My Turn to Be the Intern [CASE CLOSED]

On the Internship

2008-07-23T15:08:00.005-05:00

Top Three Favorite Moments:

When Jazz and JaColbie, the two students I briefly tutored in mathematics for ACT Prep., said that I explained things in ways that they had never heard before, and that what I was teaching them was so much easier than what they’d learned during the school year.
When we drove down Broad Street in Greenwood. Imagine a small town street in the 1980s with ramshackle houses ten years too late for a paint job, full of people walking and sitting on porches and loitering in their cars. There was a man on his porch who pointed at me and followed me with his finger, an incredulous look on his face, when we drove by in the University van.
Dinner with the Black family after church.

Least Favorite Moment:

When my alarm did not go off in the morning and I missed the bus to summer school. I went to work with Ben at the School of Education instead, but I was bummed out for a while.

Comments:

The first MTC member I met was Molly Goldwasser, a second-year teacher and former Summer Intern, and one of the first things she told me was that Ben is the easiest boss to have. She may be right. Working for Ben is a breeze and there’s lots of opportunity for relaxation, especially because Ben likes to take long lunch breaks most days.
Working at the summer school is also a lot of fun. This summer’s principal, Joe Sweeney, became somewhat of a hero to all the interns who worked for him. It was a lot of fun. The summer school is a slightly higher-stress job, but isn’t anything to be afraid of.
A unique feature of this Internship is living with the people you are supporting. As much as we are a support staff for the program, we are a support staff for the teachers in that program. A lot of them are interested in what interns do, and want a break from “teacher-talk.” When they’re not teaching or lesson-planning, they want a fun thing to do and someone to do it with.

Advice for Prospective Interns:

Give Ben plenty of warning about your incoming travel plans, times, and locations.
Bring a good bit of cash/debit with you coming into the summer. Depending on what program you’re coming through (college funded, MTC funded, or other), you may not get your first check until three weeks into the summer.
Keep in mind how much you will need to spend on food. Be a thrifty shopper.
Do not be afraid to ask teachers, other interns, Ben, or anyone else you may befriend for rides to stores, especially when it’s a matter of groceries. There may be times in life when you don’t want to ask too much of people, but asking for help getting food isn’t one of those times.
Listen more than you talk.
Be honest with Ben. He likes feedback.
Try to make friends with as many teachers as possible. If you have time, see if they need help with anything that they’re working on. They have a way busier schedule than you.
Read, read, read. Read about Mississippi, about the history of the South, read Faulkner, read the news, read about civil rights, read about education—whatever piques your interest; immerse yourself in issues of Mississippi and the South while you are there.
Hang out with the other interns; y’all probably have a lot in common.
Don’t go out to eat every night, unless you really can afford to this. Think, dinner costs at least $10 almost everywhere, and you need to have money to buy other food for different times during the day and still have some cash to go do other things.
Remember: blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

My Project

This summer I really had two projects aside from my work at the summer school. I tinkered for many hours with the MTC WikiSite, which may in time become the main website for the program. I also work on a unit of lesson plans for the incorporation of some print media into the English II (tenth grade) classroom. I must say that I enjoyed my wiki work more than my lesson plans. After I give my presentation tomorrow, I will post my lesson plans on the Lesson Plan Wiki and show y’all.

Quick Update, Quickly Written

2008-07-20T19:13:00.003-05:00

I ought to post for y’all. I promise that my lack of digital presence hasn’t been because of laziness. I haven’t been typing much recently, but I have been reading and writing in my notebooks. I finished C. S. Lewis’s Problem of Pain, am almost done with Don Quixote, am still slowly enjoying Jeremiah, and I this week started The Souls of Black Folk and A Generation of Materialism. I will set down the last one when I return to New York, and probably pick up Jacob Klein’s book on Greek mathematics in its stead, but I’m sure I won’t finish it before I start next semester. Blah, blah. What was I going to post about? Oh yeah, some thoughts on the Internship.

I am working on a list of things to tell prospective Summer Interns, something generally applicable and relevant. At the same time, I can guess that the Internship will not look the same next year. In 2007, there was a sole MTC Intern. This summer there were eight of us. I don’t imagine that the number will continue to rise, but I do assume that there will continue to be more than one, especially if Amherst College continues its community service funding programs. This summer was a trial run for the larger crowd. On a personal level, I consider it a success, but its success or failure was never really a question. It seems that, as a trial run, it’s a matter of optimizing the experience: giving the most to the students who want to devote their summers, streamlining the schedule and costs, and making the most of the extra labor and minds at work on the greater MTC project. Ben Guest has obviously done a more than adequate job catering to us, having arranged for us a schedule of speakers and given us a raw look at the life and times of the first-year teachers. Concerning scheduling, I think that next year will have the benefit of less confusion, assuming Ben will continue to reap the benefits of Google’s social empire. But I expect that most changed next summer will be the utilization of those Intern’s skills. Though I have personally gained a precious mass of experience, I haven’t really worked very hard; I could have been worked harder for the benefit of the program. There were long periods of time when I would mentally or corporally wander around, as my winemaker friend in New York would sometimes say of me, “like a little lost waif.” Now I know that there are others among the Elite Eight who at this point would frown and say that they are busy enough, so I must make it clear that I speak only for myself here. There were some moments, especially at the summer school, when it felt like three Interns were too many in one place, let alone eight. I expect that the number of Interns wasn’t as much of a problem as the lack of experience managing such a large group of more or less free labor. What kind of projects do you give them—long or short? Do you send more than one to work on the same thing? What if they get it done quickly? What next?
On the note of projects, I think daily/weekly projects are a much better use of my clerical and adjutantial skills than anything larger. To have multifarious assignments each day, regardless of whether they’re different or the same each day, is much easier for me to manage than to have an indefinite amount of time to do a work of indefinite size. But this requires more work, or at least more time and watchfulness, on the part of the employer to “manage” me and continually supply me with tasks.
With this in mind, I’ll be writing up a list of likes and dislikes, and a list of unexpected (not necessarily unpleasant) occurrences and occasions about which prospective Interns would want to be forewarned. Maybe tomorrow?
I’m off to read some more Quixote, and maybe I’ll see The Dark Knight tonight? If I don’t see it tonight, I might not see it in theaters ever. Oh well. Toodles.

Busy Weekend

2008-07-14T14:17:00.004-05:00

This was a busy weekend. On Friday Ben took Matt and I to Holly Springs to visit the summer school. It was more of a hangout-day than a workday. We went out to Phillips’ Grocery by the tracks, and I had the Fill-up Burger. Scrumptious and deadly: it was a quarter-pound burger with ham, bacon, American cheese, onions, lettuce, and tomatoes. If I live in Mississippi, I need to live far away from Ben, because otherwise we’ll go out for fatty burgers, pricey sushi, and greasy (grē'·zē, like easy) soul food every day.
After “work” I went to play volleyball with the teachers for a few hours again. I think my team lost more than it won, but it was good to get out in the sun.
After volleyball a crowd of us went to some generic Mexican restaurant for a double-birthday party. It was a strange experience, a bit like being at a large wedding where you really only know the bride and groom, but are expected to sit and chat with their relatives about your life. It was fun, though, and the food was good.
On Saturday, Ben arranged for a trip to the Delta with Ashley Johnson, who spoke to us earlier in the week about her time spent in the Teacher Corps (sounds like a prison). We visited Greenwood, where she taught middle school students while she was in the program, and also Money, where Emmett Till was brutally lynched in the 1950s. The trip was what I call “an India experience,” meaning a brush with another world whose poverty and social dynamic I had previously not imagined. Like my first trip to India, when people warned me about how shocking some scenes would be beforehand, I was forewarned as we went into Greenwood that it would be quite amazing to see some of the “houses” in the poor, black neighborhoods; it was the same kind of pseudo-preparation. Seeing one of those old houses is not as amazing as seeing the houses with people in and around them. Seeing a decrepit street is one thing, but seeing the gang members and children who live there is another. There were two effects of the trip to Greenwood: amazement and a strong desire to live there. This surely qualifies it as “an India experience” for me.
Money was an intriguing stop. We saw the store where Emmett Till supposedly wolf-whistled at a white woman. The people in Money do not talk about those events very often. They almost never call Emmett by name if they mean to refer to him.
Then we went out to eat, again, at the Crown Restaurant in Indianola. It was fabulous. I took Ben’s recommendation and ordered the catfish allison. Best fish I’ve ever had in my life, perhaps bested only by my father’s buttery tilapia. I have secretly asked Ben, should I be admitted into the Teacher Corps, to make sure my placement is in Indianola—far enough away from him to not eat out every day, but close enough to the Crown to eat out well. I also learned that caramel and cream cheese go quite well together on a cracker.
Sunday was filled with excitement, too. Latisha rented a car for the weekend, and decided to visit the mother of one of the summer school students at their home church in Red Banks. We dropped off Christine and her friend Julie (no, Ben, her name isn’t Jess) in Holly Springs so they could tour the town and go to mass. Then Tish and I visited Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist Church. It was a nice place. Mrs. Lester, the mother of the summer school student, told us that most of the church is part of one very large, very extended family. I liked it. Praise the Lord. She very graciously bought us each a plate of lunch, soul food, and sent us on our way. Tish and I picked up Christine and Julie and drove to Memphis, Tennessee. We quickly visited the National Civil Rights Museum, which was a bit more intense than I would have wanted; I couldn’t help but cry half-way through. I felt a bit heavy for the rest of the day. After that we quickly drove Julie to the airport, stopped by the Apple Store to make Tish’s appointment at the Genius Bar, and scooted home.
I was pooped by Sunday night. I’m still pooped now. Back to work on the Wiki.

