Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Vicki Baker, Professor of Economics and Management, Albion College

What happens to a college education when a chatbot can draft an essay, summarize a reading and generate computer code in seconds? The arrival of artificial intelligence in college classrooms has been swift and, for many schools, disorienting.

As professors of economics and business management and biology at liberal arts colleges, we are confronting a question that now cuts across all colleges and universities: What is the purpose of a college education, as AI is rapidly reshaping how students think, learn and prepare for careers?

While much of the public debate has focused on plagiarism and credit for student work, the deeper issue extends beyond rule-setting.

Across higher education, most schools have issued guidance on how students should use AI, rather than adopted sweeping mandates.

Liberal arts colleges, like the University of Richmond, Bard College and Trinity College, tend to emphasize the importance of students using AI ethically and responsibly, and typically allow students to use AI when they cite it and their instructor permits it. These schools also allow professors to individually determine their own AI policies.

A 2024 study of 116 research universities found similar patterns, with instructors largely determining course policies and few campus-wide bans.

What’s unsettled is not whether students can use AI, but how institutions want students to use it. In our view, unless colleges clearly shape AI’s role in teaching and learning, fast-moving technologies may begin to redefine education by default. The risk isn’t more AI, but a gradual shift in what counts as learning.

Students may spend less time asking hard questions, making their own judgments and building real expertise. In that case, college risks becoming less about understanding and more about producing papers and other content quickly.

Letting AI into the classroom

When generative AI tools first became widely available in late 2022 and early 2023, most professors focused on finding and preventing it in student work. They looked for signs of AI use, including generic phrasing, fake citations, sudden shifts in tone or unusually polished writing that didn’t match a student’s prior work. Some faculty also used AI-detection software to identify computer-generated text.

But it is often difficult to tell when someone has used AI, in part because the detection software is unreliable. As a result, many faculty have shifted from bans to more structured guidance.

Some faculty, as a result, allow students to use AI for specific tasks, such as brainstorming, outlining or debugging code.

The rationale is practical: AI is everywhere and already embedded in professional settings. College graduates are likely to use AI in the workplace.

Accepting AI is here to stay

More recently, college faculty at a range of schools have shifted the focus from whether students are using AI at all to whether students using AI can still analyze, question and justify their own research and conclusions.

At the University of Michigan, for example, some faculty are redesigning assessments to include live debates and oral presentations.

And across the U.S., professors are reviving oral exams, since live questioning makes it harder for students to rely solely on AI. Students must then verbally explain their reasoning and defend their work.

Different academic fields, though, are approaching AI in various ways.

Many business programs, like the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, have moved quickly to bring AI into coursework and degree programs, often framing them as workforce preparation.

Recent analysis of more than 31,000 syllabuses at a large research university in Texas showed a growing number of faculty in the fall of 2025 allowed students to use AI. Business courses allowed the greatest use of AI, while humanities courses allowed it the least. The physical and life sciences fell in between.

Across disciplines, AI was most often allowed at this school for editing, study support and coding. It was most commonly restricted for drafting, revising and reasoning or problem-solving.

AI’s role in higher education is not settled. Instead, it is evolving, dependent on different academic cultures.

Different schools, different approaches

Colleges’ and universities’ overall responses and approaches to AI are varied, as well.

Research universities like Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University are expanding on their long-standing investments in AI, moving quickly to develop new research centers, hiring faculty with AI expertise and creating new degree or certificate programs.

Liberal arts colleges are moving too, but often with a different emphasis.

The Davis Institute for AI at Colby College supports AI work across disciplines through new courses, faculty development and entrepreneurship. At the University of Richmond, a new center links AI to critical thinking and human values, so students can study AI’s impacts and help shape it intentionally.

All of these schools are determining AI policy course by course. But these plans are not part of a comprehensive, school-wide strategy.

Few schools have articulated coordinated, institution-wide plans on AI. Arizona State University is one example of a broader AI integration strategy, which spans academics and campus operations.

Comprehensive AI strategies are expensive. Meaningful integration may require campus licenses for AI services, upgraded computing systems and faculty training. These investments are difficult at a time when many colleges face enrollment declines and financial strain.

Public trust in higher education is another concern that makes enacting broad change difficult. Gallup surveys in 2023 and 2024 found that only 36% of Americans had high confidence in colleges and universities.

