Context
Colleagues of my husband's are expecting a baby in August, so we went to a shower for them today. In the course of talking with the man of the couple, I had two disagreements with him strong enough that I felt the need to walk away rather than say something ugly.
Commentary
I like to argue, or at least, I like to debate issues. I'm one of those people who will say things I don't even believe just to make sure the person I'm talking with is considering all possible viewpoints.
For me, the ideal person to debate with is someone who is either equally powerful to me or more powerful in the current situation, because I don't want to oppress someone with my argumentativeness. I also want the person to have an intellect I respect, because then I feel like I can incorporate their reasoning into my future understanding of the issue.
So I'm distressed at a trait I've recently discovered in myself when I'm talking with a person I consider reasonably intelligent. If we disagree about something important to me, there's a good chance I'll reassess the other person's intelligence, rather than my opinion. It doesn't happen all the time, but it feels like an extra inappropriate hurdle I'm making people get over before I'll listen to them respectfully.
What did you hear today?
5/23/2011
I heard a child yelling
Context
My house is adjacent to a city park, and as such I get to hear a lot of what goes on out there. Today I heard a child yelling in the park, and as often happens, I couldn't tell if he/she was in distress and if so, whether that distress required my attention. I let it slide and continued on my way to the dry cleaners.
Commentary
For various reasons, not the least because I used to be a Girl Scout and I have my Emergency Preparedness pin, I'm usually quite willing to jump into emergency situations. Car wreck? I'm calling 911, directing traffic, and holding the victim's hand (not at the same time). Turtle crossing the road? I'm jumping out of my car and carrying him across. Hey, you define "emergency" your way; I'll define it mine.
On the other hand, over time I've become much more cautious about getting involved in volatile interpersonal interactions, which are usually what's going on if I hear one person yelling in the park. If someone falls off the slide, I'll usually hear several people yelling, so I know to run out there. But one voice gives me pause.
As I said, this has happened over time. I used to interpose myself in personal conflicts with great glee, confident that I knew exactly what to do. This has changed for several reasons:
1) I'm a religious pacifist now. At one time I was perfectly willing to counter a violent act with one of my own, or at least threaten to. That tool is no longer in my repertoire.
2) I'm very unwilling to give unsolicited advice these days. Partially this is because I hate when people offer it to me, but it's also because I often don't believe it's effective. When someone is having a screaming match with their spouse, I'm don't think they're in a place where they can hear me say they're behaving badly.
3) I'm no longer as convinced of my own righteousness. When someone's drowning, you throw them a rope, of course. But when a mother is smacking her child, and I've experienced this, she has just as much right to tell me I have no idea what her life and her child are like as I do to tell her that corporal punishment is wrong. Neither of us is wrong.
So I stay out of a lot more situations, but I don't like that solution, either. It seems cowardly and apathetic. Lately I've been trying standing near people who are in conflict and watching silently, in hopes of giving a "I'm here, I see, I'm part of what you need to consider" vibe. So I'm opening my eyes but not, unless asked, my mouth. Is that enough?
What did you hear today?
My house is adjacent to a city park, and as such I get to hear a lot of what goes on out there. Today I heard a child yelling in the park, and as often happens, I couldn't tell if he/she was in distress and if so, whether that distress required my attention. I let it slide and continued on my way to the dry cleaners.
Commentary
For various reasons, not the least because I used to be a Girl Scout and I have my Emergency Preparedness pin, I'm usually quite willing to jump into emergency situations. Car wreck? I'm calling 911, directing traffic, and holding the victim's hand (not at the same time). Turtle crossing the road? I'm jumping out of my car and carrying him across. Hey, you define "emergency" your way; I'll define it mine.
On the other hand, over time I've become much more cautious about getting involved in volatile interpersonal interactions, which are usually what's going on if I hear one person yelling in the park. If someone falls off the slide, I'll usually hear several people yelling, so I know to run out there. But one voice gives me pause.
As I said, this has happened over time. I used to interpose myself in personal conflicts with great glee, confident that I knew exactly what to do. This has changed for several reasons:
1) I'm a religious pacifist now. At one time I was perfectly willing to counter a violent act with one of my own, or at least threaten to. That tool is no longer in my repertoire.
2) I'm very unwilling to give unsolicited advice these days. Partially this is because I hate when people offer it to me, but it's also because I often don't believe it's effective. When someone is having a screaming match with their spouse, I'm don't think they're in a place where they can hear me say they're behaving badly.
3) I'm no longer as convinced of my own righteousness. When someone's drowning, you throw them a rope, of course. But when a mother is smacking her child, and I've experienced this, she has just as much right to tell me I have no idea what her life and her child are like as I do to tell her that corporal punishment is wrong. Neither of us is wrong.
