These tenets imply the existence and validity of manifold beliefs.
1. Reality is infinite; we are finite. Therefore we cannot wrap our minds around all of reality; reality is more than our understanding of reality.
2. Reality is infinite; words are finite. Therefore we cannot contain all of reality in any set of sacred words.
3. Each of us knows a piece of reality. Some of that piece is ours alone, our own unique corner of reality. The rest overlaps with the pieces of reality other people know.
4. Reality is infinite; our piece is finite. Thus two pieces of reality may appear very different; they are nonetheless pieces of reality.
5. There are many ways of coming to know more about reality; one is through sharing with each other the part we know. No matter how different, two pieces of reality have some aspect in common. When we share, we learn more about our common aspects by seeing them from within the other person’s vision; and we learn more about our unique connection to reality from discovering what we do not share.
6. We learn much and gain strength from those who are like us; they are necessary to us. Our understanding of an aspect of our piece of reality is deeper and stronger when we understand it as others understand it. Therefore we love and are comforted by our samenesses; they lend us power for living.
7. We learn most from those who are different from us; they help us walk around our piece of reality and see it in new ways. In the process of seeking our common aspects, we lead each other into unexplored regions of our own pieces of reality. Therefore we treasure our differences; they open us to a greater connection to reality.
8. A sharer can learn from anyone, is open to opportunities for sharing, and finds a way to share with anyone who offers.
“The universe”, “God”, “Truth”, “Mystery”, “the Tao”, “the Goddess”, “Spirit”, “god”, or “the gods” may be used instead of “Reality” in the above.
I’ve been a little slow to read this. It’s excellent. Did you write it? I assume so, but the title made me wonder.
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Yes, I did write it. Someday I’ll post how it came to be. It comes as close to a statement of faith as I have. You can probably tell where some of my comments and other posts are coming from, having seen this 🙂
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1. Reality is finite. If the universe is expanding it must have an edge. If the universe is going to be bigger 5 seconds from now then it would follow that the current version is less than infinite. I’ll concede that my background in physics is inadequate to the point that I am relying on the brilliance of others. But since guys like Einstein and Oppenheimer can blow up cities with a little uranium, I’ll take their word for it.
2. Words are also finite.
3. Two guys watch a ballgame. They can agree on some things, and disagree on others. They can exchange opinions.
4. Reality is finite, so are our versions. Versions differ, but some people are just smarter.
5. Sharing information is not always good. Ask Anne Frank.
6. People who think alike stagnate each other.
7. People with differing opinions are useful for curing mental lethargy.
8. Sharing is a double edged sword. What if someone shares harmful or incorrect information?
9. Imaginary friends do not equal reality.
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heffadog: And your point?
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My point is that we agree on about 80%, but hold different views on the remaining 20%. The 20% is the really interesting stuff. Atheism vs. theism, faith vs. scepticism and conciousness that is mystic vs. conciousness that is a pragmatic tool for beings to survive.
My son-in-law is working towards his PhD in Philosophy and we seldom agree on many things. He seems to think that we can never know if anything is real, because we could all be brains in a vat, ala Matrix. I concede that I can’t prove him wrong, but I argue that he has not a single piece of evidence that his model is valid. It’s wishful daydreaming. I argue that conciousness arose as a function of genes that find it useful to know what’s goin’ on. Beauty, morality and emotions are all artifacts of information processing. But don’t get me wrong; I’m not anti-religious or a misanthrope. I like people, I like beauty. Your tree photos are a good example of beauty. My genes tell me so.
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I’m glad I asked. Frankly, I’m surprised that you would say we agree on as much as 80%, but I’ll accept your estimate.
The 20% is the part that causes us to grow, if we’re willing and able to explore it. When I first was formulating my tenets, I didn’t have one about the value of our samenesses. I added it for a couple of reasons, one being that I remember when I was a young adult–well, kid really, but in age, young adult, and how much it meant to me to find other people who had much in common with me. Another is that in my old age–well, maybe not old old, but definitely the sheen is wearing off of middle age–I’ve been able to find at least something in common with people that in my younger years I could barely see as human. So now I really do think that both same and different are part of the dynamic that fuels our growth.
Your son-in-law sounds young. I remember similar conversations. My own take: If by “know” you mean “know absolutely”–then I’d agree we can’t know if anything is real, becasue we can’t know anything absolutely. But if you give up the need for absolutes, and accept “pretty sure”–then we can know quite a lot, at least well enough to get by. Some of the time, anyway.
Thanks for the complimant on the photos. Pretty slick how you just slipped it in there at the end.
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Slick is my middle name pal. But seriously, they are quite nice. Somewhere between a Japanese painting and an O’Keefe.
Now let’s get back to arguing. “I agree that we can’t know if anything is real.” As an uber pragmatist, this line of reasoning makes me nuts. I may not have a good handle on what’s goin’ on all the time and I can be wrong in my interpretation of events and facts, but the idea that I can’t know if anything is real is insanity. Isn’t that what insanity is? Out of touch with reality.
Plato’s Cave, dementia, hallucinations, brains in vats and never ending college careers are interesting examples of alternate realities. But sooner or later the fire in the cave goes out (Oh crap! I hope a realist invents cable), people take their meds, the mushrooms wear off, and Neo saves the world and students become professors. Reality is chasing us or maybe stalking is a more appropriate word.
I would actually argue that life forms are excellent arbiters of truth. Millions of years of evolution have rewarded those who apprehend the truth.
Have you ever read anything by Richard Dawkins? His views might be offensive to you, but maybe not.
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You quote “I agree that we can’t know if anything is real.” Now that’s what I call selective “hearing”. If you read the entire paragraph, you’ll see that I basically agree with you. So if it’s an argument you want–well, we could probably whomp one up, but it’ll be a bit lame. So let me raise a question for you: if “life forms are excellent arbiters of truth”–does that mean that you and I, both (presumably) being alive and the result of pretty much the same amount of evvolution, are both equally excellent arbiters of truth when we disagree? And if not–how would we decide which of us is the better arbiter of truth?
