Context
A colleague at the library I work at sent me an e-mail asking if I would remind people how important it is to do proper data entry when registering patrons for library cards. I replied back both my apology that this would fall outside the scope of my job duties and my opinion that if just reminding people of the importance of a task was enough to ensure perfect execution of it, airplanes would never crash.
Commentary
I think there is a sweet spot where we do our best work on any given task. When we're first learning, we're very careful, but we make mistakes because we don't understand everything we're doing. Later on, when we understand both the procedures and the logic behind them really well, we think we can do the task with our eyes closed and the carelessness bugaboo emerges. Somewhere in between we probably produce outstanding work a couple of times.
I can see a couple of ways to fight this problem. One is cross-training, or at least, task variation. If we only do something once a month, rather than 20 times a day, there's the potential for it to seem a little bit unfamiliar each time we do it, maybe enough to make us work carefully. At the very least, we don't grow so resentful of the repetition that we switch off our brains. Balancing my checkbook is a pretty mindless task, but I don't do it often enough to be bored by it.
Automation is another solution. Machines are uniquely suited to repetitive tasks, even complex ones. What's great about computers these days is they can learn (mostly by trying different procedures and keeping only the ones that work), but they can't get bored. In my line of work, as in many others, there are people concerned about their jobs being turned over to computers. I always assure them that computers are only good for tasks that are too stupid for human beings, by which I mean too mindless to be satisfying for us. Maybe I'd get more leverage if I said "tasks that are too boring for human beings."
What did you see today?
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
5/31/2012
I saw a description of a school
Context A little over six weeks ago, the Louisiana State Legislature passed HB 976 (look it up on this site, if you like). This legislation, among other things, allows students in underperforming public schools to attend private schools using vouchers provided by the state. It is up to the private schools to decide whether and how many of these transferring students they will accept. Today I read in the Shreveport Times that the state Superintendent of Education is getting into some hot water because one of the private schools in question does not appear to have facilities to accommodate all the transfers they said they would accept.Commentary I am a firm believer in school choice, in that I believe parents should be allowed to enroll their children in the school of their choice. If the school is public, then children should be able to attend for free, regardless of the location of the school or the child's residence. I take something of a free market approach to public schools, believing that the good ones that attract lots of students should be allotted more tax revenue, and the ones that don't, not so much.I like this idea in theory, but the practice might be a little tricky. C.E. Byrd, located a block from my house, has over 2000 students, double the number of any competing high school in town bar one. It is stuffed to the gills now and already a traffic nightmare, but I have every confidence that if more students were allowed to enroll, they would. Everyone wants to go to Byrd. So I can see that the same problem might occur at New Living Word School, the private school described in the Shreveport Times article linked above: they're anticipating a lot of demand.My question is, "Why?" Late in this article by Diane Ravitch in the New York Times Review of Books, she talks about the belief some people have that private schools are, by their very nature, better than public ones. I attended a private school from 3rd to 12th grade (and college, too, but that's a separate issue), and it was academically better than the public school I started at (no link, to protect the guilty). I have also heard of people who enrolled their children in private schools that touted their superior academics and discipline, only to find that the standards for teacher recruitment were so poor that students slipped to below grade level in reading comprehension and were nearly held back a grade when they returned to their neighborhood school.The discussion of whether private is intrinsically better than public would be academic (Hee!) if it wasn't for the fact that flesh and blood parents are trying to make decisions about their children's futures. The belief that a private school that has to compete more directly for its financial resources than a public one would provide a higher quality education is not an irrational one. Nor is there anything wrong with expressing a general preference for commercial solutions to problems over tax-based ones. It's not the way I roll, but there's nothing evil about it.The problem comes from taking these philosophical opinions and substituting them for careful evaluation of the real choices before you. Schools, and all other institutions for that matter, are defined by more than just their revenue streams. The people involved, students as well as teachers, the physical location, even the history of a school can affect its success or failure. That's why everyone wants to go to Byrd. And hopefully considerably less than 315 kids will want to go to New Living Word.What did you see today?
3/27/2012
I saw some information about Trayvon Martin
Context
I was reading this article about the Trayvon Martin case on Slate. Until I watched the Daily Show last night, I hadn't realized he was shot over a month ago. I keep learning new things all the time, including the tidbit included in the Slate article about Martin's school suspension for marijuana possession.
Commentary
My husband and I differ on whether Trayvon Martin's death should be considered a lynching. We were in the park walking our dogs discussing it, so we didn't have a dictionary at hand, but it turns out we were pretty close to the correct definition. According to Merriam-Webster Online, to lynch is to to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal sanction. So I will concede to my husband that this was not a mob action (unless you want to blame the entire Florida Legislature) and make the half-concession that it was not achieved by hanging. Nonetheless, very much without legal sanction. Or at least, without common sense sanction.
Departing from the formal definition, my husband made another argument that we think of lynching, at least the form that was practiced regularly down here where I live (check this data set if you want your hometown's scorecard), as being predicated on teaching someone a lesson. I remarked that it's hard to teach a corpse a lesson, but I understood the point he was trying to make.
And now, from hyperbole to trivializing. Lynching in this country is what white people do to black people who are bugging them. It's our way of saying, "The law of proportional response only applies to people who look like me. For others, I can react however I want." Remember, we used to use this form of capital punishment for offenses like speaking to white women, failing to yield the sidewalk, or looking someone in the eye. Which is why I don't find the continued investigation into Trayvon Martin's various misdemeanors helpful. It's like we keep trying to come up with a sum of offenses that make it OK that he's dead.
Well, maybe it is helpful. Decide for yourself, does walking around a gated community + hoodie + marijuana use + school problems = put him down like a rabid dog? I'm going to be even meaner and say that if Martin was beating George Zimmerman up he still shouldn't have been shot. If someone is punching you in a populated area, you yell. You or someone else calls the cops and the perp is taken to jail. Everybody survives the encounter. Even people who bug the crap out of each other.
What did you see today?
I was reading this article about the Trayvon Martin case on Slate. Until I watched the Daily Show last night, I hadn't realized he was shot over a month ago. I keep learning new things all the time, including the tidbit included in the Slate article about Martin's school suspension for marijuana possession.
Commentary
My husband and I differ on whether Trayvon Martin's death should be considered a lynching. We were in the park walking our dogs discussing it, so we didn't have a dictionary at hand, but it turns out we were pretty close to the correct definition. According to Merriam-Webster Online, to lynch is to to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal sanction. So I will concede to my husband that this was not a mob action (unless you want to blame the entire Florida Legislature) and make the half-concession that it was not achieved by hanging. Nonetheless, very much without legal sanction. Or at least, without common sense sanction.
Departing from the formal definition, my husband made another argument that we think of lynching, at least the form that was practiced regularly down here where I live (check this data set if you want your hometown's scorecard), as being predicated on teaching someone a lesson. I remarked that it's hard to teach a corpse a lesson, but I understood the point he was trying to make.
And now, from hyperbole to trivializing. Lynching in this country is what white people do to black people who are bugging them. It's our way of saying, "The law of proportional response only applies to people who look like me. For others, I can react however I want." Remember, we used to use this form of capital punishment for offenses like speaking to white women, failing to yield the sidewalk, or looking someone in the eye. Which is why I don't find the continued investigation into Trayvon Martin's various misdemeanors helpful. It's like we keep trying to come up with a sum of offenses that make it OK that he's dead.
Well, maybe it is helpful. Decide for yourself, does walking around a gated community + hoodie + marijuana use + school problems = put him down like a rabid dog? I'm going to be even meaner and say that if Martin was beating George Zimmerman up he still shouldn't have been shot. If someone is punching you in a populated area, you yell. You or someone else calls the cops and the perp is taken to jail. Everybody survives the encounter. Even people who bug the crap out of each other.
What did you see today?
1/10/2012
I read a definition of a term
Context
I'm reading A History of the End of the World by Jonathan Kirsch. I'm doing this because I'm thinking about attending a seminar on apocalyptic literature given by Dr. Susan Brayford, a professor emeritus at Centenary College, and she mentioned possibly using this book as a jumping off point.
Anyway, this footnote appears fairly early in the text: "The abbreviation B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) is the equivalent of B.C. (Before Christ), and C.E. (Common Era) is the equivalent of A.D. (Anno Domini, or "In the Year of Our Lord"). The abbreviations B.C.E. and C.E. are used by scholars to avoid the theological implications of B.C. and A.D., and I have used them here for the same reason."
Commentary
I don't care much for this book. I find it astonishingly disrespectful of people (like me) who take the Bible seriously and downright dismissive of the author of the book of Revelation. Usually I believe life is too short to read books I don't like, but I'm continuing with this one for two reasons:
1) It's an Interlibrary Loan. Since the library took extra effort to get it for me, I figure I should give extra effort to getting through it.
2) I am actually learning stuff, like how various apocalyptic prophesies in the Bible compare and contrast with each other.
