Time better spent

History teachers love the saying, "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."  The saying gives them justification for their jobs.  I don't think it's true, however.  In fact, I prefer one of the slogans from the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, "History is bunk."  The slogan is one of the secondary themes of the book.

The idea behind the slogan is that no amount of history could have prepared the people of the very advanced and future world presented in the book is not a repetition of anything that had gone before.  There was no way people could have prepared for it.  Maybe from about 3500 BCE to 1400 ACE history tended to repeat itself in various aspects.  But since about 1400 BCE with the advent of the late Renaissance period, the world has presented many new scenarios and with ever-increasing rapidity.  Nothing learned about the Sumerians or the Romans, the Goths or the Mongolians, the Vikings or the Samurai could prepare the people today for anything in their world.

What should the proper stance on cloning be?  Should we continue the experiment with educating the masses or has it run its course?  Does anyone really cook with an oven anymore when the 5-10 minute microwave meal suffices?  Can you believe the panoramic views from the Mars rover Curiosity - they're stunning and majestic, a picture of Earth millennia from now?  And what about the moon Titan circling Saturn? That is a future world whose time will come before long.  It is exactly like Earth with the exception that water is liquid methane in the same amounts, complete with atmosphere, rain, lakes, and rivers.  And, of course, much much more like totally electric cars.

History has been included in school because it teaches us a few lessons about citizenship and a few ideas about connecting the dots of the evolution of our own history.  In the name of well-roundedness it has been a core subject.  But, no more.  It is more well-rounded to know about terra-forming other planets for future survival, or to know about nanotechnology, or to study the plans for colonizing and commercializing the moon.  It is more well-rounded to teach how to defend oneself against identity theft, cyber-hacking, and combating phishing and malware.  It is time better spent to know how to globally network than to know the dynasties of Egypt, Persia, and early China or to explore harvesting the ocean to stave off hunger for 4 billion of the world's inhabitants instead of learning what the government of the Roman Empire or the societal structure of feudalism was.

We need brave people with new thinking for a more advanced world.  That's the main message of Brave New World.  And the secondary theme is also true.  "History is bunk."

Call it liberation

I remember hearing that Einstein had developed a theory on time when I was in high school.  None of the teachers understood it very well.  It was called the theory of relativity.    In college, I remember hearing about the special and general theories of relativity.  The instructors there at least knew what each was, but they didn't really believe it, since it was in a relatively (love puns!) new state.  But, by the end of the 20th century, the theory had been proven many times over.  Now,it is a staple of today's science knowledge.

Today, the theory has spawned new thinking because it is the foundation which allows some really great progress, progress that is a quantum leap from the days of my high school... and that quantum leap happened in a very short time.  The same can happen to our own thinking.  It is time for a quantum leap.  But, we have to loosen our grip on what education is.

The space-time continuum is not merely a concept in a science book.  It has been emancipated into reality. It is not an impossible idea to wrap our minds around.  The idea has been bound up in words and with teachers and their understanding of science and relativity.  I challenge you to emancipate your understanding from some locked up bias from the years you went to school and found the words from a book or the wordiness of a teacher to confound such a simple idea.  In a mere 8 1/2 minutes, you will understand the idea of space-time as a concept.

Time-space

That's what I mean by quantum leap... from an idea in a scientific theory... to a book and/or teacher explaining the theory... to 8 1/2 minutes for understanding.

Yes, quantum leap.  Let's end the incredibly slow snail's pace of reading about things and being slaves of words that we don't understand or explanations that we have to wade through or that confound us because they are poor.  It's a waste of precious time.  Let's emancipate our thinking.

Let's get serious

If I could choose what to teach in a school it would be the ability to communicate in a visual way, a logical order, and with words that stimulated, not that dulled.  It would be to teach students how to do the following:

AWE

This type of presentation fits modern media and follows how the brain learns.  How to make a presentation through video is so easy a fifth grader can do it - and well.  And if one were to learn how to do this beginning in first grade, what would the quality and content be like by age 16? It should replace the English curriculum, if not the speech curriculum, probably both.

Yes, this is how one should learn to present information and knowledge.  Something that inspires learning and showcases knowledge.

The bonepile

The idea behind grading assignments in school is to show what a person has made in comparison with others.  Ideally, grading happens to show progress to the individual, but that was only true in the beginning of grading.  It's really never been true since the 1800s, however, in America.  And I'm not sure it was true before then.  I just don't have any grading examples from that far back.

Oh, you thought grading was to show mastery?  Well, now, that is a laughable notion.  No one can really determine what mastery is.  I guess in today's terms, it is the minimum score required to show "Y" for scoring at least the minimum "scale score."   But the formula to derive a scale score is only in comparison to all the other scores in the state.  In a classroom, mastery is really a "soft" idea because teachers count off points differently, weight questions on tests differently (therefore, what is deemed important for a subject is different), and give "participation" grades differently and for different types of assignments.  With national standardized tests, the tests are normed, usually for each year it is given separate from the year before and the year after.  The norms are usually in percentiles or stanines.  So, does a student master a standardized test when scoring the 51st percentile, the 75th percentile, or the 98th percentile?  Is the 7th stanine ranking as good as the 8th stanine ranking when both rankings are above the idea of "passing?"

Perhaps if people could agree on what mastery is, then measuring it would be easier, but the definition eludes those who would try to capture it.  Knowing information definitely comes into the mastery picture, but how much information should be known?  And, for how long should people know the information?  Should mastery include knowledge that has been regurgitated in the amount of a particular percentage?  Should knowledge be tested immediately following its presentation and 6 months later?  Perhaps the average of retention of information is a better measure of mastery.  Perhaps mastery should include some real world application of knowledge or some problem in which manipulation of knowledge takes place.  Maybe mastery should not be a term used at all.  Only experience with knowledge can yield mastery.

If an idea exists, it can be defined.  If it can be defined, then it can be measured.  And if it can be measured, then we can talk intelligently about the various divisions and portions of its measurement.  On the other hand, we cannot talk intelligently about the various divisions and portions of mastery if there is no standard method of measuring it.  And, we cannot measure mastery if we cannot define it.  And, what makes us think mastery even exists in schools if we cannot define it.

And all of this gets back to grading somehow.  Everyone expects it.  Somehow teachers are not worth their salt if they are not telling students what they think of their work in some quantitative way.  And somehow students don't feel the need to turn anything in to a teacher unless they can expect a comparison to other people (so they can feel ashamed, average, or esteemed).  And somehow parents and students earn bragging rights for the number 70 or higher even if that number is mainly for participation or the number is against the backdrop of a field of 50 points rather than 100 points, or the number represents 60 points by the student and 10 points as a gift from the teacher.

Grading should have seen its last day.  It has certainly outlived its usefulness.  It has no consistency of meaning.  It needs to be placed in the bonepile alongside the sun dial, the gyroscope, the slide rule, the Polaroid camera, the black and white TV, and silent films.  If we ever come to an understanding of mastery, then maybe we can resurrect grading from the bonepile.  Then again, bonepile items are there because what is new, modern, and meaningful has replaced them for good.

Tailor designed

I would like to know about how government works. I use one of many search engines.  I can get overviews of my own government or the government of others.  Actually now, there are many YouTube explanations, complete with graphs, of varying lengths to fit the amount of time I have available and mood I am in.  So, I click on the ones I want, or all of them, put them on a playlist, set a time for being finished with them, and presto... I know about government.

And that is just one way.  Maybe I want to study modern film or television.  I can use a cable or satellite service and get on-demand movies of television series, documentaries, etc.  I can go to a website such as Hulu and see what is free or see what is subscription and see the variety of film and television series that I need for my study.

