This year’s Halloween was the best and the worst. Let’s save the best for last. So the first question is, “How many trick-or-treaters did we get this year?” For perspective, we need to know that Barbara and I just happened to go out for dinner on Halloween in both 2008 and 2007, so we weren’t at home for visitors (cough, cough). But in 2006 we got over 200 trick-or-treaters. So we loaded up on lots of candy for this year, just in case.
End result? 37.
What a disappointment. I guess I’ll have to dream up lots of class activities for which candy will be a suitable prize.
Now onto the plus side. At Weston High School this year’s Halloween Assembly was definitely the best ever — at least for my 13 years there. The level of enthusiasm was extremely high, as was the participation rate. Last year, for example, I don’t think more than 10% of the freshmen dressed up, but it seemed that about 50% of this year’s freshmen were in costume. There was similarly high participation among the sophomores, juniors, and seniors, as well as the faculty. Here are some pictures.
As you see, my colleague, Jim McLaughin, dressed as Rock — part of the Rock, Paper, Scissors trio, of course:
But the highlights of the assembly were three groups of students. One pair came as two bunches of grapes, one as the Village People, and one as Kiss. While the Village People stole the show with their rousing performance of YMCA, the grand prize went to Kiss.
This is Rosalita, commonly known as Rosie but sometimes called the Curmudge-o-cat:
I was recently asked whether a Boston voter should always vote for the full allotment of four at-large City Council candidates, or whether bullet voting made sense. I unhelpfully replied, “It depends.”
It occurred to me that I had already dealt with this issue four years ago. So read that link if you want to read the mathematical arguments (actually, not too much math!) for or against bullet voting, depending on the situation.
Never in my life did I think that I would join a gym. And I especially never thought that I would enjoy being a member of a gym. But all that changed in July when I joined Dedham Health & Athletic Complex. You can tell from the name alone that this is no ordinary gym. The problem, you see, was that I have always been unwilling to be surrounded by young people who are already in great shape; I would only feel self-conscious and embarrassed. (Oddly enough, it doesn’t bother at all in the context of teaching, but it definitely does in the context of a gym.)
Dedham Health is different. Although there is indeed a sprinkling of young people in great shape, the majority of members are older and initially out of shape. Just as important is the medical emphasis: through its affiliations with the Joslin Diabetes Center, New England Baptist Hospital, and Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, Dedham Health has a medical emphasis that emphasizes lifestyle changes to combat obesity, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and/or high cholesterol. They have a nurse on duty much of the time — a nurse with a speciality in those areas and their relationship with exercise and nutrition. They are exceptionally well-staffed with professional exercise physiologists (who knew that there even was such a profession?); not only are they experts, but every one of them is also a low-key, caring, supportive personal assistant. Although their regular membership is a bit pricey, they offer an introductory 60-day plan for $60.00 (with a doctor’s prescription). Both the 60/60 plan and the regular membership include a personalized fitness regimen that ranges from the big picture to the small. As you can tell, I am surprisingly enthusiastic about this place!
Go see the musical version of Spring Awakening at the Colonial Theater if you’re a parent or a teacher or a teen, or if you’ve ever been one of those. This disturbing German play from 1891 is not exactly typical raw material for a musical, but it survives the transition admirably. As you probably know by now, Frank Wedekind’s original play was banned because of its themes and how they are presented. Sexuality, sex between young teens, teen suicide, abortion, unethical teaching and parenting, radical politics — even one of these would get a worked banned in late Victorian times, whether in England, America, or Germany — and the combination of all of them was surely so far over the top that there wouldn’t have been any doubt.
Today, of course, these topics aren’t shocking. I suppose that’s why the producers made no attempt to translate the play to modern times. The audience is always conscious of the time and the place, despite the presence of rock music — which somehow doesn’t seem out of place. One oddity is that they’ve cast a single actor to play all of the adult male roles, and another to play all of the adult female roles. I assume that this is trying to convey a message — something to the effect that the adults are all interchangeable, and only the kids have individual personalities. Fortunately it’s not as confusing as it might be, since the contexts are clear and the characters are often addressed by name.
Some bits of trivia: How often do you hear quadratic equations and lines from Vergil’s Aeneid mentioned in a musical? They probably didn’t register on most of the audience, but the math references were appropriate and the Latin class convincing (though terrifying). Also, I can’t find anyone else who was aware of this play in the ’60s, but I first became acquainted with it in 1966, when my roommate was reading it (in the original) for a college freshman German course. So I knew it as Frühlingserwachen, and it clearly made an impression on my impressionable roommate, who had a lot of related issues. For similar reasons, I thoroughly recommend it to my high-school students, most especially if they can later have an in-depth discussion with their parents and/or teachers. I was glad to hear that a couple of dozen Weston students will be going to see it next week on a field trip.
I can’t keep up with Andrew Sullivan, since he posts about 42 entries a day. (I’m not exaggerating!) But I just read the following email from one of his readers and I have to pass it on:
First they tortured in ticking time bomb cases but I didn't mind because it was a clear and imminent danger.