All the above was to let you know I might be predisposed to snarkiness while reading this book. Here are the two thoughts that crossed my mind when I read the definition of B.C.E.:
1) If you're counting time forward and backward from what historic calendar makers considered to be Jesus's birthdate, calling it something different may avoid the theological implications of that, but the cultural ones are still glaringly obvious: there was some kind of history-changing event 2012 years ago.
2) Does the author really think there's anyone reading his book who won't know what B.C.E. means? This is an historical analysis of the impact of Revelation with lots and lots of references. I don't think people are going to pick it up unless they've at least seen one college classroom or done an equivalent amount of reading. And if any of that study has been in the realm of history, they've seen B.C.E. before.
What did you see today?
I'm reading A History of the End of the World by Jonathan Kirsch. I'm doing this because I'm thinking about attending a seminar on apocalyptic literature given by Dr. Susan Brayford, a professor emeritus at Centenary College, and she mentioned possibly using this book as a jumping off point.
Anyway, this footnote appears fairly early in the text: "The abbreviation B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) is the equivalent of B.C. (Before Christ), and C.E. (Common Era) is the equivalent of A.D. (Anno Domini, or "In the Year of Our Lord"). The abbreviations B.C.E. and C.E. are used by scholars to avoid the theological implications of B.C. and A.D., and I have used them here for the same reason."
Commentary
I don't care much for this book. I find it astonishingly disrespectful of people (like me) who take the Bible seriously and downright dismissive of the author of the book of Revelation. Usually I believe life is too short to read books I don't like, but I'm continuing with this one for two reasons:
1) It's an Interlibrary Loan. Since the library took extra effort to get it for me, I figure I should give extra effort to getting through it.
2) I am actually learning stuff, like how various apocalyptic prophesies in the Bible compare and contrast with each other.
All the above was to let you know I might be predisposed to snarkiness while reading this book. Here are the two thoughts that crossed my mind when I read the definition of B.C.E.:
1) If you're counting time forward and backward from what historic calendar makers considered to be Jesus's birthdate, calling it something different may avoid the theological implications of that, but the cultural ones are still glaringly obvious: there was some kind of history-changing event 2012 years ago.
2) Does the author really think there's anyone reading his book who won't know what B.C.E. means? This is an historical analysis of the impact of Revelation with lots and lots of references. I don't think people are going to pick it up unless they've at least seen one college classroom or done an equivalent amount of reading. And if any of that study has been in the realm of history, they've seen B.C.E. before.
What did you see today?
12/03/2011
I saw a list of classroom rules
Context
There have been papers littered around the park next to my home for a while now, so I decided to go pick them up and dispose of them. Idly looking at some of them, I realized they were schoolwork for a freshman at our local high school, including a long set of rules for a math class. One of the rules was: don't criticize teachers or administrators.
Commentary
I taught high school for a year after I graduated from college, and discipline was my least favorite aspect of the endeavor. Some of that was surely because I don't like being told what to do and therefore don't like telling people what to do. This characteristic of mine is discussed in more detail in this post, if you'd like a blast from the past.
There was more to it than that, though. There was also the idealistic (and who isn't idealistic when they first get out of college) notion that what I was teaching should be interesting enough that the students wouldn't have to be forced to learn it, which is what classroom management sometimes felt like to me. Even then I realized this couldn't possibly be true all the time, and that even I was subject to discipline more than once from my favorite teacher in high school. To this day, though, it still seems like a good goal to keep in front of me when I teach. So if I concede that some classroom rules are necessary, I would like you to return the favor by understanding that the goals behind the rules are an important educational consideration.
A few weeks ago, I read Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough, which is a book about Geoffrey Canada's efforts to rescue kids in Harlem from the poverty cycle. One of the things the Harlem Children's Zone's Baby College tries to teach parents is to not shut their kids up when they ask questions. After all, as Canada puts it, that's what "rich white kids" do all the time, and it gives them an important step up in formal educational settings. This is a struggle for the parents, though, because they want to emphasize good, respectful behavior, which in their eyes includes not pestering people with questions. These goals are in conflict, but I'm foursquare with the Baby College in believing it's better to be smart and annoying than dumb and pleasant. I will confess to having more personal experience with one side of this equation than the other.
I believe that if you're trying to grow smart kids (and I concede this may or may not be the goal of any given educational institution), you have to be understand that all questions in between the poles of completely innocuous (How are you?) and completely obnoxious (Are you always this idiotic?) spring from a void or a conflict within a person. I ask why the sky is blue because I don't know, but also because it is a different color than the grass and because I know the sky is composed of air and air doesn't look blue when it's right in front of me. In other words, I'm trying to make sense of stuff. Answering my question, or at least acknowledging that it's OK to ask it, teaches me that sensemaking is an appropriate thing to do.
The same thing is true of questioning authority, or criticizing it, as the case may be. If someone's beliefs, experience and/or feelings don't mesh well with what they're being told by someone in charge, saying so is a way of making sense of how the world works. I'm not saying this means those in power always have to accommodate what we want or feel, but there's no reason to pretend we don't have those individual needs. That's why the U.S. Constitution protects our right to talk about these conflicts. I guess I'll just be grateful I was reading the rules for a math class instead of a civics one.
What did you see today?
There have been papers littered around the park next to my home for a while now, so I decided to go pick them up and dispose of them. Idly looking at some of them, I realized they were schoolwork for a freshman at our local high school, including a long set of rules for a math class. One of the rules was: don't criticize teachers or administrators.
Commentary
I taught high school for a year after I graduated from college, and discipline was my least favorite aspect of the endeavor. Some of that was surely because I don't like being told what to do and therefore don't like telling people what to do. This characteristic of mine is discussed in more detail in this post, if you'd like a blast from the past.
There was more to it than that, though. There was also the idealistic (and who isn't idealistic when they first get out of college) notion that what I was teaching should be interesting enough that the students wouldn't have to be forced to learn it, which is what classroom management sometimes felt like to me. Even then I realized this couldn't possibly be true all the time, and that even I was subject to discipline more than once from my favorite teacher in high school. To this day, though, it still seems like a good goal to keep in front of me when I teach. So if I concede that some classroom rules are necessary, I would like you to return the favor by understanding that the goals behind the rules are an important educational consideration.
A few weeks ago, I read Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough, which is a book about Geoffrey Canada's efforts to rescue kids in Harlem from the poverty cycle. One of the things the Harlem Children's Zone's Baby College tries to teach parents is to not shut their kids up when they ask questions. After all, as Canada puts it, that's what "rich white kids" do all the time, and it gives them an important step up in formal educational settings. This is a struggle for the parents, though, because they want to emphasize good, respectful behavior, which in their eyes includes not pestering people with questions. These goals are in conflict, but I'm foursquare with the Baby College in believing it's better to be smart and annoying than dumb and pleasant. I will confess to having more personal experience with one side of this equation than the other.
I believe that if you're trying to grow smart kids (and I concede this may or may not be the goal of any given educational institution), you have to be understand that all questions in between the poles of completely innocuous (How are you?) and completely obnoxious (Are you always this idiotic?) spring from a void or a conflict within a person. I ask why the sky is blue because I don't know, but also because it is a different color than the grass and because I know the sky is composed of air and air doesn't look blue when it's right in front of me. In other words, I'm trying to make sense of stuff. Answering my question, or at least acknowledging that it's OK to ask it, teaches me that sensemaking is an appropriate thing to do.
The same thing is true of questioning authority, or criticizing it, as the case may be. If someone's beliefs, experience and/or feelings don't mesh well with what they're being told by someone in charge, saying so is a way of making sense of how the world works. I'm not saying this means those in power always have to accommodate what we want or feel, but there's no reason to pretend we don't have those individual needs. That's why the U.S. Constitution protects our right to talk about these conflicts. I guess I'll just be grateful I was reading the rules for a math class instead of a civics one.
What did you see 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?
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?
4/08/2011
I saw ideas about education
Context
I'm still reading What Would Google Do? In the section on Google U, Jarvis posits that most useful education is self-motivated and self-directing, so the current educational model of coming to a specific classroom and learning what the teacher tells you is hopelessly outdated. He allows that our schools may have a socialization function as well as an educational one, but he thinks there are plenty of other communities and experiences that could fulfill the same role.
Commentary
OK, now Jarvis has wandered into my field, so I'm bound to get touchy. Actually, I don't want to talk about education per se; I want to dive into that "socialization" thing. It seems to me that when Jarvis looks at it, he thinks of socialization as the process of helping a student find a community, literally giving them a social life in some respect.
However, that's not entirely what we expect out of schooling, especially public schooling, in this country. We don't just want students to find some community to belong to, we want them to specifically belong to the American community. The most obvious example of our attempts to create Americans is the civics class, but there are others. Take science labs. Performing experiments in school tells our kids that they shouldn't just take someone's word for something. Or gym class, where 8-year-olds learn some of the same lessons about discipline and teamwork they would if they attended military boot camp.