And that's just one way.  Maybe I want a foreign language.  Many courses are available for free off the internet, like Coffee House Spanish, and off of YouTube with native speakers.  But maybe I want to follow a Spanish blog or belong to a small group of people learning with one native speaker.  I can join the group.  I have a friend who is learning Greek with a small group. It is a group of 5.  None of the five lives in the same country and my friend lives in Nigeria.  What an authentic way to learn.  Virtual immersion.

And that's just one way.  I can learn labs for science a variety of ways.  The internet has many experiments to try.  However, one really neat method is to go to sites like Second Life, visit a virtual school or world that has been built for science, and see actual exhibits or 3D graphic designs of many different kinds of physics, chemistry, astonomy labs.  It works much the same way as a video game where you have a character and visit certain "rooms," learning what is available in each room as you go.

And that is just one way.  I can hear stories from audio.com and many other sites.  I can virtually learn anything I want to learn.  I can also learn things not in the so-called "academic core."  I can learn anything I want about fixing engines or doing body work on a car using schematics or watching people perform a task while they are explaining it.  I can visit any virtual gallery, such as fotosearch.com, and see thousands of actual pictures of any geographical feature in the world, visit every major city, even play games helping me to familiarize myself with  a particular region of the world.  I can study about alien visitation to the earth or walk on Mars alongside the rover Curiosity.  I can learn about dinosaurs, fossils, and extinction.  I can learn about genetics, farming, truck driving, information technology, electronics, plumbing, air conditioning.  I can learn anything, anywhere, anytime.  I can learn when I am ready to learn, when I am the most alert.  I can design my own course of study.

Even at the university level, there are 3 online universities that offer online courses taught by bonafide professors, some of them famous in their fields, in which you can piece together your own courses for your own reasons.  All you need is a particular number of courses.  You can choose the courses you want whether or not they fit some predetermined package of courses.  You may want courses only in a certain field, you may want interdiscplinary courses on a subject.  You may want courses out of your field.  Or you may want to follow one of the pre-designed packages offered.  It's up to you.

I can get so much more and get it in a tailor-designed fashion.  And this is not a vision of the future.  It's education available now.  Why would I want to go to a school, when I can avoid the crowds, the bullying, the indifference of a teacher, or incompetence on occasion, the constant moving from one part of a building to another, the drive to a building not close to my house, and the social games that are associated with present day schooling?   Why would I?

Reading in particular

Many who are 40 and above, basically those teaching new teachers in colleges of education, still think that reading is important and that the method used to teach reading is important.  The method should not be a hodge-podge of methods.

Newsflash...

A study by Mathematica, a research company for all kinds of educational research, from just 4 years ago, shows that reading methods don't matter at all.  The national study of 100 schools scattered across the country, pitted 4 different kinds of methods against each other and a control group using no particular method.  The method that used group techniques for reading had a slight advantage over the others and the control group at the end of one year.  The method that used software to enhance reading skills had a slight advantage over two other methods and the control group after one year.  But, no method had statistical significance over any other method or no method at all.  At the end of two years, even the slight advantage had disappeared.  Thus, any method works and every method works as statistically equally well as the next.

And, it's interesting that the group method came out slightly on top since reading is such a personally developed skill, linked to background readiness, interest, and rapport to the teacher.  That alone should suggest that reading has diminished.  If it takes a group to instill competition, to substitute for personal background, or to provide a small bit of incentive, then the group method will reach its limitations within a short time and tail off completely over the long term.  Thus, 10-year-olds are left with 7-year-old skills, 12-year-olds might reach an  8-year-old's skill level.  There is really not a substitute for personal background and personal incentive.

Besides the need for reading vanishing over the next decade, the currently developed methods used don't increase the level of reading beyond what is presently in place.  The smart phones, smart TVs, and smart houses of the next decade use icons, symbols, or voice command to control them or communicate with them.

As Bill Engvall, the comedian, would say, "Here's your sign...!"

What's 10 percent of...?

Something must be going on that is not very effective.

One of the most misspelled words is the word receive.  The rule is clear:  i before e except after c, or when sounded as a, as in neighbor and weigh, or as sounded like i like in einstein and height.  Neither and weird are exceptions spelled right, and don't let c-i-e-n words make you completely uptight.

One of the easiest multiplications to make is 10 times any number. So, how is it that people will know 10 X 10, but cannot reverse the idea to 1/10th of a hundred?  And percentages? Forget it.  Even if the percentage is 10%.

One would think that the only Civil War in the history of the United States would be an important fact to learn for a number of reasons. Here are two.  There were three amendments to the constitution as a result of it.  And, southerners and northerners disdain each other today because the southern states hated the policies of the northern states during Reconstruction so much that,  even after the policies disappeared, the southerners still called people from the north "damn Yankees."  And how's this possible?  Some people know that Lincoln was the president during the war, but almost 1/2 of adults in their 20s  (recent graduates) don't know this, the date or the cause of the war.

One of the rudiments of recognizing life is knowing what happens at the cellular level.  Every student takes biology at least 3 times in school.  And while most people can  tell you what a cell is and where it is found, they cannot tell you its parts, its importance to medicine or nutrition, its function in bodily processes, nor its communication system.

And English, Math, History, and Science make up the core of what educators think is important in America. We need to find a way to teach what is important to posterity in an effective way.  Perhaps the method is wrong.  (It is.)  Perhaps the subjects are the wrong ones.  (They are.)  Are they outdated?  Does every child need to take every subject?  Perhaps the approach to education is wrong.  (It is.)  Does education need a frame of reference for its teachings?

Education will continue in its current state (the state of mediocrity) until something goes on that is very effective.  We  need educators that know how the brain works.  Then a quantum leap will occur.

Driving forces

Personality, like physical traits, appears to be genetic.  Psychology has done a tremendous disservice to the study of personality popularizing tests to make the public think that personality is merely a group of four or five traits that manifest themselves as dominant or passive.  Personality is so much more robust than this that a comparison of such a four-trait personality test to the time when the earth was thought of as flat is absolutely the right comparison.

Personality is a set of driving forces behind the decisions people make when learning anything.  What fields of knowledge people choose to build up for themselves and what fields they choose to discard is ruled by these driving forces.  They determine what motivations are near to people's hearts and which ones are not.  They guide which outside motivations cause people to respond positively to certain learnings and which ones cause people to resist other learnings.  They drive people toward natural proclivities that go beyond interest to form talent bases.  They even help determine which  personalities in other people students want to respect enough to learn from and which they want to ignore.

How much does personality play into the current state of affairs of education? Nothing discernible.  It's part of the level playing field that public schools want to create in the name of equal opportunity.  The schools will educate a person with the same curriculum one step at a time for 13 years regardless of race, gender, creed, socioeconomic status and personality, a view that keeps the dropout rate around 40%.

Personality consists of driving forces, genetically controlled.  Educators controlling the public schools could not be more mistaken.

Fully depreciated

From watching the process of education since 2000, I see a clear trend.  Teachers are trained to dispense information pertinent to a test.  They are expected to only oversee a canned, state-approved, set of standards which can be measured on a specific, state-administered test.   Progress is slow.  Standards add a little information at a time each year without regard to growth spurts in the brain or in the socialization process.  Tests, therefore, are particularly repetitious.  Students who have decided that their education has left their interests out of the equation or has ignored their acumen in an area not tested are viewed in a negative light by the state. If they choose not to understand the information drummed into a classroom's airwaves one year at a time, 13 years in a row, K-12, they are deemed as at-risk and have to endure extra tutoring. In reality, they have chosen not to participate in trying to understand a subject that has no relevance to interest or acumen.

It is so sad to see the schools of education at colleges training students to be guardians of a daycare system for children ages 5-18 instead of training students to teach information pertinent to advancing knowledge in the plethora of fields that make the economy, our health, our technical and scientific prowess, and our rights as a society vibrant and enduring from one generation to another.  What a travesty for the government to create and support a system to spend millions of dollars for the mere rating of school districts and teachers on success as measured by one test based on a set of standards that doesn't have much relation to what makes money, what heals the body, what advances society in technology and science, or what manages our rights.

