Summer Begins

Oh, summer. How I have missed you.

Summer vacation for us is usually a whirlwind of travel and activity, but this year we're taking it easy: a fun little jaunt last week to say goodbye to some friends who are moving far away, and a French-language course in Montreal just before we return to school. Between that, six solid weeks of NO PLANS. 

This week I cooked up a storm -- cherry recipes at the forefront, as I had picked 15+ pounds of them last weekend, but I also made dinner every night. Vegan dinner from scratch. Uh-huh.

I took advantage of two cool mornings and spent many contented hours weeding, though there are plenty more where those came from.

When two friends called on different days, needing rides from the train, I was able to drop everything, share a meal and catch up with them.

Finally, as a summer gift to myself, I spent 99 cents on a New York Times subscription so I could enjoy reading at my leisure. And on the first day of enjoying it, I ran into what might be the best news story of all time:

It’s hard to talk about Yo. The app is so simple (it lets users send the word “Yo” to each other) that even to mock it feels like taking it too seriously — come on guys, it’s just Yo! Luckily, hackers have made things easier on all of us by making Yo do some new tricks.

Pre-hack, critics had to evaluate Yo on its merits, which was somewhat difficult, since it has so few of them (and so few demerits, for that matter). Nonetheless, some rose to the challenge. At Yahoo, Alyssa Bereznak said the app’s one message “might be succinct, but then so is throwing a brick through the window.” 

An app that exists solely so you can "Yo" your friends. Man, if only we could expand it to include other words as well . . . and pictograms . . . and photos . . . and maybe even a feature that would let one user talk to another user! That would really be something.

What a gift: time to enjoy life's exquisite ironies. I wish you the same!

Plus Ca Change, Plus C'est La Meme Chose

Those French. Always eloquent, always pessimistic, and almost always right. Listen to this:

“It was all so enchanting at first,” muses our protagonist. “They were almost toys, to be played with, but the people got too involved, went too far, and got wrapped up in a pattern of social behavior and couldn’t get out, couldn’t admit they were in, even.”

When was this written? Last week? No, fifty years ago, by Ray Bradbury.

Most of all, Mr. Bradbury knew how the future would feel: louder, faster, stupider, meaner, increasingly inane and violent. Collective cultural amnesia, anhedonia, isolation. The hysterical censoriousness of political correctness. Teenagers killing one another for kicks. Grown-ups reading comic books. A postliterate populace. “I remember the newspapers dying like huge moths,” says the fire captain in “Fahrenheit,” written in 1953. “No one wanted them back. No one missed them.” Civilization drowned out and obliterated by electronic chatter. The book’s protagonist, Guy Montag, secretly trying to memorize the Book of Ecclesiastes on a train, finally leaps up screaming, maddened by an incessant jingle for “Denham’s Dentifrice.” A man is arrested for walking on a residential street. Everyone locked indoors at night, immersed in the social lives of imaginary friends and families on TV, while the government bombs someone on the other side of the planet. Does any of this sound familiar?

No? How about these:

• "Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills." Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes. (There Will Come Soft Rains, 1950)
• "I remember the newspapers dying like huge moths. No one wanted them back. No one missed them." (Fahrenheit 451, 1953)
• "The more I see of the mess we've put ourselves in, the more it sickens me. We've been contemplating our mechanical, electronic navels for too long. My God, how we need a breath of honest air!" (The Veldt, 1950)
• "There sat all the tired commuters with their wrist radios, talking to their wives, saying 'Now I'm at Forty-third, now I'm at Forty-fourth, here I am at Forty-ninth, now turning at Sixty-first." (The Murderer, 1953)

Bradbury was known for his aversion to technology, refusing to use computers or fly in planes. But, in this excellent homage to his life's work, Tim Kreider explains that Bradbury was more than just a troglodyte.

But it was more complicated than that; his objections were not so much reactionary or political as they were aesthetic. He hated ugliness, noise and vulgarity. He opposed the kind of technology that deadened imagination, the modernity that would trash the past, the kind of intellectualism that tried to centrifuge out awe and beauty. 