Against this backdrop, AI is raising questions about how colleges prepare students for their careers. Employers still prize critical thinking and communication. Yet generative AI can mimic the appearance of thinking even when real understanding is absent.

The tension is clear: If AI does the writing, coding or analysis, where do students do the thinking?

Rethinking learning

Rising use of AI is forcing colleges and universities to revisit what students should learn, how to measure this and the enduring value of a college degree.

That shift moves the conversation beyond course-by-course changes to a shared strategy on what forms of knowledge and thinking are developed in college. Colleges may redesign assignments, expand oral and project-based assessments, and integrate AI literacy across disciplines. They may also clarify learning outcomes, invest in faculty development and find new ways to document students’ judgment and problem-solving in an AI-assisted world.

The question is no longer whether AI belongs in higher education. The real question is whether colleges and universities will shape its role – or allow AI to quietly reshape them.

Linda M. Boland receives funding from the American Physiological Society.

Vicki Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Colleges face a choice: Try to shape AI’s impact on learning, or be redefined by it – https://theconversation.com/colleges-face-a-choice-try-to-shape-ais-impact-on-learning-or-be-redefined-by-it-275653

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Abigail Leigh Phillips, Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Florida has ranked No. 1 in the United States when it comes to banning books for the past three years, with 2,300 books removed or restricted from public school libraries.

What’s driving these numbers are small, grassroots organizations made up of vocal, media-savvy members. Moms for Liberty is one of the best known to school and public librarians.

Moms for Liberty has chapters in every state, with a particularly active Florida chapter that has been aided by legislation easing restrictions on banning books under Governor Ron DeSantis. Moms for Liberty created and regularly updates a document it calls the Book of Books, with a content-based rating system the organization created. The document is meant to serve as a template that parents can use to make complaints about a book to school boards and school district administrators.

In some cases, book challenges have gone beyond heated public debates, escalating to harassment and even death threats against school librarians.

That kind of escalation hits home for me because I’m a former public librarian. I spent my career in libraries serving small, rural communities in southwestern Georgia – the same libraries I grew up in. Now, as an information science professor in Wisconsin, I educate students on how to build and maintain physical and digital collections as librarians, archivists and museum curators.

One thing I emphasize to my students is that creating a collection involves building in processes for the community to give feedback – even by challenging books.

The purpose of school libraries

School libraries have long served as sanctuaries and supportive spaces for vulnerable students. They are meant to serve as access points to diverse, unique and insightful materials that help students connect with learning in a new way. A school library collection is intended to offer students both a mirror that reflects their own experience of the world and a window that allows them to see that there’s a bigger world out there.

School librarians help teachers with instructional technology in their classrooms, teach students how to use databases and online resources, and build the school community’s information literacy skills. They help schools meet district instructional goals, state education standards and national school library standards.

The required qualifications to work as a school librarian vary state by state. In Florida, school librarians must have a bachelor’s degree, a minimum of two years of professional library experience and demonstrated successful professional work experience as a full-time library staffer.

School libraries and politics

But beyond their qualifications and functions in the classroom, a school librarian’s role also requires leading and engaging the community as an advocate for the importance of the library.

Unlike public libraries, which have elected or appointed boards, school libraries are governed by district policies decided by school boards and school administrators. This means local funding, changes among school board members and local politics have significant implications for school libraries.

Still, school librarians are not without some power to affect policies in their districts. Every state and even every school district has its own unique ways of operating, but typically, school librarians are tasked with writing or at least consulting on the policies the school board approves. A school librarian has to know their local policies and procedures and build collaborative relationships with the decision-makers in their district.

And of course, librarians excel at knowing and taking advantage of resources at their disposal. These include the American Association of School Librarians’ collection of position statements covering a range of issues like selecting materials and appropriate staffing in school libraries. The American Library Association also provides a free tool kit covering selection, maintaining the library’s collection and ways to encourage a student to check out new books. All of these policies serve to help protect school libraries when battling book banning.

Well-crafted policies and best practices

I emphasize several best practices with my students that serve as guideposts, regardless of their individual district’s characteristics. Well-crafted, transparent policies defend school librarians and their collections against arbitrary book challenges, restrictive protocols for readers and eroding intellectual freedom.

