Nine Shift

Generational conflict in the office

Gen Xers and Baby Boomers work in, and view, the office in very different ways.
Here's a true story submitted from a Gen Xer about Gen Xers and their Boomer bosses.
Withholding his name for now, but thanks NineShifter for the story!

"Yesterday, our team (marketing, operations, programming managers) were called into ANOTHER meeting. However, this time we were in trouble for not being at our desks enough. We roam the halls too much, apparently (actually this is quite true, we do walk the halls a lot). 

"The bosses were really mad at us, and now of course, we are mad at them too. Funny thing is, nobody mentioned the record gross and net revenue we're generating this year, our business award, or the special projects award we won this year.  Just imagine what we could have done if we stayed in our seats!  So now I'm not supposed to leave my cage, I mean cubicle, for more than 10 minutes unless I'm at a meeting (very important to attend, you know) or taking my 30-minute lunch (no longer!)."

Your thoughts on generational conflict in the office. Going to get better, or worse?

A leading architect says offices are obsolete

"The local cafe, where a person working wireless on the laptop checking email, is a place where work gets done today." So says Frank Duffy, co-founder of New York and London-based architectural firm DEGW, in a speech recently to Europe's largest commercial real estate conference. "There is abalance between the virtual realm and the physical realm.  And I don't think we've given the workplace, or cities, for that matter, the proper attention in addressing this change."

"The American office is still fundamentally Taylorist," he said, referring to work-flow behaviorist Frederick Taylor, who believed people should be treated as units of production.  "The Taylorist approach was designed right down to the way your chair swiveled. It was a control strategy."

"For 200 years work depended on two conditions: you had to work with other people in the same place and at the same time, in synchrony. These conditions no longer apply. And that's the biggest thing that has happened since the Industrial Revolution."  (Thanks to a NineShifter for sending me this article.)

Picture is of Shanghai's newest skyscraper, which will be, at least for a short time, the world's tallest building. Here's a story on that.

The house of the future

In an old neighborhood of Amsterdam, amidst other houses several hundred years old, is the house of the future.

It too is hundreds of years old, but it has been refitted energy wise to be energy efficient, energy renewable, and high tech at the same time. The picture is of the house. To find out more, check out this BBC story on it.

Generating ideas from all your staff

This is a fascinating story about generating ideas from all your staff.
In this century, group-think is more profitable and productive (and correct).

"At Rite-Solutions, top executives James R. Lavoie and Joseph M. Marino focus on an internal stock market they created where any employee can propose a new business idea or efficiency improvement. These staff ideas become stocks, complete with ticker symbols, discussion lists and email alerts. It's called Mutual Fun. 

"Each stock begins trading at a price of $10. Every employee gets $10,000 in 'opinion money' to allocate among the offerings, and employees signal their enthusiasm by investing in a stock and, better yet, volunteering to work on the project.  Volunteers share in the proceeds, in the form of real money, if the stock becomes a product or delivers savings." (From a New York Times story by William C. Taylor, published March 26, 2006)

Why Smart Boys Get Bad Grades

Parents and teachers: a new web site with the answers, and tips for parents and teachers, is now open!  Just go to SmartBoysBadGrades.com

Boys are being penalized for "behavior unrelated to learning and knowledge achievement."  (memorize that phrase).

Grades are gender biased, particularly homework.  The solution to getting boys back into college costs no money, takes no time, and can be implemented immediately:  1. Stop penalizing students for turning homework in late; and 2. Allow students to quiz out of homework they already know.

Tests are gender neutral. Boys and girls test scores are roughly equal.
Yet 36% of boys, and 20% of girls have test scores considerably higher than their GPA. So colleges keep these smart students out of college.  We announcing our results with a Press Conference in Washington DC. Again, the web site is SmartBoysBadGrades.com

Education: Nurturists must recognize Nature

Well, we have to confront the reality of the 21st century and accept the research and facts about gender in education.

The nurturist argument that we can turn boys into girls has never worked, does not work, and is a harmful idea for both boys and girls.

Wilton (Mass.) High School is being sued over gender bias against boys, and the principal said, "We teach everyone the same."  Which is the problem.  We are not all the same.
And the factory-model of education is obsolete.  As the UK Department of Education notes, "personalisation" is now key.

Some facts:
* Boys behave differently in the womb than girls.  The nurturists would have us believe mothers are screwing up their infant sons before they even know the sex of their child.
* At birth, boys' eyes focus on such things as moving objects, while infant girls focus on eyes, dolls, faces. Before they are exposed to male culture, boys behave as boys.
* Yes, other primate males and females behave the same way as humans. Will this turn some feminist evolutionists into intelligent-design supporters?

