Culture: May 2003 Archive Page

"When my children were in junior high, students who maintained a 4.0 average all year were rewarded at the end of the year with a '4.0 pizza party': they got out of one hour of class to go outside and eat a slice of pizza and drink a can of soda....No parades, no full-color photos in the newspaper, no mention on the local newscast that evening--all rewards routinely given to successful student-athletes. Just a slice of tepid pizza and a can of pop."

On a college football player whose teammates derided him for loving poetry:

"He would glare at them and mutter obscenities as he lumbered up to drop yet another unrequired essay on my desk, and they would howl and guffaw and slap their desks at this poor fool who was studying poetry as if it actually mattered. At six foot five and 285 pounds, this student was a mountain of a man. But under the relentless teasing of his teammates, he would hunch down and pull in, trying to shrink and disappear to escape their notice." Tina Blue --It's Stupid to Be Smart (Teacher, Teacher)

"The hunter-gatherers whose genetic make-up we inherit devoted all their energies to getting food. Labour, danger, stress and companionship attended their provisioning. Having secured their meal through their shared hardship, it is hardly surprising if our ancestors consumed it in a common ceremony, with rejoicing, affection, and gifts to the gods. | That experience of food lies buried within us, and the species-memory of it will influence our conduct however much we wish to grow out of our genes." Roger Scruton --Eating the world: the philosophy of food  (openDemocracy)

I'm not actually very interested in food. For lunch I tend to choose foods that I can eat with one hand that won't make crumbs on my keyboard as I surf and blog. If I could take a pill instead of eat real food, I probably would.

"In the study, teens who had no cell phones and whose numbers were not included in someone's phone book could pretty much write off the possibility of speaking with any of the teens with cell phones, a group Blinkoff refers to as 'mobiles.' | While saying he didn't think the cell-phone-toting teens were intentionally acting rude, he said he suspects that a new kind of 'digital divide' has been created, similar to the gap among PC haves and have-nots." Elise Batista --She's Gotta Have It: Cell Phone  (Wired)

"It may still be a man's world. But it is no longer, in any way, a boy's. From his first days in school, an average boy is already developmentally two years behind the girls in reading and writing. Yet he's often expected to learn the same things in the same way in the same amount of time. While every nerve in his body tells him to run, he has to sit still and listen for almost eight hours a day. Biologically, he needs about four recesses a day, but he's lucky if he gets one, since some lawsuit-leery schools have banned them altogether. Hug a girl, and he could be labeled a 'toucher' and swiftly suspended -- a result of what some say is an increasingly anti-boy culture that pathologizes their behavior.... Now, in every state, every income bracket, every racial and ethnic group, and most industrialized Western nations, women reign, earning an average 57% of all BAs and 58% of all master's degrees in the U.S. alone. There are 133 girls getting BAs for every 100 guys -- a number that's projected to grow to 142 women per 100 men by 2010..." Michelle Conlin --The New Gender Gap: From kindergarten to grad school, boys are becoming the second sex (Businessweek)

This story starts out with an alarmist tone that is designed to get the reader riled up -- so read it with care. It does settle down and become more balanced. But anyone who can look at these stats and say "It's about time men paid for what they did to women for centuries" is completely missing the point.

"Fugitives can best be recognized by their relaxed attitude during office hours. However much work they have to do at the office, it can't be any more stressful than what they have to deal with at home. Fugitives usually have at least one extremely comfortable chair in their office, and can occasionally be spotted sitting in that chair and staring off into space, just enjoying the peace and quiet." James M. Lang --Office-Hour Habits of the North American Professor (Chronicle)

I would have to say that, according to the taxonomy presented by this amusing article, I am definitely a fugitive. But instead of spending my lonely office hours reading, I blog.

"If your name is David Nelson you can expect to be hassled, delayed, questioned and searched before being allowed to board aircraft anywhere in the United States for the foreseeable future."

