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super.super

Ben Chun — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:45:47 +0000

Last week I introduced the super keyword in my AP Computer Science class. Actually, it came up in the book a few weeks back, but it suddenly became relevant because it appeared on a quiz. And naturally in class someone asked if you could use super.super to get to the grandparent. Instead of answering, I left the question open as part of an extra credit assignment. (Since, after all, it is a computer science class and they have all the tools necessary in front of them to do the experiment.)

Best answer so far:

I did this at Starbucks (which explains the frappuccino thing). After some probing I learned super only goes up one level (for methods anyways). Apparently it is nearly impossible to go back to the top from a third level (ECExtension2 in this case), so I made a method in ECExtension called drinkEC() that would go back to its top drink() (the highest drink()). It’s usefulness lies in letting me say “delicious” two different ways AND still being able to say I am drinking a frappuccino. All in one inheritance tree.

My favorite way to explain why super.super isn’t legal is to ask students to consider a class with no explicit superclass. By default, it’s superclass is Object. And so if you call super.super.something(); from an instance of this class, what is the parent of Object we should consult for the something() method? Oh, right.

Belated Sunday Confession

lifeiseverything — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:21:01 +0000

I have a mad awesome connection to a famous science celebrity through one of the kids in my class. I have pretty much worshipped this person since I first learned of their work. We are trying to finagle a way to get them to come to my school and speak. If it happens I may have a SERIOUS Star Struck moment (or 10).

Confession: I love being a science geek.

OUR CULTURAL COMMONS (PART 3): THE ONGOING STRUGGLE TO GOVERN THE COMMONS

chrismaser — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:19:57 +0000

THE ONGOING STRUGGLE TO GOVERN THE COMMONS

Chris Maser

A discussion of governing the commons has a minimum of four interactive components: (1) recognizing perception as truth, (2) the degree to which a commons is isolated, (3) the changing biophysical environment, and (4) the need for adaptive principles of governance.

RECOGNIZING PERCEPTION AS TRUTH

Perhaps the major challenge to governing the commons wisely and unselfishly for all generations lies in fact that every person sees and understands the world differently because each person is imbued with a unique story based on individual circumstances. One’s interpretation of that story is informed by personal perception—and that perception is unarguably one’s sense of the truth. This being the case, the notion of right versus wrong can exist only metaphorically because the reality of everyone’s perception is right, right, and different.

The Indian spiritual leader, Mahatma Gandhi, said that, “A votary of truth [a person fervently devoted to truth] is often obliged to grope in the dark.” Our challenge therefore lies in our blind spots, not in our vision. Unlike correcting a blind spot in the rear view of an automobile, which can be rectified simply by adding a different kind or a supplemental mirror, we cannot correct our personal blind spots so easily. To correct them, we must grow in our perception and in our acceptance of what is. “Perceive” is from the Latin percipere, which means “to seize the whole of something, to see all the way through.” Perception, therefore, is the act of seeing in the mind, of understanding.

Although our perceptions grow and change as we mature, not everyone’s perceptions mature at the same rate, which accounts for the widely differing degrees of consciousness with respect to cause-and-effect relationships. This disparity is neither good nor bad; it simply means that each of us have different gifts to give at different times in our lives as we see different versions of the truth.

Truth is absolute, whereas perceptions of truth are relative. Therefore, facts, which are perceptions of truth, are relative. Consider the following statement: The world functions perfectly; our perception of how the world functions is imperfect. What does that mean? We don’t know because our perception is constantly changing as we increase the scope of our knowledge.

Trying to understand this concept is the essence of science. Yet even having worked as a scientist for 40 years or more, I would not know a “scientific truth” derived from testing a hypothesis if I stepped on one, because all science can do is disprove something. A scientific fact is therefore a fact only by consensus of the scientists, which means that a scientific fact or truth is only an approximation of what is. It represents our best understanding of reality at this moment and is constantly subject to change as we learn.

Perception is learning, because cause and effect are always connected. Gandhi had reached this conclusion when he said, “My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements, but to be consistent with the truth.” He was consistent in his changing perceptions of what the truth was at different stages in his life. He grew from “truth” to “truth” as his vision cleared and he could see greater and greater vistas. So he said that if one found an “inconsistency” between any two things he wrote, the person “would do well to choose the latter of the two on the same subject.”

As I have grown, I am increasingly struck by the way my perception of what is continues to unfold, like a many-petalled flower. As each petal matures, I see the world anew, and thus perceive it differently. My reality is therefore different.

Truth is perfect understanding of that which is. It is neither the spoken word nor the written word, although these may have a ring of truth to them. Truth cannot be defined; it can only be experienced and lived.

With respect to governing the commons, the flawed assumption made during policy debates is that everyone involved has a similar level of understanding of the problem being discussed. In reality, however, vast differences in knowledge and understanding underpin the resource problems confronting the commons because those in charge are either not understood the issue or ignored it through “informed denial.” When religious, political, or other special-interest ideologies are added to the milieu, uncertainty and contestation over potential solutions is a virtual certainty.¹

In addition to differences in knowledge, understanding, and ideologies, men and women intuitively perceive their respective worlds differently. Men tend to be relatively direct, linear, quantitative, and short-term oriented in their approach to problems, whereas women are predominantly interrelationship oriented based on a familial sense of multiple generations and thus a greater propensity for simultaneously considering an integrative approach in successive time scales.

THE DEGREE TO WHICH A COMMONS IS ISOLATED

In the early days of shared use, governance of a commons was a jointly assumed responsibility of everyone in the hunter-gatherer group who used it. Although most such commons were sustainably used over centuries, that likely began to change with the advent of herding and the beginning of competition for grazing and a more sedentary way of life that led to local increases in human populations. Nevertheless, it took the onset of agriculture to effectively seal the fate of long-term sustainability with respect to Nature’s commons. The rapidly increasing numbers of people and domestic animals in the agricultural areas not only incited and fostered growing inter-tribal competition for arable land and water but also the conflicts it engendered. These conflicts grew in scale and intensity as various tribes coalesced into larger and larger societies, which spread across the landscape and conquered smaller, weaker groups of people. What becomes evident from history is that sustainable governance of a commons collapses more often due to unfavorable influence from without than from within. Ancient Greece is a case in point.

Greece, flourishing under wise agricultural use during the beginning of the Iron Age (12^th century BCE), had nevertheless greatly altered its landscape, in spite of its apparently sound agricultural ethic. But all the human-caused changes, including deforestation, do not appear to have caused the collapse of the agricultural system. It was sustainable in fact, and it might have continued to be so had not been for the effect of outside influences.

Although the Greeks modified their landscape, making it ecologically fragile, their agricultural system was sustainable as long as there was a full human population to tend the terraced fields. The destruction of their agricultural system was not a consequence of the system itself, but rather of Romans raiding the Greek countryside for slaves that reduced the population of workers and left the vulnerable landscape increasingly untended, thereby allowing the terraces to collapse and the soil to wash into the Aegean Sea.

As long as the Greeks maintained adequate cover crops that functioned to hold in place the soil as the forests had once done, their agricultural system was sustainable. Unfortunately, as Roman slavers continually reduced the Greek’s working population, there came a threshold beyond which this labor-intensive agriculture simply could not be maintained, and the system collapsed with the loss of the topsoil.²

Prior to the advent of Greek agriculture, the land had been forested for millennia, making sustainability a moot point. Sustainability arose as a problem not because of deforestation, but because of the inability of a society debilitated by slaving to continue performing the function of the forest, namely soil conservation.

This same kind of dynamic is occurring today in many other parts of the world, but for another reason. While working in Peninsular Malaysia, I observed a number of abandoned rice paddies, some of which were being reclaimed by young-growth jungle, while others were simply eroding away. When I asked why this was happening, I was told that many of the younger people were migrating to the cities, such as Kuala Lumpur.

Growing rice without modern machinery is labor intensive. As long as there are enough young people in the villages to augment and eventually replace the old people in the labor pool, the rice paddies will be sustainable. But as the young people leave the villages for the cities, they diminish the village labor pool just as surely as the Romans did when they captured and removed Greek peasants as slaves. When a village labor pool falls below a certain threshold minimum, the rice paddies are no longer sustainable as part of the village commons.

