The Nature of Human Nature - Review

In her freshman book, The Nature of Human Nature, Dr. Carin Bondar, biologist with a twist, gives a wonderful introduction to how the human species compares with other species of the animal world. Dr. Bondar clearly enjoys her subject which you can discern from any of her dozen locations on the web. Whether filming biology shorts for her biomusings, blogging for Scientific American or tweeting, plusing or facebooking to her followers, Dr. Bondar is constantly forwarding her enthusiasm.
With Nature she uses an easy, sometimes conversational, style to her writing and keeps her subjects short and to the point. The book is composed of two parts, Survive and Reproduce, each section broken into chapters and further short sub-chapters which the reader can devour at their leisure in 3-5 minute increments. The topics range from waste management and crop production to transvestites and male pregnancy. She covers obvious choices like mating rituals, but addresses aspects that one may not have previously thought about like how a species may benefit from having an experienced male or a virgin female. I felt that the less obvious chapters fell under the Survive section and concerned themselves with less sexy but very interesting issues such as peer pressure and home remedies. The information and concepts are presented in a language which a novice can understand but also allows one with previous exposure and experience to remain interested and entertained. Though several of her chosen subjects could be viewed as risqué to some readers, Dr. Bondar stays light in how she treats them and parlays any real controversy that may otherwise arise.
I would liked to have read a more in-depth coverage of fewer subjects, perhaps sticking to the actions and attitudes which are believed distinctly human such as eating junk-food and prostitution. However, I feel that overall Dr. Bondar has produced an satisfying read that gives a glimpse of our world through a slightly different lens. I enjoyed my brief dip into her world and look forward to her subsequent endeavors.
Enjoy the Show!

What Science Means to Me

Before I joined the Army, before I became a bonafide science nerd, I was a literature student -you can infer whatever you want with that information. I feel compelled to reveal that despite having written a paper on Bartleby the Scrivener, I've never finished Melville's opus Moby Dick. I read enough to have a favorite sentence stick in my mind, though. It is not the famous first, "Call me Ishmael." It is the fourth:

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet: and especially whenever my hypos gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principal to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

If you're like me, you might be wondering, "What the hell is hypos?" A quick Googling will give a couple of hits. Hypoglycemic? Well maybe the confusion associated with being in this state. Hyposulphite? No, that's now referred to as thiosulphate. Perhaps you're one who already knows it means, "a morbid depression of spirit". - Isn't that beautiful? (If each of these suppositions was accompanied with a strong sense of I don't give a shit you should probably stop reading now.) Also, you might wonder what any of this have to do with science. Hint: it doesn't have anything to do with the taxonomy of whales.
It was my own sense of this feeling which Ishmael describes that led me to join the Army in 2000. I was sick of explaining to counselors that a literature degree was not an English degree and that their university studies program didn't apply to me since I was also on a separate education track. Besides, I didn't want to work in a restaurant or play the role of someone's punching bag for the rest of my life. Instead I wanted to live in Germany and perhaps pursue my other interest, medicine. (That "ER" really made me question my choice in not going straight to college. )
What I discovered through this dramatic restructuring of my life was that I really enjoyed time in Germany, providing care for people who truly needed my help and a previously unfelt desire to continue my education. My education ultimately didn't lead to a medical degree (see previous post), but it did cause me to uncover a love for science that I hadn't realized I harbored.
Science, in its various incarnations, has since filled my imagination. I want to spread my affection for science to others - the Theatre ZOO is one venue to have sprang from this drive. Friends and family sometimes laugh from my presentation of correlations concerning practically everything around us. I "see" physics in light and water and sound everywhere I go. I consider biology wherever I go and have been found recording birds on my phone or staring at tree structure while at military trainings. I get defensive about topics concerning education spending and delivery, evolution and even space exploration.
Since I am not currently a science practitioner, I must be content with being an enthusiast.
Below is a short list of specific examples to illustrate the impact science has made on my thoughts.
Bio 102 - Though I took a lot of other, higher level Biology courses, my first and one of the fondest memories and impacts came from talking genetics in this early course. My professor, Lesley Blair, started each class with music. She wore vests and laughed a lot at life. She ranked better than any of the professors for the "serious" courses. For our genetics lab, we were each given a set of numbers and could only "mate" with others that fit into a certain range. It was initially an awkward, high school memory-inducing period, but it was also funny and informative. Once the males in the class got over the whole homoerotic aspect, people loosened up and tried to get better mates. In the end we learned how species divergence happens - a topic I further explored through evolution. During that time I looked at my children differently. As parents, we often find ourselves staring at our kids in a way one is not permitted to do so in polite society, but this gave me a new filter. "Where did those dimples come from?" It was no longer merely a matter of he has your hair or your eyes or skin tone. My ears have been more tuned in to certain subjects on the news. Genetic links to personality, friends and political affiliations have been found and discussed a lot lately. I learned more information in my actual genetics course, but it was trying to hook-up with a mate in lab that really started my understanding and interest in the subject.
BB 541 - The summer that I was taking my biochemistry series, my wife and I were expecting our third son. We were approaching the due date and I was approaching a midterm. During the summer sessions OSU packs a ten-week course into four weeks, so one doesn't want to miss any classes since so much is covered each day. The professor was an intelligent, though socially inept, individual who looked like Kenny Rogers and once got lost in his own example of protein folding. He was discussing amino acid synthesis. I imagined these described microscopic interactions taking place at an exponential rate inside my wife, adding layers of proteins to skin, bones and muscles, developing lungs that would soon breathe air and a gut that would need food. I told my professor of the upcoming event and he readily excused me from the exam in case it happened on a class day. I think it was that very evening as I was about to go to work that my wife suggested I come home instead. Though I don't remember the specifics about the lesson, I do remember the images - ala Hollywood - of our growing child streaming across the screen of my mind.
ST 351 - I really didn't care much for Statistics.

