Soap Box Fantasy

There is a scene in Anna Karenina where Anna is reading a romance novel and holding a paper knife up to her throat, foreshadowing her eventual affair and suicide. I remember my literature professor commenting on how one's daydreams and fantasies can reveal quite a bit about a person--although those of us living outside of novels are in control of how much of that information becomes public knowledge.

What better way to keep my privacy than to post it online? As the topic of today's post, I have chosen one particular fantasy--the home-town show-down. But to justify what has driven me to my fantasy, I'll need to give some background.

My memories of my home-town are fairly cliche: I recall small-town pride and camaraderie, but also narrow-mindedness, provincialism, and clannishness. As a disclaimer, I should mention that I moved away from my hometown at the age of 18, leaving me with an impression heavily influenced by the pettiness that any high school experience might bring. However, I do specifically recall instances of well-respected adults committing the worst kind of racism--the delusional kind. As a humor writer for my college newspaper explained it, you know you're going to hear something racist when someone begins with "I'm not racist, but. . . "

An example? A friend's father bemoaning the lack of blondes on the homecoming court. The court that year was heavily Latina, and the father's disgruntled explanation was "It's because all those Mexicans vote for their Mexican friends," as if he had made some profound breakthrough on the nature of high school race relations in America. Of course, our school was 65% Latino, meaning that his proposed preference--a blonde court--would have required not only all the white kids to vote for their white friends, but a hearty support from students of other races, too.

In the context of thinly-veiled racism, shortly after I graduated from high school, proposition 227 was passed. This proposition eliminated bilingual education and mandated that all English Language Learners be immersed in regular courses after one year of sheltered ESL instruction. It goes against everything I now know in terms of language acquisition and sound educational theory, but it passed. In defense of well-meaning Californians, I do believe that the pro-bilingual faction did a lousy job explaining why this was such a bad idea. For those less language-policy nerdy than I, allow me to summarize why this was such a rotten idea:

1. Kids are in school not only to learn English, but to learn content-area knowledge, academic vocabulary and expression, and critical-thinking skills. So when you're thinking the fastest way for kids to learn English is to immerse them--more time on task, right?--you're forgetting that while they're learning the colors and numbers, their peers are learning how to support a thesis statement, the intricacies of protein synthesis, and the underlying causes of World War II. Those kids immersed in English? Missing it all while they figure out the basics.
   
2. Language Acquisition takes time. That ESL kid who speaks with hardly any accent and you think should be in regular classes? Give him a Biology text to read or ask him to write a persuasive essay. The language required is significantly more complex than chatting about the weekend, and it takes years longer to learn.
   
3. Virtually every drop of valid, reliable research on bilingual versus immersion education that measures results over a substantial length of time (as opposed to studies covering only a year or two) show that bilingual education is measurably, objectively superior to immersion. Boo-ya!
   

So after all this rambling background, you're probably wondering what the fantasy is. The fantasy is that I'm in a school board meeting in my hometown. The discussion turns to bilingual education. I sense my chance at vindication: proclaiming the evils of undisclosed racism and informing the ignorant masses as to the merits of bilingual education--simply more effective, regardless of your political persuasion. The moment is ripe, the timing is perfect. I take the microphone and school the board and the community with my vast knowledge of all things ESL. A cynical board member attempts to derail me, but my infinite wisdom of language acquisition, my crackling wit and debate skill, and my dutiful preparation allow me to humiliate him with style.

So that's my fantasy. It doesn't say much for my superiority to my home-town counterparts, does it? I'm still thinking about how to one-up them, while I'm sure I've all but disappeared from collective memory.

Action and Reaction

I've been feeling more and more lately that American politics bear an uncanny resemblance to Newton's third law: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Action: 2004: Americans re-elect Bush.

Reaction: 2006: Americans, fed up with Republicans, elect a Democratic house and senate and in 2008, Americans elect a Democratic president largely based on his mantra of "change".

Reaction: 2010: Americans, perceiving the passage of health care legislation and the bail-out bill to be too much enlargement of government, take to the streets as members of the tea-party, and oust proven, effective conservatives like Bob Bennett. (If the tea party gets their way and elects some of the more radical people they support, where do they think this is going to end up in 2012 or 2014?)