THE CHANGING BIOPHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Today every aspect of the commons is increasingly under attack from the global-scale growth in the human population; rampant, wasteful use of resources in the industrialized countries; competition in the global-market money chase, which fosters deployment of advanced technologies for resources exploitation worldwide; the virtually unlimited human access to the once-isolated commons of indigenous peoples, as well as compounding effects of polluting the global ecosystem.³

We humans have jointly inherited the commons, which is more basic to our lives and well-being than either the market or the state. We are “temporary possessors and life renters,” wrote British economist and philosopher Edmund Burke, and we “should not think it amongst [our] rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance.”⁴

Despite the wisdom of Burke’s admonishment, the commons is today almost everywhere under assault, abuse, and degradation in the name of economic development as corporations are increasingly hijacking (euphemistically termed “privatizing”) both Nature’s services and every creature’s birthright to those services. Pollution despoils the air, defiles the soil, and poisons the water. Noise has routed silence from its most protected sanctuaries. City light hides the stars by night. Urban sprawl, the disintegration of community, and the attempts to control, engineer, and patent the very substance of life itself are all part or the economic raid on the commons for private monetary gain. “Corporations,” says author David Korten, “are pushing hard to establish property rights over ever more of the commons for their own exclusive ends, often claiming the right to pollute or destroy the regenerative systems of the Earth for quick gain, shrinking the resource base available for ordinary people to use in their pursuit of livelihoods, and limiting the prospects of future generations.”⁵

This is not to say that all corporations are bad or that the market is inept. It is to say that both corporations and the market must have boundaries to keep them within the realm of human competence and moral limits. “The market economy is not everything,” asserted conservative economist Wilhelm Ropke in the 1950s. “The supporters of the market economy do it the worst service by not observing its limits.”⁶ And it’s by ignoring the moral limits of the market economy that we, the adults of the world, create poverty and increasingly mortgage all the generations of the future—beginning with our own children and grandchildren.

As long as humanity is motivated by fear, of which “greed” is a part, every market economy will be destructive. Although money, which is seen as personal security, is the true object of competition, the ultimate battlefield is the global environment—the commons. The only possible solution for human survival with any sense of dignity and well-being is a conscious reduction of and cap on the human population. Even then, the market economy would remain destructive, but the biophysical carrying capacity for human life would be in better balance with the long-term availability of natural resources.

THE NEED FOR ADAPTIVE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNANCE

Although there is increasing emphasis on the significance of mutual trusteeship of our natural resources, generalized social bounds—while essential—are not enough to shift the entrenched patterns of interactions toward new, adaptive forms of cooperative caretaking and governance of a commons in response to ongoing environmental change. In fact, the more complex a commons is biophysically and the more diverse the segment of humanity that uses it, the more contentious the interactions are likely to be. Under such circumstances, sound, often-strict, local enforcement of predetermined social behavior is necessary to protect and maintain the potential biophysical productivity of the commons.⁷

On the other hand, I have found that the level of consciousness that causes and problem in the first place is not the same level that can fix it. For this reason, I have over the years facilitated the transformative resolution to environmental conflicts, which raises the level of the participants’ consciousness of cause and effect with respect to their decisions and actions. The outcome of this transformative conflict resolution is a shared vision based on the heightened level of awareness whereby the participants negotiate a new standard of behavior—inevitably a personal constraint of some kind—in order to achieve a greater collective freedom with respect to a future condition.⁸

As environmental problems become more complex, however, it is good to identify a complement of guiding principles that touch the heart and soul of people even as they protect the productive capacity of the commons for all generations—present and future. Whereas an interdisciplinary group of 16 people engaged in a discussion that promulgated six principles for the sustainable governance of the oceans as a global commons, it is with humility that I add the seventh: (1) responsibility, (2) matching scales, (3) precaution, (4) adaptive caretaking, (5) full-cost allocation, (6) participation, and (7) shared leadership. As the authors state it, “The [seven] Principles together form an indivisible collection of basic guidelines governing the use of all environmental resources, including, but not limited to, marine and coastal resources.”⁹

I have rewritten the principles in order to engage them as fully as possible in the care we take of all aspects of the global commons:

Principle 1: Responsibility. Access to environmental resources carries with it attendant responsibilities to use them in a manner that is ecologically effective, economically sensitive, and socially just to ensue the continued productive capacity of the commons in question. Individual and corporate responsibilities and incentives must be aligned with one another and with the broad goals of social-environmental sustainability.

Principle 2: Matching Scales. Ecological problems are rarely confined to a single scale in time or space. Therefore, decision concerning environmental resources must: (i) be assigned to institutional levels that maximize their ecological contribution, (ii) ensure the flow of ecological information among all appropriate institutional levels, (iii) be inclusive and take all concerned citizen into account, and (iv) internalize costs and benefits. Appropriate scales of governance are those with the most relevant information, can respond quickly and effectively, and are able to integrate within and among scales in time and space.

Principle 3: Precaution. In the face of uncertainty and the irreversibility of environmental impacts, decisions concerning their use must err on the side of caution. The burden of proof is thus shifted to those whose activities could potentially damage the environment.

Principle 4: Adaptive Caretaking. Given that some level of irreversibility always exists in caring for environmental resources, decision-makers must continuously gather and integrate appropriate—monitoring—ecological, social, and economic information with the goal of adaptive improvement.

Principle 5: Full-Cost Allocation. All of the internal and external costs and benefits of alternative decisions concerning the use of environmental resources, including social and ecological, are to be identified and allocated. For the sake of transparency, education, and social-environmental sustainability, markets must continually be adjusted to openly reflect full costs. As history demonstrates over and over, true economic transparency is the road to social justice within and among generations.

Principle 6: Participation. All stakeholders must be engaged in the formulation and implementation of decisions concerning environmental resources—which means someone must speak for the children of all generations. Full understanding and participation on the part of affected citizens is necessary for credible, accepted rules that appropriately identify and assign the corresponding responsibilities.

Principle 7: Shared Leadership. The sustainable governance of the commons will require an ongoing, participatory, and open process involving all the major stakeholder groups—including someone speaking for the children of all generations. It will also require integrated assessment and shared leadership and to accomplish fully adaptive caretaking.

Shared or revolving leadership comes about in two ways: first, when “subordinates” break custom and become leaders, and second, when someone’s particular expertise is needed and they temporarily assume leadership. Revolving leaders are indispensable in our lives because they take charge in varying degrees, as circumstances require.

Such leadership relies on three things: (1) inclusivity, which presumes that lasting solutions require the participation of all affected parties, including someone speaking for the children of all generations; (2) mutual accountability, which presumes that sustainable solutions depend on all sides taking responsibility for answers (which means mutual blaming is not enough); and (3) cultivating the skills of democracy, which presumes that we are not born knowing how to be effective within a democratic system of government and must be taught the art of participation—from active listening to negotiation and evaluation.¹⁰ When, however, we view government as distinct from civil society, we exempt it from practicing inclusive, participatory approaches to interpersonal relationships.¹¹

Revolving leadership is the basis of day-to-day of the participatory democratic process required in all contexts of social-environmental sustainability. Such participation is both one’s opportunity and responsibility to be accountable through the example of one’s personal behavior, by participating in the democratic process and thereby extending a willingness to accept ownership in the resolution of it society’s problems.

Because no one person can be an expert in everything, the person in the official position of overall leadership must have the common sense and good grace to support and follow the lead of a person whose expertise is momentarily in demand. It is difficult for many people to be open enough to recognize what is best in a given circumstance and to step aside when specific leadership—other than theirs—is required.

In the last analysis, leadership must be shared (but neither given away nor sold) because a time will arise when we must count on someone else’s special competence. If we think about the people with whom we share the commons, it becomes apparent that we must be able to count on one another if our commons is to meet our needs while protecting our deepest values. By ourselves, we are severely limited, but together we can be something truly awesome.

But, you might say, I’m only one person, what can I do? My actions account for so very little. Because so many people feel this way, it might be instructive to consider snowflakes.

When snowflakes begin falling, those coming down first land on the warm soil and melt, entering the ground without a trace. One after another, they come into view out of the sky, fall past our faces, and land on the ground, only to disappear as rapidly as they appeared—or so it would seem.

But each snowflake does something as it touches the soil. Its coolness dissipates the soil’s heat. As flake after snowflake touches the ground and melts, the collective coolness of their beings creates a cumulative effect by which the soil is eventually cooled enough that falling snowflakes melt progressively more slowly until some don’t melt at all. Now, snow begins accumulate, gradually at first, until the land is covered in a blanket of white.