Statistics

It wasn't very difficult or anything, it's simply that it was bullshit. Sure it's important and in the right hands can be used for good. However, as my friend wrote in my notebook during class, Stats = best guess. I did enjoy the number play and that is what I think about concerning the discipline. There was a regular customer who came into the restaurant I worked who had been an engineer and consequently loved both statistics and physics. Something had come across the news one day, I think it concerned Bush being a good president - I don't remember exactly what it was other than that it concerned Bush. Whatever it had been irritated him enough that he felt compelled to utilize his knowledge of statistics to figure out the intelligence of our populace. He posted his conclusions on a blog with all his data and pretty charts and graphs - he was an engineer, as I said. His findings using a mean IQ and typical Std Devs ultimately showed that most people were morons. It was completely manipulated and biased and funny as hell.
PH 201 - I'll be brief concerning physics. Much of the field is admittedly beyond me, though I maintain a respect and awe of the subject. I imagine arrows in light rays and the forces that cause water to roll over itself. In a nutshell, everything looks different to me now.
These are only a few examples, but the give a good sense of how science has since impacted my viewpoint. I still read as though it's my sustenance, but now fiction is interspersed with books about mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics. I don't find that there is a disparity between these two aspects of my interests. The answer to the question from above, how my interaction with Moby Dick plays into science is simply this; I want to know things that others may not care about. Reading has generated a love for the stories of life and science has enriched my understanding. Each is a kind of investigation; one is for the emotional world and the other is for the physical world. I still battle my own hypos, especially in this economic environment, but I feel that someday, with the knowledge I have gained, I will find my white whale. Until then, call me Ishmael.BI 445 - I took evolution as an elective while I was waiting for a military course I needed to attend after graduation. I really don't understand why this is not a mandatory class for every science student. I'm pretty sure that the straight Biology students needed it, but it wasn't required for the general science, pre-med or nursing tracks. I know it's touched on in general biology and then one takes genetics (which is also touched upon), but one doesn't get the richness of the subject until one attends a dedicated course. This class affected me as much because of my background (see previous post again) as anything else. It was like getting stitches taken out. I no longer had to support it with such rudimentary understanding, I could now support it with college credit to back up my support. Speciation is my favorite aspect. Perhaps I think of it as a type of relationship where individuals ultimately part ways because of differing interests and paths. I don't know. Maybe it's enabled me to rebel even more against my childhood. Maybe it just made sense to me. Whatever it is, I now look at the life around me through a different set of eyes.
Enjoy the Show!

Screw the Protests

or

Blech! My Coffee Tastes Like Sewage!