In case Facebook and Instagram, Flickr and Picasa, Photoshop storyboards, and Facetime and Skype are not wake-up calls to education, then education needs to know it will die a fairly quick death beginning in the year 2017.  Reading and writing will not lead the way to a better life.  Numbers will.  Already, those who know technology and programming make more money than those who know how to read and write.  Those who can understand making an app are much more employable than those who can get the main idea of a written story or who can recount details of a multiparagraph essay.

We need a system that is, first and foremost, relevant to society's needs.  We need a system that pays attention to what happens with the development of the brain.  We need a system that is dynamic, individual, and that gives a true mastery of knowledge (at an 80% level or higher).  We need a system that finishes such mastery in a short period of time rather than extended over a 13-year period for the sake of those who choose not to learn.  A person at 16 can master every subject that is currently in place.  Students aged 18 are not children and should already have begun the integration process into the larger society, not be chaperoned by guardians of a daycare.  We need a system that actively uses available technology and that seeks to move that technology to the next step in its evolution.  We need a system that rewards the accumulation and advancement of knowledge rather than a system that tries to manage socialization equitably and piecemeal knowledge at a pace that dulls the senses.

Of course, these thoughts are at conflict with the current caretakers of public and private education.  But the years of 2020 and beyond will require knowledge of a very different nature from our young people than the current system is capable of offering.

Voices

The 1950s and 60s were good years in education.  Dewey, Montessori, Piaget, and Bruner all began applying knowledge of cognition to theories and methods.  True individualization and interest-governed education began its course.  Steps in the long journey of accumulating knowledge emerged as unified theories.

Education in the public sector ignored these voices.

Montessori knew that children ultimately governed their own progress, so she introduced concepts of knowledge to them as they were ready, acknowledging that developmental stages could not be ignored, but  the public schools continued their lock-step, twelve-year approach to student growth.  Dewey and Piaget both knew that students had to be ready for knowledge before they could make it their own.  They formulated theories about taking in knowledge.  Bruner cleaned up the theories showing that learning was a rather ragged adventure and students should be presented with how facts fit a bigger, societal picture.  In no way was learning merely information to be dispensed by a teacher for instant student consumption over an equally distributed twelve-year period of time.

Public schools ignored these voices.

They kept the hard-nosed curriculum dispensed in twelve consecutive steps even though reports of progress in Dewey's schools and Montessori's schools showed that progress made by students surpassed the attempts at education in public schools.

Later voices emerged.  Madeline Hunter, Jane Healey, Marie Clay, Howard Gardner promised to bring education out of the dark ages with ideas about cognition and progress, instructional methodology and progress, reading and progress, and intelligence and progress.  Public schools tried to apply some of the ideas, but poorly, because the stalwarts of the educational system couldn't imagine that their twelve-year lockstep program had failed.  But it had - miserably.  Even the books Savage Inequalities and A Nation at Risk didn't deter the schools from becoming bastions of mediocrity, mistaking equal opportunities to learn  for learning as a function of the brain as the correct response to lack of student progress.

Since the days of Dewey, public schools have ignored and misapplied research to the extent that the public no longer trusts the schools to do their jobs.

The Departments of Education at universities were coaxed into creating their own set of experts to guide education.  But, voices such as Marzano's have produced only misunderstood, misapplied research, because it is nebulous, sloppy, and imprecise.  Not only that, but since the turn of the millennium some really good  and proven voices from technology have tried hard to get schools to use software and smart devices to advance the cause of education.  But, the inability of schools to allocate sufficient funding has limited the resources made available to students, and the world of technology has moved past what the schools have been able to provide.  Schools cannot keep up because of such poor planning, so they don't, opting instead to hold to the extremely outdated, lethargic, and disproved ideas of 12 years of lockstep instruction that leads to an ever-decreasing Bell curve average of knowledge as measured by the NAEP, SAT, and ACT exams, and as evidenced by the amount of money US businesses spend to train young people in deficient areas of communication and quantitative reasoning.

The appeal is clear.  Quit ignoring what is helpful, scientifically validated, theoretical, and individual.  Stop the twelve-year march of uniformity that dulls the mind and open the frontiers of education for the individual.  Use the tools of advancement propeling education a quantum leap ahead of what pen and paper have produced.  Recognize that reading is not the panacea for leading the way from the dismal depths of darkness.  Numbers lead the way.  Organization of visual thoughts are the best form of communication in the lives of young people, not using the imagination resulting from reading material, which is fast becoming an indecipherable and painful exercise and slows the progress of understanding concepts.

Quit turning the deaf ear to the voices that would lead to a more efficient, fuller, richer education!

What if?

Dynamic.

When Socrates tutored/schooled Plato, he gave his knowledge to him all right, but he also gave him a beautiful gift - the strategy of asking the right question when his stored knowledge would not be enough.  Socrates certainly did his part to advance knowledge.  The ability of the brain is built just this way. It stores knowledge, but it also has the ability to ask questions to gain new knowledge and connect knowledge to related ideas. Memories supplying information are seeking ways to be infused into new knowledge.
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Once an observation has been made, the knowledge, or stored memory, is either singular or related to other stored memories. If singular, then the observation's days are numbered before passing out of existence. But, if related then it joins other related memories in a cluster, called a synapse. One bit of knowledge may join as many clusters, or synapses, as it needs to in order to show multiple relationships. So the same memory may be embedded in a number of synapses. The idea is that the more embedding in various synapses an idea has, the more chances it has of reconfiguring old information into new. Embedded information can be recalled and reconfigured if it is pertinent to a new situation.  Information doesn't merely sit around, it is used over and over in both the same situations in which it was originally formed and new contexts in which it finds itself.

It is the time for our schools to become the agency for the modern Socrateses among us. Imagine a school whose teachers know the interests and motivations of her or his students well enough to show how to ask leading questions.  Given the internet's ability to direct someone to articles that inform, knowledge should be multiplying tremendously compared to the restrictions on advancement of knowledge now found in single teacher classrooms of many students.
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How can a teacher teach the information to be embedded in synapses so that it can multiply when new contexts come along? Through supplying the questions required of real-life scenarios in the classroom, used on the internet, encountered with professionals, sometimes other amateurs, or entertained in private, reflective moments of musing.  What an army of thinkers would be created, and the world would take a quantum leap ahead.
 
Dynamic!

Riptide coming soon

What is logic?

There are different answers to that question depending on whether you are speaking of the popular definition or the more formal philosophical definition.  So, I would like to define it as the organizational pattern into which the brain places the experiences that have value and have been recorded as notable.  There seem to be two main types of logic.  One is to communicate important life experiences to others.  The other is to relate important life experiences to quantity.

The oldest cave paintings ever found, the Cave of Lasceaux in France, support these two types of logic.  The drawings first tell a story of the kinds of animals found in the area and record the relative strength of the herds found through a repetition of particular  animals found.  The first writing in cuneiform is translated to mean who certain plots of land belong to and their boundaries, and the amount of value (money) the land was worth.  Even Homer's great chronicles of the Trojan War and its aftermath recount the story and the number of people involved.

Formalized communication through words and numbers (reading and math) acts the same way as the spoken.  Because it is a written form, a particular syntax has been developed to follow.  Different methods of teaching the syntax of the two types of logic vary in order of presentation of syntactic parts, but the overall concepts are the same.

Apparently the two types of logic appeared in time rather simultaneously in human history, so they are organizational patterns.  They develop from the amount of use they receive.  The amount of use is related to importance and value.  If one type is used more than the other, it increases.  If the two types get the same amount of use, they develop at the same rate and to the same extent because the syntax for both follow the same growth patterns (the same syntactic order).