I had to read Dawkins “Selfish Gene” when it first came out as an assignment for a college course, and found him intensely annoying. E.g., his title–he uses the word “selfish”, precisely for its shock value and emotional impact based on the imputation of motivation to genes, then proceeds to explain that of course he doesn’t mean to imply that genes are motivated in the sense implied by the word (which would be a teleological view of evolution which is a no-no). Annoying. Even when he said things that I (understood and) agreed with, he said them in ways that were annoying.
One of the things I remember deciding he had to be wrong about was his whole take on what he called “junk DNA”. I think the idea was something like the only explanation for the existence of all that junk DNA was that selfish genes were simply replicating themselves without regard to benefit to the organism. I decided I just didn’t buy it–it just didn’t seem reasonable to me. DNA costs energy to make–why wouldn’t all that expensive junk get selected out? was my reasoning. Not that I know what I’m talking about, mind you–but even so, I figured he was probably wrong about all that unexplained DNA. Imagine my gratification upon hearing an NPR discussion of how it turns out that it does have a function–if I remember correctly, it tells the other DNA when to turn on and off. It’s sort of executive DNA. I don’t imagine that that one thing sinks Dawkins selfish gene thesis–I don’t remember the book that well, it’s been years–but it sure puts a hole in it.
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Hmmm….Since we are both middle aged human males, I would guess that we are pretty much equal in our abilities to discern truth or reality. I think perspectives(where a person is and has been) matter more than the hardware of our brains.
I had a feeling Dawkins would annoy you. He can be abrasive. He is what I consider an “angry athiest.” But, I think time will show the concept of a selfish gene to be true. The adjective “selfish” doesn’t imply emotional motivation when discussing genes. There is a similar concept of “altruistic” viruses. The viruses aren’t really altruistic, but they behave in a way that resembles altruism. They increase or decrease their virulence in response to host population changes. If the hosts are croaking too fast, they lower their virulence. A lack of altruistic behavior is why E Bola never gets out of Africa. It kills so hard and fast it can’t spread. If it was a little more considerate of others it might be invited to more parties.
I’m not a biologist but I think the current idea on junk DNA is that they are mostly “Fossilized” genes. If a gene becomes no longer a factor in successful breeding, it still gets replicated but without the pressure of needed success. The lack of pressure allows mistakes to multiply and since these genes no longer add or detract value, the mistakes persist. The icefish is a prime example. It’s the only known vertabrate that lacks hemoglobin. Its environment is so oxygen rich, that it doesn’t need it. It does however have the remnants of hemoglobin genes in the form of “junk” DNA.
My next question: Do people have souls? Do dogs?
Well, gotta go for my annual checkup.(The unexamined butt is not worth having) Later.
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It’s taken me awhile to get back to you on this one, partly because I’ve been out of Internet reach for awhile, camping and such, and partly because I needed to chew on it a bit.
You see, we are not, in fact, both middle aged human males. You got two out of three, but I am in fact female. Given the questions about truth, objectivity, and subjectivity we’ve discussed–you may want to chew on a few questions yourself, in light of this fact. For instance–does knowing I’m female rather than male change your interpretation of any of my statements/claims/contentions/arguments? In particular, does it change your perception of their “truth”? Their objectivity or subjectivity? Or even your understanding of their content? If so–in what way(s)?
Second–does knowing I’m female change your perception/interpretation of the nature or tone of the dialogue?
Third, does it change how you are inclined to respond?
These are not rhetorical questions–I’m genuinely interested in your experience and thoughts about this.
Back to Dawkins. “Selfish” is an emotionally loaded word, and Dawkins was fully aware of this. Otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered to explain that he didn’t really mean it that way, which he took pains to do. He used it to get a rise out of people and sell books, not to communicate clearly. To which I say bah humbug and a pox on him. You can use “black” to mean “white” if you want to, and even still communicate if you explain that “black” is code for “white”–but I always find this annoying, and am suspicious of the motives of people who do it.
Do people have souls? My answer is sort of “yes”. Or perhaps it’s a “maybe”. To me this is a question that quintessentially we each answer for ourselves, and it’s interesting to share our answers, or our questions about it, but we each must work it out for ourself. Some day I intend to write a post about that, but so far the time has not been right. As for dogs–all I have to say about that is, if I have a soul, dogs better have souls too or I’ll want to know the reason why.
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I’ll be perfectly honest. I am flabbergasted that you are female. I reviewed the stuff that you’ve written and I can’t for the life of me see why I thought you were a guy. I don’t think it changes much of anything in how we have or might communicate though. I basically revere women and vastly prefer their company to that of men.
Your second point about the tone is quite valid. I’ll try to be less alpha doggish but I can’t really promise.
Third. It’s hard for me to be confrontational with women because of my upbringing, but as you may have noticed, I’m very fond of my own opinions.
As for the soul thing, if humans got ’em, then dogs do too. But….I don’t think either one does. Which might make the passing away of favorites hard to take but I want truth not comfort. I loved them-they’re gone-they ain’t comin’ back. But in the interest of honesty, I do sometimes behave as though I think the soul exists. When my black lab passed, I paid extra for a solitary cremation and then spread his ashes on the shoreline where he frogged with joyful abandon.(He would trade live, unharmed bullfrogs for hotdogs.)
Last but not least, I came across a poem written in a book by an autistic teenager from India. He lives in the U.S. now and has some measure of fame for his writing ability. I think you might like it.
Perceptions differ from man to man
And perceptions differ from man to dog
I see, he sees, or it sees the same things,
And perceptions tell us what is what,
And thus through some eyes, a rose may bloom
Not as a mere yellow-petaled flower,
For through his eye the blessed would see,
The image of the tender hands of its maker.
