Category Archives: Education

The Nostalgia Trap

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As I age, I’d like to avoid many middle-aged and elderly people’s penchant for complaining that “compared to back in the day, the world is going to hell.” Much of that pessimism rests on selective perception. Except for the clinically depressed, isn’t life a constantly shifting mix of good and bad?

Here’s a related NYT book review excerpt from a new novel “Super Sad” which takes place in the near future.

“Mr. Shteyngart has extrapolated every toxic development already at large in America to farcical extremes. The United States is at war in Venezuela, and its national debt has soared to the point where the Chinese are threatening to pull the plug. There are National Guard checkpoints around New York, and riots in the city’s parks. Books are regarded as a distasteful, papery-smelling anachronism by young people who know only how to text-scan for data, and privacy has become a relic of the past. Everyone carries around a device called an äppärät, which can live-stream its owner’s thoughts and conversations, and broadcast their “hotness” quotient to others. People are obsessed with their health — Lenny works as a Life Lovers Outreach Coordinator (Grade G) for a firm that specializes in life extension — and shopping is the favorite pastime of anyone with money. It’s “zero hour for our economy,” says one of Lenny’s friends, “zero hour for our military might, zero hour for everything that used to make us proud to be ourselves.”

Is your relative optimism or pessimism based upon the quality of your nation’s governance, economy, and military, or as I suspect, more on the nature of your personal budget, the status of your family’s and your health, the quality of your friendships, and the relative purposefulness of your work.

I’m feeling positive about life today in part because of a post run lake swim, an enjoyable dinner with three friends, and an amazing sunset over the sound.

I have downer moments, days, and weeks like everyone.

I prefer spending time with people who reject the myth of a golden yesteryear and what sociologists refer to as “deficit model” thinking and show empathy for the truly unfortunate. People whose thoughts, words, and deeds are more hopeful than cynical.

Mental File Folders

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Social psychologists suggest our brains are filled with mental file folders of sort that enable us to take short cuts when bumping into or first interacting with people. Labels such as male, female, rich, poor, overweight, African-American, professor, Wall Street banker, southerner, foreigner, libertarian, conservative republican, liberal democrat, elderly, homeless, aspergers, gay, lesbian, environmentalist, evangelical Christian. We also have thinner files that might be (awkwardly) labeled, “male, conservative republican, evangelical Christian”.

Without our mental file folders, we’d have to make sense of each new person from scratch; consequently, we’d be too overwhelmed to function normally.

The question though is how thick are our respective folders? In our increasingly diverse world, we can get into serious trouble when our folders are so thin that we succumb to inaccurate stereotypes. Everyone has preconceived notions about other groups of people. The best antidote for negative preconceived notions is getting to know a wider range of diverse individuals through direct daily experience. Only then can you get a feel for a key cross-cultural insight or sensibility, that the individual differences within each file folder are typically greater than between them.

Our challenge as multicultural people is to do two things simultaneously, to recognize that there are group patterns, themes, and differences, and to recognize that the individual differences within each group are usually greater than the differences between groups. There’s lots of evidence that not everyone is up to this relatively sophisticated, multitasking, social psychological balancing act.

Fast forward to Thursday night’s training ride with about thirty other cyclists. Early on, heading out-of-town, I was spinning casually in the back (like Lance Armstrong) when a new rider introduced himself. At 20mph we talked for the next ten minutes. A military officer with about 20 years experience. Our worldviews couldn’t have been more different. We discussed drones in Afghanistan, the McChrystal firing, and his work more generally.

I’m about as dovish as they come and he was all hawk. I was unpleasantly surprised by his “I sleep well at night” lack of introspection. Cue the “military personnel” folder. Fortunately in that folder are a few “pieces of paper” representing the marines I met while teaching in Ethiopia. They were based at the US embassy and would travel to our school to hoop it up with us once or twice a week. We became friends. They invited a few of us to the embassy in the middle of the night to watch the World Series, and without knowing it, they helped me rethink my preconceived notions of military personnel.

So I’m adding my new cycling acquaintance to my “military personnel” folder, but not overgeneralizing about all military personnel based upon my admittedly brief interaction with him.

300th Post

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Quite a few don’t you think. Thanks for reading and sometimes commenting whether online or in person.

You’ve probably noticed I’ve been switching templates lately. The problem is the best designs have the smallest, least legible fonts. Within wordpress, to get a larger, more readable font, you have to sacrifice on the design front. I’d like to customize things, but need someone more tech savvy than me to volunteer to help. Yeah, yeah, I know, why specify “more tech savvy” when that’s most everyone.

As always, I’m open to suggestions.

