Pillows and Blankets

You know the feeling when the weather outside is gloomy, and the rain pours down like watery tendrils of some gigantic beast from the sky on its way through the earth and sewer drains? It's that instinctive urge to stay where you are, mash your head against a comfortably large and extravagant pillow, and then pull the blankets over you as though you were some little caterpillar undergoing a transformation; and maybe you are. When the sun rises again the next day, or in the next few hours, you'd thrust off your protective shell and dress and go dancing out but until then, you rather stay where it's warm and safe.

It's human instinct to avoid things that seem dangerous, just as it is with all animals whom are concerned with self-preservation. However, we have the perchance of viewing not only the physical things as dangers to ourselves, but also the metaphysical things that hide behind the curtain; for instance, the death of a loved one. The sense of fear. The pain of loneliness. We would often avoid all in favor of the warm blankets and pillows that make up our beds because, well, it is our instinct.

But much like an allergic reaction or an overzealous immune system, this protective mechanism can sometimes go horribly wrong. The child who has known only comfort in his surroundings, and just enough anguish to know what to avoid, will never grow. His experiences have a hard cap; he is limited solely to that which he has built around him. His environment has become his protective shell and unlike the waking of the dawn and the throwing off of blankets to greet the world, he won't ever have that awakening. The instinctual response we all have to seek only comfort has turned now, into a detriment. Naturally, the depicted case of a NEET is only a theoretical (and rarely realistic extreme, barring video game addicts and obsessive otaku junkies), but we can see less pronounced behavior in all of us, if we only choose to look.

Perhaps it is a response to adolescence, where much confusion is to be had from new experiences themselves and our ability to maintain both self-cohesion and internalize new sensory information is pushed to the limit, but as people grow older, the experiences they seek tend to streamline. This could be, granted, a consequence of finding one's place, the natural placement of one in the universe but at the same time, it could simply be comfort within circumstance. Such mindsets give rise to all sorts of strange creatures, such as 'relationships of convenience,' 'unhappy work environments,' and 'depression;' and perhaps it is because past some point, some mental age, we become too afraid to seek what we are lacking and cling to what we already have. Those who are adventurous cling to the thrill of adrenaline; those who are homemakers seek only to make more homes; those who are comforted by singles bars and one-night stands cling to, well, singles bars and one-night stands.

We grow afraid of the new and stay with convention because convention is known. The new is not and perhaps, can never be. Curiosity is only as strong as we are.

Yet, if you stay wrapped within pillows and blankets, you will never understand how the rainwater feels as it cascades over your eyes. You will never feel the winds as the storm blows through, nor hear the footsteps of a thousand sprites, and you will never see the dawn break through the cloud cover. Sure, perhaps you would dislike it; perhaps it is only wet, and cold, and damp, but how can you ever know if you don't cast off your blankets right now and go seeking? We all have our comfort zones, but it is when we step out of them, to places where we are afraid, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar, that we truly gain something new. To be more accurate, the opportunity to gain something new.

I am, of course, aware of my own personal boundaries for comfort; I dislike too much noise, too many people, anything in real excess and prefer at times to be alone with my own thoughts and musings. However, do I believe I can truly understand what 'too much noise' to me means if I do not step outward? The seek for new experiences should not be the same soft comforts we have always known, but the things that challenge us to change. It is only with change that we grow. It is only with growth than we can advance and hopefully, find something new beyond the pillows we keep on our bed.

The next time you feel a place is 'not your scene,' or a dish is 'not your taste,' give it a shot. It is through that that you'll change, and sometimes, aren't the wings of a butterfly better than the little feet of a caterpillar?

Today is sunny, but incredibly hot outside. Therefore, I am lazy.

Cheers.

Little Red-Haired Girls

As a young kid, I enjoyed reading Peanuts strips for their humor, awesome drawings, and Snoopy's crazy antics. One of the strongest themes that struck me from the series was the amount of unrequited romance between all sorts of characters; Lucy and Schroeder, Sally and Linus, and of course, Charlie Brown and the little red-haired girl. Of all, arguably, it is the latter that is the most soulful and the one that hits us all home, for we've all been like Charles Schultz, and therefore like Charlie Brown trying to share his lunch with some dream wandering off into the distance.

To be clinical, romance is just a form of emotional attachment; just a form of 'bonding' between people for some biological imperative that perhaps we are now too deluded to fully understand or even acknowledge. Maybe as a species, it was somehow determined that if love brings parents together into a nurturing environment for their offspring, then it would only produce children who are well-cared for and therefore successful. From that sprung a fountain of which love was born, some immutable bond by design meant to ensure survival and maximize the chances for our children and our children's children. Too bad that the creation of love was a Pandora's Box for all sorts of possibly unintended consequences; jealousy, hatred, divorce, protective custody, and foster homes. I sometimes wonder that if whoever shapes the hands of evolution were to see this havoc, what feelings would emerge.