Tito Mukhopadhyay
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When I first started the blog, I thought it might be interesting to not reveal my gender and see what people would assume, but after awhile it became tedious figuring out how to phrase things, so I quit worrying about it. So I was surprised that you assumed I’m male. Honestly didn’t know whether I felt flattered or insulted or merely taken aback. But what’s really interesting about this is that it does make a difference in how one interprets and reacts to what’s written. It shows that, regardless of what we may tell ourselves, it’s not only about the content of the message–the source matters also. Which, if the truth or falsity of the propositions put forward is strictly “objective”, it wouldn’t. Or perhaps it only demonstrates our own lack of objectivity–the inevitability of some degree of subjectivity in our assessment of pretty much everything.
I like a discussion with some bite to it–being challenged is a good thing, it makes one “walk around our piece of reality and see it in new ways”. But I don’t like contentiousness–I find it counterproductive. That’s why I avoid politics on my blog, and also try to avoid emotionally loaded language. I was about to say maybe it’s the academic in me–but east coast academic discussions are often extremely emotionally charged and contentious. So maybe it’s the west coast academic in me 🙂 Seriously, though, when people take the trouble to make their points in emotionally neutral language, it often leads their thinking into new directions, reveals new insights that never come to light as long as they are merely taking potshots at one another or doing one-upmanship. I like being pushed–but not over a cliff.
As to souls–I don’t always believe in ’em either. Intellectually, it’s sure hard to figure out what a soul would be, or how it would be related to the rest of us. On the other hand–I’m terrified of dying, and have been since I was about 4 or 5 (stupid story, nothing scary or profound), so the glimmers I’ve had that perhaps we do have souls and something of us may survive physical death–very comforting. So I’m sure not going to work at convincing myself we don’t have souls. But I’m not going to work at convincing anyone else we do, either. Here’s an area where I think sharing our experience is more relevant than trying to write a philosophical treatise or engaging in debate.
I do like the poem. Which is saying something, because I usually don’t “get” poetry–I’m way too literal-minded. Do you like it also, or were you just thinkig I would? If so–I’m surprised, given its last line.
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My gender confusion reminds me of that cliche women’s lib riddle where a man and his son are in a car accident. The man dies but the son is gravely injured. The attending surgeon says “I can’t work on this boy. He’s my son.” The riddle would ask “How can this be?” In the seventies, people would go through all kinds of mental contortions such as “Is he a step dad?” etc. In these more enlightened times, I don’t think it’s much of a riddle.(Paging, Dr. Erin Grey)
The east coast-west coast thing is very real and not just for rappers. I find it very unsettling every time I travel to AZ to see my daughter. And Hawaii is just insane.(I try, but I just can’t “drive with aloha.”) It is such a relief to fly home to Boston and have the first SOB cut me off in traffic as I head back to my manana cabana.
I’d be interested in the fear of death story. I promise I won’t go all east coast over it. Personally, I’m not that afraid of death, just the pain associated with it. I’ve witnessed three deaths .(None were violent, just long term illness.) And as an alter boy, I served at scores of funerals. The office lady at school would tap at the glass in the school room door and point to me. I would walk the short distance to the church, do my thing and then have the rest of the day off. For my own funeral, I plan to copy Hunter S. Thompson. My wife has orders to cremate me, pack me into some fireworks and shoot me out of a mortar.(It’ll be my last chance to make people go “oooh!”)
I also like the poem, even the shmucky last line. As a happy atheist, this may be a contradiction. But I’m comfortable with it. I may not be religious but I do have a thing for quality art. Speaking of quality. I noticed in your book meme that you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance twice. What made you read it twice?(I read it in a continuous loop for about a decade.) How’bout Casteneda?
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Hey! I most certainly did not put those smiley faces in my text. This is awful! How do I prevent this? I’m a barely reformed Luddite and I’m sure it is a problem on my end, but this is unbearable! Please help. A grown man can’t have smiley faces! AAAAHHH!
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I could fix the smiley faces for you–Wordpress turns emoticons into faces, I could edit them out–but I think I’ll just leave them. Heh heh.
I’m not quite ready to share stupid stories about myself yet, even if I was only around 4 years old at the time. But it’s not so much death as dying I fear. I figure once we’re dead, it’ll OK one way or the other. It’s the transition that scares me. The suffering may be bad and I’m certainly not looking forward to it–but it’s the transition from alive to dead that gets to me in the middle of the night. I’ve been known to wake up suddenly from one of those twilight states with the thought “I don’t think I can do it”–die, that is. Dumb, huh? Like we have a choice. I’ts definitely a back-of-the-brain thing.
As for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance–I loved it the first time I read it. Since I often re-read books I love, I read it a second time–and this time I was mostly struck by how neurotic and adolescent it seemed. At one time I could have been more specific and articulate both about what I liked the first time and didn’t the second–but it’s been too long. Castaneda I couldn’t get through in the first place. Magic and magical thinking ain’t my thing. The atheistic side of my agnosticism kicks in big time. Unless it’s fiction, and even then–I stopped reading most SF when it became mostly fantasy.
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Yup….Nothin’ worse than the 4 am blues. Got the fear of mortality from my head down to my shoes.
I may become a little slow in the back and forth banter. I am coming out of semi-retirement to teach math, science and life skills at a correctional facilty for boys. Developing lesson plans has been more time consuming than I thought possible. I’m told that some of the kids are barely literate and most lack even rudimentary math skills. I’ll bet most of them can convert grams to ounces quite well though.
What sort of academic are you? I’d guess math, but we know how well I guess. My second guess is philosophy.
