Counter-Revolutionary

My wife and I just finished watching the first season of Revolution on Netflix. Creator Eric Kripke together with co-producer J.J. Abrams have put together an interesting world and peopled it with potentially interesting characters who have very little interesting to say and get pushed along in uninteresting and predictable little arcs.

Action is at the center of each episode and the story moves along nicely, but I'm having a hard time giving a shit about what happens to the characters. Sure, a few of the crew get offed as the story progresses, but it's not like I really care. I'm more interested in seeing how Kripke and Abrams rationalize technical aspects of a world unable to generate any electricity.

The premise is similar to Sean McMullen's Souls in the Great Machine, but less compelling.

I was interested enough to stay up past my bedtime and watch the season opener this last Wednesday. I am still interested in the details of Kripke and Abram's post-electron world, and will admit to feeling a little something for one of the characters.

Plus, these guys obviously have a love for Zeppelin and Rush, as evidenced in the titles of two first season episodes, "Kashmir" (yes, the song featured) and "Nobody's Fault but Mine."In the opener, an extended reference was made to "Ramble On," and the main characters linger long enough in the vicinity of a street performer for him to play the entire chorus of "Tom Sawyer."

Fortunately, I don't get wrapped around the axle if the science is wonky, although I'd love to sit down and talk with somebody who is willing to bitch about all the ways Revolution hand-waves its way past reality. If you're one of those people, comment your ass off on this post. If not, comment anyway.

Revolution is a great RPG set-up, however, so if it builds up a Firefly-like following, someone with more time than and dedication than I could build a D20 plug in for it. I'd check it out.

Kripke's other major project, Supernatural, has also so far failed to impress. It has the same flat writing quality as Revolution. Not terrible, just mediocre, especially when contrasted with the high water mark of the genre, X-Files. However, Supernatural does compare favorably with Kolchak: The Night Stalker. It gets some great reviews, so I am going soldier on for a bit and hope it improves.

A Spoonful of Respect

I spent yesterday filling in for a colleague at Spring Valley High School:

12th graders.

Basic US Government.

All 5 class periods.


Now, I suppose at this point you're expecting a rant about the kids' complete lack of political awareness and general apathy. Well, there was some of that. Quite a bit of it really. I'm not going to pretend they were particularly up on things. Still, all of them knew the names of the two primary political parties. They were aware that there was some kind of debate going on about the budget, and a few of them knew what the NRA and AARP were generally about.

These monster organizations came up because the day's topic was interest groups and whether or not students felt they endangered our rights or were an essential bridge between the populace and its representatives.

Of course, the answer depends on one's perspective, which came out slowly as we moved through some basic questions and discussed the nature of rights and how people in general perceive their own arguments versus those of people with whom they disagree.

If Bohemian Ear Spoons are outlawed . . .

It seemed most kids supported liberalization of gun laws. The bulk of each class agreed that people should be allowed to carry around firearms. One girl said, "You can kill someone with a spoon. A gun is no different." Very few students, in fact only one out of all five classes, attempted to support more restrictive firearms policies for civilians. She vaguely indicated that "Yeah,but if I had a gun I could, like shoot you from over here and I couldn't do that with a spoon."

I thought, well, maybe with a Bohemian Ear Spoon.

In general, kids who jumped in proffered the same basic arguments we've heard in the firearms debate. Curiously, not too many really seemed to care about abortion. In one class, marijuana legalization was a hot topic.

Hey, it's cheaper than Earl Scheib

Without taking a position on any of the specific arguments, I used it as a lesson not only in the lobbying process, but also in how people argue. I pointed out that most people go straight into "what a fucking dumbass" mode when offered a view alternative to their own. This, I explained, is why bumper stickers do nothing but wreck your paint job.

I also demonstrated that if we disallowed lobbying by groups we philosophically oppose, we also risk having our group shut down. This seemed to strike a chord in some students.

It was great to listen and hear them try to work out ideas. I'm not sure how often this happens in schools. I mean, the teacher for whom I was subbing dropped me a note and asked me to try to get them engage in exploratory, open discussion, because he said it is difficult to get them to open up. I think I succeeded.