In fact, the biggest battles we fight over education in this country are about what "America" is. Are we a Christian people who should be taught about God in the classroom? Are we an egalitarian people who believe everyone should learn together, regardless of skills or background? Is free speech or good discipline a more important characteristic of Americans? General school board meetings are fun, but if you really want to get a lesson in civics, find a way to get yourself on a curriculum or textbook choosing committee. Then you'll really learn what this country is all about, at least in your neighbors' eyes.
Does it make you uncomfortable when I talk about school as indoctrination? That is, in and of itself, an American thing. We pride ourselves on being free, independent, self-deterministic types. And, to be fair, the fact that we debate the issues mentioned above on a regular basis, rather than being dictated to by a small group of people or a time-honored tradition, speaks to how free we are. And also to why debate techniques are frequently taught in American schools.
What did you see today?
I'm still reading What Would Google Do? In the section on Google U, Jarvis posits that most useful education is self-motivated and self-directing, so the current educational model of coming to a specific classroom and learning what the teacher tells you is hopelessly outdated. He allows that our schools may have a socialization function as well as an educational one, but he thinks there are plenty of other communities and experiences that could fulfill the same role.
Commentary
OK, now Jarvis has wandered into my field, so I'm bound to get touchy. Actually, I don't want to talk about education per se; I want to dive into that "socialization" thing. It seems to me that when Jarvis looks at it, he thinks of socialization as the process of helping a student find a community, literally giving them a social life in some respect.
However, that's not entirely what we expect out of schooling, especially public schooling, in this country. We don't just want students to find some community to belong to, we want them to specifically belong to the American community. The most obvious example of our attempts to create Americans is the civics class, but there are others. Take science labs. Performing experiments in school tells our kids that they shouldn't just take someone's word for something. Or gym class, where 8-year-olds learn some of the same lessons about discipline and teamwork they would if they attended military boot camp.
In fact, the biggest battles we fight over education in this country are about what "America" is. Are we a Christian people who should be taught about God in the classroom? Are we an egalitarian people who believe everyone should learn together, regardless of skills or background? Is free speech or good discipline a more important characteristic of Americans? General school board meetings are fun, but if you really want to get a lesson in civics, find a way to get yourself on a curriculum or textbook choosing committee. Then you'll really learn what this country is all about, at least in your neighbors' eyes.
Does it make you uncomfortable when I talk about school as indoctrination? That is, in and of itself, an American thing. We pride ourselves on being free, independent, self-deterministic types. And, to be fair, the fact that we debate the issues mentioned above on a regular basis, rather than being dictated to by a small group of people or a time-honored tradition, speaks to how free we are. And also to why debate techniques are frequently taught in American schools.
What did you see today?
3/09/2011
I saw a blog post about teaching methods
Context
One of the messages on the Information Literacy Instruction mailing list today referenced this blog post. I encourage you to read it yourself, but here's the quick summary: it's about using a learning cycle consisting of assimilation, accommodation, and organization as a model for library instruction.
Commentary
This is my interpretation of the learning cycle described by Frierson: assimilation is when we receive information, accommodation is how we match up new information to what we already know, and organization is how we decide to use the information. Let me give an example of how this works: I look at my thermometer and assimilate that the temperature outside is 49 degrees Fahrenheit. I accommodate this knowledge by remembering that in the past when it has been 49 degrees, I've been pretty chilly. I organize the information by deciding to wear a coat.
Teaching is often treated as just a process of putting information out there so students can assimilate it. In return, students sometimes bypass accommodation entirely and only organize the information so they can regurgitate it on an exam. Teachers are frustrated because students don't appear to learn; students are frustrated because teachers don't appear to offer anything of lasting value (Where am I ever going to diagram sentences in the real world?).
Early in his teaching career, my husband attended a workshop called Teaching and Learning. He learned all kinds of useful stuff there; I learned for the first time that education is not just about teaching, but about learning as well. In other words, you can be the best teacher in the whole world, but if your students aren't learning, it's a pointless exercise for everyone. This can be terrifying to teachers, because although we have complete control over how we present information, we have no control over how students accommodate it or organize it. The best we can hope for is to accompany them in that process and maybe learn something ourselves.
There's also a time factor. Presenting information generally doesn't take long, whether we talk, or give the students something to read, or even demonstrate a task. However, waiting for each individual student to find existing knowledge in his/her brain to tack the new information to and decide how she/he wants to use it is not only time-consuming, it's unpredictably time-consuming.
A typical response is to say we don't have time to teach that way. I don't buy it. Here is my philosophy about time: we have time to do everything we really want to do. I have a similar philosophy about money, but I won't go into that. Anyway, when it comes to time constraints, I think what we're really saying is we don't have time to do something and . . . "I don't have time to do the dishes tonight" really means "I don't have time to do the dishes tonight and go to bed early so I can get up early tomorrow and not be sleepy." We're setting some priorities, which is reasonable, but it's not the same as having no time to do the dishes.
So why don't we have time to teach in such a way that students will want to learn and be successful doing so? Because what we prioritize more highly is "covering material." Of all the insidious ideas to infiltrate education, this has got to be the worst. OK, I'm not super fond of group work either, but I digress. I don't know how we ever got to a place where we believe it is more important for a teacher to get through a certain number of lessons or concepts or textbook pages than it is for students to actually learn something.
Actually, I'm lying. I know exactly how we got here; it's through mistrust and laziness. We don't trust teachers to teach, so we want to evaluate them. But measuring how much a student has learned, as opposed to how much he/she can remember at test time, is difficult. So we settle for a quantitative measure, like a percentage of right answers, instead of a qualitative one, like how good a student is at formulating worthwhile answers to substantive questions of her/his own devising. But man, that material gets covered!
What did you see today?
One of the messages on the Information Literacy Instruction mailing list today referenced this blog post. I encourage you to read it yourself, but here's the quick summary: it's about using a learning cycle consisting of assimilation, accommodation, and organization as a model for library instruction.
Commentary
This is my interpretation of the learning cycle described by Frierson: assimilation is when we receive information, accommodation is how we match up new information to what we already know, and organization is how we decide to use the information. Let me give an example of how this works: I look at my thermometer and assimilate that the temperature outside is 49 degrees Fahrenheit. I accommodate this knowledge by remembering that in the past when it has been 49 degrees, I've been pretty chilly. I organize the information by deciding to wear a coat.
Teaching is often treated as just a process of putting information out there so students can assimilate it. In return, students sometimes bypass accommodation entirely and only organize the information so they can regurgitate it on an exam. Teachers are frustrated because students don't appear to learn; students are frustrated because teachers don't appear to offer anything of lasting value (Where am I ever going to diagram sentences in the real world?).
Early in his teaching career, my husband attended a workshop called Teaching and Learning. He learned all kinds of useful stuff there; I learned for the first time that education is not just about teaching, but about learning as well. In other words, you can be the best teacher in the whole world, but if your students aren't learning, it's a pointless exercise for everyone. This can be terrifying to teachers, because although we have complete control over how we present information, we have no control over how students accommodate it or organize it. The best we can hope for is to accompany them in that process and maybe learn something ourselves.
There's also a time factor. Presenting information generally doesn't take long, whether we talk, or give the students something to read, or even demonstrate a task. However, waiting for each individual student to find existing knowledge in his/her brain to tack the new information to and decide how she/he wants to use it is not only time-consuming, it's unpredictably time-consuming.
A typical response is to say we don't have time to teach that way. I don't buy it. Here is my philosophy about time: we have time to do everything we really want to do. I have a similar philosophy about money, but I won't go into that. Anyway, when it comes to time constraints, I think what we're really saying is we don't have time to do something and . . . "I don't have time to do the dishes tonight" really means "I don't have time to do the dishes tonight and go to bed early so I can get up early tomorrow and not be sleepy." We're setting some priorities, which is reasonable, but it's not the same as having no time to do the dishes.
So why don't we have time to teach in such a way that students will want to learn and be successful doing so? Because what we prioritize more highly is "covering material." Of all the insidious ideas to infiltrate education, this has got to be the worst. OK, I'm not super fond of group work either, but I digress. I don't know how we ever got to a place where we believe it is more important for a teacher to get through a certain number of lessons or concepts or textbook pages than it is for students to actually learn something.
Actually, I'm lying. I know exactly how we got here; it's through mistrust and laziness. We don't trust teachers to teach, so we want to evaluate them. But measuring how much a student has learned, as opposed to how much he/she can remember at test time, is difficult. So we settle for a quantitative measure, like a percentage of right answers, instead of a qualitative one, like how good a student is at formulating worthwhile answers to substantive questions of her/his own devising. But man, that material gets covered!
What did you see today?
7/08/2010
I saw an article about incentives
Context
Duplicate issues of magazines the library receives are kept in the staff lounge. The April 19th edition of Time, had a cover story about the results of and reactions to a series of economics experiments giving cash incentives to students in public schools. Read the article here, if you like.