"My Girls"

2008-07-10T08:10:00.002-05:00

Earlier this week the Select Seven had the joy of meeting with Ashley Johnson, an alumna of the MTC. For her placement in the program, she taught sciences at Greenwood Middle School. Ben invited her to speak with us for two reasons: (1) to understand Greenwood is to understand the Delta; and (2) Ms. Johnson is a fabulous speaker. Very down-to-earth.
For anyone who doesn’t know the history of Greenwood, and the nearby town called Money, where Emmet Till was mutilated and killed in 1955, I recommend reading up on it. I’m not going to reiterate it here.
One thing that I cannot get out of my mind is a phrase that Ms. Johnson used repeatedly: “my girls.” Thinking about it for a bit I noticed retrospectively that almost all of the teachers talk this way. The students are their students. They belong to them. But moreover, especially in Ms. Johnson’s way of speaking, the students are not merely students. They’re people, not products or customers. I got a sense that Ms. Johnson had a lot of love for the young teens that she served in Greenwood.
Part of her presentation was a little bit darker, because she was talking about where her girls came from, and what they were exposed to on their walk back home after school. She used to get so angry at the older guys who, after dropping out of school, would hang out on all the street corners near the middle school. They were 18 and 19 years old, and these young girls had to walk by them everyday. Violent rape is not as much of a concern as plain manipulation (so yet even that is called “statutory”).
But on a brighter note, she talked about how these young guys can be turned around if someone gives them something to do. She recalled an election where the people had to vote a second time because of some suspicious ballots in the first vote. The one candidate, who lost the first time, was a black woman, and the other candidate was accused of using names of dead people to win the vote. On the second vote, the leaders in the black community in Greenwood rallied together to get “those on the south side of the river” to show up for the vote. These boys on the street corner turned from ruffians into community activists, handing out flyers and escorting people to the voting precinct. All they needed was a little bit of direction, a purpose, and they suddenly had a different impact on the community.
More on that later. Time for work.

Redirect to Older Post

2008-07-08T18:40:00.000-05:00

I would like to redirect your attention to a “hot topic” post from last week. I received a new comment today that some may be interested in replying to.

Mr. Barnes

2008-07-08T18:06:00.008-05:00

Last Thursday Reggie Barnes spoke with all the first-year teachers and the Select Seven (the Elite Eight sans Elise, who has returned to Massachusetts to finish out her summer with another scheduled internship). It will be difficult to recall all of his various jobs and accomplishments, but now he works as an educational consultant after being the Superintendent of the West Tallahatchie School District among other things. During his work as the Superintendent, he was featured in the HBO documentary LaLee’s Kin, which gives an acute and terrible look into the deplorable conditions (of education, of society) in the Mississippi Delta. Mr. Barnes has seen it all, or a lot of it. What is the it that I mean? The mess of poverty and its effect on all aspects of the public education system. His sensitivity to, and his profound knowledge of, the problems makes him a long-time friend to the Mississippi Teacher Corps, whose participants he says bring “culture” into the Delta.
This word culture especially fascinated me. Mr. Barnes says I could bring culture to the students. What do I have to offer? I’m a little white guy from New York. I am different—look different, have a different vernacular, different accent, curious mannerisms, strange pastimes and hobbies (“What did you do last Friday night?”—“Read some Don Quixote.”), and an ordinary-Gary sense of style. Is this what Reggie means? I thought about it a little bit more. When someone shows the students a photograph of the Parthenon or Big Ben or Vatican City, I can say that I was there. I traveled to Greece, England, Rome twice, India three times, and all over the United States. I suppose that’s groovy, as a sideshow. What else? I’ve read some of the greatest literature and philosophy this world has ever seen. I know people at every corner of the earth. I’ve seen miracles. I suppose these are the things Mr. Barnes wants people to bring to Mississippi.
I acknowledge that I am “cultured” in a way that may be desired, but I question what the effect of such culture is. Some, including MTC’s Chimaobi Amutah, don’t seem to think this culture is really so valuable. I quote Mr. Amutah with all license because he wrote this as a response to one of my posts:

Quite honestly, I feel that MTC's ranks should be filled with Blacks FROM Mississippi. The rest of us should go back from whence we came and stop trying to force immediate, drastic change on a culture, people, and place that is not our own. White Man's Burden, Take 2. [sic. I think he meant to link this.] I feel that if White people are truly interested in ending (or decreasing the existence of) racism, educational inequality, and poverty in this nation then their quarrel should be with other Whites who are players in this system, big or small. People need to organize and educate folks in Ridgeland and Oxford just as much as Holly Springs or Rolling Fork.

I must say that I disagree strongly with Mr. Amutah on this point, but I don’t completely agree with Mr. Barnes’s appeal to the cultural contribution of us non-Mississippians either. Mr. Amutah wants black locals in the black Delta schools, ideally at least. Mr. Barnes wants, for lack of a better term, foreigners. Mr. Amutah’s position will, I argue, ultimately re-segregate the system, ignore the problem of racism and educational inequity, and perpetuate the current conditions. Mr. Barnes’s position, however, doesn’t seem to offer much more benefit to me: the foreigners will occupy the territory, preach in their own language, and (mostly) leave in two years. The assumption is that our peculiarities will translate readily into the students’ language and be seen as something desirable, something to inspire them to pursue a similar experience. But what if it doesn’t translate? What if my cultural invasion is rejected? Moreover, how can I be so sure that what I’ve got is worth giving? There are only a few things in my life that I would want someone else to take, if they even can be taken: my faith in God, my hope in Christ, and my love for my neighbors. My travels and reading and knowledge have no comparison in substance to these three things (despite what Quixote may suggest), at least not when they are considered apart from them.
Here’s the bottom line. I’m not convinced that education gets people out of real poverty, even if it does give them a higher-paying job and the sense to not get into trouble with the law.

That was a huge digression. Back to Mr. Barnes. He was a brilliant speaker. He reminded me of my Latin teacher from high school, Mr. Kunz. They are both gruff and forceful, in a good way. They both speak softly, and then start yelling when they want to make a point. Yelling isn’t the right word. Bellowing? Hollering? No, roaring is probably more appropriate. Reggie has a way of commanding the room’s attention with the volume and intonation of his voice. He’s also very articulate. Speaking loud and fast keeps an audience on their toes and makes the slower, emphasized phrases all the more dramatic. If Mr. Barnes, or Mr. Kunz, told me to vote for him in the next presidential race, I would probably nod my head Yes as a knee-jerk reaction to his oratorical power.
His speech was mostly a rolling list of things to do and not do when teaching at a school in the Delta. Afterward, the Select Seven had an interview with him, and he shared the story of his younger years during the Civil Rights Movement. Especially fascinating was the rage he experienced during high school. A lot of times we see or read a story of violence among teenagers and think that they must have something so fundamentally twisted about them, that their parents are evil or negligent, and that they will always be violent. Mr. Barnes’s story goes against those assumptions. He said that he became a fighter and joined a gang for a few years in high school after Dr. King was assassinated, and he does not know why precisely. And then, he stopped. He saw the damage he could do and he turned away. What was it that did it for him? Did he see something different in one of his teachers? Was it a cultural influence? Or was it simply the unexplainable grace of God?

