Word: behaviorism
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...observe ordinary roach behavior, Halloy and his colleagues created an enclosure with two "shelters" inside - red-tinted plastic disks mounted so that roaches could scurry underneath to avoid bright light, which they do instinctively. When the insects were dumped into the enclosure, they scrambled around randomly for a while, but eventually all huddled under the same shelter. That they huddled is no surprise, since roaches like to gather in crowds. But since cockroaches don't have enough intelligence to allow for leadership skills or even communication, the fact that they collectively decide on one shelter looks, says Halloy, "like...
...hypothesis has merit, Halloy and his co-workers figured they should be able to trick the roaches into doing something unnatural. To do that, they would need a rogue roach to infiltrate the herd. "One way to get them," Halloy says, "would be to create mutants somehow, with abnormal behavior. But we don't have a genetic institute for cockroaches." Instead, the researchers recruited some engineers to build them roach robots that would slip into the crowd and manipulate it from within. "It turns out," he says, "that roaches aren't very discriminating" - they'll accept anything of roughly...
Other schools have a broad ban on "inappropriate displays of affection," or IPDAs. Proponents say it gives school administrators more discretion in interpreting what constitutes "inappropriate" behavior. Yet that same discretion potentially exposes administrators to accusations of unfairly targeting, say, a Latina for braiding a friend's hair, or for showing favoritism by failing to reprimand the football team's quarterback who playfully smacks a teammate's back after...
...drew dozens of newspaper headlines and landed her on NBC's Today Show. But it also illustrates a key challenge facing America's schools: When is a hug inappropriate - or "extreme," as its been dubbed by some administrators? And, more broadly, how far should schools go in policing the behavior of a generation that often takes its social cues from Paris Hilton and Britney Spears...
...parent has just died could potentially face suspension. The lack of nuance in such policies bothers critics like Lisa Graybill, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union's Texas Chapter. "Preventing harassment and teaching kids to respect each other is important, but having yet another reason for kids' behavior to be criminalized is unnecessary," she says. "It's draconian to ban all forms of touch...