Noema (noematic), that to which we orient ourselves; it is the object referent of noesis, the noetic act.
Noesis, the interpretive act directed to an intentional object, the noema (or the noematic object).
Noematics, in this context, what is externalized, exposing understanding, albeit partial and a temporary negotiation.
June 27, 2007
June 26, 2007
6 'nd 3, so
[on the occasion of my nephew's wedding in '06]
Life is kinda like that.
Anticipation up.
Dips, thrills, clickety clack.
Pain and joy, little luck.
So it goes.
Marriage--Mother Coaster!
Up, down, and around.
Little love'll get mosta her.
And later wheels will sound.
So it goes.
Years and miles pass ya by
(before now joyous eyes),
so fast you'll wonder why.
Life'll hide in disguise.
So it goes.
This day be both of yours:
Remember well be wise
for ends come in "No more's,"
just fit us each our size.
That is it . . .
if I here were there to say so.
Life is kinda like that.
Anticipation up.
Dips, thrills, clickety clack.
Pain and joy, little luck.
So it goes.
Marriage--Mother Coaster!
Up, down, and around.
Little love'll get mosta her.
And later wheels will sound.
So it goes.
Years and miles pass ya by
(before now joyous eyes),
so fast you'll wonder why.
Life'll hide in disguise.
So it goes.
This day be both of yours:
Remember well be wise
for ends come in "No more's,"
just fit us each our size.
That is it . . .
if I here were there to say so.
untitled
Smoky pubs don't turn me on.
Talk and cheap philosophy be gone.
No one's that clever in those places.
If so, we'd've won our human races.
As it is day-in-day-out the same,
To keep the hoi polli insane.
And aspirant ones have their druthers,
But can't solve the quest of the others.
Talk and cheap philosophy be gone.
No one's that clever in those places.
If so, we'd've won our human races.
As it is day-in-day-out the same,
To keep the hoi polli insane.
And aspirant ones have their druthers,
But can't solve the quest of the others.
I accept
A rope dropped from the sky
Inviting us up for a better view.
But doubters doubted, including why.
It undulated gently in the breeze,
Innocent it was and said just is.
Some said portend! comes dis-ease.
Leave well alone enough already.
So the crowd prevailed,
And convinced us steady.
Such a shame to leave that way--
Could have been a giant up there.
And I have never seen one. What say?
Inviting us up for a better view.
But doubters doubted, including why.
It undulated gently in the breeze,
Innocent it was and said just is.
Some said portend! comes dis-ease.
Leave well alone enough already.
So the crowd prevailed,
And convinced us steady.
Such a shame to leave that way--
Could have been a giant up there.
And I have never seen one. What say?
As I could
Yellow with green, a centered vase
On the worn warm table before me.
Here in flesh but without a face,
I seek not seen nor do I see.
Round them circle and curl the cat
Flowers flair and timely fade,
I come not from this land or that.
As we watch and wait among the made.
Bloom away, you defiant one.
But give to me the face I would--
Not to curl and circle, stray but run
Till I can see as I could.
On the worn warm table before me.
Here in flesh but without a face,
I seek not seen nor do I see.
Round them circle and curl the cat
Flowers flair and timely fade,
I come not from this land or that.
As we watch and wait among the made.
Bloom away, you defiant one.
But give to me the face I would--
Not to curl and circle, stray but run
Till I can see as I could.
n-of-one
it is blue,
anyone said
I saw green
but this one was!
I then saw blue
(and everyone like that)
I saw green again
and then red
and black
and a color I had no n for
curious science or math
or whatever it is
n of one--
with better things to do . . .
anyone said
I saw green
but this one was!
I then saw blue
(and everyone like that)
I saw green again
and then red
and black
and a color I had no n for
curious science or math
or whatever it is
n of one--
with better things to do . . .
untitled
Tourists too have a stable life,
as their placeholder brothers and sisters.
With stress and strife
and bills to pay, occasional blisters.
It has just been chance or choice
that appear to make us different.
So judge or wish deliberately,
before you our places take.
We'll both return home
to that self-same place.
And we'll give no matter
to distances, landscapes
and the spaces left intween.
November 05
_____
* for Marie.
as their placeholder brothers and sisters.
With stress and strife
and bills to pay, occasional blisters.
It has just been chance or choice
that appear to make us different.
So judge or wish deliberately,
before you our places take.
We'll both return home
to that self-same place.
And we'll give no matter
to distances, landscapes
and the spaces left intween.
November 05
_____
* for Marie.
This morning
This morning I got up and knew it was the day. I tried to slip out without being seen, but I had to ask to use the car. It was too far to walk. I said I was going to the store and would bring something back to eat for breakfast. I could hardly keep from crying as I spoke. I hid my face as I left quietly and quickly.
It is almost the 25th of October, the anniversary of her death. This visit has been planned for months, but not consciously. I think today was the right day. I just knew it as I awoke. It was time.
I went to the grocery store and among the few things bought a peach colored rose. I left the store with tears in my eyes.
Green Mountain Cemetery is nestled up against the mountains. It is a quiet and beautiful place, just above where Anne and Ray lived on Devon Place. I parked the car nearby and approached the outdoor bank of compartments. There is where Tara's ashes lay, facing the south and east. I cried and cried and talked to her and talked some more. I then lay the rose at the foot of the bank of compartments noting that I had tried to think of what she might want. She was married in a peach colored dress and peach was somehow the color of her wedding to Tony that day on top of Vail Mountain.
I went to see Ray's gravesite nearby. Walked right to it. I sort of knew my way without looking. I recall looking out the window of the house on Devon, seeing two gravediggers jumping and packing the dirt on top of Ray's grave. I never told anyone about this--at the time, I could not look and turned away from the window. And today I talked for a short while, noting I had only twenty years with him while he was alive. I miss him, and I told him so. I took away a pot with dead flowers in it.
And upon returning to Tara, I cleaned up some dead flowers around her place of rest, although I am sure she is not there. I talked some more. I said I would listen from now on if she wanted to talk with me. I have been so selfishly sad all these years and have closed my eyes and ears to life and the pain. When there was just one Kleenex left in my back pocket and a full pocket of wet ones in my jacket, I said, "See ya later, I hope soon."
I returned slowly through the old neighborhood and by the university and down into the downtown. I parked the car and slipped into the house while it was quiet, went to my room, closed the door, and my eyes; and I thought I should tell someone this secret.
I am telling you because . . . if you love someone. . . .
It is almost the 25th of October, the anniversary of her death. This visit has been planned for months, but not consciously. I think today was the right day. I just knew it as I awoke. It was time.
I went to the grocery store and among the few things bought a peach colored rose. I left the store with tears in my eyes.
Green Mountain Cemetery is nestled up against the mountains. It is a quiet and beautiful place, just above where Anne and Ray lived on Devon Place. I parked the car nearby and approached the outdoor bank of compartments. There is where Tara's ashes lay, facing the south and east. I cried and cried and talked to her and talked some more. I then lay the rose at the foot of the bank of compartments noting that I had tried to think of what she might want. She was married in a peach colored dress and peach was somehow the color of her wedding to Tony that day on top of Vail Mountain.
I went to see Ray's gravesite nearby. Walked right to it. I sort of knew my way without looking. I recall looking out the window of the house on Devon, seeing two gravediggers jumping and packing the dirt on top of Ray's grave. I never told anyone about this--at the time, I could not look and turned away from the window. And today I talked for a short while, noting I had only twenty years with him while he was alive. I miss him, and I told him so. I took away a pot with dead flowers in it.
And upon returning to Tara, I cleaned up some dead flowers around her place of rest, although I am sure she is not there. I talked some more. I said I would listen from now on if she wanted to talk with me. I have been so selfishly sad all these years and have closed my eyes and ears to life and the pain. When there was just one Kleenex left in my back pocket and a full pocket of wet ones in my jacket, I said, "See ya later, I hope soon."
I returned slowly through the old neighborhood and by the university and down into the downtown. I parked the car and slipped into the house while it was quiet, went to my room, closed the door, and my eyes; and I thought I should tell someone this secret.
I am telling you because . . . if you love someone. . . .
That would be
New Year, come.
We can yet rejoice.
But for the old,
some dusting some.
Truth transient and goodness gone, of this world will not suffice, not again complicit, seduced or seducing. Now--beauty in mine eyes, this horizon; a definitive step, a worthy journey. Not this one's pimp, or that one's whore.
While others are left to theirs and uses, I will immerse in the colors and textures of what I see and can describe, in some lost corner, or in concert with truth and goodness that would be, and more.
New Year's, rejoice.
We're not yet old.
I will find my love,
and embrace her voice.
Goddesses not gods beauty is. And trinities but for the holy and the gifted. Choosing above the rest is worthy much (and yet not yet all outlawed). We can have abundant if limited and partial joy.
Before our silent fall, before the majesty that we can conceive. And conceive we must, if not realize, or we will surely die. So, New Year, come and let us rejoice--no need but want, no longer coy.
December 31, 2005
PS I have decided to return to living outside of the US to find and follow my muse, come what may. It is about time, and getting late.
We can yet rejoice.
But for the old,
some dusting some.
Truth transient and goodness gone, of this world will not suffice, not again complicit, seduced or seducing. Now--beauty in mine eyes, this horizon; a definitive step, a worthy journey. Not this one's pimp, or that one's whore.
While others are left to theirs and uses, I will immerse in the colors and textures of what I see and can describe, in some lost corner, or in concert with truth and goodness that would be, and more.
New Year's, rejoice.
We're not yet old.
I will find my love,
and embrace her voice.
Goddesses not gods beauty is. And trinities but for the holy and the gifted. Choosing above the rest is worthy much (and yet not yet all outlawed). We can have abundant if limited and partial joy.
Before our silent fall, before the majesty that we can conceive. And conceive we must, if not realize, or we will surely die. So, New Year, come and let us rejoice--no need but want, no longer coy.
December 31, 2005
PS I have decided to return to living outside of the US to find and follow my muse, come what may. It is about time, and getting late.
Humanizing teaching and learning
I tried to end my teaching career by disclosing who I am and what I believe in and what I thought was happening to students in the system in which I supposedly teach. The result was an extraordinary outpouring of words and thoughts and sentiments from students asked to respond to my retirement. They responded to the different disclosures, each, apparently according to their interests and personalities. I had an insight into individuals and what they were about, more so than in two years of teaching them as other.
My object has been to create learning experiences which were evocative, but they were not, except at this end. It is ironic that as I try to end my teaching career, at least in the Czech system, I find one silver bullet for engaging students in feeling and writing about that.
My object has been to create learning experiences which were evocative, but they were not, except at this end. It is ironic that as I try to end my teaching career, at least in the Czech system, I find one silver bullet for engaging students in feeling and writing about that.
Hats I, An Invitation
(written on the occasion
of the First ZUSAS Staff
Research Colloquium,
January 15, 1998)
There's something quite like wearing a hat.
It can be compared with where you have sat.
Remember when you were at school,
And changing your seat was really cool?
From that new but ordinary place,
You actually changed your mental space.
To see the teacher and all goings on . . .
Well, at least for a while it staved off a yawn!
Hats come in all shapes and all sizes.
Some are even invisible, one realizes:
Have you ever seen a thinking cap?
Your teacher said, "Put it on!" after a loud clap.
Yes, in sizes and colors galore.
Some hats make you look from days of yore.
But some hats are mere functional,
Can make non-Germans downright punctual.
Others let you be whoever you would.
Some we call not hat but a hood.
Some sinister ones help you to hide,
And make you good though you have lied.
While some of these help you be hid.
Others make you look as if with a lid.
With some you can play sports and run.
Some to be seen in is just plain fun.
All in all hats do a trick.
They are as magicians,
And in a flick,
From candles come flowers,
Which turn into,
You guessed it, bowers.
It is abundant ideas here we are after,
Sparked by altered states, like laughter.
Your hat this occasion, silly or serious,
Will take you, scholar, beyond the mere curious.
Putting one on will change your view,
From who you were to someone new.
Realities beyond what is normal and is.
You can even change from a her to a his.
Consider for a moment if but brief,
How becoming another might be a relief!
So come with your head, and your hat.