But yet, what a Pandora's Box it was. With love came compassion and not just the rather moralistic high ground of pure altruism (which, by the way, I fully endorse and believe in) but the muddy areas of trampled wild flowers and fulfillment. Elation then, was next and all of the rush and the adrenaline and the excitement, and contentment followed; not just any contentment, but the real form of peace one has with the moment (notably, usually attained after years of meditation). There are times when even I wonder if the benefits of the existence of love outweigh the massive list of detriments, the long-term consequences, and the breaking of so many Charlie Brown hearts.

Yet, perhaps what love is at heart (pun!), intended or unintended, is a purpose. We live for love because it ties into every aspect of our lives, be it our children's children, our own fulfillment, or some other unfathomnable reason. It is a drive, a crucial mental rule and a fail-safe that prevents us as a species from annihlating ourselves. Perhaps when evolution occured within our then-primitive brains, the idea that our burgeoning intellect could only lead to our destruction was realized by the powers that be, and in turn, we grew the capacity to love. Sure, it might have killed many of us either through the guns of jealous lovers or the resulting mental depression of doom, but it has saved us too; love for one another preventing too many atomic bombs from being launched, preventing us from turning into male lions ripping apart competitors, preventing us from going through sometimes with the most dastardly of deeds.

Perhaps with this understanding, we might even one day overcome love's darker shades, and see only for the benefits it has given us. Consider that the next time you sit beside your little red-haired girl (or guy), and in turn, be grateful for what they have given you, even from just a moment's glance to an entire lifetime.

Grudgingly, I suppose I must do the same.

Today started rainy, but has progressed to a 'passable' sunlit day. However, I am still lazy.

Cheers.

Quincy Archer Hates You

In my forays into the realm of educational philosophy, I have discovered one thing that irks me beyond almost everything else (well, potentially except the lack of real logical rigor that provides a soft mushy backbone for just about anything). All of the people in education seem to be in there because they get a sense of happiness from actually helping someone out. The way they talk and giggle about the cute traits they discover in their current and/or soon-to-be little darlings simply offends my sensibilities and makes me wish desperately I could just listen to my iPod and drown them out (I would, would it not be rude, impolite, and completely insulting).

Please don't misunderstand; this doesn't mean I believe teachers and educators should not feel anything when helping out students. I simply don't believe that this feeling should be the forefront reason for someone to pursue teaching as an occupation. It is akin to me believing that if playing music makes you happy, then that's a personal issue; but to become a professional musician simply for that reason is somewhat selfish and short-sighted. It is idealistic to the point of recklessness and for teachers, being reckless means messing up a child's life and removing one otherwise productive member of society from play.

Altruism and humanitarianism are central concepts to this discussion of 'how one should feel.' The fact remains that many people do deeds out of good-will perhaps not entirely out of wanting to help someone else (and in some cases, not at all) but for the personal joy of having done something to help someone else. Functionally, in a utilitarian way, this has little to no effect but as a purist, I believe there is almost something fundamentally wrong with this approach to any sort of compassion. When helping others, the forefront should not be necessarily 'it makes me feel good,' but 'how can I best help them;' with personal bias (I feel good!) tied into this, it isn't so much doing something for others as it is doing something for yourself. I cannot subscribe to this because it is illogical and frankly speaking, can lead to tunnel vision.

The best examples come from family. Some aunt or a mother might feel great at doing something nice for someone even if it is completely unwarranted and has no justification; something like bringing an apple pie to a dinner party hosted by someone else that is sure to include dessert comes up fairly readily. If we discount the possibility that bringing a second dessert is a slight (not very subtle but certainly hurtful), we are then left with 'I didn't know dessert was being served' (ignorant but hardly hateful or detrimental) and 'I knew but I wanted to do something nice for them even at the cost of offending them' (both 'pure' altruism and 'false' altruism). If one was embodying 'true' altruism, one wouldn't bother bringing the dessert if one knew it would have an adverse reaction on the host; if one was embodying 'false' altruism, however, it is easy to justify bringing the pie even if one knew. 'I'm just doing something nice, they'll understand' is an often-heard phrase that really means 'I am doing something nice to make myself feel better for some reason or another.'

Things like these can surpass the familial sphere and affect all the manner of situations from the corporate world to the street and all can be explained in part by 'blindness' brought about by the feel-good of altruistic acts. Sure, I'm willing to bet that around half of these social faux-pas occur because of actual ignorance, but the rest can probably be chalked up to people intentionally blinding themselves because they like the feel-good high of 'helping' someone. In nowhere is this more prominent than in something like missionary work; who can judge whether one is really doing this for the potential converts or is actually doing it for a personal emotional gain? This fact has actually always been a crucial component of why I am both highly wary and critical of extremely 'giving' people and in tandem, most charities and such organizations.

