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Category: Philosophy

June 27, 2012

The Cycle

It’s been a busy week, what with the end of the school year and the impending due date of my daughter (which was yesterday: still waiting!).

Today is the first day that I don’t need to go in to school.  Summer hasn’t quite sunken in yet; it always takes me a few days to get into the groove.

I attended graduation last Thursday, and watching those kids stride across the stage every year, staring toward their nebulous futures, I get to thinking about many things.  One is always how much I love my job.  I am privileged enough to be able to work with some of the finest students in the world on a daily basis (except during summer: yet another perk to this profession).  I get to be a part of their lives for a brief moment, and I hope that I am a positive influence.  And, in turn, they are a part of my life for a brief moment.  They move on, and I stay in the same place, waving at them as they head off in a hundred different directions.

And in the fall, I have another one hundred and thirty kids who will spend the next ten months with me.  It is a challenge–that is for sure.  Yet it is also the most rewarding experience.  Not to disparage other subject-area teachers, but being an English teacher is unlike any other job: I am able to get a glimpse into how these people work, what they love, what they hate, what they want from life; I am able to watch them create, using words that come from their heads, worlds on the paper.

I do not measure a year from January to December.  My year is from September to June.  Summer is lovely–my favorite season–but there is a little part of my heart that looks forward to the fall, to the start of a new year with fresh faces and worlds to be created.

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June 20, 2012

The Journey v. The Destination

  For better or worse, I am an American, raised by Americans raised by Americans, back and back.  When people ask me what my cultural background is, I tell them that I am American, and their inevitable question is, “Yeah, but where is your family from?”  Ask my grandmother and she’ll tell you that I have ancestors that came over on the Mayflower.  Aside from being a Native American, that’s about as American as it gets.

  I say this not out of sense of pride for my background.  Quite the contrary.  I say it only to establish that my culture is the American one.  I am a dissident in many ways, and much of what I see in my culture appalls me.  If I mentioned all that does, I would be writing a novel of a post.

  Instead, I will focus upon the attitude that my culture has about product over process.

  What I mean is this: rather than focusing upon the process of completing a goal, we tend to focus upon the end result, mostly ignoring what it took to get this result.

  I am a teacher.  There are plenty of examples of this pervasive attitude reflected in our education system.  Many kids are so focused upon grades–since that is what will help get them into college–that they will do whatever it takes to get the grades they desire.  Parents are no better.  Most often, they ask about their children’s’ grades and not their work ethic.  As a nation, we favor standardized tests as the assessment tool to give us an idea about our students’ educational ability.  But tests are a poor judge of how successful our students will be.  They require little work and a child can do fairly well with little preparation.

  This attitude is also evident in our medical system.  Doctors are quick to prescribe medicines as a quick fix.  Our medical industry is primarily diagnostic rather than preventative.  That is, we treat health problems rather than stressing preventing the problems before they arise.  I can’t say I entirely blame doctors.  People wait until there is something evidently wrong before seeking help.  I see plenty of billboards advertising gastric bypass procedures and the like.  This is a prime example.  People weight–I meanwait–until they are morbidly obese to attack the problem.  Diet pills and expensive procedures could be entirely avoided by not gaining the weight in the first place.  It seems small, but gaining five pounds a year over twenty years equals a weight gain of one hundred pounds!

  I see this attitude represented in many more areas of our society; the list is a long one.

  It’s well beyond time for us to begin stressing the process of things rather than only the product.  It is the process that makes us strong, that allows us to hone our skills and grow.  If we fail to teach our children this, we will have a lot of pretty buildings that will collapse under the slightest pressure. 

  Let’s work on our foundations.

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June 18, 2012

$$$

There are millions of quotations on money, many of them expressing the evils of it. 

I don’t agree one bit.

The best defense of money I’ve read is from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, in a speech by Franciso d’Anconia.  (You can read it here if you wish: http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/). 

I can’t say it better than that, but I’ll add my two cents.

Money itself is not evil.  Forget for a second that I don’t believe in evil and let me say that no object has anything inherently evil or good about it.  Objects like money are there for the use of people.  Many people have used money to do good, so it would be stupid to say that money is evil.