Even if an invisible thinking cap.
(It's a small thing to ask.
And represents a wee task.)
And let yourself go.
To other worlds you would know.
There's nothing quite like wearing a hat
To alter the ordinary thises and that.
of the First ZUSAS Staff
Research Colloquium,
January 15, 1998)
There's something quite like wearing a hat.
It can be compared with where you have sat.
Remember when you were at school,
And changing your seat was really cool?
From that new but ordinary place,
You actually changed your mental space.
To see the teacher and all goings on . . .
Well, at least for a while it staved off a yawn!
Hats come in all shapes and all sizes.
Some are even invisible, one realizes:
Have you ever seen a thinking cap?
Your teacher said, "Put it on!" after a loud clap.
Yes, in sizes and colors galore.
Some hats make you look from days of yore.
But some hats are mere functional,
Can make non-Germans downright punctual.
Others let you be whoever you would.
Some we call not hat but a hood.
Some sinister ones help you to hide,
And make you good though you have lied.
While some of these help you be hid.
Others make you look as if with a lid.
With some you can play sports and run.
Some to be seen in is just plain fun.
All in all hats do a trick.
They are as magicians,
And in a flick,
From candles come flowers,
Which turn into,
You guessed it, bowers.
It is abundant ideas here we are after,
Sparked by altered states, like laughter.
Your hat this occasion, silly or serious,
Will take you, scholar, beyond the mere curious.
Putting one on will change your view,
From who you were to someone new.
Realities beyond what is normal and is.
You can even change from a her to a his.
Consider for a moment if but brief,
How becoming another might be a relief!
So come with your head, and your hat.
Even if an invisible thinking cap.
(It's a small thing to ask.
And represents a wee task.)
And let yourself go.
To other worlds you would know.
There's nothing quite like wearing a hat
To alter the ordinary thises and that.
Three strikes. You're out.
09.06.04
Exams are like chances to score in a game. Above are some descriptors and rules for "the game of university." In short, if you know the amount of content that is considered a passing percentage for a course from class meetings, textbooks and references, handouts, assignments, teacher recommendations and corrections, then you score and are "safe." You win the game.
"Three strikes and you're out" refers to American baseball. A batter gets three chances to hit a pitched (thrown) ball with a bat (piece of wood or metal, not be be confused with the nocturnal creature with wings). If the batter doesn't succeed, he is "out," and this is bad for his batting average (individual score). It is hard to be a winner if you strike out.
California, interestingly, has a three-strikes law. If you are arrested and convicted of three crimes, you go to prison for a long time. But this is another story . . .
In (this) university game you get three chances to pass an exam. If you don't pass, you don't go to prison, and your team is not hurt by your failure. Only you suffer(?) defeat and have to take a course again, or something, another time, plus exam, perhaps a year later. With regard to the three chances or attempts, if you miss the first scheduled sitting to take (not "write") the exam, well, then there are only two chances left to take it, and so on.
To cope with serving fair and comparable exams for three sittings, some teachers prepare three versions of an exam. Maybe they're called versions A, B, and C. If you sit for the first attempt and you get version C, well, next time it will be B or A. However, for the first sitting, versions B and A have been used with other students. (You know why.) No matter, this is how it goes in this game as it is often played.
What's wrong with this picture? One, if there are different knowledges and skills tested at any time, are the grades (scores) achieved comparable? Maybe. Maybe not. Tests and exams only test what they have on them, and test-takers do more or less well with that and only that which is on the exam. Sitting for different sets of questions results quite naturally in differences. And thus, usually students and student achievement scores cannot be compared with certainty with what different tests or exams show.
Two, if little Honza, a student, takes three chances to pass, is he just as qualified as those who took the same or similar test and passed earlier? Doubtful. He has the benefits of prior test-taking experience and more time to prepare for a test he can easily get a good idea of from those who have taken that same, exact test. No, Honza, regardless of your score, you are different in kind and quality from those who passed the exam at the first sitting.
One student, I will call her Petra, had a good point related to this. She said that taking the exam three times gave you an idea of how much more you have to study to pass. I like this objection. It is like the world is a glass of beer, and it is half full rather than half empty. But I thought in this part of the world people, including students, like beer a lot? Are they satisfied with half full and the rest will appear because the barman is a good and generous Pepa? (There may be a logical fallacy here, but I will ignore thinking about it. Glasses of beer is a good metaphor if you don't think about it another half minute.)
Third problem. It is laudable (a good thing) to give people second and third chances in life. But for performance--quality--assessment, after a term or two of classes and hopefully independent effort, a singular chance should be sufficient and much, much simpler. By the end of a course plus exam preparation, it is reasonable to expect that little Jitka, also a student, can answer just over half of the questions prepared for her to test her competence (knowledge, skills, abilities) in the subject. Well done, Jitka. I guess.
Just over half? What is this? A reflection of a system which tolerates and in fact encourages mediocrity? Think about it. If you guess the answer for all questions posed on an exam, you'll probably get fifty percent correct. Try flipping (tossing) a coin (guessing), if you can't read or understand the English question. You'll still get about fifty percent as your score. This is the law of averages and chance and all of that. To get ten or fifteen percent more correct, you then probably only need a little English. Show up in class a few times, have a glance now and then at a textbook or other learning resource, do a few assignments, and chat with those who've already taken the exam--they either passed or failed it, doesn't matter. Receiving a passing score under 70 percent appears in this light no great achievement--fifty percent chance plus fifteen percent material you can learn rather passively. But perhaps this too, the matter of acceptable passing scores, is another story.
For over ten years, EFL teachers in this country who have come from abroad have questioned and tried to circumvent, or somehow cope with, the three-strikes approach to the university exams game. Frankly, it appears quite blazen to us. But, hey, we are from somewhere else with our own crazy ideas and values.
Now, you have read the above, my understanding of and questions about the game. The next issue (matter to think about) is: How does this teacher circumvent or cope with all this, and is his way defensible particularly in view of the objections raised here? And why does s/he want to circumvent (go around) or cope (somehow work with)? The answer to this last question is easy. Teachers are like the referees in the match, trying to ensure that winners are certifiable winners. That is why we even bother to circumvent or cope in the face of a system which has apparent flaws (things wrong). Now, if you are interested in responses to the first questions in this paragraph, read on.
But I will not be writing for you to read. Look for yourself into how to test and measure academic competencies, what are some different grading methods, what is valid, validity, validation . . . and try to answer this question: Do the developing values and practices, even the way of life, in your society match what is being done in university departments and classrooms? Is the university game good preparation for what it will be like upon advancing from the university level player to that required in the-world-of-work game? After all, you are in a program to prepare yourself as a future teacher. You need to know and question what you are doing, and getting yourself into.
I suggest you look at what this education business is all about, from the inside and the outside--from the perspective (view) you have as an educated member of society who will lead and guide younger people in those institutions we call schools.
That's my two cents (idea, contribution) concerning "Three strikes and you're out."
Exams are like chances to score in a game. Above are some descriptors and rules for "the game of university." In short, if you know the amount of content that is considered a passing percentage for a course from class meetings, textbooks and references, handouts, assignments, teacher recommendations and corrections, then you score and are "safe." You win the game.
"Three strikes and you're out" refers to American baseball. A batter gets three chances to hit a pitched (thrown) ball with a bat (piece of wood or metal, not be be confused with the nocturnal creature with wings). If the batter doesn't succeed, he is "out," and this is bad for his batting average (individual score). It is hard to be a winner if you strike out.
California, interestingly, has a three-strikes law. If you are arrested and convicted of three crimes, you go to prison for a long time. But this is another story . . .
In (this) university game you get three chances to pass an exam. If you don't pass, you don't go to prison, and your team is not hurt by your failure. Only you suffer(?) defeat and have to take a course again, or something, another time, plus exam, perhaps a year later. With regard to the three chances or attempts, if you miss the first scheduled sitting to take (not "write") the exam, well, then there are only two chances left to take it, and so on.
To cope with serving fair and comparable exams for three sittings, some teachers prepare three versions of an exam. Maybe they're called versions A, B, and C. If you sit for the first attempt and you get version C, well, next time it will be B or A. However, for the first sitting, versions B and A have been used with other students. (You know why.) No matter, this is how it goes in this game as it is often played.
What's wrong with this picture? One, if there are different knowledges and skills tested at any time, are the grades (scores) achieved comparable? Maybe. Maybe not. Tests and exams only test what they have on them, and test-takers do more or less well with that and only that which is on the exam. Sitting for different sets of questions results quite naturally in differences. And thus, usually students and student achievement scores cannot be compared with certainty with what different tests or exams show.
Two, if little Honza, a student, takes three chances to pass, is he just as qualified as those who took the same or similar test and passed earlier? Doubtful. He has the benefits of prior test-taking experience and more time to prepare for a test he can easily get a good idea of from those who have taken that same, exact test. No, Honza, regardless of your score, you are different in kind and quality from those who passed the exam at the first sitting.
One student, I will call her Petra, had a good point related to this. She said that taking the exam three times gave you an idea of how much more you have to study to pass. I like this objection. It is like the world is a glass of beer, and it is half full rather than half empty. But I thought in this part of the world people, including students, like beer a lot? Are they satisfied with half full and the rest will appear because the barman is a good and generous Pepa? (There may be a logical fallacy here, but I will ignore thinking about it. Glasses of beer is a good metaphor if you don't think about it another half minute.)
Third problem. It is laudable (a good thing) to give people second and third chances in life. But for performance--quality--assessment, after a term or two of classes and hopefully independent effort, a singular chance should be sufficient and much, much simpler. By the end of a course plus exam preparation, it is reasonable to expect that little Jitka, also a student, can answer just over half of the questions prepared for her to test her competence (knowledge, skills, abilities) in the subject. Well done, Jitka. I guess.
Just over half? What is this? A reflection of a system which tolerates and in fact encourages mediocrity? Think about it. If you guess the answer for all questions posed on an exam, you'll probably get fifty percent correct. Try flipping (tossing) a coin (guessing), if you can't read or understand the English question. You'll still get about fifty percent as your score. This is the law of averages and chance and all of that. To get ten or fifteen percent more correct, you then probably only need a little English. Show up in class a few times, have a glance now and then at a textbook or other learning resource, do a few assignments, and chat with those who've already taken the exam--they either passed or failed it, doesn't matter. Receiving a passing score under 70 percent appears in this light no great achievement--fifty percent chance plus fifteen percent material you can learn rather passively. But perhaps this too, the matter of acceptable passing scores, is another story.
For over ten years, EFL teachers in this country who have come from abroad have questioned and tried to circumvent, or somehow cope with, the three-strikes approach to the university exams game. Frankly, it appears quite blazen to us. But, hey, we are from somewhere else with our own crazy ideas and values.
Now, you have read the above, my understanding of and questions about the game. The next issue (matter to think about) is: How does this teacher circumvent or cope with all this, and is his way defensible particularly in view of the objections raised here? And why does s/he want to circumvent (go around) or cope (somehow work with)? The answer to this last question is easy. Teachers are like the referees in the match, trying to ensure that winners are certifiable winners. That is why we even bother to circumvent or cope in the face of a system which has apparent flaws (things wrong). Now, if you are interested in responses to the first questions in this paragraph, read on.
But I will not be writing for you to read. Look for yourself into how to test and measure academic competencies, what are some different grading methods, what is valid, validity, validation . . . and try to answer this question: Do the developing values and practices, even the way of life, in your society match what is being done in university departments and classrooms? Is the university game good preparation for what it will be like upon advancing from the university level player to that required in the-world-of-work game? After all, you are in a program to prepare yourself as a future teacher. You need to know and question what you are doing, and getting yourself into.
I suggest you look at what this education business is all about, from the inside and the outside--from the perspective (view) you have as an educated member of society who will lead and guide younger people in those institutions we call schools.
That's my two cents (idea, contribution) concerning "Three strikes and you're out."
In one of Ken Wilber's pre-publication excerpts
7/18/04
In one of Ken Wilber's pre-publication excerpts, he says
One may inquire then, of each human developmental stream: What is it in my/our (rich, individual description and qualitative research) consciousness?
