquire real world experience.

The third curricular cell that I include is that of Entrepreneurship Instruction. What this cell looks like can vary, as it requires using the resources at hand. For example, a weekly studio performance seminar is a great place to expose our students to new ideas. At least once a semester, I invite an industry professional to lecture on a topic of their choosing. I often organize exchanges with my colleagues. With professional bartering, numerous resources are available. A colleague in the music industry might be a great resource for students to hear about the vast array of jobs in our profession. On campus visiting artists are also an excellent resource, and they usually enjoy sharing career advice with students.

What can you add? Maybe a weekend retreat for exploring the idea of a professional vision. Create collaborative projects between students: a model for building an arts consortium. Discover volunteer opportunities for your students. Source an internship suited to your student that directly corresponds to their career aspirations. There is much more to say about this topic. Fundamentally, however, we want to teach our students that their careers are in their hands, that they must work creatively to develop opportunities, acquire the necessary skills for their careers, and be flexible, engaging in lifelong learning. In nurturing entrepreneurial skills alongside students’ artistic journeys, we empower them to find fulfilling careers—and lives.

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Late winter etymology gleanings and a few little-known idioms

Late winter etymology gleanings and a few little-known idioms

Questions and answersSheeny

Ms. Melissa Mizel found my post for July 29, 2009, on the ethnic slur Sheeny “Jew” and sent me her idea about the etymology of this ugly word. I returned to that post and was both glad and sorry to find numerous comments added to it quite recently. Nothing can be done about the system, but unfortunately, I have only now discovered the latest musings. When I write an essay, I am eager to learn what the readers will say, but if a suggestion appears years later, how can I discover it? In any case, I have reread the 2009 post and all the comments. The origin of Sheeny remains “unknown,” and the opinions are divided between the etymon I cited (the Yiddish variant of Standard German schön “beautiful,” an epithet used, as it appears, mockingly; this is the majority opinion) and some Irish word. Melissa Mizel wonders whether Sheeny may have originated in the Jewish community in Edinburgh that was close to Sciennes (pronounced sheens) Road, where the first Jewish cemetery was established in 1816. This gives us the earliest possible date for the origin of the slur. I hope that her thought-provoking suggestion will call forth speedy answers from those who know more about the subject than I do.

Goose milkSilverweed, also known as Potentilla anserina, fed to young geese (Latin anser “goose”). The closest approach to goosemilk we could find. By Matt Lavin, CC2.0 via Flickr.

Mr. Alan Mighty sent us several interesting quotations with this phrase, and it turned out that goose milk was not invented in the American south. Goose’s milk occurs in the English translation of Athenaeus’s Deipnosophists. Since the Internet gives all the necessary information about the Greek author and his work, I’ll let those who are interested in the subject do the search for themselves. In the English text, we find goose’s milk, and it remains unclear how to obtain that food product. The British author Lydia Helen Burton (in the novel Abbots Thorpe, 1864) also knew about the existence of goose’s milk! The context is not illuminating. As for the pigeons, the only lactating birds in nature (Mr. Mighty mentions them too), I was well aware of their existence: see the entry cushat in An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology. But the trouble with the American phrase referred to in my post is that both characters use goose milk (not goose’s milk) ironically, and it seems to mean something like “the project may (or might) look difficult to some, but it is not.” Surprisingly, the most comprehensive dictionaries seem to have missed this slangy idiom. Other than that, search the Internet for goose milk. Great fun!

The desire of the moth for the star, or wishful thinking. White and Black Pendant Lamp by Евгения Егорова, via Pexels. Wishful thinking

The question was about the age of this phrase. It seems to have been coined in the nineteen-thirties and has always meant the same, namely, the belief that something one wants to happen will indeed happen, with the implication that the belief is a product of self-deception. According to the OED, in the sixteenth century, wishful meant “longing, desirable, desirous.” Then we find only “desirous,” and finally, “colored by what one desires for the future.” Yet today, wishful (“suggesting a wish”) hardly ever carries positive connotations. The path from “desirable” to “illusionary” is a rather mild case of what historical linguists call deterioration of meaning, as opposed to amelioration of meaning.

Matt’s money

See Stephen Goranson’s comment on a previous post. He seems to have unearthed the real person, alluded to in the idiom. If he guessed well, my fear that we are dealing with a fictitious figure, someone like the elusive Jack Robinson (before you can say Jack Robinson), was ungrounded.

Little-known phrases and idioms

As promised, I am continuing to cite some idioms and phrases not included in my dictionary Take My Word for It. Here are a few examples with the word butter. Many idioms with butter are well-known and widely used, for instance, (he looks as if) butter would not melt in his mouth, bread always falls on the buttered side (incidentally, that is why it is important to observe on which side your bread is buttered!), a bread-and-butter letter, and so forth. One of the most interesting butter connections in etymology is through the word butterfly (see my old post “Wilhelm Oehl and the Butterfly” for August 22, 2007). But here is a more exotic example. (1907, from Somersetshire; the West Midlands on the Welsh border): “They were as thick as butter, as the sayin’ is, but now they don’t speak.” Thick as butter is reminiscent of thick as thieves, but, unfortunately, it does not alliterate.

Unless our idioms go back to some phrases in Greek, Latin, and the Bible, they are usually not particularly old. In the days of Sigurd, Beowulf, and Roland, people understood similes but had not yet mastered figurative meanings, so that no one would have said to kick the can down the road or it blew my socks off unless one really did so or witnessed such a scene. The art of speaking in unborrowed metaphors came to the Europeans only with the Renaissance. Today, sayings of this type are the veritable sand of the sea, and I am not sure that even all such phrases as surfaced in print have found their way into collections. The phrase I’ll now cite is a proverbial saying, rather than an idiom.