In a sad application of these thoughts, it also makes martyrdom much less attractive. Was the guy who camped out in front of a forest trying to do something great for the environment because he believes it, or because he enjoyed the high of stopping a bunch of construction workers in their tracks? Who can tell these things aside from subtle clues in body language and facial expression (Lie to Me FTW), but even then, elation is elation. The reason behind the elation is what matters the most and thus, one cannot garner perhaps a definite answer unless one has the patience to interact and speak with the subjects in question. Even at that point, it is still guesswork to a degree.

Our perceptions determine our reality, to quote Obi-wan Kenobi, and this makes trusting of someone else's empirical motive difficult to do to any logical and rational skeptic. But it is only through introspection and objective analysis (as best we can) that we can avoid tunnel-vision in our charitable effects and not cause a misguided disaster, however well-intentioned it may have been.

Today is crappy weather outside and I'm on campus typing this post in lieu of finishing my second required 'synthesis paper' (read: feel-good paper on education) due in four days. Therefore, I am lazy. At least I can trust myself that I am generally always lazy, even if I doubt many of my classmates are going into teaching for reasons in addition to and other than 'self-fulfillment.'

Cheers.

Sobering Thought

One of the wonderful things about learning is that it never stops. After elementary school is middle school, after that is high school, and after undergraduate study is the pseudo-graduate era where one takes professional, pre-professional, and esoteric classes in an attempt to learn various useful and not-so-useful things. However, more often than not, these experiences allow us to view the world in new and more interesting ways, considering points that we might not have originally conceived of, or reaffirming truths we had always known somewhere deep in our little hearts.

It was only after I had walked out of the second class of my second education class of all time that I realized something. 'US high school teachers suck. Hard. And it's probably not going to change.'

Though I can probably write pages and pages on why this is so, some of which might actually be supported by real, quantitative evidence, I will instead remark only on the sobering nature of the discovery of such a bold statement and comment only on the logic that lead up to this rather cynical conclusion. Probably in a series of posts. A point in each one.

The first point is that the pool of teachers and educators is simply too soft. I admittedly, am an elitist and have a large amount of derision when it comes to 'soft' things, but precisely one of the problem with teaching is the lack of a hard philosophy. Teaching theory is a social institution and it is precisely because of this fact that relativism almost exclusively dominates any methodology and any theoretical discussion. The premise of this is simple; every student is different, with various factors that all influence how one learns and there is no 'right' answer. Relativism, therefore, regulates educational theory to 'what is best by individual basis,' and attempts to apply common solutions to wider, and wider pools until you end up with a system that is applicable to a logistically large enough group of people. This is why there are schools with distinct teaching philosophies; they essentially take an individual solution and slowly widen the pool of applicable subjects until it is enough to base an entire school on. One can extrapolate this rather skeletal (read: mildly reductionist) process to all sorts of things but I'll leave those to readers who are interesting in theoretical thinking while intoxicated or otherwise.

There is one thing I would like to point out. Tailoring distinct solutions for specific groups of people (for example, standardized test takers vs intuitive Performance-Based Assessment type learners vs people who learn by watching porn) and then separating them into schools ('programs' on a smaller scale though the division, notably, is less severe) is a form of categorizing students into distinct groups. Another word for this is 'segregation.'

The idea that there 'is no solution' (the always-repeated 'there is no right answer' mantra) is often used as a justification for this form of 'educational discrimination.' Surely, if there is no right answer then there must be 'many right answers,' each of them equally valid and applicable, right? And because of that, each of these learning environments is theoretically equal in utility when applied to their student population, right? Something like that?

If none of this makes sense, then good. It doesn't make sense either to me either. The application of hard logic into such a soft system makes the subject matter almost fall apart entirely and thus, a new form of understanding can only be reached by a new viewpoint.

Let's start with the student. It is a clear given that all people learn in different ways, and that the natural ability of all people are different (my omission of 'potential' from this statement should be enough to appease those 'fairness' folks). Thus, it is not a stretch to say that the optimal way of learning is probably different for each and every person. In an idealized case (and we'll deal with logistics after setting up this theoretical system), an educational system would be able to be optimally efficient with each kid, using precisely each individual student's way of learning. This is the basis for things such as one-on-one tutoring, homeschooling, and other things that deal with the student as an individual. However, while this might be ideal, it is not feasible. Here's where logistics come into play.