The educational system should be presenting the two types of logic in equal amounts of time and in matching elements of syntax.  But, teachers don't know to do this, so much of the time communication in words far exceeds communication in numbers.  So, growth in math is stunted.  That's a real shame given that the world works according to numbers both in financial and technological success.  Transmission of knowledge is so very linked to the binary code and other kinds of number patterns that living with a restricted use of number logic determines how far in society a person can advance a great percentage of the time.

Since the purpose and tools of advancement in society has grown a different direction from in the last 150 years, those whose two types of logic aren't stunted will lead the way to the next step in civilization.  Unless instruction changes, it will be the children in Asia who will rise to the occasion.  The tide has already turned in that direction, and although there will be a little time, soon the tide will become a riptide.

Fingerprinting learning

Above all, the brain is efficient.  So, for learning to take place  it has to have a reason for taking up space and time.  Otherwise, why would learning take place?  So, early on in life, a person learns that experience is the best teacher.  All of us continue with this idea throughout our lives because "life" in this case refers the dichotomy of learning - what gives us pain is to be avoided, what gives us pleasure is to be rewarded.  The brain will create elaborate schemes if necessary to avoid or reward.

Learning is related to these two ideas in one form or another.  Something has to have + or - value for memory to form, so the first line of memory is to find something utilitarian that helps us in advancing ourselves or taking caring of our needs.  Language is learned for this reason.  It is utilitarian.  After a while language is manipulated, so it becomes ever increasingly more sophisticated in use, but at the outset and for most purposes it remains utilitarian.  Can schools really capture this idea?  Most learning at a school is hypothetical.  Some children can find a use or pretend a use for the hypothetical, thus making the learning utilitarian, but most cannot in the early years.

Humans also are unique in many ways.  One of those ways is in personality.  Some likenesses in personality span the human experience, but not many.  So, if learning is also to help design our uniqueness, it is laughable that education would even attempt to standardize learning.  Humans are the guardians of what they develop, and they develop it according to what motivates them, both from experiences that are utilitarian to them (because what is utilitarian is not usually universal across people) and that are motivating to them.  Commonly, this is referred to as extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.  And because humans continue their journey in seeking to be unique, they develop interests that vary in degree.  The stronger the interest the more + value it has.  The weaker the interest, the more - value it has.

So, a place of learning should enhance what comes naturally to a person.  The real problem is that people have different things come naturally to them.  What has + value to someone, has - value to someone else.  What has a great degree of + value to someone, has a + value to someone else in a greater or lesser degree. And, even if there could be a set of shared and common facts to be learned in grade 1, it would erode and disappear the older students became.  The idea of having electives after grade 5 tries rather poorly to deal with this truth.

Individualized instruction becomes impossible, then, when students are grouped in 20s or 30s or when given some broad choices.  When students ask why they should learn something, they are manifesting a primary function of their brains.  When the answer is because you will need this later in life, it is likely that the learning that sparked the question will be sorted into the discard pile.  Its utilitarian function for any value is not apparent.

I suppose one could say, "If all of this is true, then how is it that the US has such distinguished astronomers who can see planets beyond our own solar system or such wonderful surgeons who can restore health to ailing people, or such (name the group) who can (name the specialty)?"  How many astronomers can find these planets?  Oh, 30 (maybe).  Out of 315 million people.  That sounds rather individualized to me.  Even if the answer is 500, what is that percentage out of 315 million?  Even if one speaks of engineers or architects as a large group, how many can really design an 80-story building, or a building in a bay, or a bridge to carry the weight of all types of traffic for 100 years, or a vehicle designed to be electric and respond to an app from a smart phone, or...

But OK.  Test away on a common curriculum.  I'm pretty sure I know where that path leads.

The default is forgetting

If I visited a classroom today, no matter what level in the educational bulge (1-12) I visited, I would hear and see that reinforcement is a well-liked idea.   It would appear that good pedagogy includes introducing an idea and repeating it until all of the 20-30  students have at least heard it a minimum of 10 times, whether or not the concept is grasped.  Teachers wait for the golden mean to happen, that is, they wait until the middle number of students, 10-15, have demonstrated that by the 10th repetition of the concept they can perform the task.  A really good teacher will have all or nearly all students demonstrating understanding by the 10th time.

I cannot quit laughing at this notion.  Principle number 2 is all about the way that a synapse is formed.  Gary Lynch in California worked for nearly his whole 30 year career in the last two decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century trying to actually see a memory being formed.  He finally did.  And, then, he saw it replicated but not as many times as he expected.  After all his trials of getting the cells to  remember something he realized that the brain is programmed to take in what is necessary for reaction and survival, but to remember only what is worth remembering.  It doesn't really remember electrical impulses carrying information until the information is notable.

So, when I visit a classroom and see students with a vacant stare after a concept has been introduced, I know that the information being transmitted is not really notable; it doesn't have worth.  Even after the 10th time, if an idea has no worth to someone, it will not form a synapse with other related information.  What is more, Lynch found that impulses lit up (showing the remembrance) for different lengths of time, mostly measured in milliseconds.  The shortest impulses didn't last long enough to form connections to other dendrites.  So, even if a student showed understanding for one sitting, it is common only to show it temporarily, not for long term understanding.  Those memories are for information that has worth.

The real job of a teacher seems like it should be to show worth for the information dispensed.  Otherwise, it would appear that ease of forming ideas is rather a lost cause.  Reinforcement (repetition) doesn't have a place in memory formation.  Perhaps it does in memory storage, but the last word is not in on that yet.

I do see a problem for the schools knowing how memory is formed.  What is notable is many times linked to what is in a person's background, what is of value or interest, or what contains motivation for a particular individual.  I'm not sure a teacher has that varied a bag of tricks.  Even if a teacher does, I am certain a teacher doesn't have the time for making information notable to such a varied number of students (making one piece of information notable for someone, times 20 or times 30, times the number of concepts to teach in a day's time).

There's a reason one size does not fit all.

I'm seeing iridium

Here's the great irony.  Teachers in the classroom today think they are teaching things that are relevant.

Hmmm.  Let's review.  My 15-month-old granddaughter knows how to look at pictures on the phone by swiping from left to right and vice-versa to change from one picture to the next.  She knows how to enlarge and shrink the screen.  My daughter and her friend even tonight were joking about having to learn cursive handwriting when no one ever writes that way anymore.  Online banking has removed the need to keep a check register.  Receiving change from cashiers is always preceded by the "register" telling you how much change is needed.  Every smart phone made in the last two years has the capability for people to search by voice command and texting can be done by speaking rather than typing.  Text messages and Facebook messages are typically about 20 words long.  Twitter only has room for 140 characters per tweet.  No matter how long an article is on the internet, most people read only the first two paragraphs.  Information garnered from articles with headings is most of the time limited to the heading and two sentences.  Fewer and fewer people handle money.  People swipe their cards instead.  Skype and Facetime are as easy to use as regular voice mode when carrying on conversations.  Taking pictures of things to remind ourselves of what information it might have carried is the most common way for reminding ourselves of something.

It's a great irony that teachers think their classroom teaching approximates anything relevant to survival in today's world.  I'm seeing the iridium already building up in the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene (formerly the Tertiary) layers of the Earth.  Just by way of reminder - no dinosaur remains have been found above the K-Pg (KT) boundary.  The brain really does develop through what it takes to survive in the present and in the future.

I'm thinking that some changes are in order.

Much ado

The brain will assess its environment.  If it is hostile, it will determine whether to stay and ward off the danger, thereby learning something, or retreat to fight another day.  In education, the environment is called socialization.  But, that is a cover term for allowing a lot of sorting to happen in order to find a pecking order.  That kind of sorting teaches a student that a day of reckoning will happen sometime during the school year when her or his order will be decided.  Much of the time a person will not like the sorting process or the order that is decided for them.  The environment then begins to grow shields and spears and limits learning severely.

