Rain, Boston, and Politics

Well you asked for it. When I woke up the other morning to the cool breeze coming through the window I was thrilled. I love cold weather. Then I looked outside and saw that it was raining as well. I hate the rain. My exuberance was instantly dashed and I fell into a depression. That’s right. And every morning when I woke up to rain, I fell farther into that depression. On Wednesday I actually went home after school and just curled up in a ball in bed and went to sleep. I hate the rain. While I understand that rain is essential to the environment, I wish it would only rain at night. That way I could enjoy it.

Anyway, that’s enough about the rain. Let’s talk about baseball. So, with all of the homework, working, and time with my girlfriend, there is little time to enjoy watching the games, but I made sure to catch the highlights on Sports Center in the morning during breakfast. When Boston fell down 3 games to none I thought they were done. No one has ever come back from a 3 game deficit. I especially thought there would be no hope for them when Schilling hurt his ankle. But I was wrong, sorry Layne. When they started to win, game by game, I got excited. Could it really happen? It did. I wasn’t planning on watching any of the World Series, but now that Boston is in it I may try and squeeze in a few innings. I know, it’s too bad that my Mets couldn’t get it done this season, but their time will come. For now we should all join together and root for Boston.

Well, the election as proven to be a bust for me. I never paid much attention to past elections, but I was determined to be informed this year. I have read article after article about each of the candidates and I have listened to their speeches and watched some of their debates. It’s too bad that neither one of the candidates seems to want to tell us how they are going to do anything. On the few occasions when I was able to filter through the name calling and pot shots, I realized that both Bush and Kerry only said what they were going to do, not how they were going to do it. I’m not stupid, the American people aren’t stupid, lay it out for us. Maybe we over estimate ourselves? Maybe we aren’t intelligent enough to understand the complex plans that these men’s men have created. I read a political cartoon in the New Yorker that described the sad estate of politics by showing two children playing the sand and one saying to the other, “I hope to raise enough money to be President.” What would happen if the most intelligent and informed people ran this country? Maybe their debates would be entertaining. I am honestly not sure who to vote for because frankly, I don’t like either candidate. Neither one of them seems to be able to be mature enough to avoid cutting down their competitor. Why not just tell us what you’re going to do with our country? Flip!

Teaching & Indoctrination

Being that I have slacked on my blogging duties as of late, I will have to comment on snow conditions on a later blog. The following blog addresses the past few discussions in class:

If there is surely a difference between education and indoctrination, I cannot locate that difference. I cannot find such a difference because I do not see the operation of the teacher/tutor bias as the influence that creates indoctrination. Of course, personal biases can have that effect if left unchecked, but we all have the ability, with minimal effort required, to filter out personal perspectives. Rarely is it a problem to have to deal with a teacher who is unwilling to explain/teach or entertain perspectives differing from their own.

The real problem begins when trying to answer: how do teachers/tutors filter out their personal perspectives? What perspective does the teacher/tutor now rely on?

A teacher usually relies on curriculum guidelines to ensure she is covering various topics and addressing them in such a way as to not be in favor of one view. A teacher will use a textbook, see what is commonly held to be effective or true, recall experiences from graduate school, or any other such ways to objectify their approach in the classroom. However, what has their view now become? Far from being an objective one, the teacher now has a collection of views that have come to coalesce through various societal, cultural and institutional approvals. Her curriculum guide is approved by the board of education. The education she received before becoming a teacher consisted of lesson plans that were, again, approved by the board of education. On a cultural level, she has been conditioned to give credence to various forms of arguments, in preference to other, just as valid arguments. It is the same with art: we are taught to value the portrait over the abstract; the novel over the collection of short stories; the sonnet over the sestina. Growing up in western civilization, we inherit the canonization of literature, painting, music, architecture, rhetoric, politics, etc. It is not possible to grow up and not be influenced by 1,500 years of your cultural past. You may define yourself as a part of it, you may define yourself against it, but you are never non-affected.

Consider: a literature teacher, proposing to teach an entire class on three Tom Clancy novels in place of an entire semester class on Shakespeare’s histories, is going to come up against strong resistance. A teacher, in some degree or another, must define him or her self in the context of their culture, their current culture as a chapter in a history of evolving cultures, and within the discourse community of a certain academic setting. Now, our teacher who wishes to teach Tom Clancy novels in place of Shakespeare has an enormous battle ahead of her. It is not technically impossible for her to find a way to convince the school board, faculty and student body to participate in such a class, but in order to do so, our teacher has the task of turning over 300 years of history that has continually said yes to Shakespeare and no to writers such as Tom Clancy.