In one of Ken Wilber's pre-publication excerpts, he says
. . . The cognitive [developmental] stream represents the types of answers that people give to the question, 'What is?' The values stream represents the types of answers that people give to the question: 'Of what is, what do I value most?' The self-identity stream: 'Of what is, what is 'I' or me'?' Needs: 'Of what is, what do I require?' Morals: 'What should I do?'
One may inquire then, of each human developmental stream: What is it in my/our (rich, individual description and qualitative research) consciousness?
School--retrospect fragment
In the early '70s, Fred served as the watchdog for preparation standards development for school professionals. He particularly and articulately spoke against performance objectives and programs, machine-based or otherwise, which would produce desired results, or human products. This would be antithetical to education as creating the conditions whereby students discover and develop what they already know, or would naturally acquire in the course of a course, which necessarily allowed new and unapproved lines of inquiry in situ.
That was then, when fears of 1984 and big brother got linked to behaviorism and specifying desired outcomes. Ten years later, computers became personal and the flood was too great to hold back. Fred's feared future folded into an historical past, and now we don't talk much about behaviorism--we have e-learning in all its manifestations, effectively technology-delivered, disembodied content. For better or worse, what is intended is what is desired, albeit concretely and narrowly defined and measured.
The state of the art would seem to indicate that the rationality and sensibleness of good educators have prevailed in spite of. We have almost unlimited horizons with today's tools. We can create places Fred clearly objected to in the historical past, but these are no longer feared. They are just some among an infinite many. We have succumbed in some sense, and found the academic arguments no longer compelling. We have hardware and software and firmware and all kinds of ware at our disposal. We can fashion our learning's desires in ways not seen back then. And we have seen educational and economic interests converge so that practical aims of education (read, "getting a job") no longer play second to arts and humanities. So much for a liberal education.
But have we come so far? Are the tools we use and do the protocols of educational culture signal a kinder, gentler, brave new world? This paper will look at these questions in light of how we know what we know, a cousin to the varieties of learning experiences, and how suitable our technologies are to the tasks of education which have really not changed, only reversed their priority order: To learn practical matters for daily bread and to understand and appreciate the world we live in.
27.02.2005
That was then, when fears of 1984 and big brother got linked to behaviorism and specifying desired outcomes. Ten years later, computers became personal and the flood was too great to hold back. Fred's feared future folded into an historical past, and now we don't talk much about behaviorism--we have e-learning in all its manifestations, effectively technology-delivered, disembodied content. For better or worse, what is intended is what is desired, albeit concretely and narrowly defined and measured.
The state of the art would seem to indicate that the rationality and sensibleness of good educators have prevailed in spite of. We have almost unlimited horizons with today's tools. We can create places Fred clearly objected to in the historical past, but these are no longer feared. They are just some among an infinite many. We have succumbed in some sense, and found the academic arguments no longer compelling. We have hardware and software and firmware and all kinds of ware at our disposal. We can fashion our learning's desires in ways not seen back then. And we have seen educational and economic interests converge so that practical aims of education (read, "getting a job") no longer play second to arts and humanities. So much for a liberal education.
But have we come so far? Are the tools we use and do the protocols of educational culture signal a kinder, gentler, brave new world? This paper will look at these questions in light of how we know what we know, a cousin to the varieties of learning experiences, and how suitable our technologies are to the tasks of education which have really not changed, only reversed their priority order: To learn practical matters for daily bread and to understand and appreciate the world we live in.
27.02.2005
School--a collision course
Fall '04 Generalizations About
as online/blended learning courses launch:
students
--motivated by getting credit and out of school
--use presented information for later recall
--learning (and study) is attending class
course
--content available 24/7 for the term
--automated and individualized continuous assessment
--attendance is completing learning activities
methods
--self-directed and instructor-led blended learning
--steady and regular progress for completion
--class meetings are for special purposes
teacher
--motivated by the subject and learning
--uses what-do-you-think questions based on knowledge
--learning is doing, often separate from what teachers do
as online/blended learning courses launch:
students
--motivated by getting credit and out of school
--use presented information for later recall
--learning (and study) is attending class
course
--content available 24/7 for the term
--automated and individualized continuous assessment
--attendance is completing learning activities
methods
--self-directed and instructor-led blended learning
--steady and regular progress for completion
--class meetings are for special purposes
teacher
--motivated by the subject and learning
--uses what-do-you-think questions based on knowledge
--learning is doing, often separate from what teachers do
Fragment--Czech spring?
[unknown date--but in '04]
Spring snaps to attention as does awareness, which has brooded in the dark winters here. I am a tourist just having stayed a bit longer this time and revisited to see if there was something I missed somehow, or lost here.
Karel Gott still croons to the masses to tunes played by the ruling elite or popular trend. Lucie Bila screams in the new generations who had a childhood in a historical period they can't remember, or weren't aware of.
Spring snaps to attention as does awareness, which has brooded in the dark winters here. I am a tourist just having stayed a bit longer this time and revisited to see if there was something I missed somehow, or lost here.
Karel Gott still croons to the masses to tunes played by the ruling elite or popular trend. Lucie Bila screams in the new generations who had a childhood in a historical period they can't remember, or weren't aware of.
Apologies, Robert
Apologies, Robert: . . . in a Strange Land, A Sequel
My university students are really interesting. But they kind of have strange ideas. So does the department where I work. For example, the department says that the students must show up for class. If they do not, and there is a limit for how often they don't, they fail, or just don't get credit for the course. Same thing, I think.
So my students at the end of the term say to me, "I was in class. I was there (almost) every lesson," as they stare at their failing test paper. They then say, "I did the work. I turned in all of your assignments."
"My assignments?" And I am also thinking, but did you do your own assignments, your own work? I found a Web site with the exact same words your last essay had, an essay which said at the top, written by you. Funny kind of world, where Web sites are copying student work left and right.
Students come to me and apologize for not having attended a class. It is never "I won't be there because," but always "I was not there because, and I am sorry." I know I live in an English-as-a-second-or-third language part of the world, and things get a little screwy because my students and I are often not communicating in the same English. But the apology always stops me for a moment; I have learned to quickly recover though, and say something like, "You have communicated why you were not in class. That is an excuse, and I guess you are excused."
But you see, even that goes too far. I don't care if they come to class or not. I am not into excuses. I am not in concert with my department on this. I don't relish all that record keeping. Who is here today and who is not? The real question is who is present and are we learning anything interesting. Have you left evidence of your attendance in class today, or online at any time during the term? Presence of mind is more important than the body, and showing up on a given day and time is not as important when we can have our cake and eat it too. I am referring to virtual classrooms and 24/7 learning.
The absent student asks me if there will be a problem because s/he was not present (in body). I think not--the important thing is doing the work, that is showing you know and can do what the lesson or course is at least vaguely about.
So I say, "Attendance is meaningless as such. Performance and results are what count. Show up either in class or online and do the lesson."
"Oh?" or no response at all.
So my students at this time of year, taking the departmental line, say that they were in class, or online, and they should get credit or pass.
"You don't get credit for showing up on the job; you get paid when you do the work. And for some jobs nowadays, showing up thankfully means getting it done on your own time, at your own convenience, within limits, of course. What a great world, but in time (all at once at the last moment) is often not good enough, at least for the good reasons that we cannot control (i.e., check) the quality and eliminate defects before we certify you and send you out the door into the real world."
"Huh? So you won't give me credit?"
"It is not my job. It is your job to earn it. I am just the lackey who says you did your work. Competently."
Now there is a whole other subject, which I will not get into here. Suffice to say, just turning in work or getting ten percent above guessing all the answers to the test is not much competence: a 60 percent passing grade for a course is, well . . .
"Sixty percent quality product from this university for sale. What am I bid? Shows up for work if told to, and turns out work, if not his or her own, sometimes in sporatic bursts. Absent sometimes, but for reasons you can sympathesize with. Ideal pre-current-era employee: Believes showing up for work should be compensated."
Universities and students today? I feel like I am in culture shock in a strange country speaking an English that is at best half understood. I am operating at about 60 percent, I guess. Maybe I need to work a bit harder than just showing up in class and imagining I am teaching. I apologize. Really. Or, excuse me. I am just a stranger here.
03.02.2005
My university students are really interesting. But they kind of have strange ideas. So does the department where I work. For example, the department says that the students must show up for class. If they do not, and there is a limit for how often they don't, they fail, or just don't get credit for the course. Same thing, I think.
So my students at the end of the term say to me, "I was in class. I was there (almost) every lesson," as they stare at their failing test paper. They then say, "I did the work. I turned in all of your assignments."
"My assignments?" And I am also thinking, but did you do your own assignments, your own work? I found a Web site with the exact same words your last essay had, an essay which said at the top, written by you. Funny kind of world, where Web sites are copying student work left and right.
Students come to me and apologize for not having attended a class. It is never "I won't be there because," but always "I was not there because, and I am sorry." I know I live in an English-as-a-second-or-third language part of the world, and things get a little screwy because my students and I are often not communicating in the same English. But the apology always stops me for a moment; I have learned to quickly recover though, and say something like, "You have communicated why you were not in class. That is an excuse, and I guess you are excused."
But you see, even that goes too far. I don't care if they come to class or not. I am not into excuses. I am not in concert with my department on this. I don't relish all that record keeping. Who is here today and who is not? The real question is who is present and are we learning anything interesting. Have you left evidence of your attendance in class today, or online at any time during the term? Presence of mind is more important than the body, and showing up on a given day and time is not as important when we can have our cake and eat it too. I am referring to virtual classrooms and 24/7 learning.
The absent student asks me if there will be a problem because s/he was not present (in body). I think not--the important thing is doing the work, that is showing you know and can do what the lesson or course is at least vaguely about.
So I say, "Attendance is meaningless as such. Performance and results are what count. Show up either in class or online and do the lesson."
"Oh?" or no response at all.
So my students at this time of year, taking the departmental line, say that they were in class, or online, and they should get credit or pass.
"You don't get credit for showing up on the job; you get paid when you do the work. And for some jobs nowadays, showing up thankfully means getting it done on your own time, at your own convenience, within limits, of course. What a great world, but in time (all at once at the last moment) is often not good enough, at least for the good reasons that we cannot control (i.e., check) the quality and eliminate defects before we certify you and send you out the door into the real world."
"Huh? So you won't give me credit?"
"It is not my job. It is your job to earn it. I am just the lackey who says you did your work. Competently."
Now there is a whole other subject, which I will not get into here. Suffice to say, just turning in work or getting ten percent above guessing all the answers to the test is not much competence: a 60 percent passing grade for a course is, well . . .
"Sixty percent quality product from this university for sale. What am I bid? Shows up for work if told to, and turns out work, if not his or her own, sometimes in sporatic bursts. Absent sometimes, but for reasons you can sympathesize with. Ideal pre-current-era employee: Believes showing up for work should be compensated."
Universities and students today? I feel like I am in culture shock in a strange country speaking an English that is at best half understood. I am operating at about 60 percent, I guess. Maybe I need to work a bit harder than just showing up in class and imagining I am teaching. I apologize. Really. Or, excuse me. I am just a stranger here.
03.02.2005
PRB
[This listening/reading was given to two classes in a course called PRB. It produced the best student writing in six years of teaching English in the Czech Republic. I should have done something like this much, much earlier. But what did I know? I was trying to deliver the best content I could consistent with the syllabi and norms I knew about and sensed where I taught. Sometimes it is just best to follow your gut.]
PRB, a course abbreviation. Probable Reality--Bearable? Possible Realities Bothersome? I am not sure.
Today is my last day of teaching. I think forever. And next week, Monday, is my daughter\'s birthday. May 30. I think in honor of these occasions, my last classes today should somehow be remarkable, or I should fess up and disclose why PRB, or what the real PRB is.
Honesty, truthfulness, integrity, thoughtfulness, vulnerability, humanity, responsibility, meaning. Ideals and therefore values. Bothersome in that in this environment, this schooling--not education--they are irrelevant, and therefore, I am. Possible reality one. But my last chances today can be to live these values, and let students know at least in part why they, at least some, have had such a difficult time with me! I hope in living these values today, I can bear it.