And as I wandered off the campus, I thought about the use of discussion in high school classrooms. It can be highly effective while at the same time can be an excuse for many kids to check out.

Unfortunately, it's hard to tell the difference between an introverted kid who is just quietly listening and absorbing what is going on around her and a bored slacker just spacing out and waiting for the bell to ring.

However, I am more convinced every day that if I am allowed to do my job without worrying about headphones or texting or dropping an occasional piece of taboo language or dress code or trips to the Deans' office, I could probably get most of the space cadets to come around. It is a matter of speaking to them as equals who are early in their experiential journey.  You know, like you have something to share that's pretty cool, and they are welcome to chill for a bit. Whatever.

http://sprinklebrigade.blogspot.com/

True, some will act like fresh sidewalk turds on a summer's day, but I find teachers who skip being condescending and arbitrarily controlling tend to have students who are more inclined to listen to the teacher and to each other. Scooping the turds can come later.

In the end,  I worked hard for my chickens , but my reward came from at least one kid at the end of every class, who on the way out thanked me for making the topic interesting and told me they learned more in my hour than they often learn in weeks of note taking.

I'll take that.

Like Chickens for Elephantiasis

I offer a service. I can help people learn how to organize an essay, use a semicolon, and avoid pronoun-antecedent disagreement. 

Interested?

Bob is. He decides my service is worthwhile and useful as part of a larger goal of getting a college degree. So Bob decides to trade currency in the form of banknotes that have a value determined by general agreement for my service. Now, Bob doesn't give me his currency. He gives it to an institution who holds it for him until another institution, one that has agreed that the services I offer are useful to people like Bob, requests that currency. At which point Bob changes some numbers and currency shifts from the first institution to the second.

The second institution and I agree to cooperate. I provide my mad English skills and the people and structures within the institution act as intermediaries between me and Bob. Still tracking?

An English teacher who also washes cars

Now, on the weekend I decide I need to get my car washed because, you know, it’s about that time of year. I don’t want to do it myself, so I drive my car to a local car wash that has other people who have made agreement with the owners of the car wash to provide me a service I desire: doing their best to make my dented 2004 Civic presentable.

I hand one of these people a card that belongs to another institution who has promised a short-term loan for currency I have been promised in exchange for teaching Bob how to parse complex texts, and the car wash owners have some people soap up my ride while I sit on the patio and enjoy a coffee.

We take this admittedly simplified series of transactions for granted. Everyday we buy stuff and get other people to do things for us in exchange for money. We are, by proxy, offering our goods and services for their goods and services. It is very rare that people in the developed world trade services or goods directly.  I doubt that Julie at Green Valley Car Wash would wipe down my car in exchange for a quick lesson on compound sentence structure. Simplifying this system to eliminate proxy exchanges of goods and services through the use of currency is impossible in any culture more advanced than a Stone Age extended family. True, there are instances of straight barter in our lives. For instance, I traded my neighbor a piece of scrap lumber for a handshake and a bit of goodwill. My father traded permission to stay in one of his rental units for a few paint jobs on other units to a tenant who was unable to produce money. But this simplistic form of direct exchange does not keep a civilization based on specialization running. The reason I have hauled you, if you are still here, through my half-assed economics lesson is because I sometimes think people forget the necessary complexity of a modern economy. I keep running into people who seem to hold a view of economics borne of hyper-nostalgia and a romantic notion of rugged individualism based on simple transactions. They view the economy as an exchange of mutually beneficial contracts between equals: I make things, you can choose to buy them. I will provide a service in exchange for a service you provide. The problem is that love for this sort of modern economic fairy tale permeates some political circles and strongly informs the public debate on health care in America.