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Cool. Welcome to my world. My main job is teaching prospective teachers (both elementary and secondary) how to teach math. You have some serious challenges ahead of you, but it should be interesting. From your comment on how time-consuming developing lesson plans has turned out to be, I take it that teaching, or at least teaching at this level, is new to you?
I find myself sitting here both trying to come up with some pithy words of wisdom for you, and reminding myself how pointless that is. If pithy words of wisdom would do the trick, my job would be a lot easier. But oh heck, I can’t completely resist, so here goes: Be sure not to infer from any lack of literacy or other educational skills that you discover that they correspondingly lack intelligence. Always assume the intelligence is there, and it’s your job to find it and connect with it and figure out how to get it working for them.
So go, put your time into the kids with my blessing. You’ll learn more than they do, I predict with confidence–I call this one of the “dirtly little secrets of teaching”, not that it’s really dirty nor all that secret. And if you care to drop by and let me know how things are going, I’d be interested. Or perhaps you have your own blog somewhere?
I haven’t written a lot about teaching on my blog, but if you’re interested here’s something.
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You’re right, I’ve never taught before. My previous occupation was owning an auto repair shop. I went to school at night and earned a degree in biochemistry twenty years ago. I recently sold the shop and went back to school to get my masters in education.
As for the kids being intelligent, some are and some are not. In one group I have kids who have already earned their GED’s mixed in with head injury victim’s. A very differentiated crowd. It’s the extremes that make this a difficult job. Their crimes run the gamut. Some have committed heinous acts while others are just garden variety hoodlums. I’m doing my best for all of them regardless of what they have done. I feel that even the sex offenders deserve a chance to grow.
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Hm-m. Interestingly eclectic–biochemistry to auto repair to MEd. I sense a story or three lurking in there. Did the MEd include a teaching credential?
Your auto repair experience should give you a fund of good practical contexts to use for both math and science, and will certainly give you more credibility with the kids than most of us have.
What I meant about the intelligence wasn’t that some people aren’t smarter than others, it was more that I’ve found that even kids who are shall we say challenged intellectually are still thinking at some level, and if I can find the right way to present something–or I should say the right problem to present–that is figure out what counts as a genuine problem, at the right level and containing the relevant math for them–they’ll show me something, they’ll think and figure things out for themselves. It can be quite the challenge to find the right problem to give them or question to pose–but it’s very satisfying to both of us when I succeed. (And apparently, from my fumbling around here, it’s a bit of a challenge to describe, too!)
How many kids are you working with at a time? That makes such a huge difference.
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Sadly, my bio isn’t that interesting. Smart kid/bad attitude. Kicked out of public school for drug dealing and violence but reclaimed through the selfless efforts of Sister Bernadette in a small Catholic school. Worked in and eventually took over the family business. (I was a third generation mechanic.) My wife and I raised two lovely daughters, and I worked like a dog for 25 years at a job I hated. If you have seen “The Bucket List”, I’m basically Morgan Freeman’s character with white skin.
The girls have both finished college and are living independently. Daddy no longer needs to make “mad cake” anymore, so now I work at a job I love.
I’m still working on my MEd but I am licensed in Mass. to teach biology. Here in Mass., we have the MTEL tests. If you can pass the communication/literacy and subject matter tests, the state gives a preliminary license that is good for 5 years.
The kids have a phrase that I have adopted for my own use. When someone mentors another they are “Puttin’ a little shine on someone.” I would say that describes my new job fairly well.
Class size. Where do I even begin? Every one of these kids needs an IEP. Only one out of the twenty actually has one. My class maximum is 10. My smallest is 4. I’m inexperienced, but I find difficulty increases exponentially with class size.
I’m going to try a new strategy next Monday. I’m going to give some more math assessment tests to my gangsta’s and whilst they work their way through them, I’ll take single students out to the quiet halls and spend some one on one time based on last week’s math assessment.
I’m finding the subtle undercurrents of gang communication in my classroom fascinating. The most innocuous phrases and gestures can convey some pretty strong ideas. More on that later, if you are interested.
I committed a horrible gaffe by calling one black student by another’s name on my first day. The implied racism of my mistake was rewarded by another student humming and “spittin” a few bars of “Not from the city”. This ofcoarse caused the rest of the class to laugh. I didn’t put the two things together until after the class. I still feel awful about it because, in most cases, a name is the only thing these kids have.
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I’ve been otherwise occupied for a while, but am back in the saddle (sort of) again.
You are too modest–sounds pretty interesting to me.
Again I’m torn between wanting to be able to advise you, and knowing that’s both presumptuous and foolish. You’re not only in the trenches, but in some trenches I have only a mild notion of. Gang stuff just flummoxes and scares me. My own students often are confronted with it, and I feel pretty helpless to be of of use to them in that regard. When I taught HS math in Oakland, I handled it by just acknowledging my own ignorance with the kids–just another middle-aged white lady here.
Ah yes, names. I had that problem when I first taught on the Navajo reservaton, and two of the boys had a few weeks of fun with it by switching names on me. Took me about three weeks to catch on (what were they giggling about, anyway?), and another three weeks to straighten their names out in my mind. Of course, those kids were anything but hard core, so it wasn’t a serious problem.
So anyway, you’re a few weeks into it now–how’s it going?
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It’s going fairly well. The environment is so anti-intellectual that at times I wonder if I’m shoveling against the tide. I guess I should start by describing my students.
Out of eighteen, 3 are mentally challenged pedophiles. They are the saddest cases. I am under the impression that their “moms” drank before, after and during pregnancy. All bear scars from beatings and I don’t have much optimism for their future. One bright note though; One of them wrote me a thank-you note for “helping me through it.”
7 of the students are hard core, real deal gang bangers. Their crimes range from attempted murder to rape/attempted murder to high volume drug dealing to last but not least being engaged in an open street gun battle with a rival gang.