First, let me thank you for inviting me this week to your party to mark the end of term. By the time I realized, it was past the time to show up, I was on my way to bed. I noted the invitation with care and significance when it was given to me, but my own vulnerability always prevents me from joining groups of treasured young people. So my forgetfulness was really a conscious decision not to participate. Truth.
In 1991, Tara, my daughter died. Informal groups, perhaps especially with young people, are impossible for me to bear. The sadness is overwhelming, and since my near-death almost a year after hers, experiencing strong emotions . . . well, I cannot allow it. Not yet. Maybe never again. With her death, I die a little each day. It is not something you want to show or share with other people.
So now you have my excuse for my not joining you plus my apology. I am truly sorry I did not and cannot participate. And I thank you for past invitations.
What has this got to do with our last class, and school, and English, and your education? A lot, I think. Just start with what you now know. Our classes have not been really about the important stuff. Should school be about important stuff, truth, vulnerability, meaning? In short, it should. And this dissonance has brought me to this point, that I no longer want to try to teach. It doesn\'t work. But more importantly, it is not, at least in this environment, this school, this country and culture, with and by me, now and here about important stuff. And I believe it should be.
PRB has been my last compromise. I merely check to see if you are sitting there and have handed in your assignments. If these things, you get credit for the course.
School. It is a place where you show up and produce a few things and get some kind of sanction that something changed you. But the only changes I see in the different students and years of study is that you can cope better and better with the system. Learning, and God forbid, getting educated are beyond probability, beyond even possibility. This is the reality I see, and I may be wrong. Reality may be, probably is, different. But we have to go on what we believe we know.
Education is a good thing. I believe in it. I believe in learning to enrich your life. I do not believe in school to make you rich. I am wrong, at least a minority voice, in this belief. It is bothersome to me that schools have sold out to practical realities. But that is as it is, and you will do well to take advantage of what school has to offer you.
Education is a bad thing. Having had a ton of it, formal and informal (in school and outside of school), I believe this. The wonderful textures and colors and nuances and insights now possible for me make for possible and probable realities impossible otherwise for me to experience. So, I hope that you can get an education here.
These richer dimensions, however, will make for dissonances so great as to separate you out from others; and if you need others like you, or those with whom you can communicate and feel something akin, well, forget it. Education will make you more alone, more alienated, more different. Place this together with your other losses and sadnesses and you have it sometimes unbearable.
You have two subjects you focus on here. English and something else. English, for the most part, is a skill to acquire so you can get along better using the current world language. Practical reality--making a living--has placed my language into prominence, because everybody else wants but doesn\'t need a lot of what the dominant cultures and countries (i.e., English speaking) have. So, you are not really just getting English but a whole range of cultural bits and pieces. But the language by itself is useful, I admit. Continue to go after it; it will serve you well.
Your second subject, let\'s call it the substantive one--not just a skill to acquire to get along in the world--must be teaching you something about, well, school or education. In my case, my language has allowed me to find the sense and nonsense of things. It has also allowed me to enjoy the best of life, and I include in that our brief association here at this university. My schooling and education have given me the qualitative difference. I am blessed, and cursed, with what I can know and do.
What does the other subject you study teach you, let\'s say, about school? Civics. What does civics say about the schooling you are experiencing? Information systems. What does this subject have to say about what school is? Any dissonances? Any joys?
Again, your second subject is really English. Your primary subject is not this practical thing called a language. It is what you study in your own language, or what you use English to know more about. What you are devoting your time to, other than English and what is in English, must help you by giving you information and knowledge about the world. Maybe it even helps you understand it through that lens.
What do you know now or understand about your university experience when you let mathematics, physics, chemistry, civics, psychology, Czech history and literature, etc., talk to you and make sense or nonsense for you?
What is all this now about? PRB, probabilities, Kevin\'s daughter, this question. Just that.
If this class, just for this day, is about what is important to you and what you believe in and what you are spending your time doing, wouldn\'t it be a pretty good idea to say, or find out, what good all your time and maybe effort is producing?
Education is for life. Will your or other lives be better in some way because of what you are studying here? Let\'s try to begin to answer that important question.
Here is my answer for me. This is my last day of teaching. I have found it has become more than bothersome. It is unbearable. The realities I see for you and for me here are not the best. And if I can make a change for the better, for me and for you, I need to get out of the way of your education, or at least your schooling. Doing teaching the way the students and culture expect of me here is too great a force for me to guide to what I believe are better, more important outcomes.
It is kind of like this. Students need not witness nor experience the effects of my frustration, my irrelevant values, my realities . . . my botheredness. It is not in your best interests. And I am happy for the decision, and happy for you. I have confidence in you that you will do best with what you choose to do. Maybe it is like the parent who lets his child go, and lets her experience the wonder of her possibilities and her realities wherever she is.
I will miss you, miss you more than you can possibly know.
After you try to answer your question about your primary subject and give me something I can touch and read to remember you by, that will be the end of class today.
May 27, 2005
PRB, a course abbreviation. Probable Reality--Bearable? Possible Realities Bothersome? I am not sure.
Today is my last day of teaching. I think forever. And next week, Monday, is my daughter\'s birthday. May 30. I think in honor of these occasions, my last classes today should somehow be remarkable, or I should fess up and disclose why PRB, or what the real PRB is.
Honesty, truthfulness, integrity, thoughtfulness, vulnerability, humanity, responsibility, meaning. Ideals and therefore values. Bothersome in that in this environment, this schooling--not education--they are irrelevant, and therefore, I am. Possible reality one. But my last chances today can be to live these values, and let students know at least in part why they, at least some, have had such a difficult time with me! I hope in living these values today, I can bear it.
First, let me thank you for inviting me this week to your party to mark the end of term. By the time I realized, it was past the time to show up, I was on my way to bed. I noted the invitation with care and significance when it was given to me, but my own vulnerability always prevents me from joining groups of treasured young people. So my forgetfulness was really a conscious decision not to participate. Truth.
In 1991, Tara, my daughter died. Informal groups, perhaps especially with young people, are impossible for me to bear. The sadness is overwhelming, and since my near-death almost a year after hers, experiencing strong emotions . . . well, I cannot allow it. Not yet. Maybe never again. With her death, I die a little each day. It is not something you want to show or share with other people.
So now you have my excuse for my not joining you plus my apology. I am truly sorry I did not and cannot participate. And I thank you for past invitations.
What has this got to do with our last class, and school, and English, and your education? A lot, I think. Just start with what you now know. Our classes have not been really about the important stuff. Should school be about important stuff, truth, vulnerability, meaning? In short, it should. And this dissonance has brought me to this point, that I no longer want to try to teach. It doesn\'t work. But more importantly, it is not, at least in this environment, this school, this country and culture, with and by me, now and here about important stuff. And I believe it should be.
PRB has been my last compromise. I merely check to see if you are sitting there and have handed in your assignments. If these things, you get credit for the course.
School. It is a place where you show up and produce a few things and get some kind of sanction that something changed you. But the only changes I see in the different students and years of study is that you can cope better and better with the system. Learning, and God forbid, getting educated are beyond probability, beyond even possibility. This is the reality I see, and I may be wrong. Reality may be, probably is, different. But we have to go on what we believe we know.
Education is a good thing. I believe in it. I believe in learning to enrich your life. I do not believe in school to make you rich. I am wrong, at least a minority voice, in this belief. It is bothersome to me that schools have sold out to practical realities. But that is as it is, and you will do well to take advantage of what school has to offer you.
Education is a bad thing. Having had a ton of it, formal and informal (in school and outside of school), I believe this. The wonderful textures and colors and nuances and insights now possible for me make for possible and probable realities impossible otherwise for me to experience. So, I hope that you can get an education here.
These richer dimensions, however, will make for dissonances so great as to separate you out from others; and if you need others like you, or those with whom you can communicate and feel something akin, well, forget it. Education will make you more alone, more alienated, more different. Place this together with your other losses and sadnesses and you have it sometimes unbearable.
You have two subjects you focus on here. English and something else. English, for the most part, is a skill to acquire so you can get along better using the current world language. Practical reality--making a living--has placed my language into prominence, because everybody else wants but doesn\'t need a lot of what the dominant cultures and countries (i.e., English speaking) have. So, you are not really just getting English but a whole range of cultural bits and pieces. But the language by itself is useful, I admit. Continue to go after it; it will serve you well.
Your second subject, let\'s call it the substantive one--not just a skill to acquire to get along in the world--must be teaching you something about, well, school or education. In my case, my language has allowed me to find the sense and nonsense of things. It has also allowed me to enjoy the best of life, and I include in that our brief association here at this university. My schooling and education have given me the qualitative difference. I am blessed, and cursed, with what I can know and do.
What does the other subject you study teach you, let\'s say, about school? Civics. What does civics say about the schooling you are experiencing? Information systems. What does this subject have to say about what school is? Any dissonances? Any joys?
Again, your second subject is really English. Your primary subject is not this practical thing called a language. It is what you study in your own language, or what you use English to know more about. What you are devoting your time to, other than English and what is in English, must help you by giving you information and knowledge about the world. Maybe it even helps you understand it through that lens.
What do you know now or understand about your university experience when you let mathematics, physics, chemistry, civics, psychology, Czech history and literature, etc., talk to you and make sense or nonsense for you?
What is all this now about? PRB, probabilities, Kevin\'s daughter, this question. Just that.
If this class, just for this day, is about what is important to you and what you believe in and what you are spending your time doing, wouldn\'t it be a pretty good idea to say, or find out, what good all your time and maybe effort is producing?
Education is for life. Will your or other lives be better in some way because of what you are studying here? Let\'s try to begin to answer that important question.
Here is my answer for me. This is my last day of teaching. I have found it has become more than bothersome. It is unbearable. The realities I see for you and for me here are not the best. And if I can make a change for the better, for me and for you, I need to get out of the way of your education, or at least your schooling. Doing teaching the way the students and culture expect of me here is too great a force for me to guide to what I believe are better, more important outcomes.
It is kind of like this. Students need not witness nor experience the effects of my frustration, my irrelevant values, my realities . . . my botheredness. It is not in your best interests. And I am happy for the decision, and happy for you. I have confidence in you that you will do best with what you choose to do. Maybe it is like the parent who lets his child go, and lets her experience the wonder of her possibilities and her realities wherever she is.
I will miss you, miss you more than you can possibly know.
After you try to answer your question about your primary subject and give me something I can touch and read to remember you by, that will be the end of class today.
May 27, 2005
First lecture, second term--rant
Recently I have been assessing what you have learned from the first term. And from the perspective of course content, this is a view of individual accomplishment that I uncovered. It is in a sense part of what I learned.
There are those who are or have been bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. This translates into students who have some solid knowledge about general and specific things and are keen learners.
There are those at the other end who are, now were, without much that was on offer for acquisition, or who may, in my estimation, be unsuitable for further study. It was like the lights were out and no one was home.
Slightly above these are those where the lights were on and there was apparently no one home; for these, I gave the benefit of the doubt. They could learn, I thought, or did but I couldn't measure it somehow. So, on provision of good performance in the second term, they could earn credit for the first term. They could continue, but a burden of proof lies on them. I will be assessing them especially, and carefully.
Next there are those who convinced me that they were capable of tracking and learning, and they had some level of knowledge about the subject and understood what the skills were that were required, if unable to demonstrate them. The lights were on and someone was home.
Take each of these categories and see if the shoe fits. You will note that only one of the categories is entirely complimentary. But that is the category that is the fundamental value that guides the course and makes what content is available. To be in concert with the subject, the content, that is the alignment you want. Now, I do not expect all to get into this alignment. After all, that wouldn't be American. We value diversity and each can decide how best to get through life and school challenges.
What else did I learn? I had my preconceptions confirmed. There would be difficulties for students to handle a wide open door of what to learn, plus part of the delivery of the course would take clear perception or reframing to accept and follow. What this means is that logging onto the learning server and doing lessons is essentially no different from attending class and remaining mentally awake for the given time period. The only difference is that with the former, you had to show you were at least a little bit awake. In the latter, in most classes, especially lecture classes, you can sleep while appearing to be awake. And I learned my students preferred this for a number of reasons, the main one being "because that is what we are used to."
