Finland could teach...

I've expressed my admiration for Scandinavian countries. Here's another good short story on Finland.

I think it's interesting that the article's author decided to frame Finland's lesson as one for Latin America.

But I'd like to add that while better teachers (lured by better salaries and even better benefits) would help most education systems the critical component is parent involvement. Parents need to be aware and involved in their kids' educations. It needs to be their top priority.

Do you believe everything your personal psychic tells you?

Proof that Canadians (Canadian EDUCATORS, no less) can be as mind-numbingly stupid as anyone else. Based on the advice of a psychic, a teacher's aid contacts child services regarding the possibility of sexual abuse of a child in her class. The result? No, the child was not being abused. Yes, the mother was plenty pissed off. People are beyond silly.

I can't remember whether I've talked about impostor syndrome before, but it is a very real problem. This article summarizes it nicely.

Here is my Gist anyway: In graduate school, or any academic environment really, there is a tendency for people to feel inferior to their peers. This can escalate to the point where you feel that you really don't belong in the position that you have found yourself in. You get a feeling that you've fooled everyone into believing that you are smarter than you actually are and any second now they will all realize how incredibly stupid you've been all along.

I feel like an impostor all the time, but I've learned a while ago how get over it. I've simply forced myself to remember one simple thing: We don't all have the same skills. For example, if I had to rank my understanding of higher level statistics on a scale from 1 to 10, I would put myself at about a 6 thanks in large part to the ton of math courses I've taken througout my academic career (I would put the average High School Grad at about a 2 and the average linguistics professor at about a 5). However, I often interact with colleagues who are at about a 9 or a 10 and they make me feel like an idiot, even though I know that I'm more knowledgeable than a bunch of my peers.

But the key isn't really to remember that I'm still better than other smart people. This is because when I interact with those people I'll realize that their knowledge of something like the sounds or syntactic patterns of the world's languages is at a 9 where mine is at a 2. So when I need to talk about some aspect of linguistic typology with them, they make me feel like a complete moron (though certainly unintentionally). So no matter where I turn I find people who are better than me in everything, even though I might be pretty good at many of those things.

I suspect the way that some people deal with this issue is by picking one particular topic and striving for a 10. Then, whenever they need an ego boost, they steer the conversation toward their topic and blow everyone out of the water. I'll never be able to do that because I spend too much time sticking my nose in other fields like anthropology, astronomy, sociology, etc. (the very typical 'jack of all trades, master of none' syndrome). I can't seem to find the motivation or drive to focus on one particular topic for a very long period of time so I find myself achieving a rank of 5 in everything. Of course, I'll never be able to achieve this goal.

One simply can't be good at everything... I'll always be a poor group leader since I don't like telling people what to do unless they annoy me (and it's not good to be an annoyed leader). I'll never be a good musician since even to be mediocre on the guitar requires that you practice at least once a year. I'll never be a good marathon runner since there's simply not enough time in the day for me to piddle away on some circular track when the internet has a new article about never before contacted tribes in the Amazon and a new TED talk video about climate change.

So I wonder whether I should re-think my strategy. Maybe I need to seek out my 10. But then what if I get my 10 and it's not fulfilling? I seem to be happy doing what I'm doing now even though I know there will never be a conclusion...

My points are these: All of us experience a time when we feel stupid. But I'm pretty sure that we all experience a time when we all feel smart. We should always try to remember both of those times (I hate it when mechanically inclined people try to make me feel like a jackass about something like auto repair, that's such an assholish thing to do. Oh, and I absolutely hate the word noob for the exact same reason). Career decisions should only be made while keeping these things in mind.

Why teachers need more training

I've been often told that you should never believe everything that you read, especially on the internet. I hope that this article is exactly one of those times when the material must be untrue, because it is pretty unbelievable.

