Fear of flying

Dell has a disturbing new ad out, and even more disturbing has been its response--"[t]he Dell ad makes its technology feel human."

I just spent a wonderful week as a Siemens STEM Institute fellow,where at Discovery Education  Hall Davidson and others showed us how to manipulate images just like this girl did. Most of my kids will love this, for a few moments, anyway, then on to something else. (Dopamine's half-life is about two minutes.)

But it's not science. Beyond knowing a few keystrokes and where to find the software, it's not learning.*

***

During this same week, we got to spend some time behind the scenes at the Smithsonian Institute, where we saw passion and joy as scientists described what they do. Turns out real live scientists like to hold things--skulls, nuggets of gold, dead fish, apples. Their passion was palpable, but even more notable was their joy!

Here's an exercise we picked up, one worth doing as a department.

Take an apple or two, real ones, pretend you've never encountered one before, and describe it. List as many of its qualities as you can in a few minutes. You will likely scribble down dozens.

Now observe an apple model--you can use one of the plastic ones, which wholesale around 35 cents a piece. Scratch off all the qualities you listed about the real apple that can't be found of the fake one. The list gets dramatically smaller.

Northern spyes, my choice for hard cider, via Village Voice.

Now do the same thing with a photograph of an apple. You're down to a few words, maybe red, oblong, with a stem attached.

And finally, this:

Apple

To most of us, the word conjures up vivid memories of what we know of "appleness"--but the word itself means nothing to someone who has never seen an apple.

***

What is the purpose of public schooling?

If it is to produce "career and college ready" corporatizens, then mastering manipulation of the digital world becomes the goal. Virtual flying becomes meaningful, and an apple's visual appeal matters more than its taste--how else explain the dominance of the ironically named Red Delicious over the plain looking Roxbury Russet?**

If it is to produce joyful citizens in a community, with all its human warts, well, then, Bloomfield and thousands of towns like us are trying to hang in there with our gardens and plays, our cooking and sewing classes, our wood shop and photography classes, our bands and choirs, our art shows, our sense of community.

Our motto is generations old, and can be found on the floor of the foyer as you walk in:

Learn to live

If you want to fly, you need to build something that will let you do just that. You need to risk failure, ridicule, broken bones and even death--Orville Wright himself was involved in the first fatal airplane crash (which he barely survived--Lt. Thomas Selfridge did not).

The girl who jumped off the roof with an umbrella in the Dell ad will not be satisfied with a green screen fantasy--she likely will lead a happy and productive life despite the casts and sutures she'll accumulate along the way. Not all dreams need be so risky--but dreams should not be avoided because of the risks.

Green screen lives are safer in some ways--hard to fracture a femur playing Angry Birds--but, it turns out, are far more dangerous in the long run.

Our sedentary screen lives are literally killing us--when we require children to sit still, when we ask them to watch a screen, we are shortening their lives.

From Advanced ICU Care newsletter, Spring, 2009

Beyond that, deferring life to virtual reality kills living long before a heart stops beating. Technology can keep that same heart beating a little longer, in a small cubicle surrounded with screens whose job it is to keep that heart going--a heart that stopped working long, long ago.

 *It's a great tool for story-telling, and story-telling belongs in science class--Hall Davidson is a master story-teller and gets this. Dell, at least in the ad, does not.
**Yes, I know, hardiness and ability to survive shipping also matter. If you're going to make cider, though, I strongly recommend Northern spies.

An ally in the White House?

I have been reading Herman Melville and it's August--so, yeah, this needs editing....

Sir Ken Robinson is a superstar in the education world--he wows audiences with his humor, his wisdom, and (no small thing) his alluring accent. He's quite entertaining, and earns a comfortable sum making the rounds at various conferences.

I just returned from a wonderful conference, the Siemens STEM Institute held at Discovery Education in Maryland. We didn't see Sir Robinson, but we did see Dr. Steve Robinson, who will ultimately have a much larger effect on my classroom.

There's a subtle schism in Federal education policy, subtle enough to survive, big enough to give me hope.

***

A lot of teachers are losing hope, or at least say as much--a teacher without hope is like a frog who can't hop, and survives about as long.

Arne, Bill, and Eli got me gnashing a bit, but long as I got more than a handful of quahogs left to rake on Richardson Sound, despair shuns me. Clamming lets you see things you forget you care about. Clams are in no hurry to escape; the only urgency is the rising tide.

Even the madness of Arne Duncan's edutheocracy fades as the edge of the sea licks my toes--no evangelists on a mudflat. Still, teaching pays a bit more than clamming around here, and as much as "educators" complain, we have a pretty good gig.

The other Robinson (Steve) has not been knighted, a plus here in the States. Unlike his counterpart Arne, Dr. Robinson was a high school science teacher and taught in a real classroom for years,  because, it seems, he wanted to. (He earned his Biology degree at Princeton, his PhD at Michigan (GO BLUE!).

The Siemens STEM fellows got to spend an hour with Dr. Robinson in the Indian Treaty Room--he's brilliant, he's nuanced, and (I think) he gets it. He used to work under Arne, now he has a more direct pipeline to the President sitting on the Domestic Policy Council. He and Mr. Kumar Garg explained the President's STEM Master Teacher Corps, then took comments and questions.

Kumar Garg and Steve Robinson--our best hope?

And here's where it gets interesting--the current push to improve STEM education in the lower grade levels competes with time dedicated to enabling kids to pass tests prescribed by various Race to the Top programs adored by Arne and his cronies.

I pointed this out to Dr. Robinson, perhaps a bit bluntly, and got an intelligent, nuanced response that acknowledged the concern without tipping his hand, which, after years of inane soundbites from Arne, was enough to get me a tiny bit excited. This guy, at a minimum, gets the issues. He's not an evangelist.

Robinson pointed out that trying to transform science education from the Federal level is like trying to perform surgery with big mittens. He demonstratively held out both of his hands--he's still got the teacher in him--and I thought (and this may be an over-read) that his expression was asking for a little breathing room. He's in a tight spot--he would not be feeling it if he was comfortable with Arne's action plan.

 It gets better--I looked up this Robinson guy when I got home. He used to work under Mr. Duncan, but moved from Education under Duncan to the White House closer to Obama in 2009. Folks noticed:

What's interesting about Robinson's shift is that it further signals that STEM is a really big issue for President Obama, but perhaps not as significant for his education secretary.

Michele McNeil, Politics K-12, Education Week, September, 2009

Oh, Ms. McNeil updated the article after getting some noise from the DOE, and she added some updates, but she saw the same thing I see now. She even calls Robinson a "STEM guru".

I now got hope for the change that needs to happen if Mr. Obama is serious about transforming education in this country. I have hope that Mr. Obama sees the inanity of trying to implement mutually exclusive goals.

But I'm not naive. An hour with my Chatham scratcher working a back bay flat reminds me of what matters, and so long as I can rake clams, I can teach. Mr. Robinson, you're welcome to join me--just don't tell Arne.

Ken Robinson photo and quote from his website here.

The clam chart is from the State of NJ.

Siemens STEM Institute video

OK, I'm not sure I'm allowed to do this (but it's usually easier to be forgiven than get permission--my Mommy taught me that)--here's my video for the Siemens STEM Academy program this summer.

Mind you, it was edited on a cheap laptop running Vista Home Basic, about 17 hours of my life I won't get back.



But I like it anyway....

It's already banned in Germany--does anyone know Izzy's address?