I remain unconvinced that any of the students I have seen at this university really learns from this method.
I also learned that better mousetraps need to be built for the unmotivated, because they will do anything, and give any number of excuses, not to do the course and follow what is tacitly clear in any class or school in today's Europe. The first term had many words on the course site and resource area about all of this, but it boils down to: Do your own course work on time. In this one injunction, all is said and all judgments can be made about accomplishment.
Of course I also learned that because I would not teach how to use technology for learning, some would not use it, or would have difficulties. The rationale for not scaffolding the technology skills for this course ahead of time, or during it, still holds true. Students can and should learn this elsewhere, or on their own. We need not take away from the core content to learn how to read online, or write an essay and submit it electronically. We also, today, need not show students how to click on a link.
Those technical skills aside, and not part of the course, does not relieve me of the responsibility of helping students learn what is good and bad electronic information, what is important and what is not as important when they read or view an artifact. So these will be a part of the next term's work.
My students would make adequate lawyers. They look carefully for the loopholes in the law. That is fine, and my learning is to be very careful and specific about what the course requirements are. This emphasis on requirements comes as a result of a difference in values. Those bright-eyed and busy-tailed do not need to be told and reminded about what is due, or what you should learn. However, the vast majority need to know how to get through this experience with the least amount of difficulty, and the least amount of work. The university system breeds this norm. It is a fact of life for me and my students.
Part of being clearer must be to concept check every important point and assignment. The tacit for me must become the clearly known and understood for the student. Although it is impossible to meet this expectation, more effort on my part is required. And so it shall be. If students will hold me to the letter of the law as they understand it, then the law must be mutually understood. We must find the language that will convey for us both what is to be done, when, what is important, etc.
So each lesson, plus some material from last term, will be reviewed (AE), revised (BE). This means repetition for some. Unfortunate, but that is the price of making students attend class. We could move much faster using the knowledge base that is the Web and course site, but as we have learned, that also has its problems. So, more classes, more repetition. The optional class, by the way, is not optional content. But if you know or can do it already, you don't have to come. Get it elsewhere, or via the course documentation.
Thus, the course will be more directive. Total, or almost, freedom comes with responsibility. But to handle the freedom and the responsibility takes a level of knowledge, skills, and maturity most of the students I know do not have. So, I will "tell them what to do," within limits, because that is what they have pleaded for again and again. First this and then that. And so, the course will evolve more in concert with what students appear to need, although much of it should be available right from the get go for the better than average student.
Two serious problems I have noticed with some students. And I need to address this because it is not from the hopeless that I have heard these things. There is some aversion to reading and text. And there is an I've-already-made-up-my-mind, or similar, attitude. Embracing either of these spells doom for the culture studies student. Two skills are required.
One, text is the primary medium used for the preservation of what we know, and what happened before. Texts talk with us, not only to us. And a community of the knowing have the real keys to what the stories say and mean--meaning is the result of conversing with the text and trying to become a member of the community. The skill is reading and asking questions of the text.
Two, any area or subject of human society is an appropriate object of inquiry. Some will be interesting to some, other subjects won't interest. But that doesn't mean what you are not interested in is not important to someone, or for some understanding. Close the door prematurely on anything and you have become a smaller, more isolated person, and not a candidate for success in cultural studies. The skill is to hold off judgment until you have sufficient information and knowledge. For beginning students, this means holding off judgment. For those who have visited America, or have talked with someone who has, this is no excuse. Make no judgment, yet.
What is information and what is knowledge? This is where term two starts.
28.02.2005
There are those who are or have been bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. This translates into students who have some solid knowledge about general and specific things and are keen learners.
There are those at the other end who are, now were, without much that was on offer for acquisition, or who may, in my estimation, be unsuitable for further study. It was like the lights were out and no one was home.
Slightly above these are those where the lights were on and there was apparently no one home; for these, I gave the benefit of the doubt. They could learn, I thought, or did but I couldn't measure it somehow. So, on provision of good performance in the second term, they could earn credit for the first term. They could continue, but a burden of proof lies on them. I will be assessing them especially, and carefully.
Next there are those who convinced me that they were capable of tracking and learning, and they had some level of knowledge about the subject and understood what the skills were that were required, if unable to demonstrate them. The lights were on and someone was home.
Take each of these categories and see if the shoe fits. You will note that only one of the categories is entirely complimentary. But that is the category that is the fundamental value that guides the course and makes what content is available. To be in concert with the subject, the content, that is the alignment you want. Now, I do not expect all to get into this alignment. After all, that wouldn't be American. We value diversity and each can decide how best to get through life and school challenges.
What else did I learn? I had my preconceptions confirmed. There would be difficulties for students to handle a wide open door of what to learn, plus part of the delivery of the course would take clear perception or reframing to accept and follow. What this means is that logging onto the learning server and doing lessons is essentially no different from attending class and remaining mentally awake for the given time period. The only difference is that with the former, you had to show you were at least a little bit awake. In the latter, in most classes, especially lecture classes, you can sleep while appearing to be awake. And I learned my students preferred this for a number of reasons, the main one being "because that is what we are used to."
I remain unconvinced that any of the students I have seen at this university really learns from this method.
I also learned that better mousetraps need to be built for the unmotivated, because they will do anything, and give any number of excuses, not to do the course and follow what is tacitly clear in any class or school in today's Europe. The first term had many words on the course site and resource area about all of this, but it boils down to: Do your own course work on time. In this one injunction, all is said and all judgments can be made about accomplishment.
Of course I also learned that because I would not teach how to use technology for learning, some would not use it, or would have difficulties. The rationale for not scaffolding the technology skills for this course ahead of time, or during it, still holds true. Students can and should learn this elsewhere, or on their own. We need not take away from the core content to learn how to read online, or write an essay and submit it electronically. We also, today, need not show students how to click on a link.
Those technical skills aside, and not part of the course, does not relieve me of the responsibility of helping students learn what is good and bad electronic information, what is important and what is not as important when they read or view an artifact. So these will be a part of the next term's work.
My students would make adequate lawyers. They look carefully for the loopholes in the law. That is fine, and my learning is to be very careful and specific about what the course requirements are. This emphasis on requirements comes as a result of a difference in values. Those bright-eyed and busy-tailed do not need to be told and reminded about what is due, or what you should learn. However, the vast majority need to know how to get through this experience with the least amount of difficulty, and the least amount of work. The university system breeds this norm. It is a fact of life for me and my students.
Part of being clearer must be to concept check every important point and assignment. The tacit for me must become the clearly known and understood for the student. Although it is impossible to meet this expectation, more effort on my part is required. And so it shall be. If students will hold me to the letter of the law as they understand it, then the law must be mutually understood. We must find the language that will convey for us both what is to be done, when, what is important, etc.
So each lesson, plus some material from last term, will be reviewed (AE), revised (BE). This means repetition for some. Unfortunate, but that is the price of making students attend class. We could move much faster using the knowledge base that is the Web and course site, but as we have learned, that also has its problems. So, more classes, more repetition. The optional class, by the way, is not optional content. But if you know or can do it already, you don't have to come. Get it elsewhere, or via the course documentation.
Thus, the course will be more directive. Total, or almost, freedom comes with responsibility. But to handle the freedom and the responsibility takes a level of knowledge, skills, and maturity most of the students I know do not have. So, I will "tell them what to do," within limits, because that is what they have pleaded for again and again. First this and then that. And so, the course will evolve more in concert with what students appear to need, although much of it should be available right from the get go for the better than average student.
Two serious problems I have noticed with some students. And I need to address this because it is not from the hopeless that I have heard these things. There is some aversion to reading and text. And there is an I've-already-made-up-my-mind, or similar, attitude. Embracing either of these spells doom for the culture studies student. Two skills are required.
One, text is the primary medium used for the preservation of what we know, and what happened before. Texts talk with us, not only to us. And a community of the knowing have the real keys to what the stories say and mean--meaning is the result of conversing with the text and trying to become a member of the community. The skill is reading and asking questions of the text.
Two, any area or subject of human society is an appropriate object of inquiry. Some will be interesting to some, other subjects won't interest. But that doesn't mean what you are not interested in is not important to someone, or for some understanding. Close the door prematurely on anything and you have become a smaller, more isolated person, and not a candidate for success in cultural studies. The skill is to hold off judgment until you have sufficient information and knowledge. For beginning students, this means holding off judgment. For those who have visited America, or have talked with someone who has, this is no excuse. Make no judgment, yet.
What is information and what is knowledge? This is where term two starts.
28.02.2005
Thud
This always happens. My writing thuds. Here is "a deconstruction."
The last poem
[This is the last poem for me or anyone in concert with where I am re a spiritual outlook. See the last line of the poem.]
Years and years and years past
I would write a gift,
and thought it shared
the love at Christmas.
[Christmases ago I used to write poems as gifts to family, friends, and loved ones. I thought it showed or shared my love for them. I thought that anyway. I suspect in these lines that I was wrong, in years past.]
Now and now and now at last
through the years I sift,
and think to share
our love at Christ's mass.
[Later, after reflection but then recent affirmation, I thought we could join in love and joy in the spirit of Christ's birth, life, and death. Getting back to true religion, or the truth in religion.]
Then and then and then repast
I would mine eyes uplift,
And pray forgive--
self love this boat's mast.
[Failing the above, I then thought it was myself I had to save; therefore, I found strength in petitionary prayer. The word repast is here mostly for rhyme, but it has a feeling of after a supper, perhaps Christ's last and the mass. That is after having gotten and become disillusioned with religion.]
But again, again, again it's no.
Not my love nor ours this journey takes.
But of the One that gives without the for,
And all the pretty words forsakes.
[But the lesson is clear, after learning it again and again. Life is a journey guided by the One (God, gods, ground of being, etc.). And for him or her, there are no words no matter how pretty, nor does s/he speak; and s/he is in the business of being, not for-giving, or for giving, or forgiving. Big play here on forgive from the previous stanza.]
PS Not "Dante's Prayer," but sort of.
[This is an allusion to a nice lyric. The words are available for those interested to look them up--and people did, unfortunately without understanding the above first. Since this poem here is from me and I have personalized it with a postscript, it is both an explanation for my silence in the past few years(no pretty words) along with the hope that we can remember each other with the kinds of love Dante's Prayer talks about, as well as that which I hope I have expressed here, in a last poem. Conclusion: We are all a part of the One!]
A final note. Some thought I did not write the poem and they tried to find it somewhere. For those and others maybe, I wrote the poem standing in line at the local post office just before Christmas. Never without a notebook, I thought what better thing to do as I stood waiting to post my modest attempt to show I cared in the traditional way, Christmas cards.
Now, don't you think the poem better than the lengthy explanation and context for its composition? I know, I know. And it's OK. I am used to it.
THUD
19.05.2005
The last poem
[This is the last poem for me or anyone in concert with where I am re a spiritual outlook. See the last line of the poem.]
Years and years and years past
I would write a gift,
and thought it shared
the love at Christmas.
[Christmases ago I used to write poems as gifts to family, friends, and loved ones. I thought it showed or shared my love for them. I thought that anyway. I suspect in these lines that I was wrong, in years past.]
Now and now and now at last
through the years I sift,
and think to share
our love at Christ's mass.
[Later, after reflection but then recent affirmation, I thought we could join in love and joy in the spirit of Christ's birth, life, and death. Getting back to true religion, or the truth in religion.]
Then and then and then repast
I would mine eyes uplift,
And pray forgive--
self love this boat's mast.
[Failing the above, I then thought it was myself I had to save; therefore, I found strength in petitionary prayer. The word repast is here mostly for rhyme, but it has a feeling of after a supper, perhaps Christ's last and the mass. That is after having gotten and become disillusioned with religion.]
But again, again, again it's no.
Not my love nor ours this journey takes.
But of the One that gives without the for,
And all the pretty words forsakes.
[But the lesson is clear, after learning it again and again. Life is a journey guided by the One (God, gods, ground of being, etc.). And for him or her, there are no words no matter how pretty, nor does s/he speak; and s/he is in the business of being, not for-giving, or for giving, or forgiving. Big play here on forgive from the previous stanza.]