I've been considering the protests on Wall Street and around the country for a while now. In fact, I've been considering them before they happened. They way I see it, it was inevitable. You can't have this amount of hardship rubbing up against privilege without causing a bit of chaffing.
I won't talk about numbers, percents or dollar amounts. The people who may be moved by those things already know them; the rest won't be swayed or don't care. After all, this is really an emotional issue. It's true that many will say that this corporate greed needs to stop, that the pandering from the politicians has reached a point where it is destructive, but at the end of the day, week, year, none of this will dramatically change.
This Occupy Wall Street bullshit has been compared to the peace movements of the sixties. Martin Luther King has been invoked and is probably twisting in his grave. See, that man had style. He had God on his side and, above all, he had an obtainable goal. Equal rights is doable. Legislated fairness with regards to race is doable.
Even the hippies smoking dope out in the open in the streets and fields and college campuses had a conceivably reachable goal to strive for and demonstrate against. Did they try to get their lifestyles legitimized? You know that live free and FUCK THE MAN! mentality? Sure, but only their fight against the war really worked.
Now, why did those two agendas succeed while this current moanfest will fail? It's for a few simple reasons, really.
1) There's no real leadership. There's no well-spoken individual putting a face on this mess and making it dignified. There were a lot of people who hated King for what he was doing, but he brought a sense of necessity to the issue and he made it everyone's problem. I like to think there was some racist asshole watching his fuzzy black-and-white with a shotgun in his lap while MLK gave his "I have a dream!" speech. I imagine his eyes welling up a little. I have him steel himself back up with a swig of moonshine from a jar on aluminum tv tray next to his lounge chair and he says to the hound at his feet, "You know what, Cooner? That fella's gotta point."
I don't have cable but I hear plenty on the radio and I have a computer. Currently, I get bits and pieces of the vilification of the protesters on one side and an attempt to humanize them on the other side. This isn't really about the issue; it's about the presentation.
2) The clashes with police in the sixties had a bunch of people's kids getting sprayed with fire-hoses, beaten, bitten and hogtied. The kids may have been dressed funny, under the influence and surrounded by questionable acquaintances, true, but they were still the children of mothers and fathers who believed their children would grow up one day and return to a civilized society, preferably without a cracked skull. These days, supporters are compelled to create sympathy. If 99% (oops) of the US population is presented, why must they explain? It's because many of that 99% don't consider themselves as a part of this current body politic.
3) They had clear objectives: Civil Rights and get out of the war (with a distinct underlining socialist bent that was more negotiable than the other two). So what do today's protesters really want? I empathize with the desire for a sense of equality, that whole "fair share" bit. I am aware of all the numbers dealing with wealth distribution, the discrepancies in income increases over the past several decades, the political influence and the myriad issues concerning our financial institutions and the government.
Even so, I ask again, what do they want? Those on Wall Street aren't going to do anything about it. The rich who understand or care about these grievances (Hello, Warren Buffet) can't change the system with op-eds and they're outnumbered by their peers anyway. There's been a movement to support their beliefs called Patriotic Millionaires For Fiscal Strength that I'm willing to bet few people have even heard of much less seen any effect and that is from a volunteering group.
4) They created a true disruption. Schools were closed down. The Mall was filled. Fields were taken over and made into public toilets. Today, they bargain with mayors to allow them to stay in designated parks. If you look around the world right now, you won't find the Greeks being polite, and those are some people in trouble.
5) Lastly, there was a real sense of violence along with the peaceful demonstrations. As a contrast to Martin Luther King, there were people like H. Rap Brown saying, "If America don't come around, we're gonna burn it down." Additionally, Weathermen were blowing up statues, banks and government buildings. When given the choice between working with MLK and a bunch of hippies or Malcolm X and radicals openly intent on the violent overthrow of capitalism, the authorities played ball with the former.
There's no real sense of danger from an aspect of the movement today and no standout, rationally presentable leadership from another aspect and therefore no one to choose between.
I am not an advocate of outright violence and I think threats are transparent and weak. I also don't like socialism, but I don't find taxes to be socialism. What I find socialist is the seizure of property. When we start taking people's extra houses and cars and clothes, I'll worry. Taxing the wealthy and leaving them with only ten, twenty or a hundred times more than the average American wage doesn't bother me in the least.
That being said, I think there is another problem with this "movement". Who's their target? It's not really Wall Street. I know that phrase refers to the people running Wall Street but that term is as ambiguous and vague as Main Street. (And I might add, it has a hint of the "they" stink of so many conspiracy theorists). It's not really the rich, either. Many of us aspire to gain wealth for ourselves and our families. It's part of the American Dream. We don't actually begrudge the rich for their wealth; the problem is the manner in which many have gained their wealth and how they maintain it.
The protesters are peacefully focused on the wrong establishments.
This leads us to the true perpetrators of this issue: the legislators. Only they can affect the change that will ultimately fix the situation. It has to be about policy, not culture, because there's no incentive for the rich to change and they shouldn't need to do so.
But guess what? This is the first truly bipartisan, or at least left-right intersection, we've seen in several years. Many of the same grievances are mentioned from each camp. (Check out James Sinclair's post, Occupy Wall Street vs. The Tea Party. It's a well written consideration that even has a nice simplified venn diagram included. Another commentator I've had the fortune of reading several posts from is Paul Krugman at the NY Times.)
With this commonality, the protesters should march all over DC. They should camp out at Cantor and Boehner's homes. They should block every member of congress, Democrat and Republican alike, from leaving work for fear that they might be handily attacked or hit by a projectile - one that is preferably hard and wrapped in foreclosure notices. Let their appointments as legislators come with the price of duty and responsibility rather than the reward of power and prestige.
A recent poll showed Herman Cain leading President Obama in a head-to-head. His bullshit 9-9-9 plan, a completely unpassable proposal by the way, appeals to many who believe it to be a fair way of handling our fiscal problems. (I won't extemporize on this much other than to say that the only way I would ever support a flat tax is if it were shackled to a progressive cost of living plan also. In that I mean food, energy and healthcare costs are also based on a percentage of income, that way the poor wouldn't spend a greater portion of their income on survival than what the rich spend. This would still allow for wealth accumulation and purchases of privilege without burdening those less fortunate.) However, it does have something that the current demagogues don't: intention to change the system.
Despite record-low approval ratings of congress, they insist on staying on this current track. Despite the majority approving the basic content of President Obama's Jobs Plan, congress is not pushing it forward. Despite that the #1 concern of the majority of Americans is job creation, they debate - or rather, pointedly refuse to debate - taxes and abortion.
Why is this? Well, it's the same reason why dogs lick their own balls, because they can. They feel no sense of threat from the populace, they've shown that so many times it's become a joke. Neither are they faced with someone to whom they must directly answer. Sure we say, they must answer to the people. Has anyone else noticed how little effect this has? The faceless mob of protesters is either of little consequence or irrelevant.
The livelihoods of these political kings and queens are secure and even if many, though not all, of them never earn another cent, they will come out of this alright. They expect the protesters to fatigue. They believe that our current Starbucks culture will return to its previous indignant and ineffective self. The economy will stabilize at some point, when exactly, they don't care, and they expect the self-proclaimed 99% to again indulge themselves in buying products and lattes, yumm!, to obfuscate their discomfort of knowing something isn't right. As for the legislators, they will remain steadfast and continue to operate as they have always done: for those who provide them with the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed.
Enjoy the Show!

