Who Gets the Credit, and Why Do We Care?

That’s the big question that all of Goethe’s writings led me to ask. I’ll start with some words from the ungrateful Prometheus as he cried to the heavens. “Was I not forged into a man, by all-powerful time/And eternal fate, my masters and yours?” He argues the same to Zeus that many atheists of our day argue to believers. God didn’t make me who I am today, he didn’t help me at all. I got here because of me. I am a product of my experience over time. The fate of the year molded this great edifice of a mortal. Things teachers teach will be forgotten. At one point or another we will believe we have taught ourselves things that were shown to us in classrooms by underpaid teachers in underfinanced schools. No one wants to remember those days, and so the teachers and the skills they taught become part of their own developing mind that evolved into its end product with no help from any outside source.
Goethe’s Faust also leads us into some interesting questions concerning the value of teaching. Here’s a man who is widely acclaimed as a learned professor, and yet he turns to the devil for some help. He’s done so much, but doesn’t seem like he’s done too much. Possibly because he hasn’t gone anywhere. My family lived in Linden, California for sixteen years. My father taught in the same portable classroom at Waterloo Middle School from 1991 to 2005, when he went to the high school. Having seen the before and after, the classroom looked exactly the same. The same posters of Michael Jordon, Mike Gallego and Mike Bordick and Dennis Eckersley that he posted when he got there were on the walls when he left. Some teachers don’t see more than one city, school, or classroom their entire careers. Yet young people come in and go out their doors every year, and all teachers can hope for is that they made a difference. On occasion they see an end product, but often they don’t. Without ever knowing what you’ve done to help, depression can verily easily creep up on you. The devil can drop in, and as Faust said, “The worst company will let you find that you’re a man among mankind.” In other words, the Faust had a pity party with the devil, and the phrase “I’m just a teacher and I don’t make a difference” throbbed in Faust’s head enough for him to throw in the towel.
When teachers feel like stepping down from their pulpit in self-pity and depression students don’t remember an effective, motivating, invigorating teacher who helped them become a better person, they remember a talking head who held up hoops through which students jumped and found loopholes to get around. Some of these students are not ruined by a sub-par education, however. They become professionals in law, business, health and the bureaucracy, and live very successful lifestyles. When they get there, they don’t remember an accomplished, wise teacher, they remember someone who’s still in the same portable classroom that they taught in fifteen years ago. To me, this is the saddest thing, and one that has affected me in my own life. People around me are going into careers in law, engineering, landscaping, business and forest rangering, and I’m going to be a teacher. I have always had a desire to teach, even though I danced around it forever before finally settling down right where I always wanted to be. These friends of mine will have grander “success”, perhaps, in the world, and live in nicer houses and drive more expensive cars and go on extravagant vacations, and I’ll love being a teacher, living somewhere around the poverty line and babysitting the teenagers of the entitlement generation and dealing with their whacked parents in a crackpot education system. That could get depressing at some point, so why do I want to do it?
People in other professions look for jobs where coworkers are competent and hardworking, the working environment is comfortable, and the company is profitable and well organized. Teaching won’t always be like that, and that’s something you realize when you decide that teaching is what you want to do. For a while I would tell people that I planned on going to grad school and studying education policy, but the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want those jobs. I love statistical research and analysis, but I don’t really want to be that distanced from the front lines. I want to teach and at some point go into administration, really find ways that work and put them to use. I guess the paycheck never worked as my motivation, but a worthwhile challenge that I believe in is worth working on--even if the payout isn’t that great.
In conclusion I refer back to the words of Prometheus. “Here I sit, shaping man, after my image…To rejoice and be glad, and like myself/To have no regard for you!” Goethe hit it right on the spot. Faust and Prometheus worked for the wrong reasons. Maybe Faust should have gone into a more lucrative profession if he was going to dismiss God as the fount of all knowledge and give himself all the credit. If we don’t give credit where it’s due, we’ll be very surprised that day when we think we deserve it and we don’t get any either.

Question Time!