A few years ago there was a kerfuffle around Sue Lowden, a Nevadan with a penchant for the public eye and periodically successful runs for public office, who said, “Before we all started having health care, in the olden days our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor, they would say I'll paint your house."
She stood by her comment, and not only as figurative language. She implied that health care should be part of the marketplace and subject to negotiations of contracts between equals and, by extension, those who have something worth exchanging for say, a colonoscopy. If you couldn’t come to an agreement, maybe the doc wanted a cow instead of a chicken and you didn’t have one,  you were SOL. Or maybe you could trade some chickens to the rancher. But then we’re starting to get complicated. This implication by Lowden and many others that health care should be wholly part of the marketplace is something with which we have yet to really decide, even though we have made this decision with regard to many other services. We decided that the education of our children through the age of 18 is an essential service and something important enough to provide to all our citizens. We decided the same thing for fire protection, judicial services, major transportation infrastructure, and enforcement of safety norms. Sure, my Libertarian, homeschooler, and organic-veggie-for-hemp-sandals-bartering friends would argue that some of these services would be better managed by individual families at the kitchen table and with garden hoses, firearms, 4WD and a strong sense of caveat emptor. But wherever you stand philosophically, we live in a republic where the social hierarchy is built around individuals we elect through a system of mass expression to stand at the top and make decisions for the group. At this point, it is clearly decided that in general it is worth funding schools as well as fire stations, highways, courthouses, and the FDA. While there are some, like those Libertarian friends, who crow their disgust at many of these institutions, most people I know really just want to get on with their everyday lives, while throwing out an occasional Facebook rant or slapping on a bumper sticker. In poll after poll, most citizens are willing to gripe about some aspect of the services we as a society have decided to support, but are unable to decide which of those services they personally would like to do without. It seems crazy to me that one of the major services we seem to have been unable to address philosophically is health care. We can’t decide whether healthcare is like getting your car washed or like educating your children. We haven’t decided if keeping everybody as healthy as possible is beneficial enough to fund in the same way we do the other services we’ve deemed critical, or if health care is an optional service that should be available only to those who have enough chickens (or produced enough chickens by proxy) to afford it. Look, health care is limited. It will always be rationed. There will never be enough to service everybody at the highest possible level.

Sorry, there's only one of me to go around

Do we ration it via the marketplace, just like we do Teslas and Coach purses and valet service and landscapers and painters? Or do we ration it the same way we ration education, another service without enough providers to go around? Making health care a service governed by the same business principles as grocery stores will mean that quality and access to care will be clearly defined by the marketplace. Limited supply will drive demand and prices will adjust accordingly. If you can’t afford it, you don’t get it. Making healthcare openly available, as have most Western democracies, might indeed dilute the quality of care some people receive and where we submit our currency will shift from private companies to public entities.  However, those with no access in the market-based system will get some level of basic care. Should the ability of our citizens to access medical care be as important as their ability to access K-12 education, safe drinking water, and legal defense? Or should the ability of our citizens to access to health care be as important as their ability to access a movie theater, get their cars washed, and have their yard mowed? So, before we get derailed arguing about someone taking our money to give to somebody else, which is what happens in all modern economies, we need to answer this question: Is access to health care for all our citizens fundamentally important to the strength of our nation? Pass your answer up the chain. It may help us get past this mess.

Glow On, My Wee Droogies

We've come a long, weird way from cloth diapers. Now you can strap a glowing Disney princess to your toddler's crotch.

The ad copy for Be a Big Kid at Night urges users to  "Do the Glow Show" and the television commercial features an uber-dad dressed as some sort of android terrorist, with various Pixar/Disney character diapers dangling from his body like grenades. He robots his way into the kids' room, with mom as silent enabler and host, and waves a pair of flashlight beams at the giggling pairs' junk drawers. "Charge 'em up, hit the light, be a big kid at night!"

Dad and Mom retreat as she kicks off the lights, and the future therapy patients are left to stare at each others' bright, curving codpieces.

Personally, I can't wait for the Breaking Bad Depends.

Slaves to the Symbol

http://www.blogcatalog.com/

As an English teacher, I spend quite a bit of time discussing the importance of context, of connotation, of how diction impacts how what we write or say is perceived and, by close association, how we are perceived. Symbols are a big part of that discussion. I find that most of my students are not only unaware of the fact that we are swimming in symbols and that we take a huge chunk of meaning from them, but also completely dismissive of any need to be able to recognize symbols and how those symbols shape the way they interact with the world.