My Sad Education

There's been a lot written about education and the education system lately. The stories include cuts in education due to the economy, the Wisconsin Governor taking away teachers' rights to collective bargaining and other financially centered dialogues. There has also been a bit, albeit in smaller, specialized circles of talk concerning actual teaching and learning.
Two interesting articles that I've come across and will refer to tangentially are Andrea Kuszewski's The Educational Value of Creative Disobedience and Jeanne Garbarino's Education Reform in the Wrong Direction: High-Stake Consequences for New York State Teachers and Their Students. (Both posts appear on Scientific American's excellent new blog network.) Each article addresses important problems that our educational system faces and I recommend checking them out and following wherever they may further lead you.
My own story started a long time ago in a land far away, East Texas during the 80's and early 90's. Though I wasn't self-taught, I was a competent early reader. The only reason I believe this is because it was a significantly odd enough event that I would read to a girl who I shared puppy love with as we waited for her bus to arrive after school during 2nd grade. (My son A, who I will mention later, reads 100-1000x more than I ever considered at that age.) By third grade I was already publicly considering skipping a grade. My parents and teachers did not put this into my head and I have no idea of where the notion came from. All I know it that I already showed signs of discontent with the system. It didn't manifest itself in a 'I hate school!' manner but rather as an 'I want more!'
Not surprising, a collage of my early academic memories reflect more the setting than any scholastic endeavors. In the mixture are various social situations, projectile vomiting, a fourth grade teacher sending me to the office for having sucked hickeys onto my arm out of boredom, a friend demonstrating his break-dancing skills, bathroom hi-jinx, witnessing behavior that was entirely inappropriate for our ages, getting paddled for jumping on some hay bales which were setup for game day and performing something like 20 pull-ups during my team's turn on that same day. In fifth grade I decided that I wanted to be an accountant because I enjoyed math so much. My teacher said, "No", that my handwriting was too messy. She told me I should be a doctor. I don't think she based this on anything academic.
In middle school, I had some clashes with an art teacher who really liked my art (the less effort I put into it, the more she seemed to appreciate it) but didn't like my attitude. The Challenger exploded shortly after take-off as schoolchildren across the country watched. The classroom I happened to sit in didn't see it but I got to hear many of the kids in the halls claim that it had been the Russians. I can't recall anyone in the administration refuting the claim. I didn't actually discover girls at this time; rather, I discovered that girls were becoming even more interesting than I had previously believed. I also discovered that my abilities at participating in school sporting events were lacking. You can make your own inferences on how these two discoveries worked together. At some point in there, my parents bought me The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible and Noah's Ark and the Lost World. The day I took my advanced placement exam for mathematics, I had a fever and performed poorly before getting sent home. The next year I floated through math and urged my teacher to let me skip the pre-algebra stage. Thankfully, she did.
In high school I was your typical underachiever. I took more 'honors' courses than our valedictorian, but I rarely felt challenged or driven and never learned any proper or effective study habits. I continued to enjoy math, excelled at algebra and performed well in the courses up through Trig -Calculus wasn't offered until the year after I graduated. I also liked the other sciences whenever I maintained my focus. However, when I discovered that our physical science teacher believed in evolution, I remember declaring that I would walk out of the room if she tried to teach it to me. (My awesome biology teacher would never commit to her stance on evolution. I realize now that had she discounted it she would have said so. She was a smart cookie and knew the political ramifications of any response she gave whether it was given on or off the record.) My physical science teacher never addressed the issue, and my initial resistance was replaced with an appreciation for her intelligence, patience (something I fear teachers very much needed with me) and friendliness, though her teaching capabilities and command of the classroom was lacking. A distinct memory I have concerning her is when she received our school's first laser, a friend and I were given virtually free range to experiment with it. Though we were never successful creating the hologram we attempted, we had lots of fun sending the beam down and around the halls with pocket mirrors where it ended as a giant splash of swirling, pulsating red light. I think she enjoyed our enthusiasm as she anxiously graded papers. In addition to teaching physical science our freshman year, she taught chemistry to us in 11th grade and that year she made a bet with me that I could get an 'A' on the following exam. I told her that I knew I could, so, for her benefit, I attended a study session which mostly consisted of me dickering with some odd piece of equipment while the others in the group studied. I got the A and my teacher beamed, "See, I knew you could do it." To which I replied simply, "I knew I could, and now I never have to prove it again." Her face fell and I felt somewhat saddened that I had caused that expression.