Is one snowflake more important than another? Is the one you see sparkling in the sun more important than the one that melted upon landing? Neither is more or less important than the other. Without those that melted and cooled the soil, the ones that ultimately formed the blanket of winter white would not have survived to do so. Therefore, just as every snowflake (individually and as part of the collective) is important to the whole of winter, so is each person (individually and as part of the collective) important to the whole of a commons.

Just as no two snowflakes are exactly alike, no two people are identical. Thus, each individual has a unique gift to offer, a special talent that in the collective of a democratic council is complementary rather than competitive. Each person’s belief, being a little different from all the others, helps a democratic council of caretakers to see itself when that person’s voice is raised in expressing their particular point of view.¹²

Although I recognize that flawless, ecologically sound, democratic governance of any aspect of the global commons is a wishful illusion, such as the elimination of air pollution, we come closest to achieving our goals by aiming for the ideal. And if we fall short of achieving the ideal, we will at least have accomplished more than if our aim had been lower.

There is a land in the imagination, however, that some call “Utopia,” a land much written about through the centuries as people struggle to find peace and equality in a world that seems designed and governed by conflict. Like the Utopias imagined by philosophers, the Idyllic Isle of my dreams, the possibility I hold fast in my heart, is today still surrounded by a brooding sea of strife and thus difficult to reach, although long ago I touched its shore.

Throughout the years of middle-life, I used to get glimpses of the Idyllic Isle from time to time after strenuous, focused effort. But as I get older, I succeeded more easily in making the journey to that shore of possibility—a land where people choose to love one another; where work is transformed into labors of love that some would call “play;” and where social-environmental problems are untangled with patience, compassion, and ease. Earth, too, could be like this, so the story goes, if only. . . But here, today, it is one thing to envision a better future, and quite another to pry people loose from their entrenched, habitually negative thinking and drag them, in full resistance, into that better future.

I emphasize negative thinking because Utopias are not imagined perfection, but rather imagined cures for imperfection, and herein lies the problem with most “solutions.” Namely, a solution is conjured in an attempt to move away from an unwanted circumstance rather than moving toward a desired outcome. Put another way, instead of moving toward the ideal, most solutions attempt to cure an imperfection by moving away from it, an action that is neither physically nor psychologically possible because we not only become but also create what we focus on—in this case, the imperfection.

Regardless of how it may seem, I am not intimating the kind of Utopia described by Sir Thomas More, that imaginary isle of perfection in human relationships. But, I am suggesting an ideal because an ideal is all that is worth striving for and thus writing about.

To solve our social-environment problems, we must have a destination in the form of an idealized vision toward which to journey. This ideal can then define an agenda resting firmly on the bedrock of a shared vision that incorporates the collective wisdom, personal courage, and political will needed to inspire true social progress. Although this sounds good, where, in a practical sense, do we go from here?

Despite the usual elusiveness of an ideal, we can each begin our personal journey toward wholeness, toward “psychological maturity,” which, upon attainment, will allow us to both envision our ideal and work toward it as an unconditional gift of love to bestow on the generations of the future by leaving the world a little better for having been here. To those who doubt this is possible, I offer an admonishment by the aforementioned Edmund Burke: “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”¹³

I know from experience that achieving psychological maturity is no easy task. It requires discipline, self-reflection, a willingness to admit and learn from mistakes, the courage to change with each new insight, and, above all, the courage to purposefully struggle within oneself toward an ideal of being that has as its reward an inner freedom and peace unparalleled in the outer world. “We actually live today in our dreams of yesterday,” mused aviator Charles Lindbergh, “and living those dreams, we dream again.”¹⁴ Thus begins the journey toward the Idyllic Isle.

The extent to which each person achieves psychological maturity is the extent to which society as a whole approaches the shore of the Idyllic Isle—the Isle of Positive Possibility. There is but one time to set sail. And that time is now!¹⁵

ENDNOTES

William M. Adams, Dan Brockington, Jane Dyson, and Bhaskar Vira. Managing Tragedies: Understanding Conflict over Common Pool Resources. Science, 302 (2003):1915-1916.

The preceding discussion of ecosystem fragility, and the example from ancient Greece, is based on: Fritz M. Heichelheim. The effects of Classical antiquity on the land. Pp. 165-182. In: W. L. Thomas (Editor). Man’s role in changing the face of the Earth. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. 1956.

Thomas Dietz, Elinor Ostrom, and Paul C. Stern. The Struggle to Govern the Commons. Science, 302 (2003):1907-1912.

Jonathan Rowe. 2001. The hidden commons. Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Summer (2001):12-17.

David C. Korten. 2001. What to Do When Corporations Rule the World. 2001. Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Summer (2001):148-151.

Jonathan Rowe. 2001. The hidden commons. Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Summer (2001):12-17.

Per Olsson, Carl Folke, and Terry P. Hughes. Navigating the transition to ecosystem-based management of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105 (2008):9489-9494.

Chris Maser. Resolving Environmental Conflict: Towards Sustainable Community Development. St. Lucie Press, Delray Beach, FL. (1996) 200 pp.

The foregoing discussion of principles of sustainably governing a commons is based on: Robert Costanza, Francisco Andrade, Paula Antunes, and others. Principles for Sustainable Governance of the Oceans. Science, 281 (1998):198-199.

The foregoing two paragraphs are based on: Chris Maser. Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Development. Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL. (1998) 235 pp.

Frances Moore Lappé and Paul Du Bois. A Place for Democracy. Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Winter (1997):37-38.

The foregoing discussion of shared leadership is based on: Chris Maser. Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Development. Lewis Publishers, Boca Raton, FL. (1998) 235 pp.

Edmund Burke. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/e/edmundburk100421.html (accessed on March 23, 2009).

Charles A. Lindbergh. http://www.mcrecord.com/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=2&ArticleID=43777 (accessed on March 23, 2009).

The forgoing discussion of utopia is based on: Chris Maser. Of Ditches And Ponds: A Journey Through The Metaphors Of Childhood And Maturity. Woven Strings Publishing, Amarillo, TX. (2006) 282 pp. E-Book. 2505KB.

I spent over 25 years as an active research scientist in natural history and ecology in forest, shrub steppe, subarctic, desert, coastal, and agricultural settings. Today I am an independent author as well as an international lecturer, facilitator in resolving environmental conflicts, vision statements, and sustainable community development. I am also an international consultant in forest ecology and sustainable forestry practices.

I Have Lived, Worked, Consulted, And/Or Lectured In: Austria o Canada o Chile o Egypt o France o Germany o Japan o Malaysia o Mexico o Nepal o Slovakia o Switzerland o and various settings in the United States.

If you want to contact me, visit my website: http://chrismaser.com/index.htm

The Edublog Awards Are Back

teachj — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:14:15 +0000

Last year I did get a nomination for an Edublog Award and it was nice to be nominated. But even if I don’t get a nod, I’d like to put up my nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards.

Best individual blog – http://www.principalspage.com/theblog/
Best individual tweeter – http://twitter.com/msjweir
Best group blog – http://edtechtalk.com/
Best new blog – http://uncomfortableadventures.blogspot.com/
Best student blog – http://www.suzanneyada.com
Best resource sharing blog – http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com
Most influential blog post – http://www.principalspage.com/theblog/archives/germ-x-generation
Best teacher blog – http://scholastic-scribe.blogspot.com
Best educational tech support blog – http://creatinglifelonglearners.com/
Best elearning / corporate education blog – http://digital-photography-school.com/
Best educational use of audio – http://wickeddecentlearning.blogspot.com/
Best educational use of video / visual – http://blogs.nppa.org/editfoundry/
Lifetime achievement – http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

Why not go through your RSS feed and post a list of nominations.

Is off to rehearsal...finally!

cgleek — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:46:20 +0000

His First Fuck

thepinkpoppet — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:27:38 +0000

She had never done this before and still wasn’t sure if she’d be able to follow through with it. She

Incorporating Languages I Don't Know Into My Teaching

Ms. Flecha — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:12:29 +0000

Disciplemakers

toshibaninja — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:55:52 +0000

What is it to be a disciplemaker?

I was listening to a sermon and there was a video playing and one of the interviewees mentioned that we should be so in love with God that “helping people is not an option.” She said that we should be so in love with God that it’s not a choice for us to help people, that we should just go and sacrifice our time and our daily life so that we can invest in people.

Another interviewee in the video mentioned that they did social justice work at the local missions and that they went on missions trips as an entire family that he and his family served God as a family unit. He makes this statement:

Everything we do, we do as a family… I believe that because they [his children] have been raised this way that it’s just gonna be a part of their lives and it’s not even gonna be a choice for them. It’ll be “Listen it’s not even a choice, let’s go help others.”…

I was really moved by this statement because it reminded me again about the importance of discipleship and our responsibility to live our lives and lead in such a way to create disciples that glorify God.