No More Beard

2008-07-06T19:54:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I looked like Jesus. I shaved. Now I look like Michael Jackson. Alas.

A Poem for Ben

2008-07-04T13:08:00.005-05:00

Untitled Poem of the Metal Man
Looking at the statue of Meredith
The fourth of July, two-thousand-and-eight
University of Mississippi

Meredith's metal leg is put forward
The black man is ready to make a move
Bold, strange, motionless; there he stays tonight
Maybe he'll move soon, creep an inch closer
While "Fight the good fight" is cheered all around
The prophets and priests together cry, "Peace"
But they lie through their teeth with rich white smiles
The black man hasn't made it through the gate
All day he bakes in the fire of the sun
Like his fathers and mothers, hard at work
They bought him his freedom with sweat and blood
And he'd have it, he'd take it; so close now
But he can't move forward, doesn't know how
Would that the Lord make his metal legs flesh
For only he, none beside, can set free
The man whose bound to fail, bound to failure
Who of us would teach a statue to walk?
If we push him through, we will break his legs:
What if he's better off whole where he stands
Than over there with no means of freedom?
On the other side of of Opportunity
There is Dependence, a lame community

Service

2008-07-02T16:43:00.005-05:00

This recent New York Times article on Obama’s call to service is importantly, albeit tangentially, related to some questions that I had in a post last week.
I think that service, including non-paid and low-paid work like teaching, is largely deemphasized in this nation. When service is highlighted it is often a résumé-booster. Let none deny it. My submission in the post already mentioned, for the sake of conversation, was a propagandist’s: engender in the youth of the nation an internally founded desire to serve. Mr. Obama seems to have a notion in opposition to mine. It seems that he thinks a multitude of young Americans want to serve but don’t have adequate opportunity (or rather, the funding for service organization isn’t quite high enough). I, however, assumed that there are a million-and-one ways to serve, but that there is little incentive to serve. And these incentives, if service is to remain service, cannot only be financial; they must be moral, philosophical, ideological; service is born from one individual and given to another.
I’m not sure what to think about Mr. Obama’s speech. Maybe he’s right. Maybe my talk of incentives comes from a misinterpretation of his statement, “Americans have shown that they want to step up.” Any responses?

(A copy of the speech is located here on a Wall Street Journal Blog.)

Ri-freakin’-diculous: a review of, and warning about, Freakanomics

2008-06-30T21:01:00.011-05:00

First Word

It’s difficult to write a complete, organized, whole review of a work that boasts of its own lack of focus: “Most books put forth a single theme, crisply expressed in a sentence or two, and then tell the entire story of that theme . . . . This book boasts of no such unifying theme” (14). Lacking nothing grandiose, they also add that they aim to explore the “hidden side” of everything (ibid.). So it must be the large scope of their aim that makes them seem aimless. They want to have no limits on what they can investigate (excepting the limit of 300 pages, or less, required to be a New York Times Best-seller). Levitt, the economics professor, and Dubner, Levitt’s personal praise patrol, have set out to write a neatly packed, sexy-titled, philosophical micro-epic, whose aim is either everything or nothing. In this reviewer’s opinion, their trajectory hit nothing first and the writers settled with what they got.
So even while not having their “unifying theme,” the writers did make some claim to get us readers grounded: “What this book is about is stripping a layer or two from the surface of modern life and seeing what is happening underneath” (12). Pause. Excellent idea. Now tell us how statistics are stripping layers away from surfaces. No answer, only the sound of crickets chirping amidst the graphs and tables. The writers want to be cutting-edge philosophical investigators, but fall into nightmarish scenarios like, for example, when they compare morality, which “represents the way that people would like the world to work,” with economics, which “represents how it actually does work” (13). Yikes! What a dichotomy! We’re off to a rocky start if they want to strip away layers to find something like truth underneath, because they’ve already tossed out one of the most fundamental layers in human society. (Don’t worry, they bring morality back later when they talk about incentives, and they have a new, more convenient definition for it.) By the end of the book this reviewer was unsure about how many layers had been stripped away or how many layers of pseudo-scientific stucco had been plastered on to his brain. Assumption after assumption, generalization after generalization, and it’s not quite clear how all their sets of data could possibly be revealing anything without covering more things over. This review will address some details a little farther below. But first, the introduction and underlying framework of the book should be examined.

Introduction and Framework

The writers assert that they have five presuppositions:

“incentives are the cornerstone of modern life”;
“the conventional wisdom is often wrong”;
“dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle causes”;
“‘experts’ . . . use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda”; and
“knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so” (13-14).

(Regarding the first presupposition: incentives (internal or external, financial or social) are inseparable from a personal sense, or lack of a sense, of morality—what is right, what is good, or at least what is beneficial, what is pleasurable, etc. Regarding the second: this reviewer assumes they mean “wrong” amorally; also, attacking conventional wisdom is easy and in so doing writers and scientists create infinite new conventional wisdoms by doing it. Regarding the third: fine. Regarding the fourth: beware that experts also wrote Freakanomics. Regarding the fifth: this presupposition makes sense, but in light of the preceding one it is worrying that we readers have no clue what or how to measure, and so we are invited to utterly trust the writers’ hidden, expert knowledge.)
Their list isn’t a bad foundation for a book, but they could have added a few more to make sense of the remainder of the book:

generalizations can be considered the same thing as knowledge;
predictive data can be bent back and applied to the past to describe what would have happened; and
the authority of statistics is unquestionable, or in Dubner’s words, “Steven Levitt may not fully believe in himself, but he does believe this: teachers and criminals and real-estate agents may lie, and politicians, and even CIA analysts. But numbers don’t” (17).

With the hasty introduction out of the way, they begin to look at various mini-themes, each of which makes a neat chapter that relates two usually inconceivably related things. This is the merit of the book. The writers have great creativity. This is, no doubt, why many people really like this book. Go check the five-star reviews on Amazon.com and see for yourself; people who rate the book highly are dazzled and wowed by their insights, and some reviewers are even so pleased despite not agreeing with the conclusions. This reviewer, however, is not one of them, and two stars out of five is all that could be mustered in support of Freakanomics.
Their initial promise was delightful: "We will ask a lot of questions, some frivolous and some about life-and-death issues” (12). They weren’t lying. Questions about abortion are not separated by many pages from ones about baby names. But the range of questions from shocking to silly does not necessarily make any of them the right questions. Again this reviewer had some philosophical hopes coming into this book, but was very disappointed and even angry throughout the reading.

Exhibit One

Chapter 5, tagged with the question What Makes a Perfect Parent? is a great example. Levitt and Dubner put forth eight things that do and eight other things that do not correlate to public school standardized test scores. The list isn’t quite random. Using a magical tool called “regression analysis,” which remains a mystery for us non-experts, even if we do try to fill in the gap with Wikipedia, they found the following correlates (with a “+” or “-” to show positive or negative correlation):

the parents are highly educated (+);
the parents have high socioeconomic status (+);
the mother was 30 years old or more when she had her first child (+);
the child had low birth weight (-);
the parents speak English in the home (+);
the child is adopted (-);
the parents are involved in a PTA (+);
and the family has many books in the home (+).

The following are supposedly non-factors in a child’s likelihood at getting better test scores:

the child’s family is intact;
the family recently moved into a better neighborhood;
the mother didn’t work between birth and kindergarten;
the child attended Head Start;
the parents regularly take the child to museums;
the child frequently watches television;
and the parents read to their child every day.