AFTER watching question time for the prime minister in the British parliament American politicians are no longer impressive to me. Here in America we base the entirety of our political discourse on rhetoric. This has led to a government that appears to speak, but not say anything. Last year we saw a series of debates in January, and again in September and October that highlighted our firm grasp to rhetoric. If it ever seemed like neither candidate was very good at answering the question posed, it’s because American politicians weren’t made for debate. American politicians are built upon a framework of saying what they want you to hear and hoping that you think it sounds persuasive enough for you to support them. This allows them to dance around questions at debates and close their statements on an entirely different subject than that which was questioned. To most Americans, this makes debates horribly painful to watch, and leads to votes founded in a candidate’s charisma and charm.
IN Britain, the scene is much different. Every week the head of the government, the Prime Minister, enters the House of Commons to undergo Question Time. The Speaker of the House calls on anyone who wishes to pose a question to the Prime Minister to put him on the hot seat for a minute or two. My favorite are the questions asked by the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. I watched the Prime Minister’s questions from January 21, 2009 and saw one of the weekly heated exchanges between the Right Honorable David Cameron, leader of the opposition, and Prime Minister Gordon Brown. At this time the British government stood in the middle of addressing their financial crisis. Cameron grilled Prime Minister Brown on the different measures that the government has taken to repair their crumbling economy and demanded answers, and with every question posed came hollers from the benches rooting him on and booing the Prime Minister. Here's the link to this and other sessions of question time.
THIS type of atmosphere requires the head of government to stand accountable for what he does. The same questioning period exists for members of the cabinet, and they stand accountable for the performance of their department. With the incessant nagging of the opposition staring at the ministers, many will resign when their departments have shown a sub-par performance, despite whether it’s their fault or not. The public gets to know what the Prime Minister is doing and his or her reasons on a weekly basis, something the American people may not get at all during a president’s term.
THIS day followed the inauguration of President Obama here in the states, and I just imagined how our previous president would have handled a weekly inquisition: a fiery Nancy Pelosi at one side of the table making a hiss and a byword out of the highly unpopular Bush administration. He wouldn’t have stood a chance against her, or anyone else, for that matter. Bush had a great speechwriter who prayed every night that the Commander in Chief wouldn’t try to say anything off the cuff.
I’M most impressed at all the knowledge that the Prime Minister must be able to hold in order to answer intelligently. He must be extremely well briefed in all his administration’s operations in order to provide real answers to questioners who will allow him to do nothing less. Simple monologues filled with generalized statements of rhetoric don’t hold water in Question Time, but from them we drink the finest tasting bull in the United States. Personally, I would like to see a government in the United States held more accountable for their actions like that in the United Kingdom, but I‘m not sure how many politicians would agree with me on that.

Thoughts on Emile

I read part of Jean Jacques Rousseau's 'Emile' this week. If you haven't heard of it, the peice is his statement on education, which, you might imagine, involve quite a bit of freedom on the part of the child. Today teachers are required to teach in certain ways that comply with state mandates and learning objectives. Methods are approved by the What Works Clearinghouse as “proven educational methods” that comply with No Child Left Behind’s standards. Teachers in failing schools get very little leeway in how they can teach and use classroom time. The ideas Rousseau shares with us throughout Emile would certainly not be tolerated by Rod Paige and the four pillars of NCLB. Here are some quotes and my thoughts.

“The child is the real master of his education.” How true this could be, but isn’t. A child is naturally curious and inquisitive, and learns so much in his or her first few years in the home. While at school, however, talking heads are put in place who recite information and require recitations. Feeding ‘knowledge’ and demanding regurgitation, all in hopes of producing lasting images in the child’s mind through repetition.

“If your head guides his hands, his own mind will be useless.” To Rousseau teaching is more than just instructing. It’s more than demonstrating an equation on the board and taking a quiz. The child must be the master of his own education. If each individual is indeed an individual, then the ways of learning and understanding will be different for each person. Mimicry is a cheap trick, and imitation stunts individualism. Children must learn how to do things themselves.

“Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself.” The reason we have teachers is to guide, direct, and instruct. Teachers can enhance a child’s ability to critically think without causing the child to forsake reason. The teacher, therefore, must prompt inquisition, and ask questions that will make the child engage his mind to action

“To substitute books for (feet, hands and eyes) does not teach us to reason, it teaches us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little.” This, I find, is generally true. It surprised me. At first thought, this sounded blasphemous. I read over two hundred pages of textbooks every week for courses I’m taking this semester, and it helps me understand the lectures more, but what helps me really learn about the subjects? Writing assignments that require my mind to expand on topics and analyze issues. If I did not research what I read about I would not really be learning; I would be filling dark spaces of the mind with a few things that I read and underline. Now, for those of you who may be fuming like Bradbury over there, Rousseau did suggest that he would have Emile read one book. Which? Robinson Crusoe. A book such as this would expand a child's mind, and I argue that there are many today which do this, that Rousseau would simply delight in sharing with Emile. The works teaching philosophy and the sciences, I believe are his main worries.

“The child who reads ceases to think.” Reading cannot be the crutch of our learning experience. All things read in books must have a supplementary activity to lead to learning. In my quantitative political methodology course last semester, each of our weekly assignments included a case study problem that we were not told how to solve. We read about the tools, Professor Goodliffe showed us examples of how the tools work, then we were supposed to critically think through the problem at hand. It took a long time to work through these problems, but the activity helped me develop critical analytical skills. Sure, he could have taught those in class, and shown us the exact procedure, but doing it myself provided a lasting experience. Of course, I many times failed, and did not go back to correct what I did because the next assignment consumed me as soon as I would complete the previous, so I did not learn successful practices as much as I would have liked, but that’s another story. This story is about the coming to pass of this idea of Rousseau: “The child must work like a peasant and think like a philosopher, if he is not to be as idle as a savage.”

“A child can read the master’s thoughts before the master reads the child’s feelings.” I conclude on this quote, which refers back to the beginning of my thoughts. Teachers go in there with an agenda to teach a skill--whether it be writing, mathematical or scientific--and present the information in such a way that the child can easily follow the teacher’s logic. The teachers try to shield the difficulty as much as possible, and the children catch on and learn and logically connect the dots to where the teacher is going and what the teacher wants. On the other hand, children are a little more difficult to follow. My wife and I teach a class of five year olds at church, and you never know what’s going to happen. We could be singing a song with thirty other kids and the boy sitting next to me will suddenly start a conversation about his dinner last night and how much he likes beans. Or maybe we’re about to say the opening prayer and a little girl pulls her legs up and says, “I have a hole in my tights right here,” pointing to her crotch. Or maybe another girl will announce that she would like to be called ‘Ladybug Princess Annabelle’ today. We had no idea that was coming! How could we have known? Children have their own warped visions of life that we may never know about (I know, I kept a journal in middle school).

I do not know much about elementary education theory or practice, but I think Rousseau was on to something, here. Unfortunately, the state of our education policy does not allow for immeasurable practices that lack appropriate structure to permitted into public schools. Perhaps one day the godless liberals will succeed in destroying the Protestant Work Ethic and the Lancaster method of competition and standardization in schools; then we may see radical educational reform (not that I really want to see the radical godless liberals take power). Maybe I should post my thoughts on Lancaster, grading, and the GPA...

Hurry, get the kleenex box...or a monkey wrench

No, it's not becasue I'm going to watch Cool Runnings or Horton Hears a Who. I'm sick, and tissue needs to be in hand nearly 100% of the time or snot will be all over my face. It's like a leaky faucet that I just can't contain. Before you know it, I'll flood the apartment, or campus, or Provo. Seriously, I had no idea that this much snot existed within me. Once I think it's done, it starts up again and just keeps on coming; sort of like the Barry Bonds steroids issue on ESPN.

What I really think I need is one of these:

Yep, that'll do it. I think I can get it from Harriet Carter.