--David Nelson, Could You Step Aside for a Few Moments? (The Oregonian)

I have a David Nelson in one of my classes. This is really scary. And by "this" I do not mean having a David Nelson in one of my classes.

"Despite the crash and the resulting disruption, more marriage licenses were granted in 2001 in San Francisco than any year prior. In Santa Clara County, more babies were born in 2002 than in any year of the boom, and house purchases have bounced back to near-record levels, despite the massive evaporation of wealth. The culture of shifting alliances and temporary agreements is out; permanence and settling down is in." Po Bronson --Life in the Bust Belt (Wired)

"In 1987, Brown told Hunter and two dozen other first-graders at Brookfield Elementary School that she would put them through college if they graduated from high school. Four years ago, most of them did, with 19 enrolling in college.

On Saturday, Hunter became the first person in her family -- and the first from that first-grade class -- to earn a college degree, a bachelor's in accounting from Alcorn State University. And Hunter's beloved Miss Brown was there to see it..." --Struggle, Support, Sheepskin: Oral Lee Brown's 1st-graders Reach for Finish Line (SF Gate)

I've often blogged my complaints about the system that prepares my incoming freshmen, so its only fair to mention when somebody is doing something right.

Oral Lee Brown is a hero in my book -- I'd much rather hear her opinion on any subject under the sun, instead of listening to random music stars, supermodels, actors, sports figures, or talk show hosts.

Brenda Laurel's Purple Moon computer games aimed for the tween girl market. Her book Utopian Entrepreneur is excellent -- I'll certainly use it in an upcoming media course at Seton Hill. Here's a choice quote from the Stanford talk:

1. We covered a truck in pink fuzzy material. Boys didn't go for it. Pink fuzzy overrides truckness.
2. We took a diary and put some bulletholes in it and labeled it "War Journal". No go. Diariness overrides warness.

--Brenda Laurel at Stanford (GameGirlAdvance.com)

"But I still feel sorry for Blair Hornstine. Because all the hard work and courage it took to get where she is will forever be eclipsed by what she's come to represent: A system that's gone so far to level the playing field that it's created a culture of entitlement instead of gratitude.|A society that seeks redress of every slight in a lawsuit, no matter how frivolous. A culture in which young people are groomed to be so competitive that they value advantage over everything else.|And because of that, Blair Hornstine is now an object of ridicule rather than a role model worthy of well-earned respect." Jill Porter reflects on the high school student, already accepted by Harvard, who sued to prevent the school board from naming someone else co-valedictorian. --For Blair, It's Victory She Can't Really SavorPhiladelphia Daily News)

As I write this, my freshman comp students are writing a final exam in which they take a stand on how grading has impacted their education. My guess is that Blair Hornstine has learned quite a lot about grading, but little about the real world. Let's hope that Harvard really does dish her up a challenge that will cause this little Veruca ("I want an Ooompaloompa!") Salt to grow, rather than cause her turn to litigation to get what she wants.

"Hannas draws on a raft of data about Asian scientific research practices, technology piracy and graduate study abroad, all intended to show that Asians are brilliant imitators but poor innovators, adept at borrowing and improving on Western science but not so skilled at making advances themselves.... he cites a Japanese Nobel laureate in medicine, Susumu Tonegawa, who said, 'It is very clear that Japan is making money by taking and applying the fruits of science that the West creates at great expense.'|Yet Nathan Sivin, a professor of Chinese culture and the history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, said he was not impressed. 'That's nonsense,' he said." Emily Eakin reviews The Writing on the Wall: How Asian Orthography Curbs Creativity by William C. Hannas

--Writing as a Block for AsiansNY Times)

When I used to teach technical writing at the engineering school at the University of Toronto, where about a third of the students were first- or second-generation Chinese, I found the students to be very good at imitating models, but they struggled with any writing that asked them to show independent thought. But it wasn't just the Chinese students who had that difficulty -- the native English speakers also had that problem. I think it had more to do with the way the engineering school was set up.