So I stay out of a lot more situations, but I don't like that solution, either. It seems cowardly and apathetic. Lately I've been trying standing near people who are in conflict and watching silently, in hopes of giving a "I'm here, I see, I'm part of what you need to consider" vibe. So I'm opening my eyes but not, unless asked, my mouth. Is that enough?
What did you hear today?
5/14/2011
I heard a question
Context
At my Quaker meeting today, we discussed this article about the Bible by Kristin Swenson. One of the regular attenders at the meeting has neither a strong interest nor a strong background in the Bible, so she asked what we thought the Bible was for. I said the Bible was for religious instruction. It has pretty good poetry, although it's probably better in the original Greek; reasonable history, especially if you're interested in the various kings of Israel, and some great philosophy. I also said it makes a poor science textbook. Someone at the table said this last would be a radical idea to the Texas Board of Education, because over the past few years, Texas has been embroiled in a debate about how to treat the theory of evolution in science textbooks.
Commentary
I need to start with some housekeeping. The link for Kristin Swenson's article goes to the Deseret News instead of the Shreveport Times, because the latter's archive didn't make it appear in a search. I'm sure they'll rue the day they lost the huge amount of traffic that comes from my blog!
Also, I try to be accurate in the Context portion of the blog, so I reported my comment that the poetry was better in the Greek. Upon further review, I should have said, "in the original language," because very little of the poetry in the Bible was originally written in Greek.
Lastly, I posted the most recent article I could find about the Texas textbook controversy, but if you do a Google search for Texas Board of Education creationism, you'll find all kinds of other goodies.
OK, now the actual commentary. Scientists don't like it when school boards put "all sides of scientific theories" language in textbook standards, because they think it's code for "take potshots at the theory of evolution." It may very well be, but the testimony on integrity (that again!) won't permit me to say so without positive proof.
So I won't deal with that issue. Instead, I'll talk about why the Bible itself, not any creationist-leaning textbook, makes a poor resource for scientific learning. The purpose of science books, and science classes for that matter, is to make observations about the world around us, come up with a plausible explanations for it, and ideally, teach people to do the same.
The Bible is terrible at this. In general, it jumps straight to conclusions without offering any physical evidence for them. I see no "We conclude God created the world in seven days because of this, this, and this" in Genesis; do you? Luckily, assertions about the nature of the physical world are kind of rare in the Bible; it's mostly about setting up a belief system and acting upon it. And to be fair, science textbooks are as bad as religious instruction as the Bible is at science.
Science is tethered to the realm of the possible. This is problematic for religion (at least my religion) in two ways:
1) Faith takes us outside the realm of what's physically possible. The Bible asserts that people can rise from the dead (2 Kings 4:32-37), that men can be thrown into a furnace and come out unharmed(Daniel 3:19-28), and that there will come a time when wolves lie down with lambs (Isaiah 11:6-8), and that's just in the Old Testament. The New Testament really goes berserk. Science can bring awe and wonder, but only faith sets us free from the tyranny of our lives to see new, unimagined possibilities. I recognize the irony of using that word, but whatcha gonna do?
2) Science makes no distinction between the possible and the desirable. Observable phenomena tell us that splitting atoms can cause horrific destruction. Science, in its purest form, has no opinion about whether this is a good or bad thing. Pretty much all religious thought comes down firmly on one side of the issue.
So science and religion have different purposes and places in our lives. Is that really such a radical idea?
What did you hear today?
At my Quaker meeting today, we discussed this article about the Bible by Kristin Swenson. One of the regular attenders at the meeting has neither a strong interest nor a strong background in the Bible, so she asked what we thought the Bible was for. I said the Bible was for religious instruction. It has pretty good poetry, although it's probably better in the original Greek; reasonable history, especially if you're interested in the various kings of Israel, and some great philosophy. I also said it makes a poor science textbook. Someone at the table said this last would be a radical idea to the Texas Board of Education, because over the past few years, Texas has been embroiled in a debate about how to treat the theory of evolution in science textbooks.
Commentary
I need to start with some housekeeping. The link for Kristin Swenson's article goes to the Deseret News instead of the Shreveport Times, because the latter's archive didn't make it appear in a search. I'm sure they'll rue the day they lost the huge amount of traffic that comes from my blog!
Also, I try to be accurate in the Context portion of the blog, so I reported my comment that the poetry was better in the Greek. Upon further review, I should have said, "in the original language," because very little of the poetry in the Bible was originally written in Greek.
Lastly, I posted the most recent article I could find about the Texas textbook controversy, but if you do a Google search for Texas Board of Education creationism, you'll find all kinds of other goodies.
OK, now the actual commentary. Scientists don't like it when school boards put "all sides of scientific theories" language in textbook standards, because they think it's code for "take potshots at the theory of evolution." It may very well be, but the testimony on integrity (that again!) won't permit me to say so without positive proof.