Let me summerize it for you. A weird little five year old boy (possibly autistic) was "voted out" of his class by his five year old classmates. The teacher, by organizing this tribal council, suggested that this was an appropriate method of dealing with a problem child. It's not clear how much of a PROBLEM this problem child truly posed, but that's quite beside the point. I'm less concerned with the psychological well-being of the child being voted out (though I suspect it is pretty horrible and that this might be the kind of trauma that might lead to severe problems a bit later on in life) but I think the lesson that all of the other children in the class learned that day was an unspeakably foul one.

Knowing what we know about the psychology of mob rule and conformity in the presence of authority I can't imagine in what universe a teacher would consider this situation an example of a positive education. Maybe she was attempting to teach them a lesson about democracy, though a terribly misguided one. Or maybe she was just fed up with having to deal with a socially awkward little boy.

Let's hope none of this is true. Or at the very least, let's hope this is as bad as it gets in the educational system...

Take them outside!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it in this blog before, but I'm a big proponent of the following educational method:

The Finnish educational system

I'm not saying that I agree with everything about the Finnish system completely, but it's definitely a system that the US could learn a bit from.

Fixing the schools

I read in the san diego union tribune today that a school district in Georgia is going single-sex. They want to separate all the boys and all the girls in order to improve test scores (by improving the student's ability to learn, presumably). The superintendent of the district said this was the last thing he could think to do after trying everything else for the past 7 years to increase the scores (to get more funding via the no-child-left-behind act). He claims that the biggest problems include underage pregnancy, and suspects that this should help fix it.

I don't know that literature on sociological studies on single sex schools and their increased or decreased test scores so I can't say for sure whether separating the boys and girls is going to have the desired effect. But when I read the article I got depressed because this is just one example of school districts totally missing the point.

I feel incredibly confident that the problem is this: Parents depend on their schools to educate their children. This leads to the idea that the school is solely responsible for educating them. Parents are removed from the equation by both the school district as well as the parents themselves. It should, of course, be the other way around. Parents should be responsible for their children's education and the school is supposed to help the parents educate their children.

And that's the fundamental problem of the 'no-child-left-behind act'. It holds the schools responsible regardless of what the parents are doing. The reason why so many of our schools are not producing results is because the vast majority of parents don't care what the child is doing in school, don't have time to care, don't realize that they should care, feel inadequate to care because their own education was so shitty, as a result they don't instill into the child any sense of urgency, pride, respect, or desire for academic achievement and this results in schools becoming day-time detention centers.

Imponderables

Oh, and with respect to the previous post, here is something that struck my fancy

THE IMPONDERABLES

Why do people turn to crime?

I've often said, to those who would listen to me, that providing someone with the skill of Critical Thinking is a valuable gift.

What is critical thinking?

Some might think that it's the same as common sense. Well, it isn't common sense (the way I think of it). Common sense is an important skill to have, but you can actually learn common sense through life experience and don't require explicit instruction to gain and master it.

For example: Everyone knows that it's dangerous to run with scissors, it's common sense, because we learn through life experience that scissors are sharp and pointy and that running sometimes results in falling down and falling down on sharp pointy things can lead to serious injury. If you ask anyone "do you think it's safe to run with scissors" they will tell you YES. You can even ask them "why" and they'll probably give you an excellent reason.

Now, some people still run with scissors from time to time. This is not because they lack common sense, but because their brain isn't focusing on the fact that what they are doing is dangerous. Maybe they are working on an art project and suddenly the doorbell rings, or the baby is about to put his moist finger in the electric socket. Their brain focuses on the activity of answering the door or removing the baby from danger, forgetting the scissors in the hand.

So it's a bit harder to learn critical thinking as part of critical thinking is to be able to put those common sense issues together at such critical times and, in turn, remembering to put down the scissors. But that's, just a small part of critical thinking. An even bigger part of critical thinking is to absorb information from the world around us and using what we know to decide what to do with it. It's much easier to just absorb things and not think about them. You sort of need to train yourself to be critical about them.