Thanks to all the mothers consider school lawsuits on behalf of their sons.
Solution: let boys turn in homework late and let's get them into/out of college and paying for your social security instead of working at McDonald's for $5/hour.

NineShift will continue to provide facts and research on this. You can help.

Picture is of feminist Betty Friedan, who died this month at age 85.  Ms. Friedan later broke with other feminists during the time when feminists moved from gender equity to turning boys into girls. We think maybe she'd support the boys. What do you think?

Education and Responsibility

One of the big arguments for punishing boys for turning homework in late is that teachers are promoting "responsibility." 

This is the same argument teachers made 100 years ago to justify hitting the boys in school.
Back then 'good' fathers and teachers hit the boys to promote "moral character."
Only of course there was no evidence. The only thing that happened was boys dropped out of school.

Today there is no evidence that penalizing boys for late homework promotes "responsibility."
* Despite all the punishment, the GPA gap never closes between boys and girls. So punishing the boys never works.
* Outside of school, boys show up on time, and turn in their work assignments on time. All that "we're preparing them for the workplace" nonse nse is just nonsense. There's no problem in the work place.
Like 100 years ago, the only thing that is happening is that boys don't go to college.

Julie has discovered that girls are never depicted wearing a dunce cap, only boys.
What to do? Got any ideas? All comments are welcome.

Will girls stop doing homework?

More girls will soon stop doing homework.
That's the startling prediction from my always-ahead-of-the-curve co-author Julie Coates.

She says that while more boys are dissatisfied with school than girls, that the growing rate of dissatisfaction is higher among girls now than boys. Just back from England, educators there say that if students have to characterize school in one word, 85% of them will say "boring." Even if girls don't join the boys and revolt against homework, there's other reasons why girls do not benefit from the anti-boy gender bias in grading. Here they are.

1. Girls are not learning more.
   Even though girls are given most of the A's, good grades, and seats in college, they still are not learning more than the boys, according to test scores.  When we start to treat boys and girls differently in the classroom, girls will benefit just as much as the boys.

2. Some girls are being misled.
   Some 30% of girls are being given better grades than their test scores would justify, according to the analysis of date in  Gender and Fair Assessment by ETS researchers Warren Willingham and Nancy Cole.
   So some girls are getting "A"s in English or Math not because they know English and Math, but because they are polite, neat and turn in their homework on time.  They're being misled.

3. Family suffers as husband pool shrinks.
   Every study shows a huge majority of girls want to marry someone who makes more money than they do. With 35% of the smart (high earning) boys taken off the job market, they are also off the marriage-market.  Many girls want the option of raising a family before entering the workforce (see this huge trend among Gen X women).  With family-supporting men down 35%, not a good prospect for girls.

4. When society loses...
   When society loses scientists, mathematicians, and sends 35% of its smartest male workers to WalMart and McDonalds, the economy and society suffers, along with it the girls. 

5. Smart Girls, Bad Grades
   While boys are far more likely to have high test scores and low grades, some 20% of girls also have higher test scores than grades.  These girls may be shortchanged in college just like the boys.
((photo of girls in Moscow, Russia, behaving just like kids everywhere))

What do you think? Will more girls soon stop doing their homework? Tell us your opinion.

Newsflash! Family has dinner together

It happened at 6:35 p.m., in Wantagh, New York, to the Cathy and Bill Powell family.
And it made front page news in the New York Times.

So is having dinner together a sorely missed ritual that we need to bring back, or just another nostalgic memory of the last century?

With 5 kids, we had dinner every night at 6:05 pm sharp, just after the news. I always sat to the left of my father, who was at the head of the table of course. Half a century later, my mother still has to have supper at 6:05 pm every night.  When we went to my grandparents, the kids sat at the kids' table, while the grown ups sat at the adult table and had discussions.  It was a big deal when you were old enough to join the adult table. (photo of our dining room table, with my mother, now matriarch of the family, at the head, and my brother's family. Son Willie and Julie on right side.)

Do you have dinner together?  Do we need to bring it back, or do other family activities substitute for dinner and discussion?

Massachusetts health plan great news

What great news that Masachusetts is "poised to become the first state to provide nearly universal health care coverage," as Pam Belluck reported in the New York Times this week.

Universal health insurance a NineShift-MUST for the 21st century. And by the way, make that portable health insurance.

"All told, the plan is projected to cover 515,000 uninsured people within three years, about 95 percent of the state's uninsured popultaion, leaving less than 1% of the total population unprotected."

The bill appears to be a mixture of the resources of individuals, business and government. Individuals who can afford health insurance will be penalized if they don't buy it. Same with businesses. Government helps out the working poor.  We haven't heard any negatives to this plan yet, and it has received widespread bi-partisan support.

Got thoughts on whether the Mass. plan will spread to other states?