I've been a Bradbury fan since reading The Illustrated Man in high school, but I only read his masterpiece a few years ago. He was such an inspiration, for his strong work ethic and idyllic family life as much as for his uncannily prophetic writing. I only hope that, as a society, we can start to take some of his lessons to heart.

In Other News

As an ironic follow-up to my last post, you might find it amusing to hear that I join Twitter about three months ago — and have discovered I actually like it.  I’m sure there’s just as much timewasting potential here as on other social media sites, but the brief format means you have to get right to the point, making it easier to sift through the chaff and ponder the kernels.

Besides using it to promote my freelance work (the real reason I joined: employer pressure) I’ve enjoyed reading links and thoughts from some of my favorite food writers, restaurants and friends.  I have no trouble leaving the site after 5 or 10 minutes, every few days, which I wish I could say about Front Porch Republic or The New York Times, where I enjoy teleological meditations and niche pieces: I get my bread-and-butter news weekly from, well, The Week, reading a little every evening from the old-fashioned paper copy that lives on my nightstand.

So, if 140-character blips are your thing, you can read mine at BaltimoreBites.  (It’s a joke.)  

(Sort of.)

Reach Out and Tweet Someone

Rarely have I read such an articulate, insightful and disturbing status report about the human race:

We’ve become accustomed to a new way of being “alone together.” Technology-enabled, we are able to be with one another, and also elsewhere, connected to wherever we want to be. We want to customize our lives. We want to move in and out of where we are because the thing we value most is control over where we focus our attention. We have gotten used to the idea of being in a tribe of one, loyal to our own party.

I see this behavior all the time, especially in adults. I hate it. Often I want to ask the person, “Why are you here? To interact with me, or to check your e-mail?”

And yet, I am certain I am guilty of the same behaviors. Being blessed with a husband who loves to drive, I often use my time in the car to communicate with clients and friends, sending messages and playing my single iPhone vice. In the guise of taking notes, I can read the news on my phone during boring meetings; I have noticed that I no longer sketch chair backs and light fixtures in the margins of my agendas, and honestly, I kind of miss that last connection to years spent with a pencil glued to my hand.

Later, the author continues:

We expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship. Always-on/always-on-you devices provide three powerful fantasies: that we will always be heard; that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; and that we never have to be alone. Indeed our new devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved.

The great irony of this: I love being alone. In fact, most days I find myself working at the computer and thinking, “If I can just get this finished, I’ll go work in the garden / start dinner / read a book on the front porch.” And suddenly, after work with distractions all day it’s time for bed.  Or, more likely, way past time for bed. So, for me at least, it’s a matter of control. How can I keep these (innovative, useful, efficient) devices at a life-enhancing, and not a life-encompassing, level? I’d love to know how other people are handling it.

The Way of the Future

1) Teacher makes up a blank chart in Microsoft Word.

2) Students download the chart and fill it in with quotes, citations and examples of the American Dream as stated by the characters in the novel.

3) Students upload individual assignments to Turnitin.com.

4) Assignments are automatically cross-checked for plagiarism against tens of thousands of books, hundreds of millions of other papers and billions of websites.

5) Teacher viewes individual papers and reads the plagiarism reports.  Teacher adds comments with one click, anywhere in the document, and can even choose from a list of common comments, like “fragment” and “incorrect citation” — which each come with multiple paragraphs of explanation and reference.

6) Students log on, read comments and print a copy if desired.  (It’s usually not.)

Less waste, less headache, less drudgery.  I actually found myself commenting more because it’s so much faster to type in a box than to write on a piece of paper!

It doesn’t approach the cushiness of, say, an architecture professor, who assigns letter grades for entire projects DURING the students’ presentations.  Nevertheless, these advances have certainly made life easier for English teachers everywhere.

You're So Predictable

Usually, when I say this, it’s to the tune of the EMF song and in gentle mockery of my husband — after he’s said “I just bought us concert tickets,” or “Let’s have pizza for dinner!”  I like to think of myself as the spontaneous one.