For example: Let's say that you hear the following sentence "Kucinich believes in UFOs". Now, let's assume that you know that the word UFO means UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS. Your first reaction might be "Oh my god, this guy is crazy. He believes in little green men." And most people would just drop it, and move on, forever thinking that Kucinich is one crazy guy. But you could pause, and take an additional 15 seconds to think about what the sentence "Kucinich believes in UFOs" really means.

Based on only this sentence, you could assume Kucinich essentially believes that there are things which fly in the earth's atmostphere which are, at the time of their flight, unidentified. Well, I believe that too. UFOs are sighted all the time. Usually, UFOs are later identified as all sorts of things like whether balloons, toys, military aircraft, civilian aircraft, natural phenomena. Sometimes they aren't identified but, for the most part we assume that just because we can't identify them doesn't mean that they are aliens. So MAYBE Kucinich DOESN'T believe in little green men, but only believes that the military puts secret things in our skies (surely a possibility).

Or maybe he does believe in little green men (I believe that extra-terrestrial life forms, possibly intelligent, exist) AND he believes that they visit earth (I don't believe that they visit earth). Why is that so crazy? Why is that crazier than believing that the earth is only 6000 years old? At least we have concrete evidence that the earth is much older than 6,000 years, but no one seems to be calling Huckabee crazy...

Anyway, my point is that when we hear any kind of serious sentence, especially coming from the news media or people who seem sure of themselves, we should always contemplate it quietly and thoroughly. It should only take a few seconds and that's an important critical thinking skill.

Basically, critical thinking skills involve training your brain to be constantly aware of the world around you (awareness), examine one's (or others') behavior from different perspectives (empathy), and doing intelligent things with the information you gather with all 5 senses (analysis). There's a bit more, but that's the basics.

Typically, you would want to teach critical thinking skills to young people, because it's much more difficult for someone to begin applying critical thinking skills after 20 years of not. And when critical thinking skills are not being applied, they atrophy very quickly.

The world would be a better place if everyone had excellent critical thinking skills. Racism and similar types of bigotry would almost certainly disappear, petty crime would drop drastically, capitalism would be completely transformed (mostly because advertising would become less effective), we'd see much less war, people of different religions would be much more tolerant of each other, etc.

This is why I think education is so important. If we could redesign the curriculum for primary school in this country to focus almost entirely on building critical thinking skills rather than simply teaching subjects like history for history's sake or math for math's sake I feel incredibly confident that we would see amazing improvement in the quality of life of that generation.

For example, 4th grade children should not be taught about the nitrogen cycle over a 40 minute science class through a diagram in their science book with little arrows. Each full day of an entire week should be devoted to this and similar natural cycles. The children should be given the basic tools and appropriate pushes to discover the nitrogen cycle for themselves. Two simple in class science experiments, a fieldtrip to a field or forest, and some explanation and nudging from the teacher should be enough (assuming that 1st-3rd grade were filled with similar exercises, by the time they get to 4th grade, they should be pros at this type of instruction). This experience would last for the rest of the child's life, and they would gain that valuable skill of learning something through experience and experimentation. It sure beats being told something and having to believe that it's true by the teacher's authority.

What would this cost? Teachers would have to be more specialized, so they'll require more schooling and ultimately a much much higher pay. The job of a primary school teacher would need to be revered more than that of a doctor or a scientist, and similarly their pay should be much higher. The major problem now is that too many primary school teachers lack the very skills they should be teaching. Why do I believe this?

Well, when I was a sixth grader I had a history teacher (Mr. Wiggins) who, one day, told us that George Washington had wooden teeth. When I heard this, like the rest of the class, I thought "WOW, gross, weird, ha ha ha." But shortly after, unlike the rest of the class, I thought about it and decided that this probably wasn't true. This is because I knew that most wood expands when wet and shrinks when dry. Life experience should have taught anyone this. So the art of making false teeth out of wood must have been either very complicated, causing the false teeth to be more expensive than ivory or metal ones, OR possibly causing wooden false teeth to be remarkably painful or practically useless and left as an alternative to only the poor (and I knew that Washington was not a poor man). I brought this up to Mr Wiggins and he was not pleased. He argued with me so I dropped it. I did some research at the library (this was before the internet boom) and found out that George Washington's wooden teeth are a myth. I brought this up a few days later (essentially calling Mr Wiggins misinformed at best, a liar at worst, but certainly not so bluntly) and guess what happened? I got punished for it. As far as I know, my entire fifth grade class is currently still misinformed about Georgy's wooden teeth and currently, in some schools, applying critical thinking skills still nets you a detention.