Kids often see symbolism as something arbitrarily assigned to books they have to pretend to read in order to pass, by people with no real-world skill sets. "Right, we get the rose in The Scarlet Letter and the role of nature in Macbeth. We get it because we skimmed SparkNotes before class. Whatever."

And it isn't just students who have this problem. Consider this article in the Atlantic, proffered by another friend who, as the wing historian, shared a hallway with me at Aviano Air Base. The piece discusses Brad Paisley's relationship with the widely recognized Confederate battle flag. My friend passed it along the day I published It's My Right! and it comments on the connection between Paisley, the Confederate flag, and that post's element of offense giving and taking.



Coates, the writer of the Atlantic piece, does a great job explicating the flag's symbolism to modern African-Americans, whose North American history as an enslaved group makes the flag particularly repugnant. This is the kind of strength many of my non-African-American students don't grasp. "It's just a flag. Why are people getting worked up?" And yet these same students wear other symbols, often eager to get them permanently inked on their skins. It's important to get them to understand that everyone is moved by symbols because they need to see how they themselves are moved and often manipulated in order to understand exactly why "just a flag" can stir deadly passions.

This general blindness, a meta-emotional deficit if you will, causes us to see symbols only through the lens of our own experience and accept our reaction to the symbol as normal and natural and others' reactions, if those reactions don't coincide with ours, as trivial or ridiculous.

This alternative opinion of the Brad Paisley question opposes Coates' view and illustrates how those who embrace the flag see it.

Both are correct, at least from the perspective of decoding symbols. Both sides view the flag in their cultural context and, while recognizing opposing points view, are generally dismissive. How you view the Confederate flag, a priori, will make you nod your head in agreement with one or the other. Confirmation bias ensures that.

However, it isn't enough to recognize that we recognize others' bias. It isn't even enough that we recognize our own bias. If we stop there we risk stalling at a shoulder shrug and sleeping forever between the sheets of moral relativism. We still have to take action in the world, the best path we can discern. We have to judge and act on those judgements, to realize our human failings and prejudices and to move beyond them the best we can.

There is no moral ambiguity in the case of the Confederate flag. It so strongly represents verifiable and widespread oppression and murder to such a large group of people that to argue that admittedly, the flag does represent a bad idea, but it represents honorable qualities as well, is disingenuous. It is like asking a judge to grant mercy to a prolific serial rapist and killer of many because he was also a good father to a few. As a nation we have long agreed that enslaving and oppressing people is clearly wrong, whether you lived in antebellum Alabama or Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, whether you are selling human beings or cutting off little girls' noses.

What then, can be gleaned from this exercise? If you didn't listen in my class, you will walk away shrugging that symbols are there to keep English teachers in chicken and rice and will cheer when your team wins and be baffled or angry when other people bitch about your team's mascot. And you won't be alone.

It's My Right!

It is not unusual in the United States for special interest groups to voice their opinions in unseemly ways. In fact, it's part of how we do business and we pride ourselves on our general freedom to make asses out of ourselves in the name of whatever we think is important enough to warrant looking asinine.

Of course,  whether or not our demonstrative behavior is seen as "unseemly" is subjective. If you agree with those prancing and shouting, then you will view their actions as honorable and worthy. If not, you'll just think they are out of touch at best and fucking assholes who threaten the fabric of our democracy at worst.

Amped and Armed

So, where on this continuum does the "I love guns & coffee" crowd fit? It seems even some of those in the armed camp think their brethren may have stepped outside the reservation. A friend and comrade-in-arms from my Air Force days who also happens to live happily in not-Austin-Texas, is decidedly conservative, and who is very much on the side of open gun ownership policies passed along, with approval, this piece titled "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things:"

http://practicaltacticalpodcast.com/starbucks/

In short, it was published on Practical Tactical Podcast, a site that provides"information, news, blog postings, and reviews about the firearms and gear industry," and takes to task those gun rights advocates who chose to promulgate frequent and repeated open carry of firearms into Starbucks coffeehouses.