As I think about the topics I’ve written about, I’m struck by how wide-ranging my interests are. I’m sure blog consultants would say too wide-ranging. I could TRY to narrow my focus, but that would mean posting less often. Right now at least, I’m more inclined to accept the limitations of my decidedly generalist orientation.

Speaking of consulting, I would like to do more going forward and would appreciate any leads you might have. Primarily lectures and/or workshops on: 1) reinventing high school teaching and learning; 2) the high school to college transition; 3A) internationalizing curriculum; and 3B) teaching about globalization. In April, I enjoyed helping a university faculty at an Iowa college (on 3A&B) and I am looking forward to speaking at a college in Illinois next spring (3A).

I’m looking forward to being on sabbatical during the 2011-2012 academic year, although I may need to tweak that in light of other departmental colleagues on the same timeframe. I intend on using my sabbatical, whenever it occurs, to prep for and seek out more consulting opportunities.

Guns and Bombs

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From the Wall Street Journal, 6/21/10. World governments are spending more on guns and bombs than ever. Global military expenditures in 2009 topped $1.53 trillion—2.7% of global GDP, up 6% in real terms from 2008 and 49% since 2000. The U.S. spent $661 billion—4.3% of GDP, accounting for 43% of the world total. China followed with an estimated $100 billion—2% of GDP and 217% more than 2000.

Just under 5% of the world’s pop and 43% of the world’s military expenditures.

And the China stat of recent days. Every six hours China exports more than it did in all of 1978 (Marginal Revolution-blog).

Weekend Notes

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U.S. OPEN

• I was off Friday and spent some of the day prepping for 17’s Graduation Open House and some fantasizing about being at Pebble Beach. As great as the visuals were, listening to Chris Berman do the U.S. Open is excruciating. I’m sure he’d be a fun guy to play poker or watch football with, but he obviously did not grow up playing golf. I can take “We’re all just Dustin’ in the Wind Johnson” but I can’t take the “He shot a 9” and “That’s the second snowman there of the day!” and the “back, back, back” urging of a short putt. No one shoots anything on an individual hole. One MAKES a nine. And pros occasionally make eights, not snowmen. This is a MAJOR, not the Bristol Municipal Club Championship. Listening to Dick Vitale is soothing by comparison.

• Also on Friday, very interesting ruling involving Paul Casey’s chip on 14. Brutal uphill chip with zero margin of error. Casey hits it a tad chubby and in frustration hits/repairs the divot a few times. In the ensuing ten-fifteen seconds, the ball backs all the way off the green, eventually to almost the exact spot. Viewers alert the rules officials that Casey has improved his lie. Penalty? Rules officials huddle with Casey after the round, review the particulars of the two shots, and ask him whether he hit/repaired the divot in order to improve his lie in case the ball returned to the exact same spot. Based upon his body language they didn’t think so, and so they weren’t surprised when Casey confirmed that. There really was no way Casey could have known the ball would return to exact same spot. The rule is it’s a penalty if there’s intent is to improve one’s lie. I hereby declare that before wives rip husbands and daughters ban fathers from speaking in public that they adjust for intent.

WORLD CUP

• After reading the comments about my “it’s poor form to complain about officiating” post, I’ve changed my mind. Merty’s comment in particular reminded me of the NBA/FBI/Tim Donaghy fiasco. I’m sure there’s far more $ coursing through World Cup matches than NBA games. Maybe the Malian ref who blew the call at the end of US/Slovenia is cut from Donaghy cloth. So here’s my revised axiom. Whenever athletes are amateurs, it’s poor form to complain about officiating. The corollary is “The younger the athletes, the poorer the form.”

SCHOOLING

• I understand it’s sociocultural/historical roots, but I’m still amazed at how prevalent individualism is in our schools especially when future success will inevitably hinge on interpersonal intelligence. The OHS awards assembly and graduation (where the same award winners were feted a second time) reminded me of that. Why is it that teamwork and groups are only emphasized in extracurricular activities? Our success in solving pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges hinge mostly on team/group work. Sarason’s concept of the “regularities of schooling” comes to mind. A “regularity of schooling” is some feature of teaching and learning that we no longer question, it’s just accepted as the natural order. For example, we always assign grades to each individual student and we only award individual student achievement. This also calls to mind Sarason’s “ocean storm” metaphor in the Predictable Failure of Education Reform. Lots of wind, waves, tumult on the surface during an ocean storm, but no change in water chemistry, temperature, etc, on the ocean floor. The ocean floor is the teacher-student relationship. How would teaching and learning change if we tempered our individualism and focused at least some of our assessment efforts on small group academic achievement?