Shooting an Elephant

I recently read George Orwell's "Shooting and Elephat" for my British Government class. I advise everyone to do the same (http://orwell.ru/library/articles/elephant/english/e_eleph )It's a small short story about a policeman (possibly Orwell) in the Imperial Indian Police during British occupancy of India. It's about an elephant who goes into its must period and tramples many straw huts, killing one man. The main idea is the struggle the policeman has with whether or not he ought to kill the elephant or not. He does not want to, but when he asked someone to fetch him an elephant gun (to protect him) a crowd started to follow him, for they were sure he would shoot the elephant.

THE policeman has come, through his service in Burma, to disagree with the imperialistic reasons he’s there. In his mind’s battle of whether or not to shoot the elephant, he discovers himself in the position of a colonizing tyranny. He did not want to shoot the elephant, but the natives expect him to kill it. This predicament is similar to that of any colonizing country. As an imperial ruling entity, the natives expect certain actions in these situations, and the ruling entity will likely never disappoint, for it is important that they always deliver an impressive performance to the natives. What is expected by the natives isn’t always what is in the nature of the ruling entity to do, but they will do it in order to keep up the appearance of a tyrannical imperial force. Orwell explains that in this way the tyrant destroys his own freedom because he can only choose to do what the natives expect. For this reason Orwell defies his own will and kills the elephant.
THE extent of my exposure to information regarding the British occupation of India is limited to sources in entertainment media. In every movie I’ve seen, however, there is very little sympathy for the Indians. The British are depicted as arrogant and condescending towards the savage natives. The policeman’s character, after observing the brutal oppression of the natives, became overwhelmed with guilt and came to disapprove of imperialism, and despised the work he did in support of such a cause. His opposition to his work was not vocalized, as he “had to think out (his) problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East.” Because of this imposed silence the policeman describes, it could be understood that the there are many others in the same situation that feel the same way, but fail to express themselves. After all, even the policeman succumbed to shooting the elephant in order to save himself from humiliation. To be in a position of authority requires one to assume the tyrannical nature of the post and act as the tyranny would in order to meet the expectations of the ruled.
AFTER just three years in Burma Orwell resigned his post and took up a pen name and a pen to begin his career as a writer. This was one of his first works, which begs me to wonder if Orwell had sold his birthright (his successful career in the Indian Imperial Police) for a pot of message. In addition to the short narrative on the comparison to the British imperial cause that the policeman found, I found an innuendo of this clash of wills (the policeman’s vs. the natives) in his own actions. He could not, for instance, test the elephant’s behavior to determine if it was still mad. Even though he did not fear the elephant (“a white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened”), he could not approach the elephant because if something did go wrong he would be made a laughing-stock. “That,” he says, “would never do.”

I picked up more symbolism of imperialism in the story than the comparison Orwell explains himself. The policeman had never shot an elephant before, and did not know the most effective way to take one down, but out of fear of humiliation he made a guess at where the brain might be and pulled the trigger. The policeman fired three more shots to where he thought the brain was and his last two to where he thought the hear was. The elephant would not die, but laid on its side breathing deeply--even after emptying his Winchester into it, too. Bells went off in my head about the American occupation in Iraq: an imperialist venture set off without a clear indication of how long it might take to subdue the opponent. It has taken much longer than expected with no foreseeable end in sight. The policeman gave up and left the dying elephant in misery while the village people sat like vultures ready to pick the elephant dry. If our new president keeps his promises, we’ll be out of Iraq, leaving their young secular democracy to the wiles of whatever extremist factions that lay in wait to destroy.
BRITAIN had a similar situation with an elephant in India known as Mahatma Gandhi. Through his leadership, India became as an elephant in its must period, but through civil disobedience and non-violent protest. As much as the British shot at it, it would not die, and ended up leaving before his death. Orwell had no idea this would be the case, as it all came to pass much later in history, but I believe that because it has proven analogous of the United States’ invasion and reconstruction in Iraq and the outcome of the British in India countries ought to consider the repercussions of imperialism from the point of view of both the gunman and the elephant as Orwell did.