I must say, I do not think Clancy should replace Shakespeare. Yet, it is an important illustration as it points out that we as teachers/tutors instruct from an institutional perspective, a cultural perspective, and a political perspective. We make choices on what needs to be taught and our community of colleagues help to shape the range of possible options. We find what we think works best from acceptable curriculum and implement that method in our teaching. Everything cannot be taught; therefore, Germany emphasizes Goethe, while the United States emphasizes Faulkner. Even in the realms of science and mathematics there is no ONE way. Once you are past the beginning stages of mathematics, it is used in new and creative ways. With the advent of string theory comes two schools: those who think it is fundamentally flawed; others who think we lack the mathematical language to accurately describe it. In other words, there are certain schools and teachers who are teaching their students the possible need for creating a new mathematical language (like Newton had to do); and yet others who insist the road to discovery lies within the investigation of current mathematical language. Also, in the past thirty years, the idea that there is one scientific method that all scientists use, as a sequence of rigid steps, has been discredited.

All of this illustrates one point: to teach is to instruct in the methods and knowledge you and your academic community think is best. Inherent in every course is, “I am teaching you this thing because . . . And it is important that you know this because . . . .” This means that other things are seen as less important for the student to know, other methods less effective. And this is as it should be—a teacher cannot teach everything, and choices (meaning exclusions) have to be made.

To view this as indoctrination may seem overblown—it is not explicit propaganda, no one is sitting behind a desk planning ways to control your thoughts (maniacal laughter implied), and no one is trying to make you believe something that is not true. The problem with the word “indoctrination” is that we immediately associate it with brainwashing and propaganda. For it to be indoctrination we believe someone wishes to blind us all into an unquestioning darkness, and then tell us how and what to think.

When looked up in the dictionary, the word indoctrination means simply, “to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideologue etc. To teach or inculcate.” Is this not what teaching is? The teacher has a curriculum that the students need to learn/understand—a given set of principles—and the teacher does her best to ingrain those principles into the student. Of course, “indoctrination” comes with the added meaning of “to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief in relation to those principles.”

The partisan or biased belief that is given to the student is an inevitable one, transferred by hundreds of years of cultural history. Beliefs cannot be perspectiveless, a student will learn to view things through certain cultural and societal lenses, and therefore what is taught and what is learned are brought about by predisposed pathways set in by cultural determinism. Of course, it is not wholly deterministic (there are options), but they are limited, and the pathways are conducive to certain means, to certain ends.

In teaching, the curriculum is defined by time limits and the fact that it is taught by a single professor. That professor can try and give as many perspectives as possible within the semester, but as time shapes the classroom, a teacher and his department come to the decision of what is most important for their students to know, and how it is best for them to come about to that knowing.

In teaching, there is no intent to brainwash or foster dependent thinking; yet teaching is always the transfer of knowledge from a certain perspective chosen from a range of other valid possibilities. Teaching is an operation of choice—an operation of exclusion.

FYI

Here's a pretty famous essay I thought you might all like: How to say nothing in 500 words

Topic: ?

Sorry about not posting a topic sooner. Because of that, here's a slacker topic: What's on your minds? Baseball? The election? The coming of snow? Interminable rain?

Important Issue

As of this moment we do not have a specific topic to blog for this week so I am choosing to write about whatever I want to.

This one is for you Andrea.

I have a very important issue to discuss. But first there are a couple things about me that you must know, and those that get to know me find out fairly quickly. They include, but are not restricted to, the following: I hate horrid, vile smells and I love cute little animals.
I have been known to actually throw up when confronted with certain offensive smells and will do whatever is necessary to avoid them. I have also been known to visit the animal shelter just to pet the adorable kittens. I once literally sobbed while sitting on the floor of IFA because I was holding a baby duck in my hand and it was so dang cute I couldn’t take it.
Now that you know some of my most embarrassing secrets we can now proceed to the issue at hand. You can now understand why I am so disgusted by current state of Weber State University’s duck pond. The stench of the rotting alligator carcasses (it’s true) and whatever else ends up at the bottom of that pond is pervading the entire campus. I must also mention that the draining of the pond has resulted in the loss of a decent home for numerous hungry ducks. This is not the first time that the pond has been drained, nor so I feel it will be the last. Some years they drain the pond a few times a semester! I have not yet heard the exact reason why they must expose that smell to us, but whatever the reason may be I don’t think that it should have to take place so frequently.
I am not the only one that has suffered the injustice of enduring the smell; I have heard frequent complaints during the last couple of days. When leaving campus our own Stephanie, from the writing center, stated, “uhhgg- that smell is disgusting! Why the [heck] are they draining that thing (the pond) again?
I have also heard from reliable sources that I am not the only one bothered by the sight of so many land-ridden ducks. Many students have voiced their outrage to the proper authorities, but to no avail. The poor little things wade in the few puddles that are left, but have no where to truly swim and pursue the true happiness that only a duck in a pond can find. The ducks are lucky that during this draining none of them are fostering small ducklings, but what of other drainings when some new families are not so lucky?
Something must be done to protect both duck pleasure and olfactory contentment. If you have any suggestions or would like to join me in a duck food drive please let me know.

