Lift Up Your Hearts!

While chatting with the dental hygienist yesterday, I learned about a science project that had been assigned to her fifth-grade son: Each student was assigned a "body system"—perhaps circulatory, digestive, respiratory, etc.; I didn't get the details—and told to make up a game using questions about that system.  At first glance that seems reasonable, perhaps even interesting. Games are not a particularly efficient way to learn facts, but they can be an enjoyable way of masking the repetition that is required to commit them to memory.  Certainly making up the questions is a good exercise.

However, the amount of time and effort required for this project was 'way out of proportion to the science knowledge gained, most being devoted to extraneous matters:  the game must have a well-made game board, with a detailed, typed instruction sheet, and a sturdy, well-decorated box.  Such a project might be a joy for some students but torture for their less-crafty classmates—and to what purpose?  Whatever one might think of the merits of training fifth graders in manual dexterity and design, it seems unfair to base a science grade on such work, and in any case one ought not to pretend that it is science that is being taught.

This assignment is yet one more example of how those who claim they don't have enough time to teach properly waste the students' time with busywork.  Craft projects instead of science, PowerPoint presentations instead of written reports, browsing the Internet for images instead of writing paragraphs, and tweaking fonts and backgrounds instead of improving sentence structure!  It's bad enough when a teacher allows a student to get away with such nonsense; to require it is ludicrous.

My theory is that the teacher in question is using her students as slave labor to create classroom materials for future years, so I encouraged the hygienist to make sure the project comes home after it has been graded. 

The end month of Porter's recent gig was very stressful, with lots of pressure and 80+ hour work weeks.  My father often said that his favorite Bible quotation was "And it came to pass...."  This, too, has passed at last, and we have survived.  Many thanks to those of you who upheld Porter in your prayers.

If anyone wants a measure of how stressful the time was, I need only say that he has spent several days recently working on replacing a neighbor's roof, and some of you remember that two years ago—after replacing ours—he said he'd never, ever do that again. But this is how he chooses to relax these days, finding the physical work a delightful change.

So, onward!  Two days in Roanoke, then who knows?  It's always an adventure. 

Picture this:  During the upcoming Olympics, the second place finisher of a big race suddenly collapses and dies.  Nonetheless, the crowd still celebrates with the winner, and the medal ceremony takes place as if nothing had happened.  It's a tragedy, sure, but that's life, that's sport, and nothing should take away from the winner's glory.

That's not as far-fetched as it might seem.  We don't like to rain on anyone's parade.  No one seems anxious to boycott this year's Olympics, despite China's blatant and unrepentant violation of human rights and international law.  We don't want to hurt our athletes, and that's understandable.  Still, there was a time when celebrations were set aside in the face of tragedy, such as the wedding of my mother's cousin, for which, as the newspaper announcement put it, "nuptials were quiet owing to the late bereavement in the home."

Horses are not people, but the death of Eight Belles, the brave filly who finished second in today's running of the Kentucky Derby, then collapsed with two compound fractures of her front legs and had to be euthanized immediately, will put a damper on the post-race celebrations.  Or at least it should.

When I was in Pittsburgh, we bought some dried pineapple at Trader Joe's, and it was very, very good!  Thus when I saw the same at my local health food store, I snapped it up.  Did I say it was the same?  Not.  Even thought the label did not mention added sugar, this pineapple must have been sweetened, as is the dried pineapple I can buy at the grocery store.  Yuck.  I couldn't eat it, so I cooked it with some dried apricots to make a fruit topping for my breafast muesli.

Not to be defeated, however, I set about making my own dried pineapple out of canned pieces (rings work best) heated in a low-temperature oven.  Voila!  Wonderful!  Delicious!  The only trouble is that a can of pineapple shrinks to something so small—and so tasty—one could easily devour an entire batch in one sitting.  (One didn't, but it was a close thing.)

The acoustics in our house are such that the sound from the television is loudest in every room except the one in which the TV resides.  Perhaps that is not literally true, but to those trying to work or sleep while someone else watches television, it certainly seems that way.  Hence our joy when Porter's "thank you award" came from IBM:  a set of wireless headphones.

Fortunately, there was no need to understand in detail the instructions, which contained several gems.

This wireless headphone is worked based on optical-electricity transition.

Well, of course.  What else would it be worked based on?