The Right to be a Total Dick

The Starbuck's demonstrators are Constitutionally correct, just as the Wetsboro Baptist church is Constitutionally correct. Both are exercising their right to express their beliefs in ways that will almost certainly disturb and offend their fellow Americans. In fact, I would argue that the whole point of "God Hates Fags" signs or dragging your Mossberg 930 along for a mocha has little to do with educating the public and more to do with irritating your fellow Americans.

Furthermore, I find the idea of a weaponized culture disconcerting. A society where being armed is the norm is indicative of instability, a retrograde to a time when fear of one's fellows warranted the bearing of swords or pistols or knives or shillelaghs. Some would argue that, well, American society is unstable and more dangerous and the truly prudent go perpetually armed. That to do any less indicates a personal helplessness and acceptance of de facto victim status. I think this is just wishful thinking exacerbated by l'amour de la zombocalypse.

Ladies night out

So I suppose there are two points here: 1) as Practical Tactical restates "Just because you CAN doesn’t always  mean you SHOULD." and 2) Do we really want to live in 1870s Deadwood or modern Somalia?

Shared Roads

You could say I am a fan of the Canadian band, Rush. I certainly say it. It might help, however, to clarify the word "fan," at least as far as I am concerned. Yes, I own all their major studio releases and live albums and have a couple of esoteric releases as well. But I've only been to two shows and I have only one Rush t-shirt and that no longer fits me. So hard-core fans might balk at my "fan" status.

In any case, I find myself comfortable with them in that weird way that only fans of something can understand. Whether you are a fan of a particular musician or group or painter or writer, you feel there is a metaphysical connection between you and the object of your devotion. If you're crazy, you'll stab and slash at the rational voice that says, "Hey, I get it. The artist has done the job well and your emotional response has made you feel something and feel it quite strongly. Therefore, it's no surprise that you'll extend this feeling from the art to the artist as a person. It is much like falling in love. I get it. But it isn't real."

But if you're not crazy, you can simply enjoy the feeling and the art and occasionally marvel at some coincidental connection between you and the artist. For instance, as a teenager I fantasized that Geddy Lee was singing my name in the nonsense vocals section of "Didacts and Narpets."  And by the way, if you get that reference without looking it up, you count as a Rush fan as well, whether you want to admit it or not.

Today I noticed another interesting coincidence that really isn't all that amazing but does make me feel strangely connected to Neil Peart through a piece he wrote about shunpiking with his motorcycle in the United Kingdom. When you put Peart and the Sceptered Isle together in one article, with pictures, I get a feeling I can only describe at this moment as nostalgically euphoric. When I saw the post on Peart's page, I immediately thought of Hardknott pass, a single-track road that climbs like a rocket and twists like a wounded night crawler. I was so entranced by the idea that Peart must certainly have shunpiked his way through the pass, probably stopping at the ruins of a Roman fort near the top, I didn't read the article at first, I just mouse-wheeled down, scanning the contents and sure enough, Hardnott appeared. I immediately felt a completely irrational sensation that Peart and I were road buddies, asphalt Eskimo brothers, ready to throw up high fives and throw back pints of bitter and the end of the travelling day. So if you're a Rush fan, maybe you'll want to join Neil and me on my delusional road trip:
http://neilpeart.net/index.php/space-for-news-items/drummer-singletrack-mind/

Watch Out for SASI, Sarah Connor

At 0600 this morning, I set the Civic on autopilot and blasted NPR for a thumpin' ride to Spring Valley High School. I'm back on the "guest teacher" circuit and today I took some classes for a colleague. Striding the halls and jawing with so many of my former students made me feel like I might want to get back into the full-time high school teaching biz again. But not for long.

SASI?

Today was "count day" (say it like a camel), a ritual fraught with danger. Asses in chairs are important, because all those ass cheeks get ground into an algorithm up at the "Ed Shed" where they are then packaged into staffing and funding sausages.

This makes administrators anxious. If counts are too low, principals get less sausage, and despite what they say about watching it being made, sausage is pretty damn yummy.