First of all, proactive communication ensures that everyone in the school and the community knows the library’s role, procedures and contacts. When policies are visible and accessible, they become tools for strengthening collaboration rather than afterthoughts.

A transparent collection development policy serves as a how-to manual for library staff on building and maintaining physical and digital collections. It also provides a basis for explaining their choices if part of that collection is challenged.

And finally, it’s best practice for every district to have a standing committee of parents, educators and district officials to oversee book challenges. A school librarian can brief them on the district’s collection policy so that they understand what criteria are considered when books are added to the school library’s collection. This gives them context in which to evaluate the books being challenged. A standing committee also ensures that challenges will be addressed in a timely fashion.

District officials often feel enormous pressure to respond to the loudest voices at a school board meeting, even if they don’t represent the majority of parents. A standing committee and clear procedure for challenges help to alleviate that pressure by providing a venue for those voices to be heard and weighed against the interests of other library users. This helps to safeguard the collection’s integrity against persistent minority voices.

For the love of reading

I don’t remember my first trip to a school library. But I still remember one of the first picture books I ever checked out: “A Chocolate Moose for Dinner” by Fred Gwynne. I fell in love with this delightful and cleverly written book, full of puns, word play and hilarious illustrations. And it’s that love of reading that all librarians want to nurture.

Collection development policies are not simply paperwork. They are the backbone of a school library’s integrity, supporting librarians as they curate collections that meet educational goals, nurture the school as a community and provide students with books they are excited to read.

Read more stories from The Conversation about Florida.

Abigail Phillips has received funding from IMLS, ALA, Library of Congress, and Internal Grants from UWM (her university/employer). Consistently applying for external and internal funding is integral to her position as a university faculty member to support her research.

– ref. How transparent policies can protect Florida school libraries amid efforts to ban books – https://theconversation.com/how-transparent-policies-can-protect-florida-school-libraries-amid-efforts-to-ban-books-269769

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Shelly Tygielski, Doctoral Student in Philanthropic Leadership, Indiana University

Have you ever received some money through a GoFundMe campaign or Venmo or CashApp transfers after a medical emergency, natural disaster or other crisis?

If so, you may have also gotten an unwelcome surprise: a federal tax form that treats what you got as a gift as if it were earned income. And receiving this form can also affect your state tax return.

We are researchers at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Together, we study how the tax system treats charitable crowdfunding – and sometimes harms people who get help that way.

A failure to make a needed distinction

Also known as monetary mutual aid, charitable crowdfunding refers to need-based gifts that one person gives another.

It may sound simple, but many practical issues arise when reporting rules designed for commercial transactions inadvertently treat these transfers as taxable income.

We have analyzed Internal Revenue Service reporting rules, federal case law and community-based mutual aid practices to better understand how tax policies can affect people who get money directly from others, given to them as charity.

In the cases we examined, recipients were not selling goods or services. Yet payment platforms frequently issued tax forms to the recipients without distinguishing between payments tied to earned income and money received as crisis-related support.

Mutual aid has grown

Through mutual aid, people can help meet the needs of others, typically outside formal nonprofit or government systems – meaning that such giving tends to bypass established charities. It tends to be community-driven and often emerges when institutional support is delayed, insufficient or inaccessible.

During the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent disasters, mutual aid surged. For example, studies indicate that at the start of the pandemic, approximately 50 documented mutual aid groups existed across the United States.

By May 2020, that number had grown to over 800, with networks established in nearly every U.S. state.

These groups provided food, rental assistance, medical supplies and direct cash support when formal systems, such as government programs and nonprofit agencies, faltered.

Research from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s Women’s Philanthropy Institute found that during the first year of the pandemic, most Americans who gave money did not donate primarily to official charities. Instead, they gave directly to people in need or to informal groups using crowdfunding platforms, such as GoFundMe, and money-transfer apps like Venmo and CashApp.

Tax law hasn’t kept up

We’ve found that the tax code has not kept pace with the rapid growth of digitally mediated, peer-to-peer giving on a large scale.

Crowdfunding platforms now facilitate billions of dollars in transfers each year, and peer-to-peer payment apps process hundreds of billions more in transactions. Unfortunately, reporting rules originally designed to detect business income are increasingly applied to individuals who receive crisis-related financial support.