But after having downloaded Google Chrome as my browser of preference, I am finding that it applies to me too. Its automatic home page for a new window or tab includes thumbnail screen shots of your most popular eight sites, and it’s rare that I need to go anywhere else.  Here they are:

• Gmail: Still the best e-mail service out there, especially since I discovered you can stay signed in to multiple accounts simultaneously.  Since I have different addresses for work, home and junk, this is especially useful.
• WordPress: I haven’t used SquareSpace enough to replace this one, but it will happen by the end of the week, I’m sure.  My new platform is much more snazzy, although we’re still getting used to each other.
• Catonsville Patch: I’ve been writing more frequently here during the summer, mostly in a series called “From the Farm” in which I pick one item from the week’s CSA pickup and share recipe ideas.  “Delicious Dish” reincarnated?  Perhaps.
• Google Voice: Your ticket to free unlimited text messages, phone calls through your computer and cell phone, and text-transcribed voicemail messages that never fail to make me laugh; I’m sure the software will improve over time, but for now “my towels and laundry” becomes “my pal the laundry” and “it’s Naomi” becomes “it’s mail me.”  When the message is in another language, it’s funnier still.
• Google Reader: This list is beginning to sound like a commercial plug!  I resisted Reader for a long time, thinking it would make me more of a blog addict, but it’s actually made it faster and more efficient — I only see new posts and I only need to go to one place.  
• The New York Times: After touting the clever loophole idea, I caved and bought a subscription for the summer — it’s half price for the first 12 weeks, and by the time the deal runs out, I’ll be too busy to read it anyway.  For now, I’m loving what I took for granted for so long: the ability to graze at will through all kinds of interesting material, even on my phone while waiting in a particularly boring line!
• Flickr: Since this service became basically free for normal people, I’ve been using it to share photos quickly and easily.  It also dovetails nicely with a cute little app called Instagram (thanks, Jo) which can make ordinary photos look retro, scary or warm and fuzzy in — you guessed it — an instant.
• Netflix: We’ve been exploring new material this summer — new to us, without a television or time to watch it during the school year, but old and dusty to the rest of the world.  We’re particularly taken with In Treatment for its simple compositions and plotlines that focus almost entirely on the psyche.  Next up are Mad Men and The Sopranos.  Alas, nothing so far has come close to the experience of LOST!

So that’s my online life, in a nutshell.  Isn’t it sad, how similar I am to millions of others on the planet?  One more reason to turn off the computer and go outside for awhile!

The Real Me

On our travels over the long weekend, we had the opportunity to listen to several Christmases’ worth of CDs that had never made it out of the packaging.  I especially enjoyed my brother’s gift of This American Life, a radio show that, very simply, plays real stories told by real people.  It can go from heartwarming to heartbreaking in a moment, avoiding preachiness in favor of the drama of true life.  (The only downside, so far as I can tell, is the way the music interrupts the flow of the story every so often – generally very good music, but misplaced, in my opinion.)

Anyhow, in my musing about this piece I will certainly ruin the ending for you, as well as most of the rising action, so I highly recommend waiting to read further until you have 20 minutes or so to listen to it yourself before clicking below:

The incredible part of this story was watching a father, with all his flaws and shortcomings, struggle to do what was best for his son.  First he sacrifices to work hard and give his son everything he could possibly want in the way of material comforts: they live in Beverly Hills.  But all is not right, as evidenced by the fact that they obviously do not trust each other and the son begins to take his charmed life for granted.

So, when the son’s grades begin to plummet and his personality undergoes a sudden and drastic change, the father worries, but he knows the son will never be honest with him if confronted (and the son confirms this.) He therefore decides to take the rather unseemly step of recording his son’s telephone conversations.

Obviously, I don’t think this is a great thing to do.  It’s certainly not illegal (father’s house, father’s choice) but it doesn’t bode well for future trust in their relationship.  But I found it touching that the father cared enough to try to find out what was going on.  Even more touching was the way in which he used the information he obtained through clandestine means: instead of confronting the boy about it, he simply tried to reroute his behavior.  If he heard his son was planning to get high on Friday after school, he’d tell him he desperately needed his help at the store on Friday afternoon.  Over time, he hoped these interventions would lead to an altered outlook and properly-aligned priorities.