P.S. When Professor Rogers said that we could write anything did he really mean anything?

Indoctrinating me with every note

There is surely a difference between education and indoctrination, but it's hard to draw an exact line between the two. We all have our own set of opinions and biases, but we aren't always actively aware of them. This is why it can be easy to accidentally throw a bit of indoctrination into every tutoring session. I usually know better than to openly impose my liberal (ok, liberal for Utah) views on tutees and other strangers, but they are sneaky and sometimes slip out.

For example, I worked on an online submission about the gay marriage issue. I bit my lip and refrained from replying with "Your argument is wrong on every level, you homophobic moron!" However, in hindsight, I realize that I did offer much more criticism than I normally would for an online submission. This was before Stephanie's presentation, so I didn't have the benefit of explaining how each argument was faulty, but I did my best to point out every single gap in logic. I tried to correct for my own opinions, but it was impossible to completely separate myself from them.

This leads me to the question of whether or not I abused my rights/privileges as a tutor. On the one hand, I did not ever state my opinion on the subject and my suggestions, if followed, would have helped the student strengthen his paper tenfold. On the other hand, I could have offered one or two friendly comments about making sure all arguments were supported and left it at that.

This is likely the case with most of us, including professors. No matter what role we are playing, we will always be ourselves.

I can't concentrate. Everyone in the Writing Center is singing. They promised to stop, but it was a lie. A series of lies, actually.

My excuse

Okay, so here’s my excuse. I made a plan to blog on Fridays since I have a little "free" time (meaning I keep my sister’s kids so she and her husband can go on a date. Her kids entertain my boy, which gives me a little time at the computer without a kid on my lap.) So, I planned on doing blogs on Friday nights. Well, my last blog was on Sept. 24th (note it was a Friday) and I was due to do a blog on the 1st. However, my inconsiderate older brother decided to go and get himself killed in a car accident on Thursday night. What was he thinking? Didn’t he know I had to do a blog on Friday? So, instead of doing my much anticipated blog, I was hysterically trying to comfort myself, my parents and remaining siblings (self medication with chocolate didn’t work as well as usual). The next week I spent every free moment at my parent’s house, in a state of shock along with the rest of our family.

Searls, my oldest brother, and his family have been living in Florida for the past couple years. They got hit by the hurricanes and so he was spending lots of time cleaning up after the storms. He was also the BSA leader in the area, so spent lots of time working with a group of boys trying to get their Eagles. Less than a week before the accident he fell asleep standing up in the back yard, leaning against the tree. His wife, Christina, had enough time to go into the house for the camera, take a picture and return the camera before he fell over and woke up. So on Thursday he was coming home from his class (he was working toward his MBA) and apparently fell asleep at the wheel. He crashed into the back of an auto-transport semi and flipped the car over. They think he died instantly. He has a wife and five kids between the ages of 3 and 11. Since both our family and his wife’s family are in Utah she decided to bury him here.

The next Friday (blog day) was my brother’s viewing and we buried him on Saturday, the 9th. Obviously, I could have found some time to do a blog or two during the past two weeks, but it’s been a big enough challenge to get out of bed (since I sleep when I’m depressed/sad), not to mention coming to campus for class and work, being a mom, and housewife. My sister-in-law and her children have needed a lot of emotional support. Stuart, age 5, followed me around the mortuary asking questions about everything. Morgan, the oldest girl, pulled me around by the arm for a while. My sister, who is only 19 months older than Searls, is falling apart because she’s lost her "almost twin" who’s been her best friend for as long as she can remember. What a mess.