Second they tortured "slow-fuse" high value detainees and I didn't mind, because you never know what might happen.
Third they tortured Iraqi and Afghan prisoners who weren't high value, but who might have had useful information, and I didn't mind, because they were acting in good faith.
Fourth they tortured prisoners to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam, and I didn't mind, because surely there must have been such a connection.
Finally, they came to torture me, and nobody cared, because if I was being tortured, I obviously deserved to be tortured, and, as Peggy Noonan says, some things are just mysterious and it's best to just keep on walking.
Once a teacher, always a teacher, so…in case you didn’t catch the references, here are some pointers.
- The entire quotation is an homage to Martin Niemöller’s famous text:
In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.
- Charles Krauthammer is a right-wing pundit who consistently supports the use of torture. (OK, Krauthammer would object to my word “consistently,” but follow the link and judge for yourself.)
- Peggy Noonan is a commentator and former Reagan speechwriter from New Jersey and Boston, like many of us (I mean the New Jersey and Boston part, not the Reagan speechwriter part). The last sentence of the passage quoted above from the Andrew Sullivan blog refers to her remark about the torture memos: “Sometimes in life you just want to keep walking. Some of life has to be mysterious.”
Kathryn Cramer writes about the new book, Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedon We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry, by Leonore Skenazy. I’ve reserved a copy through the Minuteman Library Network; maybe I’ll write a review in this blog after I’ve read it. But at least I can respond to Cramer’s observations even before reading the book:
Skenazy was dubbed “America’s Worst Mom” after she wrote about letting her 9-year-old ride the New York City subways by himself… America is now gripped with terrible anxiety about what will happen to kids if they are not constantly under the watchful eye of a parent or some paid professional. And, as Lenore Skenazy points out, the crime statistics do not bear out the claim that this is a more dangerous era. It is not. We only behave as though it is. Skenazy discusses the issue of balancing children’s freedom and safety and aims to empower parents to give their children the kind of freedom they themselves enjoyed as children.
These remarks resonated with me for several reasons, not the least of which was that I rode the Newark subway by myself when I was ten (OK, not New York, and not when I was nine, but close enough). I don’t remember how old I was when I first went into New York by myself, but it certainly was before I was a teenager. I felt trusted, not abandoned. I felt safe.
Cramer asks, “Why the de-liberation of both mother and child?”
Whose interest does it serve? Certainly not the children. It serves the interests of towns that don’t want to pay for sidewalks. It serves the interests of rating-hungry media like CNN (known in this household as Child-abuse News Network). It serves the interests of cultural conservatives. It serves the interests of car makers if our kids have to be driven everywhere. It serves the interests of lawyers, especially divorce lawyers. It serves the interests of insurance companies. In short, there are many conflicting social forces at work.
I don’t know. Is Cramer being too cynical? Or just realistic? Certainly her observations are on the mark. As a teacher since 1969, I unquestionably notice that parents hover around their kids much more than they used to. And we’re not just talking about pre-teens: even colleges suffer from the attention of helicopter parents. Teachers and parents are doing kids a disservice by curtailing their freedoms so much.
The thorny question of grading took a new twist yesterday afternoon. I’ve discussed grading before — in my posts of 11/30/2005 and 12/20/2007 — and I’m not going to rehash those arguments. Sometimes I’m wrong, but on these issues I’m still right. Here was the new twist:
Yesterday I was returning a test that had been given to six sections of Algebra II, taught by three different teachers. We had agreed on the questions, we had agreed on the number of points per question, and we had even agreed on a detailed rubric for grading (1 point for constructing the right matrix, 1 point for indicating a product, 1 point for calculating the product correctly, etc.). But we had not yet agreed on a scale, since there was no way we could feel confident about that until we had looked at some sample papers and had agreed on what constituted competent work. (As indicated earlier, we create a scale not by percentages and definitely not by a curve, but by examining student work and converting the lowest competent work into a low B and so forth.) Anyway, I explained to the class that Ms. P was out today and therefore I could give them only their raw scores. One student asked me what the scale was likely to be.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I can’t make that decision unilaterally. I know what I think it should be, but I have to consult with Ms. P and Ms. F first.”
“Can’t you give us some idea?” he pleaded.
“Well, all I can say is that if you got more than 90% right, you’re unlikely to benefit much from a scale. Where could your grade go anyway? But if you got, say, somewhere in the 70s, you might possibly end up with a B. People with lower raw scores are the ones who need the benefit of a scale, especially those who ran out of time but otherwise did good work.”
“You must be a Democrat,” was his astonishing reply.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because Republicans believe in treating everyone equally.”
At that point I told the student that I didn’t want to go there and was not going to continue the conversation. I suppose some of my Weston students might really buy the idea that Republicans believe in treating everyone equally, but tell it to my Dorchester students and neighbors. In the famous words of Anatole France, “The law in its infinite majesty forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.”