The examples below go back to 1921, and, like thick as butter, were recorded in Notes and Queries. There seems to be or to have been the saying “Butter goes mad twice a year.” It occurred in the speech of a native of Hertford (southeast-central England) and was followed by the suggestion that the allusion might be to the tendency of butter to melt in summer and harden in winter. Jonathan Swift knew the phrase. This is an exchange in his A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation: “Miss, the weather is so hot, that my Butter melts on my Bread.” “Why, Butter, I’ve heard ‘em say, is mad twice a Year.” Before Swift, it occurred in the 1607 collection of English proverbs by John Ray, one of the most famous books of its kind.

Look at the udder but don’t neglect the horn. Image from the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection. The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Public Domain.

Ray also included a rather obscure saying in his Proverbial Observations Concerning Husbandry: “Butter’s once a year in the cow’s horn.” The following explanation may perhaps shed some light on that pronouncement: “…in the late autumn, when cows were milked in the open, it happened that the hands of the dairy-maids were dry and cold when milking-time came. They used then to lubricate their hands. In my youth I have seen the milkers use some fatty ingredient, probably inferior butter, for that purpose. It was procured out of a cow’s horn hanging on to one of the milk pails.” See the entire exchange, referred to above, in Notes and Queries, Series 12, No. IX, 1921, pp. 331, 375, and 415.

Feature image: Edinburgh, Sciennes House Place, Jewish Burial Ground. CC4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Faith in God, themselves, and the people: Black religious activist-educators

Faith in God, themselves, and the people: Black religious activist-educators

I started my first seminar on Radical Pedagogy, reflecting with students on a provocative blog entitled “10 Reasons Septima Clark was a Badass Teacher.” Beyond the shock value of using badass in a divinity school setting, the students were curious about why I started with this lesser known (if not completely unknown) figure from the 1950s Civil Rights era. Most of the students were interested in community organizing and the educational philosophies of the well-known authors on the syllabus like Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and bell hooks. Septima Clark was not a “key figure” like these and even in her own time, she often did not make headlines. Yet it was she who joined Martin L. King, Jr. as he went to accept his Nobel Peace Prize, and it was her work in the Citizenship Schools which Andrew Young credits with “training” an entire generation of leaders across the southern United States (Levine, 388).

I asked my students how she could be so important to these figures and generally unknown to others? So, as my students quickly went to Google more about Clark, I began to explain that Clark embodied one of the types of radical pedagogy that I wanted them to explore. She embodied what I have come to describe as a radical, pragmatic, and improvisational pedagogy—one that empowered educators like Clark (and the many she trained) to respond to the unexpected challenges of educating children and adults who for the most part had been systemically kept from education and disenfranchised from the typical venues for advancement in the United States. Clark also embodied a deep activist faith that drew upon her Methodist roots but came to life in her genuine love of people and her ability to have faith in them (to trust them) to learn, to lead, and to be able to fully participate in their lives if they were trained.

However, describing her pedagogy did not fully convey why I researched and esteemed this woman. So, I invited the students to participate in a simple lesson, where we learned to hold pencils. Yes, we learned to grasp pencils in our hands, and wonder at the types of frustrations we would encounter if something as simple as a pencil stood outside our grasp and beyond our mastery, because our lives had not ever been accustomed to this type of labor. These were the types of students that Clark started teaching when she attempted to teach adult literacy in the rural south. Students who I imagine broke pencil after pencil because they were more used to holding a plow than a delicate writing utensil. Likewise, I asked my students to break their pencils. This simple request to break something I paid less than 7 cents each for and that did not cost the students a thing caused them to pause. Some refused outright. Others did it but were hard-pressed to explain why they felt guilt, pain, and shame doing so, even when it was the direct instruction of their professor. These reactions illumined the difficult and unforeseen hurdles to literacy and education which Clark and her fellow teachers could have never imagined, but had to creatively respond to as they attempted to help their students have a better chance at becoming fully engaged participants in their communities and lives.

The next time I taught my seminar on radical pedagogy, I started with a TED Talk by a long time public school educator, Rita Pierson. She was equally unknown at the time, but created less initial confusion than Clark, as most students assumed that if she was doing a TED Talk, she was important. And yet, I could see them waiting for the moment when she would give them the one idea that would change all their thoughts and practices regarding education. While no students voiced disappointment, there were many who just did not see her as a “radical” educator. She was not calling for a complete overhaul of the educational system. She did not start a special charter or private school. Her talk instead is most well-known for the phrase that “every child needs a champion, an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection, and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.” Pierson emphasizes the importance of relationships and human contact within education. As a veteran teacher, she had seen her share of educational reforms and new instructional techniques, but what endured was the power of relationships in helping students (even the most academically deficient students) become successful. Thus, while students initially trusted me when I presented a TED video, I got strange looks as I again presented a seemingly unlikely exemplar of radical pedagogy.

Pierson’s was a pedagogy that centered, as did Clark’s, on empowering students with basic skills, responding to unexpected challenges, and taking time to get to know the students and families they were engaging with. Pierson, over the course of her career, encountered students historically and geographically far removed from the children and adults Clark was teaching in the pre-civil rights era south; however, the social and economic challenges among their students were strikingly similar.