Due to changes to federal tax reporting rules that Congress approved in 2021, payment platforms, including Venmo, CashApp, PayPal and any other platforms used for transacting funds, had to issue 1099-K forms to any Americans who received more than US$600 in payments. The 1099-K is a tax document that reports payments a person receives through third-party platforms to the IRS.

Lawmakers made this change to improve tax compliance in the gig economy – by making sure that Americans were paying taxes on the taxable income they earn by driving for Lyft, walking dogs and doing other kinds of side hustles.

Congress has since reversed course.

A provision in the large tax-reform-and-spending package that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, restored the federal 1099-K reporting threshold for payment apps like Venmo to the prior standard: over $20,000 in gross payments and more than 200 transactions.

An incomplete fix

While this change is likely to make a difference, especially since it’s retroactive to 2021, confusion persists.

For one thing, people can still receive tax forms in some states, including Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia, that have continued to require that people getting less than $20,000 be issued 1099-K forms.

There are still cases where mutual aid recipients may have to document that the money they’ve gotten from people trying to help them was a gift, not earned income.

And when someone gets very ill or their house burns down, legitimate fundraising through mutal monetary aid can exceed $20,000.

For example, roughly 250,000 campaigns are created each year on GoFundMe for medical costs; studies have found that campaigns related to cancer seek $20,000 in gifts on average.

Following the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, the median amount that vetted, individual fundraisers raised through GoFundMe topped $25,000 , with several instances where they brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

If someone receives a 1099-K for funds that were provided as gifts rather than payments, tax experts generally recommend keeping clear documentation of the transfers and consulting a tax professional about how to properly report the amount so it is not treated as taxable income.

IRS doesn’t get mutual aid

Mutual aid isn’t gig work, so the tax code shouldn’t treat them the same. Getting multiple $50 gifts through a GoFundMe campaign to help you contend with a crisis brought on by your husband’s stroke is not the same as earning the equivalent driving for Uber.

The Internal Revenue Code excludes gifts from your taxable income, although the person donating needs to pay taxes if they give someone more than a certain amount – currently $19,000 per year.

But U.S. courts have historically interpreted what constitutes a gift narrowly. In a 1960 U.S. Supreme Court case, an opinion from a seven-justice majority defined gifts as arising from “detached and disinterested generosity.”

That standard works when your uncle cuts you a birthday check. But it’s not a good fit for today’s collective, need-based giving that’s often coordinated through online platforms and often involves the transfer of funds among people who have never met.

Jeopardizing government benefits

Research shows that mutual aid disproportionately supports low-income households, undocumented families, people with disabilities and communities of color. These same groups are more likely to face heightened scrutiny from financial platforms and tax authorities, and are less likely to have access to tax or legal assistance.

In examining tax enforcement research alongside our findings, we found evidence that expanded reporting requirements may have amplified existing racial and economic inequities. And there could be serious consequences for the recipients of monetary mutual aid. Simply receiving a tax form can jeopardize their eligibility for some government benefits because it may suggest to the authorities that someone’s income is too high to need them.

Without clearer guidance, people who are already facing a crisis may be penalized for receiving help. Research on informal giving suggests that when reporting rules are unclear, individual donors may become more hesitant to send money directly to someone who needs it.

As charitable crowdfunding continues to grow, the issue is not only how platforms such as Venmo or GoFundMe report transactions. Clearer guidance from the IRS about how need-based, noncommercial transfers should be treated could reduce the risk that emergency support is mischaracterized as income.

Shelly Tygielski founded the Pandemic of Love mutual aid movement.

Shelly Tygielski is affiliated with Pandemic of Love, the global mutual aid organization. She is also an executive board member of Global Empowerment Mission, a global nonprofit humanitarian aid organization.

Pamala Wiepking receives funding from the Dutch Postcode Lotteries and her work is funded through a generous grant from the Stead Family.

– ref. Crowdfunded generosity isn’t taxable – but IRS regulations haven’t kept up with the growth of mutual aid – https://theconversation.com/crowdfunded-generosity-isnt-taxable-but-irs-regulations-havent-kept-up-with-the-growth-of-mutual-aid-274945

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Anna Swartwood House, Associate Professor of Art History, University of South Carolina

When a 5-inch-by-4-inch red chalk drawing of a woman’s foot by Michelangelo sold at auction for US$27.2 million on Feb. 5, 2026, it blew past the $1.5 million to $2 million it was expected to receive.

