| Monday
March 21, 2005
Hail the Vernal Equinox
Note that there was considerable
discussion in MAIL
over the weekend.
Changing Education
For days I have been wrestling with the question you
(and Bill Gates) posed about changing high schools. I have had some spirited
debates with my spouse who was arguably much better educated than I was in
high school. He is five years older and grew up on the West Coast in Orange
County, while I grew up outside of Syracuse, NY.
He studied among other things, the history of
California. I studied the history of NY. He knows about the Erie Canal. I
know about the Gold Rush.
We both hold high school diplomas.
This leads me to the following thoughts. Before we can
have a discussion about how to change high school, we have to decide what is
important for students to learn during those years. What should be the goal
of public eduation? In a very inept way, I think this is part of what No
Child Left Behind is suppose to address.
The variables to consider in the case of public
education are enormous. Can we have a one-size fits all education system?
Some people argue yes, but fail to remember, for example, that schools are
filled with special needs children these days who a couple of generations
ago were either in special schools, at home, or institutionalized.
The impact of special interest groups on the
educational system is enormous.
Here in New Jersey, a school district decided not to
close next year for the Jewish holidays. There was an enormous outcry from
the Jewish community in the district, followed by calls from the Muslim
community to close in recognition of their holidays, and a request to close
for Asian New Year and the Indian celebration of Dawali! The Christians,
these other groups note, get vacation time for Christmas and Easter.
Then there are the curriculum issues. Do you know that
in the State of NY, for example, studying the potato famine is required
because a group of Irish constituents leaned on legislators to pass such a
regulation? Again, here in NJ, health curriculums mandate the study of
suicide, cutting behavior, and sex education in the 7th and 8th grades
whether kids are emotionally ready or not.
My biggest challenge as a teacher, and now a
homeschooling mom, is history. There's so much of it. How does one pick and
choose what is important? And whose history do we teach? The Holocaust is
undoubtedly a dark chapter in human history, but not the only incidence of
genocide on a large scale. So then, should we teach about the concept of
genocide and cite examples, or should we teach exclusively about the
Holocaust leaving the impression among high school students that that was
something that happened in the past and happens no longer?
We can't possibly teach children every piece of
history. As my ten-year old pointed out the other day, "We make history
everyday mom, how can I learn it all?"
For her, a lot of history is being taught through art.
She loves to draw. We have learned that a lot of what society knows about
the history of mirrors was learned through examining artwork, for example.
Right now we are reading a new book titled Chasing Vermeer. We have spent
time learning about Delft, Vermeer, and Vermeer's artwork. The book also has
a character who loves pentominoes, so we have been playing with those too as
we read the book. Actually, I have never read such an interactive piece of
fiction! We have had to decode messages. We have puzzled out rectangles with
the pentominoes, and we are trying to discover the hidden messages in the
illustrations. This book is packed with learning!
But I digress.
Questions about how to teach math and science have
also plagued educators. I have always hated the fact that we separate areas
of study as if we never need math in science, or have to read in math. And,
as soon as educators label something Science or Math, it gets the kiss of
death. Do you think a kid would mess around with pentominoes if he or she
thought it was Math?
But truly the biggest problem in schools today is not
learning, but socialization. In the absence of a focus on and a desire for
learning, kids have been allowed to create subcultures that are quite
harmful. For example, a recent incident at a high school in Maryland found
one girl piercing the tongues of two other girls with a nail (as in hammer
and nail), in a school bathroom, during the day. There was apparently blood
everywhere (caught red-handed!) and the school district is in a quandary
about how to discipline these students.
While as a society we have closed institutions for the
psychiatrically ill and for those with disabling conditions, we have chosen
to build bigger schools; schools that are more impersonal, harder to
monitor, and allow students to run the place. Where's the learning curve?
As this email progresses, I have yet to even address
issues like teacher certification, poverty, language barriers, harassment,
and bullying. And then there is entertainment. Kids have so much to
entertain themselves with that dealing with a human being seems boring. When
I teach I often talk to students about their multi-tasking behaviors. They
are so used to sitting in front of a TV while computing, talking on the
phone, eating, you name it, that they have not learned the skills of
interpersonal communication. I tell my students that I am not a television
and I get offended when they talk while I am talking, something the TV never
complains about, I'm sure!
Personally, as I watch all the college-educated
managers lose their jobs around here, I believe my children will be best
served by having manual skills along with their college education. If they
can learn to cut hair, groom animals, lay bricks, whatever, they will always
have a skill they can use to put food on the table.