This rant was brought to you by a couple of economist that try to re-analyze why the poor commit more crimes.

Frustration building...

Any college student who chooses a major based on his perception of its difficulty SHOULD NOT PURSUE HIGHER EDUCATION.

-all majors are difficult if you really put yourself into it. If you are just looking to "graduate college as easily and as quickly as possible" then do yourself, your parents, your possible future professors, TAs, and fellow undergrads a favor and re-analyze your decision to go to college.

Any college student who fears having to deal with "a lot of memorization" SHOULD RE-EVALUATE THEIR DEFINITION OF LEARNING.

-what's the difference between memorizing and remembering? What's the difference between remembering and learning? I know what the differences are to me, I've known since I started high school. That's how I've managed to go through the past 11 years of schooling without memorizing ANYTHING.

If you make a claim based on no shared evidence and someone else refutes your claim you cannot require the refuter to come up with evidence against your claim. THE BURDEN OF PROOF RESTS ON THE PERSON MAKING THE UN-EVIDENCED CLAIM.

-too many times I've heard religious faithfuls ask "rationals" to come up with proof for the un-existence of God. Unfortunately, that doesn't make much sense. Observe the absurdity of the following conversation.

Person 1: I believe that I have two pairs of lungs, but one of the pairs is incorporeal, unable to be x-rayed or MRIed or touched with human hands.
Person 2: I think you are misguided - you do not have two pairs of lungs.
Person 1: Prove it!

If person 1 is fair in his demand, then it is now person 2's job to prove that person 1 does not have a second incorporeal set of lungs. Unfortunately, due to the very nature of this pair of lungs, Person 2 will not likely come up with proof. Does this mean we are to believe that the claim of person 1's second set of lungs is true?

According to many many many folks, who don't think about stuff before they are interviewed on television, yes.

============ Rant ==================

Now I don't like to get involved in arguments about religion for many many many reasons.
The problem is that when I hear arguments between a religious faithful and a "rational" I often find major logical faults, or scientific inaccuracies/misunderstandings with the arguments made by the faithful. Similarly, I tend to have a major problem with the method that the "rational" employs to make their point. So I get angry (or involved) because most of these discussions/debates become intellectually fruitless.

In the above paragraph, by the way, "rational" is in quotes because I do want to make clear that "rational" in this sense is meant to be someone who has applied logic to his belief system without appealing to the supernatural. "rationals" might not be rational in the sense that they often get involved in religious debates with poor purpose or goal. Many such supporters of atheism feel that the goal of this discourse should be to "eradicate religion" and they do this by ridiculous tactics such as trying to show how stupid the opposition's argument is.

The goal, I think, should be for both parties, though one at a time, to incrementally build an understanding from the smallest claims that they can agree on. That way, the most basic disagreements can be identified, targeted, and resolved or noted. I've seen this type of debate happen twice before, both people keeping calm and rational, tempers unflaired.

Ultimately both of these debates ended with the rational "rational" conceding that there was no proof that a god didn't exist but believing that it was irrational to suppose one does exists, and the religious faithful conceding that the only thing they had to sustain their belief system was faith and personal experience but believing that this was more than enough to stick to their convictions.

This is a good resolution to expect because

A: the goal of the "rational" should be to make sure that everyone is using a fair and logical system to evaluate claims such as "you must prove to me that vishnu does not exist" and not to claim that the religious faithful is simply wrong. History has shown that only mass murder/extinction or the encroachment of a new idea can effectively eliminate a belief system (see the greeks or mayans for examples of these). If one really wishes to see religion disappear, one has to replace it with something really good and let time do its work (because no one should be murdering anyone). Maybe logic and compassion is enough as a replacement, but we'll never know if one side is constantly belittling or bullying the other.

