Adolescents' Commitment to Developing Talent: The Role of Peers in Continuing Motivation for Sports and the Arts

The role of peer relationships in supporting or hindering adolescents' talent development has received little research attention, despite the importance of peers in adolescents' lives. We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 41 adolescents talented in sports or the arts, and their parents, to investigate (a) the role of peer relationships in adolescents' continued involvement in their talent activities, (b) possible differences in this role by activity domain, and (c) possible gender differences. Thematic analysis indicated that peers typically played a positive function in supporting the continued involvement of talented adolescents in their talent activities. There were differences in opportunities for peer relationships and social satisfaction between in-school and out-of school activities, but not between activity domains. Both males and females mentioned equally social benefits of such involvement. However, females mentioned receiving negative peer attention more frequently than males, and more often cited social dissatisfaction as a significant contributor to decreased involvement or quitting.     

'All things richly to enjoy': Economics and Politics in Locke's Two Treatises of Government

For all its importance, what is actually said about money in Two Treatises is highly obscure. Comparison with Locke's 1668–74 writings on interest reveals a common understanding of the function of money, akin to that of contemporary mercantilists, which illuminates many difficulties in the chapter on property. These writings are the source of the main economic concepts in the Treatises ; namely, labour as the active source of wealth (which along with the Roman Law notion of self-ownership provides the basis of Locke's theory of property); money overcoming the 'spoliation limit' on the accumulation of consumables, and the idea that money is created by and derives its value from consent (which Two Treatises exploits as a justification of the unequal distribution of property). Finally, the early writings suggest how implausible it is to read a labour theory of exchange value into the Treatises .     

School vouchers and academic performance: results from three randomized field trials

This article examines the effects of school vouchers on student test scores in New York, New York, Dayton, Ohio, and Washington, DC. The evaluations in all three cities are designed as randomized field trials. The findings, therefore, are not confounded by the self‐selection problems that pervade most observational data. After 2 years, African Americans who switched from public to private school gained, relative to their public‐school peers, an average of 6.3 National Percentile Ranking points in the three cities on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. The gains by city were 4.2 points in New York, 6.5 points in Dayton, and 9.2 points in Washington. Effects for African Americans are statistically significant in all three cities. In no city are statistically significant effects observed for other ethnic groups, after either 1 or 2 years. © 2002 by the Association for Policy Analysis and Management.     

Psychological self-defense

A small but increasingly visible number of battered women eventually kill their batterers. While most of these women plead self-defense, they are generally convicted of murder or manslaughter because their homicidal acts rarely fit the narrow legal definition of self-defense. This article (a) explains who battered women are and why they kill; (b) suggests that many, perhaps most, battered women who kill their batterers do so in psychological self-defense; and (c) argues that current self-defense law should be expanded to justify such killings.Adversary Forum is edited by Gary B. Melton.