It’s a cliché to say so, but this was certainly a day that I’ll remember for the rest of my life! Unlike most such days (the JFK assassination, 9/11, etc.) it was historic as a joyous occasion, not a tragedy. Although I couldn’t see the inauguration as part of the millions who were there in person in Washington, I was just so glad that I could still be part of a reasonably large number of people watching on a huge screen in an auditorium: it almost gave me a sense of actually being there, a sense that I wouldn’t have had if I had been part of an audience of six watching on television. It definitely became an experience, not a passive observation. So much is being written about the inauguration today that I don’t think I’ll add any more, except to say that I kept thinking of the last two lines of one of Pete Seeger’s songs, “Talking Union”:
And if you don’t let race hatred break you up,
You’ll win. What I mean, take it easy, but take it!
How appropriate for President Obama. And here we had Pete Seeger with Bruce Springsteen at the pre-inaugural concert, moving us with “This Land is Your Land,” including the two verses that are usually omitted. And the line “take it easy, but take it” was famous as the way the late Studs Terkel always closed his radio show. But Terkel sadly didn’t quite live long enough to see Obama become president. However, the musical Working, based on Terkel’s book of that name, is going to be our spring musical at Weston. Everything is deeply intertwingled, as Ted Nelson says.
The inauguration was surrounded by our Weston Professional Development Day before and afterwards (thank you to the administration for letting us watch it, and more about what we learned in my next post), and we capped it off with dinner at JP Seafood. Of course I had to have the Obama maki: vinegared rice with raw tuna, pineapple, cream cheese, and scallions, all wrapped in seaweed. Quite good, but a bit strange. My theory is that the pineapple represents Hawaii, and the cream cheese represents “No Drama” Obama, and the tuna represents Obama’s serious substance, and the scallions represent… oh well, maybe I’m going out on a limb here. But the whole thing definitely represented change. The five-year-old girl had the next table was eating sushi with salmon roe, but then again this was JP.
So, why do I have a Facebook account if I don’t do anything with it?
That’s an easy question. I have a Facebook account because some of my students kept pestering me to set one up. Apparently Facebook is absolutely essential to high-school life. And several other Weston teachers are on Facebook; why shouldn’t I be?
So I gave in. Being mildly concerned about privacy issues as a public-school teacher, I set up some limitations: I don’t show my birthday, my political views, or my religious views; I don’t post my address or phone numbers; and I don’t check “Friends may post to my Wall.” I’ll accept friend requests from current and former students, but I won’t initiate them. These restrictions seem excessive to my students, but I’m comfortable with them.
The problem is that I don’t know what to do with Facebook! I already have a blog (you’re reading it now), and I am totally comfortable with email and IM, having used both since 1978. But the whole concept of a social networking site like Facebook eludes me. One thing that students tell me is that they use it to send messages to classmates — when they’re organizing a class party, for example — and that use makes sense to me. But why do they want all of their “friends” (hundreds of them, in some cases) to read personal messages that might apply to just one person or at any rate might not be public information?
Some day, perhaps, someone will give me a clear explanation of what I want to do with my Facebook account. In the meantime, there it is, and I check it every two or three days…
For other opinions, see Would you track your health on Facebook.
I just discovered a cool poster-creating applet called Wordle. In their own words:
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.
You can create an image from text that you type in, or from a URL of a blog with an RSS feed. In the latter case, the applet uses all the text it finds at that URL, excluding some common English words (or whatever other language you might choose).
I rather like the result I got by giving them the URL of this blog:
My major Hanukkah present from Barbara was a footstool in the shape of a genuine replica of a stuffed bear:
We named him Fred the Footrest. You have noticed that William is loyally guarding Fred in case any hunters should come near.
The manufacturers (or their lawyers) are really unclear about the status of this product. It came with two tags. Note the last three words of the safety warning:
In contrast, here is the tag below the safety warning:
So…is it a toy, or isn’t it? Inquiring minds want to know.
Continuing yesterday’s theme… There has been renewed interest in Larry Summers’s supposed sexist remarks. When Senator Obama (I almost said “President Obama”) announced that he would appoint Summers to be his senior White House economic advisor, bloggers and others revived the old canard that Summers believed that women were deficient in their math and science abilities. For instance, Wendy Hansen in the LA Times wrote as follows:
The notion that boys are better than girls at math simply doesn’t add up, according to a study being published Friday in the journal Science. An analysis of standardized test scores from more than 7.2 million students in grades 2 through 11 found no difference in math scores for girls and boys, contradicting the pervasive belief that most women aren’t hard-wired for careers in science and technology.it
The study also undermined the assumption — infamously espoused by former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers in 2005 — that boys are more likely than girls to be math geniuses. Girls scored in the top 5% almost as often as boys, the data showed.
The trouble, of course, is that Summers did not espouse that position. Summers did observe that there is a gender disparity among the very top mathematicians and scientists (as no one could deny) and proposed that it would be helpful to investigate why: to what extent is it genetic, and to what extent is it societal?