PS Not "Dante's Prayer," but sort of.
[This is an allusion to a nice lyric. The words are available for those interested to look them up--and people did, unfortunately without understanding the above first. Since this poem here is from me and I have personalized it with a postscript, it is both an explanation for my silence in the past few years(no pretty words) along with the hope that we can remember each other with the kinds of love Dante's Prayer talks about, as well as that which I hope I have expressed here, in a last poem. Conclusion: We are all a part of the One!]
A final note. Some thought I did not write the poem and they tried to find it somewhere. For those and others maybe, I wrote the poem standing in line at the local post office just before Christmas. Never without a notebook, I thought what better thing to do as I stood waiting to post my modest attempt to show I cared in the traditional way, Christmas cards.
Now, don't you think the poem better than the lengthy explanation and context for its composition? I know, I know. And it's OK. I am used to it.
THUD
19.05.2005
On reading
Czechs came to these lands centuries ago. How do we know? Not from what your grandmother told you, or your school buddy yesterday. We know because many, many yesterdays ago someone wrote it down for us. In fact today someone is recording in writing what we know we have learned today. Someone did that yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. The accumulation of what we know and can know is mostly in written form.
There are signs that the Czech Republic shows vestiges of its tribal beginnings. An oral culture is alive and well. But in educated and educational circles, the culture is not oral but verbal, that is mostly written. With the advent of film and photography, visual records and memory are now also part of knowing.
Universities historically used libraries to hold all the verbal knowledge. They also packaged the knowledge into scripta (Czech academic texts and syllabi) and now textbooks.
The student today at university who finds reading boring probably needs to ask a fundamental question: Other than for credit or a piece of paper (ironically, a written and visual record)--why are you here?
Life is full of compromises. If you are here only for credit, perhaps there is a shortcut. Find that shortest way. Do the least amount . . .
Today is tomorrow's yesterday. But to understand will take knowing about more than one yesterday, or having a photo without caption or annotation, or a useful audiovisual clip without order and sound because someone forgot to script it. How will you do it without reading?
28.02.2005
There are signs that the Czech Republic shows vestiges of its tribal beginnings. An oral culture is alive and well. But in educated and educational circles, the culture is not oral but verbal, that is mostly written. With the advent of film and photography, visual records and memory are now also part of knowing.
Universities historically used libraries to hold all the verbal knowledge. They also packaged the knowledge into scripta (Czech academic texts and syllabi) and now textbooks.
The student today at university who finds reading boring probably needs to ask a fundamental question: Other than for credit or a piece of paper (ironically, a written and visual record)--why are you here?
Life is full of compromises. If you are here only for credit, perhaps there is a shortcut. Find that shortest way. Do the least amount . . .
Today is tomorrow's yesterday. But to understand will take knowing about more than one yesterday, or having a photo without caption or annotation, or a useful audiovisual clip without order and sound because someone forgot to script it. How will you do it without reading?
28.02.2005
Specialized CD proposal
The following is a general sketch of a book/CD product to teach/learn specialized English. It is meant as an example from which to begin discussions, if desired, about contract work to develop products like "Obchodni jednani v anglictine" ("Meetings in English").
Title: Customer Service English
Aim(s): The user will learn the basic words and phrases for giving customer service in common situations. S/he will also learn or review a few customer service principles.
Audience: Intermediate and above English proficiency.
Section I: At work
+ at the reception desk (first impressions)
+ in a retail shop ("may I help you")
+ handling the service request ("give 'em what they want")
Section II: On the phone
+ from the helpdesk (practical information)
+ with difficult customers ("the customer is always right")
+ responding to inquiries ("information, please")
Section III: In correspondence
+ offering after-sales service (repeat business)
+ using e-mail ("mind your manners")
+ responding to information requests ("this and much much more")
Notes:
1. Each section (module) will be built on situations to contextualize the language. Each situation will refer to one or more principles of customer satisfaction.
2. An introduction will give a rationale for customer service. Perhaps a short presentation video or audio file with transcription.
3. The modules will be different paths through the material (non-linear learning). You can start anywhere and get to the end of that module, and then choose another, or bookmark your place to return later.
If you find this sketch of interest, let me know.
28.02.2005
Title: Customer Service English
Aim(s): The user will learn the basic words and phrases for giving customer service in common situations. S/he will also learn or review a few customer service principles.
Audience: Intermediate and above English proficiency.
Section I: At work
+ at the reception desk (first impressions)
+ in a retail shop ("may I help you")
+ handling the service request ("give 'em what they want")
Section II: On the phone
+ from the helpdesk (practical information)
+ with difficult customers ("the customer is always right")
+ responding to inquiries ("information, please")
Section III: In correspondence
+ offering after-sales service (repeat business)
+ using e-mail ("mind your manners")
+ responding to information requests ("this and much much more")
Notes:
1. Each section (module) will be built on situations to contextualize the language. Each situation will refer to one or more principles of customer satisfaction.
2. An introduction will give a rationale for customer service. Perhaps a short presentation video or audio file with transcription.
3. The modules will be different paths through the material (non-linear learning). You can start anywhere and get to the end of that module, and then choose another, or bookmark your place to return later.
If you find this sketch of interest, let me know.
28.02.2005
Culture is, multiple choice
Culture is a description of:
what they do28.02.2005
what I observe them doing
what they observe themselves doing
what I think they are doing
what they think they are doing
what they observe or don't observe themselves doing
what they think or don't think they are doing
Writing for no audience
Writing for no audience is writing what is in consciousness now. Look neither forward nor back. It is a process, a self description--with all the voices, all possible topics--no inhibitions, no intent other than itself, a kind of being through what looks like a doing.
It could be stream of consciousness, a label. But labels are applied to something after having looked at it, a kind of analytical post scriptum, or description of what we have come to know. But writing for no audience is not intended or a purposive art. It is more like art for art's sake, sans even that label. It may be what is done. But who knows or cares if process-now writing has no audience?
Writing for an audience is to have something to say, to share. Writing for no audience is therapy? recreation? re-creation? an outlet for what unarticulated things may be brewing in the great stew of the soul's manifesting? a way to let me become? the playground of conflicting selves where we can work through and then stop and move beyond. So with nothing but all of that license, there is no audience, no aim I want you--you, you, and you-me--to get.
Does this writing matter? Silly question. Only to do it when the up-welling needs to have a place to go--and then that purpose may be too Western, too serious, too tasky.
When does it take place? Anytime, anywhere. But empty Chinese restaurants in towns I visit--where I am unknown--are my favored places. You-other will have to sort out your where. I like it when the family is eating and talking at their own table before other guests arrive.
What is it like? It is pleasure. It is affirmingly being, my being alive and here. It is flexing and discovering. It is asking questions and writing to learn the answers. It is filling a notebook, a record of the good times and bad, where I have been and when.
Will I read all that stuff? Maybe. When I am old and wear purple and sit in front of the fire, scanning then burning--so no one will have evidence of my having been here--except their memories.
Writing for no audience with only what flows out as the something-to-say is like touching my self to make sure--to pinch myself and respond. It is for no other--not him or her or them, not for me sometime-when. But for now. Moments to hold before they're all gone. Moments to treasure and count up the riches now. Moments to let go of--after their clear acknowledgment. Moments to hope for should life surprise me with being as I would have it. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on"--you know the rest.
And when I put my pen down, I close my notebook and relish that home cooked meal in silence, wondering if the Chinese food is so beloved because of nature or nurture. If my writing for no audience were to speak aloud, s/he would say the answer is like all things--apparently, probably, sometimes, mostly--it is a little of all. And that as answer will have to suffice until the next time I think about and want to sort through the dustbin of my living.
My writing is about what it says it is about, that as ambiguous as that is and then some. I suspect the some is really sum--it is a whole, of a piece, and nothing. It is about a life trying to affirm itself as it tries to erase the trace of self which is of little account in the world of measured things. It is every time with every word the flicker of that flame before it goes out, or is given another moment to shine its light for someone, somewhere, somehow . . . if even that. Silence.
[Phenomenology exercise, summer 1999]
Epistemology excursion
The premise is that we have two general ways to discover and contribute to what we know and understand, the qualitative and the quantitative, the former usually associated with what-understanding and the latter with how-explanation. The individual results or sum is (information leading to) knowledge. The pursuit-method is different kinds of science. These approaches have their own breadths and depths and variations and mixtures, but reality is still one of the two ways, or both.
Qualitative and quantitative break apart along an inside-outside divide, and in number. The qualitative is concerned with the individual and individuals in a group. It is always somehow personal, having to do with the insides that we see and experience. A thing singular and things plural are held and seen outside of us, in the exterior world; and we count and try to describe these things. This includes the ideas (things plural) we have about that world. In short, this is the quantitative world.
If we take singular and plural and interior and exterior of what is, or we suspect to be, then we get a foursome, or quadrants: qualitative inquiry in the areas of person and people and quantitative inquiry in thing and things.
Both terms now, qualitative and quantitative, do not seem adequate to encompass our world, if they ever were, in its and our own richness and variety. But the terms are still useful in this simplified scheme.
The different perspectives or disciplines now take their place as elaborations on the new multiple in the pursuit of science as knowledge building.
What-is-the-experience-of becomes first person knowing (e.g., phenomenology and related interior human sciences). What do we understand, believe, value, etc., becomes first person plural (e.g., interpretive studies such as history, cultural anthropology). Examining it and explaining what and how becomes singular thing research, the object(s) of inquiry for "harder" (more exterior) science (e.g., biology, physics, etc.). Not least (because all four quadrants are contributors to knowing and understanding) is things plural and how they relate between and among (e.g., systems sciences, political science, etc.).
What does all this mean? That there is an expanding universe of how we know what we know. That might be conceptualized not in terms of qualitative versus/or quantitative but in terms of the object(s) of inquiry and whether we are looking at individuals or multiples from the inside or outside. Those objects (both singular and multiple) require different ways of knowing and understanding, that is different kinds of ways of knowing--science. Each has its truth value and contribution to make. And together, they make for a diverse but integrated view of what is. And this is perhaps the most important point.
If an integrated or integral view of what is comprises what we claim to know, then arguments about which view presides is superseded by all as at least part of the whole.
Application discussion next.
28.02.2005
Revised 23.09.2023
At my earliest convenience
A trip back to the mother country awakens one's ears to changes in the mother tongue. I recently visited the US. I found, not surprisingly, my native language developing. This sound bite startled but didn't surprise me. But I hope it is an aberration, not a development.
Several people I telephoned in the US had this recorded for callers to leave a message: "Hello, this is So-and-So. I am not available to take your call right now, but if you leave a message, I will get back to you at my earliest convenience."
Sounds innocent enough, right? For those learning how native speakers say things, this may be a good sample of American English to use. I suggest it is not, and here is why.
The phrase "at [one's] earliest convenience" has been used by someone who wants to leave an urgent message, or make an important request. S/he says, "Please get back to me at your earliest convenience." Translation: "I need you to do something ASAP [as soon as possible]. In fact, and quite probably, I will be very worried or upset if you don't!"
Here is that phrase from the other side. If someone says in a recorded message, "I will get back to you at my earliest convenience," this means "When I choose to contact you, I will. But it will be on my terms, when I have time, perhaps after working out, having lunch with friends, checking my e-mail, and surfing the Web for a bit--if it is today. If tomorrow or later, well, I will just have to see if I can fit calling you into my busy and important life."
I may be overstating it a bit, but one might get away with this kind of thing on an answering machine. Face-to-face, it would be rare to hear unless someone really wanted the social boundaries as obvious and impenetrable as a brick wall. "What is important and urgent for you is not necessarily so to me. In fact, it's not."
I say I was shocked, but not surprised. Shocked because this phrase had but one situation or context in the past, and that was when someone really needed an answer from someone, or to have something done. It was not often used to say, "I am more important than you, or whatever it is you want."
Has my native language changed in this way, or is this a bite of culture. For people to assert how communications will be without first knowing who is calling and for what, well, that is a development in language too far, a kind of preemptive strike. Sounds like a culture thing.