Thanks to Tim at Random Observations for alerting me to this interesting commentary on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.  The book and the movie derived from it have formed our national image of the Depression and the Dust Bowl.  The trouble is, that's a false impression.  Like Amadeus and Braveheart, The Grapes of Wrath tells a good story based on historical events, but without letting the truth get in the way of the narrative.

Someone with a solid knowledge of the historical situation might be able to imbibe the story without harm, but the rest of us, unfortunately the majority, are learning history through these media, and learning it wrong.  We're left with a mish-mash of fact and fiction we may never sort out, and upon which we will unconsiously base our philosophical, political, social, and moral decisions.

Whoever said (I've seen various attributions), "Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws," might just as well have been speaking about its popular books, television shows, and movies.  The only antidote besides a healthy (uncynical) skepticism is a solid grounding in history, preferably from several viewpoints.  Mea culpa; my own knowledge of history is abysmal, and I did not do much to help our children achieve more.  But if I were designing a home eduation program now, the tripod on which I would rest the entire academic program, beginning from the earliest stages, would be: language, mathematics/logic, and history.  Those who are strong in these three areas will not easily be duped.

On rare occasions I have the opportunity to hear National Public Radio's Car Talk program, which I find amusing as well as informative, which is saying something since I have little interest in cars beyond their usefulnes in getting me from Point A to Point B.  (Okay, so I make an exception for a certain Ford GT, but that has more to do with the people involved than the car itself.)  The shows usually feature a "Puzzler," which since it involves cars often leaves me clueless.  But every once in a while (well, twice) there has been one that I have solved almost instantly, which of course makes me feel great.  Thus the inspiration to share them with you all.  The first was many years ago, and the second I heard today, so you can gather from that how good a Puzzler puzzler I am, or perhaps how often I hear the show.  For a hint, I can say that my ability to solve them both so quickly was due to personal experience with the situations involved.

Puzzler #1

Puzzler #2

Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices is a New York Times article about research at Ohio State University that may have profound implications for the teaching of mathematics to young children.  Unfortunately, just what those implications may be is completely obscure to me, as it is, I daresay, to the researchers.

I've written before (here, and here) about my belief that many children can learn abstract math concepts much earlier than is commonly supposed, and do not need to be limited to practical, real-world mathematics until they reach Piaget's magical age of abstract thinking.  So I suppose I should have been pleased to read about a study that purports to show that children actually learn mathematical concepts better through abstract symbols than they do through practical examples.  Not so; I'm also a fan of practical math, and believe both to be important.  In any case, it's hard to draw any conclusions one way or the other from this research—or at least from the Times report.

In the experiment, students were taught a mathematical concept either through abstract symbols or through concrete examples such as combining liquids in measuring cups.  They were then asked to apply that knowledge to figure out the rules of a game.  Those who had learned the concept abstractly did better at that application than those who had learned through the concrete examples, and also better than those who had been taught first the concrete examples and then the abstract ones.  Supposedly the real-world examples actually obscured the underlying math.

I'm going to break the post here, because some of you will want to look at the puzzle yourselves before reading about my experiences.  I strongly encourage you to read the article, but if you don't do that, at least follow the link and click on the link in the upper left under "Multimedia" that will show you the problems.  (It's a javascript pop-up, and I can't figure out how to insert it here without offending someone's copyright.)  Then click the "more" link after this paragraph to continue reading this post. (More)

Okay, so it may not generate any cash income, but my status as a blogger has earned me a free, one-year subscription to the Encyclopedia Britannica online!  Many thanks to Groshlink for the alert.  I'm grateful for the existence of Wikipedia, the hare in the online encyclopedia race, because of its wide-ranging, rapid-response (if not necessarily dependable) fluidity, but the opportunity to be able to access, and link to, a steady, reliable tortoise like the Britannica is not to be missed.

The application site has been swamped, it is claimed, but my blog was approved for the free account in less than 24 hours.  Try it with your blog, before they change their minds!

