"I didn't vote for you..."

Youth Can and Do!

Here is an excerpt from an article in Life Learning Magazine, Jan/Feb 2005 issue. The article,"Nurturing Everyday Genius" is written by John Taylor Gatto.

Still an older way of coming to maturity, of taking an education for oneself,managed to survive and perpetuate itself without fanfare. In 1989 a school dropout from Brooklyn, a teenage girl named Tania Aebi, with no nautical experience than I have, sailed around the world alone-first women know to do so in history.
A few years ago, an elementary school dropout--George Meeghan,took the longest walk in human history, entirely on his own hook, un-sponsored, to prove to himself he could do it.--the man who gave us popcorn in movie theaters,an idea which made him a billionaire, was selling flags on the street at the age of nine.. and filling vending machines at 12. Lew Wasserman, recently deceased head of the largest entertainment conglomerate on earth, cut school to be a movie usher at age 12;by age 18 he had figured out how to sign a string of movie stars like Fred Astaire to his contracts. Michelle Wie, Hawaiian golfing sensation, multimillionaire by age 14 reached the enviable pinnacle because her father and mother understood what really mattered;the tennis playing Williams sisters, daughters fo a black mailman who couldn't afford tennis lessons, were worth 1000 million each at age 21 because their non-tennis playing parents taught them the game from books and videos when they were five. The head of the most prestigious scientific project on the earth (Francis S. Collins),the human genome project was homeschooled on a remote sheep ranch in Virginia by his mother using this intriguing methodology:he studied whatever interested him for exactly as long as it held his interest!
Gatto goes on to ask,"Shouldn't every body passed through a forced schooling meat grinder be made intensely ware of these models of the possible, and many more bedsides?..And if a college degree is wanted, shouldn't kids understand that hundreds of first class universities will allow candidates to earn one inexpensively through correspondence-same degree as sit-down students get, except much, much,cheaper and much more convenient?"

Take Back the Night Hamilton

"Can we go to 'Take Back the Night?' Please?" asks my daughter getting off the phone with her dad whose just announced the event's taking place this evening. I'm tired and not wanting to go but it's important to her,so we go. And I'm glad we do.

The energy is high; women of all ages wave their arms, singing in preparation for the march. Take back the night. There is excitement in the air as we begin walking down Main Street. Women we pass smile and wave. We are sensitive to the male on-lookers- be they honking their support from out of car windows or drumming their fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. Some stand by the side of the road in groups; small groups of men looking humbled and subdued-maybe considering the struggle women still have,maybe reflecting for a moment on the respect they deserve. We hope. Others clap with us, cheer loudly. Larger groups of males take photos of the parade of women going by-they are enjoying the free entertainment.

We continue up the road through intersections manned by motorcycle police who with a command of their hand wave us through;impersonal, burly men wearing tall,black leather boots stopping traffic, controlling the situation. I pause to consider the strange juxtaposition of this maleness in a sea of femaleness.
We go by a woman wearing a scarf around her head and face; she encourages a little boy in her arms to clap with us. We pass women at a bar who stand up and raise their beer glasses to us.
We pause to watch a group of young males breaking dancing, hip hopping, back flipping , somersaulting at the side of the road, their muscles strong and popping, slim, confident and agile; beautiful in their movements. We see all this as we sing and hold our banners high; educating our husbands and lovers, our fathers, our sons. Behind me a male (where did he come from?) begins the chant, "No means no," and a few people take it up but it dies away almost immediately. Who wants to chant when you can sing and dance and laugh? We are here to celebrate ourselves and our presence tonight is a testimony to the strength and joy that women are.

Teen Culture

I gotta be honest. After my experience today I couldn't help but have my doubts in the human species. I admit that I faltered and temporarily lost my faith in Robert Epstein's work: The Case Against Adolescence. Waiting for the bus (that came late) I was engulfed by the most disgusting presentation of maleness egged on by the worst kind of female stupidity. The young males of our kind cleared their throats loudly and spat on the ground continuously in between crude language and cussing, 'talking' about the worst kind of rubbish, the giddy females giggling and encouraging them.

"Epstein's cracked!" I said to myself. How can we treat these people like they're adults? Kids handling responsibility? Not likely.

But this is exactly Epstein's point: kids live up to our (adults) expectations. If we expect shitty behaviour then that is what we get! If our expectations are high the results will correspond. But we need to give them the opportunities first. So yes, yes, yes. Expect more. Give more responsibility and trust.

