Just to see stuff...

I wasted a day today prepping my lambs for the New Jersey Biology Competency Test. I will waste another day on Monday.

I have no idea what it means to be competent in biology, and judging by the practice questions, I am not alone. If a child passes the biology competency test, is she a biologist?

I chased a herd of daphnia today in one of my tanks--we have about 10 in the room. A child from another class came to visit today, just to see stuff.

We have a generation of children who do not see stuff. We have a generation of adults who do not see stuff. We can't even blame the gods-we've gone done outsourced hubris.

***

In a couple of weeks I will lead almost 200 kids on a trip to Sandy Hook. We will hold fiddler crabs and grass shrimp and pipefish and horseshoe crabs. We will get too much sun, and a few of us will lose some red blood cells. Children will watch the tide fall--we cannot stay long enough to watch it rise again.

We will hunt for hermit crabs and whelks and killies and mussels.

The children will see that the world is for them, of them, and that it is, ultimately, incomprehensible. Science is, to paraphrase Richard Feynman, understanding how nature behaves. The "why" I leave to the priests, the astrologers, the charlatans--grasping the how is more than enough for a thousand lifetimes.

And what, really, will help a larval human "get" science? Prepping for a test given to meet the demands of a few aged men sitting in fancy buildings just over a couple hundred miles away? Or walking along Sandy Hook Bay in early June?

A shame I even need to pose the question. A bloody shame....

Spring silliness

As I type this, a tiny gnat is trying to break through my monitor.

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."

Theodosius Dobzhansky

I should be crafting a descent with modification (misnamed "evolution") exam.

Descent with modification is the heart of biology. Without it, a world with red-lipped batfish, roly-polies, and humans makes no sense, no matter how clever God pretends to be.

Without it, nothing in biology makes sense. Nothing.

Seems sacrilegious to test it using vocabulary and a few standard examples any student paying attention can just fly through half aware of our universe.

 ***

 
I walked tonight, crushing thousands of insects and worms, breathing in microbes, watching squirrels and starlings and dogs and robins and humans go about their business.

A cherry tree late for the party dropped a few last petals on my head.

Mosquitoes paraded around my tiny pond, blissfully unaware that soon it will be filled with young fish born in a tank in Room B362, trapped by glass they learned to avoid, soon to be munching on the young wrigglers laid today.

Sunlight bathes us now, and everything that buzzes or tweeps or flaps or gurgles has forgotten that darkness was ever possible. At least I have.

And if I can forget, despite centuries of words telling me of death and of destruction and of entropy, well, what hope does the fledgling robin I saw bouncing around the Green yesterday have of grasping how serious this all must be.

Seriousness is a human conceit.

It's May. I going to listen to the fledglings for now, as long as now lasts, as long as the sun continues to bathe us with grace.

Red-lipped batfish--really, how serious can we be if red-lipped batfish exist?

The red-lipped batfish photo from PBS here.

Beware the Yabby net

Thanks to The Violet Hour for pointing me in Michael Leunig's direction.

"I [Richard Lawrence] specifically asked Leunig about the copyright implications of this and he replied that  he derives great pleasure from the knowledge that people send his 'toons, poems and prayers to friends all over the world."
--Richard Lawrence, curator of The Curly Flat




And a yabby is some sort of Aussie crustacean: looks like a crawdad to me.

On matters of faith

Morning storm clouds. The light bit at edges, accentuating the few colors that poked through the gray dawn gloom. A brisk wind swirled from the northwest, a breeze out of Chocolat.

A cherry tree dumped its blossoms like a snow squall, surrounding me with impossible pink light. The heavy rain drops followed seconds later, soaking the pink petals so thick they hid the grass.

Even in the middle of it, I try to remember, and I cannot. Remembering anything other than those things that will keep us alive is a human conceit. Turns out I'm human.

Change is coming. As it has. As it will.

***

I am teaching about evolution, descent with modification. It is going better than most years have.

I spent a few moments talking about Charles Lyell and the concept of uniformitarianism, the idea that whatever natural laws apply here, today, apply anywhere and anytime. I dropped a small chunk of wood as I spoke. It fell each time, as expected, landing loudly on the desk.


This is where science relies on faith.

And it does. The kids relax just a tad. All year long I've assured them that we know less than we think, that the world is a wonderful place despite this, and that science requires, at a very basic level, faith.

Not the kind of faith many of them have been taught, but faith nonetheless. 8 months after we first met each other, things are starting to fall into place.

Of course the piece of wood will fall, each and every time, and we know this only because it always has. This may seem trivial, but it's the soul of reality, whatever "reality" means.

***

Were humans as inevitable as the fall of the block of wood I dropped over and over again? I leave it to the students to ponder. I'm not particularly interested in the question--we're here, and that's enough for me.

But they are, which is why I pose it. Their universe swirl around each of their own existences, and I just called it into question.

It's my hope that by June, they will know as little as I do.

Decision time....

Goyaałé

When I was a child, I was fascinated by Geronimo--his fierce face stared at me from a century away, in a sepia toned paperback I kept on the shelf above my bed, tucked between Stan Fischler's Thinking Man's Guide to Hockey and the latest issue of Mad Magazine.