Also, the brain will assess the learning environment for its value in determining future success.  It will override the impulses for flight or fight if it thinks the long-term result is worth the fight or the retreat.  But too many times, there is no information worthy of subject matter matching future needs for survival, thus no relevance.  Then, the environment is deemed hostile since it is of no use.

Bill Daggett has been harping on the importance of relevance in the curriculum for years.  People have ignored him.  But, the evidence is written on every senior's transcript because the ability to communicate in numbers is very, very low and the ability to communicate substance meaningfully with words using any format has diminished.  Following Daggett's ideas for relevance would certainly help.   A student will certainly learn more if two things exist.  1) ensuring that the learning is clearly linked to future success, and 2) ensuring that the environment does not make one feel that fighting or fleeing is necessary.  Otherwise, 12 years of education is much ado about nothing.

Refinement time

So what would education be like if teachers paid attention to the principles found in the brain studies and cognitive research?

First, the brain has developed as a tool for survival.  That comes with a flight or fight feature.  When a child finds that she or he no longer can survive in a school environment, flight takes place, if not in body, then in mind.  People who describe "mentally checking out of school" say they wish they had been able to overcome their fears, but they couldn't and it has limited them, following them into adulthood.  But, beyond the safety of the environment, a person retains information that pertains to his or her perceived survival for the future.  If the information isn't pertinent, then why bother with it?  The principles that follow decide the data's fate.

Second, the brain follows a particular method for forming synapses, connections linking things that are remembered.  And, things that are remembered must have something memorable to spark a particular kind of impulse to flow to a cluster of dendrite terminations for the possibility of joining a synapse in the first place.  That memorable spark has to be remarkable because the brain's default is set to forget what is seen, heard, touched, smelled, tasted, and felt unless it is memorable.

Third, the brain is very efficient, so it only allows for knowledge that advances the individual's cause.  Information that is utilitarian is the primary reason for learning anything.  After that, information tagged with motivation (both intrinsic and extrinsic) gets captured for a synapse to form.  After that, information that is compatible with one's personality, what some call information of interest, is used to personalize, and tailor one's experience.  And, finally, information that comes from someone else of value, that originates from an established rapport with someone significant, will present itself as important enough to connect with other information garnered.  So, general information is packaged by the brain and made unique or it won't be remembered for a synapse to be formed.

Fourth, the brain follows a certain logical pattern - one that follows a protocol for growth in two areas.   The areas, one for communication in words, one for communication in numbers are designed to develop simultaneously and equally.  Lack of stimulus for either logic stunts its growth.  And, lack of stimulus translates to lack of efficiency, which throws its development back into the arena of principle three above.

Fifth, the brain functions best in a dynamic environment, not a static environment.  Although routines are established for involuntary systems of the body, routines for learning have not been observed as necessary for forming synapses.  In fact, connections made from various sources of information are stronger connections and more numerous than connections made within a single environment, such as attendance in one room with the same people for years at a time.

Other principles exist, but these five are enough for a person to see that what is touted as education today doesn't follow how the brain forms multiple and strengthened synapses in an efficient, logical, and personalized manner.  It's high time for schools to reconsider what forms the basis of information retention.  Someone will do it.  Probably someone in the business community.  He will make money, and the method will be efficient... like the brain.  We will ultimately see how much time is wasted today on things that don't have much to do with efficiently transmitting information for future survival.

Hard to watch

Stephen J. Gould's book, The Mismeasure of Man, accurately reviewed the outrageous testing and false hope that the U.S. put in psychological testing.  Aldous Huxley's Brave New World portrayed the natural societal results of such outrageous notions as people being born with a certain amount of IQ and the jobs that that IQ was suited for.

To some degree American society listened to Gould, but for the most part, the populace and educational community, including those trained to teach America's children, have continued to perpetuate those early 1900s outrageous, unsubstantiated notions of the psychological community regarding IQ.  Copious studies of the brain exist from both medical and cognitive scientists that discount entirely the early notions of IQ.  It is clear that humans' brains are equal and that learning takes place across the world's populations regardless of the formality of the training.

I am so very sorry that the educational community continues to accept the notions of psychology from the early 1900s and ignore research from more specialized and better suited fields bearing on how people learn. It is hard to believe that 150-year-old ideas and techniques still inform modern teachers, curriculum directors, and educational businesses.  The 12-year, lockstep, uniform, curriculum with its accompanying tests to "ensure that everyone learns only the same set of ideas" leads to mediocrity at best.  It serves no one's best interest.

The world has changed and in the next 10 years will undergo such radical changes in information delivery that  to continue the current system of education will be certain doom for all those who perpetuate it.  Fortunately, people like Ian Dukes have spoken loudly enough for anyone with ears to hear.  Others like him are paying attention to the current, specialized research in brain studies and are laying out paths for people to follow so that learning in the US doesn't become antiquated and contribute to the country's demise.

I leave it to the business community to lead the way out of the mire that the public schools seem to be unable to find their way out of.  My hat is off to business leaders like those at Exxon and those who are associated with Bill Gates who can see some handwriting on the wall and react accordingly and timely.  I am counting on them.

Transparent printing

Traces is the word I usually use when speaking of things that linger from the past and show themselves in the present.  I think that is because traces is a word used in the linguistic literature to show underlying grammatical structures that have disappeared but that still have prints on the surface structure of a modern usage.  But the word traces lacks the idea that the prints left from past use are still extant because they are so very important to the people still speaking the language.  The prints have merely survived for one reason or another through accidental fortune.

When it comes to experiences that have indelibly imprinted my current way of thinking and acting, I believe that a different word is better.  Latin had two words that have come to us.  The way the roots came into English were the same,  via French, and were only separated by a couple of hundred years for their entrance into the language.  The second word meant the same as the first, but had an aspect the first one didn't have.  The first word shows up in a number of  examples like tract, retract, detract, contract, subtract, and a few others.  The past participle form of trahere is tractus  which meant to drag.  That implies that someone can see evidence of the item being dragged.  Tractus morphed into a verb in French during the Middle Ages when French customs and language were fashionable in London.  That French word  became the word trace.  But, another Latin word was making its way into English, also via the French influence on English, at almost the same time, vestigium,  footprint.  That word showed up a little later in English as vestige.

So, now two words exist to choose from that are very close in meaning.  As I consider my current way of acting and believing, I want to choose the more recent word.  It is not merely a fortunate accident that I have become what I am, it is because someone's live and active footprint stepped into my life.  Someone walked with me and became a part of the fabric of my soul, my psyche.  The memory foam of my mind recorded the exact print and it lives in a place within even today.  The vestige of that print is extant... deliberate... and very important still... for anyone to see.

Enjoying a few moments of water

A fish out of water tonight.

I was sitting at a table in the banquet hall at a charity attended by many who had deep pockets in the suits they wore, came in their Benzes, and gave generously to the cause.  The program was nice, the food was excellent.

During the speaker's allotment of time my mind wandered, however, to a place I would have rather been... far, far away, where there was relaxation, ease, laughter, and love.  For a few moments, I enjoyed the water. I stayed there as long as I could, but the speaker finished, the charity ended, and reality reset itself.

Smorgasbord

I'm thinking tonight of restaurants that have dotted my memory.  When I was a boy, from ages 5-10, I lived in a small town in the center of Wyoming.  I remember going every Sunday to the Teton Lodge, a restaurant inside the hotel in the center of town.  Normally, I would order the open-faced roast beef sandwich with mashed potatoes.  I can taste it even now.  The roast was so tender.