Sometimes, I too have wondered with my students about my focus on teachers like Clark and Pierson. I thought I wanted to research the type of education and spirituality that leads to massive change (and movements), and yet I was studying the spiritual lives of TEACHERS, long time, primarily public school teachers. But in honesty, I have found renewed joy and energy in studying “teachers”—not just the philosophies which undergirds their actions but the complex and sometime messy stories of how they came to commit their lives to teaching. They have inspired me and reminded me of the ongoing significance of education and individual teachers in transforming the lives and futures of generations (even as generations of education as a practice of freedom has been undermined and the academic study of education have been challenged or reduced to mere technique). And as I delved into their stories, I found myself drawn to the ways that their faith or spirituality often emerged as an animating factor in their work. Sometimes I could point to direct ways that teachers were inspired by a religious conviction or community to live or act in a particular way. But more often, I found in these teachers an embodiment of what Audrey McCluskey describes as “activist-educators.” McCluskey describes her cadre of Black women activist-educators as having an intriguing and unwavering faith in God, themselves, and their students. In a word, mining the spiritual wisdom of Black teachers has reminded me of the ways that Black teachers, across the 20th century and today, while exceedingly complex, collectively inspired movements for and with Black students; and through their lives teach us to attend to the ways that Black religious traditions permeate the worlds of Black women educators in both expected and unexpected ways.

Significant portions of this blog were previously published as:

Wright, Almeda M. 2016. “Unknown, but Not Unimportant! Reflecting on Teachers Who Create Social Change.” Religious Education, 111 (3): 262-268. DOI: 10.1080/00344087.2016.1172861

Featured image: Part of classroom with teacher. Prairie Farms, Alabama by Marion Post. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.

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The first women’s shelter in Europe? Radegund’s Holy Cross

The first women’s shelter in Europe? Radegund’s Holy Cross

‘With the passion of a focused mind, I considered how to advance other women so that—the Lord willing—my own desires might prove beneficial for others. […] I established a monastery for girls in the city of Poitiers. After its foundation, I endowed the monastery with however much wealth I had received from the generosity of the king.’

– Radegund, Letter to the Bishops

Radegund wrote these words while reflecting on her greatest achievement: the foundation of the convent of Holy Cross in Poitiers. She had every reason to be proud of this monastic house, which represented a triumph over the adversity she had faced previously in life—a manifestation of her personal resilience in stone. But was it something more? Had Radegund intended to create a sanctuary for women like herself, who had suffered everything that early medieval politics might inflict on highborn girls, to find refuge and peace? If Holy Cross was in fact a women’s shelter, then it was the first of its kind.

Born a princess to the Thuringian royal house, almost 1500 years ago, the young Radegund endured a series of tragedies: orphaned in her earliest years, she then witnessed the invasion of her homeland by the Frankish king, Chlothar, who slaughtered most of her remaining family and took her as his war captive. The king placed her in one of his rural villas, where she was guarded, raised, and in some ways treated like a slave. While still very young, she was forced to marry him, despite her efforts to run away. Radegund endured her marriage until Chlothar ordered the murder of her brother, her only surviving close kin.

After Radegund escaped her miserable marriage, but before she founded Holy Cross, she created her first institution for women in need: a hospital in a villa in Saix, which offered beds specifically for infirm women. ‘She herself washed them in warm baths, treating the putrid flesh of their diseases’, wrote one of her biographers. Radegund also provided treatment for men in Saix, but separately and without beds. This foundation can be fairly described as the first women’s hospital in Europe.

“If Holy Cross was in fact a women’s shelter, then it was the first of its kind.”

In her next effort to support her stated goal—the advancement of other women—Radegund founded Holy Cross in Poitiers. She accepted other highborn women into what became a religious house of considerable size, with around 200 nuns. Although the circumstances of entry are usually obscured from the historian, the example of Basina is both evidenced and instructive. The daughter of the Frankish king Chilperic I, Basina lost her mother, who was murdered at the hands of a rival—Queen Fredegund, who became Basina’s stepmother. Fredegund next turned her malevolent intentions to Basina, who was, according to the Histories of Gregory of Tours, ‘dishonoured by the slaves of the queen and sent into a monastery’. While most translators have interpreted the word deludere (rendered here as ‘dishonoured’) to mean something like ‘tricked’, it is much more likely that the word functioned as a euphemism for sexual assault, as suggested by Bruno Dumézil and explained in greater detail by Rachel Singer. Thus, historians have mistakenly thought that Radegund conspired in Fredegund’s trickery, when in fact she had offered refuge to a victim of sexual violence.

Radegund ensured that Holy Cross served as a protective environment for Basina, who was sheltered from the consequences of political life outside its walls. When Chilperic tried to reclaim Basina and marry her to a Visigothic prince, for example, Radegund resolutely refused. This was a fear that Radegund herself knew all too well: she had long worried that her former husband Chlothar, might try to reclaim her. This possibility was, according to one of her biographers, a fate she feared worse than death. History records one occasion, when a terrified Radegund successfully implored a high-ranking bishop to urge Chlothar to change his mind. Legend records another instance, in which nature herself protected the former queen. In an incident known as the ‘Miracle of the Oats’, Radegund fled into a field to escape Chlothar’s grasp. Recognising the vulnerability of the holy woman, the oats quickly grew so high that Radegund was concealed from Chlothar’s view. When the king saw that he had no hope of finding his former wife, he abandoned his pursuit.

Whether or not she was assisted by miraculous plants, Radegund ensured, just as she wrote in her Letter to the Bishops, that her efforts were beneficial not only for herself, but also for other women.

Featured image by Marie-Lan Nguyen via Wikimedia Commons.

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Analysis of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Agenda

Analysis of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Agenda

Nuclear risk analysis will not save us

In a context of intensifying great power competition and deep divergences of view between nuclear and non-nuclear powers on the urgency of nuclear abolition, ‘nuclear risk reduction’ has gained renewed attention as a pragmatic framework for managing and reducing nuclear dangers. The pitch is simple. With more fundamental policy changes either undesirable or out of reach, government officials, parliamentarians, and civil society actors invested in nuclear arms control and disarmament should focus their efforts on humanity’s ‘shared interest’ in curtailing the risk of nuclear weapon use. This means collectively identifying, analysing, and sequestering so-called nuclear risk scenarios.