B: the religious faithful should truly examine their own belief system and make sure that their comprehension of it is not simply a result of indoctrination and simply going along with the motions. If one believes something because of the joy in their heart or the personal miracles they experience, that is fine. But this is a personal belief and one has to really think about and understand the way that it should or shouldn't be applied to the rest of the world with respect to prostelatizing, relying on prayer, making laws about stem cell research, and teaching our children (especially those who don't share that belief system) about the world.

The end

I have ceased to be surprised by these sorts of things years ago

An Arkansas legislator wrote some incredibly ignorant things a few weeks ago. I'm sure that legislators from all over the US... all over the world actually... say stupid things like this all the time. This one just happened to write them in an e-mail which, somehow, became publicly available.

I ceased to be surprised about these things but I continue to be disappointed. I wish there was a way for me to fix the problem or learn to ignore it.

Taking over the world, one IP address at a time

Using this nifty webpage here I discovered today that the University I attend has a huge stake in the internet as far as IP addresses go. I wonder what the story behind that is.

Scientific reporting

Shortly after posting my last poorly-thought-out-stream-of-consciousness post, I randomly stumbled on this article titled "Is scientific Journalism Doomed?" which is a more interesting informal analysis of the problem. (via slashdot)

Part 3 of the "cultural games I don't want to participate in" series

Intellectual Masturbation

I vaguely recall reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 when I was a high school lad. I vaguely remember one of the themes of the book was about government censorship. That's actually a lie. I remember government censorship being the CENTRAL THEME of the book. I don't know if I came up with that analysis or if it was implanted by whichever high school lit teacher was responsible with enlightening me.

The point is that the Author, one Mr. Bradbury, did not intend for that to be THE or even a theme of his book.

Should this matter? After all, the muse works in mysterious ways. Maybe his subconscious was speaking through his pen. Maybe critical analysts of literature are much more intelligent than the authors of the books they critique. Or, maybe, Cien años de soledad was really just about a family and their crazy adventures and not a socio-political allegory on the state of Latin America.

This sort of pseudo-intellectual bullshit is exactly what is supposed to shame me out of reading science fiction. I refuse to buy into it. If you're going to write a book that only a subset of the educated elite population is going to appreciate that's you're prerogative. But I loathe the industry that develops around this very notion that there are different kinds of Art, each belonging to a segregated social class.

We're living in a country where a trip to a MoMA (any of the dozens splayed across the country) is going to cost you $20+ and nobody, not the poor nor the rich, cares. How lucky we are that 3/4th of our population is functionally literate, it's just a shame that less than a fifth of us cares to use that skill.

I'm going to teach my children to read ASAP and then, when they're old enough, I'll give them a copy of Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" and then ask them to teach me what it's about. They'll tell me, and then we'll go to an art museum together.

Graduate School is actually Work

It is the case that graduate school is actually a lot like an office job. It certainly has differences, but the similarities are really key.

Similarity: We have bosses, and we work for them in a somewhat organized way.
Difference: Our bosses often change periodically

Similarity: There is a hierarchical set of strata and at any one time we have bosses on each stratum.
Difference: We're not always fully aware on which stratum each boss currently lies

Similarity: deadlines, always with the deadlines
Difference: We are much more likely to take the work home and loose sleep working on it at all hours.

Similarity: Lots of office drama
Difference: none, it's the same kind of drama (although, generally, there's much less inter-office romance)

Similarity: We work 40+ hours per week (much closer to 50 or 60 I'd guess)
Difference: We can choose our own hours, but we get paid about 1/3 of what our time is worth (though our benefits are pretty darn good and we're kind of interns anyway)

Similarity: omipresent, endless meetings
Difference: most are not mandatory

Similarity: We needed to be hired for this position
Difference: We know we're gonna be fired/replaced in less than 7 years