(What would Claiborne Barksdale say to that last item on the non-factor list?)
Here’s the problem: they beg the questions about the basis for their magical regression analyses. They lead the reader to assume he has learned something because a bunch of variables have been correlated with test scores. But what are test scores? It is “conventional wisdom” that standardized test scores have their own range of error. A crack in the foundation of these statistics could make the house of cards fall. Instead of bringing this up, they begin to make claims on the Nature versus Nurture question, in favor of nature—some admitted generalization about what the parents are versus what the parents do. This question cannot begin to be answered in such a way! They’ll quickly fall into an infinite regression of causes: being causes doing, which leads to being, which causes doing, which . . . What? Has the reader learned anything really? In fact, the writers themselves subtly admit that the reader has not gained much insight from these correlations and non-factors. With regard adopted children, who statistically have lower test scores, they bring up another “study”:

Sacerdote found [that] the parents weren’t powerless forever. By the time the adopted children became adults, they had veered sharply from the destiny that IQ alone might have predicted. Compared to children who were not put up for adoption, the adoptees were far more likely to attend college, to have a well-paid job, and to wait until they were out of their teens before getting married. It was the influence of the adoptive parents, Sacerdote concluded, that made the difference. 174

This is Levitt and Dubner admitting that their foundation among standardized test scores and “intelligence quotients” is shaky and possibly meaningless. On the one hand, students’ test scores are more likely to be higher because of genetics and things occurring before birth (Nature > Nurture; we should probably weed out the bad ones now and start the eugenics race). On the other hand, the very same negative correlate to test scores, I mean adoption, is a positive correlate to college attendance and a well-paid job. The reader must navigate an intricate maze of glitter and jazz to find that these two writers are using a lot of words and numbers to say very little, and even this little bit is spuriously got.

Exhibit Two

Let’s take a look at another philosophical blunder from the chapter 4, which correlates higher abortion rates to lower crime:

What sort of woman was likely to take advantage of Roe v. Wade? Very often she was unmarried and in her teens or poor, and sometimes all three. What sort of future might her child have had? One study has shown that the typical child who went unborn in the earlier years of legalized abortion would have been 50 percent more likely than average to live in poverty; he would have also been 60 percent more likely to grow up with one parent. These two factors—child poverty and a single-parent household—are among the strongest predictors that a child with have a criminal future.
. . .
In other words, the very factors that drove millions of American women to have an abortion also seemed to predict that their children, had they been born, would have led unhappy and possibly criminal lives. 138-139

This reviewer will let C. S. Lewis answer, from chapter 5 of The Problem of Pain: “But it must always be remembered that when we talk of what might have happened, of contingencies outside the whole actuality, we do not really know what we are talking about.” This doesn’t speak against using sets of data as predictive tools, but it points out the inanity of bending a generalized prediction back on the past. If it is difficult enough to find sets of data of the present conditions and to find all the variables of today that will affect tomorrow, then how much more difficult would it be to find all those things from the 1970s and ’80s that are clouded by time from the detective’s eye? And furthermore, the quote from Lewis cries out about the irresponsibility of justifying an action, whether intellectually or morally, on such shaky ground as the future optative grammar affords.

Exhibit Three

This is the reviewer’s last complaint. The book is filled with praise for Levitt, who remains like a Jedi Master with magical abilities that cannot be communicated to the common rabble. It seems as if Dubner has been following this fairly successful professor around like a puppy dog, waiting for crumbs to fall from on high; and now the journalist is generous enough to share with the rest of us vermin if we buy the book. But the praise in Freakanomics is stale. And, despite the creativity in the connections, the basic material isn’t really very fresh. At the beginning they present it like it’s hot off the press:

Now, as the crime-drop experts (the former crime doomsayers) spun their theories to the media, how many times did they cite legalized abortion as a cause?
Zero. 6

Dramatic, right? It makes it seem as if they, or at least Levitt, received oracles from God about some of these data. But really, 130 pages later, we find out that it’s old news that we must have been snoozing through because no one wrote a New York Times Best-seller about it:

Whether or not one feels strongly about abortion, it remains a singularly charged issue. Anthony V. Bouza, a former top political official in both the Bronx and Minneapolis, discovered this when he ran for Minnesota governor in 1994. A few years earlier, Bouza had written a book in which he called abortion “arguably the only effective crime-prevention device adopted in this nation since the late 1960s.” 142

Now we’re well informed.

The Summary

What does this book do? It groups things into genera, begs all the right questions, praises itself, and leaves the reader either dazzled with pretty colors and flashy titles or angrily skeptical. The writers made it clear that morality was not in the picture (too idealistic), that numbers don’t lie (they mean “lie” in an amoral sense), and that economics, or at least statistical analysis, is utterly incapable of responding to anomalies. They confirm this last point themselves with the final comparison between Ted Kaczynski and Roland G. Fryer Jr., both of whom break the trends discovered by, or the molds made by, Levitt and Dubner. It comes as a bitter blow to their statement that “economics represents the actual world” (206). Obviously the generalized is not the same as the actualized.

Just a Thought. A Thought Just.

2008-06-30T15:49:00.005-05:00

I have a quick meditation while I procrastinate on finishing my review of Freakanomics. During my laborious shifting and sorting through articles online, I decided to read President Kennedy’s speech on civil rights in America. Wow. I never paid much attention to this. I vaguely remember a blip of this time period in my U.S. History class in high school, but we never looked at this source text. There’s quite a bit of philosophy in it. Kennedy states that “the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened”—and this very thing my current roommate and I discussed briefly last night as he described one of his goals, as a graduate student in philosophy, is to eliminate the dichotomy that says we must choose to honor either the “good of the individual” or the “good of the state or community” as if they’re incommensurable or in competition. Kennedy and my roommate may agree, at least in part.
What really caught my eye was this gem from the ninth paragraph: “Law alone cannot make men see right.” It recalls Herodotus, or rather the ancient poet Pindar: “Custom is king of all.” My roommate from freshman-year at St. John’s College argued vehemently to say that no law is valid without some foundation in the culture, or the customs or norms, of a society. For example, a law or amendment banning alcohol will not stop a society that holds alcohol in high esteem from drinking; but if alcohol were to be effectively attacked, the prohibiter would need to aim deeper, on the level of the societal soul, and cut the custom out with razor-sharp scissors of persuasion, if at all. I think Pindar and Kennedy are right. Law makes a bad weed-killer for wild problems that have their roots set firmly in our moral and traditional history.
Blah, blah.

Literary Exploits

2008-06-28T17:14:00.005-05:00

This is probably one of the most self-indulgent posts you’ll read from me this summer. I’ve been doing some great reading, and should chronicle my literary adventures.
Because of my scatterbrained sense of time, I picked too many reading projects this summer. I read the first book of Augustine’s City of God before coming to Mississippi, but quickly decided to put it on the shelf for next fall. I enjoyed it greatly, but couldn’t balance it with some other large projects. Among the things I can recall off-hand: he has some really wonderful material on the pilgrim-life of a believer and a great argument against suicide. The second one is especially intriguing because of his attack against certain “virtuous” characters in history and literature, like Cato Minor, whose biography by Plutarch praised him so highly that he became a posthumous hero to Romans and subsequently many Christian writers. I enjoy Augustine’s writing, sometimes. He, and I confess to being as bad, has a tendency to write very long, very winding sentences, and so it’s difficult sometimes to get one statement out of him without getting three others that you didn’t mean to reach for. I think it’s a good thing. It makes him more difficult (but not impossible) to quote erroneously. And he’s so fluent, both in thought and in Latin, that I could tell when he was getting exited while writing. It’s a good read so far, but I imagine there will be some dry parts coming up. It’s a long read.
I finished Exodus sometime last month, and began Leviticus. I became distracted, though, and read through the first eight chapters of Jeremiah, several chapters of Proverbs, all of Colossians, and parts of Mark and Matthew. The last time I read Jeremiah I remembered liking it, but this time around has been wonderful! There is so much in there; it’s fun to theologize, but the real value for me is in the poetry, the raw human expression and relation to God. Jeremiah is uncompromisingly harsh, devastatingly outraged, pained, hopeful, and confident in everything he says. A lot of people prefer a psalm if they’re going to tackle Hebrew poetry, but I must confess my liking of Jeremiah’s intensity, which is often only his as he acts as a conduit for the greatness and power in the Lord’s words. There is a very intriguing narrative at work. At one point God asks the prophet,

What wrong did your fathers find in me
that they went far from me,
and went after worthlessness, and became worthless? Jer. 2:5 ESV

And then the Lord illustrates the consequences for Israel and Judah’s sins, moving from human judgment to his own: “Now it is I who speak in judgment upon them” (4:11). The whole of the first part seems to rotate around these two questions: What fault do humans find in God, and what fault does God find in humankind? And overarching this question is the statement that God’s judgment is superior to ours; in fact, the whole theme of the first seven chapters is that humans misjudged even what would make them happy, “committing adultery with stone and tree” (3:9), and suddenly feeling fear like a woman in labor whose realizes too late that her midwives, which are the idols she worshiped, intend her great harm:

I heard a cry as of a woman in labor,
anguish as of one giving birth to her first child,
the cry of the daughter of Zion gasping for breath,
stretching out her hands,
“Woe is me! I am fainting before murderers.” 4:31

Very powerful.
I also read Freakanomics, which was assigned to me by Ben. I will post on this tomorrow. I have a few choice words….
And the work I’ve put the most time into, undoubtedly and for good reason, is Don Quixote.This book is fabulous! I highly recommend it to anyone. It’s really among the first modern novels, and set the stage for many other prose pieces afterward. Cervantes has a similar education to Montaigne and Shakespeare, and is especially like the latter in his comedic attempts. This book is laugh-out-loud funny in some parts, and I commend the translator, Edith Grossman, for allowing it to be so. I’m not yet done with this book, though. I have 591 out of 940 pages read. For a while I was at four chapters a day, but now that I’m working on my project for Ben I’m not able to manage it with my reading in Bible and Freakanomics-like assignments and articles online. I will try for two chapters a day. I really only have one thought after having read so much, and it's a confusion: I’m not sure if I’m a knight errant or if knights errant are the same thing as liberal arts majors. Time will tell. I hope to finish it before leaving Mississippi.
The second half of this post is dedicated to stuff that I want to read, but instead of writing lists, I’ll show them to you. There’s Ancient & Medieval Philosophy, Art and Arts, Bibles and Bible Study, Mathematics, Modern Fiction, Modern Non-fiction, Modern Philosophy/Commentary, Music, Poetry, Reference, Social & Political History, Teachings, Sermons, etc. My most recent additions have been to the Modern Fiction and Non-fiction lists, including some books recommended to me by folks down here. (I am an obsessive Amazon.com shopper.)
Blah, blah. Have a great weekend!

Another Note on Corporal Punishment

2008-06-27T17:01:00.001-05:00

This post on my other blog was really coincidental with current discussions among the Interns and another recent blog post. I just glanced at it again today and thought y’all might like to read it; it’s only tangentially related.

My Friday

2008-06-27T16:46:00.003-05:00

I had an odd start to my day today. It began with the alarm setting on my phone making an unprecedented decision to be uncooperative—that is, to not operate at all. Everything was set right: I had the same two alarms on that I have every other morning, one for 5:59 and the other 6:00, both ante meridian. I can’t explain it, so I won’t try to. I woke up at about 8:00 and sighed deeply when I saw the sun so high in the sky. I had missed the bus to summer school by over an hour. There was no way to get there now. It would have been my last day of work there. I sighed a few more times as I went to the kitchen to pour out my raisin bran cereal. While munching I, with much strain, resolved not to be angry. I called Ashton, told her that I missed the bus and would not be at work, called Ben, told him that I was coming to the School of Education instead of summer school, and took a shower. Afterward, I said my morning prayers, thanked the Lord, ended with, “Your will be done,” and walked to work.
Work at the SoE was alright. I spent some time editing a Wiki site formerly used by the MTC that has since fallen into disrepair. My current mission is the methodical removal of digital vandalism. I deleted more than 800 pages in the course of the day (which included a 3 hour break for lunch at Ben’s favorite, soon-t0-be-out-of-business restaurant in Oxford). This kind of work on the Wiki is somewhat enjoyable for me. Somewhat. It’s algorithmic: click here, click there, click there, Delete, Enter, … , click here, click there, click there, Delete, Enter. Of course, the downside is the boring effect of repeated tedium, but that was overwhelmed by my joy at my own sense of efficiency. When I’m “beating the system,” then I always feel some satisfaction; I, like my friend Eric, whose mastery of Rubik’s Cubes still leaves me stunned, was able to turn my work into a kind of game. I became so fast that I could actually do my work on one computer and browse Amazon.com simultaneously on the other without sacrificing anything. (Despite the warnings that we’re approaching the Singularity, the human mind in some ways is yet faster than the standard Windows machine.) The only unfortunate side effect, not including the browsing of books, is that such pattern-based mental and motor processes have the same after-effect as playing video games for long periods of time: I have a slight headache on the top of my brain and an intensified desire, like being thirsty while running a long distance, to write creatively instead of working on my project.
Blah, blah. Work is over now. This blog is done, and now I’m going to surf Amazon.com and write a poem or something. I plan to post more on my reading exploits tomorrow; I promise is might be interesting….

Board Games

2008-06-27T10:32:00.004-05:00

On Wednesday the Elite Eight had the privilege of meeting with Marian Barksdale, who spoke about her role on the School Board here in Oxford. It was a delightful interview. Oddly, I think I was the most talkative of the Interns, mostly because I was mystified by the whole realm that seems so far above what I’ve seen.
But it’s really not so far above. Mrs. Barksdale is not disconnected from the world of the students, not floating off in some management position with only numerical data to consider. In the last half-decade she has taken it upon herself to tutor a young man going through the schools in her district. Her involvement in this young man’s life has kept her grounded in the realities of the school district, the problems that plague many of the students, and the difficulties of being a teacher.
I found most humorous her description of the politics of being on the Board. Everywhere she goes, someone has to tell her something about their kid or the school or the sports teams. She says she now budgets much more time if she ever goes to buy groceries; she will, without a doubt, run into someone with a problem, a question, or a suggestion. Many people know her and are comfortable approaching her as a member of the Board because her children are in the school district. So some parents know her through her children, and they have that route of access to her. But as much as she does have friends in this respect, she confessed the great difficulty she has in telling them that she cannot help them if they ask her to do or say something beyond her mandate. It’s difficult for her to look at another parent, a friend, and tell them to go elsewhere to get their request accomplished: “No, I can’t help you, but you can call the teacher, the coach, and the principal….”
I was especially interested because of my sneaking suspicion that I would enjoy some of the work of school administrators. But it would be a lot different from working directly with the students. I also don’t know if I would be able to handle the political stress of it. The “office politics” that come with teaching seem like they could be difficult enough. And I really like to get in and out of the grocery store in a timely manner.
Aside from my own curiosities, I have gained a good deal of respect for this level of administration. I had never realized how difficult it could be, and what kinds of powers they really had.
One thing that I took away is the imperative, if I would become a teacher, to be involved with the School Board—not necessarily to be on the Board, but to attend the meetings and take note of their needs and plans. It just seems like something a teacher ought to do….

Some Thoughts on the Big Problem, or The MTC Exists Because This Problem Is So Difficult

2008-06-27T09:35:00.004-05:00

Matt Hopper, the only other dude among the Elite Eight, has a great post I think y’all should read. The following is a response to his post.