Centring the nuclear policy conversation on the risk of use, so goes the argument, promises to slash political polarisation between nuclear and non-nuclear powers, increase trust between states, and, most fundamentally, help manage or gradually depress nuclear dangers—perhaps even to the point of a ‘permanent escape’ from nuclear jeopardy. There is broad support among experts and officials, including many supporters of abolition, for devoting time and resources to discussing nuclear risk and risk reduction measures across domestic, bilateral, and multilateral political forums.

In a new article for International Affairs, we interrogate the assumptions underpinning the line of thinking set out above and conclude that the diplomatic orientation variously referred to as the nuclear risk reduction ‘framework’, ‘template’, ‘agenda’, or ‘approach’ offers a false promise for those seeking durable, shared solutions to the nuclear predicament.

To be clear, our gripe in this article is not with specific diplomatic measures or attempts at progressively reducing the salience of nuclear weapons in world politics. We do not mean to suggest that limited technical or diplomatic measures—be it the fitting of electronic locks on warheads, maintenance of systems for crisis communications, or doctrinal changes—cannot be worthwhile or even risk reducing in an objective sense. Instead, our contention is that these measures are not categorically derivable from risk analysis, that nuclear risks and deterrence cannot be reliably ‘managed’ over the long term, and that risk analysis offers a poor overarching framework for those eager to advance nuclear devaluing and disarmament. Advocates of the latter, we suggest, would be better off anchoring their demands either in explicit normative commitments or a general ethic of restraint.

We see three big problems for the risk reduction agenda. The first is that meaningful risk analysis requires access to a level of knowledge and foresight that is quite simply unattainable in the secretive and often contingent world of nuclear politics—a world where even a single error could prove disastrous. Epistemic errors and knowledge gaps could end up leading policymakers down dangerous paths. A second challenge is that risk thinking often encourages an unduly instrumental view of complex techno-political systems, inviting potentially catastrophic overconfidence. As we show in the article, central luminaries of the risk reduction school have systematically underestimated the chances of disaster, placing outsized faith in leaders’ ability to maintain control in difficult situations. The third and final problem we identify is that the risk reduction framework is too indeterminate to steer diplomatic action. As a result, discussions of nuclear risk can easily be coopted, and nuclear-armed leaders cannot be held accountable for their actions one way or another.

Tellingly, the risk reduction agenda has lent itself to everything from calls for deep nuclear stockpile reductions to demands for new nuclear weapons acquisitions and a resumption of explosive nuclear testing. And as long as nuclear risks remain effectively unmeasurable, risk analysis cannot adjudicate these disagreements. What’s more, and contrary to what its proponents often claim, the risk reduction agenda is severely circumscribed by the putative requirements of nuclear deterrence. Deterrence practices, after all, are necessarily ‘risky’ as the credibility of nuclear deterrence, in particular extended nuclear deterrence, depends on ‘threats that leave something to chance’.

Proponents of the nuclear risk reduction agenda would be right to point out that the current international security environment does not look particularly conducive to radical nuclear policy changes. Implementing common-sense measures of restraint would be better than doing nothing, they might argue. We do not disagree. Our objection is that the radical uncertainty that defines the nuclear world renders ‘risk reduction’ a poor overarching frame for diplomatic action; the discourse of risk, we suggest, does not offer advantageous terrain for advocates of change. If what proponents of nuclear risk reduction really want to do is to promote nuclear de-alerting, new or improved communication hotlines, ‘deterrence only’ postures, risk reduction centres, or the adoption of no-first use policies, they should just do that and not invite a discussion about unmeasurable risks that can easily be coopted by those eager to do the opposite. The search for a consensus-based, ‘pragmatic’ approach to nuclear arms control and disarmament—a nuclear politics without politics—is in vain.

Feature image by Kilian Karger via Unsplash.

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Of language, brain health, and global inequities

Of language, brain health, and global inequities

One of the greatest public health challenges of our century lies in the growth of neurodegenerative disorders. Conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and frontotemporal dementia stand as major contributors to disability and mortality in affluent and under-resourced nations alike. Currently affecting over 55 million individuals, their prevalence is expected increase significantly by 2050—especially in less developed countries, where risk factors are most impactful and mainstream clinical approaches least developed.

Language research in the fight against neurodegeneration

Against this background, researchers from various fields are searching for new, affordable, and scalable digital innovations to facilitate diagnosis and other clinical tasks across the globe. Speech and language assessments have emerged as crucial tools, offering robust insights for detecting, characterizing, and monitoring these diseases. For instance, individuals with Alzheimer’s often struggle with word retrieval, experience difficulties in constructing grammatically complex sentences, and exhibit challenges in understanding or expressing figurative language. These linguistic deficits appear in early and preclinical disease stages, differentiate Alzheimer’s from other forms of dementia, allow predicting the onset of core symptoms, and even capture brain anomalies that typify the disorder.

These clinical applications can be boosted through artificial intelligence tools. New digital technologies allow capturing specific alterations in recorded or written language samples in a non-invasive, patient-friendly, and cost-effective way. Such is the type of solution required to reduce clinical disparities across low-, middle-, and high-income countries. Multicentric research initiatives, large grants from leading funding agencies, and science-based companies are spearheading exciting projects to validate and expand this novel framework. However, a critical challenge looms large: the lack of linguistic diversity in the field threatens its scalability and undermines its potential for more equitable testing worldwide.