Now, you might think counting would be a pretty easy deal. Each high school has a dedicated registrar and all the kids are counted from the moment their parents drag them in to the day they move to that new matrix of D.R. Horton fabs next to the half-empty strip mall. They are counted like convicts, every school day, every school hour. In fact, CCSD runs a Cyclopean piece of software called SASI to take care of this ass-counting business. To be fair, this monstrosity does way more than just take attendance. It tracks test data, stores transcripts, and yes, provides an interface for teachers to take roll at the beginning of every class. So you might think SASI would make count day button-push simple.

Nuke'em til they fund

Not so fast, overworked teacher. SASI's powers must be limited or need some sort of oversight because on "count day" (say it like a camel), every teacher in every room at every period must have every student sign a class roster.

In third period, teachers must note the number of students present, the number absent, add the two together, note this information on a slip of paper and wait for another adult to come in to double check the teacher's numbers and manually count each ass in each seat and then co-sign the slip of paper. At no time were any asses to be moved from seats during this process. This reminded me of loading B-61s on F-111s. Two-man concept, double check the switches, get ready to centrally heat the Warsaw Pact.

I can't explain why SASI can't be trusted. Perhaps it is really SkyNet.

Pedagogical Resurrection

I gave my last high school semester exam in June of 2012, pulled the student projects from the walls, picking staples like nits from the orange peel drywall. I started this project in 2007 and its end came in a shrugging anticlimax of last-day checklists and whiteboard cleaner..

I knew I would miss the classroom, miss the students, miss the energy. The room echoed my emptiness. Cast adrift, I walked out, unlocked my car, and drove home. the reasons I left were varied, but they had nothing to do with the relationships I formed with my students. In fact, those relationships kept me tethered to a job that gradually seemed an exercise in futility.

Fortunately, I had picked up a job in 2010 as a freelance writer for Vegas Seven and Greg Miller, the managing editor, asked me to put together an essay on why, on that warming June day, I walked out of my classroom for the last time. Here it is.

http://vegasseven.com/latest/2012/08/23/back-school-not-me

Now it seems I can get back to building relationships and teaching again. I have missed the classroom more than I ever thought I would. I assumed my estrangement wouldn't be painful for long. My wife and I rolled across country in September and hopped around Europe in October. When we returned, I picked up a short gig filling in for Virtual High School and kicked up the output for Seven. Still, something was missing. And I'm not talking Jesus.

It looks like I've found a fix for my jones. Due to happy blend of synchronicity and networking, I picked up an adjunct teaching position at Nevada State College. Now I'm in my fourth week teaching English composition to 15 college freshmen. So far, so fucking awesome.

Four Years in Transition

I considered changing the "dek" for this blog since it still reads ". . . as he transitions into his new career as a high school English teacher." I decided not to.

I didn't, because at four years in I am still very new and I am certainly still transitioning. Many days I question my decision to take on this job and stay with it. Working with adolescents is both exhilarating and disheartening, sometimes both emotions are separated by mere milliseconds.

There is never a day when I come away feeling I did my job particularly well. Teaching writing is tough, but teaching it to 184 16-year-olds in 55-minute blocks shot full of Deans' Office summons, announcements, and more good questions from students than I can possibly answer make it impossible to teach with any focus.

Our school has now entered its third year of just missing making AYP as determined by the state in its efforts meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. As a result, we are polishing our books, printing binders full of charts, and changing the format of our lesson plans. Anyone who has worked for government agencies that are inspected by other government agencies knows exactly what all this polishing, printing, and changing is designed to do.

I just want to figure out how to better teach my students. Maybe I can't.

Green Robes and Cell Phones

There were roughly 600 seniors in my youngest daughter's graduating class. At the ceremony, they were arranged in two columns: boys on the right and girls on the left. Each column was further divided: a few International Baccalaureate graduates robed in black sitting at the front, followed by honors graduates robed in white, followed by non-honors girls in green and non-honors boys in blue making up approximately the last 60% of each column.

This color and gender sorting method made for at least one interesting observation: The heaviest users of portable telecommunications devices during the ceremony wore green robes. I noticed some blue-robes using these devices as well, but no white or black-robes. I was further away from the blue robed graduates, but could clearly see the female black and white robed students.