Fate intervenes, however: the son discovers what’s going on, and instead of confronting his father, embarks on his own tour of espionage.  He begins planting false evidence, telling his friends he’s going straight but continuing his downward spiral on the sly.  After a month of this, though, he feels immensely conflicted about lying to both his father and his friends, so he tells his father he knows – effectively admitting to a lot of highly punishable behavior.

This is the magical part, and the reason I’m not sure I could ever be a parent: the father admits what he’s done, says he will stop, and in lieu of a punishment, asks only one thing of his son: that the boy take the dozens of accumulated tapes and promise to listen to them all.

The son, now himself a man, recalls that it took him years to get all the way through the project; it was that painful to hear his own voice, and within it the self-centered and unfeeling person he had become.  I work regularly with teenage boys, and I was shocked to hear such honesty and emotion between them:

Son: That was an interesting look you gave me today.

Friend: Oh, ha, I know. (Laughs)

Son: So what’s the problem with you?  What are you p–-ed off at me for?

Friend: I don’t know.

Son: Is it that time of the month again? (Editor’s note: I believe the friend is male.)

Friend: No …

Son: Well then, what’s wrong?

Friend: Well, I guess the basic thing is, I don’t like your fluctuation in attention towards me.

Son: (Laughs) What are you talking about? If I’m not going somewhere, if I have not got a set place that I am off to, and I’m, like, probably usually late, then I’ll stop and talk to you.

Friend: (Laughs) Uh-huh.

Son: And it’s like … well … forget it, then!  S–-!

Friend: Wait, hold on –

(Dial tone.)

he father somehow knew that the only punishment the son needed was to be forced to observe the changes that had come over him, and the son agrees: “It was valuable to be able to witness myself in that way, although painful … it’s a rare gift, in a way, to be able to see yourself from the outside … given an opportunity, I think most people would probably not want to see themselves that clearly.”

Ouch.  Way to go, Dad.

Backchannels and Consumerists, All

Ironically, I’ve been reading the New York Times much more frequently since it instituted a monthly article limit; the “most popular” list is now tailored to my specific interests (philosophy, education and cooking) and I can read at my leisure through the loopholes of Twitter and my cell phone.

Unfortunately, this often leads to an elevated heart rate at an inconvenient location.  Last week, waiting for a delayed plane, I read this flippantly upbeat suggestion that teachers embrace social networking as a classroom tool:

With Twitter and other microblogging platforms, teachers from elementary schools to universities are setting up what is known as a “backchannel” in their classes. The real-time digital streams allow students to comment, pose questions (answered either by one another or the teacher) and shed inhibitions about voicing opinions. Perhaps most importantly, if they are texting on-task, they are less likely to be texting about something else.

Forgive me, but this is about as silly as encouraging your children to experiment with drugs in your own house, since “they’re going to try it anyway.” Our attention spans are already hopelessly short, and our ability to relate on a human level severely hampered:

“When we have class discussions, I don’t really feel the need to speak up or anything,” said one of her students, Justin Lansink, 17. “When you type something down, it’s a lot easier to say what I feel.”

Of course it is, Justin.  It’s always easier to type an angry e-mail instead of confronting someone, or to text “luv u” rather than declare your feelings outright.  Why are we encouraging this, then, instead of helping our students to focus on the interactions and articulations that make them uniquely human?

If I’d read that piece with openmouthed indignation, I read this condemnation of the college experience with a wistful sigh of resignation:

In a typical semester, for instance, 32 percent of the students did not take a single course with more than 40 pages of reading per week, and 50 percent did not take any course requiring more than 20 pages of writing over the semester. The average student spent only about 12 to 13 hours per week studying …

Not surprisingly, a large number of the students showed no significant progress on tests of critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing that were administered when they began college and then again at the ends of their sophomore and senior years.

