DOES RAISING TEACHER SALARIES IMPROVE PERFORMANCE?–Fifteen years ago, Indonesia embarked on a policy experiment that shed new light on how salaries affect teacher effort. Over the course of 10 years, Indonesia raised salaries by more than a quarter for a subset of teachers. They randomized the roll-out across schools, which allowed researchers to compare schools that got the raises early on to schools that wouldn't get the raises until much later. The result? Teachers were happier, and they were less likely to hold a second job. The reform initially decreased teacher absenteeism, but that effect disappeared by the second year. Student learning remained unchanged. psmag.com
Will Translated Fiction Ever Really Break Through?–One way to try and break the impasse is to chase readers. If every translation sold like Elena Ferrante’s books, everyone would be doing them. Every publisher tries to replicate the last most successful thing. But does that mean that every nonprofit trying to bring news and culture to American readers should seek out the next A Man Called Ove or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? Maybe not. Publishing is a business, and even nonprofits have to sell books, but at the same time, there is a long-running faith in publishing that books are more than commodities — that Cervantes and Tokarczuk and Bolaño and Ferrante and Sebald generate something beyond profits. www.vulture.com
The Hidden Harper Lee–Among other things, these letters revealed that Lee, a fan of small-stakes gambling, was a withering casino critic (“the worst punishment God can devise for this sinner is to make her spirit reside eternally at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City,” she wrote to one friend in 1990), a capable sportscaster (ESPN could have hired her solely on the basis of her 1963 report on the “lallapalooza” that ensued when Wally Butts and Bear Bryant were accused of fixing a Georgia-Alabama football game), a dedicated chronicler of bar ballads from around the world (including Thomas Hardy’s favorite, “Come Where the Booze Is Cheaper,” with its rousing call to “Come where the pots hold more! Come where the boss is a bit of a joss! Come to the pub next door!”), and an amusingly sympathetic homicide reporter (“I know exactly why she did it,” she explained in 1976 of Lizzie Borden: “Anyone burdened with long petticoats and having had mutton soup for breakfast on a day like that was bound to have murdered somebody before sundown”). www.theparisreview.org
Social Media Are Ruining Political Discourse–Propaganda is nothing new; it has appeared in pamphlets, books, and newspapers practically since the invention of the printing press. But social media seem particularly susceptible to spreading disinformation. That’s because social media engage viewers in a way that designers call “flow,” a psychological idea adopted as a digital-design strategy by video games. Flow focuses on keeping the user moving from one element to the next, repetitively, in search of gratification from the act of consuming media rather than from engaging with its content. www.theatlantic.com
Our Fury Over Abortion Was Dismissed for Decades As Hysterical–Which is why I am almost as mad at many on the left, theoretically on the side of reproductive rights and justice, who have refused, somehow, to see this coming or act aggressively to forestall it. I have no small amount of rage stored for those in the Democratic Party who have relied on the engaged fury of voters committed to reproductive autonomy to elect them, at the same time that they have treated the efforts of activists trying to stave off this future as inconvenient irritants. www.thecut.com
The 4 Questions to Ask before You Unplug–Unplugging is far from costless—and I’m not just talking about the hours of therapy required to separate me from my computer. There’s a massive literature about digital exclusion and the “digital divide”: the gap between people (and especially young people) with significant technology access, and those whose access to tech and tech skills is more limited (or non-existent). daily.jstor.org
Why Western museums should return African artifacts–Repatriation seems the only way to address the historical injustice museums have caused. This is crucial to restore the agency of Africans as producers of their own history. Preservation is not the only answer to the question of what to do with the vast wealth of natural, cultural and intellectual items, including human remains, held in Western museums. Following repatriation, Africans should determine the worth and place of these collections. Not all artifacts need to be preserved and put on display. They are living sources of knowledge, objects of worship and expressions of life. qz.com
C.E.O. Pay, America’s Economic ‘Miracle’–The extravagance of C.E.O. pay surfaced anew when Abigail Disney, granddaughter of the Walt Disney Company co-founder Roy Disney, called Bob Iger’s $65 million compensation “insane.” She then criticized the company for bragging, in its response to her, that it paid theme park workers a minimum of $15 an hour — twice the federal minimum. Big deal, she countered. “Cast members” still struggle to make ends meet while Mr. Iger is earning 1,424 times the median employee pay. This is the same Scrooge McDisney company that in 2015 imported lower-paid foreign workers on special visas to replace the local technical staff in Orlando, Fla., — and compelled the fired workers to train their own replacements. www.nytimes.com
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