Histories held little interest for me in high school, but I did possess a passion for literature. It was evident enough that during 10th grade a conscientious coach allowed me to study in the library or read during my half year of required P.E. following an incident with a bully and a bat (nobody got hurt, by the way, but the bully did later go on to commit suicide). I enjoyed verbally sparring with my intelligent, yet somewhat testy freshman English teacher, barely knew my 10th grade teacher -who incidentally looked like Ursala from The Little Mermaid, retired mid-year to sell dried flowers, had a good 11th grade teacher but held little respect for my 12th grade instructor. I felt she was disingenuous, using gimmicks to get her students' admiration. ("Why should you not assume? Because it makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me." Really?) Here are the two situations that most confirmed my initial impression: Assignment 1)Write a short story consisting of a group of vocabulary words (this project I actually got excited about). My story ended up being about 25 pages. She actually let out a sigh when I turned it in. I got an 'A', but the problem was that there were absolutely no errors or corrections. I'm not that good now, I wasn't that good then. Assignment 2)Research paper. We were given 6 weeks in class to complete it, several weeks of which we sat in the library. I chose to attend college English that year, forgoing high school Physics since I couldn't stand to be at that school the extra hour it required. As it so happened, that research paper was also assigned. We were given two weeks on our own time to complete the work. I got a 'B' on my college paper and failed the high school report. That, in itself, was enough suck but the real kicker for me was that I didn't really fail. The paper had an initial passing score of 70% -I admit that I hadn't put much effort into it - written in the standard red ink like everyone else but added, or rather subtracted, below that in black ink sat a -1, bringing the final, recorded grade to a failing 69%. I shrugged it off as an amazing display of audacity. Luckily, as I mentioned above, my high school English experience wasn't a complete wash; I did have a good 11th grade English teacher. She respected her subject and respected her students. She mentored appropriately and was firm when required. She taught one period of debate which, because of her personality, I also took. I did alright for a novice and enjoyed myself in their small circle. That is until I got myself arrested.
I won't go into it here, but I will say that the reasons were all tied into my academic experience, as well as the aforementioned suicide, and I learned something more valuable from the incident than what curriculum the school taught. I grew even more cynical of the environment - my guidance counselor served as primary word twister and situation over-blower -, I but continued to desire knowledge. Fast forward through some college in England -undertaken for England's sake, not education's-, several unrelated courses, a crappy novel while working as a busser and finally a genuine attempt at a literature degree since it became obvious to me I wasn't going to write full-time. I grew disillusioned by the literary racket the more I learned. My motivation dropped to nil so I chose to take a sabbatical and joined the Army as a medic.
*Cue patriotic music* I found myself in a place where I couldn't quit, removed my 'self', in a sense, from the equation and did very well. After several years in Germany and a couple of deployments -should I include getting stationed in Oklahoma?- I requested to be discharged and allowed to go back to school to study science with the intent of returning as a military doctor. *You may return to regular soundtrack now* My study habits underwent a severe overhaul and I had to fight an uphill battle of circumstances. Though I never quite reached the level of achievement I had hoped for, I did raise the flat 'B' from two years as a Literature student to almost a 'B+'. Not too bad considering I hadn't taken a math or hard science course in over 15 years, but we all know 'not too bad' is not good enough for medical school. This was a difficult concept for me to accept at first, but my re-found enjoyment of science has helped to cushion the blow. My mind has been exposed to countless paths to which my interests turn depending on the hour of the day or by whatever topic I am exposed. As a young man I may have fantasized that I could become some kind of savant, but the wisdom I've gained has revealed otherwise. Heartbreaking, right? Well, I live vicariously through, and hold an amount of pride in, knowing that most of my friends are more intelligent than I. It's not so bad since it helps keep me grounded and interested. So, I suppose what I really wanted to drive in, since I am currently waiting to enter into a graduate program about 15 years late, is that I have been going through a lot of reflection lately. I have come to acknowledge my own faults and failures, my own strengths and limitations. As well, I realize the obstacles within my earlier environment and the weaknesses of the system.
This all leads to my interest in Andrea Kuszewski's and Jeanne Garbarino's articles. You can read the articles yourself and I highly recommend that you do. It will give you a better idea of the situation that our nation is finding itself in and will clarify the remainder of this post.
After reading Kuszewski, I performed a little test of my own with my oldest child. It was a simple sequencing series. The instructions that I gave 'A' were merely to complete the series. He probed me for more definitive guidance but I refrained. Below are the results.