I have one genuine sociopath. He violently raped his younger brother and remains unrepentant. His narcisism is boundless and he has a very deep well of anger. He is the only one that truly frightens me.
The remainder are your classic stupid kids that steal cars or break into houses. They will mostly age out of their stupidity and go on to repeat the cycle with their own kids.
My most successful activity has been “Science question of the day”. I give them a short lecture or some reading material relevant to the topic and then have them write an essay. We have covered topics such as creating a strategy to use selective breeding to re-create the wolf from domesticated dogs. They have written essays on bio-ethics questions such as should athletes with prosthetics be allowed into mainstream sporting events. At some point, I would like them to engage in classic debate but they are not quite ready for that yet. “YO M-F er! Your opinion is whack, yo!”
I do have three or four diamonds in the rough. They are all highly intelligent. Unfortunately, they are also career gang bangers. They “move much weight” when they are not incarcerated and all have committed extreme acts of violence against rivals.
New words in my lexicon: Bid is a jail sentence. Whip is a car. Although they have never heard of Edward G Robinson, A gat is a gun. Izzo is pot. To “crash” is to have a disciplinary meltdown. When you use ecstacy, you are “rollin”. An O.G. is someone with street cred. And “yo” is sprinkled liberally throughout their dialogue.
I’m going to do a science question of the day on consciousness, next week. If I get anything good, I’ll relay them to you. The spousal unit and I are off to the beach; talk to ya latah.
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The trick is definitely finding something you consider worthy that will grab their interest enough to get their brains moving. Or as they say in ed lingo, “the teacher’s job is to bring the curriculum and the student together.” Way easier said than done, obviously.
And of course, the second agenda, which is really in some ways the first agenda, is to get them engaged in some moral . . . what’s the word, “reasoning” seems too cold. Re-thinking? And helping them see how they can be a different way in the world, and that that might even be a preferable way. That’s your “life skills” part. Altogether pretty daunting, so the good news is–any progress you see counts as success.
I don’t know if it would work with these kids, but you could try teaching them acceptable forms of talking with each other. Like Deborah Ball does with her 4th graders in math–they have to learn to disagree using the specific form “I disagree with so-and-so because. . .” and follow up with a mathematically relevant statement, and she specifically models and teaches them how to do this. Apparently it taes them a few months to get good at it. You might have to get pretty prescriptive at first, limiting them to a small set of forms and having them practice those until they have a reasonable set of alternatives to “Yo, your opinion is whack”. But as I say–I don’t know if it would work with your kids. (From my observations, some mathematicians could use some of the same kind of coaching–their language has less of the street and more of the academy in it, but pretty much amounts to the same thing at times.)
The “spousal unit”? Do you smile when you call her that to her face?
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Yes, I do smile and so does she. We both consider ourselves very lucky to have met each other and without getting too sentimental, I’d be lost without her.
I like that you compare my students to mathematicians. Both live in different worlds and both lack socialization skills. Speaking of math; I have a really bright Hispanic kid. He tears through everything I give him, so next week we start calculus. I need the week to brush up because these kids pounce on any weakness.
One of my ghetto scholars is reading Life of Pi. He had an interesting take on the plot. Essentially, Pi ends up on a lifeboat with a tiger and a limited food supply. Through wit and guile he co-exists with the tiger. My student merely remarked that “That Pi kid was a punk, yo. I woulda stabbed that tiger while he slept….fo real.” Oddly enough, I believe him.
I appreciate any advice you’re willing to give and hopefully I won’t bore you with too many tales from the trenches. Still haven’t gotten metaphysical with the boys yet. I have a new student who looks so young it would break your heart and I can’t subject him to anything too “philosophical” yet.
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Sounds like you’re getting seriously involved, and having at least some fun. I warn you–if you’e successful with these kids, or even some of them, you’ll be hooked for life. Feeling useful, feeling like you’ve made a difference to someone that perhaps no one else could have, or would have taken the time, to make–it’s addictive.
I tried Life of Pi a couple of times–too literary for me, I guess.
Go ahead, try something “philosophical” with the kids. I bet they’ll surprise you. One way or another 🙂 How’s your math star doing?
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The math star is doing very well, but only in math. He has such a lopsided set of abilities. Although he has good ideas, he can barely string two sentences together on paper. I think it is due to a lack of practice. His formal education pretty much stopped in the ninth grade and he just turned 17.
I asked the class a question on the morality of human cloning and got some pretty funny/inciteful responses. The vast majority were pro-cloning because “You could commit a crime and frame the clone.” They are also useful for yardwork. One, my math prodigy, stated that the clone wouldn’t have a soul and that we would be playing God by cloning humans. This is one of the kids I am pinning my hopes on.
So…….what do you think about the morality of cloning humans. Would the clone have a soul? Human rights?
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Metaphysically, clones are no different to my mind than identical twins, so yes, they’d have as much of a soul as the rest of us, and certainly human rights. Star Trek-style copies would be a tougher question. You know, when the transporter made a mistake and they’d end up with two of someone. That one raises interesting identity questions. And questions of consciousness. Which I always felt they’d approach but always copped out on in the end.
The morality of doing the cloning is another matter, but largely because of the liklihood of large numbers of “mistakes” happening before you got the viable clone. But assuming the technology gets past that–well, I think the idea is a bit creepy–why would someone want a clone of themselves? I can’t think of any very good reasons–but assuming the person would get a decent upbringing and be taken care of reasonably well, I don’t have strong moral objections. Of course (back to why would someone want to do it in the first place) that’s a rather big “if”.
Mathy people often don’t much like verbal stuff, so it doesn’t surprise me that your guy doesn’t write well. My secondary math people often cry about all the writing I make them do. There’s probably some way you could exploit his math mind to help him write better, but I wouldn’t know how to go about it. Does he read OK?
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Sorry for taking so long to reply. I was slammed by the end of summer school.