What I read of the article discussed the scientific rigor behind the experiments, conducted by Roland Fryer, Jr. of Harvard, and their varied results. It also pointed that many people really disliked the idea that they were being conducted at all. Educators in particular wanted students to develop a love of learning, not constantly have a hand out for tangible rewards. On the other hand, the writer for Time said, "most adults work primarily for money, and in a curious way, we seem to be holding kids to a higher standard than we hold ourselves." I stopped reading at that point.
Commentary
Just to kick things off, I'd like to give kudos to Time for their online archive. It is remarkably easy to find and use, and that's something librarians care deeply about.
I didn't stop reading the article because I was disgusted with the subject matter; I found it fascinating. Too fascinating, because as soon as I got to the "most adults work primarily for money" line I had to stop and think about incentives in my own life for a good ten to fifteen minutes.
Money almost never works as an incentive to me. I have taken jobs in the past just to pay the bills, but you could have given me million-dollar bonuses and I still wouldn't have done them particularly well or with any enthusiasm. In fact, my dad gave me cash for good grades a couple of times when I was in high school, and although I didn't turn them down, my internal attitude was pretty much "Yeah, whatever."
The good opinion of others works, but only from people I respect, and there aren't a whole lot of those on the planet. With the distance of years I've developed some real sympathy for people whom I didn't care for who were trying to get me to do stuff. Even when they went the punishment route, as some educators did, they found that in my perverse way I usually considered that a badge of honor.
I remember love of learning being an incentive for me, especially when I first entered school and, ironically enough, when I went to grad school in my mid-thirties. But I also remember that throughout my educational career I put special effort into any assignment I considered interesting or worthy of my talents. And I'd be willing to bet that's true of most people. The problem is, it's a moving target; what's interesting to me is deadly dull to others (Shall I talk to you about controlled vocabularies again?). And of course, my talents are different from yours.
I still believe it's a goal worth pursuing. In fact, in human resources and training materials I often read about the need to personalize rewards to the individual worker's values and goals, rather than taking a one-type-fits-all approach. So if we're going to adopt a business-type model for education, I'd rather we go with that one. And if money is what works for some students (sigh!), then why not start handing it out, if only to help them see that their individual opinions have worth? As Dr. Fryer says, let's try "treat[ing] kids not as inanimate objects but as human beings who behave in interesting ways."
What did you see today?
Duplicate issues of magazines the library receives are kept in the staff lounge. The April 19th edition of Time, had a cover story about the results of and reactions to a series of economics experiments giving cash incentives to students in public schools. Read the article here, if you like.
What I read of the article discussed the scientific rigor behind the experiments, conducted by Roland Fryer, Jr. of Harvard, and their varied results. It also pointed that many people really disliked the idea that they were being conducted at all. Educators in particular wanted students to develop a love of learning, not constantly have a hand out for tangible rewards. On the other hand, the writer for Time said, "most adults work primarily for money, and in a curious way, we seem to be holding kids to a higher standard than we hold ourselves." I stopped reading at that point.
Commentary
Just to kick things off, I'd like to give kudos to Time for their online archive. It is remarkably easy to find and use, and that's something librarians care deeply about.
I didn't stop reading the article because I was disgusted with the subject matter; I found it fascinating. Too fascinating, because as soon as I got to the "most adults work primarily for money" line I had to stop and think about incentives in my own life for a good ten to fifteen minutes.
Money almost never works as an incentive to me. I have taken jobs in the past just to pay the bills, but you could have given me million-dollar bonuses and I still wouldn't have done them particularly well or with any enthusiasm. In fact, my dad gave me cash for good grades a couple of times when I was in high school, and although I didn't turn them down, my internal attitude was pretty much "Yeah, whatever."
The good opinion of others works, but only from people I respect, and there aren't a whole lot of those on the planet. With the distance of years I've developed some real sympathy for people whom I didn't care for who were trying to get me to do stuff. Even when they went the punishment route, as some educators did, they found that in my perverse way I usually considered that a badge of honor.
I remember love of learning being an incentive for me, especially when I first entered school and, ironically enough, when I went to grad school in my mid-thirties. But I also remember that throughout my educational career I put special effort into any assignment I considered interesting or worthy of my talents. And I'd be willing to bet that's true of most people. The problem is, it's a moving target; what's interesting to me is deadly dull to others (Shall I talk to you about controlled vocabularies again?). And of course, my talents are different from yours.
I still believe it's a goal worth pursuing. In fact, in human resources and training materials I often read about the need to personalize rewards to the individual worker's values and goals, rather than taking a one-type-fits-all approach. So if we're going to adopt a business-type model for education, I'd rather we go with that one. And if money is what works for some students (sigh!), then why not start handing it out, if only to help them see that their individual opinions have worth? As Dr. Fryer says, let's try "treat[ing] kids not as inanimate objects but as human beings who behave in interesting ways."
What did you see today?
3/19/2010
I saw a lack of capitalization
Context
I did New Staff Orientations for five new library employees today. Part of the orientation is filling out a time sheet on the computer and printing it out to be turned in to payroll. Two of the students typed their names on the paysheet in all lower-case letters.
Commentary
When I saw my students not capitalizing their names, I had three progressively softer reactions:
1) This is bad grammar.
2) This is inappropriate grammar; i.e. there are some circumstances where lower case is OK for names, like for e-mail addresses or if you're e.e. cummings, but this is not one of them.
3) This is a stylistic choice that makes no difference in this context. After all, it wasn't going to keep anybody from getting paid or anything.
I think the fact that #3 was definitely true but I still had reactions #1 and #2 says something about me. Ah well, I notice stuff; that's my job.
So since I do notice, I wonder what typing your name in lower-case says about the students in question. Specifically, is it really a stylistic choice, or does the person not know any better? Actually, that second choice could be divided in two: does the person not know names are traditionally capitalized in English grammar (Yeesh! I hope not!) or do they not know how to capitalize on a computer (still sad, but not as sad)? From an educational standpoint, the answers to these questions are important. Ignorance requires a remedy, but stylistic choices can be the start of a student-teacher dialog on different modes of expression.
I'm reminded of when I taught in a minority-dominated high school in the late 1980s. We used to agonize over whether some of what we were teaching was tantamount to expecting students to deny their native cultures. Over time, I came to believe that my job was to offer the kids the tools to make an informed choice: if they chose to adopt the values and habits of the dominant culture, their lives might be enriched in some ways and impoverished in others. Either way, they go in with their eyes open. Which is always a good idea.
What did you see today?
I did New Staff Orientations for five new library employees today. Part of the orientation is filling out a time sheet on the computer and printing it out to be turned in to payroll. Two of the students typed their names on the paysheet in all lower-case letters.
Commentary
When I saw my students not capitalizing their names, I had three progressively softer reactions:
1) This is bad grammar.
2) This is inappropriate grammar; i.e. there are some circumstances where lower case is OK for names, like for e-mail addresses or if you're e.e. cummings, but this is not one of them.
3) This is a stylistic choice that makes no difference in this context. After all, it wasn't going to keep anybody from getting paid or anything.
I think the fact that #3 was definitely true but I still had reactions #1 and #2 says something about me. Ah well, I notice stuff; that's my job.
So since I do notice, I wonder what typing your name in lower-case says about the students in question. Specifically, is it really a stylistic choice, or does the person not know any better? Actually, that second choice could be divided in two: does the person not know names are traditionally capitalized in English grammar (Yeesh! I hope not!) or do they not know how to capitalize on a computer (still sad, but not as sad)? From an educational standpoint, the answers to these questions are important. Ignorance requires a remedy, but stylistic choices can be the start of a student-teacher dialog on different modes of expression.
I'm reminded of when I taught in a minority-dominated high school in the late 1980s. We used to agonize over whether some of what we were teaching was tantamount to expecting students to deny their native cultures. Over time, I came to believe that my job was to offer the kids the tools to make an informed choice: if they chose to adopt the values and habits of the dominant culture, their lives might be enriched in some ways and impoverished in others. Either way, they go in with their eyes open. Which is always a good idea.
What did you see today?
8/14/2009
I saw a discussion of blame
Context
I sent out an e-mail to the staff of our Main Library today to let them know about a computer glitch we thought might affect patrons and taking responsibility on behalf of my department. The director of the library, being a nice guy, sent an e-mail back saying, "No one is to blame here." Then, because it was Friday afternoon, we got into a silly discussion of who really was to blame. We decided on the framers of the Constitution.
Commentary
OK, you had to be there. But I understand Dr. Heezen's intent, as it mirrors something I often say, "I'm not interested in assessing blame; I want to solve the problem." On the other hand, in order to prevent a problem from recurring it's often necessary to know who caused it in the first place. Plus I'm a firm believer, with Samuel Smiles, that a mistake is the best opportunity for learning on the planet.
So is there a way to get to get the benefits of assigning responsibility for errors without oppressing those guilty of them? There may be, if we stick to some basic principles:
1) Assessing responsibility is not the end of the story. It's the beginning of a process of improvement that ideally includes not just the person who made the error, but also anyone who can help her/him prevent it in the future, like a trainer, copy editor or beta tester (Yup, that's what we needed today!).