Experts believe it to be a study for the figure of the Libyan Sibyl, a female prophet who appears on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Michelangelo painted the iconic frescoes from 1508 to 1512, but he first sketched out the overall composition and details in a series of preparatory drawings. Only around 50 of these drawings survive today.

This was an exciting sale for reasons outside that eye-popping sum. Held in private collections for centuries, the drawing only came to light after the owner sent an unsolicited photo to Christie’s auction house. There, a drawings expert recognized it as one of the relatively few remaining studies for the Sistine frescoes.

As an art historian who specializes in the Italian Renaissance, I’m excited about the sale not because of the money it fetched, but because of the attention it has brought to Michelangelo’s lifelong devotion to drawing, a medium he prized over painting.

‘Not my art’

Art historians know a lot about Michelangelo through the letters and poems he penned, along with two biographies written in his lifetime by intimates Giorgio Vasari and Ascanio Condivi.

In 1506, Pope Julius II put Michelangelo’s sculpting work on a papal tomb at St. Peter’s Basilica on hold, redirecting the funds intended for the tomb to the renovation of the basilica itself.

Michelangelo responded by closing his studio. He ordered his workshop assistants to sell off its contents, abandoned 90 wagonloads’ worth of marble and left Rome in disgust.

In 1508, Julius and his intermediary, Cardinal Francesco Alidosi, were able to lure Michelangelo back to Rome with the promise of a 500-ducat payment and a contract to paint the Sistine. Despite accepting, the artist went on to complain relentlessly about his new commission. He wrote to his father that painting “is not my profession” and told the pope that painting “is not my art.”

Sculpture, not painting, was central to Michelangelo’s identity.

In the Condivi biography, which Michelangelo approved and helped shape, the artist is said to have abandoned painter Domenico Ghirlandaio’s workshop around 1490 to train in the Florence sculpture garden of powerful arts patron Lorenzo de’ Medici. Michelangelo would later joke that he became a sculptor as an infant, thanks to the breast milk of his wet nurse, who was the daughter of stonemasons.

Beyond his enthusiastic embrace of sculpture and resentment over the Sistine – what he called the “tragedy of the tomb” – Michelangelo found painting in fresco to be backbreaking work.

“I’ve grown a goiter from this torture,” he wrote to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia in an illustrated poem. “My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard’s pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket, my breast twists like a harpy’s. My brush, above me all the time, dribbles paint so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!”

“My painting is dead,” he concludes. “I am not in the right place – I am not a painter.”

A grand design

The caricature that accompanies Michelangelo’s poem shows not only a cantankerous and restless mind, but also his use of drawing to reflect its inner workings.

The early 16th century witnessed a rise of drawing, with Michelangelo leading the way. Rather than simply copying or providing models for painting, drawing became understood as an important intellectual, exploratory and creative exercise

Michelangelo’s biographer Vasari famously used the term “disegno” to mean both a physical drawing and a work’s overall “design” or concept, giving the artist an almost godlike creative power.

This double meaning is reflected in the title of the hugely popular 2017 exhibition of Michelangelo’s drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York”: “Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer.”

Michelangelo created many drawings for the Sistine that reflected the different meanings of “disegno.” There were his sketches of models, along with his architectural renderings and schemes to organize the huge space. Then there were the full-size “cartoons” he drew to transfer his designs directly onto the ceiling itself.

The good foot

Michelangelo also made many studies of individual body parts and gestures for the Sistine, including eyes, hands and feet.

In a drawing for the Sistine ceiling that’s now in the British Museum, various hands – perhaps modeled after his own – repeat across the right side of the page. Feet were especially important to the overall design of the human figure, and they stand at the intersection of Michelangelo’s interests in Classical art and human anatomy.

Contrapposto, or the Classical “counter-poise,” was the iconic stance for standing figures in paintings and sculptures. It features the trunk of the body centered over one leg with its foot planted, and the other bent with the foot perched on the toe. Michelangelo’s “David” stands in contrapposto, and even doctors today are impressed by the anatomical precision of the muscles and veins of each foot.