It’s a tough dilemma to sort. The most at-risk, poor, unattended students should have the best, most experienced, most innovative teachers. But they don’t, as Dan Brown states at the end of the videa. (This confirms Ben’s advisement to the Elite Eight to remove the word should from our vocabularies if we want to be successful in this crumbling education system. He did not mean to destroy any moral imperative, but only to prepare us for the frustration that awaits any idealistic, “should-based” mindset.) What should happen doesn’t happen, in this case. So I hear with full understanding Matt’s closing sentiment: “Please don’t tell me that because I don’t have 20 years experience in a successful Connecticut public school district, that I don’t belong in a classroom that desperately needs me”; there are classrooms that desperately need teachers, any teachers, and it’s unacceptable to dissuade any program or individual from meeting desperation head on.
And I simultaneously have another note to make this chord a little less stable in my mind. I keep thinking about time. Some of my favorite teachers were those who had been at it for years. They had been in that school for as long as anyone of my older peers could remember. They were veterans who had stayed in one place. I wonder if that steadfastness, that constancy in a single academic community, is what makes the best teachers really the best. And if that’s true, or if at least it heavily factors into their teacherly excellence, then the Should in the previous paragraph is not even true, let alone overly ambitious. If all the best teachers go to the high-needs schools, then what happens to the schools that once had the best teachers? We must send our inexperienced workers there. If we’re on the defensive (as Ben seems to assert—“this may well be a failed system”), then we only have so many soldiers to place at the fortifications, and if we move the veterans from one place, then we shall have to fill their slots with the weaker troops. Would the benefit accrued in one sector be worth the loss felt in another? What if moving our teachers to new posts doesn’t let them perform at their best? What if consistency, being a long-time member of a single community, is more important than, or is a multiplier of, individual talent?
(As a side note, the MTC doesn’t seem to me like it generates a lot of consistency. I have my suspicions that a lot of people have come through this program from wealthy, private, liberal arts colleges to inflate their résumé or to kill time after college and before going on to do “bigger” and “better,” and especially higher-paying, jobs. I can see the temptation myself. I have x dollars in loans to pay off, I’m not ready to pay them yet, I’ll get a loan deferment by enrolling in this program, and by the time my two years are up I can get myself a hot ticket somewhere with the big bucks. It’s not the MTC’s fault that this happens, but I mean to say that the people coming into the system aren’t helping anything if they come, under-qualified, to teach for two years and then scram when they only just begin to get the experience and technique that’s called for by people like Amy Wilkins.)
Back on topic, I’m not sure that there’s an easy solution to the good-teacher-in-bad-schools shortage. In a recent meeting I put forth the idea, purely for the sake of pondering, of mandatory job placement for services like teaching. Should we force the best teachers into these undesirable positions? The general consensus is Nay, but not undisputedly. Think Switzerland, think mandatory military service, for a likable example; think Soviet-controlled Ukraine, think nationalized agricultural slavery, for a less pretty picture.
Another possible solution is money. Ben is a proponent of increasing the economic incentive to come to these schools, but then you might have borderline schools cheating to appear as under-achievers to receive Federal or State funding to hire better teachers. And sometimes there’s no reasonable amount of money that will make a white, veteran teacher in New England charter school move to the Deep South to teach in an all-black, historically poorly performing public school.
Alternatively, I very subtly implied, unnoticed, a propagandist’s approach to the starving public/community/social service market. Right now, I generalize, “service” is largely regarded as a résumé-booster in high schools and colleges. I mean both unpaid and underpaid service. Students do it because scholarships and companies, especially political ones, like the look of it. “It shows you care,” or something. Various organizations like the National Honor Society perpetuate this thinking. But what if service wasn’t promoted as a means to an end, but an end in itself? We Interns recently were talking about financial, social, and moral incentives: What if we engendered in the youth of the nation a strong moral incentive to serve, to go into low-paying jobs like teaching? Right now there is financial incentive only inasmuch as it could lead to a better job, but there is no financial incentive for long-term service (few people really “move up” in the teaching world in the same way as in the corporate one). There is little social incentive anyway, because (as I have experienced strongly in my life) many are pressuring young people away from service, because it would be a “waste” of their house-buying, car-insuring, mortgage-paying, college debt-relieving talents. “Those talents need to be invested,” some say. Invested in a résumé, or in the lives of other people?
But my half-hearted socialist and propagandist suggestions wouldn’t really change the current system. What do you think? Is there a simple answer to the education crisis? Or are programs like the MTC only delaying the inevitable fall of poor public education systems? Is the answer found in socialistic education schemes, in indoctrination, in big government spending? Please shoot a response my way.

Corporal Punishment, or Ben May Beat Me If I Do Not Obey

2008-06-21T16:17:00.005-05:00

I think I’d rate corporal punishment as Hot Topic #5 among the Elite Eight, following poverty, literacy, classroom (in)equity, and racial discrimination. For all my readers in the North, I should mention that corporal punishment is not only legal but also encouraged in many Mississippi school districts. Growing up in a public high school in rural New York, where a teacher can be sued for striking a student (and a parent, also, can come under fire for striking their own child), I assumed that this was the American cultural norm; don’t touch your students, because someone somewhere will have a problem with it. Wrong. In Mississippi, corporal punishment is practiced throughout the entirety of public education, all the way up to senior year. We five of the Elite Eight who hail from the North were shocked when we learned this. I was the only one who expressed approval of the practice, whereas two or three others held that “are you cave men?” look on their face for probably a few days. In this disagreement, I have found something to satisfy Ben’s insatiable appetite for blog assignments.
Before continuing in a more thorough argument, I should preface this with some of my favorite parental advice, which may or may not apply to the classroom:

Do not withhold discipline from a child;
if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. Pr. 23:13 ESV

And now I will continue in the mode of Thomas Aquinas and the medieval university, because I’m in a humorous mood right now. I do seriously support corporal punishment, but I don’t seriously present this argument (and you will notice that I have provided no statistical evidence anywhere).

Question: Should corporal punishment be used in Mississippi public schools?

Article I.

Whether any one method is most effective for disciplining children/students.

Objection 1. Verbal communication is paramount. Not only does it communicate the desired behavior, but it trains children/students to listen and think critically about what is being communicated to them.
Objection 2. Furthermore, verbal communication should reinforce positive behavior. Children/students will react to praise in things that they do well and continue doing them.
Objection 3. Taking the previous two objection into consideration, they are effective but not nearly as effective as corporal punishment. Verbal communication is meaningless if not backed by power. Pain is a powerful deterrent for unacceptable behavior, and children/students react much more strongly to the threat of pain than anything verbal.

On the contrary: the laws of our society prescribe multifarious kinds and degrees of punishments for offenses and violations of laws, and yet all of this variety is contained within a systematic framework that aims to manage and modify the behavior of its citizens.

I answer that consistency is the most important aspect of a discipline scheme. Different environments have different stipulations for behavior and different resources for controlling or modifying that behavior. When a scheme, especially if reinforced by a cultural norm, calls for corporal punishment in a regular and systematized way, then there should be no aversion to the effective practice within that scheme. The scheme including corporal punishment is most effective when the children/students are verbally forewarned that corporal punishment is an option for the practitioner of the scheme. The supreme effectiveness of corporal punishment is not found in its use, but in that it often does not need to be used regularly on any child/student, because they are both verbally and experientially aware of the risk they take when violating the rules that warrant corporal punishment.
Furthermore, corporal punishment is rendered ineffective in inconsistent schemes. Emotional reactions of the practitioner cannot play into the practice of corporal punishment; it must remain a plain option like any other option that is part of the scheme, and be practiced in a way similar to all the other options.
The effectiveness of punitive or “positive” verbal communication is likewise dependent upon the consistency with which they are practiced, and require a detachment from the practitioner’s emotions.
And finally, the number of “successful” people coming from multifarious disciplinary schemes is evidence to show that no one method is most effective.
This is sufficient to reply to all three objections.

Article II.
Whether corporal punishment is acceptable when alternatives are available.

Objection 1. A survey of a group of people who never received corporal punishment would show that they turned out okay, and the alternative methods were successful in disciplining them and producing a successful citizen.
Objection 2. Furthermore, a survey of a group of people who received corporal punishment would show long-lasting negative side-effects, and many instances of abuse in the home and elsewhere.
Objection 3. Furthermore, corporal punishment has not been shown to be corrective in children/students, but only leads to a temporary fear of pain that dissolves when a child/student enters a new environment with a different disciplinary scheme.

On the contrary: “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Pr. 22:15).

I answer that corporal punishment is as effective as its alternatives under the conditions of a consistently enforced scheme (ref. Article I). Its effectiveness alone makes it acceptable. But the objections to its acceptability are often severe and very emotional, not looking toward results but toward some fundamental opinion about human nature.
The descriptions of the detrimental effects of corporal punishment, especially in abusive situations, often do not come from settings under the condition of a consistently enforced disciplinary scheme. Many people have negative emotional reactions when they reflect on corporal punishment because they have only seen it practiced in environments with negative emotional actions, lacking any real disciplinary scheme. But when it is practiced apart from emotion, those who underwent corporal punishment as children/students are often proponents of the practice, and they do not associate either positive or negative emotions with it.
Many people disagree with its uses because it is similar to those used on animals. They say “raising” children/students is different from “training” animals. They point not toward the effectiveness of modifying human behavior, but toward a philosophical disagreement with the notion of modifying human behavior. This, however, is utterly beyond the scope of this Article, and is also rejected because of the legal and practical necessity placed on parents and teachers, in whatever way and under whatever scheme, to manage and modify the behavior of their children/students.

