h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Welcome, Pattern-chaser! From what you've said, I think you'll find this is a congenial place.

*Matina brings in Amy's breakfast*

That's Matina, the bot in charge of the kitchen. If there's anything you want just ask, but I can tell you up front her specialties are cinnamon buns and mbougatses, which is a Greek pastry, flaky crust with apples and cinnamon. You can't have too much cinnamon!

We have just done some major renovating, so in addition to the link provided on the atelier page you might also check out http://www.asterlil.com/h2g2/aplannew.htm -- this will explain all the concurrent threads in this forum.

Z, congratulations on a major hurdle passed!

We had windstorms all night so there was too much dust in the air to be going out and looking up. But it's pleasantly cool this morning.

Welcome, Pattern Chaser.

Congratulations Z, but I sincerely hope that the 5-minutes-per-case is not meant to be training on how long to spend with your patients when you are a grown-up doctor.

OK, I have a bit more time this morning and I know we have sort of moved past the education debate, but I actually kept a few notes so here are my thoughts on the subject in no particular order, and now thoroughly disassociated from their context.

The standardized tests are good at revealing problems, but not at fixing them.
When that many students fail a test, it's not a matter of personal motivation or commitment to learning. That will be true for some students, but these numbers reveal a systematic failure. It's also well documented that a teacher's attitude towards a student's sex or race will impact how well the student learns (this has been studied to death in terms of sex, with studies revealing how girls are less likely to be called on for answers especially in the sciences, and thus discouraged, all subconsciously). The racism revealed by the tests also goes back many generations, and can be seen both in the children's attitudes towards learning and their parent's attitudes.
By the time a child is a teenager, they may have years of poor education behind them. A teenager's attitude might reflect the neglect of a kindergarten teacher.
The reaction and protest may be misguided but it is not unfounded.
Disney pays no taxes to the state of Florida (that actually may be an urban myth, but I first heard it on a news program), so boycotting Disney does (if true) make some sense. If they did pay taxes, much of that money could go into the schools.
Education is overrated. Or more specifically, the type of education we receive in the schools is overrated. We have factory schools that produce factory workers, with much of a student's success depending on how well they "behave", follow instructions, and do what they are told.
The hysteria over the failure of our education system is also overrated. Two generations ago the illiteracy rate was much higher and it was not uncommon to run into people who had no more than a year or two of schooling if even that (one of my great uncles never made it to the 4th grade because he was epileptic). Now we educate nearly everyone, people complain about the numbers of people who read at a 3rd grade level when in the past many of those people would barely know the alphabet. Meanwhile some trade skills that are equally difficult to learn as reading and just as valuable to society are slowly being lost to history. Knowing how to build the pyramids is not academic.

Congratulations Z.

Hi Pattern Chaser.

Lil, I like the rockface, but is it supposed to be winking at us? Sort of makes me want to watch my p'sand q's.

Rain and 64º. Strong, gusty winds. Everyone on my staff is either on vacation or injured or has gone completely insane! Working by myself all day. Time to let in the thundering hoards.

I am awake far too early today. I had intended to sleep late to ready my body for the drive ahead. I have to leave teh valley some time after noon and I have a 13 hour drive ahead of me.

I guess I can finnish packing and readying my musical selsctions for the trip. Any suggestions on the latter?

Marv, is this the same company that messed you about so much recently?

Well done to Z, and Hullo to Pattern Chaser.

Well, I have printed off a dozen letters to local breweries. Maybe one of them needs a spare brewer

In the meantime, I should have a few weeks of temp work lined up, so that brings some pennies in

I'm back, much wetter but none the wiser about my liver. I presented said organ for ultrasound examination at a new hospital. It was so plush and quiet I could hardly believe I was in the UK. Anyhow, I watched the screen and the doctor's face carefully. My insides looked very untidy to me but there were no expressions of horror or shock or, indeed, awe from the doctor so I assume everything was as expected.

I am very wet.

Thanks for the breakfast, Matina. That tided me over nicely until my late lunch.

Well hello to you all - aren't you a friendly bunch?

Mary asked <...musical selections for the trip. Any suggestions?>

Well I'm listening to "Casablanca Moon" by Slapp Happy, after it was featured in Another Place I visit. Haven't heard it for years; bad mistake. It's excellent! Tea dance music, until you listen to the words, which are quite poetic, and often provocative. I doubt you'll have a copy handy, though, Mary?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Oops! Sorry, MARV, my eyes aren't what they used to be!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Congratulations, Z. Welcome patern chaser. Cool rockface, Lil.