Here's a question to Epstein and his reply found on p202 of his book:
Q:Isn't it true that the brains of teens aren't fully developed? Isn't that why they behave so poorly? Doesn't current brain research refute your theory?
A: No brain is fully developed. Brains change throughout
the life span. Teen brains aren't all that different from adult brains, but where there are some differences, those differences don't explain their misbehavior or distress. Brains are reflections of our behavioral, cognitive, and emotional states:they don't cause the states...

In summary, is there a teen brain? Epstein's reply is, "Only in the trivial sense that unique behavioural characteristics that some teens might have-anger, impulsivity, depression-must be encoded in their brains...it's the genes and experiences of angry people that made them angry and gave them angry brains;their brains aren't the cause of their anger... The teen brain is by necessity every bit as much of a cultural creation as adolescence itself."

chomsky on role of education

ice images and climate change

More laments about Math

Lockhart's Lament - The Sequel

A while back, I posted a link called Lockhart's lament-all about the dismal state of affairs in how math is taught in schools. The best way to teach math, according to mathematician Paul Lockhart, is by 'doing' and by that he means 'owning' one's mathematics-mathematics that has meaning for the learner. It's an unschooling approach-one that aims at drawing upon the interest and motivation of the child. A way that is not divorced from life!
www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html

Well it seems that this strange and radical idea sparked a controversy and you can read about it at
www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_08.html

I thought Lockhart's response is worth quoting here:

I would like to begin by reminding readers that what I have written is a Lament, not a Proposal. I am not advocating any particular plan of action; I am merely describing the extremely sad and painful (and probably hopeless) state of affairs as I see it: mathematicians are not interested in teaching children, and teachers are not interested in doing mathematics.

If I am advocating anything, it is only the obvious (and time-tested) idea of "learning by doing." If I have a method, it is only to convey my love for my subject honestly, and to help inspire my students to engage in a delightful and fascinating adventure - to actually do mathematics, and to thereby gain an appreciation for the depth, subtlety, and yes, utility, of this quintessentially human activity. Is that really such a strange and radical idea? Have we really reached a point where one has to argue for teaching that "awakens and stimulates students' natural curiosity?" As opposed to what? I thought that was the definition of teaching!

I find it a bit frustrating that I am put in the position of having to defend such a simple and natural idea as having students engage in the actual practice of mathematics. Shouldn't it rather be the proponents of the current regime who should have to defend their bizarre system, and explain why they have chosen to eliminate from the classroom the actual ideas of the subject? You say I take a hedonistic approach to mathematics education? I call it a mathematical approach to mathematics education!

What I find so pathetic about our math education system is that it reduces a lively, creative, and messy human art form to a sterile set of notations and procedures, then attempts to train students to master them and become "technically skilled." Of course it fails even on its own terms because there is no coherent narrative - the teacher doesn't know where the natural logarithm came from, what its problem history is, what it means within the context of modern mathematics, only that it's on the test and the students need to "know" it. So the students cram some formulas into their heads for a day or two, pass a test, and promptly forget them. Of course most people can't retain dry, meaningless hieroglyphic information that they had no role in creating or contextualizing, so they get classified by the teacher (and by themselves) as "bad at math." (I worry that the most talented mathematician of our time may be a waitress in Tulsa, Oklahoma who considers herself bad at math.)

What are the goals of K-12 mathematics education?
One theme that seems to recur in discussions of my essay is this idea of training the 21st century workforce to be responsive to the needs of industry and to be "competitive in the global economy." I am no economist, but this seems to be more a matter concerning college and graduate level education, not the K-12 setting with which my essay is nominally concerned. Of course (as you may easily imagine) I have quite a bit to say about the disastrous state of affairs at the university level, but perhaps this deserves a separate discussion. (I have, however, received numerous emails from graduate students and researchers in mathematics and the physical sciences who feel that my essay hit the nail on the head for them as well.) So let's save the economic discussion for another time.

So the question is, what should be the goals of K-12 mathematics education? Or, to put it in somewhat more inflammatory terms, what whole categories of human experience do you want hidden from your child? Any other "enjoyable and challenging intellectual pursuits" you wish to prevent your youngster from engaging in? Painting and music certainly don't seem very practical, and neither does all this literature and poetry. Why should society expend resources to impart knowledge of any form of beauty? My god, there's so much unprofitable, non-industrial fluff our young economic units are being wastefully exposed to!