I don’t think I’ve discussed this in a while but I want to bring it up again. I believe it is extremely important that those who are in roles of parents have a massive calling and a massive responsibility that God has laid on them: you folks have the responsibility to lead your children in such a way that they become disciples of God.

The reality is that (in North America anyways) every person is responsible for their own faith, but it does not stop us as individuals to do our best to be a positive influence for the children that are in our lives. Do we live in such a way that these children can say: “I want to be like <insert name> because he/she is a disciple of God and glorify God in whatever they do!”

Do we live in such a way that we encourage children to love God so much that it’s not an option for them to help the poor and the oppressed? Do we live in such a way that inspires children to fall in love with God and to serve Him authentically and wholeheartedly?

Or do we choose to teach our children that it’s better to have a good education and to grow up and be safe and never to rock the boat and get a good career and make a lot of money so that you can buy a house and two cars and have 2.5 children? Do we choose to teach our children to choose a safe life devoid of the sacrifice and cost of following Jesus?

Or should you choose now to teach your children to be disciplemakers? So that they can join you on crazy missions trips and have a heart for the broken, the poor, the lost, the oppressed, the orphan, the widows and the imprisoned?

Children are our most important disciples – especially your own children!

Give Thanks and Live Thanks This Holiday Season

Jake Smith — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:32:46 +0000

It’s become pretty obvious that holidays like Thanksgiving, which started out one way, have drastically changed in terms of how we celebrate. The holiday thrives on traditions (tradition!), some of which have stayed constant since Pilgrims and Indians celebrated together in Massachusetts. Yet, a number of newer traditions are for many people, a little strange and unsettling. For instance, in Buffalo, New York every year on Thanksgiving weekend, 7,000 people gather for the World’s Largest Disco. Seriously. Check it out.

For some, this kind of event ruins the spirit of the holiday. And so, every year we are hit with a slew of articles, reports, and news stories that come out talking about the “real spirit” of the holidays. Usually, they go on about the ways in which our society has lost touch with the true meaning of Thanksgiving and yet, they’ve become so commonplace that, unfortunately, they are rarely read or discussed.

The problem is that these writers never really give us any action steps except for “be thankful.” That’s like putting a brand new swimmer at the top of a high diving board and saying, “Just jump and do some flips and twists.” There’s no guidance, just a simple abstract command. Is Thanksgiving really just about “being thankful for stuff?”

The other day, one of the brilliant Team Leaders from SuperCamp, our academic summer camp for kids and teens, wrote something on Facebook which really made me stop and think. She wrote,

“Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.”

I think this is something most people realize, yet don’t have the necessary mindset for – that is, they don’t know how to really physically represent the idea of being thankful.

At Quantum Learning professional staff development programs, we’re given so many useful tools for life, relationships, and teaching – and we’re encouraged to use them often so that they can fully impact the way we teach, as well as the way our students learn.

This Thanksgiving, the challenge is to take physical action steps in regards to thankfulness (I think that’s a word. And if not, you’re welcome). Personally, I’m always thankful for important people in my life. If you feel the same, maybe use this Thanksgiving break to strengthen those relationships.

Here are a few QL strategies to get you started:

The Affinity Process

Tell me something I don’t know about you.
Tell me something you like about me.
Tell me something you think we may have in common.

OTFD

Try using OTFD as a way to acknowledge someone.

4 Steps:

Observations
Thoughts
Feelings
Desires

Example: Hi (insert name of resident turkey carver), I noticed that you carved that turkey all by yourself. I think this makes you a champ because only you could carve a turkey like that. I feel proud that you are in my family, not just because of your awesome turkey-carving skills, but also because you are a really great person. My desire is to give you a hug and then eat this delicious turkey. You’re the best, (insert name of resident turkey carver).

4-Part Apology (AAMR)

Maybe this is the time of the year for a heartfelt apology to your parents, kids, creepy uncle, whoever.

Remember, the four steps are:

Acknowledge
Apologize
Make it Right
Recommit

Try some of these out! Let us know how it goes. Most of all, have a fantastic Thanksgiving from all of us here at QLN.

So what are you going to leave out?

Jonathan Rees — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:25:45 +0000

Randall Stephens at the Historical Society Blog and I saw the same Chronicle of Higher Ed article (subs.) in the last few days. Here’s Stephens’ summary (if you’re a non-subscriber like I am):

“Several years ago,” writes David Glenn, “a small group of faculty members at Indiana University at Bloomington decided to do something about the problem. The key, they concluded, was to construct every history course around two core skills of their discipline: assembling evidence and interpreting it.” Glenn goes on to explain some of the interesting assignments and exercises history students at IU are doing in and outside of the classroom.

Stephens buys it. I was more skeptical (perhaps because it was our campus assessment officer who forwarded it to me), so I went digging. Here are Arlene Díaz, Joan Middendorf, David Pace, and Leah Shopkow of Indiana University in the March 2008 Journal of American History (via the History Cooperative, footnotes omitted throughout):

It is a story replicated in many history classrooms during the course of a semester. Students have once again done poorly on an assignment or exam. Their essays are the sites of massive, undifferentiated data dumps. They have paraphrased primary sources instead of analyzing them, ignored argumentation, confused past and present, and failed completely to grasp the “otherness” of a different era. A few students, as always, have done extremely well, but many have done poorly. What is wrong with these students? How can a teacher help them understand history?

These sorts of poor performance often result from a mismatch between what college history teachers expect of their students and what those students imagine their task to be. Most college professors learned how to be historians more or less by osmosis, without explicit instruction on how to perform many of the operations necessary to produce historical knowledge. They, like the minority of students who seem to perform historical tasks effortlessly, are naturals who have not had to reflect consciously on what they do automatically. As a result, professors often do not model for their students some of the most basic—and most essential—steps in historical analysis. As Sam Wineburg has noted, it is so habitual for historians to check the author and date of a passage before they begin reading it that they do not realize that such procedures are not natural for many of their students. Such intellectual maneuvers, unmarked by the professor and as invisible to the students as the sleight of hand of a magician, often leave students with the “facts” of history, but no idea of how they were created.

I don’t know why I didn’t notice this article when I first saw that issue, but now I can see that there are many parts of it that certainly speak to my experience:

We expect our students to know that the bias of a source does not necessarily disqualify it from usefulness. They may be asked to use the same primary source as a locus of information about what “really” happened in an era and also about the subjective perspectives that particular individuals brought to their experience. For students expecting a different kind of discussion this may seem like a walk into a confusing twilight zone.

Adding intention and argument into the mix renders history even more slippery and subjective. Students who read for the story and the facts, not for the argument and its validity, often experience a task such as identifying and evaluating thesis statements or arguments from sources as a major challenge. As one of our interviewees pointed out, many students “do not feel that they are qualified to critique someone who has written a book because automatically this person obviously knows much more than they do.” Such students do not expect to evaluate texts critically, and they are uncomfortable with inserting themselves into an ongoing dialogue about an event or issue of the past or with disagreeing with experts.

Then the article gets into exactly why the campus assessment officer forwarded the Chronicle piece to me in the first place:

As a result of the workshop, we now have a prototype with which to begin departmental discussions for reforming our curriculum, based not on geography or period but on the historical skills students need to learn. We do not envision that faculty will be required to teach these skills in any particular way, or that all faculty will focus on all of the skills. We hope instead that each faculty member will choose at least one skill pertinent to the class content and course level, and explicitly model it in a way with which he or she feels comfortable. Because many of these skills are interrelated and used in many different historical tasks, we believe that if each professor explicitly teaches and provides practice for one or more of these during each semester, more of our students will be better equipped to improve their performance in history courses. Ideally, by the time a student gets to his or her senior research course, the professor will not have to teach that student how to analyze a primary source or recognize an argument or compile a bibliography.

My department is currently being asked to do pretty much the exact same thing. The difference is that we have been told that we are probably teaching all the skills we want students to learn now, we simply have to map them in order to prove to accreditation bodies that we actually do assessment. Think of it as curriculum reform through improved marketing.

Oddly enough, I think I like our method better than what’s been going on at Indiana because it’s less invasive towards historical content. Perhaps I’m being technical, but to me a curriculum is not a set of skills or time periods, it’s a long list of historical subjects. When I started teaching, I had a picture in my mind of what needed to be covered in…say…a post-1877 U.S. survey course. That list has dropped steadily over the years as I’ve done exactly what the UI people suggest, teach skills like writing and source interpretation. [I's probably a product of teaching too much historiography. It's probably inevitable that all that stuff slips into your other classes if you teach it as regularly as I do.]