The restaurant I remember most from my junior high years is a cafeteria in Arlington, Texas, the Colonial Cafeteria.  Every Friday, because my parents were too tired to cook, we went out to eat.  Most of the time there I would eat the ground sirloin steak patty.  I would get it with its natural broth poured over it.  For dessert I would always get the Eagle Brand lemon pie.  So delicious.

By far, the restaurant I went to most in high school was Kip's Big Boy Restaurant.  It was a hamburger place that had the equivalent of a Big Mac before Bid Macs were a part of MacDonald's menu.  The guys from the basketball team frequented the place.  We would go there after the games on Friday nights and sometimes on Tuesdays.  It was the Thousand Island dressing they used in the place of mayonnaise that lingered on my taste buds.

In my 20s I would visit a place called Daniels on a regular basis.  It was only a few blocks from where I lived.  Their chicken fried steaks were to die for.   Lots of crust, lots of gravy, mashed potatoes with cream gravy also, a roll and corn.  It was always finger-smackin' good.

From then on, money flowed a little more freely, so I was fortunate enough to eat at many places.  There are some standouts, however.  There's really not a better flavor for steaks than the steaks served at Outback.  The seafood at Red Lobster is hard to beat even if you visit a coastal city and eat at a local restaurant. I have tried to eat at some really fancy restaurants like Aquarium and some celebrity owned ones like Planet Hollywood.  I have eaten at some chain restaurants on foreign soil like Hard Rock Cafe, Cancun, and a whole host of local color restaurants in states strung out from Washington to Maine.

Besides the fact that I love a well cooked meal, I think they represent something for me.  They help me place my important memories in space and time.  Those memories, too, are flavorful.  The people in them added meaning to my life and made me who I am today.  Along those lines, then, the "flavor" of three restaurants best all others - The Rainforest, La Hacienda, and Little Italy.  Sacred ground, those restaurants, till the day I die.

Enjoying my milkshakes

Once in a while I swing by Baskin Robbins to get a milkshake.  I go to Baskin's because of a particular ice cream that I want used in the shake - Jamoca.  I don't drink coffee anymore, but I do like that flavor still in my shakes.

As I look back on my life and realize that some things have not made it forward to the present, I also see that some things served as a foundation for some of the little pleasures and left a trace that they had been there once. So many past likes in my life have disappeared with no trace.

Today I stopped by a Baskin Robbins and bought a Jamoca milkshake.  The flavor of coffee made my day as did the traces in my memory of some past, sweet days that have indelibly stamped my present stage in life.

Sweet translation

There's always more than one way to say something. Translation work shows this principle best and interjections or expletives highlight the difference. Spanish speakers use ojala when they are excited that something is about to happen. They anticipate the event, counting on the event to happen and meet all their expectations.

Usually, ojala is translated as "hopefully." But that doesn't really capture the excitement and anticipation of the Spanish phrase. Hopefully is much too casual. It has too much que sera sera in it to be a decent translation. "I hope so" is the sister translation if one wants to expand beyond the single word to a word phrase. But even that leaves out the expectant factor of ojala. Perhaps "I can't wait" is an equivalent phrase for ojala, but it's a phrase rather than a one word equivalent. I think when people are anticipating something good for themselves, they smile and say "Sweet!" with great emphasis. Sometimes people will become really animated when they think something great is coming their way. They'll exclaim, "Yes!"

So, "sweet," "yes," and "can't wait" are sometimes the best translation choices for ojala. I've never heard it translated those ways, but that's because the Spanish phrase is a stock phrase, so it is set in stone. Translators want to make the matching English translation a stock phrase as well. So, if they can make it a one-word translation, they feel like they have achieved their objective. Of course, they have fallen short for the reasons stated.

I look at life's experiences in much the same way. It seems that people want to duplicate good experiences. So, they find some experiences that relate somehow and they're satisfied. But when I have an experience that I want duplicated, I will not use a stock phrase that doesn't capture all the same aspects.

And when I speak of that one experience in life that I have faith will recur, then I use the word that captures all the aspects I need. Ojala. But for friends who won't use Google translator, allow me to translate for  you... "Sweet!!!"

Distant twinkles

It's been a while.

I can still see the twinkling lights across the lake from my place on Lake Travis.  I would sit on the back deck overlooking the lake around midnight and gaze at the lights shimmering from their reflection in the water and twinkling from the actual houses where they were.  Double contentment.

I also have some definite associated memories with those glistening lights of  a time in Camelot when life was noble and there was life and light along my shore... a light that glowed... a light that was splendorously distinct from the darkness... a light that relaxed the fabric of my soul... one that centered me... one that I could see reflected in every experience... so, double contentment.

It's been a while.

Alike

On a particular day of the week when I go to work, I look across to the far end of the parking lot from where I park.  The car is usually in a different parking space, but it's always there.  It's not there on any other day of the week.  I look over at it because it reminds me of my own station in life.

I see the car, but don't go very near it.  Only once have I passed by it.  It was the first time I saw it on the parking lot.  I was on my way to Dairy Queen close by my workplace and didn't see it because I was looking the opposite direction.  So, I almost bumped into it.  It was hard to see inside the car because kerchiefs and dirty, worn towels covered the windows.

Inside the car was all the man owned - a couple of bundles of clothes, close-to-disintegrated sandals, coats with holes, bottles, food wrapped in paper, a can of beans or two.  The man himself was gray-headed, dressed in a t-shirt and jeans, heavily bearded, and asleep (at midday).  The paint on the car was splotched, showing the paint of a couple of different layers, and looked to be a model from the early 90s.

Of course, I wonder what his life's story is.  But, no matter what it is, I am sure it is the human story.  Something brings us to the place we are in life.  Good things and bad come to us regardless of our position in life or of our location along the journey that takes us to our final destination.  I have a feeling the man is doing his best.  He may even be happy, living life with no regrets.

He and I are alike in that.  Whatever people see on the outside, my goal is to be content, doing the best I know how.

Time for landscaping

In one phase of my life, I lived in a house for 13 years.  I didn't really do anything to it as far as landscaping went - for the whole 13 years.  I did put a pool in the back yard after the first two years, but didn't really landscape the yard around it.  I did maintain the two trees that grew in the back yard.  They grew strong, tall, and thick over the years.  The bushes and trees in the front of the house maintained their luster.  And, the grass was cut and green during the summers.  Cooking barbequed meats was a pleasure under the roof of the patio, but I never really changed the patio's looks either.

I look back on that and see that it represented what I was doing in life.  I maintained the seeds of what had been engendered within me since childhood.  I added something pleasurable to my life that would add sparkle to it.  And, one season of the year the house looked really nice.

I don't live in that house anymore.  But, I have seen how much could have been done.  Of course, there's always a reason why nothing did get done.  Mainly my kids were growing up and any large amounts of time spent were dedicated to taking them places or spending time with them, their friends, and their events.

But, now... there is another agenda for me.  I can spend large portions of time however I want to spend them.  My landscape will better reflect the more aesthetic things in life and the more meaningful things.  I need to plant something in the right places that will grow.  I need to nourish what is in place or change the look altogether to a view more to my liking.  I need to invest in plants that return year after year.  And I need to make the overall look something attractive so that return on investment (resale) is always enhanced.  The housing market will someday be very conducive to turning a large profit.

No dinosaurs allowed

I drove up in the driveway to the house.  Immediately lights on the exterior of the garage and the porch light came on.  As I walked up the entry way to stand at the door, I could hear a voice inside announcing my presence by name.  I heard a click on the door and the voice from the speaker on the outside of the door softly spoke "Welcome."  The door was open, so I walked in.  The light in the entry way came on.  My phone vibrated as the projected 2- inch picture of my host appeared in 3-D, saying, "I'm almost through in the bathroom.  Be there in 5.  Have a seat and tell the TV what you want to watch."  I sat down and said, "Scandal."  The TV flashed on and asked, "Which episode?"