The Christie’s red chalk drawing of the foot was likely done from a live model, with Michelangelo showing the elegance of the Libyan Sibyl prophetess through her dramatically arched foot.

In the finished fresco, Sibyl’s body is a kind of elegant machine. The musculature of her extended arms, her coiled torso and her pointed toe all work in concert. This small drawing shows how the charged energy of a single body part could contribute to the overall “disegno” of the massive fresco.

While the process of painting the ceiling was arduous, the process of conceiving it through drawing was obviously rewarding for Michelangelo.

Drawing as the linchpin

Despite the popularity of the Sistine frescoes, Michelangelo rarely returned to painting after completing them. In 1534, Pope Clement VII commissioned him to paint the “The Last Judgment” on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel. But only after Clement died later that year – and Clement’s successor, Pope Paul III, gave Michelangelo the extraordinary title of Chief Architect, Sculptor, and Painter to the Vatican Palace – did the artist begin work on the altar wall.

While many people today may think of the Sistine frescoes or Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” when they think of the Italian Renaissance, those artists did not think of themselves primarily as painters.

In a famous letter of introduction to the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, Leonardo elaborates on his many skills in creating fortifications, infrastructure and weaponry. He boasts about his ability to build bridges, canals, tunnels and catapults. Only after 10 paragraphs does he include a single sentence admitting that he, in addition, “can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and in painting can do any kind of work as well as any man.”

Like Michelangelo’s, Leonardo’s drawings show a voracious mind at work. They explore, rather than simply observe, everything from military machines to human anatomy. In 1563, Michelangelo would go on to be named master of the Accademia del Disegno in Florence, which aimed to teach drawing and design as the underlying skills necessary for sculpture, architecture and painting.

Drawing, it turns out, was the art that unified the many pursuits of the “Renaissance Man.”

Anna Swartwood House does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Michelangelo hated painting the Sistine Chapel – and never aspired to be a painter to begin with – https://theconversation.com/michelangelo-hated-painting-the-sistine-chapel-and-never-aspired-to-be-a-painter-to-begin-with-275788

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Kathleen Keller, Professor of Nutritional Sciences, Penn State

It’s 5:45 p.m. and you’ve just arrived home after a long day at work. You’d like nothing more than a glass of pinot and to binge old episodes of your favorite show. Into the kitchen comes young Sally, your food-adventurous 8-year-old. “I’m hungry, what’s for dinner?”

Sally has never met a food she’s afraid to try. Visions of her savoring the tangy brine of an oyster and joyously slurping spicy ramen noodles dance in your head.

Before you can give her an answer, Billy, your 4-year-old picky eater, shouts, “Mac and cheese!” from the living room. Billy rotates between three entrées: macaroni and cheese from a box, chicken nuggets (only dino shaped) and pasta (only spaghetti).

You sigh and wonder how such diverse creatures ended up in the same family.

If this scenario rings a bell, you are not alone. As a nutritional neuroscientist and a parent, I have spent the better part of my professional and personal life thinking about why children eat the foods they do.

Understanding how food preferences develop can help parents teach kids to enjoy a diverse, varied and healthy diet.

Nature vs. nurture?

Are genes to blame in the case of picky eaters like Billy? While genes can have some influence, they often explain only a small part of the story.

People are born liking the taste of sweet and disliking the taste of bitter. These traits are thought to be protective in that they can help drive someone toward sources of calories – which are often sweet, such as fruits or breast milk – and away from potential toxins or poisons, which are often bitter. As an example of these innate preferences, one study found that pregnant moms who consumed sweet carrot capsules had babies who smiled on the ultrasound, while those who ingested bitter kale capsules had babies who grimaced for the camera, suggesting early on their dislike for bitter vegetables.

In addition to these innate responses, there are genes that affect your ability to taste bitter compounds. These compounds, called thioureas, are similar to those found in cruciferous vegetables. People who inherit genes that make them sensitive to these bitter compounds – about 70% of the U.S. population – tend to also be more sensitive to other bitter tastes in foods. Because of this, they may dislike foods such as raw broccoli, black coffee and grapefruit.

However, there are plenty of people who develop a liking for bitter foods, even though their first experience with them might have been unpleasant. Case in point, the growing popularity of bitter IPA beers.