• During his grad speech, the OHS principal honored the top ten students. A slide of the students flashed above. He said, “good job girls” with no sense of irony or urgency. I’m in the middle of a related article in the most recent Atlantic magazine titled “The End of Men”. Highly recommended.

• Byrnes Postulate (be sure to credit me). The more meaningful the curricular objective and related classroom activity, the more difficult to assess the associated student learning. Granted seems obvious, but I suggest that postulate informs more of what’s wrong with the “standards movement” than is first apparent.

WORLD POLITICS

• Heard an interview with the author of this book. He persuasively argued that no single nation can singlehandedly solve the immigration challenge. Made perfect sense, but it doesn’t seem as if anyone is acknowledging that. In fact, it’s true of most global issues today, but there are at least two serious impediments to thinking more globally and acting more in concert with other people in other nations to address pressing global issues like global poverty, environmental crises, and terrorism/war. First, the U.N. has a lot of negative baggage associated with it and there are wonderful NGOs, but few truly global alternatives. And secondly, no country/region (in the case of the EU) really wants to be take the lead in compromising their relative sovereignty.

FITNESS MALISE

• It’s 12:56p Sunday, we’re on the cusp of the summer equinox, and I’m sitting at my desk in half a cycling kit, staring at a cold, wet, dark gray landscape with 57 miles on the odometer for the week. Pathetic. I started down the street at 9:50a only to turn around when it started to rain. Mother Nature is testing all cyclists’ mental health this June. Look for some to start snapping. I was supposed to be Lance’s domestique on Mount Saint Helens today and then opted for a 10a club ride. Now I’ve performed the rare “double wuss”. My problem is I have nothing I HAVE to train for, not a single event on the calendar. I don’t even think I’ll do our local Oly triathlon in September. I’m 280th on the RAMROD waiting list. This is a desperate cry for help. Someone tell me what event should I do next and why? To add insult to injury, 14 informed me that if I had stayed in bed, her sister and her would have made me a “Dad’s Day” breakfast.

No Sense of Urgency

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Friday, June 10th, 11:30a.m. Sitting up high in the stands in the Olympia High gymnasium. Awards assembly. Surrounded by fellow parents of seniors. Make contact with fourteen on the other side of the gym and hold my iPad up and taunt her with it which she and her friends find entertaining. This early adopting stuff is kinda fun, but it would be awfully embarrassing if an administrator confiscated it.

But I digress. 11:50a.m. and we’ve gone from 165 students with a 3.5 gpa to 80 with something higher to the top 20 gpaers.

Nineteen young women.

Why aren’t parents, educators, ordinary citizens of all types more concerned with the growing gender gap in academic achievement?

Where’s the urgency?

iPad Review

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In the Steve Ballmer-desk-top computers will continue to thrive v. Steve Jobs-desk-tops will become like a truck that you use sporadically for a few specific tasks, I’m putting ALL my money on Jobs.

And I will be in the vanguard. I have been blown away by my Pad and am frustrated I haven’t had more time to set it up and learn the ins and outs. Two things are conspiring against Pad-time, a heavy June teaching schedule and a light fourteen year old.

Just how great a handheld computer is it? Eventually women will find an alternative word for their feminine product. At the store, “Do you have any pads?” “Wi-fi or 3G?” The first night I went to bed at 10 p.m. and by 6 a.m. the next morning five new apps appeared out of thin air including the bible and an especially riveting one where you poke plastic bubble wrap. The highlight so far has been showing fourteen how to lock it in either horizontal or vertical mode.

Let’s get my least favorite feature out of the way so I can return to positive product pimping. The homepage photograph is a beautiful coastline at dusk with white wisps across the sky, remnants of shooting stars maybe? The problem is they look exactly like ruinous scratches. They still give me heart palpitations six days later. Don’t know that I’ll ever get used to them.

As every other reviewer has explained, typing on the screen keyboard is okay for a few sentences at a time. I bought a separate keyboard and mouse so that I can go long on it. Lack of printing is an issue, but no doubt a temporary one.

Here’s one way it’s changed my life already. Yes, that was tongue in check. My wife is of the anti-television persuasion. I wear the pants in the family nearly all the time (I should confirm that with her), but I have not mustered the courage to defy her “no television in the bedroom” edict. With this bad boy, I mean pad boy, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Case in point, the other night I surreptitiously watched an episode of Scrubs on ABC’s app. I know what you’re thinking. Let’s just say it will be ON if she even suggests a “no Pad in the bedroom” policy.

Admittedly, this may be the most incomplete, least technical, least insightful, least helpful iPad review written to this point. But how many of those other fanboys can do this?

Palming the Pad