It’s simple: money is a unit used in exchange for experiences.  It has no intrinsic value at all.  People place value in different experiences, such as dining and travel.  Certain experiences are assigned certain values, often by the demand for the experience and the availability of the experience: basic economics.

When we are paid, it is based on how much value our work has been assigned in a given society.  For example, I am paid to teach children–underpaid, but I’m a bit biased.  My experience and my educational level are used to determine how much I receive for my salary.  I’ll save the inefficiency of such a system for another post.  But I am being paid to provide an experience for people; in this case, it is education.

People who say money is evil are the same people who claim that technology is evil or sex is evil or drugs are evil.  Anything can be used with harmful results, but that is not the fault of the thing; it is the fault of the user.  When people are taught to use responsibly, less harm will come.  That is one of my foundational beliefs.

Money is what you make of it.

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June 15, 2012

The Elephant in the Room

Alright, I’ll say it (since a lot of you are thinking it): obesity is a huge problem–pun fully intended.

Over one-third of American adults is obese.  Not just a bit heavy: obese.  Thirty-five point seven percent to be exact, according to the CDC .  Take a gander at your leisure: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

I am not obese.  I have never been obese.  I have never been what might even slightly be considered over-fat.  In fact, I’ve been very thin my entire life–except for the first year or so, but I had a three-hundred-pound babysitter who fed me grits, so it wasn’t my fault.  Having admitted that I’ve always been thin, I know what the objections will be to me posting this: that I don’t understand what it’s like, that I have genetics on my side, that I’m a superficial a-hole.  I’m sure there are many more, and I’m sure I have heard them all.

Look, I live in the same country as some of you (United States), and I am subject to the same food choices and other environmental factors as you.  To be fair, I ate In’N'Out last night, so I am by no means a saint when it comes to eating out.  But I ate one burger, not three, and I had a few fries, not a plateful.  I do not eat fast-food on a daily basis.  Like many other activities in my life (except for maybe reading), I do it in moderation, which is just fine.  I’ll be the last one to preach about the evils of a night out to eat once in awhile or the occasional beer with buddies or a cookie now and again.  But Americans are not so good at moderation; we enjoy excess.  And it will kill us if we’re not careful.

An answer to a possible objection: my genetic blessing of a super-fast metabolism.  It would be dishonest of me to say that it has been hard work for me staying thin.  It has not.  I come from a family of thin people on both sides.  Small people in general, really.  My brother is five feet and six inches tall, weighing in at about a buck twenty; my sister is five feet tall (probably more like four eleven) and tips the scales at about a hundred pounds.  I am the giant of my family at five feet ten (and a half) inches tall, with a hundred and sixty pounds to carry around, twenty of those gained in the last few months by working out frenetically.  I know I have a fast metabolism, and I act accordingly.  I wouldn’t lead the lifestyle I do if I didn’t have some genetic assistance.

But it would be nonsense to claim that this is the only reason my family is thin.  We have all led fairly healthy lifestyles.  We were never allowed sugar cereal as kids (possibly due to my hyperactivity, but…), we drank soda sparingly, ate fast-food maybe once a week, we were involved in sports, rode our bikes all the time, and more.  It would be easy and convenient to just say that we had to do nothing but rely on the genes to keep us thin, but it would be untrue.

I work hard to maintain a healthy body.  Yes I had fast-food last night, but you know what I’m doing today?  I’m going to the gym to work out with weights, and tomorrow I’ll swim at least five hundred meters.  Weight-gain and weight-loss both are a matter of simple mathematics: there are either caloric surpluses or caloric deficits.  Not rocket science.  I also get plenty of sleep and stay active throughout the day.  It’s not that hard.  One can run anywhere, do push-ups anywhere, do sit-ups anywhere.

I’m tired of living in a place where it’s okay to rip on someone for smoking, giving a laundry list of the health risks, putting commercials on TV about it, and more, but then it’s cruel to talk about the health risks of being over-fat.  We might hurt someone’s self-esteem.  It’s my opinion that people not only look better when they’re fit, but they also feel better.  Heart disease is the number one killer in America.  That’s a fact.

So let’s make a collective effort to get that number below one in three.  It’s embarrassing to have such a ratio in what is supposed to be a developed nation, one that claims to be a beacon of light to the rest of the world.  The light will not make it out there if it’s obscured by all these rolls of fat.