2) You cannot judge a person's character by one of his/her actions. A person who makes a mistake is not a screw-up, anymore than a person who drinks a glass of water is the ocean.
3) The person who bore the brunt of the consequences of a mistake may not be ideal for helping the person responsible recover. AA step 9 is to make amends to the people you've wronged, but you don't usually ask those people to be your sponsor. A disinterested third-party often brings a more solution-oriented perspective.
What did you see today?
I sent out an e-mail to the staff of our Main Library today to let them know about a computer glitch we thought might affect patrons and taking responsibility on behalf of my department. The director of the library, being a nice guy, sent an e-mail back saying, "No one is to blame here." Then, because it was Friday afternoon, we got into a silly discussion of who really was to blame. We decided on the framers of the Constitution.
Commentary
OK, you had to be there. But I understand Dr. Heezen's intent, as it mirrors something I often say, "I'm not interested in assessing blame; I want to solve the problem." On the other hand, in order to prevent a problem from recurring it's often necessary to know who caused it in the first place. Plus I'm a firm believer, with Samuel Smiles, that a mistake is the best opportunity for learning on the planet.
So is there a way to get to get the benefits of assigning responsibility for errors without oppressing those guilty of them? There may be, if we stick to some basic principles:
1) Assessing responsibility is not the end of the story. It's the beginning of a process of improvement that ideally includes not just the person who made the error, but also anyone who can help her/him prevent it in the future, like a trainer, copy editor or beta tester (Yup, that's what we needed today!).
2) You cannot judge a person's character by one of his/her actions. A person who makes a mistake is not a screw-up, anymore than a person who drinks a glass of water is the ocean.
3) The person who bore the brunt of the consequences of a mistake may not be ideal for helping the person responsible recover. AA step 9 is to make amends to the people you've wronged, but you don't usually ask those people to be your sponsor. A disinterested third-party often brings a more solution-oriented perspective.
What did you see today?
6/11/2009
I saw poorly written blogs
Context
One of the e-mail lists I’m on pointed me in the direction of the Learngasm blog, which includes this entry. The 100 links on it looked interesting so I thought it would take me forever to go through all of them, but that turned out to not be the case. Most of them were poorly written, so I rejected them as wasting my time.
Commentary
There is almost no content in the world that I will wade through poor writing to get at. Living in the 21st century, I find there’s usually enough good writing available on any subject that I can afford to filter this way, so I feel blessed.
So what counts as poor writing? Well, it's similar to poor teaching, which I define this way: any educational experience that is more strongly focused on the teaching than on the learning is of poor quality. My hope is that you’ve never had this happen, but I’ll bet you have: you’re in a class and you quickly discover that the instructor’s goal is just to get through a certain amount of material. Whether you actually understand it is not part of the equation. I think the same dynamic is often at work when people write. They’re seeking to communicate something, but mostly they appear more concerned with getting it off their chest than in ensuring that the message is received.
What are the hallmarks of this kind of writing? Undefined acronyms and references ("My school.” Which is where? What kind of school? What do you do there?), stream of consciousness sentence and paragraph structure, and my personal bugaboo, misspellings and grammatical errors.
“Oh, Lynn,” you might say, “that’s not fair. Grammar and spelling rules in English are really hard to learn. You can’t expect someone to observe all that minutiae.” Whether the rules are hard or not is debatable, but the fact of the matter is they are the conventions we use in order to understand each other. When I teach my Introduction to the World Wide Web, I tell the students that transfer protocols (http, ftp, SMTP) are agreements between computers to share information the same way so they'll understand each other. Rules governing grammar and spelling are the same sort of thing, and disregarding them amounts to breaking a covenant with your reader.
"Aha," you might rejoin (Wow, you're really being feisty about this issue!), "but you break grammar rules all the time. Why, I can see you're just itching to start a sentence with a conjunction like you always do." OK, but I learned in school that breaking grammar rules on purpose isn't poor writing, it's stylized writing. The author who does this is actually creating a new covenant with his/her readers, like when a poem is written in dialect so readers will experience the lyrical qualities of unfamiliar sounds. If I come across something like this I still may choose not to read it, but I will have some respect for the writer's cleverness, creativity and courage.
On the other hand, even if I concede to the clueless blogger that the conventions are hard to learn and apply, that makes the abdication of responsibility even worse. It's like she/he is saying, "It's too difficult for me to figure out whether to use 'there,' 'they're,' or 'their' in this sentence. Instead I'll just type whatever comes to mind. The reader can expend the effort to figure out what I mean." Thank you, but I must respectfully decline.
What did you see today?
One of the e-mail lists I’m on pointed me in the direction of the Learngasm blog, which includes this entry. The 100 links on it looked interesting so I thought it would take me forever to go through all of them, but that turned out to not be the case. Most of them were poorly written, so I rejected them as wasting my time.
Commentary
There is almost no content in the world that I will wade through poor writing to get at. Living in the 21st century, I find there’s usually enough good writing available on any subject that I can afford to filter this way, so I feel blessed.
So what counts as poor writing? Well, it's similar to poor teaching, which I define this way: any educational experience that is more strongly focused on the teaching than on the learning is of poor quality. My hope is that you’ve never had this happen, but I’ll bet you have: you’re in a class and you quickly discover that the instructor’s goal is just to get through a certain amount of material. Whether you actually understand it is not part of the equation. I think the same dynamic is often at work when people write. They’re seeking to communicate something, but mostly they appear more concerned with getting it off their chest than in ensuring that the message is received.
What are the hallmarks of this kind of writing? Undefined acronyms and references ("My school.” Which is where? What kind of school? What do you do there?), stream of consciousness sentence and paragraph structure, and my personal bugaboo, misspellings and grammatical errors.
“Oh, Lynn,” you might say, “that’s not fair. Grammar and spelling rules in English are really hard to learn. You can’t expect someone to observe all that minutiae.” Whether the rules are hard or not is debatable, but the fact of the matter is they are the conventions we use in order to understand each other. When I teach my Introduction to the World Wide Web, I tell the students that transfer protocols (http, ftp, SMTP) are agreements between computers to share information the same way so they'll understand each other. Rules governing grammar and spelling are the same sort of thing, and disregarding them amounts to breaking a covenant with your reader.
"Aha," you might rejoin (Wow, you're really being feisty about this issue!), "but you break grammar rules all the time. Why, I can see you're just itching to start a sentence with a conjunction like you always do." OK, but I learned in school that breaking grammar rules on purpose isn't poor writing, it's stylized writing. The author who does this is actually creating a new covenant with his/her readers, like when a poem is written in dialect so readers will experience the lyrical qualities of unfamiliar sounds. If I come across something like this I still may choose not to read it, but I will have some respect for the writer's cleverness, creativity and courage.
On the other hand, even if I concede to the clueless blogger that the conventions are hard to learn and apply, that makes the abdication of responsibility even worse. It's like she/he is saying, "It's too difficult for me to figure out whether to use 'there,' 'they're,' or 'their' in this sentence. Instead I'll just type whatever comes to mind. The reader can expend the effort to figure out what I mean." Thank you, but I must respectfully decline.
What did you see today?
4/20/2009
I saw an older European-American man driving poorly
Context
In Shreveport, I-20 West has an off ramp that merges into northbound Common Street. As I was traveling north on Common this morning, one of the cars on this ramp failed to yield to oncoming traffic like it was supposed to. When I looked at the driver of the vehicle, I saw that he was an older European-American, and that he was looking down at the seat next to him rather than watching where he was going. I said "Sir!" in an exasperated tone as I swerved around him. At least one of the cars behind me, which had to swerve even more, honked at him.
Commentary
My theories as to what happened with the guy this morning all center around him not realizing he was sliding into traffic. In other words, he thought he had a moment or two to glance at his papers or his phone or whatever before he would have to pay attention to other cars, but he didn't. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about white privilege.
I am not a road-ragey type. This is one of the few areas in my life where I actually hew pretty closely to the Quaker peace testimony. I do not honk my horn in anger, only in warning or greeting. When my fellow drivers do something irritating, I usually just say or yell something in the privacy of my own vehicle and it usually isn't even profane or insulting. Something along the lines of "C'mon!" or "Seriously?" If I'm particularly irked I'll emulate my dad, who used to say "Well, friend . . . " in a very sarcastic tone. This is pretty funny in light of the fact that my dad was not a Quaker but a Baptist, but I digress.
However, I don't recall ever saying "Sir" before. Now maybe it's just because I live in Louisiana, where "yes, sir" and "no ma'am" have been codified into law. But I don't think so. I think it's because the driver was older than me, which definitely does deserve some respect, and because he was white and male, which doesn't necessarily.
So I guess my new mandate in the fight for equality is to refer to every bad driver, without prejudice, as sir or ma'am. Wish me luck!