The article goes on to mention colleges’ tendencies to invest in residence and athletic facilities and to rely on student opinion forms as the main barometer of an instructor’s skill in the classroom – which pushes instructors to be pushovers, which further dilutes the academic rigor of the school.  I’ve certainly seen this in my graduate school, where I’m at the top of every class through a reasonable, but not burdensome, amount of effort – embarrassing, really.  College should be hard.

Well, harrumph.  That’s what I get for reading the paper.

In Case You Weren't Worried

Here are three great, thought-provoking articles about education and society, all of which should do the trick:

1. The sad truth about Internet research, which English teachers have been saying for years: students, even the intelligent and conscientious ones, don’t know how to absorb and integrate new material into their work.  In the best-case scenario, they cobble together research papers from quotes of academic sources.  In the worst, they lift chunks of text from Wikipedia and eNotes and drop them into presentations, and are then shocked when plagiarism-detection software finds it: “I didn’t mean to copy.”  I think they actually don’t know what copying is.


2. The digital revolution has spawned a generation of students who can’t focus; yes, it begins with simple rudeness in their private lives, but it carries over easily into the school hours, when they spend a whole class period “researching” with nothing to show for it — having been distracted by fluff and sidebars.


3. Peter Thiel thinks that higher education is the next bubble.  It represents wealth and safety (prestige, salary, job security) and we are willing to incur massive debt for it:

“A true bubble is when something is overvalued and intensely believed,” he says. “Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”

Let's Get it Started

"The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach accordingly."

David Ausubel

My current grad course has an online forum, where we all take turns moderating discussions based on the text.  This was my week, along with my colleague James (we teach at the same school, but weren't really friends until we met out of school.  Isn't that funny?)

The effusive nature of most previous posts had bothered me, so I tapped into the Six Word Memoir for a framework: in six words, I asked my classmates to describe the methods of the most effective teacher they could remember. It was interesting to see the similar trends that emerged: openness and challenge were two of the most common.

Meanwhile, James used the above principle to run his forum.  Is this the most important thing? he asked -- and if not, what is?  Despite his many efforts at argument, he couldn't convince anyone to argue otherwise (except for the copout answer, "There is no single most important principle.")  One student offered a story in support: tutoring for a state assessment test, she came upon a question that referred to a letter written by Robert E. Lee.  Neither student knew who he was, so she tried to prompt them:

Me: Okay. Do you know any American Wars?
Students: Yes
Me: Alright. What was the very first American War?
Student: WWII?
Me: Well...actually i think it was the Revolutionary War... Do you remember what comes next?
Student: No. What does History have to do with this. I thought we were doing English.

So basically, I found out what they know....they know about different kinds of writing, but that isn't going to help them at all if they can't fit the writing into any of their prior knowledge.... I found out they don't know much about American history, so even though I am an English teacher, and responsible for them passing the English HSA, I have to not only backtrack, but backtrack completely out of my content area at this point.

After most of a semester in which you could hear a pin drop at any point in any class, we had suddenly revved everyone up.  The student who had shared this story went on to explain that he believed socio-economic status to be the single most important factor in determining success in school; if you were raised without the benefit of parental supervision and expectation, he argued, you couldn't possibly be expected to do well.  In reply, another student ended a rant with the following: "If you don't have the discipline to work things through for yourself, you deserve to be flipping burgers at McDonald's.  THE END!"  Another told of her own childhood as her voice shook with emotion: "My father was a drug addict, and my mother was never around.  But I'm not an outlier; they'll never make a movie about my life.  I just got myself to school, day after day, and here I am.  I'm doing fine.  I don't blame anyone."

James and I just gaped at each other as student after student broke his silence to unburden his soul and speakaloud of his insecurities and frustrations about the profession.  Somehow we had struck a nerve.  But how did we do it, and could we do it again?  That's anyone's guess.

Whenever anyone asks me what I like most about teaching, I don't hesitate to say: "Its unpredictability." You just never know what might happen next, and what it will be that gets things started.