You don’t like it?  Stop reading and get off your butt and do something about it.

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June 12, 2012

Why My Subject Is More Important Than Yours

  Last year, a student asked me, with all earnestness, “Why do we have to take only English for four years and not any other classes?”  He went on to explain that he wanted to go into film in college, which had nothing to do with English.

  Really?

  I asked him if he knew what went into making a film before anyone picked up a camera.  What about screenplays?  Scripts? Proposals?  Meetings with producers?  People would be hard-pressed to complete all of these foundational tasks without the ability to write, read, speak, and listen–all of the standards I am required to teach in my classes.

  It is true that English is the only class a high-school student is required to take for all four years.  Students at my school are overachievers, so they take math and science for four years also, but they don’t have to do so to graduate. 

  They must take English for four years because, frankly, it is the most important subject.

  Now, I know what you “non-English” people will argue: math is imperative to our day-to-day workings; we would know next to nothing about the natural world without science; history teaches us about our past.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I know all this.  But go ahead and perform all these functions without reading and writing abilities.  Try to major in any of these subjects and make it through college without writing a term paper or giving a presentation or reading a textbook.

  It’s not gonna happen.

  I was in a discussion with a guy online whose posts were riddled with grammatical errors.  He was ripping on teachers, stating that they were mostly lazy and that he had only had two good teachers in his twelve years of schooling.  I pointed out that perhaps he should have spent more time paying attention to his terrible teachers  in elementary school during the grammar lessons.  He then pointed out that he was an engineering major for the very reason that he wasn’t “an English person” and thus had horrible spelling and grammar.  What a stupid statement.  It would be like me saying that I couldn’t add or subtract because I wasn’t a math person. 

  English isn’t just about grammar.  Only a terrible English teacher would give a student such an impression.  It isn’t just about literature either.  English–or Language Arts, in the more modern way of referring to it–is the foundation for all of the rest of education.  

  I’ve made it quite far in my life without having memorized the quadratic formula or the table of elements or all of the names of the presidents of the United States.  But I never would have made it this far without the necessary skills that I learned in English class.

  So if you’ve read this far and understood it, thank an English teacher.

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June 10, 2012

Let Us Compare Mythologies

Interesting organizational strategy:

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June 9, 2012

How I Make A Difference

I was at dinner once with a bunch of people, most of whom I did not know.  We were all in college at the time, and so we were talking about school and majors and so forth.  The girl across the table asked me what my major was.  I replied that it was English Education.  I told her I was planning to become an English teacher.  Without a trace of sarcasm, she said, “Oh, that’s noble.”

I wanted to punch her in the face.

I did not get into this profession for nobility; I do not have a bleeding heart; I don’t believe that I will completely change the world. I got into it because I love the subject of English; I stayed in it because I love interacting with students every day, because I love the variety, because I get to talk all day about writing and books.

I harbor no grandiose visions of myself as a role model who will one day revolutionize the country.  My goal is much smaller in scale: I want to positively affect one person a year for each year that I teach.  If I stay in the profession until the golden age (in California sixty-one and a half), then I will have taught for thirty-seven years.  That’s a minimum of thirty seven people I hope to positively impact.  That’s not too shabby.

Teachers have an immense amount of responsibility, and they’re working with a mostly reluctant clientele and a general lack of support from the public.  A big deal has been made of teacher accountability in the past decade.  I agree that teachers must be accountable.  But so must parents and so must students.  I can only do so much with my students for the hour a day that I have them for the one hundred and eighty days of school each year.   The canker is not in the heart of most teachers; it’s in the attitude we have as a society: we are entirely focused upon product and not process (more on this in another blog).  The most accelerated brain development happens from zero to five, before teachers can even get a crack at those brains.  So step up, parents.

It’s a frustrating profession for the reasons above and also because there are times when I feel like I am shouting into the wind.  I wonder whether my voice is floating away unheard into oblivion.  Teachers do not get to see the products of their endeavors–unless students come back years later.  But I know, from personal experience, that teachers do make an impact.  I am in this profession thanks to the teachers that I had, both good and bad.  Yes, we’ve all had bad teachers, horrible teachers who have made us feel small and stupid and insignificant.  And I learned so much about the teacher I want to be by watching these teachers along with the great ones.