Although this question is precisely what a scientist in a research university should ask, it created great controversy. The very act of asking the question suggested to many people that Summers was assuming that women are less capable than men in math and science.
Summers had great strengths as President of Harvard, especially in his sponsorship of the Crimson Summer Academy (where I teach in the summers, so I can’t claim objectivity) and in his insistence on huge scholarships for low- and moderate-income students. Unfortunately his lack of social skills caused him to lose support in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences (though not in Harvard’s ten other schools), and he was forced to resign. Some say he has Asperger’s Syndrome; he might well, but who knows? Anyway, he has returned to being a professor of Economics at Harvard, and now he is a top advisor to Obama. I don’t believe that he’s sexist, but he clearly has some problems communicating his ideas; nevertheless, he is a distinguished economist with a lot to contribute, and he is an excellent pick for the Obama administration.
I saw this catalog the other day, and I found the cover strangely appealing:
I’m not sure which part I liked better: the “Davidson Bill of Rights” at the bottom, or the list of words at the top, terminating in “Davidson.”
(It was actually a Davidson College catalog, BTW.)
One day I walk into a Russian grocery store in Watertown, and the owner starts speaking to me in Russian; I don’t understand a word. Another day I walk into a Russian grocery store in Waban, and the employee at the register starts speaking to me in Russian. Waiting to check out a book at the Boston Public Public Library, I can’t understand a question from the next patron in line, because — you guessed it — the question is in Russian. Buying new glasses at LensCrafters, I remark to the optician that I assume from his name that he must be Russian, and he says yes and that it’s clear that I am too.
Do I look Russian? Apparently I do, though I never thought so. I suppose it isn’t surprising, since that’s what most of my ancestry is. But I speak only about 20 words of Russian, and the only phrase that’s really useful to me is, “Я не понимаю.”
Instead of being out in the thunderstorm this afternoon, I attended a beautiful concert performance by my fellow Dorchesterite and former student, coloratura soprano Zakiyyah Sutton. (Yes, I had to look it up too. I used to know what coloratura meant, but I had forgotten.) The concert was held at the mostly white Old South Church in Copley Square, but was actually sponsored by the Concert Committee for Young People’s Artistry and Education of their sister UCC Church, the predominantly black Eliot Congregational Church in Roxbury. As you’ll see, this racial distinction turned out to be relevant.
 Zakiyyah, who just graduated from the Boston Arts Academy, was a student of mine for two summers at Crimson Summer Academy and will be attending Wellesley College in the fall. She sang an amazing 14 numbers in this concert: ten as solos and four as duets with fellow performer Jamal Hoskins, a tenor, who performed five solos (and, of course, four duets). The Eliot Studio Singers accompanied a few of the songs as well.
By far the best performance was Zakiyyah’s rendition of the aria “Der Hölle Rache” from Mozart’s Magic Flute. This was actually her second song in German, since she had opened the concert with “Bist Du Bei Mir,” attributed to J.S. Bach in the program but apparently actually written by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, or so they say. Zakiyyah’s other two pre-intermission solos were Scarlatti songs, both beautifully sung in Italian; she was so convincing in both languages that it was only afterwards that I found out that she actually doesn’t speak either of them.
The second half of the concert was less familiar to me, including a song from Aladdin, one by Stevie Wonder, and several gospel numbers, only two of which I knew. Culturally speaking, I found the performance eye-opening in several ways, starting with the fact that I was in a small minority in the audience (there were probably only six or seven whites there) and I have very little familiarity with the traditions of the black church, both for racial and religious reasons. Sure, I know about them second-hand from books, plays, and movies, but it’s something quite different to be immersed in the black church in person. The differences became vividly evident when Zakiyyah movingly dedicated a song (“His eye is on the sparrow”) to her ailing father and then broke down when she started to sing it. The audience was just so supportive of her, and in a way that no white audience could have been. I don’t meant to suggest that a white audience wouldn’t have been equally supportive, because of course they would have tried to be — they just wouldn’t have been able to show it very well. The interaction between performer and audience was just so meaningful and effective in this context.
About ten minutes later, Zakiyyah got back up and said that she had recovered and wanted to sing the song the way it should be done. Actually, I thought she had sung it perfectly well the first time — she did manage to get through it successfully with the aid of the audience — but I have to admit that the second rendition was truly beautiful, and I’m glad she decided to do it.
In general, the solos were much more effective than the duets, perhaps because Zakiyyah was definitely the stronger performer. But their closing number, a duet version of “Amazing Grace,” was moving and perfect.
I’ll close with a couple of non-musical notes: the opening remarks by Old South Church Associate Minister Quinn Caldwell included an African proverb that definitely resonated with me: “If you want to walk fast, walk alone; if you want to walk far, walk together.” This speaks to me in part because of what it says about teaching. (More about that in a later post.) Also, I was struck by the explicit recognition of two judges in the audience: Judge Leslie E. Harris and Judge Milton L. Wright, Jr.; the latter turns out to be “a gifted singer and writer of a musical production as well as a lawyer.” The musical director from the Eliot Church pointed out that performances like this one show “Roxbury on the good side,” in contrast to what they usually see in court. While Zakiyyah is from Dorchester, the point is still completely valid and contrasts with what we usually hear on the news. Crime is news; music isn’t.