Day after day our society feels as though it is in a
freefall and I, for one, have no idea where we will land. Our kids are a
mess because they are essentially warehoused all day, sometimes starting at
the age of 6 weeks, while parents make money to own that Mercedes or
McMansion.
And, like you, I don't believe more money is the
answer. The Princeton Regional Schools System is one of the wealthiest in
this state. The teachers are among the highest paid for the 180 days they
are in the classroom. The system is a disaster, and the teachers openly
admit that they can't reach all the children.
Our society is adrift in so many ways.
Thanks for opening this conversation on education.
Best wishes,
Sue Ferrara, PhD
I would say the one certainty is that
a local school board has a chance of perceiving priorities in a proper
manner; while the chances of getting priorities straight through creation of
huge regional, state, or national school boards approaches nil.
And see below
a
Subject: Visual Basic
Dr Pournelle,
I read with interest your correspondents loathing of Visual Basic. I am
fairly convinced that VB was one of the reasons that Windows became the 'de
facto' environment for a lot of businesses, instead of the Mac, or some *ix
system.
The ability for a small to medium sized business to create a stand alone
application just can't be underestimated.
I've been an IT Professional now for over 10 years, and I've seen
appalling code written in VB, and in "Office" macros. However I've also seen
some well structured and maintained code written in VB.
Given a dedicated programming team, with experience, then VB may not be
the language of choice, its not "cool". However there is a lot of industries
where computer experience is not part of the job, its just a tool.
I'm aware of quite a few Visual Basic 3 applications, still in daily use
by large companies, as they solve the problem. They still work on Windows
3.1, but also work without problem on XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003. Pretty
impressive.
I've been involved in the deployment of Java based applications in the
last two years, and I'm amazed that this great language is completely
hamstrung by the need to run pseudo interpreted. The only way to get the
benefit of more than one processor is to run duplicate copies of an
application. Client side Java applications are not able to use OS
conventions and thus end up with annoyed users.
Microsoft should have ported VB6 to the Mac and Linux, they would have
made a lot of money...
James Chamier Hampshire, UK
We are in substantial agreement.
==================
Subject: Schiavo, Federal Case?
Sir,
your point is well taken, and I'm sorry I didn't
address it earlier. The Florida Supreme Court found that the Governor's
legislative attempt (Terry's Law) was in violation of the FLORIDA
constitution, not the US Constitution, so it has always been a state issue.
I'm linking to the decision.
http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/pub_info/summaries/briefs/04/04-925/Filed_09-23-2004_Opinion.pdf
bryan
But that too is an interpretation matter: unless
the Florida Constitution explicitly allows its courts a sovereignty that
most state courts do not have --
That is, although we in the US are accustomed to
take Marbury vs. Madison as settled law, it was not so prior to the Civil
War, and is largely validated by conquest. Not trusting to such, the
Reconstruction Congress put Congressional right to enforcement of the
Reconstruction Amendments in the Amendments themselves.
It is not a settled matter that state courts have
any right to declare state laws invalid. Moreover, if the Florida
legislature decided to impeach the judge on that matter, it would be within
its power. Legislative supremacy is the usual presumption of democratic
states; the "checks and balances" of the US Constitution are in part
accepted because of the Federal, i.e. confederate, nature of the Union,
which was a union of sovereign states.
In that sense it remains a state matter, and
perhaps it should remain so, but I do not see this as quite so cut and dried
as you do. On the other hand, we are in agreement that this ought to be a
state, not a Federal matter. I do believe, though, that while the
Congressional ploy of subpoenaing Terri was an odd and overly legalistic use
of the Federal power of Inquisition, it was technically legal, and the House
would be within its rights to send a Sergeant at Arms to arrest the judge
for contempt and throw him into the District of Columbia jail for the
duration of this Congress (but no longer). It is a seldom used power that
arose again in Reconstruction, but it is a power held by each of the Houses.
The Congress is the Grand Inquest of the Nation, and part of that power is
the power to protect the objects of its inquisitions. A novel use of the
power in the case of a person incapacitated, but not unprecedented as a
means of providing Federal protection to witnesses and potential witnesses.
I had more to say on that
in View last week.
I can't resist adding one more reference, which
says about what I have been saying:
Subject: Prosecuting the torturers.
http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200503201334.asp
-- Roland Dobbins
Excerpt: Where
does it say, under Florida law, that a judge has the power to authorize the
commission of felony violations of the law? A judge manifestly had no power
to tell Michael Schiavo and the hospice that they could feel free to shoot
or hang or over-medicate Terri to death. Why in the world do we think he had
the cognate power to permit a torture?