I do make a difference.  This I know.  And when I go to bed at night, I can sleep easy knowing that I have done my small part to make the world a little better, one student at a time.

I only have thirty-one more years to go.  I better step it up.

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June 8, 2012

Goooooooooooaaaaaaaal!

Tell me you don’t hear a soccer announcer’s voice in your head.

So yesterday was the Iron(wo)man at the school where I teach.  Now, it’s nowhere close to a real Ironman: we only swim five hundred meters and run two and a half miles.  But it was still tough.  I was the only staff member who did it last year (with no training); I mostly did it just to see if I could.  This year, I invited my fellow staff-members to join me.  We had nine people this year, with six of them partnering up (with one swimming, one running), and we turned it into a fundraiser for our new multimedia center on campus.

I’m not sure how much money we raised yet, but I’m so happy that I got that many people to get out there for a good cause.  It’s a nice feeling of solidarity to set a goal and have other people right there with you working toward that same goal.  I started lightly training for this back in February, and aside from the money we raised and the feeling of accomplishment and pride I have, an ancillary benefit was the fact that during training I gained about twenty pounds of muscle.

I’m big on setting reasonable goals for myself.  I like having that marker on the horizon to look toward when I’m heading down the road.  I encourage everyone to think about a goal to reach–whether it is mental or physical–and set up a plan to train for it and achieve it.

I promise you: it will only make you hungry for more.

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June 6, 2012

Loud and Proud

I know, I know: it’s another one of the Seven Deadlies.  It cometh before a fall.  The god of the Bible abhors it (though he seems to have a whole lot of it).

Yep, it’s pride.

And our society has an ambivalent attitude toward it, thanks in part to all of the cliches and scripture we hear and read about it.  We’ve created an assessment system that forces kids to compete with one another; we tell them to achieve, achieve, achieve.

But don’t talk about it.

I’ve always done okay in school.  I got decent marks throughout my academic career as a kid.  Nothing stellar, but I was raised in a home that valued learning and conversation and intellectualism.  My mom said to me once, “We expect A’s and B’s.  A C isn’t the end of the world, but you can do better.”  I was never under an intense amount of pressure to perform academically, and I was a happy kid.  I could have been pushed harder; I could have achieved more in academics.  But I have no regrets.

When I got to university, I decided that it was go-time: my parents were paying for me to go to school, and I knew I wanted to go to grad school, so I would need the grades.  My parents put zero pressure on me.  And the result?  I got straight A’s in my major.

But I never talked about it.  I never told anyone.

I remember a poetry class that I was in as an undergraduate.  The professor was a notoriously hard grader. When we all got our first papers back, there were groans all across the room.  One guy, a creative writing major, said, “I’ve never gotten a C on a paper on my life!”   I had my paper on my desk; I read the comments and got to the grade.  I got an A.  People were comparing papers, reading the comments and trying to make sense of their grades.  The guy next to me said, “What’d you get?”  I was embarrassed–yeah, embarrassed–to tell him.

Why?

I should have been proud.  My students are great, some of the smartest and highest achieving kids in the country.  While my school is an academic magnet, my students are multifaceted, creating wonderful music and beautiful works of art.  They don’t have trouble with much.  But when it comes to talking about themselves and their achievements, they clam up.  They can’t do it.

It’s time that we started teaching our kids that it’s okay to be proud about their achievements and it’s okay to talk about it.  I’m not talking about being braggadocious.  But I don’t think it’s bragging if you can back it up with concrete evidence.  Saying I got straight A’s is not bragging: it’s a fact.  I worked very, very hard to do what I did.  It wasn’t a god; it wasn’t my parents.  If I say that I am better than other people due to this…  That’s over the top.

Well, you know what?  I am better than other people.

And I’m willing to say so.

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June 2, 2012

A Civil Conversation

I’ve been having an interesting, engaging conversation with a fellow blogger, Simple Theologian, over the past couple weeks.  I invite you to take a look if you get a chance: http://simplifiedtheology.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/wisdom-oh-what-foolishness/comment-page-1/#comment-64

The only way we’re ever going to understand each other is by communicating in the (admittedly limited) ways we have available to us. I, for one, am not optimistic about a lasting world peace, but on the small scale, we can avoid hurt feelings and expand our understanding by talking and listening.

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