I’ll try to catch up. I know you all have been missing my witty comments and glorious insights. =) I can’t promise anything at this point, though. It is impressive that I did this blog on Monday instead of procrastinating until Friday.

Boston Gets One

I have a lot of things on my mind right now. I just saw the Red Sox beat the Yankees in extra innings; that was cool. I know saying this isn't going to make me much friends among my tutoring associates, but I'm not much of a Yankee fan. Don't worry, just cause I am not too fond of the Yankees and kinda like the Red Sox, that doesn't mean I like Kerry that much either.
It is late and I have put this blog off for too long, so I am going to give it a wack just like Ortiz did to finish the game late in Boston.
After class on Monday I started to think about this whole indoctrination theory and if I could recognize any of my teachers trying to do it to me. I thought of one prime example. I took English 2010 just as the whole Patriot Act was coming together. I remember very vividly my professor subtly saying things so that we would think the whole Patriot Act was a bad Idea. I remember thinking that my teacher was smart so that meant he must be right. I hated the Patriot Act, yet I knew nothing about it. Since then I've learned a little more about it and, well, I kind of think it's a good idea. I guess that is besides the point. The thing I'm trying to point out is that my professor used his position and influence on us to try and make us have his point of view. It makes me more than a little angry. I feel like he used me like a tool.
We need to be so careful when dealing with writers who have views different than our own. If we don't share the same views as the writer, we can still help their writing and we can do it without trying to change their view.
A very effective way we can do this is by "playing the devil's advocate." This way the writer can see a different perspective of the argument. However, when we do this, we need to be careful. I think the second the writer starts to change his views instead of how he makes his argument, we probably have crossed the line from trying to help the student write better to indoctrinating him.
IN my opinion there are only two topics that we should try to indoctrinate in our students: Bush is better than Kerry and to vote Yes on amendment 3. :)

I never wrote this down before

October 16, 2004

Ah, the sun is shining, the birds are screeching, and I’m blogging over their cries as best I can. Oh, to be at work where it’s quiet! I may have spoken rashly when I told Celia one bird more or less wouldn’t make any difference.
I tried to post a picture of me in my blogger profile today, but my stupid PC is too old and doesn’t have the right processor to run the software, so now I’m in a pout over being financially forced to live in the dark ages (I'm sure I'll be over it in momemts). For the benefit of all my fans out there, I’m a six-foot-tall, willowy blonde with naturally bronze skin and perky…ears.
Here’s a fascinating thing: Do you know that there are actual newsletters out there just for tutors? I did not know this! And conferences and whole entire books, where people just wax philosophical (I guess) on tutoring, and (I hope) trade tutoring tales and tutoring ideas. Who woulda thunk it?
I’ve had experiences, though, that have taught me lots of things are that way. I don’t notice things unless I’m in them. When I was pregnant (many, many moons ago), it seemed to me like the entire female population of the world was pregnant along with me. Now I hardly ever see a pregnant person, and if I did I sure wouldn’t mention it—what if she was just fat?
Long ago, I found myself homeless. Do you know that when you’re homeless, you have to make sure you get to the dumpster behind Ralph’s before the other homeless people if you want to get the best garbage for dinner? It’s true. And Kentucky Fried Chicken, at least where I was at the time, throws away the unsold chicken at the end of the day, but they put it in a double paper bag on top of the dumpster. The dumpster does happen to sit inside a locked fence, but no one will call the cops on you for jumping it. I think that’s kind of them.
There we were, living in a campsite, and our “neighbors” were other homeless people, living in campsites. Then summertime came and tourists took all the campsites, and so we were living in the car in the back of the Denny’s parking lot, and we had neighbors there, too! I used to get up in the morning and go to the gas station bathroom to get ready for work, and I shared the sink with another homeless lady who was getting ready for work. We both had kids that we had to take to school first. It was surreal. Then the car broke down, and I found myself and my family walking around all day and crashing wherever there was shelter at night. There were a whole bunch of other people doing the same thing, whole families with kids and dogs and everything. In fact, we’d give each other tips on safe places. I knew one girl who slept on top of the Taco Bell, with a stolen airline blanket for a bed.
We were invisible, all of us, an entire community no one could see. That was why I’d never known there were so many. I couldn’t see them until I was one of them. And you know what’s sad? I can’t see them any more. Does like only attract like? Or am I wearing invisible blinders?
What does this have to do with Scott’s prompt? Nothing! I’m just observing, and writing it down while I’m at it. Isn’t that what writing is?