On the way out after supper, I noticed the pictures in the art niches in the wall.  In one niche, the artwork changed every 10 minutes.  They were beautiful pictures - paintings and photographs that had been digitized.  If I wanted one of the pictures to stay for more than 10 minutes, all I had to do was to say the name of the picture and give the amount of time I wanted it to stay present.  In a second niche, 3-D holographic images appeared every 10 minutes of famous sculptures and monuments like The Thinker and The Leaning Tower of Pisa.  The same voice command worked for them too.

There was more, of course.  I loved it.  Can't wait to see the 22nd century.   Ri-i-i-ght, I should live so long.

What's taught and what's true

Things plague me that probably shouldn't. When things are supposed to be one way, then suddenly they aren't that way, then it bothers me. I guess that has to do with trying to live life in the best possible way based on the information we have available to us. And it bothers me even more when people continue thinking in the vein of what changed when clearly the change has made something very different.

A number of examples can be cited. In history, I was taught how great a president Lincoln was. But, through the years, I have come to see that he barely won his presidency, and his administration was every bit as divisive as any that have existed in modern times. In English, I was taught that "proper" language was the basis of a good education. The truth is that educated people speak pretty much like everyone else their age, and the notion of "proper" is associated with a dying breed of grammarians who had delusions of a golden age of education in the country. In education, I was taught that having a solid foundation with a liberal arts education would propel me into the future with a solid base of financially appearing better than those without a complete education. But, the job market is much more complex than reduction to a platitude. Many with lesser amounts of education than I have are doing quite well and sport a higher level of quality of life than I will ever achieve. In geology, Tectonic Plate Theory is still new enough that many discount its ramifications that the Earth's crust has evolved over a really long period of time. In theology, I was taught that the Bible pretty much came from heaven. But it has a traceable history, signs of borrowing from sectarian culture, and a hint that politics determined some of the outcome of the books in it.

I watch many documentaries about what archaeologists have found from the ancient world. The more we dig, the more we find that it is a silly notion to think that the world of prehistory was crude. Toilets and hot/cold water capability was found in the Minoan civilization in the third millennium BCE. Cities have been found underground in beautifully carved caves, underwater with precision cut stones for highways and fortifications, and under existing towns with gold and weaponry in their burial sites. Relics have been found from humans at the time of the disappearance of the last ice age. Paintings have been found in cavern systems that illustrate the life and environment of people around 30,000 BCE. Three different species of humans inhabited the Earth at the same time, albeit a short time.

I guess my main beef is that all the changes make truth "a hard deer to hunt," to use Stephen Vincent Binet's term from his short story By the Waters of Babylon. I walk on a shifting foundation. What I thought I could count on turns out to be relative. That does something to my thinking. It makes me tentative.

Then again, who gave me the idea that I live in a black and white world anyway? I was one of the people that was taught that the world was stable and certain and dependable. I just need to forget that and move on with my life.

Miles

There was before me,
Mile up on mile
Of snow, ice, burning sand.
And yet I could look beyond all this,
To a place of infinite beauty;
And I could see the loveliness of her.
When I gazed,
And in my gazing, desired,
Then came again
Mile upon mile,
Of snow, ice, burning sand.

Stephen Crane

___________________________________

It is so true that the desires of one's heart, the desires of a lifetime, are miles and miles away, and that only through burning sand and ice can one reach them - if he survives.  There is no doubt but that my vision is clear.  I just can't seem to overcome the miles even if I have walked a million of them already.

But my heart says to have faith.  So I will.

Pristine

Since nothing is 100%, I suppose not everyone does, but it seems to me that most people want the peaceful, serene, and pristine life - like a very private house on a winter day secluded among mountain peaks. One can wake up on a snow-set morning and gaze upon ice crystals covering the peaks, trees, and everything else surrounding the house. Who wouldn't?

Life is not always cruel, but it has a way of giving us desires even if only seeing them as dreams, or it allows a stroll down a path to see a spectacular setting, then quickly turning away from the splendor, leading to something much more mundane.

I prefer to live the unquestioned life, wholly compatible with someone who gets what I'm about, in a private house on a winter day, surrounded by snow-covered trees and peaks. Who wouldn't?

At present, though, the splendor-filled scene of my preference has twisted to the more mundane realities of living. Somewhere down the path, life will turn back eventually. I will venture upon a scene of splendor around some corner up ahead. I just need to keep the picture in front of my eyes until I make that corner turn. Then, talk about pristine...

Reading tea leaves

On the weather segment of the news tonight, the forecaster showed a disturbance in the upper atmosphere halfway between Siberia and Alaska. The computer that tracks storms from this area spit out 3 scenarios for the movement of the disturbance. According to one of the models, my area should get a soaking rain next Sunday. According to a second model, rain will come next Sunday, but the front bringing it will blow right through without leaving much rain. The third scenario shows the front coming through too far north to bring any rain at all. Weather forecasting is inexact still after many years of refining the technique of reading radar and clouds.

 And such are the days of our lives. Our minds can easily run some possible scenarios of what the future holds given the variables that face us each routinely. Some years are so out of kilter with the rest of the years, that it is impossible to predict what will happen very far down the road. Other years are much more stable and allow us to predict with accuracy what the next few months will be like.

 I've looked off the coast of Alaska on my horizon. But, I know that where I am now is temporary. Predicting the movement of disturbances and their timing for my area is still enigmatic, but I do know that spring is coming. It comes every year, and most of the time it is wet. Last year, not so much. The rain came early this year. Spring is early too. Rains should come in June. I'm running the models in my mind. But I'm living for the precipitation of June. Till then... chin up.

Lab rat

It reminded me of the back room of casinos where people are taken when casino bosses cut off their debtors' fingers and beat them.  Ducting showed below the ceiling.  Lights dangled from the ceiling on poles. The plastic on the machines used were of the old beige variety of the 1960s and 70s.  Wires snaked along the floor everywhere like the ones from the 1990s connecting electrical guitars to speakers strung across a concert stage.  I was on the table.

First they had to map the nerves down the side of my knee by using electrical shocks.  Supposedly, I was not to have felt the shock.  But, a number of the buzzes sent my leg to shivering vigorously.  Then, they went in with very thin needles to areas that had been mapped in order to find a nerve root in the subcutaceous region.  Now, that was electrifying.  I was supposed to call out when I felt a sensation with one of three terms - local (meaning the pain was felt where the needle was stinging), sharp pain (yep, the shock felt the entire length of my leg), and twitch.  That was the term they wanted to hear so that they could stop and hear the brain's signals to the nerve.  Strong signals would mean there was too much pressure in the vein along which the nerve root was located.  Normal signals would indicate normal pressure.

This went on for one hour.  Mostly I used the word local, but a good number of times I felt the sharp pain from the shock down the length of my leg.  Only once in a blue moon did I say twitch.  The net result was that the doctor couldn't find enough nerves that told her that there was pressure being affected.  Other "noise" interfered with the signals because the muscle wan't relaxed enough.  Imagine that.  Pain locally and sharp pain down the length of my leg for the better part of an hour, and the doctor thought I wasn't relaxed enough for her to hear the signals clearly from the nerve root.  I kept telling myself that this was experimental after all, but this was really on the inexact science side of things.  The doctor told me she wouldn't continue after an hour - good news.  Oh, but that was followed by, "Schedule another appointment and we'll try in the other leg."  Now that was comforting.

Faith, rain will come

In the hilly areas of the country, streams bring much needed water to plants, animals and humans living in lower lying areas. But these streams only run after a rain. Most of the year, they are merely dry, cracked stream beds. I have been through several spells of drought in my life, one of them for the last couple of years.