Disorders of language vs. disorders of languages

The field is marked with inequities. Less than 0.5% of the world’s 7,000 languages have received any attention in this research field. Also, although English is spoken by roughly 17% of the world’s population, it accounts for nearly 70% of all published studies on speech and language in neurodegeneration. Moreover, large language models and feature extraction tools are available for only a handful of languages. Of course, none of this would be a major issue if links between language anomalies and brain dysfunctions were universal across the world’s languages—if that were the case, we could rely on the abundant findings from English and apply them to patients worldwide, irrespective of their language. Unfortunately, the reality is much more complicated.

As it happens, cross-linguistic differences deeply influence the presentation of speech and language symptoms, challenging the universality of existing diagnostic criteria and candidate disease markers. For instance, a sentence production study showed that Italian-speaking persons with Alzheimer’s could be identified by their tendency to omit subjects, a phenomenon notably absent in their English-speaking counterparts. The distinction lies in the inherent structure of the languages. Unlike English, Italian allows deducing sentence subjects from verb conjugations (the Italian verb ‘camminiamo’ inherently implies a first-person plural subject, whereas the English verb ‘walk’ requires a preceding ‘we’ to convey the same meaning). More strikingly, linguistic anomalies may be diametrically opposed between languages. For example, research on Alzheimer’s shows that different pronouns (words like ‘I’, ‘their’, ‘ours’) tend to be overused among English-speaking patients and underused in Bengali-speaking patients—relative to healthy speakers of the same languages. This, too, likely reflects differences between both languages, as Bengali grammar includes many more (and morphologically more complex) pronouns than English. Succinctly, the linguistic markers that may signal a given disease among speakers of one language may not be relevant among speakers of another language.

Taking action

These findings underscore the need to consider language diversity when examining the linguistic impact of neurodegenerative conditions. Such is the call we raised in our recent article in Brain (García et al., 2023). Researchers must broaden the representation of languages, incorporating diverse linguistic communities to identify shared and distinguishing properties. Multicentric collaborations, harmonized protocols, and cross-linguistic tools must be forged for a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of neurodegeneration across regions and cultures. The path forward requires overcoming core challenges, such as establishing robust pipelines for comparing outcomes across languages, disentangling linguistic and non-linguistic sources of heterogeneity, and securing funds for language research across underrepresented regions. Ideally, local-global connections should be prioritized to integrate country-specific needs and resources with leading worldwide trends.

Promisingly, strategic efforts are being made in this direction. Consider, for example, the International Network for Cross-Linguistic Research on Brain Health (Include). Supported with initial funds from the Global Brain Health Institute, the Alzheimer’s Association, and the Alzheimer’s Society, Include aims to foster trans-regionally equitable approaches to language-based neurodegeneration research. The network has grown continually since its launch in November 2022. It now has over 140 members spanning 80 centers sites across 30 countries. Five network-wide projects are being run, targeting diverse phenomena across multiple languages in large cohorts of persons with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and frontotemporal dementia variants. Include is also leading awareness-raising actions, such as the Language Diversity and Brain Health webinar series, hosted in collaboration with the Bilingualism, Languages, and Literacy Special Interest Group of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Diversity and Disparities Professional Interest Area. Initiatives like these can make a difference towards fairer language-based research on brain dysfunctions.

The bottom line

Speech and language assessments hold a valuable key to unlocking generalizable insights on neurodegeneration. To harness their full potential, however, we must bridge the linguistic gap in research, embracing more diverse samples and more inclusive practices. These actions are vital to ensure that valuable tools for equitable brain health assessments do not turn into a new source of global inequity.

Feature image by Studioroman via Canva.

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A four-forked etymology: curfew

A four-forked etymology: curfew

I remember that I promised to answer a few questions, and several of my answers are indeed overdue. But so is the post on the word curfew, which has been smoldering on my back burner for a long time, because I did not dare make its conclusions public. But nothing boils on that burner, and I decided to put off the gleanings and a few lines about curious idioms until next week and share with the world what I know about the origin of curfew.

The poet Thomas Gray. Plaque marking Thomas Gray’s birthplace, CC4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

It appears that the etymology of curfew has been solved. In any case, all modern dictionaries say the same. The English word surfaced in texts in the early fourteenth century, but a signal to people to extinguish their fires is much older. Curfews were introduced as a protection against fires and nocturnal disorders in the unlighted streets (so The OED, The Century Dictionary, and other reliable reference works say). The modern sense of curfew does not antedate the nineteenth century. Supposedly, curfew goes back to Old French covrir “to cover” and feu “fire.” The word’s recorded forms are numerous, disconcertingly so.

Many people will remember the opening line of Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”: “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” In a different mood, Shakespeare’s Edgar says (King Lear, III/4): “This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet; / He begins at curfew and walks to the first cock.” One can read in dictionaries and encyclopedias that in the remote past the curfew bell was rung at eight or nine o’clock, but Shakespeare’s testimony is confusing. In a different play, we read: “The curfew bell is rung: / ‘Tis three o’clock” (Romeo and Juliet, IV/4). Three o’clock is too early even for “the first cock.” We will presently return to this riddle.

Cock crowing early. Rooster crow by Five Furlongs, CC2.0, Via Flickr.

Two other etymologies of curfew exist—or at least existed. One is fanciful. It refers to a bulky implement for covering fires. Allegedly, its name gave rise to couvrefeu. Such an implement, regardless of its supposed popularity in the past, has nothing to do with our story. But before coming to the point, let us remember that the custom of putting out fires at a certain hour existed in all medieval Europe, and England was no exception. Therefore, the idea that the curfew was a cruel invention of William the Conqueror, who wanted to humiliate and punish his Saxon subjects, cannot be sustained. It is the French origin of the word that is responsible for the guess. One also wonders why the name of such an important regulation turned up in texts so late: since the curfew, most probably, existed before the Norman Conquest (1066), why don’t we know the Old English form of the word?