The top row is pretty straight-forward. His middle completion is interesting because it wasn't the sides that he added but rather the corners (the third image I drew in the series has marks where he showed me what he was attempting since he wasn't satisfied with his final product.) The bottom, I found to be his best. 'A' stated flatly that he felt he wouldn't be capable of adding additional lines to the series so he simply drew a hashtag in its place. He acknowledged his limitation as a 7 year old and reinvented the parameters. (Perhaps I'm just a proud papa, but I've seen this kid create a pattern with colored macaroni complex enough that his teacher didn't see it. I discovered the sequence through accident and a cup of coffee and had my suspicion confirmed by having him describe his intent to me.) Andrea was right! Children will find more novel approaches if left to devise something on their own. Other issues she addresses in her article and my own prejudices concerning the current methods are the reasons we pulled our school-aged children out of the system.
However, though schools should and need to allow for thoughtful creativity and a significant free flow of discovery, the responsibility can't sit solely on the shoulders of the teachers. As my own experiences can attest, the students have to be held somewhat accountable. They must put in the effort and meet the standards set before them. We can't determine the value of the teacher merely through the performance of the students. As Garbarino discusses, doing so will simply incapacitate our teachers, lead them to "teach the test" and further degrade the system.
We need to encourage a new paradigm for both the teachers and the students to increase the effectiveness of our schools. I don't know that there is any 'silver bullet' method to address either of these problems, but I agree with both Kuszewski's call to actually use the methods that have been demonstrated to work and Garbarino's assertion that teachers shouldn't need to become robots in the classroom to retain their jobs.
During my own sad education, I fought against every effort to subjugate me or box me in. However, the teachers who allowed me more freedom to show creativity, and those who pushed me and held me more accountable were the ones who got the most out of me and I don't hold them liable for any of my own shortcomings. For those willing to make the effort, I am grateful, I only wish I had realized more fully what they were trying to say to me sooner.