But I know that at some point the streams will swell again to bring life. I can't always see or smell the refreshment promised by gathering dark clouds, but I know they will come. The beds are carved into the ground because rain has filled the streams many times before. So, I watch the skies and wait... with anticipation.

A miss in guidance

It's always interesting to hear what people say about the languages of the Earth.  Having a cozy conversation with language teachers the other day proved to be enlightening. The conversation began by three teachers talking about how some people were able to learn several languages while others sputter to master their native tongue. Finally, one said that languages have the same patterns, so finding the universal pattern used in languages enables them to quickly learn many.

Wel-l-l-l, not exactly. I let it go at the time it was said because the two other teachers agreed with the notion. A little reading about that subject would have helped them have a more fine-tuned view of the subject, but they had not read, nor did they plan to read more, so this was not the time or place to comment on what was common knowledge for those aware of the field's literature. Right, universal grammar is the holy grail of linguistics, but to date, the grail has been illusive. Maybe a philosophical comment will be appropriate someday, just not this day.

But therein lies a point. A person only learns (or in this case, dispels a common notion) when the context for learning has produced a desire or need. Those contexts are not continuous nor related to routines. But these 3 teachers were products of the system that touted continuous learning, continuous improvement, and repetition. I'll check their students for fluency in about a month, but I already know what I will find because the system they think gives progress, has a long track record of failure to achieve its goals.
What a different story for their students if they would read about the brain's workings and the purposes for needing and developing systems for communication.

Being true

I have heard the advice frequently given, "Be true to yourself." Socrates is many times credited with saying this although his literal words in translation were, "Know yourself." Shakespeare put the words in the form of advice from his Hamlet character Polonius when bidding bis son farewell. His exact advice was, "To thine own self be true, and it will follow as the night the day, thou canst then be false to no man."

Call it wisdom of the ages, I guess. But the same advice is still being given. However, competing advice is also heard these days in the form of, "Consider the audience and act accordingly," and "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face."

While it is important in daily interaction to listen and not to be offensive, it is still good to stand for your own beliefs, make every effort to achieve your own goals, and stand alone sometimes , not acquiescing,  when you have more knowledge of something than others or when you know your own desires better than others who only think they know you well. An exception is when you have expressed your desires to someone else so that they know you as well as you know yourself. But that kind of transparency is rare, as rare as the true beauty of the person with whom the transparency is a shared commodity.

Guineas and changes

The diagnosis was hyperplasia from one doctor, hyperaldosteronism from another.  It's one of the newer conditions treated by specialists because no one knows what all exactly it affects or what all affects it.  It's somewhat rare now, but specialists don't really know how many people might be affected because the condition goes undiagnosed for the most part.

So, it was no surprise when I received a call to ask if I would be a guinea pig.  Not literally, of course.  Specialists wanted to sample my blood using a special procedure so that they could see what areas of the body were contributing to the condition.  Well, it's ok by me.  Why not.  It's all for the cause of progress and medical advancement.  And, who knows, it might promote a more normative condition once they pinpoint the cause, remove it, and take a sampling of the blood after removal.

Before and after is definitely a part of the scientific process.  And, it's a part of my own life story.  I have seen my life's trajectory before certain events and seen the line after.  Definitely a trajectory change.  What's even better is that I know the cause for the change, so I don't have to go searching for it or isolating probable causes and retesting.  I am thankful tonight for the one who brought such a trajectory change, who reversed a declining curve, whose essence is restorative.

A number of deep meaning

Numbers take on symbolic status in a great number of cultures both ancient and modern.  The Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest story on record.  It is a story by the Sumerians that shows how culture was born through an involved series of symbols, some through worded analogies, others through numbers chosen to represent special actions.  One such number was 10, especially for distances in the story.  Another number was 7, used for meaningful forces.  Both heighten the experience of the characters in the story.

Other stories from the old world have survived as well.  The number 3 was important to Egyptians and Akkadians alike because it represented the fullness of the mystic forces early people had no understanding for.  Classical Greek records the numbers 2 for happiness, sometimes discord, and 3 for strength as did the Hebrew records.  Romans lived in a dichotomous world, one world of practical, utilitarian living, the other world for the great secrets of life and mysticism.  Their symbol of strength was the number two, represented by their consuls during the days of the republic and by their founding mythical fathers, twins, Romulus and Remus.  But they also loved the number 10 and its powers of 2 and 3 (100 and 1000) for overwhelming, unbreakable, impenetrable force.

Religion through the ages has also developed its own number values for symbols.  3, 4, 7, and 10 have been their old reliables.  From the Christian age onward, 3 has represented the deity.  Four has represented the four elements of the Earth or the four corners of the Earth, depending on the era.  7 often represented completeness, and 10 represented something with force or something in an absolute form.

For me, the symbolic number is 5.  It doesn't match anything from literature, modern or ancient, but it does symbolize complete happiness and satisfaction from every fiber of my being.   It provides strength during difficult times, vitality during peaceful times.  5 is every bit as significant to me that 3 is to Christendom, 10 is to the Romans, and 7 to the Sumerians.  My life thrives on five.  It is my special number and heightens my experience.

A priori

Rank ordering is a simple exercise, but I find that many cannot rank their days or their emotional meanderings.  Sometimes people find that they can set a goal or two, but watching their actions to obtain the goal they have set shows that rank ordering is not something they are accustomed to doing.  Too many other desires pull them away from what they say is important.

Higher education helps to a degree so that people know that they really can't achieve something unless they rank order.  And certainly, advanced studies or successful entrepreneurship prove the necessity of rank ordering in order to achieve what one sets out to achieve.  Watching the most recent superbowl showed the importance of rank ordering for sure because the quarterback with no superbowl, or playoff experience for that matter, didn't know to rank order clock management as an a priori task in his preparation.  The other quarterback did, and the game came down to managing the clock well.

Since my 30s I have rank ordered my life, and when the circumstances allowed for unilateral control of a situation, I have done exactly what I have wanted to do.  That's not the whole story, though.  Circumstances seldom allow for unilateral control.  I didn't order the death of a beloved professor that, had he lived, probably would have changed the path I took.  But he died, and I went about my business bettered by his influence, but not bettered by his direction.  I didn't order my son's death at a young age, and that altered my path over time absolutely from the trajectory it was on. 

As I consider the rank order of my top five desires, I know what it takes for each item to be realized.  Not any of them are wholly within my own ability to realize.  So, I am setting out toward the realization of the top ranked item first, knowing that, with faith in the part not dependent on me, its realization will bring me the greatest of earthly happiness.

Mid-winter dandelions

The groundhog predicted an early spring for this year.  As I look out my window, I can confirm that the spring will come early.  Dandelions dot my yard.  Dandelions only show up in mild temperatures indicative of spring.  It has been a mild week for temperatures in the dead center of winter - 80s last week, 70s this week.  So, seeing dandelions makes me know that the trees will be ready to bloom in about a month.  I know this because the round head of soft fuzz replacing the dandelion after its flower is gone, is ready for a strong wind to spread the dandelions across my yard to neighbors' yards.  This means that February will have one or two cold spells of slightly under freezing, but after that, the winds of March will be ushering in the spring weather.

Because of an early spring, then the usual "April showers bringing May flowers" will not occur.  Rain events will be split between March and June.  It's all about watching signs and having gone through the cycle before.

Life offers its set of patterns also.  A book from the 1980s called Passages helped me see these patterns.  That is not to say that life is predictable.  It is to say that large patterns tend to guide people through the decades of their lives.  For the people going through the decade, everything happens fresh and new as if they are the first to ever experience life in their own unique ways.  While that is true on a day-to-day basis, a larger pattern follows certain guideposts.

So, I am going to sit back, enjoy the spring when it strikes early, and enjoy my life knowing what the big picture is about to bring.