Reply to Objection 1. Again, there is no single most effective method for disciplining a child/student (ref. Article I). The variety of options alone does not make corporal punishment unacceptable.
Reply to Objection 2. That survey is valuable, but it does not describe under what scheme the corporal punishment was practiced, and cannot therefore rule out the acceptability of its practice.
Reply to Objection 3. “The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother” (Pr. 29:15). Temporary fear of pain would be produced in an inconsistent environment, where the punishment was in a way random and lacks a scheme. But if corporal punishment is presented consistently in a cause-and-effect relationship, there is no need to have fear of pain before violating a rule, until the intention to violate the rule comes. And afterward, the cause-and-effect thinking, projecting consequences from initial actions, goes beyond the realm of corporal punishment to produce further discipline in the child/student outside of the older disciplinary scheme.

I guess this is only funny if you’ve slaved through many hours of reading Thomas Aquinas. Comments, questions?

Falling Short Again

2008-06-20T17:55:00.003-05:00

Ben really wants me to disagree with him, and I do plenty, but not in a way that I can write intelligently. As I wrote in my previous post, I tried three times to give some kind of persuasive presentation of something I disagreed with over the past few weeks, but I deleted all three. They were hypothetical disagreements; I wasn’t really attached to the outcome of the arguments, and one of them—arguing against Matt Alred’s (possibly facetious) claim that fractions shouldn’t be taught in core mathematics courses—was really petty and not very engaging. I also have no attachment to arguing over statistics that “prove” and “disprove” the benefits of standardized testing, or those that suggest whether public education should be entirely federalized. I would rather argue about the non-factor of statistical information on my worldview than try to persuade anyone about anything using these egregiously generalized and often cryptically suggestive data. I fear what I will become when I make the statistics the foundation of my thought. I was thinking about this recently while meditating on infinitesimals in the calculus (I’m still going through Comenetz’s book, which is quite good). When we measure things instrumentally, we conveniently neglect the inaccuracy of our measurements and smooth over the places where our instruments fail us. Likewise, infinitesimals allow us ignore the obscurity of those realms where our mind cannot penetrate, in the crevices between points in space, between zero and a positive number, where there is something utterly un-mathematical in the Greek sense of the word; and we reckon that those immeasurably small things measure up against each other enough to touch somehow, and so we smooth over the impossible places (that are not spaces) and quantities (that are not really like numbers at all) where our mind and imagination fail us. This meditation bounces back on my feelings toward statistical “knowledge” and “proof”: because our minds have a framework, a kind of law at work in them, we must adjust the input to suit our immense but limited intellects. Statistics are powerful tools, but only ever provide us with theory and conjecture because they smooth out a complex input to make it mentally useful. And this is not to mention the horrible error to be found in how often we abuse these data.
Now that I’ve ranted against the importance of statistics, it would be appropriate to ask myself how much I really do depend on them. How much have I let them set a foundation or a framework for my thought? Too much to write, so little time. Back to the assignment—to find a statement and disagree with it. I’ll try again tomorrow.

A Few Questions

2008-06-19T15:40:00.004-05:00

I have been talking with several teachers about what is fundamentally “wrong” with the curricula and structure of their classes. I’m not as much an activist as an idealist, and I’m trying to get a survey of two things when I engage in these conversations: (1) how my own notions and imaginative formulations are measuring up against others’ opinions got by means of experience; and (2) what problems and discrepancies are currently floating around among the teachers. Most of the teachers in the MTC are very conscious of what they don’t like, and very eager to talk about their own theories and creative solutions. I’ve talked with teachers about all kinds of things. I’ll give a few brief examples, highlighting some questions that fascinated me to give y’all a flavor of the conversations:

Cultural Literacy. Shakespeare and current rap music may have more in common than is normally assumed. Is it more helpful to introduce students to meter and rhythm by first studying rap music (RAP being originally an acronym for, surprise, rhythm and poetry) or by starting immediately with Shakespearean English, which is difficult enough lexically, let alone in the finer terms of rhythm and meter?
Inclusion of dialectical and idiomatic language in the English classroom. How helpful is “standard” English if it not presented as somehow contiguous with what students hear and speak day-to-day? Would it be more helpful to teach the “standard” in a similar way as a foreign language, so that students can “translate” between the two? How much creative talent for writing is suppressed by the suppression of dialectical and non-standard English? (I learned “standard” English in my eighth grade Latin class and again in my Attic Greek tutorial at college.)
Interdisciplinary approaches to mathematics. Mathematics these days has largely lost its status among what are called “the liberal arts,” which is often reserved only for “humanities” classes and especially not the sciences—much to my dismay, because of my fondness for finding the influence of mathematics on literature. Why is the logic and analysis of the English classroom presented without a relationship to those very same terms in, say, Algebra I? (Anyone would be hard-pressed to try to convince me that these two terms are used equivocally in the two different settings.)

These are conversations don’t have a persuasive tone, and so it’s easy to exchange ideas and obtain new questions from the teachers. Something to munch on.

On another note, Ben recently asked me to find someone with whom I disagree and write about that topic. I have found that I hold a vastly different mass of opinions from most of the teachers, some of the Interns, and usually Ben. Most of my disagreement doesn’t come out in conversation; I’m not too timid to share (my tutors at St. John’s have told me about how “strongly” my opinions are sometimes presented to them), but I’m very willing to defer to others’ experience, at least temporarily. Who could I choose? Should it be Ben? Should it be Matt? Should it be the Freakanomics guys? Should it be a hypothetical argument, or something I really hold dear? I have tried to write this part of the post three times now, and have failed to find anything satisfactory to tell you. I will report back tomorrow.

Summer Project

2008-06-17T15:54:00.004-05:00

While I’m making bread, brewing coffee, ringing bells, reading Don Quixote, tutoring, and generally learning everything, Ben has asked the Interns to pick a project for the summer. (Such a hard life! Καλεπά τά καλά, etc.) We’ve all been thinking about it for a while now, and I’ve set out my goals. I’m going to be researching media literacy education, focusing on the inclusion of print media into the 9-12 English curricula. The following is an outline of my overall project:

A short, informal, (philosophical?) paper:

Definition and articulation of media literacy education
Goals of media literacy education in K-12
Apology for the inclusion of print media, at least, into the high school English curricula

A portfolio:

Five 60 minute lessons plans, complete with relevant worksheets, references, and guides for adaptation; these will be designed to be taught together over one week, making a cohesive unit
Layout for a longer-term project assignment and suggestions for other kinds of assessment
A bank of references for media literacy and lesson plans

A presentation:

An overview of the paper
An overview of the print media unit
Template design for current news media, adaptable year-by-year

It’s an ambitious project. Honestly, I’ll be lucky if I get the lesson plans done, but I have some ideas swirling in my head. In a day or two, after more research, I’ll write about my paper’s key themes, which should illumine my interest and incentive for taking on this project. Until then, toodles.

My New Identity

2008-06-16T08:33:00.001-05:00

I wait in the wee hours of the morning. I walk to the Piggly-wiggly to buy milk when you least expect it. I hide in the cove near the school’s office. I live and breathe justice. Who am I? I’m Breadman.

Theatrics aside, I’ve been officially trained on Joe’s bread machine, and so now I make bread for the teachers in the morning. What will happen next?

Game Point

2008-06-14T15:52:00.005-05:00

I stole this photograph from Amanda’s blog. Yesterday afternoon, following a rainstorm, a bunch of the teachers and interns went out to the field of glory to test their powers against each other in “fierce and unequal combat.” I’ll refer you to her post for more photographs.
After the rabble cleared out, only Justin, Ryan, Parks, and I remained. We played a game of two vs. two, and it was a blast. Much to my surprise, I was tired at the end of it. Running around in the huge puddles of water was quite a workout.