In The Gentleman’s Magazine for 1895, Lionel Cresswell published a detailed essay on the origin and history of the curfew (pp. 599-617). Cresswell was a serious researcher, and his paper should be treated with the respect it deserves. Below, I will reproduce his conclusions. As far as we can judge, there never was a general, or even a local, practice connected with the ringing of the bell as a specific signal of a curfew. The second syllable of curfew looks like French feu, but among the many variants of this word, listed in the OED (and Cresswell had access to the volume with the letter C), we find Curfur, Curfoyr, Corfour (the latter was recorded in 1320), and so forth. Let us repeat: was –r added under the influence of the English word for fire? More likely, says Cresswell, the etymon of such forms was the French word carrefour “a town square, or junction, formed by the crossing of two roads.”

Town crier. Provincetown Advocate, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

It was there that the bell was rung for whatever reason, because the nucleus of a town in ancient times was the crossways. “Enlarged, this junction became the market-place or town square, where the Guildhall, chief Municipal buildings, or church stood, around which the inhabitants built their dwellings, and in which they trafficked in their daily business” (p. 610). Creswell noted that “curfew was frequently applied to a morning as well as an evening bell” (p. 611 and 612; remember Shakespeare!), a fact never discussed in dictionaries. The junction, the crossing was called Carfax, from Old French (and Medieval Latin) carreforcs or directly from Latin quadrifurcus “having four forks.” The OED has a detailed and most instructive entry for Carfax. If such is the origin of curfew, the forms with final r were original, and only folk etymology, that is, a popular conception of the origin of the word, associated the English noun with the French word for fire.

This would have been the end of my message, but for a short sequel. In the journal The Academy for August 20, 1904 (p. 136), a letter on the subject that interests us appeared (note the excellent periodicals mentioned above; they contain tons of precious information). The author was Frederick R. Coles (1854-1927; see the article about him on Wikipedia). Coles must have read Cresswell’s essay or known its contents and wrote the following: “We are now told that this [that is, the current] etymology is a striking instance of mistaken popular etymology which has deceived even scholars. The explanation is that the bell was rung in the evening at the crossroads [not only in the evening!]. Dr. Murray is said to have been persuaded of this etymology, but too late for insertion in his new dictionary. Can any reader point to any textual evidence in support of this new etymology, or explain why even scholars have fallen into this error of popular etymology, if such it be?” To the best of my knowledge, no response followed.

It is not clear what Coles meant by “we are now told.” The essay, which antedated the letter by almost ten years, gives an exhausting survey of the relevant data. What “textual evidence” did he expect? And we should hardly be surprised that “even scholars” (even is repeated twice in the letter) did not guess the truth right away. The entire history of etymology is such: a seemingly inscrutable (or deceptively transparent) word, numerous guesses about its origin, unacceptable solutions (compare the idea of a utensil once called “curfew”), clever conjectures, the disappointing verdict “origin unknown / uncertain / disputed / contested,” an unsafe consensus for want a fully convincing answer, or a true discovery, such that everybody says: “Yes, this is how it was.”

I find Cresswell’s etymology persuasive, but obviously, his or my opinion cannot and should not tip the scale. The question remains open, and we need a discussion. I have written this postscript, intrigued by the statement that James A. H. Murray, the great first editor of The Oxford English Dictionary, “is said [!] to have been persuaded of the truth of this etymology.” What is the source of that statement? Perhaps the etymologists at the OED or those who have for years been working with Murray’s voluminous correspondence, or Peter Gilliver, the author of a book on the making of The Oxford Dictionary, know where and when Murray “was said” to have accepted Cresswell’s reconstruction. I’ll be eagerly awaiting an answer. My search on the Internet yielded no information on this subject. Or have I missed the latest edit of curfew in the OED online? Such things have happened to me in the past.

Feature image by Georgia National Guard via Flickr.

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The need for expertise in quality improvement at every stage of a healthcare worker’s career

The need for expertise in quality improvement at every stage of a healthcare worker’s career

The quality improvement in healthcare movement has been around for the past 25 years with variable degrees of success. The focus on quality and safety commenced with the publication of a few seminal reports: Crossing the Quality Chasm and To Err is Human in the USA, and Organisation with a Memory in the United Kingdom. In 2018, just prior to the pandemic, two international reports, Crossing the Global Quality Chasm, a follow up of the initial report, and the Lancet Commission reported on the quality and safety of healthcare world-wide. These reports demonstrated that in lower middle income countries there was a challenge to improve safety and quality in the context of delivering universal health coverage. The quality of healthcare in upper income countries has improved but is variable. In 2021, the World Health Organisation published the Global Action Plan for Patient Safety, starting the decade with a focus on patient safety. All the reports documented the need to improve quality and safety of patient care. The COVID pandemic added to this imperative, and added new dimensions, such as the wellbeing of all.

“An ongoing challenge has been spreading successful improvement outcomes at scale.”

Academics often focus on writing such reports, which are called for by policy makers who use them to develop strategic plans for action. The NHS and other health systems are littered with strategies that come and go with each leadership change. Strategies result in setting standards with a system of inspection and regulation. The reports and standards should be an impetus to change, but they are far removed from the realities of working on the frontline of healthcare. Standards and strategies to implement change do not necessarily improve the quality of care. The real question is how do we get smart people, i.e. doctors and nurses and other health professionals, to deliver safe, high quality care all of the time. An ongoing challenge has been spreading successful improvement outcomes at scale. Partly, this is due to a lack of sound implementation processes; partly, due to a lack of data on what works; and finally to a simplistic view that what is successful in one context can be applied elsewhere.