What did you see today?
In Shreveport, I-20 West has an off ramp that merges into northbound Common Street. As I was traveling north on Common this morning, one of the cars on this ramp failed to yield to oncoming traffic like it was supposed to. When I looked at the driver of the vehicle, I saw that he was an older European-American, and that he was looking down at the seat next to him rather than watching where he was going. I said "Sir!" in an exasperated tone as I swerved around him. At least one of the cars behind me, which had to swerve even more, honked at him.
Commentary
My theories as to what happened with the guy this morning all center around him not realizing he was sliding into traffic. In other words, he thought he had a moment or two to glance at his papers or his phone or whatever before he would have to pay attention to other cars, but he didn't. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about white privilege.
I am not a road-ragey type. This is one of the few areas in my life where I actually hew pretty closely to the Quaker peace testimony. I do not honk my horn in anger, only in warning or greeting. When my fellow drivers do something irritating, I usually just say or yell something in the privacy of my own vehicle and it usually isn't even profane or insulting. Something along the lines of "C'mon!" or "Seriously?" If I'm particularly irked I'll emulate my dad, who used to say "Well, friend . . . " in a very sarcastic tone. This is pretty funny in light of the fact that my dad was not a Quaker but a Baptist, but I digress.
However, I don't recall ever saying "Sir" before. Now maybe it's just because I live in Louisiana, where "yes, sir" and "no ma'am" have been codified into law. But I don't think so. I think it's because the driver was older than me, which definitely does deserve some respect, and because he was white and male, which doesn't necessarily.
So I guess my new mandate in the fight for equality is to refer to every bad driver, without prejudice, as sir or ma'am. Wish me luck!
What did you see today?
7/24/2008
I saw a discussion about analogies
Context
I was catching up on some e-mail lists today, including the Information Literacy Instruction list. About a month ago a distinguished professor of library science sent the query referenced here to the list, asking about the use of analogies in library instruction. This touched off a long discussion of whether to use analogies at all and if so, which ones are appropriate. The discussion has largely petered out now, but a particular piece of advice, taken from this response really struck me:
Connect to real life experience – think about those common experiences students are likely to share such as shopping, eating, and sleeping. An examination of the common sports and military metaphors used in the teaching of physics and engineering and the disproportionate number of women in those disciplines can help illustrate the need to focus on common experiences.
Commentary
I don't know what to make of the implication here that sports and military metaphors do not reflect the "common experiences" of women. On the one hand, it's certainly reasonable to say that they are more likely to be common experiences for most men than for most women. On the other hand, I and both of my X chromosomes are much likely to understand a sports metaphor than say, a shopping one (I hate shopping with a purple passion!).
There's another underlying assumption here: that not using "common experiences" is bad. I can think of two reasons why that might be the case: students might not understand what you're trying to get across with your analogy, which is not the ideal result of a teaching method, or they might be offended by it, which is not good for any relationship between human beings.
I'm wondering if both of these problems are exacerbated by students' insecurities. I'm a pretty confident student, possibly because I'm also a teacher, so if someone uses an example or a metaphor that I don't understand, I say so and I expect the teacher to come up with a different one. In other words, I see my failure to learn as a problem to be solved, not a personal shortcoming that needs to be covered up.
I think offense works similarly. Certainly I'm offended if someone insults me to my face and I'll often take the bait when someone is deliberately trying to get a rise out of a certain group of people. Most of the time, though, I assume people don't mean to be offensive; they're just ignorant or at worst, insensitive. In both cases, self-confidence helps me address the issue with the offender productively instead of stewing in my own wounded juices. Shoot, in an exchange like that I might even discover that my own assumptions were incorrect!
Touchiness, whininess, and even victimhood sometimes say, "the world sucks and I can't do anything about it." So I guess what I'm advocating is less tiptoeing around a student's potential ignorant or touchy spots and more empowering them to tell us about those spots so we can engage in the learning experience together.
What did you see today?
I was catching up on some e-mail lists today, including the Information Literacy Instruction list. About a month ago a distinguished professor of library science sent the query referenced here to the list, asking about the use of analogies in library instruction. This touched off a long discussion of whether to use analogies at all and if so, which ones are appropriate. The discussion has largely petered out now, but a particular piece of advice, taken from this response really struck me:
Connect to real life experience – think about those common experiences students are likely to share such as shopping, eating, and sleeping. An examination of the common sports and military metaphors used in the teaching of physics and engineering and the disproportionate number of women in those disciplines can help illustrate the need to focus on common experiences.
Commentary
I don't know what to make of the implication here that sports and military metaphors do not reflect the "common experiences" of women. On the one hand, it's certainly reasonable to say that they are more likely to be common experiences for most men than for most women. On the other hand, I and both of my X chromosomes are much likely to understand a sports metaphor than say, a shopping one (I hate shopping with a purple passion!).
There's another underlying assumption here: that not using "common experiences" is bad. I can think of two reasons why that might be the case: students might not understand what you're trying to get across with your analogy, which is not the ideal result of a teaching method, or they might be offended by it, which is not good for any relationship between human beings.
I'm wondering if both of these problems are exacerbated by students' insecurities. I'm a pretty confident student, possibly because I'm also a teacher, so if someone uses an example or a metaphor that I don't understand, I say so and I expect the teacher to come up with a different one. In other words, I see my failure to learn as a problem to be solved, not a personal shortcoming that needs to be covered up.
I think offense works similarly. Certainly I'm offended if someone insults me to my face and I'll often take the bait when someone is deliberately trying to get a rise out of a certain group of people. Most of the time, though, I assume people don't mean to be offensive; they're just ignorant or at worst, insensitive. In both cases, self-confidence helps me address the issue with the offender productively instead of stewing in my own wounded juices. Shoot, in an exchange like that I might even discover that my own assumptions were incorrect!
Touchiness, whininess, and even victimhood sometimes say, "the world sucks and I can't do anything about it." So I guess what I'm advocating is less tiptoeing around a student's potential ignorant or touchy spots and more empowering them to tell us about those spots so we can engage in the learning experience together.
What did you see today?
7/03/2008
I heard a patron express appreciation
Context
A woman called my workplace today wanting to confirm her reservation of our computer classroom for a group she was sending to the library. She did not, in fact, have a reservation, but I went ahead and made one for her. It was a little later than she wanted because I had to wait for the machines in the classroom to be freed up, as they are used by the general public when no classes are in session. In order to fill the gap between the time the session was due to start and when the computer classroom would be available, I made a reservation for the group to use our meeting room as well.
After the group arrived, they stayed in the meeting room much longer than I expected, so long that they missed their computer classroom reservation entirely. The computer classroom is one floor below my cubicle in the Main Library, so I was called downstairs to resolve the situation, at which point I told the teacher (who was not the lady I had spoken with on the phone) I would try to go upstairs and make another reservation. After I had accomplished this and checked back with the teacher, she said, "I appreciate you."
Commentary
At one workplace or another that I've occupied over my lifetime, there was a sign over someone's desk that said, "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." I was irritated with the group today because I felt like they didn't have their act together, and when I bent over backward to get them what they needed anyway, they were too disorganized to take advantage of it! I even suggested to the teacher that she reschedule for another time, rather than continue to make the machines in our computer classroom unavailable to the public, but she wheedled some more reserved time out of me. And then she said she appreciated me. I couldn't help myself; I said, "it was no problem." I just couldn't stay mad after she expressed gratitude.
The library-oriented comic strip Unshelved recently ran this installment, where the protagonist mentions you can get away with saying almost anything about a person if you immediately say, "bless him/her." When I was little, I was taught that "please" and "thank you" were magic words, and today's incident really makes me believe it. I guess on the simplest level I was feeling angry because I thought my efforts weren't being valued, and then they were!
I wonder if a lot of our anger comes from feeling underappreciated. Let's try an experiment: the next time someone's mad at you, try thanking them for something. Or blessing them.
What did you hear today?
A woman called my workplace today wanting to confirm her reservation of our computer classroom for a group she was sending to the library. She did not, in fact, have a reservation, but I went ahead and made one for her. It was a little later than she wanted because I had to wait for the machines in the classroom to be freed up, as they are used by the general public when no classes are in session. In order to fill the gap between the time the session was due to start and when the computer classroom would be available, I made a reservation for the group to use our meeting room as well.
After the group arrived, they stayed in the meeting room much longer than I expected, so long that they missed their computer classroom reservation entirely. The computer classroom is one floor below my cubicle in the Main Library, so I was called downstairs to resolve the situation, at which point I told the teacher (who was not the lady I had spoken with on the phone) I would try to go upstairs and make another reservation. After I had accomplished this and checked back with the teacher, she said, "I appreciate you."
Commentary
At one workplace or another that I've occupied over my lifetime, there was a sign over someone's desk that said, "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." I was irritated with the group today because I felt like they didn't have their act together, and when I bent over backward to get them what they needed anyway, they were too disorganized to take advantage of it! I even suggested to the teacher that she reschedule for another time, rather than continue to make the machines in our computer classroom unavailable to the public, but she wheedled some more reserved time out of me. And then she said she appreciated me. I couldn't help myself; I said, "it was no problem." I just couldn't stay mad after she expressed gratitude.