Nevertheless, I have always been acutely aware of what this practice costs me in coverage. Every moment I spend teaching how to write a paper is less time to spend on historical content. There are sacrifices I can live with (like the lead up to WWII, which ought to come in a world history course anyway) and ones that just kill me (like most of the pre-Brown v. Board Civil Rights Movement).

Don’t get me wrong. I think I’m a better teacher for covering more skills and less specific facts and I’m sure my classes are much more useful for students, especially the non-history majors. I just don’t think this manner of teaching should be marketed as a purely win-win situation.

Digital trends among Japanese university students: podcasting and wikis as tools for learning

usydlanglib — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:48:42 +0000

Yayoi Anzai. International Journal on ELearning. Norfolk: 2009. Vol. 8, Iss. 4;

Abstract (Summary)

English education has entered a new era. Bonk (2008) boldly proclaims that “the World is Open” for learning. It is somewhat obvious that opportunities for learning have expanded with the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies. Now we can interact, participate, and collaborate on the Web in “a planetary community” attached to a traditional class. E-learning has become increasingly fruitful and lively. This study consists of two parts. First, it introduces the results of a survey investigating current technology trends among Japanese university students including their digital studying environment as well as their perceptions and experiences related to using podcasting and wikis. The survey was conducted in April, 2008 with 160 Japanese college students. Podcasting was studied since it provides a ubiquitous studying environment as well as authentic English listening and writing materials, while wikis can enhance students’ English writing ability through collaboration with peers, revising, and editing. The second part of this study introduces the survey results of students’ media consumption conducted in November, 2008 with forty-three Japanese college students. The findings can assist in the design and implementation of such technologies in language education. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

One of those days

Joel — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:44:04 +0000

It has been one of those days where so many things have gone … I feel as if I have efficiently packaged all my minor disasters into one day. In particular, I had three attempts at recording screencasts today, and something went wrong every time. The first one was simply my carelessness in failing to save the recording (don’t ask!). I don’t know exactly what happened with the others, but I only have sound from one small fragment. I do have the videos, so I might add narration.
Although almost all of the bugs have been eliminated by using mains power for my tablet, still I have one persistent problem: from time to time the tablet completely loses touch with the tablet pen. It still responds to the trackpad (not that I am very good with those), but it is still a real nuisance as I have to restart to get the pen working. (So far I have always managed to do this AND save the recordings too). Yes, that happened today too. Actually, I think I am going to take a spare mouse with me in case that helps under these circumstances.
Perhaps this tablet pen problem is a known issue with a solution I can find.
Meanwhile, I also have a blemish which looks something like condensation under the screen. Very odd: the display is otherwise unaffected, and (unless this is connected with the other problem) the machine appears to be otherwise unaffected.
If anyone has come across any of these problems, please let me know!
Joel

Studty Skills - The "Half Test" (Tuesday November 24)

georgewoodbury — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:35:01 +0000

Note – A series of Study Skills related articles appears here each Tuesday. I now shift my focus to practice tests and helping students prepare for an exam.

If you typically spend a day reviewing prior to an exam, consider the following activity instead.

For my developmental level math classes I will often bring in a “half test” on the day before the first exam. I figure that they’ve seen me work enough problems, and watching me go through problems one more time might not be so helpful. Here’s how it goes.

Write a varied practice test that will take half of a class period.
After the students have finished, give out a sheet with solutions.
Have students determine whether they are working quickly enough.
Have students determine which subjects/problems will require further study and spend the remainder of the time answering questions.

The main idea is to put students in a test-like situation prior to the test. You can never tell how you will respond until you experience the feeling of walking the tightrope without a net. For a student with anxiety, it gives them a chance to experience that feeling, then focus on techniques to overcome it. This also clearly helps students to determine where their weeknesses are while they still have time to study and prepare for the exam.

I only use this activity once a semester. After that students can do this on their own prior to all subsequent exams.

Although I usually only do this in developmental math classes, I tried it this week in my trig class. I’ll update you on how it worked tomorrow, after I have finished grading.

I am a math instructor at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, CA. If there are topics you’d like me to address in future Study Skills articles, send in your requests through the contact page on my web site. Be sure to check out next Tuesday’s article. – George

iPods and Differentiated Instruction

glennw — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:26:11 +0000

What if we taught like an iPhone?

What if

instead of trying to adapt our lessons to meet each student’s need, we . . . create lessons that students can customize themselves?

Robyn Jackson over at Mind Steps takes an interesting angle on the use of iPods and iPhones in the classroom. One that I’ve been thinking and talking about for a while now. But I really like how Robyn walked me through her thoughts.

The angle?

Games (and apps on the iTouch) can actually differentiate instruction as kids use them and provide a great model for us of how we can better plan our own instruction.

The thing that makes Robyn’s post so interesting is that she argues that we spend too much time attempting to find ways to personalize instruction for our students. She suggests the opposite.

For years we have tried to differentiate our instruction, creating several different lesson plans to meet the needs of more of our students. Often we miss several students’ needs and wear ourselves out in the process. I wondered, what if instead of differentiating our lessons for students, we created lessons that were customizable? What if we taught like an iphone?

I like this. I like this a lot.

She uses her purchase of an iPhone to illustrate her point. Rather than trying to figure out a way to make the iPhone specific to each personal, Apple went in the opposite direction. They made the iPhone generic.

. . . Apple didn’t focus on trying to build a phone designed just for me. In fact, it did just the opposite. Rather than offering an array of colors, the phone comes in only 2 – white and black. Instead of offering an array of built-in applications, it offers just a few basic programs loaded into the phone. Instead of trying to offer an array of phones to meet my needs, Apple offers just one.

I’ve got an iTouch but the point’s the same – I can personalize the thing myself . . . picking apps, cover, operating system, photos, video, music to fit my own needs.

Maybe instead of differentiation, we should focus on building lessons that are flexible enough that each student can find a way to access the curriculum. Maybe instead of trying to guess what our students may need, we should teach students how to show us what they need in ways that can be quickly addressed by the supports available in the classroom. Maybe instead of trying to adapt our lessons to meet each student’s need, we should create lessons that students can customize themselves.

Differentiation focuses too much on individualization rather than customization. We are trying to meet the individual needs of students rather than showing them how to meet their own needs. We are building individual lessons for each student instead of building lessons that are flexible enough so that all students can access them.

I like this. A lot.

It gives me a way to re-think the whole differentiated instruction idea. You really need to read the full version. Check it out and let me know what you’re thinking.

I could choose peace

sudugan — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:23:00 +0000

The puppy had been up several times in the night; sick again. The fan on my computer had gone ballistic and begun channeling the sound of a cement mixer. My left eye that seems to take the brunt of mysterious allergies wouldn’t stop itching. Sleep deprived, worried about the dog, and infuriated by the computer’s drone I couldn’t seem to concentrate on the newspaper article I was trying to write. I couldn’t reach the vet to discuss Kayleigh’s condition either. I would have to drive over there yet again and spend another two hours waiting for them to examine her to the tune of canine torture emanating through those scary, steel doors. Waiting for them to prescribe new medications administered through tiny syringes almost impossible to get her to swallow that might or might not work to cure her intestinal problems.

“I could see peace instead of this,” today’s A Course in Miracle’s workbook lesson suggested. I wondered what he might be smoking.

The ego’s tirade had started a couple days ago, soon after reading that morning’s workbook lesson: “I have invented the world I see.” Although the Course teaches us the world is nothing more than an outer picture of the inner condition of buried guilt in the mind, I found its wisdom hard to absorb, and quickly forgot about it as I merged into the day’s many distractions and responsibilities.

My daughter had celebrated her 17^th birthday with a sleepover the night before. She and her friends lay jumbled on the floor of our rec room, limbs tangled like a three-dimensional Picasso. I tiptoed past them to the laundry room to discover my daughter had taken my half-dried load of clothes out of the dryer to accommodate her own. I switched them back. Upstairs my husband had begun cooking bacon, sausage, and waffles for the girls in the kitchen I had just cleaned up from the night before, even though it was almost 11 a.m. and they still showed no signs of stirring. On a right-minded day, I might have found it endearing. Instead I only worried about all those Thanksgiving vegetables I needed to prep for the crowd we were having. Now I wouldn’t be able to reclaim the kitchen for hours.