Another gene that can influence food preferences is the gene that makes cilantro taste soapy. Those born with a version of this olfactory gene – up to 20% of the U.S. population – are sensitive to aldehyde compounds that tend to taste soapy. Because of this taste, they often dislike cilantro.

Pavlov and food preferences

While genes by themselves explain only a small part of taste, a person’s interactions with food in the environment are particularly influential when it comes to what they want for dinner.

Ivan Pavlov was a 19th-century experimental physiologist who showed that dogs could be taught to salivate at the sound of a bell. He put them through a conditioning period in which mealtime was repeatedly paired with the sound of a bell. Most pets have some ability to learn to associate environmental cues – such as a food bowl or the sound of their owners’ commands – with food.

In the early 1980s, psychologist Leann Birch conducted a series of studies showing that people develop food preferences using a process similar to Pavlov’s classical conditioning. When the taste of a food is associated with positive experiences – such as an influx of calories, release of reward chemicals in the brain or the pleasing tones of a mother’s voice – these positive experiences can enhance how much a person likes a food. On the other side of the coin, negative experiences, such as a painful stomachache or a punishment associated with eating a food – “You have to eat all of your vegetables or no screen time!”– can often decrease how much someone likes a food.

Babies even begin learning about food before they are born. In a classic study by biopsychologist Julie Mennella, pregnant moms who drank carrot juice four days a week during their pregnancy or while breastfeeding had babies who were more accepting of carrot-flavored cereal when it was first presented to them. Flavors that are passed through amniotic fluid to the developing fetus prime the future baby to accept the cuisine of the family.

Hope for picky eaters

The good news is that for most children, picky eating is a phase that tends to decline as they reach school age. And if children are growing at a healthy pace, it’s often not something to be too concerned about.

For parents who want to help their kids expand their palates, the most important thing you can do is give your child repeated opportunities to taste foods without pressuring or coercing them. Some children need 12 or more taste experiences with a new food before they will accept it. Some children will also be open to trying foods at school or day care, even if they won’t try them in front of you.

As for Sally and Billy, you’ve managed to get dinner on the table right on time. Your latest invention: kimchi mac and cheese and baked cauliflower, with extra Sriracha for Sally. You’re hoping the familiar shape of the boxed mac and cheese noodle might tempt Billy into taking a bite. And if not, there’s always tomorrow.

Kathleen Keller receives funding from The National Institutes of Health, The United States Department of Agriculture, Dairy Management Inc., McCormick Science Institute

– ref. Picky eating starts in the womb – a nutritional neuroscientist explains how to expand your child’s palate – https://theconversation.com/picky-eating-starts-in-the-womb-a-nutritional-neuroscientist-explains-how-to-expand-your-childs-palate-275643

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Timothy J. Pawl, Professor of Philosophy, University of St. Thomas

What do you envision when you think of meekness?

You probably see a mousy doormat, someone sheepishly acquiescing to the will of the stronger. When Jesus says, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” you might think that those wimps will hand it over without a whimper or word of objection to stronger, more ambitious people. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called meekness “craven baseness.”

Indeed, one of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions is “inclined to submit tamely to oppression or injury, easily imposed upon or cowed, timid.” Meekness, then, is a weakness. Why would you ever want to be meek?

The same goes for docility, often characterized as a near neighbor of meekness. We can get a feel for its usage these days from the Corpus of Contemporary American English, where one finds that a docile person is slow, controllable, obedient, submissive, compliant, passive and under control.

Or consider condescension. You likely envision someone self-important looking down her nose at a service worker, or some insufferable prig unwilling to come off his high horse to mingle with the peasants. Being condescending, far from being a virtue, is universally acknowledged as a vice.

Meekness, docility and condescension: three traits with no cultural capital today. And yet, our ancestors typically understood these traits to be virtues. How in the world could that be?

As any philosopher will tell you, in a case of seeming disagreement, you need to settle the definitions of the words in play. How many arguments have been abruptly dissolved by someone saying, “Oh, that’s what you mean”? When we check the meaning of these three terms, I think we come to see that there’s been a switcheroo. As I’ve found in my philosophical research and teaching, some of the virtues that were most celebrated in yesteryear but now go undersung are traits that can help us lead good lives, even now.

Forgotten virtues

Consider meekness – but allow me to start with a little vignette.