By observing frequency of use, I could also determine which speakers the graduates found most interesting. The principal's speech had the fewest number of users and the valedictorians' had the most.

Year 3.5

This year saw me take on 120 Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students in the middle of the school year. Their teacher was diagnosed with cancer about two months into the first semester and they had substitute teachers from then until the middle of January, when I stepped in for the second semester.

Alas, the intrinsic academic motivation of most 16 year olds regardless of prior achievement is fairly limited, and they spent their time sleeping, communicating with other students face-to-face or via portable electronic telecommunication devices, listening to music, playing cards, or perhaps attempting cut through the din to study for other classes.

A few students were concerned that this environment wasn't conducive to preparing for the rather rigorous AP exam, but they couldn't do much about without competent adult guidance, so they shrugged their shoulders and assumed they would be inadequately prepared. Then I arrived.

I had four days to prepare to teach the class, and I did my homework well. Fortunately, I had taken an AP seminar in 2008, and knew what to expect and how to broadly proceed. The sudden application of AP standards and expectations was a shock to the system for most of the students, and many reacted with indignation, some sought to flee the field before what appeared to them to be an unconquerable foe but only two managed to transfer out. Some attempted to bring in reinforcements and my position was assailed by off-board artillery, whining in through telephone lines and e-mail missives from parents concerned about the damage my program might do to scholarships and college applications. A few questioned my competence and motives, as if perhaps I was unqualified to teach the subject or was loading their sons and daughters down with pointless and punitive work. Oddly enough, they didn't complain when their kids were under the care of babysitters, learning nothing, but getting default "A" grades.

In any case, the real test of my program comes with the release of test scores sometime in July. I am supposed to be able to see individual students results then. The global mean score on a scale of 1 - 5 was 2.88, so I'm hoping my students beat it soundly.

Today's journal was centered on an excerpt of a talk given by Michael Shermer at the 2006 TED meeting. Here's the link, for those interested in viewing (the excerpt I showed in class begins at the 9:00 minute marker) 

 http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/michael_shermer_on_believing_strange_things.html

I wrote the following writing prompts to the left of the slide on which the video played:

Watch and listen to the video and think about what you want to believe.

Can you hear the back-masked message?

What does this have to say about how susceptible we are to suggestion? 

So, if you haven't watched the video, here's a summary:

Shermer plays a section of "Stairway to Heaven" forward, then backward, then asks the audience to identify the "secret message," then displays the the text of the supposed "secret message" while replaying the section backwards again. 

Here's the first unsurprising news: The first time it played through backwards, my students couldn't understand it and took it as gibberish, but the second time through, they, like Shermer's TED audience, were able understand the words clearly. This, of course, makes Shermer's point that we look for patterns and once the sections of our brain that respond to sensory stimuli are "primed" we can rapidly build and cement patterns and meaning to that which is patternless and meaningless.

Here's the second unsurprising news: Many of the students had already heard the rumor that Zep's music was laced with secret Satanic messages and figured it was probably true.   In any case, the "believers" also couldn't understand the "words" at first, but when shown them were even more convinced of their initial belief. Alternatively, those who considered the whole thing a bunch of hooey had their beliefs confirmed as well.

So here's the interesting bit: The students who hadn't heard of either proposition became more convinced that Zep intentionally placed secret Satan-loving messages in their music after hearing the evidence that clearly showed how easily our brains our tricked. One young lady, who read her entry aloud, commented on how "scary" the presentation was and that she was now concerned about Satanists in the music industry. She was going to go home that evening and begin looking for ways to play her CDs backwards to look for more secret messages. In the discussion that ensued, I asked them to consider why we believe what we believe and why we are so easily taken in by these things. 

The answer, I discovered, was obvious when posed the following question: What is cooler, that Zep is a bunch of Satanists who are trying to convince the world to join them or that playing a record backward makes weird sounds and if we work a little, we can make whatever we want of them? 