What kind of stuff do you have mathy people write about? I might try some on my young scholars. I find myself constantly devising ways to torture their torpid little minds into action. Most are so used to being ignored that when I make demands upon them, they react with shock. “Excuse me, Sir? Didn’t we read yesterday?”. Gotta scoot.
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And I’m being slammed by the beginning of our semester (we’re in for a rough one)–so I’m happy for the distraction of something else to think about.
Since my mathy people are aspiring teachers, I of course make them write about math and about teaching. The most esoteric thing I ask for is their thinking about “What is mathematics? Is is discovered, or invented?” Then I make them write at length about their lesson plans and unit plans. Which isn’t going to help you with your guys at all.
With your guys, I’d probably try posing them some kind of puzzle, then make them write their solution down. Don’t know if it would work, of course. I’d be tempted to start with some kind of “game”, like Nim, that has a winning strategy. First they’d have to figure out the winning strategy, then write the strategy down for a buddy so the buddy could win if they have the “winning” turn (trying to provide some kind of motivation/rationale that might make sense to them about why they have to write the strategy down.) You could even try to make it sorta real, if you want to get elaborate–pair them up, and give ’em a prize if they can write the strategy down clearly enough that their buddy can use the strategy to beat you the first (or maybe the second) time they play it. There are several simple games with winning strategies (nim may be too hard to begin with, I don’t know), so if it works once, you could switch roles on them (who has to write the strategy, and who has to read and apply it.) You could also put them in teams, so they’re playing team against team, and make it competitive in some way.
Anyway, that’s my best shot, on a Firday after a long hard week. If you decide to use the idea in any way, I should tell you that usually there’s a distinct gap between kids figuring out how to win the game and being able to verbalize, even orally, how to do it. I progammed Nim into a computer once, so kids could enter the total number of tokens, and the max they could take on a give turn, and play first or second, against the computer. Some of them figured things out pretty quickly, but it took quite a bit longer for them to be ale to explain it. So this would be a serveral day process, if you want to try it.
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Hi Adoffio—-Again, sorry for taking so long to reply. My lack of experience as a teacher is taking its toll in wasted time. I find myself constantly reinventing the wheel so to speak. I actually wrote a reply to you two weeks ago and then like a jackass, I went to check something on the web and erased the whole thing. Duh.
My Readers Digest version of my reply is this. I think some math is out there waiting to be discovered. Newton’s physics comes to mind. I think some math is an artificial construct such as base ten math. And last but not least I think some math can be both, such as Fibonacci’s sequence which was invented but later found to exist in nature waiting to be found.
I did find a game for my boys. It’s called factor captor. It’s a table of numbers ranging from 1 to 60. One opponent chooses a number and gets points corresponding to that number. The other opponent gets the sum of its factors. As the numbers are chosen, they are removed from the table until none remain. The highest total wins. They must then create and write strategies for winning.
Had a very unusual day today. One of my boys received a phonecall informing him that both his sister and brother were shot in a driveby on Wednesday. The shooting was due to a beef between my boy’s gang and a rival gang. The brother had only minor wounds but the sister is still critical, with severe injuries. Although he is a stonecold, drug selling gangbanger, I really like this kid and he has the most amazing sense of humor and is highly intelligent. I always tell him “Clyde….You musta been a trip when you were five. I wish I coulda got ahold of you then.” It was heart rending to watch him process this awful event. At one point, the two of us were sitting alone in my tiny classroom and I just let him vent. But honestly, I think I took it harder than him. I wasn’t supposed to really talk to him because I am only a lowly teacher and not a clinician, but I’m already on thin ice for bringing books into my reading class so I figured, screw it. They can only fire me once. To make matters worse, the boy is going to find out tomorrow that his term has been extended. They can hold him until he turns 18. Hopefully, the dimwits(my bosses) will wait until next week to drop that on him, but I doubt it. Sorry for all the negativity, but like my boy, I needed to vent.
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I hate to tell you this, but while plagiarism is (as I tell my students) a basic survival skill for teachers, we still have to figure everything out for ourselves, not least because our students and teaching situations are all different. It does get easier in subsequent years, but first years of teaching are notoriously difficult–unless the teacher isn’t really paying attention. So I empathize, I smile, I say “Welcome to the club.”
One of the consequences of working with populations of kids such as yours is that we inevitably take on some of the pain of their lives. We all have to find ways of coping with that, too. It only makes it worse when we can’t do anything to help (except maybe listen, which often does help). The trick seems to be to establish inner boundaries and balance, while still being open to the kids and continuing to care about them. I’ve known people who were remarkably good at this, and admire them enormously–they are my heroes– but I’m not all that good at it myself. A lot of people end up closed off or burned out; others get out. I took the latter route. Not immediately, but soon enough to not build up a lot of inner scar tissue. In any case–vent away, it’s safe here.
So how did the activities with the math game work out? Did they get into it at all? could they figure out strategies, and articulate them?
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They resisted at first because it was a “game” and gangstas don’t play yo. They finally relented and then the competitive nature of teenage boys came out. One boy in particular was killin’ everybody. He absolutely dominated the game. But when asked how, he replied “I dunno, I just add up what I would get and then I add up what they would get to see if it works.” The losers on the other hand, knew what he was doing after several rounds. They mentioned prime numbers as being good choices and not picking a number like 60 which at first blush is an obvious choice but when the factors are added up becomes a loser. I was pleasantly suprised by the analysis that most of them put into it. I actually picked this game up at a PDD(professional development day). What do you think of PDD’s? Most of my fellow teachers bitch about them as being boring and a waste of time but I found my first one to be very interesting. And another thing, is it just me or are teachers a really weird assortment of freaks? And I mean this in the kindest sense. It has reached the point where I can pick them out in a crowd. While my supervisor and I were on vacation on the Cape I asked the lady in the condo next to us what she taught. She seemed suprised that I knew what she did for a living and was actually hesitant to respond until my wife told her I was a teacher as well. I can usually pick out mechanics too. The shifty eyes, slouched postures and dirty fingernails are dead give aways.