Maybe it's the inherent nature of the two-party system. It creates the illusion that life is a series of either/or choices. So it's either McCain or Obama, universal health-care or the party of "no", unenforced immigration law or a racial-profiling police state.

What saddens me is watching the way that ordinary Americans are playing into the politicians' game: because the argument is presented to us as an either/or scenario, we feel we must take one of the proposed sides. Americans, take back your opinions! Frame the argument on your terms, beyond ideology and name-calling. People can have concerns about immigration and long for reform without being racist; likewise, teachers can teach in Spanish and feel the need for ethnic studies without being communist propagandists. Convenient as it is to have someone else with more political expertise and eloquence to frame our political arguments for us, this weakens my most beloved of American ideals--freedom of thought, the necessary prerequisite to the first amendment.

Show Me the Data!

A comment on the way I think about a controversial issue: I argue it. I want to hear how my opinion holds up. I want to hear how well I can deconstruct the dominating idea. So just for practice, here it goes on the topic of grading.

Should students who do poorly on an exam be allowed opportunities to retest? Should they be allowed to take the higher grade, rather than an average of the two? According to Ken O'Connor (author of such delightful fare as How to Grade For Learning and 15 Fixes for Broken Grades), teachers should offer retakes to students and record only the score of the second test. I have sat through many frustrating meetings on this topic during the past school year, as revising grading practices is the current priority of my principal. Here is a summary of the reasons WHY O'Connor believes you should allow students to retest:

1. Forcing a student to keep his/her low grades gives the student an "out" in the sense that he or she can stop worrying about the material once the low grade is received. Retesting requires the student to try again to learn the material. (My question: how do you make a student that was originally resistant to learning and studying actually learn and study? Aren't we missing the salient point that students are beings with a will of their own?)

2. We claim that students should be held accountable for scores on their first tests because that is the way of the real world, but in truth, the "real world" allows for retests: think of the driver's test, SAT's, bar exam, etc. (My question: what about performance in the real world that is not measured by a test--which is indeed the vast majority of our professional careers? So, Dr. Smith, you killed your first three surgery patients? Not to worry, you got it right THIS time. Or imagine you totally screwed up your proposal for an architectural project. You lost the commission--no second chances.)

3. Grades should be a reflection of WHAT the student knows, not how long it took to get there. If a student eventually relearns the material, why does it matter if it was not for the date of the original exam? (Rebuttal: I think this is actually his best point. Still, the reality is that schools function on a timeline. Quarters end, grades are due, the class moves on to the next topic. Accommodating individuals is not inherently bad, but in practice, does this mean the teacher has 30 lesson plans per class?)

4. Change is good. Anyone who doubts proposed changes fears change. This one actually comes from leadership at the school. (Now that I've stripped that idea free from the accompanying rhetoric, do I need to rebut it?)

I've started some preliminary research on test retakes. What I've found so far are many advocates of grading systems similar to Ken O'Connor's. They can give philosophical and theoretical reasons for their opinion, but none so far has offered empirical proof. While they cite plenty of research indicating the negative effects of traditional grading practices on learning and motivation, I have yet to see any research that shows improvement in these areas under the proposed changes: I want them to show me that students actually LEARNED more because of this change. Otherwise, all this hoopla about grades is only conjecture. (Disclosure: I need to research this more carefully; I don't recall seeing any research that fits this bill, but I need to check O'Connor again carefully, and there is certainly a lot of research out there that I haven't seen yet).

If I'm feeling bold enough and like it's worth the ensuing unpleasantness, I may suggest in our next meeting that we actually pilot our proposed grade changes by collecting data: to start, what were grades in previous years in identical classes? How do they compare? But grades can't be used alone because the proposed changes could potentially result in grade inflation. What about state exam and AP test scores?

While I realize data aren't everything, I find it comforting that carefully collected, honestly presented data are a powerful tool for convincing people to look beyond their own philosophies and politics. You want me to believe revising grading practices in this manner will have a powerful effect on learning? Show me it works, don't just tell me why it should.

Here's To You, Fairfax County Taxpayers!