Just getting around to blogging this, but there was a fascinating article a few weeks ago in the Boston Globe, made all the more relevant to me because it mentioned several of my Weston students and was written by the mother of one of those students. Ellen Freeman Roth’s article, headlined “Not your father’s nicknames when teens talk to parents,” explored what kids call their parents and their parents’ friends:
Lisa and Michael Josephson of Old Greenwich, Conn., are Mama Jo and Papa Jo, names coined by their daughter’s friend. Timothy Sweet of Watertown began calling his father “Sweet Man” a dozen years ago on a Boy Scout trip. Sweet likewise has nicknames for his friends’ parents, including “Glenzo” for Glen and “Pina” for Patricia.
Sarah Switlik, 18, a Babson College student from Princeton, N.J., said her mother, Pam, wasn’t thrilled at first when Sarah called her P-Money. “Initially my mom said, ‘Really, Sarah,’ exasperatedly. Now when she’s texting she signs off, ‘Love, P$.’ It makes her feel like one of the girls.”
…
Caroline Gaulin, 22, of Greenwich, Conn., yelled “My bad, G-Dog!” to her father, Dan, during a basketball game to make light of an error she’d made. “After that we started calling him G-Dog,” she said. “Now he loves it.”
Teachers are almost always called by title and surname at Weston, but at CSA we’re all on a first-name basis. These customs run counter to expectations and fly in the face of the customs for naming of parents and parents’ friends, at least based on my predictions. There are probably some interesting class issues here. Although I grew up calling my parents “Mom” and “Dad,” I called all my other relatives and my parents’s friends by their first names: it was Lillian and Leonard, not Aunt Lillian and Uncle Leonard; Luke and Gen, not Mr. and Mrs. Garner. But Barbara grew up more formally, with Aunts and Uncles and surnames with titles. I’ll have to ask my CSA students what they do; I’ll predict big differences between Weston and Dorchester.
As I mentioned in my post of two days ago, the sophomore component of the summer course I teach at Crimson Summer Academy focuses on models of voting. Although the emphasis is primarily on applied mathematics, the 2008 course was destined to be more political than the previous summers’ versions. For the first time it was clear that voting would not be merely an academic exercise for these teens who won’t be able to vote for three more years. Ordinarily I try to avoid talking about politics with students, and in the typical math class it’s easy enough to avoid it. But in these circumstances there was no alternative but to take this as a teachable moment and embrace the students’ natural interest in the presidential race. Keep in mind that these are inner-city kids who attend public and parochial schools in Cambridge and Boston, with the largest contingent living in Dorchester and Roxbury.
So I started by polling the students about their political views. Here were the results:
| 0 |
John McCain |
| 0 |
Ralph Nader |
| 25 |
Barack Obama |
| 4 |
None of the above |
| 1 |
Prefer not to say |
I guess we won’t invite McCain to speak to the class.
My regular readers know that I teach Quantitative Reasoning (QR) at the Crimson Summer Academy (CSA) over the summer. (If you don’t how what CSA is, read my blog posts from May 7, 2007, and April 30, 2008.) The theme for all courses for the summer is The Student as Citizen, and the particular QR unit for rising sophomores is models of voting. More on that in a later post, since of course it’s especially interesting in this particular summer. Anyway, one girl’s succinct comment on Barack Obama yesterday was, “Obama’s cute.”
I didn’t know how to respond to this observation, but another girl in the class did: “Obama isn’t cute! Deval Patrick is cute!”
I decided to stay out of this conversation. Fifteen-year-old girls don’t see the world in quite the same way as I do.
Yes, it was one night early for Passover, but last night Barbara and I attended the 2008 All-Dorchester Seder, which is held every year at the First Parish Church. A seder at a church? Well, yes. In the first place, it’s a Unitarian Universalist church, so no one should be surprised that they would be hosting a seder. And in the second place, this endeavor is deliberately an interfaith community-building activity, so it’s best not to hold it in a Jewish facility even if one still existed in Dorchester. (For those who don’t know, most members of Dorchester’s once-vibrant Jewish community have long since fled to the suburbs, although there are still a few left here, and there’s a fair number of us who have moved into Dot in the past 25 years.)
Like many other worthwhile all-volunteer activities, the All-Dorchester Seder needs more publicity. I give the volunteers full credit for their hard work and accomplishments, but there really should have been more than 38 of us at this event. Religiously it was a good mix — about half of the people sitting near me being Jewish — but racially it was hardly representative of today’s Dorchester, since almost everyone there was white.
 “Next year in Jerusalem!” Well, not exactly. As the Seder leader observed, this wish is to be interpreted symbolically, not literally. Very few of us intend to be in Jerusalem next year. But maybe next year there can be more attendees, with more racial diversity. I’ll remind everyone again in eleven months.