So I won't deal with that issue. Instead, I'll talk about why the Bible itself, not any creationist-leaning textbook, makes a poor resource for scientific learning. The purpose of science books, and science classes for that matter, is to make observations about the world around us, come up with a plausible explanations for it, and ideally, teach people to do the same.
The Bible is terrible at this. In general, it jumps straight to conclusions without offering any physical evidence for them. I see no "We conclude God created the world in seven days because of this, this, and this" in Genesis; do you? Luckily, assertions about the nature of the physical world are kind of rare in the Bible; it's mostly about setting up a belief system and acting upon it. And to be fair, science textbooks are as bad as religious instruction as the Bible is at science.
Science is tethered to the realm of the possible. This is problematic for religion (at least my religion) in two ways:
1) Faith takes us outside the realm of what's physically possible. The Bible asserts that people can rise from the dead (2 Kings 4:32-37), that men can be thrown into a furnace and come out unharmed(Daniel 3:19-28), and that there will come a time when wolves lie down with lambs (Isaiah 11:6-8), and that's just in the Old Testament. The New Testament really goes berserk. Science can bring awe and wonder, but only faith sets us free from the tyranny of our lives to see new, unimagined possibilities. I recognize the irony of using that word, but whatcha gonna do?
2) Science makes no distinction between the possible and the desirable. Observable phenomena tell us that splitting atoms can cause horrific destruction. Science, in its purest form, has no opinion about whether this is a good or bad thing. Pretty much all religious thought comes down firmly on one side of the issue.
So science and religion have different purposes and places in our lives. Is that really such a radical idea?
What did you hear today?
I heard someone apologize
Context
In a meeting today, the director of my library apologized for an administrative failure. After he did so, I heard a couple of people behind me murmuring things like, “Don’t apologize!” and “This was going on long before he got here.”
Commentary
This is actually my entry for 5/12/10, but Blogger was down that day.
I’m a strong believer in the Quaker testimony on integrity. Your “yes” should be a yes, and your “no,” a no. People ought to be able to believe in what you say.
A consequence of this is I get annoyed if people don’t believe what I say. If I say I’m sorry, I’m not trying to smooth things over or gain sympathy; I did wrong and I want to express regret about it. Moreover, I think that minimizing my apology minimizes my autonomy, implying that I'm not really responsible for the things I do. I feel it's only fair to warn you: you don't want to get between me and my autonomy.
I also tend to take a transactional view of human interactions. I say, "Thank you;" you say, "You're welcome." You ask me if I want something; I say, "No, thank you;" you don't give it to me, and we both go on with our lives.
Brushing off an apology, rather than accepting it, short-circuits the transaction. A person lets me know I've done something wrong, I apologize, then the person says, essentially, "Oh, don't worry about it." Then, what? The transgression just hangs out there forever? Or am I supposed to forget you said anything? Then why did you say anything? I'm trying to take responsibility for the bad thing I did; are you refusing to take responsibility for having brought it up?
I know, I'm reading way too much into something people do to be polite. But that brings us back to the integrity thing again. The stuff you say, complaints, apologies, declarations of affection and gratitude, should not be just empty words, they should mean something. Or don't waste your breath and my time.
What did you see today?
In a meeting today, the director of my library apologized for an administrative failure. After he did so, I heard a couple of people behind me murmuring things like, “Don’t apologize!” and “This was going on long before he got here.”
Commentary
This is actually my entry for 5/12/10, but Blogger was down that day.
I’m a strong believer in the Quaker testimony on integrity. Your “yes” should be a yes, and your “no,” a no. People ought to be able to believe in what you say.
A consequence of this is I get annoyed if people don’t believe what I say. If I say I’m sorry, I’m not trying to smooth things over or gain sympathy; I did wrong and I want to express regret about it. Moreover, I think that minimizing my apology minimizes my autonomy, implying that I'm not really responsible for the things I do. I feel it's only fair to warn you: you don't want to get between me and my autonomy.
I also tend to take a transactional view of human interactions. I say, "Thank you;" you say, "You're welcome." You ask me if I want something; I say, "No, thank you;" you don't give it to me, and we both go on with our lives.
Brushing off an apology, rather than accepting it, short-circuits the transaction. A person lets me know I've done something wrong, I apologize, then the person says, essentially, "Oh, don't worry about it." Then, what? The transgression just hangs out there forever? Or am I supposed to forget you said anything? Then why did you say anything? I'm trying to take responsibility for the bad thing I did; are you refusing to take responsibility for having brought it up?
I know, I'm reading way too much into something people do to be polite. But that brings us back to the integrity thing again. The stuff you say, complaints, apologies, declarations of affection and gratitude, should not be just empty words, they should mean something. Or don't waste your breath and my time.
