This Is What Happens To Education When Teachers Are Treated As Production Costs

Teachers are seeing their own experience be devalued by policymakers and other officials with little experience in the education field, and it’s not improving the education of their students. In other words, and as others have noted, teachers are balking at the erosion of their status as professionals. In fact, I would submit that it’s precisely because of their sense of professionalism that teachers are driven to an agonizing decision to withhold their labor. Teachers perceive themselves and their students being treated as fungible costs of production, cogs in a bureaucratic machine. To them, nothing less than the education profession is at risk.

Who’ll Guard Your Privacy? Librarians

Listen, I delight in telling weird stories about what’s happening in the library. I truly love it. I make jokes about silly things the patrons do (aggravating, frustrating, truly bonkers annoying things, sure), but I would rather cut off my own arm than reveal anyone’s personal information.

Check Out The Skills Necessary To Be A Ballet Rehearsal Pianist

It’s a challenge, for so many reasons: “The received idea of ballet pianists is that they are at the bottom of the totem pole, working, as they do, out of the public eye with people who don’t really care about music. On the surface it seems easy enough—small bits of light classics in triple and duple meter with a maybe a show tune or two thrown in for fun. Plié. Sauté. Soutenu. And again on the other side. [But] Ballet pianists at a top company will have about ten seconds to choose the music for the exercise from the library of tunes in their heads.”

Martin Amis: Writers Have To Expect Something Different From Readers

“I think most writers are wedded to social realism, these days — social realism is the only genre left. And there’s been a contraction, as I was saying, of what you can expect from the reader. It’s not a conscious decision to cease to be as complex as you might once have been; it’s just going with the flow of things. It was Trilling, wasn’t it, who said we like complex books? The truth is, we may once have liked them, but we don’t anymore.”

Audiobook Sales Up By More Than 20% In Past Year

“Based on information from responding publishers, the [Audio Publishers] Association estimates that audiobook sales in 2017 totaled more than US$2.5 billion, up 22.7 percent over 2016, and with a corresponding 21.5-percent increase in units. This continues a six-year audiobook trend of double-digit growth year-over-year.” And the accompanying consumer study explores the advantages listeners find in the format.

New EU Copyright Law Could Block Legitimate Legal Content

The effect would be similar to how YouTube tries to detect and block copyrighted audio and video from being posted on its site, but it would be applied to all types of content, including text, images, and software, as well as audio and video. Critics say this section of the proposal, Article 13, would lead to legitimate content, such as satire or short excerpts, being blocked even outside the EU.

Live Nation Wired Up Fans At A Concert With Biometrics. Here’s What They Discovered

At a Cannes Lions presentation this week, Live Nation unveiled the results of the experiment and, unfortunately for music-loving homebodies, they show that dragging yourself to a concert on a Friday will result in three times more emotional intensity than listening to a recorded album alone in your bedroom, wearing sweatpants and eating Wheaties.

Record Film/Video Residual Payments For Musicians Even As Music Business Declines

Employer contributions to a residuals fund for musicians whose work is heard on the big and small screens hit a record $100 million last year, according to the latest report from the Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund. Last year, the fund distributed more than $81 million to 17,000-plus musicians but is holding more than $5 million in unclaimed checks for more than 6,000 musicians for whom the fund has no current address or contract information.

How Technologies Will Transform The Ways We Interact With Art. Are You Ready?

Many would argue that the ways we look at and interpret a painting, experience a performance or appreciate an architectural location have not changed in millennia. This may be true, but the ways we discover, research, plan and communicate our experiences have fundamentally shifted. Whether it’s because of search engines, social media, mobile devices or online reviews, our experience of the world has been changed forever by digital technology.