I took the dog into my office and decided to answer some work emails. But before I had even managed to open the first one, a slide show of grievances starring a diverse array of characters spontaneously launched itself on the screen of my brain. How could I teach A Course in Miracles when I couldn’t seem to stop projecting? When I couldn’t even remember the title of the day’s workbook lesson? When all I wanted to do was let someone (and it didn’t really seem to matter who) have it?

I am new to formally teaching the Course, and several of my students are completely new to studying it. I have tried to be as honest with them as possible about the Course’s take on this world we think we inhabit, within which we believe we interact with others, without scaring them away. But no matter how you spin it, it is not a pretty story.

A Course in Miracles is a spiritual psychology that explains the constant conflict humans find themselves mired in, and offers a solution for resolving it at the level of the true mind, the only place in which it can be truly resolved. According to the Course the world we think we navigate is really nothing more than an external projection of the mind’s inner experience of repressed guilt over believing it separated from and in the process destroyed the one love we are and have never really left.

We naturally feel guilty over the sin we think we pulled off and fear our creator’s retribution. This underlying fear motivates us to reenact on a personal level the ego’s original collective projection of an entire universe of fragmented, guilt-animated forms. Blaming others for our problems momentarily relieves the mind’s submerged torment, and, according to the ego, gets us off the hook with God. But quickly enough we feel guilty again and must start all over searching for a scapegoat onto whom we can cast our angry, frightened, guilty feelings. Even though none of it ever happened, the selves we think we are unconsciously believe it did and behave accordingly. I am trying to share with my students just how threatening the Course’s lessons designed to expose the concealed guilt in our mind can seem to these false selves fueled by an ego thought system intent on preventing us from ever recognizing the source of all our misperceptions.

The workbook lessons gently invite us to begin to question the meaning, purpose, and cause of our experience in this seeming world. They tell us we invented the world we see, that we could see peace instead of this parade of problems if we would learn to choose again for the part of our mind that does not take illusions seriously, the part of our mind that remembers our invulnerable unity. They encourage us to make no distinctions in our practice between inanimate objects, relationships, bodies, thoughts, traffic jams, bad hair days, sick dogs, computer glitches, wars, and natural disasters because all share the same purpose of concealing the repressed “sin” of separation. They ask us to observe a world of seemingly endless, differentiated symbols and entertain the possibility that returning to our one mind might result in something other than annihilation. To entertain the possibility that returning to the scene of the “crime” of taking the “tiny mad idea” of separation from love seriously might actually empower the decision maker to whom the author of the Course speaks. That chooser in our mind once chose to believe a lie but can just as easily choose again for the part of our mind that remembers the truth.

I know all this and yet, going through these workbook lessons again have once more forgotten the real cause of my seeming distress: the fear engendered by the suggestion that I hallucinated a world to cover my guilt, but could choose to see my mistaken projections through the lens of another teacher, a viewpoint that offers true comfort and release. I had felt so joyful teaching these early lessons the first few weeks and then suddenly hit a wall of resistance wherein I couldn’t remember the day’s lesson, let alone its point, seemingly distracted by a stream of incoming annoyances. I had fallen into the trap of trying to demonstrate how happy and loving I am, rather than recognizing how difficult I find it to hold on to love and happiness.

I had fallen into the trap of believing I could judge my progress with this Course. Believing that days in which I couldn’t seem to stop projecting were somehow lesser than days in which I seemed to walk in an elongated holy instant. When, in truth, the workbook was working me, just as I had promised my students it would them if they sincerely applied it. Working to expose the underlying guilt we all share, the guilt we deny by projecting it outward and making it somebody else’s problem. The workbook teaches us to focus on those projections, to recognize how seriously we take them and how strongly we resist changing our mind about their purpose. But we can’t change our mind unless we first look outward, and we can’t see truly unless we ask for help from the part of our mind that can truly see.

This is a course in bringing our darkness to the light, not bringing the light into an illusory world based on a lie. But we can’t bring our darkness to the light if we don’t know it’s there. Jesus can’t help us use our lives as a classroom and our relationships as our curriculum if we won’t look with him at just how much we want to believe in a continual saga of unfair treatment at the hands of other people and situations seemingly beyond our control. We must turn to him for help in interpreting just how real we continue to make the error of separation even after years of practicing forgiveness and experiencing its mind-healing benefits. We must ask for his help again and again as we catch ourselves in the act of mindlessly projecting our fear outward. As if our lives depended on it, which, of course, the ego–unaware of a life beyond the false self it invented–believes they do.

As the “Light in the Dream” section of Chapter 18 of the text clearly explains:

“As the light comes nearer you will rush to darkness, shrinking from the truth, sometimes retreating to the lesser forms of fear, and sometimes to stark terror. But you will advance, because your goal is the advance from fear to truth. The goal you accepted is the goal of knowledge, for which you signified your willingness. Fear seems to live in darkness, and when you are afraid you have stepped back. Let us join quickly in an instant of light, and it will be enough to remind you that your goal is light.”

I had fallen into the trap of believing there was something out there intent on disrupting my plans, my pace, my peace, my practice, the spiritual makeup I apply to disguise how deeply ticked off I truly am by this whole state of affairs we call living, this fugitive identity my false self-accusation has erected. An identity that keeps me loveless and longing, seeking but never finding, frightened and exhausted.

But I could see peace instead of this. Workbook lesson 34 does not ask us to try to prove how peaceful and spiritual we are by projecting peaceful and spiritual images on our surroundings. It asks us to search our mind for what scares us, those people and situations that trigger us. It asks us to experience the painful emotions that surface as we do so and reassure ourselves as Jesus does that we could see peace instead of this if we will only look with him. Why? Because Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the part of our mind that holds the light of our eternal oneness illuminates and undoes our mistaken projection, healing our tormented mind and returning us in the holy instant to the peace of the one, indivisible love we are. Nothing outside the mind ever really changes because there is nothing outside the mind. But our burden lifts, our muscles relax. Our eyes and foreheads once more serene, we recognize our brother’s newly revealed innocence as our own.

“Peace of mind is clearly an internal matter. It must begin with your own thoughts, and then extend outward. It is from your peace of mind that a peaceful perception of the world arises.”

Notice that it says a peaceful perception, not a peaceful world. I could choose this.

Mr. D’s Guide to the Holidays # 1: Thanksgiving

ldorazio1 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:16:59 +0000

Freedom From Want (1943) By Norman Rockwell -- could it also read "Freedom from wanting clear arteries"?

Let’s begin with a holiday that’s all American, wholesome, family-oriented, and brings out the best in us. Or, conversely, a stressful, be grudgingly multiethnic, polyglot, emotionally charged day that get us longing for tomorrow.

Super Bowl Sunday.

Sorry, as a Giants fan, it is wishful thinking. Of course I mean Thanksgiving, the annual late November ritual where we give thanks to God/Yahweh/G*d/Allah/the Force/etc. for all the good blessings of the year.

This is, obviously, followed by gorging on his divine good bounty until we get the coronary that will ultimately send us to our maker. God has a funny way of accepting gratitude.

He also has a sense of humor in concocting the myths behind this celebration. As children, we have all been drilled in the mantra of the Pilgrims. Let’s recap for those unfamiliar:

In 1620, 102 God-fearing English souls—dressed as if from a Rembrandt canvas—set sail on that grandiose vessel the Mayflower to seek a land where they can worship God in their own way (as long as nobody else says otherwise). They land on Plymouth Rock (which must’ve done wonders for the ship’s undercarriage) and began the hard existence of life. The first winter was brutal and cold, and it was not until they met the kindly “Indian” Squanto, who showed them the wonders of maize and hunting, that the little colony was spared. In 1621, to give thanks for their good fortune, the Pilgrims invite the Wampanoag, led by the kind Massasoit, to enjoy a bountiful meal, complete with turkeys raised with pop-up timers. They lived together as friends (cue the smallpox blankets) and we have celebrated ever since.

Please wipe your feet to avoid tracking the bullshit on the carpet.

Okay, so like so many things, Thanksgiving is a lie teachers told you. Not entirely, but it is the case here. Let’s take this myth and break it apart piece by piece.

Myth # 1—The Pilgrims came to seek religious freedom.

In the 17^th Century, there was no such thing—not in Europe, America, or anywhere else. Even swinging Holland, known for its tolerance, had an official Calvinist religion; one which viewed outsiders as an irritant best avoided.

The Pilgrims were no exception: they were so radical even Puritans avoided them—that’s fucking radical.