Obviously, we can't have every student in the world have one or more teachers for each subject and individual attention all the time. Let's start with the simplest 'complex' case; two students, being taught at the same time. Any teaching methodology, therefore, has to be an amalgam of the two student's ideal and thus, is now an average of the two. In addition, there is the emergent property of 'interaction;' that is, the students are not wholly separated from one another and will interact. As a teacher, all of these factors must be considered, though perhaps not with equal weight. For example, if both students willingly do not interact with one another, student interaction is downgraded in importance because the chance of it being a crucial 'key property' is much lower. Similarly, if both students model close enough ideal learning methodologies, any 'differences' between the two can be downplayed due to again, a low chance of diference being a crucial considerable factor. As more and more students are added to this system, more and more properties emerge but the method we use to teach effectively with two students will be more or less the same as the method to teach multiple students.

The teaching methodology will be, therefore, an 'average' of the ideals between all students because that is the solution that best meets the needs of the group as a whole. This methodology is to be further modified in effectiveness based on emergent properties (intrinsic cultural differences, student-student interaction, etc) which need to be judged on how much impact each property would have on the overall learning of the group. True, there might not be a unified answer that is equally efficient to everyone within a group but this is certainly not 'many answers with equal value.' In fact, this points to one distinct single answer, even if that answer is simply a 'best-fit.'

However, if we take a closer look, we see that one should not be fitting students into teaching methodologies, but fitting methodologies over students. In this vein, segregating children into different schools with different teaching methods is the exact opposite of this conclusion. While logistically it might allow for the job to be easier, as teachers have a preformed methodology already made that needs minimal tinkering to fit into each class, it is not ideal because it prevents students from meeting with students who learn entirely differently; in short, it mitigates progressive education movements entirely. A part of experiential learning is being placed into situations, particularly ones one is not used to, and meeting people one perhaps has not met. How can this occur if children are already presegregated by the very schools they go to based on something as esoteric and unyielding as 'learning method'?

Some might disavow this interaction as important, but if schools really are a social institution, well, it is clear this interaction is as important as having more than one teacher through 12 years of standardized education and not being in the same homeroom for those same 12 years. Ironically, it takes hard rigor to reach this conclusion as opposed to the soft 'all solutions are equally valid' approach that is the essence of circle-jerk education courses. No, not all solutions are equally valid; no, there probably isn't a universal methodology in the colloquial definition, but this should be decided by class to class, not through a pre-screening process to make things easier. In some ways, progressive educational reforms pidgeon-hole children almost as badly as standardized testing does by stripping away 'the world' with completely tailored learning environments.

'Free-learning' environments seem to be the best solution to this, as they allow for individualized discovery by students and no 'set philosophies' (in the colloquial sense of the word) for students to abide by. However, a problem with pure free-learning environments is the utter lack of structure. Will kids learn on their own? Won't they? Clearly, I as an observer should not leap into free schools as a solution against pidgeon holing, despite the environment certainly supporting the idea of 'methodology fit into children' as opposed to 'children fit into a methodology.' But where should structure come from? Teaching method, which I just pretty much argued against for a standard (and thus, a structure)? Results and assessment methods? Taste in TV shows?

That's a question for another time. For now, the conclusions to be reached are the following for you tl;dr peeps.

1) The most effective teaching methodology for a given sample of students is one which best resembles the average ideal methodology for the group. This insures the teacher hits the largest amount of students possible with the greatest yield, as opposed to favoring one group over all others through the decision on what methods to use.

2) The given is the student population. In terms of what this means, it suggests that teachers should tailor methodologies to a student population, making the entire process student-centric.

3) Segregation occurs when students are divided by learning methodology. This intrinsically is not a problem, but results in conditioning students to learn in certain ways through institutions devoted to only one teaching methodology (or, to be more precise, one family of educational theory); in other words, making the entire process method-centric.

4) While being 'method-centric' is not inherently a problem, it results in two problems. One, students are removed from 'choosing' their own learning method (self-discovery) and are pidgeon-holed based on either performance, environmental, or other criteria. Two, students who are therefore segregated into an institution with only one or one family of teaching methodologies lose the interaction with students who learn differently, removing experiential learning. In layman's terms, students learn to deal only with the same, not with the different.

5) Method-centric segregation stems from the false premise that if there is no answer, all answers must be equally valid in some way. This not only fails to examine 'best-fit' solutions, but also allows ideas to propagate that fit only extremely specific people that cannot be applied to other cases. Note with student-centric thought, these same ideas can all be reached but innately have a distinct context for application and for consideration in future development. Also note that 'best-fit' is not the same as 'shotgun technique.'

6) Free schools provide an environment where there is no set methodology (colloquial sense). However, there is, at the same time, a lack of structure that is intrinsically present in other schools (where methodology serves as the structure). Thus, two questions arise; is structure required, and if so, what sort?

Tune in next time for more psychobabble!

Today is sunny, but I'm lazy (and somewhat disappointed).

Cheers.