Healthcare policy planners have stated they want to have safe and person-centred healthcare services that are efficient and effective. The desired outcomes have not been widely achieved for several reasons including:

the theories and methods are not understood or accepted by clinicians,there is limited published evidence that they are effective ,implementation is dependent on context,improvement initiatives may not have been applied in a logical and consistent manner,and there are competing demands and resultant time constraints.

The lack of uptake within the medical profession, and to a lesser degree by nursing and other healthcare workers, has been a specific challenge. This may be the result of jargon, the variable evidence base, and their lack of knowledge of the new sciences of improvement and implementation. The study of improvement theory and method is not an integral part of the medical curricula. We train healthcare workers to have excellence in subject matter knowledge but do not provide them with the education to apply that knowledge equally. If one adds the complexity of professionalism it is difficult to decrease the widespread variation that exists in the delivery of healthcare.

“One must add ideas of implementation science and make quality relevant to the workforce […]”

The understanding of what is required to improve healthcare and to be safe and person centred is now well understood. However, implementing what we know works is not easy. Setting standards is essential and can be regarded as Quality 1.0. Unfortunately, many see this as the solution when in fact it is only the start of the quality journey. Learning technical skills using the theories and methods of improvement can be termed Quality 2.0. This is where the focus has been for the past 25 years. Most interventions to improve quality of care have focussed on teaching healthcare workers patient safety or quality improvement methodology. This is essential but will not achieve quality care at scale. One must add ideas of implementation science and make quality relevant to the workforce in an age of pressing issues—such as climate change and the delivery of equitable care. This leads to a different approach to achieving quality.

“Every healthcare worker requires the power, agency, and/or courage to improve care, supported by knowledge and expertise.”

The future of quality in healthcare is the coproduction of solutions and interventions, Quality 3.0. This process may use standards and improvement as well as safety theories and methods, but will be owned by the patients as well as doctors, nurses, or other healthcare workers. The transfer of power is challenging and complex. Yet if not adopted, it will be difficult to achieve high quality care at scale. Every healthcare worker requires the power, agency, and/or courage to improve care, supported by knowledge and expertise. Only then can there be a difference for the people receiving care.

Feature image via Freepik.

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Cosmopolitan, cad, or closeted Catholic?

Cosmopolitan, cad, or closeted Catholic?

Having just arrived via ferry to the Dutch town of Sluis in mid-May 1611, William Cecil, Lord Roos (1591-1618), promptly exposed his “privy member” (penis) to what one assumes were rather surprised townsfolk. The gesture, repeated “5 or 6 times” for emphasis, was meant to display Roos’s disdain for the Protestant Dutch rebellion against Catholic Spanish rule. Later the same day, Roos emphasized this contempt by his “speeches uttered against the Hollanders” while touring a church.

The dangers of foreign travel in the early seventeenth century

The English Lord Roos was hardly the first young man to display boorish behavior while abroad on educational travels, and he would not be the last. In the early seventeenth-century, it became more common to send young men from elite families abroad for a year or two to acquire language skills, knowledge of foreign courts, customs, art, and history. Creating friendships and networks with important people was also a boon. A young man from a good family with such skills, knowledge, and networks was well-positioned for a career at the royal court, or perhaps royal service abroad. Many families thought the potential payoff worth the expense.

In addition to monetary cost, however, sending impressionable youngsters abroad also posed risks. They might be seduced by foreign vices, princes, and religions. Worried parents hired tutors to accompany their sons and ensure they stayed away from bad influences. Unsurprisingly, some tutors found it difficult to control their independent-minded charges.

We know of the above incident with Lord Roos because Thomas Lorkin, tutor to Thomas Puckering, found the behavior disturbing enough to report it to his charge’s brother-in-law Sir Adam Newton, secretary to Crown Prince Henry. Puckering made Roos’s acquaintance while they were both in Paris. Roos asked Puckering to accompany him on his tour of the Low Countries. Lorkin agreed to this arrangement because he thought this was a worthwhile connection for Puckering to foster: Roos’s great-uncle Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, was the most powerful man in England next the king. Roos also sought an appointment in the prince’s household, making the connection to Puckering useful. It was precisely the sort of networking that educational travelers were after.  

After traveling with Roos, Lorkin regretted his decision. The negatives far outweighed the few positives: seeing sites, being kindly received at the court of the regents of the Spanish Netherlands in Brussels, and making the acquaintance of Roos’s cousin, Salisbury’s son. In Roos, Lorkin found every danger with foreign educational travels personified. Roos drank and partied too much, stayed up late and slept the mornings away. He lost money gambling and engaged in “unsavory & obscene discourse.”

The company Roos kept was more troubling, because Lorkin thought it dangerous for his pupil’s very soul. For Protestant Englishmen, Catholicism constituted the greatest danger abroad. One could not avoid Catholics when travelling in Catholic regions, obviously, but one should keep one’s distance and not engage in religious debate. By contrast, Roos surrounded himself with Catholics. One of his travel companions was Sir Tobie Mathews, a Catholic Englishman who lived in disgraced exile. Roos regularly dined and conversed with Catholic priests and visited English Catholics living in Brussels. Rumors of Roos’s potential conversion to Catholicism persisted during his educational travels.