I'm Doing My Job; I Can Tell by the Whining

I teach critical thinking. I want students to break out of the educational millworks they were placed in at the age of five. It's hard for them though, since it involves effort well beyond the multiple-choice world they are used to. These last few months have been especially painful for them since they want to simply keep providing book reports rather than conduct meaningful analyses of the literature they are reading. I have had a fair bit of success, but one bold and intelligent young lady wrote me an articulate and well argued response to the question: "How do these ideas [presented in the text] integrate into your schema?"

"Oh schema, how I still don't even know what this means. I could give you my Miss America response about how this taught me not to worry about everything. God has a plan for me or that patience is a virtue, but those are things one should already know. The meaning of [The Sundiata] to me was something I hear all the time at church so it wasn't something extremely new. What was new was the comment my mom said while she saw me sitting reading with the checklist in front of me. She simply said, 'Doesn't that take the joy out of reading" and everything clicked from there. Of course I hate reading, this is a punishment. I may find this material boring, but I believe I think that because I know that after I read I just have to write and write and analyze and make up some more stuff to write about it. This feeling can't really help my schema because I have the choice to do it or to fail, but I think it can help your schema. If one can't write for punishment [a rule I have; writing is a privilege], then why are you having us read for punishment? If I logged on to Facebook right now I could read multiple status's complaining about this, I can check my new texts which I know are about this, or I can go to the table in the morning and hear how no one even did it which shows that students do think of it that way. Yes, this may not be schema, but I know if it is taking the joy out of reading then when I become a teacher I want to make sure I'm not having my students hate to read. Maybe this is more of a rant, maybe it's because I am tired, or maybe it's a schema for my future."

She is a good writer and an excellent student, but one to whom until now learning has come easily because she is quick-witted and the assignments were simple. I wrote a response to her, as well as to another student who wondered as teens have for millenia, "why am I reading this old stuff?"

04/03/2009: Purposeful Reader's Checklist Africa Responses. I finally began digging into the bulk of your work and have received some excellent responses. I found one case of academic dishonesty, and another rambled pointelessly for several pages about nothing in particular; those both received 0/50 points. 

Another student stated that she didn't "fully understand how something that happened centuries ago [could] fit into [her] life somehow." For those who feel that way, I urge you to consider the following statement by S. I. Hayakawa, a former United States Senator from California:

"In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish." 

Furthermore, we are the only species on this planet who can do this. By not considering the lives, loves, joys, and pains of those prior generations, we do them a great disservice.

I also had a fairly articulate complaint that connected directly to my personal experience as a young man and young writer. The schema section of this young lady's submission was devoted to her assertion that analyzing literature takes the joy out of reading. I laughed when I read this because her words were my words many years ago. Because she was forthright, I returned with a forthright response. I transcribe it here for you since it may apply to many who were not so bold:

"Please bear in mind that I do no assign work out of some twisted sense of cruelty. Every checklist I assign, I must grade and comment on. I am obligated to make sure you are prepared to engage material regardless of your personal level of interest. If you begin to learn how writing is constructed on a deeper level than your natural talent for writing, you can then become a truly excellent writer, rather than simply a talented, glib, 10th grader. I know this because I was a self-absorbed 20-something writer who thought analyzing writing was pointless and joyless and there was nothing left to learn. My undergraduate English teacher, Ms. Pamela Schoenewaldt, jerked me up by the collar, gave me a few "B"s, and forced me to think. I make no pretentions about being your (or anyone's) Schoenewaldt, but I am committed to try, in spite of your persistent and predictable protestations."

I also would like you to consider my qualifications and efforts thus far. I have extensive background in the world: I'm roughly 30 years ahead of you and have extensive experience in written and spoken communication delivered in a wide variety of ways to a wide variety of audiences. I understand what you are feeling, not individually, but as an adolescent. One of the reasons I understand this is because I was an adolescent, I listen to and read adolescent spoken and written language, and I read a wide range of material about adolescents. I came into this field because I have something to offer you, although I cannot make you believe me. I can ask you to trust me. I am not your enemy; I am your coach, and I want you to keep doing crunches and taking laps until you can write and read like a pro. 

If you've made it this far, you deserve to have access to the following thread: 

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2007/06/18/on-teens-and-the-fact-their-writing-sucks/