In 2018, mixed martial-arts champion Matt Serra was having a family meal in a restaurant when a belligerent drunken man entered, threatening servers and patrons. Serra could have knocked him out cold. But instead, he calmly pinned him, waiting for security to arrive.

A similar trait is on display when exasperated parents react with control, harried teachers don’t rise to students’ provocations, and police de-escalate situations. In each case, they kept control of their emotions, especially their anger. One common feature of these stories is that the person wasn’t powerless; rather, it was precisely because they understood how much power they had that they used restraint.

Such a trait – excellence with respect to one’s anger – used to be called meekness. We hear an echo of this original meaning even today in horse training, where to “meek” a horse means training it to subjugate its great power to its master, not letting its passions take control. Likewise, meekness once meant not becoming weak, but subjugating power to reason – not letting anger take control.

In the Gospels, when Jesus calls himself meek, it is the same Greek word used for a meek horse: “praus.” A horse is not weaker on account of being meeked; no Greek warrior wanted a wimpy steed. The horse retains its strength, now safeguarded by self-control.

This is quite a different notion of meekness than we find in our contemporary lexicon. Yet in its traditional sense, the word names a trait almost everyone deeply values. No one wants her best friend, child, teacher, coach or deputy to be unable to control her anger.

Such control is an important character trait for living a good life, but we no longer have a concept for it. What term do people use today for being disposed to pick battles prudently, not letting anger cloud one’s judgment, not being easily baited into action they’ll come to regret – without being easily biddable or callous to real injustices? “Self-control,” a broad category that covers facing temptations, enduring difficulties and myriad things in between, is too broad a notion to do the work.

Nor do we have a word for someone excellent at receiving instruction and insights – but at the same time who’s unafraid to think for herself, to disregard the advice of a snake-oil salesman. That used to be called docility.

Condescension, the most surprising of the three, now suggests someone deigning to speak down from their lofty height. Yet it once described excellence at respecting people, regardless of their social status: easily connecting with those on a lower rung so they feel seen and valued, but without causing embarrassment or awkwardness. What term do we have now for inculcating such an important trait?

Why words matter

To be clear, I’m not here from the Language Reclamation League. I’m not necessarily advocating for a return to older language – and certainly not just because it is older. But without replacements for ethical concepts we’ve lost, we’re faced with a moral void, unable even to conceptualize the goodness that we want to see in ourselves and those we love.

Maybe you think that not much is lost. Bridges fall when engineers can’t distinguish varieties of physical strength; what’s lost if people can’t distinguish varieties of character strength?

To my mind, there are at least three reasons why it is important to have some term or other for these traits.

First, there’s good psychological evidence that goals of approach – “I want to get healthy,” “I want to get financially stable” – are a stronger motivation for us than avoidance goals – “I want to stop being sick,” “I want not to be poor.” Approach goals typically yield more effort, more satisfaction and more well-being. But they require naming the moral virtue you want to cultivate.

Second, the positive traits named by these old virtues are what you really want. You don’t merely want your loved ones to stop acting out of wrath. You want them to be able to restrain their power in the face of their anger. You are ignorant of your real goal if you don’t have a concept for it.

Third, consider the detriment caused by not having shared language for an ethical concept. The philosopher Miranda Fricker has written of the time before the term “sexual harassment” was coined in 1975. She provides multiple instances of women being wronged in the workplace, but being unable to articulate that wrong to those in power, owing to a lack of a shared label for it. And not only that, but the lack of an adequate concept prevented the victims from fully understanding the wrong themselves.

Having positive concepts for the traits we want to enable in ourselves and others is essential, then, to the moral life. The fact that we’ve let several go the way of “blatherskite” and “bumfuzzled” is telling.

We still have terms for a bloviating windbag or being bewildered, so we don’t need those archaic, though admittedly fun, words to express important truths. But when it comes to undersung virtues, we do need some way to highlight character traits that help form us into our best selves – even if the words of yesteryear no longer fit the bill.

Timothy J. Pawl received funding from The John Templeton Foundation for research on the topic of this article.

– ref. Meekness isn’t weakness – once considered positive, it’s one of the ‘undersung virtues’ that deserve defense today – https://theconversation.com/meekness-isnt-weakness-once-considered-positive-its-one-of-the-undersung-virtues-that-deserve-defense-today-276360