That's most of what I remember from the mountain of backlog I read yesterday and today. That and the education stuff. d'E has already said most of what I wanted to say about it (I like the "factory schools produce factory workers"). Schools are mostly about ranking people and separating the winners from the losers and they do so in such a way that the children of winners end up winners and the children of losers end up losers, all with an appearance of fairness. Standardized tests simply reflect this and the results should be no surprise.

And you're right, d'E - the problem IS systemic. Here's a cool quote from my favourite authority on education, John Holt:

I would be against trying to cram knowledge into the heads of children even if we could agree on what knowledge to cram and could be sure that, once crammed in, it would stay in. Even then, I would trust the child to direct his own learning. For it seems to me a fact that, in our struggle to make sense out of life, the things we most need to learn are the things we most want to learn. To put this another way, curiosity is hardly ever idle. What we want to know, we want to know for a reason. The reason is that there is a hole, a gap, an empty space in our understanding of things, our mental model of the world. We feel that gap like a hole in a tooth and want to fill it up. It makes us ask How? When? Why? While the gap is there, we are in tension, in suspense. Listen to the anxiety in a person's voice when he says, "This doesn't make sense!" When the gap in our understanding is filled, we feel pleasure, satisfaction, relief. Things make sense again - or at any rate, they make more sense than they did.

When we learn this way, for these reasons, we learn both rapidly and permanently. The person who really needs to know something does not need to be told many times, drilled, tested. Once is enough. The new piece of knowledge fits into the gap ready for it, like a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Once in place, it is held in, it can't fall out. We don't forget the things that make the world a more reasonable or interesting place for us, that make our mental model more complete and accurate. Now, if it were possible for us to look into the minds of children and see what gaps in their mental models most needed filling, a good case could be made for giving them the information needed to fill them. But this is not possible. We cannot find out what children's mental models are like, where they are distorted, where incomplete. We cannot make direct contact with a child's understanding of the world. Why not? First, because to a very considerable extent he is unaware of much of his own understanding. Secondly, because he hasn't the skill to put his understanding into words, least of all words that he could be sure would mean to us what they meant to him. Thirdly, because we haven't time. Words are not only a clumsy and ambiguous means of communication, they are extraordinarily slow. To describe only a very small part of his understanding of the world, a man will write a book that takes days to read.

John Holt
from How Children Learn
Delta 1967, 1983

[spk, who favors the "perfect" tenses, being imperfect and all]

Marv, change out of that dress. You're confusing people.

Hello Pattern-Chaser

It is still a damp day here and Cassie is getting exceedingly bored with being cooped up indoors. At the moment she is practising ambush tactics with a couple of corks.

Having got some w*rk out of the way, been to the gym, done some chores and decided on the evening meal for the menfolk (supermarket brand reduced-everything for me), I reckon I have earnt some time playing Icewind Dale II.

The gym thing and calorie counting seems to be kicking and I've lost 2K (about 4 1/2 lbs)

On long car trips I take mindiscs stuffed full of mp3s. My favourite is the one I put together of all the tracks I heard on the tv and radio from Glastonbury 2000 that I really like and includes David Gray, Chemical Brothers, Moby, David Bowie and Toploader amongst many others.

Toc, yes same company.

Pattern Chaser, Welcome and no worries about the name thing. People do that all the time.

Amy, it's called a kilt, not a dress

A kilt? Even when it's got pink flowers on it?

Now I feel I am being put upon

Marv, didn't realize you have such good legs.

Have already had to unclog the toilet in the men's room. It's going to be a long day.

Matina, if you are going to bake cinammon buns, I'd appreciate one or three.

Well met Pattern-Chaser, welcome.

dE - I agree with the factory school remark. I have often felt that we do not have an education system, we have a glorified vocational training system.

Courtesy

*aside to Marv* Your slip is showing

Well said, d'E. And thank you for the illuminating quote, Garius.

I missed the lunar eclipse last night because, to borrow the opening lines of Snoopy's many books "...it was a dark and stormy night." Plus, I was holed up listening to my new acquisitions from a CD buying fit. Early Van Morrison, His Band & Street Choir and Veedon Fleece. Both excellent driving music, I might add.



Marv darling, your seams are crooked.

Welcome, Pattern-chaser! It's nice of you to join us.

Marv, don't listen to them. You look very cute.

Courtesy's right, it isn't education, it's shop.

Marv, dear, you look stunning. Are you going to wear the pillbox or the snappy slouch hat with that?

Off to pour beer for several hours. Yeah! I love my job.

Oh, yes. Welcome Pattern Chaser!