What did you see today?
5/10/2011
I saw (and heard!) a disappointing webinar
Context
I attended a free webinar sponsored by the American Library Association today entitled It's All About the Student: How Students Learn and How Online Reference Sources Help. Since I teach computer skills to adults at my library I thought it would be of some use to me and I stuck with it until the end, but I didn't enjoy it much.
Commentary
The first thing I found disappointing about this webinar was that it was not a webinar, at least not in the sense of being in seminar format. The presenters were given time to present and attenders were allowed to ask questions through a chat window, but generally those were answered by a moderator. So it really wasn't the "exchange of ideas" my dictionary says a seminar is supposed to be. It was a set of lectures.
To compound the problem, the lectures themselves didn't engage me. Some of that was because I am not much of an audio learner. Instead, I'm more of a visual-kinesthetic type. There were visual aids (otherwise it would have been a podcast), but because they were PowerPoints I found myself thinking, "I could have just read these slides at my leisure instead of being chained to my desk listening to these people blather on." Or in one case, LISTENING TO THE PERSON READ HER POWERPOINT SLIDES! Are we ever going to cure people of that?
Not that I would have read the slides anyway, because they were mostly sales pitches for the online reference products sold by various companies. I probably should have expected this going in because most of the panel was composed of vendors, but I didn't think it would be quite so blatant.
Which brings me to my main problem with the whole enterprise. The first presenter, a librarian at Harvard, attempted to build a context for what we were going to hear by talking about some learning characteristics of digital natives. I didn't necessarily trust her conclusions, but at least she was speaking in the realm of ideas. After that, it was a series of "Look at these cool bells and whistles!" talks except for the very last vendor, who at least attempted to to talk about the pedagogical reasoning behind his company's offerings. I came away not only disappointed in the webinar, but in our whole educational system if this is how we decide what tools to use.
"Student engagement" is a popular concept in teacher training these days, and I agree that if someone's not paying attention, they're not likely to learn much. I'm concerned that we're confusing condiments for entrees though, trying to get students engaged using cool technology toys and ignoring whether they're actually learning and retaining something in the process.
In the end, though, the webinar was not a total loss for me. I spent some time this afternoon thinking about ways I balance student engagement with discernable learning outcomes in my own classes, and I'll probably do some writing about that topic a little later. I count it as blessing when my generally discontented nature allows me to examine some deeper truths.
What did you see (and hear!) today?
I attended a free webinar sponsored by the American Library Association today entitled It's All About the Student: How Students Learn and How Online Reference Sources Help. Since I teach computer skills to adults at my library I thought it would be of some use to me and I stuck with it until the end, but I didn't enjoy it much.
Commentary
The first thing I found disappointing about this webinar was that it was not a webinar, at least not in the sense of being in seminar format. The presenters were given time to present and attenders were allowed to ask questions through a chat window, but generally those were answered by a moderator. So it really wasn't the "exchange of ideas" my dictionary says a seminar is supposed to be. It was a set of lectures.
To compound the problem, the lectures themselves didn't engage me. Some of that was because I am not much of an audio learner. Instead, I'm more of a visual-kinesthetic type. There were visual aids (otherwise it would have been a podcast), but because they were PowerPoints I found myself thinking, "I could have just read these slides at my leisure instead of being chained to my desk listening to these people blather on." Or in one case, LISTENING TO THE PERSON READ HER POWERPOINT SLIDES! Are we ever going to cure people of that?
Not that I would have read the slides anyway, because they were mostly sales pitches for the online reference products sold by various companies. I probably should have expected this going in because most of the panel was composed of vendors, but I didn't think it would be quite so blatant.
Which brings me to my main problem with the whole enterprise. The first presenter, a librarian at Harvard, attempted to build a context for what we were going to hear by talking about some learning characteristics of digital natives. I didn't necessarily trust her conclusions, but at least she was speaking in the realm of ideas. After that, it was a series of "Look at these cool bells and whistles!" talks except for the very last vendor, who at least attempted to to talk about the pedagogical reasoning behind his company's offerings. I came away not only disappointed in the webinar, but in our whole educational system if this is how we decide what tools to use.
"Student engagement" is a popular concept in teacher training these days, and I agree that if someone's not paying attention, they're not likely to learn much. I'm concerned that we're confusing condiments for entrees though, trying to get students engaged using cool technology toys and ignoring whether they're actually learning and retaining something in the process.
In the end, though, the webinar was not a total loss for me. I spent some time this afternoon thinking about ways I balance student engagement with discernable learning outcomes in my own classes, and I'll probably do some writing about that topic a little later. I count it as blessing when my generally discontented nature allows me to examine some deeper truths.
What did you see (and hear!) today?
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