But seriously, are we really saying that introducing children to mathematics and helping them to develop a mathematical aesthetic is a bad thing? Inspiration, wonder and excitement can only lead to positive results. And it is especially valuable to have this kind of energy and enthusiasm when learning to master a new technical skill. Practicing a new scale is a lot easier when it occurs as part of an interesting, challenging, and beautiful piece of music.

Look. A child will have only one real teacher in her life: herself! I see my role as not to train, but to inspire and to expose my students to a wide range of ideas and possibilities; to open up new windows. It is up to each of us to be students - to have zeal and interest, to practice, and to set and reach our own personal artistic and scientific goals. Children already know how to learn: you play around and have fun and struggle and figure it out for yourself. Grownups don't need to hold infants up and move their legs for them to teach them to walk; kids walk when there is something interesting in the room that they want to get to. So a good teacher is someone who "puts interesting things in the room," so to speak.

No? Alright, fine. I propose a curriculum for reading which has students first learn all the words that begin with the letter 'A' and then proceeds through the alphabet. The course of study would be divided into 26 Units, and naturally one could not 'skip' to the advanced 'Q' class without having taken the 'P' prerequisite. (Reading actual books would come much, much later of course.) I wonder why we don't currently do this? Could it be because parents and teachers actually do read from time to time, so they know what matters and what does not? But the only source of information about what mathematics actually is comes from school itself: the 37th-generation photocopy of the same blinkered misconceptions, the perpetual feedback loop of School Math.

Suppose the devil were to offer you this deal: your child will get a perfect score on the English section of the SAT, but will never again read a book for pleasure. I would like to believe that no parent would make that deal. But how many would gladly shake the devil's other hand? Math is not something we want our children to enjoy, it is something we want them to get through.

To read more go to this link://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_05_08.html

Interesting Math

In an effort to spark mathematical interest in my 11 year old 'girlier-than the other daughters,' I picked up a book from the library called Math Doesn't Suck:How to survive middle school Math by Danica McKellar.
I figured since she likes fashion and style and acting and this book is written by a girl who is an actress and a self proclaimed fashion addict she'd like it.
My daughter's reaction after perusing the book for a few moments? "If they want people to like math they shouldn't have bubble-heads talking about math; it's a stupid book written by a dumb girl who is addicted to boys,dates and shoes."
In the past I have tried to present math in an interesting way. I invest $100 in the Murderous Maths series and that went no where fast. None of my girls picked up these comic,factual and what I consider,fun books.
I've tried to present cool art projects that have a mathematics component;worked on building projects that involve math and measurement. I've attempted to present the kind of math that is exciting and mysterious to me: Fibonacci sequences, the golden rule, phi, math in patterns in nature-and so on. Didn't/doesn't work.
So I question then the reason for why we think everyone should know math. Maybe, like brain surgery or ice-skating or writing novels, math just isn't something everyone is good at or even needs to know! This sounds sacrilegious but I really want to consider this seriously. How much math do we really need to know to get by in this world?

Casting Adolescence in Stone

The psychologist G. Stanley Hall put the modern concept of adolescence on the map a hundred years ago-we can blame him for inventing adolescence. But what came first? There is no smoke without fire so perhaps there really is a period of "storm and stress" leading up to adulthood?
Robert Epstein writes in his book The Case Against Adolescence, that "to Hall,the turmoil of the teen years was the inevitable consequence of recapitulation. In reliving our evolutionary past, said Hall, we must inevitably pass through a stage of great chaos-." But recapitulation theory "is bunk" according to Epstein and Hall's theory was built on faulty science-witness an idea that has severely influenced western perspective on adolescence over the next 100 years now put into question.
"To push the metaphor to the brink, Hall created the life-size, three dimensional, rock-solid image of Teen in Turmoil that Americans have believed in for a hundred years, but the impressive statue that he sculpted has been resting on a platform composed of the remains of some old German biology texts that long ago decayed to dust," Epstein writes.
Kids do go through a period of turmoil as Hall suggested but not for the reasons he gave.
Adolescence as we've created it is the cause of this period of turmoil. It could be avoided since as studies show again and again,adolescence is relatively new in human history,is rare in other cultures and can be reversed with serious doses of real responsibility.

Youth after youth, bewildered by the incapacity to assume a role forced on him by inexorable standardization of American adolescence runs away in one form or another, dropping out of school, leaving jobs, staying out all night and withdrawing in to bazarre and inaccessible moods.
Erik Erikson, Identity; Youth and Crisis (1968)