Since it was arguably the top engineering school in Canada, the professors (many of whom were brilliant engineers, poor speakers of English and even worse teachers) used huge lecture classes to weed out those students who couldn't grasp the material on their own. The assignments the students were given in the first few years didn't require original thought, so the only way the students could learn was by watching the professor do equations on the board and then copying what they did. As a result, cheating (uh... I mean "answer sharing") was rampant, which meant that students were conditioned to expect that the way to get ahead was to memorize and spit back (or churn out on demand), rather than to theorize or innovate. One challenging writing assignment in a materials science class involved writing a memo that referred to the Leidenfrost effect (where a boiling droplet of liquid rides on an insulating cushion of vapor) to explain to an imaginary employer that there is no need to worry about the tank of liquid oxygen on the roof of a building; if the liquid were to spill out, it would not freeze the roof and damage it, but the vast majority of the liquid would simply slide right off the roof and into the rain gutters, where it would liquefy harmlessly. That assignment (created by my former colleage Robert K. Irish) not only asked the students to demonstate their knowledge of a materials science phenomenon, but it asked them to explain it to a non-expert. Simply spitting back the equations would not be enough.

Shortly before I left Toronto, I proposed to Rob the idea that we could modify a level of Quake (or some other FPS game) so that players had to investigate a building looking for evidence of structural decay, and then write a report based on their findings. Of course, to keep things interesting, the building in question would be infested by zombies with blowtorches. Now that would have been a fun assignment.

"The facilitator wasn’t giving up on her blame-the-white-Republicans theme, however. 'But why should we have to go to prison to get help?' she asked petulantly. The sex convict stood his ground. 'I was one of those that got rescued,' he replied. 'I was raised twisted: raping women, stealing?that was normal. I had to go to prison to educate myself. I needed that, because my decisions are not always the right decisions.' | I heard this honest self-appraisal again and again, suggesting that the biggest risk in some prison programs is that the offenders will absorb the worldview of the providers." Heather MacDonald

--How to Straighten Out Ex-ConsCity Journal)

A provocative essay that challenges views widely promoted in the media and widely believed by the public.

"The 3-year-old website offers dozens of love letter templates covering various aspects of relationships, including love at first sight, Internet courtship, apologies, long-distance, drifting apart, breakups and even secret romances. | Subscribers to the site, who pay an annual rate of $40, can download a letter, add their own personal touches and send it to their special someone who's none the wiser." Jenn Shreve

--Cyrano at Your Lovelorn Service Wired)

Here's a sample:

"If we were eels would we migrate together? I envision us intertwined riding the Gulf stream across the cool oceanic depths, a slipknot, a caduceus wand, writhing our way aloft on our private eddy of warmth."

Uh... sure. If you don't have an ounce of romantic blood in your veins, you can buy some words, and your partner will never know. This is the "Cliffs Notes Guide to Relationships." Does the market exist because so many young people used similar shortcuts to get through all their English lit and writing courses? Why should I tax my brain struggling with that question -- I'll just buy a copy of the "Cliffs Notes Guide to Being a Writing Teacher" and copy the answer.

Visualizing huge numbers can be very difficult. People regularly talk about millions of miles, billions of bytes, or trillions of dollars, yet it's still hard to grasp just how much a "billion" really is. The MegaPenny Project aims to help by taking one small everyday item, the U.S. penny, and building on that to answer the question: "What would a billion (or a trillion) pennies look like?"

--The MegaPenny ProjectKokogiak)

Wow... extremely entertaining to move gradually from a familiar scale to a gigantic one. When does your brain boggle?

First, take the survey; then read the results.

--Roper Geographic Survey 2002National Geographic)

An intersting tidbit: "Americans who reported that they accessed the Internet within the last 30 days scored 65 percent higher than those who did not."