The disdain that Roos developed for his own home-country was also worrisome. After a long sojourn in Spain, Roos had fallen in love with everything Spanish. Lorkin said he had “never heard any so highly magnify any nation or country, as he doth” Spain, and while praising Spain, Roos was vilifying other countries, even “his owne.”  Many Englishmen were highly suspicious of Spain, as the enmity of the war during the late Elizabethan age lived on, and Spanish attempts at reconverting England continued. Lorkin noted Roos’s association with people who were suspected of being Spanish spies. Roos’s love of Spain led to his disagreement with the Protestant Dutch rebellion against the Spanish crown, which then led him to expose himself in Sluis. His peculiar penis protest became the crescendo of his caddish behavior.

While Lorkin expressed concerns, others might dismiss Roos’s behavior as ill-advised youthful antics. Indeed, English agents and ambassadors abroad found him charming company, an affable young man with a keen interest in wider Europe. Just a year after the trip with Puckering and Lorkin, King James sent Roos on a formal mission to congratulate the election of a new Holy Roman Emperor.

In the case of Roos, his family’s significant investment in his educational travels thus initially seemed to pay off. When he came home, he made a good marriage. He received a royal appointment to go as extraordinary ambassador to Spain. But his high hopes were soon squashed, and the foreign lands where he spent his youth became a source of respite from Roos’s growing troubles at home. His marriage soured, his career stalled, and his relationship with his in-laws fell apart spectacularly. According to his critics, Roos’s foreign travels had ruined him.

Feature image by Clark Young via Unsplash.

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Brighter than a trillion suns: an intense X-rated drama

Brighter than a trillion suns: an intense X-rated drama

You may be unaware of the celestial wonder known as OJ 287 but, as you will see, it is one of the most outlandish objects in the cosmos. Astronomers have known of periodic eruptions from OJ 287 since 1888 and in recent decades a mind-boggling explanation has emerged. It seems that the outbursts arise deep in the heart of a distant galaxy where two supermassive black holes are locked in a deadly embrace.

What is a black hole?

A black hole forms when a huge quantity of matter collapses under its own gravity to form an object whose gravitational attraction is so intense that nothing can escape, not even light. This fate awaits the most massive stars at the end of their lives.

Such stellar mass black holes may be a whopping five, ten, or even a hundred times the mass of the Sun. The first stellar mass black hole to be identified is known as Cygnus X-1. A black hole’s size is characterized by its event horizon. This is the sphere of no return: once inside all roads lead inexorably inwards. The radius of the event horizon of a 10 solar mass black hole is just 30 kilometres.

[Left: The red box in this image from the Digitized Sky Survey encloses the Cygnus X-1 system that contains a blue supergiant star and a black hole of around 15 solar masses.
Right: Artist’s visualization of the Cygnus X-1 system. (Image Credit: Cygnus X-1: NASA’s Chandra Adds to Black Hole Birth Announcement. Chandra X-ray Observatory, NASA.)]

Astronomers believe that at the centre of every galaxy there lurks a black hole on another scale entirely. These are the supermassive black holes whose mass may be millions or even billions of times that of the Sun. We do not, as yet, fully understand how they grow to be so enormous in the time available since the Big Bang.

Brighter than a trillion stars

Over time galaxies collide and merge, and this may bring their central supermassive black holes into close proximity. Indeed, OJ 287 is the most well-studied example of such a system where two colossal black holes dance around each other performing a celestial tango de la muerte. Astronomers estimate that the primary black hole is a staggering 18 billion solar masses, while its much smaller companion is a mere 150 million solar masses. This gives the primary’s event horizon a radius of over 50 billion kilometres. To put this into context, the distance between the Sun and the outermost planet Neptune is 4.5 billion kilometres. So, the primary black hole is a vast bottomless pit that would dwarf the entire solar system.

OJ 287 is the most well-studied example of a system where two colossal black holes perform a celestial tango de la muerte.

Surrounding this chasm is the black hole’s accretion disc—an incredibly hot swirling disc of plasma with a temperature of billions of degrees—so hot that it emits X-rays and gamma rays. As the secondary dances around its gigantic partner, it periodically crashes through this seething whirlpool of fire releasing a blast of radiation that is picked up by telescopes here on Earth, and this is how we know of this amazing system.

[Lankeswar Dey et al, ‘Authenticating the Presence of a Relativistic Massive Black Hole Binary in OJ 287 Using Its General Relativity Centenary Flare: Improved Orbital Parameters’, The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 866, issue 1, Page 3, Figure 2, October 2018, https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aadd95. © AAS. Reproduced with permission.]

These two-week-long flares are brighter than the combined light of an entire giant galaxy of a trillion stars. The radiation blast is produced mainly by hot plasma from the accretion disc spiralling into the secondary black hole. The OJ 287 system is 5 billion light years distant, so the light in these flares has been travelling our way since before the Earth formed. It is only because the flares are so bright that we can see them from such an incredible distance.

The clash of the cosmic titans

There are two flares every 12 years, the most recent in February 2022, as the secondary black hole plunges and re-emerges through the primary’s accretion disc. Like a cosmic duel in Lucifer’s inner sanctum, the two writhing supermassive black holes twist, twirl, and cavort around each other. Researchers led by Finnish astrophysicist Mauri Valtonen of Turku University and his colleague Achamveedu Gopakumar from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India have used the precise timing of the flares to build a detailed picture of the orbit of the black holes based on our best theory of gravity—Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This enables them to predict when future flares will occur. The extreme nature of OJ 287 challenges our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature, offering tests for general relativity that have not been possible before. A wide range of astronomical instruments will be ready and waiting when the next blast is due to arrive. In the years ahead, we are sure to learn much more about this amazing system that illustrates just how weird the universe can be.

References: Mauri J Valtonen et al, ‘Refining the OJ 287 2022 impact flare arrival epoch’, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 521, Issue 4, June 2023, Pages 6143–6155, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad922

Feature image: Black Hole and a Disk of Glowing Plasma by Daniel Megias via iStock.

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