Evolution 2 : Why Politicians Shouldn't be Stupid Monkeys

Last week (Mar 2011) two events took place that made my head ache and my teeth grind. One, I read that Stephen Wise, Chairman of the Senate EducationCommittee, was trying to reenact a bill to include Intelligent Design in school curriculum as a counter argument to evolution. Two, a young man I worked with said that he believed in evolution but didn't believe in evolution of the species. Huh? Of course, neither of these is new or unusual. What bothers me is actually their un-unusualness.
Sen. Wise is an idiot (yes, this is true. A person who runs and gains public office and then gets on a soap box against evolution saying, "Why do we still have apes if we came from them?" is by act and definition an idiot -"a mentally deficient person or someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way."). That he is a member of our country's legislative body but incapable of educating himself on one of the basic aspects of a subject he so adamantly wants to fight is appalling and disgraceful. I can understand not being convinced of evolution if you don't anything about it and you are steeped in religious beliefs, but I can't see mounting a pretty controversial campaign and acting as if your lack of knowledge is an attribute. Is this part of the whole "Taking Back America"?

The other issue is the guy at work. His case is merely one of education. He said he didn't believe it and I told him that was okay, it didn't matter if he believed it or not. This sounds a lot like the argument for God and I realize this. But the truth is you can't convince someone who doesn't know. (again there's that similar argument popping up)

I think that some of my issue with this debate really comes from growing up believing that evolution was ridiculous and that God was the end all, be all explanation. Truthfully, I feel cheated. I don't mean this as an insult to faith (though I more and more have issues with people justifying everything according to their "Faith". Pole dancing for Jesus? Seriously?) I've known or met many wonderful people of faith. They're people too. Many are flawed extensively, but most know this and work at mitigating it. (I'm not getting into the Maher attack on religious institutions because just like I can't talk about every facet of evolution, I can't talk about every failure of religion.) The good people of faith use their faiths for comfort and peace and all the things it should be used for. They see it as a belief and not something you press on others through mandates, intimidation or violence.
Evolution is a scientific field, proven, proven and proven a couple more times through practice and observation. It's not meant to usurp, justify or prohibit anything. Like much of science its primary purpose is just to explain. That's pretty pure. And it's pretty awesome.
People like Stephen Wise should be thrown out of office for a lack of education in his field (I'm pretty sure that's what would happen if he worked at a company). It's not because he wants to teach ID, either. It's because his reasons for wanting it are without merit and their justifications are based of complete fallacy.

I will concede to this last thing, though, and it worries me more. Perhaps Wise does know evolution but chooses to not educate his base. Instead, he perpetuates the misrepresentations in an attempt to keep their attentions away from other issues or as a means to keep the knowledge below a certain standard. I've been in countries were leadership actively keeps the masses reliant on a higher power so that they themselves may maintain their positions as ordained by said higher power.
So, keep your eyes and ears open to the coming time and the inevitable fight that's going to ensue if Sen. Wise pushes this further. And -
Enjoy the Show!

Duck, Duck, Goose!

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