Today was kind of rotten. Because I teach at a school with such a small ESOL population, I teach the same students for 3 periods. They are generally not bad kids, but they see each other (and me) all the time, I think we've all gotten a little too casual lately, and today they were just punks. I confess that I had a few moments where mild expletives may have been whirling through my brain in reference to my students, which frankly does not happen often. I would say that today was the worst day of teaching I've had for about 2 1/2 years--definitely NOT the worst ever (that would hands down be summer school 2007) but a low point. I also was at school from 6:45 to 5:00, which happens more often than I would like. So my title refers to the great deal Fairfax County taxpayers get in employing me--I definitely earned my paycheck today!

Just as a side note, on my way home from the crazy day I stopped at the gym. On Saturday I saw advertisements for my gym reading "6 months free!" Then I went in today and there were no parking spots and no treadmills open. So here is the angry letter I composed in my head:

"Dear X-Sport Fitness,

While I realize that your business plan, naturally, is to suck as much money out of me and as many other people as you possibly can, it annoys me that you are giving away free months while I am dutifully paying for what is already limited space. I am hereby withdrawing my membership because I refuse to be treated in such a manner. And also because I am spiteful, crave revenge, and I want you to beg me to come back just like the Washington Post did when I canceled my subscription.

Sincerely,

Fed Up"

I'll never send it. I was over my rage five minutes later when a treadmill spot opened up. I guess you know you have a pretty easy life when your worst day in a while consists of snotty teenagers and a crowded gym!

If You Want to Feel Good About the State of Humanity . . . .

. . . don't ever read the "comments" sections beneath online news articles. Is it the anonymity that makes people so nasty? Perhaps. Then what's the excuse for their atrocious spelling and poor logic? I'm just hoping that those with any sense have better things to do than post vitriolic comments under an article. So what does that say about me for reading them?

Top 10 Non-Fiction

As promised to my sister Jen, a list of some of my favorite non-fiction through the years. I probably left out some good stuff, but it was fun to remember all my favorites as I wrote this.