The American societal emphasis on rights and what is right has its darker side. Argue with this if you will, but an answering machine's generic outgoing message reveals its owner. Among other not-so-obvious messages in this is that "at my earliest convenience" assumes callers need to be clear about the rule for live talk. The receiving party will be in charge of it including when your call will be returned--as if leaving a call-me-back message didn't say this already.
"At my earliest convenience" should be reserved for those demanding few who deserve reminding their language or behavior need restraint. Do not let this casually creep into everyday English. Argue with this if you will, "I will get back to you as soon as I can," which has a friendlier sound to it.
31.05.2006
Several people I telephoned in the US had this recorded for callers to leave a message: "Hello, this is So-and-So. I am not available to take your call right now, but if you leave a message, I will get back to you at my earliest convenience."
Sounds innocent enough, right? For those learning how native speakers say things, this may be a good sample of American English to use. I suggest it is not, and here is why.
The phrase "at [one's] earliest convenience" has been used by someone who wants to leave an urgent message, or make an important request. S/he says, "Please get back to me at your earliest convenience." Translation: "I need you to do something ASAP [as soon as possible]. In fact, and quite probably, I will be very worried or upset if you don't!"
Here is that phrase from the other side. If someone says in a recorded message, "I will get back to you at my earliest convenience," this means "When I choose to contact you, I will. But it will be on my terms, when I have time, perhaps after working out, having lunch with friends, checking my e-mail, and surfing the Web for a bit--if it is today. If tomorrow or later, well, I will just have to see if I can fit calling you into my busy and important life."
I may be overstating it a bit, but one might get away with this kind of thing on an answering machine. Face-to-face, it would be rare to hear unless someone really wanted the social boundaries as obvious and impenetrable as a brick wall. "What is important and urgent for you is not necessarily so to me. In fact, it's not."
I say I was shocked, but not surprised. Shocked because this phrase had but one situation or context in the past, and that was when someone really needed an answer from someone, or to have something done. It was not often used to say, "I am more important than you, or whatever it is you want."
Has my native language changed in this way, or is this a bite of culture. For people to assert how communications will be without first knowing who is calling and for what, well, that is a development in language too far, a kind of preemptive strike. Sounds like a culture thing.
The American societal emphasis on rights and what is right has its darker side. Argue with this if you will, but an answering machine's generic outgoing message reveals its owner. Among other not-so-obvious messages in this is that "at my earliest convenience" assumes callers need to be clear about the rule for live talk. The receiving party will be in charge of it including when your call will be returned--as if leaving a call-me-back message didn't say this already.
"At my earliest convenience" should be reserved for those demanding few who deserve reminding their language or behavior need restraint. Do not let this casually creep into everyday English. Argue with this if you will, "I will get back to you as soon as I can," which has a friendlier sound to it.
31.05.2006
The last poem
Years and years and years past
I would write a gift,
and thought it shared
the love at Christmas.
Now and now and now at last
through the years I sift,
and think to share
our love at Christ's mass.
Then and then and then repast
I would mine eyes uplift,
And pray forgive--
self love this boat's mast.
But again, again, again it's no.
Not my love nor ours this journey takes.
But of the One that gives without the for,
And all the pretty words forsakes.
25.09.2005
I would write a gift,
and thought it shared
the love at Christmas.
Now and now and now at last
through the years I sift,
and think to share
our love at Christ's mass.
Then and then and then repast
I would mine eyes uplift,
And pray forgive--
self love this boat's mast.
But again, again, again it's no.
Not my love nor ours this journey takes.
But of the One that gives without the for,
And all the pretty words forsakes.
25.09.2005
Foolproof formula?
I am going to be a bit brash and give a quick and dirty formula to use to bypass all the courses and advice people get about teaching.
This formula appears foolproof, but it is not easy to do what's best for students when using it or any other tool in ever-growing bag of teaching tricks. So in this sense, the formula is not exactly foolproof. The formula is practical, however, and at the same time powerful. It will help disclose learning such that students can acquire, practice, and demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Here goes, and I am addressing those who wish to build better and better ways of teaching, and especially learning. A visual aid for this discussion is the attached model for teaching where the focus at the center is student learning and success in accomplishment.
First, before we get into the details, know these rules of thumb.
1. Stating what you want a learner to learn and demonstrate is the key. If you are not clear about this, s/he might end up learning somewhere else. S/he will work on and try to give you evidence of something other than what is the reasoned aim.
2. A learning activity is one that best helps the learner acquire, practice, and demonstrate a worthwhile aim or objective. The challenge and creativity that is good teaching, or tutoring, is to find or design that best, most effective activity. Why should teachers or students bother spending time with anything else?
It is clear from these rules that the business of learning can be wild and exciting, a journey with a desired end and reward when concluded. Teachers and students can have a good and interesting time together on the path to discovery and competence.
What these rules of thumb also clearly show is that the primary learning activity that the student need not always face is a teacher talking.
Where does this developmental or discovery process begin for teachers and students? I will talk about the teacher perspective on these matters first.
Subjects to learn have aims, large and small, and their reasons for being. In chemistry you need to know and be able to use the periodic chart of elements because without this, nothing can come together in nature or the lab. Plus incompetent use of what is available can blow up in your face. Kind of gross generalizations, but you get the idea.
Large aims are goals. Smaller aims are objectives--statements about specifically what is to be learned or demonstrated and how. Here is a goal--to appreciate and be sensitive to the differences among us. This might be a goal for a Cultural Studies course. An objective: to be able to paraphrase what another person has said to that person's satisfaction. Note both the behavior and the measure in the objective. Another slightly higher level objective might be to be able to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs to explain the presence or absence of art in publicly financed homeless shelters. Each of these objectives, the lower and slightly higher, are not particularly difficult, but they depend, of course, on other objectives. For example, knowledge objectives having to do with paraphrasing and Maslow's hierarchy.
Should the second objective be met? A bit strange or unique, perhaps. This is to say that the teacher has to be careful and strategic in setting objectives. And in turn teaching demands that learning activities and their objectives need to have reasons, good ones both in terms of the subject or field of study and in terms of what students can and should be able to do.
Given pretty good learning objectives, two questions then face the teacher.
1. Can students meet the objectives already?
2. How will you know?
The terms in the formula or model are assessment and evaluation. Assessment is where is the student now in a possible series of learning steps to meeting an objective. Evaluation is a judgment about sufficient evidence indicating that the objective has been met. Sometimes teachers prepare measures, like tests, to help see where a student is and whether or not s/he is finished. These are sometimes called pre- and post-tests. Pre-tests are informative and guide learning. Post-tests are, at least they are supposed to be, decisive. The student knows or can do this.
A teacher helping students learn, practice, and demonstrate needs to, well, help. One way of helping is to give information about progress. As students work with a subject, say in acquiring information or evaluating knowledge, teachers need to give feedback indicating yes or no, you are progressing or not. Feedback is ideally non-evaluative, however, in the sense that this is information to guide learning, not to say whether or not or how much s/he has.
A teacher's job, up to this point with specific reference to the formula, is not much about what we usually think of as teaching behavior. There are aims or goals, objectives, rationales, assessments and evaluation, and feedback. Pretty methodical or formulaic stuff.
It is not true that if a teacher does all these things students will learn. It is also not true that if the teacher selects or designs student learning activities and the resources to support that learning that students will learn.
But it is the enterprise of education and schools and teachers (and training) to facilitate, that is to make easy the acquisition of knowledge and skills. At least it is that, sometimes more than that. The basic idea is that learning will more likely occur if the teacher does these things with students. And education, schools, and teachers have a legitimate role to play if their expectations for learning and how to learn are more clear than not.
Well, now for the fun part. What can the student do that will most likely and effectively and efficiently help him or her achieve worthwhile educational objectives? Here is the real challenge and the source of creative joy in teaching. Given a learning objective, assessments, etc., the teacher, and sometimes students themselves, select or design whatever it takes as learning activities to enable or demonstrate proficiency. It's best if these activities are challenging, fun, engaging, age appropriate, suitable for particular learning styles. There are probably other criteria for great and appropriate learning activities, but here again you (should) get the idea.
This is the core of what we usually think of as teaching. But realize one thing. Teaching here is not teacher behavior or teacher activities but what the learner can experience to develop his or her own competence, often cognitive in formal educational settings, but not exclusively so. (Skills training, for example, can have their origins in psychomotor or kinesthetic domains.) This then, plus all the above parts of the model, shows the teacher as manager or coordinator or facilitator of learning. Pretty simple, huh?
Well no, not really. But this formula or model abstracts the key aspects of what needs to be in place for leaning to happen beyond the likelihood of chance.
Does chance or serendipity or an unanticipated learning outcome happen in schools and classrooms or in self study? Yes, and they should. We cannot specify in advance all the good and appropriate learning that can take place while we are in relationship with students. Nor should we. If education is to bring out the genius that we all have already inside us, going back to the root of the word educate, then institutionalized education, that which is planned and documented, is only part of what it means where and when you can learn. There is always more and something else that we learn in, say, school--in addition to what the course descriptions and other official documents about learning say.
For example, one of the best traditional students I have had recently said, "I can't wait till school starts again. I miss all the people and the things we do together." Seems like this student hasn't read the university catalog or the course requirements. He is here for apparently different reasons than many teachers and educational programs wish to promote.
Which brings up the part I haven't addressed yet, the all-important student's perspective. Students, realize that whether your teacher makes it clear or not, you are being processed in the education factory along the lines of the model presented here. If and when things are not going according to this outline, raise your hand and question and start to discuss what is going on. You are at the center of the enterprise. If you are not, you need to take charge of your learning such that you get as much as you can out of this great and good thing called school. It's your education.
Realize at the same time that even though the model looks like a formula and should work most of the time, the actors are human, and in this, like planned an unplanned learning experiences, anything can happen. And that is the best education you can have, the planned along with the unplanned.
In summary, whether you are a student or teacher or a student of teaching, when you are asked to supply or experience a learning activity, ask. Does this experience have a high likelihood that it will lead to acquiring, practicing, or demonstrating a worthwhile learning aim? and will it be fun, interesting, and/or challenging such that learning will last beyond any tests or exams? If the signs are Go, such learning and an education is not foolish and will prove useful, rich with better and better stuff--to learn.
Approx. 1500 words
Originally posted on June 22, 2006. This revised version is dated 23 June, 2009.
This formula appears foolproof, but it is not easy to do what's best for students when using it or any other tool in ever-growing bag of teaching tricks. So in this sense, the formula is not exactly foolproof. The formula is practical, however, and at the same time powerful. It will help disclose learning such that students can acquire, practice, and demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities.
Here goes, and I am addressing those who wish to build better and better ways of teaching, and especially learning. A visual aid for this discussion is the attached model for teaching where the focus at the center is student learning and success in accomplishment.
First, before we get into the details, know these rules of thumb.
1. Stating what you want a learner to learn and demonstrate is the key. If you are not clear about this, s/he might end up learning somewhere else. S/he will work on and try to give you evidence of something other than what is the reasoned aim.
2. A learning activity is one that best helps the learner acquire, practice, and demonstrate a worthwhile aim or objective. The challenge and creativity that is good teaching, or tutoring, is to find or design that best, most effective activity. Why should teachers or students bother spending time with anything else?
It is clear from these rules that the business of learning can be wild and exciting, a journey with a desired end and reward when concluded. Teachers and students can have a good and interesting time together on the path to discovery and competence.
What these rules of thumb also clearly show is that the primary learning activity that the student need not always face is a teacher talking.
Where does this developmental or discovery process begin for teachers and students? I will talk about the teacher perspective on these matters first.
Subjects to learn have aims, large and small, and their reasons for being. In chemistry you need to know and be able to use the periodic chart of elements because without this, nothing can come together in nature or the lab. Plus incompetent use of what is available can blow up in your face. Kind of gross generalizations, but you get the idea.
Large aims are goals. Smaller aims are objectives--statements about specifically what is to be learned or demonstrated and how. Here is a goal--to appreciate and be sensitive to the differences among us. This might be a goal for a Cultural Studies course. An objective: to be able to paraphrase what another person has said to that person's satisfaction. Note both the behavior and the measure in the objective. Another slightly higher level objective might be to be able to use Maslow's hierarchy of needs to explain the presence or absence of art in publicly financed homeless shelters. Each of these objectives, the lower and slightly higher, are not particularly difficult, but they depend, of course, on other objectives. For example, knowledge objectives having to do with paraphrasing and Maslow's hierarchy.