One last note- I think I’m finally breaking down my boss. I finally got the concession of having books in my reading class. Yeah, that’s right–Books. I almost got canned for bringing in books during the summer, because silly novice teacher that I am, I thought you needed books to have a reading class. They felt that phonogram worksheets were a much better idea because “they have been used since colonial times to teach reading.” Talk about old school. My next mission is to get a microscope. I just need to convince my overseers that the boys won’t bludgeon each other with it.
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The game sounds like a pretty good success for a first venture. I’m curious about the boy who was the winner but couldn’t explain how. I’d be wanting to figure him out.
PDDs? Well, when I taught high school, they were petty deadly–mostly addressed behavior management (at which I was never much good, so probably I should have taken them more seriously). However, now I’m more likely to be conducting a PDD activity than being the subject of one, so . . . I stand mute, in self-defense.
I suppose us teacher types might seem a bit freaky to the rest of the world. I’m sure I would qualify, especially if people really knew how I spend my leisure time (think not weird and exciting, but especially boring and yet weirdly satisfying to me). I’ve found the world of academia more relaxed and in some ways tolerant of idiosyncracies (sp?) than other occupations I’ve experienced, so maybe it does attract weirdos more. Or maybe too much exposure to kids really does make us crazy. Or maybe , if you’re going to be around kids that much, it helps if you are a bit crazy to begin with. Or maybe teachers are intensely focussed on things the rest of the world doesn’t think about all that much, or think is all that important (like, say, math), and that makes us seem weird even though we think we’re perfectly normal and in fact that the rest of the world could benefit from being a bit more like us. Or maybe everyone is actually rather crazy, only most hide it better than we do because we are too tired most of the time. Or maybe we’re actually the normal ones, and everyone else is weird.
Gee, that was kinda fun. What’s your theory?
I hardly know what to say about your boss. What the heck does he think reading is about, anyway? Did he get to the second part of his reading methods course–the part where they point out that reading is more than decoding, and that it has to do with understanding what one reads? And that the language one reads consists not just of sounds, but of entire words, pharases, sentences, paragraphs? I mean, I’m just a math person, and I know all that. Or maybe he never took a reading methods course at all? But then–neither have I, and yet I know all that. Anyway–I usually try to be cautious about bad-mouthing teachers–the rest of the world does a pretty good job of that–but still. Good luck with the microscope. (Are you sure the boys won’t bludgeon each other with–or over–it?)
Back to that interesting boy. Reminds me of a story. Years ago, in my previous job, I had more time to do math activities with my students. I was doing an activity on geoboards involving finding area of triangles using the squares on the geoboard–no formulas allowed, and you had to explain how you figured it out. One of my students, a middle-aged woman, was consistently getting the area right, but couldn’t explain how. She finally said “It’s the dots–I can’t explain how, but it has something to do with the dots.” My first reaction was to dismiss it–but then I remembered Pick’s theorem (I’m sure you can find that in Wikipedia if you’re not familiar with it.) The rest of the class was snickering at her a bit, so I explained that it was possible–that there was a theorem that related the dots to the area enclosed by a figure. With not much more info than that, she and another woman pretty much figured out the theorem (they stayed after class to get it all.) It was a peak experience for both them and me (they didn’t think they could do math). Turned out she was a quilter–I think that was why her mind could process the area questions in the first place. That’s why I’m curious about what’s going on with your boy–there could be something pretty interesting underneath it all.
Don’t feel any huge obligation to respond–I’m enjoying the conversation, but don’t want you feeling apologetic if you let it lapse. Well, maybe feel a little obligated–I do want to know if you get that microscope or not 🙂
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Hey ya’ll- AHHHH. I wish I could translate the self satisfied smirk that I have as I type this. Because, now my friend,…the gender jumping to conclusions shoe is on the other foot. So….what is it in your tortured psyche that makes you assume a obstinately stupid boss is a male? Hmmm? Sorry if I’m enjoying this a little too much, but then I’m an obstinate stupid male myself.
Next topic: Why are teachers weird? Because we do the job the kid’s mama never did. And we like it. We take in stray dogs, we take in stray children, hell, we even vote Democrat. SEMPER INSANUS
No microscope yet and there was big fight this weekend, so maybe I don’t need one.
sorry so brief, but I’m being observed tomorrow and I want to really prepare so they will be impressed and leave me alone to teach. ttfn
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Hmph. Imagine my chagrin.
Gee, I wonder what could have led me to suppose that an “obstinately stupid boss is a male”? I suppose I could just go all sexist here. . . but OK, I’ll admit, you got me.
Why would a big fight lead to the conclusion that you don’t need a microscope? The connection escapes me.
How did the observation go? I figure either the boys were on they best behavior to make you look good, which would mean they like you, or their worst, which wouldn’t necessarily mean they don’t like you, just that they were entertaining themselves at your expense. And who is “they”–your obstinately stupid woman boss? and someone else? That would be intimidating–it’s bad enough being watched and evaluated by one other person. And then I’m wondering if someone who doesn’t understand why one would need books to teach reading would recognize good teaching if she saw it. . . So anyway, how did it go?
I’m celebrating (in the form of doing nothing whatever useful for at least 12 hours straight) being halfway through my marathon of dealing with my students’ rough drafts of the big lesson planning assignment I subject them to. It’s a time investment of about 4-6 hours per student; this semester I have 24 students, so you can do the math. I go over their plans (2-3 hours per person), then meet with them to give them feedback and help them develop their ideas into a coherent, well-integrated set of activities with a solid assessment plan (the other 2-3 hours/person)–or at least that’s the idea. I’m enjoying it (which has to mark me as very wierd indeed; if teachers are strange, how much stranger teachers of teachers?), but it does take it out of me a bit. Another week of it to go, and then I intend to take two entire days off! The entire weekend! Hooray!