The Pilgrims practiced Separatism, which meant they wanted to completely separate from the Church of England and establish their own theocratic hell in the land of their choosing. This differed from the Puritans, who wanted the Church of England to be “purified” into their theocratic hell, which was better than the Anglican theocratic hell, which was better than the Lutheran theocratic hell, which was light years better than the idolatrous Catholic theocratic hell and the (God Forbid) Muslim theocratic hell.

They can all go to hell, for all I care.

Anyway, the Pilgrims were getting persecuted, that’s true. To avoid English rule, they did establish themselves in Leiden, the Netherlands—also true. Yet here’s the second part of the story: The Pilgrims ultimately left for America for two reasons. First, to establish a hell as described above. Second, to make sure their kids don’t grow up Dutch: speaking a phlegm-based language looking like a Vermeer portrait and being all tolerant and such.

Myth # 2—everybody on the Mayflower were Pilgrims who wanted religious freedom.

There were, in fact, non-Separatists on the voyage, along with the captain and crew of the ship. Only 27 of the 70 adults on the voyage were Separatists. The rest were in no mood for Jesus. On the contrary, their mood was for a quick buck. Some came to establish a homestead in the New World. Others came to find the gold that the bozos in Virginia seemed to miss. All these people would chafe at the Pilgrims’ “religious freedom”—which would actually cause resentment and exits from the colony.

Myth # 3—the Pilgrims were heading to Virginia, but were blown off course.

This is kind of true. The Mayflower was blown off course, but the course was not present-day Virginia. The Virginia Company claimed the land north of Jamestown including the mouth of the Hudson River. The ultimate destination of the Pilgrims would be present-day New York.

In a weird twist of irony, in 1619 the Dutch West India Company offered to settle the Pilgrims in New Netherland, their colony in North America located on the exact same spot of their supposed landing. The Pilgrim leaders declined, wishing to not further the “corruption” of their youth with Dutch influences. Delft tiles, prim black clothing and actually making money doing business is a scary thing, I suppose.

Myth # 3—the Natives welcomed the Pilgrims with open arms.

The Native tribes were suspicious of these newcomers, and with good reason. Between 1617 and 1619 English fishermen in the area exposed the local people to smallpox, which devastated the numbers of Narragansett, Pawtuxet and Wampanoag populations. Furthermore, the Pilgrims stole corn stores from villages that were deserted due to the disease, which couldn’t have made the locals pleased.

In fact, the Wampanoag were actually looking for a strategic advantage in befriending the newcomers. They still outnumbered the new settlers, which meant that any false move and they could quickly dispatch them, as they weren’t much of a threat. The settlers’ weakened condition after the winter of 1620-1621 further tipped the cards in Massasoit’s favor. Also, Massasoit knew that these people could be a powerful ally in their constant battles with neighboring tribes such as the Narragansett, the Pequot and the Mohegan—who obviously had not yet learned the pacifying power of all-night gambling.

Over the years after 1621, and especially after Massasoit died, the Plymouth colony would take advantage of the Wampanoag to gain more land for the ever-increasing numbers of settlers that were arriving from England. By the time Massasoit’s son Metacomet, or King Philip, took over the tribe in 1662, enough was enough. The subsequent war, King Philip’s War, would ravage New England between 1675 and 1676, and would be among the bloodiest of native conflicts in North America.

Massasoit should’ve gotten that drumstick, after all.

Myth # 4—the first Thanksgiving was a mutual celebration between the Pilgrims and Wampanoag to celebrate their mutual good fortune.

For this, we’ll turn to two primary sources. The following is an account from a 1621 book entitled Mourt’s Relation, or A Relation or Journal of the Beginning and Proceedings of the English Plantation Settled at Plimoth in New England. It was primarily written by Edward Winslow, a Separatist who did much of the communication between the colony and the Wampanoag. This is his account:

“Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which we brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.” – Edward Winslow, Mourt’s Relation (1621)

According to Winslow, the whole celebration happened by accident. The Pilgrims went out hunting for their harvest celebration, found the Wampanoag wandering in their midst, and basically made an impromptu invitation to dine with them. The three-day event was full of entertaining, feasting, and hunting—apparently the Wampanoag brought five deer to the event.

Here’s another, probably better known account. The following comes from the now-legendary 1647 work Of Plimoth Plantation, written by acclaimed Pilgrim leader William Bradford. Edward Winslow was Bradford’s assistant in communicating with the native tribes. This is Bradford’s account:

“They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides waterfowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides, they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to the proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.” – William Bradford. Of Plimoth Plantation (1647)

Bradford writes of abundance and good fortune, yet no mention of a celebration. This good fortune may even be contrived—this was published some 26 years after the fact, so Bradford’s eye may be a bit more glassed over.

The point is the celebratory feast we envision as the first “Thanksgiving” may have simply been an English harvest feast that was crashed by the Wampanoag. Or it may have never really happened at all. Nonetheless, whatever happened, it bore almost no relation to the modern holiday, which leads to the last myth.

Myth # 5—America has been celebrating Thanksgiving ever since the Pilgrims.

To honor the real founder of the holiday, kids should be wearing beards and tall hats instead of feathers and buckled shoes.

Although individual Presidents have proclaimed days of Thanksgiving from time to time, and some states even creating their own Thanksgiving holiday, it wasn’t until the Civil War that a national holiday was created. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of prayer and Thanksgiving. Given the national mood of the time, it was sorely needed.

Yet it didn’t stop future leaders from monkeying with the date.

Franklin Roosevelt, in an attempt to stimulate the Depression-era economy, proposed moving Thanksgiving a week earlier in 1939. Republicans would have none of it, resisting Democratic moves to sully old Abe’s Thanksgiving in the name of economic recovery. For a number of years, there were two Thanksgivings, depending on your political party. The mix-up was straightened out by the time we entered World War II in 1941.

You may be asking yourself, “Mr. D, how do we know the information you’re giving us isn’t bullshit?”

Good question. Here’s some links to back up my bullshit, with more information:

Plimoth Plantation is one of the few historical re-enactments that cut through the crap pretty well. Their work is thoroughly researched and documented, and actively strives to provide a balanced look at life in the early colony. Look at their Education sublink for their online education center which features their “You are the Historian” section, which kids will love.

The Plymouth Colony entry in Research Starters from Scholastic provides a great overview of the topic, followed by links to articles and to other websites for further study.

The Plymouth Colony Archives Project was a historical archaeology project started at the University of Virginia, but now housed at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It is a magnificent repository of primary records about the colony and its settlers.

Lessonplan on Popular Culture

sarahsahara — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:00:04 +0000

Today’s in-class task was to create a new-media based class session that works into the hessian Lehrplan. Our group decided to make one for a grade 11 (G9) class on the topic of Popular Culture.

The double-session (90 minutes) is planned for approximately 30 pupils (but it would work fine with pretty much any number of students, as long as there are computers for all of them).

So here is what we put together:

The pupils are to devide into teams of three (which would be ten groups). We decided to give them five major topics (movies, music, literature, fashion and sports), of which each group would work on one (so two teams would work the same topic).

Within 20 minutes each team should be able to create a mind-map (using e.g. bubbl.us).

After that the team splits up and each pupil is to research the topic(s) he/she was assigned to by the group. For that individual research the pupils are given approximately 25 minutes. The teacher should encourage them to search not only for information, but also for media, e.g. videos, pictures or current articles on the topic(s). (A possible source could be answers.com)

When finished with their research, each pupil should create a powerpoint presentation on his topic (using only the basic tools, no major layout!!!), for which he/she is given another 20 minutes. One presentation should not exeed 5 slides.

Finally the groups team up again to integrate all minor presentation into one major presentation, deciding on order, layout, use of colour and type style as well as creating a short introduction to their presentation, on which they can spent the remaining time (approximately 25 minutes).

The presentations can either be given in the next session, be made available online by the teacher or stored on the students’ pen-drives.

A possible homework would be to evaluate two of those presentations.

What do you think about our lesson plan? Do you like it? Do you see room for improvement?

Musical Inspiration

eslchill — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:35:36 +0000

Sing, floss, stretch. But trust me on the sunscreen.

I wrote recently about the elective class that I am developing and teaching on popular music. I’m covering a decade per week and a song per day. Within each song, I highlight an interesting grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation point.

Developing this class has meant combing through many online resources including lists of Billboard number one hit songs on Wikipedia and best-of-the-decade lists such as AOL’s radio blog, which is a good place to start because you can listen to most of the songs on the list. I’ve also found that the website sing365.com tends to have the least errors of all of the lyrics websites that are returned in Google searches.