Overheard this morning at Weston High School…part of a conversation between two sophomores:
“What can you tell me about John McCain?”
“Who’s he?”
”Oh, he’s some dude who’s running for President.”
As I was reading Paul Graham’s essay, “Some Heroes,” it struck me that I’ve never liked being asked who my heroes are. In his second and fourth paragraphs, Graham reflects on the question itself:
I’m not claiming this is a list of the n most admirable people. Who could make such a list, even if they wanted to?
…
When I thought about what it meant to call someone a hero, it meant I’d decide what to do by asking what they’d do in the same situation. That’s a stricter standard than admiration.
I had never thought of that criterion before, but perhaps it would unstick me. Then I thought of the statement from one of my former students that Paul Erdős is her hero. [Brief aside: it’s tough to get the correct diacritic over that o. The natural tendency is to try for an unlaut — Erdös — especially since umlauts are relatively easy in HTML. But in Hungarian the diacritic looks like a double acute accent rather than an umlaut, producing a character with Unicode ID 0151. Thus you want “&#” followed by “x0151;” in HTML. End of aside.] So I wondered whether Erdős would fit the description in Graham’s next paragraph:
After I made the list, I looked to see if there was a pattern, and there was, a very clear one. Everyone on the list had two qualities: they cared almost excessively about their work, and they were absolutely honest. By honest I don’t mean trustworthy so much as that they never pander: they never say or do something because that’s what the audience wants. They are all fundamentally subversive for this reason, though they conceal it to varying degrees.
More on Erdős after I watch the movie about him. But note that Graham’s characterization is not a definition of “hero”; it’s simply a comment on two of their properties. Graham’s twelve heroes are Jack Lambert, Kenneth Clark, Larry Mihalko, Leonardo da Vinci, Robert Morris, P.G. Wodehouse, Alexander Calder, Jane Austen, John McCarthy, the Spitfire, Steve Jobs, and Isaac Newton. Could I make a similar list (though surely not duplicating any of Graham’s)?
I don’t think so.
But it did make me think about the issue. Which people have influenced me to such an extent that I would consider them to be my heroes? Would I really “decide what to do by asking what they’d do in the same situation”? Would my list consist of people who “cared almost excessively about their work” and “were absolutely honest”?
I suppose Isaac Asimov, Socrates, Charles Darwin, and Bertrand Russell would come to mind first. And maybe Johann Sebastian Bach. And probably Martin Gardner and Noam Chomsky. And it’s a cliché to put one’s mother and father on such a list, but it’s a cliché for a reason, so I will do that as well. And shouldn’t Shakespeare and Ibsen be on the list? And perhaps James Joyce? Well, that’s twelve, but I’m not convinced. This bears more thought…
Every school will tell you that academics are more important than sports. After all, it is a school. Even the most sports-minded principal will ban an athlete from playing football if his grades are too low, but no one would ban a student from class because his athletic performance was poor.
But take a look at the pages where schools are mentioned in the newspaper. It’s almost all because of sports. (OK, there’s also crime, but let’s not go there.) Even in Massachusetts it’s really a joke to expect the same kind of coverage for the math team as the paper gives to the football team (or, in the case of Weston, as it gives to the swimming and golf teams). Yes, yes, I know that participating in an athletic team can build all sorts of virtues, from persistence and cooperation to sportsmanship and planning, but it’s still not what the mission of a school is all about.
And then we get to the arts. Weston has first-rate theater and music programs, an excellent Art Department, a very successful dance team, but what kind of coverage do they get? I was reminded of this issue in a post by Adam Gaffin in this morning’s Universal Hub:
Writing on the Herald site, Tai Irwin contrasts the Globe’s coverage of the Massachusetts High School Drama Guild Finals — which it sponsored — with its Sunday coverage of high-school athletes. The final tally:
Athletes: 16 pages of coverage.
Drama kids: Zero.
The excerpt from Tai Irwin is telling:
… The message is very clear: although Westford, Nauset, and Weston received awards, and many students were singled out for theatrical excellence, once again it’s sports that matter most, even to the exclusion of intellectual and artistic activities. What a great thing to tell our kids, over and over again. Never mind the brain pursuits — the science fairs and business/educational coops, and never mind the arts, dance, music, drama. The thing that is going to solve all our problems and nurture all our values best is sports. …
I couldn’t say it any better myself. So I won’t try.
Actually, I never knew you, sad to say. For 15 years now I have been intending to meet George Sanborn and talk with him about the MBTA (since my model railroad layout is based loosely on the MBTA of 1969). But I kept putting it off, and now it’s too late. Adam Gaffin’s remembrance, titled “Remembering Boston’s train man,” links to Dirty Water and to Commute-a-holic. Read the comments to Gaffin’s post, and the various links in the original post and within the comments. As SwirlyGrrl says in her title to her otherwise blank post, “He will ride forever ’neath the streets of Boston.” Why did I keep thinking that I could always talk with him next year?