I find that question compelling. If there is no
right to order death by shooting or hanging, how is there a right to order
death by thirst?
================
Subject: YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK
http://www.bankstocks.com/weblog.asp
*YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK ON THE DAY AFTER ST.
PATRICK'S DAY:* Zach, heading out of town, pages from the airport: "The
security lines are the longest I have ever seen. The reason: most of the
agents called in sick. The real reason: they are all hung over."
Don't know if this is true but seems reasonable to me
!
Tom Slater
No data, but don't we all feel safer?
And on that score,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/17/nmoped17.xml&sSheet=/
news/2005/03/17/ixhome.html
==========
Subject: Groundhog Day.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/03/21/12FEfbi_1.html
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/03/21/12FEfbi_2.html
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/03/21/12FEfbi_3.html
http://www.infoworld.com/infoworld/img/12FEfbi_in.gif
-- Roland Dobbins
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so
little useless information.
-- Oscar Wilde
============
Subject: Re: Whither the
ebook reader?
Jerry,
Imagine you're a schoolteacher in, say, 1959. A time
traveler from 2005 arrives, and is questioned about the future. In the
conversation, the following is learned:
In 2005, an object about the size of a paperback book
can be made, for each child, for the cost-to-manufacture of about 18 loaves
of bread. This object can be hooked to another costing each school district
the equivalent of about 100 loaves of bread, and a selection of any of about
50,000 classic books of science and literature from the Greeks throughout
history up to about 1920, absolutely free, including Melville, Dickens,
Twain, Swift, Rousseau, Voltaire, all versions of the Bible in any language
you wish - in short every child could have an inexpensive object to carry
with them anywhere, which could contain within it basically ALL OF THE
WORLD'S LITERATURE. It would be portable, as easy on the human eye as a
book, and could survive most casual accidents, and bumps, short of being
thrown off a building, being forcibly held underwater,or burned... And it
could probably be powered by the sun, a rechargable battery, or both.
The 1959 schoolteacher might say that truly 2005 must
be a Utopia, with every child able to have such a thing to use. Then the
teacher is informed that, well, they tried it and it's not very popular and
the kids wouldn't read that "stuff" anyway, and it might take away from the
profits of the large entertainment industries, and that, well, nobody really
makes anything like this anymore in 2005.
And that accredited institutions could write textbooks
for various projects like this, referred to as "open source," and schools
could use essentially free textbooks. But that isn't done because of the
pulp and paper lobbies and big textbook corporations.
Oh, there are devices that COULD do this, but they
cost about 10 times as much, they aren't really promoted for that use, they
are really kind of fragile, and, well, they really aren't made for reading
text, anyway. See, there's not really much of an interest in that sort of
thing. And only the fairly well-off kids can afford them. But they don't
want them. Nobody is really interested at all.
The teacher from 1959 would be heartbroken.
As sometimes I am too.
Project Gutenberg.
http://www.gutenberg.org/
Russ Newsom
Well, let's see. Google "price loaf bread" and find
bread offered at $2.25/loaf, so $45 or so for the reader, and $225 for the
server that connects to the Internet and brings in the books. Specification
was "manufacturing cost" and this doesn't seem out of line, although I am
not sure what device I could actually buy now for $50 that would do the job.
Still, if we set out as a goal to provide such for every child, we could
probably do it.
Population of US is about 300 million (it was 140
million when I was in 7th grade civics and required to learn it), and about
25% will be under age 18 or school age, so 75 million units needed, or about
$3.9 billion. The Department of Education budget is something about $50
billion a year. My guess is that actually providing everyone under age 18
with a device like this, connected wirelessly to servers, would be under $10
billion at most including an endowment to keep it operating -- and that it
would do more good than the entire Department of Education. Say as good as
half of it. Thus saving $25 billion a year, year after year, and providing
education opportunity to anyone who tants it; making home schooling
possible; etc. etc.
Of course home schoolers have this capability
available more or less now. And see below
===========================
Subject: Frank's Compulsive
Guide To Postal Addresses
http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html
Jerry - if you're like me it's likely that you have
needed this web site at least once or twice in your life. Frank da Cruz,
from Columbia University in New York, has written what he calls Frank's
Compulsive Guide To Postal Addresses.
What this does is tell you the proper way of writing
the postal address for every country in the world. And boy, are there ever a
lot of variations.
Not only is this guide exhaustive and engrossing, it's
actually downright entertaining, with asides and jokes scattered throughout,
and even items of historical interest. Trust me, if you're the least bit
curious you'll lose at least three quarters of an hour here.
Barry Rueger http://www.threesquirrels.com
Fascinating
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