Mr. Sweeney’s Henchman

2008-06-13T14:26:00.001-05:00

I’ve committed a grave injustice by not updating y’all on my experience at the MTC summer school in Holly Springs. For the past week I’ve been here under the direction of Joseph Sweeney, an alumnus of the Teacher Corps. Last year he was a language instructor in Japan, and now he makes an excellent example of what (I think) an administrator should be striving for. My praise doesn’t mean much on his behalf, I being so inexperienced on this side of things, but I can tell that his efforts are making this school work for both the students and the novice teachers. No joke: anyone who can cater to vegan teachers by making fresh bread (oil and soy-milk instead of butter and cow-milk) in the morning gets a medal of honor in my book, not because I think vegan diets are good but because I can tell that Joe is willing to go an extra mile for his faculty.
The summer school is a rare place. It functions as a kind of test site for the teachers in the MTC program. It is a genuine summer school, where kids sign up to take classes they failed or missed or need for some other reason. The difference between this school and another is that, for example, in the US History classroom there are seven teachers and one student, and in Biology I there are six teachers and five students. They alternate lessons. For the first-years, this is a very good system, because it gives them an opportunity to relax (a little) while they write up and deliver their very first lesson plans. Remember that these folks are not trained in education from their undergraduate schools, so they have all the hard stuff slammed in their face at once. The second-years and other first-years can support each other and dialogue about their work. And anyway, being underprepared with a group of people is way better than being underprepared alone!
My job is simple enough. I sit at the desk near the entrance and wait for Joe to tell me stuff. Often, teachers will walk by and ask me questions that I cannot answer, so I point them to Joe and make him (try to) reason with them. I also ring the period-bells. Joe wasn’t kidding when he said it was the most important job in the school. I am the one who holds the power to release students into the freedom of the hallway, a power that could wreak havoc in the whole school if abused. Works for me.
I might share some insights later, but this update will have to suffice for the time being. Toodles.

Some Ole Miss History, or Sometimes the South Makes My Head Hurt

2008-06-12T19:08:00.019-05:00

Last night I perused a condensed version of The University of Mississippi, A Sesquicentennial History by David G. Sansing given to me by Dr. Mullins. (Before I go on with a real commentary, I must say that I had never seen sesquicentennial used seriously before.) It’s an insightful account of Ole Miss, and a helpful one for a Northerner like me.
To preface my reaction to the text itself, I would say why it was helpful for me: I struggle altogether to understand the South. I have no doubt that my struggle comes from my life in the North. The root of the problem is in fact black and white (and by that I mean it’s plain to see).

I grew up in a hole of racial uniformity.
I learned in history and social studies classes that the American Civil Rights Movement ceased to move because it had won against the bigotry of our past. (Whether my teachers really taught me that is irrelevant, and I hold nothing against them for what my possibly faulty memory recalls.)
St. John’s College has, if it stretches as hard as it can, 8% minority students, which includes white Europeans I’m sure.
I’ve spent my last two years reading books by dead white guys, many of whom are by today’s standards considered to be bigoted, often sexist, some racist if they even mention non-white peoples at all. (Now, I don’t agree with that judgment against the College’s Great Books, but I do see how I have failed to expose myself to the critical issues specific to the American South.)

So these are the contributors to my problem of understanding, which has caused a notably awkward couple of weeks for me here at Ole Miss, where I have been bombarded with information about, for example, segregation, which I thought did not and could not exist in the United States.
History, it seems, is a mediator between ignorance and present reality. The overview of my perusal of the Sesquicentennial History will point to what helped to sooth the ache of ignorance in my soul. Here are some key points:

The War Between the States. The University was really founded in 1848 as a bastion of southern pride, whispering “the last enchantments of an earlier age.” Its founders hoped it could compete with schools in the North, so that white Southerners didn’t have to send their sons to other States that had foreign, insidious ideas about southern culture. When the War broke out a few decades later, the valuable programs it had established were diminished greatly, since many (or all?) of its students enlisted in the Confederate Army and left the campus. Then-Chancellor Frederick Barnard commented on his deserted campus, “Our university has ceased to have visible existence. We are inhabitants of a solitude.” But the War ended, and the students and faculty returned and “occupied the solitude.” After that Ole Miss grew greatly, and it kept with its strong affections for the Old South and those who fought in the War. A significant part of the culture was that the former students had fought for the preservation of a bygone way of life, as if the dignified voices from the Golden Age had still echoed among its white columns and verandas.
Sports. Now, I understand that college football is an important thing for Southerners, but I hadn’t realized how much of an impact it had on the University’s struggle throughout the Civil Rights Movement. The legendary football coach John Vaught thought that the excellent performance of his team saved Ole Miss during “the Meredith Crisis.” Perhaps indeed it was the love of the game that prevented Ross Barnett, then-Governor of Mississippi, from closing the school in 1962, since that year the team went undefeated, produced two All-Americans, won the SEC championship, and beat Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl; if not his love for the team, then at least the undying adoration of the Ole Miss alumni, who petitioned constantly, kept the University open.
“The Meredith Crisis.” What more can be said about James Meredith’s story at Ole Miss? About two hundred feet from where I type out this post is a statue of him walking through a gate labeled COURAGE, KNOWLEDGE, OPPORTUNITY, and PERSEVERANCE. It’s a checkered story. Obviously, the resistance posed to his admission and the need for the Federal Government’s intervention is a notable scar on the University’s image. The real culture of the University, however, has suffered from a negative portrayal of that time. In defense of the Ole Miss alumni Sansing writes,
Some students did riot on the eve of Meredith’s admission, but the president of the student body and the elected editor of the campus newspaper condemned their actions. Some students did harass Meredith, but others befriended him. More than sixty Ole Miss faculty and staff put their livelihoods at risk when they publicly defended the federal marshals against the charge that they had caused the riot.
With the drastic changes that cut through the campus in the decades to follow Meredith’s graduation, the University dissociated itself from the Confederate flag and changed its official mascot, which had been Colonel Rebel. The symbols connecting it to a bygone era, while not forgotten, are no longer seen as the real face of Ole Miss. Chancellor Khayat is quoted as saying, “The enduring symbols of Ole Miss are the lives of its graduates and the mark they make in the world,” instead of the faded allusions to lost world.

This is only coming from a brief and condensed, and somewhat apologetic, history of Ole Miss. But I find it compelling me to think about the South in general: how it sees its own past, how difficult it is for some of its people to see a future so different from that past, how much some have fought to make the future different. As I come up against a barrage of “new” information about the current struggles in Mississippi, the stress of it is eased a bit to know some of this State’s past. To know where it has come from is necessary to know where it is going. If I look at the South as a static dot on a map, I could despair at its condition. But if I see the line of its progress, I am encouraged when I extrapolate the possibilities of its next years; what seems bleak and harsh is suddenly transformed into a bright view of a new era.

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

2008-06-10T19:08:00.001-05:00

Sitting down with W. Tucker Carrington, a former public defense attorney in D.C. and professor at Georgetown University Law Center, was a very informative experience. Currently, he is the Executive Director of the Mississippi Innocence Project. MIP, like similar ones in other States, concerns itself with investigating old cases in which there may have been false convictions. MIP is not exclusively interested in falsely convicted people, but in anyone who has been poorly served by the public defense system or other areas of the criminal justice system. Among their most publicly celebrated programs is, of course, their ongoing fight to exonerate falsely convicted people with the new techniques developed in DNA testing. Since its inception in 2007, MIP has been responsible for four exonerations, which can be read about here. Furthermore, The (national) Innocence Project has a hand in almost 200 such exonerations in the past decade. It’s a really unique and stunning program, not only because of the success stories.
Most intriguing to me about Mr. Carrington’s talk was not the stories of exonerations, but of the discoveries associated with those cases in the criminal justice system. This organization has a knack for finding that false convictions are not mere aberrations, but can be serially linked by an underlying problem. Mr. Carrington didn’t mention any of them explicitly, but I can imagine a few that Mississippi may have. Reading through the cases that I linked above might illumine for y’all what I’m getting at.
It’s exciting to see falsely convicted people go free. It’s also intriguing for me to hear about people pushing for legislation to try to prevent the past calamities. One example of such legislation being put forward by MIP is that which would require the search for and preservation of DNA material in a police investigation, because currently in Mississippi a police officer is not at all required to secure this kind of forensic evidence in an initial investigation.
As has been a common theme among those that the Elite Eight have interviewed, Mr. Carrington points at poverty as a major culprit in these cases. The demographic has peculiar details, but what’s almost universal among the cases of exonerated people is that they came from situations of poverty. Being in poverty often means that they’re uneducated about how they should be treated by the criminal justice system, especially the public defense lawyers, or on the side they have dealt too often with the criminal justice system to trust it to do its work well.
I don’t have many thoughts on all this, mostly because it’s so new to me. I think it’s a valiant effort to work on behalf of innocent men and women in the prisons, but I’m not really sure what’s at stake in the questions regarding future policy and the development of the criminal justice system to correct some of the old problems.
It holds the question of poverty as tightly as programs like the Teacher Corps. How might MIP be linked with MTC? (Amanda is doing a project on this and other topics, by the way.) Is there a way for schools to play a part in correcting the problems found in people who are undereducated about the legal system?