P.S.: I have just been told about the Globe’s article on George Sanborn. Read that too.
Wow! I don’t often call a PBS show inspiring, but last night I watched the truly inspiring American Masters episode, Pete Seeger: The Power of Song, which had aired on my birthday and TiVo had kindly saved for me. I wonder how well this would resonate with today’s young people, most of whom haven’t even heard of Pete Seeger; and even those who have can’t possibly have the experience that comes from the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam-war movement. I suppose it could be like my reactions to the McCarthy-era segments of the show. To me those are merely history, albeit recent history that clearly affected my childhood in various ways.
Anyway, this episode was exceptionally well-written, filled with music as of course one would expect, but also filled with fascinating interviews with Seeger’s children and grandchildren and fellow musicians like Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, Ronnie Gilbert, Mary Travers, and Bob Dylan. There was even a cameo appearance by Bill Clinton. Seeger’s long experience with thinking globally and acting locally in the environmental movement was suitably and movingly stressed. Most significant was the implied relationship between the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq. The seamless mixture of politics and song was just so appropriate to Pete Seeger’s life and work. But I wonder why they didn’t wait for his 90th birthday, which will come next year; that would be a suitable milestone.
Finally, the inspiration that comes from Pete Seeger and from his amazing abilities to connect with audiences, involving and uniting them, resonated in another way with me. Although there are dozens of obvious and not-so-obvious differences between him and Barack Obama, I realized that they evoke similar inspiration in their listeners. That gave me an extra appreciation for Obama, which was probably strengthened by an incident in my precalculus class yesterday afternoon. As we were waiting for one group to complete some complex preparations for presenting their fractal project, I wandered by a gaggle of half a dozen juniors who were talking politics. “Do you support Clinton or Obama?” one of them asked me.
“How do you know I don’t support McCain?” was, of course, my response.
“Because there are no Republicans on the faculty.”
I pointed out that I know of at least two Republicans on the faculty, as well as many who keep quiet about politics, and then explained why I don’t like to talk politics with students except with those whose views are already well-developed and are unlikely to be influenced by me. I really don’t want to be in the position of molding kids’ politics. They all assured me that they weren’t going to be influenced by me, so I countered by asking, “So who do you think I support?”
“Obama,” replied one student, “because Clinton is just too polarizing.”
I had to admit that he was correct and had even nailed my principal reason for supporting Obama. I said that I thought Clinton would be a good president and I would certainly vote for her over McCain, but I don’t think she would be a good nominee since there are so many people who have an irrational hatred of her (not to mention those who won’t vote for a woman, like a certain other member of this class).
(Thanks to Barbara for the title of this post.) Let me begin by setting the stage. On Friday I wrote about this year’s Fractal Fair. Groups of students (generally three in each group, occasionally two; generally juniors, but there were a couple of sophomores and a senior) researched a specific topic to do with fractals; created a product that might include posters, models, PowerPoint presentations, or whatever; exhibited the product at the Fractal Fair; and prepared to present it to their classmates this week. Everyone was supposed to be enthusiastic and upbeat as a result of the teamwork and the opportunity to show off their mathematical creativity. That was the theory, at any rate.
On Wednesday, during final in-class preparation, one of my groups suffered an all-too-public meltdown when two girls had a major conflict about who was doing what for their project. That was awkward and uncomfortable for all concerned, but it eventually got worked out by Friday. And then came the Fractal Fair, when a different pair of girls (not my students even) had a similarly all-too-public meltdown in the Library. Even the issues were similar: non-communication, different perceptions of what the product would be, different values concerning esthetics and content, etc. Drama, of course, is nothing new with this age group, but these reactions seemed a little excessive for a math project, though they were clearly genuine reactions. Why should fractals be so fractious?
Working together is difficult. It involves important skills like consensus and compromise. It involves continual communication. It involves trust. As I suggested last week in my post about Curriculum B, these goals are far more important than whether one can calculate fractal dimension or the rotation number of a bulb in the Mandelbrot Set. Part of me wants to just drop the issue and move on, but part of me wants to develop an important lesson out of the whole issue. Obviously I can’t reveal any more details here, in a public forum, but unfortunately I probably can’t even do so in class.
In Universal Hub this morning, Adam Gaffin quotes Cara Lisa Powers on the subject of the Boston Globe’s coverage of a protest at the John D. O’Bryant High School of Mathematics and Science. The Globe ignored the kids. In this week’s Weston Town Crier, a letter is published protesting an article about students at Weston High School. The Town Crier placed too much weight on what the kids said. Since I live in Dorchester and teach in Weston, I had to compare and contrast. (Yes, the O’Bryant is actually in Roxbury, not Dorchester, but it’s pretty close and it’s an exam school that serves plenty of Dorchester kids.)
In her letter to the Globe reporter, Powers includes the following observation:
By only quoting the spokesperson from the Boston Public Schools, and not giving any voice to the youth, you are reinforcing the dominant perception that adults’ opinions are more valid than those of young people.