10. In Defense of Food, by Michal Pollan. This book is a simple and quick read, but simple in the sense of elegant cohesion rather than simple-mindedness. The author's premise is (simply): eat food (not processed chemicals), not too much, mostly plants. His point is that nutrition science is how we got into our current confusion about food, and that since its advent our diets have rapidly deteriorated, leading to epidemic obesity and heart disease. He promotes going back to basics, like actually eating whole foods rather than nutritionally-concocted food products like snack packs and diet bars. We once knew how to eat when it was passed down through families and cultural tradition. Time to go back.
9. Musicophilia, by Oliver Sacks. Oliver Sacks is a brilliant writer as well as a neurologist; the extraordinary case studies he cites wouldn't be quite as dazzling in lesser hands. Sacks explores the many strange ways music can interact with the brain, offering examples as diverse as Nabokov's purported "amusicality" (complete lack of enjoyment in music, hearing it only as an unpleasant din) to how musicians with debilitating memory loss can reclaim a part of their identity through performance. Fascinating and fun.
8. The Children in Room E4, by Susan Eaton. I enjoy reading books based on education, but I am often suspicious of them: too often, they are so often heavily political or obnoxiously sappy (my Foundations of Education professor actually made us read Tuesdays with Morrie. For a grad school level course! Shudder). Even Kozol's excellent Savage Inequalities felt at times forced and manipulative to me. The Children in Room E4, in contrast, meticulously cites the history of desegregation legal battles and Civil Rights advocacy: Eaton uses this foundation to build an excellent argument for how education in the years since Brown v. the Board of Education has become increasingly resegregated due to white flight and the housing industry's racist policies of the '60's and '70's. The book then goes on to promote integration as a solution best for everyone--if we believe in a the virtues of a racially and economically diverse society, where better to start teaching mutual tolerance and understanding than in public schools?
7. Alphabet Juice, by Roy Blount Jr. I love Blount's premise--that words really maybe aren't just arbitrary symbols for the things they represent, as linguists claim--and I love even more how he goes about whimsically and unscientifically cataloguing the way words' connotations shift based on their sounds. It is more of a celebration of words than an actual argument, and so fun for a language-lover to read!
6. The First Word, by Christine Kenneally. Kenneally provides a succinct history of linguistics, from the 19th century through and including Chomsky with his various adherents and detractors. The purpose of the book is to explore the new research into evolutionary linguistics, long a taboo topic among linguists who considered it to irrelevant or unscientific. She takes a chapter by chapter approach, examining research into what aspects of anatomy, cognition, culture, and socialization may have been necessary to the evolution of language. Ambitious and far-reaching yet designed for someone with little or no background in linguistics, though to be frank, those without a passion for the field may find it tedious.
5. Green Metropolis, by David Owen. This book was fantastic: practical, logical, well-supported, convincing of the need to conserve energy and rely less on oil, and heavily critical of the popular "green" movement with all its inconsistencies. The author asserts that the American, Thoreau-based environmental tradition is counterproductive in focusing on movement away from the cities, long demonized as environmentally unfriendly. Convincing data show that city-dwellers, by virtue of public transport and smaller apartments (and therefore less stuff) are far more environmentally efficient than their suburban and rural counterparts; they are fitter, too, from all that walking. He attacks architectural organizations for awarding "green" awards to commercial buildings with all the new ecological bells and whistles, located miles from where any of its employees live and thus requiring them all to commute large distances to get to work. He likewise pokes holes in the logic of a wealthy family in a huge home, interviewed for the newspapers for their recent environmentally friendly, multi-thousand dollar gadgets. In the interview, the patriarch congratulates himself for doing "the right thing." As Owen points out, the positive environmental effect would have been far greater if the family had simply bought an "energy efficient" (i.e. smaller) home. Good stuff.
4. Ex Libris, by Anne Fadiman. I read this book a few years ago, and unlike most of the other books on this list, it is filled with a book-lover's ruminations, and is therefore not an informational text. Fadiman is intensely readable, likable, and relatable. She has that rare gift for description where you find yourself squealing in delight, "yes! yes that's it exactly!" A fast, pleasurable read.
3. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell is a premier story-teller, and here he explores the role of snap judgments, which can be astoundingly accurate, uncomfortably revealing, or harmful, depending on the situation. His arguments are not always the most air-tight I've ever seen, but the questions he asks and the angles he takes are invariably interesting and fun. Blink was my first experience with Gladwell, and it was easily devoured. He's good brain candy!
2. Into Thin Air/Into the Wild. Yes, these are two different titles by John Krakauer. And they are both fabulous--the first describing the author's role in the disastrous Mount Everest expeditions of 1996, the second an attempt to understand the intense and uncompromising personality of Chris McCandless, who ventured into the wild to live a Thoreau-like, simple, and deliberate life without hypocrisy, and ended up being killed: the wild unpredictability of nature that he had come to crave was his undoing. After reading Krakauer's account, I don't believe McCandless would have seen his death as the ultimate tragedy.
1. Collapse/Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. Really, these two books could be separately listed as my number 1 and 2 entries. While both are written in the incomparable style of Jared Diamond, their subjects are sufficiently diverse to stand alone. Jared Diamond is hands down my favorite non-fiction writer. His entire process is so appealing to me: come up with a befuddling, comprehensive, unanswered question--why did the Old World conquer the New, and not the other way around? (Guns, Germs, and Steel), or why do some societies suddenly collapse? (Collapse, clearly)--compile a mountain of data, build a theory, test it against the data, and then overwhelm your reader with extensive and meticulous evidence. His books are the scientific method at its best: intensely creative, painstakingly methodical, refreshingly interdisciplinary. LOVE his stuff.

Super Combined Skiing Versus Ice Dancing

I just watched last night's Olympic coverage on our digital recorder. The mens' super combined? Breathtaking feat of skill, agility, strength, timing, and quick reflexes. Interspersed was ice dancing: Russians dressed in fake Aborigine costumes, grimacing and doing fancy footwork. Certainly ice dancing takes coordination, skill, hours of practice. But if it's an Olympic sport, why not add ballroom dancing? Ballet? Cheerleading? Perhaps, as a friend pointed out, the Summer Olympics equivalent is synchronized swimming. So the rule must be that it is a sport if you're not doing it on a traditional surface (i.e. "the ground"). As the same friend pointed out (thanks, Jenica), we do have trampoline. High-flying trapeze, anyone?