I intend to post the list of songs I’ve used at the end of the quarter (I might even link to the Google Docs spreadsheet that I used to record all of the songs I considered for each decade) but for now I thought I would post the following music video, which I plan to use tomorrow, the last day before Thanksgiving break.

The song is actually a spoken word piece which has an interesting story. While not a traditional pop music video, I think the message is inspirational without being cheesy. Plus, there are lots and lots of examples of advice using the imperative. It might not get you through the last two weeks of the quarter, but it doesn’t hurt.

Are you listening?

teflnaut — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:30:52 +0000

Are our students really listening to each other? They may well be listening (and focusing) on you (the teacher), but are they listening to (and focusing on) each other? This is the thought I crossed my mind the other day when I was covering a class. Actually, it crosses my mind all the time, it’s just that taking someone else’s class always makes me more aware of my own teaching. It got me thinking about a few ideas that I’ve picked up over the years to make sure that the students aren’t just listening to you:

1. Ask one student to repeat what another has just said. I always pick on someone who I know hasn’t been paying attention. If they can’t tell you, quickly choose someone else. And if they can’t, choose another student who (hopefully) can. It’s a really quick way of getting the students to focus on each other and not just on you. It also comes in handy for practising reported speech, of course.

2. Get students to nominate each other to answer questions. Not only does this mean that the students will have to learn who else is in their class (I’m always amazed at how often they don’t know the names of their peers), but they’ll also have to listen to what the others are saying in case they get called out. Like all great teaching tools, it takes the focus off you and puts it on to the students (where it should be).

3. Sit with the students. If your classroom is laid out in a classic horseshoe shape, take some time to sit with the students in the horseshoe. By moving the students’ gaze inwards, they should be more aware of their peers. It can almost work in other classroom setups, but it takes a bit of experimentation.

4. Tape your students. In the past, I recorded my students while they presented policies for their new political parties. I listened to this and wrote some simple comprehension questions for them. The next day, we all listened back as the students answered the questions.

I’ve tried all these ideas out in the classroom, and I’ve found that the students have quickly come round to the idea that they are the most important people in the room, not the teacher. The teacher may well have the perfect accent and pronunciation, but since most of the English in the world is spoken between non-native speakers, they’d better get used to listening to each other.

My final exam for Classical Christian Thought

Adam Kotsko — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:29:47 +0000

Other than a question asking them to summarize the argument of one of the texts from class (to make it feel more fair that I was making them turn in their analytic summary papers the day of the exam), my final exam was all about classical orthodoxy, including the heresies. How would you have done?

For each of the heresies listed, provide at least the following facts: (a) whether it was most closely related to the doctrine of the Trinity or Christology; (b) what the heresy claimed; (c) what the orthodox teaching was on the question the heresy addressed (this will be the same for some); and (d) why the difference was thought to be important.

Points (a)-(c) are worth one point each; point (d) is worth two. For bonus points, (e) provide the name of a prominent figure who espoused the heresy (no points if the heresy is named after someone) and/or a prominent church father who fought against it (one point each).

1. Docetism
2. Ebionitism
3. Arianism
4. Modalism
5. Nestorianism
6. Monophysitism
7. Monergism
8. Monothelitism

Essay question: Discuss the primary features of the orthodox doctrine on the Trinity and Christology, explaining the core convictions that guided the development of each doctrine.

It occurred to me one morning...

missincognegro — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:19:33 +0000

as I was getting out of the shower: I’ve been fired from three of the four teaching jobs I’ve held. Well, actually two; my position was reduced to part-time during a downturn at my previous place of employ. But, given the tenor there, I may as well have been fired.

Tuesday afternoon

meli — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:22:09 +0000

I am in the humanities library at the University of Oslo. I am terribly excited. I just had a chat with the people who established the postcolonial literature subject I’m going to teach. They are so lovely! As soon as I stepped onto the campus it felt like coming home. A university campus!!! With courtyards and large square glass-fronted buildings and students in coats and scarves! The library smells like old books. There are high windows above the shelves and sunlight slants in through the blinds. I am sitting opposite The Riverside Chaucer, two shelves away from Peter Carey’s Collected Short Stories. (This is a small library; they have a larger one a few buildings down.) The musty book smell and the yellow sunlight make my heart skip. This is where I want to be.

Working Questions

mjc — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:04:13 +0000

Sunday’s brand-new Portable Papermaking class was excellent, if small. I transported a setup that wo

Poetry's dumb

paisleyandplaid — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:28:53 +0000

Teaching. You have to love it or leave it. Or you may love it and still leave it, which is my final(?) decision. Again.

The straw this time is a question from a student beginning an in-class essay on Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which we had read and discussed and I believe is still taught in better high schools:

“When you say clergy, what do you mean?”

It didn’t help that a few students had handed in easily-detected plagiarized papers, one pasted from Sparknotes and two identical papers from another online site. (“We’re in different classes. She’ll never know.”)

Or that one with a late paper suggested that I could fiind her paper in the library where the copy tech probably had it ready. Sure. Thanks for playing.

Do Independent Schools Prepare Students for the Real World?

drsteverobinson — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:22:08 +0000

A common misconception about independent schools is that they are artificial environments in which students lack exposure to the “real world.” This argument comes from those outside of the independent school world that believe that we must expose students to the ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic diversity of their communities in order to provide a real world experience. Though I do not doubt that attending a large public school will expose students to a great range of attitudes, behaviors, and local experiences, it does not follow that this exposure is necessarily healthy. In fact, there is substantial evidence that shows that independent schools actually better prepare students for the real world than public schools do. But, it is important to define what we mean by the ‘real world.’

When we understand the real world to be the world beyond the city limits and the nation’s borders, it is very clear that independent schools outpace all other schools. When we understand the real world to be the world in which the right brain will reign supreme, it is clear that independent schools provide a superior approach. When we understand the real world to be a world in which critical thought and creativity is honored and teachers are not encouraged to teach to standardized tests, it is clear that independent schools excel.

In fact, the lack of real world experience found in local public schools is astounding. Local public schools only represent the local community and the diversity, or lack thereof, found in that community. These schools also represent the greatest variance in academic abilities, parental involvement, student behavior, and student motivation; variances that tend to serve as hindrances to learning, not advantages. Within the typical public school, students regularly cluster into interest groups isolated from the others. In spite of the ethnic and cultural diversity often present, these schools rarely represent the diversity of the real world.

Only the exceptional non-independent school regularly engages its students in global activities such as international travel and international school partnerships, activities that are the norm for independent schools. On the other hand, virtually every student in independent schools is involved annually in student service projects occurring throughout the world. We only prepare our students for the real world when they have the ability to function in a global economy and understand the various cultures of the world. The real world does not exist within the walls of a school, regardless of the diversity present therein.

The difficulty for many of our public school colleagues is not of their doing; it is the unfortunate fact that most American communities do not value public education highly enough to ensure appropriate funding. Additionally, public school teachers are required to teach to a much wider variance of academic abilities, thus making it more difficult to address the needs of all students in the class. Teaching to such a wide variance of academic abilities is even more difficult when the class size exceeds 25 students, a regular occurrence for public schools. Additionally, unlike their independent school counterparts, public school teachers have less enforcement ability to ensure good student behavior.

It is common for friends of independent school parents to shame them for sheltering their children from real world experience. This argument implies that parents should neglect their child’s developmental interests for the good of the public school. The suggestion that taking the best students from the public school creates an unhealthy brain drain for the public school is only sensible if one believes that parents should use their children to fix the troubles found in many public schools. This notion that a child should be used as leaven to improve the public school is, in my opinion, an immoral position.

Parents should provide the best education possible for their children. For the truly conscientious parent, sending their children to the local public school merely to show support for public education should not be an option. Support for the local public schools should be expressed in ways other than using ones child to raise the mean academic achievement level.

This discussion is not intended as an attack on public education, for indeed we all hope that America’s public schools will succeed. It also is not intended to be a treatise on public school teachers, for indeed there are many outstanding teachers in public schools. It is, however, an argument against the notion that students attending independent schools are not being exposed to the real world. The facts just do not support this notion. In fact, independent schools represent the real world best.

Tip: It is in the interest of all independent schools to include phrases addressing the global nature of your program as you market your school. Although we in independent schools have always understood this value, it is clear that we have not always made the argument effectively. It is time to dispel the myth.