Indeed, the Globe article by Megan Woolhouse never presented the students’ point of view on the subject of being locked down for two periods because some students were “taking seven to eight minutes to get to class, instead of the typical four minutes.”
I can’t find an online copy of the letter written by a committee of six parents to the Weston Town Crier (published on page 8 of the 2/28/2008 print version), but here is an excerpt:
The presence of two Weston seniors was a welcome addition to the engaged discussions of all those in attendance.
Unfortunately, Mr. Leiner chose to give the two students’ opinions about alcohol and drug use the weight of fact rather than opinion. He did this without taking the time to validate these views with either the actual survey results available or the health and education professionals present at the meeting. His choices did offer the reader catchy, attention-getting quotes while putting these minors at potential risk for misunderstandings within the community and with their peers.
Indeed, the Town Crier article by Gabriel Leiner did give the students’ views “the weight of fact rather than opinion,” but it didn’t completely ignore the cited survey or the views of adult professionals. Check the link to read the article for yourself. Also note a sentence in a comment by an anonymous alum: “In every high school there are students who drink and those who study, but in weston there is a different class of student, those who study and drink.” Hmmm….
One of my colleagues objects when a teacher addresses a group of students as “Boys and girls,…” No, it’s not that she would prefer it if we said “Girls and boys,…”; that’s not the issue, though of course one should try to be at least equitable when using the phrase. In fact, one could argue that it would be best to say “Girls and boys,…” all the time, simply as a corrective measure. But that misses the point: my colleague doesn’t want us to say either version.
At first I was unconvinced. It’s not that I ever use the phrase. I don’t, even with fourth-graders. But to me it sounded harmless and inclusive.
All it took for me to see the light was for this colleague to propose addressing a class as “Blacks and whites,…” or “Jews and gentiles,…” I got the point.
A month ago I wondered why nobody was talking about the possibility that Barack Obama would pick Michael Bloomberg as his running mate. It wasn’t that I was seriously supporting such a ticket at the time; it just seemed to me to be a politically viable combination. Now, however, I’m taking the idea more seriously. In the first place, the recent spate of sleazy attacks on Obama claiming that he’s anti-Semitic would be effectively countered by having a Jewish running mate. In the second place, Michael Bloomberg’s Op-Ed piece posted today (to appear in tomorrow’s New York Times) makes it clear that Obama-Bloomberg would be a good combination. It’s not that they agree on everything, because they don’t. Nor is it that I agree with all of Bloomberg’s opinions, because I don’t. And it’s not even that I agree with all of Obama’s opinions, because there are some of those too that are wrong (IMHO). But the political effect of choosing an urban, Jewish ex-Republican with executive experience could be too exciting to resist. There’s definitely something appealing about these words:
More than 65 percent of Americans now live in urban areas — our nation’’ economic engines. But you would never know that listening to the presidential candidates. At a time when our national economy is sputtering, to say the least, what are we doing to fuel job growth in our cities, and to revive cities that have never fully recovered from the manufacturing losses of recent decades?
More of the same won’t do, on the economy or any other issue. We need innovative ideas, bold action and courageous leadership. That’s not just empty rhetoric, and the idea that we have the ability to solve our toughest problems isn’t some pie-in-the-sky dream. In New York, working with leaders from both parties and mayors and governors from across the country, we’ve demonstrated that an independent approach really can produce progress on the most critical issues, including the economy, education, the environment, energy, infrastructure and crime.
Sounds to me like Obama. Sounds to me like a good match.
I’ve been catching up on some back reading over vacation, so I just now got to my copy of the January issue of Harvard Magazine. After reading “Applying Yourself,” by college senior Liz Godwin, I am convinced that this essay should be read by all college-bound high-school juniors and seniors, whether they’re from Weston or Dorchester or anywhere else. So many of these students have so much fear of rejection that they mistakenly consider themselves failures; they might benefit from reading the thoughts of a generally successful college senior who has had the same worries throughout her four years at Harvard. It’s helpful to know that you’re not alone. Here are a couple of excerpts from Godwin’s essay:
I instantly understood that to adapt successfully meant to excel at classes, social life, and preprofessional development, all with minimal discernible effort. I thought I saw this being accomplished everywhere — by roommates, by friends on the Crimson, by classmates — and I could not understand why I was having so much trouble emulating their easy perfection. In my frustration I left unexamined the question of what I actually wanted, too concerned with my fears about keeping up with everyone else to care about understanding my own desires.
What surprises me now about how disconnected and inept I felt then was my absolute assumption that I was alone in my fears of inadequacy. Alone, I berated myself for getting caught up in destructive comparisons of myself to my peers, or for not knowing what I wanted to do after college, or for not getting a stellar grade. I worried occasionally that I was the only person I knew without a summer job lined up by November. I clammed up in sections, sure that my comments would be the least valuable of the discussion. Every small rejection or failure felt immeasurably personal, and it would have shocked me if someone had told me that other people had similar thoughts. Hiding my insecurities became almost another extracurricular activity, but one that nobody would put on a résumé.
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