With polygamy in the news these days, it seems a good time to report on my discovery of one of our stranger cousins. Fourth cousin five times removed to both Porter and me (through different lines), Aaron Johnson, born in 1806, the tenth of the thirteen children of Didymus and Rahuna (Stephens) Johnson, was just another name in my genealogical database, discovered during a convoluted search for the ancestors of Stephen Johnson, husband of Lucina Burr (sister of Porter's great-great-great grandmother) whose grave we found last summer in a small cemetery in Haddam, Connecticut. (More)

It's easy to dismiss the Yearning for Zion Ranch as a collection of kooks, but even kooks have rights in this country, or should. Innocent chidlren, especially, should have their rights firmly protected, including the right not to be torn from their homes without clear and compelling evidence of immediate danger.  Yet the State of Texas has abused the children of the Yearning for Zion families in just that way, on the strength of one anonymous phone call accusing one man of abusing his 16-year-old wife.  Over 400 children were turned over to strangers, subjected to medical examinations, and even though there was no evidence of abuse have still not been allowed to return home.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (not to be confused with the "mainline" Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly called Mormons) certainly is bizarre, and if they are forcing people to marry against their wills (underage or not), if they are breaking the laws of Texas, they are in the wrong.  But living in an isolated community, wearing old-fashioned clothing, and teaching one's children that obedience is a godly virtue are not crimes, no matter how odd they might seem to mainstream America.  If the laws against underage marriage have been broken, let them be investigated and prosecuted with due process, not with hysteria and actions that will forever scar young lives.

"Laws against underage marriage."  Hmmm, I wonder where the activists are?  The ones who think it's so natural for children to have sex that they're pushing for condom distribution in middle schools?  The ones who insist 13-year-olds need access to abortions—without parental consent or even notification?  It's okay for young teens to be sexually active and have abortions, but not okay for them to marry and have children?  Now that's what I call a bizarre belief system!

Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer story about Diane Goslin is a good summary of, or introduction to, Pennsylavnia's home birth problems. Such struggles are not limited to Pennsylvania, but are a good example, like the recent California homeschooling crisis, of how rights and practices that we have relied on for years—centuries!—in our country can be stripped away in an instant if not specifically written into our laws. I don't blame midwives, like the one who assisted with the deliveries of Noah and Jonathan, for fearing that legislation will bring more restrictions rather than fewer. That's what homeschoolers feared 30 years ago, when the modern home education movement was going through its own birth pangs; in some ways they were right, but when society's attention makes it no longer possible to stay under the radar, the protection of the law becomes necessary.

The concern of the U.S. Supreme Court for the religious freedom of the Amish (Wisconsin v. Yoder) was a significant force in the eventual acknowledgement of the rights and responsibilities of all families in the matter of their children's education, though as California has proved, we must be ever vigilant. The wisdom of the serpent is a complement, not a contradiction, to the harmlessness of the dove.  May the Amish also succeed in establishing recognition of the parents' rights and responsiblities when it comes to the birthing of those children!

The Story of an Experiment is another interesting story from Perla (see previous post), which she posted to support her contention that children should not be taught arithmetic, except as connected with real life experiences, until they are at least ten years old.  I write about it here, not because I agree with her, since I most emphatically do not, but because the story nonetheless makes some excellent points.

In the early 1930s the superintendent of schools for Manchester, New Hampshire tried an experiment—several experiments, actually.  Essentially, he abandoned math as it was taught in the elementary schools, and concentrated instead on language and logic:  reading, reasoning, and speaking, with arithmetic introduced only as it came up in the course of the rest of the studies.  The results, as he reports them, were spectacular, with the "new curriculum" students far exceeding the abilities of their traditionally-taught age-mates, even in mathematical reasoning, and where they were behind (in basic arithmetic manipulation) they caught up quickly when formal study was introduced in sixth grade. (More)

I can hardly count Perla Adams my friend, since we met online and I only visit her blog occasionally.  It's in my feedreader, but the posts and comments in Spanish get ignored.  I'm not proud of my monolingualism, but must deal with it.  Still, I'm not sure how to speak of her in this introduction.  "Internet acquaintance"?  "Fellow blogger?"  Nothing sounds quite right.  Anyway, this delightful person, of whatever label, recently wrote a post (in English) that provoked me to comment, and when I write that much I usually can’t resist sharing in more than one place, i.e. what I’ve written ends up here.  You can find Perla’s original post on her blog, The Classical Mommy.  (That's actually her main site, with all sorts of interesting things.  The post on math is here.)  My response, with a few modifications, is below. (More)

High Tide in Tucson, by Barbara Kingsolver.  (HarperCollins, 1995)

My sister-in-law gave me this book about a year ago.  I started it on vacation, but didn't get very far before we returned home and it got lost in a pile in my office.  That turned out to be a happy accident:  I'm not sure I would have finished it had I not been prepared by Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  I love the way Barbara Kingsolver writes; as I said about the first book, even if I had found the subject dull—which I didn't—I would have enjoyed reading it. (More)