Born to Run

In August 2003 I arrived at Campus Plaza. One week passed and I hadn't run, then I was bored one morning and just did it. As I returned from my 30 minute jog and hopped in a cold shower. As I stood in the shower feeling the chilled water pelt my whole body I heard an imagined voice whisper into my ear, "Welcome back to the fold." It had been a long time since I had last run. I ran the two mile in league finals, but never trained for it, and after Sections I was done with everything. It got hot in California and I didn't run, because I had nothing to run for. Standing in the shower that day, feeling my body's tire and satisfaction with my run, I knew who I really was. I was a runner.

So I began a training program called '5k at 5:00', and ran every evening. After I started getting my groove back I started running 5 miles at 5:00. I was back in the swing of things, even when it got colder than my running shoes had ever experienced. A column in the Salt Lake Tribune caught my attention when the columnist was training for a marathon and would report a weekly training log. I saw his first week's schedule and decided I could start out like that, and from that time on my marathon training began.

I registered for the Santa Cruz Marathon to be held on June 5th and trained well. School ended and I went home. After being home for two days I ran a scheduled 30 miler on a hot late April day in central California. Running had just become something that I did. Distance did not phase me--especially shorter distances. Two days later I was offered a job at Prima Frutta Packing. I would be working seven days a week, 16 hour days when they started picking Bings locally for the last few weeks. The projected final day of the season was June 5th. I knew that I would not have time to run, and therefore would not be ready for my race. But I also knew that I needed this money to pay for a greater part of my mission and also have some for tuition when I got home. So I took the job and laid my marathon aspirations to rest.

I don't remember running the rest of my time at home preceding my mission. I didn't get to run that much on my mission. When I came home to Idaho I ran. It was cold and windy, but I stuck it out. In Provo I tried, but failed miserably to keep up a consistant running schedule. Until today.

Today I ran five miles , ending a 15 mile week. I decided to take a jogging class this semester. The class requires that I run 140 miles throughout the semester. I needed a running schedule, so I looked online and found a good half-marathon schedule. I decided a couple of years ago that training for the marathon may not have made my body very happy with me at times, and that I didn't really want to do that. Besides, I ran 26.2 miles on my own a couple of times, and there's nothing that exciting about it. Running a half marathon is just as legit a race to train for. So I called up Scott E and asked if he was in, too. He's as fast as (if not faster than) I was when I was his age, and he's in. So late in the summer we'll face off.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm intimidated by his speed. Especially when I started my easy runs coming in with 8-minute miles. But I'm not pushing it at all-I don't want to risk injury. Once I'm accustomed to running greater distances and for longer periods of time (like my 40-minute job today) then I'll switch training schedules to work on my speed. Will I be as fast as Scott? Well, probably not, seeing that he still has track training in his sights. But that'll be shorter distance. When he's running two mile races, I'll be running twelve mile LSD (long slow distance) on Saturdays. Come May I'll have the endurance and he'll have the speed. Possibly by August we'll be on the same track.

The Longest Day

Paul Anka, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Richard Burton, and Sean Connery had a long day back in '62. That's what I feel like now. Christmas takes a lot out of you. A very taxing holiday. My mother told me that it's even longer with little kids, although I won't have to worry about it for a while. Courtney and I tried to inflict slight heart attacks to my parents by unwrapping a little infant onsey from her to me. My mom was speechless, as I tried to be, too. Coach had just got on the phone with Todd. Couldn't fool them. Oh well, it was worth the try.
All in all it was a great day with the family. From breakfast, to sledding, to Cool Runnings and Horton Hears a Who, to doing three puzzles, it was a fantastic--howbeit long--day. A fantastic Christmas. Last night my mom read us the Santa Bag story which shows us hidden meanings of Christ's birth in the commercial and pagan symbols of Christmas (stars, trees, wreaths, ornaments, candles, bells and candy canes). It's good to remember that we're doing this out of respect for the birth of the Savior of the world. It's nice to be with family when celbrating the birth of he who brough salvation to the family,