The library-oriented comic strip Unshelved recently ran this installment, where the protagonist mentions you can get away with saying almost anything about a person if you immediately say, "bless him/her." When I was little, I was taught that "please" and "thank you" were magic words, and today's incident really makes me believe it. I guess on the simplest level I was feeling angry because I thought my efforts weren't being valued, and then they were!
I wonder if a lot of our anger comes from feeling underappreciated. Let's try an experiment: the next time someone's mad at you, try thanking them for something. Or blessing them.
What did you hear today?
6/27/2008
I saw a statement about teaching
Context
I was reading messages on the Information Literacy Instruction mailing list today. A few days ago, a woman asked a question about methods of explaining Library of Congress call numbers. Over time, the discussion has gone off on the tangent of "why you shouldn't bother to teach this material at all." Today I read this message where Joseph Harmon of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis states, among other things, that he tells students to avoid subject searches because of controlled vocabularies.
Commentary
Well, I've tried to avoid explaining what controlled vocabularies were
in the past, but now I think it's required so you'll understand my response. Controlled vocabulary is a communications concept that basically says people talking about like things should use the same words. Simple, huh? And you can see why it would come in handy.
However, in the library world many thorny issues arise when you're trying to decide which controlled vocabularies to use in your catalog and how to communicate them to your users. These complications are some of the reasons why it takes a master's degree to be a librarian.
I think learning happens best when it fulfills a student's immediate need and relates to her/his personal experience. For example, there's a certain procedure we only have to use at my workplace when the internet goes down. So I tell new employees I'm not going to bother to train them on it, because by the time they need it, they will have forgotten the training. I really believe that throwing predetermined material at people just because "it's in the curriculum" not only wastes time, but also sours some students on the whole idea of education. So I can see why Mr. Harmon might say to himself, "there's no point in covering controlled vocabularies with these students. I'm going to teach them research methods that will speak more to their immediate need and experience."
We can't always limit education this way though, because it discounts two important factors: the teacher's experience and the students' future needs. In the extreme case, you wouldn't wait until your toddler was wandering off into the street to teach him about looking both ways for traffic. He may not have an immediate need when you're explaining this concept at the kitchen table, but your experience tells you it's worth teaching because he'll need it eventually.
Returning to the library instruction arena, I've done a whole lot more computer catalog searches than most non-librarian folk, and I know that subject searches using controlled vocabularies are really useful! Once you understand them, they simplify the research process enormously. So it may be outside your experience and beyond your immediate need now, but if you learn it, you may very well thank me later.
I'm not sure how this relates to my current classes, but I am thinking about how to balance students' immediate needs (which include, of course, the need to not be overloaded with information) with my projections of what their future needs will be. This is particularly hard for me because I don't like to tell people what to do. Even if it's good for them.
What did you see today?
I was reading messages on the Information Literacy Instruction mailing list today. A few days ago, a woman asked a question about methods of explaining Library of Congress call numbers. Over time, the discussion has gone off on the tangent of "why you shouldn't bother to teach this material at all." Today I read this message where Joseph Harmon of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis states, among other things, that he tells students to avoid subject searches because of controlled vocabularies.
Commentary
Well, I've tried to avoid explaining what controlled vocabularies were
in the past, but now I think it's required so you'll understand my response. Controlled vocabulary is a communications concept that basically says people talking about like things should use the same words. Simple, huh? And you can see why it would come in handy.
However, in the library world many thorny issues arise when you're trying to decide which controlled vocabularies to use in your catalog and how to communicate them to your users. These complications are some of the reasons why it takes a master's degree to be a librarian.
I think learning happens best when it fulfills a student's immediate need and relates to her/his personal experience. For example, there's a certain procedure we only have to use at my workplace when the internet goes down. So I tell new employees I'm not going to bother to train them on it, because by the time they need it, they will have forgotten the training. I really believe that throwing predetermined material at people just because "it's in the curriculum" not only wastes time, but also sours some students on the whole idea of education. So I can see why Mr. Harmon might say to himself, "there's no point in covering controlled vocabularies with these students. I'm going to teach them research methods that will speak more to their immediate need and experience."
We can't always limit education this way though, because it discounts two important factors: the teacher's experience and the students' future needs. In the extreme case, you wouldn't wait until your toddler was wandering off into the street to teach him about looking both ways for traffic. He may not have an immediate need when you're explaining this concept at the kitchen table, but your experience tells you it's worth teaching because he'll need it eventually.
Returning to the library instruction arena, I've done a whole lot more computer catalog searches than most non-librarian folk, and I know that subject searches using controlled vocabularies are really useful! Once you understand them, they simplify the research process enormously. So it may be outside your experience and beyond your immediate need now, but if you learn it, you may very well thank me later.
I'm not sure how this relates to my current classes, but I am thinking about how to balance students' immediate needs (which include, of course, the need to not be overloaded with information) with my projections of what their future needs will be. This is particularly hard for me because I don't like to tell people what to do. Even if it's good for them.
What did you see today?
6/04/2008
I saw an odd post on an e-mail list
Context
I belong to an e-mail list called PUBLIB, which is directed at public librarians. Threads on subscription e-mail lists like this one usually start with a question or an invitation to offer advice, information or opinions on a particular topic, which are then responded to.
Recently, a library school student named Ron Creswell made various postings to the list (example here). His postings appeared in the form of essays on various topics which had not been prompted by previous discussion. As written, they did not appear to invite further discourse.
Commentary
After receiving three or four of Mr. Creswell's missives, many participants on PUBLIB, including myself, came to the conclusion that he had been given an assignment at library school to participate in an e-mail list. This is a standard assignment, one that is calculated to introduce students to the various modes of communication used by working librarians. It seems unlikely that Ron's instructor intended for him to dump seemingly random ruminations on the profession at large.
Once this conclusion had been drawn, list members' stated opinions of these postings basically broke down into four categories:
1) This guy is an idiot who is posting inappropriate material to the list and wasting our time. He would make a bad librarian.
2) This guy's teachers at library school are idiots for not teaching him the appropriate professional communication skills. They are turning out bad librarians.
3) We should be nice to this guy. Everybody makes mistakes.
4) This is a teachable moment where we could let this guy know where he went astray and what e-mail lists are actually used for.
In a perfect world we would all have had the #4 response. But I didn't. In fact, I remember being in distinct solidarity with the #1 folks, although I didn't post to the list.
As a teacher and a Christian, I find my response appalling. What is it in me that made me see my brother stumbling and decide that screaming and shaking my fist was the appropriate response? Sin, of course, but what specifically was going on?
Well, first off, I wasn't looking at my brother at all. I was looking at how his actions affected me (wasting my time). Then I started thinking, "somebody needs to tell this guy he's making a fool of himself in front of a bunch of people he may be working with someday." Not me, mind you, but "somebody."
This response might fall under the category "diffusion of responsibility." You can find a good explanation of this and other similar sociological phenomena here. I think that given the number of people who participate in PUBLIB who are more eloquent and venerable than me, I just didn't think it was my job to intervene.
So is this humility, appeal to authority (an insane thought if you know me personally), or just a method of avoiding difficult situations? Realistically, it's probably a combination of the three, but I know the third is of no merit and I should do my best to eliminate it from my repertoire.
Well, humility and standing aside are good things, right? Maybe, but it's not like I had nothing to contribute. I was well aware that Mr. Creswell was doing something unwise and I could have said so, maybe privately to him, maybe on the list itself with the aim of building community.
As for the appeal to authority, that actually has a lot of merit if I'm appealing to the correct authority. Ultimately, the student's well-being is not in the hands of his teachers or the list moderators. It's in God's hands. And if you listen to Jewel, you know that our hands are God's hands (listen to the song "My Hands" off the 1998 Spirit album if you don't know what I mean).
What did you see today?
I belong to an e-mail list called PUBLIB, which is directed at public librarians. Threads on subscription e-mail lists like this one usually start with a question or an invitation to offer advice, information or opinions on a particular topic, which are then responded to.
Recently, a library school student named Ron Creswell made various postings to the list (example here). His postings appeared in the form of essays on various topics which had not been prompted by previous discussion. As written, they did not appear to invite further discourse.
Commentary
After receiving three or four of Mr. Creswell's missives, many participants on PUBLIB, including myself, came to the conclusion that he had been given an assignment at library school to participate in an e-mail list. This is a standard assignment, one that is calculated to introduce students to the various modes of communication used by working librarians. It seems unlikely that Ron's instructor intended for him to dump seemingly random ruminations on the profession at large.
Once this conclusion had been drawn, list members' stated opinions of these postings basically broke down into four categories:
1) This guy is an idiot who is posting inappropriate material to the list and wasting our time. He would make a bad librarian.