Should the second objective be met? A bit strange or unique, perhaps. This is to say that the teacher has to be careful and strategic in setting objectives. And in turn teaching demands that learning activities and their objectives need to have reasons, good ones both in terms of the subject or field of study and in terms of what students can and should be able to do.
Given pretty good learning objectives, two questions then face the teacher.
1. Can students meet the objectives already?
2. How will you know?
The terms in the formula or model are assessment and evaluation. Assessment is where is the student now in a possible series of learning steps to meeting an objective. Evaluation is a judgment about sufficient evidence indicating that the objective has been met. Sometimes teachers prepare measures, like tests, to help see where a student is and whether or not s/he is finished. These are sometimes called pre- and post-tests. Pre-tests are informative and guide learning. Post-tests are, at least they are supposed to be, decisive. The student knows or can do this.
A teacher helping students learn, practice, and demonstrate needs to, well, help. One way of helping is to give information about progress. As students work with a subject, say in acquiring information or evaluating knowledge, teachers need to give feedback indicating yes or no, you are progressing or not. Feedback is ideally non-evaluative, however, in the sense that this is information to guide learning, not to say whether or not or how much s/he has.
A teacher's job, up to this point with specific reference to the formula, is not much about what we usually think of as teaching behavior. There are aims or goals, objectives, rationales, assessments and evaluation, and feedback. Pretty methodical or formulaic stuff.
It is not true that if a teacher does all these things students will learn. It is also not true that if the teacher selects or designs student learning activities and the resources to support that learning that students will learn.
But it is the enterprise of education and schools and teachers (and training) to facilitate, that is to make easy the acquisition of knowledge and skills. At least it is that, sometimes more than that. The basic idea is that learning will more likely occur if the teacher does these things with students. And education, schools, and teachers have a legitimate role to play if their expectations for learning and how to learn are more clear than not.
Well, now for the fun part. What can the student do that will most likely and effectively and efficiently help him or her achieve worthwhile educational objectives? Here is the real challenge and the source of creative joy in teaching. Given a learning objective, assessments, etc., the teacher, and sometimes students themselves, select or design whatever it takes as learning activities to enable or demonstrate proficiency. It's best if these activities are challenging, fun, engaging, age appropriate, suitable for particular learning styles. There are probably other criteria for great and appropriate learning activities, but here again you (should) get the idea.
This is the core of what we usually think of as teaching. But realize one thing. Teaching here is not teacher behavior or teacher activities but what the learner can experience to develop his or her own competence, often cognitive in formal educational settings, but not exclusively so. (Skills training, for example, can have their origins in psychomotor or kinesthetic domains.) This then, plus all the above parts of the model, shows the teacher as manager or coordinator or facilitator of learning. Pretty simple, huh?
Well no, not really. But this formula or model abstracts the key aspects of what needs to be in place for leaning to happen beyond the likelihood of chance.
Does chance or serendipity or an unanticipated learning outcome happen in schools and classrooms or in self study? Yes, and they should. We cannot specify in advance all the good and appropriate learning that can take place while we are in relationship with students. Nor should we. If education is to bring out the genius that we all have already inside us, going back to the root of the word educate, then institutionalized education, that which is planned and documented, is only part of what it means where and when you can learn. There is always more and something else that we learn in, say, school--in addition to what the course descriptions and other official documents about learning say.
For example, one of the best traditional students I have had recently said, "I can't wait till school starts again. I miss all the people and the things we do together." Seems like this student hasn't read the university catalog or the course requirements. He is here for apparently different reasons than many teachers and educational programs wish to promote.
Which brings up the part I haven't addressed yet, the all-important student's perspective. Students, realize that whether your teacher makes it clear or not, you are being processed in the education factory along the lines of the model presented here. If and when things are not going according to this outline, raise your hand and question and start to discuss what is going on. You are at the center of the enterprise. If you are not, you need to take charge of your learning such that you get as much as you can out of this great and good thing called school. It's your education.
Realize at the same time that even though the model looks like a formula and should work most of the time, the actors are human, and in this, like planned an unplanned learning experiences, anything can happen. And that is the best education you can have, the planned along with the unplanned.
In summary, whether you are a student or teacher or a student of teaching, when you are asked to supply or experience a learning activity, ask. Does this experience have a high likelihood that it will lead to acquiring, practicing, or demonstrating a worthwhile learning aim? and will it be fun, interesting, and/or challenging such that learning will last beyond any tests or exams? If the signs are Go, such learning and an education is not foolish and will prove useful, rich with better and better stuff--to learn.
Approx. 1500 words
Originally posted on June 22, 2006. This revised version is dated 23 June, 2009.
Final Course Version: 15.12.06
Ways of approaching a text--a running commentary
This commentary is in DRAFT form and is to be used for instructional purposes only.
Key Points
One has to understand what one is looking at before making evaluative statements, or statements of agreement or disagreement. Makes sense, no?
Two requirements for being able to understand a text are to
- Hold it at arm's length (impersonally look at it), and
- Try to see it from one or more points of view.
One or more people can do these things together. A common description for this interpretive and interactive activity is academic discourse.
Academic discourse is grounded in dialectics (logic and reasoning), and questioning. Ask as many questions as you can about a text before and as the discourse proceeds, and you are well on your way to grasping what it--the text--is. Questions include even those about the medium in which the text appears (electronically, on the back of an envelope, via film, etc.).
The first interaction is between text and reader; and then it can expand to interactions among text and readers, including texts about the text.
Generating questions is hard for some people. Take several texts and see if you can ask more and more questions as you proceed from one text to the next. Even a short text can easily have twenty or more basic questions that are relevant to start with.
Next, list three questions for a given text, and use the text to help you respond to (not necessarily answer) these questions. In other words, ground your understanding in the text using specific questions that the text itself suggests. Limit your remarks to just the text and the selected questions.
As a proof of competence in understanding, you make observations and statements and insights about a text, plus perhaps its medium, and you can do this in different ways. But writing it all out is the best, so, of course, others can look at what you say, discuss that, and come to a better understanding. This can be seen as interactions among texts and readers.
Understanding
To say you understand is to make a knowledge claim. To make a knowledge claim, do these things.
- Follow a method (follow a procedure).
- Look at the results (analyze the data).
- Ask if experts agree (seek confirmation).
Here are some points of view, or perspectives, to use when looking at a text. (The words for these perspectives here are those used in class and may not be the same as you might encounter elsewhere. But they should suffice for the idea for methods used to make understanding/knowledge claims.)
belief system (e.g., Protestantism), Biblical reading, biographical interpretation, common knowledge (including cross-cultural), genre, historical analysis (when written), historical-linguistic context (hermeneutics), ideology (e.g., Marxism), intent (see also purpose), intuition ("what your gut tells you"), language and linguistics ("the bleeding obvious" for this class), literary criticism (e.g., point of view), paraphrase or summary, phenomenology (what is it like to experience), psychological perspective (e.g., Jungian), reader-response theory, reason and logic (e.g., inference), religion (see belief system), research (what science tells us), sound (the spoken text, all aspects), variation, etc.
Perhaps it goes without saying, but if you have a text which depends on knowing or understanding other things, then you and others need those to come to a fuller understanding, and to make any valid claim beyond what you can prove by evidence in the text itself.
Value
There are three guiding questions for considering the value (perhaps use) of a text.
1. What does the text mean? 2. How does it mean that? 3. Does the text call for some action? (In the case of teaching, how can you use, for example, the text in the language classroom?)
Question one has to do with what the text actually says and the interpretive-interactive process referenced above.
Question two has to do with the points of view or perspectives you use for your understanding (e.g., ideology, intuition, etc.).
Question three has to do with what to do, if anything. For example, in the case of a political text, is there a call to action? Another example. For students interpreting a text, what can they learn from it, and how can they best learn it? What activities would you have them do with a particular text, and for what purpose?
Answering (or responding to) these guiding questions comes through a process of addressing and re-addressing them until what you have suffices. You may not be able to respond to the questions in order.
Purpose
What is the inherent or intended purpose of a text? This surely has a bearing on meaning and value.
Purpose has to do with audience and apparent or supported-by-the-text evidence. For example, we talk about texts as having meaning. However, there may be other purposes for a text than to have people understand it.
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.
For Henry Higgins, the speaker, this is a practice exercise in spoken English. However, Henry, remember, is a fictional (dramatic) character.
For Eliza Doolittle, his student and an actress with a script to follow, this is an opportunity to break out into song, on stage or screen.
For us, those who know this material, the sentence is reminiscent of the musical (My Fair Lady), or the play on which it is based. And its purpose may be to give us some kind of pleasure, or ah-ha recognition awareness.
For those who don't know where the line (text) comes from, they can deduce its possible meaning, or rather its purpose: phonology exercise? a part of a larger work to read or speak for the pleasure of hearing the sounds? (Recall the classroom exercise on this text, including reading and repeating it.)
So what a text is for is another way to approach a text. Who is it written for? Why has it been written? What purposes can a text have, in addition to conveying or transmitting sense/meaning? There may be many, or many levels of purpose!
Genre
With the identification of the type of writing (genre) comes conventions with which to analyze and understand. That is, once one says this or that text is a novel, poem, business policy statement, eulogy, or whatever, that genre then suggests how to read.
We thus seek and use touchstone types of writing for our appreciation and understanding. We have expectations and standards and terminology appropriate to just this or that type of text, and we exclude those expectations and so forth for what it is not. You don't usually read a eulogy as a comedy sketch.
Reading in a foreign language gives us a rudimentary model for reading with genre foremost in mind. First we try to say what the text is about (topic or theme). As we perform this step, we can look to the form of the text. What does it look like? Skimming and scanning are particular techniques familiar and helpful to foreign language learners.
To restate this in another way: What sounds like a poem about love is considered in ways different from an electro-chemical analysis in technical prose about when a man or woman displays behaviors associated with romantic love. Each genre then has its reading/understanding requirements.
Here is an incomplete list of genres a review of which should illustrate this point, and then which should also suggest that specific teaching-learning situations will guide choosing one genre over another: business letter, TV advertising copy, short silly poem, personal narrative, dialogue heard on the bus, classic piece of literature, lunch menu, fine print disclaimer, creative non-fiction, song lyric.
Genre is then more part of the descriptive as well as an analytical toolset for approaching a text than it is a key in a selection matrix of what to refer to or use in, say, instruction. This is true except, of course, when you are trying to teach genres, or something about a particular genre.
And here is a subtle point for advanced reading. Instruction, its own genre, will make demands on choice which an authentic text can but does not always fulfill.
Reflection
Our own development as human beings offers each of us different ages and stages, and along with these, we can or cannot do certain things, or perhaps some tasks are more or less difficult for each of us. Also, brain structure and learning style dictate in some ways what we are capable of, and even of who we like and don't!
So it is no wonder that when approaching a text, each may go about understanding or appreciating in different ways. One of those ways we--especially teachers--need to manage in approaching a text is seeing it as an object. A text is a thing to be reckoned with.
Once a text is seen as a thing out there, in some sense separate from our self (recall academic discourse), we are left with looking at it after our first reading, after our first experience of it.
This is to say, we can reflect on it. For some, this will involve both reflection on the text and the experience of it. We can call this a kind of guided introspection. Looking at the text and our experience of it allows us to come to our own understanding and appreciation quite separate from and better than a first reading. This qualitative difference, naturally enough, makes for better judgments about a text and what it says.
Not everyone, certainly not all students, can or like to do this. However, for teachers, who want to do better and better for students, reflective practice is required. If a lesson is a text, then remembering what was done and how it was done to improve are musts.
One frame for activating the process of reflective practice is do-look-learn. Teach your lesson, look back at it from a variety of perspectives, conclude how it could have been more successful.
When enacting this frame for an authentic text, it might look like read/experience, then analyze, then (tentatively) conclude.
And this is the skillset you want your critically thinking students to have and develop.
. . . to be continued, on your own interpretive and pedagogical journies.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)