“Leave you alone to teach”? Ha. You haven’t figured out the system yet, have you. If all those administrators, to say nothing of policy makers and politicians, left us alone to teach, how would they justify their existence? For you, it’s your immediate boss or bosses, it sounds like. For me, it’s the state (teacher credential commission, who regulates our program, and the state legislature, who need to stop writing major education reform bills long enough for us to catch our breath and maybe actually implement something long enough for it to have an effect) and the University bosses, who’ve decided for reasons that escape me but I suspect have to do with ego and status that we should be NCATE-accredited. Ah well. Enough kvetching. I am tired, and I tend to gripe when I’m tired.
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The reason a big fight would make me think twice about a microscope is because the fight was between two students. I can only imagine the repercussions of having one student bludgeon another with something I brought in.
The observation went well! The boys were awesome. They make me look a lot better than I am. “They” are the people from HEC, which is an organization that provides teachers to DYS. I have reached a sort of “separate peace” with my supervisor. She don’t bother me, I don’t bother her.
This is a funny place. My supervisor just got ripped a new one because she allowed a student to color a paper pumpkin red. Since the little scholar is a blood, this is a major issue. I don’t see the harm, but the powers that be, do. Little things like letting a kid walk down the hall with his left hand over his right (a gang signal indicating bloods are better than crips) can get a teacher in trouble if we don’t confront the student. The gang stuff is endless. Certain colors, combinations of colors, hand gestures and body postures have meaning to these kids that elude the general public.
Ah, to be left alone to teach. I know it can’t happen, and for good reason. There are some sub-par knuckle heads still teaching. But still…….To wake up one morning and know I can cover cellular respiration in any way I choose would be nice.
Also, I am so sick of the acronyms. PDD’s, IPDP’s, NCLB, SMART goals, KUD’s, IEP’s etc…..Just tell me what you want the kids to know and when, and I’ll gitter done. I think every jackass that comes up with a new acronym should have to go back to the daily grind of teaching and live with the “new” program for a year.
I thinking of my own future acronym….Developing Under Motivated Boys. Welcome to the program kids!
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What happened to “Heffadog”?
The boys must like you. Kids do that when they like their teachers. If they didn’t, they’d have done the opposite–been at their worst. So you must be doing something right.
I hate gang stuff. It’s one of the reasons I couldn’t do your job–and for that matter am glad I no longer teach HS. A couple of my current Intern teachers have to watch who they seat next to whom, based on gang affiliation. What a pain. And you’ll never get ahead of it–as soon as we figure out current gestures, signs, etc. new ones get invented, since the whole point is to have an underground culture that evades control of the powers that be (of whom, from the kids’ perspective, you are one.)
I sometimes think that education has so many policy constraints and “new” initiatives because so many of us teachers have fled the classroom and have to justify our salaries to themselves one way or another. I’d hate to really have go back to basic principles to justify my own. I’m worth something, I think–I’m not dissing myself or what I do–but I’m not sure I’m worth what I’m paid. I just accept it gratefully, and pay my union dues 🙂
And I say “fled the classroom” judiciously. Every one of the people going through grad school with me with whom I got close enough to have a real conversation had some horror story or other about their experiences as a teacher (including me). There was something about teaching that had us hooked–we just couldn’t hack it in the schools in which we’d found ourselves for one reason or another. I had made it longer than most–I hung in for 12 years, and then hit that school that I couldn’t hack. Even then, when I started grad school, I intended only to stay for a year or two and then go back to the classroom (in some small town somewhere)–but then the whole PhD thing seduced me, and I never went back. But who knows, maybe I’m a better teacher of teachers in my old age than I would have been a teacher of HS math.
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Twelve years. You either need your head examined or a medal. Your choice.
I don’t know what happened to my nom de web. But it reminds me of an old joke. What do you call a moose with no name?……………Anonymoose!
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Well, I moved around a lot. As I tell my students, I have more job hunting experience than is quite respectable. My longest time in one place was five years on the Navajo reservation. And then there were three years in the Peace Corps, in Ghana. And a few non-teaching jobs in between. Change keeps you from getting too stuck in a rut. I’ve been here for over ten, and it feels weird, and I am somewhat in a rut, but I’m also too close to retirement to move again. I have a sabbatical next semester, so that should help refresh my mind.
Not all kids are as challenging as yours. But I still say we need those long summers off, to recover.
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Ghana? Maybe you can answer a question for me. I’ve noticed that most Ghanese men have a small scar on their right cheek. I’ve heard conflicting versions of why these scars are given. Do you know?
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That’s “Ghanaian”, and it’s probably tribal scarification. Some men have quite elaborate scarification, some more modest marks such as you describe. I never learned all the details, but it has something to do with the tribe to which the man belongs, though two men from the same tribe might have different markings. Some of the more elaborate scarification I saw were really works of art, very attractive.
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Interesting. I’ve been told that sometimes the scar is made as the boy leaves puberty. Others have told me that it is done during infancy to protect the child from evil. Hope you have a good Thanksgiving!
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Glad to see you have your identity back. Or by the type of scarification.
Perhaps it varies by tribe. I’m not sure–I don’t think I asked. If I think of it. I’ll ask the next time I see my Ghanaian. . .Hm-m, I’m not sure how to characterize the relationship. I think I’ll settle for “Ghanaian ‘son'”; we joke about him being my son, anyway. He was one of my students over there; my mother sponsored him to come here to go to school, and he ended up staying. I still think of him as a kid, even though he’s beginning to turn bald and look like his father.
You have a good Thanksgiving, too.
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