2) This guy's teachers at library school are idiots for not teaching him the appropriate professional communication skills. They are turning out bad librarians.
3) We should be nice to this guy. Everybody makes mistakes.
4) This is a teachable moment where we could let this guy know where he went astray and what e-mail lists are actually used for.
In a perfect world we would all have had the #4 response. But I didn't. In fact, I remember being in distinct solidarity with the #1 folks, although I didn't post to the list.
As a teacher and a Christian, I find my response appalling. What is it in me that made me see my brother stumbling and decide that screaming and shaking my fist was the appropriate response? Sin, of course, but what specifically was going on?
Well, first off, I wasn't looking at my brother at all. I was looking at how his actions affected me (wasting my time). Then I started thinking, "somebody needs to tell this guy he's making a fool of himself in front of a bunch of people he may be working with someday." Not me, mind you, but "somebody."
This response might fall under the category "diffusion of responsibility." You can find a good explanation of this and other similar sociological phenomena here. I think that given the number of people who participate in PUBLIB who are more eloquent and venerable than me, I just didn't think it was my job to intervene.
So is this humility, appeal to authority (an insane thought if you know me personally), or just a method of avoiding difficult situations? Realistically, it's probably a combination of the three, but I know the third is of no merit and I should do my best to eliminate it from my repertoire.
Well, humility and standing aside are good things, right? Maybe, but it's not like I had nothing to contribute. I was well aware that Mr. Creswell was doing something unwise and I could have said so, maybe privately to him, maybe on the list itself with the aim of building community.
As for the appeal to authority, that actually has a lot of merit if I'm appealing to the correct authority. Ultimately, the student's well-being is not in the hands of his teachers or the list moderators. It's in God's hands. And if you listen to Jewel, you know that our hands are God's hands (listen to the song "My Hands" off the 1998 Spirit album if you don't know what I mean).
What did you see today?
12/13/2007
I saw a description of education
Context
I was reading through some more messages on the Information Literacy Instruction mailing list today. One of them was about academic institutions whose campus-wide goals reflect an emphasis on information literacy. Reading the various examples, I found this snippet from the mission statement for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte: "Develop an understanding and appreciation of the themes of liberal education for private and public life in the areas of arts and society, the western tradition, global understanding, and ethical issues and cultural critique." As a person who is generally liberal in my political opinions, the use of the phrase "liberal education" struck me.
Commentary
A quick check of Wikipedia and the Association of American Colleges and Universities' website shows that "liberal education" means essentially the same thing as "liberal arts education": the idea that it's beneficial to learn about many subjects instead of just focusing on the field you plan to make money in.
I was wondering, though, if some people see the term "liberal education" and think it means education in how to be a liberal. In other words, the liberal education one would get at UNCC might be in contrast to the conservative education one would get at Oral Roberts University. I would have never thought that way about liberal arts colleges, but seeing "liberal" and "education" right next to each other made the idea more plausible.
Actually, one might not be mistaken in seeing it that way. A recent poll by Zogby and The Norman Lear Center showed that when it comes to television at least, people with liberal political views are much more likely than political conservatives to watch a variety of different types of shows, not disdaining even those whose views they disagree with. In retrospect this is not a surprising result. For me, liberalism means being open to everything. Illiberalism, on the other hand, posits that certain views are so obviously dangerous or erroneous that they don't even bear examination.
It bears noting, however, that liberalism and illiberalism are not always equivalent to left-wing and right-wing political convictions. I've lived in California; I know plenty of radicals who are convinced the only way to effect social change is to annihilate anyone who holds a contrary opinion. I also have friends who have a Republican's love for small government but don't vilify me for not sharing it. And in spite of my general liberalism, I'm fairly conservative religiously and economically. None of my convictions ever make me want to shut my eyes to what else is out there.
What did you see today?
I was reading through some more messages on the Information Literacy Instruction mailing list today. One of them was about academic institutions whose campus-wide goals reflect an emphasis on information literacy. Reading the various examples, I found this snippet from the mission statement for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte: "Develop an understanding and appreciation of the themes of liberal education for private and public life in the areas of arts and society, the western tradition, global understanding, and ethical issues and cultural critique." As a person who is generally liberal in my political opinions, the use of the phrase "liberal education" struck me.
Commentary
A quick check of Wikipedia and the Association of American Colleges and Universities' website shows that "liberal education" means essentially the same thing as "liberal arts education": the idea that it's beneficial to learn about many subjects instead of just focusing on the field you plan to make money in.
I was wondering, though, if some people see the term "liberal education" and think it means education in how to be a liberal. In other words, the liberal education one would get at UNCC might be in contrast to the conservative education one would get at Oral Roberts University. I would have never thought that way about liberal arts colleges, but seeing "liberal" and "education" right next to each other made the idea more plausible.
Actually, one might not be mistaken in seeing it that way. A recent poll by Zogby and The Norman Lear Center showed that when it comes to television at least, people with liberal political views are much more likely than political conservatives to watch a variety of different types of shows, not disdaining even those whose views they disagree with. In retrospect this is not a surprising result. For me, liberalism means being open to everything. Illiberalism, on the other hand, posits that certain views are so obviously dangerous or erroneous that they don't even bear examination.
It bears noting, however, that liberalism and illiberalism are not always equivalent to left-wing and right-wing political convictions. I've lived in California; I know plenty of radicals who are convinced the only way to effect social change is to annihilate anyone who holds a contrary opinion. I also have friends who have a Republican's love for small government but don't vilify me for not sharing it. And in spite of my general liberalism, I'm fairly conservative religiously and economically. None of my convictions ever make me want to shut my eyes to what else is out there.
What did you see today?
11/08/2007
I saw a discussion of incentives
Context
I belong to an e-mail list called ili-l, which stands for Information Literacy Instruction. A recent post on the list asked for suggestions for promoting a certain type of classes. Several responses came back including, "give the students chocolate."
Commentary
Information Literacy Instruction is the practice of teaching someone to find information and use it effectively and ethically, so it's something all librarians engage in to some extent. However, because of the centrality of research to the mission of universities, it's particularly important to academic librarians, and they dominate the discussion on ili-l.
It's particularly depressing to me, therefore, that academic librarians often feel like their role in the information universe is belittled. Apparently people in their communities (not just students, but faculty and administration as well) really believe that everything is on the Internet. This is wrongheaded enough, but even if all the useful information in the world was on the internet, you would still need information professionals (librarians are one class of those, but there are others) to help you find it and use it.
So some academic librarians are reduced to asking how they can possibly convince students at their institutions to avail themselves of their service, and others are reduced to suggesting that students be bribed with chocolate. I had a hard time getting started on this blog entry because I didn't know how to express the many, many reasons I think this is wrong. I finally decided to stick with just one: handing out candy doesn't convince people of the importance of your enterprise; it trivializes it.
Picture this: Lakeisha Student comes back from her Information Literacy class and her roommate asks what it was like. "Well," she says, "I learned to use controlled vocabulary to create more effective searches in specialized databases and I got some M&Ms(tm)!" It's like somebody saying, "I climbed Mount Everest yesterday, and when I got to the top there was a McDonald's(tm)!" By the way, if you don't know what I mean by "using controlled vocabulary to create more effective searches in specialized databases," you might want to ask a librarian. You'd be amazed at what you can learn.
What did you see today?
I belong to an e-mail list called ili-l, which stands for Information Literacy Instruction. A recent post on the list asked for suggestions for promoting a certain type of classes. Several responses came back including, "give the students chocolate."
Commentary
Information Literacy Instruction is the practice of teaching someone to find information and use it effectively and ethically, so it's something all librarians engage in to some extent. However, because of the centrality of research to the mission of universities, it's particularly important to academic librarians, and they dominate the discussion on ili-l.
It's particularly depressing to me, therefore, that academic librarians often feel like their role in the information universe is belittled. Apparently people in their communities (not just students, but faculty and administration as well) really believe that everything is on the Internet. This is wrongheaded enough, but even if all the useful information in the world was on the internet, you would still need information professionals (librarians are one class of those, but there are others) to help you find it and use it.
So some academic librarians are reduced to asking how they can possibly convince students at their institutions to avail themselves of their service, and others are reduced to suggesting that students be bribed with chocolate. I had a hard time getting started on this blog entry because I didn't know how to express the many, many reasons I think this is wrong. I finally decided to stick with just one: handing out candy doesn't convince people of the importance of your enterprise; it trivializes it.
Picture this: Lakeisha Student comes back from her Information Literacy class and her roommate asks what it was like. "Well," she says, "I learned to use controlled vocabulary to create more effective searches in specialized databases and I got some M&Ms(tm)!" It's like somebody saying, "I climbed Mount Everest yesterday, and when I got to the top there was a McDonald's(tm)!" By the way, if you don't know what I mean by "using controlled vocabulary to create more effective searches in specialized databases," you might want to ask a librarian. You'd be amazed at what you can learn.
What did you see today?
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