My students hardly know Osama bin Laden. They hardly know the story of Goyaałé, better known as Geronimo. Linking them together speaks to our banality.

Who among us knows of the slaughter of his children and lover at Kas-Ki-Yeh?
Who among us knows of his hatred of Mexicans for this slaughter, a hatred that he carried through life?

If you kill someone's family, you may create a thirst that may never be quenched:

"All the other Apaches were satisfied after the battle of Kaskiyeh, but I still desired more revenge."

That we chose to use the name of one hero of people we coldly conquered not so long ago, upon whose land we sit now, to represent the our greatest enemy the past decade, says something about the people we have become.

Her name was Alope:

"Perhaps the greatest joy to me was that now I could marry the fair Alope, daughter of No-po-so. She was a slender, delicate girl, but we had been lovers for a long time."

The United States uses unmanned aerial vehicles ("drones") to hit targets in Afghanistan.  People die from machines reigning Hellfire missiles in very poor, very remote regions of our world. Each missile costs more an average teacher's salary.

How many Geronimos does each missile create? The code name may not be as ironic as we think.

Both photos in public domain.

No, it's not a science teacher post.

Happiness is not a warm gun

What do you want?
What do you need?

While ambling through the Bloomfield Green from school this fine afternoon, I saw a squirrel chase a starling, then again, and finally, a third time, pushing the bird to flight. It then went back to gnawing on the acorn it had dug up.

Makes no sense for squirrels to chase starlings. None.

We tend to take a mechanistic view of animals that don't share our roofs, but squirrels are mammals, and this one was, well, squirrelly. Most mammals are in May.

***

We keep talking about education as a commodity, as a way to preserve the economy, as a way to make America great again.

I'm selfish--I don't want to make America great, I just want to teach. I realized this almost 10 years ago, while I watched Manhattan burn, waiting for the wounded at Liberty Island who never came. Medicine matters, of course, and I was pretty good at it, but turns out putting things back together is not enough for me. Selfish.

I want to teach children how to think, how to know what they need, what they want. It's been my experience that most adults don't know either. Maybe I need to get out more.

I've met a few, though--happy scallopers, happy plumbers, happy doctors, happy writers, happy teachers, happy landscapers, happy waiters, happy just about anything you can name.

From my (very limited) experience, I'd dare hypothesize that happiness has little to do with one's particular job. Pretty much all jobs that matter can lead to happiness. A lot of jobs that don't matter don't preclude happiness--a job that does matter, though, certainly helps.

I love rattling on about DNA polymerase III or cytochromes or G protein-coupled receptors--this stuff is fascinating (to me, anyway)--but I have no illusions about this changing anyone's world view. (Understanding natural selection might mess you up (in a good way) but that's another story for another day....) My best teaching happens when I shut up long enough for my lambs to absorb something, anything, other than the drone of my voice.

If they could tap directly into my brain, here's what they'd hear: Hey, kids, this is your world, it's a fuckton more interesting than anything you can find on a screen, and, well, dig in.

And some do. Not enough, but it's a start.

***

A lot of noise about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. My students barely know who he is--they were in Kindergarten or preschool when he struck.

I saw first-hand the destruction he wrought. I sat in the same pew with someone who lost her brother. He was not an abstract evil--he hurt my people.

And I did not rejoice at his death. Because he chose not to matter to me. He affected me, true, and in terrible ways, but he did not matter.

I want every child I teach to matter, and to know what matters.

***

All these words because of a cranky squirrel.

Education is not about finding jobs or making money or bettering the economy. Education is about living a life worth living.

Hard not to be happy when you live that kind of life.

Arne and Eli and Bill and Melinda and Michelle do not strike me as happy people. Each one of them have real effects on my life. But they do not matter about things that do matter.

The sooner we internalize this, and act on this, the sooner we can get back to the business of living life. If you want to glorify evil, no need to look across an ocean.

My Dad kept a piece of a torn up automobile after the 1st WTC bombing--don't ask. It sat on his yard for years, and eventually disappeared.
Bloomfield just got granted a piece of twisted metal from the 2nd attack. We learned this a few days before OBL was killed. I don't want it anymore.

Yes, those are a couple of barnacles--just alien enough when I'm roiled as I am.
The WTC light memorial from "Life as a Human"--photographer not identified.
The barnacle pic was taken by us.

Konformity is Power Program

Oh, I'm glad I'm not an Oscar Mayer wiener.
That is what I'd never want to be.
Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener.
There would soon be nothing left of me!

This commercial was popular when I was a kid. It glorifies conformity and bullying, and renounces independent thought. Leslie dug it out for me. It bothered her then. 40 years later it still bothers her.

Stuff we toss at kids sticks a long, long time.

I did not know, but now I see
That KIPP is my identity
Through work, love, hope, and strife
KIPP is not just a school but a way of life.

Sayda Morales, "Bolero," from KIPP promotional video.

Just saying....

You can't make this stuff up....